The Den

There was a small plaque up in the den in the Fowler house – and if you're picturing "The Den" as looking like the room in which Mr. Brady worked, or where Bob Newhart wrote his how-to books in the Inn in Vermont, well... the Den in the house in Fowler was different. It was a brightly lit, worn-linoleum-covered room on the southeast corner of our house. It had windows along the east and south sides, an arch into the living room on the north side and a squared – as much as anything was truly squared in that settled farmhouse – entrance into the dining room on the west side.

It also had the front door to the house, at the top of five concrete steps leading down to the pitching sidewalk which led out to the gravel driveway. It was a balky old wooden door that was simultaneously hard to open and completely ineffectual at keeping out winter drafts, so once it was shut up in the winter it was seldom used except for first time guests, Father Froehlich, and our District Manager from the Journal and Courier paper route. In warmer months we'd use it on our way out to the bus in the morning as it was closest to the road and we could see the bus crest the hill from there, but we didn't often use it to come in - afternoons, we'd troop past the flag pole, past the faded statue of Mary in her small but well tended grotto, past the bikes sitting out in the side yard, and past the tire swing - and enter through the back door, where we'd kick off our shoes.

The den housed both the toy cabinet and the gun cabinet. The glass-faced gun cabinet was in the southwest corner of the room, behind the door, and it always contained at least five long-barrel guns including a .22, a .410, and a rifle with a scope. After my brother returned from the service it also contained a Colt .45, but the way that gun was talked about and handled was very different. Shotguns were guns, but the handgun was different, and possibly sinister, and definitely locked away in the bottom drawer, with the ammunition. The upper part of the gun cabinet was locked too, of course, but since the key was IN the lock at all times so as not to be lost, and as the house itself was never locked, you couldn’t really say that this was highly effective security.

The gun cabinet was to the left behind the door as you entered and the toy cabinet was to the right, in front of all of those windows. It really was a shelf unit, a converted bookcase, about three foot high, two foot deep and four foot long, homemade of plywood with one lateral shelf about halfway up and painted light blue. Like most kids, I'd guess, I thought it was fantastic. It’s where I kept my barn and the plastic model animals, and the fences that I'd set up to keep them penned. The Silly Putty and the Play-doh, when there was any to be had (usually shortly after Christmas), were there (when they were put away), and also, later, my tub of BrixBlox (Sears' answer to Legos) and two big yellow Tonka trucks which were pressed into duty when I would play in the driveway.

On top of the toy cabinet was a round goldfish bowl, which you probably are picturing correctly if you’ve ever seen a fishbowl in the comics. If it were close enough after the Benton County Fair for the goldfish that was inevitably won to still be alive, then it would be a goldfish bowl with a goldfish; otherwise, it was housing for any vaguely water-based animal unfortunate enough to have been caught. Baby rabbits whose moms got run over by the mower went into a box with rags and were fed with an eyedropper of milk, but tadpoles from the Fowler pond and crawdads from Schwartz’s creek inevitably went into the fish tank, and were largely forgotten. (And, sadly but unsurprisingly, the fish tank was often their last residence - all died shortly after being moved in. It was on the top shelf of a southeast facing room that got lots of sunshine, so in the summer months when they were likely to be caught, vaguely water-based animals didn't stand too much of a chance.)

To the left of the toy cabinet in the corner there was a wooden rocker – just wood, no cushion – which was said to have belonged formerly to one of my grandparents and which was displaced for the Christmas Tree on the 24th of December. The goldfish bowl was put someplace else during Advent as well, since by then it wouldn't have housed anything living anyway, and that was where the cardboard Advent Calendar was placed. Opening one door at a time for each day that passed, revealing a different scene in the tiny window behind it in the story of Jesus’ arrival, was very effective at building anticipation for Christmas. The calendar didn't change from year to year, and by the time I came along it had tape on top of tape, and I was well enough versed in Christian mythology to remember from year to year which window had The Visitation, for example, so it wasn't suspenseful in that regard, but it was one of my childhood's rituals that marked the passage of time.

The den also had the desk of the house, which, looking back, probably earned the room its label. And which probably should have occurred to me before now, but as a kid it was just "the den" in the way that it was just Fowler or just Sacred Heart Church; the power of naming being opaque and bestowing that degree of inevitability. There was a ridiculously heavy old Royal typewriter for older sibling on the desk which I was not allowed to use. It sometimes had a black-and-red ribbon in it vs. just black, which I thought was especially cool. I would try to surreptitiously type on it, playing with the red and black settings, but I would always get quickly caught - it was a manual typewriter sitting on an oak desk on a linoleum floor in a room with plaster walls, so no surprise there.

The desk was a beautiful old oak desk, with shelves on either side, a foot board that ran the length of it that I could first reach in 5th grade, and a drawer that pulled out in front holding, inexplicably, a small red box with “Dennison” written on the cover diagonally in cursive on one side and three circles, like Cheerios, of white on the other. Inside the box were adhesive hole reinforcers. They were small circles of white paper with the equivalent of envelope glue on one side. When I was a kid I was mystified by these Cheerios, but eventually I learned that if you made a mess out of three-hole punching something, you could lick one of these babies, slap it over the hole, and you were all set. Some bored sibling had licked three of them and placed them exactly over the three circles that ran diagonally across the bottom of that box, and then that same or another sibling tried to circle the three adhesive hole reinforcers with a ball point pen and had failed, so that one tangent of pen line went off to the side, which I remember, even then, bugging me. That box was in the top desk drawer, always, even after we moved into Lafayette when I was thirteen. And I never thought it odd, from before I knew what it contained until after I found the box in its accustomed place when I was home on break from college and I was scrounging for an envelope. We never, as far as I knew, had a three-hole punch or a single-hole punch, and I can’t imagine what we would have done with one if we had it.

In the top desk drawer of the desk in the den was one of my favorite things in the Fowler house: a ruler. It was from my Grandpa M-- (and grandparents were simply grandma + surname and grandpa + surname, done, no nicknames) and it had inset across its face squares of different wood species, from light to dark, from pine to walnut, labeled to help the user identify them. I memorized it in the hopes of being able to recognize the wood of a piece of furniture and say it correctly, out loud, in the presence of one of my six older brothers, my parents, or my grandpa M--. It wasn't the kind of thing I was thought to have known. I loved that ruler and those beautiful wood grains; I thought it was the second most beautiful item in the house.

That desk felt majestic, almost regal, and when I would sit at that desk in the den as a kid, with the dining room to my left and the gun cabinet over the left shoulder and the toy cabinet over the right, even with my feet not touching the foot board, I felt very grown up. I would read the dictionary there, and write letters to my siblings who were away, and haul up encyclopedia volumes so I could flip back and forth between the beautiful topographical map and the no-nonsense political map of whatever state or country I was reading about, and quiz myself on flags and principal industries and largest cities. I didn't read fiction at the desk, it was a serious place for serious endeavours.

And as I'd sit there I'd often look up to my left, in the corner, above where the dictionary and thesaurus stood, and up almost to the ceiling, from my point of view, there were two rounded shelves snugged into the corner. The top one was empty, as I remember, but on the second one there was a thin rectangular wooden plaque – pine – with a perfectly fit rectangular piece of aged paper mounted on it with three words written in brown ink and in all capitals: “I AM THIRD.” I learned to read when I was very young, thanks to my sister who read to me incessantly, so I could read it for long time before I asked what it meant. “God is first, your neighbor is second, and 'I am third,'” I was told, when I asked. I wished I hadn't. I was terrified. Already I was 10th, and now I was third, too?

I didn't often think about it, and I never intentionally looked at it, but sometimes when I'd be sitting on the floor in my favorite hat, playing with my train set - maple - or sitting at the desk, swinging my feet, thinking of a word, it would catch my eye, and I would quickly look away, aware that I'd been caught not thinking about God first again.

Missed story of the week -

Perhaps with all of the media coverage of the "Obama Referendum" you missed the following news item, but relations between Thailand and Cambodia are worsening. Fast.

The Cambodian government has just appointed ousted and indicted former Thai Premier Thaksin Shinawatra to be a personal advisor to Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen, according to a story in the Singapore Straits Times.

This is a problem because Thaksin is legally on the lam from Thai government officials, and his supporters have rallied across the country repeatedly in the last few years, disrupting transportation in Bangkok and prompting counter demonstrations that shut down the international airport and significantly affected tourism, a major industry there.

This is also a huge "Screw you" from Cambodia to Thailand.

Civil society in Thailand is deeply divided over the coup that threw Thaksin from power in 2006 - the coup was urban and middle class, for the most part, while Thaksin is supported by poorer urban Thais and those in the northeast and east. A little bit of a Berlusconi figure without the buffoonery, Thaksin is a gazillionaire several times over and owns many media outlets in Thailand. He briefly owned Manchester City Football Club in Britain. He is politically populist, instituting universal health coverage for all Thais but also waging a bloody "War on Drugs" with extrajudicial killings, and he led a crackdown on those segments of the press he didn't own.

There has been residual unrest from the coup for the last three years, and a weak government is in place now, the third since his ouster in '06. Add to that the border tensions of Cambodia and Thailand, who have been shooting at each recently over an ancient temple that both claim (and I'm sure the resident gods whole-heartedly support THAT), separatist unrest in Thailand's Muslim south, and the Thai King's failing health, and things in Thailand could go very bad very fast.

If the Thai King's health continues to worsen, or if Thaksin makes mischief by rallying supporters from just across the border to demonstrate, overtly or covertly or tacitly, or if any of the fully armed troops from either army patrolling the border get trigger happy, the situation along the border could deteriorate into a hot war with disastrous consequences for both nations and regional stability.

Sources: The Nation and The Bangkok Post (Thailand), The Straits Times (Singapore)

Why Palo Alto is awful

It's a class thing.

I freakin' hate Palo Alto. I do. I haven't lived or worked in the suburbs since... well, ever, really (except the few months I lived in Buffalo Grove, Illinois) and I'm about to start yelling at people to behave themselves.

"Oh, Northern California is so nice, you'll love it there!" people said, when I was getting transferred. Well, it might be, but Palo Alto and the mid Peninsula is a terrible, awful place filled with dreadful, miserable human beings.

San Jose? Fine. When I walk to the train station in the morning, at least half of the people will say hi, or give a head bob, or not walk right into me intentionally (and yes, this is how low the bar is now set, thanks to my experience in Palo Alto). The regulars and staff that I've come to know at 4th Street Pizza where I watch football on Sundays, San Jose natives, many of them, are uniformly friendly, open, well-mannered folk. (Well... one regular is a complete and utter tool, but he's loaded - and not the kind of loaded that you often find on a bar stool. Last Thursday he comes in, and within seven minutes - literally, I timed him when I saw where the train was heading - he had told the young woman behind the bar that within the past week he was in Vancouver ["Wait that was just six hours ago? wow!"], Las Vegas and New York, and was going to Asia "again" next month, and had been to the Philippines, Ireland, and Tahiti "a few times." He also treated his much younger wife like crap and talked to the bartender like she was nine years old. Awful, awful man. And evidently rich. See what I mean?)

San Francisco? Excellent. When I was living in Noe Valley for that month and would walk around the neighborhood people would almost always say hi on the street when you'd pass them, or at least respond if you did.

I have never seen such an unhappy, edgy, ill-mannered collection of human detritus as the fiduciary bunch that walks the streets in Palo Alto. They park their $100,000 cars straddling two parking spaces; they walk into a restaurant, sit at a busy counter, and throw their crap across three seats; they walk four abreast, ploddingly, down the sidewalk, and then deliberately walk into you as you approach from the other direction; they have no regard for any rules that help to make things a little more livable (e.g., "Walk your bikes on sidewalk," choosing instead to ride around the dogs, people, and cafe tables; or "Please place used dishes in the dishwasher marked 'Dirty'," leaving stuff pile up in the sink of the shared office space all weekend, despite the dishwasher marked 'Dirty' being RIGHT THERE; or "Left Turn Only this lane," applying, evidently, to the little people).

I have decided that it must be a class thing. Here's my theory. To live in Palo Alto costs a LOT of money. People with money are (nearly) invariably awful, coddled, lazy, entitled, careless, oblivious people. Someone else fixes things, cleans up after things, does things, and unless you are in their world, you don't matter. Rules? For other people. Deadlines? For other people. Traffic laws? For other people. Common Courtesy? There's a whiff of Egalitarianism there, so most definitely for other people.

People with significant means have, at least since Tom and Daisy Buchanan, had "other people" to take care of the messes they make. And they know that people aren't equal, of course they aren't, so why treat those who are beneath you as though they are? I have found this to be true about rich people throughout my life, but I've never really lived or worked among them. I remember when I started at Marquette, which at the time was a pretty middle class kind of place with still a lot of first generation farmer's kids and working class kids, being SHOCKED at the carelessness of some of the guys on our floor. It wasn't that all of the guys with significant means were complete tools, but I would say that everyone who was a complete and utter tool was from a family with significant means.

I had also thought that money = class; that people with money behaved well, for some reason. Maybe that was because the only people I knew with money, real money, was the one family in Fowler who ran the grain elevators. They had slightly nicer, and newer, cars than the rest of us (though their cars were still American), and they lived in a nice, newer two story house, but they didn't "Wear what they owned and carry the rest with them," as a colleague would later say about the people at the Cherry Creek College Fair. That family in Fowler could have bought and sold the town, likely, but beyond the kids' straighter teeth because they could afford braces, they were indistinguishable, and would never have put on airs of being anything other than that. I was friends with them, good friends with the girl in my class, and as we grew up I realized that wasn't accidental, and further that they'd have been mortified had anyone ever acted in any other way.

When I got to MU and interacted with the one or two scions of real money, in this, as in many other things, I was completely unprepared. Messes were made in public areas because someone else would clean it up. Food was wasted. Money was spent frivolously. Cars were wrecked and replaced. Cafeteria workers were treated with visible disdain because, well, they were cafeteria workers. This was shocking behavior to me; I was completely dumbfounded that people could act like that. Since then, I've seen it over, and over, and over.

Here let me say that, yes, of course, there are exceptions. I have met people from families with great wealth who are level-headed, hard working, polite and thoughtful. My roommates in Hawai'i were from very wealthy families, and I am not proud to admit it but I was reluctant to live with them because of that. It really gave me considerable pause. I took the plunge anyway, and made a great friend who is one of the most generous, thoughtful, deliberate persons I have ever met. I remember that as a lesson about prejudice, and try to keep an open mind, but I'm not always successful - if I know someone comes from money before I meet them, I'm likely to mistrust them, despite my best efforts. And the awful human beings who walk around Palo Alto don't make it any easier.

Compounding the problem, I think, is that so many of the people walking around Palo Alto were very, very wealthy in their home countries, and many of those home countries don't have the lip service that we pay to egalitarianism. While I do believe that wealth can breed carelessness and disdain in everyone, it might be that in the Ukraine, Russia, and India, wealth breeds more acute carelessness and disdain because of the social realities in those places. It may simply be that the wealth PLUS the education that they earned, first in their home countries and then at Stanford, further imbues an innate sense of superiority with disdain? Or that the incestuousness of the social milieu - all wealthy people, all well educated people, all in IT - further reaffirms whatever disdain they may have, or nurtures it where none existed? While living in Japan, I noticed that foreigners were, when among only themselves, terribly ill-mannered; collectively, a group of gaijin in Japan didn't know the rules, follow them, or care, and assuredly some found it liberating to be unbound by social strictures. Perhaps some of that dynamic is happening here as well?

When I lived in Southern California many of my neighbors were immigrants, either first or second generation, but they were of a different class - largely working class, not university educated in their countries of origin (in L.A., this was Mexico; in San Diego it was the Philippines, VietNam, and Mexico). And again, they were friendly, would say hello, would not take up two parking spaces, and had some sense of what it meant to live in a communal setting.

And maybe it's that the "industry" here in Silicon Valley is, well, Silicon Valley? Maybe it's that all of these engineers together... I don't want to say they are socially challenged, but perhaps that further layer of incestuousness causes some of this? One of my old friends, who's in IT for a large IT company just up the road, says "Too many tech geeks in one place is definitely NOT a good thing."

But I know a lot of engineers who know how to put a cup in a dishwasher; I know a lot of immigrants who are friendly and unfailingly gracious; I know a lot of well educated, highly intelligent people who don't act as though the world owes them something.

So I think it comes back to class. Maybe it's that Palo Alto it is the low-lying, rank, weed infested marsh into which the confluence of the wealthy, entitled, I'm-socially-above-you stream; the recent immigrant I-don't-need-to-follow-the-local-rules stream; and the hyper-educated, I'm-smarter-than-you stream all dump?

Whatever the reasons, I can say that I've never lived anywhere or seen anyone like the near-vicious, definitely thoughtless, undeniably selfish denizens of Palo Alto. They are awful.

So I'll take the train in, try to limit myself to one meal a day there, even on 16 hour days, and take the train home. And I'll try not to start yelling at people to behave themselves, but I am not making any promises.

In praise of Big Government

Any dropped calls lately? Any text come through 24 hours - or later - after it was sent? Any phantom charges on your phone bill, or credit card statements?

How are your bank fees? Happy with your bank overall?

Travelled by air lately? How was that?

And your employer, if you work in the private sector - they never do anything stupid, do they? They are remarkably well-run models of efficiency, are they, always making good decisions?

So why have we as a nation fetishized private enterprise and vilified government run endeavors? How has this happened?

I have had it with people saying that big government is the problem. How so, exactly? What's the problem? They drive interstates, they turn on taps in their homes and drink the water, they fly planes that are checked for safety by a government that built the airports from which they're flying, they have police to look after their property and enough social welfare to ensure that we all get along, for the most part, and yet government is the problem?

Wha...?

I've heard things like "Government isn't good at running things" from people who like to talk about our military as one of this nation's greatest assets.

I've heard "government can't do anything right - look at the Post Office, it's losing money!" Well, true, but of COURSE they are! One November on a recruiting trip in Guam, I mailed all my holiday cards. I remember so clearly going into the main Post Office in Hagatna and handing over a stack of envelopes, and marvelling that they would all get to where they were supposed to go for such a small fee. (And I have never had a piece of mail misdirected or lost.) So who else is going to run something that will charge me 42 cents to put a sticker of Bart Simpson on the corner of a piece of paper and ship it from San Francisco to L.A., or New York; or Milwaukee; or Fowler, Indiana? Isn't that a good thing, that there's someone willing to send a letter from anywhere that's under a U.S. flag to anywhere else that's under a U.S. flag? Isn't that part of the common good? Isn't it freakin' remarkable, when you think about it?

Am I the only one who remembers that the Hoover Dam and the Space Shuttle were built by Big Government?!

The 20th Century has been called by some the American Century. I can see why - we were pretty dominant on the world stage. We had unprecedented wealth, we spread it to an unprecedentedly broad group, we led unprecedented growth, innovation, creativity, peace and prosperity.

Name the greatest achievements of the United States of the last century.

Would defeating fascism in World War II make the list?
How about putting a person on the moon?
Discovering and harnessing atomic energy?
Eliminating endemic poverty among elderly people?
Founding and funding the best university system in the world?
Getting closer to fulfilling the promise of full participation by all in civil society?
The Marshall Plan?

What are yours?

This is why I'm a liberal - most of the unprecedented achievements wrought by the effort and ingenuity of Americans over the past 100 years have been led by liberal governments.

The "intent of the founders" that our countrymen and women in the Traitor States keep yammering about? Does this sound familiar?

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

How is any of that done without government, and Big Government?

Since Hoover, Republicans have been the party of cowardice in foreign affairs, the party of racism in domestic affairs, and the party of temerity at first and latterly hostility to science and technology.

The moon shot? John F. Kennedy's vision, Lyndon Johnson's execution.

Lend Lease, to keep Britain in the war long enough to overcome the resistance and fear of myopic Republicans in Congress? Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The Great Society and Civil Rights? Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson

The G.I. Bill? In fairness it was co-sponsored by a Republican, but it was passed under a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic president.

What has lead to prosperity in this country - the more perfect union that our founders explicitly strove for - is government ensuring that there is enough fairness, justice and opportunity that we can live in neighborhoods without walls, that we can achieve our dreams, that we can work hard and move up and keep the fruits of our labor.

What does private capital do? It engorges itself. Left to its own devices, private enterprise will absolutely destroy itself - we've seen that, this year, in the finance sector. Private enterprise needs government - big government, government with enough authority, budget, capacity and oversight - to ensure transparency, fair play and confidence.

Government has run large, complex projects - stunningly well, in some cases (and you're welcome, ingrates who didn't send one electoral vote to a democrat, for the TVA, electricity and Federal talent and money to wrench you into the 2oth century) - and it will do so again. To suggest that it can't or hasn't or doesn't, every day, is to forget our proud national history and some of our greatest national achievements.

And it diminishes our future.

We are a richer, better, more equitable nation due to large government, and we surrender that progress and that unique legacy when we turn over our nation to private enterprise. Think of that the next time a call drops, or you're inexplicably delayed at an airport on a sunny day.

Think of that the next time you turn on your tap.

And think of whose hands you'd rather have your health care in.

Science in the News

1. Open Arctic Seas - Henry Hudson and Jacques Cartier might just have been a few centuries too early in the search for a Northwest Passage. For the first time in history, two ships are making commercial deliveries between Asia and Europe through the Arctic Ocean. It's a lot shorter, and there are a lot fewer pirates, and Global Climate Change is making it all possible! Story in the NY Times here. (A few months ago I read an article in L'Actualité [mérci, Celeste!] about how shipping interests in the major cities in Canada's east, particularly Montréal, were concerned about a multi-million dollar expansion of the port in Manitoba's far north, in Churchill. With increasingly ice free seas in Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean, farmers may be able to ship grain to Europe more efficiently and cheaply - and through more months - through the Arctic. Unprecedented.)
2. More evidence for human inputs - An L.A. Times article reports that yup, pretty much, it's us that's causing Global Climate Change. Despite the fact that a wobble in the earth's rotation means that the Arctic region is 600,000 miles farther away from the sun than it was in Year 1 (and I'd just like to pause here in awe of what human intellect and effort is able to deduce - that's miraculous) and so it should be cooler, in fact: "the region has warmed 2.2 degrees since 1900 alone, and the decade from 1998 to 2008 was the warmest in two millenniums." Of course there are plenty of people (Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK) who argue that Global Climate Change is a fiction. If they just happen to be neighbors of the same people who know so little about science that they discount evolution, welll...
3. Figuring out the evolution of flowers - While they now account for most flora on land on this little blue ball, flowering pants haven't always dominated, and they all - gladioli to corn, apples to thistle - evolved from one plant. Between 130 and 120 million years ago, flowering plants evolved the tools needed to come to dominate. Awesome story in the NY Times here.
4. And because Bren's Left Coast has the sense of humor of a 13 year old male, the best Science Headline of the Week comes from the Guardian: "Great tits found hunting bats." Evidently, they mean the bird. Still a great headline.

More "God-Squad hypocrisy - best yet?

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.

"I made a mistake and I sincerely apologize," the statement said. "I deeply regret the comments I made in what I believed to be a private conversation. This is a private matter and I ask that everyone respect the privacy of all involved."

Thus spaketh the California State Assemblyman Mike Duvall, Republican (natch) from Orange County (natch!). Well, you know what? When you are on a break from a legislative hearing IN THE CAPITOL it's not a private matter.

When you are talking about having sex with two LOBBYISTS, one of whom represents a firm (Sempra) with business BEFORE YOUR COMMITTEE it's not a private matter.

And lastly, when you decadent, corrupt, mean spirited, two faced, cheating, lying, hypocritical, malfeasance-practicing vermin make my personal life a public matter through your "Defense of the Family" propaganda? Yeah. It's DEFINITELY not a private matter.

As legislator, Duvall has "blasted" efforts to promote gay marriage. The conservative Capitol Resource Institute gave him a 100% rating, calling him "a consistent trooper for the conservative causes" who "voted time and time again to protect and preserve family values in California".[8]

(from Wiki, here)

Disgusting.

A ton more from the good folks at the Sacramento Bee here, and if you have a strong stomach there's more here (though this has his actual comments, and they are DEFINITELY not safe for work).

Dirty, filthy, disgusting, god-fearin', Family-defendin', hypocritical trash.

Updated:

Duvall joined other Republicans in voting several times this year against renewable energy measures opposed by Sempra Energy. The measures would require utilities to derive significantly more electricity from solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable energy sources by 2020.

Japan elections - Update - 30-Aug-09 21:14 PST

UPDATE (30-Aug-09, 21:14 PST) - results are in, and it's a WOLLOP: The DPJ has won 308 seats, the Communists 9 seats, and the Social Democratic Party is on 7. Anything over 300 would be considered a landslide. Let's see what the DPJ can do - their challenges are huge.

Japan goes to the polls on Sunday, have you heard?

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party ("LDP") has been in power pretty much since the end of WWII (except for 10 months in the 90's), and they've had a good run. A small, crowded island nation absolutely devastated by war, with no natural resources, managed to make itself into the 2nd largest economy in the world behind only the United States - a position it still holds, depending on how you count the EU. It's an achievement unparalleled in human history, and one of which the Japanese people are justifiably proud. The Japanese in their 70's in Japan - those born in the 40's - were born into an impoverished, humiliated nation hated by its neighbors; experienced food rationing for decades; and were saddled with a government structure they didn't choose. Despite this, they toiled and sacrificed and rebuilt, giving their children more prosperity than nearly anyone on the planet had ever achieved. They had participatory electoral politics, broadly recognized freedoms of expression and association, and an independent judiciary. They worked long days for the new emerging industries and saw as a common goal the achievements of the nation. Their children continued the social contract - working very hard their whole lives for country and employer, still often conflated, knowing that they had social peace, liftetime employment, security and prosperity. Their grandkids, however - well, not so much. Which collapsed first - the social contract or the broad consensus among Japanese to support it? The end of lifetime employment or the broad Japanese commitment to working uninteresting jobs for a lifetime? Good question, and one for a PhD in socio-economics thesis.

In 2009, the Japanese economy is in a mess. Headline from today's Japan Times reads: "Unemployment hits all time high of 5.7%" - not exactly what you want to hear if you're the ruling party heading into an election on Sunday.

The graphic to the left shows what economic growth has looked like in Japan since their own bubble burst in 1991 - a cautionary tale for Mr. Obama and economic policy makers in DC, perhaps - and it's been grim. Stagflation, deflation, a collapse of exports as local competitors have underbid them and oversold them, and a sclerotic political system with a complete inability to reform itself have all left Japan with decreasing confidence, stagnant prosperity, increasing unrest, unemployment, and poverty, and the social problems concomitant with each.

As if that weren't enough, Japan has absolutely no plan to deal with its own depopulation. Its domestic market is shrinking, its population is greying, and its culture has so far been hyper resistant to solutions to declining populations that other nations have pursued - i.e., immigration. Until some political party or leader is willing to talk about this elephant in the room - Japan's population is predicted to contract under 110 million, down from over 140 million, in twenty years - there is likely little that a new ruling coaltion (or government, if the predictions of voter anger at the LDP are accurate and the DPJ [Democratic Party of Japan] wins a majority outright) can do to alter the landscape of Japan's economic malaise.



Election results should start coming in around 5 pm PST (Sunday, 30-Aug). Stay tuned...