Before we start, check out my latest contribution over at the American Free News Network!
Now then: Over in Japan, a place I love to visit and hang out, Rahm Emanual is continuing to make an ass of himself. Jason Morgan, associate professor at Reitaku University, has some thoughts:
Over a series of tweets in late April, Ambassador Emanuel shared photos of himself and the American Embassy staff heading out—in full rainbow regalia, the new red, white, and blue—to join the Tokyo Rainbow Pride Parade. The usual celebration of civilizational collapse? All in a day’s work for our man in Tokyo.
But it was this tweet that started the firestorm: “Now is the time, now is the moment for Japan to be all that Japan can be. You could feel the energy in the air at @Tokyo_R_Pride. Today was a parade with purpose.”
Many in Japan were appalled. Not just at the sentiment, of course, or at the tone-deafness of a man who speaks zero Japanese inserting himself into a national debate he knows nothing about. After all, we know that liberal Americans consider themselves culturally superior to the Japanese. That was the entire premise behind dismantling the Japanese constitution and imposing a new one. Never mind that Japan has been a democratic country since the 19th century.
The linked article goes on from there in documenting the many ways Emanual is making a horse’s ass of himself. But then, that’s something Rahm Emanual has lots of experience doing.
Look, an ambassador is there to be his country’s representative, and to deal with issues between the two nations; in this case, the United States and Japan. Especially in this case, he is not there to engage in moral preening over that nation’s internal affairs. Japan is a fully modern nation, a functioning democracy and our best ally in the Pacific save perhaps Australia, and we have no business lecturing them on internal matters.
Should we expect Japan, an old culture with long-established traditions, to automatically hew to what we feel should be the right way to do things? No. Much as I love visiting Japan – I’ve done a lot of work there, spent months at a time in the Land of the Rising Sun, and I love the food, the people, the culture and how beautiful the country is in general – I could never live there. I’m culturally a red-state American, and I will live out my life in a place that reflects my values. And I would not presume to lecture my Japanese friends on their nation’s values, even though I disagree with some of them.
It’s well past time Rahm Emanual learned a new skill that would serve him well: Knowing when to keep his damn mouth shut.
