Originally Posted by
Stavros
It is possible to have ideals and be a realist: every time I cite very real policy decisions that are happening now and right under your nose, you either dismiss them or claim they are of little or marginal importance. But my point about the rights being taken away from Transgendered Americans, is that they are your rights too, just as the right to vote that is being taken away from voters in North Carolina or Ohio is also your voting right. It is frankly either bizarre or offensive that you seem so disinterested in the very rights that are the foundation on which the USA rests, and without which it would be 'just another' country, whereas Americans have built an exceptional country with all of its contradictions and successes. Voting rights are real, not an ideal. The decision to serve in the military is a real choice, not an ideal persuasion. Transgendered Americans are your equals, they cannot have rights taken away that you have and remain equal, by definition, this administration considers them to be Inferior citizens, but it begs the question: are they citizens? Just as Jasmine Jewels asks of some her fellow citizens: Are they real Americans? Without telling us what a 'real American' might be.
With regard to Presidents, the distinction is between making money after a President leaves office, or making money during it and from it. The only President I can think of who has made money from the office is currently sitting in it. Even Presidents who preceded the 50-year old rule on ethics did not profit from the Presidency -unless you cite who, how and when they did. I see no record of corruption in the Presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush I and II, and Clinton. Ronald Reagan put all of his assets into a Blind Trust and had no idea how they were being managed. Obama did the same and published his tax returns, and the money he made was from two books published before he was elected President.
The reason why I discuss the technicality of North Korea and the USA is because it goes to the heart of the matter, which is not North Korea's nuclear status, but the status of the Korean Peninsula. Why was there such a savage war? Because the Worker's Party of Korea -then and now- laid claim to the whole of the peninsula as the legitimate government of the first unified Korea since the Japanese annexed the territory in 1910. The war was fought geographically between north and south, but in reality was fundamentally about the choice: capitalism or communism. If you trace the money spent in the Cold War, the two frontiers where the US spent most of its money were in Central Europe and East Asia, primarily Taiwan, Japan and Korea (South). And East Asia was critical because the USA faced off with China and Russia, North Korea being viewed then as a Chinese asset.
It was fundamental to US policy not to recognize North Korea as a separate state because the US and South Korea -and in fact, North Korea too- never accepted the legitimate separation of the peninsula, and the US always believed one Korea should be capitalist just as North Korea claimed the right to rule over the whole peninsula. Do the South Koreans want to sign a treaty that in practical terms confirms there are two Koreas and that unification is therefore impossible for a generation? What in fact would a peace treaty contain? Neither the US nor North Korea have said anything about it, in fact the document signed in Singapore, while it does merely mark the beginning of talks, says little that has not been agreed to before, so that while it was indeed remarkable for the Chairman of the Worker's Party to sit down with the President of the USA, only an idealist would welcome it as a major step forward. Realists search for, and hope for, the details.
