@BillRM,
BillRM wrote:I am far from an expert on the Japanese culture however it is my understanding that there still exist to this day a racist world view by the Japanese people.
I would agree with this sentiment, it's more of an elitist worldview than one particular to race though. They don't think their race is so much superior so much as they do their culture and value the closed nature of some of it.
But yeah, in effect, this is often racially discriminating. And I would say that they have some of the most systemic and deeply ingrained prejudices about race relations of anywhere in the world. For example, I believe they have the lowest rates of inter-racial marriage in the world.
Quote:The same kind of outlook that cause them to mistreat people they gain control of in the 1920s to 1940s.
I read that it is no fun to be a guest worker in Japan as a result.
I have never been to a place where guest workers were not treated in an inferior manner to the natives though.
Anyway, my point isn't that Japan would have been so much better. We don't really know that. Japan has a more collectivist culture, and is right now much more anti-war than America but who is to say that this culture would be the same if they were in power? Cultures change, my point is really that even if Nazi Germany had won, that doesn't mean we'd all be Nazi's today, and Germany could still have evolved its culture into the progressive one it is today in theory. We can't just freeze time there, and say that because we stopped those bad regimes the subsequent imperialism would have been better than theirs.
We will never know, and I think America is probably a relatively good choice if we must have anyone dominate the globe. But at the same time, America has harmed a lot of people in this process of modern imperialism, and whether or not you are yourself an American is something that tends to greatly influence the benevolence you are willing to see America with. Others, due to their far greater propensity to becoming the target of American harm, view America much more warily.
My point isn't that some countries are good and others are bad, I think the very concepts are flawed and that to even try to anthropomorphize their systems into such concepts even more so, my point is that the benevolent empire perspective is one that is much easier to swallow when the empire has your back, but is less easy to swallow when the empire is on yours (or when you fear it might fancy yours).
This largely explains the large trust gap that Americans have in their empire versus the rest of the world (including their allies).
