Here is a perfect documentary.
It teeters for a second.
Early.
Because it shows two of the most vile, reprehensible propagandists in the world.
Susan Rice and Barack Obama.
But it lets them speak.
The film lets Rice and Obama make fools of themselves.
[and it doesn’t take these two idiots long]
Then we are immersed in a richness of inquiry which befits the home country of our director.
Spain.
But Álvaro Longoria’s film is about a wholly different place.
North Korea.
I was lucky enough once to visit Mr. Longoria’s hometown of Santander.
Though I was not there long, I found it odd that we (me and my traveling companions) boarded our plane on the runway.
A Boeing 737, I believe it was.
So we are talking about perhaps 200 people.
On a runway in Spain.
With a little control tower.
I must admit.
The operation was not heartening.
But then again, I’ve taken a propeller plane from Sacramento to San Francisco.
The world likes to think of America as filthy rich.
But we still have propeller planes for some of our shorter routes.
Flying over San Francisco Bay in a propeller plane wasn’t exactly my idea of relaxation either.
But so then…what do we think of North Korea?
If we listen to people like Susan Rice and Barack Obama (neither of whom, categorically, can be trusted), then we are to shudder at the thought of the DPRK.
Well, our director Mr. Longoria has given the most fair, measured approach to a very controversial subject.
And his final product (the film) is so much the better for it.
To wit, Mr. Longoria does not presume to think for his viewers.
He lets you decide.
If you are looking for bias in this film, you will have to look pretty hard.
Perhaps, you will reason, Mr. Longoria is a Spanish leftist and therefore he gives North Korea the benefit of the doubt.
On the contrary, one might reason that the director is a very (VERY) savvy propagandist himself…and therefore, his documentary is largely an exercise in reverse psychology.
I must admit.
When I heard the voices of Rice and Obama, my internal monologue of opprobrium almost caused me to lose my lunch.
But I stuck with it.
And I’m so glad I did.
What is at issue in this film, and in the frozen conflict zone of which North Korea is half, is the discipline/technique/art of propaganda.
If you are very dumb (and I doubt you are, as you are reading this illustrious blog), you will believe everything you hear about North Korea.
You will believe CNN.
You will believe Martha Raddatz.
You will believe George Stephanopoulos.
To call these two “presstitutes” is really being too kind.
They make Rice and Obama look like saints.
Those of the Raddatz/Stephanopoulos ilk in the United States journalistic community are really worthless individuals.
Mostly because they have ceased to BE individuals.
They aren’t even drones.
They are more like little Lego pieces of poisonous honeycomb.
Inhuman.
But they’re not alone.
Throw in Diane Sawyer.
Actually (and I’ll throw the lefties a bone), throw in Bill O’Reilly.
All of these journalists are generally less than nothing when it comes to their global contributions.
And so it only makes the case of the DPRK stronger (for better or worse) when such née-individuals (including emasculated presstitutes) insult North Korea.
And so it is very clear that North Korea is the target of an immense amount of propaganda.
HOWEVER,
the DPRK seems itself to be quite prodigious in the art of manipulative communication.
Or, propaganda.
So our director lets the two sides go at it.
It’s almost like two Charlie Brown schoolteachers (Othmars both) having a verbal altercation.
The West: “Blah blah blah blah HUMAN RIGHTS blah!”
North Korea: “Blah blah blah blah IMPERIALISTS blah.”
We must credit North Korea with restraint.
The people.
Polite.
Keep in mind, this is a focus on the people.
What kind of people live in North Korea?
[well, Koreans…obviously]
Adults, children…male, female…
And so the cynic will cry “Potemkin village” very early on in this one.
But it is worth watching till the end.
Most intriguing is the figure Alejandro Cao de Benós de Les y Pérez.
Here’s an idealist if ever there was one.
But that’s what we must remember about North Korea.
It is a country of extreme idealism.
Let me frame it with slightly different diction.
It is a country of immense idealism.
[ah…we even got some alliteration there!]
Mr. Cao is, or was, Spanish.
Now he is a North Korean.
He is a spokesman for the DPRK.
As we say here in the West, he’s “all in”.
He digs their chili.
He’s drinking the Kool-Aid.
We want some of whatever he’s smoking.
[you get the picture]
But I must say…
Mr. Cao is an extremely (immensely) articulate individual.
To hear him tell it (and he does so with genuine conviction), North Korea is the last bastion of communism.
China has sold out to market forces (capitalism).
The Soviet Union sold out Stalin (Cao actually makes this claim).
[and, he asserts, China sold out Mao]
Vietnam is now thoroughly capitalist.
[that might be a direct quote]
So does Mr. Cao have a point?
Well, perhaps he does.
But there are doubtless few self-respecting communists [more to this sentence after brackets] who would hold up North Korea as a beacon of socialist governance.
Communist, socialist, Trotskyist…
It all begins to run together for us heathen imperialists.
Ah!
There’s that other buzz word.
Imperialism.
Indeed, if you look at the U.S. military bases in South Korea and Japan (which this documentary illustrates as a sort of “ring of fire” [pun intended]), the imperialism charge is not without evidence.
But this is really the quintessence of what Nick Tosches calls “intellectual parlor games”.
Meaning, we could be here all day.
I’m at nearly a thousand words (and so are you, if you’re still with me) and I haven’t even begun to truly scratch the surface of the imbroglio that is the 38th parallel.
North latitude.
Simply put, the U.S. has a vested interest in creating and propagating propaganda about North Korea.
[which does not mean that all of the reportage is made-up…indeed, the best propaganda has a kernel or modicum of truth…sometimes even a heaping spoonful…North Korea certainly does not seem to have the whole “public relations” thing down yet]
And conversely, North Korea has a vested interest in creating and propagating (mostly for internal, domestic purposes) propaganda about the United States and capitalist economies in general.
[and granted…the United States has done some incredibly daft stuff…the likes of which could be spun into a thousand tales of horror for 10,000 years]
What really complicates matters are nuclear weapons.
North Korea, we are told, has twenty (OH MY GOD! 20!!!) nuclear weapons.
The United States has sixty-eight-hundred (6,800) nuclear warheads in various states of readiness.
I hate to sound like Ted Turner (and it’s sad when Mr. Turner becomes a voice of reason), but there seems to be a rather glaring discrepancy there.
Oh!
But one side is responsible (I’ll let you guess) and the other side is reckless (guess again).
Of course, nuclear weapons have never been used in war…except by the United States.
Twice.
And so every society has its propaganda.
I will never feel very good that my country nuked two Japanese cities.
Somewhere between approx. 125,000 and 250,000 Japanese people (at least half of them civilians) were vaporized and/or bombarded with lethal radiation by Fat Man and Little Boy.
I know that the U.S. Department of Defense (then known as the Department of War and Department of the Navy, respectively) isn’t selling Girl Scout cookies.
But Harry S. Truman’s “display” on live targets is a rather hard pill to swallow.
We are supposed to think statistically.
Think of how many lives we saved (by, counterintuitively, squelching perhaps a quarter million OTHER souls).
I guess maybe after six years of war, we were insane.
They say it only takes 100 days.
Of warfare.
Any man (or woman).
No matter how mentally strong.
Literally insane.
Beyond that point.
But we were talking about North Korea…
Mr. Longoria is more of a scientist than me.
Our director, Mr. Longoria.
He meditates on the problem.
He is not rash.
Granted, his access to the “hermit kingdom” compels him to be open-minded (if only for the duration of his stay [and in strictly “apparent” diplomacy]).
It seems evident to me that Álvaro Longoria is a very formidable filmmaker.
I wonder what he would have made of our recent American election?
[when Trump supporters learned to hate Hillary…and Hillary supporters learned to hate Trump]
In retrospect, the United States has just been the battlefield of an immense propaganda war.
The winner (for the time-being) was and is Donald Trump.
But the war was so ugly that things are still not back to “normal” in the USA.
Perhaps they never will be again.
And that is also the lesson of The Propaganda Game.
This substitutes for bullets when you cannot shoot.
When destruction is mutually-assured, colder, icier methods prevail.
Sneaking, surreptitious oozing of lies and falsehoods.
All’s fair in war and love, they say.
And “close enough” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
“They” say that too.
“They” say a lot of things.
Indeed, “they” are the most quotable group around.
Now, if we only knew who “they” were…
-PD
paulydeathwish 