Kinda makes you wonder how many common citizens in these dictator countries (Iran, NK, etc.) are thinking to themselves: This is working well and this is what I want for my country. Our hate for the west is so strong that we would rather live in constant fear and poverty rather than submit to western policies/capitalism.

Not saying capitalism is great but its pretty clear which is the lesser of the evils imo. Am I way out of line, here? Please correct me if so.

North Korea is the dictatorship we know the most about, because Kim Il Sung's parents were in contactwith American missionaries. When he was 14 he was boarded with one of their friends whose 8 year-old son later moved to the US. So we know a lot about his early life. He dropped out of college and led a paramilitary company that he recruited from other students.

He sounds very similar to the leader of the Tamil Tigers, doing the same things at the same ages. It sounds like a syndrome caused by linkages in the brain, forcing the sufferer to seek domination over others, using whatever social beliefs are in the environment that can be turned to the purpose. After looking at those 2, you notice similarities with Mao Tse Tung and Ho Chi Minh. I remember reading a book in the 80's by a refugee who spent some time in an improvised prison cell in Saigon that included an old Bolshevik who had been in the Communist Party in the early 30's before Ho Chi Minh joined. He was one of the few who survived by fleeing to the South. Ho Chi Minh purged all the members who had joined the party before him. Even after Ho died, his secret police still had orders to pick up the old communists. The last communists were sheltered in South Vietnam before the Fall.

In the early 70's, Kim Il Sung did the Fahrenheit 450 routine to destroy the books of the old regime and had all the works of Marx and Engels locked up. Even the professors at the Kim Il Sung University needed permission to be allowed to read them. For public use, he promulgated the Ten Principles of Kim Il Sung Thought, which replaced the constitution and Marxist ideology as the basis of society and law. Each principle is split up into a number of articles. The people are expected to memorize the principles and articles and recite them in public. A bit like recitations from the Koran or the Bible.

So it has been obvious for 40 years that North Korea is not based on any ideology or general political principles, just devotion to the sole autocrat and ruler. Which leads to peculiar incidents like the current one when the sole autocrat feels threatened. After all, there are no rules, there is no more between him and his will than a wolf has. For a good fictional treatment, read the Fu Manchu novels by Sax Rohmer. He was watching in the 30's when people like these were making themselves into warlords. Later, all the ideological propaganda seemed to argue against his interpretation. But once the ideology drops, leaving naked power behind, as happened in the 70's in North Korea. . . Sax Rohmer starts to look like a very shrewd observer.

Lawrence

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