Friday 31 May 2013

Choice




So then. Toru Hashimoto. The man makes my face hurt. Seriously, it’s a genuine physical reaction every time I see him on TV or in the newspapers or on the internet or in my dreams and still waking nightmares smiling with his smug self-obsessed areshole of a face with the same blissfully ignorant grin you see on the face of a toddler who’s just taken a crap in the middle of the living room carpet and is now pointing at it with witless pride and expecting congratulations because he’s made the entire house stink of shit, and he did it all by himself.

Except of course he didn’t do it all by himself. He has nearly three-quarters of a million followers on twitter, which is apparently a meaningful metric nowadays, and more significantly lots of people voted for him. A sufficient number of the electorate in Osaka looked at him and thought, ‘Yep, he’s the best we could hope for here.’ While hindsight has obviously thrown that decision into question, the woeful state of Japanese politics means that I’d be wary about saying that back in 2011 he definitely wasn’t the least worst option.

As other, smarter people have noted, the Japanese electorate are confronted with what amounts nothing more than a slight variation of Hobson’s Choice. Hobson was a stable owner who rented out horses when that was still the thing to do. In order to make sure his best mounts didn’t get chosen disproportionately and worn-out before their time he introduced a strict rota system; if you wanted a horse you could take the one he chose or you could get fucked. The variation in Japanese politics is that you take the LDP or nothing, and you’ll get fucked whatever you decide. If you try to get your horse from a different stable then you end up with a Hashimoto gurning like a cunt and debating how many rape victims can dance on the head of a pin.

Pinhead

The consensus seems to be that he’s really pissed on his chips this time around, that he’s simply gone too far and in addition to alienating the Chinese and the Koreans and the Americans and people who support nuclear power and people who oppose nuclear power and people with tattoos and teachers and parents and civil servants and members of the armed forces he’s now also pissed off women. And men. Well, me at least.

I genuinely don’t see how you can pull these constituencies apart. Whenever Hashimoto or any other ignorant politician opens their gobs to dribble whatever ill-formed brain-smegma they felt needed jettisoning at that particular time and says something offensive and inaccurate, there’s always commentators who say something like “this won’t play well with female voters,’ or, ‘this will alienate him from working parents,’ or whatever.

I’m not sure how not playing well with a specific demographic is a greater concern than just being plain fucking wrong. I don’t know how we got to this stage. I don’t know how we can see political ‘debates’ with wealthy middle-aged men trying to co-opt feminism and gender issues on the grounds that ‘I have daughters, and I want them to have the same opportunities as boys.’

I don’t have daughters. I have sons and guess what, I want them to have the same opportunities as that wealthy, influential, well-connected politician’s daughters. In truth I’d rather everyone got the same opportunities regardless of gender or class or ethnicity or orientation, because it’s the right fucking thing. It’s possible for someone’s moral compass to be guided by more than nepotism and genetic self-interest, but I realize I’m probably on hiding to nothing here.

No real relevance, but too good to waste.

Because this is how arseholes get elected. They buy people off. They promise things that they think we want and at best only half-think they can deliver. But I can’t blame them for that, not really. The modern ‘western’ democratic system is one that values glitz and showmanship over ability and substance. The single attribute modern political operatives most value is ‘Name Recognition’ which is how we end up with spurious ‘celebrity’ candidates in the most apparently serious of positions, and also why come election season in Japan we get all those fucking vans doing nothing more than endlessly repeating the candidates’ names. The insulting assumption is that the electorate don’t need to know anything more about, say, their policies or track record or personality because mere knowledge of their first and last names is enough. It’s insulting, but it would also appear to be right.

How much more can I say? No, I can no more blame the politician for his vacuous attention-seeking than I can blame a shark for eating a surfboarder or a toddler for shitting on the carpet; that’s just the nature of what they are and it’s up to more mature, intelligent creatures to find ways of neutralizing or correcting their inherent flaws.

Step one of which is stop fucking voting for them. Step two is to vote for someone else.

Oh. It rather falls down there, doesn’t it?


13 comments:

  1. The only possible good side of this guy is that maybe he'll force people out of complacency. When someone makes your entire country look like a bunch of cunts in front of the whole world, you might think twice about who you vote for. But yeah, is the other guy any better?

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    1. If there is one thing the Japanese population can be said to show, it is that they cannot be forced out of their complacency. Meiji-Restoration? Merely a changing of the guard and the means of production. American Occupation? Not even a changing of the guard, and the population are both too stupid to understand the constitution was written by the Americans (including women!) to keep them docile, and too lazy to use it to improve their lives. Canada cannot be said to be perfect, but our minorities, and women, have used our 'Charter of Rights and Freedoms' to exercise their rights; whereas women in Japan... wear pink ribbons and talk like they've been goosed.

      "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H. L. Mencken

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    2. Kathryn - I hope you're right, but sadly I agree with Ant and fear you're not. For me the point I gave up was the aftermath of the Tohoku disaster(s). I was genuinely appalled at how politics just carried on as normal. If anything was going to prompt change you'd think it'd be that, but sadly the only 'jolting' involved was tastelessly literal.

      Ant - 'Stupid' isn't the word I'd use. 'Apathetic' is probably better, and 'complacent' definitely is. It may be apocryphal, but I heard a story about a journalist interviewing an experienced British (I think) diplomat. When asked 'Why do the Japanese people let their leaders get away with this stuff?' (I paraphrase), the diplomat replied, 'You have to understand that "Let" is far too active a verb to describe their participation in the process."

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    3. Gonna have to agree with you on the tsunami bit, though you already know that from reading my post. (Great book btw!) There is a telling quote in said book from a pol who says, "How many people died? 20,000? That's nothing. 30,000 commit suicide every year, and that doesn't change anything."

      My wife is far more engaged in US politics than she ever was in Japan, which seems kinda crazy to me. Of course, remove the gun issue and there goes 90% of her activism, so who knows. Doesn't help that she is an LDP-bred woman with a Kyosanto worldview.

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    4. My wife is wholly apolitical, which is probably for the best as far as our relationship goes. As a micro-example of the Japanese population as a whole however, not so good.

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  2. The first paragraph is gold. Not to say the rest isn't good. Just love the first paragraph the best.

    Ishihara's re-elections in Tokyo should be enough to show that it doesn't matter what people outside Japan think, inside Japan these douches will get and keep power. I'm willing to lay down money that Hashimoto will have no trouble being re-elected in Osaka and may end up being the governor of Tokyo one day. The restoration party?... May die in the arse for now and be resurrected later.

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    1. Thanks. I must say I was fairly happy with it myself, though reading it back now I probably shouldn't have used the word 'face' quite so often.

      I wonder how much clout Mayors really have over here. In Britain only the Mayor of London has any sort of powers at all, and they're pretty feeble compared to what I understand is the norm in America. My point being, I hope these guys are content with the relatively contained local platforms they have. Can you imagine if they ever got to the national level?

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    2. That's the thing... Ishihara, as the governor of Tokyo (glorified mayor really) had enough pull to force the national government into nationalizing the Senkakus and whipping up a shit storm. Then, he retired suddenly. I guess he thought that was his final masterpiece and saw fit to bow out. Now, with the problems in Istanbul, looks like Tokyo may get the Olympics as nobody believes Spain has a chance...

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  3. My Gov taps reporters phones. Screws the opposition using the taxation branch....we let our ambassadors die...I got nothing.

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    1. I sympathise. I'm sick to the back teeth of it all and really didn't want to blog about it any more, but it was either that or rant at my wife (again). So I'm afraid y'all are going to have to take one for the team this time. Thanks, it's appreciated.

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    2. My blog exists to keep my marriage, and I still bother her about her culture more than I ought. It'd be great if I'd met people in real life any time after university who'd listen to my bile, but instead I have to fling my rants into the ether. Thank you all for reading who have.

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    3. I read your blog every day! It's great, and I totally empathize with the J-wife situation. Your my f*cking anchor that helps me know I'm not losing it.

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    4. Thanks. In fairness my wife has a fairly high tolerance for my shit; she did choose to marry me, after all. A large part of the reason I started this blog was to provide an alternative outlet before it started causing strife. Seems to be working thus far.

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