Doug's Darkworld

Stuff keeps happening. Near 200,000 dead of Covid-19 in America now. A million deaths or more world-wide. Trump retweeted some sophomoric fart joke. The man’s sense of humor, well, appeals to his base. He also joked about signing an executive order prohibiting Biden from being president. Trump’s not much of a humorist, despite what his toadies and fans may think. If he was doing a great job, who cares? Since, um, still no national plan to address the Covid-19 pandemic, I’m going with a not so great job. Whatevs, lame tweets are just lame tweets, Trump’s other ‘accomplishments’ are far more worrisome.

Like the national debt: Under Trump’s Watch, America’s National Debt Has Increased by $6.6 Trillion. I seem to recall the GOP gets excited about deficit spending when they aren’t at the helm? Reagan is the guy to blame for this. “Borrow and spend,” the right’s answer to “tax and spend.” I’m not an economist, I don’t know, but I find extreme deficit spending by a non wartime president to be questionable. 

Definitely questionable is Trump’s decision to keep ramping up pressure on Iran. And doing it in defiance of the UN and our allies. Yeah, they aren’t buying it. In the fantasy realm the neocons have created, Iran is the font of all evil in the Middle East, and nothing less than endless war makes sense. So Trump’s just doing what his base, and the current government of Israel, want. It’s crazy, but we’re getting to see what would happen if a drunken uncle blowhard like Rush Limbaugh got to actually run the show. Fun times.

Bear with me here. Train of thought thinking. So multiple reports are coming out that the US military electronically camouflaged spy planes as commercial aircraft in order to spy on China. Hopefully the gentle reader can see the big problem with this practice. There are several problems with it. The biggest is that by deliberately disguising a combatant as a civilian,  it makes all civilians potential military targets. It’s basically hiding the military among civilians, like disguising a military base as a school or hospital. Or another way of looking at it, how about if Russia or China or Iran did that to the US? The outrage on both sides of the political aisle would be seismic. Us doing it to them, we’re the good guys; but they’re the Godless commies, it reduces the risk to our spy planes. 

So somehow it became part of the American national character that since we’re the good guys, we don’t have to follow the rules if the end is just. Numerous US war crimes during World War Two for example. Firebombings, nuclear bombings, whole cities full of civilians murdered. And many if not most Americans not only overlook that, they even celebrate it. It goes back deeper too. In some ways the founding of the United States was a good moment for humanity. Self determination, constitutional democracy, inherent human rights … these were and are good positive ideas. How could they go wrong?

They went wrong because at the very outset, America didn’t live up to its ideals. Chatel slavery, human beings as mere property, was written into the constitution. Indians didn’t become citizens until 1924. Acknowledging flaws doesn’t make America weak, it makes it greater. Because once acknowledged, a flaw can be fixed and we can move on to even better things. It’s not weakness to admit mistakes were made, it’s definitely cowardice and weakness  to deny such. So yes, Trump and his supporters are ultimately cowards. I hope they come around.

So during World War Two a Japanese pilot flying off of a Japanese submarine bombed Oregon. Yes, submarine aircraft carriers were a thing in WW2:

He dropped a few incendiary bombs, trying to ignite a forest fire. The US was well protected against that though, since it was still operating under the misapprehension that putting out all wilderness fires was a good idea. Hell, if the Japanese attempts to light forest fires in the western United States during the war had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and burned a hundred and four million acres … today’s fires on the west coast wouldn’t be so bad. And few would even guess. I digress.

So yes, the pilot’s name was Nobuo Fujita. He was invited to Brookings Oregon in 1962, the town he had dropped his bombs near. After being assured he wouldn’t be tried as a war criminal, he went. He had trepidations though, he was ashamed of what he had done, and if he was received badly he planned to kill himself with his family’s 400 year old katana sword. As it was he was treated warmly, though there was some controversy. And he gave the sword to the town in atonement and all went well. 

Teaching school children the truth about America’s past isn’t child abuse. And there’s lots of room to teach nuance and context. It’s not anti-white, it’s not anti-American, it’s not unpatriotic. It’s the truth. Truth is the first casualty of war though, and Washington declared war on reality a long time ago. 

And now, America is reaping what it sowed. Stay safe everyone. Shares, likes, donations, comments, suggestions (anatomically possible,) welcome. #StaytheFHome #WearaDamnMask #InsanusTempora

Copyright © 2020 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Images: Top image is a Snappygoat public domain photo with an anonymous quote I found on Facebook. Shares appreciated. Bottom image is the British HMS M2, it’s a Public Domain image pretty much everywhere.)