George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 264

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“There’s been a problem with the President’s lobbying. I don’t need to spell out what the problem is, do I?”

Just as the peace agreement was becoming a reality, it was abruptly halted. Well, not really halted, but close. However, this alone wasn’t enough to cause a sudden and drastic outflow of Jewish capital from the United States.

“Who cares? Besides, someone once said that a certain amount of corruption is necessary for a country to run smoothly. I actively agree with that. But it shouldn’t be in our country. You know what I mean, right?”

“The approval ratings of civil servants, excluding the military and police, are scraping the bottom. This is because their salaries and workload are not in sync.”

“It’s just an extra hour of work… or so I’d like to say, but yeah, I guess. Even I would throw a fit if my salary stayed the same but my working hours increased by an hour.”

Civil servants, who have to scrape by on the money the country gives them to support their families, are different from Bush, who is overflowing with money and whose will and motivation are exploding like a volcano, causing him to volunteer to work like a dog.

Do people who work without getting paid even exist? Well, maybe they do. But those people usually get something else in return.

Living things, from humans to even speechless beasts, never work without compensation. Even volunteers receive ‘fulfillment’ as compensation, and even single-celled organisms have the purpose of nutrient intake and the reward of nutrition.

People who work more than they are compensated are generally called slaves. And Bush was well aware of that.

Then, shouldn’t they just raise the salaries? No, was that ever an easy thing to do? Once salaries are raised, they never go down again. If there ever comes a day when civil servants’ salaries are lowered, it would be when the country has truly collapsed.

And Bush himself understood that well enough. Frankly, even back when he was a construction foreman, he only worked as much as he was paid, right? If he worked more than that, he’d get paid extra or something. It was important for employers to give fair compensation to employees. Especially if it was America.

Of course, if you dig deep enough, you can easily see that it’s just a country of freedom in name only, but even if it’s just in name only, the facade is always important. That’s because it’s the camouflage that creates justification.

‘Even if you exclude all this and that, there’s nothing more infuriating than not getting paid properly after working.’

“Why not? We can just raise the salaries. It’s a bit late, but still.”

Anyway, prices go up with the passage of time, so why not raise them? Well, if he were to do it, it should have been done at the same time as his re-election. Actually, it wasn’t like he hadn’t raised them every year. They were raised every year. It’s just that they were raised by such a tiny amount, no different from what he had been doing, that it didn’t make much of a difference.

“It’s time to raise them regardless of politics. And what’s important now is Israel. Those guys actually accepted it.”

Bush muttered, tapping the newly arrived report with a pen. Perhaps because everything wasn’t going as intended, every action was nervous.

Israelis were a tenacious bunch. After losing their country, they had been sharpening their swords for a whopping 3,000 years to reclaim their land. The ethnic group itself had never been without money and had never forgotten the land of Canaan [ancient region corresponding roughly to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and parts of Jordan and Syria] at the same time.

No matter how much overseas Jews turned their backs on Israel, if they were Jews, the place they would ultimately lean on in the last moments of their lives was the embrace of Judaism. So, no matter how atheist they were, when they were about to die, wouldn’t they rely on a god-like being that they had so denied out of fear of the afterlife, whether it was Christianity or Buddhism?

Of course, there would be people who weren’t like that, but those people were very few. At least for now.

‘If we want to balance this land through Palestine, it’s simple. Just become as tenacious as Israel.’

But was that ever an easy thing to do? He couldn’t just say to wait exactly ’30 centuries’ to balance this land. And wealth. The most important thing was wealth. Experts explain the reason for Israel’s establishment in various ways, but Bush believed that the cause of Israel’s establishment was astronomical wealth, no matter what anyone said.

‘This is the problem.’

To be honest, it’s a bit unpleasant to say this. It wasn’t that the United States chose Israel, but that Israel chose the United States. If the United States abandoned Israel, Israel could just find another patron.

They had been sharpening their swords for a staggering 30 centuries. The management was also thoroughly thorough so that the blade would not be completely worn away. The modern Jewish kingdom, created with such tenacity, fearlessly showcased its sharpness to the world, leaping towards victory even with all the surrounding countries as enemies.

‘This is the problem. Why did they accept it so readily?’

Bush couldn’t shake off this question even as he flipped through the report. The reason Bush was so sure that they would never reconcile was none other than the fact that Israel had no reason or cause to accept this agreement.

During the short time it took to return to the White House, Bush wondered if Ariel Sharon had finally gone crazy or was on drugs, but it didn’t seem to be the case.

That thought continued until he received the next report. It wasn’t for nothing that Bush thought, ‘Is this really happening?’ at the last moment of the agreement. He had never really thought that this empty peace agreement would be established.

‘At least it’s certain that this peace agreement won’t last for several years. At least anyone with eyes and ears would agree with this, even if they’re not experts.’

No matter what, it wouldn’t be broken while Bush was in office, but he thought they would break the agreement and attack again as soon as he stepped down. Even that would be useless if he didn’t know why that person accepted it in the first place, and it would be difficult to prepare for future measures.

For Bush, ‘not knowing’ was quite unpleasant. Even the achievements he had made so far were the result of maximizing the combination of future knowledge and Bush’s inherent abilities. Since one of them was falling apart, he was honestly quite anxious.

However, he had no intention of entrusting this to someone else, even though there were still 3-4 years left in his term.

‘What on earth is it?’

Bush delved deeply within the information he knew. But a plausible answer didn’t come out. He just kept badgering those who were strutting around as experts.

He never dreamed that it was the result of the Jews’ futile dream of swallowing the entire Middle East by taking advantage of the Pax Americana [a period of relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and beyond, thought to have begun after the end of World War II in 1945, when the United States became the world’s dominant economic and military power] hegemony, which would last for at least half a century, seeing a too distant future that didn’t even exist.

* * *

“The people’s desire becomes policy, and policy directly affects reality. This damn country is the same.”

The problem is that those people were the North Korean people who had been groaning under the dictator’s belly until recently. Although it’s not even North Korea anymore, their ideology was extremely dangerous. The reason why their ideology was dangerous was none other than the fact that they were more immersed in fantasy than necessary.

Many people migrated south from northern Korea in search of dreams. In terms of appearance, it was the Korean Dream itself. However, it was difficult to achieve at once. The most important condition for becoming a dream is success. But that was never going to be easy. Would success (成功) be success for nothing? Originally, it is difficult to achieve, and after achieving it, you feel rewarded, so isn’t that success?

They saw the bare face of economic democracy in a very short period of time. The labor laws, which were not properly observed even for the people in the South, were not properly observed for those who really knew nothing, and they treated the people from the North poorly.

It wasn’t difficult to get a job. Once they got a job, they realized that there weren’t that many jobs in the South, so they had to move back to the North, but still, they could enjoy a better life than before no matter where they got a job.

Among the North Koreans who moved to South Korea, only a very small number could settle in South Korea safely. The majority of those who settled in South Korea were elderly people who were quite old. This was not surprising, as the Korean War was only about 50 years ago.

These people are usually in their late 60s to 80s, and in modern times, where the average age has risen to an incomparable level compared to the past, it was too ambiguous to die of natural causes or illness.

In other words, they were all separated families without exception. Unless one of the family members who came down first had achieved great success and the entire family had come down.

Next, of course, were the young people. They came down in search of new jobs and a better quality of life. And they were exploited. Some of them certainly succeeded. But as always, that could not be the majority.

And most of those who succeeded were people who had their base in Pyongyang. The high-ranking children who lived in Pyongyang, although partially twisted, had received sufficient education and were quite motivated. In addition, they had some understanding of and contact with South Korea, and it was not so difficult to adapt.

In addition, the unofficial lobbying that took place between the party members and the Korean National Assembly members before the collapse of the Communist Party made it easier for them to settle down, and they remained wealthy even after coming down to the South.

Almost nothing had changed.

But it had to change. If the situation turned into a prolonged one, Korea would surely be seen as a country trapped in the middle-income trap, where economic growth had stopped.

“You ignorant Yankee bastards!”

In fact, at the newly reorganized Ministry of Unification’s North Korean Human Rights Center, an employee couldn’t contain his anger and swore, breaking another new three-color pen today.

‘Yeah, just look at soccer, isn’t that right? I mean, American football. How can soccer be transformed like that? Such a barbaric sport!’

In fact, American football was derived from rugby, not soccer, so there was only a somewhat indirect correlation, but even if he knew this, the result would be the same. If he had known, he would have cursed at something else instead of American football.

After the sudden unification, the intensity of work changed so drastically that it became murderously difficult to even speak. The number of comrades collapsing from overwork gradually became difficult to count with one hand, and in just a few days, it became not enough to use both hands and feet, and today it finally reached 100.

The only consolation was that Minister of Unification Jeong Dong-won was among those who collapsed from overwork.

They had to suffer doubly, with the existing workload suddenly increasing by dozens of times, along with the new recruits who came in on a large scale, and correcting the people who had been North Koreans.

It’s called the Human Rights Center, but it was nothing more than a reorganization into the North Korean Rehabilitation Department. But the reason why they are doing this at the Human Rights Center instead of Hana Center is a very simple answer.

If you pour a kettle into a cup, won’t it overflow? If you want to put all the contents of the kettle into the cup without spilling it, just bring another cup. That’s right. That’s it. That other cup became the Human Rights Center.

-Israel and Palestine have dramatically signed a peace agreement at Camp David. To finalize the practical and administrative procedures, we have established a temporary border…

“What the hell is going on in America?”

He couldn’t contain his anger and broke another pen. This time it was a Monami ballpoint pen. But sadly, even as he was getting angry like this, the work was piling up.