I’m still warming up to Jimi's conversation-style podcast, but enjoyed this one.
What caught my ear was something you said:
"Dr. Luke says 'Listen here. Americans respect the Japanese. If you go back to the war time cartoons, they've even censored it because they were so racist and hated those Japanese so much that they wouldn't let ordinary Japanese people walk around the streets in America. But the Japanese stood up to Americans and they said 'You're going to have to kill me first.' And when the white man recognized he had a mortal enemy who was willing to kill him, that's when the respect started."
This reminded me of something I read in Eric Hoffer's book (1951), "The True Believer."
"It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise. The Japanese had an advantage over us in that they admired us more than we admired them. They could hate us more fervently than we could hate them. The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American's hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners. It is of interest that the backward South shows more xenophobia than the rest of the country. Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life."
Whether America's position in the world is born of arrogant or objective exceptionalism is hard to say. Maybe both. And as I've watch events unfold over the past several years, world views stitched together with confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance have given rise to odd beasts that demand but are not deserving of respect: Exceptional and professional victims whom the majority do not respect but give wide berth and the corporations leverage as useful idiots. They are killing us softly and I wonder if, as a nation, we'll ever notice.
I’m still warming up to Jimi's conversation-style podcast, but enjoyed this one.
What caught my ear was something you said:
"Dr. Luke says 'Listen here. Americans respect the Japanese. If you go back to the war time cartoons, they've even censored it because they were so racist and hated those Japanese so much that they wouldn't let ordinary Japanese people walk around the streets in America. But the Japanese stood up to Americans and they said 'You're going to have to kill me first.' And when the white man recognized he had a mortal enemy who was willing to kill him, that's when the respect started."
This reminded me of something I read in Eric Hoffer's book (1951), "The True Believer."
"It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad. We cannot hate those we despise. The Japanese had an advantage over us in that they admired us more than we admired them. They could hate us more fervently than we could hate them. The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American's hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners. It is of interest that the backward South shows more xenophobia than the rest of the country. Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life."
Whether America's position in the world is born of arrogant or objective exceptionalism is hard to say. Maybe both. And as I've watch events unfold over the past several years, world views stitched together with confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance have given rise to odd beasts that demand but are not deserving of respect: Exceptional and professional victims whom the majority do not respect but give wide berth and the corporations leverage as useful idiots. They are killing us softly and I wonder if, as a nation, we'll ever notice.