trexthoughts

[trexthoughts]

The Thoughts of the Average American T-Rex - Post 2

Hello and welcome back!

There’s A LOT of current news this week...most of it pretty terrible and silly...but as promised in the last post this would be more of an about me post and not so much a current events post. HOWEVER, I do believe I can kind of mix the 2 and get a little bit of both in the mix.

SO, let’s do a little smidgen about me, as I’m super average this shouldn’t take too long, and then we’ll get on to this week’s topic of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a.k.a. North Korea.

I have been happily married for close to 11 years and we have 2 kids that are 9 and 6, both boys. I hate the word religious as I feel it implies a doing of something without understanding fully the reasoning or purpose; That being said, we are a church going family and we know why we go and Who we serve; the wife sings at the church and I play the drums as needed.

Alright, enough of that, lets get to the DPRK. So, I’m sure everybody has heard about the whole “Welcome to Hawaii, you’re gonna die in 10 minutes” text that was accidentally sent out by an employee at the Hawaiian Emergency Management Agency. According to a statement from the actual agency, the employee started the shift and was going through the process of doing the internal tests when they selected the wrong option from a drop down menu. There were only 2 options from the drop down menu: Test Missile Alert and....Missile Alert. Honestly, it’s easy to see how this could be done mistakenly, especially given the fact that the agency just started the testing for this instance back in November. 

Here’s the issue that I have with all of this. The entire media is blaming Trump for this mishap, when in reality, he literally has nothing to do with this missile test agency. Oh, T-Rex, how could you possibly say such a thing?! He’s the head of our nation, he’s totally responsible!

Look folks, I can totally understand wanting to blame someone for the incident, it was a big deal and it caused a statewide panic, but 45 isn’t to blame here. The agency is a state run facility, and if anyone needs to be held accountable it would be the employee and their manager. If you wanna try and fry a big fish, you can shoot for David Ige, who is the current governor of Hawaii. Again, this is a STATE RUN facility, not a federal facility.

Now, here’s the other side of the same coin: Would the panic have been the same had 45′s rhetoric on DPRK been less.....insane? Probably not is a good guess here. Had 45 not been button measuring and giving out ridiculous nicknames on Twitter the reaction of the people down there would have been somewhere in between “LOL wut” and “OMG I’M GONNA DIE”, instead of just “OMG I’M GONNA DIE”.

Like him or hate him, the reality is that 45 inherited a big ‘ol game of kick the can with North Korea, of which I’ll try to give a rundown. Here we go, this will not be quick: The Korean War started in 1950 when North Korea and South Korea had some skirmishes along their border. The UN and the US came to the aid of South Korea and China, with a little help from Russia, came to the aid of North Korea. This all ended in ‘53 when Eisenhower set up the Armistice Agreement that created the demilitarized zone that separates the 2 countries today.

The main issue comes from the end to the war, being that no formal peace treaty was actually signed and technically the countries could still be considered at war today. This comes from the failure of Harry Truman to let Douglas MacArthur actually finish the job. MacArthur had wanted to push the regime all the way back to China, but Truman didn’t like this plan and canned him in ‘51, replacing him with Matthew Ridgeway, who just did an absolutely terrible job and basically stalemated the whole war ending with the demilitarized zone being set into place by Eisenhower in ‘53-’54.

There really isn’t much that happens between ‘53 and ‘85. There was a small skirmish in ‘68 where North Korea captured a small US Naval Intelligence ship(USS Pueblo), but nothing really came of it, because, hey it was ‘68 and we were getting it handed to us in Vietnam, but that’s a topic for another day. The big thing happened when North Korea joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in ‘85 AND THEN STARTED RESEARCH ON NUKES IN ‘86 at a research facility in Yongbyon. Somehow, nobody noticed that North Korea was violating this treaty until ‘93, but hey, the collapse of the soviet union and the Gulf War, I guess nobody noticed....I guess.

Alright, so this is where it gets interesting. in ‘94 Bill Clinton comes up with this deal and calls it the “Agreed Framework”. In a nutshell, North Korea dismantles it’s current nuclear program, in exchange for 500,00 tons of heavy oil A YEAR, and 2 light water nuclear reactors and basically us building out their electric grid. So, the deal goes through and everybody is happy, but, spoiler alert, North Korea reneges on the deal and continues to research nuclear warheads and long range ballistic missiles, actually firing a rocket over Japan into the pacific ocean in ‘98.

Alright, so we end up in 2002 and 43 labels North Korea, Iraq, and Iran the whole “Axis of Evil” thing saying they’re making weapons of mass destruction, we flood into the middle east, and everybody puts North Korea on the back burner for almost 15 years.

Some little details during those back burner years: In ‘05 North Korea said that they had created a nuclear weapon for self defense and then proceeded to fire 7 long range missiles in ‘06. The only thing that happened as a result of this is that ALMOST everybody (Lookin at you China) placed sanctions on North Korea. Basically saying, you’re a mean bully so we won’t trade with you anymore. This means nothing....I mean, I can’t stress this enough how much this means nothing, ESPECIALLY given the fact that China was still trading and bank rolling North Korea.

I hope that this kind of gives us an idea into where the issue with North Korea comes from and that, while the entire situation isn’t being helped by 45, it wasn’t 100% caused by him. Yes, there was more that happened between ‘02 and ‘17, but I felt that deep diving a lot of the decisions made by North Korea outside of the nuclear steps, weren’t super relevant and would extend an already extended blog post.

Just for clarity, I didn’t vote for Trump, nor did I vote for Hillary, but I guess we can touch on that next time! Thanks for sticking around! Next week, we can talk about who I voted for and why, and maybe a little bit of some hot button political stuff like immigration or taxes. See you next week!

Average Regards,

T-Rex

[trexthoughts]

The Thoughts of the Average American T-Rex - Post 1

Hello!

Sorry to disappoint, but I am not an actual T-Rex, it is sadly just a nickname. I do hope that I make it up to you in the following posts as this blog continues and eventually evolves into something halfway respectable. I make no promises, but I will do my best to keep this first post somewhat short.

I’ve been debating on doing something in the way of blogs for a while, but the last 2 election cycles and some pushing from friends and family have brought me to this point. I don’t find myself and my opinions to be special in any particular way, but I do believe that the voice of the average American is being drowned out by extreme partisans from both sides of the political system. That being said, I believe that having a voice of someone who identifies as more of a “Middle of the Aisle” type guy will help level the playing field for people to make more rational assessments of whats actually happening in the world.

The 3 things I’ll typically post about are:

1 - Religion

2 - Politics

3 - Science

As this is a blog of my own efforts I reserve the right to be able to post about random stuff also if I feel like it.

I’ll do my best to stay consistent and hold all post topics to the same standard, for example, if I found it to be politically unpalatable for Obama, it should be equally unpalatable for Trump. I refuse to play the card of “Its my team, so it’s OK if they do it, but not you”.

I’ll try to post at least once a week, I’m attending college part time and working full time on top of also having a family. In my next post I’ll put more info about myself and clarify a few of my stances on certain hot topic items such as immigration, abortion, taxes, and the like. 1 major thing to point out is that all of my beliefs are up for discussion, if you disagree, tell me why and we can discuss!

Thanks for sticking around, I hope that wasn’t too long of a first post, I look forward to seeing you next time!

Average Regards,

T-Rex