Fuck Noda

After Fukushima, the whole country wanted nuclear power gone. You could feel it—the fear, the disgust, the sense that nobody in charge had been paying attention to what could actually happen. Then Noda’s government came out pushing to restart the reactors anyway. Restart them. The public opinion numbers were unmistakable, the anger was real, and they did it anyway. There’s a particular kind of contempt that involves ignoring millions of people telling you exactly what they want, then acting surprised when they stop trusting you. Japan had lived through the catastrophe. The fear wasn’t abstract. But the machinery of power had its own logic, and it didn’t include listening. That was the disconnect—not that the government and its people disagreed on something complicated, but that one side had already made up its mind it didn’t care what the other side thought.