Frank Bruni, columnist for the New York Times, is outraged — outraged! — that people are comparing Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, to Ivanka Trump, the daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump. Both women are part of their respective governmental delegations to the Winter Olympics in South Korea. In his NYT column yesterday, Bruni expressed outrage that people would make such a comparison and, even worse, that they would actually compare North Korea and the United States. He believes that while North Korea is “rotten to the core,” America, under Trump, is only “in a rotten moment.”
Notice how Bruni conflates the government and the country in both North Korea and the United States. Like many North Koreans, who themselves are the victims of a state educational system, Bruni is obviously mentally unable to separate out the two entities. In his mind, the government and the country are one and the same, which leads him to conclude that “North Korea” is “rotten the core” while “America” is only experiencing “a rotten moment.”
That mindset obvious inures to the benefit of the U.S. government. If North Korea is “rotten to the core,” then it’s no big deal to kill everyone in North Korea should war break out there. They’re all commies. They’re all Reds. They’re all gooks. Carpet-bomb every town and city, like the U.S. government did in the Korean War. Inflict nuclear fire and fury over the entire nation. No American would need to be concerned because the whole country, including everyone in it, is “rotten to the core.”
The conflation mindset inures to the government in another way. If an American citizen criticizes or condemns actions of the U.S. government, that…