Brian Reynolds Myers quotes - page 5
![[S]tart by reading Pareto; elites routinely do things that in retrospect look politically suicidal. (Brian Reynolds Myers)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/51/brian-reynolds-myers-reading-534351.webp)
Journalism is the most Americanized of all professions, and nothing is more American than the belief that economic matters trump ideological ones. There is very little talk of ideology in coverage of any country. Western journalists here see a poor North facing off against a rich South and laugh at the notion that the former might have serious designs on the latter. They don't seem aware of what I call the South's state-loyalty deficit.
Brian Reynolds Myers
[A]crobatics are very much an American thing. No one does wishful thinking like we do. I don't see South Korean progressivists pretending that the regime's every word and deed can be boiled down to the same reassuring message. In fact, part of the reason many of them feel a sneaking admiration for the North is because it follows through on its Yankee-defying rhetoric. But that's another topic.
Brian Reynolds Myers
Communism is all about breaking down nationalism, about uniting workers around the world, and North Korea has always been about the opposite, it's been about racial purity and pride, so remember North Korea was isolated even inside the old east-block, even inside the Soviet block.
Brian Reynolds Myers
We need only look at the much lower level of anti-Americanism in Vietnam to realize that suffering incurred in wars does not necessarily dictate decades of animosity and fear between peoples. It's what propaganda does with history - for contemporary political ends - that counts.
Brian Reynolds Myers
If South Korea's dictatorships were America's running dogs, then North Korea was the Eastern bloc's house cat: intractable, convinced of its superiority, and to some observers a more independent creature, but never much good at feeding itself-even after the can openers started falling silent in 1989.
Brian Reynolds Myers
![Judging from the yin-yang flag's universal popularity in South Korea, even among those who deny the legitimacy of the Republic of Korea, it evidently evokes the [Korean] race first and the [South Korean] state second. There is therefore none of the parodying or deliberate desecration of the [South Korean] state flag that one encounters in the countercultures of other countries. (Brian Reynolds Myers)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/95/brian-reynolds-myers-desecration-868195.webp)
