BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY JUNE 11, 2018) — They have arrived. Early.

Folks, we have unfolding a breathtaking moment. Someone, apparently, not only thought but actualized the unthinkable. Slam the two major participants in what is the most historic diplomatic outing since 1950 if you insist, but doing so ignores reality. Two men who couldn’t at once be more alike and opposite have tuned out the naysayers to plow ahead for the good of the globe.

There’s no understating the importance of tomorrow morning’s planned summit between DPRNK president Kim Jung-un and President Donald Trump. THE PLANET has no expectations for this improbable meeting, rosy or otherwise. We simply stand agog that it is happening at all, in any way, shape, form, appearance, or attitude. It is, regardless on one’s personal feelings about these two men,  a diplomatic breakthrough not seen ever in the Post-WWII era.  Compared to this, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall was tinker toys, since it took place not with diplomacy but following the collapse of the Soviet Union over the internal weight of its unsustainable military spending.

Trump said he would know Kim’s intentions within the first minute, flying on the dual instruments of “feel” and “intuition.” Maybe, maybe not — but the fact that a U.S. president is meeting at all with the supreme leader of North Korea speaks for itself. Trump and Kim have succeeded where their predecessors tripped up owing to foolish pride and stupid ego. The two elder Kims, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama failed where Kim the Younger and Trump have succeeded. Is a joint Nobel Peace Prize in the offing, doctor?

Kim has a side to him that most Americans don’t realize. He is a realist of the first order, but not above the self-deprecation unheard of from his father and grandfather, who were portrayed as divine beings descended from on high. In March, when Kim met Thomas Bach, head of the Olympic Committee, he joked: “Even if it may not look like it, I love to play sports, especially basketball.” He loves the Chicago Bulls and rightly thinks Celtics’ great Bill Russell is the G.O.A.T. THE PLANET wonders if Trump will show off the Super Bowl ring presented to him by buddy Robert Kraft.

The Western-educated Kim, the “obscure” third son of Kim Jung Il, defied all odds. When he took over from his late father, the “experts” East and West predicted he would be overwhelmed and either ousted or, more likely, controlled by the Old Guard. It didn’t happen. Kim eliminated the Cold War fossils among the military and civil leaders and replaced them with younger people loyal to him, not to “the old way.” He headed efforts to achieve scientific progress faster than anyone thought, culminating with ICBM capabilities. And why should he not have done it? Does the DPRNK not have the right to nukes? Where’s the fine line that “divides” the “good” possession of these hell weapons from the “bad?”

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim as a preliminary round to the historic Trump-Kim summit, he called the North Korean leader capable and willing to negotiate. The looming hand of China rests on Kim shoulder, to be sure, and there’s every reason to believe the summit with Trump will be productive, simply because it allows for the possibility of opportunity to end a stalemate that’s 70 years stale. Nothing but nothing beats face-to-face, look-em-in-the-eye diplomacy as the sugar substitute for the brew of world peace.

Our favorite Kim story comes from his meetings in April with the president of South Korea. At once point, Kim apologized for the “early wake up calls” prompted by the test launch of missiles. A joke, you see, reveals more than a threat. In Kim, we see man who realizes his place at the table. The United States, the world, has literally seen nothing like it from the North Korean part of that peninsula.

This is a brave, new world.

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“Make it new” —Ezra Pound, on his literary and life philosophy.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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