The great Satan 1 of 2:
An Iranian cleric once referred to the United States as the great Satan. We’ll take a look at why he might have next time. Right now we need to warm up a little bit.
First, people are superstitious. We much prefer going by hearsay or habit to thinking about what is actually going on even if hearsay and habit invoke supernatural energies that cannot possibly exist. For instance I have said and continue to say that our mating strategy has thrown us into dire peril. Check out that last January summary if you haven’t seen it yet. But of the enormous number of people I have reached out to, hardly any has made it a priority.
But sizing up warnings is very simple. How bad could it be? How likely is it? What resources might be brought to bear to avoid it? In this case the answers are it could mean total extinction. Total extinction is highly unlikely, but a regime change is highly likely, and that would be bad enough? The resources should at least involve mentioning to everybody one possibly can. Everybody has dozens of friends that could be reached within a day. If everybody talked to ten people a day, within two weeks it would be worldwide. Then somebody might have a suggestion.
But evidently most people think, “That could never happen.” It always happened before, but that’s not enough to change routines. We are not rational animals.
Now the Iranians are not the first to think of Americans as devils. I am told, without being able to cite a source, that in Japan red is the color of devils. And when the marines were fighting them in the Pacific during WW II, the marines were pretty much Scotch Irish, which means red hair and sunburn. They were also well equipped, making them efficient killing machines. The devil image seems fair enough. But they carried it much too far. For one thing, surrendering to the Japanese probably wasn’t going to be a good idea; how do you treat a devil that is under your control? Not well I should say. And there is no way a decent person is going to surrender to a devil; better to die fighting however hopelessly, which they did in enormous numbers, island after island.
Of course they knew there are no such things as real devils that you can see and feel running around in the world. There was a zoo in Tokyo, for goodness sake, with exotic animals from the far corners of the earth. No devils in that zoo. But we are not rational, we humans. I do not mean to be unkind to those Japanese, just to hold them up as ordinary examples of normal human beings, just like you and me. Just like all those people I have begged by personal communication to pitch in and help and who somehow think they have more important business.
I my mother had a friend who said that even after the surrender most of the people in Japan had plans to attack the Americans who came ashore, most of them literally with sticks, and not very impressive sticks at that.
The surrender was a near thing. The emperor wanted to surrender, but there were strong elements that wanted to fight to the hideous end. They say the atomic bomb turned the tide. But what did it look like to them? It was a weapon truly worthy of a supernatural entity. And it was exploded right over the Hiroshima hospital, vaporizing all the pain medication and the skilled people who could administer it. It maximized horror.
Then when all was done, Admiral Nimitz, in command of the largest military operation the world has ever seen, thought a parade might be a good idea. So the whole Pacific fleet lines up to the greatest military extravaganza ever.
Now you remember the kamikaze airplanes that did so much damage to our boys. They were suicide attacks. Yeah, sound familiar. You’ll do anything to get your lick in on a devil. They were named after a great typhoon; literally the Divine Wind. When the Chinese were about to invade Japan, having turned up with an enormous, if rather rickety, fleet, the wind came along and sank them all.
So just when Nimitz’s invasion should have been at the point where the beachhead was not quite secure but it was too late to pull pack, down came the typhoon. The little old women with their sticks would have been coming in wave after wave, and a marine can only carry so many rounds.
I have a friend who saw that storm. A wall of purple cloud rolled over the horizon. Airplanes saw it and were going onto the nearest carriers they could find. If the plane was too big for the carrier’s equipment, the plane was thrown overboard to make room for more. You won’t read about this much in the history books. The Divine Wind was there, right on schedule. But the Japanese had already surrendered, intimidated by the bomb.
Don’t think for a minute that the Muslim clerics have never heard the story. Don’t think for a moment that they are more immune to superstition than you or I or Japan.
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