Night and Day

Julie Goodyear: You know what else I miss? Pizza.
Greg Goodyear: Toilets that flush.
Daryl Jenkins: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
Robert Kitner: Dude, we're living Call of Duty. And it sucks.
--Red Dawn

The commencement of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang finds many in the mainstream media waxing poetically about near neighbor North Korea, located on the other side of the 38th parallel about 100 miles away. The country and its rulers are wonderful, so goes a popular narrative, with North Korean representatives displaying charming examples of synchronized uniformity at the Games.

In past generations, the media uttered similar ruminations about the former Soviet Union, about Communist China, and about Cuba.

In reality, North Korea is similar to its socialist predecessors. It is a murderous police state where people live in conditions of squalor that would place poor people in the US near the top of social strata in North Korea.

We can only hope that bits and pieces of the nearby Olympic games that sneak past the propagandist firewall offer a vision of what could be to citizens of North Korea--a vision that inspires a movement to reclaim the liberty that is theirs by natural right.