12-16-2020, 11:14 AM
I do not believe in the superiority of any culture, national or regional, over another. People may be uncomfortable with the one (which in America is often a composite) in which they are born and choose something else with which to affiliate.
Japan had an honor culture before 1945, and it has traces of that left. Violence against others except in war or official actions seems to have been little tolerated, but violence against self has been. Suicide rates are high in Japan, and that may reflect differences in a philosophical culture. Japan is not a Christian culture, so suicide might seem an honorable thing to do in contrast to disgracing oneself. Second chances seem to not be part of the old culture, in contrast to the norm in America for much longer. The American economic order encourages people to take economic risks to create a more vibrant economy. So you failed as a restaurant owner? Going back to the family farm or to the factory for work is an option.
All political systems somehow fit the culture... note that I did not claim any superiority of any American culture. I might not find the culture of the Ozarks or Appalachia very appealing, and I might be more accepting of a culture far more exotic rather than with something that I know well for its realities. Maybe I know it too well. The Bolsheviks may have dismantled the economic order of imperial Russia, but they figured how to use its existing institutions -- especially its police and its armed forces -- for Bolshevik ends. The gangsters who ruled Japan during World War II exploited the old culture of bushido and what most Americans consider the innocuous way of Zen (It did fit the ethos of the kamikaze). They perverted Japan into a monstrosity just as Mussolini exploited the allure of the great Roman past in Italy and Hitler exploited the backstory of the Nordic gods behind Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen.
We Americans can be complacent about such things, but think carefully about the Second (1915) Klan. It had most of the characteristics of fascism before Mussolini created the word fascismo and gave it his meaning. The 1915 Klan had many elements of Nazism: the racism (including antisemitism), znti-rational sentiment, gaudy symbolism, terroristic violence, the corruption of public officials, an anti-proletarian attitude, and a sense of lost national (or at least regional) pride. If anyone wonders about all those Confederate monuments that reactionaries defend -- those are mostly from about 1915-1920, long after the end of the American Civil War. The world can consider itself fortunate that the Second Klan disintegrated in the late 1920's before it could have a chance to exploit the economic and social distress related to the Great Depression. It also helps that Herbert Hoover didn't cast blame on Jews, Catholics, and blacks when such might have been politically expedient.
If you think The Man in the High Castle a horrible fantasy -- a Klan-dominated America would have been just as horrible as the consequences of an Axis victory. I have my own idea of a novel involving an Axis victory that would have its own twist: the Germans and the Japanese are the good guys, and they defeat a Klan-dominated America. Rommel Plan, anyone? I'm not quite sure how "New Deal" translates into German (German-language Wikipedia calls it "New Deal")... maybe we Americans translate our equivalent of Autobahnen as "Motorways" as do the British.
Don't think that the Klan would be any nicer than Nazis because it is American. The purge that eliminates Marshall, MacArthur, Clark, Eisenhower, Patton, Halsey, and Nimitz is at least as nasty as what goes on in Stalin's Soviet Union. Remember: the strength of a system in preventing the worst does not come from the national culture. The Germans had Goethe and Beethoven; the Russians had Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky. Do we have an artist as great as Hokusai or Uemaro?
But so much for an ominous novel in my mind.
Japan had an honor culture before 1945, and it has traces of that left. Violence against others except in war or official actions seems to have been little tolerated, but violence against self has been. Suicide rates are high in Japan, and that may reflect differences in a philosophical culture. Japan is not a Christian culture, so suicide might seem an honorable thing to do in contrast to disgracing oneself. Second chances seem to not be part of the old culture, in contrast to the norm in America for much longer. The American economic order encourages people to take economic risks to create a more vibrant economy. So you failed as a restaurant owner? Going back to the family farm or to the factory for work is an option.
All political systems somehow fit the culture... note that I did not claim any superiority of any American culture. I might not find the culture of the Ozarks or Appalachia very appealing, and I might be more accepting of a culture far more exotic rather than with something that I know well for its realities. Maybe I know it too well. The Bolsheviks may have dismantled the economic order of imperial Russia, but they figured how to use its existing institutions -- especially its police and its armed forces -- for Bolshevik ends. The gangsters who ruled Japan during World War II exploited the old culture of bushido and what most Americans consider the innocuous way of Zen (It did fit the ethos of the kamikaze). They perverted Japan into a monstrosity just as Mussolini exploited the allure of the great Roman past in Italy and Hitler exploited the backstory of the Nordic gods behind Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen.
We Americans can be complacent about such things, but think carefully about the Second (1915) Klan. It had most of the characteristics of fascism before Mussolini created the word fascismo and gave it his meaning. The 1915 Klan had many elements of Nazism: the racism (including antisemitism), znti-rational sentiment, gaudy symbolism, terroristic violence, the corruption of public officials, an anti-proletarian attitude, and a sense of lost national (or at least regional) pride. If anyone wonders about all those Confederate monuments that reactionaries defend -- those are mostly from about 1915-1920, long after the end of the American Civil War. The world can consider itself fortunate that the Second Klan disintegrated in the late 1920's before it could have a chance to exploit the economic and social distress related to the Great Depression. It also helps that Herbert Hoover didn't cast blame on Jews, Catholics, and blacks when such might have been politically expedient.
If you think The Man in the High Castle a horrible fantasy -- a Klan-dominated America would have been just as horrible as the consequences of an Axis victory. I have my own idea of a novel involving an Axis victory that would have its own twist: the Germans and the Japanese are the good guys, and they defeat a Klan-dominated America. Rommel Plan, anyone? I'm not quite sure how "New Deal" translates into German (German-language Wikipedia calls it "New Deal")... maybe we Americans translate our equivalent of Autobahnen as "Motorways" as do the British.
Don't think that the Klan would be any nicer than Nazis because it is American. The purge that eliminates Marshall, MacArthur, Clark, Eisenhower, Patton, Halsey, and Nimitz is at least as nasty as what goes on in Stalin's Soviet Union. Remember: the strength of a system in preventing the worst does not come from the national culture. The Germans had Goethe and Beethoven; the Russians had Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky. Do we have an artist as great as Hokusai or Uemaro?
But so much for an ominous novel in my mind.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.