Interaction with family on FB messenger:
“Check this out [______]. I think you're confused. Like many. Me as well probably (I don't know everything that's for sure).
But, America only gave businesses rights as that of a person in 1908 or so. America became the superpower of the world after World War 2.
Then can look up neoliberalism and how multi-national corporations and World Banks/International banks lend money to developing countries. Free trade deals etc.
Then the anti-environmental, anti-science, anti-education movement started after the late 60's, early 70's, after Nixon passed a lot of our big environmental laws we rely on today (Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, NEPA, etc.). This created a backlash and led to corporate politicizing and organizing to influence government and the public at large via marketing etc. And then came about thousands of lobbyists to DC as companies saw the benefit in influencing government.”
Later: “They use Facebook, etc. and people, and famous people who advance their agenda. Sow confusion and doubt. Divide and conquer. Trump and all Republicans and most Democrats (whether knowingly or not), 2 party system...meh, always limiting people's narratives and perspectives. Picking one side or the other while Free trade deals etc. are the big deal and the Fed. printing all kinds of money etc. etc. Endless war and defense spending of crazy amounts. There are reasons....global economic warfare. Against China etc. Control. Power. Status quo. But yeah.....IDK it's okay. Just have to try to do good in our lives and mostly worry about ourselves I think.”
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Amazon Books and some interesting information:
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Biography
Peter is a CPA, former candidate for the NYS Senate, and former collegiate baseball player. As a freshman in college, Peter experienced a transformation after reading Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Seeing that he was a prisoner of ignorance he developed an insatiable desire for knowledge and self improvement. This desire ultimately led him to run for the NYS Senate in 2016. While campaigning, he came face to face with America's greatest enemies: ignorant Americans who have no sense of civic duty. We The People Are The Problem, addresses how this civic virus can be overcome.
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Emory Corporate Governance and Accountability Review
Thick as Thieves? Big Pharma Wields its Power with the Help of Government Regulation †
Leslie E. Sekerka, Lauren Benishek ∗
Introduction
Americans are barraged by an endless flow of ads that claim to remedy medical maladies with prescribed drugs. The commercials depict productive and happy lives, with suggestive associations that human flourishing can be achieved via pharmaceutical intervention. The appeals are accompanied by an exhaustive inventory of potentially negative life-altering side effects. As ads end with this depiction of relational bliss through drug use, viewers hear a fast-paced listing of monotone non-segmented disclaimers, which can range from modest impacts (e.g., slight weight gain) to very serious implications (e.g., suicidal ideations). Research suggests that hearing about the risks of use may increase consumers’ trust in the advertising. 1 Sufferers may also conclude that stronger means better (i.e., helping them more effectively manage their condition). 2 Patients may prefer a name-brand drug because the medicine may have a higher perceived quality due to advertising and promotional activities. 3 American consumers are enculturated to reinforce their desire for convenience and accessibility, while also wanting their pains to go away. Moreover, they expect to view ads that compel them to want novel products or new applications. When it comes to health, consumers tend to mitigate the risk of taking drugs. 4 Cognitive dissonance fuels a process of rationalizing side effects as part of the cost of wellbeing. 5
Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising (DTCPA) refers to any promotional effort by a pharmaceutical company to present pharmaceutical drug information to the public in the lay media. 6 Drug companies claim the ads are designed to educate patients, encourage doctor-patient dialogue, and move people to take more responsibility for their healthcare. 7 Opponents suggest that this type of marketing tends to normalize obscure disorders, encourages people to believe they suffer from certain dysfunctions, and prompts framing uncommon diseases in a normal light. 8 When pharmaceutical firms get U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval for a new product, under the auspices of health communication, the government enables them to market the drug and create demand where none previously existed.
Table 1. Top U.S. Drug Advertisement Expenditures (2016) 9
Drug/Maker
Advertisement
(in USD millions)
Purpose
Humira/AbbVie
$439
Anti-inflammatory
Lyrica/Pfizer
$392
Nerve pain management
Eliquis/Bristol-Myers Squibb
$296
Blood thinner
Xeljanz/Pfizer
$258
Anti-inflammatory
Opdivo/Bristol-Myers Squibb
$168
Cancer treatment
Chantix/Pfizer
$151
Smoking cessation
Cialis/Lilly
$150
Erectile dysfunction
Trulicity/Lilly
$142
Increase glucose (diabetes)
Prevnar/Pfizer
$142
Pneumonia vaccine
The pharmaceutical industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually to market its products. Direct-to-consumer prescription ads are the second-fastest growing ad category, competing with other top marketers stemming from automotive, fast food, insurance, and cable/wireless providers. 10, 11 Ad spending for television by pharmaceutical companies has more than doubled in the last four years, representing a 65% increase in this genre since 2012. It is currently the seventh largest ad category in the U.S., investing $6.4 billion in 2016. 12
Table 1 offers examples of top U.S. drug advertisement expenditures in 2016. 13 Yet, greater ad spending does not necessarily correlate with product effectiveness. One of the most advertised drugs in 2016, Jublia (a toe fungus treatment), 14 costs about $600 a bottle but is reported to work in fewer than 20% of users. 15
In 2016, 80 prescription drug advertisements were televised every hour, totaling 1,920 drug ads directed at American viewers per day. 16 Television networks—ABC, CBS, NBC—along with cable channels like CNN draw millions of dollars from pharmaceutical advertising, approximately 8% of their ad revenue. 17 Given U.S. viewers watch about five hours of television daily, 18 many citizens are likely to spend more time listening to pharmaceutical advertisements than talking with their physician (typically 15 minutes per visit, four times a year). 19, 20, 21
All this advertising can increase the cost of prescription drugs. 22 Ironically, these ads actually serve as tax deductions for pharmaceutical firms. 23 Legislation to eliminate this deduction is currently being debated in the U.S. Congress but powerful lobby groups backed by the industry are challenging these reforms with tenacious veracity. 24 To better understand the interconnections between the U.S. government and the pharmaceutical industry, it is important to explain the industry’s historical context. From there, issues can be discussed and ideas for systemic change considered.
I. The Genesis of Big Pharma
To understand what drives these ads, it is necessary to examine the trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry known as Big Pharma. Big Pharma is the name ascribed to a consortium of the world’s largest drug companies. The term is applied to the vast and influential pharmaceutical industry and its trade group in the U.S., known as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). Given the astronomical amount of money made in the global prescription drug business, the industry has inordinate power and influence over consumers’ lives. It is no surprise, then, that Big Pharma is the subject of heated debate amongst many stakeholder groups. 25
Drug companies like Merck, Eli Lilly, and Roche; and chemical firms like Bayer, ICI, Pfizer, and Sandoz, have been in business for more than 100 years, going back to a time when most medicines were sold without prescriptions and roughly half were provided by local druggists. The period between 1918 and 1939 was marked by the discovery and modest production of penicillin and insulin. 26 As demand for analgesics and antibiotics escalated during World War II, a government-supported international collaboration, including Merck, Pfizer, Squibb, and Lilly, sought to mass produce penicillin. 27 The unprecedented success of this effort signaled a new direction for drug development involving collaboration between companies and the government, forecasting the advent of the modern pharma industry.
The implementation of state healthcare systems in the post-war period created a more stable market for prescribing and reimbursement processes. For example, in 1957 the UK established a pricing scheme that enabled reasonable investment returns and incentivized commercial investment in the research and manufacture of new products. 28 In the ensuing years, consumers benefited from the introduction of over-the-counter products like acetaminophen and ibuprofen, complemented by completely new classes of pharmaceuticals such as oral contraceptives, betablockers, ACE inhibitors, benzodiazepines, and a range of cancer treatments. 29
Between 1980–2000, drug development was largely in the hands of multinationals, prompting the creation of “blockbuster drugs.” These chemical compounds were designed to become consumer staples as treatments for common, chronic ailments. For example, the ulcer medication Tagamet quickly reached $1 billion in sales, followed by a succession of other blockbusters like Eli Lilly’s Prozac (the first serotonin reuptake inhibitor) and Astra’s Omeprazole (the first proton pump inhibitor). Pfizer’s cholesterol drug Lipitor became the best-selling drug of all time, with $125 billion in sales over 15 years. Pharmaceuticals strategically promote products expected to become the most profitable. For example, in 2011 Boehringer Ingelheim spent $464 million advertising its blood thinner Pradaxa. The investment appears to have paid off: the drug passed the $1 billion sales mark the following year.
Today, prescription drugs are a massive market. Americans spent $325 billion in 2015 (equating to 1.8% of GDP and 10% of total national health expenditures) on retail prescriptions alone (not including drugs administered directly by healthcare providers). 30 Critics are concerned that pharmaceutical firms are driven more by financial self-interest than by their espoused values to serve society. Given today’s legal environment, this industry is expected to reach $5.7 trillion by 2026, representing a 5/5% growth rate per year (2017-2026). 31 Pharmaceuticals have an especially robust duty to society because they have the power to contribute to or deny the ability to live a healthy life.
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NOVEMBER 13, 2017
Trump Completes Big Pharma’s Takeover of America’s Health Care With Nomination of Alex Azar to Head HHS
Nov. 13, 2017
Statements of Public Citizen Experts
Note: President Donald Trump today has nominated Alex Azar to be the next U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Azar served for five years as president of Lilly USA, LLC, the largest affiliate of global biopharmaceutical leader Eli Lilly and Company.
Just weeks after denouncing “out-of-control” prescription prices, President Donald Trump shows he doesn’t mean it by nominating a former pharmaceutical company executive to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. If Alex Azar’s nomination is confirmed, then Big Pharma’s coup d’etat in the health care sphere will be virtually complete.
In his public statements, Alex Azar has made clear that he is opposed to measures to restrain prescription companies’ profiteering and limit improper marketing, while favoring weaker safety approval standards.
Americans understand, passionately, that price gouging leads to rationing of care. It is unethical and must end. Even President Trump says so. But it is highly unlikely that a pharmaceutical company executive who has made passionate arguments against price restraints is going to advance real reform. Much more likely is that he serves as the instrument by which Big Pharma aims to defend its monopolies and unaffordable prices.
The swamp only gets worse. Tom Price supported Big Pharma in the U.S. Congress. Now apparently Trump has decided to cut out the middleman and let a pharmaceutical executive literally run the federal department that protects the health of all Americans.
–Robert Weissman, president, Public Citizen
As Tweeter-in-Chief, Trump tells us Azar will be a ‘star’ who will lower prescription prices. Maybe he should have asked the six million diabetic Americans whose insulin prices have more than tripled under Azar’s watch at Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly is notorious for spiking prices of this century-old isolated hormone. During Azar’s tenure as president and vice president, Eli Lilly raised the price of Humalog by 345 percent from $2,657.88 per year to $9,172.80 per year.
–Peter Maybarduk, director, Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program
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From Amazon.com
Fauci: The Bernie Madoff of Science and the HIV Ponzi Scheme that Concealed the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Kindle Edition
by Charles Ortleb (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
From the Author
This little book is a chapter from The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up Volume Two. First of all I want to thank Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the author of the forthcoming biography of Anthony Fauci, Teflon Tony: Big Pharma's Coup against Democracy, for bringing the world's attention to this book on Instagram. A detailed discussion of all the factors and characters that played a major role in the tragic mishandling of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and HHV-6 pandemics can be found in the two volumes of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Cover-up which are available as separate volumes or in one combined book. This Fauci chapter is also available in Fauci Versus Duesberg, a little book that explores the courageous attempts of a brilliant scientist to challenge the science of Anthony Fauci. This chapter is also available in Apocalypse Then and Now, a collection of all of the author's writing and reporting to date. When science is good it is very good. The picture most people have of science is one of objectivity, integrity, good faith, and miracles. People of noble character use time-honored experimental procedures to give us a truthful picture of the reality we find ourselves situated in. But there is another side of science, a dark side. On that side of science there is prejudice, deception, and outright fraud. This little book is about that dark side.My journey into the dark side of science began in 1981 when I was the publisher of a newspaper called New York Native. I inadvertently published the first article about the AIDS epidemic. Subsequently, I devoted my newspaper to the coverage of AIDS, which evolved into to equally groundbreaking coverage of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. My history of New York Native is contained in The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up. Randy Shilts praise my newspaper's early coverage of AIDS in And the Band Played On. In Rolling Stone, David Black said New York Native deserved a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of AIDS. New York Native is mentioned in Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart. In the first part of the AIDS epidemic, my role was that of publisher, editor, and journalist. But given the long, unrelenting nature of the epidemic, I have found myself evolving into a historian and political philosopher of the science and culture of the epidemic. Those roles are reflected in my many books on the subject which include journalism, history, political philosophy, fiction, plays, and even poetry. I have looked at our dark times from a number of different angles and have used a variety of means to try and communicate the criminal nature of the tragedy. As a historian, I have tried to identify the elements that have come together to form the perfect public health storm and the perfect biomedical crime. As an involuntarily-drafted political philosopher, I have been forced to peer behind the veil of science and public health propaganda to analyze the values and structures that are the foundation of the political and medical dystopia that we are still living in today. My decades of coverage of HHV-6 was vindicated when the University of Wurzburg issued this statement in 2018: "While HHV-6 was long believed to have no negative impact on human health, scientists today increasingly suspect the virus of causing various diseases such as multiple sclerosis or chronic fatigue syndrome. Recent studies even suggest that HHV-6 might play a role in the pathogenesis of several diseases of the central nervous system such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression or Alzheimer's."
About the Author
No journalist has written more books that sounded the alarm about the intertwined nature of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, AIDS, and HHV-6 epidemics than Charles Ortleb. A thorough understanding of these epidemics must begin with the reading of Ortleb's unique books. Four decades of writing and thinking about what can only be called a political and biomedical cover-up have turned Ortleb into one of the most important political philosophers of science and writers of his time. His uncompromising work has made him the George Orwell and Hannah Arendt of his generation. As a publisher, editor, and author, Charles Ortleb has been warning the world that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a contagious pandemic caused by a virus that can trigger a spectrum of illnesses and that it can be both chronic and fatal. Ortleb has insisted that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is at the center of a public health crisis that still has not been recognized by the scientific, medical, and media elite. The deaths of a number of people from complications of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are finally waking the world up to the importance of his work and the wisdom of all of his books. Charles Ortleb was the publisher and editor-in-chief of Christopher Street, New York Native, and Theater Week. At Christopher Street, he was responsible for launching many of our most celebrated writers and artists. At the helm of New York Native, he was the first journalist to take the AIDS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic seriously. In Rolling Stone, David Black said that the New York Native deserved a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of AIDS. The investigative reporting he published by journalists like John Lauritsen and Neenyah Ostrom is still required reading for any historian that wants to know the true story of AIDS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Some Reviews:
Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2020
Chuck Ortleb is one of the gay liberation movement's unsung heroes, and his account of Fauci is only one of many vignettes of the cast of characters Ortleb's "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-Up Vol. 2." I should note that Volume 2 is much better than Volume 1 and of broader interest. It stands on its own. Fauci is one of the most evil mass-murderers of the 20th century - and an even fuller account of his misdeeds can be found in John Lauritsen's "The AIDS War." Ortleb employed Lauritsen at the New York Native and Lauritsen exposed how Fauci's "Protocol 019" lead to the poisoning and death of 200,000 gay men due to pay-to-play propaganda at Burroughs Wellcome. I would recommend Lauritson's book over this mostly because Lauritsen's work deserves to replace Randy Shilts's "And the Band Played On" as the defining chronicle of the Real "AIDS" Epidemic. Readers might be off-put or surprised by Ortleb's HHV-6 hypothesis, and I think he should have pulled back on that assumption for the purposes depicting how evil Fauci really is. For those coming to Fauci only recently - Ortleb has been following the Fauci Fraud for decades, and he really knows what he's talking about. The HHV-6 Hypothesis is not without substantiation - and untangling the AIDS mystery in a sea of propaganda and lies may never come to resolution. For more on Fauci, I would also recommend Kary Mullis's interview with Celia Farber for "Spin Magazine." Fauci is a pathological liar, murder, fraud, and racketeer. His pretense at being a government official is a front for his true nature as a mob boss for organized crime. This becomes clearer in context of the other criminals portrayed by Ortleb in his Vol 2 CFS book. In the context of Fauci's cronies, crooks, and cutthroats, it becomes the entire public health establishment of which Fauci is the public face is rotten to the core.
Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2020
Calling Doctor Fauci the Bernie Madoff of Science is certainly provocative, but is it well deserved? Back in the 1980s the AIDS epidemic was not going well. Many young gay men were dying. Only one drug AZT appeared to be a potential cure. The government clinical trials were moving too slowly to help those afflicted. Anthony Fauci, head of the Institute for Alergies and Infectious Diseases was the face of the government holding up the approval of AZT. You get the picture. Michael Specter does a much better and more balanced treatment of Fauci's involvement with the AIDS battle, which presents a much better outcome than Ortleb provides.
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Me: Brings up a good point and question: how does the government have more leverage over corporations, banks, the fed, international banks, international corporations - If they have no leverage - 28 Trillion in debt?
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This was actually an older post waiting to be published*
Update 5/17/2021: Googled John Lauritsen (from above). Reading a couple of his articles on his site, are interesting! I agree with much of what he has to say.
Main Page: http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/
Expelled from Boston Atheists for Thought Crime By John Lauritsen http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/BA.HTM
Warning, graphic language!:
Down With LGBTQ!* by John Lauritsen
I agree especially because it is belittling (having very negative psychological effects) to label a human being as their sexual orientation, race, etc (though it's not the end of the world either as they are just labels). Though I also believe people should be free to have sex-change operations if they want but that it should be restricted to people over say, 25 years of age (and in saying that, also wonder if, like the author, if it's really necessary at all and possibly just wrong - just love who you are and what you were born with, except maybe in very special cases). Just my opinion...I also definitely DON'T agree with his AIDS/HIV book/information - believe in science but believe science and the pharmaceutical industry also are businesses and corporate entities.
I also do believe in "Critical Race Theory" as it's called but reject a lot of what is being pushed by the "left" and also the "right".
The book above does sound a bit out there but, looking up HHV-6, it is interesting...just so much information out there and can it really be trusted? Hans Rigelman's review (above) sounds pretty reasonable though in my opinion.
Is good we have freedom of speech still!
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A link from "Expelled from Boton Athiests..."
Why Trump Won: The Foreign Policy Factor
He pledged to put America first – but will he? Can he?
by Justin RaimondoPosted onNovember 11, 2016
The media – and by that I mean a horde of Clinton surrogates masquerading as “journalists” – is in full-bore self-examination mode, strenuously trying to figure out how to “explain” the victory of Donald J. Trump – as if they are doctors who must diagnose the nature and cause of a disease. Congruent with this is the bafflement of the pollsters, whose prognostications the media mandarins depended on to confirm their own biases. Only two or three major pollsters got this one right.
So certain were they that Hillary Clinton was going to be the 45th President of these United States that both New York magazine and Newsweek ran covers proclaiming Her Majesty the winner before the votes were counted: these are now fated to become collectors’ items. And now the anguished cry goes up from the press gallery: How could we have been so wrong?
All sorts of explanations are being bruited about. There’s the America-is-racist-xenophobic-anti-gay mantra of the far left, which is so mired in identity politics that they’re effectively cut off from anything remotely resembling reality. The fact that Trump scored better than Romney in all these demographics – and that Clinton failed to mobilize the minority vote – doesn’t impinge on this narrative. After all, if Trump is really the reincarnation of Hitler-Mussolini, then why did minorities fail to respond to Hillary’s call to arms against the dreaded “alt-right”?
Then there’s the Forgotten Man/Woman trope: poor whites in the “Rust Belt” who feel excluded from the concerns of the Beltway elites rose up in record numbers and voted for their man. Immiserated by what Trump denounced as the “bad deals” of NAFTA, TPP, etc., living in the shadow of deserted factories, and addicted to opiods, these downtrodden semi-rural folks harkened to Trump’s message of economic nationalism and gloried in the promise that he would make them great again – or, at least, not quite so poor.
While there is some truth to this, the attribution of purely economic motives to these voters – in Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, as well as throughout the Midwest and South – is another version of the same condescending attitude that led the media to ignore their plight in the first place. To the Beltway bravo who makes a good salary and never gets his or her hands dirty, the denizens of Flyover Country are merely stomachs only tenuously attached to brains. They are supposedly incapable of having motives unattached to their desire to pay the rent, consume more fast food, and drink themselves to death at the local speakeasy. What these earnest and often learned analyses of Trumpism leave out is that the sons and daughters of the Forgotten Men (and Women) are the War Party’s cannon fodder. What future is there for someone born in one of these half-deserted husks of what used to be America’s industrial heartland? Very often they find a way out by joining the military. And how has our military been engaged in the past fifteen-plus years? They’ve been fighting wars in the Middle East, futile grinding conflicts that have not ended well – and, indeed, have not ended at all.
The one factor conspicuously missing from these expositions on the electorate’s romance with Trump is the attraction of his “America First” foreign policy stance. Indeed, Trump’s view that the US footprint abroad is too large and his vow to make it much smaller is what enraged the Washington, D.C. elites the most about his candidacy: a bevy of GOP foreign policy “experts” sent out at least two “open letters” excoriating Trump for his “isolationism” – the cardinal sin, according to neoconservative orthodoxy. This was the core of the Republican “Never Trump” faction’s complaint. And the Clintonites added their voices to this chorus, gladly welcoming the neoconservatives into their ranks.
Yet the common assumption is that ordinary voters – precisely the sort of voters who turned out for Trump – don’t care about foreign policy, presumably because they’re too parochial and ignorant to even have the faintest inkling of anything that goes on beyond their immediate ken.
This, of course, is one big reason why the media, the pollsters, and the pundits missed the biggest story of the last half century: they just didn’t get that Trump’s campaign against globalism meant a repudiation of America’s role as the world’s policeman – and that Trump’s supporters, after a decade and a half of constant warfare, fully understood and agreed with his “isolationism.”
How many young people, born in the devastated towns and cities of the Rust Belt and the rural Midwest communities where Trumpism triumphed, have come back home from foreign wars minus a leg, an arm, or in a body bag? The media missed this aspect of the election for the simple reason that it isn’t their sons and daughters who go off to fight and die for the hubristic dreams of Beltway policy wonks.
During the GOP presidential primaries, when a smirking John Dickerson asked Trump if he still thought George W. Bush should’ve been impeached over his launching of the Iraq war, this exchange followed:
“George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East. DICKERSON: “But so I’m going to – so you still think he should be impeached? TRUMP: “You do whatever you want. You call it whatever you want. I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”
The audience – made up of Lindsey Graham supporters and GOP donors – booed, but out in the American heartland the people cheered. And Trump, whose political instincts are fine-tuned, seemed to hear those distant cheers as he stood there, defiant, and said “Go ahead and boo.” He knew this would pay big political dividends down the road, and the payoff came when he won the GOP nomination, beating a baker’s dozen of wannabes, and finally took the prize this November.
The trade issue is but one aspect of Trump’s overarching anti-globalist vision, which encompasses a devastating critique of the “international order” that our foreign policy “wise men” have upheld since the Allies defeated the Axis powers and the cold war with the Soviet Union set in. Why are we paying for the defense of Europe when the Soviet threat has long since ceased to exist? Why are we defending the Saudis, when jihadists inspired by their Wahabist ideology are attacking us – including on September 11, 2001? Both South Korea and Japan are rich countries, whose industries are out-competing us and hollowing out the factory towns that were once the heart and soul of America: why, then, are we risking war and emptying our pockets in order to defend them from threats both real and imagined?
These are the questions Trump asked, and that gave his message resonance in Flyover County. The irony is that they used to be “left-wing” talking points, ones that Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern once raised. Today’s leftists, however, are so mired in identity politics that they don’t care one whit for the antiwar slogans of yesteryear: indeed, these same people are whinging and whining that it’s our “moral duty” to “do something” on behalf of the jihadists now besieging Syria. And it didn’t bother them in the least when Hillary Clinton revived the worst aspects of cold war liberalism and campaigned against Trump as a supposed “Russian puppet.”
Indeed, the warlike Washington policy wonks and their journalistic amen corner were eagerly anticipating the arrival of Hillary Clinton and the First Husband in the White House: they’ve been straining at the bit to intervene on behalf of our “moderate” jihadists in Syria, and they saw their chance when the media was trumpeting her imminent victory. That prospect has, thankfully, been cut short by the biggest upset in American political history – but the War Party doesn’t give up so easily.
The pressure on President Trump to compromise and even reverse his anti-interventionist instincts is already apparent and growing. And precisely because they are instincts, and not thought-out principles, the danger of this occurring is very great. The neocons are already trying to sneak into his administration, and what with the open hostility to Trump by leading “realists,” it’s almost inevitable that a sheer lack of qualified personnel will ensure that their infiltration is successful.
That’s why it’s vitally important for Trump’s supporters – the movement he created, and that he puts so much store in – to be vigilant, and make their voices heard. President Trump is facing not only opposition from the Democrats, but from the people in his own party – neoconservatives and GOP “moderates” – who abhor his foreign policy stance. They hate the very idea of “America First,” and will do anything and everything to sabotage the translation of Trump’s campaign promises into policy. The War Party is on the move, as is the so-called Deep State – the permanent national security bureaucracy with a material and ideological interest in internationalism. They are determined to derail the Trump train. We can’t let that happen.
How can we stop them? By raising our voices, by protesting and appealing directly to the President himself – by doing what Trumpists do best, i.e. making noise, and lots of it. And by supporting this web site, which, almost alone, gave Trump a fair shake. Let us put the new President and his enemies on notice: we are watching you. And at the first sign of a betrayal, we will come after you hammer and tongs. We will not be silenced – and we will not be fooled.
The battle to put America first is far from over: indeed, it has hardly begun. The next four years is going to be hand-to-hand combat. Let us enter the fray with no illusions.
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Just found 5/17 ~5 p.m. - "Viewpoint Diversity"
"True inclusion requires viewpoint diversity, the educator Erin McLaughlin argues, and children should be taught how to think—not what to think."
