The Donald Does Japan

Looks like the Donald has made yet another belly flop of a splash during his time abroad, this time in Japan. He managed to meet the new emperor, attend a sumo wrestling match, and trash one of our most important alliances for good measure. Evidently, he threatened Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with tariffs if the Japanese auto industry didn't stop importing so many of its products to the U.S. Nobody bothered to remind Trump that Japanese automakers already manufacture one-third of all of their products in the Lower 48.

For good measure, Trump gave a favorable shout out to one of his favorite dictators, Kim Jung Un, by way of agreeing with the North Korean government's communique, which called Joe Biden a low IQ individual. Never mind that U.S. presidents have traditionally followed an unspoken rule of leaving partisan politics at the American shore while traveling abroad and representing our nation. Norms are for other (lower IQ) people. What struck me is that when Trump is overseas, he's bumbling foolery is only magnified, because it is so out of context and without the usual 35% of our own population bobbing their empty heads in unison to his crass, puerile nonsense.

It all had the air of an Elementary school Model United Nations exercise, except that 10 year olds would at least make an effort to act diplomatically and avoid rupturing intentionally strategic alliances. Not Trump. He's like a big clumsy, vicious monster that revels in finding new ways to destroy whatever person, place or thing has the bad fortune of being in his path. And for measure, he teams up with other brutish monsters, to whom he has pledged his undying love and affection, so that together they can all pile on for a proper session of raze and burn.

I guess Trump's visit to Tokyo will be forgotten within a few hours in our rapid reload news cycle. He'll just go off thrashing, smashing and crashing somewhere else. We'll all gasp and shudder and then wait for the next time he does it all over again. It's exhausting even thinking about it never mind actually doing something about it. Me, personally? I'd actually prefer some big green scaly nuclear waste-powered, hellfire-breathing monster. At least, I wouldn't have to experience the same self-rewinding tape of disaster over and over and over and over again.