Thursday, February 28, 2008

Notes on Halberstam's The Next Century

Some of the notes I made while reading Halberstam's The Next Century:

-In Japan, the government's primary reason for being was an economic and commercial one; in America, that primacy belongs to defense (guns vs butter?).
-For Kazuo Inamori of Kyocera, work was meaningful; he encouraged his people to try to have a perfect day at work.
-Art Buchwald asked a room full of CEO's if they voted for Ron Reagan and they all raised their hands; asked them if they would hire him to be the CEO of their corporation, no hands were raised.
-With the advent of television, we've lost the thoughtful civility of discourse; we're more like the USA Today and less like the New York Times (I agree and blogging seems to perpetuate that brevity (?) of thinking).
-the author finds himself being 'churlish' about America again. Cool word, don't you think?
-one difference between Japan and America: Japan wants to make things, America wants to make money.
-America becoming a land of the more rich and the more poor (sounds like something we heard from John Edwards...).
-America needs to become more like Japan's 'establishment' but fear is it is becoming more like a Latin American oligarchy:
Does America have an establishment or an oligarchy? Every day I pick up the newspapers, and journalists describe--and I think they're right--Japan as having an establishment--that is, Japan has a group of people at the very top who may, in fact, be quite as selfish as any other ruling elite of powerful capitalists. But the members of the Japanese establishment know that they and their children cannot succeed, particularly in so small and vulnerable a nation, unless most of the society succeeds as well. So the members of this establishment are willing to sacrifice some of their own personal privilege and power and riches in order to make sure that the larger society works and is regenerative. At the same time, when virtually the same journalists describe Latin American countries, the word they invariably use to describe the leadership is 'oligarchy.' They are describing a very small handful of immensely privileged people who have it very good and who plan to continue to have it very good and don't care at all about the fact that the rest of the country is doing poorly. In effect, an oligarchy believes it can be successful even if the rest of the country is unsuccessful. And that's the system we're moving toward."

(quote is from page 9 of a Washington Monthly article of Jan-Feb, 1991. Me thinks this may very well be one of the chapters in the book - worth a read...)
-repeat of the concern that America is a national security state and that Mexico is a threat - and if I remember correctly, it is a threat because of the vast discrepancy between what's possible in the two countries. Guess that's been said for a long time - the third world nations, and this is especially true with the rapid improvement in communications, know they are the have nots and eventually will find some way to change that condition. Think it was earlier in the book that Halberstam told of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rush of East Berliners to the streets and stores of the West Berliners - and that caused anger and rage on the part of the East Berliners because they saw how little they had in common every day goods and how much was available to their neighbors - they correctly blamed the system (Communist) and its leaders.

Guess it was and remains a thought provoking book. I recommend it even if it is 18 years old.

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