Navigating the sea of chaos with impeachment
Published: 20 Nov. 2024, 20:03
The author is the head of the Today-People News team at the JoongAng Ilbo.
“Hey, just impeach him.” I couldn’t believe my ears.
On Sunday, I overheard a conversation of teenagers sitting next to me in a café. They were talking about impeaching their teacher. Half of the conversation was filled with curse words, and I didn’t expect to hear the word “impeachment.” Once printed in a Gothic bold font on the front page of a newspaper, the term has now become part of daily language.
There is no need to scold the students for using expletives. Nowadays, politicians are competing over who speaks with the roughest language. The reality is that the abnormality of an incumbent lawmaker saying “I’ll kill you” to an opponent in the same party has become commonplace. I feel bitter that everyday life has been impeached.
I am reminded of the famous first sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” — “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” We live in a time when replacing “family” with “country” is not strange. The terms like “impeachment” or “special prosecutor” have little impact now.
The most powerful man in Korea used the word “demonization” during a live broadcast while talking about all the criticisms against his wife, and a promising politician aiming to be the next president cried out, “I’ll never die.” No matter where they are in the political spectrum, everyone is unhappy in their own way.
Is it comforting that not only Korea but also the whole world is unhappy? But let’s face it. There is no end to worrying about the world. I recently interviewed Pauline Brown, a marketing specialist who studies beauty. She said that when the world is painful, what supports an individual is “the beauty in daily life.” During the interview, the results of the U.S. presidential election were announced. She was discouraged for a while and then said, with a smile, that her job would become more important because protecting beauty is important in an age of chaos.
The more chaotic a country is, the stronger an individual should be. In an era when a small happiness feels like an eternal luxury, everyone is in agony. I have to keep my focus if I want to keep composure, if not beauty.
When I think about it, it’s always been a hard job being a Korean national anyway. At this rate, teenagers may say, “Let’s impeach mom and dad.” The spread of impeachment in daily life is unbearably light.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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