“For those who long wondered why throughout the presidential campaign
Trump could not bring himself to say a critical word about Russian President
Vladimir Putin, we now know the answer: Trump was hoping to do business in
Russia, and doing so would require the approval of Putin.” – USA TodayOpinion
Make no mistake, the mainstream left and
state serving-media voices are trying to gaslight an entire generation into
believing any candidate that wants peace with Russia may be a foreign
conspirator worthy of prison, shame, and family persecution.
Former
congressman Ron Paul, as a peace presidential candidate, did not regurgitate
war propaganda against Russia either. Neither did Senator Rand Paul when he
ran. What, is there supposed to be a Paul hotel in Moscow or something? Yet for
future generations, many in the media want to ensure no such anti-war candidate
ever runs again without baked-in misgivings of treason and criminality.
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No serious observer of recent
events can honestly believe the mono-narrative the old media, including “hard
news” outfits, has tried to curate about the 2016 election. However, the aim of
the last two years of conspiratorial hysteria has been to sear into the minds
of low information voters a suspicion of any successful political figure who
even half challenges the conventional wisdom that America must perpetually
spend hundreds of billions on NATO, collect citizens’ private conversations,
sanction Russian citizens, and intervene in Russia’s local border disputes.
This
is nothing new. When Martin Luther King Jr. used his national spotlight to
challenge the moral authority of the Vietnam War, he was denounced as a
subversive agent of enemy foreign powers.
What voters need to
understand is that those who challenge bipartisan orthodox foreign policy are
the leaders most likely to keep them safe from foreign authoritarians. Free
trade and travel with Russia would do more to undermine internal Russian
tolerance for Putin’s corruption than any bellicose grandstanding and arms
build up ever could. In fact, Putin’s administration’s domestic popularity was
at an all-time low prior to the Obama
administration’s 2013-2014 involvement in the Ukrainian civil conflict. Like
clockwork, with economically damaging sanctions and foreign missiles
accumulating along their border, the Russian public has begrudgingly fallen
back into the arms of the local devil they know.
Conservatives
and liberals informed by military wisdom must remind the public the lessons of
history when we abandon a policy of strategic independence on the world stage.
Sanctions and debt-financed bloated budgets are the best gifts we can give to
corrupt foreign regimes. They saddle our economies with capital-destroying debt
and malinvestment, and they repel otherwise sympathetic populations by ruining
their lives over Machiavellian nihilistic turf wars with their rulers.
How would we feel if China placed
missiles all along the Mexican and Canadian border? How would we feel if their
state department and intelligence agencies helped install a rabidly
anti-American leader in Canada and armed them to the teeth? One
would think that with all the cultural leftist and media preening about social
mindfulness of others, the nightly news narratives about Russia and other
foreign bogeymen would illustrate this context for viewers. But alas, DC
interventionist interests and their career bureaucratic allies prove too
intoxicating for power-struck press fawners.
In 2017,
the US reported military budget was 610 billion dollars. This was before
Trump’s 700 billion defense bill in 2018. In contrast, Russia spends roughly 66
billion a year on defense. No matter what TV talking heads say, it is never a
winning strategy to spend over ten times an adversary to remain safe. One of
these country’s citizens is getting a better return for every dollar taken from
the productive sector. It is not you.
Putin and other rival powers
are watching the same strategy that bankrupted the Soviet Union: allow a
debt-crippled economy, deeply hampered by crony corporatism, to destroy its
currency by creating too much of it to finance foreign adventures. The bureaucrats
and military cronies cannot help it: with a decades-long world reserve currency
to export the effects of spending, their specialist knowledge blinds them with
stupendous tunnel vision. Behold, their glorious strategy: “Putin bad, money
grow on tree, my pension nice, me too smart to put skin in game, other people
pay for our smart plans, we spend 700 billion and still behind rivals’ nuclear
technology, we spend 10 trillion more.”
Whatever
they are feeding in Foggy Bottom’s farm-to-table kibble does not a Sun Tzu
make.
Morally-blind
people locked in herd inertia cannot course correct. For merely questioning NATO
spending and floating a desire to talk to Putin, Trump and his entire family
have received a two year media-massaged rectal examine by Robert Mueller, an
architect of the Iraq War trillion dollar disaster.
But sober people who understand that
money is scarce and free trade and travel undermines and defangs foreign (and
domestic) authoritarians, can do something about our predicament. We can just
say no.
Just say no to sending youth into a
military that has been abused of its original constitutional designs as it
polices the world’s internal disputes for cronies.
Just say no to voting for anyone that
does not oppose the folly of trillion dollar interventions that make the world
less safe, less free, and less interested in America’s model of liberty.
Just say no to media outlets that
stupidly cheer family-starving sanctions, drone strikes, and failed coups and
then scapegoat the president in office when the wars drag on too long or show
too many maimed and killed.
David
Gornoski [send
him mail] is a writer, speaker, and thought leader on mimetic
theory. He is the founder of A Neighbor's Choice, a multimedia project
advancing prosperity and nonviolence through top news and culture essays,
podcasts with world-class intellectuals, and documentaries telling stories of
victims of state violence. He hosts the most electrifying show in radio A
Neighbor's Choice Tuesdays at 8pm ET in Orlando on 93.1 FM, 540
AM and worldwide on YouTube. David is building a billion-dollar enterprise.
