Dear Du Bois,

First, I wish to comment on your first question "Is this an article from somewhere on the internet?" This question is rude and insulting bordering on absurdity. Tempers would definitely flare up if everybody begins his message with such a question in all the forums on the Internet.

Try asking any writer or author this question at a book promotion but prepare yourself for any eventuality by wearing a crash helmet: "Is your story or idea from somewhere else?"

When I said "the U.S. is suffering from Parkinson's Disease or some sorts of mental problems with the result that 'the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing'", I was criticizing the inconsistency of the U.S. foreign policy by comparing the U.S. political establishment to a person with a dual personality. It is flawed reasoning and lack of common sense for you to take my analogy literally by labelling it as an "initial assumption" and bringing out the irrelevant point that "the US is not composed of one person, but 300 million".

Taking another example, sometime ago I saw a cartoon in a Southeast Asian country's Chinese newspaper satiring the Japanese government's policy on wartime atrocities. The cartoon depicted a Japanese man bowing low in apology but standing back to back behind him was a Sumo wrestler bowing to the notorious Japanese war shrine. It would be illogical for a Japanese reader who saw the cartoon to argue that the cartoon was flawed by highlighting the huge population of Japan. What the cartoon represented figuratively was the Japanese political establishment. So is my analogy with the U.S. It is absurd to take the analogy literally by highlighting the entire U.S. population of 300 million people.