Thursday, June 15, 2017

Offensive rebounds

Search elsewhere for Dennis Rodman snark. The former NBA rebound-machine continues to do the Lord's work in engaging a dangerous dictator that has nuclear capabilities in his arsenal. Rodman and his small entourage make a return visit to North Korea and the palace of Kim Jong Un this week, and within hours of his arrival, American college student Otto Warmbier is released from his 17-month imprisonment by Pyongyang. U.S. Intelligence officials, who, along with Washington Congressional and White House leaders, have ratcheted up the rhetoric against North Korea in recent years, have also failed for 17 months to get Warmbier released. They say that Rodman, who Kim Jong Un calls "an old friend," played no role in the decision by the North Korean government to return Warmbier. I guess we'll chalk up the timing of Rodman's arrival then to exceptional coincidence.

Our government is in the war business, as you must recognize by now, and Rodman, it seems, is in the peace business, so there's a conflict of interest here. He just made the Deep State look bad, and they know it. He's also bad for their business, which profits on conflict and on imposing a permanent fear of attack by marauders upon the populace of the dying empire. The leader of North Korea, along with his late father, who preceded him in power, have been tremendous basketball fans, as well as fans of American pop culture in general, and Rodman, though he has rarely been asked to do interviews on the subject, must have seen an avenue by which he could be useful-- not to our government, mind you, but to us.

You're going to hear a lot of shit-- intelligence propaganda-- about how Rodman just "provided legitimacy" to Kim's rule by visiting again and shaking hands, but he did nothing of the sort. He did not one thing that our diplomats and ambassadors are not supposed to be doing-- talking. He went without government authority, but it's hard to imagine how the situation would have been improved when our government carries no moral authority in the world. He followed the blueprint of Edward Snowden, the plan we should all be following, that says you give what you have to give personally to the cause of peace. He also delivered a lesson on how one is to act diplomatically and creatively, even to the face of a vainglorious authoritarian mad man. When he leaves there, maybe he can go to Washington and provide to Democrats a series of much-needed seminars on how to deal with Donald Trump.

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