Thoughts about comfort and leaders . . .

Our leaders have so many opportunities to not meet our expectations. And it seems to me that the most remembered presidential failures and successes are the ones that, in the grand scheme of things, matter least.

President Bush reading "The Pet Goat"

We Americans all remember President Bush’s decision to keep reading “The Pet Goat” with an elementary class after being informed of the September 11 attacks, and to fly over the wake of destruction left by Hurricane Katrina, instead of wading into it. Those actions, I think it's fair to say, did not bring great comfort to the American People.

But President Bush also walked out alone into the center of a packed Yankee stadium shortly after the September 11th attacks, which was a terrific message to all of us that the American spirit was undaunted. I don't know about you, but I thought it was very brave of our president.

Our American culture is big on ceremony that masks itself as non-ceremonial action. In times of trouble, we expect our leaders to swing into action, throw balls, get down to the business of leading us through whatever Eve of Destruction we've landed in toward whatever brighter days lies ahead.

We expect leaders to go to whatever part of the country is in trouble and take a good look around. And we take great comfort from our president swinging into Head Cheerleader Mode, giving speeches about how, sure, times are tough, but the tough have gotten going, the American Spirit is undimmed and indomitable, and we, the American People, are going to get through this together.

In my lifetime, America has never had to deal with as destructive and desperate a situation as the current one in Japan. The country's death toll is likely to exceed 18,000; radiation has reached the food chain; the World Bank estimates $235 billion in damages. 


To put  these numbers in perspective:

Though estimates vary, Hurricane Katrina caused $81.2 billion in damages in 2005, according to a widely cited study by the National Hurricane Center. Last year, the costs of natural disasters soared to a worldwide total of $109 billion, three times the total in 2009, according to the United Nations. In 2010, the Haiti quake cost $8 billion, floods in Pakistan $9.5 billion and an 8.8-magnitude quake in Chile $30 billion.

The Japanese people have received high praise for their resiliency amidst this mega-crisis; the government, high praise for the effectiveness of its nuclear disaster plan. But its hard to imagine a more comforting action for the Japanese people than that made last week by Emperor Akihito. And it wasn't brave; it wasn't decisive; and there was nothing "can-do" about it.

To put Emperor Akihito's position into perspective, until 1945, the Japanese Emporer was considered a god, but World War II put an end to that way of thinking. Now, according to the Japanese Constitution, Emperor Akihito is a "symbol of the state and the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power."

Last Wednesday, this symbol spoke publicly to his people about his country's crisis, something he has never done in his entire twenty year reign.

The Guardian reported the news this way:

When the emperor of Japan addresses his nation, you know there is a crisis. On 15 August 1945, a week after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hirohito's radio address announcing the surrender of Japan was broadcast across the country. Until last week, however, no event in the country's history was considered traumatic enough for his son, Akihito, to perform a similar task. 

Emporer Akihito (AP photo)

All that changed last Wednesday when the consequences of Japan's biggest-ever recorded earthquake spurred the 77-year-old emperor into action with a televised call for concerted national action. For those old enough to remember Hirohito's Gyokuon-hoso ("Jewel Voice Broadcast"), it was a stark reminder of the gravity of Japan's situation. And in contrast to Hirohito's address, which had been couched in language familiar only to the well-educated and notable for a confusing lack of detail about the surrender itself, Akihito was clear in his message of hope. 

Emperor Akihito spoke simply for about five minutes, saying, among other things:

"I truly hope the victims of the disaster never give up hope, take care of themselves, and live strong for tomorrow. Also, I want all citizens of Japan to remember everyone who has been affected by the devastation, not only today but for a long time afterwards -- and help with the recovery" 

"Currently, the entire nation is putting forth its best effort to save all suffering people. However, under the severe cold weather, evacuees are having a very difficult time because they lack food, water, and energy sources. Also, I am deeply concerned that the current nuclear plant situation is critical. I truly hope that with so many people working together to help, the situation will not worsen." 

"I am deeply impressed to see people who have survived, and are suffering from the biggest disaster, encourage themselves to live for tomorrow. This is so courageous."

Emperor Akihito's words perhaps sound a tad uninspiring to us. There's no cheerleading, energizing, loin-girding rhetoric.

We are such a casual, noisy people -- and long may we remain so. A quiet, heart-felt, five minute speech from a "symbol of the state and the unity of the people" might not bring us much comfort in the face of disaster.

But we are not the Japanese. And, given this rather glaring distinction, this one particularly noisy and casual American found something tremendously moving -- and comforting -- in Emperor Akihito's speech.

One world

All the other news today seems so – so small, next to the news from Japan. I cannot stop thinking about how, while my life trundles on in its pleasantly cocoon-like, middle-class rut, the lives of thousands, maybe millions, of Japanese have been reduced to a long-odds struggle for survival. And that the difference between those people's Monday mornings and mine is an arbitrary shake of the earth.

This post is about what those weekend thoughts made me feel. I rarely write about personal feelings in this blog, but today I'm going to.

As I'm sure you noticed, it was beautiful  here in WMRA Land; warm enough and calm enough on Saturday and Sunday to get outside and do some serious early-spring weeding. Here is a picture of me in my back yard yesterday.

Below is a picture of a Japanese woman around my age, presumably taken this weekend, maybe in her backyard.

What I want very hard to keep in mind today, and tomorrow, and for a long, long time, is that I share a world with that woman.

I also want to keep in mind that hovering and happening nuclear meltdowns threaten the viability of life in Japan.  The unfolding nuclear disaster there is science fiction made real; and it makes me feel subhuman to pretend for a moment that anything else matters in the same way that situation matters.

NHK, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An explosion Monday at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station blew the roof off the containment building of reactor No. 3, right.  Reactor No. 1’s containment building, left, was damaged in an explosion on Saturday.

Here's an update on the nuclear situation from this morning's New York Times:

As the scale of Japan’s nuclear crisis begins to come to light, experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months. 

The emergency flooding of two stricken reactors with seawater and the resulting steam releases are a desperate step intended to avoid a much bigger problem: a full meltdown of the nuclear cores in two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. On Monday, an explosion blew the roof off the second reactor, not damaging the core, officials said, but presumably leaking more radiation. 

So far, Japanese officials have said the melting of the nuclear cores in the two plants is assumed to be “partial,” and the amount of radioactivity measured outside the plants, though twice the level Japan considers safe, has been relatively modest. 

But Pentagon officials reported Sunday that helicopters flying 60 miles from the plant picked up small amounts of radioactive particulates — still being analyzed, but presumed to include cesium-137 and iodine-121 — suggesting widening environmental contamination.

So there we are. At the moment. And you and I will just have to wait to know where things stand tonight, tomorrow, and for the rest of a long, long time.

Such impersonally cataclysmic occurrences always make me think of the day in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was killed.

I was holed up in an isolated boarding school in Massachusetts. Rumors of Kennedy’s assassination had gone flying around Northfield School for Girls all afternoon, but I’d paid them no attention – rumors were always flying around my boarding school. Then I saw the school’s flag lowered to half-mast and knew this particular rumor was true. I also knew that a far-away action had irrevocably changed the world. Meaning my personal world, isolated as it was by its remoteness and an insular intellectual focus. It was probably the first time I realized that we humans are inescapably intertwined.

What I also remember about that day is how passionately I wanted to do something to help, and how I couldn’t think of anything at all useful to do. The world had been severely wounded, and I had no power to help it heal. I have never, before or since, felt quite so emotionally isolated and impotent as I did that day at Northfield.

Over the weekend, I  found found myself feeling quite differently to the post-earthquake/tsunami situation in Japan; to the realization that the world is enduring what I can only (old hippie that I am) describe as another jolt of cosmic mayhem. Instead of feeling emotionally isolated by this physically far-removed disaster, I've felt united – with the Japanese, with you, with everyone else who gives a damn about something other than her/his own survival as one of the fittest.

The reality is that those of us without specific disaster expertise probably can’t really help Japan or its people in any way other than to give a few bucks, but you and I can help the world by simply resolving to live more decently; to be as kind and useful as we can toward everyone who comes our way. We can resolve to do more quiet good in this troubled, obstreperous, mendacious world; to tone down the mean-spirited shouting we do about stuff that doesn't seem to matter nearly as much this Monday morning as it did last Monday morning.

I feel so strongly today (and most days, actually) that the hard truth is we can only do what we can do to help the world be a kinder, more helpful place, but we must take care to do that. We simply must.