Do you feel that Trump's downplaying of Kim Jong Un's short range ballistic missile launches was a form of long term diplomacy?

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Huh. Is it Biden who is scare-mongering?

@4meAndyou It is every administration since 1953. NK is a very useful boogey man.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow I really hope we can calm things down with them. If North Korea could calm down, we might be able to encourage them to become more like China, and manufacture to export.

@4meAndyou Never going to happen. Antagonizing them is too useful. It keeps South Korea and Japan basically colonies, justifies places like Guam and justifies bloated budgets and makes the US a never ending fortune in weapons contracts.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Trump mentioned that our foreign policy is controlled by a huge military industrial complex. I wonder if that's what he meant?

@4meAndyou don't get me wrong. I would love nothing more for peace to break out but the US would go broke even faster if it did.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Your phrasing...made me laugh..."peace to break out"...like a zit...😂

@4meAndyou pretty much he is right...for once. Eisenhower who I have much more respect for warned of the same. But it is more since the line between state and corporation is almost nonexistent.

I disagree-the weapons/arms makers would be devastated. The rest of this nation could and would survive.@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow

@soar2newhighs Weapons are the only things still made in any significant quantity in the US. It is all that is left of the real economy.

I respectfully disagree in that if the arms industry were to shut down, the other giants of Industry and Corporations would fill the vacuum.@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow

@soar2newhighs The other giants of industry are in China and Bangladesh not middle America.

@soar2newhighs Something else to consider. Keeping a time bomb on China's doorstep is a useful distraction.

China and Bangladesh are nothing. Wait until (and I hope not) China decides to take Taiwan...then see where this so called President is on China and trade. We get SHIT from China, and sadly the things we get from Bangladesh are on the backs of barely alive paid workers. And the arms industry sales other than to support our military, have the blood of millions on the hands of this President and others before him.@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow

@soar2newhighs Seriously? Probably 95% of everything you us including the clothes on your back are Chinese. Taiwan is another place the US eggs on to poke the dragon.

Trump is being played by all these countries and he's an ass hole not to see it. Like I said, when the Peoples Republic of China decides to reclaim what they allege is a renegade province; what will Trump do? China is the emerging Dragon in Asia, and tragically, the BS about trade goes out the window. The man is an idiot to think he'll stave off China's emergence as a super military power in Asia while he lets them sell us shit products. It ain't happenin'

@soar2newhighs Actually strictly speaking the position of Beijing on Taiwan is accurate. It is literally the one remaining province of the loser of their civil war and declared themselves the real China. Politics and ideology is the only reason the US has backed the absurd position.

Why if that's how China felt, did we remain (I was there) for years until the "One China" policy came to be? We sold out a country, a country far better off than the Mainland. The Dragon has "threatened" Taiwan far too often. And they took areas of shoals and reefs under the previous administration that cowered. I only hope Trump if confronted with a China/Taiwan conflict will back Taiwan.@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow

@soar2newhighs A good analogy for Taiwan is imagine the Confederacy managed to hold on to New Hampshire and declared it the True United States of America.

From my time in Taiwan, too often I was told that many of the aboriginal people there are descendants, long before the Chinese were there of peoples from Polynesia. No doubt you read about the 48,00 year old Mother and child found in Central Taiwan? I doubt it was a mainland Chinese.@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow

@soar2newhighs It was a rump state founded by a military dictator. Not sure how the stone age is relevant.

@soar2newhighs Not to mention Chiang Kai Shek enlisted every criminal gang in China during his failed campaign.

I know about Chiang, etc., but the Chinese did NOTHING. Well tell me when the Chinese occupied and held the Island. Yes, the KMT were lousy, but you know as well as I do, in the geopolitical scene, the US had driven out the Japanese, and on seeing the rise of Mao, were to stay in Taiwan to "stop" the spread of Communism. Chiang was all for that after losing in the Civil war to Mao. Last question: You ever been to Taiwan, and would they be better under Beijing's rule?@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow

He wasn't the only one to do such nefarious things. That's how dictators/tyrants keep power.@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow

@soar2newhighs And it has been under martial law since 1987 and has a reputation for sex tourism. Unless you are an oligarch I am not sure it has gotten much better.