Barry Soper: Nuclear brinkmanship between Trump and Kim continues

Opinion

Finding a Republican in New York in the final weeks of the Presidential campaign late last year was nigh on impossible.

One was finally tracked down in a respectable bar in Midtown Manhattan and what he had to say was interesting. This businessman said electing Hillary Clinton to the Presidency would be like putting a pistol to your head and pulling the trigger. He conceded electing Donald Trump would see him putting the same pistol to his head, but at least he'd have the opportunity to play Russian roulette.

I wonder how many times he's pressed the trigger since then and whether the firing pin's about to strike the bullet.

That of course depends, it seems, on who blinks first as the brinkmanship between Washington and Pyongyang continues. We can all simply live in hope that their eyes remain on the greater good of the world.

Trump, who's old enough to be Kim Jong-un's father, is behaving like a possessive toddler in a playpen, coveting his toys for himself but boasting they're bigger and better than the kid's from the other country. Kim's always been a fruit loop but now he's got someone to play with he's started throwing his toys skyward with the ultimate aim of possibly hitting identified targets all over the place.

The bellicose American bully said at his golf club in New Jersey that those sort of threats "will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before." He clearly liked the sounds of his own voice and what the tongue with the disengaged brain was saying, because he repeated it for emphasis, which surely must have made those sitting at the table around him cringe.

The kid from Korea's officials, who speak for him under the fear of death, retorted the United States "would suffer a shameful defeat and final doom if it persists in extreme military adventure, sanctions and pressure."

These men are as silly as each other.

Trump justifies his ridiculous rhetoric with childlike reasoning that it was time a President stuck up for America. If sticking up for America sees Kim pushing the button, as he's threatened to do this week, there might not be an America to stick up for.

Okay, Trump should know better, but Kim of course is the provocateur, at colossal expense lobbing nuclear weapons into the sea while his countrymen and women starve, even more so now with a new round of sanctions.

It's altogether too silly for words, but let's hope it remains that way, words rather than action that'll affect all of us!