I’m not certain I should write this blog post, because I am still processing in my mind what I am hearing our President say. And yes, whether you like him or not, he is our duly elected president. What I think I heard him say was that if North Korea threatened the United States they would be met with, “Fire and fury such as the world has never seen.” Then, I heard him say today that perhaps that wasn’t a tough enough statement.

I’m just working to put my mind around what that might mean. It sounds like he threatened thermonuclear war. That is what it sounded like–our President threatened another country with nuclear weapons. We, The United States, is engaging in brinkmanship of the ultimate kind. He threatened to drop a nuclear bomb on civilians oppressed under a brutal military dictatorship. He threatened to begin what would no doubt be a chain reaction of bombs across the Korean Peninsula, Asia, and no doubt the world. Our President threatened to intentionally deploy the weapons of a kind of armageddon. He used the specter of nuclear holocaust the way a playground bully would use a punch in the nose, or a petty businessman might use a lawsuit. He opened the vault of the past, where we’ve kept the fear of nuclear winter and the Doomsday Clock, and made us smell the rotting mold of genocide. He, that is we, because he is our president and he speaks for us, moved us in the most dangerous direction possible, on purpose.