Comments

1
Not without your little blue pill it doesn't, old fella trump.
2
Why can't Melania get him to chill?
3
i'll just be the conspiracy theorist, or doubter, here. has any country ever successfully used an intercontinental nuke missile in actual combat? to me this is more scare tactic BS keeping bloated military budgets bloated. as if NK has the means to nuke the US by button. it would have to be more of a terrorist format than the very trad military looking paradigm they are operating on. Also, china would not be interested in an unprovoked NK attack on the US, so really the ball is in the US court to remain chill and not escalate to where it would be a retaliatory act in kind for NK to attack us here.
4
Doubt Melania has been near his button dick for years, raindrop. Be hard to find under all the folds of his maccas' belly.
5
@3: “so really the ball is in the US court to remain chill and not escalate”

Well we’re fucked because morons like raindrop voted in this madman.
6
@5: I voted for Hillary Clinton. But if you prefer to believe otherwise, be my guest.
7
@5: As you likely know, Ayn, Raindrop has consistently copped to politics a bit to the right of US center. While it's true that "a bit to the right of US center" means "pretty far right by the standards of first-world nations", he is no where the nut-case end of the spectrum as it presents itself to us here in the US. In the 2016 election he says that he voted for the woman whose policies are half a bubble to the left of US center. In summary: are Raindrop's politics terrible? Yes. Is Raindrop a sociopath? No.
8
Raindrop has leaped to his own defense, as I was typing.
9
"Mine is bigger than yours!" Didn't see that coming.
11
Wait, we aren't really talking about buttons, are we?
12
Two narcissistic megalomaniac petulant children with access to nuclear weapons. What could possibly go wrong?
13
@3,

I agree and have long viewed cheeto mussolini as a sort of pathetic, pudgy, playground bully who talks a ton of shit, but is terrified to ever actually engage in a fight. And while it'd obviously be preferable to have a reasonable, diplomatic, not shit-brained person in charge of nuclear freaking launch codes, I'd be pretty genuinely shocked to see him do anything pre-emptively.
14
Kim Jong Un knows that the second he launches a nuclear missile his empire dies. He and the people around him are not that dumb. They bluster and threaten until they get handouts from the developed world, and then repeat the cycle.

I know it is fun to imagine a nuclear holocaust, but it's not happening over dick jokes on Twitter.
15
@14

We are all grateful for your expertise on North Korea.
16
Trump makes outrageous Twitter but nothing bad happens! No repercussions for saying stupid shit! Ratings go up, up, up! All eyes focus on Trump! The indispensable man, the big man!
I keep hoping there will be some sort of rock paper scissors dynamic that will undo this dynamic but I am losing hope on that score. Perhaps the ceaseless use of exclamation points will become tedious eventually and his shtick will become passe- the repetitive, monotonous drone of the blinking idiot will eventually fade into white noise, still there but unnoticed. The US President as boring embarrassment and irrelevant, a mere figurehead. Could happen. I think the adults might keep him away from any actual decision making. A regency Presidency, if you will.
17
@15: Does not take an expert to notice that the same thing has been happening over and over since the 1970s. Sorry to disappoint you, but nuclear annihilation will have to remain a fantasy.

Not to mention, you would have to be an idiot to believe that Kim Jong Un is actually in power over there. Kim Jong Il may have died, but his party apparatus did not. Doughboy is not making any real decisions, and the ruling party is not going to commit suicide over his schoolboy pride.
18
This latest tweet might be the most childish yet. It totally sounds like two kids on a playground arguing about who's dad is bigger and can beat up the other guy's dad. I'm so tired of pure idiocy and ego having such control over my fears. Fuck Trump to the millionth power.
19
What could go wrong? The same thing that went wrong when Ronald Reagan said "We begin bombing in 5 minutes."
21
Don't worry. They replaced the nuclear football with a Merlin. Trump thinks he's already launched about a thousand missles in the last year.
22
@21: Showing your age with that Merlin reference. Let me whip out my winkle picker boots and satin shirts and we'll see if the old girl still runs. Or we can just make some string art.

23
Theodore dear, I am very, very old. Everyone knows that.

But I am not as old as Donald Trump.
24
Why is this even news? Fucking ignore Twump, Dan.

The more you focus on him, the bigger he gets.
25
I have ground my teeth down so much since the election that my dentist told me not to read the news.
26
George Carlin described the "Bigger Dick Foreign Policy" decades ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMwXR-1o…

/I miss George
27
@23: Nothing wrong with the 70s, everyone got laid all the time, it was great.
28
@25 - This, this is why Dan's sweaty-eager promotion of more FearFearFear is counter-productive: it's playing straight into Twump's little hands.

Dan is unwittingly carrying Twump's water for him.

By continually ramping up existential anxieties, the News Media does the bidding of the Administration by inducing fear into the population. Fear, in turn, reduces rational thinking, and makes people more susceptible to soundbite propaganda ("meme warfare")... little info bits of a larger framework that is accepted without questioning. Your own brain fills in the blank areas of the framework they are suggesting.

So the false antagonism between Twump and the MSM really only plays into Twump's media strategy: Keep the media focused on him, make it seem like they are in opposition, but really bait the media into repeating and regurgitating --undigested & unanalyzed-- whatever bits of Fear Propaganda that Mr. Twump wants to put out there.

Terrorits! Nuclear War! Immigrants! Omg, we're all going to die...
It's a massive distraction campaign to keep us afraid & not thinking clearly, AND focused on anything other than capitalism's continued clear-cutting of the American economy.

So yes, don't read the news. OR learn how to detach yourself from the news --and anxiety in general--... it doesn't really affect you. If you can't do anything about it, don't worry.
30
@29: No, there are just a few others like you. Like the kind of men who enjoy farting in public and joking about it.
32
@29 - Oh look David, North Korea offered to cease their nuke program... January 2016.

But Twump & co. rejected it. Just like Obama rejected it in 2015.

So really what has happened is that TwumpCo.(just like Obama) rejected a peace option in favor of having a weak state that poses no threat to us, so he could smack someone around whenever he needs to ramp up public fear & anxiety as a news smokescreen.
And you fell for it.
33
Treacle, so you suggest everybody just has a giggle about trumps latest piece of bs? This man is President, not some hobo trying to big note his small floppy bits to make himself feel like a young man again. No. This must be called out every time or we all just start to see such pathetic words as normal.
Then it's like an abusive relationship where crazier and crazier behaviour is allowed to fester and grow.
35
@34 - Since the US is the only nation to have actually murdered 1000's of non-combatant civilians with nuclear weapons, why should anyone trust *us* to have them? Possessing nukes is a perfectly reasonable (if wholly terrifying) strategy to stop the US from invading your country.
Why should anyone tolerate a nuclear US? We've killed with them when no one else has, and we invade countries whenever we feel like it. We killed 1/5th of the N.Korean population in the 50s... what did they ever do to us? Why should they trust us now and put down their weapons?

Your logic is that of a bully.

--
@33 - No, I don't think we should have a giggle, but we should not take it at face value, and instead dig further.

There is no chance N. Korea will launch nukes at us, that would be total suicide. They are being held defensively as a backstop against US aggression -- which has been historically proven. China, on whom NK is dependent, does not want nuclear conflict. Nor does Japan. NK offered a peace treaty... if the US would stop holding military "exercises" w/ South Korea in the Seas around their peninsula. The US refuses to stop acting aggressively. Since we have the greater power, we also have the greater responsibility to step back and foster peace.

But what is going on is that an extremely weak state is being used as a propaganda PR weapon against Americans to keep us in a state of anxiety & fear. The sabre rattling is a distraction from real problems --like the savage Republicans eviscerating the American middle-class with their tax bill, and doing nothing to restrain the worse urges of capitalist rapaciousness-- and it is a way to keep people from thinking. Fear short-circuits rational thought, and allows the spoon-feeding of soundbite propaganda. It keeps people docile, and the "existential anxiety" makes people desire a "strongman" leader. Which is a recipe for authoritarianism. Which is how we ended up with Twump in the first place.

So yes, this tweet is malign, but for different reasons than those which seem to be apparent.

An additional reason is that Twump's aggwession serves to support and prop up Kim Jong Un... because without a Big Enemy the despotic state would have less rationale to exist and would become weaker. Twump is actually doing Kim a favor by reinforcing his dictatorship.
36
@35 - And Dan is reinforcing these actions (domestic propaganda, distraction, supporting NK dictator) by uncritically reproducing Twump's words and spreading anxiety.
37
@31 - Thank you blip
38
Dan doesn't need to spread anxiety, we already all feel it @36, at the same time acknowledging that trump is piss weak, because he needs to play these childish games.
Nobody is stopping Americans from demonstrating en masse ( except maybe wait till the big freeze is over), about the tax bill, about families being ripped apart and deported, about the growing racism and bigotry, about losing what respect the rest of the world developed while Obama was President. Or even simpler, complain to twitter and have the moron kicked off.
39
@38 - My point is that the anxiety is non-productive, and that Dan is doing exactly what Trump wants.

Here, George Lakoff breaks it down better than I can: How Twump's Tweets Manipulate the Media
40
Imagine if we took a different approach to Trump’s social media antics. Imagine if we put them in a small, quiet corner of the newspaper. Imagine if they were only a minor throwaway item at the end of the newscast. Imagine greeting them with calm clarity, not instant outrage.

Please wait...

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