When Japanese Dogs Teach Americans a Lesson in Humanity

Never before have I written a political commentary based on an animal video, but I suppose there's a first time for everything.

I was touched by the recent news coverage of two dogs suffering in the midst of the debris and devastation left by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.  Trembling and apparently afraid, a spaniel wearing a collar leads reporters to another dog that is injured.  The dog is standing next to his sick, prostrate friend, as if to protect him.  And in a few minutes of footage of these canine creatures-- struggling to survive under circumstances we dare not imagine-- we see the essence of humanity, more humanity than can be extracted by some humans who walk upright.  And so we, as people, can learn from pets a lesson in compassion, in protecting the vulnerable and the suffering, as we fail to exhibit those qualities in our daily and political lives as Americans.

With over 18,000 estimated dead and countless displaced in Japan, a great deal of humanity is needed.  And it is clear that the needs of people must and will take precedence over profit motives.  The importance of community in hard times is on full display in japan, as even the Japanese mafia, known as the Yakuza, are providing tons of crucial goods in the relief effort.  The word Yakuza is a self-effacing term which loosely translates as "loser" or the "losing hand" of society, a reference to a Japanese card game.  "There are no yakuza or katagi (ordinary citizens) or gaijin (foreigners) in Japan right now.  We are all Japanese," said one Yakuza member.  "We all need to help each other."

And yet, it would be hard to imagine organized crime in the U.S.--specifically, the banks--displaying such acts of charity and selflessness.  Recently I wrote that if a reconstruction effort ever came to the U.S., America would stop all efforts in their tracks, due to greed, a shambles of a political system, and the legalized bribery that finances our politics.  I want to take it a step further and speak to the humanity which is in such scarce supply in American political discourse and public policy. America could use some humanity, a big smoothie made with the milk of human kindness.

In the U.S., we worship and honor those who have plenty, yet steal more when many others go hungry.  Reality shows such as "Secret Millionaire" attempt to change the subject by depicting undercover rich people who go into impoverished neighborhoods and give away some of their money.  Meanwhile, in the real world in which we live, the stewards of American government give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires in these tough times, even as greed caused our recessionary problems in the first place.  Conservative governors, appendages of the corporate interests who bought them with cash, preach as a stern parent to the common folk about the need for austerity.  They lecture us on shared sacrifice, and cut social programs for poor and working people, funding for public schools, and collective bargaining rights for union workers.  This, after they just rewarded the banks, big oil companies and other industries that bankrolled their campaign.  And in the process, they would wreck the economy for no other apparent reason than as a 2012 election year ploy to change the occupant of the White House.

In a nation with so many millions unemployed, the unemployed are barely an afterthought.  With all of this talk about the urgency of creating jobs, the Tea Party Congress takes their opportunity in the sun to holds hearings on radical Islam, as state legislatures, captured by the forces of insanity, pass legislation banning Shariah law.

Humanity is lacking because the good thinking people have surrendered their authority to the morally bankrupt, those whose priorities are warped and perverse.  In 2011 a majority of Americans favor same sex marriage, which is astounding, given that most people opposed interracial marriage when it was legalized by a "liberal activist" Supreme Court in 1967.  Further, back then nearly half believed such marriages should be prosecuted as a criminal offense.  Yet today, our public discourse is controlled by homophobic hate groups and their elected enablers.  The religious right claims to care about values, yet values to them is such a narrow term, curiously limited to a discussion about banning abortion, criminalizing gay marriage and upholding gun rights.  

A nation short on humanity in its public policy fails to ask certain questions on purpose.  For example, how can we sustain democracy when the top 1 percent takes home 34 percent of the pie (they only took 9 percent in 1976), more than the bottom 90 percent?  How does this nation justify paying CEOs 300 times more than their workers, when they only made 30 times more in the 1960s?

Why are black and Latino boys in urban neighborhoods more likely to attend the penitentiary than the university?  Why is it so easy for a child to acquire a gun, but so difficult for him or her to get a quality education, or a balanced and nourishing meal?  And why do our lawmakers ignore the epidemic of gun violence across the land, responding instead to college shooting sprees with legislation that would allow students to pack concealed weapons on campus?

How can the quest for dollars consume some individuals so as to justify nuclear power as a viable energy source, in the midst of the nuclear disaster in Japan?

Animals teaching humans about humanity is a novel idea.  And yet, unfortunately, it is rather "human" to dehumanize the "other," to depict groups as different, as animals, as a pretext for the humiliation and suffering inflicted upon them.  It happened to black people under slavery, Jim Crow segregation and apartheid.  Nazi Germany conjured up images of Europe's Jewish population as subhuman in order to enact laws to marginalize and eventually annihilate them.  The U.S. depended on dehumanizing cartoon images of Asian people to justify the internment of Japanese-Americans and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Genocide in Rwanda was facilitated by the Hutu referring to the Tutsi as cockroaches.  And even today in the U.S., we are witnessing the racial and ethnic scapegoating of Muslims, people of Arab descent and Latino immigrants through measures designed to strip them of their civil rights and their dignity.

Right now, America is a cold-hearted place, and in our midst is an anti-democratic movement allying the uber rich and the super greedy with the plenty ignorant.  Without question, they are cruel, callous and brutal, and we must resist them.  But comparing them to dogs would be an insult to dogs.

Americans Would Doom an American Reconstruction Effort to Failure

There is no question that the devastation caused by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accidents in Japan, already estimated at $180 billion, will get worse before it gets better.  With thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced, the damage is staggering and heartbreaking.

Japan will require a massive reconstruction, including a dramatic reconstruction effort to rebuild the nation with the world's third largest economy.  They will need the help of the world, and the U.S. is certain to provide leadership in the effort, as it should.

I'm betting on Japan to win this, with their ganbatte spirit, highly educated workforce, long-term strategy and dedication to technological advancement.  As a student of the country who once lived in the country and worked in corporate Japan, I have a particular viewpoint on the subject.

Japan has one thing in its favor -- it is not the U.S.  When it is time for America to require its own reconstruction -- that time being yesterday -- I seriously question whether it would even happen.  To elaborate, there are two things working against America.  First, the U.S. political system is a shambles, operating under a system of legalized bribery called campaign finance.  Under this system, the top 400 earners make more money than the bottom 150 million.  Public policy revolves around these 400, who are getting exactly what they want, which is the almost the entire pie.  All of the money in the system has their name on it, and even that isn't enough for them.  

Second, the nation's minority party -- the unruly, untutored mob working at the behest of the 400 -- has convinced enough of us, for now, that they actually are in the majority.  Characterized by an unsavory combination of ignorance, callousness and raw greed, members of this party control one chamber of Congress, and a number of state legislatures and governorships around the country.  And their goal, it seems, is to fall all over themselves, in an effort to prove that one of them is more bigoted and batshit insane than the other.  

If reconstruction ever comes to America, these are the people who will stop it dead in its tracks: the plutocrats, the oligarchs, the kleptocrats and their enablers.  The battle taking place across the land, the reinvigoration of the American labor movement as the next civil rights movement, is a test to see whether they can be stopped.

America has had experience with reconstruction efforts, and it is a checkered past.  America's first Reconstruction was a time of promise and unfulfilled dreams, of universal public education and the Freedmen's Bureau, of 40 acres and a mule rescinded, and of federal troops leaving freed slaves to the whims of the Klan and the Crow -- Jim Crow, that is.  A quite different group of radical Republicans had the opportunity to see how far America would go to live up to its promise.

The second Reconstruction was the New Deal, an effort to save the public from predatory capitalism, if not to save predatory capitalism from itself.  It was also the era of a regulatory regime that kept greed in check, and believed that workers should provide exist in a balance of power with government and corporations.  Much of the New Deal legacy of relief, recovery and reform that has not already been eliminated is under siege.

When the U.S. did reconstruction in other countries after the Second World War, with the Marshall Plan for Europe and Japan, it worked.  Rep. Keith Ellison's idea of a New Global Marshall Plan to invest 1-2 percent of America's Gross Domestic Product in aid to poor countries sounds like a fantastic idea.  The senseless and parasitic war profiteering taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan is another story altogether.

But can you imagine what would happen if and when reconstruction comes to America?  Conservative lawmakers, wallowing in their own backwardness and incalcitrance, would condemn the very idea as a socialist plot, wasteful spending and an infringement on states' rights.  Just as the dyed-in-the-wool racist fights against universal health care because black people could also benefit from it, the hard right would resist foreign assistance and investment in infrastructure like it was a stimulus check signed by President Obama himself.

America does need to get its act together soon, but we are our own worst enemy.  The land of the free finds itself in a struggle to determine whether it will continue to stand in its own way, in the way of progress, economic justice and fairness.  What happens next is a matter of speculation and finger -- crossing.  But in the meantime, it's time to help Japan.

The Limits of Tyrants Are Prescribed By the Endurance of Those Whom They Oppress

The Food Research and Action Center released a disturbing report about food hardship and hunger in the United States. According to the report, nearly one in five Americans simply does not have enough money to buy food that they and their family need. In 21 states, at least 20 percent of respondents said they did not have enough money to buy food in the past 12 months, while at least 15 percent of respondents in 45 states answered in the affirmative. No part of the country is untouched by this crisis.

And yet, Tea Party-sponsored governors and lawmakers around the country will make no mention of this, as they channel their inner tyrant and slash state budgets at the expense of the poor and working people. Megalomaniacs, they seem to derive pleasure from using their power to make people hurt -- certain people, that is. After all, their talk of fiscal responsibility is selective, as austerity is reserved for the poor. The rich are not being asked to tighten their belt, but rather are being rewarded with tax breaks. In that regard, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is doing exactly what his masters, the Koch brothers, instructed him to do. When America, backward and crumbling, should be investing in infrastructure and technology to create jobs and promote growth, some governors reject high-speed rail projects and wear their ignorance as a badge of honor.

Moreover, the concept of the budget crisis is being used as a subterfuge -- a scam, if you will -- to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. And all the better for the extreme right if they can slip something devious like anti-gay language in the legislation when no one is looking. Because that's what tricksters do.

Unions have lost ground over the years, and not surprisingly, so too have working people, in terms of declining wages and a lower standard of living. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and others would make public unions the new welfare queens, the new bogeyman. And we are supposed to believe that public school teachers are the new millionaires, getting rich at the public's expense and breaking the backs of state budgets with their exorbitant salaries -- if you consider $40,000 or $60,000 a lot, that is. And when nobody is looking, the true millionaires and billionaires are making out like true bandits, taking away most of the nation's wealth.

But people are starting to wake up, which is why they are engaging in nonviolent protest by the thousands in Madison and elsewhere in America. They have much in common with protestors in Tripoli, Cairo and other nations in the Mideast, where the masses are divesting themselves of the mob bosses, potentates and presidents-for-life that have passed for leadership in that part of the world. All they want is to be able to put food on the table, to feed their children. But they are unable to do so.

Like Egypt's Mubarak and Qaddafi, America's Tea Party rulers -- kleptocrats who feign populist tendencies -- are driven by delusions of grandeur and utter contempt for the will of the masses. When the people do not go along with the program, these authoritarian leaders maintain power by brute force, arrests or through the barrel of a gun -- or at least consider it is an option. The primary difference is that the Mideast rulers operate under no pretense of democracy. Politics in the U.S. enjoys at least a democratic veneer. And in a technical sense the electorate, however uninformed and prone to act in their own economic interests, actually cast their ballots for such walking disasters as Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, and Walker of Wisconsin. But thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, corporations and wealthy interests have unlimited influence over elections. America really is owned by a handful of individuals, and the electoral system has turned into a tool to do the bidding of the oligarchs. So what is the real difference between an autocrat who holds no elections, or holds a sham election and declares victory, and a plutocrat who purchases an election with cash and utilizes corporate cronies to rule by proxy?

When the poor and working poor cannot afford to feed their families, all bets are off. Faced with rising inequality, oppressive laws and the naked greed of the powerful, people take to the streets. Here in the land of opportunity, wealthy conservative interests are jonesing to destroy the unions, the only thing standing between them and unlimited political and economic power. Who wins depends on how far the common folks are able and willing to take it.

Perhaps Frederick Douglass said it best: "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

Rodney King beating 20 years later: Can't we all just get along?

From theGrio:

This week marks the twentieth anniversary of the Rodney King beating, an incident which shone the spotlight on police brutality and race relations in Los Angeles and throughout the United States.

On March 3, 1991, King -- who was driving with two of his friends in his white Hyundai -- was stopped by LAPD officers following a high-speed chase on the 210 freeway with the California Highway Patrol. King reportedly had been drinking with his friends. Ordered out of car, King was repeatedly beaten and kicked by officers Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno and Stacey Koon. According to court records, after learning that King worked at Dodger Stadium, Powell said to King: "'We played a little ball tonight, didn't we Rodney? You know, we played a little ball, we played a little hardball tonight, we hit quite a few home runs. Yes, we played a little ball and you lost and we won.'"

King sustained serious internal injuries, including a broken cheekbone and a broken right ankle, and received 20 stitches, including five inside of his mouth. In his negligence claim against the city of Los Angeles, for which he later won $3.8 million, he also claimed he suffered "11 skull fractures, permanent brain damage, broken [bones and teeth], kidney damage [and] emotional and physical trauma."

The four officers would later claim self-defense, arguing that their lives were in danger from King, who they said was aggressive and was resisting arrest. Meanwhile, other police officers who were on the scene did nothing to stop the beating. What made this police beating incident different from many others was that it was caught on videotape -- by a bystander named George Holliday, a plumbing company manager. The tape showed that the officers clubbed King with 56 baton strokes, and kicks to the head and body.

The LAPD officers were charged but were later acquitted by a jury trial the following year. The acquittal led to the April 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which 55 people were killed, about 2,000 were injured and 12,000 arrested, with over $1 billion in property damage. In the midst of the riots King called for calm, asking in the now famous words, "People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?" The officers were subsequently tried in federal court on civil rights violations, where Powell and Koon were convicted and sentenced to 30 months each. Wind and Briseno were acquitted.

In the wake of the Rodney King beating, The Christopher Commission report was issued to conduct "a full and fair examination of the structure and operation of the LAPD," including its recruitment and training policies, citizen complaint system and internal disciplinary practices. The report found that a significant number of police officers used excessive force and ignored department guidelines. In addition, the complaint system was skewed against complainants. There was a breakdown in leadership on the force, a management problem, with a failure to deal with repeat offender officers who were often promoted and rewarded for their behavior.

"Testimony from a variety of witnesses depict the LAPD as an organization with practices and procedures that are conducive to discriminatory treatment and officer misconduct directed to members of minority groups," the report found. "Witnesses repeatedly told of LAPD officers verbally harassing minorities, detaining African-American and Latino men who fit certain generalized descriptions of minorities, employing unnecessarily invasive or humiliating tactics in minority neighborhoods and using excessive force." Police officers of color, the Christopher Commission found, were also susceptible to racist slurs, racially-motivated behavior and discriminatory treatment, which was attributed to white dominance in LAPD managerial positions. In light of these findings, the Commission recommended the resignation of LAPD police chief Daryl Gates.

The LAPD's reputation was further damaged in the late 1990s by the corruption scandal involving the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) anti-gang unit of the LAPD's Rampart Division. Over 70 officers were implicated of brutality, misconduct and corruption. At least three officers in the unit were found to be on the payroll of Death Row Records boss and convicted felon Marion "Suge" Knight, who is affiliated with the Bloods gang. The officers were implicated in the drive-by shooting murder of rapper Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace, (a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.). The scandal led to over 140 civil lawsuits, with settlement costs of over $125 million. The report of the Rampart Review Panel noted a sense of insularity in the CRASH unit. This created an "us versus them" mentality towards the community, and an "ends justifies the means" attitude that led to abuses of authority, such as the planting of evidence, unjustifiable beatings and shootings, bank robbery and drug dealing. "Community policing -- which must be at the heart of the Department's efforts to reestablish its credibility with the public -- remains more a slogan than reality. And ethics remains almost an afterthought in the training of the City's police officers," according to the report.

Click HERE for more.