Just like June 28, 1914, it all started innocently enough Crazy John McCain was on MSNBC with Crazy Scientologist Greta Van Susteren and the subject of crazy came up:

Via The Hill:

“China is the one, the only one, that can control Kim Jong-un, this crazy fat kid that’s running North Korea,” McCain told MSNBC’s “For the Record with Greta.” “They’re the ones. They could stop North Korea’s economy in a week.

…

“He’s not rational, Greta,” he added. “We’re not dealing even with someone like Joseph Stalin, who had a certain rationality to his barbarity.”

Eventually, someone informed the DPRK government about the fact that MSNBC was a television channel and John McCain had said some hurty-hurt things and they responded:

As such guys as John McCain and Ted Cruz made a provocation tantamount to declaration of war against the DPRK, the DPRK will take steps to counter it. They will have to bitterly experience the disastrous consequences to be entailed by their reckless tongue-lashing and then any regret for it will come too late. They will have to be entirely responsible for their foolhardy tongue-lashing. It is, indeed, a burlesque making even a cat laugh for the dishonest elements of the U.S., the mastermind of all forms of terrorism worldwide, to label other country “terror-sponsor”.

And McCain responded:

What, did they want me to call him a crazy skinny kid? https://t.co/Ym3juRfBev — John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) March 29, 2017

McCain really isn’t all that right here. Kim Jong Un is fat and he is a sociopathic kid who could easily have a role in Game of Thrones but he’s not crazy or irrational. We may not understand his methods but that is more of a cultural issue than anything else. During my time in Korea and in discussions with Korean friends I found that the DPRK was considered very rational and it was the irrational US that scared the bejeezus out of them.

I’m not sure that it is good policy to do what McCain did, but, on the other hand, I’m not sure there are any good policy moves left to deal with the DPRK. The DPRK continues to produce nukes and improve its missile arsenal. Its economy is a shambles and kept afloat by Chinese charity and by its exports of meth and counterfeit currency and ballistic missiles. Even as I write this the DPRK is preparing for another nuclear test in between bouts of lobbing missiles in the direction of Japan. Everyone is hoping for a softish landing but I’m not sure that is much more than a hope.