I can’t get over a writing quirk of this author. Is there a word for this inconsistent use of tense?
“When Chaplin asked what happened, Ken would say his father had been assassinated. He’d travel with the Prime Minister’s son to the palace and see the blood-stained floors.”
Unless I’m mistaken, this is considered poor style in English, isn’t it? Was - would be
“Chaplin didn’t understand Japanese, but knew they were in danger.
He’d immediately put his acting skills into play.”
I have to go back and fix this kind of inconsistency in my own writing occasionally. I'd agree that it's poor style. Even without the inconsistency, I never like it when things that are clearly from the past are written in whatever tense you call it where you make everything "would." Subject would present tense verb only seems appropriate when you're describing something both past and _in general_. "He would leave his shoes by the door when he came home from work."
I think it's just confused word use. The author seems to treat 'would' as a "past tense operator". In programming terms, the author appears to be under the impression that past_tense("action") -> "would action". The correct function is past_tense("action") -> "actioned". (Or whatever weird conjugation "action" has.)
The tense this article's passages (mostly) use is "future-in-the-past" tense, where the verb 'will' becomes 'would'. It is used when one transports the reader to a specific moment in time, looking omnisciently into the future. For example, these sentences (in present/present/future, respectively):
"It is 1845. John Johnson wakes up. His wife will bake a cake in celebration."
become (in past/past/future-in-the-past, respectively):
"It was 1845. John Johnson woke up. His wife would bake a cake in celebration."
If we transport the sentences you quoted from past->present and future-in-the-past->future, they become: "Chaplin asks what happened. Ken will say his father has been assassinated. He will travel with [...]". The second sentence becomes: "Chaplin doesn't understand Japanese, but he knows he is in danger. He will immediately put his acting skills into play." These are grammatically correct, but I believe there are a few cases where the author gets it wrong. In general, there are so many tense changes (and changes in the 'specific moment' as described earlier) that it is probably unreasonable to consider the whole document grammatically correct even if one could break the document into isolated pieces of correctness.
Prewar Japan was among the most intellectually vibrant, politically diverse, and artistically challenging cultures of the 20th century. This book is a great portrait of the period:
The primary problem with why the country devolved into fascism is that democracy was never really expanded, allowing wealthy, right wing cadres to capture exclusive control of state power and outlaw political inclusion of their opponents (several left wing parties were made illegal following universal male enfranchisement in the late 1920s). But there was actually widespread internal opposition to the Japanese imperial project, well into the 1930s, until fascists used violence, imprisonment, and intimidation of its leadership to stop it.
I think you may be overreacting to the current state of affairs. We have a right-wing Senate, a left-wing House, a rather balanced (slightly right) Supreme Court, and a right-wing Executive. 5 years ago we had a left-wing Senate, right-wing House, balanced (I think slightly left) Supreme Court, and left-wing Executive.
Obviously vote, but I think it's a pretty sure win for the left in the Executive here in a few months. Outlook is pretty good for the left in congress. I find it hard to foresee right-wing fascism taking control and illegalizing the left in the near future.
Of course we should always be concerned about fascism because it has devastating and existential consequences. But I don't see cause for alarmism now, and every false alarm weakens the call to action when it is needed. For now it seems like voting works.
The Whitehouse, the Senate and the House of Representatives are nearly a lock to be controlled by the Democratic part at year end.
Trump always had a tough uphill battle to ever be re-elected (worse poll numbers in modern history) but the Coronavirus has made reelection nearly impossible.
I found the Barefoot Gen manga an informative account of on-the-ground opposition to the war as well as including an account of surviving the bombing of Hiroshima.
I lived in Japan for about 10 years, and have subsequently made a lot of Chinese, HK, TW and SG friends (partly because of the businesses I have been in), and except for the TW and SG folks whose opinions seemed to be mixed by generation, there is a lot of focus in modern history education on how badly the Japanese behaved leading up to WWII and in WWII.
And, fair enough!
But there doesn't to be much education on any side of the aisle about the 1000-or-so years leading up to their mutual antagonism.
I don't think that anyone is served by having sections of their history books snipped out - and the Japanese are no saints in this regard either. (Of course, I say this in the US, now, when some people are trying to have literature and history books snipped out)
There was no mutual antagonism. Japan of this period was expressly a violent, imperialist project, from its annexation of parts of China and colonizing of South Korea following the Russo-Japanese war to later invasions of modern day Taiwan and the Philippines, all of whom were ill-equipped to resist them. The Mongols tried to invade and China and Japan fought over the Korean peninsula sporadically during what we call the Middle Ages, but that's about the extent of prior regional strife.
Its basic regional history, not my "say so." Japan had an extreme isolationist policy for the two hundred years leading up until the Meiji Restoration.
The Qing dynasty was on its last legs, following the disruption of the Opium wars, the chaos of the Taiping and Boxer rebellions, and the nascent, internal modernization movements. The independence of Korea's Joeson dynasty was put to an end when Yi Un was put under Japanese control by Ito Hirobumi in 1907. Taiwan quickly transitioned from being a Chinese Vassal state to a Japanese one. The Philippines had been colonized by the Spanish for a few hundred years, then the Americans in the period leading up to the war. They were able to so quickly build an empire because the countries around them were in a poor position to resist their sudden outburst of aggression.
You really should read some Japanese history about pre WW2, even back to the Restoration on late 1800s. Japan was very aggressive militarily, and assassination attempts against leaders not deemed to be in line with that were common.
The “Supernova in the East” podcasts might be a good start.
I had the same experience. We went into great detail on how the events of WWI set the stage for Hitler to take power, etc, but then it was always just "and Japan jumped on board too".
It's eerie reading about a populist/fascist minority gradually radicalizing others under a promise to "return the country to its roots", militant groups inciting chaos to justify martial law, etc. A little bit too familiar.
Yuri Bezmenov has an interview where he explains the more subtle way the USSR would weaken the US (after Stalin’s time)
Yuri was right. All along the US thought it was projecting soft power via Hollywood movies, and it did and does but there are other dimensions to the whole thing, and given our system of governance there is no way to avoid getting to where we are.
In the USSR and China today, it’s not up to factions to make up or derive what ones principles are, what the mores are, who the authorities are. There is no equivocation, it always comes from the state.
Teachers, professors, etc., anyone questioning certain tenets would get nudges or more aggressive tactics to cease those lines of thinking.
edit: And having duly familiarized myself, I have to say, I appreciate you mentioning it! High-grade Bircher nonsense is tough to come by these days, and it makes a nice, nostalgic diversion from its more modern and more dangerous conspiracy-theory descendants, like antivax stuff and QAnon.
Nothing but respect for Bezmenov and his obvious grift, but it's not a surprise to me that anyone still peddling this nonsense with a straight face in 2020 would do so in a way that's cagey. I mean, you could hardly expect to be taken seriously if you were more upfront with it, could you?
Yuri Bezmenov was also a nobody who instantly became a darling of the American far-right. The interview you're referring to is by the Alex Jones-like conspiracy nut G. Edward Griffin. Bezmenov became "famous" by reinforcing every far-right fear of "communist indoctrination" in American society.
I would love to know how you think this has manifested in American society. The interview you're talking about is from 1984, and he's warning how these effects will start manifesting in the next 10-15-20 years. He, in fact, defected in early 1970. Let's be generous and say the changes would come after roughly 25 years. Where is the sweeping ideological and policy changes that in the mid-90s made the US so much more subversive and/or communist? I see little to no evidence of this.
In fact, the Bezmenov interview is carted out by all people trying to explain a change in the political landscape. Current-day liberals (in the American sense) use the (context-less) interview to claim it's indicative of current Russian measures. At the same time Republicans use it to prove that there's a "both sides", and that issues like trans rights and the internment camps are simply subversive claims by a foreign power.
Both of these narratives try to show that the "us" isn't inherently flawed, but that we're deliberately pushed in a "subversive" direction by an evil, all-powerful force. It's a comforting truth, in a way. You maintain the positive self-image while gaining a common enemy. Sure, you're mad at the other side for falling for the lie. But ultimately the common enemy is even worse.
Edit: Changed the second paragraph to reflect the year he defected
> Yuri Bezmenov was also a nobody who instantly became a darling of the American far-right. The interview you're referring to is by the Alex Jones-like conspiracy nut G. Edward Griffin. Bezmenov became "famous" by reinforcing every far-right fear of "communist indoctrination" in American society.
You're engaging in weak thinking known as "guilt by association". Whatever merit the rest of your statements have, it's totally irrelevant whether the "far-right" likes Bezmenov or if the person who interviewed him was a "conspiracy theorist". It's weak because it says nothing about Bezmenov himself, and at worst it is an attempt to shut down any counter argument. (association to the "far-right" and "conspiracy theorist" are common tactics to shut down arguments)
Okay, then. What do you have in the way of independent support for Bezmenov's claims? Surely, in the decades since the collapse of the government whose secret plans he claims to describe, some sort of verifiable corroboration must have become available.
There’s a ton of evidence that our education system, universities, popular media and more has been building up an ideology based on a postmodern/poststructuralist theory that has culminated in what you see today as woke/cancel culture, Antifa, etc.
You may not agree with these theories, I certainly am less of a conspiracy theorist about them than some (to me they seem guided by good intention more than cabals of boogeymen), but the case has been made by many especially as of late, and yes, were clear by the mid-90s.
To cite a more popular recent academic to bring it up, Jordan Peterson talks about this extensively including citing trends going back to the French philosophers in the 50s.
So I’m not even standing by the evidence as being true, but to say you “see none” would be more of a personal oversight than the historical truth, as many modern and well followed people do.
Yeah, I mean, we're a decade at this point past even Moldbug's historiography, and it's not as if he contributed any ideas that were both new and worth having; mostly he just reformulated and to some extent synthesized some very old ideas in a fashion that might find a 21st-century audience, which it more or less did.
Stating the existence of such historiographies doesn't do anything to make the case for their veracity. People here in 2020 have better reasons for doubting them than simply not knowing they exist.
You’re doing a lot of hand waving. That’s not convincing.
An idea that’s been around consistently, supported by a group of people for a long period of time and continually being cited with many concrete examples needs refutation more than “people have better reasons to doubt them”. Again, I’m just replying to the ridiculous original hand wave of “I don’t see it at all”.
Sorry, you may disagree. But you’d have to address years and years of pretty rigorous thought that’s been put into these problems. You won’t convince anyone with appeals to authority or whatever fallacy it is to wave away things based on nothing but “2020” (thought terminating cliche, I guess).
Claiming I'm hand-waving when I ask you to substantiate your hand-wave is a hell of a flex.
You made the claim. You want to support it, okay: support it. Or if you'd rather not, that's fine too, but it doesn't get to stand unchallenged either way.
I responded to herbstein's "I see little to no evidence of this" with a popular modern intellectual (Jordan Peterson) who has cited a ton of stuff around this. If you are too lazy to look that up, fine. You even cited another, Moldberg (not my first or hundredth choice), then hand wave something-something 2020.
The only thing I refute is that there is some consensus that there definitely doesn't exist communist/communist-lite ideological trends within our country dating back decades, it most definitely isn't the consensus as Fox News would happily tell you many times a week.
I'm not defending it even, I think some of it is true, some not. But... I already refuted the points I came to refute. It's not open and shut, and there exist many who see that narrative being true.
If you want to get into the details, sure, we could do that. But Peterson and other right wing thinkers (Thomas Sowell comes to mind) spent a lifetime researching this and distilling it into a series of lectures and books, I'd prefer not to have to re-hash that. That you don't see that it even exists is a sign you either aren't familiar with that literature, or you are just unwilling to ackowledge it.
I'm not here to prove it right, just to prove definitely that there exists many counterarguments to you/herbstein, to which you seemed unwilling to admit.
--
Edit: If you want some example, we have plenty in Silicon Valley. Companies almost all promote ham-fisted affirmative action hiring policies, any speech against those policies will result in firing, public tarring, and a general ban from the industry. This Equality of Outcome policy is the dominant ideology, enforced in an authoritarian way.
Odd that you should take the time to reply to me and not to the person who actually took the time to counter your argument in detail and with references. Why is that?
Jordan Peterson obviously hasn't read most of the stuff he decries and is just recycling talking points from various anti-Semetic movements that were extended by William S. Lind and others in the context of American White Nationalism:
Adorno, one of the founders of the Frankfurt school, for example, was quite opposed to the leftwing tendencies of the 1960s, from which much of modern "woke" culture emerged:
Adorno was just not immune to his own creation but was all for the left wing cause until then, and Lind being anti-semitic has nothing to do with what Peterson talks about.
> Adorno was just not immune to his own creation but was all for the left wing cause until then
What was his “creation”? Or his “left wing cause”? I don’t understand what these vague gestures are supposed to indicate. I’ll again highlight that “Cultural Marxism” is rooted in various anti-Semitic and fascist ideologies.
But for the record, Adorno opposed the radical student movement and had vehement disagreements with many other leftists, including his Frankfurt School peers and famously with the actual communist party official and Marxist philosopher Lukács. There’s no uniformity of thought or conspiracy as painted by those like Peterson, who just repeats these canards to people hoping they won’t engage with their origins, the actual history, or the works themselves.
From your own source: Adorno was opposed to it once it grew to disrupt his own campus - to a point - then turned on just that element of it.
Critical theory and its descendants are alive and well. It has roots in Marxism (as per Wikipedia[0]). That he teaches a class on this history and that you disagree with his hagiography is fine.
Adorno and Lind have nothing to do with the conversation. Peterson's books and class lectures go far more into things than a couple Wikipedia pages, and you've basically just tied him to a couple small events/people and tried to call fascist..
You immediately jumped to guilt by association (Lind), brought out of context things (Cultural Marxism), cited a small example to try and refute a large body of work with Adorno (nice Motte and Bailey).
I am reasonably certain that Stalin had Warren Bechtel, one of the builders of Hoover Dam, die on a visit to Russia. "Dad" Bechtel was a virulent anti-communist.
“When Chaplin asked what happened, Ken would say his father had been assassinated. He’d travel with the Prime Minister’s son to the palace and see the blood-stained floors.”
Unless I’m mistaken, this is considered poor style in English, isn’t it? Was - would be
“Chaplin didn’t understand Japanese, but knew they were in danger. He’d immediately put his acting skills into play.”