'everyone's stupid'

[Taro Toporific]

Living in an era of 'everyone's stupid'
Asahi Shimbun, Japan - Aug 3 by Shinobu Yoshioka

People demonstrate a distinctively common trait. To put it crudely, they are all saying, `Everybody is stupid except me.'...
....Wherever I visit, the scenes I see are anything but cheery: Towns and villages that seem to sag sadly from age and depopulation; neighborhoods comprising of vacant and crumbling houses; broken cars and bicycles abandoned in front of dilapidated back-alley watering holes; deserted supermarkets and department stores on supposedly busy shopping streets. In every town, there is what the locals call the ``shuttered street,'' lined with out-of-business stores with their rusted shutters pulled down.

Byproduct of recessionSuch scenes are no longer unusual. They are explained away as a byproduct of the recession that set in after the end of the asset-inflated economic boom. The ``lost decade'' itself is already becoming history, and optimists insist things can only improve from now-or have to.

I wish this were true, but my gut feeling tells me it will not happen...

.... Recession. Terrorism. War. North Korea. These are all serious problems that confront Japan today. But with people believing they alone are smart and everyone else is stupid, even these problems are probably perceived as ``elaborately staged spectacles'' that do not really affect them.....
In such a mentality, I see a clear portent of the depths to which this nation will sink.