The World Is Voting Against Globalism and Japan Fired the Loudest Shot Yet

I suppose the Super Bowl was nice but it could have been better with Bugs Bunny instead of Bad Bunny.

Olympics Italian style is going so well that I won’t attribute Lindsey Vonn crash to Trumpenfreude even though it was.

I have no idea what the politics of Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin are. I don’t want to know. All I care to know is the duo will play Sweden for the gold medal in mixed doubles curling after defeating Italy, the reigning champion. USA! USA! USA!

The intensity of curling crews is overwhelming. Don’t sweep their athleticism under the Zamboni.

But the real big news on Sunday was the election in Japan. PM Sanae Takaichi is working at the speed of Trump. Right after she took office, she called for a snap election, which was held 110 days into her term.

Maybe she should anchor Japan’s curling team because her party swept the election.

She woke up Monday morning with a veto-proof majority in their parliament. This was the biggest blowout in 71 years. You say you’ll change the constitution? She can now.

Takaichi is a pro-growth nationalist who is poised to ditch provisions that restrict Japan’s military. MacArthur wrote Japan’s constitution, which served its purpose in an era when the United States was the free world’s Uncle Sam. That era’s gone.

Her plan is to bolster Japan’s military, cut taxes and kick the Muslims out. The New York Times had difficulty wrapping its ideology around another First Female PM.

In October, NYT reported:

Ms. Takaichi, 64, who grew up near the ancient Japanese capital of Nara, defies easy labels. She once spoke bluntly about the challenges of working in politics as a woman in Japan, yet she is now the leader of the traditionalist, male-dominated Liberal Democratic Party. She has expressed concern about Japan’s reliance on the United States, but has also said she hopes to work closely with President Trump. She is an amateur drummer who idolizes bands like Iron Maiden and Deep Purple, yet she also wears blue suits to pay homage to her other hero, the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Ms. Takaichi, a protégée of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, who was assassinated in 2022, is expected to move Japan farther to the right, responding to a recent populist wave that bears some similarities to Mr. Trump’s MAGA movement. She has embraced hawkish policies on China; pushed the message that “Japan is back”; played down Japan’s atrocities during World War II; and promised to more strictly regulate immigration and tourism.

“She wants to make Japan strong and prosperous for the people of Japan and for the world,” said Yoshiko Sakurai, a prominent journalist and activist who has supported Ms. Takaichi. “She is open to the outside world. But she also understands that we have to be really good Japanese. We have to know our own culture, traditions, philosophy and history.”

The prime minister showed her media savvy as the NYT report said, “Ms. Takaichi declined, through a representative, to be interviewed for this article.”

Donald Trump, please note.

The story did say this about her and Abe. She came from a two-income family.

During her early years in Parliament, she forged an enduring alliance with Mr. Abe, a lawmaker from an elite family with a nationalistic worldview. The two found common ground on issues like increasing military spending and adding a more patriotic tone to history textbooks.

When Mr. Abe was elected to his first stint as prime minister in 2006, he appointed Ms. Takaichi to his cabinet, making her one of the most visible women in Japanese politics. He reappointed her in 2012, at the beginning of his second term, which lasted eight years. She became a fierce defender of his policies, including efforts to revise Japan’s Constitution to unfetter its military after decades of postwar pacifism, and his economic program, which emphasized cheap cash and government stimulus efforts.

Ms. Takaichi tried to persuade Mr. Abe to run again in 2021, but he declined. When she entered the race, he threw his support behind her. “Ms. Takaichi is the true star of the conservatives,” Mr. Abe said at the time. She lost that race and fell short in another bid in 2024.

She proved herself worthy over the course of three decades in the parliament and Abe’s cabinet. Now she is the prime minister Japan needs, which is nice, but she is also the Japanese prime minister that America needs—someone who can stand on her own two feet.

That is why Trump had her address our military.

She is part of a new group of world leaders who are not dependents but actual allies because they can and will defend themselves. They no longer rely on us. As Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said recently:

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