Saw an item on ABC (Public Channel) last night. Seems a lot of Japanese were upset with Trump’s visit. Not for any moral or ideological reason, but because the extra security impacted on the Sumo wrestling. If not for that, the impression I got is that the Japanese overall were indifferent to Trump and his visit.
Trump should have put on one of those Sumo crotch covers and got out there and done an exhibition match. He could have been a big hit. I mean, is he willing to do what it takes to get a good trade deal, or not?
“Trump should have put on one of those Sumo crotch covers and got out there and done an exhibition match.”
My impression is that he is already wearing such a thing, or his undies/nappy are full or all out of focus. That would account for his generally obnoxious disposition. Perhaps some one should gird themselves and change his nappy .**
Seems like OP is hinting that Trump respects the new emperor because Trump is a wanna be emperor.
Nonsensical because Emperor of Japan is a ceremonial position with no real power and the president of the US is far more powerful than any emperor who has ever lived.
As a narcissist to his core, Trump craves adulation and being treated with awe and respect for it’s own sake. That is part of why he routinely has his staff do a group obsequious session for him, where they go around 1 by 1 and say how thankful they are to him and how great he is. That seems like nonsense to you, because you can’t imagine being such a sicko narcissist.
Of course he also wants the power, to the extent that he uses and abuses it beyond the limits heretofore dared by previous POTUS’s.
“Seems like OP is hinting that Trump respects the new emperor because Trump is a wanna be emperor.”
Who knows what Trump thinks or his understanding of the role of emperor?. Wouldn’t surprise me if he misunderstands completely. After all, his behaviour suggests he seems to have his very own special interpretation of the role of POTUS.
As an outsider, watching Trump has reinforced my opinion that POTUS should not also be CIC. (formed that opinion during the Vietnam War)
But hey, what do I know, I’m only an ignorant foreigner.
I don’t know if there is any re-structuring of the role of POTUS that would protect us from the likes of Trump, without fundamental hard limitations on Presidential power that would make the Presidency so weak that we would find it to be rather useless. If we are willing to have leaders that have his lack of character, we will not be a great nation.
The informed are unengaged and the engaged are off in their own little lalaland of self-invented me first “reality” that requires all the rest of us to be their enemies. Do you ever get the feeling this ain’t going to end well?
CC, just this morning I was listening to an incredible CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) radio show called ‘Ideas’. It’s often too artsy-fartsy for me to handle, but sometimes they have a good science theme, and today’s was one of them.
The episode was about Hubert Reeves, a Canadian born astrophysicist living in France. During the episode, Hubert was lamenting the current terrible state of the world and the poor prospects of changing things for the better in time to save ourselves.
It’s times like that, when a great thinker is pessimistic about the future, when I feel my lowest. I wonder what my kids will be left to deal with, and my grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and on and on and on.
How can I tell my brain-dead friends, who think climate change is a hoax and immigrants are taking over the world, that they are not just wrong, but really, really, really wrong? Is there any way to influence a population that thinks facts are what you ‘feel’ and scientists are deluded liars?
I am someone who has the feeling this ain’t going to end well.
I missed the first few minutes and very end of the interview. Hubert may have been more optimistic in those parts.
Hubert sounded like a cool guy. The interviewer really gushed about his poetic writing style and said that there are a couple of his books translated into English. I might have to look at getting one.
As for generational change, I think the older generation is holding us back and is a crappy influence on younger people. I can’t help but hope that in 20 or 30 years there will be a reversal of public apathy and ignorance.
Yair, I think we baby boomers really stuffed up. To ad insult to injury, large numbers of us are spending the kids’ inheritance.
Me, I blame that bunch of privileged, bourgeois wankers who called themselves ‘hippies’. They were terrific at getting stoned and going off to fairy land, where they made wonderful plans for future of society . When it came to actually doing all that stuff, their application left a great deal to be desired.
An unintended result of the 60’s was a generation of anal retentive conservatives. If I were a grand child of the hippie generation, I’d probably be royally pissed off.
Disclaimer:
Before our resident-sometimes -troll gets his panties in a bunch, the foregoing is simplistic rhetoric, with some tongue-in-cheek.
I actually knew some hippies who were pretty close to normal, apart from the weed.
“Those damn hippies and their empty idealism. Where the heck did they come from anyway?”
Quite.
I’ve always thought there was a lot of “monkey see, monkey do”, at least inOz which was besotted with everything American in the 1960’s. EG every person of my or my parent’s generation can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard of the Kennedy assassination. It stunned and deeply grieved our nation. None more so than my Catholic home and school.
Hippies? I think more complex than at first sight. I think there was more to them than just a bunch of bored teens doing liberal arts on daddy’s dime.
It was those same kids who became involved in the civil rights movement, the anti Vietnam movement and who were shot at Kent State.
Here in Oz those kids also became involved in the anti Vietnam war movement. The kids of my generation were appalled at what we saw as the staggering hypocrisy of out government with its involvement in the Vietnam war. Even more so when one was called up; it was a lottery; they literally picked birth dates out of a barrel. In my neighbourhood, I was the only one called up. My parents were livid.