After the Clinton years when people such as Richard Armitage (US Deputy Secretary of State from 2001-05) and Michael Green (Senior Director for Asian affairs at the NSC from 2004-05) came to power in Washington the concern of “Japan passing” receded from the minds of many Japanese politicians. The nomination of Obama and the return of the Democrats to power has rekindled the idea that America may again tilt more toward China. (Random Obama fact: He likes bulgogi and kimchi).

Interestingly, the fear in Japan of being passed (or ignored) doesn’t only apply to relations with the United States. In addition to the ongoing Australia-Japan disputes over whaling, current prime minister of Australia Kevin Rudd’s “widely celebrated Sinophile credentials” have also contributed to concerns that Australia will lean more toward China at the expense of relations with Japan.

So are Japan’s concerns about being “passed” (by the United States, Australia, or other bodies such as the UNSC) unfounded or warranted? Even if many of Obama’s advisers indeed turn out to be from the Clinton era, I think it’s unrealistic that Japan will cease to be an important US ally in Asia.

And to continue my rant against Alaska, I can’t believe that it looks like Ted Stevens will be re-elected. What a world.

Second, are US voters so lazy or ill-informed that they’re willing to swallow campaign propaganda hook, line, and sinker? The internet makes fact-checking so easy these days — meaning that chances are, someone else has already done the work for you, and their results are posted somewhere online. But I suppose that charisma still counts for something as well, and people tend to be swayed more by emotionally-charged words than cold, hard facts. More’s the pity for the future of our country.

Third, party platforms and personal policies aside, I think what worries me the most about politics these days is the willingness of some campaigns to resort to fear tactics in order to increase their voter support. People can point fingers at each other and debate endlessly about who’s more “patriotic,” but personally, I can hardly think of anything less patriotic than undermining the very basis for our democratic system. We should vote because we support one ticket over the other, not because we’ve been cornered there out of fear.

In the midst of our current financial situation, my mind keeps returning to FDR who took office in the shadow of the Great Depression and whose New Deal reforms (though still controversial) brought the US back from the brink of fiscal ruin. In his now famous 1932 inaugural address, FDR reassured the American people that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” In his 1941 State of the Union FDR also the “four essential human freedoms,” which included “freedom from fear.”

Don’t we have a responsibility, as citizens of a democracy, to hold our leaders accountable to such democratic ideals? We should not put up with emotional statements that brandish the threat of “terrorism” to scare voters. And as voters we should be sophisticated enough to see through such statements.