The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    Blundering towards Bethlehem

    By jollyroger on Sat, 06/09/2018 - 3:32pm |

    As Trump in Singapore bids fair to fulfill the mandate to provide his reality show with an audience pleasing finale, may we friends of humanity argue that no downside lurks in the prospect of a supine Trump, albeit producing a Potemkin peace?

    What I mean is this: Granting that Trump, by definition, understands nothing, what's the worst that could happen?

    The fear seems to be that Trump will "give away" too much in his zeal for a chance to sample the golden shower culture of Oslo. That is obviously bullshit.

    More to the point, a brief consideration of the World of Trump (his capricious capitalization infects us all....) was enough to induce a strong desire for peace in the South Koreans, which is the real change in attitude leading to the prospect of Kim and Trump chopping it up old school and comparing anti-aircraft guns to AR-15s as tools for the enforcement of political orthodoxy..

    How bad is that?

    If by "give away" the chickenhawks mean to implicate a desire to end the American expeditionary presence in year 70 rather than run it out to a full hundred years' war, soit.

    So, what could go wrong?

    Well, considering that it's the world's most toxic amalgam of stupidity, ignorance and narcissism with which we are dealing, I will concede that his wounded response in the aftermath of a deal which causes Anne Coulter to call him pisher, could potentiate a dangerous susceptibility to the martial blandishments of Bolton, the Serial War Criminal (there go them caps again....).

    I guess as far as the negotiating nitty-gritty goes, I figure Kim will eat Trump's lunch, and that's all good.

    And yet....the particular rough beast in question has a life long pattern of reneging after-the-fact as a tactic for extorting from an interlocutor concessions that had been previously resisted. (cf, Iran deal deconstruction).

    It will be instructive to see how Kim proposes to protect himself from Trump's propensity to weasel on the back end.

    Comments

    I am not convinced that the newly arrived Bull in a China Shop is the one who inculcated the desire of South Koreans to step back from Eternal War. If the negotiations in Singapore were all about South Korea, they would call for the removal of all those guns and cannons aimed straight at Seoul and pull back all the armored units parked on the edge of the DMZ. The NK nukes are more a threat to Japan than anyone else. 

    Side note on Capricious Capitalization. It was commonly used in political messages in 18 nth and 19 nth century American political messaging and became eschewed by the stylists of policy and government in order to separate their language from those used by Partisans.


    by moat on Sat, 06/09/2018 - 5:38pm

    Side note on Capricious Capitalization.

    Enjoyed this semiological point because it just hit me like a light bulb, as in: yeah, exactly! I have noticed that about reading old texts. Or more precisely, I subconsciously inferred it after enough experience without realizing it, that that is one difference in the writing. It's sort of like the same way many use quotation marks today! Also like using "hand quotes", one can infer a little bit of cynicism or skepticism.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 06/09/2018 - 5:50pm

    The NK nukes are more a threat to Japan than anyone else. 

    I agree with you here! Pop culture and dystopian post-WWIII scifi tales have done a lot of damage about  taking fear of nukes to crazy irrational levels. I try to calm friends that I think are fearfully irrational on this front with a reminder of something along the lines of: okay, let's do nightmare scenarios, check on Fukushima and Chernobyl now, what happened afterwards. And think on that and then if you still wanna freakout about something,  do it about about greenhouse gases and global warming and I will entertain that.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 06/09/2018 - 6:01pm

    Uh oh, just saw that Dennis is planning to hang around and try to steal some of the ratings thunder. This is where there is potential of a real "blowup," mho. By Eric Grynaviski @ WaPo.

    Yes, it’s true — on Friday, Dennis Rodman confirmed on Instagram that he’s heading to Singapore to “give whatever support is needed to my friends, President Trump and Marshall Kim Jong Un.”

    This news has caught many — including the president, apparently — by surprise. On Thursday, President Trump said that Rodman had not been invited to the summit but called him a “nice guy.”

    Rodman’s “basketball diplomacy” since 2013 involved high-profile visits to North Korea, where he met with Kim Jong Un, the nation’s leader. Rodman also brought along copies of Donald Trump’s books in 2017 and claims to have sold the North Korea leader on the U.S. president.

    Rodman told TMZ that he should get some credit for a summit [.....]


    by artappraiser on Sat, 06/09/2018 - 6:10pm

    A "blowup"?  Why and for what purpose?  For logic's sake, this whole thing is going to be a security wonderland - or nightmare - neither of which is going to find Rodman anywhere within its boundaries.  If there's an up to blow it will be of the media's making. 


    by barefooted on Sat, 06/09/2018 - 7:15pm

    Just making a joke (sort of) that Trump doesn't like anyone upstaging him. Rodman already is a Kim buddy, so he could even come in with Kim, doesn't have to be with the Americans.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 06/09/2018 - 7:21pm

    Now that would be funny.  cheeky


    by barefooted on Sat, 06/09/2018 - 7:39pm

    If Rodman can play best buds with Kim, doing the same with Trump is no problem.

    Trump especially loves celebrities, and 'the blacks love him.'


    by NCD on Sat, 06/09/2018 - 8:16pm

    The first question to be asked is what are we giving Kim and what do we want Kim to do?  It's been NK policy for decades to request a meeting with the president of the US. The theory is that for other nations, especially small nations, a meeting with the US president is huge in that country. It increases the leader's power within the country to be seen meeting the president as an equal. Past presidents didn't feel that NK was willing to give enough to justify that propaganda coup. Trump gave Kim that victory for nothing. America might have been able to get some concessions on human rights or humanitarian access to NK gulags or more in exchange for a meeting.

    Then there's international law, the UN and sanctions. If Kim signs a peace treaty he can make a case at the UN to  lessen sanctions. There are several small countries that have nukes that are not punished by sanctions, Pakistan and Israel to name a couple. There are many countries that would like to support NK and end sanctions. A peace treaty makes that more likely.


    by ocean-kat on Sat, 06/09/2018 - 7:50pm

    This deceitful, arrogant ignoramus will likely pull a magic rabbit named “denuclearization” out of a hat in Singapore, believable only by deplorables, Fox News and graduates of  Trump University. 


    by NCD on Sat, 06/09/2018 - 8:13pm