<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/59124558@N06/7835533242/” title=”Willard Jong-un by dengre.bj, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8436/7835533242_de4c858260.jpg” width=”500″ height=”383″ alt=”Willard Jong-un”></a>
Last week I was traveling (off to Des Moines for family events and the Iowa State Fair). I’ve gotten used to reading news online. I rarely read a newspaper, expect when traveling by air or train. As I read the paper on my trip, I rediscovered the fun of turning newsprint pages. Often there are interesting layout juxtaposition of news stories, photos and/or ads that add to the experience and underscores an idea. There is an online echo of this, but it I just don’t see it as often.
Above is the Opinion Page from the 8-16-12 issue of the paper. The two articles seemed to be talking about the same phenomena: the selling of a politician/leader without policies, history, background and any details about what they would do with power.
Both Willard Mitt Romney and Kim Jong-un are men of mystery. In both cases it is unclear what they would do with power, who controls them and even the basic facts of their record and their beliefs. For Willard this is odd as he has been around for decades (and running for President for most of that time)–and yet most of his life, his beliefs, his record and the basics about who he is are off the table. Tim Egan’s essay on the page completely captured the hollowness of the man:
This problem of who he is, Romney acknowledged last year, has plagued him ever since he became a public figure.
In focus groups, he’s described as a tin man, a shell, an empty suit, vacuous, a multimillionaire in mom jeans. And that’s from supporters.
At the convention, you can expect to hear high praise for a virtuous, disciplined, loyal person of family and faith. You will surely hear the words “turnaround” and “no apology” — both titles of platitudinous and unread books by Romney — in defense of his business acumen and unshakable view of American exceptionalism.
But I doubt you will hear anything of the real Romney because he is afraid of his own past.
In a few days The GOP/Wingnut noise machine will put on a spectacle carefully crafted to give a focused group tested image of Willard Mitt Romney. Talking points will be circulated and repeated. Visuals will reinforce the message. President Obama and Liberals will be presented as existential threats to the survival of White Men and their America. Romney will be presented as the hero who can save and protect the Nation.
It is all very, very much like the political theater of North Korea: a show put on to sell the figurehead of the elites to the masses. The other story on the page tells of how another son of a political family is being sold to the rubes as the new Dear Leader:
In my recent visit, I saw slogans extolling the new leader everywhere: “Long Live Great Leader Comrade Kim Jong-un!” “Long Live Kim Jong-un, Sun of Military-First Korea!” and more ominously, “Follow Great Leader Kim Jong-un to Final Victory!”
Kim Jong-un has already proven himself to be a much more visible and publicly engaged leader than his more reticent father; he appears a natural politician in the mold of his still-revered grandfather, Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s founding leader. The regime is clearly trying to cultivate that image, as if to make the North Korean people forget the famine and other failures of the Kim Jong-il era and relive the hopeful and relatively well-off era of Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994. Even Kim Jong-un’s appearance, including the Mao suit, paunch and short-sided haircut, seems deliberately designed to make him resemble Kim Il-sung when he came to power in the 1940s.
But Kim Jong-un’s public image gives little indication of the political and economic policies his regime will follow.
North Korea is a State ruled by a single Party on behalf of a group of elites. The Wingnut vision for America is similar: a single Party in control of everything to benefit the elites.
On Monday the spin-masters of the GOP will try to re-brand and sell Mitt Romney to the rubes. It will be a spectacle. At its core the effort will be very similar to the one that the elites of North Korea are using to sell their figurehead. They’ll bring in the wife to soften his image and present the cipher as a fun-loving guy. They’ll inflate any international travel as proof that their cipher as a master of international affairs. And of course both North Korea and the GOP will rely on promotional videos to sell their front man.
Now wingnuts will be outraged at the idea that they are relying on the same propaganda tactics to sell Mitt the Unknowable as North Korea is using to sell Kim Jong-un, but that is the way of it. Their nominee is a hollow man who’s only belief is that his birth has entitled him to lead the Nation. The elites in North Korea have a similar problem. And in both cases the more you know about the leader, the Party backing them and the elites pulling the strings, the more you know that they suck. And so, you have to invent a myth for your front man and stage manage it through controlled events and spectacles.
Next week, Mitt will have his in Florida. Expect a lot of talking points and choreographed bullshit to obscure the emptiness of Romney’s beliefs and policies. The wingnuts will be celebrating that their nominated rubber stamp will follow orders, but that is all you would learn from watching the GOP Convention.
Except, you would also heard about the enemy. In fact, I suspect that most of everything said at the Convention will be some form of fear mongering about that black guy in the White House. If any of them were honest, they would drop the code talking and just called the President a nigger. But they’re not honest, so we can expect more birther jokes, welfare code talks and some mixture of dog-whistles that Obama is a weak nigger and others to suggest that he is a gangster scary nigger–sometimes within the same sentence. All of it will be tribal and all of it aimed at goosing white anxiety about race. It has to be this way–without a big White Fear vote, Mitt is toast. They cannot sell Romney without also selling an enemy–a boogyman who is responsible for all the reasons that their policies always fail.
For Romney, the GOP and wingnuts that enemy is Barack Obama, but he is only the target of the moment. For the wingers the enemy is always some group of “others” (Gays, women with their lady parts, immigrants, young people, old people, brown people, Democrats, Liberals, workers, etc.) guilty of demanding that the elites share power. And they always present anybody who thinks that the elites should share power as an existential threat. Much of the GOP convention will be a passion play about how these groups want to destroy the White way of life. It is a show to fool the gullible, the fearful and the hateful.
This need for an external enemy is something that the GOP shares with North Korea. For Kim Jong-um and the elites pulling his strings, their existential enemy is America, capitalism, South Korea and the West. This is the boogyman they sell to their people to justify the massive failure of their policies.
While Romney holds his coming out celebration in Florida, Kim Jong-un will travel to Iran to attend his first International Conference and give a speech. Both men and the elites behind them will be presenting themselves to the world at the same time. Both will rely on spin, talking points and stage craft to say nothing while looking like a “leader”. The world will learn nothing from either man at either event. Both will talk about the great “other” they face–the great enemy of their gang of elites.
For Romney it will be President Obama, his policies and everything he believes. For Kim Jong-un it will be the same enemy.
Cheers
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
And we creatures outside look from man to pig, and from pig to man, and from man to pig again, unable to say which is which.
JGabriel
@Judas Escargot: Oh my god, they’re BOTH pigs!
.
arguingwithsignposts
Well, the hurricane kind of threw a wrench in your piece, but kudos for the effort.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Romney is alien to regular people, because he’s never been one. Unlike the regular rich folks from rich families, he’s been elevated to the functional equivalent of royalty in his faith community. Which combined with the immense wealth, creates kind of a monarchical misfit. Robotic to boot. What a winner.
JGabriel
__
__
I wonder how The Daily Show plans to cover the cancelled-due-to-hurricane first day of the GOP convention.
.
Hill Dweller
@JGabriel: They’ll blame both sides.
Yutsano
@JGabriel: Maybe some version of the Piers Morgan empty chair epic fail?
@Hill Dweller: Ugh. It’s bad enough Halperin will have a permanent erection like a Viiagra overdose the whole time. Not to mention the other Villager hagiographies. BoBo will have tingles up both legs. Blech.
dmbeaster
The better analogy is China rather than North Korea. A true partnership of crony capitalism and the state.
The Dangerman
Started reading that as “Willard Dong”; didn’t even make it to the “un” part.
I’m still +0 (which will rapidly change given that error).
mclaren
Classic! You win the internet.
The RNC convention will not be cancelled due to the hurricane. Instead, the delegates will stand in hip-deep water and torrential rain and winds rip the roof off while they intone “Global warming is a hoax perpetrated by liberals in order to further their dictatorial anti-industry green agenda.”
Dennis G.
@arguingwithsignposts: Did they cancel the first day because of the hurricane or because the networks wouldn’t cover it?
I would suspect the latter.
In 2008 they also cancelled the first day of their Convention. The excuse was also a hurricane (that was a long way away from Minnesota), but I seem to recall that the networks were debating if they should run it live and the main speaker was GW Bush.
A hurricane is bad news for the folks in its path, but if one does have to hit the USA, disrupting the GOP Convention would be a silver lining…
FlyingToaster
Enterprising oppo researchers will be camping out in every Tampa-area strip club and bondage joint with wi-fi cameraphones. Well, that’s what I would do, if I wanted to see how the other (R) half live :)
mai naem
Somebody in Charlie Pierce’s comments suggested the creation of Halperin’s Law which would apply to false equivalencies reported by the press. Therefore I suggest the first item that Halperin’s Law be applied to is whatever’s said at the Republican convention.
CitizenSoldier_RC
First, I get the point of the post. I really do. But —
I respectfully disagree about the wisdom of this method of argument. Generally speaking, yes, the image they will put forth of Romney has as much to do with reality as the North Korean version of Kim Jong-un.
However, making that the sole focus of the post cheapens us. Because THIS (picture me waving my arms around America) is not North Korea. We survived Bush, and I’m fairly sure we can survive Romney, who is much more inherently evil than Bush. The North Koreans don’t have that luxury.
I’m all about pushing back against the right-wingers. By all means, let’s be ruthless in pointing out the truth. Because the truth about them is REALLY THAT BAD. Let’s not use the comparative absurdity and lunacy of the right as a license to descend into a mirror-image form of baseless hyperbole on our side.
amk
Nice piece, Dennis. mittbot = jong boy and rethugs = n.korea admin is perfect.
Linda Featheringill
There were people who lost something with the election of Obama to the presidency. These folks wondered what the hell happened to “their” America that this guy was actually elected.
There’s another, larger group that has lost something with the Obama presidency. Barack Obama is very effective, very smart, and very good at his job. His administration has pretty well shattered one of the main tenets of white supremacy, based on the inadequacy of darker folks.
There is a smaller core of people who are in danger of losing even more pride and esteem. Those are the ones who have done EVERYTHING WITHIN THEIR POWER to make Obama’s presidency a failure. But it hasn’t worked. And it looks like he just might be reelected. They, who thought they were so powerful, are in danger of being revealed as being impotent.
All of these people might support the latest Great White Hope but it will be in vain. There will be other white male presidents but the absolute lock on the presidency has been broken. There will be other AGs but the stories of all authority being with the white man have ended. There will be other people who aren’t WASPs who will have power.
The difficulty for these people is that if you build your whole self upon the notion that you are innately superior to X, Y, and Z you have nothing left when that supposed superiority is proven to be a fantasy.
The problem for the rest of us is that when you have nothing left, you have nothing to lose. No matter what you do.
And I don’t know what that could lead to.
A Ghost To Most
Great post, Dengre, even by your elevated standards.
For a couple of days, I can root for a hurricane instead of a meteor.
amk
twitterdom
Violet
@JGabriel: Isn’t the Daily Show on vacation?
Linda Featheringill
@amk: #14
I agree. Nice post. [applause]
Firebert
I’m anticipating some weirdness from the Ron Paul cultists at the convention. No idea if it’ll bleed out into public view though. Plus, I’m sure there will be enough thick envelopes and veiled threats spread around to help that.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
AT: For all the kitteh lovers, Mommy’s here.
redshirt
I never liked smudgy thumbs whilst reading the paper. Good riddance!
amk
@Linda Featheringill: I was about to say the same thing about your post at #15. :)
Many whites have lost their heads in the last 4 years purely over prejudice and not based on reality. I just hope they they are still in enough ‘minority’ to re-elect Obama.
HRA
This is the 1st time I will not be watching one of the conventions. Yes, it will be the R convention. The disrespect for a president of the United States will be too disgusting to watch. I will certainly wait for and choose what to read about it here.
I really do not want anyone to get injured in Hurricane Isaac while part of me finds it gleeful that it disrupts their convention.
Roger Moore
@FlyingToaster:
Sadly, most strip clubs require you to surrender your recording devices when you enter. I assume it’s so you won’t record the talent, but keeping you from recording the other patrons is at the very least a side benefit. So the recording device wielding detectives will have to hang around outside the clubs to monitor people going in, not inside the clubs to see what they’re doing there.
SFAW
@amk:
You do remember that by pointing that out, you confirm that YOU are the real racist.
Also, too.
Roger Moore
@amk:
More like God’s mercy.
Jewish Steel
Bravo Dennis.
You used to edit a real live dead tree paper, right? Do you miss it?
amk
@SFAW: You betcha. ;) ;)
SFAW
@amk:
Fixed to more accurately reflect the large number of Godless heathens that infest this site.
FlyingToaster
@Roger Moore: Heh heh heh.
Waynski
I think a great question if they do this, “…if you can ask the other candidate one thing about himself…” thing.
Obama should just look at Mitt and say, “Who are you?” (which by the way is a common job interview question)
Romneybot software meltdown in 3,2,1…
Although it would be nice if a stenographer did this so the Pres doesn’t have to, but I guess we’ve all but given up on that.
ETA: If I was Obama, I’d ask it condescendingly. Who are YOU?
Dennis G.
@Jewish Steel: sometimes…
rikyrah
@Linda Featheringill:
fabulous comment
robertdsc-PowerBook
Ri Sol-Ju is much nicer to look at than Ann Romney.
Jewish Steel
@Dennis G.: I can believe that.
EnoughIsEnough
@Hill Dweller:
Yep. Jon Stewart is part of the false equivalency team.
xian
@Dennis G.: i think they did it to get Huck off the stage
karen marie
@HRA: I’m not watching it either, but then I don’t usually. I am, however, following Charlie Pierce who is positively on fire! Travel agrees with him.
karen marie
@Waynski: These pretzels are making me thirsty.
MikeBoyScout
Great piece