Witless Gamblers

     Do I have time to buy the materials to construct a bomb shelter?  Are we in the 1950s again?
     This morning on MSNBC I heard commentary on the "North Korea crisis."  The U.S. Defense Department has a plan, which, unbelievably, they've shared with the public, to "conduct a preemptive strike against North Korean nuclear missile sites."  A map of the Korean peninsula showed red circles, like open sores, where these sites allegedly are.  Satellites have undoubtedly identified the targets.  We need only wait for President Trump, currently vacationing in New Jersey at one of his golf resorts, to order a swift and short air campaign to end the crisis; or to begin World War Three.
     The news hostess stood before a board displaying the capabilities of the B-1 bomber, emphasizing the aircraft's high speed and capacity to carry massive amounts of explosives.  Primitive computer animation showed the numerous support airplanes that would accompany the B-1s.  North Korea has nothing like this--their missiles, though, are poised, they say, to strike the U.S. territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean.  From Guam, ironically, the B-1s will fly, although it is and has been a major U.S. military installation for a long time and as such makes sense as a target.
     North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-Un, or high-ranking officials in his government, have declared for all to hear that by mid-August, days away, their plan to attack Guam will be ready.
     Can a diplomatic solution be found?  We've been assured, just two days ago, by Secretary of State/former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson that we have nothing to worry about in this matter.  He's a very reassuring and trustworthy person; I had a good night's sleep after I heard him say that.  He's been on a trip to eastern Asia; he seems calmer than the excitable Donald Trump.
     During a presidential meeting on America's opioid epidemic (which kills more Americans than terrorism), President Trump, in his usual off the subject fashion, declared that if North Korea gets out of hand with its nukes, America will bring "fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen."  Senator Lindsay Graham has spoken glibly of obliterating North Korea.  These mad positions, fever dreams of power-hungry vicious sadists who don't seem to realize that a cooling of aggressive rhetoric would probably help Kim Jong-Un relax, could be viewed in their insanity by Donald Trump's body language when he made the "fire and fury" remark.  While he was supposed to be talking about alleviating opioid addiction (helping people) he boasted instead about annihilation, around the time of the anniversaries of Hiroshima's and Nagasaki's atomic destruction.
     He gripped his upper arms tightly in the exact position of someone bound in a straitjacket.
     Someone gets put into a straitjacket because they're having a psychotic episode.  There's concern by a medical staff that the patient may harm him- or herself, but may also harm staff members.
     The rhetoric of U.S. versus North Korea agitates the skin of insanity.  Trump, with all of his other problems--the Russia investigation led by Robert Mueller, the FBI raid with search warrant on Paul Manafort's house, his low popularity ratings, the setting up of a PAC for a Mike Pence presidential run in 2020, the slow diminishment of his voting base, scrutiny of his family by government investigators--is faced with one of the most difficult issues of the last six decades, the Korean Question.
     The Korean War of 1950 to 1953 did not resolve itself.  A leftover of the Cold War (by contrast, Vietnam united into one country after 1975), North and South Korea remain separated by political decisions and the militarism in service to those decisions.  Koreans are one people.  South Koreans want unification with the North--they don't want their separated fellows to be obliterated by the might of American sky dominance.  During the Korean War, American bombers blew up North Korea every day for three years, death toll unknown but probably in the millions.  North Koreans think of this when they think of America.  America, to them, is a major mass murderer.  Many Iraqis, I suspect, think the same based on experience.
     We Americans like to believe that we do good in the world.  There are some government policies carried out that really help people in other countries, but the left-hand side of that equation carries a gun with no limit to its ammunition.  We Americans act as if our military isn't strong enough, even though its muscularity makes it into a Goliath, one that doesn't seem to realize its own enormity.  That hugeness is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive when it comes to good relations with the world, and the overall economic health of this country.  War and war machines produce only the need for more war and war machines.  Trump's straitjacket posture, perhaps, shows our country's mindlessness and self-tormented idiocy resulting from constantly being hard for aggression; a testosterone-addled cage fighter that just needs to fuck with people.
     MSNBC's segment on the capacities of the B-1 bomber ended with a tease for the next segment, accompanied by repeating images of North Korea missile launches.  Remember August and September 2002, when Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and George W. Bush warned of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons capabilities, that he might destroy a major U.S. city.  More people realize now that this was bullshit; too bad for all those dead Iraqis.  I say it's time again to look at August as not only the month when politicians go on vacation, but as the time when they plan to fuck up the lives of foreigners.  One major reason for going to war is to get the public distracted.  Trump has some uncomfortable legal issues getting close to his way of life.  If Mueller is digging into the nature of Trump's finances--and why wouldn't he be?--the President of the United States may find himself getting booted out of office, a failure, even as he may eventually come under the cloud of embarrassing financial investigations.
     He's a sociopathic predatory capitalist criminal, most of us already know this--for Mueller to prove it would be something beyond the day by day show of "What did the President tweet?"
     Once again, my country is following war as a solution, starting with war talk, threats, maneuvers of ships and airplanes.  Do these strategies ultimately work?  Are we better off for having attacked Afghanistan in October 2001?  Iraq?  Is the Syria campaign helping anyone?  Did overthrowing Gaddafi make Libya more peaceful?  Is the American Empire getting stupider by the year?  Whatever its level of intelligence, I want it to fail.

                                                                                Vic Neptune