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 fashionable occasions.
There are not any bugaboos or sacred cows. Not like each President since Gerald Ford, our forty seventh Government 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 street. Not blaming this or that circumstance outdoors of his management.
The whole lot about what we’re seeing is to date outdoors the norm of latest expertise that it definitely 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 fair proportion 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 right” typically has held for generations. Owing to many years of Chilly Warfare propaganda, (by which People 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 risk that America might cross an ocean and a continent to defeat the Soviet Union’s tank legions on the Steppe) many, if not most People view Pentagon spending as de facto good and crucial, and at the same time as cash nicely spent.
That, in fact, 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? Test.), for waste so unimaginable you possibly can hardly imagine your eyes ($37 for a single screw, $8,000 for a espresso maker, $1,300 for espresso cups, examine.), and for being completely 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 convention of September 10, 2001, when he informed the assembled scribes that the five-sided constructing’s monetary system couldn’t monitor $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, if you happen to nonetheless imagine that there’s not a penny in financial savings to be discovered within the conflict 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 subsequent 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 forth.
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 army in 2024 – whereas within the midst of what they view as existential conflict with their massive neighbor.
Which is to say, our flesh pressers spent $721 billion extra than Russia did final yr, or 6.5 occasions extra. Put one other approach, the $183 billion Uncle Sam might or might not have willy-nilly given to Ukraine with no second thought is greater than Russia’s whole protection finances.
It’s time to start out being life like. Historical past might rhyme in a Cockney rhyming slang sense, nevertheless it by no means repeats. Russia just isn’t the Soviet Union. The date just isn’t 1938, or 1944, or 1962, or 1991.
President Trump and First Buddy Elon Musk are on to one thing that nobody else appears to grasp, or be keen to do something about: This nation is correct on the verge of a debt-death-spiral.
In 2022, the curiosity cost 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 cost 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’s going to price $1.8 trillion simply to pay the curiosity cost.
There’s a very critical enemy we have to fear about. And it’s not loopy Ivan. It’s not China, nevertheless badly our leaders need to as soon as once more plop American boys down into one other land conflict in Asia.
It’s not even outdoors the gates. The enemy is contained in the gates. He’s been there for many years together with his grubby little arms 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 forth.
He’s at conflict with Actuality, who has fought with no champion till 2016, with a minor interruption thrown in.
There are two and solely two choices. Both we turn into a critical, accountable folks and we select the place to chop, or we keep the course, and another person will resolve for us.
