Bluster won’t constrain NKorea

Dispatch Editorial Cartoonist Nate Beeler is a very talented cartoonist, but he has some maturing to do, as Wednesday’s cartoon, “Smithereens,” demonstrates.

The drawing of a small, cowering Kim Jong Un hugging his nuke, as an American megabomb is about to obliterate him, is breathtaking in its naivete. This is just the kind of “kick- his-***” rhetoric that swelled the drumbeat/ countdown/etc. to war in 2003.

“Smithereens,” of course, echoes Tuesday’s “fire and fury and, frankly, power, the likes of which” threat by President Donald Trump, which used President Harry Truman’s language — on the eve of the Nagasaki anniversary (!) — to give his base a thrill. But what happens to people in Seoul, and/ or in Tokyo, when North Korea is attacked?

Trump’s and the cartoon’s rhetoric cheer on war, from a safer place, with a blind eye to other people’s ( American allies’) certain destruction. It does nothing to make North Korea cease its threats.

There are concrete measures, notably those that involve China, to get Kim’s regime off its present path, and they warrant our most attentive, intensive efforts. The simplistic bombast of Trump and Wednesday’s Dispatch cartoon appeals too strongly to mass media’s insatiable thirst for sensation, which can all too easily drown out any discussion that demands care and intelligence.

Charles Quinn