Nothing frustrates me more than pointing this shit out to people, having them nod along, and them go “well they’re starving their own people”
I’ve tried having a discussion with the lib I work with who does that whole nodding along thing as if he’s listening, but then he’ll pop out something as if he thinks he’s found a profound thought; in his case he asked how large the DPRK’s military was, to which I said it was perhaps around a million soldiers (I THINK; I’m not 100% sure), to which he says we have a population of over 300 million people and our own troops are only a million, that the ratio is much higher in the DPRK, as if he thought he had an argument here. I explained to him how violent the Korean war was and the never ending hostility and how the DPRK is staying on its toes and he’s nodding along again, and honestly I don’t think anything I said reached him.
Just because someone doesn’t go “Oh wow, you’re totally right, I changed my mind!” doesn’t mean you haven’t had an impact. If you’ve believed something for decades, a single conversation with a coworker is never gonna flip that. But it might have caused cracks in their beliefs and they may be more open to other pro-DPRK arguments in the future.
![[CW: Transphobia] Congrats to North Korea for winning the U-17 Woman's World Cup!](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/e0f95f39-e410-42a1-8130-454ce954a438.png){kind=link}
I’ve tried having a discussion with the lib I work with who does that whole nodding along thing as if he’s listening, but then he’ll pop out something as if he thinks he’s found a profound thought; in his case he asked how large the DPRK’s military was, to which I said it was perhaps around a million soldiers (I THINK; I’m not 100% sure), to which he says we have a population of over 300 million people and our own troops are only a million, that the ratio is much higher in the DPRK, as if he thought he had an argument here. I explained to him how violent the Korean war was and the never ending hostility and how the DPRK is staying on its toes and he’s nodding along again, and honestly I don’t think anything I said reached him.
Just because someone doesn’t go “Oh wow, you’re totally right, I changed my mind!” doesn’t mean you haven’t had an impact. If you’ve believed something for decades, a single conversation with a coworker is never gonna flip that. But it might have caused cracks in their beliefs and they may be more open to other pro-DPRK arguments in the future.