Lovers in a Dangerous Time

The latest media take on the "legendary" Trump-Kim border stroll is that in so doing Trump has "normalized" the NORK nukes.

Far be it from me to hand El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago any diplomatic props whatsoever, but...what the hell else could he do?

The DPRK has nuclear weapons. Crude, perhaps, but certainly no cruder than the weapons used in 1945. Donnie Trump hasn't "made" North Korea a nuclear power; North Korea IS a nuclear power. Short of risking nuclear detonation on the Korean peninsula, what the hell is the U.S. going to do to change that? Kim, as big a sonofabitch as he is, is not a fool. He knows his survival and that of the Kim Dynasty depends on making his little fiefdom too nasty for a larger enemy to take down without paying an unacceptable price. He's seen what happens to the Saddams and the Gadaffis of the world. He's no more going to "denuclearize" than he's going to appear on The Apprentice in a cheap suit.

Only a monstrous simulacrum of a human being with the intellectual capacity of a brain-damaged marmoset would think or expect otherwise.

Oh, wait...

Christ, what a maroon. What an im-bessal. Can anyone explain why the Mustache of Stupidity still has any geopolitical credibility whatsoever?

Christ, what an asshole.

So while I'm perfectly willing to dopeslap the Tangerine Tinpot for his behavior at the G20, where he did his best to imitate his boss from Moscow and follow the boss' direction for continuing his efforts towards the demolition of the Western hegemony (his comments on the 1951-1960 US-Japan agreement were particularly moronic), I can't really get too arsed about this little jaunt around the bricks at Panmunjom.

The notion that the U.S. can do what it can and the NORKs must suffer what they must died the moment the first fission test succeeded north of the DMZ.

North Korea is and will be a nuclear power; regardless of what gas Trump and the Trumpkins may expel, the U.S. is going to have to accept that unless and until the people running the show in the U.S. are willing to risk a nuclear, biological, and chemical attack on their Korean and Japanese allies. Bolton may be willing to do that, and Trump may be ignorant enough to let him, but almost no one else in the U.S. government is.

For the U.S. "news" media to bloviate otherwise simply makes that acceptance more difficult and fraught.

En español se llama: "Irak "

After the ridiculous tragicomedy of the failed "coup" (if that is, indeed, what it was) in Venezuela the usual wild rumors are flying about whether Caesar Orangius will use U.S. armed force to do what the Venezuelan "opposition" couldn't, and before you could say "Achmed Chalabi" the usual suspects were blabbering on about regime change:

"Your time is up. This is your last chance. Accept Interim President Guaido’s amnesty, protect the Constitution, and remove Maduro, and we will take you off our sanctions list. Stay with Maduro, and go down with the ship." (Bolton on Twitter)

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry, frankly.

I think the fears of a Venezuelan intifada are overblown. I don't see this as another Iraq Occupation with GIs getting blown up on roads and mortars hitting the Green Zone in Caracas.

What I do see is that regardless of who rules in Venezuela the nation is completely fucked, and only a great fool (or John Bolton and Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump, but I repeat myself...) would want to have anything to do with it.

How quickly we forget that the very reason there is a Maduro - and before him, a Chavez - is because the rule of the people like Guaidó and López was worse for Jose and Maria Desayuno than Chavez and Maduro were, at least initially. The rabiblancos or whatever they're called in Venezuela ruled for the 1% in Caracas, and the notion that the mass of Venezuelans want them back in 2019 is as idiotic as believing that installing the Iraqi National Congress would make them the Federalist Party of Iraq back in 2003.

Add to that the simple fact the Venezuela was and is a massively corrupt petrostate at a time when petroleum prices have cratered. Yes, the Trumpkins are doing their best to bollix the petroleum market by screwing with Iran, but it's unlikely that they can jack prices up enough to save Venezuela from itself. The place is simply screwed in the short- and, probably, the medium-term, no matter who runs it.

But it's hard to underestimate the Great Wall of Stupid that runs through the Fraudulency Administration:

"The president has occasionally mused to others that Bolton wants to get him into wars. Two advisers who have discussed Venezuela with him said Trump often brings up Florida politics, and his golf club in Doral, when talking about the subject. Both said Trump was unlikely to authorize any sort of long-term military action there. At the same time, however, aides said he has given Bolton wide purview over Venezuela."

I like the golf club thing; that's particularly Trumpy.

(I wonder if he knows there's a par-3 one-hole "golf club" along the Korean DMZ?)

With any luck my Army brothers will be spared a dip in this shitpool, because right now only the locals get to enjoy the dysfunctional mess that is Venezuela...but remember the "Pottery Barn Rule"?

Jesus wept. The stupid, it burns.