BC HISTORY
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

1/Alright, gather round, friends, and let me tell you the story of 1930s Japan, and how it's a cautionary tale for 2020s

 2/Everyone knows that Japan became militarist, fascist, and (even more) expansionist in the 30s.

But what few people know is that this followed 6 years of coup attempts by EVEN MORE militarist/fascist/expansionist lunatics.

So let's review that history.
3/The first coup attempt was the March Incident in 1931.

Basically, some right-wing army officers planned to stage a riot to provoke martial law, and install a military dictator.

It failed when they couldn't get enough people to riot.
4/The coup plotters weren't really punished, so they just tried again a few months later. Some of their co-conspirators ratted them out and they failed again.

But AGAIN THEY WEREN'T PUNISHED! People defended them, saying they were simply too patriotic. 🤡
5/These coup plotters wanted the following:

1. A military dictator
2. Aggressive military action against Japan's rivals (i.e. every other country)
3. Increased colonial expansionism
4. Some mumbo-jumbo about cultural purity and economic egalitarianism
6/Anyway, a year later, some different coup plotters tried again. This time their plan involved lots of assassinations. They successfully assassinated the Prime Minister, but failed to kill the visiting Charlie Chaplin (which they hoped would provoke a war with the U.S.
7/But despite killing Japan's elected leader, the coup plotters received only light punishment!!

There was an outpouring of popular support on their behalf. They thus received only a short stint in jail...which of course encouraged further coup attempts.
8/Anyway then there was another coup attempt a couple years later that never got off the ground, but of course no one was punished.
9/But finally, in 1936, the big one came.

A large number of junior army officers, with troops to back them, and sympathies from some generals, launched a huge insurrection aimed at assassinating senior politicians and seizing control of government buildings.
10/Some generals sympathized with the insurrectionists, but the Emperor and a critical mass of loyalists opposed them. Eventually they were arrested.

This time -- FINALLY -- the government meted out harsh punishments, executing 17 of the plotters and imprisoning others.
11/But now here's the thing. The Japanese government went on to do pretty much exactly what the coup plotters wanted!

They put the military in charge of the country! They tried to colonize all of Asia! And they started a war with the U.S.!

Oops.
12/So what can we learn from Japan's failures in the 1930s?

Fortunately, the coup attempt of 1/6/2020 didn't come from within the military. Nor does Trump support or fascism in general come from the military. So that's one positive difference.
13/Another positive difference is that the U.S. does not currently have a tradition of "government by assassination", as Japan did then. In the 60s we did, but assassinations are thankfully rare now.
14/BUT, there are some disturbing similarities between 1930s Japan's crazies and the right-wingers who stormed the Capitol on 1/6.
15/The first big lesson from the failures of 1930s Japan is:

PUNISH THE PLOTTERS HARSHLY THE FIRST TIME.

Don't wait for the coup attempts to escalate! Don't call the coup plotters "patriots"! Don't let them off with a slap on the wrist!
16/The second big lesson is:

DON'T GIVE IN TO THE COUP PLOTTERS' IDEOLOGY.

Japan basically became what the rightists wanted. We musn't do that.
17/Remember, a slap on the wrist will just encourage the same assholes to be bolder the next time.

The first of Japan's many coups was even less impressive than what we saw on 1/6!

Because it wasn't punished, it encouraged more and more.
18/We're a more stable country than 1930s Japan, with better institutions.

But if we give coup plotters a slap on the wrist, and call them "patriots", we too will go down the path of chaos and fascism.

(end)

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Today's @bopinion post is about how poor countries started catching up to rich ones.

It looks like decolonization just took a few decades to start

Basic econ theory says poor countries should grow faster than rich ones.

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https://t.co/JjjVtWzz5c

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https://t.co/hilDvv0IQV

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But then, starting in the 80s (for China) and the 90s (for India and Indonesia), some of the biggest poor countries got their acts together and started to catch up!


Global inequality began to fall.
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Remember: Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's good.

Knowing whether old ideas are more likely to be good requires understanding whether conditions have changed in important ways.

Horse archery was an amazing method of warfare for over a thousand years...then people invented guns, and suddenly this great idea that had stood the test of time became obsolete.

Then again, when underlying conditions don't change much, tried-and-true approaches are probably better.

"Learning the lessons of history" usually just means assuming ergodicity and stationarity in an informal time-series model...

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Met a Brazilian-American Lyft driver from San Diego who passionately attacked the racism of Republicans, then switched to passionately defending Bolsonaro.

If I were Thomas Friedman, I could tell you what this means.

Met a Haitian-American in a restaurant who said he'd always vote for Democrats because of the immigration issue, but that he has conservative beliefs too. "I don't want to pay for someone's abortion!", he declared.

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Time for panel #3: Big Tech and regulation!

I will be live-tweeting again, and you can also watch video at either the Twitter or Facebook links below!


Kaissar: Every industry gets regulated when it gets big. The question is what kind of regulation Big Tech will get,and whether the companies will be proactive in shaping it.

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Noahtogolpe \U0001f407
Noahtogolpe 🐇
@Noahpinion
1/OK, let's take a little break from Coup Twitter, and think about an economic issue:

How can we build up the wealth of the middle class?

2/The typical American has surprisingly little wealth compared to the typical resident of many other developed countries.

This is a fact that is not widely known or appreciated.


3/Now, some people argue that stuff like Social Security or social insurance programs should be included in wealth. But I chose to focus on private wealth because I think having assets you can sell whenever you want is important to


4/For many decades after World War 2, middle-class wealth in America was on a smooth upward trajectory.

Then the housing crash came, and all that changed. Suddenly the rich were still doing well but everyone else was seeing the end of their American Dream.


5/Why the divergence?

Because the American middle class has its wealth in houses -- specifically, in the houses they live in.

It's the rich who own stocks.
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A challenge with society in general is a facile understanding of the word “coup.” When the population at large thinks of a coup, they imagine a violent military (Chile, 1973) or paramilitary (Cuba, 1959) overthrow of the government.
Coups are often far more complex and nuanced.

So, let’s talk about the autogolpe—the “self coup” (a perfect example of how some words in Spanish are objectively better than their English equivalents). An autogolpe is, at its simplest, when a duly elected leader revolts against his *own* government to consolidate power.

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1/ ISSA AREMU: THE IRREPRESSIBLE COMRADE 60

It was sometime in October 1984. I had just been admitted to study Economics at the University of Port Harcourt. After processing my papers and having been registered, [...]

#OutsideTheBox


2/ I proceeded to the Students Affairs Office where the halls of residence were allotted. After the fairly long process, I ended up at the Nelson Mandela Hall. My new hall of residence had 6 blocks: A to F, and each block comprised 4 floors with multiple rooms.

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4/ On arriving the hall, I was assigned to block C, Room 308 by the Hall Warden. I knocked and entered the room where I met this young final year Economics student who displayed a very good command of English language and radiated knowledge all over him.

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#BlackHistoryMonth In the Navy, I was fortunate to serve at Commander Cruiser Destroyer Group 2(CCDG2). I reported to duty in 1981 as Radioman Seaman Apprentice(RMSA), and served through 1985 in the communications division achieving the rank of Petty Officer 2nd Class(RM2/SW) /1


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