What happens when you have two bullies facing down in a schoolyard? Often they both back off. But with schoolyard bullies who base their entire leadership of a gang on bullying, this often ends up with a physical fight and suspension or expulsion from school.
Armed bullies
Taking the schoolyard bullying face-off comparison one step further what happens in the US is that the gangs all have lots of weapons and we end up with dead children in Chicago from stray bullets. US gangs show that armed bullies don’t have the time to cool down or give the consequences of shoot-first a second thought.
Bully Trump
President Donald trump won the adoration of nearly 40% of less-well-educated Americans and extreme Biblical conservatives who want to force everyone to join their religion but as his first 100 days in office have shown he won’t or can’t do what he claimed he would do such as stopping all Muslim refugee immigration (a war crime), working closely with Russia (from adoration to simmering hatred today), ending the current health care system (Obama Care), creating good jobs, forcing China to end currency manipulation, tax reform, infrastructure, and so much more. He signed a lot of meaningless Presidential Orders and got a conservative Supreme Count justice.
In fact, Trump has done the opposite of what he promised in some ways, such as putting billionaires in charge of the country when he kept telling fanatic crowds that he cared so much about the middle and lower classes.
So, what happens when a bullying demagogic leader can’t deliver on his promises and begins to lose his support? Often in history, government bullies have turned to threatening some demonized group. We’ve seen several mass killings in the last century as a result of miscalculations or deliberate warmongering and there is little evidence that the human race has really changed much in the past 100 years.
If President Trump doesn’t start winning big league (his commonly used phrase) his approval rating will drop even further.
Trump bombing for ratings?
As his popularity kept dropping during the initial weeks of his presidency (which is usually known as the “honeymoon period” for a newly installed president), President Trump began dropping bombs on two countries where the US isn’t legally at war.
One stunt included the use of the world’s largest non-nuclear weapon on a barren mountainside in Afghanistan, possibly killing 36 ISIS or Taliban rebels. But at least this was against terrorists who are already fighting most of the world. And, despite the claims this was extremely expensive just to kill a few terrorists, the reported multi-million dollar cost actually included all the development costs. The actual cost of one Mother of All Bombs or MOAB (actually called the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast) is in the region of $200,000 which is cheap by military ordinance standards.
Considering the power of this explosive and the claim that it destroyed a number of tunnels in a remote part of the country it is somewhat curious that the number of ISIS fighters killed was reported almost immediately.
It is entirely possible almost no terrorists were killed since this bomb might leave no remains and collapse all the tunnels.
Unfortunately for President Trump, and perhaps for the world at large, Gallup poll surveys found his overall rating actually fell after his recent bombing in Afghanistan and in Syria.
The Gallup organization tracking poll showed Trump had a 40% approval rating the morning before he fired 59 Tomahawk missiles (at $1,400,000,000 each) at a Syrian airbase (doing almost zero damage). Today his approval rating is one point lower.
Trump vs. North Korea
But while we have little or nothing to fear from Syria’s Assad or any new hatred from ISIS, the clearly narcissistic, bullying, and unpredictable (remind anyone of a US President) North Korean leader can easily reach millions of South Koreans with his artillery, put a nuclear weapon on a submarine or cargo ship, and overrun 36,000 US troops.
So now we have the possibly politically unstable North Korean Kim Jung-un eye-to-eye with bombastic President Trump. What happens next?
While some people think the failure of a missile launch on the big North Korean holiday was a good thing, it was actually a very dangerous escalation because it humiliated the “Dear Leader.”
Both Trump and Kim Jong-un base their entire careers on always being a big winner, succeeding at everything they do even through bullying opponents.
Meanwhile, President Trump is spending more weekends on vacation than he has worked in Washington.
