May 23, 2018

Even By Crazytown Rules, North Korea Isn’t Making Sense

Yonhap News/Newscom via ZUMA

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On the one hand, this is exactly how North Korea operates, so it’s not much of a surprise. On the other hand, what’s the point of all this? The summit was North Korea’s idea in the first place. Why offer a summit, have it accepted, and then play hard-to-get? What would North Korea get out of having the summit canceled?

Is this just ordinary expectation lowering? Or an effort to humiliate Trump a little bit beforehand in order to soften him up? Given their behavior so far, what do we think North Korea is hoping to get out of all this? Can some Korea experts please chime in?

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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