Subtlety

I am not a subtle man, but I can appreciate it when I see it.

 

Japan's way of dealing with their housing bubble in 1989 has been a long series of placating denials and refusal to modify their broken financial system, because that would fix it, and fixing it means allowing competition for the currently failing monopolies. It means losing power, despite their power actually killing off their country. Japan has a long history (centuries) of self-genocide, and that practice continues today. What they are doing is not subtle, and if anybody cared about them, would be decried in the same way that we decry the dictator running North Korea (Best Korea!). But we don't. Japan is friendly and patient and very polite and we nuked them twice and feel slightly guilty about this. Or are told we should be. Nuking them saved 2 million American servicemen from dying, men who had families of their own after the war. You might exist because of that. You might not be here if we didn't nuke Japan. Twice. Be slightly conflicted over this, but only slightly. Japan, after all, butchered 2 million civilians in Nanking, civilians who had already surrendered. They didn't kill them because they had to, or in battle. The Japanese butchered them with swords because they WANTED TO. Always remember that, especially when Japan says it didn't happen despite the bragging and photographs of their OWN NEWSPAPERS of the time. It happened. And denying it today just keeps more nukes aimed at them from China, and reminds America why we need to keep our bases there. Japan can't be trusted with its own destiny, because it allows genocidal aggression and pretends its all just fine because everybody else is a subhuman and unworthy of life. That's the real Japan.

 

I worry that someday America will be just as evil and corrupt. So far, our tricky environment is good at killing such monsters. Western states allow for some outlandish ideas, but droughts, fire, and earthquakes mean you must be reliable to your neighbors in times of trouble or you find yourself a victim of common disasters or pointed rebuke. The east has all these, plus tornadoes, hurricanes, ice storms, and worse corruption. The East is like the West, in certain ways. And due to its corruption is very different in how it handles things. If civil war breaks out, it will happen there first.

 

Japan is a country which is what the future looks like. They've got the Shinkansen, the Bullet Train, which is 200 mph, electric, and carries passengers around the country very quickly. It is a first world transportation system. Meanwhile, farmers stoop over rice fields planting enough for their families because they can't afford a full sized combine or the land to do operations at full scale like California does. Japan imports California rice because small scale is backbreaking labor and doesn't pay enough to be a career. And the Youth! can't make it work. So there's no jobs in agriculture with a future in Japan. And when a nation starts importing its food, it is in trouble.

 

This has lead to an overwhelming depression in the population, which exerts itself in various popular media. One form is the sadly cute harem anime, where a boring guy with no particular good qualities is surrounded by desperately cute teen girls who want to date him, marry, and have his babies. And they squabble over this not very interesting guy. Naturally, this is a completely unrealistic genre and its popularity stems from Dating Simulation Games. The young men who buy them don't get dates with real women, who want a whole lot more than anyone can afford in an economy where only a small population actually have jobs. With no job, you have no future, no right to marry and have children. The Japanese population is crashing. The most intelligent women either suicide or leave the country. The more helpless women suicide or settle for a life of misery alone, which is arguably worse. The more reckless but pretty seem to become sluts and try to land a married man and have his kid and some child support settlement money to live on. I can't imagine a son of a slut would end up very happy with life and likely end up with dating sims rather than a marriage. The basis of Japanese families has collapsed with their economic collapse. Similar things seem to be happening in America too. I worry this is where things will go, though it seems that instead of dating games, we have more unwed mothers, who thanks to the economics of paternity suits, need two children from separate fathers for full income and three children for a retirement income. Keep in mind, these women have three children, from three separate men, specifically for money. It doesn't make men feel very good about single moms, and single mom's always deny this is what they are doing, that they are different and it was All His Fault, not themselves. Men end up living alone, getting obsessive hobbies, and setting aside money for DNA paternity tests and countersuits for fraud if they bother to date at all. Those cases are nearly always denied because Judges are ALWAYS on her side. This has had a very chilling effect on American men and seems to lead to violence against women, particularly murder suicides. We don't often hear that the children killed weren't his, but were claimed as such. The Coroner doesn't bother with the paternity tests, much less publicize the proof that she was a cheat and a criminal. No justice.

 

Another direction the Japanese go with this is cult religions. The Sarin gas attack in Tokyo was by a suicide cult called Aum Shinri Kyo. They're dead or in jail. Suicide cults also slip into media. And being a Buddhist country for the most part, accepting your fate is an expected part of the culture. So you get media about the end of the world and how nice it is. And that leads to a very odd but beautiful manga (adult comic book) called Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou aka Record of a Yokohama Shopping Trip. The name is nothing special, but the content is really interesting.

 

It is a story about Japan sinking into the Pacific, of the human race dying out after some wars, and the wild nanotechnology and plant life growing over the artifacts of man as everything largely goes back to nature. The story takes place over about 40 years. And the heroine is an Android who doesn't age, merely observes peacefully, which is a very odd way to tell a story. There is no effort to reverse the changes. No brave story of people starting families to repopulate and rebuilt. None of that will work and has been discarded before the story even starts. Things have gotten so far that even the violent people themselves are dead so you don't even need a firearm for self defense anymore, though in the first chapter it is clear that you DID recently before. Things have just gone so far that the section of society which could object is gone. The meek have inherited the Earth, and its being overgrown with vines, grass, and trees. Even the roads are vanishing because there's no vehicles moving, the oil is mostly gone, and there's no reason to go anywhere because the economy is in the small gatherings of people that still exist, for just a bit longer. How can you even argue with that?

 

Here in America, the most popular cult is Global Warming Is Caused By People and We All Need To Die to stop it. I was a child when the local Jonestown kids left for Guyana and died a few months later, poisoned by the cult because it had run out of money and that was their escape to Paradise. I knew two of those kids. They were just like me, only their parents were nuts, broke after giving all their money to Jim Jones, a vacuum cleaner salesman who discovered religion paid better and was a tax writeoff. Anthropogenic Global Warming is a cult, just like Jonestown, and will end in fire for the faithful zealots. If we are lucky they will kill themselves without trying to kill the rest of us. I can only hope. Few seem interested in sane solutions to the perceived problem. All their solutions either can't work or involve taking money from other people by force and putting it into their own pockets. And that's your obvious sign of a scam. Carbon trading has already been exposed as a money laundering operation, but the Zealots just say "NAH NAH NAH NAH I CAN'T HEAR YOU". Die in a fire. Can you hear that?

 

Someday when there's no money or fuel for road maintenance, gasoline is either unavailable or painfully expensive, and the US dollar has collapsed so we're all broke, the roads we love will have herds of deer and black bears and coyotes and wolves wandering around in daylight. If we are lucky, we'll ride trains past the pretty wildlife. If we are unlucky, we'll be on foot, and possibly lunch. Buy a motorcycle and you can probably outrun the bears and wolves and coyotes. And try not to hit any deer. Hitting one with a motorcycle is worse than hitting one with a car. This happened to a friend of mine. Recovery took a very long time. If the falling over bugs you a lot, think about a 4 WD ATV. Better fuel economy and maneuverability than a Jeep, with a 400cc engine, and easier to get un-stuck. You still need to ride it on roads, but it has more grip and is less likely to flip over if you ride carefully. Japan isn't worried about transportation because they've already got trams and buses and few people have jobs so getting there and back is less about convenient timing and more about necessity. When their economy drops another step, it will probably turn up in their anime, and we'll see how they handle it, and if the way they go will work for us.

 

So I'm watching the Future, sort of, in Japan. And I'm wondering how America will deal with things. We're just as doomed.