Why aren't the Japs freaking out?
So I have a couple of contrarian replies to this.
First, We've seen this several times in the past with Japan. The Great Kantu earthquake of 1923, the Sea of Japan 1985, Hokkaido 1993, of course Tsumai of 2011. And there have been numerous illness outbreaks in that area as well. The Asian flu of 1956, the Hong Kong flu in the 1960s, Sars in 2004, and a few others.
I remember hearing the exact same thing in 2011, and 2004, and in the 1990s, that reporters would go to Japan expecting to find riots and chaos and looting and hording, and finding nothing.
The Japanese people have a different sort of culture. They are not culturally disposed to going insane, and acting like animals.
This cultural difference extends to the very raising of their children, in a way that is completely foreign to US, and I'd suggest many western countries.
For example, a extremely popular children's animation program, called Naruto. In this anime, in the first season, Naruto faces an assassin and his friend, who die together. The confrontation of tough and real hardship and the pains of life, continues throughout the entire anime, to the Naurtos god-father and only remaining family dying, to an attack on their city leaving it in total ruins, and a woman falling to her knees wailing in despair.
Now that isn't to say all the episodes were misery and terror. Of course not. But just like real life, bad things happen, and even kids shows in Japan, confront the tough issues of life, that things do not always, or even often, go your way.
None of this would ever make it to the kids market in America. Instead we have sanitized happy-only, care-bears style shows for kids, where nothing bad ever happens. Then these kids commit suicide, or over dose on heroin, in order to cope with the harsh realities of life.
It's these same people, who have never faced adversity, that when there's a rumor of a cough somewhere, they freak out.
Now I would say that there is some amount of politics involved.
Namely, the US is over-run with hate filled people, who are more interested in gaining power, than they are in what is good or not for the country.
To that end, they are screaming that Trump isn't doing enough, and whipping up the public into reactionism that Trump isn't doing enough.
And Trump, is naturally responding to the criticisms by doing more.
So there is a level of freakout, that is caused by politics.
However, I think we need to understand, that the political situation is influenced by the public. If you were to somehow flip the people groups around, and leave the government in place.... the situations would be reversed.
If the Democrats and Republicans were over in Japan... it wouldn't work. Trying to whip the public up, simply wouldn't happen.
Equally if you brought the legislature of Japan to the US, I would be very much willing to bet that we would still have the same freak out. The public unable to handle something bad happening, would demand that the Japanese legislature save them, and then they would act, which would result in more freaking out.
in that post!
