Making America Great Again

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From James Fallows' appearance on Booknotes in May 1989, discussing his book, More Like Us: Making America Great Again:

"If there's someone [in the audience] who is ... an unmarried person or a childless couple especially in your 20's or 30's that has some freedom, go to Japan because you can get a job in a short time teaching English. And while you are making money teaching English you can learn Japanese. And then when you've done that there are a million things you can do there. And you will have a sense of knowing what the future is like because America will be dealing with Japan. So go."

The Nikkei 225 peaked at 38,957 in December 1989, so I think he left almost exactly at the top. I was in college studying Chinese in 1989, having wisely? anticipated that Japan was peaking, and Japanese wasn't the language a young man should be studying then. 

Fallows lived in China for some of the years that we were there (2005-2015) and I remember enjoying a talk he gave at the Bookworm. Thoughtful guy, hyper-articulate, we're lucky that he has been interested in Asia and writing about it for the last thirty years.   

Tweets for April 9, 2016

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Tweets for April 8, 2016

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Books Read -- Lone Survivor

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After enjoying No Easy Day, I thought I'd try another SEAL book, so I borrowed Lone Survivor. Unfortunately I only made it one chapter in before quitting. Luttrell comes across as a bit of a knucklehead and lays on the military rah-rah too heavily. Maybe it's just a problem of finding the right co-author.

No Easy Day was short and fast-paced and I appreciated "Mark Owen's" lack of reflection. Lone Survivor is 444 pages and there was no way I was voluntarily going to be in Luttrell's company for that long. 

Tweets for April 7, 2016

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The Rise of the Corporate General

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From David Hackworth's appearance on Booknotes in 1989:

"This tragedy that occurred started in 1946 when we took our Officer Corps and started this business of making everybody a diplomat and a warrior which ended up under Maxwell Taylor when he became Chief of Staff. Our Generals became corporate generals rather than the fighting generals of type that won World War II. The Ridgeways and the Pattons and so on."

Hackworth on military decorations:

"... take Admiral Crowe who is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On his jacket it's ablaze with medals. 31 of them. But there's not one for a combat deed. They're all having-been-there awards. You're-a-good-guy award. You-moved-some-paper-across-your-desk-in-a-neat-way award....

Just like when Admiral Crowe perhaps appears in front of Congress, those are his credentials, and those Congressmen don't know they are just having-been-there awards. When he says we need this they believe that he knows what he's talking about from the standpoint of being on a battlefield. So I think that we've kind of put our award system at a cross purpose. Grenada -- there were 7,000 men on that island. They gave 8,000 awards. There were 200 enemy Cuban soldiers or so on that island. And they gave 200 awards for valor. One per enemy soldier. 

... I think we need to go back and clean up our act on awards and just give awards to soldiers. The final line on awards is to me the only award ... that really means something to warriors is the Purple Heart and above that, the Combat Infantry Badge. That means I've been there."

Tweets for April 5, 2016

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Tweets for April 4, 2016

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