If I Had Only Known
Now I get it. With everyone else I was agitated, on edge at the thought that our President would confront the dictator of North Korea with an ill-considered demand that he immediately give up his nukes. No doubt that would have ended badly for everyone, especially for those in the area, South Korea and Japan. Surely their top decision makers lost some sleep over the prospect of what might happen.
The meeting simply was the opening move in a real estate development negotiation. That is what our President had in mind, what he really cared about. The Nukes were just the pretext for getting together with Kim Jong-un who has unconditional say over a impoverished country that is ripe for development, for the prosperity that development entails for the developers. Trump has always and only cared about “the deal.”
I am reminded of an old text from Japanese Medieval literature, the Tale of Heike. It is about the fall of the Heike Warrior clan in the late 12th century, their bloody rivalry with the clan of Genji. The tyrannical Heike leader Taira no Kiyomori, is impetuous and obnoxious as Agamemnon in Homers Iliad. Both clans are pledged to protect the emperor in the city of Kyoto.
Kiyomori “who never honored any wish but his own” rules through terror.
The famous opening lines “describe” the sound of the temple bells in the Gion neighborhood of Kyoto that “ring the passing of all things.”
The arrogant do not long endure:
They are like a dream one night in spring.
The bold and brave perish in the end:
They are as dust before the wind.
