why we are so weak

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Sep 17 14:03:52 PDT 2002



> > America: Love it or leave it?
>
>> Kevin Dean
>
>No, more like if you're afraid to speak your mind lest you be carted off by
>US Gestapo agents, then why return and risk the chance it might happen,
>especially with Japan being free of racism, hatred and other sins unique to
>the US?
>
>DP

Nowhere have I said or even implied that Japan is "free of racism, hatred, and other sins." Why do you have to get defensive about America's standing relative to other nations in others' opinions, especially since criticisms of US imperialism, current assaults on civil liberties, etc. do not imply at all that other nations are free from exactly the same or even worse problems. What makes USA "unique" for the time being is its hegemony -- nothing more, nothing less. It will cease to be "unique" once it loses its hegemony.

You are sounding a bit like some American college students that I have encountered; they often ask, upon reading or hearing criticisms of US foreign policy, "Then, why do immigrants come here?" That's in a way a naive question, but at the same time an interesting one that can get meaningful discussion going, _if_ the question is genuinely motivated by curiosity, not out of defensiveness or the spirit of "if you don't like it here, why don't you go to Afghanistan" (they used to say Russia). Foreigners and immigrants come here for a variety of reasons: some of them are economic migrants of various classes and strata (investors, managers of foreign multinationals, white-collar workers, pink-collar workers, agricultural workers, etc.); some are transients who eventually return to their native lands or move onto somewhere else; others are political exiles -- not just right-wing anti-communist losers but also left-wing exiles fleeing to USA -- no doubt paradoxically and perhaps hypocritically in your eyes -- from the very effects of US imperialism (like my friends from Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Turkey, etc., one of whom I mentioned in another post).

Patterns of migration and how they have been shaped by shifting boundaries of and political winds in empires are fascinating subjects of study. -- Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>



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