Where's Hawkeye When You Need Him?

I've known a lot of crazy people in my time. Hell, you probably have, too. Someone you know takes anti-psychotics or anti-depressants or MAOI inhibitors or drinks too much or doesn't like themselves. Someone you know is not right in the head. Most people you know aren't right in the head; that's my theory, at least. You might be that someone you know. The simple fact is, life in America (possibly the world in general) fosters and encourages mental instabilities of some sort or another. Because of this, there's a whole spectrum of whack-jobs out there, a sliding scale of madness. I did a brief stint in a homeless camp and saw a lot of the uglier side there, the different flavors and levels of bad lunacy. Mostly you get the harmlessly insane, the ones who had been dealt such shitty cards in life that they needed to move out where the buses don't run in order to cope. These are usually the guys drinking beer after cheap, watered down beer, one minute your best friend and the next whispering panic-stricken half-sentences about the Reptilian shape-shifting politicians that run the Illuminati and all fuck one another to keep the bloodlines pure. These guys are the staple of any Friday night out on the town. You nod, buy 'em a beer, maybe chuck a buck or two their way.

Later into the night, lurking in the darker parts of the city, you find the more rattled, the ones whose screws have long since fallen off and rolled under the workbench. There are the deeply violent, the men who will lash out at anything come near, the ones whose minds are constantly feeding them input that does not, cannot, will not exist, and it's terrifying. The worst nightmare you ever had on acid fucking Freddy Krueger and ejaculating the screams of children and it never stops. And then there's the truly sad cases, the men and women and children so far gone that they're never coming back. There was a guy in my old homeless camp like that, a 'Nam vet named Gary. The rest of the camp pitched in what they could to buy Gary his medicine, probably just codeine, something to ease the pain off while the clock ticked by. Gary never spoke once. I never saw him move. He only gestured with his right hand; it didn't stop the other homeless guys from including him in conversations, passing him beers, letting him speak his peace with his mangled, arthritic conducting. It was one of the kindest things I'd ever seen, a more human gesture than anything I see from most people with comfortable lives.

Like it or not, insanity is a very real part of life today. There are a number of things that can be done to help the folks that need it. Lower the price of mind-drugs, sink more funding into public health care, tip the bums more so they can buy whatever puts them at ease. I'm no lobbyist, nor city planner; I can't give anyone the answer to making the mentally ill, homeless or otherwise, well and healthy. I do know one thing, though. Do you want to know what you don't do with crazy people?

Let them run their own fucking country.

Let's talk for a bit about this guy. Kim Jong-Il has been running North Korea since God took a break for a day, and the country is a festering shithole because of it. According to Kim's official biography, his birth was nothing less than an event of celestial magnificence, a miracle marked by the appearance of a double rainbow and a new star in the sky. Little baby Kim is born on one of Korea's sacred mountains and a new ball of gas erupts in the heavens to commemorate the heralding of the Chosen One. Shit, when I was born my old man got all his friends hammered on 2-dollar martinis and tried to throw me off the roof of the Grand Hotel in some North Florida port town. I was a tenacious little fucker even back then; I'm pretty sure the old man still has the scars.

But I digress. Kim's official biography claims that he was born on a sacred mountain and that the universe shat itself in happiness when he popped out of the womb, theoretically finishing up a copy of "Das Kapital" and writing his doctoral thesis on flaws in capitalism before the doctor smacked his ass. This, like everything else Kim and Kim's people have said about his life, is an utter fucking lie. Look at his wikipedia page; littered with contradictions. "Born on a sacred mountain" becomes "born in a dingy Russian hospital where his father was soldiering." "His mother died in childbirth" is apparently Korean for "she might have been Glocked and left to bleed out." My personal favorite? Kim had a brother, and the kid drowned at the family mansion. Quoting the wiki: "Unconfirmed reports suggest that 5 year old Kim Jong-il might have caused the accident."

And it only gets better from there. Kim comes to power in '97 after his father dies and the nation of North Korea is handed its death sentence. This diminutive lunatic with cartoon-character hair has been trying to play North Korea up as one of the bad boys of the world while starving the nation as hard as he can. Kim is literally in control of everything, having self-appointed titles longer than my rap sheet that put him at the top of every food chain you could think of. He and his cronies have used the nation as their own personal playground while trying to seem like a legitimate military threat to that ever-present enemy, Anything Not North Korea. Kim has long-since been famous for pissing people off by ignoring UN sanctions against nuclear capabilities and brushing aside loud complaints from nearly every human rights group on the planet that the people are starving, the economy doesn't exist, and, as of late, some truly heinous health care situations. So why bitch now, Uncle Tambour? Surely there have been crazymen running nations come and gone, so why North Korea? Didn't we stop caring about Korea when M*A*S*H ended?

Because it fucking matters. Even if you want to ignore the fact that this little bastard is keeping an entire nation poor, isolated, and crippled, even if you want to disregard the inhumane conditions, you can't ignore the fact that Kim Jong-Il has started fucking with us. They blew up a South Korean boat (which they vehemently denied, long after the remnants of their torpedo were found), have been laundering money via the Russian mob, and the nation isn't seeing a dime of it. While the populous starves and dies off from illnesses we cured decades ago, Kim Jong-Il and his homeboys have an estimated $4 billion slush fund. For those rainy Pyongyang afternoons, you know.

Bill Maher said it best, I think: "North Korea is like a four year old waving its penis around. Yes, we all see, now can you put that away, please?" in reference to DPRK nuclear policies. Now that little four year old has started pissing on all the furniture and leaving steaming turds all over the glass cutlery. Half of the politicos this side of the Prime Meridian are itching to get Kim and Co. out of power and into shallow, unmarked graves, and I'd like to see the same thing. The actual removal will be tricky; the Russian mob is doing most of North Korea's money laundering, and we can't afford to piss off Russia. That means no direct confrontation, no spearheading a righteous campaign to bring democracy and a little fucking food and medicine to a downtrodden people. No, I'm thinking coup d'etat, Bay of Pigs style. Hopefully we'll get it right this time. Any way you slice it, Kim Jong-Il needs to go if we want to avoid loss of life on a bigger and more tragic scale than anyone wants to see.

Hyeogmyeong ,

Uncle Tambour

PS: I mean it, you bastards. Say something. I need input to ignore, dammit, it's a crucial part of the writing process!