By The more and more I watch politics in the United States, the more I am becoming convinced that politics in this country is becoming more and more like what you see in Korea. Here is a few examples of what I am talking about:
- Prosecution of Prior Administration Officials – Korea has a long history of former politicians and Presidents being investigated and prosecuted once they are out of power. The most recent example of this was former President Roh Moo-hyun who ultimately ended up committing suicide due to the investigation. Roh was corrupt, but on the Korean scale of corruption he was quite low. However, does anyone doubt that after Lee Myung-bak leaves office and if the Korean left wins the next election that they won’t investigate and prosecute his administration? You see the same thing beginning to materialize in the US as well. Scooter Libby is a recent example of this, but in the first months of the Obama Presidency there was a huge call by the left to prosecute former Bush officials as well as Bush himself.
- Use of Front Groups Controlled By Larger Organizations – The variety of civic groups in Korea is well known. Every time a hot button issue comes up it seems like there is a civic group that magically appears to protest. However, often times these smaller civic groups are controlled and funded by larger organizations such as People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, Hanchongryun, Green Korea, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, and others. In the US, large organizations such as Amnesty International and George Soros’ Open Society Institute have been masters at astroturfing by funding small groups to make it look like a grassroots effort is being launched in support of or against a hot button issue. That is why I had to chuckle at the left’s complaints of astroturfing at the town hall protests against the government take over of health care because the left has become masters at this to include President Obama’s top adviser David Axelrod literally making an industry out of astroturfing. However, the Korean left was by far masters of this technique long before American political groups.
- Use of Civic Groups to Intimidate - In Korea often times the civic groups will even go to the homes of people they disagree with in order to intimidate them into silence. Well now you are beginning to see this happen in the US with ACORN sending people to protest outside people’s homes.
- Use of Labor Unions as Hired Muscle – In Korea labor unions have long been know for violent protests and being the muscle of leftist organizations. Now in the US you are beginning to see the same thing happen. In response to the town hall protests against the government take over of health care the American left has decided to use the labor unions as hired muscle to go up against the health care protesters. Some of the union members have already resorted to violence in both St. Louis and Florida. How long will it be before you start seeing Korea level protest violence in the US?
- Misinformation on the Internet - In Korea the Internet has long been used by leftist groups to attack rivals with misinformation long before the American left became skilled at using the Internet to do the same thing. If you are at odds with the left in either country be prepared to be destroyed on the Internet. Just ask Sarah Palin. For whatever reason the right in both Korea and the US continues to lag behind in effectively using the Internet to fight back against the left. The right in the US is getting a bit more skilled I have noticed, but in Korea, President Lee Myung-bak has just decided to shut down websites and arrest people who publish smears on the Internet. Sometimes I wonder how long it will be before the US gets so indoctrinated with misinformation on the Internet that you could see a mad cow like riot happen in the US?
- Biased Mass Media – If you haven’t noticed how biased broadcast and print media in the US is than you must have been living in a cave for the past 10 years. However, the Koreans have a long history of biased mass media that stretches back to the days of government controlled media by Korea’s military dictators. Now the media is more controlled by special interests and political organizations, which is exactly what the US mass media has become. Much like with combating misinformation on the Internet, Korean President Lee Myung-bak has decided to go after people legally for broadcasting false stories. So can anyone imagine Fox News or Rush Limbaugh being arrested for broadcasting misinformation in the US? We haven’t reached that point yet but people have already made calls to prosecute Rush Limbaugh before.
These are just are the main points I see happening right now in US politics that are becoming more Korean like in nature. I believe this evolution is happening because of the increased power of special interest groups, corporations, as well as corruption in the US government, which is making politics more and more of a zero sum game, just like it is in Korea. However, I don’t think we will be seeing this happen anytime soon in the US Congress.
4:22 am on August 12th, 2009 1
With due respect, but all of this rank nonsense.
Prosecuting former officials who've committed crimes and broken the laws of the nation, civic groups mobilizing over issues they are passionate about, as well as a rancorous and opinionated press and internet are not signs that American politics are becoming "Koreanized".
If anything it's a sign that both are healthy, vibrant democracies.
On another note, it's interesting that most of your "signs" that American politics is going the Korea route are entirely manifested in your indications of your perceived shortcomings of the "Left". This is just flat out tendentious. Conservative and right-wing factions within America can just as equally be charged with "Koreanizing" American politics-if for a moment we accept your ludicrous notion. "Birther" movement anyone? Glenn Beck and and "FEMA concentration camps"? Lou Dobbs and his race-baiting? The utterly misinformed comments and questions raised by "average Joe and Jane" Americans at health care reform townhalls? The list goes on.
Just because you're hearing and seeing things that don't comport with your own political and ideological leanings does not mean that ergo American politics is becoming corrupted. Frankly, your criticisms are more revealing of you than anything else.
4:46 am on August 12th, 2009 2
Calling NGO activity in South Korea part of a "vibrant democracy" lets you gauge Masao's position. Also dismissing Lou Dobbs as race-baiting and showing typical contempt of the "average Joe and Jane" (who isn't liberal) is another.
The birthers want to see a full record of birth. Wow. Those fanatics. I personally think they are wasting their time, but the easy contempt with which liberals and Masao dismiss them and label them – as usual – right wing crazies says more about the left than the birthers.
I do disagree with GI Korea overall – but in a different way. Whenever I find myself starting to think things today have gotten worse or atypical, I force myself to take an honest look back at the past:
I wasn't alive in the and late 60s and was a child in the early 70s. I also wasn't alive back in the 1920s and 30s. And both of those modern times saw greater amounts of upheaval than today. Those and other times were plagued by corruption often at a greater extent than today. Yellow journalism was also a problem at different times.
…I don't like what we are seeing now. I put up heated blog posts about it every other day. But, it's life….
For example, one to show I'm not basing this on ideological affiliation like Masao and won't be dismissed as such: I thought it was bad that Pres. Clinton had to have lawyers spending so much time in court. Conservative and other groups kept him under investigation constantly throughout his two terms.
I agreed he lied under oath and should have been impeached and convicted in the Senate. Presidents don't have the option of telling lies under oath just because they believe the charges are stupid.
But, overall, watching Clinton pulled into court month after month, year after year, made me have serious doubt about having special prosecutors with unlimited budgets and scope of inquiry. (I forget who Bill Richardson was investigating on the Republican side, but I remember a video of him apologizing to the person(s) about how the investigation took on a divergent life of its own due to the open-ended scope of a special prosecutor's discretion, and he regretted that he had basically bankrupted the person(s) with such a long inquiry that churned up headlines but nothing else even after digging into every area conceivable.)
5:43 am on August 12th, 2009 3
I don't mean to be disrespectful or anything, but you don't seem to know anything about American history.
Basically all the examples you mention above were regular features of American politics for most of its history. For example, most people know that the US Civil War was a breakdown of electoral conflict into war proper – but how many of us have heard of the Republicans' paramilitary arm, the Wide Awakes? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes) The Democrats had their own paramilitary orgs as well. In fact, mob violence was a ubiquitous feature of American democracy from its birth to the New Deal. Media outlets were for the most part party organs and mouthpieces, and this is why many newspapers had their party affiliation or bias in their names, i.e. "The Springfield Republican", "St. Louis Globe-Democrat", etc. They were forthright about letting their political leanings be known. It isn't until roughly after the New Deal that you get this farce of apolitical, "independent" media. And there are many more examples of these supposedly "Korean" political features throughout American history.
With the New Deal there was a dramatic change in American politics, a revolution in many ways, that retained the symbolic forms of democracy and republican government but in reality ceded more power and control to non-democratic elements such as the civil service bureaucracy, "independent" media forming public opinion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lippman#Journalism_and_democracy) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Opinion), etc. So since the New Deal, there's been this received wisdom that's been hammered into everyone's heads that the proliferation of countless "experts" in government, all these bureaucrats, departments, policy wonks, "bipartisanship", "consensus", and so forth that are the features of the "New Deal Design" is somehow an expression of true democracy and republican government when it was basically developed as a way of circumventing it. See the following for a concise, though highly theoretical explanation of the "New Deal Design": http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007…
If anything, it's Korean politics, and indeed much of world politics, that has been Americanized rather than the inverse. Those pathological features you point to in Korea politics are manifestations of this Americanization. This isn't really surprising when considering that the post-WW2 world was shaped largely by the US. The only difference is that Korea hasn't undergone a complete New Deal style redesign.
7:55 am on August 12th, 2009 4
Agree with #1
8:05 am on August 12th, 2009 5
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They have already; except they refuse to acknowledge it and constantly spout conspiracy theories.
As for the post as a whole, many of that stuff is not "Koreanization" and have been used as tactics by numerous groups all over the world for decades.
8:07 am on August 12th, 2009 6
Look at it this way — I don't know of any leading conservatives who are big fans of Bill Ayers and the methods of dissent seen in the radical 1960s-early 1970s. I don't know any of them who found such wonderful things in the ideas of people like Saul Alinsky – the Machiavelli of the left.
Democrats and liberals like to toss conservative talk of Alinsky out of hand as being a distraction and absurd, but BOTH choices for the Dem. nomination saw the guy as a hero. Obama followed his path. Clinton wrote her undergrad thesis on the man. The man who liked to say things like how Lucifer was the first quality community organizer/radical…
That is FAR BEYOND a group of conservative "birthers" or angry chants at town hall meetings on health care.
One thing Alinsky was NOT is a fan of healthy, vibrant democracy.
He wrote out a program for abusing free speech, free assembly, and other aspects of the system, and doing anything necessary, to gain enough power in the hands of a limited number of radicals to undo democracy from within. He is very plain about this…and this is the type of man the leaders in the liberal movement think is wonderful and a guiding light.
8:20 am on August 12th, 2009 7
Also, it is the Speaker of the House of Representatives who is out front calling white people who disagree with health care reform – Nazis.
It is other liberal Democrats in Congress who are throwing out claims of racism, of being Nazis or KKK members or fascists. – not some group of birthers. These are top elected officials on the left.
It is also the elite liberal media that champions day after day this demonizing of white people who disagree with Obama.
These leading lights of the left are big fans of Alinsky and Ayers and radical action of the 60s-70s. And they are the ones using vile slander against people they disagree with – being quick with a hairtrigger in calling the opposition racists – and this isn't new.
It is the left in Congress who claimed trying to reform Fannie Mae a racist lynching of Howard Raines…
10:49 am on August 12th, 2009 8
For American politics to become truly "Koreanized", there have to be ridiculous slap fights on the floor of the House and Senate
11:31 am on August 12th, 2009 9
As a free speech civil libertarian, I believe everyone has a right to ask a question and voice an opinion at a public meeting. But that right should end when they are clearly there to monopolize and disrupt the meeting, because it deprives others of the same right.
When Code Pink people stand up and protest at public meetings they are promptly and properly ejected. Why don't we see that happening to the disruptors at these town halls?
"Don't tase me, bro, don't tase me!"
12:21 pm on August 12th, 2009 10
Obama the "community orginizer". tp://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/obamas_alinsky_jujitsu.html
12:32 pm on August 12th, 2009 11
[ED NOTE: See below comment]
<del datetime="2009-08-13T13:10:00+00:00">Obama is very Roh-esque in his leanings. Anti-free speech. Will demigogue anybody who dissagrees (his neverending use of the race card). Anti-business, anti-freedom. The only thing Heussain wants to help is his fellow "bro's" and musslems.
America is really going down the s-hole thanks to Heussain. On the otherhand, democrats are happy. They think that they can get the rich to pay for everything and they can sit on their huge fat butts and eat TV dinners, between protesting the "man".
Now the USA has a radical hispanic woman in the supreme court, who is hell bent on getting back at all the white men who have done her wrong (though it was whites who helped her all along). You should pick the right person for the job, not the right color for the job. Democrats will never learn.</del>
2:27 pm on August 12th, 2009 12
Wow! Democratnazi is special.
Could you give examples of any of your charges or are you gonna just keep on reading from the checklist. You covered so much in your tirade that I wouldn't want anyone to miss such a great analysis of the current state of American political discourse.
3:15 pm on August 12th, 2009 13
Since WWII when the country was united, perhaps closer than anytime in its history including the American revolution, the American people have divided over Vietnam, civil rights, womens rights, disabled rights, social security, medicare, illegal immigration, tobacco, etc.etc.
The US has become very splintered in its makeup of people and their causes. Rather than being drawn together, they have drifted apart.
The democratic party won the recent election as a coalition of disafected groups, rather than a cohesive party with a solid platform. Hence, "Change" was the platform. Change what? and how? Not a problem, just change whatever was going on before, its gotta be better.
So yes, the US is headed in a direction that will become more radical, and splintered, as time goes on, until and unless there is another defining moment such as WWII.
3:19 pm on August 12th, 2009 14
Very well said.
3:53 pm on August 12th, 2009 15
[ED NOTE: Just a warning to be more respectful to the President. I didn't like it when people were saying Bush wasn't there President and calling him Bushitler. So if you continue to use derogatory names towards President Obama, yes he is the President your comment will be deleted.]
<del datetime="2009-08-13T13:06:56+00:00">Sarcasm and bitter bitter anger from "the expat". Let me guess, the expat, you are a democrat right?
For all you peaple who are bashing those who dare to question the so called democratic messiah, Sheikh Hussein Obama, let me tell you a story. It takes place in the not too distant future…
"First they came for the Repblicans, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Republican. Then they came for the Christians, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Christian. Then they came for the Doctors, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn't a Doctor. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."</del>
4:12 pm on August 12th, 2009 16
Sarcasm is the only way to deal with such dribble, but bitter anger is pretty much what you wrote in your three comments. Again, can you give me any links or should we just all come and live in your fanstasy world where you think everyone is coming to get you?
Gerry is right and I think the last 16 years have been particularly polarizing to the point where BOTH sides of the aisle refuse to look at simple facts and prefer make statements like the angry gentlemen above me did.
4:32 pm on August 12th, 2009 17
I agree with both of you. Actually, I think many South Korean and Japanese leaders learned too well from the US as early as the 50s and continued to refine "what we do, not what we say" into a modern Koreanized version of the underside of American life. If there's a re-Americanization of this, then it's a long-term process abetted by SCOTUS rulings on campaign finance, deregulation, and gerrymandering.
4:41 pm on August 12th, 2009 18
I thought your first comment was dead on – and i agree the New Deal and the FDR administrations had some unintended corrupting consequences. But, at least for now, I'm reticent to take that analysis much farther back than the FDR administration. And, as far as the bitterness the blog author taps, I would highlight the Nixon administration's realignment, Vietnam, and stagflation for more proximate causes.
12:00 am on August 13th, 2009 19
I have seen many videos when individual people were being escorted out of the town halls by police. But when there are a thousand people booing the police aren't going to escort all of them out of the building. I agree that people should be more respectful simply because it is a member of Congress they are listening too. However I think what is going on is a sign of how much people distrust the government now. Also keep in mind that no one is forcing these Congress people to have these town halls.
3:25 am on August 13th, 2009 20
Understood GI Korea. It is just that I LOVE THE USA SO DAMN MUCH. I hate what the hippies are doing to it. I also respect the office of the President, no matter who is there, so I will refrain from disrespecting the office and those who serve there.
4:23 am on August 13th, 2009 21
Your citing of Saul Alinsky as the reason why Democrats and the Left are so much worse than anything that the Republican Right does is interesting.
It's interesting in that you seem to not have grasped how redolent the tactics the rabble-rousers utilize at the townhalls are of Alinsky.
Here's a link that offers a good rundown of the congruence:
http://washingtonindependent.com/54554/conservati…
Reading the piece myself, I couldn't help but came back to this passage from the historian Richard Hofstadter's famous essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"
"It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry. Secret organizations set up to combat secret organizations give the same flattery. The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through “front” groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy.* Spokesmen of the various fundamentalist anti-Communist “crusades” openly express their admiration for the dedication and discipline the Communist cause calls forth."
Read the whole thing: http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/th…
10:51 am on August 13th, 2009 22
Korea has a long history of protest culture far, far beyond its contact with the United States. In the Chosun Dynasty, and maybe before, I don't remember exactly, the Censorate Bureau, a common feature in traditional East Asian societies, was staffed by usually young, idealist, top graduates of the Confucian Civil Service Exams. The Censorate had to OK every government policy, and another duty was to watch the moral standing of civil servants, the monarchy, and powerful families.
Sometimes they clashed mightily with other power groups. They used strikes and sit-in protests that could turn violent. And their strikes were often successful in shutting down the day-to-day function of the government – at least in the capital.
Another example from Korean traditional culture is the town rock throwing events where villagers from different nearby villages who were having issues would officially meet in a field and stone each other.
You can also look at another feature of Korean society today — the mass scrums by elected politicians in the Legislature. You surely can't trace that back to the bastardization of Korean society by American political culture. It's an Asian thing…
Lastly, the biggest feature of American political culture South Korea adapted was — democracy. Something that did not spring from their traditional culture and was imported – for the better of the society…
10:57 am on August 13th, 2009 23
You seemed to have missed the primary point:
Alinsky is openly admired by — the highest leaders of the Dem party and elitist liberals. (I use that term not to label all liberals or all Democrats elitist but to specify one influential element in both those groups). The man's radical, underhanded agenda — inspired both Obama and Hillary — and you can see such an affinity to this type of radicalism commonly in liberal circles.
If you can show me where top Republicans and conservatives are fans of such people and their advice on how to defeat their opposition, your comment above can work — otherwise…
11:04 am on August 13th, 2009 24
Most of what I've seen of the actual meetings is along the lines of a union hall – where church-like "Amen" shouts are common either in support or against what the person speaking is saying. That kind of environment can at times drown people out, but what little I've seen of the videos is that type of crowd, not a program to shout speakers down by constantly making it impossible for them to be heard.
Outside the venues, it is a different matter.
Overall, I believe the US media is actively distorting what is going on – distorting the amount of disruption taking place – selectively overlapping scenes from outside and inside the forum to give the impression nobody in favor of Obamacre can get the chance to speak.
I believe the media has decided to do what it did in the 2008 campaign: that they have decide the issue is just too important for them to sit on the sidelines, and they are doing what they believe is necessary to erode the strength of the opposition and promote the position of people like Nancy Pelosi.
12:23 pm on August 13th, 2009 25
I understood perfectly well your primary point in spite of its outlandishness. That's why the link was provided.
Read the first link that I provided for you edification. Otherwise you're just reiterating a nonsensical point in lieu of a cogent counter-argument.
AGAIN: Read the link. It's not just "liberal/Democrats (sic) elitists" who subscribe to Alinsky's "radical, underhanded agenda".
2:26 pm on August 13th, 2009 26
Funny how we came up on almost identical issue at the same time. (See AAK!)
4:30 pm on August 13th, 2009 27
If I may, I do think your presentation is from a different angle than the presentation here. Yours is exposing the misinformed, the uninformed, and the uninformable; the U.S. equivalent of hard core Mad Cow protesters who believe beef imports were part of a deliberate plot to exterminate them.
I think GIKorea wants to approach from those concerns due to the lack of information and uncertainty.
An outside may not be able to distinguish from the two groups because they may both appear over-agitate and irrational, but I think the former group will never be satisfied with real facts; the true conspiracy believer.
The later group may be placated when enough details and information is provided.
4:33 pm on August 13th, 2009 28
outside = outsider
5:38 pm on August 13th, 2009 29
Is this Kushibo? Is the IP address from Hawaii?
Anyway…
Done. And you still don't have much of a leg to stand on.
If you want to stick to that limited claim, your fine, but you don't. You want to claim that the right is just as engaged with Alinsky and his style as liberals.
But the best you can come up with are groups and people who I've never heard of and who most Americans have never heard of. (Unlike Code Pink, MoveOn.org, Acorn and the likes).
Which is – of course – trying to bypass the main point you said you understood and found outlandish.
Outlandish? Really? Obama chose to move to Chicago to become a community organizer following in Alinsky's footsteps. He openly admits his affinity for radicalism like that when he was a younger man. Hillary Clinton wrote a supportive undergrad these on the man…
…but pointing that out is outlandish? And the mention of a few little known groups who mention Alinsky's name and/or say they are applying his program —- is equivalent to Obama and Hillary?
And I'm the one with nonsensiccal points and your the one with "cogent counter-arguments." Sure…Ku…
Next, the second link is to a diatribe that gives meaning to the word outlandish.
Next, in the Post article, there is hardly anything in it proving the leaders of the conservative groups mentioned are following Alinsky. I think there was only one direct reference in a quote. Another simply says the leader has read his work and that there is nothing similar among conservatives. I've read him myself — does that mean I'm going to follow his example?
The article, like much of the media, wants to deflect public criticism of Obama by saying these events are astroturfed, but they fail to make the case.
The Post article also fails to justify its sweeping statements about how the tea parties and town hall meetings developed. It wants to say that the level of top conservative groups is secretly behind these campaigns to such an extent you can ignore the protests as fakes…
…but, for example, pointing out Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh is plugging them on the radio isn't (shouldn't) be a solid foundation for such a claim.
5:44 pm on August 13th, 2009 30
Is this Kushibo? Is the IP address from Hawaii?
Anyway…
Done. And you still don’t have much of a leg to stand on.
I am posting this again because, at least in Firefox, the original one disappears when the page is fully loaded…
If you want to stick to that limited claim, your fine, but you don’t. You want to claim that the right is just as engaged with Alinsky and his style as liberals.
But the best you can come up with are groups and people who I’ve never heard of and who most Americans have never heard of. (Unlike Code Pink, MoveOn.org, Acorn and the likes).
Which is – of course – trying to bypass the main point you said you understood and found outlandish.
Outlandish? Really? Obama chose to move to Chicago to become a community organizer following in Alinsky’s footsteps. He openly admits his affinity for radicalism like that when he was a younger man. Hillary Clinton wrote a supportive undergrad these on the man…
…but pointing that out is outlandish? And the mention of a few little known groups who mention Alinsky’s name and/or say they are applying his program —- is equivalent to Obama and Hillary?
And I’m the one with nonsensiccal points and your the one with “cogent counter-arguments.” Sure…Ku…
Next, the second link is to a diatribe that gives meaning to the word outlandish.
Next, in the Post article, there is hardly anything in it proving the leaders of the conservative groups mentioned are following Alinsky. I think there was only one direct reference in a quote. Another simply says the leader has read his work and that there is nothing similar among conservatives. I’ve read him myself — does that mean I’m going to follow his example?
The article, like much of the media, wants to deflect public criticism of Obama by saying these events are astroturfed, but they fail to make the case.
The Post article also fails to justify its sweeping statements about how the tea parties and town hall meetings developed. It wants to say that the level of top conservative groups is secretly behind these campaigns to such an extent you can ignore the protests as fakes…
…but, for example, pointing out Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh is plugging them on the radio isn’t (shouldn’t) be a solid foundation for such a claim.
7:56 pm on August 13th, 2009 31
It's time to put up or shut up USinKorea.
Yes it's true that in their younger days both Hillary and Obama read about and were trained in the activists tactics of one Saul Alinsky. Fine so far.
But then you make this logical leap in assuming that both Clinton and Obama are these dangerous radicals out to topple the system Jacobin style. But if you actually look at both their records of public service, it's all pretty much centrist, third-way, incrementalist stuff.
You go on and on while foaming at the mouth about how "radical" this Alinsky fella was implying by innuendo that somehow ergo Clinton and Obama are chips off the same old block. Yet interestingly you offer NO example of how Clinton, Obama, and other leading lights of the liberal/Democratic movement are acting in such a manner.
You say the following:
"He (Alinsky) wrote out a program for abusing free speech, free assembly, and other aspects of the system, and doing anything necessary, to gain enough power in the hands of a limited number of radicals to undo democracy from within. He is very plain about this…and this is the type of man the leaders in the liberal movement think is wonderful and a guiding light."
Really? Show me a specific instance were this is the case.
Moreover, it's not that conservative are just "reading" Alinsky. They're reading him and applying his tactics with equal brio and gusto. Sure they may not admire the man or have written undergraduate theses about him but there actions are telling: The person they make into a bogeyman is the very person they have write their playbook.
Finally, so what that "most Americans" haven't heard of the conservative groups mentioned in the article? If you're really under the illusion that "most Americans" know who Code Pink, MoveOn.org or ACORN are you're pretty off base. At best, most have a vague sense of who or what they are. They're level of knowledge concerning these leftist groups is in most cases on par with that of those on the right.
9:13 pm on August 13th, 2009 32
Foaming at the mouth, check. Distorting my sayings, check. Insulting my intelligence, check. Flailing away himself, check Doing exactly what he claims I'm doing as he spits accusations, check — must be Kushibo.
Why in the world would I go to the trouble of getting another copy of Rules for Radicals or go about digging up source material in an attempt to engage in a debate with someone who is so quick to insult and so blind he can say with a straight face — Obama's career has been one of a centrist?
— I'll pass…
3:39 pm on August 14th, 2009 33
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/21824?in=07:19&a…
8:17 am on August 15th, 2009 34
Korea's long history of protest culture is not a counterexample to my argument. Protests and disagreement are a universal feature of human societies throughout history. I never denied that Korea has an indigenous culture and history of protest. That's not the issue this post was attempting to address. The question was whether the character of recent American politics was a "Koreanization" of sorts, that is whether current American politics reflects similarities with the recent history and character of Korean politics, involving the things you mention above in your post. The answer is of course, to a certain extent, but not for reasons you believe. It's not a "Koreanization" but a reversion to many features that were common throughout American history. Your post claimed that the recent manifestations of dissatisfaction and discontent on the part of American citizens, as well as some of the features of social and political activism, somehow reflected a "Koreanization" of American politics. And I demonstrated (I think sufficiently) that this is incorrect because these things were present in American politics decades and centuries before.
When I claim that many of the pathological features you point to in Korea are manifestations of Americanization my point is that the American style democracy that was "imported" is to some extent responsible for these features – that is they provided avenues for these features to spring up and develop. The idea that this can't be due to "Americanization" because we don't really see this kind of thing in American politics is a mistaken one, and I explain why in my initial comment. These were common elements of American politics – they only seem "not American" because of the drastic changes that occurred with the New Deal (the "New Deal Design") that in effect made sure the more democratic character of American politics was hindered and ultimately circumvented.
There aren't any, and there haven't been, any protests in North Korea. During the Cold War, there weren't really any domestic protests in the Soviet Union either. We wouldn't say that this was due to the "North Koreanization" of Soviet politics. More accurately, we would've said that North Korea's lack of protest and domestic opposition was due to a form of "Stalinization" or "Sovietization", etc.
2:38 pm on August 15th, 2009 35
The original wasn't my post but the blog owners – GI Korea. And in my first comment on it, I staked out a position very roughly similar to yours – saying that if we look back further in American history, we can see similarities at times with what we are seeing in America today.
I believe it is human nature to believe what you are seeing today that irks you as something new in degree if not totally so — but, like I said in my comment – whenever I find myself throwing my hands up in disgust or dismay at what is going on in American society, I force myself to take a longer look at the past to see if things really are as different today as they were at times before…
My point is that calling these manifestations pathological and attributing them to contact with the United States – is misleading in terms of Korea's long history.
I'd say the same thing about your North Korea-Soviet Union example. To say that North Korea's style of tyranny caused the Soviet one would be wrong (— well – first of all – simply because of the historical timeline —). I'd also say you can't lay all or perhaps even the bulk of North Korea's tyranny at the feet of the Soviet Union:
People have written about the Confucian-origins of North Korean despotism and how elements of Korean society that are oppressive have some Confucian and East Asian roots. To say that North Korea's despotism is a pathological result of its contact with Stalinist Russia or Soviet communism would be misleading in part.
For example, in the Community Compacts some Korean towns had in the Chosun Dynasty, based loosely on Chinese models and varying widely from town to town, one common feature was —– villagers were supposed to spy on each other – and during the periodic meetings of the town under the Compact, they were to let everybody know the good and bad people had been doing. This type of social pressure is a part of Stalinism and Soviet-style communism that was exported wholesale around the world, but in North Korea's case, it also has a clear connection to the Neo-Confucian roots of the society and East Asian despotism as exemplified by China – the Middle Kingdom.
The same is true for attributing South Korea's protest culture to its contact with the United States.
This kinda talks over itself: If we don't see it in American politics, how can it be a common element?
If this is largely in response to my point about the slap fights and legislative scrums you see from time to time in Korean political culture, I'd have to say it is wrong:
Korea isn't alone in this kind of political scene. It has been seen in contemporary times in Japan as well and maybe Taiwan and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the Far East, but it is not a known feature in American political culture or as far as I know any of the Western European democracies……So, you would naturally assume the roots of it are mostly in traditional East Asian culture…