Why Must We Demonize Those Who Disagree With Us?

While I was writing my Vietnam Seabee novel, Asphalt and Blood, I read a number of memoirs by former soldiers in the conflict. I was somewhat surprised to learn that the U.S. Army purposefully trained its troops to consider the Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers as lesser forms of humans. I suppose that I shouldn’t have been surprised. The depiction of the Japanese enemy during World War II had been even more racist. In fact, the depiction of Germans in World War I as rapacious “Huns” was part of the same process.

The psychological purpose of such demonization is to make it easier for the trainee to kill the enemy in combat. If one is taught to hate the other side, killing becomes a reasonable reaction. Many of the electronic warfare games of today originated in military training programs designed to condition the user to “zapping” another human being.

While the military usefulness of such approaches may be understandable in times of war, why have we seemingly extended “demonization” to include just about anyone with whom we disagree? The practice has been particularly virulent during the recent U.S. election cycle. The practice was not exclusive to either party but extended across the spectrum of politics. As an amateur historian, I am well aware that American elections have been plagued with demonization since the beginning of the republic, but the advent of social media has allowed intensification beyond imagination a few decades ago. I have voted in the last 15 presidential elections, and I have never seen it so bad.

Demonization leads to hate. I have written before about how hatred does nothing but poison society. I have also written about “thought police” and their hateful results. Driving wedges between various segments of society will never result in a peaceful civilization. Breeding hatred is a sure path to the disintegration of any culture.

We as a society need to start listening to one another. We need to listen not to frame a counter-argument but to actually understand what the other is thinking. When negotiating engineering and construction contracts, I learned early on to first search for the items upon which both parties agree. To bind our nation together, we need to start looking for those points upon which we agree, both in our legislative bodies and in society as a whole.

Branding those who do not share our beliefs as inferior human beings is the product of intolerance and unwarranted arrogance. Looking down your nose at other segments of society does not prove the correctness of your vision. It just assures that you will be shortsighted.

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Warren Bell is an author of historical fiction.  He spent 29 years as a US Naval Officer, and has traveled to most of the places in the world that he writes about.  A long-time World War II-buff, his first two novels, Fall Eagle One and Hold Back the Sun are set during World War II.  His third novel, Asphalt and Blood, follows the US Navy Seabees in Vietnam.  His most recent novel, Snowflakes in July, is a Pentagon thriller about domestic terrorism.  He is currently working on a new novel, Endure The Cruel Sun, the sequel to his best-selling novel, Hold Back the Sun. For more about Warren Bell, visit his website at: wbellauthor.com or see him on twitter @wbellauthor.

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Were the “Good Old Days” Really That Good?

Eisenhower and Congress Leaders

The current election cycle has revealed a craving among a large segment of the U.S. population for a return to the way things used to be, to go back to the "Good Old Days." As a person who has lived more than eight decades in this country, I am not sure what part of the past these individuals want to restore. I suspect the time that they yearn for is the 1950s.

Why the 1950s? Perhaps that was the last decade in which people with only a high school education could aspire to get a well-paying job and enter the famed middle class. In the 1950s, activity was booming in the industrial cities of the North. If a person were a sharecropper, whatever your race, opportunity beckoned in the factories of the North. If you have read John Grissom's book, A Painted House, or seen the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, you have witnessed this phenomenon from the viewpoint of poor white farmers. All across the South, cotton fields fell fallow or switched to mechanized farming while hundreds of thousands of farmworkers headed north. The "American Dream" was alive for large segments of the population.

Despite stresses of the "Cold War," peace prevailed in the U.S. for most of the 1950s. After the Korean War ended, American troops were not actively involved in combat.

In the 1950s, the Federal Government actually worked. President Eisenhower often conferred with the leaders of both parties in Congress to address national concerns. Compromise positions were hammered out in these discussions, and acceptable legislation was then proposed and enacted. "Compromise" was not a dirty word in those days. Our leaders still realized that compromise is the very lifeblood of a functioning democracy.

Peace, economic opportunity, and a functioning government are all worthy of nostalgia. Unfortunately, there are other factors about that era that are not worthy of restoration.

Rigid gender definitions still divided society. There was "men's work" and "women's work." Men were expected to work and earn the family's living. "Bringing home the bacon" was their primary task. Women were supposed to marry, have children, and become homemakers. Almost all of the myriad duties of maintaining a household fell to the woman: providing meals, childcare, housekeeping, and assuring clean clothes for the family. Just keeping up with family laundry during those days before modern washing machines was an exhausting process. In the 1950s, boiling clothes in an outdoor wash pot and scrubbing them on rub-boards was still commonplace. Soaking garments in starch and ironing them with flatirons could be tiring as well. My mother-in-law always said, "There never were any ‘Good Old Days' for women."

In the 1950s, the Southern states of the old Confederacy remained rigidly segregated by race. African-Americans were decidedly second-class citizens. Segregated schools for blacks were often starved of resources needed to provide a reasonable education. The Ku Klux Klan was still active in some areas. Many white parents still taught their children that blacks were inherently inferior. Finding a better way of life was another motivator for the mass migration to northern cities.

Medical care in the 1950s was primitive compared to what we have today. Preventive medicine was chiefly limited to smallpox vaccination. The current inoculations to prevent childhood diseases had yet to be invented. Most children endured Chickenpox, Measles, Whooping Cough, and Mumps at some time. Some died of these diseases. And in the background always lurked the specter of polio, the crippler, and killer of hundreds each year. Many parents would not let their children take swimming lessons because of polio concerns.

Most people only saw a doctor when they got severely sick or injured. Doctors did make home visits in those days, but the treatments available to them were only a fraction of what exists today. Standard treatments still included prescribing laxatives for just about everything to "purge the body." Bed rest was recommended for most ailments. Smoking, on the other hand, was viewed as a good way to relax from stress. Almost all doctors were heavy smokers. Alcohol was considered a stimulant, although it is actually a depressant. The number of hospitals was limited. In those that did exist, privacy was given limited priority. Most patients were confined in large open wards.

At least in the early 1950s, many country families still lacked indoor plumbing. Use of outhouses remained a necessity. Chamber pots were used at night. Of course, emptying these every morning usually fell to the woman of the household. Bathing usually occurred on Saturday night so people would be clean for church the next day. Galvanized washtubs in the kitchen were the usual bathing place.

I believe that the human mind tends to retain and augment the good things about the past while conveniently forgetting the not so pleasant ones.  Widespread opportunity, functioning government, and peace are all objectives toward which we need to strive, but I do not personally desire a return to the 1950s. There are many aspects of the current situation that need to be changed, but we need to hammer out new solutions in keeping with the realities of the world today rather than seeking to go back to the past.

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Warren Bell is an author of historical fiction.  He spent 29 years as a US Naval Officer, and has traveled to most of the places in the world that he writes about.  A long-time World War II-buff, his first two novels, Fall Eagle One and Hold Back the Sun are set during World War II.  His third novel, Asphalt and Blood, follows the US Navy Seabees in Vietnam.  His most recent novel, Snowflakes in July, is a Pentagon thriller about domestic terrorism.  He is currently working on a new novel, Endure The Cruel Sun, the sequel to his best-selling novel, Hold Back the Sun. For more about Warren Bell, visit his website at: wbellauthor.com or see him on twitter @wbellauthor.

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Women in Early 1940s Japan

Earlier this month, The Japan Times reported that several thousand women in Tokyo had threatened to boycott sex with their husbands if they voted for Yoichi Masuzoe, one of the mayoral candidates in the upcoming election. Masuzoe had made comments at a press conference to the effect that women were unfit to make government decisions because their judgment was that erratic during their monthly period. After Masuzoe won, the same group is calling for all women to boycott sex with any man who voted for him.  Such a movement would have been unthinkable during the early 1940s, the setting for parts of my latest novel, Hold Back the Sun.

In pre-Pacific War Japan, women were decidedly second-class citizens. This had been true since the beginnings of the Samurai Period. The greatest value of women, especially in middle and upper class society, was as child bearers and sex objects to be enjoyed by men. The Japanese viewed sex drive, especially in men, as just another appetite that needed to be consistently satisfied. Among the peasant farmers, of course, women were also valued for their labor in cultivating crops.  When the push towards modernization began in the late 1800s, women were also viewed as a source of industrial labor, at least until they were married.

Women had few freedoms. They were always under the domination of a male. Before marriage, they had to obey their fathers. After marriage, their husbands assumed command. Widows were expected to follow the orders of their oldest son. Nowhere were the words of the old folksong sung by Joan Baez, The Wagoner’s Lad, truer than in Japan:

Oh heartache’s the portion of all womankind,

She’s always controlled; she’s always confined,

Controlled by her parents until she’s a wife,

A slave to her husband the rest of her life

In the home, the wife was the husband’s servant. When he returned from work, she took his coat and made him comfortable, holding his chair while he sat if they used western furniture. She prepared and served the food and was responsible for child care. If her husband was an eldest son, she was required to become his widowed mother’s servant also. If the husband desired sex, she could not refuse him. But the primary job of a wife was not sexual entertainment. It was bearing children to carry on the family. For pure sexual enjoyment, Japanese men frequented geishas and yûjos (courtesans).  Japan’s sex trade was extensive and sophisticated. The pinnacle of the trade was the famous Yoshiwara sex market in Tokyo. Girls as young as twelve were literally sold into this trade by their families. They became sex slaves. Of course, peasant farmers could ill afford to live by this standard. They were more likely to depend on their wives for sexual pleasure.

Some readers of Hold Back the Sun have suggested that I was too harsh on the Japanese arch-villain. But considering the culture in which he was brought up, is it any wonder that he viewed women primarily as sex objects? Or that he considered them incapable of complex thinking. As one of the militarist ultra-nationalists, he would have harbored hatred for European colonialists for the subjugation of Asians. Such a man would have been ashamed and enraged to lose a bridge tournament to a “mere woman,” and a white one at that. He would view revenge in the form of sexual slavery as a matter of simple justice.

The position of women improved a great deal after General Douglas MacArthur and his staff wrote political sexual equality for women into the new Japanese constitution. Women today are much more independent. A large percentage of educated young women have discovered that they don’t need a man to support them. Almost forty percent of these women are refusing to marry and assume the role of servants. A poll showed that about 30 percent of all Japanese between 18 and 30 years old have never had even one date.  Yet the attitudes of some politicians like Yoichi Masuzoe indicate that men still have a way to go in their attitudes. It will be interesting to learn how the boycott turns out.

Much of the information in this post was drawn from Cities of Sin, a 1930s publication of the League of Nations Commission on White Slavery.

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels released and for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com. Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One taking place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun is set in the war in the Pacific. 

The Blessings and Disappointments of a Long Life

By Florida Memory, via Wikimedia Commons

This week I read a novel by one of my favorite mystery writers, Faye Kellerman. In it, she was describing the parents of her protagonist. The father was 77, the wife, 75. Both were described in ways that made clear that they were elderly. These characters were the same ages as my wife, Annette, and me, but we don’t look on ourselves as elderly.

Long life can be both a blessing and a curse. Watching your children and grandchildren grow from infants to young adults can be a blessing. We are proud of all our children and grandchildren, although they are each a singular person with individual personalities. My wife and I are blessed with devoted partners who treat life as a great adventure to pursue together. We were blessed with successful careers that provided a secure retirement. We’re blessed with a shared love of vocal music and many years of singing together in church choirs. Retirement can yield the time to pursue old dreams, as I am now with my writing and Annette does with her Master Gardening.

Living many years also gives one a long view of history. In a meeting with a group of young adults a few years ago, I was asked what I thought was the most significant thing I had witnessed in my life. My answer came instantly, “The civil rights revolution.” This surprised my young listeners. Having been born after the 1960s, they had no conception of how bad circumstances were for African Americans in the south during the last years of “Jim Crow.” When the market crashed in 2008, many of us older investors didn’t panic. We’d been through downturns before and knew to ride it out. I doubt that anyone under thirty really understands living under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, as we did during the Cold War. Yet we didn’t buckle under the pressure.

Time does not always result in progress. People my age remember when Congress used to actually function. Leaders of both parties conferred with the President and worked out compromises all could live with. Politics was not nearly as nasty as it has become in recent years. Compromise was recognized as essential to the democratic process, not viewed as caving in on one’s principles. The country moved forward. Watching the dysfunction of Washington today is heartbreaking to one who loves this country.

I remain thankful for a long life and good health, but most of all for my good luck in choosing a life partner. I suppose one day we really will get old, but we’re doing everything we can to stall that inevitability.

Note: Warren Bell is a historical fiction author with two novels released and for sale either for Kindle or in paperback from Amazon.com.  Both are set during WWII, with Fall Eagle One takes place in Europe, and Hold Back the Sun is set in the war in the Pacific.