Donald Trump is a dangerous lunatic in many ways, but I doubt he’s as mad or dangerous as North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong Un. Unlike any administration in the democratic US, North Korea’s ruling elite has had free rein to develop a totalitarian state over several decades.

There are plenty of moral monsters in Washington but, as they old saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s safe to assume that the level of moral monstrous-ness among North Korea’s ruling elite is off the scale. Probably to a degree which we would find hard to believe or stomach. Who knows how many innocent people who happen to have been born under the rule of these maniacs are dead as a result.

North Koreans are arguably the most tragic people on earth. They have a higher standard of living than many people in the third world, but they are practically slaves who are born into their slavery. Worse and more tragic still, very few of them want to escape and be free.

They are ‘educated’ by the state to believe that the system they live under is a utopia. They’re taught that the most virtuous life they can live is to serve the greater good by obeying their glorious Rulers and sacrificing the pursuit of their own happiness (and thus most of their economic and social freedoms).

If you spoke to some North Koreans, they would undoubtedly tell you they were happy. Indeed, they would look happy. And you would walk away considering how utterly tragic that is; like a wife with a black eye saying how much she loves her husband who just gets mad sometimes.

So corrupted are the minds of North Koreans by state propaganda that some who escape over the border to free and prosperous South Korea quickly return to their slavish existences. The sights and sounds of a free society disturb them greatly. They feel a deep repulsion to the anarchy of millions of individuals acting towards their own ends and not towards a single one assigned to them by Authority, which they have been indoctrinated to believe is the only way to manifest an ordered and good society.

The fact that North Korea has a higher number of active military personnel per 1000 capita than any nation reveals how dedicated its people are to protecting their society. It shows they love their enslavement, which is just tragic. But it also shows they don’t realise that no people of wealthy free market capitalist societies would ever want to invade and loot North Korea. Because it’s grim and reeks of human misery. North Korea’s giant standing army, one of the largest in the world, is akin to a team of security guards protecting the rotten cardboard box that a tramp sleeps in.

Personally, I think a nuclear war between America and North Korea is unlikely. I doubt that North Korea has the capability and I don’t think Trump would ever feel sufficient incentive to initiate a war. He’s personally got too much to lose. He surely has no desire to risk destroying the wealth that his exceptionally high standard of living is founded on.

However, Trump might be tempted to wipe North Korea off the map and put its people out of their misery, so to speak. It’s possible he could be persuaded that doing so would be a service to humanity; a great act of humanitarianism. If there are enough moral monsters from the military-industrial complex whispering in his ear, then that might just happen.

If North Korea is capable of delivering a nuclear payload to the US mainland, then whether nuclear war breaks out would seem to depend on whether North Korea’s ruling elite are willing to lose everything except, possibly, their lives. (I’m assuming they have bunkers to hide in). That’s not a nice thought.

Here’s where humanity is right now. State-ism has put the fate of the world in the hands of two lunatics, whom millions of people believe are worthy of their positions as masters of humanity. If this precarious and perverse situation isn’t enough to convince humanity that state-ism is the greatest threat to human life and disruptor of peace, prosperity and progress everywhere, then I doubt we’ll ever be persuaded.