Deconstruction of Hillary vs Obama 3

Because all “good” movies need to be a trilogy…

In part 1, I analyzed the arguments Hillary and Obama have been throwing at each other. In part 2, I looked for a pop culture representation of the Hillary/Obama dynamic.

This time, I analyze the metaphor which is the Hillary-Obama struggle and cast in its truest and most cosmic form a la the characters from Neil Gaiman’s amazing series The Sandman (hat tip: Blog@Newsarama).

For those of you who have not yet read The Sandman, the series describes a world which is an “upleveling” of the traditional DC comics universe (e.g. Superman, Batman, and the Martian Manhunter all make guest appearances at one point or another) to incorporate cosmic and mythical entities (e.g. the Egyptian pantheon of Gods, the Judeo-Christian God, etc.). In that universe, a set of “beings” called the Endless are anthropomorphic representations of concepts beginning with the letter “D” who preside over those concepts: Destiny, Dream, Desire, Despair, Delirium (who was once Delight), Death, and Destruction. Specifically, The Sandman is about Dream, and the role he, and dreams in general, play in the universe.

In one of the earlier story arcs (issue 4!), Dream goes on a quest into Hell to retrieve his lost helmet. In Hell, he meets the demon Choronzon who has possession of it, and the two challenge each other in what I can only describe as an imagination game where they strive to defeat one another with images. It sounds very hokey, but it is very well done (and the series is definitely on my list of “must reads” for people who want to get into comics). In any event, some Obama-loving comic book reader must have stumbled onto the dialogue as it depicts, in no uncertain terms, the true character of the Obama-Hillary battle:

Can’t you see it? Not only does Hillary being an anthrax bacterium and “anti-life, the beast of judgement, the dark at the end of everything” make sense to me, but look at the graphic representation of Obama, the Dream King, and Hillary, the demon Choronzon of hell:

I think this works quite well. And John McCain?

Hell yeah. Vacation is awesome.

Taiwan and Japan

It is no surprise that many Asian countries are wary of Japan. After all Japan, until 1945, exerted strong military control over much of Eastern Asia. In light of this, what is very surprising is how Taiwan does not share in this negative opinion despite being a colony of Japan for 50 years.

Instead, as this video (complete with cute animations summarizing the Nationalist-Communist rivalry) shows, Taiwan almost seems to embrace the Japanese influence which helped shape its cultural and economic heritage. The video starts with an elderly Taiwanese woman speaking fluently in Japanese about her admiration of Japan to a group of Japanese students and later cuts to clips of various Taiwanese using Japanese sayings and sentences:

Why does Taiwan’s view of Japan clash so much with the views of other Asian countries? The video describes some of it, but in a nutshell, the historical context:

• Japan built Taiwan’s economic infrastructure (roads, hospitals, buildings, etc.)
• Japan imposed mandatory education on all Taiwanese citizens — boosting literacy and education in Taiwan and making it such that, even today, there are some Taiwanese who are better able to speak Japanese than they are able to speak Mandarin (my late Grandmother on my father’s side is one example — who actually tried to teach herself English using Japanese syllables as a guide)
• The Japanese, through a policy called “Three Bad Practices”, helped to reduce Opium addiction, foot binding, and the wearing of the queue (a symbol of Manchu dominance over the “Han Chinese”)
• Although limited, Japan opened Taiwan up to foreign art forms such as Western painting and cinema
• Japan did not practice as heavy-handed a rule over the Taiwanese as they did to other Asian countries and were, instead, hoping to integrate Taiwan and its people into the Japanese empire (my Grandmother on my mother’s side once noted that Japanese soldiers in Taiwan were viewed by many to be effective and reliable deterrents to crime)

The results?

1. Japan’s investments in Taiwan allowed it to become one of the fastest growing economies in the post-War period (a product of the high literacy rate, high quality education, excellent economic infrastructure, in-place banking system, etc.).
2. Japanese influence has produced a Taiwanese culture that is very distinct from that of Mainland China’s in its inclusion of many Japanese and Western influences.
3. The result is that Taiwanese lack the enmity and suspicion towards Japan which is much more characteristic of the Korean and Mainland Chinese people.

The video ends with the narrator noting that it is a shame that, despite the affinity that Taiwan seems to show for Japan, the two countries currently do not have official diplomatic relations. I think it’s a shame too.