The gist is this: ever since the Cuban Missile Crisis, the international consensus has been that nobody would benefit from a nuclear war and therefore we should all find ways to do our geopolitical business that won’t result in Armageddon. The point of the “cold war” was that it allowed the US and the USSR to play their dominance games without confronting each other directly in a conflict that would inevitably go nuclear. This was, of course, not good for the regions of the world in which they fought their proxy wars (the major ones being Korea, Vietnam, and, eventually, Afghanistan). But to the extent that this was about avoiding global thermonuclear war, we can say it achieved its goal. As part of this strategy, public chest-thumping about how big your nuclear arsenal is was kept to a minimum, on the theory that irresponsible rhetoric might lead one of the Great Powers to believe it had “no choice” but to push the button.
Farrell points out that whether or not Buttercup actually intends to push the Button, the “fire and fury” speech is a problem, because even what we would all see as the ‘good’ outcome–that is, nobody drops a nuclear bomb on anyone–strengthens North Korea and weakens the US, because the POTUS has now clearly established that he can’t make good on his threats. Which means the next time he tries to get another world leader to do what he wants, they won’t take him seriously. To be fair, I think that’s pretty much what’s already happened; this will just make it official.
Farrell’s poker metaphor puts me in mind of the classic Star Trek TOS episode “The Corbomite Maneuver.” In general, a lot of those classic Star Trek episodes bear rewatching right now, because Buttercup has made the world as crude and cartoonish and unsubtle as the world of ST:TOS often was. Buttercup’s White House operation reminds me every day of the Mirror Enterprise command ‘system’ in “Mirror, Mirror.” I’ve already talked about how Buttercup himself affects the country the way the alien creature from “Day of the Dove” affects the crews of both the Enterprise and the Klingon warship. I think “The Cloud-Minders,” in both its depiction of a class-stratified world and Kirk’s battle to convince the Stratos dwellers of the harmful effects of “xenite gas,” gets more relevant every day. But I digress.
My point was: “Corbomite Maneuver” will give you some idea of what it felt like when two world powers armed with planet-annihilating weapons were constantly playing each other at high-stakes poker. Kirk is faced with an alien spaceship whose capabilities are so beyond anything the Enterprise has got that there is basically no way to engage it tactically. In that sense, the Enterprise is not so much an allegory of the US state as an allegory of the American people, trapped inside this system of mutually assured destruction with no real way to affect the outcome. He gets out of it by using a bluff. Spock has been viewing the situation in terms of strategy, as a chess game. He points out that they have reached the point where, in a chess game, they are basically fucked. At which point, Kirk realizes: they’re not playing chess, they’re playing poker.
We can debate whether poker is really that interesting (I’ve never liked it) or whether it’s a good thing that we talk about potentially planet-annihilating geopolitical maneuvering as if it were a game people play for fun and profit. But what’s not debatable is that Buttercup sucks at poker. The whole point of having a “poker face” is that it’s unreadable; people don’t know when you’re bluffing and when you’re not because you never give anything away no matter what kind of hand you have. You don’t play poker by yelling, “I have all the cards! I have the BEST cards! I have a hand of FIRE AND FURY AND UNIMAGINABLE POWER!” Cause that doesn’t say “maybe this guy really does have a royal flush,” that says, “this dude is looking at a pair of deuces.”
Kirk’s bluff, on the other hand, is not about producing the appearance of omnipotence, but about getting to a solution. The Corbomite Maneuver requires Kirk to admit defeat–something which is more credible, in this situation, than pretending you can emerge victorious–in order to secure his real objective, which is the survival of the ship and the crew. It is not something Buttercup could ever pull off, because the only goal he ever has is his own aggrandizement.
So yeah, I figure the most likely outcome is that Buttercup basically just loses this game of poker. It won’t lead to our actual annihilation, just the diminishment of our geopolitical influence. And the boat has already sailed on that; it’s just getting further out to sea.
To be honest, I am pretty much ready for the US not to be a world power any more. It’s exhausting, and expensive, and it leads us to routinely inflict horrific violence in ways that are profoundly unjust and essentially immoral. What is kind of terrifying about this situation is that Buttercup, for all the America Firstism of his backers, is absolutely NOT ready not to be King of the World. Everything’s personal for him. Our nuclear arsenal, to Buttercup, is just another kind of prosthetic masculinity, like his money and his beauty pageants and his neo-fascism and the presidency itself–like the fantasmatic hugeness of everything he touches, from his electoral college victory to the size of his rally crowds. He keeps searching for things that will give him the all-powerful masculinity that he clearly fears he doesn’t really have. Unfortunately, unlike a lot of these prosthetics, our nuclear arsenal is actually real and actually within his grasp and actually capable of doing unimaginable damage.
For those of you who are in the tags worrying about an actual nuclear war: I wouldn’t call this reassuring exactly, but it does support the theory that Buttercup does not actually intend to start a nuclear war:
Honestly, if you can put aside your anxiety for a few minutes, this story is pretty damn funny. His entire administration, basically is out there telling everyone, don’t worry, he’s not really going to nuke anyone. Apparently the “fire and fury” speech was extemporaneous, though they’re trying to spin it as if they knew it was coming. But here’s my favorite part:
A senior White House official voiced frustration that Trump’s use of the phrase “fire and fury” had been interpreted as a depiction of nuclear strikes. This official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about a sensitive matter, said Trump’s words should not necessarily be taken literally.
[JFC. How many times have we been told we shouldn’t worry about anything that comes out of Buttercup’s lie-hole because of course he doesn’t really mean it? Tell me then why the House voted 1.6 billion to build the border wall y’all said he didn’t LITERALLY want? Of course he means it literally, he DOES NOT UNDERSTAND METAPHOR.]
“People on TV who know nothing about North Korea are claiming this is nuclear escalation,” this official said. “ ‘Fire and fury’ doesn’t always mean nuclear. It can mean any number of things. It is as if people see him [Trump] as an unhinged madman.”
[WE DO. WE ALL DO. WE ALWAYS HAVE. Someone find me a GIF of Moriarty going, “YOU’RE JUST GETTING THAT *NOW*?”]
Asked whether Trump came up with the phrase “fire and fury” on his own, this official replied, “Absolutely.”
[AND THIS IS WHY.]
I bet the “official” was Kelly.
If you’re worried about nuclear war, one actual thing you can do to prevent it is to call your representatives and ask them to cosponsor the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act. It would require Trump (and any future president) to get congressional approval to use nuclear weapons as a first strike (as opposed to retaliation after someone uses them first). It was proposed back in January and seems really, really relevant these days.
If they’re not a cosponsor, call and ask them to become one.
If they’re already a cosponsor, call them and thank them, and ask them to release a press release reaffirming their support. The more news there is about this, the more likely the GOP leadership will feel pressured to actually deal with this.
Sage advice from delurkingdetective.
I enjoy that this entire article replaced T’s name with Buttercup.
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