This essay examines Hillary Clinton’s insulting remarks toward Trump supporters, the “intolerance” that characterizes much of contemporary liberalism, and the way victim-based politics has deepened division in American society.
At the same time, it points to the spread of “IYI” throughout Japan’s political world, bureaucracy, media, and universities, sharply exposing the postwar pathology that obstructs constitutional revision and national security policy under the Abe administration.

2019-07-12
This is, in every sense, “hate speech” directed at Trump supporters themselves.
And yet liberals are convinced that they themselves are never engaging in “hate speech.”
The following is a chapter I published on 2018-05-09.
This essay is required reading especially for the NHK news division, which is controlled by red union activists—people whose being genuine Japanese is itself uncertain—who, regarding China, would more properly be described as the Japan branch of China’s state broadcaster, and regarding South Korea, as the Japan branch of South Korea’s state broadcaster, and above all for Arima and Kuwako.
The Astonishing Spread of “IYI.”
During the presidential election, Hillary insulted half of Trump’s supporters as racists, sexists, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic.
This is, in every sense, “hate speech” directed at Trump supporters themselves.
And yet liberals are convinced that they themselves are never engaging in “hate speech.”
While never doubting the righteousness of their own cause, liberals are characterized by carrying through a thoroughgoing “spirit of intolerance” toward differing opinions.
I believe that Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement, which sought the elimination of racial discrimination, was something absolutely indispensable for the United States as a nation.
I strongly believe that the movement symbolized by Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered in Washington in August 1963, showed the right path to an “outdated America” in which racial discrimination had been allowed to prevail.
But have not liberals in recent years twisted Dr. King’s ideal?
In his speech, Dr. King spoke as follows.
I have a dream.
That one day my four little children will live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Dr. King was, in truth, declaring that America should become a great nation that does not discriminate by race or skin color.
And yet today, the minority-rights protection policies being carried out by American liberals are advancing reverse discrimination together with the division of American society itself.
For example, the Obama administration loudly proclaimed the advancement of the rights of Hispanics, chiefly Latin Americans.
But in fact, many Hispanics already thought of their identity as American.
As the generations passed from first-generation immigrants to the second and third, the consciousness of being “Hispanic” was in reality fading.
And yet the Obama administration, regardless of the wishes of the people themselves, deliberately sorted them into the category of “Hispanic,” making it appear as though their rights were being violated.
The same is true of black Americans.
For example, in America, if a black high school student drops out of school, the far too great a leap in logic that “this is because whites once enslaved blacks” is allowed to pass unchallenged.
What ought to be done instead is to make efforts to lower the dropout rate among black high school students.
And yet why is it that people do nothing but shout, “Black people are still being discriminated against!” and “Give aid to black people who have suffered discrimination!”?
Liberals, in order to protect their own vested interests, are steering society away from the “spirit of self-reliance,” which is the founding spirit of the United States, and toward its exact opposite, “dependence.”
That is because if the problem of discrimination were ever truly solved, they would lose their “goose that lays golden eggs.”
I believe I wrote with particular force in The Melancholy of Japan and America Poisoned by Liberalism about how this kind of “victim business” is eating away at America.
Finally, at a time when the situation on the Korean Peninsula is tense, some opposition parties in Japan are refusing parliamentary deliberations and, in concert with the media, repeatedly criticizing the Abe administration.
The Constitution of Japan is the ultimate unequal treaty forced upon Japan by GHQ for the purpose of preventing Japan from rearming.
And I cannot help but keenly feel the astonishing spread of “IYI” infesting Nagatachō, Kasumigaseki, the media, and the universities, all of which seek without end to drag down the Abe administration as it advances constitutional revision.
*“IYI” means “a highly educated but incompetent person.”
It is an abbreviation of the English phrase “Intellectual yet idiot.”
In this world, there are people who, for some reason, are highly educated and yet cannot do their jobs, or whose abilities are low.
In English, such people are collectively referred to as “Intellectual yet idiot” (literally, “intellectual fool” or “highly educated simpleton”), and “IYI” is the abbreviation of that phrase.
Until now there had been no such term in Japan, but it was introduced by Kent Gilbert.