None of my friends believes Trump would not try to use nukes. What they, along with me, believe is that the military will not cave into that cretin’s attempt to destroy the world quickly.
My concern is less him ordering a full scale exchange, but using “small” ones in a tactical fashion. This leads to escalation. There is a much better bright line between no nukes and using nukes than there is between a “small” nuke, and a “slightly bigger” nuke.
I do also agree that I think that the military will be wise enough to not give in to his baser impulses, but at a certain point, if he gives the legal order, refusing it is essentially starting a coup. There are bad or worse endings for that, but no good ones. As much as I don’t want the military listening the Trump, I also don’t want the military to ignore the civilian government.
Anyway, my point is that we never actually saw what a nuclear exchange would look like. We do see what school shootings look like. If we’ve ever seen an interview with anyone affected by nuclear war, it was an interview in a WWII documentary with someone who lived in Japan at the time. We’ve all seen interviews with people affected by school shootings in our contemporary news.
I don’t see much equivalency between a nuclear threat from foreign powers that never materialized, and continuous gun violence that we keep doing to ourselves. We have a limited to nonexistent ability to change what rival and enemy nations will do, and the incentive to try isn’t strong when a threat is only theoretical. But we can pass laws to change our own country’s access and use of firearms, and the danger isn’t just a hypothetical concern but an ongoing crisis.