Getting It Right in Texas

As Hurricane Harvey slammed into Texas, wreaking extreme havoc – from strong winds, ocean surges, tornados, and flooding – all the controversial issues from the Lone Star State were all but pushed out of the news. A state mocked for its gun-crazy values, exclusionary voter ID laws and ongoing attempts to imbue local statutes with evangelical teachings was facing one of the most powerful storms in recent memory. Death and destruction tested its citizens like no other. Texans, in mass, rose to the occasion.

But that’s not the only place Texans have shone. One story, in what you might have expected in blue states like California and New York, found roots in Texas… and nowhere else. It is one of the best examples of people caring for those unable to take care of themselves anywhere in the United States. Following the Reagan administration’s slow disassembling our network of mental hospitals, relegating the mentally-impaired to jails and streets, through the outbreak of explosive drug addiction to those physically and financially unable to access medical care, one city, San Antonio, Texas rose to the occasion.

It didn’t start with any governmental program. Rather, one of the most effective venues designed to help the homeless and the helpless arose because of the efforts of one man… and the dozens of charities and many more individuals who rallied to his cause: “The vision is that of William E. Greehey, former chief executive of San Antonio-based refining giant Valero. In retirement, Greehey yearned for a cause.

“He and his wife ‘could not figure out what I wanted to do that would make a difference,’ Greehey said. ‘We prayed about it.’… His prayer was answered by a local television report on homelessness… ‘What I saw was that all we were doing was recycling the homeless people that would go to jail, come out of jail, get sick, go to the emergency room, get treated, get back on the street. We weren’t doing anything to address the root cause of why these people were homeless,’ he said.” Los Angeles Times, August 26^th. A man who has actually read and is following the essence of the New Testament? He created the most effective “homeless shelter” in the nation.

“For the next five years, Greehey lobbied San Antonio officials and cajoled other wealthy Texans. In 2010 his efforts culminated in the $101-million Haven for Hope, a Texas-sized shelter… Covering 23 acres, it most resembles a junior college campus. Haven has dormitories for 850, detox and psychiatric observation units, a sobering center and medical and dental clinics. Even a YMCA. There’s a free-standing chapel, serving the program’s faith orientation, and a for-profit call center staffed by shelter residents or, as they’re called, ‘members.’

“At a more typical shelter, those services might have to be brought in or residents shuttled to them by bus. At Haven, everything is a short walk away. At the center of campus, smartly designed buildings encircle a grassy quad. Children play soccer there after returning from school. Adults stroll or relax on park benches between appointments for case management, training, psychotherapy and healthcare.

“More than 60 nonprofit partners are on campus, including St. Vincent de Paul, which feeds the campus, and Street2Feet, a jogging club. Staff members, distinguishable only by their ID cards, intermingle on the grounds, greeting residents by name with palpable affection…

“There’s also an uncomfortable counterpoint. It’s the Courtyard, an expansive slab of concrete where those who are not ready for ‘transformation’ sleep. Every night up to 750 people crowd into an open-air space that was designed for 400. They eat in a large hall, collect their mattresses and find a spot on the concrete.

“The Courtyard was a concession to members of the City Council who wanted a spartan facility that would help motivate the homeless to enter Haven for Hope, which is more attractive but also demands more of residents.” LA Times. The center’s own website adds: “Since opening in April 2010, nearly 3,000 individuals have graduated from Haven for Hope and moved from homelessness to permanent housing. For more information on Haven for Hope, visit www.HavenforHope.org.”

Even tough local lawmen have come over to appreciate the unique solution offered by Haven: “[San Antonio] Police Chief William McManus once had a hard-nosed policy on the homeless. He now concedes it did little but bring him chagrin.

“The frequent arrests under his watch came under fire when local reporters found a homeless man who had received more than 1,000 citations. Then McManus met ridicule when he proposed an ordinance making it a misdemeanor to give money to panhandlers… ‘You can’t arrest yourself out of this problem,’ McManus said, acknowledging his error… In 2015 he joined Melody Woosley, director of the city’s Department of Human Services, in committing to a new approach to connect homeless people with services.” LA Times.

San Antonio is a smaller community, for sure, but it has opened a new approach to homelessness. Does it work for vast urban communities like Los Angeles – where on any given night there are 47,000 homeless men, women and children? In March, LA has passed a local initiative – Measure H which created a small ten-year sales tax increase – to fund solutions for homelessness. It’s not just about building housing – a particularly critical issue in high-housing-cost California cities; for vulnerable populations, it’s as much as linking effective treatment, counseling and even training within easy reach for those who need it. No one else in the United States has done it quite as well as San Antonio, and while that effort did not emanate from governmental programs, it does serve as a model for anyone – private and public – seeking a solution to these issues. Hey rest-of-America, it is most certainly worth trying this approach in your communities.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as much as I have called out Texas for innumerable political issues, today I am calling them “up” for that “big Texas heart” I’ve heard so much about.

Sheriff Joe - Convicted for Just Doing His Job?

"I am so smart... believe me!"

“Well, I am not a racist, in fact, I am the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered.”

Donald Trump

If you had the slightest doubt about Donald Trump’s biases and bigotry – unless nothing logical is ever going to convince you otherwise – his post-Charlottesville tweets, statements to the press and actions should provide unequivocal proof of his rather deep and obvious antipathy for blacks, Jews (even as his daughter converted) and Hispanics. His Attorney General’s new priority – “law and order” over “equal justice” accompanied by terminating DOJ investigations of police departments with terrible race-relations records – is a harsh reflection of Mr. Trump’s true beliefs. As noble as “law and order” may seem, it has long since developed a not-so-subtle connotation of elevating white traditionalists over everyone else, giving police carte blanche to roust people of color.

While some may argue that Trump’s first pardon, of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, was just based on keeping an old man with decades of government service out of jail – wink, wink – I suspect if subjected to a lie detector test, you wouldn’t find a whole lot of people with that “nice-nice” opinion.  Sheriff Joe was the Judge Roy Bean of the modern era… enforcing the law as he defined the law. Living in a major city in the highly Latino Southwest, Arpaio pushed his officers to engage in rather obvious racial profiling, particularly any indicia of Hispanic status.

He also created the expensive-to-maintain and very notorious “Tent City” Maricopa County (Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale) jail, forcing inmates to wear pink garb, making sure that every minute they spent in this short-term facility would be miserable. “Inmates slept outdoors in surplus Army tents even when temperatures inside reached 125 degrees [or more] during brutal Arizona summers. Arpaio was fond of Tent City–focused publicity stunts like when, in 2009, he sent out a press release to announce a parade of 200 immigrants who were made to cross a public street to transfer themselves from a detention center to Tent City, which was itself surrounded by electrified fencing.

“‘This is a population of criminals more adept perhaps at escape,’ Arpaio said at the time. ‘But this is a fence they won’t want to scale because they risk receiving a shock—literally’…

“[In early April], Maricopa County’s newly elected sheriff, Paul Penzone, announced that he would phase out the use of the headline-grabbing jail. ‘This facility became more of a circus atmosphere for the general public,’ Penzone said at a press conference... ‘Starting today [4/11], that circus ends and these tents come down.’

“Billed by Arpaio through the years as a cost-saving measure and then touted as a crime deterrent, Tent City fulfilled neither of those promises. Closing the underutilized facility, Penzone said, will, in fact, save the county $4.5 million a year, The Arizona Republic reported.” The Nation, April 12^th. Having lost his last election to Penzone, Arpaio was also convicted for criminal contempt (he continued his racial profiling policy and refused to implement a federal court order to the contrary) during his term and, at the time of his pardon, was facing sentencing – likely a 6 month term. Sheriff Joe made no secret of his antipathy for undocumented aliens.

“Arpaio has long been a divisive figure at the center of the debate over illegal immigration… During his more than two decades as Maricopa County sheriff, which came to an end after he failed to win reelection in November, he ordered his officers to stop drivers simply on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally, sometimes leading to the detention of Latinos who were citizens.

“In 2011, a federal judge ordered Arpaio and his deputies not to racially profile Latinos. A year later the Justice Department sued Arpaio, alleging a pattern of illegal discrimination against Latinos… That only elevated his stature in the movement against illegal immigration… Trump understood that as well as any politician, and early in his campaign he called Arpaio a friend and ally in fighting illegal immigration.” Los Angeles Times, August 27^th. But Donald Trump’s unabashed support for racists and racism has set racial relations back to the struggles of the 1950s-70s, when the civil rights movement was born and grew… the time Trump to which has promised to return America under his “Make America Great” mantra.

“To President Trump and many of his supporters, Joe Arpaio is a national hero whose aggressive pursuit of people in the country illegally and cooperation with federal immigration authorities should be a model for cities and counties around the country… ‘Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?’ Trump asked at a raucous campaign-style rally in Phoenix last week, three days before pardoning the 85-year-old former Arizona sheriff.

“The pardon of Arpaio — who was convicted of criminal contempt in July for flouting a court order to stop racial profiling of Latinos while he was sheriff — has galvanized Trump’s political base around an issue that was at the center of his presidential campaign… But for civil rights advocates, who believe that local authorities should not enforce federal immigration laws, the pardon was an endorsement of illegal tactics and will only serve to deepen racial tensions.

“‘Arpaio built his work on terror and fear,’ said Alejandra Gomez, co-executive director of the Arizona-based Living United for Change in Arizona, or LUCHA, an immigrant rights group. ‘Arpaio targeted the immigrant community, separating thousands of families. Arpaio built the foundation for Trump’s agenda.’” LA Times. Trump’s growing support for white supremacy and his strong stance against people of color are appalling.

On August 28^th, when asked about the timing of the announced pardon, the President responded: “And actually, in the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I figured the ratings would be far higher than they would be normally. You know, the hurricane was just starting. And I put it out that we pardoned, as we say, Sheriff Joe.” He really said that. Ratings? Seriously?

Not only are Dems shocked at Trump’s pardon of criminally-convicted, racist, Joe Arpaio but so are many prominent Republicans. Arizona’s own GOP Senators, Jeff Flake and John McCain were hardly supportive. McCain stated: ““No one is above the law and the individuals entrusted with the privilege of being sworn law officers should always seek to be beyond reproach in their commitment to fairly enforcing the laws they swore to uphold. Mr. Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt for continuing to illegally profile Latinos living in Arizona based on their perceived immigration status in violation of a judge’s orders. The President has the authority to make this pardon, but doing so at this time undermines his claim for the respect of rule of law as Mr. Arpaio has shown no remorse for his actions.”

Even the GOP House Speaker opposes the President’s pardon: “"The speaker does not agree with this decision,” said Doug Andres, a spokesman for Ryan. “Law enforcement officials have a special responsibility to respect the rights of everyone in the United States. We should not allow anyone to believe that responsibility is diminished by this pardon." Fox News, August 26^th. God help you in this country if you are not white… Jim Crow is crowing.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am sure that this pardon only raises Donald Trump’s stature with neo-Nazis, KKK members and other white supremacists, apparently a very important part of his constituency.

Legacy Preferences, Child Ambassador

Harvard, to the Highest Bidder

If the Ivy gates are locked, just buy yourself a key

Way before Donald Trump even considered running for President of the United States, Harvard’s student newspaper – The Harvard Crimson – railed at the university’s practice not only of giving the underwhelming scions of Harvard alumni so-called “legacy preferences” but at “selling” freshman admissions to clearly unqualified high school/prep school grads in exchange for a minimum donation – $2.5 million. Here is an excerpt from an October 4, 2006 Crimson article by Cormac A. Early (see the title above):

“How much is a place at Harvard worth? Hard to say, of course, but if a recently published book by Daniel L. Golden ’78, ‘The Price of Admissions: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates’ is any indicator, the answer probably ranges in the millions. 

“It might arouse the ire of many that someone like Jared C. Kushner ’03, despite what could politely be described as modest academic credentials according to the book, gained admission in the wake of a $2.5 million donation from his billionaire father. But even more galling than the thought of filthy lucre corrupting Harvard’s cherished meritocracy is the thought that the same spot could have been sold for a lot more.” Emphasis added.

Born into a mega-wealthy real estate empire (who didn’t make money in real estate if they bought early?… it’s buy “low, leverage, sell high”), Jared Kushner is the very definition of a spoiled elitist with less-than-stellar intellectual abilities… married into another elitist real estate family, convincing his bride-to-be into converting to Judaism, a point which riles Trump’s neo-Nazi-KKK- white supremacist constituency no end.

With all the White House chaos, a revolving door of departures and arrivals, and with the obvious and very public Trump-battles with the two most important cabinet officers on his supposed team – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Attorney General Jeff Sessions remain on the outs with the President – the underqualified nepotistic coterie of family advisors remains the only constant. It’s a running joke (not so funny) to those watching the power accorded to people who clearly have no clue what they are going… and perhaps lacking the moral commitment necessary for such positions of national trust.

Business Insider (August 28^th): Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump's eldest daughter and top adviser, is reportedly referred to as ‘princess royal’ by some White House aides — at least behind her back —according to a new Vanity Fair report. 

“The first daughter's lofty — and, critics say, unearned — position in her father's administration has sparked frustration among some aides, who say she and her husband, senior adviser Jared Kushner, are ineffectual additions to the president's team… Some are put off by the Trump family's nepotism. Critics were incensed when Ivanka temporarily took her father's seat at a meeting of the G-20 in Germany earlier this summer.” Trump’s base cheers as critical policy decisions are made by untrained elitists.  

But Donald Trump’s mid-30s, senior advisor, the mega-underqualified Jared Kushner, has been appointed to be this nation’s senior negotiator to bring peace to the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Throughout the Middle East, Jared Kushner is seen as the appointment of a monarch-wannabee’s child-ambassador. It’s a joke to just about anyone remotely close to this “peace process” (aka, in Trump-speak, the “Ultimate Deal”). While Middle Eastern leaders are presenting a supportive face – discussed below – there are no polls in any regional nation that present a majority of locals in any regional country (particularly Palestine and Israel) who believe Kushner has a chance in hell at effecting what has eluded career diplomats and national leaders for decades. Some are hoping that his naiveté, inexperience and lack of knowledge might inadvertently work. Right….

“Before arriving in the region, Kushner, along with a delegation that includes Special Envoy for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt and Deputy Adviser Dina Powell, visited the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. If Trump wants to initiate a regional peace initiative, these three countries are critical players in the process. Kushner even met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi despite the United States cutting $100 million from its aid to Egypt this week… In Tel Aviv and Ramallah, Kushner is encountering two leaders seemingly unable and unwilling to make concessions that are necessary for any real progress.” CNN.com, August 24^th.

Statements from both sides seem so optimistic, but these statements belie the snickering behind Kushner’s back and disbelief that an American president could be so stupid as to send such an underwhelming representative to address such a complex diplomatic effort. Here’s what the leaders of the two sides are saying publicly. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu (who is facing a major corruption investigation): Such a deal is "within our reach," and promised to work with the Trump administration "to advance peace, stability and security in our region." Palestinian lead, Mahmoud Abbas: "We know that things are difficult and complicated, but there is nothing impossible with these good efforts." What else can they say?

But not only is Jared Kushner one of the least-qualified representatives this nation has ever had at such a senior level, his boss – The Donald – has sent him on a fool’s errand, with two equally intransigent factions without even sanctioning what American policy supported long before Trump – the “two state solution.” Diplomatic experts (international, American, Israeli and Palestinian, with incredible uniformity), simply, tell us that Kushner’s peace effort was dead on arrival without the slightest change of generating that “Ultimate Deal.”

Kushner may keep trying, but he not only lacks the relevant policy support from his father-in-law, but he simply is unprepared for the job. Trump has no problem undercutting his own Secretary of State, contradicting him at every corner, but he has placed one of the most difficult diplomatic tasks in the hands of one of the most unqualified representatives in recent memory.

Not that the turmoil in the Middle East is relegated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Qatar’s isolation from its neighbors, Israel’s looming face-off with Hezbollah (Iran’s regional surrogate) and Syria, Trump’s battle to scrap the Iran nuclear accord, Turkey’s severe veering towards a Sunni autocracy, and the territorial squabbles as ISIS is suppressed. Each variable impacts on regional stability… and on that elusive “Ultimate Deal.” Think Kushner is a regional expert on all these issues? To do his anointed job, he has to be.

As a Foreign Service (Department of State) brat, I know how qualified senior U.S. Foreign Service Officers really are. My step-father, for example, never quite made it to full career ambassador (just one step below). He only had two PhDs (including one from Harvard), three master’s degrees and four bachelor’s degrees… and only spoke six languages, including Hindi and Hungarian. But then, Trump believes that such well-trained and well-educated professionals are swamp-dwellers to be drained and ignored. Instead, we get a child ambassador who had to buy his way into an undergraduate program.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the damage that such callous disregard for professional diplomacy has wreaked in terms of our global credibility is incalculable and will take decades to reverse.

Houston, It’s a Problem

Our wishes, hopes and prayers are with all impacted by this horrific hurricane/tropical storm Harvey, the second such “once in a thousand years” mega-storm (following Hurricane Katrina off the same waters in 2005, slamming into the Louisiana coastline back then). Superstorm Sandy (2012) was merely a “once in a hundred years” event. Global warming is not a “hoax.”

 If you want to help, here's a link to an excellent choice:

Salvation Army of Houston

Please, let’s all join forces to contain these devastating storms (increasing in intensity as the seas waters get warmer), floods, droughts, rising tides, migrating disease, melting polar ice and steadily rising global temperatures. Nature’s hints are anything but subtle. Let throw everything we can to stop the obvious accelerating devastation as greenhouse gasses continue to heat the earth. What else is there to say?!

            I’m Peter Dekom, and as we send aid to coastal Texas, let’s also remind our elected representatives that climate change just might be the biggest issue they will ever face… more real than ISIS or even North Korean nukes.

Thirty Minutes, Give or Take

Commuting time grabs our interest, now and again. Arguments about crumbling infrastructure often devolve down to increased time getting to work. When highway efficiency was at its peak decades ago, there was a rather substantial movement away from the inner city out to suburbia. The inner city went into steep decline, splendid new malls and housing tracts exploded in rings around major urban centers. Corporate satellites followed and companies left expensive high rises in big cities, joining “white flight” into the ‘burbs.

But that was then. The roads are in a pretty nasty state now. Today’s young work force – dealing with bad roads and expensive car-related costs – started a reverse migration back to the center-city. Zs and Ys began seeking housing nearer their workplace… assuming they were even able to leave the parental nest. As technology upgraded the need for space – think about on-demand and storage in the clouds versus shelves of video tapes, CDs and DVDs – homes moved to multifunctional “open space” versus many rooms for those same purposes. Online shopping and upscale urban malls rose just as suburban malls have fallen into decay and obsolescence. Big cities amenities and entertainment were additional reasons to move into the newly re-gentrified inner city.

Ride sharing and upgraded public transportation replaced the need for “my own car” among these urban dwellers. Even walking to work! Driving-age young drivers, even in such car-centric cities like Los Angeles, were getting fewer and fewer driver’s licenses. Their digital world, from smart phones to tablets, were state of the art, but cars were no longer the “American teenaged dream” obsession of yesteryear. Expensive and unnecessary luxuries.

Enter Elon Musk, promising to revolutionize intercity travel times with his legendary Hyperloop (pictured above). Travel times between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Washington D.C. to New York City, etc. would consume under half an hour. Wow! You could live in Portland, Oregon and commute to Seattle, Washington. What a time-saver! What an opening up of housing choices! Except for one strange reality: throughout most of recorded history, there has been a general urban trend for commute times, from home to work, to be about half an hour.

“The half-hour trip is something of a mystical notion in transportation. These [Musk] visions of the future sound seductive in part because half an hour is, in fact, roughly how long many of us spend getting to work. The typical American commutes 26.4 minutes, one way, according to the American Community Survey. Even in metro New York, with nearly the longest commutes in the country, that average is 36 minutes.

“Of course plenty of workers trek less or much more, but average American commute times have budged only modestly over the last 35 years, since the census began asking about them. International studies have shown similar half-hour patterns. History even hints that the Romans traveled about the same, when most people went everywhere on foot…

“‘What Musk correctly realizes is that there will be a huge market with maglev or hyperloop technology for the places it connects in 30 minutes,’ said Jesse Ausubel, an environmental scientist at the Rockefeller University. ‘Any pairing that you can fit into that more or less one-hour round trip, the traffic will multiply immensely,’ he said, referring to the volume of travelers.

“People priced out of Brooklyn could move to Baltimore. Congressional aides would commute to Philadelphia. Whole cities — and labor and housing markets — would fuse together…

“The law of the 30-minute commute is known as Marchetti’s constant, named for the Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti, a mentor to Mr. Ausubel. Mr. Marchetti picked up the work of Yacov Zahavi, a transportation engineer who theorized in the 1970s and ’80s that people have a fixed travel-time budget. We allocate part of our day to getting around. And that amount, about an hour, Mr. Zahavi argued, holds steady no matter where we live or how we travel.

“Mr. Marchetti noted supporting historical clues: Ancient Rome, Persepolis and Marrakesh were about five kilometers across, or the maximum distance most people can travel in an hour on foot. He diagramed the growth of Berlin, which appeared to expand concentrically as transportation advances enlarged the land people could cover. He found it not coincidental that modern-day prisons still allow inmates one humane concession — the freedom to pace for an hour outdoors.

“‘From our anthropological point of view, humans are territorial animals,’ said Mr. Ausubel, who wrote numerous papers with Mr. Marchetti on the topic. ‘So they seek to maximize range, which equates with resources. And those resources can be jobs or education, or fields for rice or wheat, or social life.’… We’re hard-wired to roam farther, they argue, when more speed allows us to. (By this same theory, delays in the New York subway disturb something deeply embedded in the human mind.)” New York Times, August 10^th. Much of this may also depend on the cost of those 200 mile zooms, but sooner or later…  Oh, then there is the additional commute needed once you arrive at your city destination.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I suspect that no matter what happens in improvements in urban transportation technology, that magical 30-minutes-each-way commute time will not change much.

Imagine a Racist-Narcissist with the Bomb; Now Imagine Two of Them Face-to-Face

“If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of the nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people of this world must unite or they will perish… This war that has ravaged so much of the earth, has written these words. The atomic bomb has spelled them out for all men to understand. Other men have spoken them in other times, and of other wars, of other weapons. They have not prevailed. There are some misled by a false sense of human history, who hold that they will not prevail today. It is not for us to believe that.”

Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1945, one of the fathers of the atomic bomb

In early August of 1945, the United States dropped two nuclear bombs over Japan, one over Hiroshima and the other over Nagasaki. The majority of the casualties were burned, most beyond recognition. Many were disfigured. Others were killed by falling debris or by a slow death from radiation poisoning. The maimed and the dead were overwhelmingly civilians. And while World War II came to a rapid close after these explosions, the United States remains the only country on earth to have deployed nuclear weapons in any combat situation.

The expected miniaturization of North Korea’s warheads – a literal fraction of the physical size and weight of the two World War II era bombs – is expected to deliver approximately the same explosive equivalency. While Kim Jong-Un is working on submarine missile platforms, reducing the reaction time from launch to impact, he is currently limited to traditional, land-based ICBMs. There is a hot debate as to how far and how accurate his best missiles are, but with an apparent boost in solid fuel engine design from a Ukrainian source, it is only a matter of time until his missiles can reach any target on U.S. soil. Larger payload equivalencies are contained in the expected U.S. attack platforms: Ohio Class submarines, each with up to 24 missiles (with each missile carrying 8 nuclear multi-targetable warheads).

Dictator Kim sees his nuclear program as existential. He and his regime, he passionately believes, will be destroyed by the United States without the threat of nuclear weapons. No amount of sanctions – even if half his population were to starve to death – is likely to deter his continued development of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. China’s pressure, fairly light to date, is unlikely to change that direction. Etched in his mind is the pledge the United States and the West made years ago to protect the regime of Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, in exchange for his relinquishing his nuclear weapons program. He was toppled and killed during an Arab Spring revolution with lots of support from the West.

North Korea’s media are completely controlled by Kim’s regime. He has executed scores of top-level officers – including a close uncle – who have questioned him and his decisions at even a minimal level. Concentration camps are filled with dissidents – often including their extended families – for a lifetime (or several lifetimes) of torture and brutal confinement.

Stories proliferate about his excellence. At seven, his first gunshots produced many consecutive bullseyes. When he plays golf, he shots are often recorded as real-world-exceptionally-rare holes in one. He is revered as a god by a mass of brainwashed followers. The North’s media show Kim and the North Korean Army as able to humble, humiliate and then destroy the United States, an inferior and morally bankrupt nation run by sub-par white traditionalists led by an ignorant and unprepared president. Kim also loves military parades showcasing his weapon systems and the largest standing army on earth. He has been engaged in bombastic rhetoric during his entire, if fairly short, tenure as the North’s leader.

But the hard facts clearly favor the United States in a one-on-one nuclear war. We would overwhelm the North, literally able to bomb them into the Stone Age. That the North would have time to unleash non-nuclear artillery fire from approximately 8,000 canons against Seoul a scant 30-40 miles from the well-entrenched emplacements – a field of fire that could reach 25 million people – or that the nuclear fallout from U.S. nukes would drift to the south and across to Japan killing masses more… or that Kim just might be able to launch a spray of nuclear-tipped ICBMs (we don’t think he can yet… but we have underestimated him before) against U.S. regional allies and perhaps the U.S. itself (overwhelming our defenses)… well… hey… do we really believe that? Most folks think somehow even the “big issue” will be diffused. Somehow. For a while anyway. When do these still smoldering embers erupt in violent flames again?

Trump threatened “fire and fury” should the North make good on its threat to launch a four missile test that would require a fly-over Japan, landing the missiles just shy of the U.S. territory of Guam. Then, “US Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned that if North Korea fired on US territory it would be ‘game on.’…  Speaking at the Pentagon Monday [8/14], Mattis told reporters: ‘You don't shoot at people in this world unless you want to bear the consequences.’

“The KCNA [the North’s state media] report Tuesday [8/15] said Kim had ‘examined the (strike) plan for a long time and discussed it with the commanding officers in real earnest.’… The statement then appears put the onus to act on Trump, saying Kim would ‘watch a little more the foolish and stupid conduct of the Yankees.’” CNN.com, August 15^th. Does that read: matter diffused?

And where is Donald Trump on all this? The same president who threatened possible military action in Venezuela, bringing almost immediate uniform condemnation from most of the leaders of Latin America. The same president who believes that there were two equally culpable sides in the Charlottesville confrontation, where only one side (overwhelmingly comprised of neo-Nazis, KKK members and other self-admitted white supremacists) came prepared with guns, batons, Klan-inspired torches, racist-labeled shields uttering unequivocal anti-Semitic and racist slurs – the same one side that killed one and severely and critically injured others – bringing massive global condemnation, including strong negative comments even from powerful GOP elected officials. The same Donald Trump whose continued threats to end the nuclear accord with Iran that have led that nation to begin preparations to restart their nuclear program with a vengeance.

We’ve spent all those post WW II years (a war where the primary enemies were Nazis and Fascists), the entire Cold War, and until now, relying entirely on the MAD principle – the deterrent effect of mutually assured destruction – plus nuclear containment treaties all over the globe. But recent developments in targeting have made the thought of a “limited nuclear war” appear possible. Really? But how does the rest of the world react when the nukes start flying? Want to place any bets? And what exactly is Donald Trump’s history with nuclear weapons?

Writing for the August 14^th FastCompany.com, Sarah Kendzior responds: “These decades of uneasy limbo were followed by the election of Donald Trump: a pathological narcissist obsessed with nuclear weapons since 1984, when he proclaimed he could learn all he needed to know about them in an hour and a half.

“While Trump’s policy positions shifted over the years, his obsession with nukes remained steady, whether when he was betraying his openness to dropping them on Pakistan and France in 1987, proclaiming their use was inevitable in 1990, or musing in 2016, ‘If we have them, why not use them?’ Last week [second week of August], Trump followed that daydream up with a specific threat against North Korea, stating the authoritarian regime would see ‘fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen’ and tweeting, ‘Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!’

“When an autocrat is cornered and flailing–as Trump is thanks to both Robert Mueller’s Russian interference investigation and by domestic policy failures like TrumpCare – he often lashes out violently to consolidate power. Trump has thus far followed the typical autocratic pattern of scapegoating minorities, but this tactic can only take him so far, especially given the public backlash to the racism the nation just witnessed in Charlottesville. There is only one domain where Trump wields absolute and unparalleled power, free from the Congress he despises and the public he reviles, and that is his control over the nuclear arsenal. He already wields these weapons rhetorically, and it is naive to assume he will stop there.

“Given how chaotic Trump’s six-month rule has been, it is tempting to label Trump’s rhetoric as a distraction–but a domestic American distraction does not translate abroad. North Korea’s bloody leadership, upon hearing Trump’s threat of ‘fire and fury,’ is not going to think, ‘Oh, Trump’s just trying to divert the U.S. media from the Russia scandal’ but will instead accept his words as a threat. Their vow to take out Guam, however abhorrent, was in response to a statement from the President of the United States.

“Might Trump actually use nuclear weapons? He certainly isn’t ruling out the option, and there is nothing to hold him back from doing so: No congressional approval is needed. If Trump decides to use them, he will use them because he can, and because he does not appear to adequately process the consequences of using them. When addressing North Korea’s aggression toward Guam, Trump told its governor the nuclear threat will improve tourism.

“Trump’s rise was predicated on denial: that he’d lose the primary, that he’d lose the general election, that his autocratic ambitions would be curtailed by our systems of checks and balances. It all happened anyway. It is time for the GOP and others wielding power to accept that with Trump, the worst-case scenario is the most likely scenario. It took the GOP two years to staunchly condemn Trump’s embrace of neo-Nazis. When it comes to nuclear weapons, there is no such luxury of time.

“The ‘false sense of history’ of which Oppenheimer warned has made willful blindness the default response to rising autocracy and growing nuclear threat. For that trajectory to change, U.S. officials must confront not only the horrors of the past, but the urgent threat of the present, and take any steps possible to curb the president’s ability to obliterate our future.”

Republicans and Democrats are watching these stories unfold, equally aghast at the provocative naiveté of a horribly under-informed president, struggling with instability and in-fighting among his top advisors. When will the threshold of “unacceptable” be reached… that point when responsible politicians say “enough” and take the necessary steps to preserve this nation… and perhaps the world… from this missteps of an autocrat? Luckily, Kim backed down from his threat to launch four missiles towards Guam. On August 17^th, Trump tweeted: “Kim Jong Un of North Korea made a very wise and well reasoned decision. The alternative would have been both catastrophic and unacceptable!” Assume the situation is diffused… for now…  North Korea continues to improve their military capacity.

But is Donald Trump’s braggadocio hell-bent on provoking Kim Jong-Un into an evitable nuclear confrontation? Does it matter that Donald Trump believes that the nation will rally behind him, as it often has in the past, if he can escalate the U.S./North Korean animus into war? It sure would refocus the body politic from the Russia investigation and the missteps and misstatements surrounding the Charlottesville debacle.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes it is not just “It’s the economy, stupid”; sometimes it’s a matter of life and death for us all.