Busy day yesterday, so only a brief note.
I know that Donald Trump does something new and terrible every day, sometimes several times a day. Yet his betrayal of South Korea in favor of his “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un” stands out even among his many betrayals.
Why? Because North Korea isn’t simply a bad government, just another murderous authoritarian regime. It is something that has become rare, even among dictatorships: a full-blown totalitarian state, in which the government controls every aspect of life and even thinking dissident thoughts is a crime.
Let’s be clear: Vladimir Putin’s Russia is an ugly regime, a kleptocracy in which critics of the leader have a habit of falling out of high windows. Xi Jinping’s China isn’t a free society either. But they’re mild and open compared with North Korea, where indoctrination is constant, where everyone must, if they value their lives, constantly praise the leader, whose name and portrait are everywhere:
Wait, did I get the right country?
North Korea is, in short, arguably the worst regime on the planet.
South Korea is, by contrast, one of the happiest stories in history. Obviously it’s not utopia, because no nation is. But it is a functioning democracy, which beat back a former president’s attempt to impose martial law — then tried and imprisoned him. (Is that the real reason for Trump’s hostility?)
It’s also an incredible economic success story, which transitioned over the course of just two generations from a desperately poor, war-ravaged nation to a standard of living comparable to that in Western Europe. It’s one of America’s biggest trading partners, a crucial supplier of semiconductor chips.
And South Korea is or was one of our most important military allies, with a military budget roughly the same size as Ukraine’s.
Much of the commentary I’ve seen about Trump lashing out at South Korea has focused on the damage to U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy. How can anyone consider us a reliable ally at this point? Fair enough.
But it’s even more important to realize that Trump clearly prefers a nightmarish, totalitarian dictatorship — the worst regime on the planet — to a vibrant, successful democracy. A democracy, by the way, that more than 36,000 Americans gave their lives to defend during the Korean War.
America has a president who hates everything our nation was supposed to stand for.
MUSICAL CODA
Not usually a big fan of K-Pop, but the joy and national pride of this performance are infectious:
HEY, TRUMP, JUST LIKE SOUTH KOREA, THE NORTH KOREAN DICTATOR IS NOT HELPING YOU WITH IRAN EITHER, … BUT, WORSE, THAT DICTATOR IS HELPING IRAN *AGAINST* YOUR MILITARY, WEAKENING IT. AND SO IS THE CHINESE DICTATOR, AND SO IS PUTIN.
Practically everyone knows that, except you, because your self-centered brain can only register how they treat you in person. Your sycophants won’t tell you the truth, because they will lose their jobs. Being happy that they treat you nicely, you are doing the dictators the favor of taking America away from its willing democratic allies.
And GOP WHY ARE YOU KEEPING TRUMP IN POWER, NOT IMPEACHING HIM? You impeached Nixon rightly, and for a lot less.
Hey donald, if you like north Korea so much why don't you move there? Almost nobody would mind.