Thanks to my Facebook feed, I have a front row seat for the Leftist world view, which is occasionally amusing and invariably somewhat frightening.
One of the useful things about my Facebook feed is the plethora of posts educating me about the Leftist world view. My feed means that, unlike Lefties, my news comes from all sorts of ideologies, with all sorts of factual underpinnings (as well as non-factual underpinnings). Read this requires that I think about and defend my position, if only to myself. I thought I’d share with you a few of the Progressive posts, replete with their Leftist world view, that have crawled across my feed in the last two days, along with my comments.
How the Left views Trump’s approach to North Korea. My view about North Korea is that, beginning with Clinton, and then continuing through Bush and Obama, the standard approach to North Korea has been to settle its periodic temper tantrums with bribes. However, after a few decades of appeasement, you suddenly find yourself facing off with a madman who is clutching nuclear weapons to his chubby chest while he makes apocalyptic threats.
Worse, given Kim Jong-un’s erratic behavior with his own people, it’s clear that his hold on power is tenuous. From his point of view, there may be nothing like a little war to unite his fractious underlings and help the people forget their misery. He’s pretty certain that a few huffings, and puffings, and the downing of a few houses in South Korea or Japan will unlock the West’s treasure chest for him.
With Trump, though, there’s a new sheriff in town, and he’s thrown the old game board off the table. Instead of rolling over and playing dead or begging China for help, Trump has a new approach: Let Kim Jong-un know that Trump will have no compunction about bringing the might of the American military to bear against him. Moreover, through his instantaneous and overwhelming show of force against a single Syrian airport, he’s put China on notice that he’s not making empty threats. (I think that, for China, it was the balance of the great chocolate cake and a massive strike that was so impressive.) As a result, I see China playing nice — and using its influence against the Norks:
China issued a blunt warning to North Korea on Wednesday — telling its belligerent ally to not conduct nuclear weapons or missile tests, or it was likely to face military action by the US.
“Not only [is] Washington brimming with confidence and arrogance following the missile attacks on Syria, but Trump is also willing to be regarded as a man who honors his promises,” said the People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s official paper.
North Korea should halt any plans for nuclear and missile tests “for its own security,” the newspaper said, making it clear that the US would not “co-exist” with a nuclear-armed Pyongyang.
Add to that the 150,000 troops the Chinese have massed along the North Korean border and one would hope that Kim Jong-un gets the message that the big powers are allied against him and they’re serious.
All of these facts lead me to believe that Kim Jong-un is less likely, not more likely, to go nuclear (literally). I believe and hope that Trump’s show of force has convinced a would-be, very dangerous, regional bully that inaction is the better course.
Those locked in a Leftist world view see something different: