09-23-2021, 08:37 AM
North Korea is a Hell. The unlikely combination of three of the worst tendencies in history in the last seven hundred years -- Marxism-Leninism, fascist ultra-nationalism (this regime adopts patterns learned from Japanese oppressors before 1945), and absolute monarchy -- make North Korea what it is. If North Korea had had the sort of Christian influence that South Korea has now, then the North Korean government would twist that into something incredibly ugly.
It blames America for everything,,. even if it hasn't been in a full-blown shooting war with the USA for nearly seventy years. For good reason, the excoriations of wartime ideally either disappear or get contrasted with later reality. The people culpable for the Bataan Death March are not to be confused with contemporary Japanese.
I can understand anyone from a former Communist country (Slovakia is an example) despising anything that reeks of Marxist ideology. It's not that people want to return to some feudal past. Marxism-Leninism promised a glorious future for Humanity and turned free people into serfs of a State responsible to Communist Party hacks who themselves become as irresponsible as feudal lords, tycoons, and corporate bureaucrats. Then again, about everyone in Germany and Austria is an anti-fascist, and there are few Japanese who would get excited at the prospect of becoming a kamikaze pilot. I love the German and Austrian heritage of musical composition and Japanese aesthetics. I consider Dachau and Bataan horrible and inexcusable... but I know where to place culpability. It isn't with Hokusai or Mozart.
I hope that I am not hypocritical. The USA did horrible things to the First Peoples and did have chattel slavery. We had the dangerous KKK of the 1920's which had many of the characteristics of German and Italian fascists who probably learned a few things about a cause similar to theirs. A KKK-dominated America would have rivaled German, Italian, and Japanese fascists for horrific deeds upon helpless people. All that kept the KKK from doing large-scale genocide like that of the Nazis is that it disintegrated before it had the chance to gain power and impose its perverse will in America. Wherever we are we all have the ethical obligation to resist evil wherever it turns up. Mistreatment of helpless people is the first mark of the (fascist, Marxist-Leninist, Baathist, or ISIS "beast").
In the last forty years or so, America has treated poor people of any ethnicity badly. Poor blacks often think that "white privilege" is the problem -- but the American economic system oppresses poor white people just as badly as it does poor blacks. Blacks are more likely to have trouble with the legal and penal system -- and that's the difference between White and Black. White people get away with more, especially with drugs and petty crime.
It blames America for everything,,. even if it hasn't been in a full-blown shooting war with the USA for nearly seventy years. For good reason, the excoriations of wartime ideally either disappear or get contrasted with later reality. The people culpable for the Bataan Death March are not to be confused with contemporary Japanese.
I can understand anyone from a former Communist country (Slovakia is an example) despising anything that reeks of Marxist ideology. It's not that people want to return to some feudal past. Marxism-Leninism promised a glorious future for Humanity and turned free people into serfs of a State responsible to Communist Party hacks who themselves become as irresponsible as feudal lords, tycoons, and corporate bureaucrats. Then again, about everyone in Germany and Austria is an anti-fascist, and there are few Japanese who would get excited at the prospect of becoming a kamikaze pilot. I love the German and Austrian heritage of musical composition and Japanese aesthetics. I consider Dachau and Bataan horrible and inexcusable... but I know where to place culpability. It isn't with Hokusai or Mozart.
I hope that I am not hypocritical. The USA did horrible things to the First Peoples and did have chattel slavery. We had the dangerous KKK of the 1920's which had many of the characteristics of German and Italian fascists who probably learned a few things about a cause similar to theirs. A KKK-dominated America would have rivaled German, Italian, and Japanese fascists for horrific deeds upon helpless people. All that kept the KKK from doing large-scale genocide like that of the Nazis is that it disintegrated before it had the chance to gain power and impose its perverse will in America. Wherever we are we all have the ethical obligation to resist evil wherever it turns up. Mistreatment of helpless people is the first mark of the (fascist, Marxist-Leninist, Baathist, or ISIS "beast").
In the last forty years or so, America has treated poor people of any ethnicity badly. Poor blacks often think that "white privilege" is the problem -- but the American economic system oppresses poor white people just as badly as it does poor blacks. Blacks are more likely to have trouble with the legal and penal system -- and that's the difference between White and Black. White people get away with more, especially with drugs and petty crime.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.