So long, Dear Leader

I am back.  Well, just back to say "Hello!" and remind you all that I have not foresaken you.  Not much to report, except, Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il is dead.  Or at least North Korea is reporting his death.  He could have been dead for months, just like the Leader in Woody Allen's movie, "Sleeper".

Now, that was a fine film.  Miles Monroe, Woody Allen, goes into the hospital for ulcer surgery in 1973 and is unfrozen in 2173 to a totalitarian society straight out of an Aldous Huxley view of the future.  Huxley believed that society needed structure and control.  If people had to cope with too much freedom, it would lead to empty consumerism and other ways people merely occupy themselves with no real purpose.  This contrasts to George Orwell's view that people need to have unfettered freedom and that totalitarian control was the societal evil.

Anyway, it is a an exteremely funny movie that holds up well over time.  Some great vaudville type slapstick comedy, too.  I will watch it again.  Could help take my mind off of the what the craziness in North Korea could launch globally.  Time will tell if Son #3 is as zany as his father.

What I did not know was that Kim Il Sung, father of Kim Jong Il, had led his country to a position of greater, or seemingly greater, prosperity than their brothers in South Korea in his years in power (from 1950, or so, to 1994.  Mind you, South Korea grew wealthier like crazy once they went to democratic rule from the military rule.  The liberty helped unleash a manufacturing tiger in the 1980s.  Kim Jong Il took a tiring totalitarian state, that was falling behind its brother state to the south, and led the decline to the bottom.  They are a mere shell of a working society but they do have nuclear material, muclear bomb making capabilities and missile design and manufacturing capabilities.  All of these, they are willing to sell to any state that will pay.  They are an annoyance and indirectly very dangerous. 

Fun bit of reality, now I will watch my movie and escape those thoughts.  What will be, will be.

Ciao!