Donald “Goldfinger” Trump vs. Kim “The Meatball” Jong-un
I brand things. It’s both an art and a science, but mostly it’s an unmissable observation. In the advertising business it was my job to come up with brand caliber headlines and clever names and slogans for products and services. I’m good at it and have been doing it since the sixth grade when I branded Frankie Sorrentino as “Residue” ...we called him “Rez” for short, affectionately, and it sticks ‘til this day.
Regarding North Korea, Donald Trump’s presidency is taking on the pretentious showman-like appearance of a WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) match every day. So, the aforementioned “Goldfinger” will effectuate as a brand name for our president, Donald Trump, and “The Meatball” will do for branding the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.
Like I said, branding is an unmissable observation.
There are a couple ways to look at this North Korea situation. Look at Kim, The Meatball, as a crazy man in a crowded room with a loaded gun making threats. It’s a frightening, volatile situation. You must neutralize him immediately since he poses a grave danger to every person in the room. He could start shooting at any minute. If you also had a gun, shooting could erupt and people would be killed. So, you try talking to him first. Diplomacy. You buy time if there is any time to be bought. You review your options, you try to employ help. You study him, his eyes, his movements. You listen for his cue. You try to direct and diffuse the situation.
If you see that’s not going to work, you try and physically position him, get an angle on him, for the least amount of collateral damage and you shoot first and hope for the best ...a clean shot, take him out, no one else is hurt.
What you don’t do is challenge him with rhetoric and corresponding threats and work up a momentum of irreversible hostility to where there is no turning back and he, or you, goes berserk and every one in the room is killed.
This seems to be exactly what our president, Goldfinger, is doing.
I want to believe that president Goldfinger knows what he’s doing, that there is a strategy here that my small branding oriented intellect can not grasp or unmissably observe. I want to feel safe and secure in the thought that he will take care of this like a strong, responsible, thoughtful world leader and U.S. president and speak softly and carry a big stick, and not act like a WWE entertainer playing to his base, and to his own ego.
I want to believe that he’s not trying to feature this situation with North Korea, pushing it out in front of his Russia investigation problem as a distraction. I want to believe that he is not exploiting this world stage event for his own personal appeasement, and using all of us as an unwitting audience to his WWE brand machismo.
I want to believe that Goldfinger is not as psychotic as Meatball seems to be.
Goldfinger. Trump is a dead ringer for the fictional 007 villain character in his physical appearance and his ambitious motivations (“He loves only gold”) just as much as “Meatball” seems to describe Kim Jong-un. Both brand names befittingly sardonic.
Trump has criticized president Obama for his “red line in the sand” gaff with Assad in Syria regarding sarin gas. Now that he is in the same hot seat with Kim Jong-un regarding nuclear weapons, he is being challenged the same way and with the same results. Trump (Goldfinger) said if Kim (Meatball) doesn’t stop testing missiles and threatening with nuclear weaponry there will be hell to pay. He said the U.S. would retaliate with “fire and fury” and “a power the likes of which the world has never seen.”
That’s foolish, crazy WWE talk from a United States president. It’s just as WWE crazy as Kim’s retaliatory rhetoric about bombing Guam. The Meatball has just placed Goldfinger in a severe position to where he has crossed the red line and seemingly now Trump must release the “fire and fury ..power the likes of which the world has never seen” on North Korea like he said he would, or he’s a bluffing liar.
A difficult situation to be sure, but made even more difficult by the volatile WWE-type cartoon personalities of Donald “Goldfinger” Trump and Kim “The Meatball” Jong-un.
Realistically, and all WWE kidding aside, the North Korea nuclear threat is serious, if not right now, but soon to be had, actual nuclear warhead delivery capability, then certainly in the terrorizing propaganda, and the annoying scaring-the-children rhetoric. The Meatball seems to have it in for the U.S., and president Goldfinger seems to be playing with fire.
The news media has a major role in these disturbing developments as well. As much as we appreciate their investigative journalistic tenacity in tracking down the facts regarding the serious matters that affect us, they seem to revel in the ambulance chasing WWE rhetoric coming from our Goldfinger president. They criticize him appropriately, and question his sanity, but I cringe every time they throw gasoline on the fire by exploiting and broadcasting to the world what comes out of Trump’s mouth.
What else can they do, it’s their job.
However it all shakes out with North Korea, it won’t just be Goldfinger vs. Meatball. If this escalates into a WWE style frenzy, other tag teams will enter the ring for a grand finale showcase of what could be WW III. China, Russia, Japan, Iran for starters, and many more countries will all be affected and forced into the act.
“Are you ready to rumble!!?”
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
http://newsbout.com/a/John+Kushma
