I don’t watch much network television, and certainly not late-night comedians. But I couldn’t resist the latest viral rant from late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s comparing Japan to the United States. From his monologue:
“But now, after traveling to Japan, I realize that this place — this USA we’re always chanting about, is a filthy and disgusting place. We were in Japan for seven days. Not only did I not encounter a single dirty bathroom, the bathrooms in Tokyo and Kyoto are cleaner than our operating rooms here. Everywhere you go, the bathrooms are clean. They don’t smell bad, and they have those toilets that wash you from the inside out.”
Ouch! He goes on to describe the lack of litter and garbage in Japan, that people clean up after themselves (imagine that happening in the U.S. these days). In the end he compared Japan to “Disneyland” and the U.S. to “Six Flags.” Anyone who’s been to these theme parks knows the difference.
I couldn’t help but notice that Kimmel’s disparaging comments were met with uproarious laughter—possibly nervous laughter, but laughter, nonetheless. I also wondered how such remarks would have been received if someone like Donald Trump made them. Not sure the same audience would have been laughing.
To be fair, travel stops like Buc-ee’s here in Texas are immaculate (people go out of their way to stop there), and many communities such as mine are clean and orderly. But that’s not the norm nor what Kimmel was talking about. His commentary was intended to strike more deeply, more philosophically. Not simply that Japanese culture is known for its precision, discipline, order, and beauty, but that Americans have devolved into full-fledged “I don’t care,” lazy, selfish, messy, ingrates. Essentially, Kimmel was asking “What happened to us?”
I’ve seen this decay in real time.
I was raised in Southern California, and even under the conservative governorships of Reagan, Deukmejian, and Wilson (I left California during Schwarzenegger’s governorship) it was largely a classically liberal society—following a political tradition that “advocates laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech.” [1] We were on the forefront of so many cultural and technological things, inhabited by highly creative, intelligent, hard-working people and proud of it. It was a “chill” environment, accommodating, friendly, and filled with natural wonders.
My visits back home over these past few years are stark reminders that it’s no longer the California in which I grew up.
Classic liberalism is gone, replaced by hardened Leftism and a George Soros Open Societies ethos bursting with crime, homelessness, garbage, squatters, graffiti, drugs, broken infrastructure, weak leadership, angry people, and a HUGE gap between the elites and the working class. To steal from George Orwell, the “pigs on their hind legs” are in charge, to the thorough discouragement of the other “animals.” While California remains filled with highly creative, intelligent, and hard-working people, it can’t figure out how to deal with its near-dystopian culture for fear of the very people ruining its society.
Talk about the lunatics running the asylum,[2] which seems increasingly the case across our nation.
So, what’s a Christian to do?
First, none of this should be surprising. When human desires are left unchecked, when political and cultural leadership abdicates its responsibilities, when our educational system changes its focus from preparing the next generation to be constructive, contributing members of society to inculcating anarchists unable to think critically, who scorn objective truth and reality, we’re in for trouble. And this trajectory will not change anytime soon, if ever.
But this also doesn’t change the Gospel or the kingdom of God. In fact, in contrast it illuminates it. While it’s increasingly difficult to navigate American society these days (at least for those who overtly live for Christ), would living in a clean, orderly, disciplined society like Japan make things easier—a society built largely on the Shintoism and Buddhism?
Not a chance.
Jimmy Kimmel simply stated what’s been obvious to millions of folks in America—we’ve misappropriated freedom by turning it into a free-for-all. Yet biblical Christians have a true freedom that cannot be corrupted.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Encyclopedia Britannica
[2] Richard A. Rowland first used this expression in 1919 when famous movie stars Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford opened the movie company United Artists to protect their work and control their careers. Some Hong Kong people feel the Legislative Council no longer works well because the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
Pondering 