-We must break the will of the crazy Europeans to want war against us. They have already started 2 world wars. That's enough, we don't need a third one.
-Conquer Europe? Our priority is the development of Siberia, which is worth 10 times as much as Europe, why on earth would we want Europe there?
-The USA has made enough profit from the war, they have robbed Europe too. They don't want to risk a nuclear war and are therefore withdrawing.
-We have freed the world from the yoke of the Western hegemon, which plundered the world for five centuries. countries in the Global South now finally have the opportunity to flourish.
-A new world order is emerging. Eurosasia is becoming immensely important with Russia, China and India as the new pillars for a more stable world. In addition, other states in Euro-Asia will gain immense importance: Turkey, Iran and the Arab states.
China is most concerned about: China and retrieving and revitalizing their civilization. All of the West’s talk about China is based on a lack of understanding about how China views itself, what it sees its aspirations as and how it intends to get there: not about defeating the US/West, but about harnessing Digital technology to propel it forward. It is far more advanced in this than we realize.
Something else that concerns China: the current state of the US and decline. China is not prepared to take over responsibilities that the US has taken for itself globally. The decline of the US makes the world in various ways more unstable and uncertain. This troubles China (and others) greatly and is adjusting accordingly.
Reset yesterday/right now: absolutely. The world has been shifting into a new paradigm since, let’s say 2000. So what is the hold up? Why virtually no talk and move to change before now?
Think of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which was not really about science per se.
Things fall apart when the paradigms can no longer answer the basic or advanced questions. The assumptions no longer hold. In the West we now question everything that Physics - the dominant science - taught us in the 20th century. Not Biology, Physics. Why? How is this relevant? As you, Mark, have noted for years, Modernity became about the secularism, or, the separation of Theology and Philosophy from “Science.” Science became reduced to attempts at math. Physics became the only bucket looked at and funded in serious ways to explain the “universe.” Not humanity, the universe, that which was reduced to being not about biology or the human.
The context of life, the human, was removed, at least attempted. This permeated all of the “social sciences.” Particularly anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Humans were reduced to how to how to control them and make them into something that could be predictable: statistics.
Yes, we need a new Geopolitics! So where do we look? Think Leibniz, and how he was rejected by the moderns. Monads. The basis of biology/humans/everything. This is all going to come back. But it’s not here yet. Nit even close. More people on YouTube and Substack “dissenting” or questioning the sciences in toto, but not much about the causes of our “troubles.” But it’s a start.
We lost the context: humans. Think of the Political Scientist Aristotle: starts with a soul and what it does. What causes its environment? (All those inner senses going all the time). Build from that.
Where do we look to begin the “reset?”
Prediction: we are going to look hard at the what came before the Moderns: Scribal Medieval. We are also going to look to the East and what they have been and are doing regarding “morality” and governance.
What is the cause of our current troubles? The old Globalist Paradigm, driven by Television tech, collapsed. The Digital Paradigm killed it. We were not paying attention. We kept fighting over the old. Thus today. It’s a Digital world and we are very behind, particularly the East.
Trump makes sense in a significant way: we see it’s broken and we see that some are willing to die and take us with them trying to fix it, so, let’s really destroy “it,” and in the destruction we will figure out a way forward. It’s a strategy. But it’s not a plan. “Again” and “common sense” only work within a context that no longer exists.
Destruction is an interesting word. It implies, I think, what comes out of it…”re…” How about “reintegration?” of humans/soul? That’s the context that then leads to “reset.”
Does Trump go down as the destroyer of the sciences? Hard and human? Can he avoid war (internal/external/psychological/kinetic) without knowing what we need to avoid and what Digital brings with it?
He talks a lot about humans. That is a break with the past. What comes next? Destruction of how we have been thinking about the world AND young people pressing for new hard and human sciences, based on concerns about the humans (not physics or the current social sciences). There is no consensus other than that we need all new and that the current institutions (meaning the people in/from them) cannot do it.
Who are those outside of the institutions that ask different questions, or better, same questions but demand different answers? Short answer is that Trump does not know who these people are and they would never be approved of.
There needs to be organizing forces/groups to help get smart and concerned people together to think the Digital Paradigm through, and then make plans, lest we be run over by it.
Yes no. There was Admiral Mike Rogers who was the head of NSA and who told Trump that his campaign/transition was being bugged. That's when Trump moved his HQ to one of his golf clubs--Bedminster in NJ. Not the guy.
2. he has had a lot of experience with the Deep State.
Still, while that's a big help, rooting out the corruption of the MIC that goes back something like 75 years and is intertwined with Congress, private corps, the whole structure of purchasing processes, etc. He'll need help to come to grips with deeply entrenched corruption, and some of Trump's appointments--especially Hegseth--will be no help at all.
Having Musk around has already served multiple purposes for right of center Americans, eg, on the ground in Pennsylvania and speaking to Iran rep. Just about anything good Musk is able to do can come under the job description of rooting out corruption. Musk has said his motivation for backing Trump is that US can't survive as a one-party country, ie democrats, as it now stands with democrat control of everything. Elon has interests but everyone knows he can never be US president. The Republican Party has long ago ceased to be a functioning one which in 2024 turned out to be a good thing because Musk, young, energetic, and capable of speaking to crowds, noticed this and decided to jump in and try to level the playing field. During 2012 Romney campaign for pres., (granted he was a poor candidate and per son Tagg didn't want to be pres.), he had little support from the Republican Party. In Florida, Romney had 200 staff on the ground to Obama's 770. Romney total for the whole country was only 500 to Obama's 3000. In Ohio, Obama had 123 offices, Romney had 40. Obama had 59 offices in Colorado to Romney's 15. "Indeed, in swing state after swing state, the Obama field team was much bigger than the Romney troops."...per Boston Globe, 12/22/2012, "The story behind Mitt Romney’s loss in the presidential campaign to President Obama," Michael Kranish...https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2012/12/22/the-story-behind-mitt-romneys-loss-in-the-presidential-campaign-to-president-obama/...At Trump's Madison Square Garden rally, Musk (who was cheered by the crowd) was one of the few speakers to stick to the suggested time limit.
If memory serves, 2016 Trump Campaign co-chair, Sam Clovis, may have hired Mike Rogers as a campaign advisor. When things got messy later on with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos some people thought that Clovis was a Deep State plant in the Trump campaign. (Ok, I was one who thought that.)
Some people also thought that Mike Rogers might have been a plant as well. But he quickly disappeared from sight and any connection he might have had with the 2016 Trump Campaign seems to have been thoroughly scrubbed from the record.
In any event if I were Trump I would stay far far away from anybody who was associated with Carter Page, Sam Clovis or George Papadopoulos in 2016.
Yes, it does seem to have been scrubbed. I had read that he was doing security vetting for the campaign. Once again, however, I think you're on the wrong track. What you should be looking at is the hiring of Paul Manafort, who had had one (or possibly more) FISAs on him already. His supposed Russian ties became a big deal and led to his firing. Manafort was the big fish.
Go back to the Steele dossier. Manafort was portrayed as directing the Russia connection. Page was the courier. It's entirely possible that somebody placed Page and George in the campaign, but they were not put their as spies. They were put there because their travels/contacts provided verisimilitude. That's why Steele had to make shit up about Page in Moscow or in Prague. Manafort was the guy with documented contacts--because they had--or had had--one or more FISAs on him and he had worked on Russian/Ukrainian campaigns. Something neither George nor Page had done.
The target was Manafort because he was the guy with direct contact with Trump and the total operation of the campaign. Page and George were completely peripheral. Patsies who didn't know they were being used.
Trump’s Hegseth Caper and the Delusion of ‘Peace Through Strength’
here is the Donald’s rationale for selecting a guy to run the $1 trillion/2.9 million employee Pentagon who has never managed anything bigger than a household of three successive wives and the accumulation of seven kids:
“Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy… Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country… With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down.
What unmitigated breast-beating rubbish!
For crying out loud, the last thing America needs is another Warrior for the Troops. Instead, what it really needs is a Fearless Slayer of the sacred cows and obese pigs of the military/industrial complex who gorge themselves at the Pentagon’s trough.
...
... America’s existentially threatening runaway public debt.
That figure was $1 trillion when Ronald Reagan took office; $19 trillion by the time the Donald stumbled into the White House; stands at $36 trillion today; will top $60 trillion by the end of the next decade based on current built-in spending and borrowing; would exceed $70 trillion by the same point (2034) under the sweeping tax cuts and spending increases already proposed by the Donald; and will hit $150 trillion by mid-century under the CBO’s latest Rosy Scenario outlook.
Yet the Donald chooses to appoint to the single most crucial fiscal job in the entire Federal government a flag-waving champion of military glory.
I recall that the conventional wisdom was that Reagan defeated the USSR by outspending them. Their economy couldn't keep up with ours in the arms race. As a corollary, whether any of that built-up materiel would be actually effective in a war was besides the point. Anyway, we sure didn't want to find out!
That's not a sensible playbook to be running this time around, if that's really what's going on. Too much has changed.
Maybe the Don's doing something tricky on "our" behalf here somehow, but I find this nomination difficult to interpret except as another betrayal of the voting constituency who wants reform.
"I recall that the conventional wisdom was that Reagan defeated the USSR by outspending them"
Reagan's ambassador to Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, a wise old owl who was at the table, rejects this conventional wisdom. He says that it was Russian democrats who brought down the Communist regime. And that crediting the accomplishment to US military outspending shamed the accomplishment of Russian democrats. "Stolen valor" - to borrow a phrase. But McFaul and politicians were uninterested in Matlock's views.
I view a lot of these as feel good moves. There's another angle. They could be ploys to Congress: Hey, you say these guys are unacceptable? Gimme a list of alternatives that matches up with some of my alternatives--we'll work together. I'm probably wrong about that.
The most charitable narrative I can come up with is that these are decoy nominations: planned fails that will be replaced later, when their failures become obvious. He did a lot of serial firing the first time around.
When JFK became president 97% of the NYSE value was US. Now, US value is around 50%. This is why the rich continue to get richer at the expense of the US population. We talk sanctions instead of tariffs because we can sanction companies and individuals but tariffs attack everyone; a sanction can target a chinese company and protect Apple in China, a tariff will hit both. We have allowed the Chinese to expand because much of that expansion has benefited American billionaires, investment funds and corporations, all at the expense of the american worker. Chinese expansion into South America is well known to the billionaire backers of both parties. Only a reset of major proportions that destroys the foundational wealth of the elites will work. War or BRICS, unless, of course, AIPAC infiltrates BRICS.
I’m with you on Roger’s, my Michigan roots run deep so I was disappointed in his pick as senate candidate. But better him than the pretend CIA agent hot dog heiress.
Pete Hegseth was in the military circa 2003-2021. He saw first-hand the pointlessness of the forever wars: the cost to his brothers in arms; the lack of benefits for the conflict sites; and the waste of money. He essentially told Shawn Ryan that the US Defense is for defense of the US. It lines up pretty well with your Monroe Doctrine positation (just made that word up as a noun from "posit").
I also think that the NSC as a whole will align more with Hegseth than Rubio.
Trump may be smart in the business world, but not in the political world. I have read this nonsense of him playing for dimensional chess for several years and I don’t buy it for a minute. I will say that Trump is a phenomenal salesman and retail politician, but translating that into coherent policy is another matter.
I frankly have not been impressed with the people he has chosen for the cabinet and leadership positions, except for Tulsi, Gabbard, and Bob Kennedy. You have so well pointed out we have an extremely pro Israel cabinet and policy group. Most all of the choices are to a great degree pro war which translates into pro Israel, and pro Ukraine. They are both losing propositions for us.
We are ignoring the most important problems that we have which are fiscal and economic. if Trump doesn’t confront the problems of the debt, deficit, and out of control spending then it’s over for us.
We can no longer afford these opened, ended proxy wars, and yet that looks exactly like what we’re going to continue to do. We are already spending over $1 trillion on the military and I suspect Trump would like to spend more. He has chosen for his defense, secretary, a person, regardless of his war background., someone who has absolutely no executive or managerial experience running any kind of company. So in essence you’re going to make a war veteran who never ran anything larger than an army company to run $1 trillion organization that he hopes to reform. The pentagon is an incredible maze of bureaucracy. It would take someone who has run a very large organization to understand how all of the pieces work and what can be done. I had into this the fact that this fellow is very pro war so there is just no telling what catastrophe we might get into.
Trump is not ignoring our fiscal and economic problems. Javier Millei was at Mar-A-Lago this week explaining how the Argentinian government was able to reduce government spending to less than government tax collection. It involed a motosierro (literally a rough motor, a chain saw).
Must apparently reduced headcount at Twitter by 80%. Ramaswamy has a plan for reducing regulations and then the bureaucrats responsible for them. This will be the most visible area of change in the new administration, I think.
Hegseth will not be alone in reducing the DoD. It will be him in concert with DOGE. No guarantees of success, but I expect them to try.
If Hegseth is actually appointed, and isn't just a head-fake like many are saying about Gaetz, then how do you expect him to "reduce" the DoD given all his hawkish rhetoric, his complete inexperience as an executive, and the administration's "Peace through strength" line?
How about we stop building aircraft carriers in the future as their effectiveness is now extremely limited. Take 50% of an $13 billion dollar carrier and devote it to R & D on new stealth drone assets or similar. Further, actions on the books from past administrations will be up for review.
Well, if you look at what they actually promised us, it's just another giant boondoggle. Technically infeasible and very expensive response to an imaginary threat. Reagan's "Star Wars" nonsense with an Israeli flag on it. More pork-barrel handouts to the same handful of very profitable and influential defense contractors is what I expect, in exchange for very little. DoD has always failed every audit.
The US Military is about to go through a massive culture change, with lots of changes of leadership, and while this re-organization is going on, I don't expect any new wars. It's like the huge pivot to China that has been talked about forever by multiple Administrations, end result is not much change. The huge issue is the ability to make things to support the US Military, which has just not there. Ukraine has shown the weakness, and the cupboard is bare. My gut feeling is there is a huge shortage of anti missiles in the US, and they are manufactured more on a boutique, almost hand made process. Not a mass production process. Ukraine and Israel for the foreseeable future are going to be huge drags on US and European production.
But here's the thing. The financial corruption IS a major part of the whole culture and has been for decades. It's great to get rid of Woke on general principle, but that just takes us back, like, what? Ten years? We're left with a non-Woke culture of corruption and much closer to monetary default. Hegseth is totally unqualified to get at the financial corruption. Musk and Vivek will be stonewalled at every step--by the department and by the congressional committees. They'll need all the help they can get, and that would include a competent manager as SecDef. Anything Musk has done in the past pales in comparison to trying to get a handle on the corruption of the MIC--and he only gets a few years.
Yeah, maybe. There is a difference between being pro-war and having a strong military. Trump wants a strong military because it strengthens his negotiating position. Russia operates this way: Strong military but not pro-war, and in support of their negotiating position.
Not to your tastes or mine... but let's not kid ourselves. When the Don picks (more or less) an entire cabinet full swamp critters, that's not a mistake. It just means his interests are not aligned with ours.
We have it firsthand that Rogers would be a very bad pick. It would say a lot about what kind of change we can look forward to. Centering the FBI was central to the agenda that
Trump outlined right after the election (of going after the Deep State). We'll see if it is kabuki or for real.
Shadow Brokers, the famous hacker, eagerly voted for Trump in 2016 but early on felt he got the opposite of what he voted for. In his April 8, 2017 letter, "Don't forget your base," he uses a deliberately fake speaking style. At the end of the letter he says that to express his protest he's releasing NSA passwords. The passwords were authenticated by Edward Snowden.....https://medium.com/@shadowbrokerss/dont-forget-your-base-867d304a94b1....(includes profanity)
Influential Russian geo-strategist Karaganov
-We must break the will of the crazy Europeans to want war against us. They have already started 2 world wars. That's enough, we don't need a third one.
-Conquer Europe? Our priority is the development of Siberia, which is worth 10 times as much as Europe, why on earth would we want Europe there?
-The USA has made enough profit from the war, they have robbed Europe too. They don't want to risk a nuclear war and are therefore withdrawing.
-We have freed the world from the yoke of the Western hegemon, which plundered the world for five centuries. countries in the Global South now finally have the opportunity to flourish.
-A new world order is emerging. Eurosasia is becoming immensely important with Russia, China and India as the new pillars for a more stable world. In addition, other states in Euro-Asia will gain immense importance: Turkey, Iran and the Arab states.
The whole video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CHfZ7TLvMxk
China is most concerned about: China and retrieving and revitalizing their civilization. All of the West’s talk about China is based on a lack of understanding about how China views itself, what it sees its aspirations as and how it intends to get there: not about defeating the US/West, but about harnessing Digital technology to propel it forward. It is far more advanced in this than we realize.
Something else that concerns China: the current state of the US and decline. China is not prepared to take over responsibilities that the US has taken for itself globally. The decline of the US makes the world in various ways more unstable and uncertain. This troubles China (and others) greatly and is adjusting accordingly.
Reset yesterday/right now: absolutely. The world has been shifting into a new paradigm since, let’s say 2000. So what is the hold up? Why virtually no talk and move to change before now?
Think of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which was not really about science per se.
Things fall apart when the paradigms can no longer answer the basic or advanced questions. The assumptions no longer hold. In the West we now question everything that Physics - the dominant science - taught us in the 20th century. Not Biology, Physics. Why? How is this relevant? As you, Mark, have noted for years, Modernity became about the secularism, or, the separation of Theology and Philosophy from “Science.” Science became reduced to attempts at math. Physics became the only bucket looked at and funded in serious ways to explain the “universe.” Not humanity, the universe, that which was reduced to being not about biology or the human.
The context of life, the human, was removed, at least attempted. This permeated all of the “social sciences.” Particularly anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Humans were reduced to how to how to control them and make them into something that could be predictable: statistics.
Yes, we need a new Geopolitics! So where do we look? Think Leibniz, and how he was rejected by the moderns. Monads. The basis of biology/humans/everything. This is all going to come back. But it’s not here yet. Nit even close. More people on YouTube and Substack “dissenting” or questioning the sciences in toto, but not much about the causes of our “troubles.” But it’s a start.
We lost the context: humans. Think of the Political Scientist Aristotle: starts with a soul and what it does. What causes its environment? (All those inner senses going all the time). Build from that.
Where do we look to begin the “reset?”
Prediction: we are going to look hard at the what came before the Moderns: Scribal Medieval. We are also going to look to the East and what they have been and are doing regarding “morality” and governance.
What is the cause of our current troubles? The old Globalist Paradigm, driven by Television tech, collapsed. The Digital Paradigm killed it. We were not paying attention. We kept fighting over the old. Thus today. It’s a Digital world and we are very behind, particularly the East.
Trump makes sense in a significant way: we see it’s broken and we see that some are willing to die and take us with them trying to fix it, so, let’s really destroy “it,” and in the destruction we will figure out a way forward. It’s a strategy. But it’s not a plan. “Again” and “common sense” only work within a context that no longer exists.
Destruction is an interesting word. It implies, I think, what comes out of it…”re…” How about “reintegration?” of humans/soul? That’s the context that then leads to “reset.”
Does Trump go down as the destroyer of the sciences? Hard and human? Can he avoid war (internal/external/psychological/kinetic) without knowing what we need to avoid and what Digital brings with it?
He talks a lot about humans. That is a break with the past. What comes next? Destruction of how we have been thinking about the world AND young people pressing for new hard and human sciences, based on concerns about the humans (not physics or the current social sciences). There is no consensus other than that we need all new and that the current institutions (meaning the people in/from them) cannot do it.
Who are those outside of the institutions that ask different questions, or better, same questions but demand different answers? Short answer is that Trump does not know who these people are and they would never be approved of.
There needs to be organizing forces/groups to help get smart and concerned people together to think the Digital Paradigm through, and then make plans, lest we be run over by it.
See: The Center for the Study of Digital Life
Yeah, I can buy most of that.
Rand appends a video of Rogers ripping Trump during the campaign.
Rand Paul @RandPaul
Donald Trump just endorsed the worst Deep State candidate this cycle.
@MikeRogersForMI is a never Trumper, and a card carrying member of the spy state that seeks to destroy Trump.
***You have to ask yourself who gives Trump this awful advice?
Who’s next, John Bolton?***
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/11/15/reports-of-former-hpsci-chairman-mike-rogers-being-discussed-for-fbi-director-mar-a-lago-interview/
Wasn't there an Admiral Rogers who behaved honorably in the whole FISA thing? Any chance that's the Rogers being mentioned?
Yes no. There was Admiral Mike Rogers who was the head of NSA and who told Trump that his campaign/transition was being bugged. That's when Trump moved his HQ to one of his golf clubs--Bedminster in NJ. Not the guy.
If I'm not mistaken, ADM Mike Rogers signed an anti-Trump letter in October.
Sundance: There is three Mike Rogers, the one being discussed is the former Chair of the HPSCI, the Mike Rogers who protected Hillary Clinton.
It's not my intent to sell Musk short. Obviously,
1. he's a very quick study, and
2. he has had a lot of experience with the Deep State.
Still, while that's a big help, rooting out the corruption of the MIC that goes back something like 75 years and is intertwined with Congress, private corps, the whole structure of purchasing processes, etc. He'll need help to come to grips with deeply entrenched corruption, and some of Trump's appointments--especially Hegseth--will be no help at all.
Having Musk around has already served multiple purposes for right of center Americans, eg, on the ground in Pennsylvania and speaking to Iran rep. Just about anything good Musk is able to do can come under the job description of rooting out corruption. Musk has said his motivation for backing Trump is that US can't survive as a one-party country, ie democrats, as it now stands with democrat control of everything. Elon has interests but everyone knows he can never be US president. The Republican Party has long ago ceased to be a functioning one which in 2024 turned out to be a good thing because Musk, young, energetic, and capable of speaking to crowds, noticed this and decided to jump in and try to level the playing field. During 2012 Romney campaign for pres., (granted he was a poor candidate and per son Tagg didn't want to be pres.), he had little support from the Republican Party. In Florida, Romney had 200 staff on the ground to Obama's 770. Romney total for the whole country was only 500 to Obama's 3000. In Ohio, Obama had 123 offices, Romney had 40. Obama had 59 offices in Colorado to Romney's 15. "Indeed, in swing state after swing state, the Obama field team was much bigger than the Romney troops."...per Boston Globe, 12/22/2012, "The story behind Mitt Romney’s loss in the presidential campaign to President Obama," Michael Kranish...https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2012/12/22/the-story-behind-mitt-romneys-loss-in-the-presidential-campaign-to-president-obama/...At Trump's Madison Square Garden rally, Musk (who was cheered by the crowd) was one of the few speakers to stick to the suggested time limit.
What if Hegseth is just a very loyal pretty face, and expected to take direction from some heavier aides behind the scenes?
What if his appointment is withdrawn? New post.
Hopefully not
If memory serves, 2016 Trump Campaign co-chair, Sam Clovis, may have hired Mike Rogers as a campaign advisor. When things got messy later on with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos some people thought that Clovis was a Deep State plant in the Trump campaign. (Ok, I was one who thought that.)
Some people also thought that Mike Rogers might have been a plant as well. But he quickly disappeared from sight and any connection he might have had with the 2016 Trump Campaign seems to have been thoroughly scrubbed from the record.
In any event if I were Trump I would stay far far away from anybody who was associated with Carter Page, Sam Clovis or George Papadopoulos in 2016.
Yes, it does seem to have been scrubbed. I had read that he was doing security vetting for the campaign. Once again, however, I think you're on the wrong track. What you should be looking at is the hiring of Paul Manafort, who had had one (or possibly more) FISAs on him already. His supposed Russian ties became a big deal and led to his firing. Manafort was the big fish.
Not mutually exclusive.
Go back to the Steele dossier. Manafort was portrayed as directing the Russia connection. Page was the courier. It's entirely possible that somebody placed Page and George in the campaign, but they were not put their as spies. They were put there because their travels/contacts provided verisimilitude. That's why Steele had to make shit up about Page in Moscow or in Prague. Manafort was the guy with documented contacts--because they had--or had had--one or more FISAs on him and he had worked on Russian/Ukrainian campaigns. Something neither George nor Page had done.
The target was Manafort because he was the guy with direct contact with Trump and the total operation of the campaign. Page and George were completely peripheral. Patsies who didn't know they were being used.
https://original.antiwar.com/david_stockman/2024/11/14/trumps-hegseth-caper-and-the-delusion-of-peace-through-strength/
Trump’s Hegseth Caper and the Delusion of ‘Peace Through Strength’
here is the Donald’s rationale for selecting a guy to run the $1 trillion/2.9 million employee Pentagon who has never managed anything bigger than a household of three successive wives and the accumulation of seven kids:
“Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy… Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country… With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down.
What unmitigated breast-beating rubbish!
For crying out loud, the last thing America needs is another Warrior for the Troops. Instead, what it really needs is a Fearless Slayer of the sacred cows and obese pigs of the military/industrial complex who gorge themselves at the Pentagon’s trough.
...
... America’s existentially threatening runaway public debt.
That figure was $1 trillion when Ronald Reagan took office; $19 trillion by the time the Donald stumbled into the White House; stands at $36 trillion today; will top $60 trillion by the end of the next decade based on current built-in spending and borrowing; would exceed $70 trillion by the same point (2034) under the sweeping tax cuts and spending increases already proposed by the Donald; and will hit $150 trillion by mid-century under the CBO’s latest Rosy Scenario outlook.
Yet the Donald chooses to appoint to the single most crucial fiscal job in the entire Federal government a flag-waving champion of military glory.
I'm getting the distinct opinion you don't agree with Hegseth as Sec DoD.
Our days of living high on the hog appear to be coming to an end.
I recall that the conventional wisdom was that Reagan defeated the USSR by outspending them. Their economy couldn't keep up with ours in the arms race. As a corollary, whether any of that built-up materiel would be actually effective in a war was besides the point. Anyway, we sure didn't want to find out!
That's not a sensible playbook to be running this time around, if that's really what's going on. Too much has changed.
Maybe the Don's doing something tricky on "our" behalf here somehow, but I find this nomination difficult to interpret except as another betrayal of the voting constituency who wants reform.
"I recall that the conventional wisdom was that Reagan defeated the USSR by outspending them"
Reagan's ambassador to Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, a wise old owl who was at the table, rejects this conventional wisdom. He says that it was Russian democrats who brought down the Communist regime. And that crediting the accomplishment to US military outspending shamed the accomplishment of Russian democrats. "Stolen valor" - to borrow a phrase. But McFaul and politicians were uninterested in Matlock's views.
I view a lot of these as feel good moves. There's another angle. They could be ploys to Congress: Hey, you say these guys are unacceptable? Gimme a list of alternatives that matches up with some of my alternatives--we'll work together. I'm probably wrong about that.
The most charitable narrative I can come up with is that these are decoy nominations: planned fails that will be replaced later, when their failures become obvious. He did a lot of serial firing the first time around.
100% agree on Rogers.
The Latin America map image and the news about Rogers as possible for FBI, IS very disconcerting.
I want to know such things, but... : ( I will pray that Rogers does not come to be.
When JFK became president 97% of the NYSE value was US. Now, US value is around 50%. This is why the rich continue to get richer at the expense of the US population. We talk sanctions instead of tariffs because we can sanction companies and individuals but tariffs attack everyone; a sanction can target a chinese company and protect Apple in China, a tariff will hit both. We have allowed the Chinese to expand because much of that expansion has benefited American billionaires, investment funds and corporations, all at the expense of the american worker. Chinese expansion into South America is well known to the billionaire backers of both parties. Only a reset of major proportions that destroys the foundational wealth of the elites will work. War or BRICS, unless, of course, AIPAC infiltrates BRICS.
I’m with you on Roger’s, my Michigan roots run deep so I was disappointed in his pick as senate candidate. But better him than the pretend CIA agent hot dog heiress.
Pete Hegseth was in the military circa 2003-2021. He saw first-hand the pointlessness of the forever wars: the cost to his brothers in arms; the lack of benefits for the conflict sites; and the waste of money. He essentially told Shawn Ryan that the US Defense is for defense of the US. It lines up pretty well with your Monroe Doctrine positation (just made that word up as a noun from "posit").
I also think that the NSC as a whole will align more with Hegseth than Rubio.
He also publicly stated that he hopes the Third Temple will be built. Make what you want out of it but it’s hardly a non-interventionist position.
Hegseth and Gabbard versus Waltz and Rubio?
Trump may be smart in the business world, but not in the political world. I have read this nonsense of him playing for dimensional chess for several years and I don’t buy it for a minute. I will say that Trump is a phenomenal salesman and retail politician, but translating that into coherent policy is another matter.
I frankly have not been impressed with the people he has chosen for the cabinet and leadership positions, except for Tulsi, Gabbard, and Bob Kennedy. You have so well pointed out we have an extremely pro Israel cabinet and policy group. Most all of the choices are to a great degree pro war which translates into pro Israel, and pro Ukraine. They are both losing propositions for us.
We are ignoring the most important problems that we have which are fiscal and economic. if Trump doesn’t confront the problems of the debt, deficit, and out of control spending then it’s over for us.
We can no longer afford these opened, ended proxy wars, and yet that looks exactly like what we’re going to continue to do. We are already spending over $1 trillion on the military and I suspect Trump would like to spend more. He has chosen for his defense, secretary, a person, regardless of his war background., someone who has absolutely no executive or managerial experience running any kind of company. So in essence you’re going to make a war veteran who never ran anything larger than an army company to run $1 trillion organization that he hopes to reform. The pentagon is an incredible maze of bureaucracy. It would take someone who has run a very large organization to understand how all of the pieces work and what can be done. I had into this the fact that this fellow is very pro war so there is just no telling what catastrophe we might get into.
Trump is not ignoring our fiscal and economic problems. Javier Millei was at Mar-A-Lago this week explaining how the Argentinian government was able to reduce government spending to less than government tax collection. It involed a motosierro (literally a rough motor, a chain saw).
Must apparently reduced headcount at Twitter by 80%. Ramaswamy has a plan for reducing regulations and then the bureaucrats responsible for them. This will be the most visible area of change in the new administration, I think.
Hegseth will not be alone in reducing the DoD. It will be him in concert with DOGE. No guarantees of success, but I expect them to try.
If Hegseth is actually appointed, and isn't just a head-fake like many are saying about Gaetz, then how do you expect him to "reduce" the DoD given all his hawkish rhetoric, his complete inexperience as an executive, and the administration's "Peace through strength" line?
Republicans are not an anti-war party. I refer you to this document, especially agenda items 8 and 12. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2024-republican-party-platform
How about we stop building aircraft carriers in the future as their effectiveness is now extremely limited. Take 50% of an $13 billion dollar carrier and devote it to R & D on new stealth drone assets or similar. Further, actions on the books from past administrations will be up for review.
Well, if you look at what they actually promised us, it's just another giant boondoggle. Technically infeasible and very expensive response to an imaginary threat. Reagan's "Star Wars" nonsense with an Israeli flag on it. More pork-barrel handouts to the same handful of very profitable and influential defense contractors is what I expect, in exchange for very little. DoD has always failed every audit.
The US Military is about to go through a massive culture change, with lots of changes of leadership, and while this re-organization is going on, I don't expect any new wars. It's like the huge pivot to China that has been talked about forever by multiple Administrations, end result is not much change. The huge issue is the ability to make things to support the US Military, which has just not there. Ukraine has shown the weakness, and the cupboard is bare. My gut feeling is there is a huge shortage of anti missiles in the US, and they are manufactured more on a boutique, almost hand made process. Not a mass production process. Ukraine and Israel for the foreseeable future are going to be huge drags on US and European production.
But here's the thing. The financial corruption IS a major part of the whole culture and has been for decades. It's great to get rid of Woke on general principle, but that just takes us back, like, what? Ten years? We're left with a non-Woke culture of corruption and much closer to monetary default. Hegseth is totally unqualified to get at the financial corruption. Musk and Vivek will be stonewalled at every step--by the department and by the congressional committees. They'll need all the help they can get, and that would include a competent manager as SecDef. Anything Musk has done in the past pales in comparison to trying to get a handle on the corruption of the MIC--and he only gets a few years.
Instead of Hegseth, Trump might have picked someone with qualifications similar to Belousov.
and missiles that leverage raw materials sourced outside the US.
Yeah, maybe. There is a difference between being pro-war and having a strong military. Trump wants a strong military because it strengthens his negotiating position. Russia operates this way: Strong military but not pro-war, and in support of their negotiating position.
Not to your tastes or mine... but let's not kid ourselves. When the Don picks (more or less) an entire cabinet full swamp critters, that's not a mistake. It just means his interests are not aligned with ours.
He's a politician. Politicians lie. Do the math!
We have it firsthand that Rogers would be a very bad pick. It would say a lot about what kind of change we can look forward to. Centering the FBI was central to the agenda that
Trump outlined right after the election (of going after the Deep State). We'll see if it is kabuki or for real.
He said all that the first time too. When will you finally stop making excuses for the guy and hold him accountable?
Shadow Brokers, the famous hacker, eagerly voted for Trump in 2016 but early on felt he got the opposite of what he voted for. In his April 8, 2017 letter, "Don't forget your base," he uses a deliberately fake speaking style. At the end of the letter he says that to express his protest he's releasing NSA passwords. The passwords were authenticated by Edward Snowden.....https://medium.com/@shadowbrokerss/dont-forget-your-base-867d304a94b1....(includes profanity)
I will and so will others. The natives are restless.