The Limits of Conservative Apologia

If I plotted the repulsiveness of Kathleen Parker's writing during my politically sentient years on a graph, with time the horizontal axis and level of repulsiveness on the vertical (the origin representing no repulsiveness whatsoever), the line of best fit would start quite high and gradually slope downward, presently resting somewhere around 2 units of repulsiveness. Her column from today's WaPo definitely represents an outlier, though.

Kathleen's not entirely to blame, as it seems the entire conservative establishment has sought to legitimize the bellicosity of those who wish to shout down, boo, heckle, and disrupt health care town hall meetings. Still, her piece bears some comment.

After writing about the new-found joblessness of three friends, she takes on the town hall gatherings:

Even so, I'm not so sure these protests are insignificant. Are my three friends really so far removed from such expressions of acute frustration? Lately, they have a new understanding of how uncertainty, complicated by unemployment and growing debt morphs into anger.

And then, perchance, to rage?

Anger at whom? Democrats? Libruls? Gays! Mexicans! Scapegoats! A friend of differing political stripes commented that the protests were the result of people's anger over the huge expansion of the federal government into people's lives. If that's the case, where was the protest when No Child Left Behind was passed? Or Medicare Part D? Both were enormous expansions of the federal government that raised nary a peep from the masses. Or at least none that I heard...Another way of reading this anger is that it is the result of overheated rhetoric and misinformation in a time of economic unrest. Aforementioned death panels and whatnot.

Parker's friend Sandra goes on:

"Angst about health care is real because people are just anxious in general. They don't have jobs, and those who do are worried about losing them. They're saying, 'Holy crap, I've got $10,000 on my credit card, and you're talking about change? Guess what, dude, I can't handle any more change right now.' "

"I've got $10,000 on my credit card! The government better not push any radical efforts to regulate the credit card industry! I can't handle change!" The prospect of change being threatening when under the status quo, you were able to rack up an unsustainable $10,000 debt AND lose your job due to a gross economic downturn is really mind-boggling. Cognitive dissonance at play.

The piece goes on to raise the specter of a growing deficit as a justifiable source for all this rage, and tells Obama and Congress to take note. I want to be very clear right now by saying to those (especially in the media) not denouncing this angry populism: you are playing with fire. Continue to antagonize the masses through the dissemination (or tacit acceptance) of misinformation and half-truths, and it will respond in uglier and more violent ways.

If you want to participate in some real critiques of our current situation, walk yourself back to at least 2003, when war was launched in Iraq. If you want to go back further, go to 2001, when a surplus was given back to taxpayers in lieu of addressing any long term structural problems in our social welfare apparatus. Was it not known back then that our health care spending and entitlement programs were going to expand massively? In short, anyone who tries to dump this on the feet of Democrats, Liberals, Gays, Mexicans, or Obama, is denying recent history for the sake of bettering their political prospects.

"God Bless You"

Sarah Fine, a former DC public school teacher, writes about why she left the profession.

There is yet another factor that played a part in my choice, something that I rarely mention. It has to do with the way that some people, mostly nonteachers, talk about the profession.

"Why teach?" they ask.

Do my lawyer and consultant friends find themselves having to explain why they chose their professions? I doubt it. Everyone seems to know why they do what they do. When people ask me about teaching, however, what they really seem to mean is that it's unfathomable that anyone with real talent would want to stay in the classroom for long. Teaching is an admirable and, well, necessary profession, they say, but it's not for the ambitious. "It's just so nice," was the most recent version I heard, from a businesswoman sitting next to me on a plane.

The corollary for special ed teachers is nauseatingly predictable: "God bless you", "You must have such patience", or "Oh, I could never do that." Kinda funny. Not in a haha way though. The other way.

The Death Panels

There's a certain irony when charges such as these, courtesy of former Gov. Palin, are leveled at a man whose mother died from cancer while, if we are to believe his stump speeches, arguing with insurance bureaucrats about her health care coverage.

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Memories

This is one of my favorite games of the late Favre era. Caffrey's erupted as Favre hit Jennings in OT, people tipped over barstools, chants of "Monday Night Favre" rang out, and palms stung from the intensity of the high fives. Thanks for the memories, Brett.

Tip of the Hat, Wag of the *vomiting in mouth*

Amen:

As part of her swing through Africa next week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to visit eastern Congo, the epicenter of two wars in the past decade, and denounce the alarming rates of rape in the region, an official said Wednesday.

"She is intending to go to Goma, where a lot of this violence is taking place," said Johnnie Carson, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, in an interview, referring to the provincial capital of eastern Congo.

The Congolese military launched an offensive earlier this year against Rwandan Hutu rebels who have lived for years in eastern Congo. The rebels have been a major cause of the deadliest documented conflict since World War II, which has involved several countries in the area and left millions dead from the violence and turmoil.

The eastern Congo has one of the highest rates of sexual violence against women in the world, with both soldiers and rebel groups using rape as a tool of war.

Clinton also is scheduled to visit Kenya, South Africa, Angola, Nigeria, Liberia and Cape Verde on her trip.

Oy vey:

Fox News Channel commentator Glenn Beck said he believes President Barack Obama is a racist.

Beck made the statement during a guest appearance Tuesday on the "Fox & Friends" morning show. He said Obama has exposed himself as a person with "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture."

Race Related

It's dawned on me, after reading some other good blogs, that I don't have to post on every article I find interesting. I can just dump them all in one post. So - in light of the Gates issue, here are some race related articles from the past few days.

1) Juan Williams advice to young black men: "If you're reaching for your wallet, make sure the cops know you are reaching for your wallet. Say yes sir...in this situation, President Obama and Professor Gates didn't hold up that line."

2) Maureen Dowd's unusually cogent analysis of the Gates thing.

3) Restaurant workers of all races dislike waiting on black customers because they believe they will tip less, study says.

The Context of the Gates Issue

By Thursday afternoon, I had heard how Officer Crowley taught courses in racial profiling and attempted to resuscitate Reggie Brown. Dear Lord, the man put his lips on a black man's lips! He is NO racist!

What I've been saying for some time, however, is that racism is a systemic phenomenon. Racism is the interplay of individuals, social practices, history, traditions, and assumptions. You can be a bigot in a non-racist system, and you can be a non-bigot in a racist system.

I don't see much value in describing individuals as racist - it'd be like describing me as a capitalist. What does that mean? I exist in and gain benefit from a capitalist economic system, therefore I must support it? I have to reject all elements of capitalism to avoid being labeled a capitalist? No. It's simply a misapplication of the term. Much the same can be said of the term "racist". More precision is needed before we throw these terms around. This may be straight out of Noel Adams' Phil 104 class, but it still holds true: distinctions are important!

I attempted to disentangle racism and bigotry during the '08 primaries, when Geraldine Ferraro was being called a racist by some folks for her criticism of Barack Obama.

And that reality is this: America was founded only as a nation for European men, and people with darker skin were not accorded equal rights as those men. This has obviously changed throughout our history, and we've made pretty substantial progress towards making the color of one's skin irrelevant to his or her political and social status. But the fact remains - the idea of race was a defining reality of America's birth, and the inequalities spawned as a result of that fact have been perpetuated to this day.

Turning to racism: it is a term that describes a society (nation, culture, what have you) in which socially constructed race is still a means by which rights are accorded and respected. Racism, standing alone, isn't really applicable to an individual. It explains a systemic phenomenon.

If Johnny Reb down in Baton Rouge sees a man with darker skin than he, ostensibly descended from African ancestors, and calls him the n-word, the gut reaction is to call Johnny Reb a racist. But in fact this is an example of bigotry, and it is accurate to call Johnny a bigot. Bigotry is the personal manifestation of racism. Racism fosters ideas of superiority and inferiority, which in turn fosters instances of bigotry by individuals.

Turning to the Gates issue, one has to ask why we haven't heard more about Professor Gates' background, other than that he is a noted African-American scholar. If it's important that Sgt. Crowley gave Reggie Brown mouth-to-mouth, then surely it's important to know if Gates has ever been unfairly targeted or excluded from a community based on his skin color. Stanley Fish, former head of the Duke English department (and now a blogger at NYT), was responsible for bringing Gates to Duke. He recounts the reaction to Gates by the Duke community:

As the story unfolded in the press and on the Internet, I flashed back 20 years or so to the time when Gates arrived in Durham, N.C., to take up the position I had offered him in my capacity as chairman of the English department of Duke University. One of the first things Gates did was buy the grandest house in town (owned previously by a movie director) and renovate it. During the renovation workers would often take Gates for a servant and ask to be pointed to the house’s owner. The drivers of delivery trucks made the same mistake.

The message was unmistakable: What was a black man doing living in a place like this?

At the university (which in a past not distant at all did not admit African-Americans ), Gates’s reception was in some ways no different. Doubts were expressed in letters written by senior professors about his scholarly credentials, which were vastly superior to those of his detractors. (He was already a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the so called “genius award.”) There were wild speculations (again in print) about his salary, which in fact was quite respectable but not inordinate; when a list of the highest-paid members of the Duke faculty was published, he was nowhere on it.

From the perspective of a white supervisor, Gates was unfairly judged because of his race. Racism at play. Some individual bigots resenting the fact that a black man was making so much money, or fearful of where he would pull the department academically.

Fast forward to the Cambridge episode, and the social dynamics at play are a little bit more clear. An individual who in his past has been unfairly targeted due to his race may or may not have been targeted again.

Notably absent from our mainstream discussion of this incident is the person who filed the report. She was a neighbor to one of the most prominent scholars in the country and she couldn't recognize him? She saw two men (one of whom walks with a cane, the other who was a driver and I assume either older or dressed respectably) futzing with a door, and her immediate reaction is to pick up a phone and call the police. Mind you it is 7 am - daylight. Why would there be a break in attempt at that time? Does the situation warrant closer investigation before calling the police? In my mind, these moments are the grossest indicators of racism at play.

Once the police had been called, anger on the part of Gates was a predictable response, as was that of the police officer. Calling any one of the players in this scenario racist is unknowable at this point. Maybe the officer or the reporter are white supremacists who believe whites should always have greater rights because of their mental superiority - that would make them racists, but we really can't conclude that from this situation. Maybe Gates secretly harbors the belief that all whites are devils and blacks ought to control the country. Again, unknowable.

As it turns out, the officer seems to be neither a bigot nor a racist, but his actions were dictated by racism - a systemic phenomenon. The same can be said of Gates. If I'm going to jump on board and label anyone in this situation, it is the woman who called the police. But I wasn't there, so who the hell knows.

People on both sides are trying to oversimplify what happened, make the characters into sinner and saint, but it needn't be that way. We just need to understand that racism compels us all to do some very unfortunate things, and we need to commit ourselves to dismantling the structures that allow racism to continue.

The Taliban: "They're not stupid."

NY Times reports on the proficiency of the Afghan Taliban.

In three combat tours in Anbar Province, Marine Sgt. Jacob Tambunga fought the deadliest insurgents in Iraq.

But he says he never encountered an enemy as tenacious as what he saw immediately after arriving at this outpost in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. In his first days here in late June, he fought through three ambushes, each lasting as long as the most sustained fight he saw in Anbar.

Like other Anbar veterans here, Sergeant Tambunga was surprised to discover guerrillas who, if not as lethal, were bolder than those he fought in Iraq.

I am not well versed in military history, but on first read this seems pretty obvious. Iraqi culture under Sadaam was top-heavy, authoritarian. Tribal authorities persisted, but under the control of a strong central power. Afghanistan has never had that kind of centralization. It also has a long and proud history of defending itself against foreigners, dating back to antiquity. Beginning in 1979, there is a segment of Afghan society that has been fighting for the last 30 years. If they are going to be defeated or coopted, it's going to take a lot of blood and treasure.

Mission Accomplished

From the application of a former intern to Tennessee state Sen. Paul Stanley (no not that Paul Stanley...).

to learn about the functions of government at the state level from first-hand experience

He had an affair with her. He also refuses to support Planned Parenthood because he doesn't believe in sex before marriage.

Mark Buehrle's Perfect Game

White Sox fans were treated to some fine baseball yesterday. Watch the condensed game from MLB.com (It's 11 minutes.) Not only did Buehrle pitch a perfect game, but the Josh Fields hit a grand slam, and Gabe Kapler had two great catches for the Rays. Good baseball.

Obama is the greatest president ever....

At least, according to the folks who judge presidential brilliance by the DOW.

Kai Ryssdal: We normally wait until a little later in the program to tell you this, but this was a mighty fine day on Wall Street. There were better-than-expected profits at some key companies. Better-than-expected home sales figures, too. Marketplace's Jeremy Hobson has more from our better-than-expected desk in New York.

The masters of the universe must have liked the press conference from the professor in chief last night. That is really the ONLY logical conclusion one can deduce from this data.

How is this a gaffe?

Biden in Ukraine:

During a quick visit by a handful of reporters, Biden also could be overheard expounding on the virtues of Ukrainian women.

“I cannot believe that a Frenchman visiting Kiev went back home and told his colleagues he discovered something and didn’t say he discovered the most beautiful women in the world; that’s my observation,” Biden said.

The man speaks truth. Look no further than their head of state.

Ryan Bingham live

I saw Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses in Scottsdale last night. It was one of the better live shows I've seen - the venue was small, sound good, and the band rockin'. The labels country, alt country, and americana really don't do the band justice - a lot of songs started slow and country-ish but picked up and got progressively bluesier and more rockin' by the end. A couple of my favorites (from youtube, not last night):

Tell My Mother I Miss Her So


Southside of Heaven

Wanted: More Diverse Readings on the American Experience

It's dawning on me, living here in Phoenix, that my cultural analyses of America possess some serious blindspots. When I look around my parking lot, or at the kids I teach, I don't see only white and black kids, but those are the only two literary traditions I've read deeply. So I ask for your assistance. Please recommend some good reading in the Latino, Chicano, and American Indian traditions, so I can expand my understanding of this beautiful human mosaic we call home.

Around the World in 30 Days - The Big Buddha

On our third day in Hong Kong, we traveled to the island of Lantau and headed up to see the biggest statue of the Buddha in the world. Its official name is the Tian Tan Buddha statue, but it's referred to everywhere as the Big Buddha. And it really is quite big.



Like the rest of Hong Kong, Lantau is very hilly, and the Buddha sits atop the highest part of the island. In order to get up to the statue, you can either take a bus or a tram. We chose the latter.


It's a very pretty ride up, passing first over the Lantau bay and then climbing above a number of hills and deep valleys. I wouldn't recommend it for those with a fear of heights, though. It was pretty windy the day we went up, and our tram car was swaying back and forth the entire time. I was a little queasy at first, but got used to it.


After rounding a ridge, we finally spotted the Buddha in the distance.


Of course, like the rest of Hong Kong, the whole thing was pretty commercialized. I'd heard similar stories from friends about the Starbucks in the middle of the Forbidden City in China, and sure enough, on our walk from the tram to the Buddha, we passed a Starbucks and a number of high-end eateries.

After climbing about 300 steps, we reached the base of the Buddha statue, who is surrounded by seven boddhisatvas offering him gifts. The low clouds set upon us gave the statue a very mystical ambiance.




After spending some time at the statue, we walked a short way to the Po Lin Buddhist Monastery. After taking in some of the shrines and architecture, we took a short rest and headed back to Central Hong Kong.


It was a lovely day trip, but very touristy. Not just the little village with Starbucks, cafes, and gift shops, but the statue itself. The essence for most visitors seemed to be not a desire for any kind of spiritual experience, but rather a shot of the statue from the perfect angle. I believe the Buddha referred to that as samsara.

The monastery, too, although very pretty, was under construction. Numerous signs informed visitors that they could have a brick, a wall, or even a dragon-wrapped column named after them for a price. I guess that's how they manage to keep the place looking so nice. Sure, the same stuff happens at churches here. I just always thought Buddhism was more dedicated to the ascetic spirit and shunning of worldly things. Not so much at this shrine and monastery.

Recently Watched: Gimme Shelter

I've always thought the dancing of Logan Adams to be eerily reminiscent of Mick Jagger's early in his career. This documentary further solidified that belief.

Much better things have been written about this movie, probably one of the most famous music documentaries ever made, so I won't say much. After the first half, I was convinced Mick Jagger was the sexiest man in the world, and Keith Richard was the coolest. And by the time the film was finished, I thought they, along with a bunch of other people, were really naive. One of the DVD extra features that is pretty cool is the discussion and calls taken on KSAN, a local San Fran radio station, the day after Altamont, in which the hosts and callers try to figure out what the hell happened. Check it out.

Racism ain't dead.

I haven't intended to write so much on the news lately, but I can't help it when I read some things. Like the abomination that went down in Cambridge, MA last week:

Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates had locked himself out of his house. Gates, among the nation's pre-eminent African-American academics, soon found himself confronted by Cambridge, Mass., police investigating a potential break-in -- meaning, of course, his attempt to get back into his own house.

From the Boston Globe:

Friends of Gates said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver’s license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours last Thursday, they said.

The Globe article goes on to talk about Gates' friend, Dr. Allen Counter.

Counter has faced a similar situation himself. The well-known neuroscience professor, who is also black, was stopped by two Harvard police officers in 2004 after being mistaken for a robbery suspect as he crossed Harvard Yard. They threatened to arrest him when he could not produce identification.

This comes less than two weeks after 65 black children were kicked out of a suburban Philadelphia swimming pool due to fears they would "change the complexion and atmosphere" of the pool.

Please, please let us not buy into the fallacy that the movement for civil rights and equality is over and all race-related issues are fine because we have a black president. We still have a LOT of work to do, America.

Israel's Insistence on Building Settlements in Occupied Territory

In light of the recent news that construction will begin soon on a new Jewish settlement in Jerusalem, I found myself asking what the next logical step for the US will be.

To recap in one sentence, the Obama administration has called loudly and clearly since its inauguration for a freeze to all settlement construction in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and Israel has continued to build settlements in those areas.

I looked around CFR and FP magazine in search of some op-ed pieces on how this could potentially play out, but haven't found anything directly addressing what position the US will take if Israel flat out refuses to halt construction.

I did, however, find this piece by FP blogger and Mideast expert David Rothkopf titled "Obama is No Friend of Israel".

Despite the endless and baseless propaganda to the contrary, getting tough with the Israelis on settlements or on other elements of the Israel-Palestine agenda will actually do precious little to address our greater concerns in the region while accepting a nuclear-capable Iran because we don't have the will to stop them from getting will damage U.S. interests in great and lasting ways.

That's not to say we shouldn't seek to actively advance a two-state solution for the Israelis and the Palestinians. It doesn't say we should agree with Israel on everything and we shouldn't pressure for change where we disagree. But as a potentially unprecedented rift looms and as a shift in the politics of the relationship seems to be taking place, it's probably worth taking a deep breath and asking ourselves if we have fully thought through the consequences of what might come next.

I disagree. One of our chief concerns in the Mideast is combating terrorism, and the occupation of Palestinian territories is a pan-Arab, pan-Islamic grievance. While the Israel/Palestine conflict itself doesn't directly spawn terrorism, it creates a feeling of persecution on behalf of some Muslims who are then more easily radicalized. Making a tenable two-state solution happen is definitely in the US' interest, but Palestinian parties will never come to the table as long as settlements continue to be built on occupied territory.

FP is one of the few sites where I read comments, and even there the Israel-related posts can sometimes get a bit ridiculous, but a few comments worth reprinting.

On the value of settlements to America, Zathras writes:

At bottom, the tension between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government is due to the latter's reluctance to challenge the intransigent and excitable pro-settlement factions within Israel. I'm sympathetic to Netanyahu's political problem here, but it is his problem, not ours. The United States can't be tip-toeing around every issue that causes the governing coalition du jour in Israel heartburn. Jewish settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan River serve no American national interest. None. Zero. If America and Israel are facing "... a potentially unprecedented rift" over an American call for Israel to stop expanding settlements, surely Israel bears the greater responsibility for keeping such a rift from opening.

And A balanced view suggests a possible outcome of halting settlement activity:

Ironically, if Obama is successful in forcing Israel to raze its settlements and pull out the IDF for good, just as Rahm Emanuel suggested, Irans claims to moral superiority will evaporate, as will that of Hamas, Hezbollah and most of the other groups who work against Israel. The settlements actually HURT our negotiating position with Iran, and feed these other groups with willing recruits.

At a time when domestic politics are getting trickier by the day, I hope the administration can maintain the will to push Israel on the settlement issue.

Right Wing Talk Radio/Fox-stoked Xenophobia

Yikes. Rep. Mike Castle (R-Delaware) cowing to a horde of angry white middle-aged people at a listening session.

Recently Read: The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

In 100 days in the spring of 1994, the country of Rwanda experienced a slaughter of historic proportions as Hutu militias, soldiers, and ordinary citizens turned on their Tutsi neighbors, shooting, hacking, and raping at will. It's estimated that at least 800,000 people were killed in a three month period.

Though concrete evidence was hard to find, few deny that this was a categorical instance of genocide, prompting comparisons to Hitler's extermination program of the 1930s and 40s. In terms of scale, intensity, and carnage, however, the Rwandan genocide seems to hold more in common with the Rape of Nanking, the first well-known mass atrocity of the World War II period.

Japanese and Chinese troops battled throughout the 1930s, and by 1937 Japan gained control of Shanghai after a long siege. Its troops than began a campaign to take nearby Nanking, China's capital and a stockade of cultural history. After months of air raids (including one which sunk a ship carrying American diplomats and journalists), Japanese troops began the siege of Nanking in early December, 1937. Facing exhausted and disorganized Chinese troops, the Japanese easily took control of the city and unleashed a wave of terror upon its civilians and soldiers.

Rather than formalizing any system for processing the estimated 90,000 Chinese POWs, Japanese troops instead executed them, using some for bayonet and sword practice while simply machine-gunning others. Account after account depicts Chinese troops led in lines of ten, forced to dig their own graves, and then shot.

Barbaric as they were towards the Chinese troops, the Japanese were equally savage towards Nanking's civilians. Shops were looted, city blocks torched, and civilians killed at will, in every conceivable way. One method of execution and torture recounted often in the book is burning civilians alive. Having read a fair amount about some of the 20th century's worst acts of barbarism, I still found parts of the book difficult to read, and the pictures included are chilling.

As the name of the atrocity implies, the most disturbing aspect of this episode was the massive scale of rape that took place. Rape has long been used as a weapon of war and an instrument of genocide, but it is difficult to say exactly what prompted such a phenomenon in this case. Undoubtedly it was partially the result of a long-nurtured campaign of dehumanization of the Chinese people by the Japanese military. Japanese soldiers repeatedly describe the Chinese as "pigs" whose lives were worth much less than humans. Still, the Rape of Nanking saw atrocities not perpetrated on other Chinese cities that had fallen to the Japanese. Perhaps it was the sense of impunity possessed by Japanese soldiers, who entered a city largely abandoned by its own protectors and much of the international community. Rape was perpetrated on women young and old, and often ended in execution. Again, the details are enough to turn the stomach.

The Rape of Nanking possesses all the hallmarks of other mass atrocities, including the rationalization, denial, and propagandizing by its perpetrators. All of these elements are documented in the book, as are the tales of three extraordinary foreigners who saved thousands of lives by establishing and maintaining a safe zone in the city.

The most intriguing of these three is John Rabe, a German businessman and the deputy of the local Nazi party. He was elected president of the safe zone and worked valiantly both to protect Chinese civilians and publicize the atrocity on the world stage. Chang's book, when it was published, provided the most authoritative account of Rabe's role and his life after Nanking, as her research turned up his surviving family members and thousands of his personal documents.

After falling out of favor with the Nazi Party back in Germany for his willingness to openly out its ally Japan's barbaric behavior, Rabe largely disappeared from the historical record. He was eventually rendered penniless due to an expensive denazification trial process and would have lived in destitution if not for the charity of Nanking's residents. Once his plight was publicized in Nanking in the postwar years, Nanking's residents established a fund for him and his family and supplied him with regular care packages. To many, he was regarded as a living buddha. This, more than any other piece of Chang's book, provides the reader with some comfort about our human condition.

Wow - I intended this to be a short blurb on the book, but I guess that's not quite possible with a topic of such gravity. The book is obviously informative, but Chang's greatest feat may be in creating a historical document that is accessible. It doesn't overwhelm with statistics, dense academic language, or long personal accounts. It flows incredibly well and gives the reader a good background on the culture of Japan's military and the long buried history of the Rape of Nanking. I highly recommend it, but would caution that some of the violent scenes are quite disturbing.