I came across a fascinating exchange, practically a monologue, between a Yakuza boss and a dying assassin in the recent Woody Harelson film called Kate.[1]
Spoiler Alert… big time, by the way: Trained all her life as an assassin by her handler, and, unbeknownst to her, also the founder and head of her agency, Kate gets embroiled in the life of a Yakuza teen heiress whom she made an orphan. Dying by radiation poisoning, she kills her way to the person she assumes responsible for her poisoning only to discover that she has been betrayed by her own, just as the Yakuza boss was.
Yakuza boss delivers a speech to Kate the assassin that must have sounded cool to a Hollywood writer and or director, but which is so full of hypocritical nonsense I don’t know how the actors got through the scene without stopping to see if anyone else noticed, without snorting milk they hadn’t even drunk out their noses as they delivered it.
Kate approaches Yakuza boss in the quintessential Hollywood Japanese home, carpets, paper walls and doors, and nothing but a few pillows dropped in suggestive places. Nothing on the walls. He kneels before her talking cool guru wisdom lines that are meant to sound like Easterners know things that the rest of us benighted fools couldn’t hope to comprehend. Then this Yakuza boss, guilty of extortion, blackmail, smuggling, human and drug trafficking, illegal gambling, loan sharking, racketeering, theft, and murder on a few continents and many nations has the audacity to say to Kate, “I failed to see envy taking root in my own family. The Western disease spreading like cancer within one of mine.“ After a few more exchanges about who really caused her coming death he calls her handler, “A smug Westerner,” and goes on, “It’s their way to take and take until nothing is left, to gorge on cultures they don’t understand and then evacuate their bowels on the rest of the world.”
Like just wow… it’s so like wow, that I like should say it upside down… like just mom. Let’s start with the obvious. All human beings are bound to human selfishness… every human heart of every race, every culture, every nation, tribe, tongue, and cricket club has the seven deadly sins waging war for control in their heart… one of those is ENVY. So, no, not a Western Disease… a human one, a Japanese one, a Muslim one, a Jewish one, an Irish one, and… well, you get my point. Critical Theorists and their host of Useful Idiots despise the West for being guilty of the common failings of mankind and have no appreciation for the laudable elements of the West that are wholly unique in world history because they are drawn from biblical worldview.
Shall we dwell on the long history of Japan in terms of Greed, Pride, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, and Wrath? They tried to take over the world at a time when this Yakuza boss would have been a boy. They committed atrocities against South Korea and China that make the Nazi experiments look like an aggressive round of patty-cake. They trained their soldiers to kills themselves in battle to get a few more victims. The only reason they exist as the society they do is because of Western mercy and forgiveness and our generally shared desire to see all boats rise with our tide. I love the Japanese people, but we must interpret this Hollywood Yakuza boss’s words in a proper context. These statements lack knowledge, perspective, honesty, and gratitude.
Now, when he says the West gorges on cultures they don’t understand, are we to assume from the Hollywood writer that the Japanese or other Asians understand foreign cultures by some element of special non-western insight gifted to them by… by… by whoever gifts such things? All people of all cultures struggle with the other… all of them. It is the very nature of cross-cultural communication that it is hard to understand the other and, the more other they are, the harder it is to understand them. What the West does is, based on its Judeo-Christian values and essentially biblical worldview, view the cultures of the world as filled with people of interest with cultures of interest. They are places with art and music and special contextual knowledge and skills from whom we can learn and grow. All are God’s creatures and though we may struggle understanding them as the other, while we may fear them because we don’t know what to expect from them, we golly gee wilikers wanna try to connect with them.
As for this final accusation that we have evacuated our bowels on the rest of the world, what can I say? Western people are the most generous people in the world. That’s not an opinion, that’s raw fact by sheer numbers given in charity (even if misguided at times). Politics are always tricky but we have a long history of building up our enemies even after they’ve tried to kill us… like Germany and Japan. We fight for our allies. We lay out our cultural blessings on the shared table of the world and bid the nations come. In the present crisis in Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa, it is the West that has opened its doors. Muslim nations haven’t lifted a finger to help their own, to take in some of the war refugees. I think we are foolish to do this given the nature of Islamic commitments to never assimilate and to be always ready for Jihad, but one can’t deny the generosity behind the open doors. American Foreign aid, though utterly foolish, still flows into lagging nations. Some of our European, American, Australian, and Canadian leaders may be duplicitous criminals using public funds to supply their fill of personal power, but there is little doubt what flows from the hearts of most citizens of these places that I’ve ever met… a desire to help those less fortunate than themselves… indeed, a sense of profound duty in it.
This Hollywood Yakuza Boss description of the West has come wholesale out of Critical Theory and Marxist delusion. These folk put on a certain pair of glasses with the tinting and warping in them set just right to look at goodness and call it foul. They remind me of the Dwarves in C. S. Lewis’ book The Last Battle. At the end of the ages for Narnia, as all the world is either swallowed up in darkness or bleeds into a new creation that looks like what Narnia would have dreamed of looking, a small band of Dwarves sit in the glory of this new Narnia, blind to its light. Aslan spreads a feast before them, but it tastes like rot in their mouths. For your pleasure, I shall present the scene as the master storyteller has:
Lucy led the way and soon they could all see the Dwarfs. They had a very odd look. They weren’t strolling about or enjoying themselves (although the cords with which they had been tied seemed to have vanished) nor were they lying down and having a rest. They were sitting very close together in a little circle facing one another. They never looked round or took any notice of the humans till Lucy and Tirian were almost near enough to touch them. Then the Dwarfs all cocked their heads as if they couldn’t see anyone but were listening hard and trying to guess by the sound what was happening.
“Look out!” said one of them in a surly voice. “Mind where you’re going. Don’t walk into our faces!”
“All right!” said Eustace indignantly. “We’re not blind. We’ve got eyes in our heads.”
“They must be darn good ones if you can see in here,” said the same Dwarf whose name was Diggle.
“In where?” asked Edmund.
“Why you bone-head, in here of course,” said Diggle. “In this pitch-black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable.”
“Are you blind?” said Tirian.
“Ain’t we all blind in the dark!” said Diggle.
“But it isn’t dark, you poor stupid Dwarfs,” said Lucy. “Can’t you see? Look up! Look round! Can’t you see the sky and the trees and the flowers? Can’t you see me?”
“How in the name of all Humbug can I see what ain’t there? And how can I see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?”
“But I can see you,” said Lucy. “I’ll prove I can see you. You’ve got a pipe in your mouth.”
“Anyone that knows the smell of baccy could tell that,” said Diggle.
“Oh the poor things! This is dreadful,” said Lucy. Then she had an idea. She stopped and picked some wild violets. “Listen, Dwarf,” she said. “Even if your eyes are wrong, perhaps your nose is all right: can you smell that?” She leaned across and held the fresh, damp flowers to Diggle’s ugly nose. But she had to jump back quickly in order to avoid a blow from his hard little fist.
“None of that!” he shouted. “How dare you! What do you mean by shoving a lot of filthy stable-litter in my face? There was a thistle in it too. It’s like your sauce! And who are you anyway?”
“Earth-man,” said Tirian, “she is the Queen Lucy, sent hither by Aslan out of the deep past. And it is for her sake alone that I, Tirian your lawful King, do not cut all your heads from your shoulders, proved and twice-proved traitors that you are.”
“Well if that doesn’t beat everything!” exclaimed Diggle. “How can you go on talking all that rot? Your wonderful Lion didn’t come and help you, did he? Thought not. And now – even now – when you’ve been beaten and shoved into this black hole, just the same as the rest of us, you’re still at your old game. Starting a new lie! Trying to make us believe we’re none of us shut up, and it ain’t dark, and heaven knows what.”
“There is no black hole, save in your own fancy, fool,” cried Tirian. “Come out of it.” And, leaning forward, he caught Diggle by the belt and the hood and swung him right out of the circle of Dwarfs. But the moment Tirian put him down, Diggle darted back to his place among the others, rubbing his nose and howling:
“Ow! Ow! What d’you do that for! Banging my face against the wall. You’ve nearly broken my nose.”
“Oh dear!” said Lucy, “What are we to do for them?”
When Aslan suddenly shows up Lucy asks Him to help the poor Dwarfs.
“Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do.” He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, “Hear that? That’s the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don’t take any notice. They won’t take us in again!”
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs’ knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey’s been at! Never thought we’d come to this.” But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarrelling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot.
Yes, this is the way of the left with their Critical Theory lenses on their eyes. They see filth where there is richness, smell foul where there is fresh, taste rot where there is goodness. I pity them, but we cannot let them win or the human suffering will be more terrible than you can imagine.
[1] Director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Netflix, “Kate” 2021.
