Come Over and Help Us

RWA1's first response on Facebook to the disaster in Japan was to link to a post by the notorious right-wing economist Amity Shlaes, titled "Four Ways the U.S. Can Help Japan, Also Itself." "A free market look at help," RWA1 calls it. Well, no.

Her first recommendation is for the US to "stop being a prissy multilateralist" with regard to trade.

Now is the time to forget about fairness and just say, “Come on in, guys,” with or without trade concessions.

Hahahahaha. And she follows that up, two sentences later, with this knee-slapper:

If the Japanese are behind in learning the value of free trade, let them learn by watching the U.S. example.

Hahahahaha again. Shlaes is a bit vague about what her one-liners actually mean, though. She quotes a former Bush II official "and now vice chairman at Citigroup" who says "It’s time for Japan to have a free-trade agreement with the U.S. and to be in the Transpacific Partnership." I guess she wants the US (and presumably the other countries in the Transpacific Partnership) to drop its trade barriers against Japan without demanding reciprocal concessions. Nice, I guess, but she's just grinding her free-trade ax, secure in the faith that free trade is the remedy for all economic ills.

Second, she ties herself up in knots.

The second thing the U.S. can do is stop kidding everyone about infrastructure as stimulus. The natural response of the U.S. now -- the most likely expression of our good will -- is to write a multibillion-dollar foreign aid bill so Japan can rebuild its cities, secure the coastline and clean up its nuclear power mess.

So, should we or shouldn't we? I'm guessing we should:

So sure, Japan will need new infrastructure now. But that infrastructure should be recognized for what it is: brick, wire, mortar. Remember, though, that growth comes from competitiveness, not government spending

Except for government spending that builds infrastructure that is necessary for "competitiveness," a null concept. I hadn't read anything by Shlaes before, but I see already why she's so popular with the wacko right and so easy for everybody else to sneer at. I'm sure the Obama administration is taking her very seriously, given Obama's own obeisance to Free Trade.

Her other recommendations? Number three,

ease immigration rules so that more Japanese can study or work here. Japanese already have a presence in American universities. Make that presence larger. Then they will be less likely to stick to their old ways of protectionism and cronyism.

... and pick up our ways of protectionism and cronyism. Finally,

The fourth move for the U.S. would be to pass laws that strengthen our own growth. That means lowering our tax rates, including corporate taxes, so that Americans make more and buy more. This isn’t selfish. It’s actually generous, because it gives Japan a strong western ally to offset expansive China. Militarily, economically and politically, a strong U.S. ally gives Japan more leeway to set its own path.

Given the US' own ties to the Middle Kingdom, I'm not sure we constitute an offset to expansive China. And Japan has been following its own path -- that's the trouble with them -- which is why Shlaes is rubbing her hands over the prospect of a coup for Disaster Capitalism.

Here’s where that unprecedented good will, that urgent desire to help a stricken country represents opportunity. If we are ever going to widen our markets, this is the moment. The same holds for Japan. An open U.S., a flexible friend, is the kind of help Japan can use most.

You'd think that Japan had been shut off behind a bamboo curtain for the past sixty-odd years instead of being a primary US ally and trading partner in Asia. But their collaboration wasn't submissive, abject enough. Now we have our chance. The vultures are circling!

Come Over and Help Us

RWA1's first response on Facebook to the disaster in Japan was to link to a post by the notorious right-wing economist Amity Shlaes, titled "Four Ways the U.S. Can Help Japan, Also Itself." "A free market look at help," RWA1 calls it. Well, no.

Her first recommendation is for the US to "stop being a prissy multilateralist" with regard to trade.

Now is the time to forget about fairness and just say, “Come on in, guys,” with or without trade concessions.

Hahahahaha. And she follows that up, two sentences later, with this knee-slapper:

If the Japanese are behind in learning the value of free trade, let them learn by watching the U.S. example.

Hahahahaha again. Shlaes is a bit vague about what her one-liners actually mean, though. She quotes a former Bush II official "and now vice chairman at Citigroup" who says "It’s time for Japan to have a free-trade agreement with the U.S. and to be in the Transpacific Partnership." I guess she wants the US (and presumably the other countries in the Transpacific Partnership) to drop its trade barriers against Japan without demanding reciprocal concessions. Nice, I guess, but she's just grinding her free-trade ax, secure in the faith that free trade is the remedy for all economic ills.

Second, she ties herself up in knots.

The second thing the U.S. can do is stop kidding everyone about infrastructure as stimulus. The natural response of the U.S. now -- the most likely expression of our good will -- is to write a multibillion-dollar foreign aid bill so Japan can rebuild its cities, secure the coastline and clean up its nuclear power mess.

So, should we or shouldn't we? I'm guessing we should:

So sure, Japan will need new infrastructure now. But that infrastructure should be recognized for what it is: brick, wire, mortar. Remember, though, that growth comes from competitiveness, not government spending

Except for government spending that builds infrastructure that is necessary for "competitiveness," a null concept. I hadn't read anything by Shlaes before, but I see already why she's so popular with the wacko right and so easy for everybody else to sneer at. I'm sure the Obama administration is taking her very seriously, given Obama's own obeisance to Free Trade.

Her other recommendations? Number three,

ease immigration rules so that more Japanese can study or work here. Japanese already have a presence in American universities. Make that presence larger. Then they will be less likely to stick to their old ways of protectionism and cronyism.

... and pick up our ways of protectionism and cronyism. Finally,

The fourth move for the U.S. would be to pass laws that strengthen our own growth. That means lowering our tax rates, including corporate taxes, so that Americans make more and buy more. This isn’t selfish. It’s actually generous, because it gives Japan a strong western ally to offset expansive China. Militarily, economically and politically, a strong U.S. ally gives Japan more leeway to set its own path.

Given the US' own ties to the Middle Kingdom, I'm not sure we constitute an offset to expansive China. And Japan has been following its own path -- that's the trouble with them -- which is why Shlaes is rubbing her hands over the prospect of a coup for Disaster Capitalism.

Here’s where that unprecedented good will, that urgent desire to help a stricken country represents opportunity. If we are ever going to widen our markets, this is the moment. The same holds for Japan. An open U.S., a flexible friend, is the kind of help Japan can use most.

You'd think that Japan had been shut off behind a bamboo curtain for the past sixty-odd years instead of being a primary US ally and trading partner in Asia. But their collaboration wasn't submissive, abject enough. Now we have our chance. The vultures are circling!

We'll Meet Again, Don't Know Where, Don't Know When

Roy Edroso at alicublog has a post about right-wing reactions to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, with a focus on Japanese nuclear power plants.

These lunatics are saying that the Japanese reactors got through the tsunami "without a dent," which proves that we should get nuclear plants up and running now. Among the choice quotes: "Regulations don't make ya safe, safety makes ya safe!" Also they claim wind power is more dangerous than nuclear because a hawk flew into a turbine.

I've tried for years to figure out what motivates them, but I'm leaning toward the explanation that they were sent by aliens to destroy the human race.

But he forgets this wingnut, who just a year ago was calling for a threefold increase in public financing for the construction of nuclear power plants, while nixing funds for storage of nuclear waste.

"It's ironic, but Obama could end up being the biggest pro-nuclear power president since Dwight Eisenhower," says Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a nuclear deterrence expert who served as deputy for nonproliferation policy in the Department of Defense from 1989-1993 under President George H.W. Bush.

Maybe the President will change his mind in the light of current events, but probably only until the next news cycle.

Meanwhile, a reporter at Obama's latest press conference actually dared to question him (via) about the brutal and degrading treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning at Quantico brig. (For which he, as Commander-in-Chief, is ultimately responsible.) The Saint replied:

With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are. I can't go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning's safety as well.

My point here is that a good many liberals prefer to look at the dementia of the far right, while doing their best to ignore the dementia of their own near-right heroes. While I enjoy Edroso's surveillance of the fringes, most of the time he forgets how deranged and evil the mainstream is.

We'll Meet Again, Don't Know Where, Don't Know When

Roy Edroso at alicublog has a post about right-wing reactions to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, with a focus on Japanese nuclear power plants.

These lunatics are saying that the Japanese reactors got through the tsunami "without a dent," which proves that we should get nuclear plants up and running now. Among the choice quotes: "Regulations don't make ya safe, safety makes ya safe!" Also they claim wind power is more dangerous than nuclear because a hawk flew into a turbine.

I've tried for years to figure out what motivates them, but I'm leaning toward the explanation that they were sent by aliens to destroy the human race.

But he forgets this wingnut, who just a year ago was calling for a threefold increase in public financing for the construction of nuclear power plants, while nixing funds for storage of nuclear waste.

"It's ironic, but Obama could end up being the biggest pro-nuclear power president since Dwight Eisenhower," says Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a nuclear deterrence expert who served as deputy for nonproliferation policy in the Department of Defense from 1989-1993 under President George H.W. Bush.

Maybe the President will change his mind in the light of current events, but probably only until the next news cycle.

Meanwhile, a reporter at Obama's latest press conference actually dared to question him (via) about the brutal and degrading treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning at Quantico brig. (For which he, as Commander-in-Chief, is ultimately responsible.) The Saint replied:

With respect to Private Manning, I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are. I can't go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Private Manning's safety as well.

My point here is that a good many liberals prefer to look at the dementia of the far right, while doing their best to ignore the dementia of their own near-right heroes. While I enjoy Edroso's surveillance of the fringes, most of the time he forgets how deranged and evil the mainstream is.

Never the Twain Shall Meet Redux

I'm reading Mark J. McLelland's Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities (Curzon, 2000), and I'm struck by how often his descriptions of Japanese culture sound just like American culture. For example, "although there are now well-publicized Japanese gay activists, who have adopted a western agenda of gay identity and gay rights, many ordinary Japanese gay men remain sceptical about the usefulness of this discourse in a Japanese context" (19). You could substitute "American" for "Japanese" in that sentence, and it would be just as true; especially in the early 1970s when the American gay movement was first starting to make waves, but I heard similar reservations expressed by American gay men well into the 1980s, and (not always coherently) right down to the present. I think McLelland (who's Australian, I believe) knows this, since he mentions correcting the misperceptions Japanese had about gay life in the West, so I'm not quite sure what his point was here, unless it was to let non-Japanese readers know that gay Japanese don't unanimously endorse gay activism either.

Then there was this on page 86, on the absence of women in the comic books or manga, very popular among Japanese women, which depict sexual love between beautiful, androgynous boys.

This [i.e., the absence of women] is not unusual in postwar Japanese popular culture however, as Susan Napier has pointed out. In her book on The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature (1990) she includes a chapter entitled 'Woman lost: the dead, damaged, or absent female in postwar fantasy' where she charts a paradigm shift in the treatment of women in Japanese literature which took place after the war where 'women are no longer caretakers but objects of prey, only acceptable as victims upon which to enact male rage' (1990: 53). The male ego, rendered so fragile now that women have encroached upon all the areas of life that were once the sole domain of men: the realm of education, the workplace and even the sexual market-place, sees itself as under attack. Napier comments that in literary portrayals, 'male characters are shown damaged and angry' (1990: 57) and women 'are frequently seen as agents of entrapment or humiliation' (1990: 56), resulting in a situation where 'women seem to have become increasingly Other, unreachable, even demonic' (1990: 57).

Again, my first thought was Wow, that sounds like postwar American fiction too: Norman Mailer, William Burroughs, Philip Wylie, and many others. Not to mention film noir, with its femmes fatales trying to feed on men's precious bodily fluids, and its boring homemakers trying to sap their men's lives of all excitement, which drives them into the clutches of the femmes fatales. There's often a tendency to blame such crises in masculinity on the loss of a war -- WWII for the Japanese, Vietnam for the Americans -- or on colonialism. But the US won World War II! What did our guys have to whine about? I don't want to oversimplify, because I think that many, maybe most American veterans wanted nothing more than to live quietly and safely with their wives and children; but there was a countermovement, partly among male youth who thought they'd missed something by not having gone into combat and having their legs blown off. (You can see this in the Western Shane, in which the annoying little boy character wants Shane to be the hero and defeat the bad guys, and his father droops a little because he's not an expert in violence. Send the little brat to boot camp, I says.) The theme of the demonic female is of course much older and widespread than just the post-WWII period in Japan and the US, so this is something I'll have to look into some more.

Let me stress, by the way, that I'm not saying there are no differences between Japanese and American cultures, only that the similarities are so very interesting.

Never the Twain Shall Meet Redux

I'm reading Mark J. McLelland's Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities (Curzon, 2000), and I'm struck by how often his descriptions of Japanese culture sound just like American culture. For example, "although there are now well-publicized Japanese gay activists, who have adopted a western agenda of gay identity and gay rights, many ordinary Japanese gay men remain sceptical about the usefulness of this discourse in a Japanese context" (19). You could substitute "American" for "Japanese" in that sentence, and it would be just as true; especially in the early 1970s when the American gay movement was first starting to make waves, but I heard similar reservations expressed by American gay men well into the 1980s, and (not always coherently) right down to the present. I think McLelland (who's Australian, I believe) knows this, since he mentions correcting the misperceptions Japanese had about gay life in the West, so I'm not quite sure what his point was here, unless it was to let non-Japanese readers know that gay Japanese don't unanimously endorse gay activism either.

Then there was this on page 86, on the absence of women in the comic books or manga, very popular among Japanese women, which depict sexual love between beautiful, androgynous boys.

This [i.e., the absence of women] is not unusual in postwar Japanese popular culture however, as Susan Napier has pointed out. In her book on The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature (1990) she includes a chapter entitled 'Woman lost: the dead, damaged, or absent female in postwar fantasy' where she charts a paradigm shift in the treatment of women in Japanese literature which took place after the war where 'women are no longer caretakers but objects of prey, only acceptable as victims upon which to enact male rage' (1990: 53). The male ego, rendered so fragile now that women have encroached upon all the areas of life that were once the sole domain of men: the realm of education, the workplace and even the sexual market-place, sees itself as under attack. Napier comments that in literary portrayals, 'male characters are shown damaged and angry' (1990: 57) and women 'are frequently seen as agents of entrapment or humiliation' (1990: 56), resulting in a situation where 'women seem to have become increasingly Other, unreachable, even demonic' (1990: 57).

Again, my first thought was Wow, that sounds like postwar American fiction too: Norman Mailer, William Burroughs, Philip Wylie, and many others. Not to mention film noir, with its femmes fatales trying to feed on men's precious bodily fluids, and its boring homemakers trying to sap their men's lives of all excitement, which drives them into the clutches of the femmes fatales. There's often a tendency to blame such crises in masculinity on the loss of a war -- WWII for the Japanese, Vietnam for the Americans -- or on colonialism. But the US won World War II! What did our guys have to whine about? I don't want to oversimplify, because I think that many, maybe most American veterans wanted nothing more than to live quietly and safely with their wives and children; but there was a countermovement, partly among male youth who thought they'd missed something by not having gone into combat and having their legs blown off. (You can see this in the Western Shane, in which the annoying little boy character wants Shane to be the hero and defeat the bad guys, and his father droops a little because he's not an expert in violence. Send the little brat to boot camp, I says.) The theme of the demonic female is of course much older and widespread than just the post-WWII period in Japan and the US, so this is something I'll have to look into some more.

Let me stress, by the way, that I'm not saying there are no differences between Japanese and American cultures, only that the similarities are so very interesting.