It's quite obvious your cellular definition of self-renewal is
quite irrelevant to this particular context where you're addressing
something less scientific and less clearly-defined.
As a matter of fact, while you may not have realised, self-renewal
isn't so much something that takes on the same meaning exhaustively
in every context applicable as you would naively claim ( "Call it
regime, despot, tyrant, incumbent... Self-renewal is still vital"
).
Just think a little and extrapolate further. Isn't the American
political leadership self-renewed every 4 years? That said, is
there really a need in the American society to invoke a brand of
self-renewal remotely close to this regime's desperate attempts at
prolonging its survival? So, contrasting the two instances, are the
two versions of self-renewals still the same product of your
all-encompassing definition?
As I'd mentioned above, are you for a moment suggesting
political self-renewal in the North Korean context means the same
as the American context?
Are you realistically expecting self-renewal of tyranny to result
in the expansion of your civil liberties and personal freedom? Or
would it be more prudent to expect another lot of despots whose
roles are pretty much peripheral bar enhancing the status quo?
Is that sort of self-renewal really necessary
for the survival of the country as you claim? If what
you claim holds, I presume the planet must be unsustainable in the
absence of dictatorships.
Moreover, isn't there a tinge of self-contradiction in your
analogy? Just because a good successor ensures "more happiness"
than the predecessor (and that's relative comparison), it doesn't
necessarily mean those governed by the emperors in question are
remotely happy to begin with, is it? For, throughout history, was
it not the fact that monarchy yields a brand of rule that
effectively disregards the interests of the governed masses that
result in the disintegration of empires (this would even extend to
the European colonies)? That, in essence, is what brings empires to
their knees - if all a good successor does is alleviate the woes of
a flawed system and prolonging the flaw, why the need to self-renew
and prolong a fallacy to begin with?
