The Occult Wars Of Kim Jong-un, Smaug, Paul Krugman And Gold
Gold coin featuring Smaug - a giant fire-breathing Dragon - flying above the Lonely Mountain |
North Korea’s actions were characterized by RedState as “unequivocally an act of 21st-century state-sponsored cyberwarfare and, indeed, state-sponsored terrorism.” This is overstated. North Korea really upped the ante by vigilante (rather than vandalism) action.
The lashing out against The Interview presents as an “occult war” by the pre-modern culture (and government) of Pyongyang. The Interview Incident has strong echoes of an almost forgotten event, from the 1960s, when Indonesia’s President Sukarno also acted out. As recounted by the late (and very wise) British career civil servant Austin Coates, in his book China, India and the Ruins of Washington:
In fact, Sukarno is the most interesting survival phenomenon in the contemporary Orient. His speeches at the time of Konfrontasi were so imbued with the simulated concept of centrality as to sound like an echo from another age.
It would be flying in the face of historical evidence to imagine that this will be the last attempt to imitate the center. … But all such endeavors will be pointless.
“Occult” — primarily, here, meaning symbolic, or psychological — warfare hardly is unknown in the West, ballots having replaced bullets. For instance, an “occult war” has been and continues to be waged by a “threatening uproar” in the media over the gold standard. Entirely coincidentally, around the time the donnybrook over The Interview began North Korea itself briefly enlisted, sotto voce, in the “occult war” against the gold standard.
The North Korea Times (the “Oldest online newspaper in North Korea”) engaged under the dramatic headline Spectre of gold standard banished on December 2, 2014. The Times republished this letter from Thailand’s The Nation:
Fortunately, on Sunday, 77 per cent of Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected the call for their currency to be anchored by gold reserves. Switzerland’s finance minister hailed the vote as a show of confidence in the central bank and a realisation that “gold is no longer as important as it once was as a tool to back up paper money”. In other words, gold is important only if people do not trust their central bank. In the modern world, trust is the basis of the fiat currency regime that superseded the long-gone gold standard. The return of that standard will come only when the end of the world is nigh.
Kim Jong-un’s regime quietly adds its voice to that of other potent “occult” adversaries on the left of the gold standard. These adversaries include Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, Nouriel Roubini, Charles Postel, Thomas Frank, Think Progress’s Marie Diamond, the Roosevelt Institute’s Mike Konczal, Brookings Institutions’ Barry Bosworth, The New York Times’s economics blogger Bruce Bartlett, the Washington Post’s Matt O’Brien, Slate’s Christopher Beam, and US News & World Report’s Pat Garofalo, and … 40 out of 40 elite academic economists polled some time ago by the Booth School.
It is not unfair to call the left’s opposition to gold “occult.” Our elite intelligentsia, relying on dogma, unleashes hostile words in the media — rather than engaging in reasoned argument — to assassinate the reputation of the gold standard. Our own culture is not always so modern as usually supposed.
In a recent interview at the Lehrman Institute’s gold standard website, which I edit, the estimable economic historian Prof. Brian Domitrovic made these observations:
The publication of Barry Eichengreen’s Golden Fetters, his essays from the 1980s, was a decisive event in cementing the anti-gold standard position in the academy. And Ben Bernanke was such a lionizer of Eichengreen’s that it would prove very fateful if he were accorded high governmental office, which happened twice (Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and the Fed). So the anti-gold view became part of the dominant political culture.
The left, whether based in Pyongyang or City College, too often relies very much on “occult means” — such as vituperation — to make its points. “But all such endeavors will be pointless.”
Meanwhile, back in the realm of the “occult,” skirmishing continues. The Hobbit’s dragon Smaug — from Peter Jackson’s movie — recently gave Steven Colbert his endorsement of the gold standard (and Rand Paul):
Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch): Quite right! Time to return to the gold standard. Rand Paul 2016 Yea! Get some Rand!
They say that history doesn’t just repeat itself, but it also rhymes, and watching this fictional made for television interview shows that indeed, there is nothing new under the sun. And while technologies may be different, and the stock of human existence may be better or worse today than in the past, what occurred during the lifetime of a storybook dragon and civilization proves the old axiom that truth is quite often stranger than fiction, or perhaps, it simply mirrors it in imagination and reality.
“Occult” means will not for long prevail.
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Ralph Benko is senior advisor, economics, to American Principles in Action’s Gold Standard 2012 Initiative, and a contributor to the ARRA News Service. His article first appeared in Forbes.
Tags: Occult Wars, Kim Jong-un, Smaug, Paul Krugman, Gold, Ralph Benko To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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