Re: [tlug] (OT) The enigma of Japan

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

JC Helary writes:
 > 
 > On mercredi 10 juin 09, at 01:49, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > 
 > > JC Helary writes:
 > >
 > >> My bias is that I don't consider Japan to be any more special than  
 > >> any
 > >> other nation state.
 > >
 > > You don't think Article 9 of the Constitution is even a little bit
 > > unusual for a so-called "nation state"?
 > 
 > Do they have armed forces or not ?

Yes, they have organizations with arms.  But they can't even muster
the political will to shoot at *pirates*, for heaven's sake, let alone
a country that has admittedly committed an act that would surely be
casus belli (kidnapping ordinary Japanese citizens on Japanese soil)
for any other country.  "This elephant is very like a snake," said the
blind man of India having touched the trunk.  You say the elephant is
like a wall, having touched its side, but I think you are as blind as
the men of Kipling's poem.

You can say the same of me, of course.  But to make it stick you'll
have to do better than these one-liners.

 > >  Or how about the nearly 60-year nearly unbroken rule by a single  
 > > party?
 > 
 > The Dems/Repugs little game in the US is a proof that you can achieve  
 > the same result by making things look vastly different.

No, you only make yourself look perverse by saying that, since in fact
it's more or less the opposite, and the evidently deliberate typo shows
that you do know the difference.

In fact. the Democrats and Republicans as candidates generally look
very much the same on most issues of interest to their electorates.
It's true that at the Presidential level platforms are subject to
being hijacked by activists, but the electorate listens to what the
candidates say, which is not very different (except that some
candidates are better orators than others).  But there is a vast array
of small but important differences in practical policy matters, eg,
Supreme Court appointments.

Nevertheless, what is *really* important is not the policies, but the
restriction on personal graft (as opposed to pork barreling) that
losing an election presents.