If you’ve followed the heres and theres, you know I’ve seen a fair bit of trauma. So has my family, some worse than me. Much worse. Horror stalks us.
The gods have blessed me, of that there’s no doubt. Yes, I’ve met with some nasty, despicable children masquerading as people, been a Ghana pig for the American military industrial technology sector, given an immeasurable amount of material to Hollywood to make trash to lull the American public into a brainwashed, ignorant stupor which would give Chancellor Hitler an erection from which he’d never recover. Nonetheless, I’ve been given tools.
I often ponder which of those tools were most essential to my awareness. I suspect Japan. Being an attorney is a close second.
Japan, most importantly the Japanese, and legal practice reminds me of the relationship between law school and the bar exam. As a 3L, We heard of the bar exam’s relevance to law practice. Eighty or ninety percent of what one uses in the practice of law, one learns in law school. At the end of three years, attorneys take a six week cram course, sit for the Bar, and, if you’ve succeeded in sucking the proper political clits&cocks, you pass the Bar. If you think the Bar exam a merit based test, you’re part of the problem. In 1996, We were part of the problem.
The tools one learns in the prep course, the techniques, the facts, etc., are essential to being a decent attorney, yet a huge percentage of what I use everyday is from law school. The bar exam and the prep course information I use much less.
Japan, in this analogy, is law school. And law school is the Bar. Yes, We could have gone to Japan without legal skills. Had we done so, i doubt We’d be anything remotely resembling awake.
