I still freak out over this:

[tblue37]

Link to tweet

Text

We once put sole launch authority of the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world in the hands of a guy who can't be trusted with the same privileges your insane Facebook uncle has.

[Atticus]

1. It might be informative if we could find out if the sale of "Depends" spiked after that

reality sank in.

[NNadir]

2. There was, according to the biography published by Edvard Radzinsky, one occasion where a maniac...

...was planning to launch a nuclear war, that was Stalin in the early 1950's.

Radzinsky's work has been criticized as "over the top" with anger and far too apocryphal, but it's a good read anyway. I'm not sure I buy it all, but again, it's worth a read.

I think with the rise of MAD - mutually assured destruction - where a putative tin pot dictator like Trump might do that is greatly diminished now.

Hitler, who had been a victim of poison gas, did not use poison gas in combat, although the holocaust included, among other instruments of death, its use on prisoners.

The most destructive thing Trump did was to express through his own racism, the idea that racism is "OK," while the rule of law can be disregarded, particularly where it serves either racist or corrupt ends.

All horrible outcomes hang on this, the acceptability of racism. It is easy to kill when you deny the humanity of the "other," and this is the issue associated most with Trump, an anti-intellectual solipsist, not that he would, being uneducated and rather stupid, know what the word "solipsist" means.

We are in the territory of Holmes statement in his famous Schenk v. Ohio opinion with Trump. His use of "free speech" has become deadly.

I am hoping that the careful work of Attorney General Garland will in due course, with due deliberation and seriousness, have the result that will put Trump and his legions in prison. They are very, very, very, very dangerous people, because they appeal to the worst people with the worst instincts and the least appreciation of humanity and the most ignorance.

[Jon King]

3. Not really true though.

Any number of military and civilian chain of command can refuse to launch. If they feel it is an unlawful order.

[wnylib]

4. How many people like that would there be

if he appointed all his own people in charge of carrying out his orders?

[Duppers]

6. Good point! 👍 But you get the gist.

Someone who's not allowed on FB or twitter shouldn't even be in that chain much less at the top. Yep, indeed, he did not have "sole launch authority."
That was a dumb, inaccurate statement.

[BobTheSubgenius]

5. I'd never thought of it like that, and it is beyond frightening to contemplate.

I think the whole world dodged a bullet here....or would "dodged an isotope" be closer to the mark?