Let’s get one thing good and glowing clear proper off the bat: What now we have seen within the first month of the second Trump administration borders on revolutionary.
It’s extraordinary. Unprecedented in trendy occasions.
There are not any bugaboos or sacred cows. In contrast to each President since Gerald Ford, our forty seventh Government appears to not solely really 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 exterior of his management.
All the pieces about what we’re seeing is to this point exterior the norm of latest expertise that it actually 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 justifiable share of the cuts we desperately want is a working example.
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Sure, The Pentagon Wants Drastic Cuts, Too
The Pentagon’s untouchable standing amongst Republicans and what passes for “the appropriate” usually has held for generations. Owing to a long time of Chilly Struggle propaganda, (wherein Individuals had 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 chance that America might cross an ocean and a continent to defeat the Soviet Union’s tank legions on the Steppe) many, if not most Individuals view Pentagon spending as de facto good and vital, and at the same time as cash properly spent.
That, in fact, is absurd on its face. The Pentagon is infamous for its damaged acquisition course of (shopping for delicate elements for our most superior stealth fighters from China? Examine.), for waste so unbelievable you possibly can hardly imagine your eyes ($37 for a single screw, $8,000 for a espresso maker, $1,300 for coffee cups, verify.), and for being totally incapable of passing an audit.
Or my private favourite style: Arming one Islamic terrorist group with a view to combat the CIA’s Islamic terrorist group.
A few of us keep in mind Donald Rumsfeld’s press conference of September 10, 2001, when he informed the assembled scribes that the five-sided constructing’s monetary system couldn’t observe $2.3 trillion in transactions.
In 2023, we had been handled to the information that the Pentagon couldn’t account for 63% of almost $4 trillion in belongings.
Taking all that into consideration, when you nonetheless imagine that there’s not a penny in financial savings to be discovered within the warfare 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 12 months for the following 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 many others.
Pentagon Spending In Perspective
However wait! How are we going to cease Russia from driving their plenty of tanks and armor throughout Germany and France, loading up onto boats, and ultimately debarking on the mouth of the Potomac?
Humorous you ask: Russia supposedly spent the whopping sum of $129 billion on their navy in 2024 – whereas within the midst of what they view as existential warfare with their massive neighbor.
Which is to say, our flesh pressers spent $721 billion extra than Russia did final 12 months, or 6.5 occasions extra. Put one other means, the $183 billion Uncle Sam might or might not have willy-nilly given to Ukraine and not using a second thought is greater than Russia’s complete protection funds.
It’s time to begin being life like. Historical past might rhyme in a Cockney rhyming slang sense, but it surely by no means repeats. Russia shouldn’t be the Soviet Union. The date shouldn’t be 1938, or 1944, or 1962, or 1991.
President Trump and First Buddy Elon Musk are on to one thing that nobody else appears to know, or be keen to do something about: This nation is correct on the verge of a debt-death-spiral.
In 2022, the curiosity fee on the nationwide debt was $476 billion – greater than half of our annual protection funds, and almost four-times Russia’s protection funds.
In 2024, the curiosity fee on the debt almost 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 is going to value $1.8 trillion simply to pay the curiosity fee.
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 wish to as soon as once more plop American boys down into one other land warfare in Asia.
It’s not even exterior the gates. The enemy is contained in the gates. He’s been there for many years together with his grubby little fingers all around 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 many others.
He’s at warfare with Actuality, who has fought and not using a champion till 2016, with a minor interruption thrown in.
There are two and solely two choices. Both we grow to be a critical, accountable folks and we select the place to chop, or we keep the course, and another person will determine for us.
