“Seven billion people inhabit planet Earth.” When I saw this video, I was reminded of a phrase that Milan Kundera came up with in ”The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” which is “totalitarian kitsch.” This sort of cartoony, idealized aesthetic using very broad, what you might call corny, images. And you see this in the aesthetics of a lot of authoritarian regimes. Vladimir Putin being photographed shirtless, it’s a corny, ridiculous image. And yet these corny, ridiculous images are often powerful in strongman regimes. Looking at it objectively, as a piece of film and a video being used in diplomacy, it’s kind of hilarious. There are so many cornball, cliché images. “ — to be the future — ” But in political kitsch, often corniness and cliché is the point. Clichés are images that everybody has seen before. They’re images that everybody recognize and therefore, they’re images that you can count on to have broad mass appeal, even if it’s not sophisticated appeal. “Their story is well known, but what will be their sequel?” One thing this video tells us is the kind of arguments that the Trump administration is making to the North Korean government: “Make this deal and you will look good. You’ll be the protagonist of the world. You will live like a lottery winner.” What I saw, when I look at the trailer, was the Trump administration trying to speak to Kim Jong-un the way the administration speaks to Donald Trump. “Be part of that world.” Donald Trump is, shall we say, a visual learner. He prefers to get his briefing material in the form of pictures, videos, images, graphics. Preferably the material references his name as much as possible in order to keep his interest. One thing that’s a constant in Donald Trump’s career is his use of big, broad cartoony symbols to get across big, broad cartoony messages. “Bradford, you’re fired.” How do you make yourself a celebrity as a businessman? How do you create the idea that you’re the most successful businessman in the world, whether you are or not? Well, you build a giant skyscraper with your name on it in three-foot-tall, brass golden letters. And that’s what made Donald Trump so fitting for reality TV. Reality TV, likewise, communicates in big broad symbols: desert islands, roses. There’s this theme with him of sort of seeing himself as the protagonist of a show that he and other people are watching. “It comes down to a choice.” So this video is reaching out a hand to Kim Jong-un and saying, “Work with me. You can be my co-star in this show that everybody else is watching.” “Will this leader choose to advance his country and be part of a new world?” What you have in this video are a lot of garish symbols of importance. This montage at the beginning, for example, where a big image of the North Korean flag is equated with the Colosseum and the pyramids. It’s a way of communicating that, “Work with us, and you will be regarded as one of the greats of history.” “ — or more isolation — ” This seems like the kind of kitschy picture that in a weird way is fitting for a regime like Kim’s. It’s surreal but it’s no more surreal than the host of “The Apprentice” negotiating a nuclear deal with the head of North Korea. This is the world we live in now. “One moment. One choice.”