How to become depressed.

After a year of living in what seems to be an unreal world---or at least one entirely different than I thought existed for the first 4.5 decades of my life---I thought it was becoming hard to become more cynical. I was wrong. It is not.

Read this at Armchair Asia.

As stereotypically resistant to change as the Japan is said to be, I am beginning to think that the US is just as much so*. And the "change"---LDP to DPJ---that certain folks in the US are resisting, does not really appear to be a huge, 180 degree change. Anyone paying any attention to Japan should have expected most of what the DPJ (vaguely) says it would like to do.

Over the last few weeks I have received much information about the US "alliance managers" fears of the DPJ victory and am grateful for all of it. One PDF which I can link to (and well worth reading) at NBR explains the DPJ's foreign policy visions and addresses some of the fears of the timid: Electing a New Japanese Security Policy? Examining Foreign Policy Visions within the Democratic Party of Japan.

Of course there are numerous blogs in addition to the above mentioned which have covered this much better than I could ever pretend or want to do including the ones here, here, and here**.

I am already dreaming of being lost in the sticks for several days in mid-September during which time I hope not to read, hear, nor think of anything related to the last year. I'll do fine not to meet another human being, I think. But for now, I shall try to go back to being a week behind the news...

*The US seems to be extremely resistant to changes in foreign policy, especially in NE Asia.

**Not being cynical enough has its penalties. When I first read at Shisaku that Hatoyama's CSM/NYT shortened and condensed article might mean problems with the US, I thought that it was very unlikely. Surely, nobody would either be surprised at what Hatoyama had written, or gotten their undies in a twist about such a vaguely written nuttin'.

6:39pm: I may need to clarify some points. The depressing thing at the Armchair Asia post is Jim Hoagland and his inane article. Also, when I wrote of not being cynical enough and referred to the Shisaku post, I meant that I was not cynical enough about what some in the US would stoop to regarding Hatoyama's article.