October 9, 2016

From the reasons I abandoned close reading of newspapers, to the misconceptions surrounding U.S. reporting, the distortions of the TPP debate, and ultimately to the perspective I call “The Turntable of Civilization,” this essay indicts the media itself as possessing a structural original sin that leads the world astray.
Through an examination of the relationship between the Financial Times and the Nikkei, and a critique of the pseudo-moralism typified by the Asahi Shimbun, it questions the responsibility borne by public discourse that can lead to war and ruin.
The very nature of those who constitute the media is, to begin with, fundamentally sinful in its structure; thus they bring the world to ruin.
Until August of the year before last, I had been one of the most devoted readers of newspapers.
Since then, however, I have read them only superficially.
The reason hardly needs stating: if one reads the Asahi Shimbun, one understands nothing of the truth.
To put it plainly, those who were once mere exam-cramming honor students, or the remnants of student movements such as Zenkyōtō who absorbed useless academic indoctrination at universities dominated by Marxist economics, have merely concealed their distorted ideologies beneath a veneer of pseudo-moralism and produced writing akin to kindergarten compositions—that is the truth.
Yesterday I wrote that when the American tendency toward rough-and-ready simplicity—commendable in some respects, deplorable in others—emerges in its negative form, it can lead the world toward destruction.
The Nikkei acquired the British Financial Times for 160 billion yen and brought it under its umbrella.
This morning’s Nikkei carried, in large space, an article from the Financial Times that proved my earlier observation entirely correct.
The passages marked with asterisks are mine.
When history comes to describe the gradual decline of American national power, how will it portray the great failure surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?

I am the first person in the world to point out that this cliché of media discourse—that the United States is declining—is entirely mistaken.
Why is it that I can perceive their foolishness?
Needless to say, it is because I am the one who conceived “The Turntable of Civilization,” one of the greatest discoveries spanning the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
For the next 170 years, the United States and Japan must continue to lead the world.
I have written clearly why China and India cannot assume that role.
As readers know, events since then have unfolded accordingly.
Will present-day China or India become the leaders of the world?
There could be no greater nightmare.
Those possessed of genuine intelligence did not live their lives in order to bring about such a world.
Those of you who inhabit the media world and earn your living through “public discourse” — a most respectable profession, so you believe — must ask yourselves what a true elite really is.
I had intended to quote at length, but I will conclude with only this portion.
For the truth is not that American power is declining.
Rather, when the American tendency toward broad-brushed simplicity appears in its negative form—it merely appears as decline.
Should that negative simplicity be compounded by the evils of pseudo-moralistic media, and should astronomical income disparities completely negate the American Dream, the United States might indeed decline.
But if one understands that such a decline would mean the world itself descending into nightmare and ruin, then the media should not be able to write so carelessly that America is declining or already in decline.
Yet as I write, I realize something.
In the end, everything is created by the media.
War as well.
Because the very nature of those within the media is itself fundamentally original-sinful, they bring the world to ruin.
To be continued.