There is a fear in my mind that transcends words and since I make my living using words this presents an extreme dilemma.
My fears are based on the facts that our elected officials in Washington have become players in a giant reality show. They have a leader who thinks nothing of threatening another country with destruction without realizing the consequences. Are these threats real or figments of a fractured imagination? These days it is hard to distinguish the difference.
Here is my dilemma: We have people serving in the Senate and Congress who listen to these threats and say nothing, that is with the exception of one or two like Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. When Corker spoke up it had to be assumed by most sensible people that others would follow, but instead elected officials like Senators John Thune (R-SD) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) and House of Representatives Kristi Noem (R-SD) retreated into a corner of silence.
But this deadly silence wasn’t just happening in South Dakota. It was pervasive in every State of the Union. If the threats of nuclear war now expounded upon again and again by Donald J. Trump lead to the loss of millions of lives what will our representatives say then? And when they look in the mirror the next morning after a nuclear holocaust will they regret their silence and say “I could have stopped this?”
The late night comedians are making hay while the sun shines and there is no greater fertilizer than Trump. His demeanor which often borders on the edge of insanity should not be a laughing matter. We have an old saying about reality in Indian Country and it goes “walk a mile in my moccasins.” Let’s put our feet in the shoes of the South Koreans and Japanese. The South Koreans went through a devastating war in the 1950s that saw millions of their people die. The Japanese are the only humans on the face of the earth to be on the losing end of a nuclear war. There are no late night comedians in South Korea or Japan making light of these threats. They know the reality of it having lived through it.
If the threats of Trump and the equally insane threats of Kim Jong Un are carried out the destruction to the South Koreans and Japanese could be horrendous. And it is not out of the realm of possibilities that several missiles armed with nuclear war heads could reach the coastal cities of the United States. Can you even begin to imagine the loss of lives if a nuclear bomb hit the city of Los Angeles? And yet, in the face of this disaster why aren’t our elected officials as equally horrified as the rest of us?
When I was a young man I walked through the streets of Nagasaki just seven years after the atom bomb hit the city. There was no mistaking the horror of what happened there. The evidence of the destruction was everywhere. And when I wrote about it I heard comments like, “They deserved it.” Did they? Does anyone?
How do we bring an end to this madness? It is bad enough that North Korea has a hydrogen bomb and the means to deliver it. Now we are faced with another hostile nation, Iran, on the road to having the same capability. When the President of the United States can stand before the many nations of the world and announce the complete destruction of another nation and our Congress says nothing, where does it end? There was a time when other world leaders in other times made these same threats and no one said anything. Two World Wars were the aftermath of those utterances.
If you are a Christian surely you read the Bible quote that says, “There will be wars and rumors of war.” And there are those who attribute this quote as “the end of times.” But in every country of the world and in every language you will find quotes similar to this leading up to where we now stand in history.
We are walking a deadly path with an unbalanced world leader guiding the way and with a Congress lacking the backbone to stand up to prevent this prospective holocaust. Where do we turn?
We can only pray that our three South Dakota clones and the other clones in Washington can grow the spine of a Bob Corker and stand up to say, “Enough is enough” and mean it. And it’s going to take more than just words.
The clown now holding the chair in Washington is no longer funny.
– Contact Tim Giago at