Trump or Kim Jong Idiot: Who Has Less Self-Control?

I don't often delve deeply into politics in this space. I have no qualms about discussing specific politicians I consider good-looking or at least mildly cute, and neither do I hesitate to mention it when I find a given politician distasteful, boring, or especially lacking in competence or intelligence. Regarding the broader issues, or even why individuals chose to vote for whom they did, however, I mostly leave it alone.  No one is going to change anyone else's mind either on social media or on a blog.  Few good things and all sorts of bad things come as a result of attempting to create posts of substance in regard to partisan politics. All of this notwithstanding, I shall go against  my personal policy at this time. My intent is not to offend anyone who will read this, and I hope I don't.

The 2016 election was the first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote. The election was a disappointment to me.  Neither party offered what I could consider a viable candidate. The democratic candidate seemed to me to be ideologically close enough to me for me to vote in her favor, while I had and continue to have issues with her integrity. For most of us there will seldom if ever be a perfect match with a candidate, or at least with a candidate chosen by a major party. In a normal election, we all have the luxury, if we choose to exercise it, to vote for a candidate who has no actual chance of winning the election based on our convictions that the person is a superior candidate. 

In a closely contested election, however, the reality is that a vote cast for a minor candidate is, in reality, a vote in favor of whichever of the two major candidates one finds less suitable to hold the office. In a nail-biter as we had in 2016, either the democratic party's candidate or the republican candidate was going to win the election, which has been the norm for many years, but the 2016 presidential election was so tightly contested that your vote or mine might actually have mattered. It was probably the wisest course of action in 2016 to have looked closely at the candidates and to have decided, even if neither candidate was anyone's idea of a dream candidate, whether one of the two was especially distasteful, and to have cast a vote in favor of the other one. Once the major parties chose their candidates, at least in the 2016 election, either Clinton or Trump was going to be president. Even though, when presented with such a Hobson's choice, the temptation to vote for an obscure candidate or to write in the name of somebody's pet might have been overwhelming so that when whatever would inevitably go wrong ultimately did go wrong, one could quite honestly claim none of the blame, the wiser option was to examine the slate as presented by the major parties and to vote for the lesser of the evils. We were all going to have to live with one candidate or the other following the 2016 election; it was prudent for anyone eligible to vote to choose wisely.

The voting public spoke and, according to our present system of the Electoral College (which is no longer relevant in my opinion and is an inane way of selecting a president), Trump was elected to our nation's highest office. While I didn't like the outcome, I could accept that a portion of the voting public was every bit as disturbed by Clinton as I was by Trump.  It wasn't exactly easy for me to vote in favor of Clinton, either. The quandary in which the two major parties placed us created a difficult situation.

What I don't understand, however, is that many voters actively chose Trump as opposed to opting for what they considered to be the lesser of two evils. Everyone has a right to his or her opinion. Still, I cannot comprehend how any lucid person could believe such a  pompous, bombastic, unstable, venom-spouting reality TV icon would be even a fitting chief executive for our government of, by, and for the people, and worldwide representative of all that is American, much less a competent steward of the black box containing controls for our nuclear weapons.  From public opinion polls and news accounts, the man was the first choice of a portion of those among us capable of registering to vote and of filling out a ballot.  The people of whom I write didn't merely opt for Trump because voting for Clinton was an unconscionable prospect for them; they likely would have voted for him regardless of who opposed him. The very idea flies in the face of all reason.

Now we're seeing the results of the choice made by the unwashed masses of our society. Once again, I don't fault anyone who voted for Trump solely because he or she felt Clinton was unsuitable for the office of president. The two major parties put us all between the proverbial rock and hard place. I voted as I felt had to vote. You did the same. The collective fault belongs neither to you nor I.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are engaged in a pissing war, boasting of superiority and threatening each other with nuclear weapons, when neither will face close direct contact with said weaponry. Both of them will be holed up in the most protective bunkers their nations can devise if and when the nuclear warheads fly. 

Members of the military -- your cousins and mine, some as young as eighteen years of age -- will suffer the consequences of this battle Trump and Kim Jong Idiot are puffing out their chests and proposing to start.  While Trump is protected in the comfort of Cheyenne Mountain or some other fortress, young people on the front lines and otherwise in harm's way will lose their lives. Even civilians living in South Korea are in grave danger, as are those living in Guam, the Philippines, and a host of other locations. For all we know, we're not even safe here. There isn't room for all of us in Cheyenne Mountain, though Trump's extensive progeny likely has reservations there or in another similarly protected location. 

I'm not suggesting we should continue to allow North Korea to build their nuclear arsenal. I am saying that the preservation of the ego of our president isn't a sufficient reason for him to be allowed to make incendiary comments and tweets that may unnecessarily cause an erratic head of state with delusions of grandeur to unleash whatever nuclear warheads he has with the intent to to take out as many Americans and American allies as possible on his way to Hell*. Trump, work with your advisers, who are, I hope, a whole lot smarter than you are, to devise a well-conceived plan, and follow it. If that involves the use of heavy weapons, so be it. But don't start a war we're not quite ready to fight because you cannot control the words that come out of your mouth or travel from your fingers to your phone or computer keyboard.  Shut the fuck up, Donald Trump, before you get my cousins and their colleagues killed!

This is stupid, I admit, but I'm all for Trump and Kim Jong Un traveling to a remote location, taking with them the weapons of their choosing that will not harm anyone other than the two of them, and fighting it out in any way they choose as long as only they will be harmed by their actions. This is becoming a war between the two of them, anyway. Why not let them fight it out? Even Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr had the decency to schedule a duel and to leave others out of their personal feud.

*Hell is a figurative term here. I'm not convinced of its actual existence as anything other than a state of mind.