Kissinger - a very bad guy

"Sometimes you have to choke the dog to get the medicine down its throat."

I remember hearing a Japanese official say that when defending Japan's invasion of Manchuria, way back when I was first acquainting myself with recent Japanese history, as I prepared for what would turn out to be twenty-four years of life in Japan.

A clear claim that the ends justify the means, that sometimes you have to do bad things to arrive at a good outcome.

I revisited that claim in my ethics seminars over the years, as we hauled out all the common "lesser evil" examples. "If you see a train about to run over twelve people and you have the chance to pull a switch which would divert the train and make it run over only three people instead, do you pull the switch?"

People who say yes are utilitarians - people who say we should aim for the greatest good for the greatest number of people - and people who say no are Kantians - people who argue we should be governed by principles - and the overriding principle here is that one should never engage in any activity that leads to treating other human beings as a means to an end.

I retain the conviction that there is such a thing as evil, and that there are good guys and bad guys in the world, and that we should align ourselves with the good guys and "fight the good fight" whether we believe we will win in the end or not. Probably I got that conviction in Sunday School. Or maybe from my grandmother, who had a marvelously practical worldview and refused to let people complicate things she saw as simple and clear.

People are complex. Most people, even the good ones, do bad things at times. And one should, I think, not reject anybody out of hand, all things being equal (even though they never are), because of the possibility that they might see the error of their ways and do good where they might once have been inclined to do harm. I like the Christian approach, in that regard, the notion that God forgives you and once he does he wipes away all your sins, the notion that plagued Hamlet and kept him from killing his uncle when he found him praying because his uncle might then go to heaven.

On the other hand, I part ways with the Christians - and other people who tell you that forgiveness is good for you because holding a grudge will only eat away at your soul in the long run. I don't believe in forgiving people if they don't ask for it and show some evidence that they have seen the light. I place a much greater weight on the Jewish valuation of justice. Bad things need to be put right. Forgiving somebody who doesn't seek it and doesn't deserve it merely prolongs the injustice and maybe even encourages the wrongdoer to do wrong again. No, I'm in favor of arresting criminals and locking them up - if we're talking legality here - and shunning them - if we're talking simple morality.

Mostly I'm in favor of spotting the bad guys and reminding ourselves constantly who they are, keeping an eye on them and preventing them if at all possible from doing more bad things.  Treating them kindly if that works to turn them around, yes. That excludes the really bad guys, of course, Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and their ilk, who caused widespread misery and need to be remembered as evil and held accountable by history.

For reasons I've never fully understood, when I think of "really bad guys" it's not Hitler and Stalin that come to mind, but Augusto Pinochet. Probably because I've always had a fear of flying and there's little to match the horror in the marrow in my bones I felt when I first learned that dropping people from airplanes into the sea was a common practice by Pinochet and other dictators in Argentina and Brazil at a time when they were all competing for worst bad guy of South America.  

I once heard Jeane Kirkpatrick, coming out of a meeting with Pinochet, refer to him as "amable, muy amable." Never got those words out of my head. Never forgave her. Never forgave the U.S. for allowing the likes of her to become ambassador to the United Nations.

And now Pinochet's name is appearing in the news again in connection with his great American enabler, Henry Kissinger, now celebrating his 100th birthday. Surrounded and celebrated by the likes of even Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Kissinger is the man responsible for hundreds of thousands of Laotian and Cambodian deaths, to say nothing of his Realpolitik decisions in supporting the war in Vietnam. A bad guy if ever there was a bad guy.

If there were justice in his case, he would be in jail as a serious war criminal. It is to America's never-ending shame that this man is treated like a hero.  One can argue that I'm being Kantian here when I should be utilitarian. But that's where I stand.

I will not say anything good about Henry Kissinger.

And, on that note, let me suggest you have a listen to Mehdi Hasan's take on the man.

And to Amy Goodman's report.

Miki Imagawa-McCornick 2010-2023

Our little girl, Miki, died in the night last night, shortly after midnight.

I immediately called Taku, who is on a tour in Hokkaido with his mother. He had been calling every few hours for an update. We knew she was at the end of her time,  and thanks to Facetime he was staying current. Friend Bill is here to help me through this awful time and these past few days our lives all revolved around sweet Miki, as she struggled under the weight of Cushing's Disease. Not a comfortable way to go, but we were spared the need, at least, to have her put to sleep, and for that I am very grateful.

She and Bounce, her twin sister, had just turned thirteen. If I were king of the world I would never have designed it this way - ten or twelve years of often pure joy followed by a month or so of quiet agony. I didn't need the reminder that I'm not king of much of anything.

Miki and Bounce came to us from the pet rescue organization, Milo. Our friend Doris had gotten wind of a pet adoption day at the local Petfood Express and we went along out of curiosity, "not shopping; just looking", or so we thought, for a pet. One foot in the door was all it took for both Taku and me to fall instantly in love with five little girls, just a few weeks old, all born to a chihuahua mama in Manteca. And some stray Scottish Jack Russell terrier daddy - we were never quite sure. I zeroed in on Miki, Taku on Bounce, and we might have locked horns over this except that the solution presented itself immediately as obvious: we would take them both. It took a couple weeks, because they had to be spayed and vaccinated for rabies. The first invoice I have for Miki from Dr. Carlos Yang at Thornhill Pet Hospital for a new client exam shows Miki weighed in at 8.07 pounds at the age of four months. We were a family of four: two daddies, one from Japan, one born in New England, and their two little mixed-race native-Californian daughters.

The Milo Foundation, that wonderful pet rescue bunch of folks took her in as "Cinco de Julio Puppy Four" and called her Pinta aka Mickey (sic) and her sister as "Cinco de Julio Puppy Three" aka Jalapeña,

Miki in her younger years

 aka Bounce. Their birthday remains unclear; I have no idea where the "Cinco de Julio Puppy" designation comes from. We know from other records they were born sometime in the first two weeks in May. We settled on May 14, my birthday, and have had a three-way birthday celebration every year for the past thirteen years. Pinta got called Mickey because she had a Mickey Mouse marking on her back. In honor of her Japanese daddy, we changed the name to Miki. Her sister got the name Bounce because she had the habit of jumping vertically off the ground like a helicopter, repeatedly, when excited, which was pretty much all the time.

Taku and I sleep in separate bedrooms - rumor has it I snore - on separate floors. For reasons neither of us can explain, Miki took to sleeping with Taku, Bounce with me. Not exclusively, but most of the time. I came to understand how a mother can love all her children equally while quietly acknowledging that they are more on the same wave length with one of them, and at the same time really love watching one of them edge a little closer to the other parent. Miki was definitely Taku-Daddy's little girl. There was no jealousy; it warmed my heart to see them together, Miki squirming around in Taku's bed keeping him awake at night, Bounce in mine doing the same. Life has been very very good.

This is the last photo we have of her, taken two days ago.

We now have to learn to live with Miki's absence - a new giant hole in reality.

I try not to get sentimental. Try to avoid talking or thinking about "the rainbow bridge" people refer to when their children lose a pet.

So far, without much success.

photo at top: Miki (left, out front) and Bounce at Cesar Chavez Park - their favorite place to run free.

Leave the guy alone

The coronation of Queen Elizabeth's first-born and successor is top of the news this week. I fully intended to take a back seat on the whole affair, hide behind my American identity and not comment on the folderol. Not my king, not my country, none of my business. But after listening to so many critiques of the monarchy and the people who populate it, I thought I'd toss in my two cents. Ignore or dismiss at will.

I'm a great admirer of Alex O'Connor, the founder of the YouTube Channel "Cosmic Skeptic." He's one smart cookie. I love his atheism, admired his stand on not eating animal flesh and sympathized with him when the vegans of the world came down hard on him for telling the world his was an unhealthy diet and he was going back to meat and fish protein. Recently he spoke out against the coronation of Charles III. He makes a very strong argument that there is something quite off about addressing certain human beings as "Your Highness" and "Your Majesty." Poppycock, he says. Double poppycock when you try to get us to believe that this elevation has the imprimatur of a fictional character called God who lives in the sky and wants Britannia to rule the waves.

It's time, say Alex and countless others, including citizens (subjects?) of the United Kingdom itself, like John Cleese of Monty Python fame, who I just heard say he burst into guffaws when his wife insisted on watching the coronation before going to bed the other night. And kept laughing. "Once I realized it was a Python sketch I couldn't stop laughing."

The media uses the opportunity to do what the media does, and that includes yucking it up over every manner of human folly - the woman who used her life savings to fly in from Australia (he's Australia and Canada's king too, remember) and add to her collection of tens of thousands of royal memorabilia; the run-down of all the jewels on all the gowns of all the women in the royal party and who possessed them previously, the speculation over where ex-prince Harry (we'll argue that another time) was going to be seated and whether it was now Queen Camilla or next-in-line William's wife, Kate, who was so nasty to Harry's American mixed-race wife - and (whisper, whisper - which member of the family said something racist?) that she couldn't make it to the coronation. You have to admit there's a whole bunch of intensely rich and flingable gossip material available out there.

I had a number of conversations with a Danish friend on the relative merits of using human beings as symbols of a nation. They still do it in very enlightened countries.  Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands - just to name a handful of countries close to us culturally - all have kings and royal families who are heads of state. My Danish friend and I were in agreement that it is arguably a better system than the one we have, where we slap the role of head of state and head of government onto the same individual. A super dumb idea, methinks, since you want somebody admirable and without any serious character flaws to represent the state, and the head of government you get is a politician, and politicians rarely if ever live up to such expectations.  I think the Germans did it right. They have a president of more or less sterling character to cut ribbons and remind the populace that the whole world is watching and they need to be their best selves. And a chancellor who can twist arms and bargain with the devil when that kind of thing is called for, as head of government.

It was in Japan that I first began to see royals as human beings, and come to feel sorry for them.  I remember the images of Hirohito surrendering to MacArthur on the Battleship Missouri and that photo of him standing next to MacArthur, on his left (the man always stands to the woman's right in traditional photos) looking like a terrified little boy, far shorter than the victorious general. On the official level, this is the job of royalty representing their nations. The way to humiliate the nation is to humiliate the human being standing in for the nation. Fine. A job's a job.

But what about the fact that when Hirohito's successor Akihito married Princess Michiko, it became an open secret that she was bullied so severely by Hirohito's wife, her mother-in-law, that she had a nervous breakdown. Word is she couldn't withstand the criticism of her failure to observe the thousand and one rules of behavior expected of her. At some point she actually stopped speaking for months.

Not to be outdone by Michiko, her son Naruhito, Akihito's successor married Masako, a woman who had to give up her career as diplomat to do official duties as empress. Masako too had a nervous breakdown, again allegedly resulting from bullying from within the family. Her illness was labeled an "adjustment disorder" - and, I ask you, is there a more nasty term that you can think of for being hounded on your inability to produce a male heir? Can't make a male baby? You're not adjusting!

This cruelty in bullying people born into or otherwise forced into an impossibly large number of rules not of their choosing doesn't stop here. Akihito's brother's kid, a girl named Mako, fell in love with a commoner while at college and had to give up her royal status to marry him. The fact that he became a successful lawyer and the two apparently are happily married did not prevent her from being diagnosed with C-PTSD. Post-traumatic-stress-disorder isn't bad enough, she has to get complex PTSD?

You could say it's not the fault of the system of using a monarchy as head of state but of individual members of that monarchy who eat each other alive. (You could also say that if you're going to have a daughter in the Japanese royal family, don't give her a name that begins with an M.) But the point is that it's not just that these people do not have the benefit of individual rights, but they have no way to escape the kind of bullying that drives people crazy, nowhere to go. There's something profoundly wrong about that.

And that's where I find myself parting ways a tad with my much admired YouTube hero, Alex O'Connor and the brilliant comedian, John Cleese. I agree with them that we should dismantle the monarchy because it's a huge drain on the national treasury. We can certainly find much better places to spend taxpayer money - and because there's something off-putting about referring to human beings as "highness" and "majesty." But even more so, just as I don't believe we have the right to take human life except in self-defence, and I don't believe in cruel and unusual punishment, I don't believe we should force anybody's children, royal or otherwise, to live lives not of their own choosing.

Don't tell me that they should be admired or envied because of their absurd wealth. Anybody with a soul figures out sooner or later that while it's far better to be rich than to be poor, as I get closer to the end, I count my blessings in loved ones, not in shekels. And a year in Saudi Arabia taught me how money can get in the way of progressive thinking and cut the legs off of ambition. Rich people are not immune to nervous breakdowns.

I know this is not a burning issue. There are far far worse things than being rich. Believing you have to live with an abusive spouse for the sake of the children is worse. Having to sleep in a bathtub so that gunshots coming through the windows and walls don't hit you at night is worse. I'm not going to lose any sleep over all the trash I've heard people throw his way ever since he first came to my attention when we read about his birth in The Weekly Reader in the Fourth Grade, in 1948.

But I never faulted him for not falling in love with the people's princess but for an older less glamorous lady, instead. I can relate at least to that.  Do we really believe we have the right to dictate other people's love lives?

Parade around with "Not my king" signs if you wish - that attacks the monarchy. But ease up on the individual.  Let him settle in. He has agreed to put on a dinner jacket when called for and to congratulate fellow royals when they marry and mourn them when they die. Cut no end of ribbon. Show some gratitude that the job of human figurehead is being more than adequately performed. Stop sneering at him when he loses his temper over a fountain pen that doesn't work properly.

Be glad Charles III is likely not to follow the paths of his previous namesakes.  Charles I had his head cut off. Charles II had at least 12 illegitimate children and no legitimate ones, forcing his brother James to take on the crown. Charles III is facing the possibility he will go down in history as the king who presided over the breakup of the United Kingdom. That's enough of a burden for any man or woman.

Stop trashing the guy. Show a little sympathy.

Long live the King.