Happy Thanksgiving! The Cost Of Empire

Most importantly, Happy Thanksgiving. Readers sometimes chide me for dealing mostly in bad news. As for so many others, I suppose that’s a result of a late life Great Awakening—the world as we thought we knew it has changed, perhaps was never the way we thought it was. But reader Richard Cook shared the opening of Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, and I’ll pass it on in my own translation:

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, 2 to the church of God in Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, who are called to be saints, with all those people everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ--their Lord and ours--3 may the grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

4 I constantly give thanks to God for you for the grace God has given you in Christ Jesus. 5 In him you have been enriched in every way, in speech and in knowledge, 6 for the witness of Christ has become established in you to such an extent 7 that there’s no grace you lack, as you await the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ 8 who will sustain you until the end, so that you’ll be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, and it was God who called you to the fellowship of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, back to mundane matters.

It seems a CIA trained Afghan turned his skills against the National Guard in DC. Here’s a post that warns against being snookered by the partisan blame game. This comes back to the matter of Empire and the price we pay for it, and that’s been a bipartisan project for many decades:

DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics

Everyone is spinning the Lakanwal DC shooting into a left/right blame war. The facts don’t allow for that.

Here’s what’s actually documented:

• He entered the U.S. on a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) during Operation Allies Refuge, a process that began under Trump, was executed during the Biden withdrawal, and was supported by bipartisan votes in Congress.

• He filed for asylum in late 2024 and was approved in April 2025 under the current administration, but asylum adjudication is handled by career officers following laws written and funded by multiple administrations.

• Both parties expanded, supported, or failed to reform the SIV and asylum systems that allowed this case to unfold the way it did.

Trying to turn this into a partisan attack misses the real issue because this wasn’t a “Democrat failure” or a “Republican failure.” It was a system failure decades in the making, and both sides helped build the system.

Bush started the war, Obama continued it, Trump expanded the SIV pipeline, Biden executed the withdrawal and processed the evacuees, Congress funded it under all four.

If people want accountability, start with the policies, not the tribal talking points.

Of course, there’s the issue of who was really behind these policies of empire building that have led to this latest event. Of course, our hearts all go out to the the guardsmen and their families. Still, in the big scheme of empire, this is a minor matter requiring political damage control lest We the People begin questioning the policies that were devised by our Deep State and put into place by our bought and paid for political class. Every empire in history that has gone out to conquer the world has been subject to similar developments, the breakdown of the societal and political fabric at home, all in the interests of empire. War is a racket, as Smedley Butler famously said. All (modern) wars are bankers wars, and We—who were never really consulted, despite the Potemkin structures of representative government—pay the price while others profit.

There are some who will say that this plays into the escalating Anglo-Zionist and Israeli funded propaganda machine that is trying to frame the genocide in Gaza and war everywhere else as an existential struggle against militant Islam, who are in cahoots with every boogey man around the world you can imagine.

DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics

Israel just started bombing Gaza, Lebanon, they simulated launching an attack on Iran yesterday, and the UAE owned oil fields in Iraq exploded a few hours ago.....

Now there’s a “muslim terrorist attack”?

We also have a bunch of corrupt Ukrainian gangsters who don’t want their gravy train to stop....

We’re exercising a HEAVY amount of caution and skepticism, watching who benefits.

What a mess! Here’s Maria Elvira Salazar, “representing” Florida’s 27th Congressional District—but really representing her paymaster donors:

In an interview, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar called for a US invasion of Venezuela, claiming that Caracas was sending uranium to Hamas, Cuba, and other countries.

And he’s good friends with Hezbollah, and they’re giving uranium to Hamas and to Iran and to North Korea and to Cuba and to Nicaragua,” she said in an interview with Fox News. “Come on. It’s time for the United States to do what we need to do. And thank god that Trump is doing it.”

Wow—that’s a lot of wars! She’s also been going around touting a takeover of Venezuela as heralding “a field day for American corporations.” Cui bono? Not you and me. We’re not part of the Imperial Club, and that’s something to be thankful for today.

Poor Doug Macgregor was left shaking his head over some of the knuckleheads he encounters in his peregrinations around the country trying to drum up support for a return to constitutional government to address American problems at home. He keeps running into people who still believe that American problems can be solved by bombing some other country—or countries: They think that’s MAGA.

Judge: Do you have enough of a finger on the pulse of the American public, either from your own anecdotal observations and reading or from sources to a point about whether the American public believes an invasion of Venezuela would be legal, constitutional, and moral?

Mac: You know, that’s a that’s a a very excellent question, and I’m not a pollster. I do know that the polling data I’ve seen suggests that 70% of likely voters that have been polled have said, “Let’s not go into Venezuela.” In other words, they don’t support the idea. So, that tells us something. I think there are still a lot of Americans that were taken in by the argument against drug cartels. I run into people all the time that say, “Doug, you know, you’ve been a real staunch supporter for defending the border. You want to go after these drug criminals here inside the United States? That’s great. What’s wrong with bombing Mexico? What’s wrong with bombing Venezuela? And I keep trying to tell them that you’re not going to accomplish much other than kill a lot of people that we’d rather not kill who are not necessarily our enemies. And then secondly, infuriating much of Latin America that is already not terribly enthusiastic about us at this point.

Right. One more bombing campaign, one more war, will solve all America’s problems—our gaze is always being directed overseas. Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, China—the list goes on. Most Americans want the imperial wars to stop—they often think that’s what they voted for—they want to focus on America, but somehow their views don’t count. Somehow the Neocons continue to direct their Project for the New American Century—under whatever name they’re currently using. And the grifters—Bushes, Obamas, Trumps, Bidens, Trumps—and their minions profit from human misery. Meanwhile the economic foundations of America, the foundations that built up a strong middle class, are being eroded while others profit, while Trump takes Tech Lords money to build his Golden Ballroom.

I’m filled with foreboding. But thankful for …