A Response to My Friend, A tRump Supporter

Every historical event has antecedents. Paradigms drive events, skew perception. Racism in Anerica has a long and sordid history, cloaked in pseudoscience. Eugenics, Hitler's inspiration.

Zero-sum Malthusian economics provides a fertile ground for racist ideology, e.g, Stephen Miller, David Duke's protégé, the evil mastermind behind the "Build the Wall" movement.

I do not recall seeing more than 10 people of Mexican or Central American descent in Virginia  before the 1980's. Perhaps I was simply not noticing them. Why the sudden inflow? The War on Drugs. The US & Russia funded wars in Central America.

Refuges who come to the US are often fleeing violence. The US, in many ways, created the conditions for violence in Latin America. Global Warming will only exacerbate mass desperation and population flights.

Buckminster Fuller & Louis Kelso offered a unique paradigm of abundance in the late 1950s & early 1960s. Binary Economics is the antithesis of zero-sum thinking. Reagan himself endorsed Kelso's paradigm which my dad has advocated since he left federal government during the Johnson Administration, frustrated with Liberals who he felt were blocking genuine community action.

With Artificial Intelligence, and a shift away from the carbon economy, using Kelsonian Binary Economics, we could grow ourselves out of our malaise, equitably, without any taxpayer dollars & without taking anything from existing owners.

Not what Joe Biden and the Democratic Party is selling. Not what Republicans are selling either. Both are locked in a zero-sum mindset at a time when we have never been closer to clean, equitable abundance.

Meanwhile, we have people expressing white supremacist ideology from the White House. Fred Trump was in the Klan. Latin Americans are the new Jim Crow, the new targets of "rising tide of color" replacement theory. As Faulkner penned, "the past isn't even the last." We're entering Civil War 2.0.

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I am Daniel Kurland, the youngest child of Mariko and Norman Kurland. I am your grandson. I am married to Karen and I have a son named Joseph. As a baby, Joseph called you “Boom Boom”. Joe is now a 5th year Senior at George Mason University. I became a Middle School Math Teacher and work with students who have learning disabilities. Every year, I explain to young learners how your story inspired me to get serious about my education when I was younger.

In 9th grade, when I learned about how you and your family were sent to Internment Camps after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, I became curious and started to research what had happened. I found it difficult to understand why my grandfather Yunosuke was taken away in the middle of the night by men wearing black suits. My burning question was how you, an American citizen, ended up losing your home and behind barbed wire.

It took me decades to process how, under Executive Order 9066, your family was  ordered to assemble at Tanforan Race Track and given no time  to dispose of your property. Rather than allowing others to take your valuable possessions, you made a bonfire and burned it all.

About 10 years ago, my mom, dad, Dawn, Rowland, and I went to an exhibit at the Smithsonian entitled, The Art of Gaman (我慢). Despite your suffering, you were able to draw from an appreciation of common things, use what you found, and you thrived.

My mom shared the story of how you and she sailed in a terrible storm from Iwaishima to the mainland to seek work with the occupying American forces. By virtue of your gift for subtle flattery, you provided for your family, even if the treasures you brought home may have been meal-worm infested flour. Mariko hates doughnuts to this day, because they remind her of the bitterness of fried meal-worms. Later, my father, a young American commander of a small radar base during the Korean War, would call in his supply orders to you. He learned that you had a daughter, and he later married her.

I’ll always remember how you love to press flowers. Like the “Rose that Grew From Concrete,” as Tupak Shakur once penned, your spirit radiates beauty, despite stormy weather. As the author William Faulkner penned in honor of those who outlasted tragedy with grace,  In The Sound and The Fury, you “endured.”

                            Love, Daniel, Karen, and Joe, and Dolly, and Benny, our dogs