{"id":3055,"date":"2016-11-11T07:07:55","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T22:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=3055"},"modified":"2016-11-11T07:07:55","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T22:07:55","slug":"a-tiny-little-post-on-mr-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=3055","title":{"rendered":"A Tiny Little Post on Mr. Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just like in other countries around the world, the election of Donald Trump to the office of the President of the United States was big news in Japan. In the lunch cafeteria of the factory where I work the TV was tuned to election news, and Trump clinched the presidency right around lunch time. My students were pretty surprised. The news media here had Clinton heavily favored to win, and so it really caught everyone off guard.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was also surprised. I don\u2019t live in the United States anymore – I live here in Japan, a country with plenty of its own political and social issues. I never expected the United States to elect someone like Donald Trump to its highest office, and during the past two years I was asked by my students occasionally if I thought Trump had a chance to win. \u201cNo,\u201d I said, \u201cthe American people know better than to hire a reality TV star as president.\u201d Clearly I misunderstood the will of the American people. I don\u2019t think anyone was cheated and I don\u2019t think there was a rigged election – the American people got the president that they wanted. <\/span><\/p>\n

These past two days I have been asked by each of my students, during their one-on-one classes, just exactly what happened that Americans picked Trump. I have twenty five students, so I have to explain what happened twenty five times. It ain\u2019t easy! But if you look at my students\u2019 expressions, you can see the real question behind their words: \u201cWhat the fuck are Americans thinking?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

For Japanese people watching American politics from afar, they really don\u2019t have an opportunity to dive deep into a candidates policies and understand their political convictions. They have little background knowledge of the candidate besides the short clips played on the evening news. Truly, what they see is what they get. They understand that Trump has inconsistent opinions – what he says today might contradict what he said yesterday. They see that he uses vocabulary at the elementary school level, that he cuts off and shouts over his opponents, and seems incapable of careful, measured thought about complex issues. <\/span><\/p>\n

Believe me, in Japan careful and measured thought is a very prized thing, indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The President of the United States serves as kind of a representative of all Americans to people living around the world. If you are an American, you are Trump. To people you meet in other countries, the first thing they think when shaking your hand is going to be, \u201cso maybe this person is one of the reasons that angry, unpredictable guy has his finger on the nuclear button right now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe the most important thing to come out of this situation for me is to realize that I don\u2019t know what Americans want as much as I thought I did. I guess that comes with living away from your home country for more than a decade. <\/span><\/p>\n

Although I am not happy with the result, I still have ultimate faith in the system \u2013 the checks and balances and power division that makes up the core of American politics. I\u2019m hoping this will be a wake up call for Americans – for better or worse, this guy is our representative on the world stage. <\/span><\/p>\n

And everyone is watching.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just like in other countries around the world, the election of Donald Trump to the office of the President of the United States was big news in Japan. In the lunch cafeteria of the factory where I work the TV was tuned to election news, and Trump clinched the presidency right around lunch time. My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-Nh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}