re: #196 Guanxi88

Machiavelli notes that a people facing starvation will fight more ruthlessly than a well-fed people. Sun Tzu notes that if faced with a choice of conquer or die, an army can do amazing things, because they know they have no option but to fight or be killed where they stand. Hobbes, too, notes that an army from a desperate people is far more terrible than one from a prosperous one.

They’ve starved off and on for 50 years or more, and have been in permanent war-footing for better than 2 generations now; they ones who allow them to eat are the ones who slay them, true, but they are also the ones who educated them, the subjects of every song, book, movie, radio play, opera, and, in short, ever cultural artifact or product to which theyve ever been exposed.

Remember in that movie, the Matrix, where Neo wakes up and realizes where he is and what’s been done to them? Something very much like that would be the effect should they learn that EVERYTHING THEY EVER KNEW, HEARD, BELIEVED, OR IMAGINED was a lie. The human mind can’t take that; this is why so many NorK defectors commit suicide, or fall into mental illness.

That might also play to our advantage. The North army has been told for 50 years that it cannot fail. If they start getting hammered and see their victory fade, they may simply disintegrate, unable to keep going after their illusion is shattered.