The crazy little thug runs his country based mostly on lies. Those he tells to his people, and those his people tell him. For it's said this ruler-for-life (however long that lasts) is never told the truth himself. A body who tells this emperor that the economic report didn't come in above all expectations might find himself a head shorter. After all, would you disappoint a person who has so much power that he makes his birthday a national holiday?
So the crazy little thug lives a lie. They say the roads to his various villas are lined with rows of corn--lush, beautiful, ripening corn. But only a few rows deep. So this crazy little thug can't see the acres and acres of dried-up stalks that suffer from not only lack of rain but of care. Newsweek's bureau chief noted: "There was no fertilizer for ordinary farmers, except those who fed the emperor's ego."
And the reports keep coming to the boss from his underlings: Our heroic farmers have done a bang-up job again this year, taking in so many millions of tons of corn and other grains. Even if the figure given to the little thug is four times higher than actual tonnage. Call it a rounding error in this system.
Our dictator lives in an alternate reality. For years this family clan has borrowed from the West, when they're able, to build an economy in need of factories and infrastructure and R&D. Except that money and other resources has been used to buy food instead of equipment and materials. This is what's called eating your seed corn. And it's gone on year after year in this hermit kingdom.
Still, school children sing about the crazy little thug. Crowds are moved around from place to place to make sure every crowd is bigger and more enraptured than the one before. Maybe the little thug has an ego problem. His minions don't want to find out.
The secret police is very, very good. "Typewriters were individually registered so critiques could be matched with their doomed author." Critique the regime, and your family might not even get back your body.
Electric power is rationed, as anybody can note who visits the place at night. That is, if they can get a peek over the walls at night. Nobody really visits. ("I visited . . . several years ago. After that I never went back."--former president of France, Francois Mitterrand.)
The residents joke out of the hearing of the secret police: "If only we had a little more food, then it would be just like wartime!" But the lack of food is no laughing matter. The regime has calculated the "true" number of calories a human needs to function. That is, the minimum number. And makes its people subsist on that.
The story goes that a visitor from its main benefactor nation was coming to town one day, so the secret police put real food in the markets along the visitor's route. The people heard about it, and the stocked stores and vegetable stands caused a food riot. Typical.
You might think we've been discussing North Korea's regime and Lil' Kim, but we're not. We've just read chapter 11 in Jeffrey Engel's new book When The World Seemed New, a chapter dedicated to eastern Europe during the last days of the Cold War.
The crazy little thug's name in this book was Nicolae Ceausescu. He ruled Romania for much too long. His was the life of lies and corn three rows deep and registered typewriters. Of secret police and school children singing his praises and food riots when a man named Gorbachev once came a-calling.
But another little thug in Pyongyang, North Korea, might study this history lesson. And Mr. Ceausescu's fate. And then decide whether to keep playing games with the world.
Editorial on 05/25/2018