In response to Barbara Demick’s “Trump already hands Kim a victory,” published on March 10 in the Los Angeles Times.
Thank you for your article in Saturday’s LA Times, “Trump Already Hands Kim A Victory.” While I agree with most of your text, I take issue with your basic position. Note that I said “take issue,” not “disagree.” It may well be that in the diplomatic chess game, Trump has handed Kim a technical victory. However—and here is my point—in so divided a social matrix as ours, do we really need on the front page of one of our nation’s leading papers another potentially divisive headline, demeaning our president and his honest efforts to seek lasting peace in this Asian tinderbox? Considering the general outrage over Trump’s relatively recent trading of insults with Kim, might we not perhaps better applaud Trump’s willingness to constructively engage? Is that perhaps not more important here, considering the dire stakes in the game of nuclear chicken? One can only imagine the general angst across our sophist culture were Trump to actually succeed—and be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Jeff Denker