"A Decent America Will Be a Force to Celebrate"

 “When World War II Ended, Nearly Everyone on Earth, Including Americans Themselves, Admired America; So Did the Japanese”

 

So writes the Japanese contemporary novelist, Minae Mizumura, in the recent issue of The New York Review of Books.  

 

Mizumura goes on to write that, in hindsight, we know that the allied occupation forces meticulously controlled the media so that no Japanese criticism saw the light of day.  The nation was to repent and welcome its defeat.  “Cynics say the population was brainwashed, and I find myself often agreeing with that assessment.  After all, America dropped the A bomb…ultimately, however, I have always concluded—if somewhat grudgingly—that the nation’s admiration was justified.  America showed generosity toward the defeated; its people wanted a better world for everyone.”

 

Mizumura went to live in the United States when she was 12 and ended up staying in the U.S. for 20 years, from 1963 to 1983.  She acknowledged that she refused to adapt to her new environment and “turned into an antisocial little Japanese patriot.”  But even during those years of rebellion, at a time when American soldiers were fighting a war in a far-away land, Vietnam, and society was in turmoil, “I never doubted that the U.S. as a whole was fundamentally a moral nation.”  

 

Moving on, Mizumura reflects on how she reacted to the news of Trump’s election.  As she held the newspaper reporting this in her hand, "My mind went numb.  Noises around me ceased to exist.  For the next four years, I felt I was on a rollercoaster, a rollercoaster that just kept plunging lower and lower.  Trump seemed to revel in his amorality.  The more he assaulted the human decency that had created America’s praiseworthy institutions and ideals, the more his orange face glowed.”  The MAGA rallies she observed on the streets and the “idiotic, hateful obsequious” support for Trump in Congress has “betrayed the image long ingrained in me of America as a nation of big-hearted, fair-minded people.”  

 

Mizumura concludes, “The world has become so intertwined that we simply cannot afford another four years of Trump wrecking our future, especially now when that future is imperiled by the threat of a renewed arms race and the ever-accelerating warming of our planet—our only planet.  I will gladly adore America once again if the country makes a decisive turnabout in November.  America doesn’t have to be ‘great again.’  A decent America will be a force to celebrate.”  

 

My friends from around the world, many of them retired from Procter& Gamble, echo the same sentiment that Mizumura expresses poignantly, almost word for word. 

 

And so do I.

 

PLEASE VOTE AND TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO DO THE SAME.