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Ahn Cheol soo The Great Demagogue

Ahn Cheol soo The Great Demagogue

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We will be a balanced and open network that will be open to everyone in the general public. This is not a space for vertical hierarchies or unilateral decision-making. Policy Network Tomorrow will provide a space where people can think -- not with their minds, but with their hearts.

It was stated not once, but twice that the people in this think tank will think not with their minds, but rather their hearts. Because, as we all know, pursuing ad-hoc goals that can change at the drop of a hat while discarding rationale, knowledge, and experience has never led to anything bad in the history of mankind!

In other words, Policy Network Tomorrow is a think tank that refuses to think. A think tank that thinks that gut-thinking is the way to go!

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Our emotions are not the same as that of our minds. Our emotions are not tools of cognition. If we fail to differentiate between our thoughts and our emotions, we might as well jump into the rabbit hole. Without a ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection, we can never truly understand whether our feeling is an appropriate response to the facts of reality, or a mistaken response, or a vicious illusion produced by years of self-deception.

So why would Ahn, a man who was once a doctor, a computer programmer, a successful businessman, the youngest man to have ever served as a dean at Seoul National University, and an elected member of the National Assembly, be so averse to thinking?

Credit has to be given where it is due.  He has a resume worth killing for. Image Source

In order to answer that question, we have to understand Ahn�s supporters, who seem primarily to be people who are disappointed with the current status quo, rather than those who agree with his principles or ideological goals.

In other words, Ahn�s supporters are the kind of people whose political views are tainted with aversion to party politics, rather than a goal. Considering that Ahn has been vague on how to accomplish any of his goals of bringing about an age of �new politics� or economic justice or concrete solutions to the countrys structural economic problems, that is the only conclusion that makes any sense.

And of course, this is most likely Ahn�s strategy to retain his (increasing) popularity. Prior to his election, then Senator Obama was also very loose and vague with his promises and political vision as he relied more on flowery rhetoric such as �hope and change.� The more vague a political candidate is, the more his supporters can fill in the blanks with their projections of what they hope that the candidate will represent.

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In this case, as far as his supporters are concerned, Ahn represents change. But what kinds of change? How will those changes come about? What will be the results, intended and unintended? They have no answers. At least none that doesn�t reek of spiked Kool-Aid. The fact of the matter is that many of Ahn�s supporters, who tend to be younger people, are more driven by existentialist angst than by ideology.

They support Ahn for �speaking-truth-to-power� while doing their utmost to find a job in Chaebol companies that they purportedly hate. They support government-administered welfare programs all the while simultaneously disdaining having to pay the necessary taxes for the welfare programs that they want. They support raising the minimum wage while failing to understand why their employment prospects are not improving. All this goes to show just how muddled the minds of Ahn�s supporters are.

Ahn�s supporters are just a spark away from becoming a violent and angry mob; young people who refuse to or cannot look beyond their immediate desires who have no way of knowing whose long-range goals they are serving. These are the people that Ahn is courting.

And what is Ahn�s goal? Well, considering how much the man has turned obfuscation into an art form, it is likely that his immediate goal is simply to take over and then worry about everything else later.

Ahn�s think tank itself states rather blatantly:

We will not forget the belief that all of our policy proposals will come from the people�s lives, and not the minds of experts.

As far as Ahn is concerned, these young college students serve as nothing more than a trial balloon. They are not an electoral base whom he respects and treats as thinking adults, but rather as a barometer, a microcosm of the entire electorate, to see how much nonsense he can spout and get away with it.

�It�s about being pragmatic,� Ahn and his supporters may counter. But considering the impracticability of their goals, they aren�t being pragmatic but merely pursuing an anti-ideological ideology. It is a shameful prelude to mob rule where ideas must give way to numerical superiority.

Korea�s young people have been had and deserve a political leader who will treat them like adults. Ahn Cheol-soo is not that man. However, before young Koreans can legitimately demand such a leader, they must first begin to think for themselves.

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Posted by Unknown at 9:19 AM

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