We're crazed

Sometimes my fellow citizens appall me. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists asked 3000 of us whether they would support a nuclear preemptive strike on North Korea if/when that country builds a missile capable hitting the United States -- even it that strike would kill one million North Korean civilians. People preferred a non-nuclear strike -- but further questioning suggested that about one-third of us would approve of our government launching a nuclear attack.

That's horrible, but I'm willing to chalk it up to ignorance and lack of imagination. But what really got me was that the survey correlated support for using nukes with some other variables. Yes, Republicans were more inclined to a nuclear strike than others and, yes, Trump supporters were even more gung-ho for gore. But that's not what really got to me.

Among supporters of the death penalty, support for a nuclear strike actually rose from 38 percent to 49 percent when the number of expected North Korean fatalities increased from 15,000 to 1.1 million; one such respondent explained that “it’s our best chance of eliminating the North Koreans.”

Washington Post

We're some sick country sometimes.

I was glad to see that respondents did show some prudential sense: support for nuking North Korea dropped when people were told the U.S. military could not prevent retaliation.

Carton from XKCD.com.