The Danger of an Incurious President

[babylonsister]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/opinion/trump-fire-fury-north-korea.html?smid=fb-nytopinion&smtyp=cur


The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor
The Danger of an Incurious President

By SARAH VOWELL
AUG. 9, 2017

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Kyoto happens to be my favorite foreign city. I don’t know how other Americans are coping with watching our government disintegrate in real time, but one way I lower my blood pressure after reading the news is to get out one of my books on the gardens of Kyoto and scrutinize photos of artfully arranged clumps of rocks and moss. Especially the dry gardens designed by Mirei Shigemori, who is, to me, the Rolling Stones of stationary stones. But for me to indulge in this harmless hobby of studying Buddhist landscape architecture, about a quarter of a million mostly civilian inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to die.

snip//

After 1945, every subsequent president knew what nuclear holocaust looked like and thus to avoid it. How they did so can be instructive. For example: President John F. Kennedy’s thoughtful if lucky handling of the Cuban missile crisis, warding off nuclear war by ignoring his more trigger-happy military advisers. Having just read Barbara Tuchman’s book “The Guns of August,” about the madcap rush into World War I, Kennedy said, “I am not going to follow a course which will allow anyone to write a comparable book about this time, ‘The Missiles of October.’ ”

Would a more curious mind like Kennedy have made different decisions from Truman in 1945? Probably not — once “the Gadget” worked, it was going to be used. But he might have asked more questions beforehand. What we do know is that in 1962, nuclear holocaust was averted in part because a president read a book and learned from it.

We know that our current president reads neither books nor the Australian prime minister’s mood. And thanks to a leaked talk to congressional interns last week, we know that his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, the administration’s supposed voice of reason who is charged with ending the opioid epidemic, brokering peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and presumably proving the existence of God, actually said these words, out loud, to people with ears: “We’ve read enough books.”

On Sunday, the 72nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the CNN news scrawl blared, in customary if alarming all caps, a statement from the North Korean state-run newspaper that the United States “will sink into an unimaginable sea of fire on the day when it dares to touch our country by stupidly causing mischief and brandishing its nuclear and sanctions clubs.”

On Tuesday, President Trump told reporters that North Korean threats would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Oh, dear. Better drag out the Japanese garden books. As with literally every other kind of book, I will never, ever read enough of those.

[pangaia]

1. Kyoto is also one of my favorite cities.

Little has changed since my first visit in Aug 1982, except the train station! :&gt )

I would highly recommend a visit - Ryoan-ji, Kinkanju-ji, Ginkanku-ji. Kiyomizudera-ji, Sanjūsangen-dō, Imperial Palace,

and of course.... the SUSHI !!!!!!!!!

[CincyDem]

2. Agree - about Kyoto and the train station !

I spent a lot of time there in the mid-90's. Such great visits and stories. Thanks for rekindling them.

[Brainstormy]

3. I once thought George Bush was the most incurious

president, possibly one of the most incurious adults, I'd ever known or heard of. Trump may be worse. The whole family may be.

[CanSocDem]

4. The real danger...

...is an "incurious" population.

I don't need to go through the list but just in my own lifetime I have watched as the USA swept one bizarre event after another, under the rug. And the incurious population just stands and looks at the few who wack the lumps with their brooms.


.

[pangaia]

5. Hear, hear !!!

An aware, educated, engaged population would never elect such tripe.