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.