The real devastation from the March tsunami may be the opening it created for Japanese regressives.
Citing the Fukushima accident as an excuse, the Christian Science Monitor reports one Japanese official as saying,
We will make the reconstructed area a model for the rest of Japan. We will do everything we can to promote ‘smart cities’ and build a sustainable, low-carbon society in the region.
An NGO official chimed in with:
I think the government is probably planning some wind farms or seaweed biofuel projects. What we really need is to change our lifestyles and reduce energy consumption.
Commodore Perry started Japan on the path to development in 1853. Is it 158 years and out for the Japanese?
“Is it 158 years and out for the Japanese?”
Yes, but they have been at it for years. Their reproductive rates are way too low to maintain their population, and they are way too xenophobic to accept immigrants. It is national suicide.
People always forget that the romantic past, the Golden Age, was only ever a nice place for the rich and powerful, who also recorded it without filling in a few details, such as what life was like for ordinary people. How can Japan, or any people, reverse its energetic history without disrupting every other aspect of its culture? Why would any segment of any society advocate a course of mass misery? Why do they do it in every nation on earth, industrialized or not? And why do they have any currency with the masses? I confess myself stumped.