|
|||||||||
Posted August 10, 2001
Don't Blame Immigrants
I
just read Mr. Raimondo's article, "Hiroshima
Mon Amour" in the Ether
Zone. It's an insightful comment on the atom bomb and the events
that led up to its use. Certainly, anyone who has studied the New Deal,
FDR, and World War II knows that self-serving politicians (e.g., FDR)
were the parties responsible for plunging the U.S. into W.W.II, so it
was inevitable that politicians (Truman) would choose to end the war
with an atom bomb.
However, I must take issue with one comment in Mr. Raimondo's article.
He wrote, "waves of immigration, ...had already eroded the foundations
of our old Republic." Immigrants didn't cause the Republic's erosion.
The vast majority of immigrants chose passage to the US as a means to
freedom – a freedom that they couldn't find in the monarchist nations
that they left. And most immigrants didn't want anything other than
an opportunity; they didn't seek handouts or government guaranteed "benefits."
True, the illegal immigrants who come here today are driven by free
government handouts. But that was hardly the case from the turn of the
century until the middle of the 1950's. Blaming immigrants is all too
easy and maligns millions of hard working, decent people.
~ M. Cabirac
Warm-Fuzzy Hollywood Ideas
[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column (August 8), "Hiroshima Mon Amour":]
...Have you ever been to Japan? Ever been to Shinjuku 3-Chome in Tokyo on a Saturday night? Ever been to Nagasaki and spoken with "hibakusha" that to this day fully support the atomic bombing of their city – the bombing of them – even with the full knowledge that Nagasaki was little more than inconsequential to the Japanese war effort at the time of the bombing and got toasted more out of "damn bad luck" than any Grand Allied Plan? Have you ever been to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and read the names of those who committed atrocities and murder, as they now sit enshrined as gods and are invoked through prayer by 21st-Century Japanese?
Your contention that life would be good in the USA had Japan won is more than inane, it is insane and fully ignorant of the culture and societies that exist now and in the past in both countries. You seem to exist in a pollyannish reality where a "tea ceremony" is an indicator for an entire society, an entire culture, and acts as a contrast and support for your narrow and twisted view of your own culture and society. I ... doubt whether you have even seen "sado" (tea ceremony) performed, let alone have any idea of the average Japanese person's attitude and opinion towards it (you certainly have no concept whatsoever of how younger people in Japan ... view such). You seem to be simply making this part up as you go along merely to add some little support to your thesis – a hollow appeal to emotionalism and warm-fuzzy Hollywood ideas from B-movies.
...Was it a slow day at the office? Slow enough that you thought you should add to the misperception that pacifists are not only weakly supported, but stupid as well?
Japanese Teens Are Into Rubbish
[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column (August 8), "Hiroshima Mon Amour":]
"Contemplating the subtle beauty of the Japanese tea ceremony" is not something the average Japanese does and never has been. I can promise you it's not something teens are into. Right now, teens are into rubbish like Ayumi Hamasaki and Morning Musume.
The crime rate here is about on par with the US. I personally have had two bicycles stolen from me just this last month. And don't forget the guy two months ago who knifed twelve 6-year-olds to death. The reason crime seems so much lower is because most are never prosecuted, and because Japanese commit different sorts of crimes. If one factors in, say, violation of Japanese labor laws, Japan's crime rate may even be higher than America's.
Literacy and Manners I will grant you.
MacArthur's Constitution
[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column (August 8), "Hiroshima Mon Amour":]
In your last paragraph you describe a seeming paradise of contemporary Japan and express an opinion that had Japan won W.W.II our society would be like theirs. But contemporary Japan is a product of MacArthur's new constitution put in place during the US occupation. Had Japan won the war their society would not have been anything like it is today. A feudal, agrarian, totalitarian society would be much more likely. Their prosperity is entirely a result of the influence of the US.
You mention P.K. Dick's novel [The Man in the High Castle], but did you actually read it? It describes a far different world than anything like contemporary Japan. I seem to remember a US divided into Japanese and German zones, with concentration camps and crematoria in the German zone, and the Japanese zone not a place I would want to be.