Warding Off Evil Spirits

TOKYO: You can lay out some salt. Or you could bathe yourself in holy smoke. Or sip the holy water. Also, you can buy an arrow.

In every store window is the comical cat figure, waving one mechanical paw at you, blessing you and bringing good luck your way.



Eating the yummiest sautéed squid at midnight, with sashimi salad, and rice, I watched the New Year arrive on the Japanese public television station, NHK. Unfortunately, I could not understand a word they said, except for arrigato, domo, moshi moshi, go chi so sama, hai, konichiwa. 

Mainly, it was a song and dance extravaganza with many of the country's top performers on hand, and elaborate costumes arrayed in an elaborate choreography. An almost impossibly beautiful actress seemed to be the main host -- tall, slender, long black hair, perfect shaped face with a warm smile and sparkling black eyes.



The longer I am here, the more people I meet and questions I ask, the more concerned I become for the future of the Japanese. Today, Tokyo is Asia's greatest city, and the Japanese economy is humming along all right, though the rapid expansions of Korea and China make Japan look like it is moving in comparative slow motion.

But Japan's tremendous asset, which is the Japanese people themselves, is also its greatest problem. The homogeneity of the people is awe-inspiring. As one Japanese woman told me, "Look at us, we all look more or less the same. Of course some are taller or some are smaller and so on. But basically we all look very much like each other. And we think and act like each other too."

The population of Japan does seem to behave almost like one giant organism. What dissent there may be from social mores seems to rarely be expressed in public. As I've noted, even the notorious gangsters, the Yakuza, are invariably polite and modest toward others.

Everyone bows and thanks each other for almost any interaction that occurs. Just going to the restroom in a restaurant invariably involves the attempt to allow someone else to go in first; or upon exiting, to bow and excuse oneself to another who may have been patiently waiting outside the door.

Because Japanese will not speak to strangers, nor look anyone in the eye, they actually have a hard time meeting one another. There are definitely ways for people to flirt, for example, but it's hard to imagine a culture more distant from the open flirtatiousness of Brazilians, say, than the Japanese.



Only 1.5% of the population is non-Japanese; most of them Chinese or Korean. The Japanese do not always regard these groups favorably. They are included as gaijin (foreigner), along with Europeans, Africans, and Middle Easterners, etc.

Most of the Chinese flocking to Japan are students, and see a potential opportunity to graduate and then create careers here. It is somewhat comical to see how the Chinese and Japanese regard each other. The one is viewed as overly loud, pragmatic, self-assured; while the other in seen as too deferential, modest, and exceedingly quiet. It's not hard to see why they don't get along so well.

Although Americans seem to be the best-liked gaijin here, many Japanese do notice that American tourists tend to be large, loud, somewhat self-absorbed people. However, when interacting with Americans, the Japanese are so warm and polite and accommodating, most of us probably do not intuit any critical feelings whatsoever.

There is a strong undercurrent of discontent with U.S. policies, however. The Bush administration's extremely unpopular wars cause a lot of grumbling, especialy among Japanese men.



One of the main problems for the Japanese is that they are not reproducing themselves at high enough rates to sustain their aging population. Unlike the U.S., Japan has not opened its borders to the waves of immigrants who could revitalize the economy, and provide a domestic workforce to replace the dwindling number of Japanese of working age.

Another issue is how to foster more entrepreneurial activity here. A small but influential group of the country's top entrepreneurs still choose to leave for the friendlier environs of Silicon Valley, where they much more easily can make fortunes and explore promising technologies.

(Interestingly, Japan does not really have much of a "super rich" class like America tolerates. It is not seemly to become grandiose and pretentious. Wealthier Japanese often get involved in socially responsible causes -- much like Americans -- but they do so quietly, not seeking notice or credit for this work.)

Their powerfully ingrained sense of collectivity helps them recognize global warming and other planetary issues without the political noise of a greedy oil and gas industry, or the politicians who suck up to it. They consume far less of everything (except seafood) than Americans; they recycle everything, and they never litter!

Tokyo, though ancient and sprawling, is by far the cleanest city I have ever visited. Dog-owners have long cleaned up after their pets, and they don't need regulations or signs or racks of plastic bags on fences to do so. They carry their empty water bottles until they find the proper dispenser. They clean up their own tables in restaurants. Their large army of janitors incessantly sweep up and discard any small crumbs or pieces of material that escape an ever-vigilant citizenry protecting the commons as if it were their common home, which of course it is.

I could never produce a website like Sidewalk Images here!

To try and be more explicit about my fears for Japan, how will they adapt to a globalized world, one where nationalities are rapidly losing power to the emergence of a new global society. The revolution in communications technology has been partly led by the Japanese. They all have cell phones, and almost everyone seems to be text messaging, photographing, or dialing one another constantly.

But it is essentially a conversation with oneself that Japan is engaged in. They are not talking enough to the rest of us!

Make no mistake about it, I love this country and these people. I think we Americans could learn so many valuable lessons by studying Japanese behavior and comportment. Here more than anywhere else on earth, I feel my strong loyalty to environmentalism, to healthy eating and living, to a quiet spiritualism inside my own soul, interlocking with all others.

To be Japanese is to feel connected to all life. There is no cruelty to animals here. (Many men carry dogs around in cozy little frontpacks, and they very cute together.) There is virtually no waste in this society. On the other hand, there is a terrible rate of alcoholism and cigarette smoking. But drug use is relatively rare, as is the violent crime rate, and disruptions of the orderly business of living quietly on the earth are rare.

I'm not unaware of Japanese history, and how rapidly they can be transformed into the fearsome wave of killers who raped Nanking, and demolished Pearl Harbor. As I have said, the kamikazeswere the first international terrorists. So there are as many bad things to say about the Japanese as good things -- as is the case with every culture on earth.

I just wonder what this country and what these people will be like in 50 years. It seems possible that more tiny attempts here to document my visit may read like ancient history by then of a placid land before the Global Storm.

On behalf of the Japanese, I fear no amount of salt, holy smoke or water, arrows, shrines, or mechanical cats waving one paw can ward off the arrival of an unanticipated future.

2026 POSTSCRIPT: The non-Japanese portion of the country’s population has doubled over the past 19 years, but is still only about 3 percent. Tokyo is still has less litter than any other city on earth.

HEADLINES:

• ‘It sends a horrible signal’: US politicians react to capture of Nicolás Maduro (Guardian)

• Trump says U.S. will ‘run’ Venezuela; won’t rule out U.S. boots on the ground (WP)

• The End of CBS News (Mother Jones)

• Meet the UC Berkeley data team who proved Trump isn’t deporting just ‘worst of the worst’ (Berkeleyside)

• Swiss open criminal case against managers of ski resort bar after deadly fire (BBC)

• Sparklers likely started Swiss fire (Reuters)

• This Is the Nastiest Opinion by a Supreme Court Justice in 2025 (Slate)

• Judge Hannah Dugan resigns from court weeks after federal jury finds her guilty (MJS)

• Unrest flares in Iran (Reuters)

• The Vanishing Local Newsrooms Where Photographers Barely Exist (PetaPixel)

• A black market is providing cats with lifesaving medicine (Reveal)

• The Race for Global Domination in AI (Atlantic)

• If U.S.-China AI Rivalry Were Football, the Score Would Be 24-18 (WSJ)

• As Schools Embrace A.I. Tools, Skeptics Raise Concerns (NYT)

• Duffer Brothers Admit They Haven’t Watched ‘Stranger Things’ In Years (Onion)

Democracy the Myth That Survived

Coming up on the anniversary of the January 6th riot, we may wish to believe that the U.S. is still the place we thought it was, and that the riot was a mere aberration. But I fear it’s time to face the fact that America has changed for the worse in fundamental ways we haven’t yet fully grasped.

Democracy is a myth, albeit one of the most useful myths humans have ever constructed, and I for one believe in it wholeheartedly. But it doesn’t exist independently apart from our shared imaginations. It doesn’t exist in nature — there is no democracy in the web of life. Therefore, for it to work, the great majority of people who live within the myth need to want it to work.

The truth is it has been a very good myth for most of us. It is flawed, deeply flawed, but not as flawed as every other human social order — autocracy for example. And democracy won’t survive if millions of our fellow citizens don’t believe our elections are fair and are willing to instead to try to install someone else by force.

Unfortunately, this week there will be some who celebrate Jan. 6, 2021 as a positive memory and perhaps a few who will even try to replicate some form of the attack on democracy again. Congress continues its exhaustive probe of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the evidence is horrifying but it will take a great writer to compile a report anyone will read, let alone believe.

And I’m not sure Congress contains any great writers.

What is the story? That the world’s strongest democracy came close to collapse? Even after a year of considering what happened, those words sound unreal, nightmarish. Yet hordes of our fellow citizens, some armed, all angry, rushed the Capitol seeking to disrupt the Electoral College from certifying the election of President Joe Biden.

The man who lost the election, Donald Trump, sat in the White House watching events unfold on TV after inciting the crowd to do exactly what they did. Remember how they chanted “Hang Mike Pence” and “Kill Nancy Pelosi” — were those empty threats?

I don’t think so.

From the Congressional investigation, we know Trump and his co-conspirators were plotting various options to keep him in power and subvert the vote of the people. That they were too ignorant and naive about the electoral process and how to successfully subvert it is what small, small comfort we have now.

Yes, we escaped disaster, barely, but Trump and his ilk know more about how the system works now, and some of the checks and balances that saved our system of government are more vulnerable now than they were a year ago.

Many of the county officials in swing states who refused to falsify returns under the pressure generated by Trump supporters have resigned or have been removed from office. The same with some of the Electors. Those replacing them may not act as ethically or as honestly should another closely contested election come down to the type of contested late counts as it did in 2020.

And given how deeply divided the country appears to be, it’s likely that the 2024 Presidential election will be very close again, even though we don’t yet even know who the candidates will be.

None of this is comforting. All those of us who care about such things can do for now is to remain vigilant and speak out whenever we can, which is what I’m doing today.

Of course, remaining silent is an option. It’s another way of saying you don’t think your opinion matters. Which is equivalent to thinking your vote doesn’t matter.

Which is one step away from ensuring that democracy will die.

HEADLINES:

• Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife were captured by U.S. military forces in an overnight raid that culminated months of threats by President Trump against the Maduro government. (NYT)

• FNI says it foiled a terrorist attack planned in North Carolina on New Year’s Eve (NBC)

• Even James Bond’s spycraft is no match for today’s technology (The Hill)

• US slashes proposed tariffs on Italian pasta imports (BBC)

• Trump Almost Has a Point About the Federal Reserve (Atlantic)

• Trump Throws a Fit After WSJ Publishes Story on His Decrepit Health (TNR)

• How Protesters Became Content for the Cops (Wired)

• Reading Is a Vice (Atlantic)

• A Study Is Retracted, Renewing Concerns About the Weedkiller Roundup (NYT)

• Swiss authorities search for answers after deadly New Year’s fire (WP)

• In China, A.I. Is Finding Deadly Tumors That Doctors Might Miss (NYT)

• Musk’s Grok AI bot says it’s fixing safeguard ‘lapses’ after posting of sexualized images of children (CNBC)

• As Schools Embrace A.I. Tools, Skeptics Raise Concerns (NYT)

• Study Finds 93% Of Murders Solved By Consulting Victim’s Pet Parrot (Onion)

Dawn

Six years ago, as the year 2020 got underway, I wrote a very short entry to my personal blog called “What is January 1st Good For?” 

Here it is:

“I should have guessed this, but the first day of the year is a very good day to work on your memoir. I woke early and almost immediately began writing. It makes sense. You can feel the transition of the years almost physically. That is a good context for this kind of work.”

At the time, I was in a hospital, recovering from a series of maladies. I had as yet no inkling of just how momentous a year 2020 was to be.

First there was Covid-19, the pandemic that virtually shut our world down, setting off a wave of repercussions we are still dealing with today.

Then came the George Floyd killing by Minneapolis police and an unprecedented outpouring of anger on our streets.

Public opinion over both Covid and the nascent Black Lives Matter movement was deeply split — and the significance of that division was magnified because it was an election year.

The incumbent president, Trump, chose to fan the flames of division in his quest for re-election. His opponent, Biden, talked of unity in an almost nostalgic way. Unity seemed as distant a dream in the USA in 2020 as it does today.

After a nasty campaign, Biden won by 7 million popular votes and by an Electoral College total of 306-232. It wasn’t really very close. The better guy won, fair and square.

But we all remember what happened next — the Jan. 6th riot early in 2021 and Trump’s effort to disrupt the official certification of the electoral result.

So once again, I asked myself yesterday, what is January 1st good for? Memoir-writing? Yes, perhaps.

But it’s also a time to recount this painful recent history and to steel ourselves for another rough mid-year election battle this time around. May our better angels once again prevail.

HEADLINES:

• Zohran Mamdani’s New York (New Yorker)

• Two people confirmed dead as Iran protests turn into ‘battlefield’ (Guardian)

• Trump tells WSJ he takes a higher daily dose of aspirin than his doctors advise in lengthy interview on his health (CNN)

• Border Patrol Chief Admits They’re Arresting U.S. Citizens (TNR)

• How the US could lose its Diego Garcia military base to China (The Hill)

• US health insurance costs to rise by 114% for millions as subsidies expire (France24)

• In plan for Ukraine, Trump faces fundamental differences with Russia (WP)

• Chief Justice says Constitution remains ‘firm and unshaken’ with major Supreme Court rulings ahead (AP)

• China Signals It Won’t Give an Inch to the U.S. in Latin America (WSJ)

• In 2025, quitting social media felt easier than ever (Engadget)

• Six Months Off the Street (Atlantic)

• About 40 people dead and 115 injured in fire at Swiss Alpine bar during New Year’s celebration (AP)

• Scientists Found a ‘Yellow Brick Road’ at The Bottom of The Ocean (ScienceAlert)

• DeepSeek kicks off 2026 with paper signalling push to train bigger models for less (South China Morning Post)

• OpenAI bets big on audio as Silicon Valley declares war on screens (TechCrunch)

• Health Speculations Swirl As Trump Seen With Damage Numbers Above Head (Onion)

And So It Begins

As 2025 slipped away and 2026 came into view, I was surrounded by perhaps 50 revelers counting down the last few seconds of the old and cheering the arrival of the new.

Everyone raised their glass to toast one another as fireworks lit up the sky to our west. The explosions reflected the wet vegetation around our neighborhood, as New Year’s Eve was a rainy affair here in Northern California.

Today is rainy as well.

The first thing I want to say in 2026 is thank you to everyone who subscribes to my newsletter. I’ve been doing this for the past six years since I retired from a 54-year career in journalism. A few days from now will mark the 60th anniversary of my first published story, which was in the Michigan Daily.

I remember going to a newsstand on campus that wintry day and seeing people pick up the paper and thinking, “I wonder what they would do if they knew I was the author of one of the stories they’re reading.”

On the other hand, it was unlikely that very many would even notice my story, which was a short item about the wrestling team buried near the back of the sports page. Yes, it was a modest beginning, but also a useful lesson in arrogance and modesty.

Most of the time, readers neither notice nor care who the author is — what they care about is the story. What this newsletter has always been about is the story of the times we are living through together, informed by the stories from the past half-century that provide the context for today’s headlines.

And speaking of headlines, there is one news item that bridged the news cycles overnight on this New Year’s that brought a ray of hope onto the bleak political landscape confronting us.

Quoting the New York Times, “President Trump said Wednesday that he would abandon for now his efforts to deploy the National Guard in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. The president made his announcement shortly before a federal appellate court ruled that the Trump administration had to return hundreds of California National Guard troops to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s control.”

In the battle to preserve our democracy, chalk one up for the “No Kings” movement. And BTW, my newsletter has its own New Year’s Resolution for 2026: 

No Kings!

Rosemary, Mint & Year's End

(This is from New Year’s Eve 2012, thirteen years ago. Oddly, it begins by referencing a New Year’s Eve thirteen years earlier than that one. To me, it’s a reminder that somehow it always seems to be the worst of times, but there’s always a new day tomorrow, and in all of these cases, a New Year.)

As we prepare for a likely fall over the fiscal cliff, the doomsday warnings remind me of December 31, 1999 and the y2k theory. I remember filling our car up with gas in Maryland, where we lived at the time, before traveling around the Beltway to wait out the impending crisis at my sister’s house in Virginia that New Year’s Eve.

The predicted disaster did not come to pass that time around, and maybe we’ll get lucky again.

This time it is not a technology issue but a political one. Competing theories of government’s role in a capitalist economy have come forehead to forehead, with neither side inclined to blink. Watching CNN tonight, I can see that the rhetoric chosen by Democrats and Republicans is still aimed at nothing more than public relations, as whatever backroom deal they may be negotiating succeeds or fails to pass the House, in the only vote that matters.

The Senate has had the votes to pass a reasonable compromise all along. Inside the Beltway, it is known as the house of Congress where the “adults” work, as opposed to the other chamber.

Be that as it may, the House is theoretically more representative of the nation, since every state, large or small, has two Senators, regardless of population. The House, by contrast, has 435 members allocated by the population distribution -- thus California has the largest delegation in that chamber, followed by other populous states.

From my time in Washington, covering the political system up close, what I remember most vividly is how much all the politicians I met there were image-oriented. There was the occasional policy wonk, who cared more about what would actually change things for the better, but most seemed far more concerned about looking good, raising money for their next election cycle, and cutting down their opposition.

In a similar vein, during the brief time my roommate in Mill Valley was a U.S. Senator, I learned just how much of his time had to be devoted to raising money and/or talking to donors. Basically, it was every available hour outside of meetings with his colleagues in the Senate.

Nothing I saw in either case increased my confidence in our federal government. And don’t even get me started about our state government in Sacramento, which I’ve also witnessed up close.

I actually have more faith in local government, which despite many problems, remains more closely in touch with citizens and their concerns — and therefore more accountable.

Not that our city and county officials do a good job of addressing those concerns much of the time. But we have a fairly responsive government here in the city of San Francisco. Come to think of it, I must find someone at City Hall to discuss the mess transit officials has made along my route from here in the Mission to Bernal.

They’ve screwed up the intersection of Bryant and 24th, and as I drive this route a thousand times every year, it really matters to me. More than the fiscal cliff, if you want to know the truth.

I don’t earn enough money to owe anything in taxes at the moment and I don’t rely on any publicly funded services, other than Medicare, so if they go over the cliff, I doubt it will matter much to me personally. On the other hand, I’m thinking of my country as a whole, and wondering whether it really can be a world leader much longer with such a dysfunctional political standoff, led not by leaders but elected officials refusing to lead.

So with all of that said, Happy New Year?

HEADLINES:

• Trump bombs Venezuelan land for first time: Is war imminent? (Al Jazeera)

• US military carries out 30th strike on alleged drug boat (AP)

• Taiwan stays on high alert as Chinese ships pull back after massive drills (NBC)

• Trump administration says it’s freezing child care funds to Minnesota (NPR)

• Ukraine seeks to contain diplomatic fallout over Vladimir Putin’s attack claim (Financial Times)

• Russia’s losses in Ukraine rise faster than ever as US pushes for peace deal (BBC)

• Russia’s Descent Into Tyranny (Foreign Affairs)

• How Social Security has gotten worse under Trump (WP)

• Performers cancel concerts at Kennedy center after Trump renaming (AFP)

• The Year That Shattered American Science (Atlantic)

• ‘I Was Just So Naïve’: Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump (NYT Mag)

• Inside RFK Jr.’s reshaping of public health in Trump’s first year (WP)

• Trump warns Iran of further US strikes if it reconstitutes nuclear program (AP)

• The Tiny Japanese Island on the Front Lines of China’s Feud (NYT)

• After Saudi Arabia’s Yemen strike, UAE rejects support for separatists (Al Jazeera)

• Looking for friends, lobsters may stumble into an ecological trap (ArsTechnica)

• Japan’s Births Predicted To Hit Lowest Level Since Records Began (Newsweek)

• Meta to Buy Manus, an AI Startup With Chinese Roots (Bloomberg)

• New framework simplifies the complex landscape of agentic AI (Venture Beat)

• Lights, camera, algorithm: Why Indian cinema is awash with AI (BBC)

• ‘Godfather’ of AI says he’s ‘more worried’ today about AI (The Hill)

• The Problem With Letting AI Do the Grunt Work (Atlantic)

• The New Billionaires of the A.I. Boom (NYT)

• Trump Appoints Self To Divine Muses (Onion)

The Bottom Line

As the year winds down, I’ve been thinking about money.

At present, there are about 3,000 billionaires in the world, 900 of them in the U.S. Each of them have more money, at least on paper, than they could ever actually spend, no matter how long they lived nor how many things they purchased.

By contrast, most people spend our adult lives working for wages and worrying about how we are going to pay our bills. For today’s college students, it will be all too easy to acquire a mountain of debt that may take most of their lifetimes to pay off. 

Wealth disparity is getting worse and it represents the single greatest threat to the future of democracy. Billionaires want to be free to acquire an obscene amount of wealth, but they don’t want the rest of us to be free to redistribute a tiny fraction of that wealth through taxes and social welfare programs to achieve a more equitable set of outcomes.

There’s a name for this — class warfare.

So Marx was right. (Sigh) 

But since the vast majority of us will never be in favor of violent political change, we are stuck with the messy work of elections and political parties and leaders we don’t like or trust.

Politically speaking, 2025 was a disaster, but 2026 is a new year, and therefore our next best chance to wage peaceful class warfare, even if nobody wants to call it that. 

HEADLINES:

• Trump on Putin call: ‘We have a few very thorny issues’ (The Hill)

• Ukraine denies drone attack on Putin’s residence (BBC)

• Trump says Ukraine and Russia are ‘closer than ever’ to peace after talks with Zelenskyy (AP)

• Tensions flare between Russia and Ukraine after Trump’s peace talks (WP)

• Trump praises Netanyahu as leaders meet to discuss next steps of ceasefire plan (CBC)

• Iran sends conflicting signals on its missiles as Israeli concerns rise (WP)

• The 2025 Agenda (Atlanta)

• Trump says U.S. took out a ‘big facility’ as part of strikes on alleged drug boats near Venezuela (NBC)

• The Department of Justice May Not Survive Pam Bondi (TNR)

• Musk’s return to Trump’s side revives alliance that could remake — or rupture — MAGA (WP)

• It Was a Bad Year for the American Military (The Bulwark)

• US pledges $2B for UN humanitarian aid as Trump slashes funding (AP)

• How frogs went from right-wing meme to anti-ICE protest symbol (BBC)

• Thousands in Kabul attend Afghanistan’s national buzkashi championship (Al Jazeera)

• On to 2050: Life in a shrinking Japan (Japan Times)

• AI Chatbots Linked to Psychosis, Say Doctors (WSJ)

• OpenAI faces a make-or-break year in 2026 (Economist)

• From A.I. to Chips, Big Tech Is Getting What It Wants From Trump (NYT)

• Tech Billionaires Threaten To Flee California Over Proposed Vest Tax (Onion)

 

Monday Mix

HEADLINES:

• The U.S. offers Ukraine a 15-year security guarantee for now, Zelenskyy says (NPR)

• Trump Greets Ukrainian President Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago (C-Span)

• China holds military drills around Taiwan as warning to ‘separatist forces’ (BBC)

• Trump and Netanyahu to meet in Florida for crucial talks on Iran and Gaza (NBC)

• How Oil, Drugs and Immigration Fueled Trump’s Venezuela Campaign (NYT)

• Winter storm brings heavy snow and ice to busy holiday travel weekend (NPR)

• New winter storm brings dangerous wind, snow and ice (ABC)

• Why the Supreme Court Is Giving ICE So Much Power (Atlantic)

• ‘We are the free world now’ — Europe declares war on free speech in the US (The Hill)

• What America Might Look Like With Zero Immigration (NYT)

• ‘Ghost resorts’: as hundreds of ski slopes lie abandoned, will nature reclaim the Alps? (Guardian)

• Santa’s good and bad economies list (Financial Times)

• China expands nuclear warhead manufacturing capacity, research finds (WP)

• The Slow, Inevitable Death of the Bowl Game (Atlantic)

• Humanoid Robots Keep Slipping Into the Future, Much Like Fusion (CleanTechnica)

• Cat Clinging To Side Of Christmas Tree Admits That Was Extent Of Plan (Onion)