Last month, a prominent figure on the right asked me point-blank, “Why don’t you move?” He was referring to California, and my stubborn refusal to leave this high-tax, low-IQ, far-left, illegal-alien-riddled state.
I certainly could move if I wanted to. If I can afford a four-bedroom house in Beverly Hills, I can afford a mansion in Dickweed, Montana.
But I ain’t moving. I was born here. I love this state. I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve never found a place as geographically and climatically perfect as Cali (sorry, Texans, you may have low taxes and such, but I’ve driven the length of your state twice, and it’s suicide-inducingly dull).
But the No. 1 reason I refuse to leave California is that I’d rather die here than give leftists the satisfaction of driving me out.
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In the course of my Holocaust research, I spent a good deal of my youth in Germany. I got to know many Germans, usually in the context of “Hi, I’m a Holocaust Jew from America! Let’s be pals.” And in 1995 I toured Japan as part of an extended lecture gig sponsored by a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University.
I was always curious what it’s like to grow up in a “loser” country, one that surrendered unconditionally only to be occupied and remade by its victorious foes. Because what did I know of defeat and humiliation? My house sits on land formerly occupied by wigwams and pueblos, the occupants of which got their butts royally kicked ages ago, and now the soil is mine. From the Civil War to the two World Wars, my family has always been on the winning side of everything. So I was keen to understand how the Germans and Japanese handled growing up knowing how badly they were pantsed and castrated after WWII.
The overwhelming majority of Germans I met dealt with the humiliation by apologizing, bowing, and prostrating themselves. It got to the point where I stopped mentioning revisionism to them, not because they’d chew me out (they couldn’t…I’m Jewish), but because they’d literally start crying like children. “We’re a bad people! We did bad things! We deserve the scorn, we deserve the punishment. We owe the world an eternity of apologies.”
Christ, I was embarrassed for them.
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The Japs, on the other hand, handled their lot with greater dignity (no surprise there, due to the Japanese fetish for honor and the fact that postwar Japan was not subjected to the grotesque mindfuck the U.S. and Soviets inflicted on postwar Germany). The most common attitude I found among my Japanese friends was “We took one for the team.” That “team” being humanity. “We were manipulated into a war with the U.S., and, as the only people to endure the horrors of large-scale nuclear bombing, through our misery, the world saw firsthand the terrors of such things, and that’s why it never happened again. Our dead did not die in vain.”
Fair enough. At least none of the little yella bastards ever wept in front of me.
The bottom line of my fascination was, what are the psychological effects of living in a nation where a foreign force came in and told you “everything you were was bad. Everything you stood for was bad. And now we’re going to remake you into a good people and a good country, whether you like it or not. You were foul, you were vile, you were monsters. But now, we’ll try to make you into decent humans…not that you have any say in the matter.”
