Brutally Honest Rant - 10/18/06

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: How To Punish A Despot
Audio Transcripts
10/18/06

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – "American Idiot Remix" – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening, and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

Well my friends North Korea is making the news again…

Kim Jong Il, the self-professed "Dear Leader" of the dying communist regime, has once again thrown a temper tantrum and tested one of their supposed nuclear devices. It’s a small device... a little bomb… supposedly about 2-percent of the explosive force that we used on Hiroshima more than fifty years ago, but hey, what can I say? It’s SMALL… like their leader!

Here’s the problem, boys and girls: what we have here is the leader of a small country that suffers from a severe case of Napoleon Complex. He’s fostered this idea amongst the populace there that he is GOD ON EARTH to make up for the fact that he looks like the love child of Yoko Ono and Tattoo from Fantasy Island. He’s just a Persian cat short of being mistaken for a James Bond villain. He has only one export for the world: weapons. Everything his country needs has to be brought in, and right now his people are eating grass and tree bark while he’s living in the lap of luxury, chugging champagne like it was Coca-Cola and flying in gourmet chefs whenever he feels the urge. You know, it’s one thing to do that when you’re people are well-off, but when your country has to dine on grass and tree bark while you’re chowing down on Kobe beef and washing it down with Chateau de Chastillay, then you’ve got some SERIOUS Louis XIV issues.

This is the country that now has nuclear weapons. And their leader, "Dear Leader", the demented refuge from the Land of Oz with the Velcro hair, has threatened to come up with the technology to not only use those weapons but to develop the kind of long-range missiles that will reach the United States.

So what do we do about that?

Well, you know, we THOUGHT we did something about that ten years ago, but it turned out that the North Koreans LIED. We can blame Bill Clinton about it all we want to, but the fact of the matter is that we made a critical mistake in TRUSTING that country’s leadership to be honorable and now we’ve realized that they have no honor.

And that’s something that we need to bear in mind with all of the threats being thrown about by "Dear Lilliputian" and his cronies. The North Korean government claims that they’ve never bluffed, but the truth of the matter is that they did just that ten years ago. A bluff is still a lie, and if they lied about being honorable ten years ago in regards to ending their nuclear ambitions, then the world has absolutely NO REASON WHATSOEVER to trust them today with the threats they’re throwing about!

That’s the first thing we need to keep in mind. They are proven LIARS. You don’t trust anything they claim without being able to confirm it yourself first. Of course we’ve got some issues with honesty as well, but that’s a subject for a different rant.

So the next thing to work on is… how do you punish a tyrant?

That’s the biggest problem we here in the United States seem to have when it comes to foreign affairs. We continually operate on the delusion that the power of all governments rests with THE PEOPLE. (Buzzer sound.) Sorry, wrong answer. No pie-piece for you.

Lesson number one: not all governments operate on the belief that their power comes from the consent of the governed. In fact many governments still adhere to some older beliefs about the source of their power. Things like Divine Right, Manifest Destiny, and of course the old adage of "might makes right". Basically it’s he who has the most guns gets to make the rules.

That brings us to lesson number two: when governments are run by those who do not fear their people, then you do not threaten that government with punitive measures that will hurt the masses. That’s like punishing a noisy apartment tenant by kicking out his next-door neighbor. You’re actually doing that annoying government a favor. Now their masses have someone to hate even more than them.

That’s why most economic sanctions really don’t hurt despots, boys and girls. They don’t fear their own people, so they don’t fear losing their positions of power over the destruction of their economy. The United Nations slapped sanctions on top of sanctions on Iraq during the 1990’s. Did the people revolt over them? Nope. Of course it also didn’t help that we allowed Saddam to stay in power and keep his guns after the Gulf War. Not a smart move on our part. Nor was having the weasel nations continue to support Saddam after the Gulf War in violation of those sanctions.

And that, my friends, is "Third World Politics 101".

Listen… if you want to HURT North Korea over their nuclear ambitions, if you want to punish Kim Jong Short Round Il for his temper tantrums, then you find ways to punish HIM, not the people that are eating grass to live! You take away HIS lap of luxury and he’ll pay attention. You take away his gourmet chefs and his constant supply of champagne and he’ll realize that the world is serious. Until then, he’s going to continue being the little dickhead that he’s been for the past few years.

But there’s something else that’s missing from this issue. Something that the Bush Imperium, for all of their cluelessness, seemed to catch and that the Democrats somehow haven’t caught on yet.

Why is the dwarf throwing these temper tantrums? Why is he threatening war and doing missile tests and testing nuclear weapons?

Let’s get brutally honest here… what Kim Jong Il and the rest of his ass-kissing cronies in the North Korean government want is something that they have NEVER deserved, something they have NEVER earned, and something that that they should NEVER BE GIVEN if they continue to act the way that they are now.

I’m talking about… RESPECT.

The North Korean government wants the rest of the world to treat them as a MAJOR power. They want to sit at the big-people table in the United Nations instead of being sent to the little kiddie table along with South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan and the rest of the 200+ countries. They WANT the influence and affluence that China, Russia, several European nations, and of course the United States have achieved. They don’t want a six-party discussion with several other countries… they want to deal with the United States… EXCLUSIVELY. One on one, as though they were our equals.

They WANT that respect, they DEMAND that respect, but they categorically refuse to do the very things that nations do to WARRANT that respect.

And sadly, people like Kim Jong Il think that they can GET that respect through two things typical of those suffering from a Napoleon Complex. They think that they can get it first through money and then through FEAR. And when he couldn’t impress people with his personal spending ways, Kim Jong Il is now trying to use threats of war to get what he wants.

Worse yet, he’s playing with stakes that his people… and the rest of the world… cannot afford to take lightly.

Well I’ve got news for people like Kim Jong Il and anyone else like him… he thinks that he’s a player? He’s nothing of the sort! He’s nothing more than a global PUNK. He’s a poser. A wannabe. Wannabe players don’t get respect. They just get attention, and if they get enough attention then they get something else that they certainly will not WANT, but it is something that they absolutely DESERVE.

(Computer – some timely things that you have to listen to appreciate)
(Fade Music In – "Skylight" by Overseer)

When a leader believes that he or she has nothing to lose and everything to gain, they tend to believe that they can do anything. THAT is what makes them appear to be so cavalier. That sentiment is also what makes them a threat to the rest of the world… be it a punk on the street or the doorstop punk in Pyongyang with nuclear weapons. And Kim Jong Il is a threat that NEEDS to be dealt with one way or another.

A nuclear-powered North Korea is a GLOBAL problem. It’s not just the problem of the United States and a select group of countries in the Pacific Rim. This is something that the whole United Nations has to deal with… including and ESPECIALLY the two main enablers for North Korea, namely Russia and China. They helped put that reject from the Munchkin Land in power, they helped to feed his ego, and then they gave him the tools needed to be the threat that he is today. This is just as much of their problem as it is ours.

So Russia and China need to step in as well and help deal with this problem. They can’t afford to either sit on the sidelines or serve as obstructionists… because if events go as they are now, then sooner or later it WILL get ugly. And when we’re talking nuclear weapons, it is the kind of ugliness that will hurt THEM directly far more than it will hurt the rest of us.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production, all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

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(Computer – Ending/"End of Recording")

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