POITOU, FRANCE — The high drama continues … That is, Part 3 of The Persecution and Assassination of Donald J. Trump, as portrayed by the grifters, crazies and incompetents of The Swamp.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, in full dress regalia, gave out the word that he didn’t think it was right to ask the Ukrainians to dig up dirt on the Bidens.
The New York Times:
In hours of questioning on Tuesday by Democrats and Republicans, Colonel Vindman recounted his alarm at the July 25 call, saying he “did not think it was proper” for Mr. Trump to have asked Mr. Zelensky to investigate a political rival, and how White House officials struggled to deal with the fallout from a conversation he and others considered problematic.
As to the merits of the impeachment case against Trump, it is not for us to say.
Of interest, however, is what Lt. Col. Vindman was up to in the first place … and what role it plays in the decline of America …
Vindman, Hero
Until this week, Vindman was just one of the thousands of “nameless, faceless” Deep State operatives that keep the U.S. bumbling along on the road to disaster.
Now, search “Alexander Vindman hero” on the internet, and you will get more than 14 million hits.
He is a true hero, according to the storyline, first for getting wounded in Iraq, and now for standing up to President Trump. He “knows what truth, honor and duty mean,” says a New York Times headline.
Lt. Col. Vindman is also a “Ukraine expert” at the National Security Council. The Ukraine poses no plausible security risk to the U.S. So why does the U.S. need a Ukraine expert, you might wonder?
In The Swamp, everything is a risk … and every risk is an opportunity to hire more experts, spend more money and transfer more wealth from the public to the elite.
For the Deep State and its many Vindmans, the real risk is anything that challenges its power … threatens its gold-plated retirement sinecures at Lockheed Martin or Raytheon … or asks too many questions.
And in the now-popular narrative, that challenge came in the person of Donald J. Trump.
Road to Ruin
In our view, the U.S. has been in decline since the turn of the century … falling relative to other nations by almost every measure. That decline was not caused by Mexicans … Chinese … or Iranians.
Nor was it caused by the ebb and flow of the economy, or by the four-year cycle of its national elections. Booms come and go … and so do presidents.
As we pointed out yesterday, it’s not the surface chop that dooms an economy … it’s the deep currents that carry it to bankruptcy, war and corruption.
A man can go on an occasional bender with little harm to his career or reputation; but if he makes a habit of it, he’ll jeopardize his family as well as himself. So too can a nation survive a bad president, an occasional deficit … or even an occasional misbegotten war from time to time. But if it keeps at it … it will ruin itself.
The high-water mark for the U.S. probably came in the late ’90s. Afterwards, its bad habits — fake money at home, fake wars overseas — began to catch up with it. GDP growth slowed. Debts rose. The Swamp’s power increased. And by 2015, the nation was clearly on a downward slide.
That was when Trump presented himself as the man who could Make America Great Again.
It would be hard to piece together a coherent program from Trump’s many election promises and gratuitous obiter dicta. But insofar as it made any sense at all, it rested on two major challenges: He had to get the U.S. out of its mindless, endless winless wars…and he had to “Drain the Swamp.”
Everything else, then as now, was a distraction … A wall with Mexico? A trade war with China? A powwow with the fat boy from North Korea? Like them or loathe them, they were not on the “critical path” to making America great again.
Deep State Warmongers
The Donald, never shy when it came to tooting his own horn, said he was the “only one” who could do the job. And he may have been right.
He was willing to take on the Darling of the Deep State, Hillary Clinton … and not just the “Queen of Warmongers,” as Tulsi Gabbard described her, but the King, too — Senator John McCain. (McCain had managed to parlay his experience as a POW in North Vietnam into a political career; Trump said he preferred heroes “who didn’t get captured.”)
And Trump had the brass to stand up to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the rest of the politically correct elite.
But poor Mr. Trump could never stay on key; he never took the time to study the music or learn the score.
So it was no surprise when he honked himself into the deepest part of The Swamp almost immediately, just as Barack Obama had done before him. The Washington Post:
Military spending has risen dramatically under Trump, from about $550 billion annually to more than $700 billion in 2019, and Democrats successfully pushed for increases to other parts of the budget in exchange for their support to boost money for defense.
Nor has there been any major pullback of U.S. forces … or any slacking off in their meddling.
Since May, some 14,000 more U.S. troops have been sent to the Middle East. Trump canceled peace talks that might have led to an end to the nearly 18-year war in Afghanistan. Drone strikes and a tightening noose of sanctions have increased the risk of war with Iran. According to press reports, 1,000 U.S. special operations troops have been pulled out of Syria … and moved to Iraq. But almost 3,000 more troops have been approved to be sent to Saudi Arabia.
Strange way to get yourself out of winless wars.
But wait … if Mr. Trump is such a friend to the Deep State warmongers … why have they ganged up against him?
Stay tuned for part four next week.
Regards,
Bill
• This article was originally published by Bonner & Partners. You can learn more about Bill and Bill Bonner’s Diary right here.