Shigeru Mizuki, a historian and manga artist, has described a World War II muster call in which pilots were invited to volunteer for a kamikaze operation. Each was handed two ballots; one of them read “willing,” the other, “very willing.” Those who didn’t “volunteer” would be killed. Imperial Japan, of course, was neither the first nor the last despotism to impose this eccentric vision of volunteerism. During the mid-1980s, a state radio broadcast in East Germany proudly announced a record-breaking national blood drive. In the audio equivalent of fine print could be found the critical, defining detail: “Most of the donors were … Continue reading The Vampire State Steals Blood