US Politics - January, 2024

US Politics - January, 2024: Determining the Direction of our Country

Are we on the path to becoming the old Roman Empire, evolving into a George Soros society, or heading towards a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) landscape dominated by gender-affirming guilt and blame on controlled minorities? Or is there a way back to democracy? One of the significant threats to democracy, aside from the current President's apparent lack of understanding of the term fascism, lies in the actions of elected officials, ideological judges, and the misuse of the law by lawyers driven by ideology. Is there a coalition forming, led by figures like Liz Cheney and Luttig, organizing a war-mongering force akin to the Bush/Cheney War Machine? Are the media outlets controlled by ChatGPT, generating similar stories under different labels, becoming propaganda machines?

These questions may reflect a Federalist opinion, but it's worth noting that even they claim the Trump card, creating confusion in the political landscape.

In its most radical forms, DEI is derivative of neo-Marxist identitarian ideologies that attribute virtually all average group differences — from arrest rates to medical school admissions — to systemic discrimination. However, average group differences in outcomes can reflect a variety of factors (see Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel”). The unexamined acceptance of DEI, however defined, is surprising in a free society where critics are encouraged to challenge and debate significant social changes. The time for a national debate over the conflicting values of DEI and MFE is long overdue.

For example, one-fifth of the advertisements for higher education faculty jobs (and more for prestigious posts) require applicants to write statements of allegiance to DEI. Academic employment often depends on DEI relevant presentations at scholarly conferences and publications in scholarly journals. Increasingly, scholars are required to explain in advance how their research supports DEI. Such litmus tests are traditionally associated with totalitarian regimes and, in America, with McCarthyism. We all know how well those turned out. 

Here some thoughts from the DEI and left Wing political Machine, In January 2019, The Washington Post wrote that the Federalist Society had reached an "unprecedented peak of power and influence." Of the current nine members of the Supreme Court of the United States, at least five are current or former members of the organization—Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett.[1][11] Chief Justice John Roberts previously served as a member of the steering committee of the Washington, D.C. chapter, but denies ever being a member.[12] Politico wrote that the Federalist Society "has become one of the most influential legal organizations in history—not only shaping law students' thinking but changing American society itself by deliberately, diligently shifting the country's judiciary to the right."[13]

On June 16, 2022, Luttig testified during a televised hearing conducted by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.[41] Before the hearing, Luttig wrote a statement for the record,[42] stating that Trump and his allies "instigated" a war on democracy "so that he could cling to power." He continued, "It is breathtaking that these arguments even were conceived, let alone entertained by the President of the United States at that perilous moment in history" and that January 6 "was the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost." At the close of the hearing, Luttig said:

Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy. They would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020. I don't speak those words lightly. I would have never spoken those words ever in my life, except that that's what the former president and his allies are telling us.[43]

Having recently watched the Netflix series on John Gotti, it's striking how Sammy the Bull managed to manipulate jurors, aided by Mafia-embedded lawyers, to claim Gotti's innocence. This leads to the question: Could the current procedures against the former President be a manipulated effort to prevent him from participating in elections, possibly culminating in states invoking the 14th amendment? Consider this NPR interview defending George Soros as a philanthropic genius with a clear goal of undermining democracy through the judicial system, not unlike the Democrats' intention to pack the Supreme Court. Research reveals that those involved in Trump's prosecution are aligned with the Open Society framework or the Jan 6 committee, and, worse yet, connected to the current administration.

The question remains: What is truly happening under US leadership, or rather, what was not happening in 2023, aside from rhetorical fireworks?

Among Biden’s goals in foreign policy were to repair frayed relations with several U.S. allies, to cooperate in global efforts to ameliorate climate change, and, in general, to return the United States to a position of global economic and political leadership.

Yep, Ukraine is still the proxy to beat Russia, the receiver of all Mother of all Sanctions, no one talks about? Russian Gas and Oil, flowing through China and perhaps via black market back to Europe to contain inflation? What happened to investigating North Stream 2, other than that Norway got a sweet heart deal with Germany to deliver the Gas? What about the Counter Offensive, as the latest info claims the Ukraine running out of Ammunition, perhaps never get involved in a War without a Goal or Strategy? Diplomatic efforts failed? 

War from Hell; If U.S. President Joe Biden wants to check the pulse of the arsenal of democracy, all he has to do is look at Bill LaPlante’s wall in the Pentagon. The U.S. Defense Department industrial chief’s office is covered with production charts for every weapon that the United States is building to fend off a potential war with China while helping countries such as Ukraine and Israel fend for themselves in wars of their own.

It’s like an electrocardiogram of the U.S. defense industry: There’s a line going up to count the number of units moved and a line going sideways for the time that it took to move them. There are production rates for the Patriot missiles that the United States has sent to the Middle East to provide backup for Israel, the sea-launched Standard Missile-6 that the United States has deployed to the Indo-Pacific to potentially bloody China’s nose if it launches an assault on Taiwan, and the guided multiple launch rockets—known as GMLRs—that helped the Ukrainians liberate Kherson and the areas around Kharkiv in a one-two punch to the Russian army in 2022.

“It’s a whole stair step,” LaPlante told a small gaggle of reporters at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California in early December 2023. The chart, he said, “keeps going and going.”

And even though business is booming, Defense Department officials are facing a problem from hell. How can the Pentagon mobilize the U.S. defense industry to respond to not just one conflict or two, but potentially three wars? Foreign Policy talked to a dozen defense ministers, officials, and experts across the NATO alliance. They described an almost Sisyphean task to rebuild the trans-Atlantic—and trans-Pacific—defense industrial base to fight three wars not during a world war, but when much of the Western world is at peace.

Israel and GAZA, on the on side we accept territorial advances, on the other we call all people not accepting it terrorists, another failed diplomatic effort. ISIS and Afghanistan are still here, and if some people thinking of eliminating Hamas, with each killed 2 are made? 

Saudi – Arabia and Iran are two countries to enter BRICS in 2024, as well as Egypt, and the Emirates? Another failed diplomatic effort. Interesting that the DC called right winger in Argentina prefers not to join? 

Domestically, cracks are beginning to appear in the President's immigration policies. The absence of high-paying manufacturing jobs, coupled with a focus on service and government roles, has come to the forefront. Inflation has undergone a transition, yet prices remain a concern. Additionally, the President's approval rating for representing all citizens is currently at an all-time low.

So, we're witnessing a shift in focus from topics such as friend-shoring (taking stock of our remaining allies) and onshoring, with billions of dollars allocated to programs advised by McKinsey and similar entities, which initially advocated for benefiting from globalization in the 1980s and 1990s. Simultaneously, there's a trend of demonizing those who question these strategies with nationalist labels, prompting questions about the logic behind such measures. The allocation of billions for initiatives like the Chips Act and Green Energy is now under scrutiny, with hopes that they will prove effective in 2024.