Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
It appears that as far as Mainstream Media (MSM) coverage of Donald Trump is concerned, the only two narratives they report on are either the idiotic notion that Russia had anything to do with the second-worst candidate in history defeating the very worst one; or, that war with North Korea is imminent.
Since CNN has yet to be able to manufacture an allegation that connects “We think Russians maybe tried to meddle” to “Hillary lost and it’s Russia’s fault!” the focus this week has shifted to the non-threat posed by the misnamed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. I mean really, only the last word has any connection to North Korea.
The latest hysteria seems fueled, at least in part, by a statement out of Pyongyang that a plan to launch ballistic missiles at U.S. Military installations on the island of Guam will be ready in mere days, according to the North Korean military. Meanwhile, sitting upon shelves somewhere in the Pentagon are plans for military action against every locale upon the planet – the existence of plans themselves is meaningless.
There are several good reasons why there won’t be a war, nuclear or otherwise, between the U.S. and North Korea.
The first and best reason is that North Korea basically sucks and has nothing the oligarchs want. Whatever fossil fuel reserves it has aren’t worth mentioning and its geography means no one wants to build a pipeline across it. In fact, the only oligarchs who have any interest in North Korea are the defense industry ones – and they need North Korea as is the same way Kim Jong Un needs us. So, there is no real (oligarch-driven) reason to attack North Korea, which is why the U.S. military won’t be launching a preemptive strike on them.
As for Kim Jong Un and the “plans” to launch missiles across Japan at Guam? Nothing but more of the same propaganda that’s kept the Kim dynasty in power for three generations now. It still works on North Koreans, by and large, because they’re kept in an information vacuum and honestly believe that the Americans are planning on attacking any minute now, since July 27, 1953. Here in the USA, where our propaganda has a more inward bent, most Americans should be able to see Kim’s ongoing blustering for what it is – ongoing blustering.
As one would expect under a true communist regime, everything sucks in North Korea. Malnutrition abounds, entire generations of children have been physically stunted by famine. Even those who get to eat don’t get enough, or the right foods, and eye disease related to poor diets is epidemic. Not that it matters much, after sundown, there isn’t much to see in North Korea as the country can’t afford to centrally-provide its single-payer electricity. Yet, somehow, the North Korean people not only decline to launch a revolution against this monstrous regime, they still love and adore their “Dear Leader.” Simple propagandizing and full-scale information censorship alone cannot create a nation of loyal, and starving, peasants. That is, of course, where the USA comes in.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,” the brilliantly inimitable H.L. Mencken wrote a century ago. That statement was true a century before that and will be true a century from now (unless we somehow reach Ancapistan before then).
The Kim dynasty has needed to menace its people with another American invasion so as to be able to get away with systematically oppressing them and destroying their lives for more than 60 years. Similarly, the American government too has had to keep us frightened. For decades after WWII the Soviet Union was our boogeyman and we were theirs – and everything was great. Both nations’ governments got to increasingly extort and oppress its citizens while making itself, its cronies and its military more and more powerful. Then, as communist states do, the Soviet Union collapsed and America had to scramble to find new boogeymen.
For going on 30 years now, those new boogeymen have all come from tin-pot middle eastern dictatorships that pose no threat to the USA militarily, but have kept the US military bogged down for the past twenty-some years. American war-weariness has made the constant repeated threat of ISIS (despite their not being a real nation and having no navy or air force) more and more remote and less tangible. So, now it seems the government, via the MSM has decided to see if we find a “threat” from a somewhat-more-serious country than ISIS that might have some limited nuclear capacity more frightening. And, it seems most Americans have taken the bait – with Salem Media’s Dennis Prager telling his audience every morning that North Korea is a “real threat” and his counterparts on the Left warning Americans that Trump is taking us to war.
Never mind the fact that there are no “new” threats from North Korea, just the same ages-old propaganda that our own propaganda ministers have decided to reheat and serve to us as it suits their purposes as well. For all the armchair psychological assessments of Kim Jong Un performed by pundits across the spectrum, only two things can be said: he’s probably not stupid and he’s probably not crazy.
The United States Navy still operates at least eight Ohio class submarines – known as “boomers.” Each one has complement of nuclear weaponry mounted atop sub-launched ballistic missiles featuring a combined payload greater than the entire nuclear arsenal of Pakistan, India and North Korea combined. I know this. If I know this, Kim Jong Un knows this.
If I know that any American retaliatory strike against North Korea for a nuclear attack anywhere on Earth will be three times more powerful than what would have been needed to end the Kim dynasty and reduce the nation’s military infrastructure and capability to nil, then so too does Kim Jong Un. This is why he’s not going to hit Guam, or Alaska, or California, or anywhere with anything.
Yet, the MSM will continue to play out this narrative until it becomes necessary to distract the American populace with some new imaginary hobgoblin.
Methinks you are whistling past the graveyard. Good luck with that. You must be young. Much has changed since the 1950s – ICBMs and miniaturized nuclear weaponry to begin with. Not to mention the two main players. I have never regretted a vote more in my life. Today, If I had to choose the more dangerous player between the two – it would be Donald Trump, hands down. He’s a cornered animal, and the walls are closing in. He is dangerous, delusional, mentally unstable and unpredictable, who has surrounded himself with emasculate sycophants. There is NOTHING in the history of the world to compare this situation to.
I’m almost 70, and I have never felt this much on the verge of panic. My nature is optimistic in general, but I’m finding it hard to be so as each day dawns. And it fairly boggles the mind to think it’s not even been 7 months. That’s what blows this old man’s mind.