Right-wing populists, like their left-wing counterparts, seem to oppose the establishment’s foreign policy mostly because it consumes tax money they want the government to spend on domestic projects. That’s hardly comforting to anyone who wants the government to do less and thereby consume far fewer scarce resources, which after all are produced privately.
Much more could be said against America First, for example, that the term national interest has long been a cover for collectivism and coercion. America First is no guarantee of nonintervention. What we need is a commitment not to America First but to individual liberty first.
Today’s Trump-inspired “America First” faction cannot be counted on to be consistently noninterventionist and antiwar. That it may lean that way because its chief rival faction is so enthusiastic about foreign adventurism is hardly a firm assurance that it will remain antiwar in the future.
We must beware of the assumption that an interventionist foreign policy is, in contrast to America First, by nature “Any Country But America First.” Admittedly, advocates of U.S. foreign adventurism often defend their policy choices in terms of the benefits to another population. But that’s not all they do. They also typically invoke the security interests of the American people. It’s a small world, after all, they say, and what protects others also protects us. How often have you heard interventionists agitate for war solely on behalf of foreigners? Sure, national self-sacrifice might not be good politics, but that doesn’t mean that people of the interventionist mindset don’t mean what they say.
My point is not that they are right, but only that they, or most of them, are sincere (though misguided). I doubt if George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq was motivated solely by regard for the Iraqis or Israelis. Not was Barack Obama’s bombing and regime change in Libya carried out on behalf of the Libyan people only. In both cases the key policymakers and their supporters believed that these actions were also good for the American people, who had been told for decades that Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi threatened them. The same can be said about the people who gave us the war in Vietnam. This is not to dismiss the malign influence of dishonest people who simply enjoy exercising power or who will profit from selling weapons to the government. But I am suspicious of such single-factor explanations.
If I’m right about this, we must ask what today’s America Firsterism is defined in contrast to.
13. You can recognize sociopaths, psychopaths, and other narcissists in your life by paying attention to how much energy they pour into convincing you to believe stories about others, about themselves, and especially about you. Someone who often spends energy trying to get you to believe negative things about yourself is someone you should get out of your life as quickly as possible.
1. It’s easier to understand what’s going on in the world when you mentally “mute” people’s narratives about what’s going on and just look at the material movements of wealth, resources, weapons, and people. That’s how you separate what’s real from the manipulations and empty narrative fluff, how you see who’s doing the taking and hoarding, and how you figure out who the real aggressors are in international conflicts.
2. The three most overlooked and under-appreciated aspects of the human experience are consciousness, the extent to which conditioned thought patterns dictate our lives, and the influence of propaganda.
3. We live in a civilization that’s so pervasively steeped in lies and manipulations that the only way to have a truth-based relationship with reality is to drop all your assumptions and premises about what’s true and begin examining everything from the very beginning with fresh eyes.
4. The phenomenon known as spiritual enlightenment is a real thing which we are all capable of realizing, and the fact that this potential exists within our species has many far-reaching implications for what we are capable of attaining as a civilization.
5. Everything is beautiful. Not seeing the beauty in something is always the failure of the perceiver, not the thing being perceived.
6. Happiness is the natural default position of human consciousness. It’s only through egoic delusions that we trick ourselves into unhappiness.
7. There are strange untapped potentials within our species which our philosophies don’t touch on, our religions don’t anticipate, our academia doesn’t acknowledge, and our common worldviews don’t account for.
8. Reality is nondual. There’s no real separation between the perceiver and that which is perceived, or between any of the objects in sense perception. All is indivisible.
9. The self is an illusion held together by believed mental narratives and fear-based energetic fixations. This illusion can be seen through and transcended.
10. It’s possible for two people to keep falling more and more deeply in love with each other for their entire lives, as long as they’re both intensely curious about each other and both keep growing and discovering new parts of themselves to love.
11. The feeling of guilt is useless and can safely be dropped entirely. The only people who might benefit from feeling some guilt are the sociopaths and psychopaths among us who never experience it anyway. For those among us with healthy empathy centers, guilt is unnecessary to motivate good behavior and often becomes a tool that manipulators use to control us.
12. Antisocial personality disorder, more commonly known as sociopathy and psychopathy, is one of the greatest obstacles to human thriving. That there really are creatures among us who don’t think or feel like the rest of us do and frequently use their lack of empathy to climb the ladders of wealth and power sounds made up (and even sounds like the basis of many racist belief systems), but it is a fact. Not until our species becomes so emotionally intelligent and awake that sociopaths and psychopaths are unable to thrive in it or go unseen will this problem disappear.
13. You can recognize sociopaths, psychopaths, and other narcissists in your life by paying attention to how much energy they pour into convincing you to believe stories about others, about themselves, and especially about you. Someone who often spends energy trying to get you to believe negative things about yourself is someone you should get out of your life as quickly as possible.
14. There really is a struggle in our world between light and darkness, though it doesn’t look how the movies tell us to expect it. Those in power seek to keep their dark deeds hidden in darkness by maintaining government secrecy, propaganda and censorship. The manipulators in our own lives seek to keep their manipulations and misdeeds hidden in the same way. Even within our own personal psychology there are dysfunctional structures which seek to remain hidden in the unconscious. Humanity’s struggle is to bring that all into the light.
15. A sincere devotion to knowing the truth is the path toward happiness, health and harmony, for humans as individuals and for humanity as a collective. Knowing what’s true about ourselves uncovers our inner dysfunctionality and leads to healing and enlightenment. Knowing what’s true about our world leads to an understanding of the abusive nature of our power structures and societal systems. Continually striving toward the light of truth will bring us all home.
___________
Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Upgrade to paid
All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon, Paypal, or Substack, buying an issue of my monthly zine, and following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
The deal is for 25 planes and is estimated to cost $3 billion
The Israeli arms industry will also benefit from the deal. The Israeli Defense Ministry said that as part of the agreement, Lockheed Martin and the engine manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney, have “committed to involving Israeli defense industries in the production of aircraft components sold.”
The Israeli Defense Ministry said Sunday that Israel will acquire a third fleet of Lockheed Martin-made F-35 fighter jets using US military aid funds.
The deal for 25 F-35 fighter jets is estimated to cost about $3 billion and will be purchased through Foreign Military Financing (FMF), a US State Department program that gives foreign governments money to buy US arms.
The Israeli arms industry will also benefit from the deal. The Israeli Defense Ministry said that as part of the agreement, Lockheed Martin and the engine manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney, have “committed to involving Israeli defense industries in the production of aircraft components sold.”
“This new agreement will ensure the continuation of cooperation between American companies and Israeli defense industries in the production of aircraft parts,” the Israeli Defense Ministry added.
We all have power to influence; residing in the decisions we make on a daily basis and the lifestyles we choose to adopt. You don’t need to be an influencer with a 5 digit follower count in order to leave a strong, positive mark on those around you.
I hope everyone has had the time to properly appreciate their first days of summer. If you did not, then I hope your efforts have gotten you closer to being capable of doing so soon.
Today’s writing is inspired by my many conversations over the current state of our United States of America, and how far we have fallen from the Tree of Freedom that our Honored Fallen sacrificed their lives for. How Americans have lost sight of what truly matters, and how our uneducated & unfit masses continue to make decisions that enable their complacencies over doing what needs to be done in order to save the future of our country, for ourselves and for our children…
Failure Teaches. Victory Confirms.
Taking the path of immediate gratification, and especially selling-out the futures of our children, alongside the soul of our proud nation, is inextricably not American. Providing products of shite quality is inextricably not American. Choosing to do the easy thing over that which is more difficult, and that which is right, is inextricably not American. Sacrificing our own steadfastness, our own resilience, and going back on our promises and debts is not American.
Simple vs Easy
The steps required for correcting this egregious path are simple but they are not easy. This brings us to the first true step (Step 0.1) towards course-correction, of any kind. Conflation of something so basic as simple & easy is a problem that we as Americans must identify, acknowledge, and work to correct. A task can be simple; “do [x] in order to get [y] outcome,” but that does not mean that the task will be easy; “man doing [x] required so little effort to so I could get [y].”
Ignorance of Failure
Admitting that we have gone awry is the other 90% of Step 1, that we have made a series of mistakes and poor decisions is necessary. Because it is okay. It is okay to make mistakes, to be wrong. It is not okay to make mistakes, to be wrong, and not own-up to them. Not accepting that we have made wrong/bad decisions is extremely dangerous as there is no learning or growth that is allowed to occur when we choose to ignore our failures. Failure teaches. Victory confirms.
The Average American is the one who holds the power in the coming years — as this is a situation that will take years to correct and get back on “the path.” I have a few simple suggestions for the everyday American to follow if you would like to be on the right side of history.
First
GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASS
America is not well. Between those already diagnosed with diabetes, and those that are prediabetic we are looking at 49% of the Us adult population being affected, alone. According to data from 2017 (which is 6 years old mind you) the US population was looking at an obesity rate of 42%. Keep in mind that this does not include the concoction of chronic metabolic syndromes and diseases that accompany obesity; heart disease, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, neurodegenerative conditions, cancers, and so on.
Americans need to get up off the couch and out of their desk chairs and push, pull, and breathe their way into individual fortitude. If the worst of the worst were to happen today, the amount of human life that would be lost simply due to intermittent access to power, let alone food, would be daunting and egregious. Through complacencies afforded the modern era we have become more fragile than ever in history. Yet we have access to the best technologies, methodologies, sciences, and access to more food and information than in any other prior empire in the history of our planet.
As Americans it is our duty and our privilege to become the baddest motherf*ckers that we can become. We are in the Land of the Free. Where you can be free to be a fat, lazy, complacent pile of shit all you want. I don’t know about you… but me, I want to be the most fit, well-rounded, capable, educated, understanding individual that I can be because I am free to do so. Because when shit-hits-fan, which is a virtual certainty (on any scale), I want to be capable of providing the strength and clear-headedness to be capable of providing protection and support to those I care about. Being comfortable means f^ck-all when life deals you a powdered backhand and you are not capable of being an effective force in times of adversity or fear — regardless of whether you are a man or a woman.
If you are not capable to react to the plethora of known knowns as far as potential negative outcomes, then you cannot even hope to be capable of handling those unknown unknowns. Of which are infinite. Fitness and sound health makes the individual far more capable of handling adversity, and during moments of historical shifts in the balance of power adversity is commonplace. Fill the gyms and run the trails, become the embodiment of strength that your neighbors, loved ones, and peers need.
Second
GET ack-tually EDUCATED
America today has been taught to demonize coming incorrect, and pedestalize being correct.
To the extent of where people are attributing their being correct as a part of their identity.
This would be a bitter pill for the US as well. In order to be logically consistent with this new philosophy, it would have to announce that if Texas or California, or Florida or New York, wished to secede from the US, it could do so without any physical opposition from Washington D.C. Let us say nothing about the war against secession of 1861.
The world’s eyes are now focused on Russia and Ukraine. And with good reason. These two nations are now involved in a hot war with each other, and there are fears that it might spread even further.
China makes no secret of its desired relationship with Taiwan.
Another possible war, that between the US and China over Taiwan, should also be kept on the forefront of consideration. If it occurs, it will involve the two most powerful nations on the third rock from the sun. China makes no secret of its desired relationship with Taiwan: the former considers the latter as its 16th province, even though it is presently separate from its mother country and has been since 1949.
The US is equally adamant that Taiwan is not a province of any other country, such as China. It opposes any unilateral change in its present status. In order to prevent any aggressive takeover of the former by the latter, American warships continually ply the waters of the South China Sea, which separates these two political entities.
How can a hot war over this issue be prevented? Is there any possible compromise that can preclude such an altercation, a potential danger to the entire human race?
There is.
One or more of these three political entities must officially sign on to the doctrine that all political associations must take place on a voluntary basis. No group of people should be compelled to associate, politically or in any other manner, with others against their will. Neither the US nor China is likely to be the first to take this plunge. This leaves the matter up to Taiwan. It, presumably, has the most to lose in any war to prevent a Chinese takeover, and, thus, the most incentive to do what it can to ward off such an eventuality.
What can Taiwan do?
Are there any folk now living in Taiwan who would wish to politically amalgamate with China? To become part of its 16th province? Fortunately for this compromise scheme, there are.
For example, Lin Te-wang, the leader of the Taiwan People’s Communist Party, admires Chinese President Xi Jinping, and maintains that his version of Chinese socialism would maximize economic development in Taiwan. How many Taiwanese support those or similar views? According to a survey recently held by the non-partisan Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, this figure is about 12%.
How, then, to proceed? The Taiwanese government should hold elections of a very different sort than the usual. It should seek a relatively small area, perhaps, even a single town or a village in which a majority of the voters are to be found representative of this 12%. Unless voters who favor joining China are randomly distributed, geographically, a most unlikely occurrence (people with similar views tend to coalesce), such a territory will be found. Then, the Taiwanese government should welcome China into this one small area, which should be declared the 16th province of that mother country (provided that a peace treaty, or some such guarantee against the coerced spread of this entity, could be arranged).
In other words, what we have here is a Washington-triggered civil war in an area that has been either a Russian vassal or appendage for centuries and where the term “Ukraine” actually means “borderlands” in Russian.
As we indicated recently, it’s time to get back to a Fortress America defense policy, which could be funded for a fraction of today’s $900 billion defense-a-palooza. And we wouldn’t have to waste our national treasure on un-useful idiots like Zelensky, either.
If the truth be told, we are getting sick and tired of the little piss-ant who runs the cease-pool of corruption, tyranny, delusion and death called Ukraine. This clown—and that’s what he is actually trained as—just can’t seem to stop stridently demanding money, arms and support from the rest of the world and lecturing everyone to fall into line or else.
In his actual clown days, of course, Volodymyr Zelensky was known for the act depicted below. But when it comes to the collective West, the latter seems to enjoy the fact that the Ukrainian president continues to bang away upon it, relentlessly pounding out a melody of me, me and more.
But lately Zelensky has really gone over the top, peddling the hideous canard that if we don’t enable him to fight “them” over there with everything and all that he demands by way of money and weapons, we will soon bleed and die against “them” over here.
That’s the “Putin is going to invade Europe next and maybe America too”, nonsense. It’s actually groundless blithering idiocy, and yet Washington treats him as a brave ally and statesman:
“If any candidate thinks supporting Ukraine is too costly, are they ready to go to war? Are they ready to fight? Send their children? Die?” Zelenskyy said. “They will have to do it anyway if NATO enters this war, and if Ukraine fails and Russia occupies us, they will move on to the Baltics or Poland or some other NATO country. And then the U.S. will have to choose between keeping NATO or entering the war.”
Let’s cut to the chase. No American or NATO soldier is going to be fighting Putin’s army in Poland, Berlin or Belgium because the Russian army ain’t going there. Not in a month of Sundays.
Vlad Putin is no prince of men, but his war aims are limited, rational and clear as a bell. To wit, as he warned for 15 years, he does not want NATO missiles on his doorstep in Ukraine, just as President Kennedy insisted about Khrushchev’s missiles 100 miles away in Cuba 61 years ago.
Likewise, he wants the Russian-speaking populations of the eastern Donbas region and the Black Sea rim, historically known as “Novorossiya” or New Russia, to have self-governing autonomy and protection from military attack by the anti-Russian Kiev government, as per the Minsk agreements. After all, those brutal attacks, which killed upwards of 14,000 mostly civilians, occurred nearly continuously for eight years after the Washington-sponsored Maidan coup of February 2014. The latter had installed hostile proto-Nazi elements in the unelected and illegal government stood up in Kiev by Victoria Nuland and her Washington gaggle of neocon hegemonists.
MCViewPoint 
