Wednesday, January 31, 2007

"I don't want no part of this crazy love..."

Allegory of Love:
Dulcinea del Toboso as North Korea and Don Quixote as America
(Image from Wikipedia)

Concerning yesterday's post on North Korea's putative desire for a long-term relationship with the United States, one of my regular readers, Conservative in Virginia, made a humorous analogy:

I think the article makes North Korea sound like a bad movie with the woman demanding that the man know what she is thinking, even when she says something else.

NK: I hate you. (Meaning, I love you.)

USA: OK. Whatever.

NK: You don't understand me! Let's talk about our relationship.

USA: Um, er, SK, China, Russia, and Japan are stopping by for a beer.

NK: I want to be alone! (A nuke will get your attention.)

USA: I'll never understand women.

Yes, sigh, what do women really want? Not even Freud hazarded a guess on that one -- though he thought that men desired love and work (perhaps not in that order).

Don Quixote, however, knew exactly what women want. They want us men to be even crazier than they are. Here's the Don putting this great insight into practice when Sancho Panza objects that Quixote has no reason for acting insanely jealous, for there is no evidence that the beloved "lady Dulcinea del Toboso has been trifling with Moor or Christian" in any romantic manner:

"There is the point," replied Don Quixote, "and that is the beauty of this business of mine; no thanks to a knight-errant for going mad when he has cause; the thing is to turn crazy without any provocation, and let my lady know, if I do this in the dry, what I would do in the moist..."

Following Don Quixote's magnificent example, the U.S. can solve all its problems with North Korea by acting crazy beyond cause, thereby convincing the North that America really does care -- along with the added benefit of an implicit message suggesting that if Lady N.K. really does trifle with a 'Moor' (like providing nuclear technology to Iran), then the crazy knight-errant Don Amerigo will go really crazy!

Now to put this foreign policy insight into practice...

4 Comments:

At 8:56 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ah, that reminds me of Kim Myong Chol's "shotgun" wedding article, "Agreed Framework Is Brain Dead; Shotgun Wedding Is the Only Option to Defuse Crisis," from 2002. A sample;


[quote] "The present furor over the reported North Korean centrifuge for uranium enrichment may be likened to the scene being made by a jealous possessive wealthy American Uncle Sam, who has gone out of his way to tell his friends and acquaintances about the alleged illicit affair of his poor but strongly assertive North Korean fiancee in a bid to whitewash his acts of sowing his wild oats. While unwearily running after other women, he has resisted not only taking any steps to make an honest woman of her by the promised wedding date of 2003, but also fails to pay proper attention to her for the past two years, say, by sending fancy gifts to her or taking her out for a date.

Nor is this all. The American gentleman has repeatedly insulted his fiancee in public by calling her all names. The North Korean woman, faithful to her Confucian tradition, has continued to grin and bear it al the time, until the American fiance made a sudden visit and insisted on her remaining his second-class mistress, submitting the evidence of her alleged infidelity.

No shred of compelling evidence has been produced that the North Korean fiancee has had relations with any other man (although the lonely woman confessed that she has gone out with another man.)" [end quote]

http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0212A_Chol.html

It actually makes me a bit uncomfortable.

 
At 3:31 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

It does parallel a bit. Thanks for the material.

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

 
At 3:30 PM, Blogger Jessica said...

I think you may be on to something. Does that make the UK Sancho Panza?

 
At 6:15 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Jessica, it just might. What other country could qualify? Well ... maybe South Korea, which has been far more involved here than the U.K.

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

 

Post a Comment

<< Home