Monday, December 19, 2011

Failed Dictator Dies, Millions Mourn


"Look in my eyes.
What do you see?
The Cult of Personality.
"
-Living Color, "The Cult of Personality.

The man called a "pygmy" by mental pygmy George W. Bush, Kim Jong Il, has died. After the boo-hooing over "Dear Leader" has somewhat subsided, I hope that posterity's final word on Kim Jong Il is that he brought out the failures and shortcomings of virtually every non-Communist nation that was ever forced to deal with him and the failure of the Communist state. That's all that posterity should say about him.

The Clinton administration tried dealing with him in its final months, sending Secretary of State Madeline Albright to talk him into drawing down his missile program and she failed. George W. Bush, reduced to impotent sputtering and name-calling, failed to deter Kim from his single-minded course in obtaining 6-8 nuclear weapons and was aided in his failure by John "Group sex" Bolton, who, as Undersecretary of State monitoring the development of the weapons programs of other nations, helplessly watched as North Korea detonated its first nuclear weapon. Underscoring the Bush administration's failure was in bribing Kim with over $20,000,000 taxpayer dollars which Kim then used to throw himself a birthday party and pursued his nuclear program, anyway.

Kim's 17 year-long reign as North Korea's dictator, a mantle reluctantly handed to him by his father after years of relentless campaigning for more power, also represented the ultimate failure of one of the last Communist states on earth. The belligerent and maddeningly stubborn Kim was so focused on harvesting every single scrap of fissionable nuclear material to create a pitiful arsenal of 6-8 nuclear warheads that he forgot how to feed his own people, depending on his enemies South Korea and the United States to do it for him.

Like Gadaffi and Bush, he was an international punchline, a man who benefited more from the cult of personality and nepotism than any other ruler of his time. The reputed owner of some 20,000 foreign movies, perhaps he saw something in himself in the complete James Bond series, perhaps in Dr. No or Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Kim also represents the absolute stupidity and cluelessness of the human race even while he was turning George Orwell's 1984 into a historical document. The North Korean people knew nothing of him, not even his exact date and place of his birth. News of his declining health were mere rumors and began to sound like the multiple accounts of Big Brother's ceaseless amputations in György Dalos' 1985.

Like Pinochet and other recently-departed dictators, Kim somehow, exclusively through a bloodline based on murder and terrorism, earned the love and idolatry of a people despite the facts that during his reign, roughly two million North Koreans starved to death, dissidents abroad were tracked down by Jong Il-dispatched assassins and countless thousands of men, women and even children were and still are kept in internment camps all over the hermetic nation. Yet in picture after picture, we see this runt in his Michael Meyers jumpsuit, smiling for the cameras while empty suits and military uniforms nervously smile, hands clasped across their genitals.

Kim Jong Il was a joke outside North Korea, so much so that he earned a starring role in the comedy hit Team America. But even worse than a joke, he was such a bad joke that he turned every nation that ever tried to deal with him into a joke, including two presidential administrations and his rival to the south that was obliged to feed the people that he plainly had no problem starving to death. We were forced to treat this man as if he was a legitimate world leader simply because the failures of the Bush and Clinton administrations allowed him to acquire The Bomb. And American foreign policy (especially with Israel) these last several decades has taught us that as long as a country has even one nuclear warhead, it has to be taken seriously.

Kim Jong Il exposed the stupidity and impotence of some of the mightiest nations on earth and ought to be viewed as an object lesson in how not to deal with heads of state in the future.

(Editor's note: Demands on my time this holiday season and the almost complete absence of a legitimate readership and commentary has compelled me to hang it up for at least the rest of the year. The amount of time and energy I put into this almost completely ignored blog fills me with a sense of neverending failure and valuable, dwindling resources going completely to waste. I may post some greeting on Christmas morning but beyond that, at the very least I cannot guarantee I'll be back for 2012, election year or no. The very minimal and intermittent rewards, financial, intellectual and otherwise that I derive from this thankless endeavor simply do not justify the resources I pour into it like a jug of water into a sand dune. I cannot do anything about being utterly and completely ignored but at least I can minimize the sense of unending failure and wasted effort by discontinuing to bang my head against the immovable wall of apathy and ignorance. To my very few readers aside from the perverts who stream in from all over the world looking for .jpegs of "naked fat men" [I am so sorry I wrote that post, "One Minute in the Teabagger Chat Room"], I apologize but there simply aren't enough of you out there to justify this expenditure of time and effort.)

14 Comments:

At December 19, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Blogger D. said...

I am so sorry.

(I have periodically linked to you, but I've noticed in myself lately a desire for the political sphere to go bounce down to the beach and play with Rover from The Prisoner. Also, I'm beginning to sound like a Pekinese.)

Your pungent commentary will be missed. Please don't nuke this blog!

WV: "flogu"

 
At December 19, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Blogger jurassicpork said...

I have no plans to nuke it but it's kind of obvious at this point when I look at my stats checker's finding, that at least a quarter of readership is morbidly obsessed with morbid obesity and another quarter fascinated by penis and tit torture. I'm tired of catering to right wingers and perverts and being ignored by those who claim to crave real intelligent commentary.

 
At December 19, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Anonymous Dee in NJ said...

Well, this just breaks my heart.

After all, it's one of the few places left for witty repartee, now that Christopher Hitchens is dead. Whatever shall I do to keep myself from going unhinged at the Treasury Dept without you?

At least we'll always have email.

Seriously I don't want you to go, but you have to do what you must. I'll bow my head....

 
At December 19, 2011 at 4:41 PM, Blogger jurassicpork said...

I just can't do this anymore, Dee. Other bloggers don't care about lack of traffic and comments because, for them, their blogs are more personal in nature and are essentially just online diaries. Not me. I got into this nearly 7 years with the intention of getting people to think and feel again, to get engaged again. I failed. I can;t do this any more.

There's still Charles Pierce at Esquire.

Got your card, btw. Thank much. It was the first and probably the only one I'll get this year. Yeah, I'm treated the same way in the meat world, too. Why not?

 
At December 20, 2011 at 9:45 AM, Anonymous Dee in NJ said...

Other bloggers blog because it's masturbatory in nature. Then there are writers that blog because they like to write and there are those of us who read you because we enjoy it. That's what makes this whole thing so sad.

Got your card too. Loved the Sandusky note. Course, living somewhat between Penn State and Syracuse makes us in NJ feel like a molester sandwich. All icky and creeped out, and no we don't want another shower because we're hoping the dirt on us will keep you away please.

Shit.

 
At December 20, 2011 at 1:40 PM, Blogger Mithras61 said...

JP,

Sorry you feel you have failed. The only failure I have noted in any of your endeavors to which I've been exposed is that you consistently underestimate the ability of the brainwashed masses to actually think.

Sadly, I believe that we are in the last days of the Republic, because the enormous failure of anyone with the wherewithal to actually address the collapse to actually DO anything other than play finger-pointing games and spout more political bullshit and corporatist propaganda. I look around and find very few who are actually capable of seeing the propaganda for what it is, and even fewer who grasp the terrible situation that the last 5 decades or so have brought upon us, and a complete lack of recognition of the awful drift to fascism that the current political game-playing is foisting up[on us. It makes me despair of anyone with vision to see it being able to actually DO anything, and am quite concerned that it is too late.

There has long been a fascist streak in this country (going back to pre-WW II and the support of many for Nazi Germany's policies), and with the decisions of the last few years by the politically-motivated SCOTUS, I have little hope of anything short of total failure of the systems in place now being able to correct it.

It is a pleasant refresher to come by and read (even if i don't post responses very often), and to know that I am not alone in my ability to see the disaster looming before us. I will miss your presence here (and elsewhere), but totally understand it. Having reached the point of despair myself, I no longer post much at all on any of the places on which I used to be quite prolific. Take some time and heal, and mayhap hope will be restored.

Best wishes for a Happy Christmas and a rejuvenating and properous New Year.

 
At December 20, 2011 at 2:41 PM, Blogger jurassicpork said...

Mithras:

Part of the reason why I can't concentrat eon blogging and function at my customary high level is Dylan Thomas syndrome. By that I don't mean a dearth of ideas, which plagued Thomas throughout his adult life (almost all his great poems were written in his adolescence). By Dylan Thomas Syndrome I mean a constant worry of money and a dread of complete impoverishment. The only difference is Thomas made money hand over fist from his readings (He used to do spontaneous readings for $50 a pop, which used to drive his manager crazy) yet couldn't keep any of it. Me, I have to husband our resources like Scrooge because $650 a month (rent) adds up pretty quickly over 2-3-4 months. And I'm tired of staving off eviction one month at a time.

But everyone else is tapped out this time of the year and despite repeated efforts last week to pay for Mrs. JP's upcoming trip to Florida, I've gotten next to nothing. That kind of angst I can do without while I'm looking for a job and trying to chip away at a novel. Blogging, as always, is the first casualty.

 
At December 21, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Blogger Stan B. said...

It's hard to attract readership (esp in times like these) when one is out there basically reflecting and amplifying the reality that surrounds us in our everyday lives- the reality everyone is trying to ignore, trying to denounce, trying to so desperately escape at whatever the cost.

The economy will get better next year, millions of tons of long buried methane that is about to burst unto our environment will not increase (the myth of) global warming, and President Obama will fulfill every broken promise he ever made us in his first campaign if we only have enough faith to elect him to a second term.

Those who uncover and unravel the truth are largely ignored when that truth does not beget better times- if not derided, persecuted, eliminated. No one wants to hear it.

You haven't failed- it was a thankless task at the undertaking. People want their Happy Meals!

Perhaps writing this has maintained your sanity through these tough times- or maybe it has been the one diversion that keeps you from breaking free. Perhaps it's time to find out...

And that said, you can always look back on this with pride- you spoke the truth in a time when people chose not to hear it. That requires no apology, or regret.

Good Luck in 2012...

 
At December 21, 2011 at 7:29 AM, Blogger mileslarboy said...

Really sorry to hear it. I read your blog all the time--it's bookmarked with a list of about 20 other "favorite" blogs--but never comment (probably because I have to make time for all those other blogs!). Maybe there are a lot of other people like me out there? Thanks.

 
At December 21, 2011 at 9:20 AM, Anonymous Blakenator said...

I am sorry to see you go. I have been a regular for some time and you are on my daily "top 10" must read list. I am not much of a commenter but your views are usually spot on to me. I do know how life can take some unplanned turns. Best of luck.

 
At December 21, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Blogger Bartender Cabbie said...

That is a shame. As you know we agree on very little but I do enjoy reading your work. Hopefully you have a change of heart.

 
At December 21, 2011 at 8:28 PM, Blogger jurassicpork said...

Oh, well, if one of my trolls insists so he can keep insulting me, then how can I say no to that?

 
At December 22, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Blogger Bartender Cabbie said...

How can you refuse lol?

 
At December 24, 2011 at 6:35 AM, Anonymous aaricevans said...

I do not know it but after your post I knew it.

 

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