So on Saturday, Pyongyang’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, speaking before the United Nations, said the following with regard to Donald Trump’s nickname for Kim and threats to “totally destroy” North Korea
Now besides being hilarious, that is exactly what we were trying to convey the other night when we penned “‘What Happens If An Airliner Comes Down?’ Trump, Kim, And The H-Bomb Threat.” Here’s an excerpt from that post:
Trump clearly has no conception of why that approach can’t and won’t work with Kim. Kim’s rule depends almost entirely on his God-like status with his own people. When you threaten to kill him in public (as opposed to communicating through backchannels that Washington is at wit’s end and a military strike is imminent), you have put Kim in an untenable position. He has to choose between appearing weak or going ahead and doing something that proves he’s not. That is not a choice for someone in his position.
We also quoted John Park, a specialist on Northeast Asia at Harvard’s Kennedy School who said this earlier this week:
There is no one on the North Korean side who is going to entertain or pursue discussion about a diplomatic off-ramp, because that individual would be contradicting the leader, which is lethal.
And see it doesn’t seem like Trump understands that either. Imagine waking up tomorrow and reading this headline on CNN: “Rex Tillerson executed with anti-aircraft gun for suggesting Trump pursue diplomatic solutions to the North Korea crisis.”
That’s a real thing in Pyongyang. If you are part of that regime’s upper crust and you even suggest to Kim that he’s not being rational, he will show you just how irrational he is by promptly murdering you. That is not hyperbole. Recall what happened to defense chief Hyon Yong-chol, who made the mistake of falling asleep at an event attended by the Supreme Leader.
The point here is that Trump is making diplomacy a literal impossibility. And just before midnight on Saturday, he made things worse still by tweeting this:
That’s how the President of the United States decided to cap off a day during which most of his time was spent badgering the NFL and rescinding the Golden State Warriors’ invite to the White House on Twitter.
And speaking of Trump’s increasingly contentious war of words with the professional sports community, he was back at that first thing Sunday. Here’s what he tweeted just after dawn today:
That’s right. Donald Trump threatened to wipe out an entire country at 11:08 p.m. on Saturday and then, before the sun was even up on Sunday, he suggested we start firing professional football players.
Dear North Korea: while you are probably correct to assume that Donald Trump is more bark than bite, please do note that he has already “totally destroyed” one entire country – America.
Yes, and we have to live through it to get to the other side. Contingency planning 101 should be at the top of each of your readers’ list.
There you have it. A Trump-ed up vision of “freedom” for US citizens under the current administration – actually the lack thereof. Under Trump #MAGA – if you don’t agree with his political policies you can be fired for not genuflecting to the current political symbols representing him and his administrations policies. He clearly thinks he and his vision are being dissed personally along with the flag.
No doubt our flag can represent the efforts of many past patriots and heroes who made ultimate sacrifices to make that flag represent real freedom from political oppression. However, today – currently, real time – you have to separate the flag’s past representations – now recorded history and not threatened by anyone other than Trump – from those it currently represents (white supremacist, KKK, neo-nazi and other forms of facism) under the radical right administration of Donald Trump and his Congressional enablers. One could argue that the Stars Stripes that fly under Trump are not the same Stars and Stripes of a country that was once free and where its’ Presidents had more important responsibilities than to threaten (illegally by the way) professional sports players or individuals other professions and were confident enough to let a free country’s justice system deal with freedom of expression issues. In reality, national symbols like flags can only represent the present – the flags past representations – glorious or shameful – are represented by history – not symbols – just like the people and their politics.
Finally, this is just one more example of Trump being incompetent and willfully ignorant of the duties and legal requirements of the Office of President and publicly demonstrating his growing and glaring mental instability. It isn’t a shame for a person to become mentally ill when it is beyond their control, but rather the expected symptoms of mental illness. It is a shameful crime when the Congress and other representatives of the voting public – do not meet their Constitutional responsibilities and do what they are Constitutionally and legally required to do – remove a mentally unstable President from office.
We can only hope that voters will serve notice of Congress’s failure to act responsibility and honor their duty as responsible voters to remove the irresponsible Republican Leadership from office in the 2018 elections.