Now this may be a bit of stretch, but I see a similar conundrum presented to Daenerys Targaryen of the fantasy book and widely watched HBO series Game of Thrones and to Donald John Trump. How you may ask? Well, in the last season of the HBO series, though Daenerys has shown to be the benign one of many who sought the Iron Throne and become ruler of the realm, she somehow miraculously survived with her three dragon eggs in a funeral pyre to come out slightly undressed but with three newly hatched baby dragons perched on her shoulders. From this she survived all sorts of trials and tribulations until she conquered several kingdoms and had at her disposal three full grown fire-breathing deadly dragons.
Of course, Trump’s journey from successful builder of skyscrapers and resorts, as well as a nice twelve year run as a top reality TV star to President of the US and the most powerful person on the planet, was not quite the same journey, but there is one very important parallel – they both had the most devastating power on the planet to destroy their enemies at their control.
Although both had many enemies, they both prospered by seemingly holding on to moral principals. Daenerys freed slaves and found loyal followers through judicious use of her dragons to vanquish the bad armies of the immoral slave owners. Trump in his unlikely rise to power used his power to take down evil drug lords and recently had the audacity to take out the evil Mullah and a large part of the thuggish Iranian military – leading to starving off much of their terrorist’s network of Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis. Though it was a crippling blow to the evil men who clinged to power in Iran, it did not stop them from murdering perhaps 40 to 50 thousand protester for regime change in order to hold on to power.
Trump and Daenerys, though close to achieving their goals, were left with the choice of allowing the evil status quo to continue, or wipe out a large portion of the population to achieve their goal of unconditional surrender. Spoiler alert! Daenerys, with her loan dragon (other two dispatched by very large dragon arrows from the King of the White Walkers, the other from the Lannisters), chose to wipe out the population of Kings Landing, ruled by the evil Cersei Lannister in order to finally win her unconditional surrender and the last obstacle to her “winning” the Game of Thrones and ascending to the Iron Throne. It didn’t end well for her, but I’ll leave it at that.
Trump could easily take out the infrastructure, power, water and potentially lead to a large percentage of the 90 million imprisoned in Iran being wiped out – freeing the country from the evil thugs – but at what cost? This could potentially positively remake the Middle East for generations – but at a cost that the rest of the world sympathetic to Trump or not – finds unacceptable – except the last time the world was at war and the first time nukes were used. And then there’s the real possibility that the other little war going on, that Russia in its seemingly failed effort to keep Ukraine in the fold, may use its Dragon – nukes – to prevent what they consider is an existential threat to them – an EU Ukraine and Crimea.
Question – do we as inhabitants of this planet continue our slow death tolerating endless wars, or one that comes in a nuclear flash – do we find a way to survive man’s apparent quest to be the author of its own extinction?