John Bolton Personifies the “Broken Clock Rule”
A broken clock is right twice a day, goes the old saw. And so it is with John Bolton, the pencil-pushing lifetime bureaucrat who pretends to be a crusty old tough guy on television — which is why his schtick impressed his old boss Donald Trump, who is cut from a similar cloth.
The difference is that Bolton, though merely a blowhard careerist and armchair general in the military hawk game, is actually relatively intelligent. Thus, successfully albeit belatedly applying the “Takes-one-to-know-one” principle to his fellow big talker, he has finally come forward to say (though in a weaker and more qualified way) what I have been saying all along about Trump’s North Korea “negotiation” policy, specifically that it is a fraudulent and utterly failed dog-and-pony show that has only emboldened, strengthened, and, most dangerously in my view, legitimized the North Korean regime, thanks to Trump’s deep-down, completely sincere admiration for and fear of two-bit thugs who have the chutzpah to actually do the kind of brazen things that a fake news artist like Trump hopes to project artificially for his television audience.
Here is Bolton’s assessment of the current situation, as offered in a recent interview:
“The idea that we are somehow exerting maximum pressure on North Korea is just unfortunately not true,” he said, calling the Trump administration’s assertion that the country cannot have nukes a “rhetorical policy.”
In other words, Trump’s Korea performance has been all talk, all optics, and no real strategy or policy at all. As we have seen in every other arena over the past few years, Trump just wants out of all difficult foreign policy embroilments, because he lacks both the intellect and the fortitude to face up to and face down genuine crises and complexities, as an actual world leader — let alone the nominal leader of the free world — must have the mind and character to do.
Here, while I’m giving credit to the obnoxious Bolton in this broken clock moment, is my other favorite observation from the same interview:
“When the president says, ‘Well, I’m not worried about [NK’s reported testing of new] short-range missiles,’ he’s saying, ‘I’m not worried about the potential risk to American troops deployed in the region or our treaty allies, South Korea and Japan,'” he said.
That’s probably the most honest brief evaluation of Trump’s mind that you are likely to see from anyone who lacks the courage to come right out and admit the whole truth, namely that the man is a flim-flam artist, a simpleton, and a world-historical coward.
Trump’s every foreign policy move, in Korea and elsewhere, is an implicit declaration, in no uncertain terms, that he does not care about the actual lives of the actual human beings, let alone the entire nations, his own and allied, that he, as America’s commander-in-chief, is explicitly obliged and duty-bound to respect and defend. He is too dumb and cowardly and vainly obsessed with saving face and avoiding all danger and stress for himself, to give two seconds’ thought to the millions of human beings whose lives he is eagerly selling to the highest-bidding thugs, primarily in order to protect his own flabby skin, and secondarily to please Vladimir Putin.
That’s the whole truth, whether broken clock John Bolton has the guts to say it or not. He came as close as he could in the passage quoted above, however, for which he deserves thanks and congratulations.
And the tens of millions of Trump’s cult followers are, without doubt and without exception, leaping on the “We hate NeverTrump fraud John Bolton” bandwagon as we speak, because they are even weaker and less principled than their god. They, in fact, as I have explained before, are the real problem. Trump is just one idiot. Without the strength in numbers of millions of idol-worshipping lost souls behind him, he would be playing with his bellybutton lint in a nursing home somewhere, as he should be.