5/1/17

First happy May day:  “arise ye prisoners of starvation, Arise ye wretched of the earth”  From one of the English versions of the Internationale.

Anyway as we have passed the 100 day Mark, the Professor is beginning to fear that we really to long to go to stay lucky.  At lunch time today Trump gave a scattered and incoherent response to a question about North Korea.

It hurts too much to bury too deeply into the word salad but the essence is that  he’s saying be afraid – right now of North Korea but I think he’d be happier if we were all afraid all the time.

As the days go by,  Trump  more and more reminds me not of the German leader most people think of but the man in charge of Germany before the First World War: Kaiser Wilhelm the Second .

Granted the parallels are not exact, history does not repeat itself exactly (although someone said it often rhymes) however reading about The Kaiser’s actions before the war and his combination of unstable personality  and massive insecurity can’t help but see they are very much alike in their bombast, their reliance on threats, and their waffling when they encounter any real push back.

The problem of course is that the Kaiser’s bombast helped pave the way for the First World War – and my humble terror of the day is that Trump’s bombast is going to get us involved and a massively serious war in Korea with consequences to the world nobody can really foresee other than it will be very very bad.

The concern is that neither NK or Trump can allow themselves to feel or act weak so both sides have been pushing, and  if we are unlucky (I’m not even saying very unlucky just unlucky) we could end up with one or the other side doing something stupid because of this terror of seeming weak.

Frightened people with guns are very very dangerous.