A STUDY IN CONTRASTS

So His Orangeness, our Prevaricator in Chief, Donald Dunce, has met with Kim Jong-un and everyone is puzzled by what Kim thought he would get out of this meeting. Being a pessimist I think I know and if in a few years this scenario comes to pass, remember that you heard it here first.

Kim Jong-un has had many conversations with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin either in person or by phone and he knows that the United States and Western Alliance (NATO) will not confront a nuclear armed adversary who swoops in and invades an adjoining nation. There's ample evidence in Putin's annexation of Crimea and his on-going war in Ukraine. As another example there's China's pre-nuclear annexation of Tibet. Kim also has been clued in to the fact that Trump is a moron who has no sense of history.

Given these facts Kim can go into this Singapore Summit meeting smiling and deferential to Trump who loves nothing more than having his ego massaged. Kim makes a nebulous promise to denuclearize. The Dunce, with visions of a Nobel Peace Prize clouding his vision, hears and sees whatever he wants to hear and see. With this unverifiable and unverified, imprecise crumb from Kim, Mr. Dunce asserts that he's gotten a whole loaf and decides that he can dispense with joint war games with the Republic of South Korea. Donald Dunce now also has an excuse to remove U. S. troops from Korea.

Kim is aware that Donald Dunce will not be around on the world stage much longer. We all hope that he'll be shuffled off by January 20, 2021 if he's not impeached and jailed before. Kim, if his cholesterol and blood pressure hold, will be North Korean dictator for a lot longer.

So the maneuvers that Donald Dunce considers "a provocation" end immediately. Troop withdrawals commence and continue. In the meantime Kim conducts no further missile tests. He explodes no more nuclear weapons. He smiles a lot and issues promises that he's working on disarming. The minefields in the Demilitarized Zone are uprooted, more by the departing Americans than by the North Koreans. Then one November 11th or, perhaps Christmas Day when all the American troops are out of South Korea and those in Japan are on holiday leave, the North Korean Army comes rolling into South Korea, captures Seoul and pushes south in a blitz kreig to capture Gwangju, Daegu and Pusan. Because Kim has a grip on history significant forces capture and hold the port of Inchon. Mobile missile batteries in Pusan are a short distance from the Japanese main island.

Donald Dunce or a successor decides to send troops to Japan and scramble bombers from Guam. However, the North Korean government issues an ultimatum that if so much as a Cessna takes off from Guam in the direction of Korea, a nuclear missile will obliterate Guam. Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand feel that they cannot take action against North Korea in the face of nuclear destruction and the hope that Kim's ambitions are limited to reunifying the Korean Peninsula. Despite a major influx of American troops, Japan, the former colonial power, hunkers down in fear of an invasion and the nuking of Tokyo. China offers to intercede with Kim in return for Japan's dropping of all claims to disputed islands between the two countries and Russia permanently asserts control of the northern Ryukyu Islands that it's held since 1945.

The end result is that the United States loses all influence in all of East Asia and extends its influence over India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and all of the mainland of Southeast Asia. Yet further, the United States is seen as a paper tiger. The East European NATO members leave that alliance and snuggle up to Russia as their protector. Germany, Austria and Italy once again find themselves the front line in Europe. The uneasy truces in the Balkan states breaks down and Russia intervenes as protector of the Slavic peoples of that fractious area.

The trade ties that China has established in what Donald Dunce has identified as the "shithole" countries of Africa make their relations with the United States more tenuous. Similarly the nations on the western shores of South America and Brazil find more interests in common with Kim's Chinese godfathers than with the United States. A world-wide alliance of pragmatism, fear and trade ties isolates the United States.

Into this dire situation will unquestionably step some narcissistic demagogue in the mold of Donald Dunce - a Ted Cruz, a Sean Hannity, an Oliver North, some televangelist, there are too many to list - offers to save the nation as long as Congress and the Courts grant him extraordinary powers. He will, of course, be truly in the mold of Donald Dunce, a Manchurain Candidate controlled by Moscow and/or Beijing. The new world order won't be United Nations black helicopters as the loonies of the far right fear. No. It will come from the loonie far right whose corrupt business deals, like Donald Dunce's, have placed him under the thumb of Russian and /or Chinese masters.

Having spun out this nightmare scenario, a nightmare that could far too easily come true, it is appropriate to note that Donald Dunce has abrogated the Iran nuclear agreement because it only stops Iran from developing a nuclear weapon for ten years. During those years Iran agreed to submit to the most stringent inspection regime ever imposed on any nation. For Donald Dunce a multi-nationally enforced agreement made by his predecessor was insufficient but an ill defined promise in a document that he and Chairman Kim signed after brief discussions is an iron clad reason to clear our military out of South Korea. Can we agree  that calling this fraud Donald Dunce is not pejorative? It is simply fact.

P. S. Donald Dunce came home and, as he is wont to do, sent out the tweet that "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea." Thus Prime Minister Chamberlain...I mean Donald Dunce...has met with Chancellor Hitl...sorry, Chairman Kim...and declared "Peace in our time"...with a probably similar result

Our great observer of humanity, Mark Twain, gets credit for a line he might well  have written but didn't that, "History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes." The philosopher George Santayana did observe, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It seems that both observations apply in this case.