Guns before butter. 花よりだんご

I have pneumonia. It took a while to realize that and be diagnosed properly. The fever of 39.5 and coughing up of blood helped the hospital to get the right diagnosis the second time, with the help of an x-ray. An unpleasant symptom of pneumonia is feeling hot, cold, sweaty, and clammy all at the same time. My splitting headache has come back. Yes, like the one Abe Lincoln had.

I was thinking about two things one day while I waiting around at the hospital. First, it is taken for granted that everyone is cared for in Japan, everyone has health insurance. The system is not up for much political debate of any kind; changes may be made by bureaucrats (by which I mean professionals in the best sense of the word) not politicians. Like virtually every other industrialized country, a public health system was put in place when the GNP per capita passed about US $8000 or 10,000. Countries with socialist ideologies, such as Cuba, build a health system before almost anything else. Something went wrong in the US. Was it that Truman didn't package it correctly? Was Eisenhower blocking it? Why did Kennedy invade Cuba and fly to the moon instead of build up a public health system? Why did Johnson invade Vietnam with his Grate Society? We can't blame it on the Chief Executioner; what about the Congress? They were bought and sold, so why didn't the public insist on it? It could be the assured class-consciousness of the ruling class which runs the press, or it could be a peculiar ludicrousness or gullibility in the American people. I can't explain what went wrong with America but, in Japan, the idea that you would just set off certain people and make it hard or impossible for them to get the same care as everybody is hard to even imagine. It would be like denying some people the vote, or elementary education, or mail service, or electricity, or mail delivery. Which reminds me: maybe it is related to American racism.

The second thing I appreciate is that there are no nuclear weapons and no appetite for them. Somebody who proposes that the country have an atomic bomb is a good candidate to be sent off to a mental hospital. I don't talk with a large number of adults freely about topics like this much anymore, but I would be surprised if many people were in favor of arming with nuclear weapons. I would be surprised to find even one Japanese female who would support Japan having nukes. Let's say the percentage is under 1%. As for the men, I tend to think it would also be hard to find anyone, but in the case of repeated tests or threats from North Korea or China, I can imagine that from 5% to 20% or so of the men might begin to back such a plan. My estimate may be too high. The sea between Japan and Korea has been sufficient to deter effective invasion until the Americans came. The US should likewise have little to worry about, with the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific oceans serving as moats for the fortress. Anyway, it is a mark of insanity to propose having a nuke here, while in the US, to propose the country get rid of its nukes, one might be called insane.

Two cheers for Japan!

If I could add a third point, it would be having decent daycare available for communities, so that children are safely, professionally, and inexpensively cared for while their mothers work. This can be done on a community or state level. For that matter, so can health insurance. Neither seems to be a big priority in the States.

Getting your priorities right is the first step of politics!

America, stop lashing out and killing foreign people, and take care of your own! Be a great nation again! Stop embarrassing us! People, demand the best of your elected officials. Don't settle for money politics.