Summits and Nadirs

So what's my takeaway from the Trump-Kim summit?  I think that they established an excellent framework for President O'Malley to use to strike a deal with North Korea in 2021.

Seriously, though, it's a good thing that Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are talking and have agreed to eventually denuclearize the Korean peninsula and lessen tensions between the one-and-half countries.  It's good that two megalomaniacs who threatened to annihilate each other are now talking to each other.  But the statement over how to achieve this was too vague, sort of like the deal Roosevelt and Churchill negotiated with Stalin on what to do with Berlin after the war ("We'll figure it out later!"), and Trump's promise to cancel U.S.-South Korean military exercises will make South Korea less secure and less ready to fend off another North Korean invasion.

Even more troubling is that Trump is treating Kim like a buddy even as he alienates Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron over trade while disrespecting Angela Merkel and Theresa May over the fact that they're women.  Even though they're all - you know - democratically elected leaders?  Trump, of course, was not democratically elected, as 54 percent of the American electorate voted for someone else but Trump won in the Electoral College.   But even the 46 percent of the American electorate that did vote for him, and certainly the 50 percent of Americans of voting age who stayed home on Election Day 2016, couldn't possibly approve of separating migrant children from their parents and keeping them incarcerated in an abandoned Wal-Mart and keeping them inside 22 hours a day with two hours of regimented yard activities like they're criminals.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions quotes the Bible to justify this action by referencing in Romans 13:1, to obey the laws of the government: "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."  Aside from the fact that this quote was used to justify slavery before the Civil War and pro-British loyalism before the Revolution, he completely ignored the compassion emphasized in Romans 13:10: "Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."  And Sarah Huckabee Sanders defends Sessions.

And the GOP is going to win the 2018 midterms because of a robust economy and a booming stock market? 

Trump's only worthy accomplishment, apart from reducing tensions with North Korea, is breaking the Bush-Clinton dynasty continuum with his election victory.  But it's long since time to fight back and stop him from doing more damage.  And then, in 2020, we work for . . . new leadership.

Meanwhile, Paul Manafort is going to jail.  It's a start.