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Donald the dotard wants to destroy North Korea, but...

Wednesday November 15 2017
trump

US President Donald Trump. He is sulking at history, at the people who elected Obama twice, sulking at Hillary and Bill Clinton, sulking at all those who are now trying to impeach him. PHOTO | AFP

By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

When I first visited North Korea, I was a very young man, and that tells you almost exactly how long ago it must have been.

Not many people I met then spoke English, or any other foreign language. The interpreter attached to me and my colleague operated in French, and she told us she was one of the very few lucky enough to speak a foreign language.

Fifteen years later I was back in Pyongyang, and the change was astounding. I met at least one American teaching English to college students, and a young Korean woman who wanted me to teach her the lyrics of Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender.

That is to tell you that, however they may be viewed as insular, linguistically these people are always making strides in an unlikely direction. Like they showed the other day, when they called Donald Trump a “dotard,” an ancient English word denoting an old fellow behaving in a silly, childish manner. It is like they caught the American president sucking his thumb.

Trump has surely brought this upon himself by taking jibes at Kim Jong Un, calling him Little Rocket Man, suggesting Kim is on a suicide mission and promising to obliterate North Korea altogether. More than enough to make the young man delve deeper into his favourite hobby, popping explosive kites for amusement.

So Trump ups and goes to Beijing to persuade the Chinese to abandon their long-lasting North Korean allies. You can almost hear Xi Jingpin say, “Not for all the tea in China!” You have to be a real dotard to think even for a minute that the Chinese would dump a close friend just to please the bully in the Oval Office.

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It would not surprise me if it were to be revealed that Trump has not read anything about the Korean War, which has never formally ended since the armistice was signed as the two belligerent sides faced off against each other along the 38th Parallel in 1953. It may be that no one has told Trump that there were millions of Chinese “volunteers” on the side fighting the American invaders.

It is not funny, but this is the same Trump who, a few weeks after taking office, was bragging that he had managed to tame the Koreans, crowing that “they respect us now.” For this megalomaniac, the very fact of someone taking over from Barack Obama was enough to beat Kim into line. After all, this was a true American, not born in Kenya, who had arrived to “make America great again.”

But he will soon learn, if he can learn anything at all, that bluster does not always work with the Kims of this world, especially if they are convinced they are dealing with someone whose mind they suspect to be as unbalanced as he thinks theirs is.

It certainly has not done his cause any favours that he has been cataloguing the awesome arsenal of aircraft-carriers, warplanes and nuclear payloads that the Americans have deployed within striking distance of Pyongyang, promising “fire and fury.” That will just encourage the Rocket Man to continue tinkering with his fiery devices.

Sulking at history

But Trump wants to undo everything Obama managed to do, no matter how good it was and no matter how costly Trump’s alternative may be. It is as if he truly wishes the man from Kenya had not been president at all. The fact that this half-African had slept in Abraham Lincoln’s bedroom is an abomination that he would like to undo.

So he is sulking at history, at the people who elected this Luo boy twice, sulking at Hillary and Bill Clinton, sulking at all those who are now trying to impeach him simply because he may have received a little boost via a little meddling from Vladimir Putin, the man he has expressed admiration for and who may have hoped that a Trump presidency was going to make matters easier for the Kremlin.

That has all but backfired, and even the slightest contact between this White House and Putin is No-No. It is the law of unintended consequences at work once again.

Still, North Korea could come in handy if this creeping impeachment refuses to go away. A little, limited war on the Korean peninsula could concentrate minds on Capitol Hill sufficiently to make the legislators forget about Russia.

Another dotard idea?

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]

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