So, To Summarize ...

In 1950, the US went to (undeclared, and under pro forma UN auspices) war with North Korea.

In 1953, the parties (the US, the UN, South Korea on one side, North Korea on the other) negotiated a cease-fire, which has now been in effect for 61 years.

Over the years, various incidents have occurred which strained the cease-fire. From the point of view of an American media consumer, most of those incidents (the taking of the USS Pueblo, sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, the artillery duel on and around Yeonpyeong, etc.) have been blamed on the north, but ...

Earlier this year, Kim Jong-Un's regime declared that the impending release of a film, The Interview, constituted an act of war. And we all laughed. Well, most of us laughed. I know I did.

Then, earlier this month, the studio releasing the film -- an American subsidiary of a Japanese company -- came under cyber attack by hackers unknown. Part of the fallout from that hack was disclosure that, well, the production and planned release of The Interview WAS pretty much an act of war. That is, the US government encouraged and facilitated its production for the clearly stated purpose of encouraging the assassination of Kim Jong Un and the overthrow of his regime.

Oops.

Now, most of us are probably still laughing.

I still was, until the Obama regime announced its certainty -- unbacked by any disclosure of real evidence, that's "classified," see? -- that the Kim regime was behind the hack and that the Obama regime plans some regime-to-regime retaliation.

Well, now. This shit is starting to get real all of a sudden, isn't it?

Could the US go to back to open war with the DPRK over the matter? I'd like to laugh at that notion, too, but then I remember what the Obama regime has done or tried to do to individuals who have initiated embarrassing disclosures about it (the four who come immediately to mind are Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Barrett Brown).

When the US accuses a foreign government of doing things that it has jailed (or tried to jail) and exiled people for, war doesn't really seem beyond the realm of likelihood. And the US government's bellicosity abroad seems to run on the same cycle as its descents into banana republicanism and police statism at home. We're at a pretty high tempo on the latter front right now, for reasons including but not limited to the Ferguson intifada. New attempts at Internet control and censorship here at home, with the Sony hack as an excuse, will almost certainly top the next session of Congress's to-do list.

Kinda scary.