President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

You're right, the last part of my post got clipped when I changed pages. It should have read, "Nowhere in the report does it detail a policy of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against states that make threats." I'll go edit my OP.

In any case, your scenario is not one that the President described.
"North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen."

 

Trump has a very unsettling fascination with the idea of the United States' nuclear arsenal. It came out in the campaign. It's coming out now.

I don't know that he'd actually ever use them. But he sure likes to brag about them. I have friends who are that way about their guns.

 

"The Internet" reacted with outrage when people said a hot dog was a sandwich.

 

If I were assigned to compile a list of people less qualified than Donald Trump to be president during a crisis that could lead to nuclear war, I'm not certain I could fill up one side of a sheet of notebook paper.

Also there is no way to nuke only North Korea, which is roughly the size of Pennsylvania. South Korea would be ruined. China and Japan would receive devastating amounts of fallout.

But he's talking tough!

What goddamn fools we are as a country.

 

I grew up scared shitless of nuclear war. My parents would have to comfort me, on occasion.

It would have never occurred to me, until well into adulthood, that there are a significant percentage of Americans actually cheering for this shit to happen.

 

Are they cops?

 

Not seeing as many stories this week about how John Kelly is making Trump a more disciplined president. I'm sure that's just an oversight.

 

Just hobbyists. The cops don't really talk about them. Act like you've been there before, you know?

 

You can attack NK with airbursts, which maximizes blast and leaves little significant fallout (which is how and why Hiroshima is still a city today). But that won't touch the underground facilities, even if we had their precise locations.

 

(In response's to Dick's comment about people cheering for it to happen)

 

Yes: Still alive.

 

The past several pages of this thread, dating to midday Tuesday, after Trump's ill-advised "fire and fury" comment, reinforce what I realized years ago about trying to have or follow a conversation with YankeeFan: There is no point.

It isn't just that he routinely argues two things as being the same that are not. It's also that he often doesn't seem to understand what almost everyone else does — and lacks the nuance of thought that allows them to see the shades of difference, not to mention the more striking contrasts. His exchanges about how Trump's (irresponsible, reckless) comments simply are an extension of U.S. policy would be laughable if they were about benign subject matter instead of a dangerous misreading of an extraordinarily perilous situation.

There are voices here that I've missed while being away. Some appear to still be active here; many are not. I miss how they could enlighten and move a conversation forward. With YankeeFan and the dynamic I noted above (and the rest of his repertoire, which is extensive and mind-boggling), it's like a truck stuck in mud, spinning its wheels. The engine's running, it's in gear, and it's making a lot of noise, but it's going nowhere.

I've never understood how people can continue to engage him when the topic wheel just spins and spins and can't move forward. Kudos and all due respect if it serves some function in their lives, but it just seems like a waste of time to try to have a discussion with someone whose conversational patterns, devices and limitations can be as frustrating as, say, Trump's. There is a bravado there, a swagger, that has no basis in substance and is largely there simply because he's unwilling or unable to stop talking, especially about matters on which he's off the mark. He just can't help himself.

I don't think he means harm, but he all too often doesn't know what he doesn't know, and in a conversation that will fall apart and stay stuck absent an understanding of how A sort of sounds like B, kinda, maybe, but really isn't B, it's like an energy vampire has entered the room and refuses to leave.