If we take "obliterate" literally, it means to cause to disappear.

The media seem to be overeager to undercut Trump's accomplishment by saying that he said the word "obliteration" but there's actually — possibly — something left. 

From this morning's news: "Trump reveals Israel sent agents to Iran’s bombed nuclear sites to confirm their 'total obliteration.'"

He seems determined not to abandon his word of choice, "obliteration."

How literally do we take "obliteration"? Really hardcore literalism would require that the thing be wiped from human memory. "Ob-" means against and "littera" means letter. Strike out the text. It's what Orwell's "memory hole" did. 

So how have we been using the word "obliterate" in recent years? Here's what I've noticed in the past 2 decades, just 11 examples taken from this blog's archive.

1. Quoting Hillary Clinton: "If [Obama] does not have the gumption to put me in my place, when superdelegates are deserting me, money is drying up, he’s outspending me 2-to-1 on TV ads, my husband’s going crackers and party leaders are sick of me, how can he be trusted to totally obliterate Iran and stop Osama?"

2. Quoting Camille Paglia: "Democrats are doing this in collusion with the media obviously, because they just want to create chaos... They want to completely obliterate any sense that the Trump administration is making any progress on anything... I am appalled at the behavior of the media...."

3. Quoting Trump: "As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!)."

The North Korea news reports on Trump's big Army parade.

On TikTok:

"After watching the whole course of the accident, the respected comrade Kim Jong-un made [a] stern assessment..."

"... saying that it was a serious accident and criminal act caused by absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism which is out of the bounds of possibility and could not be tolerated.... He warned solemnly that the irresponsible errors of the relevant officials… responsible for the accident that brought the dignity and self-respect of our state to a collapse in a moment would have to be dealt with."

So it said in The Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the Workers’ Party of Korea, as quoted in "North Korea warship launch accident leaves Kim Jong-un furious/Supreme leader says the damage suffered by the 5,000-tonne naval vessel, which was launched sideways, was a disgrace to the country’s 'dignity and self-respect'" (London Times).

I'm perplexed by the degree of openness from the government and in the press in North Korea. Over here in America, I don't even know who was President in the last few years.

"South Korea’s likely next leader would support President Donald Trump’s efforts to restart dialogue with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un..."

"... and would even consider nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize if there was a significant breakthrough, signaling a sharp change from Seoul’s current hard-line approach toward Pyongyang...."

From "South Korea’s likely next leader wants warmer ties with China, North Korea/Lee Jae-myung says he would support President Donald Trump’s efforts to restart talks with North Korea — and even consider nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"I hope there will be a situation within this year under which we as a party officially nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize,” [Lee Jae-myung] said.... 

When Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, nominated him for the same award in 2019, he called it “most beautiful.”...

Last year, Lee survived an assassination attempt after a man stabbed him in the neck during an event. “I collapsed and looked at the blue sky and thought, ‘Oh, that sky will soon disappear from my sight. This must be death,’” Lee said. “Now, the time I have left feels like a bonus. It made me a freer person, less worried about the preciousness of my life.”

"Video has emerged from North Korea showing handcuffed teenagers being publicly denounced for the crime of enjoying foreign films and music...."

"Clips broadcast on South Korean television show teenage girls with heads bowed in some kind of tribunal. One of them, whose name and school are identified on screen, stands weeping in front of a microphone as she makes her confession, before being roughly led away by uniformed soldiers.... In a second clip, a young soldier confesses to similar crimes. 'Using my mobile phone, I watched 15 American movies, 17 South Korean puppet movies and 127 videos and listened to about 160 puppet songs,' he says.... A voiceover comments: 'There is a phenomenon by which impure recordings are purchased, viewed, stored and distributed using mobile phones. In the process, even text messages are exchanged in the contaminated puppet dialect. We must consider the fight against this malignant tumour as a matter of life and death.'"

From "North Korean teens publicly denounced for listening to K-pop/Pyongyang’s fear of exposure to ‘malignant tumour’ of foreign films and music laid bare in leaked video of handcuffed and tearful suspects" (London Times).

"North Korea has released more than 3,000 of the trash balloons since May, many of which have reached the South after floating across the Demilitarized Zone...."

"They have landed on trees, farms and urban side streets, their payloads bursting and spilling out waste paper, used cloth, cigarette butts and compost​. On Wednesday, for the first time, some of them landed inside the sprawling compound in central Seoul that includes the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol... one of the most tightly guarded places in South Korea. Officials said they waited for the balloons to land before sending a chemical, biological and radiological response team to inspect their payloads, rather than blast them ​— and scatter their​ suspicious payloads ​— from the sky. The team found 'nothing dangerous or contaminating'...."

From "North Korean Trash Balloons Hit South Korean President’s Compound/Officials found nothing hazardous in the balloons’ payloads, as the North’s slow barrage of airborne garbage showed few signs of letting up" (NYT).

Why?

On the occasion of Nikki Haley's calling Vivek Ramaswamy "scum," I look into the history of "scum" in my archive.

1. October 23, 2019 — blogged here — Trump called his antagonists "human scum":

The Never Trumper Republicans, though on respirators with not many left, are in certain ways worse and more dangerous for our Country than the Do Nothing Democrats. Watch out for them, they are human scum!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2019

2. On October 24, 2019, I wrote "Troubled by Trump's use of the phrase 'human scum,' I decided to trace its usage, over the years..." This post traces the use of the phrase "human scum" in the NYT archive, beginning in 1897. I note: "The epithet rarely appeared until 2003, when it began coming up repeatedly in statements from the North Korean government. The first person called 'human scum' by the North Koreans was John Bolton."

2. In December 2017, according to The Daily Beast, Facebook was banning women who call men "scum" (because it, supposedly, "classifies white men as a protected group"). I wrote: "I don't support what Facebook is doing, but I do think the use of the word 'scum' warrants a historical note on 'SCUM' — The Society for Cutting Up Men. The author of 'The SCUM Manifesto,' Valerie Solanas, wasn't joking....'The Manifesto argues that SCUM [a revolutionary vanguard of women] should employ sabotage and direct action tactics... "If SCUM ever marches, it will be over the President's stupid, sickening face; if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade."'" Solanas became famous for shooting Andy Warhol.

3. On December 11, 2020, I blogged about a Wisconsin State Journal headline "Sen. Ron Johnson called 'delusional scum' for considering challenge to election." I asked "why is the fact that somebody hurled one particular epithet the subject of a headline? If the insult-hurler isn't important enough to name in the headline, why put one nasty insult in a headline?"

4. Back in January 2015, I blogged the immortal words of John McCain: "Get outta here you lowlife scum!"

5. On May 24, 2022, I happened to revisit Hunter S. Thompson’s 1994 obituary of Richard Nixon. Thompson wrote: "Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. … You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful."

"It may be taken as a nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage who is not at all capable of taking the responsibility... an old man with no future, as it is too much for him to serve out two-year remainder of his office term."

Said Kim Yo-jong, quoted in "North Korea: Kim Jong-un sister says Joe Biden is ‘in his dotage’ as she criticises nuclear pact/Kim Yo-jong’s broadside came after US and South Korea enhance nuclear cooperation and Biden warns Pyongyang an attack would end the regime" (The Guardian).

The North Korean Supreme People's Assembly met to pass laws to "spruce up the country into a beautiful and civilized socialist fairyland."

Reuters reports, quoting the North Korean state news agency.

ADDED: "Fairyland" strikes us as absurd, but it must be a translation. What perhaps they didn't notice is that it doesn't simply mean a beautiful place. It means — when it's not literally the realm of the fairies — a place that is beautiful and insubstantial. 

By the way, there's a place in Wisconsin, in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, called Fairyland. It's an "old growth hemlock hardwood forest situated on the shore of Lake Namekagon at the foot of a prominent interlobate moraine."

Rouge droplet?

I'm trying to read "Astronauts should not masturbate in zero gravity, NASA scientist says" (NY Post):

Astronauts have been warned against masturbating in space over fears female astronauts could get impregnated by stray fluids. There are strict guidelines over “alone-time” onboard in zero gravity. 

Scientists have warned even the slightest rouge droplet could cause chaos on board.

Rouge droplet? In space, is semen red? No, it's just the kind of typo spell-checkers don't catch, the funniest ones, the ones that are other words, like "rouge" for "rogue."

Conan O’Brien was interviewing a NASA engineer, who said, “Three female astronauts can be impregnated by the same man on the same session … it finds its way.” 

"What is lacking... is the sense of community that the North – for all its disadvantages – had given them, particularly among people from rural areas who struggle to cope with the anonymity of life in a megalopolis like Seoul."

According to Sokeel Park, South Korea country director of Liberty in North Korea, which helps defectors.

From "'Second thoughts': what makes North Korean defectors want to go back?/South Korea is no promised land for escapees from a brutal regime – loneliness and poverty are common fates." (The Guardian).

"North Koreans have been banned from laughing for 11 days as the totalitarian country commemorates the 10-year anniversary of the death of Kim Jong Un’s father and predecessor, Kim Jong Il..."

"Meanwhile, the slimmed-down despot dusted off his trendy black leather trench coat Friday to wear again as he stood beneath a large red banner emblazoned with an image of his dad, who died in 2011.... On Friday, multiple newspapers — all tightly controlled by the government — published articles praising Kim Jong Il. 'He is, indeed, the greatest man and the great sage of the revolution all the people on this land follow with their deep affection and sincerity,' the ruling party’s Rodong Sinmun paper said....  Meanwhile, Kim has reportedly banned citizens from copying his fashion choices by wearing leather coats. RFA has reported that actual fashion police have patrolled the streets to confiscate the jackets from sellers and any citizens wearing any knock-offs."

From "North Koreans banned from laughing as country mourns Kim Jong Il’s death" (NY Post).

No laughing. And no leather coat-wearing.

WaPo's front page features 2 different articles about North Korea promoting its superiority.

1. "Shirtless soldiers lie on broken glass, smash bricks with hands as Kim Jong Un vows ‘invincible’ military": "The extraordinary videos were part of a 'self-defense' exhibition on Monday in which totalitarian North Korea showcased its latest nuclear and other weaponry..."

2. "Netflix hit 'Squid Game' is so big North Korea is using it to slam South Korean society": "While the dystopian series has gripped viewers around the world with its gruesome tale of economic despair and deadly childhood-inspired games, a North Korean state-run website says the production serves to highlight the 'beastly' nature of 'South Korean capitalist society where mankind is annihilated by extreme competition.' In a post published Tuesday, the website said 'Squid Game' reflects an 'unequal society where the strong exploit the weak.'... In June, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un branded South Korea’s entertainment scene — including K-pop — 'a vicious cancer.' He accused it of corrupting the 'hairstyles, speeches and behaviors' of North Koreans...."

"North Korea closed its borders with China and Russia at the start of the pandemic, halted international air travel and imposed strict limits on domestic travel."

"It has told the World Health Organization it has not found a single case of Covid-19 after testing more than 30,000 people. That claim has been greeted with scepticism by the international community, with experts warning that the country’s threadbare health services are ill-equipped to deal with an outbreak.... Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said Kim’s comments 'indicate that health conditions are already deteriorating inside the country. Kim will likely find scapegoats for the incident, purging disloyal officials and blaming their ideological lapses. This may provide Pyongyang justification for demanding that citizens hunker down more, but it could also be political preparation for accepting vaccines from abroad."

From "North Korea Covid-19 outbreak fears after Kim Jong-un warns of ‘huge crisis’ in ‘antivirus fight’/Leader speaks of a grave incident and sacks officials for neglecting duties in fighting ‘global health crisis’" (The Guardian).

"North Korea: Kim Jong-un's sister warns US not to 'cause a stink.'"

BBC reports.

Kim Yo-jong was quoted in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper as saying: "A word of advice to the new administration of the United States that is struggling to spread the smell of gunpowder on our land from across the ocean. "If it wants to sleep in peace for [the] coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step."...

Also:

Pyongyang has yet to acknowledge that President Biden is now in office.... 

Relations between the US and North Korea plummeted in 2017, when the North tested long-range missiles capable of hitting American cities. Tensions eased as President Donald Trump sought to develop a personal rapport with Mr Kim....

Biden has yet to announce his policy on North Korea, but during his campaign, he called Kim a "thug."

"We must strongly eradicate the ‘puppet words’ and ‘puppet style’ in our society."

Said Kim Jong-un, quoted in "Kim Jong-un outlaws slang from South Korea" (The London Times).

North Korean propaganda refers to South Korea as a puppet of the United States. Despite strict censorship and propaganda North Koreans have been increasingly exposed to South Korean culture in the past decade. People can watch foreign content on mobile phones, and smugglers and activists bring in films, dramas and news programmes in memory cards.

Kim expressed special concern about the words “oppa” and “dong-saeng,” which, the Times tells us "mean older brother and younger sister but which are used of friends, or flirtatiously."

"North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has ordered pet dogs to be confiscated in the country’s capital, saying the pooches represent Western 'decadence'..."

"Kim issued the directive in July to round up the pets, claiming they were part of 'a "tainted" trend by bourgeouis [sic] ideology,’' a source told the English edition of Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper. 'Ordinary people raise pigs and livestock on their porches, but high-ranking officials and the wealthy own pet dogs, which stoked some resentment' among the lower classes, the source said. 'Authorities have identified households with pet dogs and are forcing them to give them up or forcefully confiscating them and putting them down.' But while the oppressive regime says the move is to clamp down on capitalist extravagance in Pyongyang, the dog owners are fearful that given North Korea’s food shortage — and propensity for eating dog meat — the directive has only come about to feed the masses."

The NY Post reports.

It does stoke resentment if the wealthy are keeping pet animals, which must be fed, and the masses of people are hungry. If you are going to ban the pets because of this and confiscate them and kill them, what is the ethical argument for not using the meat?

That last post finally pushed me over the line to create a tag I've been thinking about for a while...

... "the attack on individualism."

The pressure was building after yesterday's post about Seattle's effort to teach its employees about their own "Internalized Racial Superiority," which is "defined by" — among other things — "individualism."

What pushed me over the line into new tag creation this morning was a criticism of women who fall into the "trap" of talking about their individual struggle with motherhood.

I went back into the archive and added the tag to a few old things:

June 19, 2020 — This is a quote from a review of the book "White Fragility": "'I am white and am addressing a common white dynamic,' DiAngelo explains. 'I am mainly writing to a white audience; when I use the terms us and we, I am referring to the white collective.' It is always a collective, because DiAngelo regards individualism as an insidious ideology. 'White people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy,' DiAngelo writes, a system 'we either are unaware of or can never admit to ourselves.'"

November 29, 2015 — I quoted the Tom Wolfe essay, "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening":

"The conventional wisdom is that a woman could never ascend to the leadership of North Korea... [a] toxic mix of Confucianism and totalitarianism indentures women to their husbands, to their in-laws, and..."

"... ultimately, to a male-dominated regime.... Since 1948, North Korea has been ruled by three men—the founder, his son, and his grandson—but, nevertheless, it is now conceivable that the fourth man will be a woman. That is because, with reports that Kim Jong Un is in failing health, the most obvious successor is his thirtysomething sister, Kim Yo Jong.... Last week, CNN reported that he was in 'grave danger,' after having undergone surgery (an assertion echoed by a report from a Japanese magazine on Saturday that claimed he was brain dead after a failed operation to insert a stent).... Kim Yo Jong is the youngest known grandchild of Kim Il Sung, carrying what North Koreans revere as a pure bloodline that originated on Mount Paektu, a volcano on the border with China, which is the mythical birthplace of the Korean people. She was reportedly a favorite of her father, Kim Jong Il, who ruled from 1994 until his death, in 2011, [who, it is reported] praised the intelligence of his daughter, while deriding his sons as 'idle blockheads.'...  Among the adult males in the family, Kim Pyong Il, a half brother of Kim Jong Il, spent three decades posted in Europe as a diplomat in semi-exile.... Jong Un’s older brother, Kim Jong Chol, best known as a rock-and-roll groupie who once tried to invite Eric Clapton to Pyongyang, is reported to have even more serious health issues, and was dismissed by his own father as being 'too girly' for consideration in the succession."

From "In North Korea, the Fourth Man Could Be a Woman" by Barbara Demick (The New Yorker).

The article quotes Katharine H. S. Moon, a political-science professor at Wellesley College: "North Korea is so outlandishly sexist, despite the fact that they are supposed to be a revolutionary society."

I just have 2 things to say about that:

1. Hypothesis: An outlandishly sexist culture has a bigger problem with a man who is "girly" than with a woman who looks and acts in a way that you wouldn't call "girly." (The article quotes the Washington Post describing Kim Yo Jong — at the South Korea Olympics — as wearing "barely-there makeup," a "lack of bling," "plain black outfits," carrying a "simple purse," and clipping "her hair back in a no-nonsense style.")

2. The New Yorker expects us to accept as a given that a real "revolutionary society" — in contrast to a "supposed" one — will have overcome sexism, at least the outlandish kind. Don't blame the revolution for anything that's wrong with the revolution! Oh, it's just something Professor Moon said. In quotes. Don't pin it on The New Yorker...

"South Korean officials have been forced to deny that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is gravely ill following suspected heart surgery..."

Forbes reports.

Various rumours about the state of the leader’s health have emerged from South Korean lawmakers, including claims that he underwent heart or ankle surgery, to rumours he may be infected with coronavirus, Rep. Yoon Sang-hyun said....

[A] list of potential successors... includes sister Kim Yo Jong, his estranged brother, and his aunt....