All too human

By Oh Young-jin

Here is a question. Name one thing that is common to all the characters in the accompanying graphic.

With no particular order, the graphic shows Donald Trump, Park Geun-hye, Hillary Clinton, Choi Soon-sil, Barack Obama and the New York Times.

They seem as disparate with each other as flora and fauna. Park is a troubled head of state; Clinton is the losing candidate in the recent U.S. presidential election; Choi a mean-spirited sorceress, who kept Park under her spell; Obama the outgoing U.S. president with high popularity; and the Times a liberal U.S. flagship newspaper that failed to predict the outcome of the election. And well, Trump is Trump.

The answer is that they are human (adjective), all too human (emphatic negative), to borrow from the book with the same title by the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

There is no need to stumble into the dead thinker's quagmire of rambling aphorisms. Rather to make a point, it is enough to know the title signifies the humans are born with flaws and have to grapple with them throughout their lives. More to the point is that if one is perfect, he or she is not human.

So let's try to dot the i's and cross the t's for the study of these samples to find out lessons of the day.

Still, many remain perplexed about how Americans chose this ignoramus billionaire, who openly belittles women, displays disdain toward people of other races and talks about the erection of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump is the antithesis of anything that is good about being a decent human and that an avuncular Americanism is thought to stand for.

To understand the popular predilection for the indecent person, it is worth noting that there are two parties that made up Trump's victory. One is Trump himself, who doesn't need further explaining, while the voters that threw their support behind him is the other, which needs some explaining.

Obviously, it is not just, as the media insisted, his traditional support base ― white uneducated males being pushed aside ― but also a lot of Americans that backed Trump to make the difference. One fathomable reason for this overwhelming support is, for the lack of a better word, greed. Whether or not he had intended, Trump kept prodding that soft spot in the collective ego of Americans through his inane slogan of "Make America great again" and chants of "U.S.A." It worked. Voters, just like any big group of people, often act on a herd mentality that is often based on impulse rather than rational thought.

This would make even more difficult Trump's first post-election challenge ― to heal the division of his country. Not just protesters chanting "Not my president" but also a lot of those who voted for him didn't think Trump would win nor did they believe he could fix the rigged system.

Trump promised to be a president for the entire U.S. but that would be a tall order. Just a look at Obama's eight years shows the game is rigged for the winner who takes it all. Nothing is left for the losers and the losers know it.

The Trump revolution started with vulgarity but doesn't have to end up with consequences in kind.

For one, his victory has been interpreted as a revolt of the disfranchised 99 percent against the elitist top 1 percent. This phenomenon masks much of the odiousness of his victory. That alone is a lofty achievement that makes the Trump presidency meaningful.

As for Hillary's failure, she has been in public's eye for so long to make her candidacy feel like one's first breath before brushing the teeth in the morning ― as Governor Bill's wife, President Bill's first lady, senator and secretary of state. Then, she has stood by her flawed husband one time too often. Her patience conjured up not the image of a supporting wife but that of a calculating, ambitious woman who wanted to become the first female U.S. president at whatever cost. In the end, she proved too tired to "bitch" (the same kind Andi Zeisler of Bitch Media talks about) about the inappropriateness of the Trump candidacy as George W. Bush handlers did to steal the victory from Al Gore in the 2000 election.

Park appears to be frozen in time 40 years ago when she served as first lady on the behalf of her assassinated mother when her father Park Chung-hee was in power. As the scandal involving her confidant keeps growing, it appears more obvious that Park has proven to be the princess she was, and relies only on a handful of people. That characteristic is fatal to a leader. We only can wish that four years ago we had known what we know today.

Few can tell for sure whether Choi is a "Mrs. Svangali," or Rasputin, a Korean exorcist, "mudang" or a plain con artist. The really inhuman part about her is that she has been around Park and waiting for 40 years to do the con trick that has shaken the nation. Or the two are just business partners who shared the presidency together.

Obama may or may not know he was part of the reason why Hillary lost.

The New York Times was so wrong about the voters. The Times must have undergone a spoon-bending Uri Geller moment. NYT columnists should have learnt from their counterparts in the Financial Times in the lead-up to the Brexit ― they could believe what they wanted and write about it but at the risk of being proved to be plain dumb. Fire Krugman!

Now, its mistake and that of other mainstream media make the conventional news business even more irrelevant. .

Going back to Nietzsche, did the genius mean his book was only to accent the downsides of being human or did he leave a surprising twist ― something hopeful ― in his masterpiece? Without trying to read to find it, I am ready to assume that there is ― a happy ending to the Trump presidency; media renaissance from Krugman's doomed prophecy; repentance from Choi the excommunicated mudang; constitutional change from Park's escapades; a fresh breath of inspiration from Hillary and Barack's face together with Washington, Teddy, Jefferson and Lincoln on Mount Rushmore

Perhaps being too human goes both directions ― one about negatives and the other for positives. Let's not stop hoping.

Oh Young-jin is The Korea Times' chief editorial writer. Contact him at foolsdie5@ktimes.com and foolsdie@gmail.com.