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Bow Sends Pundits Chattering
Ever heard of the washed potato theory? Ken Keyes Jr. wrote about it in his book "The Hundredth Monkey." Keyes studied the monkeys on Japan's Koshima Island. In 1952 Keyes observed one little monkey who suddenly took her sweet potatoes down to the water and washed them before she ate them - greatly improving the taste. Then the monkey taught her parents and other family members to wash their potatoes and soon a large number of monkeys were enjoying a grit-free meal. About the time the hundredth monkey keyed into this culinary marvel, scientists hundreds of miles away began reporting that their monkeys had started washing food as well.
At first, Keyes' little monkey appeared to have made a conscious decision; it looked like she had invented a food preparation method. But then scientists found monkeys geographically isolated from each other taking this same step at approximately the same time. What had appeared to be cognitive thought was shown to be more like a species awakening, a bump in understanding that happened to all the monkeys at once. Those scientists concluded that this critical-mass behavior was more about evolutionary propensity than it was about intelligence.
That must be what happened to the primates on conservative talk radio this week. When they all started chanting the same vapid rant at virtually the same time, all I could think of was those monkeys washing their potatoes. I knew that their simultaneous whine was not about cognitive thought but about a concurrent bump in their primitive primate consciousness.
Don't know what I'm talking about? Ironically, it's something that happened in Japan just 57 years after our hairy prep cook was observed improving her diet. I'm talking about the chimpanzee-like noises being made by the right-wing political pundits about President Barack Obama's bow to the emperor of Japan.
It's quite spectacular that you can hire a few talk show commentators with opposable thumbs and they'll develop simultaneously, right before your eyes.
Since the cyber fact-checkers have exposed the truth of U.S. leaders such as presidents Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower bowing to other heads of state, this will surely die down. But the fact that a firestorm was swept up in the first place over something as trivial as a leader behaving respectfully should astound us. These talk hosts ran to the water with their respective sweet potatoes on this nonstory to keep us from paying attention to the real point of the president's Asian trip.
These are tough economic times. The U.S. is desperately in debt - publicly and privately. Look at our debt-to-income ratio, look at the number of people out of work and imagine how we are going to make it through this. Maybe you've personally walked in and out of a bank or lending situation and thought that it might be time to take out just one more loan.
When you are overextended and desperate for cash, you walk into a debt consolidation place and have to explain the unexplainable - that you know you are broke, but if you could just borrow more money you'd be able to get back on the right track.
That's what President Obama is doing in Asia. He inherited a policy of borrowing to pay bills and he didn't want to commit political suicide by sucking it up and raising taxes or reducing spending. He's sticking with that plan. This country is waging wars on the other side of the globe, substantively buying corporations and bailing out our financial system with loaned money. It's the same as a minimum wage earner taking out a loan, buying a mink coat and thinking that's what will make everything all right.
According to The Washington Post, as of November 2008 China owned $585 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds and Japan held $573.2 billion. The folks on the hook for this spending are our children. In 2007, 4.3 million kids were born in the United States. So if those kids equally shoulder the debt to just these two countries, every one of them must pay about $270,000 before interest.
Obama bowed to the Japanese emperor. Big deal. Our debt already has us on our knees.
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33 Comments so far
Show AllAh so, honorable US emperor and Chinese PM syndromes!
But then scientists found monkeys geographically isolated from each other taking this same step at approximately the same time. What had appeared to be cognitive thought was shown to be more like a species awakening, a bump in understanding that happened to all the monkeys at once. Those scientists concluded that this critical-mass behavior was more about evolutionary propensity than it was about intelligence.
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This is a deliberately constructed fable (AKA a lie). The reality is completely different, and quite ordinary.
But it's a very popular story, especially among New Agers (not surprisingly!). I'm not sure whether its popularity speaks to a desire for change in general, or just the desire for painless, magical change that's so characteristic of New Agers.
Do you desire painful change?
And what's so magical about telepathy?
Or simply changing our mind and operating out of an improved thought system?
However if this is a fictional fable I agree with you it shouldn't be presented as fact.
No, I don't *desire* painful change, but I'm aware that change tends to be painful much more often than not. Hasn't that been your experience?
I call things like telepathy 'magic' because it's something most people want to believe in, and some do believe in, but that hasn't been shown to be real. I've had some events in my life that are hard to explain in mundane terms, but they weren't intentional and were never repeated, so there's no way of knowing what they were. 'Mental UFOs', so to speak. Maybe I should call it 'science fiction' instead?
Certainly I'd never dream of saying we should keep plodding along in our current mental rut. I'm all for improved thought systems!
(The story is definitely made-up, though with what motive I couldn't say. But for sure it was made up)
Yah, it's made up. I think mujeriego nailed the best version of that story tho.
Yes, his satire is beautiful. I'm envious.
Sorry, Pat LaMarche, but a President deeply bowing at the waist to Japanese royalty is as grossly inappropriate as is bowing just as deeply to the Saudi king not long ago. To go on, just as grossly inappropriate as is standing at attention in Dover Delaware performing a rigid military salute. All of this is without precident and one wonders what is (or isn't) going through the man's head. Such bizarre behaviour can only add fuel to the questions about his background and his suitablility to be in high office.
Tony Vodvarka
Don't forget the bizarre behavior of GW Bush walking hand in hand around his ranch with a Saudi prince. You know, those people who funded the 9/11 attacks and continue to fund fundamentalist mosques around the world.
No, it's called RESPECT. It's called trying to show someone else in the world that you give a damn about what he or she thinks. It's called COURTESY. If being a selfish, stuck up pig is how you want the people of the world to think of us as a nation, then by all means, insist that everyone else has to obey OUR laws and traditions but we don't have to give a rat's ass about theirs, then by all means, elect more MORONS to high office so they can go out and show the world that side of us.
W was GREAT example for the rest of the world. Feeling up the German chancellor, holding hands and kissing Saudi princes (when 15 of those attacking us on 9-11 were SAUDIS), yeah, he was GREAT. And Cheney sure did a lot to help our international standing too. It's about time that we have a leader who actually understands SOMETHING about international protocol and isn't afraid to show a level of COOPERATION to the rest of the world. It's FAR better than dealing with people who are so afraid they won't even TRY to get along with anyone else.
SUBJECTS bow at the waist to their sovereigns. SOLDIERS give rigid military salutes. President Obama is neither. Kennedy or Eisenhower would have laughed themselves sick.
Tony Vodvarka
Are you campaigning for Chief of Protocol? Did either Kennedy or Eisenhower meet the Emperor? In some places and some times, subjects stretched themselves out at full length in front of the King, or the Emperor or whomever.At other times and places they knelt.There is no global standard for this-only the standard protocol of the country in question.Do as the Romans do.Personally, I think Obama was showing some class.
You don't seem to know much. Try reading.
I'm so glad that you've developed such fine sense of American "culture" and respect.
So few of us have any.
Do you think he would have bowed in front of the Queen, or do whatever protocol requires? You bet he would have, and nobody would have complained, because the Queen is white.
Patricia dear, first, what in the world are you dong listening to right-wing-nut hate radio?
Next, google "talking points" and get an education in basic propaganda techniques. Progressives as well as regressives use them to give the appearence of consensus.
Witness how suddenly we are reading articles about Al Gore, or healthcare, or TARP, or...from so many of the writers on this blog. Such behavior as you describe has all the spontanaety of a high speed copier.
Regardin the bow itself, let's remmeber that the US is in hock to the Japanese (like the Chinese)for multiple billions of dollars in t-bill holdings, not to mention needing to maintain cordial trade so we can buy all the stuff we no longer make for ourselves, not to mention the need for an imperialist power to be able to continue stationing military forces in this vital spot to dominate the Western Pacific.
Let's just say that it is not to nice to dis the Japanese Godfather on his own turf.
Poet
The more you owe, the more you bend over.
Didn't Bush 1 puke in the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister at a state dinner? Obama's bow to the Emperor is an act of Karmic ballancing.
Obama bowed, yes... but he didn't scrape!
· Yr Obd't Servant
I guess that makes him better than Bush because Bush held the Sheiks hand and then kissed him!
[Obama bowed to the Japanese emperor. Big deal. Our debt already has us on our knees.]
And by increasing that debt rather than cutting the military and increasing taxes, soon that debt load will have you on your backs with your legs in the air. I don't think your empire will collapse as peacefully as the Soviet or British empire did (although neither of them really collapsed all that peacefully...).
You might have spent 15 billion to build a carrier, but what can you get for it when forced to sell the thing?
Heaven forbid an American should show some respect and humility! We're number 1. We're number 1. We're number 1..
Acutally we have devolved and now we're #2, in the fullest sense of the number.
Koshima Island- 1952
Day 234 of my experiment..so far I have managed to train the hairless apes in the rudimentary task of bringing us sweet potatoes on a daily basis.
I have tried to demontrate how to wash the shit off the potatoes first, but the hairless apes are apparently too primitive to understand this simple sanitary concept...I will enlist the help of my contemporaries with this...perhaps if a full one hundred of us do this similtaneously, these stupid creatures will finally understand basic sanitary practices. - Dr. Emo Machau
Day 235...failure again..I will send word to our other groups to try to replicate my experiements, hopefully with more success than I have managed. It is embarassing to think that these filthy creatures have devolved from our own noble race. - Dr. Emo Machau
Day 240...gawd..failure again..now the hairless morons think we are telepathic..I think I will kill myself. - Dr. Emo Machau
Sioux Rose
MUJERIEGO: Great words, and thanks for the medicinal laughter!
Bush, cutting taxes, doubled the national debt, adding $5 trillion to it. Then he kicked off two wars costing Americans about $3 trillion. According to the Economist Magazine, 75% of the economic gains made by the Bush tax cuts went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. They bought financial derivatives, constructed a financial house of cards that infected the global economy, and when it wiped everybody out, they got bailed out along with their WallStreet banks (its the bondholders of the banks who REALLY got bailed out). The difference will be paid by the taxpayer. Maybe. In the meantime, the Chinese and Japanese are in for the rescue, loaning us the needed funds to float our massive finance deception (the deception that we are solvent).
Given that 'inheritance', fvck YEAH, Obama better bow...
Lets just not forget who put him on his knees.
Bush used Regressive Reagan "trickle-down" stupidity to justify his tax cuts for the rich ... claiming that giving money to the rich would help stimulate the economy by creating jobs. Well, it DID create jobs, but none of them are in the United States. The money the greedy rich made off of George Bush's tax cuts went to move American jobs to foreign countries ... like China.
"So if those kids equally shoulder the debt to just these two countries, every one of them must pay about $270,000 before interest."
Let us hope that possibly the "hundredth kid" will suddenly say, "Wait just a fucking minute. I didn't borrow it and I ain't fucking paying it back."
Great laugh here! Thanks.
PRICELESS!
We only bow down to God - but then the emperor of Japan is a God.
Please correct me if I am wrong; but it was the 'conservative' republicans who voted for the "Monkey Bush' and other 'republican candidates' who dominated the 'decisions' in Washington that led to the the current huge debt. Clinton, although something of a 'flake' stood against the Republicans and left office with the opposite of a deficit: -----its been so long now I can't remember that word. You know. The opposite of deficit, oh yea, a 'surplus'.
Does anyone out there really care what the Conservative Republicans or even the 'conservative Democrats' say anymore.
Conservative thinking is what led to the current problems.
If something does not work; don't use it.
Thanks for your time.
Conservative thinking is an oxymoron.
Just because Bush is no longer in the White house doesn't mean that the pundits have gotten any smarter.
The mouthing off by the wrong-wing pundits is just a verification of their cultural ignorance ... something that was, unfortunately, very prevalent during the Bush years ... another of the many things that, regrettably, went all the way to the top.
Despite all the rhetoric, from BOTH sides, the bow by Barack Obama had _nothing_ to do with the debt we are under. It is a cultural thing. Bowing is a sign of respect in Japan, and has been for centuries. "When in Rome..." Come to think of it, it's a sign of respect in Europe, too.
In the United States, we use a kick in the butt. If you get kicked in the butt often enough you learn to respect the kicker.