The North Koreans are getting stroppy again, test-firing an ICBM that they claim can reach Alaska and the west coast of USA, and can carry a nuclear bomb. Donald Trump is making predictable bellicose remarks. Few People doubt that he has a short fuse and an itchy trigger finger.
Somehow I find the situation much less ominous, much less threatening than the Cuban missile crisis. We were insulated from the Cuban missile crisis by distance -- it was going on a long way off on the other side of the world from where we were then, in Australia. Even so, it was worrying, even frightening. The escalating tension between North Korea and the USA seems somehow unreal by comparison, but as events unfold in the next few days i might have to revise this view.
Trump is clearly unsuitable for his position as so-called leader of the so-called free world. He is shallow, ill-informed, volatile, often displays evidence of paranoid conduct (for instance his obsession with a mythical widespread voter fraud to explain the odd fact that some 3 million more votes were cast for Hillary Clinton than for him. The true explanation of course is gerrymandering at the electoral college lever in the bizarre US presidential process. It's too much to hope that Trump's obsession might lead to abolition of the electoral college, but it's nice to dream about the possibility...
As for North Korea's bellicose behaviour, I can't help wondering whether the weird regime that runs North Korea is a puppet whose strings are being twitched by the Chinese. It's an interesting speculation.
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