China and other words

Larry Litt has pointed out that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was recently forced to release the list of key words used by the US Government to identify internet comments by dangerous radicals. If you use one of the words, your remarks will end up in the pile to be checked out. For example, a key suspicious word is "China."  I plan to cooperate with the security agencies and help create a pile of information as big as the moon. That's why I include China in all my comments. China, China, China.

POWs in the Second World War

World War Two was brutal on all sides, and no doubt racism played a role. Many Japanese Americans were interned for much of the war, and nothing like that happened to German Americans. In fact it would have been difficult to intern German Americans because they were the largest single ethnic group in the nation, more numerous than English or Irish Americans. But in reading about the war (which began for us when I was in the first grade), it does strike me that more than racism became involved in the differences in American perceptions of Germans and Japanese. It's probably obvious that there was a much greater cultural gulf between the Japanese and the Americans. When the Germans or Americans forces were surrounded, they surrendered; the Japanese fought to the death or committed suicide.

Two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a continuation of a policy, pushed first by the British, of deliberately targeting civilians.This occurred after Germany had surrendered, but even so it seems clear that American policy was more ferocious when it came to the Japanese. Some part of that might have come from the Japanese treatment of American POWs. In its conquering of much of the East, the Japanese had taken about 35,000 American POWs. The Japanese Army's standing order was that these prisoners were to be executed if it seemed possible that Allied troops were about to liberate them. In various battles, thousands were executed. Thousands were starved to death. In the Japanese military tradition, surrender was dishonorable and prisoners were worthless. In all, 37% of American POWs  held by the Japanese died. Among American POWs held by the Germans, 1% died.

NATO and the Ghost

As I write this, NATO leaders are meeting in Chicago, and a variety of groups are protesting in the streets. The Chicago cops are pushing people to disperse. NATO  was invented, as you may know, to hold the line in  Europe against Stalin. We were easily frightened in those days. A rumor reached us some time back that Stalin had died and was still dead and that the Soviet Union no longer existed. If that is true (and it's hard to verify, here on the rim of the Pacific) then NATO no longer serves its original purpose. It has new purposes.  NATO stands between us and the ghost of  Stalin. Also it's a key component of the Western economic system, employing many generals and constantly generating a demand for fresh ammunition.

We might get some idea of why NATO remains viable by reading  David Brooks. In his Sunday column he points out that "human depravity" is self evident. Brooks is, of course, referring to himself, and I doubt if anyone wants to argue that Mr. Smirker is not depraved. Something that is universally not doubted is what we call a certainty (by definition). Brooks' very existence explains our plight.

The Republicans Go For Lawson

Back in my distant youth, Republican and Democratic candidates could run in each other's primaries. As a result, some candidates became the candidate of both parties at once. This probably encouraged a centrist approach to politics, and it elected Pat Brown, Earl Warren and others, including wing-nuts like William Knowland. Then primary rules were changed and deals were worked out to carve permanent Republican and Democratic districts. That created the right of right no-compromise California Republican party we've watched recently. But today we have a new system, one in which all candidates from all parties run in one mass primary per district and the top two vote-getters run against each other in the final election. And that likely calls for new political strategies.

The most interesting campaign in our area (the coast of Northern California, very liberal, no Republican can win) has come in the congressional race, where one of the possibly progressive Democrats, Stacey Lawson, has been running on themes and methods borrowed from Mitt Romney. Stacey Lawson is a rich woman with no experience in politics who has flooded the district with TV ads. In the ads she stresses American exceptionalism, talking about how she began life in a trailer and went on to make a fortune. Her other main theme is that she is a "job creator." She promises to bring prosperity back to Northern California, although how an inexperienced junior congress member can do that remains unclear.

Lawson's goal in the primary is attract votes from corporate Democrats, from women in general and from the 30% of the voters who are Republican. The Republican Party has endorsed no one, keeping the door open. Two days back the Republican mayor of Ukiah, in a letter to the editor of the only daily newspaper in our area, endorsed Lawson, a Democrat. Today the Republican mayor of Willits published a letter supporting Lawson. This is, of course, an organized campaign in which the Republican leaders are signaling to their well-disciplined voters that they should support Lawson.

Keeping the Poor off the Beaches

 According to the Press Democrat, the California State Parks are planning to charge $8 a day to use the state beaches in Northern California. This will screen out the those with part-time jobs, children on welfare, the riff-raff and what is sometimes referred to as "the element." (You might not be familiar with "the element;" it is a polite reference to black people like Halle Berry and Barack Obama.)

A recent study has shown that roughly 1% of the people in this country are clinical psychopaths and that about 10% of the people who work on Wall Street fall into this category. You might not be astonished to learn that a system built on greed pushes psychopaths to the top, but I have to wonder where state leaders fit on the chart. My guess is that about 40% are psychopaths intent on keeping the state beaches open for the elite. As our climate changes, the poor can learn to play in the crumbling inland streets.

Romney's Pathology

Last week I blundered onto the smirking but intellectual David Brooks on my TV, and he told me that Mitt Romney was, despite a certain error he made in prep school,  a nice guy. David Brooks is an idiot. You pretty much have to be an idiot to be a Republican intellectual. (Some medical doctors are doctors but really bad at it, and some intellectuals are Republicans.)

I know a bit about prep school bullies. One of them took a run at me once, and I  hit him in the face and broke his patrician nose. I dropped him. We're talking about the careless sons of privilege like Bush who can afford to drive drunk. Romney was worse than Bush. Romney didn't drink. He led a small mob that threw a student down, and then Mitt personally sheared off the student's hair, while the student wept and cried out for help. Mitt didn't mind that. He claims not to remember it. A run of the mill bully would have walked away once the student began to cry.  Game over. To continue after that Romney had to be deeply sadistic. He crossed a line. To this day he doesn't remember it, probably because it meant nothing to him. Romney lacks empathy. That's why he says things like "I don't care about the poor."  Romney has no sense of how normal people react to comments of that sort.

THE REPLICANTS

For many centuries we feared that we would create a creature that would destroy us. The golem was an early example. Today we are more apt to fear a super-intelligent computer like HAL or cyborgs or the sort of replicant found in BLADE RUNNER. But when we build this nightmare, we may fail to recognize it, or we may welcome it. "Corporations are people, my friend."

The Bitter End

Some of the more cheerful among us believe that our country has an energy policy. Under wise leadership we will be shifting slowly from really bad fossil fuels like coal to less bad fossil fuels like natural gas and then to renewable fuels while our climate changes more rapidly--that's the imaginary plan.

Here's the real plan. No one is in charge. The gigantic corporations that control fossil fuels will duke it out to see who gets the most subsidies and sells the most product. The Republicans will continue to block any move toward renewable energy. The fact is that in 2009 clean energy subsidies amounted to more than $44 billion dollars. By 2014 the subsidies will be $11 billion, and the Republicans are already fighting hard to keep us on oil, coal and natural gas. Right to the bitter end.