Here is a beauty from (soon to be former) UDP leader Sohn Hak-kyu (Chosun):
“Public perception is no less important than rational judgement.”
He is right, of course. It is a truism of politics that the perception is more important than reality.
On the other hand, it would be nice to see Sohn doing something to help perception catch up with reality on the US beef issue. I won’t be holding my breath.
34 Comments
Holy crazy batman, he’s already eaten the beef!
Isn’t that the whole merit of an elected democracy over a direct demo-crazy. To have trusted leaders take a rational, studied, long term approach to issues rather then having emotional/irrational public opinion, (which often damaged the city state of Athens the only actual direct democracy I’ve ever heard of,) rule the day. If not, with the internet, countries, thanks to the internet, can go to direct democracy tomorrow. Forget candle light vigils, lets let internet fear mongers, looking to feel important and have a purpose in life, rule direct!
Holy crazy batman, he’s already eaten the beef!
Isn’t that the whole merit of an elected democracy over a direct demo-crazy. To have trusted leaders take a rational, studied, long term approach to issues rather then having emotional/irrational public opinion, (which often damaged the city state of Athens the only actual direct democracy I’ve ever heard of,) rule the day. If not,thanks to the internet, countries can go to direct democracy tomorrow. Forget candle light vigils, lets let internet fear mongers, looking to feel important and have a purpose in life, rule direct!
Holy crazy batman, he’s already eaten the beef!
Isn’t that the whole merit of an elected democracy over a direct demo-crazy. To have trusted leaders take a rational, studied, long term approach to issues rather then having emotional/irrational public opinion, (which often damaged the city state of Athens the only actual direct democracy I’ve ever heard of,) rule the day. If not,thanks to the internet, countries can go to direct democracy tomorrow. Forget candle light vigils, lets let internet fear mongers, looking to feel important and have a purpose in life, rule direct!
sorry about the triple post, my computer mucked up.
madar,
Are you sure it wasn’t the beef?
@#1~3 (:-D)
“Netizenocracy”… now there’s a scary thought.
Awesome!
I saw that guy on the street once, in Yeoju or somewhere. I thought he was a man of the people, but when I saw him, he was walking with some other dude, just the two of them, and the other dude was carrying Sohn’s umbrella, an getting all wet. So he kinda had a little servant / slave. That was awesome too.
Considering his comment, he is *the* poster-child of anything that is wrong in this country, excluding the perennial vice of loving of money at the expense of any virtue.
I never realized lemmings were carnivores.
you don’t see parallels with this and the
1/ US school teachers telling children what to think.
2/ Protest over Iraq.
If you don’t, you don’t have a right or a sound position to criticize the Koreans, who are basically basing this whole thing on EU/Japan/ANZland stuff.
Protesting the Iraq war is rational, nimrod.
Going gaga over a non-existent beef threat in order to release pent-up xenophobic mania isn’t.
why is it rational?
what is the US doing there, that is inherently bad and evil?
tell me of one country that has gone to the shit hole, because of US aid and occupation.
isn’t it true that this Iraq war thing is about
pent-up US isolationism, being released to monger fear among the masses?
you WANT IT to be another Vietnam. That’s what it is.
i remember when I was in elementary school, I really pulled for Walter Mondale to defeat Reagen, and I told my parents to vote accordingly.
do you know why?
how is that even possible for a young child to do?
it was the fucking elementary school teacher, talking about Mondale in class all the time, that’s what.
I remember when I was older, I really pulled for Paul Tsongas, the guy who lost to Bill.
do you know why? It was the fucking teacher talking about Paul Tsongas in CLASSTIME, instead of teaching.
it’s not your fucking job to do it, teacher-crusaders.
if you want conservative teachers to shut up about creation in the classroom,
why the hell are you infusing children and college students with liberal political thoughts?
great hypocrisy there.
by the way, University profs do it all the time, too. Even more so, because those kids can vote.
you only see the thorn in the KTeacher’s Un ion.
what a surprise.
You literally make no sense.
If there had been strong isolationist sentiment, there would have been no unilateral U.S. attack against Iraq.
Here are some reasons it is rational to protest the war in Iraq:
1. belief that it contravenes the Constitution;
2. belief that torture is immoral;
3. the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, while elements in untouched Saudi Arabia likely did;
4. belief that Bush attacked Iraq as part of a poorly-articulated Oedipus Complex;
5. the fact that Bush lied to the U.S. citizenry to drum up support (among idiots like you) for the war;
etc.
Now, even this dimbulb Sohn is acknowledging that his countrymen are prone to irrational behavior — nothing about these Korean protests has been rational.
I remember some teachers at my high school wearing Mondale buttons too. Some parents complained, and the teachers stopped wearing them. Tens of thousands of students didn’t pour into the streets to protest Reagan’s candidacy and damn U.S. allies such as South Korea in another ethnocentric orgy. Your analogy is stupid, unsurprisingly.
South Vietnam… most native American nations (and present-day reservations)… the Philippines… Afghanistan (work in progress, maybe?)…
Come to think of it, pre-Castro Cuba wasn’t exactly a shining bastion of upright government, human rights, and economic prosperity (not that it is now…)
I’m surprised anyone reads WJK anymore. I’ve been skipping over him for a good 2 years, largely on style grounds.
Bump to Slim’s comment.
WJK. Well you know what happens to the sheep that wanders too far from the protection of the herd and watchful eye of the shepard.
Do you believe everything you read as well as everything you hear ?
Pray tell, who tells you what to think and do these days ? Or are you lost in the wilderness without an intellectual or moral compass ?
I do agree that teachers should not abuse their position to advance their personal opinions, particularily with younger more impressionable students, but one has to hope that at sometime in their life, students will have developed some sort of autonomy and intellectual freedom…. enough that they can be enticed into critical debate without thinking they are being told what to think or do.
I wish you luck in that endevor.
university professors are always filling their classrooms with liberal non-sense and have been since the 60’s
as for the philippines being an example of occupation gone bad is kind of a stretch
To help with perceptions, he should check out the following info
http://www.beefresearch.org/CM.....rading.pdf
http://www.bbqreport.com/archi.....ng-system/
This shows that the only beef assumed to be less than 30 months old would be the USDA Prime classification — even this is not definite, seeing as the mathematical formula used to classify beef could classify older beef as ‘Prime’ because it has high levels of marbelling.
Most Americans do not eat Prime. Most people have Choice or Select. What’s next? Will Koreans insist on veal?
Zonath, your comment is pretty ridiculous…for example, directly after gaining independence from the U.S., the Philippines had one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and was one of the wealthiest countries in Asia. However, Marcos’ regime seems to be the true culprit explaining the Philiippines current status.
In Afghanistan, I’m sure most women prefer occupation to the Taliban regime. And let’s see…the war with the Soviets is what put the brakes on significant economic momentum in Afghanistan. And now non-drug GDP is growing at double-digit rates once again, thanks mostly to infrastructure put in place by the British, Canadians, and oh-so-evil Americans.
As for Vietnam…well, it has recently been fostering private enterprise and capitalism, after seeing very little good results from decades of state-encouraged collectivization (72% of Vietnamese were involved in in collectives in 1985). Coincidentally, these were policies that the U.S. also pursued in South Vietnam. And oh yeah, AFAIK the French basically treated Vietnam as a colony in the old mercantilist sense (extracting raw materials and trying to export French goods there) while the U.S. actually built a lot of infrastructure in the South. Now, Vietnamese pragmatism (government switch to a more free-enterprise-allowing stance after a relatively short time of communist frustration) was probably underestimated, but if Vietnamese leaders had used communism to maintain an iron grip on the country (e.g. Kim Jong-Il, Fidel) it could easily have been a disaster for the Vietnamese people.
To cite Cuba is even more laughable. Even though Fidel’s regime was propped up by aid from the Soviets and now Venezuela, there is still widespread rationing and, in general, poverty and frustration. In terms of societal freedom, Internet use is severely restricted and of course traveling or receiving information from abroad is also limited to the political elites. In contrast, in the 50s the Cuban press and elections (while not perfect) were definitely much, much more “free” in any sense of the word compared to today. In addition, Cuba was the most prosperous country in 1950s Latin America…surely not the case anymore.
Finally, in terms of present-day reservations the U.S. government is definitely not holding up progress; rather it is the structure of the tribes themselves - in the Navajo Nation, it takes about 2 years just to receive a license to start up a small business (http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10966109). Granted, the tribes should certainly be given the land rights to the reservations, this is a clear shortcoming of U.S. policy.
And in terms of the past…well, of course this is a big moral question for Americans as well as Europeans. What is owed (if anything) to the descendants of those tribes, whose way of life was simply not compatible with the sedentary (and sometimes city-dwelling) lifestyle of European immigrants. Is there a lesson here? Well, Americans shouldn’t go en masse to live in Afghanistan. But saying that the U.S. government is evil or that interventionist foreign policy is always bad doesn’t really emerge as the sensible conclusion. Most probably see the Native American question more in the light of domestic policy, and more recent interventions have been much less violent and with totally different intentions (as well as different consequences).
And yet, most of the country is still in craptastic shape and ruled by warlords that the US (at least partially) helped to bring back into power. Nice job there.
This, of course, following a devastating war, and decades after the end of the US occupation, but sure… let’s take credit anyhow.
yeah…. Batista was a real kitten, whose 1954 ‘election’ (he ran as the only candidate) was obviously much more free and fair than that of the Castro brothers. Again, not arguing that present-day Cuba is any better off, but American involvement definitely didn’t make Cuba (or many other countries) a bastion of freedom and democracy.
so zonath your point is that the US should be able to take a country that currently lives in the dark ages and change it over night???
I think the U.S. should just hold a press conference, and announce that the proposed deal is absolutely off due to the misunderstandings and bad feelings involved. No snarkiness, no whining, just matter-of-fact. Let the announcement hit the guts of the chaebol leaders who have the most to lose, like Hyundai Motors and Samsung, who could have taken a leadership role in this beef nonsense and didn’t.
Then, wait a week.
Then, begin stopping every boat carrying Samsung Motors and Samsung Electronics goods and subjecting them to painstaking inspections. First, 4 guys from the Dept. of Homeland Security inspect the thousands of cars, one by one, while taking ample coffee breaks, for bombs. Then, a couple of mechanics give the hyundai’s an inspection while electronics dudes inspect the phones. One problem? Whole ship has to turn around and go back to Korea. Next ship, please. Yes, you, the one that has been waiting at the dock for 3 weeks.
Next, see what happens. I can’t guess what would. The Korean govt and chaebols would….do what? It’d sure be interesting to see.
I think the U.S. should just hold a press conference, and announce that the proposed deal is absolutely off due to the misunderstandings and bad feelings involved. No snarkiness, no whining, just matter-of-fact. Let the announcement hit the guts of the chaebol leaders who have the most to lose, like Hyundai Motors and Samsung, who could have taken a leadership role in this beef nonsense and didn’t.
Then, wait a week.
Then, begin stopping every boat carrying Samsung Motors and Samsung Electronics goods and subjecting them to painstaking inspections. First, 4 guys from the Dept. of Homeland Security inspect the thousands of cars, one by one, while taking ample coffee breaks, for bombs. Then, a couple of mechanics give the hyundai’s an inspection while electronics dudes inspect the phones. One problem? Whole ship has to turn around and go back to Korea. Next ship, please. Yes, you, the one that has been waiting at the dock for 3 weeks.
Next, see what happens. I can’t guess what would. The Korean govt and chaebols would….do what? It’d sure be interesting to see.
I think the U.S. should just hold a press conference, and announce that the proposed deal is absolutely off due to the misunderstandings and bad feelings involved. No snarkiness, no whining, just matter-of-fact. Let the announcement hit the guts of the chaebol leaders who have the most to lose, like Hyundai Motors and Samsung, who could have taken a leadership role in this beef nonsense and didn’t.
Then, wait a week.
Then, begin stopping every boat carrying Samsung Motors and Samsung Electronics goods and subjecting them to painstaking inspections. First, 4 guys from the Dept. of Homeland Security inspect the thousands of cars, one by one, while taking ample coffee breaks, for bombs. Then, a couple of mechanics give the hyundai’s an inspection while electronics dudes inspect the phones. One problem? Whole ship has to turn around and go back to Korea. Next ship, please. Yes, you, the one that has been waiting at the dock for 3 weeks.
Next, see what happens. I can’t guess what would. The Korean govt and chaebols would….do what? It’d sure be interesting to see, though.
I think people should click on “Post Comment” only once.
Pretty much all Hyundai cars sold in the US are built there. Samsung cars are not sold there.
I think people should click on “Post Comment” only once.
Pretty much all Hyundai cars sold in the US are built there. Samsung cars are not sold in the US.
Pick another target.
“Public perception is no less important than rational judgement.”
That’s the argument I was using with my class as we were discussing the topic…But, I made sure that they understood that I still believe the public was wrong for letting itself be manipulated so easily.
Not at all. I was simply identifying a few places in the world where US aid and occupation have not been all the great a boon (countries that have ‘gone to the shit hole’ as the result of such.) I didn’t think it was all that controversial to state that American interventions have not always had wholly (or even largely) positive effects (and certainly not to detract from successes in the reconstruction of Western Europe and NE Asia).
Andy,
You’re right, I’ve eaten tons of American beef in my life. I’m doooooooomed!!!
@ 29 and 30
lol at you.
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