Without speaking for others, I'll admit I'm worried. Maybe the Dear Leader is onto something about human nature.
The interesting thing is not what Kim Jong-Il is saying with his face, but what the people in the background are making of it.
What do the faces in the backgrounds of all these pictures say to you? To me, they show emotions ranging from worry to pleasure to glee that the Dear Leader is Looking at Their Things.
The Dear Leader never shows in these pictures anything but Curiosity or Pleasure at the Things at which he Looks. The people who are Looking at him Looking At Things clearly care what impression their Things make on Him, but feel more or less uncertain about it.
I think this is what fear does to people. I've seen that same look among students who have certain church-political commitments they think their lives depend upon. They come in my office and want to close the door and talk about what they really believe, in contrast to what their Dear Leaders insist they pretend to believe.
Being a Dear Leader is bad leadership. Effective, obviously, but no less bad for that.
If there were nothing else speaking for it, the looks on those faces in the background are a definitive case for freedom.
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Your remarks remind me of Matthew 2:3:
ReplyDelete"When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him...: Dear Leaders like Herod and Kim Jong-Il are the kind that when they are disturbed, everyone else if disturbed. When they are happy, everyone else is still on edge.
The specific problem you mention is very real.