Let’s get one thing good and glowing clear proper off the bat: What we’ve got seen within the first month of the second Trump administration borders on revolutionary.
It’s extraordinary. Unprecedented in trendy occasions.
There aren’t any bugaboos or sacred cows. Not like each President since Gerald Ford, our forty seventh Govt appears to not solely actually perceive the rating and the present state of affairs, he’s fearlessly and aggressively taking motion. Not kicking the can down the highway. Not blaming this or that circumstance exterior of his management.
Every thing about what we’re seeing is to date exterior the norm of latest expertise that it actually couldn’t be referred to as “conservative” in any significant sense of the time period. No, to return to something even remotely resembling “America” requires much more than merely pumping the rusty drum brakes on the Pinto of our present dilapidated ship of State.
President Trump’s insistence that the Pentagon not be spared its justifiable share of the cuts we desperately want is a living proof.
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Sure, The Pentagon Wants Drastic Cuts, Too
The Pentagon’s untouchable standing amongst Republicans and what passes for “the appropriate” typically has held for generations. Owing to a long time of Chilly Battle propaganda, (wherein Individuals have been preposterously led to imagine that we needed to spend infinite cash on sufficient nuclear weapons to destroy the planet 100-times-over or that there was any even distant chance that America might cross an ocean and a continent to defeat the Soviet Union’s tank legions on the Steppe) many, if not most Individuals view Pentagon spending as de facto good and essential, and at the same time as cash nicely spent.
That, after all, is absurd on its face. The Pentagon is infamous for its damaged acquisition course of (shopping for delicate components for our most superior stealth fighters from China? Verify.), for waste so unimaginable you’ll be able to hardly imagine your eyes ($37 for a single screw, $8,000 for a espresso maker, $1,300 for coffee cups, verify.), and for being totally incapable of passing an audit.
Or my private favourite style: Arming one Islamic terrorist group with a view to battle the CIA’s Islamic terrorist group.
A few of us bear in mind Donald Rumsfeld’s press conference of September 10, 2001, when he informed the assembled scribes that the five-sided constructing’s monetary system couldn’t observe $2.3 trillion in transactions.
In 2023, we have been handled to the information that the Pentagon couldn’t account for 63% of practically $4 trillion in belongings.
Taking all that into consideration, should you nonetheless imagine that there’s not a penny in financial savings to be discovered within the struggle machine, I’ve bridges in Da Nang and workplace buildings in Fallujah to promote you.
All that brings us to Trump, who’s working up plans to chop Pentagon spending by 8% per yr for the following 5 years.
Now, earlier than anybody will get their panties in a bunch, these cuts will exempt (allegedly) essential areas, like missile protection, border safety, buying new submarines, and so on.
Pentagon Spending In Perspective
However wait! How are we going to cease Russia from driving their lots of tanks and armor throughout Germany and France, loading up onto boats, and finally debarking on the mouth of the Potomac?
Humorous you ask: Russia supposedly spent the whopping sum of $129 billion on their navy in 2024 – whereas within the midst of what they view as existential struggle with their massive neighbor.
Which is to say, our legislators spent $721 billion extra than Russia did final yr, or 6.5 occasions extra. Put one other manner, the $183 billion Uncle Sam could or could not have willy-nilly given to Ukraine with out a second thought is greater than Russia’s whole protection finances.
It’s time to begin being life like. Historical past could rhyme in a Cockney rhyming slang sense, nevertheless it by no means repeats. Russia is just not the Soviet Union. The date is just not 1938, or 1944, or 1962, or 1991.
President Trump and First Buddy Elon Musk are on to one thing that nobody else appears to know, or be prepared to do something about: This nation is correct on the verge of a debt-death-spiral.
In 2022, the curiosity fee on the nationwide debt was $476 billion – greater than half of our annual protection finances, and practically four-times Russia’s protection finances.
In 2024, the curiosity fee on the debt practically doubled – to $881 billion. 2025 projections come out to $952 billion.
Do you perceive now? If spending ranges stay the identical, in 10 years it should price $1.8 trillion simply to pay the curiosity fee.
There’s a very critical enemy we have to fear about. And it’s not loopy Ivan. It’s not China, nonetheless badly our leaders wish to as soon as once more plop American boys down into one other land struggle in Asia.
It’s not even exterior the gates. The enemy is contained in the gates. He’s been there for many years along with his grubby little palms everywhere in the controls, weakening and destroying what is meant to be essentially the most highly effective apex nation in world historical past.
He goes by many names: Historical past, Ideology, Myopia, Worldwide Utopianism, and so on.
He’s at struggle with Actuality, who has fought with out a champion till 2016, with a minor interruption thrown in.
There are two and solely two choices. Both we develop into a critical, accountable folks and we select the place to chop, or we keep the course, and another person will resolve for us.
