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retu rned to rake them with machine guns. Three Americans were killed, and
another eleven were gravely wounded. A court of inquiry in Shanghai
eventually revealed that the attack had been deliberate.
Historian William Manchester feels that the Japanese assault on the
Panay was an attempt to see how willing America was to resist the Japanese
in the struggle for hierarchical dominance. How did America respond? Like
the reluctant dog and the intimidated chimp, we pretended we didn't see.
Media scarcely covered the event. Two months earlier, President
Franklin Roosevelt had mentioned briefly during an out-of-the-way speech
in Chicago that, "The epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading." Roosevelt
had called on peace-loving nations to combine and stop the violence before it
could travel further. The president's words were greeted by a howl of
protest. Angry letters and newspaper editorials accused FDR of
warmongering. Roosevelt learned his lesson and shut his mouth.
When the Panay and her survivors were mauled, isolationist groups
went even further. They tried to get footage of the attack banned from
newsreels. Newsfilm, they said, would have "the unquestioned effect of
arousing the American temper." The ban wasn't necessary. Nobody really
wanted to pay attention to the killings. Polls revealed that 70% of U.S. voters
preferred to solve the problem by withdrawing all American citizens from
the Far East.68 Instead of looking the Japanese in the eye and protesting their
attack, we pretended we didn't see.
But the Japanese did not melt into oblivion. Lack of opposition, in fact,
fed their illusions of invincibility. Four years later, they sank eighteen
American ships, wiped out 188 of our planes, and killed 3,400 U.S. citizens at
Pearl Harbor.69
The nation slipping downward averts its eyes. But the country on the
rise is often vigorously alert, looking for the tiniest opportunity to lunge
toward the top. Instead of turning their backs and hoping for peace,
superorganisms on the move often manufacture confrontations. For an
example, let's revisit the days of Victorian England's decline.
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