One way to evaluate the direction of 21st century Western civilization is to ask whether free nations are acting more like totalitarian ones, or vice versa. A recent story highlighting modern-day North Korea indicates a depressing parallel between America and a nation where opponents of the ruling regime are rumored to be fed to the dogs – or at least executed by firing squad.
In “I went to North Korea and was told I ask too many questions,” the Washington Post’s Anna Fifield describes a visit to a Pyongyang maternity hospital during a state-organized media tour. During the visit to what we gather is a Potemkin hospital, a medical facility set up for pure publicity that misrepresents the true state of the country’s healthcare industry, Fifield asks a series of questions met with propaganda, obfuscation and not-so-curious inconsistency.
The reporter’s handlers rush her through a tour of the hospital, showing “state-of-the-art” Siemens equipment marked to show the technology is a gift from “Respected Leader Kim Jung Un.” Supposedly domestically produced machines are nowhere to be found. Staffers turn on a CT scanner to reveal password protection that cannot be cracked.
How can an administration’s words be at all trusted when frauds with profound consequences like the Iran deal and Obamacare are foisted so audaciously on the American people?
The trip ends with a visit to a room in one ward with “a nicely made-up woman sitting on the bed in pink pajamas…there were no personal effects on the bedside table or in the connecting bathroom, there was no medical chart on the end of the bed or even a glass of water on her bedside table.”
