When it comes to the politics of pragmatism, the Japanese do not give a straw about what the rest of the world thinks of US president Donald J Trump – the man who trumped everybody in his country to clamber onto the Oval Office. That sets the Japanese poles apart from the British and the rest of America’s European counterparts.
In any instance why should Japan ever care if Trump builds a wall, issues a travel ban, lectures the rest of the world on the sacrifices they need to make for their own defence or say things that may wrongly be construed as having sexist, racist overtones.
To say it like it is, would a racist and sexist president appoint an India-born woman as ambassador to the United Nations, especially after she had hurled vitriol on him during his campaign trail?
Racism and sexism are hard-boiled abstract topics and cannot be scientifically proven except by what exists loosely in anecdotes. To be called a racist, one has to practise, endorse and institutionalise policies promoting one race over another like how Hitler did. At the very most, Trump is a plain old bigot as he cannot stomach those offering a different view. He is not incarcerating or hurting people physically just because they look and speak differently! He is just a different man with a different world view however, unorthodox that world view maybe.
Let us all be a little fair to him. Like Ronald Reagan before him he did make good on his promises. When the Gipper wanted the old Soviet Union buried, he did make it happen. And like Reagan, make no mistake Trump is just another US nationalist who enjoys good relations with Japan.
As a matter of fact, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became the first leader to meet the president-elect in his gleaming Trump Tower.
And news from the Wall Street Journal (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japans-abe-to-unveil-plan-for-massive-investment-in-us-2017-02-06) says that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is planning to offer a vision for greater Japanese investment in the U.S. when meeting President Donald Trump in Washington on Friday, seeking to counter the president’s criticism about trade, Japanese officials said.
According to the WSJ, Abe’s five-pronged program, titled “U.S.-Japan Growth and Employment Initiative,” says the two nations could work together to generate 700,000 jobs in the U.S. and create new markets worth $450 billion over the next decade, the officials said. The program doesn’t detail how those numbers could be reached through specific projects or corporate investments.