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As the dueling threats are parried back and forth between the North Koreans and the West, particularly the United States, the handwringing and finger pointing is reaching a fever pitch.

Kim Jong Un and his disciples (who we now believe have nuclear weapons that can be accurately delivered to targets in the continental U.S.), like to think that they have become a world power. The U.S., however, which has the military ability to return the North Koreans to the Stone Age in less time than it takes to watch a Star Trek rerun, is neither amused nor impressed by the screaming communists in the north.

Having lived in self-imposed isolation since the 1950’s, North Korea is nowhere near ready to play a game of 21st century warfare with anyone, let alone us. None of their generals have any combat experience, and they have not been schooled or exposed to the concepts of strategic war on a global level. Despite all of their noise and bragging, North Korea is not too far ahead of where the rest of the atomic powers were in the 1960’s. “Mad Dog” Mattis, our retired four star US Marine general now serving as Secretary of Defense, has more combat time and military acumen in his middle finger than the entire Ministry of People’s Armed Forces. And he will show them that finger upon request.

They may have a couple of nuclear weapons, but for all intents and purposes, North Korea is simply a terrorist organization that has a defined home base, and we know exactly where they live. They are the monkey with a hand grenade. Yes, they are dangerous. Yes, they can hurt a lot of people. Yes, they can make things really miserable for the South Koreans, the Japanese, and probably the Chinese as well. But are they a strategic threat? No way in hell. They are the gangbangers holed up in a crack house, surrounded by a SWAT team. They are the sword-wielding Arab in the bazaar, and we are Indiana Jones with the pistol.

If this monkey does not put away its grenade, we will starve him out. If he pulls the pin, we will necessarily vaporize him and all he loves. That would be undeniably sad, but as Mr. Spock said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

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Perhaps there are some courageous North Koreans who would risk an attempt to stage a coup to get rid of the dictator before he brings down the entire nation – but I am not going to hold my breath.

There are few people more obnoxious than the little man with the big mouth. You know who I mean – that short guy who always acted tough, threw his chest out and threatened to fight everybody for no other reason than to overcompensate for his own perceived physical inadequacy. Every high school graduating class had a least one, and every office, sports team, or wedding reception includes a loud little guy who manages to offend everyone else.
Yeah, there are few people more obnoxious.

Unless it is a guy with a little man complex who happens to be from blue collar New York, that is. With a double dose of “in yer face” and “you tawkin’ to me?” a little man from New York is always unavoidably crude, loud, and offensive. Instead of using punctuation or adjectives or verbs, every other word is a variation on the “f-bomb.” That’s even worse than a plain old “little man,” for sure.  But not the worst.

Even worse is a New Yorker with a little man complex who is also Italian. Oh yeah, that little man with the inferiority complex from New York who acts like he’s a “made man” and can intimidate anybody with threats and squinty eyes while he pokes his finger in your chest and says “badda boom” and things like that. There can’t be anyone more distasteful, you would think. You would be wrong.

The pinnacle of scary social belligerence is an Italian guy, from blue collar New York, with a little man complex, who has actually earned some street cred and finds himself in a position of formidable power. Like Charles “Lucky” Luciano, or Joe “Bananas” Bonanno, or Vittorio “Little Vic” Amuso. These were all bad guys who had both the inclination and the ability to do serious harm to those who crossed them.

Enter the new proposed White House Communications Director: Anthony “Mooch” Scaramucci.

This little Italian guy from New York is so full of himself that the word “braggadocio” isn’t quite sufficient to describe him. He is a crude, offensive, and tasteless miniature Rottweiler of a human being. In less than a week, he has actually done more damage to the administration than Trump’s tweets have done in six months. This guy is the attack dog that was invited into the Oval Office and the first thing he did was eat the couch.

President Trump may be frustrated, and he may be angry, and he may even be desperate to get control of his people, but he doesn’t need a gangster with a baseball bat to walk around in the conference room and smash the skulls of anyone who falls from favor.

The Mooch needs to go. Now.

The Rorschach Inkblot Test is a projective psychological test consisting of 10 inkblots printed on cards (five in black and white, five in color) created in 1921 with the publication of Psychodiagnostik by Hermann Rorschach.

Over the decades, the validity of using the test for the measurement of emotional functioning and thought disorders has been criticized, but the premise of the test remains undisputed: Even when looking at the same identical thing, different people have remarkedly different interpretations.

Remember those summer days lying in the yard with your friends and looking up at the clouds? Where one person sees a ship, one may see an animal, another one sees a castle. Each mind constructs the same image differently, and each observer sees what the mind tells it to see.

The same thing happens in the media. Where one observer sees a meeting, another sees a conspiracy plot. One may see an endorsement of western civilization, another sees a validation of white supremacy. A single word can mean many things to different people, and a person’s interpretation is largely affected by their predisposition to see what they expect to see.

And this is the crux of the problem in the media these days. Rather than have someone show us the ink blot, and let us figure out what it represents to ourselves, the media is telling us what the ink blot represents to them. It is a battle between fact and bias, and unfortunately the media consistently presents us with much more bias than fact.

The publication of Donald Trump Jr.’s email exchange concerning the meeting with a lawyer from Russia is a great example of the media’s Rorschach treatment of fact. While the plain text of the emails is there for all to see, some pundits see treasonous collusion, others can’t see any “there” there.

It would be refreshing if the media would just show us something, and stop telling us what we are seeing. Let us believe our own “lying eyes” rather than what you think it is.

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As an aside, does anyone really think that the U.S. government never had a preference for a particular candidate in a foreign election?