At a time when Trump is irrationally endangering our national security and that of South Korea, North Korea, and Japan – to name a few – by threatening incendiarily to use his “bloody nose” option, as the put it bizarrely in his State of the Union message, to carry out a preemptive military strike at North Korea, Pence dutifully and incompetently is sent to the Korean winter olympics to what appears an effort to drive a sabotaging wedge into the inchoate globally welcomed apparent thaw in tensions between North Korea and South Korea, by refusing to acknowledge the historic presence of the North Korean officials, of the sister of the North Korean leader who just declared that “I hope Pyongyang and Seoul will become closer in the hearts of Koreans and will bring unification and prosperity in the near future”.

Pence and his wife were seated in the VIP box during the Opening Ceremonies, immediately in front, a couple offer apart,  from the very friendly, smiling, elegant, and pretty  Kim Yo Jong, the sister of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong un who invited the progressive South Korean leader, President Moon Jae-in, for a visit to North Korea, and yet Pence sat tensely and stiffly and refused to turn around to at least acknowledge the presence of Kim Yo Jong, and other North Korean officials preferring to stay detached and tight-lipped.

When the teams of both Korea’s came into the stadium, Korean tradition called for the audience to stand up.  Everyone present stood up, but Pence and his wife remained seated. According to Korean values this was in insult.

He also entered a VIP reception of South Korean and North Korean officials, but stayed for only 5 minutes and refused to greet or acknowledge in any way the presence of the said North Korean officials.

To continue to implement his boss’s threatening tone at the winter olympics in South Korea,   Pence continuously has repeated his mantra that “maximum pressure” approach will be applied to North Korea and that nothing will be off the table, until North Korea denuclearizes, something which most probably will never happen, since North Korea – and South Korea – are painfully aware of what happened in 1950 when the U.S. dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs, including napalm bombs, on Korea (more than the U.S. dropped in WWII), in a war which fragmented Korea along the 38th parallel, into North and South Korea, and which killed approximately about 30% of its mostly civilian unarmed population.

As The Irish Times has reported on Sunday, February 11, 2018 Unknown to Most Americans, the US ‘totally destroyed’ North Korea Once Before

For North Korea, its nuclear weapons are its security blanket against a major invasion for regime change, something which the U.S. troops stationed in South Korean bases train every year, except that this year said U.S. invasion training has been postponed until after the olympic games, except that given the historic rapprochement between the North Korean leader and the recently elected progressive leader of South Korea, according to James Schoff, a Korea expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, it will be hard for the U.S. and South Korea to resume their military invasion exercises with the U.S. since a summit meeting will then be taking place between South and North Korea, something which “alarms” Trump and Pence, as peace and “sunshine policy” talks may break out as a result, and heavens forbid, this may turn even into  reunification steps which if  materialized would marginalize the odious Trump/Pence plans for war.

The mindset which characterizes the Trump/Pence destructive and destabilizing agenda hegemonist, belligerence is quite analogous to that of the Netanyahu and his cohorts in in his Zionist supremacist, power structure adopt and previous PM’s of Israel have adopted, most particularly the most extremist Zionist supremacist, nationalist, ones such as Ariel Sharon.

They may at times dishonestly talk the talk of faker accommodation   but in no way will walk the walk when push comes to shove if peace actually becomes a possibility, and therefore creatively they preventively undertake provocations, such as that of Netanyahu now bombing Syria, allegedly  because Syria in its fight against the remnants of ISIS and Al Qaeda and Al Nousra, has enlisted some Iranian support, something which is entirely the prerogative of the said government.

But the Pence bizarre, hypocritical, counterproductive, undiplomatic, and opportunistically exploitive stance was just the tip of the iceberg as described above.

Pence then decided to eclipse the spirit of potential peace negotiations evolution  not by merely snubbing the North Korean officials and exhibiting his trademark tight-lipped tense expression, but he then went on to accuse the North Korean regime of violating human rights – and no one is suggesting the human rights are not violated in North Korea – but hypocritically Pence made these accusations which are irrelevant to the present state of affairs, while in reality Pence recently visited the murderous autocratic General Sisi in Cairo, Egypt, who has overthrown the only democratically elected government in Egypt’s history, and who then proceeded with the mass killings of dissenters, the mass court ordained sentencing to life prison of thousands of political opponents, and without any due process.

Pence sat down with this super egregious human rights violator genuflecting and calling him a friend, just the way he did it with the misleader of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, recently when Trump and Netanyahu teamed up to destabilize the internationalized city of Jerusalem.

It appears that Netanyahu will  probably be indicted not only by the Israeli Attorney General for his crimes domestic crimes, but it looks likely that additionally he will be indicted by the International Criminal Court, for his crimes against the humanity of the autochthonous Palestinians in occupied Palestine.

Of course one must bear in mind that Trump has stated that he likes what Rodrigo Duterte is doing in the Philippines where he has authorized his police to carry out summary executions of what has now become thousands of suspects of using, possessing, or selling drugs invitation, so he invited the self-confessed assassin strongman himself to visit him in  White House.

It is beyond clear that The Trump/Pence  White House could not care least for human rights, and is most probably the most human rights immune administration of any in history.

For decades the list of US presidents sycophantic engagements for mutual interests  with human rights violating thugs such as the most egregious oppressors and genuine terrorism sponsoring nations  as that of the Saudi Arabia power structure, is long and goes back in history to the documented support and connivance the US has often given these caudillos in South America and Central America, and often not exclusively  the Republican right-wing extremists have been the culprits as well as collaborating accomplices, but the same applies to Democratic neo-liberals.

Pence then went further in his rather feeble-minded attempt to compete with the optimistic chemistry of government officials, athletes, and musical and vocal performers by dragging into this the old and decontextualized sad case of Otto War.

This pathetic move tops Pence’s opportunistic exploitation in his hysterical off-base melodramatic  attempt to drive a wedge into any reconciliation between North and South Korea,   which is meant to  deflect from these Korean Olympics which seem turbo-charged with the potential of their becoming historic in view of the North Korean charm offensive which has their performers and athletes displaying besides the North Korean flag, the white (peace) flag which depicts in light blue colors the map of the entire Korean peninsula as symbol of reunification.

The behavior of Pence in Pyongyang, wherein he ignores that we may be at the verge of nuclear war,  as if we are now at 2 minutes before midnight on the Doomsday Clock , was despicable and thereby exposed his own utter lack of competence to become trustworthy president when Trump is probably indicted for obstruction of justice or worse.

The order of priorities got warped in Pence’s mind, so instead of graciously entertaining the notion that peace between North and South Korea is most desirable, he decided to pout, snub, and vilify, thereby missing opportunities to rise above Trump and actually engage in quasi statesmen-like diplomacy.

In any case, and regardless of relevancy, and priority, for those readers not familiar with the case of Otto Warmer, which has mesmerized sociopathically Pence to the point of dragging Otto Warmbier’s father to Korea with him to exploit his tragic story which is still a mystery at a time when he should act like an adult Vice President,  here is the properly contextualized synopsis.

The story is indeed tragic, yet it started with a man who should know better, vandalizing and stealing a plaque in his hotel for which he was arrested, tried and convicted to prison time.

What happened next remains to this day a mystery.

Warmbier became ill, was treated and then lapsed into a semi-conscious state.  He was then sent back to the United States where he died.

The British Daily Mail, which is the U.K.’s second biggest-selling daily newspaper reported more in-depth on the Otto Warmer story and on how he seems to have been manipulated by his church to steal what he did for display at said church which is his home-town church.

Sad, but utterly unrelated to the Damocles Sword hanging over the heads of all Americans and their children as long as the nincompoop Trump/Pence team continue to drag our nation into a potential calamitous disaster from which it may take generations for us to recover if we the people survive.