(I apologize for the use of a meme but that really is my current mood)
I can't promise that this will be the last political comic, because let's face it, the Grand Orangerlord practically hands the world reasons to make fun of him on a silver platter (and then yanks the silver platter back because he's greedier than Smaug). But, I'll try to make these ones sparingly and mostly focus on my life in Japan. That being said, America's foreign policy affects me, since I am, y'know, an American living in a foreign country.
Being an American living abroad right now is like... watching a toddler steal his parents' car keys and go for a joyride in the fancy car by driving it down the wrong side of the highway. We can't even back-seat drive, because good luck trying to contact your representatives or senators when you can't call them on the phone without racking up huge international calling charges. Oh, and the fact that no one is sure whether or not they actually bothered to count the absentee ballots. Yeah.
I spent four years (five if you count the personal research I did on the subject in high school because I have always been a mega nerd) studying Japanese history. I wrote my senior year capstone project on the topic of nationalism and justification of WWII, looking at both the Japanese side and the American side. Here's a very brief summary.
*Ahem* During the Edo period, the Japanese government decided to say a big "SCREW ALL Y'ALL" to the world, except for the Dutch, Chinese, Ryukyu Islands, and Ainu, to whom they said a slightly smaller "screw you too", and came up with this foreign policy called 鎖国 ("sakoku", meaning "locked country"). Nobody gets in or out of the country without permission from the government, and trade was severely restricted. Now why would they do this? Because NATIONALISM *jazz hands* (and some other related things). Now what happens when a country decides to isolate itself from an ever-changing post-industrial globalized society is that they get left behind, particularly on the technology front. Some people decided Japan needed to get with the times and overthrew the old government. New government decided "WE MUST CATCH UP TO THE WEST... BUT ALSO MUST STAY UNIQUE" (due to a surge of even more nationalism) so they adopted Western technologies, ideologies, and military tactics but put their own spin on them. And what were big countries like the US, Britain, Germany, and others doing around this time? COLONIALISM *jazz hands*. Japan wanted in on that colonial action, so they annexed Korea and started poking at China too, and then all the other Southeast Asian countries, and no one in the West really cared because they had their own scheisse going on over in Europe. Then WWII happens and sh*t gets MESSY. Everyone thinks they're justified in doing whatever they're doing, whether it's brutally murdering half a city or dropping atomic bombs on each other, because NATIONALISM *jazz hands*. The war ends, and because of all that built-up nationalism, Japan said "okay well we had reason for doing what we did, so how about you go easy on us?" to which the Allies said "I think the F not", yet America's over there preaching the same dang justification rhetoric as Japan, and yet nobody had a problem with them until decades later when people said "you know what maybe that wasn't the best idea to drop atomic bombs on cities", but it was too late at that point, because Japan was suffering a radiation crisis. And because this terrible thing happened to them, it kind of skewed their perception on the war as a whole. Bad Thing™ ended the war, so that means they're the victim, right? "WRONG" said China and Korea, "we want a damn apology", to which Japan said "but look what America did to me!", to which America said "you brought this upon yourself" and everything just devolved into a whole bunch of shouting and pointing fingers and everyone playing the victim. Things finally settled down, but they get pretty heated every time someone comes out with a new textbook or builds a memorial statue, even to this day.
And that, my guys, gals, and non-binary pals, is why isolationism doesn't effing work. Sure, it looks great at the time; yay our country is the best, let's limit jobs and funding to only our citizens because we're the best... that's going to work SUPER on paper and maybe for a couple of years if you're really lucky, and then guess what? You're gonna F up your country long-term, that's what. "taking a step back and just having some Me Time" is a great tactic for getting over a long string of bad dating partners, not for functioning as a country in the modern world. We phased out of that age like, a good thousand years ago. It's just like how war was great for kickstarting a floundering economy a thousand years ago and you could get away with justifying things like war so long as you made sure everyone was on even ground. But guess what, the game has changed and so have the rules; war is far more costly (both monetarily and in human lives), you can't justify wiping an entire city off the map, and cutting yourself off from the world is just not going to work.
Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it, but those who do study history are doomed to watch the idiots who didn't study history make everything go up in flames.
*drops mic*
