DPRK & The American Mad King (A Scenario)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


It’s demonstrable that the president of the United States is just barely hanging on to his sanity. Trump is very unstable and erratic, especially on Twitter which is apparently a direct link to his Id. But, to date, he’s managed to keep it together enough that nothing TOO dangerous has happened.

Now that we’re in August — which is a pretty shitty month for news — let’s think up a scenario whereby Trump’s craziness goes from malevolent uncle to destroyer of worlds.

There are many, many scenarios one can think up. But the one that is the easiest to plot out is something to do with North Korea. It’s generally believed that only a crazy person would poke that particular bear unless their was an absolute reason to do so.

To date, Trump’s bonkers behavior has gone the exact opposite direction — he’s be a real suck up to the worst tyrant on the planet. And, in a sense, that’s been for the best. At least we’re not worried about a limited nuclear exhange.

But, let do that now.

The thing about this scenario is it could happen at any point while Trump is president. It could happen today, it could happen two years into Trump’s stolen second term. It’s not like history gives a shit about anyone’s particular political agenda. There’s a reason why they say, “Death be not proud.”

Anyway, for the purposes of this scenario, this happens sooner rather than later. Like August 2020. What prompts Trump finally losing his mind is his absolute need to win re-election smashes into his realization that while he is obviously going to successfully steal the election, it’s going to involve a lot of work and he’s lazy.

So, let’s say he REALLY snaps and he turns his eyes to the DPRK.

The first thing that would happen is we wouldn’t know it had happened. Trump’s been so unstable for so long that the America media works pretty hard to hide it from the public. So, it’s likely if he really did snap and started to see war with the DPRK as an easy way to win re-election “fair and square” we would think he was “joking.”

If something happened and Trump felt offended by Little Rocket Man, he might start to rant about the need to whip the DPRK off the planet. Or he would pull out all American civilians associated with AFK, which would seriously spook the North Koreans.

Once he actually started to do something demonstrable like that, people would sit up and take notice. This wouldn’t be “joking,” this would be serious. The major miscalculation Trump would make — because he’s stupid — is he would see a bloody three month war with the DPRK as simply something he had to do to win re-election.

What he wouldn’t think about is the DPRK, if it felt it had an existential threat on its hands, would likely shoot off a few ICBMs with H-bombs on them our way. And I have no confidence in the DPRK’s guidance equipment. Just because it’s supposed to hit, say, DC, doesn’t mean it won’t veer off course and hit, say, gulp, Richmond.

Anyway, the point is, Trump screwing up a war with the DPRK and being blamed for it is pretty much the only way I can possibly see Trump ever leaving office for any reason.

Korean War 2.0: DPRK, TrumpRussia, Ukraine & A Possible WWIII

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Something’s up. My spidy senses are tingling. I have grown very jaded and cynical about anything having to do with North Korea, but the curious statements coming out of the Trump Administration the last few days about the DPRK make me scratch my head a little bit.

I see the North Korea situation as a major gimme for Trump. It’s his huge backup fail safe should the TrumpRussia problem finally go China Syndrome and look like it’s going to end his administration. It may very well be that nothing happens. It could be that Trump will leave office in four to eight years and the DPRK will still be there and this long-term problem we have with them will be kicked down the road for another long bit.

Or…the Trump Administration is singling that they’re going to strike the DPRK in some way and let the chips fall where they will. Now, remember, the DPRK is very unpredictable and they very much want to survive, so the States might do some limited bombing and, well, nothing might happen.

Or, all hell will break loose and 500,000 people in Seoul and beyond might die in the first month of the conflict. Such an enormous regional war would have a dynamic all its own and some pretty amazing things might happen. It doesn’t take too much to think maybe Trump might use the DPRK to wag the dog. He might attack the North Koreans, sit back for them to freak out and in the ensuing chaos use pardon the hell out of people left and right and maybe even fire Bob Mueller along the way. There simply would be so much going on in Washington D.C. and beyond that the press wouldn’t be able to keep up. Add to this the possibility that Trump doing this might be seen by Russia as a green light to attack Ukraine in a big way — not to mention whatever Iran might cook up — and you have the makings of something that would be marketed by the American press as WWIII.

Or not. I am so jaded that I have a feeling the whole kick-the-can-down-the-alley option is what is going to happen with the DPRK. It would be so callus, so transparent if Trump wagged the dog with the DPRK at this point that, well, I don’t quite know what to think of that prospect. That Trump would use the potential death of half a million people — at least — as political cover to save his own presidency kind of blows my mind. But it would make a lot of sense. By the time the States finally got around to winning the war in three to six months, TrumpRussia would be a forgotten scandal and Trump would be in a strong position to win the mid-terms and potentially a second term.

But so much could go wrong with a war with the DPRK that I just don’t know. I just don’t know if I’m reading too much into all of this or what. I can’t get a handle on it. I think everything is going to work itself out and nothing is going to happen. The alternative is to horrible and bloody to brood on for too long. I mean, the Chinese and the Russians could get involved, the DPRK could attempt to bomb Japan. Or they could attempt to nuke Seoul in some sort of blackmail situation. Wars are easily started and difficult to end as the old adage goes and Korean War 2.0 would be no different.

Only time will tell, I guess.

The Atlantic Talks Of Our Dark, Darwinian Global Present.

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarl

I am really impressed by The Atlantic’s use of video, though I think it would make a little bit more sense to have the author’s of articles talk about the article in an inline video, as opposed to having a separate place for video. But maybe they know something about how people interact with content that I don’t.

Regardless, I really liked this video that Atlantic staff writer Uri Friedman did about how Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord is a really dangerous sign of his world view because it means Trump embraces a dark, Darwinian view of international relations.

This, of course, is in step with my own personal view of things. I have long held that we’re in unprecedented times and it doesn’t take much to imagine a scenario whereby we might have two regional wars — Ukraine and Korea — that would be marketed as “World War III.”

Despite how much nerds like me may be aghast at Trump’s decision, the base of Trumplandia probably is pretty pleased with Trump’s decision. There political views typically barely make it beyond a guttural grunt and it makes total sense that they wouldn’t understand the subtle symbolic importance of the United States pulling out of the Paris Accord.

It is all too easy to just say we’re fucked, but, alas, that seems to be where things stand right now: we’re fucked. My only hope, and at this point it isn’t much of one, is that maybe eventually there will be some sort of political cost that Trump will have to pay for his behavior.

It’s unlikely that is going to happen anytime soon for various reasons, chief among them being that the Vichy Republicans are so obsessed with tax cuts for the wealthy and making abortion illegal that they’re totally cool with being callow in the face of Trump’s tyrannical madness.

The sooner we stop laughing at Trump, the sooner we take Trump as a serious threat to the Republic, the sooner The Resistance can figure out what makes Trumplandia tick and prevent the World War III that I suggested might happen.

The Rise Of Trumplandia & The Prospects Of WWIII

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Now, when I suggest that the rise of Trumplandia may lead to World War III, what I am saying is it is very possible that there may be two major regional wars at the same time — Ukraine and North Korea. It doesn’t take much to imagine a scenario whereby Donald Trump would lash out at North Korea as his dumpsterfire of an administration goes through its final death rattles.

As this was happening, it might be the final thing that causes Russian President Putin to make a serious landgrab against Ukraine. His forces are already in Ukraine as it is, and now that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stated that Europe is on its own now because of Trumplandia and Brexit, it may just be too much for him. Putin may feel he has a historic, one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make his dreams of Novorussya a reality. Or, put another way, there is a very real chance that due to the unique nature of Trumplandia that two regional wars may occur because of misunderstandings.

The America press would notice this and market it as World War III.

What is the most troubling is the state of NATO. There are no assurances that Putin will go after Ukraine in a big way when for him a more attainable conquest might be the Baltic states. If Trump is slobbing the knob of the Russians so bad that he can’t even garner up the moral fiber to defend the Baltic states, then all bets are off. That would call into question the entire liberal order established as a result of WWII.

Meanwhile, though it is pretty obvious that America and her allies would win a renewed war with North Korea, that doesn’t mean it would go in a straight line. Any number of disasters could occur, especially if there was a regional conflict going on in Europe at the same time.

The crux of all of this is Trumplandia itself. We live in extraordinary times, when the traditional American party that was strongest when it came to wanting America to be the moral leader of the free world is completely co-opted by that rotting political corpse of Trumplandia. Not since Vichy France has something so odd happened politically.
That is something that is so bizarre that I doubt we will fully understand it any time soon. It’s just crazy.

So, in the darkness of of Trumplandia we really don’t have much hope. We’re going to have to make our own hope. We’re going to have to resist as best we can. We can only hope that the DPRK won’t perfect the ability to put a nuclear bomb on an ICBM before this horrific scenario I propose comes anywhere close to a reality.

Shelton Bumgarner is the editor and publisher of The Trumplandia Report. He can be reached at migukin (at) gmail.com.