(12-15-2020, 10:54 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(12-15-2020, 07:59 PM)0 Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(12-15-2020, 05:30 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Well, how many blue cities in ruins is it going to take these days? The people of Minneapolis watched as their city descend into chaos and violence and destruction but that didn't change the way they voted or the person who represents their district in Washington DC. So, what's it going to take to change what's wrong with Democratic party and the choices/decisions that the Democratic party makes these days? So, how much death, destruction and mayhem willing to inflict, watch and support to remain in power these days. BTW, how did the Japanese soldiers respond to the American soldiers who cheered the first time they passed one their cities laid to ruin buy American bombers? Did they gather them up and execute them on the spot? Did they do it again the second time and did they have to do it again a third time or did the American soldiers left (Japanese prisoners of war) learn to keep their emotions to themselves while passing the next one? War is hell Bob and there is no right and wrong during times of war Bob and no one is off limits either. If you can't handle the fear of a pesky bug killing you then what are you going to do when we are essentially at war and we all have the right to kill you over your unwilling to recognize American sovereignty and the future of America itself. Wake up and come to grips with who and what you're messing with and trying to dismantle these days.
Interesting question. How many people have to die, or how many cities destroyed, for a culture to be considered failed, for the population to consider changing its worldview and values?
We have Pbower’s recent posts to draw on. COVID has killed about 300,000 people. He has got about half way through the 100 most populous US cities. It seems reasonable to take 300,000 people as a city on a rough scale.
On a rough scale, Japan lost about 3,000,000 people in World War II. That would be about 10 cities worth before they changed their culture.
If the red culture is as fixated and determines as the Japanese were, they will not change their values until about 3,000,000 die. They will kill an awful lot of people before changing their way of thinking. As we are likely to have effective vaccines in people’s arms before that level is reached, the red folk are likely to not change their behavior to take precautions?
Let’s take a look at systematic racism and racial murders. How many cities worth? Has the looting and violence in Minneapolis reached a level that even begins to compare with the nukes and fire bombings in Japan? One or two people die in a recent incident? One or two building are destroyed and soon built back? As far as I know, Minneapolis is still there, and Portland, and Washington DC. Sure a Portland police union building was torched, and the church in Lafayette Square was boarded up, but does that begin to compare? The protests were big, sure, but was the violence anywhere near the change the culture threshold of 3,000,000? Do the number of buildings destroyed even begin to compare to Hiroshima or the Tokyo fire bombing?
What about the red violence? One or two people die per incident? Is that going to cause the opposition to change their culture? Is it far more likely to get the culture Pearl Harbor mad than Hiroshima level ‘I give up.’ It is far easier to get the opposing culture determined and upset rather than make them yield.
Now these numbers are absurdly rough. The lynchings in the south at the hight of the Jim Crow period were not nearly as high. If you have a terrorist intimidation as part of a status quo, you might see something different. But still, people will cling to their culture in spite of a lot of death and destruction. They will go through a period of sticking to their values before they will see that the death and destruction are not worth it.
As a side note, the US and Japanese cultures were very different in the early 1940s. The US got very upset at the rape of Nanking, and the Japanese military convincing a civilian village on a Pacific island that it was better to jump of a cliff and into the sea rather than surrender to American soldiers. Yet the Americans would bomb Japan. On the other hand, the Japanese were obedient. For example, they would jump off a cliff before they would surrender to American soldiers. Before the surrender, they had plans to kill all the POWs on the home islands. Once the emperor surrendered, the plans were dropped. They were not hostile to the Americans. You might not do the same, but the story as I heard it did not include after the surrender hostilities by the Japanese.
How large was Japanese culture compared to Red culture today at the time? Red culture is about 74 million strong today. Realistically, 300,000 deaths is less than a 1% of the total population. Blue culture is about 82 million strong today. 300,000 is less than a percent of the total population for size. It's pretty clear that Covid had a greater impact on Blue Culture than Red Culture and it still does today. In short, we have no reason to change our culture. Whatever bad that is said about us is largely untrue and repeated by people who don't have a clue about us. Like I said, you and I could be neighbors or business acquaintances or passer by's but I doubt that we'd ever be friends or give two shit less about each other.
Japan has 125 million people. That is nearly one third of the population of the USA. The Japan to which you refer was a country under a brutal dictatorship infamous for its contempt for the value of human life as shown by its brutal treatment of occupied countries and its callous treatment of its own soldiers. That was over 75 years ago. What we consider the archaic elements of Japanese culture are still there, and those define Japan from all other countries. Those attributes (arguably the greatest non-Western tradition in painting, Zen Buddhism, netsuke, kabuki theater, music on Japanese traditional instruments, origami, flower arranging, rock gardens, Japanese cuisine, and distinctive clothing) are benign and even attractive. Oddly, American troops sent to Japan on occupation duty were far more effective in spreading the virtues of Japanese culture than all the brutal soldiers and administrators.
Something happened in Japan to put the country into a new era that continues to this day. Two atom bomb blasts? Japan was already reeling from economic collapse because the Japanese shipping that brought foodstuffs from conquered countries (where the Japanese put the people on the borderline of famine) was no longer getting through. Neither were raw materials or fuel for the war machine. The gangster rule came to an end, and the brutal administrators (mostly military officers, such as those who mistreated captured POWs and ravaged countries under occupation) were purged and often executed. The Japanese people were stripped of some myths of racial superiority over the rest of Humanity and obliged to go democratic and give women equal rights with men. They could keep the benign aspects of culture, but military aggression and totalitarian rule would be gone. Japan is still a conformist society even if it is a well-entrenched democracy. Just don't be a criminal. The Japanese legal system treats criminal offenders harshly, with the same sort of mind control that the Chinese Communists use upon political offenders. Obviously I have more sympathy for people who want democracy in China than I have for muggers, rapists, and car thieves. The good thing that I can say about the Japanese system is that one comes out of it a better person than one goes in.
Kill about thirty people, as is documented for serial killers Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, and your name is mud... and it will be for a very long time. I am sure that you remember how upset Americans were about the 9/11 attacks. Why should we not have been? Murder is always an injustice. Some time ago I got into arguments with Chileans praising the former dictator Augusto Pinochet for saving their country from Communism. I challenged them on the body count... and whether the repression in Chile was any nicer than what was going on in Commie regimes behind the Iron Curtain.
Kill about the population of St. Louis, Pittsburgh, or Cincinnati, and the Stalinist quote "one death is a tragedy and a million deaths is a statistic" has some relevance. Numbers can literally numb us. That is why I compare the death count to cities, which I hope shocks people. The number of deaths has surpassed the total population of the largest city in fifteen states.
Disease
COVID-19
Virus strain
SARS-CoV-2
Location
United States
First outbreak
Wuhan, Hubei, China[1]
Index case
Chicago, Illinois (earliest known arrival)[2]
Everett, Washington (first case report)[3]
Arrival date
January 13, 2020[4](11 months and 3 days ago)
Confirmed cases
Recovered
- 7,469,182[8]
Deaths
Fatality rate Disease
COVID-19
Virus strain
SARS-CoV-2
Location
Japan
First outbreak
Wuhan, Hubei, China
Index case
Kanagawa Prefecture
Arrival date
16 January 2020
(11 months)
Confirmed cases
181,870[1][2]
Recovered
153,519[1][2]
Deaths
2,643[1][2]
Fatality rate
1.45%
Quote:The Japanese citizens were indoctrinated by years of Japanese government propaganda that portrayed American soldiers as brutal savages which is why so many of the jumped off cliffs vs surrendering and being taken alive by American soldiers.
That happens when a country is under the command of a murderous cult-like organization. Note well that such anti-American propaganda was still relatively new in 1945 because it had not started until the attack on Pearl Harbor. Bushido is not the American way. That of course is over. I can think of some things that we Americans would be wise to divest ourselves of, but I am sure that you have seen that already.
By the way -- I am not sure how well you understand probability and statistics, but I would say that the Japanese have better dealt with COVID-19 than we Americans have. In 2020 it would have been better to be in Japan than in America -- even if one was doing time in Japan for bar-room brawling.
Donald Trump has shown reckless disregard for the value of human life in his bungled response to COVID-19. We Americans are about to divest ourselves of him as President.
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.