Cheryl Rofer Comments DPRK tests

Cheryl Rofer speaks about the Iran nuclear deal at Ripon College in Wisconsin on September 30, 2015. (Photo credit: Becky Bajt/RiponCollege)

Cheryl Rofer, a chemist, retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2001 after a 35-year career in which she worked on projects dealing with environmental cleanup at Los Alamos and in Estonia and Kazakhstan, disassembly and decommissioning of nuclear weapons, and chemical weapons destruction, along with many other issues. Nowadays she spends a good part of her time writing for the blog Nuclear Diner, which she and two fellow Los Alamos alumnae, Molly Cernicek and Susan Voss, founded in 2011.
-- Arms Control Association, 2016

The following screencaps are from this thread.

This delightful excerpt from Nuclear Diner, April 27 is a taste of the Rofer wit & insight. Do take time to read the whole post, and take a look at the complete image above. 

Cognitive linguist George Lakoff has explained much conservative thinking, including support for President Donald Trump, through a “strict father” model. It’s easy for us to think of the nation as a family and the leaders as parents. For conservatives, the strict father knows best and makes sure his children and his spouse do what he says. Progressives, in contrast, tend toward a nurturant parent model of leadership, which de-emphasizes gender while providing protection and valuing empathy and mutual responsibility. The bluster toward North Korea is that of the strict father, a model of domestic stability imposed on the realm of foreign relations.

In dealing with North Korea and China, the urge to resort to the paternal model is compounded by a long-standing stereotype of Asians as irresponsible children. Colonial propaganda depicted them as small, childlike, and in need of guidance from the adults of the West. Rudyard Kipling famously referred to America’s new Philippine subjects as “half-devil and half-child.” That went double for Asian men, whose features were caricatured as soft and childlike; it got another boost with America’s role in post-war Japan, lifting the infant Japanese into democracy. The boyish features of the young Kim Jong Un don’t help. Although the North Korean physically resembles his grandfather, the father of his country, Westerners are inclined to see him as a toddler in the pram. Kim-as-baby is a regular resort of cartoonists, as in last year’s New Yorker cover depicting Kim at play with missiles in a sandbox (at top).

Meanwhile, millions in South Korea are going about their business as usual. Terry Moran, Chief Foreign Correspondent, ABC News, posts this Tweet.