How ‘America First’ Ends

How ‘America First’ Ends

From

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/america-first-trump-doge/682164/

Interesting from a left mag:
Engagement is preferred to isolationism.

From the right, some speculate current policy shifts aim at

(A) getting other nations to strengthen their military deterrent strength because the US cannot alone keep China in check, especially if they are warm with Russia;

(B) getting other nations to strengthen their economies because the US cannot alone keep China in check, especially if they are warm on bilateral trade with Russia;

(C) reducing every American interest that isn’t aimed squarely – SQUARELY without distraction or dilution – at checking China both militarily and financially.

There’s a single location on the globe that dictates the world’s future for decades (or centuries), and it ain’t Ukraine or Gaza, for crying out loud. It is…

The Taiwan Strait

I’m no more immune to desensitization by statistics than anyone else. The Ukraine horror, for example, is honestly reduced to that word “horror” because it doesn’t touch me directly. And if it doesn’t touch you directly, I’m not interested in your pretentious moralizing or virtue signaling. But I’ll concede without hesitation that neither you nor I have iron-cold hearts. It shatters mine as it likely does yours.

I think that’s OK. It’s hard not to sound trite, but I think it’s “fine” and “good” for you and me to be heartbroken over Ukraine, Gaza, and everywhere else a single human being suffers. Both you and I are human beings. And so is each individual in the CCP; but, yes, I’ll risk the blanket statement that they are lesser human beings. Or, from a different and more salient perspective, they are *greater* human beings in terms of using the power to which the rest of us human beings are vulnerable. Nietzschean Uberman-style.

So if you work for a corporation that is DEI-inclined, go ahead and apologize for the ill-acquired land on which your office is built. Put some signal icon on all your social media that Black Lives Matter. Advocate for the new 54% of teenage girls who now “identify” as trans after a single generation. And blame climate deniers for normal planetary dynamics. Protest or support strapping some cloth over the bottom half of your face from ear to ear, or whether the 75th needle should be injected into your newborn. You are brilliant; you’ve been educated by the technology that has connected the world.

Except in China.
And in Russia.
Where they have leaders giggling about my angst that their minions can easily have my credit card and Social Security numbers 10 seconds from now.

They aren’t giggling about how easy it is. They are giggling that I give a shit about that.

As long as I’m worried about that, I will make my leaders worry about it too. And as long as my leaders are worried about that, they don’t know what the hell is happening that actually matters…

Wait,…

Pardon me, it MATTERS to you and your current children. For a minute. Or a year, or maybe even half a decade. You are pissed off that you read this lame article for this long, because it took you five minutes to get this far….

They’re a little longer-viewed than you are.

Yes, super powers care about the impact of a 15 second TikTok. But only because they can do simple math. Simple. Math. 15 seconds times 2 billion people is a pretty goddamn big impact.

So go hold your protest on Wall Street or some Ivy League campus. Our ACTUAL enemies never dreamed how easy it would be. It almost makes me wish I was one of them.

Wanna vote for Trump? Excellent.

Wanna hate and oppose him and half of the US electorate?

Not just excellent…

Beyond what evil can *imagine*!!!

“I love Trump.”
“I hate Trump.”

“Holy shit,” says the CCP: “This is easier than dynamiting fish in a barrel.”

“‘Divide and conquer’ was supposed to be hard. But all we needed was a couple of teenage hackers to tip the world upside down. Because Western adults are juveniles.”

Guilty.

And now the CCP must be thinking that this was quite obviously “destiny,” because we “morally upright” people in the west seem now to want to destroy ourselves.

The dividends of peace are annihilation.

Separating the church and state were not originally American ideas. Nor democratic ideas. And I don’t know whether they predated Christianity or not, but we elite moralists and virtue-signalers ought to think hard on the synoptic gospel passages about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. What in hell could Jesus have possibly meant? (Emphasis on “in hell.”)

In the Old Testament, why “in hell” did The Lord require the annihilation of certain peoples? (Whether The Lord did or did not, that is how the storytellers told it.)

If you read much around the “render unto Caesar” passage, you know that the context was excoriation of hypocrisy. As adults, we all should know that the engine of hypocrisy is guilt. And “majority guilt” sounds like it excludes minorities. Isn’t that what “white guilt” means, exactly? I’d like to unpack and expand that a little bit…

I’m a white Caucasian Christian heterosexual male. By popular understanding, I am the best of the best oppressors! Yay me! And Trump is, according to the oppressed, my hero! And if you do not share my precise identity, you are oppressed. Accordingly, if your “identity” shares my demographics, you are guilty of the most ism’s in any western cultures. Shame on us, and power to our resistors!

Support DEI!
Stand for freedom of choice!
Pro Palestine!
Hate Trump!
Support Ukraine!
Down with tariffs!
God is dead!

Love Trump!
Pro Life!
Marriage amendment!
Peace through strength!
Jesus saves!

Whatever you advocate, just don’t watch the US dollar be undermined by non-dollar investment in Africa, Canada, Panama, Mexico, Russia…
After all, reproductive rights have been overturned by SCOTUS!
*Most* teen girls might be suicidal without gender-affirming care.
Elon is a Nazi.
Biden was a puppet.

Just don’t pay any attention to…

The Roman Empire was toppled by… WTF? Christianity? Persians? Jews? Mongols? Britons? Germanic barbarians?

Roman psychosis.

Roman denial.

Hypocrisy? Oh, hell no.

…

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

Unless it’s engagement with Putin.

…

The Taiwan Strait

It’s the epicenter of today’s *actual* Cold War, and I myself have pretty much zero tolerance for disputes about that.

Whether it’s already too late to inhibit Sinohegemony ain’t anything I can opine. But the CCP has made their plans clear for decades, and so I’m more than pissed that leaders of the so-called world powers like the US and Europe have betrayed all of us by astounding neglect.

In my ignorant opinion, there’s better than a coin-flip’s chance that our great grandchildren’s lives will be controlled by the CCP – if not *directly* governed by it, and if not our grandchildren.

…

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

While hippies got high, feminists took the pill, Bob wrote protest songs, and American boys killed in rain forests on the other side of a desktop globe, “I am not a crook” engaged China.

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

As long as the orange-haired antichrist doesn’t engage Putin.

…

Neil D. 2025-03-26