In Japan, birthrates are now so low and life expectancy so great that the nation will soon have a demographic profile that matches that of the American retirement community of Palm Springs. “Gradually but relentlessly,” the demographer Nick Eberstadt writes in the latest issue of The Wilson Quarterly, “Japan is evolving into a type of society whose contours and workings have only been contemplated in science fiction.”
Funny how the warnings of demographers are laughed off, while the warnings of climate scientists produce immediate calls for action. But what’s most revealing to me is the kind of sentiment displayed in the comments to the piece, such as “There are a DISGUSTING number of people on this earth.” And: “This column is nothing more than a thinly veiled attack on a woman’s right to choose.”
And, unsurprisingly, this triumph of eliminationist hate speech:
Call me an America-hating but what better than declining birth rate among a ‘pathogen on the planet’ (Caldicott), hurling pan-global wars & arms & political meddling for its amerigoon-exceptionalist empire promoting a culture of Greed-Uber-Alles. More fundaMentalist Biblicalism we’re all so over?
Oikophobia lives. And Bob Zubrin is clearly on to something. Of course, quoting Helen Caldicott is an immediate I Am An Idiot! marker. . . .
UPDATE: Via email, Jim Bennett notes an irony:
So, “dumb rednecks breeding in their double-wides” turns out to be “America’s demographic secret weapon”?
Some people are obviously having a hard time with the necessary mental re-adjustment.
Heh.