Ah, New Years. It’s a time to look forward to what the next year might bring, to hope impossible hopes and dream impossible dreams. That feeling of a blank slate where anything is achievable lasted about two and a half days before the American people were violently dragged back to reality.

What could possibly cause such waves of anxiety and negativity, you ask? The only thing that can, of course: Donald Trump seemingly threatening nuclear war! No, I’m not kidding. Just two days into 2018, Donald Trump decided to get into a flame war with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. In his yearly address to the people of North Korea, the dictator stated that his country was officially a nuclear power, and that “the button is on his desk at all times”. Trump decided to fire back, tweeting that his nuclear button “is much bigger and actually works”.

Let’s take a step back to actually understand what the hell is happening here. First off, I’ve never seen anybody use a nuclear launch button as a stand in for their dick measuring contest, but this has been a presidency of firsts. Second, the President of the United States just implied that he was willing to get into a nuclear conflict, and for some reason, everybody is just treating this as a run of the mill foreign policy move. You know, just Trump being Trump.

The worst part about this is that they’re absolutely right. This is Trump just being Trump, and that’s a huge problem. Pretty much any other politician, or perhaps even most other sane people, would have just released a statement condemning Kim Jong Un’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, or just let it go altogether. However, Donald Trump is not any other politician, or perhaps even sane. He is a man with such unbelievably thin skin, with an ego so fragile, that any perceived slight against him must be retaliated against with extreme prejudice. The President of the United States is one of, if not the most scrutinized position in all of the world, and Donald Trump has proven time and time again that he cannot handle the constant criticism he has opened himself up to.

This has become such an issue that they have been calls by lawmakers to have Trump’s mental state evaluated, which Trump apparently took offense to. He tweeted that he is “a very stable genius” and “like, really smart”. Nobody who is actually smart has ever described themselves as, like, really smart. The only person who does that is your stoner friend who’s between jobs so you let them crash in the basement. Even North Korea is scared; they’ve reopened contact with South Korea for the first time in almost two years, presumably because they have no idea what’s going on with Trump

This is usually the point where I try to conclude or wrap up my thoughts in a neat little bow, but I don’t even know where to start. We’re approaching the one year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, and this is one of the most eventful periods of his entire presidency thus far, and it’s only going to get crazier. So if you were thinking that 2018 might just be better than the year previous, or less crazy, or less stress inducing, it might be time to wake up, and smell the Donald.