Jesus Christ. We just had an Amber Alert at 11:30 pm I had a real moment of panic that something terrible was going on in the world. What a horrific cold war sound.
Clearly, Trump watched Game of Thrones before coming up with “fire and fury”
(apologies for the spoiler but you have to know that violence is part of the series0.
It’s improvised in that no one knew he was going to say it other than probably Don and Bannon.
He blindsided pretty much his whole Cabinet and all his military advisers.
Amber Alerts are serious and all, but having them on par with Tornado Warnings and Flash Floods and the like is really annoying to me.
Especially since half the time around here it’s like “someone literally 100 miles away was abducted and seen heading away from you.”
Great. I’ll be on the look out for someone I’ve never seen heading away from me.
(talking about phone/EBS warnings here)
Watching that video, I also found it remarkable just how Melania is leaning away from Trump the whole time. Body language is an amazing thing.
Man, I still find the whole color-coded national alert thing creepy as fuck in a Papers, Please kind of way. ATTENTION, CITIZENS OF VIRGINYOSHKA: An infiltrator is in our midst! Condition Mauve and all Food Subsidies will end until the perpetrator is caught!
They should just play that Fastball song about old people ditching their retirement community to go on a joy ride every time there is a silver alert.
Amber alerts aren’t actually named for a colour, though. Rather after a child abduction victim.
In which I learned something really weird about a song I used to jam to.
I somehow missed these predating the creepy DHS by half a decade or more, but thanks! Kind of unfortunate that the obvious tie is there to be made by paranoid, albeit sleepy, nutjobs like myself :)
Considering the playlists in grocery store muzak i’d say Fastball’s The Way is the most successful song of the 90s!
Also, fun fact: i had never actually heard of Fastball until a few years ago.
Fun Fact:
The old people died of exposure
Yeah I had the same reaction when this happened at 5am today. Haven’t been sleeping super well for a few days now…
On iOS devices at least, you can turn off the amber alert part and leave the weather alerts on.
Diego
So, in my mind this all boils down to one thing. We will never again pre-emptively strike another nation with nuclear weapons.
Kim Jong Un would like to remain the leader of his despotic regime. They use military force, it is over for him, he gets hit with a bunker buster or is carted off to jail. The DPRK strikes, and nobody is on their side.
There is no motivation for them to start anything, as they cannot win, and Kim Jong Un knows that. Despots tend to never do anything that could ruin their cushy leadership position.
Also, The Donald is concerned about his image and legacy, and starting a bloody war is not good. Bragging about our military and posturing gives him the same jingoistic effect without ruining the stock market.
That is what it comes down to.
This happened before?
Yeah, the sad state of things with the DPRK is that the population there will continue to suffer under the current regime. There’s no bloodless way to end it except to allow time to take its course. Kim Jong Un is a master troll, but I agree he’d never actually start a war. Walk right up to the edge of starting one? Sure. But he wouldn’t strike unless he knew his life was about to be over.
And Trump would never initiate nuclear war, either - as noted, it risks all his wealth, his lifestyle, and his … well, popularity. That said, I wouldn’t be remotely shocked to see war crime charges brought if Trump starts a conventional war. The next time he visits one of his golf courses abroad …
North Korea has accused Donald Trump of acting “senile” while he takes a working vacation “on the golf links.”
General Kim Rak-gyom, commander of the North’s strategic rocket forces, insulted the US President in response to his threat to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against the reclusive state.
In comments made via state media, Mr Kim said Mr Trump was “extremely getting on the nerves” of his soldiers by making comments showing his “senility” again.
He said “sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason who is going senile.”
They’re not exactly wrong
You are making the mistake of assuming the people involved are rational.
Funny you should say that, I was just reading this piece, in which a former former CIA analyst said that after a “lengthy personality study of Kim Jong-il” they found that “although he, like is son, is a brutal dictator, he’s not irrational.”
I had a professor in college who wrote books about tyrants. Here’s the thing: they’re not crazy. Crazy people don’t rise and hold on to power like that, especially in societies that rule by terror and fear. They’re utterly ruthless, yes, but never crazy.