END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
Friday Aug. 11, 2017
I’ve been wondering if this Trump/USA/North Korea bravado contest will play out in ways comparable to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in terms of risk to us all …
If Twitter existed in 1962, who would Tweet outrageous inflammatory jabs – Kennedy, Krushchev or Castro?
None were that foolish.
I’m wondering, could Twitter end the world as we know it?
Probably not, but it looks well on its way to destroying one presidency.
We watch every day. Every night. Every morning. It never stops, he never stops. Someone needs to stop him before we all go stark raving mad, or we have a nuclear war – whichever comes first.
Could Twitter cause world destruction?
Not yet.
Like westerns we’ve all seen, Donald Trump acts the part of over-confident tough sheriff or bully rancher in pursuit of stubborn illusive outlaw/shepherd/merchant he dismisses. Someone he’ll squash like a bug. His weapons of choice, many guns and his big mouth. Calling-out (and Tweeting-out) his adversaries as if they are weak, rational and can be intimidated.
Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un are playing a high-stakes ‘game of chicken’.
‘War of words’ now, but risks tumbling into battlefield collisions of Russian, Chinese, American and Korean interests are incalculably horrid.
Neither are rational. Easy to dismiss their ‘theatre’ if you believe both of them grasp and fear ‘worst-case scenario’ consequences. One thinks he will win the game of chicken, and that the other guy will blink.
Will calm heads prevail?
I doubt that. It seems to me they both have nothing to gain and everything to lose – but most media reporting suggests they both see it the other way around.
Horrors of Nagasaki (Aug. 9, 1945) and Hiroshima (Aug. 6, 1945) – show-stopping events in terms of warfare – when only one country had nuclear technology. Now eighteen countries do. Trump has been doing his best to pick fights with/antagonize several of them. WWII was never expected to be what it was or end how it did – because nobody thought one lunatic could go that far, take the world that far down the drain. Hitler had many guns and big mouth. So did Krushchev. So did Castro.
Watching those old westerns we were accustomed to guys in black hats with lots of guns and big mouths running their reckless course until guys in the white hats won the day and locked them away. That was the movies and fantasy TV, not reality TV. We now witness reality TrumpTV – all networks, every day, it won’t go away.
Could Twitter cause world destruction?
Not yet.
Call Kim Jong-un many names if you wish: shrinking coward, loose cannon, suicidal, irrational. Maybe, but he’s a determined loose cannon irrational/suicidal coward. Call Donald Trump, a pillar of self-aggrandizement, ignorance. And reckless.
This is not the end of the world as we know it – but I can see it from here …
