You don’t have to be insane, but it helps.

Living in a world in which the Leader of a powerful nation has blurred the  border between truth and fiction, fact and fantasy is truly astounding. I have no problem with people who live in fantasy worlds or with those who create such worlds for the entertainment of others.  The problems arise when groups of people gather around a fantastical idea and try live it out among  a larger population of people with a broad, open and responsive perspective.

So what is it that reasonable people can do? It’s certainly not appropriate to regard people such as the North Korean government  as deluded idiots. Neither is it worthwhile to placate them or give into their childish bullying. Somehow, collectively, we must find a way to communicate to the North Korean people that we are not the slightest bit interested in taking over or dominating the country. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see how the regime cannot evaluate the risk inherent in the current foreign policy. It might seem obvious to the rest of us that actions based on such policies will lead to cataclysmic self-destruction.

Mind you the kinds of madness we witness in the leaders of other countries are greatly disturbing. The leaders of Syria and the United States of America seem almost to be tainted with the same diseases leader of North Korea in so far as any attempt to present an alternative perspective to the ones that they forward is dealt with with extreme prejudice leading in some cases to violence.

Peace lovers and peacemakers of the world need to gather together and give the collective shout; “Enough!”. After that it is important to reconstitute the United Nations so that no country has veto powers. The Security Council needs to invest in research which leads to processes of mediation such intractable problems as the Middle East and Afghanistan, North Korea, India and Pakistan as well as countries in Africa such as Sudan and Ethiopia.

My crazy idea that all people are to be respected and held to be worthwhile and that the planet on which we live is unique unquestionably worthy of protection.