War By Golf

So the fat panda, in charge of North Korea under penalty of having done to you what dictators do, well, he has been threatening to send missiles against the USA and our territories like Guam, or had been, before backing down in the face of a president with an actual spine.  At the same time, it looks funny as heck to have this kid in pictures, surrounded by generals in uniform who must lay in bed at night what they did to deserve him as their boss?

But think of the consequences in the worst case.  The FPIC (that's Kim Jong-un, the fat panda in charge), nutso to start with, lofts a couple missiles toward Guam.  The USA responds by vaporizing some North Korean military base, and then FPIC lofts a nuke at Seoul.  Millions of innocents are killed and nothing is really resolved, unless the FPIC happens to be at the vaporized base -- or, given that our intel probably knows where he is every minute, that's where the vaporizing happens.

Either way, we'll all be sitting here thinking there must be a better way.

And there is.

Who you are as a country should have a lot more to do with your economy and productivity, your art, your culture, than how big your army and navy are.  That has, of course, never been the case in the recorded history of the world, but there's no better time to start.

Now, W.C. Fields is famous for having said that instead of continuing World War II, it would be better if Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill and Mussolini met in the Rose Bowl and fought it out with socks filled with horse manure.  Maybe Roosevelt, a wheelchair-bound cripple, could have brought in his first vice-president, John Nance Garner, wielding a bucket of warm pee, which is what he said the vice-presidency was, in fact, not worth.

But that is a bit messy, and people might not pay to watch.  We need something better.

How about this.  Instead of engaging all manner of military might and risking millions of lives, let's have the leaders of the two nations compete themselves.  Not in a fight, no, no, no.  We're trying to defuse tensions, not maintain the connection between disagreement and fisticuffs.

So let's propose this.  President Trump challenges Kim Jong-un to a round of ... golf.  The winner has to concede some economic thing, like imports or duties or something.

I don't expect that the FPIC plays golf; heck, he doesn't look like he could manage a club.  But he could learn; after all, the president is 71 years old, almost 40 years older than Kim, so even if you gave him a couple months to learn the game and perfect his swing, they might be close.  Hey, maybe President Trump could teach him the game himself!  They'd get to know each other and Kim could learn something besides golf, like how to feed his people.

The president could explain that Americans haven't been called "Yankees" in decades, and in fact, there are parts of the USA where it is quickly heard as the name of a baseball team that is hated more than the FPIC hates what he thinks are actual Yankees.

And oh, yeah, after a reasonable time for Kim to learn the game, they can play 18.  You think that might be a stressful round for both of them?  Maybe they can hold it in a neutral place like Singapore.  Sure, the security would be a nightmare, but wouldn't you kick in for a pay-per-view of it?

North Korea must have a national sport other than political assassination.  I know they have platform divers, because I wrote about their Olympians in that sport.  Maybe the two leaders could compete in whatever that is.  I'd pay to see that too.

But can't we start down that path and consider other ways to settle our differences in ways that don't involve weaponry, and bombs and killing?  Competitions involving the potential embarrassment of our world leaders, well, I'd love to see us figure out how that could work.

Even if it involves horse manure.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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