CSotD: Still think it’s funny?
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Michael de Adder penned this cartoon shortly before the threats became two-sided, but it remains the most spot-on commentary so far, because a major question is at what point Trump loyalists will shudder and pull back.
And the answer appears to be that they're as nuts as he is. Our best hope at the moment is that the same generals and admirals who shook off his nonsense about transgendered service members will decline to incinerate the planet even if he wants to.
The interesting thing now will be to see if his GOP enablers are willing to show an equal amount of common sense before the crisis worsens.
In the meantime, there have been several cartoons over the past few weeks along the lines Tom Toles depicts, in which we are asked to contemplate a confrontation between two unhinged political crazies, and it's certainly relevant and accurate, though I'm not sure it's particularly helpful.
In both cases, there's little case to be made that, if people in their countries realized what kind of leadership they had, there would be an uprising to correct it. They know who's in charge.
And, as Toles' characters say, it's not likely either baby will be talked into behaving sensibly, but the problem isn't how they are behaving at this moment so much as how such headstrong, self-centered, spoiled people got in power to begin with.
The North Koreans have the cold comfort of not having done it to themselves.
And at least we've got a fascinating question that we can discuss in the shelter while we wait for it to be safe to go outside again.
I'm old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, though I wasn't quite old enough at the time to realize how close to the brink we were, and I'm not sure how many people knew it until the end.
But we did have the advantage that Kruschev and Kennedy, if they weren't the greatest statesmen ever, were at least wise enough to surround themselves with good advice and sane enough that they didn't inject their personal insecurities into the situation.
Meanwhile, both Soviets and Americans had lived with the spectre of nuclear war hanging over our heads for quite awhile and were well-aware that it wasn't some abstract thing to wave around.
Once the Missile Crisis became hot, once it came down to that ultimate confrontation, we all knew what was on the table and how very bad it would be to let things go further.
Ed Stein did a limited-run comic with stories of growing up in that era a couple of years ago, including this piece on the threat of nuclear war.
At the time, I wrote about it and I suggest now that you read that, because it has suddenly become a whole lot more relevant.
But here's one observation I won't make you click for: In that piece, I talked about interviewing a government official about Reagan's advice that, in the event of nuclear war, we should dig a hole, put a door over it and cover the door with dirt.
His response was that the doors thing was kind of a desperation idea and that the real solution would be to get out of town before the missiles arrived.
Then, when I suggested that (A) once the birds were in the air, you couldn't drive fast enough even on a clear road to get out of their reach, and that (B) there weren't going to be any clear roads under those circumstances anyway, he conceded that the real real solution was to get the hell out of town some days before things got to that point.
So here we are. If North Korea were to launch a missile, we'd have about 20 minutes to get the hell out. You need to get out before that.
So when do you decide that we're "some days before things get to that point"? Today? Saturday? A week from now?
Oh, and where do you plan to go, given that we don't actually know where the missile might hit?
And, given all the giggling and snark that has been piled on duck-and-cover drills in the past decade, how funny do you think they are this morning?
On accounta, I didn't think they were funny then, and I'm not laughing now.
When I lived within about 10 miles of Cheyenne Mountain, I didn't worry too much about things, because we'd be jelly in moments. But, as someone pointed out on CNN yesterday, people did survive in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, simply by dumb luck and being in the right place.
She suggested that Hawaiians start thinking now about how they might take shelter in those moments between the time the sirens go off and the time the bombs hit. Get inside, she suggested, and, once you are inside, get to the center of the building, hopefully at ground level or below.
In other words, duck and cover.
And then hope it doesn't hit too close to where you are, and that you avoid the worst effects of the radiation.
Will it come to that?
I don't know. The good news is that we've probably — probably — got the capability to swat down a single missile, and I doubt North Korea has much of a stockpile.
Though, as Doonesbury cautioned during Reagan's "Star Wars" era, this is one time when 100 is passing and 99 is an F.
And then you have to wonder, if we retaliate by wiping North Korea off the map, is someone going to feel compelled to retaliate for that?
I mean, it's a lot more than assassinating an Arch-Duke, isn't it?
Not that North Korea has a lot of friends, but anyone who did decide such barbarism required a response is not going to risk a simple hand-slap. If they move at all, they'll want to avoid giving us the chance to respond.
Oh well, what the hell, as McWatt said, nosing his plane into the mountain.
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