But a bigger issue here too, aren’t these kinds of statements by high-ranking officials a reflection of the crassness that our culture has taken on? Our own level of public discourse in the US is quite low. Mocking, name-calling, any abuse of reasoned argument, really anything goes these days. The attitude seems to be just because I’m “right” (or think I’m right), I should let it fly.

quick point-by-point:

a) US expat awkwardness, where is the place this doesn’t occur? I humbly submit that you perceive that people care enough about who you are to even begin to form an opinion about your Americanness. I’m extremely socially awkward IN America, and often outside it too. I’m told I have more choice about awkwardness than I’ve led myself to believe.

a2) Have you been to Poland? Denmark? Argentina? Long periods spent in the latter two don’t jibe with your statement. (But this is personal experience and I’m not attacking or berating you please please believe me.)

b) sorry to be blunt, but our DL’s aren’t making you cringe. you choose to cringe. with enough practice, you can stop.

c) now to the real meat: all the rest of what you said has some truth to it, but you’re cutting the patronizing, family bits out of whole cloth. It does *sound* hubristic, and it may well be, but listen to the message for a moment: “NK/JK-Il we do not like your behavior, we think you are out of line.” that this message is couched in the “teenager” thing is just an extra.

d) don’t forget the part about this is the way things are: the US is the global economic and military hegemon, like it or not. (I don’t.) We absolutely do have the guns and the money, and some of the time, using them or threatening to makes things go “our way.”

e) moreover, NK’s recent behavior demonstrates that its own target audience is its own people, not the outside world. see BR Myers in NYT on this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/opinion/29iht-edmyers.html?pagewanted=print

f) you said it yourself, but i can’t tell if you really meant it: this sort of rhetoric is indeed part of the job description. any history of diplomacy, US or not, will bear this out. these rhetorical devices are part of how states talk to each other.

Clinton was being both truthful and strategic in this comment and was not denigrating North Koreans, just their government.