Understanding the US - Again

[A_Gupta]

From Talkingpointsmemo, John Light writes:

Republican Party Fights With Itself Over Selling Out To AI Billionaires

Someone in Trump’s coalition desperately wants to ban states from regulating AI, legal practicalities of such a policy be damned.

Other loud voices in Trump’s coalition see the effort as the tech-mogul power grab that it is.

For months now, these two factions have been engaged in a tug of war.

The latest chapter unfolded this month, when news began circulating that an executive order was being drafted that would crush state-level attempts at AI regulation. Among other things, it “would direct the Justice Department to sue states that pass laws regulating artificial intelligence,” according to the Washington Post, which published one early report on the draft. An autopsy of the rumors by the Verge cast the draft as the work of — and a massive power grab by — the South African-born venture capitalist David Sacks, Trump’s special advisor for AI and crypto. Around the same time, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) told Punchbowl that lawmakers were considering sticking a preemption of state AI laws in the National Defense Authorization Act.

Trump’s populist constituency freaked out (as did many Democrats). During a podcast discussion, MAGA legal bombthrower Mike Davis and Steve Bannon unloaded on the efforts, denouncing the “tech bros” behind them. “I’m a capitalist,” Bannon said at one point. “This is not capitalism. This is corporatism and crony capitalism.”

The rift emerged in almost exactly the same way when, in June, congressional Republicans inserted a similar preemption provision into Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, then, virtually unanimously, disowned it, with Republicans joining Democrats to strip it out.

The draft executive order is now, reportedly, on hold. But the tension between Trump’s power-hungry, Curtis Yarvin-pilled tech backers and his right-wing, nationalist, intermittently populist base remains an important and sometimes amusing fault line in a movement that, at least for now, is increasingly fractured.

[A_Gupta]

How the US treats Singapore, with which it has a trade surplus as well as a Free Trade Agreement since 2004:
The US helped with the S’pore ‘miracle’. Now, it’s calling in the favour, says Trump’s new envoy Anjani Sinha
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/us-helped-por ... 00327.html

The US goods trade surplus with Singapore was US$1.9 billion, while the services trade surplus was US$25.1 billion in 2024, as per the US Trade Representative’s office.

The higher US tariffs are dampening global economic prospects, including Singapore’s gross domestic product growth, which is expected to ease into a range of 1 per cent to 3 per cent in 2026 after expanding at around 4 per cent in 2025 and 4.4 per cent in 2024.

The United States is calling in a favour from friends like Singapore as President Donald Trump tries to rebalance the American economy and restore “fairness” to the international trading system.

Mr Trump’s ambassador to Singapore, Dr Anjani Kumar Sinha, offered that explanation when asked how the US President’s 10 per cent baseline tariff on the Republic – in spite of a free trade agreement since 2004 – aligns with the broader goals of the US-Singapore relationship.

“Over many decades, American taxpayers and service members have underwritten regional security, playing an important role in making Singapore’s economic miracle possible,” Dr Sinha said in an e-mail interview with The Straits Times.
...
“Now, we are asking our friends to help us rebalance the economy. That’s the framework, and I am confident the US-Singapore business and economic relationship will continue to grow,” he said.
...
“President Trump’s trade agenda is focused on restoring balance and fairness to the international trading system and protecting US national security,” Dr Sinha said.

[Vayutuvan]

(I am posting a large version of the image to make the details visible)

[Vayutuvan]

Adam Smith said:

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent

[Jay]

judges allowed this too...lol

[Vayutuvan]

He got acquitted in the court of public opinion in 2024. Also, the public representatives are calling judges to account. The same needs to be done with the out-of-control activist judiciary of India.

[Tanaji]

How the US treats Singapore, with which it has a trade surplus as well as a Free Trade Agreement since 2004:
The US helped with the S’pore ‘miracle’. Now, it’s calling in the favour, says Trump’s new envoy Anjani Sinha
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/us-helped-por ... 00327.html

Any agreement , trade or otherwise signed with Trump administration isn't worth the paper it is signed on. There is no guarantee that orange man wont wake up one day and realise a perceived slight that results in either abrogation or additional tariffs.

[A_Gupta]

Catherine Rampell writes:

DONALD TRUMP WANTS another Rush Hour movie, so another Rush Hour movie he shall get.

No matter that Jackie Chan is now 71 years old. No matter that the buddy-cop franchise leaned on racial stereotypes that might not play as well with even the woke-backlash audiences of today. Forget that the franchise’s director, Brett Ratner, has been virtually unemployable ever since half a dozen women (including several celebrities) accused him of sexual misconduct.

None of this is material. Even if it ends up being a box-office flop, Rush Hour 4 would still be a bargain—because producing this movie is a cheap way to extract something much, much more valuable from the president.

Paramount Skydance will reportedly distribute the film. Not coincidentally, Paramount Skydance is desperate to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. It’s a merger that would normally face ginormous antitrust obstacles, given that the companies collectively control a third of the North American box office. But the administration has shown an inclination to dispense with regulatory hurdles when it comes to its friends. And ponying up the cash for a potential box-office dud will, if nothing else, further ingratiate Paramount to Trump.

After all, let’s say Rush Hour 4 costs a couple hundred million bucks. That’s pocket change compared to a ~$75 billion merger.

Of course, to potentially sweeten the pot, Trump will get a little payday in all of this too. Remember that until-recently-unemployable director, Ratner? He just directed Melania Trump’s soft-focus documentary, for which Amazon MGM paid the Trumps a cool $40 million.

This cinematic saga is a tidy little microcosm of Trumpism: The resurrection of a sex pest, otherwise banished from polite society. The palm-greasing for Trump. The nostalgia for extremely dated and borderline racist cultural references. The president showing more interest in being a kung-fu film producer than leader of the free world. And, perhaps most importantly,

the wholesale degradation of exactly what has made our economy great.

…
…

In a healthy economy, firms are focused on developing new products, appealing to customers, finessing their operations, or (if they’re in the entertainment business) producing films that they think audiences actually want to watch or have genuine artistic value.

Instead, these businesses are wasting their time on useless bullshit meant to appease the Grifter-in-Chief.

THE RUSH HOUR 4 EPISODE is hardly the only example of a bizarre, bespoke payoff to Trump. Here’s my running list of some of the funniest accolades and prizes Trump has been given of late:

This week, FIFA, the soccer governing body, will announce the winner of its “first annual” peace prize. We’re all waiting with bated breath to learn who gets it.1 But note it was created soon after Trump was denied the (real) Nobel Peace Prize—which FIFA president Gianni Infantino had said Trump “definitely deserves.”

In August, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave Trump a fancy plaque made of glass and 24-karat gold.

Back in January, the Coca-Cola Company bestowed upon Trump the “first ever Presidential Commemorative Inaugural Diet Coke bottle.”

South Korea gave Trump a gold crown shortly after the most recent “No Kings” protests. (I am not making this up.) It also awarded him with the “Grand Order of Mugunghwa” in recognition of his role as a “peacemaker” on the Korean peninsula. The ceremony luncheon was capped off with a brownie adorned with gold in Trump’s honor (titled the “Peacemaker’s Dessert”).

Around that same time, the Nixon Foundation gave Trump its Architect of Peace Award.

More recently a Swiss delegation arrived at the White House offering a Rolex desk clock, as well as a one-kilogram personalized gold bar worth approximately $130,000.

Elsewhere Trump has received Olympic medals, a luxury jet from Qatar, Egypt’s Nile Collar, the UAE’s Order of Zayed, an honorary silicon disk from Nvidia, and a McDonald’s fry-cook pin.

[drnayar]

Catherine Rampell writes:

DONALD TRUMP WANTS another Rush Hour movie, so another Rush Hour movie he shall get.

THE RUSH HOUR 4 EPISODE is hardly the only example of a bizarre, bespoke payoff to Trump. Here’s my running list of some of the funniest accolades and prizes Trump has been given of late:

In August, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave Trump a fancy plaque made of glass and 24-karat gold.

Back in January, the Coca-Cola Company bestowed upon Trump the “first ever Presidential Commemorative Inaugural Diet Coke bottle.”

South Korea gave Trump a gold crown shortly after the most recent “No Kings” protests. (I am not making this up.) It also awarded him with the “Grand Order of Mugunghwa” in recognition of his role as a “peacemaker” on the Korean peninsula. The ceremony luncheon was capped off with a brownie adorned with gold in Trump’s honor (titled the “Peacemaker’s Dessert”).

Around that same time, the Nixon Foundation gave Trump its Architect of Peace Award.

More recently a Swiss delegation arrived at the White House offering a Rolex desk clock, as well as a one-kilogram personalized gold bar worth approximately $130,000.

Elsewhere Trump has received Olympic medals, a luxury jet from Qatar, Egypt’s Nile Collar, the UAE’s Order of Zayed, an honorary silicon disk from Nvidia, and a McDonald’s fry-cook pin.

I think Bharat should award Trump the "Golden Pea cock" award [sic] ., that should settle the tariffs demand , why are we so "not being flexible" with awards

[chetak]

land of the free and the home of the bereaved

they should replace their useless bald eagle with a more appropriate symbol

The decapitated and skinned chicken

ILLEGAL ALIEN BEHEADS HIS BOSS IN FRONT OF WIFE & KID IN TEXAS: SOROS-FUNDED DA SAYS "NAH, NO DEATH PENALTY FOR THAT"

Yordanis Cobos-Martinez, a 37-year-old Cuban illegal with a rap sheet longer than your arm (carjacking, indecency with a child, fleeing cops, the works), got butt-hurt with his motel manager.

So he followed the guy, pulled out a machete, hacked his head off in the parking lot, then kicked it down the driveway like a soccer ball and tossed it in a dumpster.

All while the victim's wife and son watched in horror.

This savage had a final deportation order, but Biden's people cut him loose in January because Cuba wouldn't take him back.

Now he's caught for literal decapitation murder... and Dallas County DA John "Let-em-Go" Creuzot just quietly took the death penalty off the table.

Max sentence they'll seek? Life without parole.

Beheading a man in front of his family isn't enough for the needle anymore in soft-on-crime Dallas.

Trump already called this exact DA out by name for being soft.

Victim's family is begging for full justice. But Creuzot's office shrugs and says, "We might change our mind" by January 8th.

American citizens brutally murdered, illegals with mile-long records walking free until they escalate to medieval execution... and Soros-backed prosecutors making sure they never face real consequences.

Chandramouli Nagamallaiah deserved better. His family deserves justice. Dallas deserves a DA who isn't terrified of the words "death penalty."

Source: Dallas Express

[saip]

Now the OM's MRI 'report' is out put out by his faithful doctor. It shows no tail (so I am wrong - he is NOT a monkey). Also, nothing about bone spurs - they magically disappeared.

[A_Gupta]

Anyone know about Próspera in Honduras?

This past Friday, Trump announced he will pardon the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who in March 2024 was convicted by a U.S. jury and sentenced to 45 years in prison for conspiring to import massive amounts of cocaine into the US. Trump gave no substantive reason, saying only that Hernández had been "treated very harshly and unfairly" in the prosecution under the previous Biden administration (again with no evidence or even argument).

... Paul Krugman on his Substack provides an explanation which feels intriguingly correct in its corruption and overall weirdness:

[W]hy pardon Hernández? What’s the connection to the crypto/tech broligarchy? It’s called Próspera.

Próspera is a for-profit city being built off Honduras’s coast. Its charter largely exempts the island from Honduran law. Instead, the city is run by a governing structure that for the most part gives control to a corporation, Honduras Próspera Inc., which is in turn funded by a familiar list of Silicon Valley billionaires including Thiel, Sam Altman and Marc Andreesen.

So while the city is being marketed as a libertarian paradise, it’s best seen as an autonomous oligarchy, government of, by and for billionaires. And you won’t be surprised to learn that within Próspera, Bitcoin is legal tender.

The 2013 Honduran law that made the creation of Próspera possible was initially ruled unconstitutional by the Honduran Supreme Court. But that ruling was reversed after Juan Orlando Hernández’s predecessor, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, managed to dismiss 4 of the court’s justices. Like Hernández, Sosa was a right-winger, who became president after a populist president, Manuel Zelaya, was overthrown by a military coup. Under both Hernández and Sosa, chaos reigned – corruption, criminal gangs, and drugs overran the country. The current president, Zelaya’s wife, has tried to claw back some sovereignty over Próspera, which has struck back with a mammoth lawsuit that could bankrupt the country.

Yesterday Honduras held an election in which Trump backed Nasry Asfura, a member of the same right-wing party as Hernández. Early results show the governing left-wing party well behind, but Asfura in a virtual tie with another right-wing candidate.

In any case, the point is that while Trump threatens and fulminates against Maduro in Venezuela, he is openly backing the Honduran political party that has allowed massive drug smuggling into the U.S. Why? The only logical answer is because of the influence of the crypto/tech broligarchy and their interests in Próspera.

[Rudradev]

Hindu American Foundation: State of Hindus in the US

A comprehensive, realistic summary of the situation for Hindus in the US at the end of an eventful and often tumultuous year.

Please watch and share widely. YouTube's algorithm heavily suppresses any content from HAF, CoHNA, and other Hindu Advocacy groups in the US and Canada. Yes, I have my differences with specific priorities and policies of both HAF and CoHNA-- but for better or worse, they are all we have for now.

[chetak]

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... -strategy/

National Security Strategy of the United States of America ........... November 2025



TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction – What Is American Strategy?........................................................... 11.

How American “Strategy” Went Astray……………………………………… 12.

President Trump’s Necessary, Welcome Correction…………………………. 2II.

What Should the United States Want?.................................................................. 31.

What Do We Want Overall?.............................................................................. 32.

What Do We Want In and From the World?......................................................5III.

What Are America’s Available Means to Get What We Want?........................... 6IV.

The Strategy……………………………………………………………………. 81.

Principles……………………………………………………………………... 82.

Priorities…………………………………………………………………….. 113.

The Regions………………………………………………………………….15A.

The Western Hemisphere………………………………………………. 15B.

Asia…………………………………………………………………….. 19C.

Europe………………………………………………………………….. 25D.

The Middle East………………………………………………………... 27E.

Africa…………………………………………………………………... 29

Download here: >> https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/ ... rategy.pdf


VI@WA

Here are five key takeaways from the document.



Hemispheric dominance


The US is seeking to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” by reinforcing the Monroe Doctrine – a 19th-century US policy in opposition to European colonisation and interference in the Americas.

Other than deterring foreign influence in the hemisphere, it will push to combat the drug trade and irregular migration while encouraging “private economies”.

“We will reward and encourage the region’s governments, political parties, and movements broadly aligned with our principles and strategy,” the document reads.

Trump has already put this approach into action by publicly backing conservative politicians in Latin America and bailing out the Argentinian economy under right-wing President Javier Melei with $40bn.

“We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere,” the document says.

“This ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”

The NSS also calls for shifting US military assets to the Western Hemisphere, “away from theatres whose relative import to American national security has declined in recent decades”.

The strategy comes as the US ramps up its deadly attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean that it says are carrying drugs.

The Trump administration has also ordered a military buildup around Venezuela, raising speculations that Washington may be looking to topple left-wing President Nicolas Maduro by force.




Deterring conflict over Taiwan


The last two National Security Strategies, including the one released during Trump’s first term in the White House, described the competition with China as the top priority for the US.

But the rivalry with Beijing was not put front and centre in this NNS.

Still, the document highlighted the need to win the economic competition in Asia and to rebalance trade with China. To that end, it stressed the need to work with Asian allies to provide a counterweight to Beijing, singling out India.

“We must continue to improve commercial (and other) relations with India to encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security,” it said.

The document spelt out the risks of China seizing Taiwan by force, noting that the self-governing island, which Beijing claims as its own, is a major producer of computer chips.

It also underscored that capturing Taiwan would give China access to the Second Island Chain in the Asia Pacific and bolster its position in the South China Sea, a vital artery for global trade.

“Hence deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority,” the NNS says.

The strategy called on US partners in the area to increase their military spending to deter conflict.

“We will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain,” it said.

“But the American military cannot, and should not have to, do this alone. Our allies must step up and spend—and more importantly do—much more for collective defence.”





Berating Europe


Although Trump has cracked down on speech critical of Israel in the US and ordered the Department of Justice to target his political rivals, the NNS scorned Europe over what it called “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition”.

The strategy proclaimed that Europe is facing the “prospect of civilizational erasure” due to migration policies and “failed focus on regulatory suffocation”.

It also hit out at European officials’ “unrealistic expectations” for the war between Russia and Ukraine, saying that the US has a “core interest” in ending the conflict.

A US proposal to end the war, which would allow Russia to hold on to large territories in eastern Ukraine, garnered rare criticism from some European leaders last month.

The NNS blamed, without providing examples, the “subversion of democratic processes” for what it described as some European governments’ unresponsiveness to their people’s desire for peace.

The document also suggested that the US may withdraw the security umbrella it has long held over the old continent.

Instead, Washington would prioritise “enabling Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defence, without being dominated by any adversarial power”, the NNS reads.





Switching focus from the Middle East


The NSS stresses that the Middle East is no longer the top strategic priority for the US.

It says that past considerations that made the region so important – namely, energy production and widespread conflict – “no longer hold”.

With the US ramping up its own energy production, “America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede,” the strategy says.

It goes on to argue that the conflict and violence in the region are also subsiding, citing the ceasefire in Gaza and the US attack on Iran in June, which it said “significantly degraded” Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“Conflict remains the Middle East’s most troublesome dynamic, but there is today less to this problem than headlines might lead one to believe,” it reads.

The US administration envisioned a rosy future for the region, saying that instead of dominating Washington’s interests, the Middle East “will increasingly become a source and destination of international investment”, including in artificial intelligence.

It describes the region as an “emerging as a place of partnership, friendship, and investment”.

But in reality, the Middle East continues to be beset by crises and violence. Despite the truce in Gaza, near-daily Israeli attacks have continued as deadly raids by settlers and soldiers against Palestinians escalate in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has also been stepping up its air strikes in Lebanon, augmenting fears of another all-out assault against the country to disarm a weakened Hezbollah by force.

In Syria, a year into the fall of the government of former President Bashar al-Assad, Israel has pushed on with incursions and strikes in an effort to militarily dominate the south of the country beyond the occupied Golan Heights.

And with its uncompromising commitment to Israel’s security, the US remains deeply entrenched in the region with continuing military presence in Syria, Iraq and the Gulf area.

The NSS acknowledges that the US continues to have key interests in the Middle East, including ensuring “that Israel remains secure” and protecting energy supplies and shipping lanes.

“But the days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over – not because the Middle East no longer matters, but because it is no longer the constant irritant, and potential source of imminent catastrophe, that it once was,” it says.






‘Flexible realism’

The US will pursue its own interests in dealing with other countries, the document says, suggesting that Washington will not push for the spread of democracy and human rights.

“We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories,” it said.

“We recognise and affirm that there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in acting according to such a realistic assessment or in maintaining good relations with countries whose governing systems and societies differ from ours even as we push like-minded friends to uphold our shared norms, furthering our interests as we do so.”

However, the strategy suggests the US will still press some countries – namely Western partners – over what it sees as important values.

“We will oppose elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe, the Anglosphere, and the rest of the democratic world, especially among our allies,” it said.

[Rakesh]

Shame on all the MUTUs of BRF. For time immemorial BRFities kept highlighting the danger of relying on the US as a military partner. Now here we are...

National Security Strategy
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u ... rategy.pdf
Nov 2025

Summary of the above article in the two tweets below...

https://x.com/Ignis_Rex/status/1996856198851924114?s=20 ---> The American Retreat and the Birth of a Multipolar World: A Eurasian Reading of Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS). China is now downgraded to an Economic Competitor!

The United States has just published the most honest national-security document of the past eighty years. In thirty-three sober pages, Washington has admitted what Moscow, Beijing and much of the Global Majority have been saying for two decades: the unipolar era is over, liberal hegemony is dead, and the United States is returning home to its own hemisphere. The rest of the world is now explicitly invited – or rather instructed – to take responsibility for its own security.

This is Buck-Passing on a continental scale.

Buck-passing is a strategy in Offensive Realism where a great power attempts to shift the responsibility for deterring or fighting a dangerous rising state onto another power. The buck-passer avoids the costs and risks of direct confrontation, hoping the "buck-catcher" and the aggressor will weaken each other through bloodletting, thereby maximizing the buck-passer's relative power.

The NSS of November 2025 does not merely downgrade China from “pacing threat” to “economic competitor”; it quietly demotes the entire Indo-Pacific to fourth place, after (1) homeland defence, (2) the Western Hemisphere [the Americas], and (3) economic re-industrialisation [focus on American industrial renewal]. Europe and the Middle East barely merit a subsection each. The message could not be clearer: the American security blanket is being pulled back, and regional powers are expected to step forward.

Why is China downgraded to only an Economic Competitor? See 2/2

East Asia: Japan’s Moment of Truth

In Asia, the beneficiary – and the new buck-catcher – is obviously Japan.

By openly stating that defending Taiwan is merely “a priority” (not a vital interest) and that it is “ideal” to preserve military overmatch but no longer guaranteed as China is too strong militarily), the United States is effectively telling Tokyo: “If you want the First Island Chain to hold, you will have to do much of the holding yourselves.” Which explains PM Takaichi brash statement that a potential Chinese military attack or blockade against Taiwan could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan – she is trying to step up to say Japan can hold the First Island Chain on its own.

The document repeatedly insists that “our allies must step up and spend – and more importantly do – much more for collective defence.” Translation: the post-war arrangement in which Japan enjoyed security at American expense while remaining constitutionally and politically castrated is finished.

This creates an historic opportunity for Japan to become a fully sovereign great power for the first time since 1945. The grey zones deliberately left in the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty and the 1972 Okinawa Reversion Agreement – under which Japan regained only administrative control of Okinawa while the United States retained exclusive use of the bases – can now be renegotiated. If Japan is to become the eastern anchor of any serious containment policy toward China, it will need genuine command authority over the 31 U.S. military installations on its soil, especially the strategic hub at Kadena.

Whether Washington will voluntarily surrender these extraterritorial privileges is doubtful. More likely, Tokyo will have to force the issue – and that, in turn, will require the acquiescence of Beijing and Moscow. Why? Because the legal foundation for the original American seizure of Okinawa rests on the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation, both of which promised that all territories “stolen” from China by Japan would be returned to the Republic of China. Russia, as co-signatory to Potsdam and as the successor to the Soviet seat on the Allied Council, retains a theoretical veto over any final settlement of Okinawa’s status. So Taiwan has to be returned to China?

In other words, Japan’s path to full sovereignty over its own territory now runs through Beijing and Moscow, not Washington. The irony is exquisite: the very powers Japan is supposed to help contain may hold the keys to its liberation from the post-war order.

Europe: Abandonment in Slow Motion

Across the Eurasian landmass, the same logic applies. The 2025 NSS mentions Russia exactly twice – once in passing, once to say that Europe must restore its “civilisational self-confidence and Western identity.” There is no mention of NATO’s Article 5 as the cornerstone of American strategy, no pledge to defend every inch of Allied soil, no promise to keep 100,000 troops in Europe indefinitely. The message to Paris, Berlin and Warsaw is unmistakable: if you wish to manage the Russian frontier, you will do it largely with your own money and your own blood.

The Europeans, predictably, are in denial. But the mathematics are brutal. Without the American security subsidy, the combined GDP of the EU plus UK is still larger than Russia’s, but their collective defence spending remains anaemic and their arms industries are decades behind. The coming years will be a frantic, and probably unsuccessful, attempt to create a European pillar capable of deterring Moscow on its own. The more likely outcome is a Finnish-style accommodation with Russia or, in the case of Germany and France, a reluctant drift toward Eurasian economic integration once the American shield is visibly lowered.

The Gulf: An Arab-Israeli Condominium over Energy

In the Middle East, the strategy is equally revealing. The United States will no longer police the region with occupation forces or regime-change adventures. Instead, it will rely on the expanded Abraham Accords framework – effectively an Israeli-Saudi-Emirati-Qatari condominium – to ensure that no single power (i.e., Iran) can close the Strait of Hormuz or Bab el-Mandeb. American naval power will remain over the horizon, ready to intervene only if the regional balance collapses entirely. This explains why Trump sold F-35 to Saudi Arabia as now the Saudi will have to police the Middle East with Israel-Emirati-Qatari. How Iran will react to this is anyone’s guess?

This is classic offshore balancing: let the local heavyweights fight the limited wars, sell them the weapons, secure the insurance policy, but refuse to pay the premium forever.

The New Geometry of Power

What we are witnessing is the orderly (for now) dissolution of the American world order and its replacement by a multipolar system organised around continental spheres of influence:

- The United States consolidates an expanded Monroe Doctrine in the entire Western Hemisphere.
- China dominates mainland East Asia and the South China Sea.
- Russia re-establishes privileged influence in the post-Soviet space and the Arctic.
- India emerges as the swing power in South Asia and the Indian Ocean.
- A reluctant European bloc, possibly led by a Franco-German directorate, tries to find a modus vivendi with Russia while keeping the Americans at arm’s length.
- An Israeli-Arab coalition polices the greater Middle East.

Japan, the eternal outlier, faces the most consequential choice. It can cling to the fading American protectorate and remain a political dwarf with American bases on its soil forever, or it can seize the moment, negotiate with its continental neighbours, and finally become a normal great power – sovereign in Tokyo and sovereign in Naha (capital city of Okinawa)

The 2025 NSS is a plan for American Restraint and Renewal. It is the strategic re-orientation document of a power that has accepted its limits. The age of ideological crusades is over; the age of pragmatic spheres of influence has begun. America will have to invest in itself if it wants to renew its industrial and manufacturing base. The only question left is whether the former hegemon will manage its decline with grace – or whether its former dependents will force the issue themselves.

It will also open the question of the structure of the UN Security Council where you have 3 Western powers – US, France and UK where France and UK are small countries that may have to make way for India, one Muslim and one African country to be UNSC permanent member – but the new members may not have a regular veto power like the original members US, Russia and China.

We are living in interesting time.

https://x.com/Ignis_Rex/status/1996856201649479896?s=20 ----> China’s Scale Is Decisive

China’s 1.41 billion people (vs. America’s 345 million) create an unbridgeable advantage in the 21st-century technology race. By 2050, even if China merely reaches today’s South Korean or Portuguese GDP-per-capita (PPP), its total economy will be $60–75 trillion – roughly double the projected U.S. economy.

Emerging technologies (AI, quantum, biotech, 6G, hypersonics, space industry) are characterised by enormous fixed costs and powerful network effects. The country that spreads those costs across four times the population, trains models on four times the data, and sells into four times the domestic market will set global standards and price everyone else out.

The 2025 NSS tacitly admits this: the tariff war failed, and the U.S. now needs a coalition to achieve the scale it no longer has alone. Yet the coalition partners (ageing Japan, shrinking Europe, still-developing India) cannot close the gap in time.

Result: if the United States does not maintain leadership or co-leadership in the defining technologies, China becomes the global economic hegemon and standard-setter. The U.S. will remain the unchallenged regional hegemon of the entire Western Hemisphere – rich, secure, and powerful – but only a regional superpower in a Eurasian-centred world.

In short, the 2025 NSS is America’s quiet acceptance that, without technological parity at Chinese scale, it faces a future as the Britain of the 21st century: splendid, respected, and peripheral.

[Rakesh]

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1996 ... 28702?s=20 ---> This is big. The final U.S. National Security Strategy was just published and the refocus on the Western Hemisphere (i.e. the Americas) is confirmed. The document clearly establishes this as the U.S.'s number 1 priority, saying that the U.S. will now "assert and enforce a 'Trump Corollary' to the Monroe Doctrine."

In terms of military presence, they write that this means "a readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere, and away from theaters whose relative import to American national security has declined in recent decades or years."

On China, a couple of points.

The most striking aspect to me is that China is NOT anymore defined as "the" primary threat, "most consequential challenge," "pacing threat," or similar formulations used in previous such documents.

It's clearly downgraded as a priority. Based on the document's structure and emphasis, the top U.S. priorities could be characterized as:
1) Homeland security and borders (migration, cartels, etc.)
2) Western Hemisphere (Monroe Doctrine restoration)
3) Economic security (reindustrialization, supply chains)
4) China and Indo-Pacific

To be clear they don't define China as an ally or a partner in any shape or form but primarily as 1) an economic competitor, 2) a source of supply chain vulnerabilities (but also a trading partner) and 3) a player who regional dominance should be "ideally" denied because it "has major implications for the U.S. economy."

Interestingly, I believe for the first time ever, they mention the possibility of being overmatched militarily by China:
- They write that "deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority": "ideally" clearly means that it's ideal, but not necessarily a given. The fact that they call deterring conflict over Taiwan merely "a priority" also suggests, by definition, that it's no more a top strategic priority, or a vital interest.
- On Taiwan they also clearly imply that if the U.S.'s "First Island Chain allies" don't "step up and spend - and more importantly do - much more for collective defense", then there might be "a balance of forces so unfavorable to us as to make defending that island impossible."

They still maintain that "the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait" but, clearly, there's a widening gap between what the US says it opposes and what it's actually willing to do about it.

Interestingly as well, contrary to previous such document, there is zero ideological dimension in the document when it comes to China. No "democracy vs. autocracy" framing, no "rules-based international order" to defend, no values-based crusade. China is treated as a practical issue to be managed, not an ideological adversary to be defeated.

In fact the document explicitly mentions, I think for the first time ever as well, that US policy is now:
- "not grounded in traditional, political ideology"
- that they "seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories"
- and that they seek "good relations with nations whose governing systems differ from ours."

Which is quite a stunning departure from the rhetoric of the past few decades. We all knew this but it's now amply clear that the era of missionary liberal internationalism in US foreign policy is dead and buried.

The competition with China is primarily described in economic terms, explicitly so: they write the competition is about "winning the economic future" and that economics are "the ultimate stakes."

Notably, they admit that the tariffs approach "that began in 2017" when it comes to China essentially failed because "China adapted" and has "strengthened its hold on supply chains."

The new strategy, as described in the document, is to build an economic coalition against China that can exert more leverage than the US economy alone - a tacit admission that America just isn't powerful enough on its own anymore.

The contradiction is however obvious: unclear how you build an economic coalition against China while simultaneously waging trade wars against your coalition partners, demanding they shoulder more of their own defense, and treating every allied relationship as a deal to be renegotiated in America's favor.

At some point these "allies" will be asking a very obvious question: why sacrifice our economic interests to prop up an America that can no longer compete on its own - and that offers us less and less in return?





https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1996 ... 11909?s=20 ---> This part is also incredible: "We massively f*cked up by trying to be a global empire"

[chetak]

In short, they have declared cheen as enemy no 1

And don't believe all that the document says.

There are immensely powerful pressure groups within and also without the US that have agendas way beyond what has been spelt out in the document

The pressures that they will continue to exert on India will not relent, and nor will their agendas change, no matter who says what

[SRajesh]

Not as enemy but more an Economic G2
But the question still remains as to what is need for realigment with Jihadis??
Is it just quid pro quo for Sunni Islam controlling the Middle East with a wider Abraham Accord??
Or more sinister plan to curtail India's rise
If India is curtail how does it benefit US as surely China will then take over not only the SCS and East Asia but also the South and SE Asia.
Meaning once the top three of the agenda : Homeland , Western Hemisphere and the Economic Security is secured only then will the last be tackled i.e., China/Indo-Pacific be tackled.
So am I to understand that throwing under the bus is a tactical move to attain a Parity on all fronts with China and then unleash
A la Deng's 'Gloved Iron Fist'??

[A_Gupta]

I heard American commentators say that the document was revised based on input from Secy of Commerce to tone down on China, and to hold off till US can achieve some independence from Chinese supply chains, and specifically in rare earths.

[A_Gupta]

CFR analysis:
https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/unpack ... y-strategy

In place of that great-power-competition focus is a highly ideological frame that reflects the president’s domestic priorities. The Western Hemisphere is elevated as America’s highest priority, with an emphasis on arresting migration, combating so-called “narco-terrorists,” and assuring U.S. dominance through a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. The call for U.S. military posture to reflect “urgent threats in our Hemisphere” is a strong signal of what is to come in the National Defense Strategy. And far from the grave tone struck by all its predecessors, this NSS veers at times into screed. It reserves its greatest vitriol for U.S. “foreign policy elites” and European allies rather than those who could truly threaten the United States.

A close read of the NSS reveals myriad baseless assertions and internal inconsistencies. But no written document can truly guide, capture, or discipline Trump’s often impulsive, erratic, and opportunistic foreign policy. Further, the unceremonious rollout—a late-night release seemingly without an accompanying speech by the president or national security advisor—suggests the White House could see the NSS mostly as a box-checking exercise, rather than a binding statement of strategic intent. Its many audiences, from Capitol Hill to allied capitals, should discount it accordingly.

[A_Gupta]

Whether or not it should top the list, there is a strong case for greater attention to the Western Hemisphere now and in the future. Hemispheric organized crime claims more U.S. lives than any other national security threat. Recent years have exposed a troubling incapacity to control our southern border, unsettling U.S. domestic politics. The Western Hemisphere is rich in natural resources and well-positioned to help the United States strengthen critical supply chains, but China is competing in this domain by expanding its influence in trade and digital infrastructure.

The NSS gives these challenges long-overdue emphasis. At the same time, it puts forward a controversial, threat-oriented vision of the United States’ southern neighbors: Latin America is a region of risks first, and one of opportunities second. The NSS says that U.S. foreign policy will focus largely on containing three threats: mass migration, organized crime, and “hostile foreign incursion.”

…
…
…

In short, the NSS’s emphasis on neighbors is defensible, the vision largely threat-oriented, and the tactics for getting from A to B seemingly dubious.

[A_Gupta]

Most significantly, the Indo-Pacific portion of the strategy is China-centric. Other countries in the region are valued insofar as they can help the United States win an economic competition with China and deter a conflict with Beijing. The Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally, is not even mentioned. Nor are the Pacific Islands or most countries in Southeast Asia. A strategy that played to U.S. strengths, though, would make U.S. allies and partners the starting point and nest China within a broader Indo-Pacific strategy.

[A_Gupta]

The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy suggests a “civilizational” approach as the main lens through which it considers its relationship with Europe—a continent full of U.S. allies. This ideological framework is radically different from the first Trump administration, and really any past administration’s view of Europe. The core problem of the European continent, according to the NSS, is a neglect of “Western” values (understood as nationalist conservative values) and a “loss of national identities” due to immigration and “cratering birthrates.” The alleged result is economic stagnation, military weakness, and “civilizational erasure” of Europe.
...
...
Russia is spared any criticism in the NSS and, strikingly, the country is not defined as an adversary of the United States. Instead, Europeans are criticized for a lack of genuine peace efforts in Ukraine and “unrealistic” expectations, which allegedly contradict the wish for peace from the European population. On Russia and Ukraine, the NSS places a priority on the U.S.-Russia great-power relationship and highlights strategic stability (New START falls in this category) as well as escalation management with Russia in Europe. The NSS does commit to Ukraine’s survival as a “viable state” and its reconstruction, but it does not spell out how to achieve this goal. While the strategy adds that the United States wants NATO to “prevent the reality” of a “perpetually expanding alliance,” the administration writes that it opposes NATO’s open-door policy.
....
...
Vance’s speech in Munich could have been interpreted back in February as the ideological views of just the vice president and parts of the radical MAGA base. But now, these views have become the administration’s official policy, which will only accelerate Europe’s efforts to hedge against the United States and to build up its own autonomy.

[A_Gupta]

The National Security Strategy’s statement on the Middle East, which asserts that the region is no longer a focal point for U.S. policy, is entirely consistent with the position Trump staked out during his three campaigns for the presidency. It also tracks with his speech in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last May, during which the president declared that the era of American nation-building and general meddling in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries was over.

During those remarks, he pointed to the economic development and social changes underway throughout the Gulf to emphasize that the people of the region can make their own decisions about how they choose to arrange their societies and that they are capable of significant achievements without help from Washington. There was wisdom in this statement after three decades of U.S. failure to transform the politics and cultures of Middle Eastern countries.
...
At the same time, the NSS and the president’s inclination to diminish the U.S. role in the region conflicts with the White House’s approach since Trump returned to office.

[A_Gupta]

The newly released NSS reiterates President Trump’s earlier assertions that he is deserving of being hailed the “president of peace” for having “settled” eight “raging conflicts” in as many months.

If only this reality were true. Like many of Trump’s claims, the facts simply don’t support the rhetoric—at least not to the extent he either believes or would have the public believe.

[A_Gupta]

Another huge set of analyses: from the Atlantic Council:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/n ... gn-policy/

[chetak]

Meanwhile in #US #IlhanOmar (a close friend of Pakistan) : #Minnesota’s Somali fraud may reach $8 BILLION, not just $1 billion as first reported.

Fox News reports : Members of the inner circle of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., personally profited from the $1 billion welfare fraud scandal in her district that has placed her Somali constituency under a White House microscope. Omar held events at one of the restaurants named in the fraud, knew one of its now-convicted owners and had a staffer who was also convicted, the New York Post reported.

Omar also introduced the legislation that led to $250 million being defrauded from federal child-nutrition programs in COVID-19 aid, according to the newspaper. Whistleblowers now confirm her campaign funneled a massive amount of money to her husband’s firm while Somali-linked networks in Minneapolis ran one of the biggest COVID relief fraud schemes in history, hundreds of millions stolen.

Around $250 million in state funds was distributed beginning in 2020 to provide meals to schoolchildren during the pandemic. However, the money was allegedly pocketed by Salim Ahmed Said, the co-owner of Safari Restaurant, where Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party. Said was convicted in March for his role in the scheme, with the Justice Department stating that the funds — intended to feed children — were used to finance a lavish lifestyle.

(This is not “community outreach.” This is corruption on steroids.)

At the bottom of every problem, the heavy hand of that swine obummer is clearly visible

[SRajesh]

^^ this is the stupidity of the liberals and woke thinking that Ropers will integrate and be part of the society.
These guys have fine tuned the scamming of social care to the nth degree.
They are turning the screws of democracy on the Rolers that they are shell shocked.
Please check out the scams of the Illegal migrants in. UK.
From free meals/accomodation to establhing mosques inside the hotel to free taxis for school runs and hospitals its monumental.
Videos surfaces showing completely chaos inside these lodges. Weeds lyung about all over the place. Free landlines including international phone calls ability. Wimmen actively trying to get pregnant so as to bolster claims to stay back!!

[A_Gupta]

In the light of recent truck crashes in the US caused by drivers of Indian origin and that drew a lot of media attention:

AI tells us:

Legislation: The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) signed into law in 2012, required the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to establish new entry-level driver training (ELDT) standards.

Initial Proposal: An initial draft of the rule included a mandatory minimum of 30 hours for behind-the-wheel training.

Final Rule: In December 2016, the FMCSA published the final ELDT rule, which became effective in February 2022. This final version removed the mandatory minimum training hours, making the requirement "outcome-based" or focused on a driver demonstrating proficiency.

Training Provider Registry (TPR): The rule also established the Training Provider Registry, requiring all individuals seeking a Commercial Driver's License (CDL) to receive training from a provider listed on the registry.

Current Enforcement: Recently, the Department of Transportation has cracked down on non-compliant schools, removing nearly 3,000 providers from the registry for failing to meet service standards or falsifying data, an effort to ensure all drivers meet the required safety standards.

The painfulness of US regulation making is in full display in this very long document in the Federal Register. A regulation is proposed and then has a public comment period, and then the final regulation is published. Very democratic and all, but there is also scope for bad influence.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documen ... -operators

BTW = Behind the Wheel.

Who opposed the minimum BTW (Behind the Wheels) training requirement? (Similarly the theory minimum hours requirement was removed.)

Comments opposed to minimum BTW hours:

A number of commenters opposed any minimum number of required BTW hours. Those opposing an hours-based requirement included ATA, the Iowa Motor Truck Association (IMTA), American Truck Dealers (ATD), Driver Holdings LLC, Werner, C.R. England, Petroleum Marketers Association of America (PMAA), Virginia Trucking Association (VTA), SNAC International, the National Propane Gas Association (NPGA), UPS, the North Dakota Motor Carriers Association (NDMCA), and the National Feed and Grain Association (NFGA). Most of those opposing the requirement alleged that the minimum BTW hours requirement is arbitrary, given the lack of any scientific evidence or data showing that an hours-based training requirement results in fewer crashes. Some commenters also cited the lack of flexibility inherent in a minimum hours requirement. Many of these commenters instead supported an “alternative” approach in which a driver-trainee's successful completion of the Class A and B BTW curricula is determined solely by his or her demonstrated proficiency (discussed below). National Association for Pupil Transportation (NAPT) commented that “[s]etting arbitrary, one-size-fits-all hours of training as a standard would be overly restrictive in a world where actual performance should matter more.” VTA asserted that the minimum BTW hours requirement “will require additional equipment and trainers which will increase costs for training providers, who will have to pass those costs onto students.” Other commenters, including PMAA, ATD and NFGA, were concerned that the BTW hours requirement would discourage entry-level drivers from obtaining a CDL. NFGA also noted that the requirement could “dissuade employers from providing opportunities for CDL training.”

ATA, a member of the ELDTAC, viewed the proposed BTW hours requirement as unnecessary and not supported by any research indicating “a relationship between the number of hours spent in training and a reduction in crashes.” Noting that “what little data is available does not support a minimum hours-based approach,” ATA cited the American Transportation Research Institute's (ATRI) 2008 analysis of the effect of CDL driver training on safety performance. According to ATA, the ATRI study concluded that “no relationship is evident between total training program contact hours and driver safety events when other factors such as age and length of employment are held constant.”

In its comments, C.R. England summarized a study it conducted among 2,929 of its drivers “to test whether an hours-based program that requires 30 BTW hours or more, results in better performance than a performance-based program that requires fewer than 30 BTW hours.” In analyzing this data, C.R. England found, among other things, that “drivers from the shorter programs have fewer crashes and less severe crashes,” thus showing “a negative correlation between increased required hours and negative safety outcomes.” C.R. England therefore recommended that, “[g]iven the gaping lack of evidence to support the BTW requirement and the arbitrary selection of the number of required hours,” FMCSA drop the requirement from the final rule.

I think there are similar problems in establishing who is a valid trainer.

[Jay]

At the bottom of every problem, the heavy hand of that swine obummer is clearly visible

How? These somalis were airlifted to amrika during clinton era and of the roughly 90k people of somali descent in minnesota around 45k are somali born. This is fox news journalism teamed up with whatsapp fake news...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/fac ... 547385002/

[saip]

"Ilhan Omar wasn't even elected by Americans! She was elected by 80,000 Somalis that Obama dropped in Minnesota'

But she got 270,000 votes. Obviously those 80,000 Somalis (who would not have voting rights to begin with) voted more than three times each while the white Americans were asleep.

[drnayar]

At the bottom of every problem, the heavy hand of that swine obummer is clearly visible

How? These somalis were airlifted to amrika during clinton era and of the roughly 90k people of somali descent in minnesota around 45k are somali born. This is fox news journalism teamed up with whatsapp fake news...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/fac ... 547385002/

I think BRF has links to videos of overnight flights full of people from god knows where landing in various us airports during sleepy Joe s administration

[S_Madhukar]

That US Monroe doctrine document is such a hogwash. Yes they know Cheen is creeping in their backyard which they have to control again, but they have all manner of proxies in Asia and Middle East. Nice try to hide that they have nothing to do with the ensuing turmoils.

I wonder who will sign up as their allies in man and material 20-30 years down the line? Which other underdeveloped, populated country do they have under their disposal? or will they form an Anglo- Islamist axis again like the Brits did ?

[Vayutuvan]

CFR analysis:
https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/unpack ... y-strategy

In place of that great-power-competition focus is a highly ideological frame that reflects the president’s domestic priorities. The Western Hemisphere is elevated as America’s highest priority, with an emphasis on arresting migration, combating so-called “narco-terrorists,” and assuring U.S. dominance through a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. The call for U.S. military posture to reflect “urgent threats in our Hemisphere” is a strong signal of what is to come in the National Defense Strategy. And far from the grave tone struck by all its predecessors, this NSS veers at times into screed. It reserves its greatest vitriol for U.S. “foreign policy elites” and European allies rather than those who could truly threaten the United States.

A close read of the NSS reveals myriad baseless assertions and internal inconsistencies. But no written document can truly guide, capture, or discipline Trump’s often impulsive, erratic, and opportunistic foreign policy. Further, the unceremonious rollout—a late-night release seemingly without an accompanying speech by the president or national security advisor—suggests the White House could see the NSS mostly as a box-checking exercise, rather than a binding statement of strategic intent. Its many audiences, from Capitol Hill to allied capitals, should discount it accordingly.

As expected, CFR analysis is anti-Trump deepstate analysis. The characterization using words and phrases like "screed", "myriad baseless assertions and internal inconsistencies", "impulsive, erratic, and opportunistic" gives off a noisome odor that reeks of Atlatism and Pax Americana uber alles. So very neo-liberal and europasand.

[Vayutuvan]

CFR is no friend of India. They want to support Europe and NATO against the Russia-China-Iran "axis" at any cost though one faction wants support Iran as we have seen Obama doing during his second term by gifting US$700 million in small cash and unfreezing of their reserves held in the US/European banks. They also seem to be gung-ho with European welfare state and welcoming Islamists of all stripes. These are not friends of Bharat.

[Vayutuvan]

"Ilhan Omar wasn't even elected by Americans! She was elected by 80,000 Somalis that Obama dropped in Minnesota'

But she got 270,000 votes. Obviously those 80,000 Somalis (who would not have voting rights to begin with) voted more than three times each while the white Americans were asleep.

Absolutely. I don't put it beyond Dumbocrats, i.e. letting those Somalis vote three times - MN for ya.

[A_Gupta]

At the bottom of every current problem, Obama is implicated - yes, but not in the way you think.

https://www.reddit.com/r/thebulwark/com ... _stop_the/
Some emphasis added.

TL;DR: The MAGA movement isn’t driven by economic loss but by a perceived loss of cultural dominance. You cannot counter this with economic policy. The response has to be moral.

JVL has consistently argued that the “Forgotten Man” or the economically “left-behind” are not the driving force behind MAGA. I agree. But I think liberals, including JVL, often hesitate to name what really motivates MAGA because doing so feels both too easy and too validating of MAGA’s own grievance narrative.

At its core, MAGA is not an economic project. It is a cultural one. It uses political power to try to reclaim cultural dominance from what it sees as “liberalism.”

Consider the typical MAGA grievance list:

- Hollywood is too liberal
- The MSM has a liberal bias
- “Wokeness”
- “Me Too”
- DEI
- Socialism/Communism

Only one of these is even superficially economic and even the “socialist/communist” accusation functions more as a cultural attack than an economic one. To explain this, some historical context helps.

A Very Brief History of the GOP’s Cultural Roots

Racism in the U.S. is long, complicated, and foundational. Even the Republicans of the 1860s were not anti-racist; they were anti-slavery on moral grounds. After the Civil War, Union war heroes perpetrated brutal violence against Native Americans. From the beginning, the tension between European Christian “whiteness” and other cultures has shaped American identity.

JVL argues that Reaganism consolidated the neoliberal consensus. But that consensus predated Reagan. For much of the 20th century, the Republican Party’s liberal wing kept its illiberal wing contained. World War II was a turning point. Isolationists and proto-fascists were sidelined because the threat of European fascism was too severe. Afterward, anti-communism served as the unifying cause. But once the USSR collapsed and China ceased to function as a true communist state, that common enemy disappeared and the party began to fracture. When there is no enemy abroad, movements tend to invent one at home.

Though the John Birch Society [1] { 1 - If you want to know more research the John Birch Society. It is hard to overstate how influential that group has been on the far right movement and how much MAGA, including the MAHA movement, draw from it.} was kept at arm’s length (in large part thanks to William F. Buckley Jr.), the Republican “center” moved rightward as the influence of New Deal liberalism faded. Figures like Goldwater and Buchanan gained traction, and the GOP absorbed a large bloc of Southern voters angered by the Civil Rights Movement and the federal dismantling of legalized segregation.

Several core conservative concepts today trace directly back to that cultural shift. For example:

- Education: The rise of private schools and homeschooling in the South was a response to desegregation.
- Elite impunity: The treatment of wealthy individuals as above accountability echoes the plantation-era social hierarchy.
- Hostility toward federal courts: Conservative attacks on federal authority today mirror resentment toward the federal role in ending segregation.

Enter MAGA: A Cultural Counter-Revolution

With that background in mind MAGA’s motivation becomes clearer. For decades the Right has resented the liberal tilt of American culture. Women gaining autonomy over reproduction challenged conservative Christian patriarchy. Civil rights and affirmative action challenged the belief in a “natural social hierarchy.” Declining church attendance and demographic change signaled a shrinking white Christian majority.

Obama’s election was a cultural watershed for white America. Suddenly, it became undeniable that American culture might not be synonymous with white Christian culture. Complaints about rap, fashion, or halftime shows aren’t really about music or pants, they’re reactions to a cultural no longer centered around “whiteness”. Obama’s re-election cemented the fear: this wasn’t a fluke; the culture was changing.

Trump and MAGA emerged directly from the Tea Party backlash against America’s first Black president. Trump tapped into long-standing grievances and elevated the voices of Charlie Kirk, Chris Rufo, Ben Shapiro, and others, who weaponized those grievances into something sharper and more explicitly reactionary. With their help, Trump dragged racism and misogyny back to the cultural center.

Activists like Rufo reframed bigotry as “anti-woke” and “anti-DEI.” It’s marketing. Anti-woke sounds better than anti-Black, anti-trans, or anti-gay. But it is fundamentally about reversing cultural liberalization, not about economics.

Why Liberals Hesitate to Call MAGA What It Is

This brings us back to George Packer. Many on the left hesitate to say plainly that MAGA is built on racism, misogyny, and cultural dominance because:

- They don’t want to believe their fellow citizens are genuinely bigoted.
- Calling someone “racist” triggers defensiveness; almost no one sees themselves that way.
- It risks strengthening the “us vs. them” mentality MAGA thrives on.
- It can provoke the “Fine, call me a racist? Then I’ll act like one” reaction.

So the challenge becomes: How do we separate voters with cultural grievances from the political actors exploiting those grievances for authoritarian ends?

Packer’s economic approach has already been tested. Biden delivered bipartisan legislation that disproportionately benefited red states, yet Trump improved his performance in many of those same places in 2024.

[A_Gupta]

So, @chetak is rightly highlighting fraud by Somali-Americans. The good news is that the fraudsters are being prosecuted, I think around 75 prosecutions and convictions so far.

But what of this white American, now Senator?

As CEO of Columbia/HCA in the 1990s, Senator Rick Scott oversaw a company that eventually paid $1.7 billion in fines and penalties to settle what was, at the time, the largest health care fraud case in U.S. history. Scott was never personally charged with any crimes, but resigned under pressure from the board in 1997.

Now in Senate he claims to lead anti-fraud legislation. All well and good, but if Americans - Floridians in particular - rewarded this man with a long political career, hey, maybe some Somali-Americans will be similarly reformed and deserve a long political career.

The problem of course is that the axe to grind on BRF is that Somali-Americans are Muslim, and the frauds committed by their community are **obviously** way more damaging to the US than fraud committed by White Americans, and White-run Corporate Citizens (per the US Supreme Court, corporations are people.)

[chetak]

These somali SOBs are worse than the rohingiyas who have infested India with overt and covert help from BIF controlled local and FFNGOs who support them tooth and nail. That empowers them and sets the narrative.

these scum are entitled swine who have learned to leach off the system as though it is their birth right and importing beedis and rohingiyas into India is a long standing game plan. It is not possible without institutional support in assam, orissa, bengal, and the entire NE and for the best part of >70 odd years, that support has come solely from the congis, commies and their "public intellectuals", mostly ensconced comfortably in government funded poisonous institutions like jamia, jnu, aligarh, TISS, and jhadavpur universities just to name a few, joined by corrosive private (gora funded) examples like ashoka, jindal and lovely professional university et al

the rohingiyas in India do vote multiple times in any election and are extremely violent when confronted.

why are people here surprised to discover that the somali are very similar to the rohingiyas. The main industry in somalia is piracy, extortion and kidnapping for ransom, with side businesses of murder, rape and looting, and not many who have landed in the US are respectable church goers.

is obummer really a paragon of ameriki virtue or is he a devious jihadi who has gamed the system and laid the immigration landmines, sowed the seeds of a civilizational invasion, and stacked the deck using the resources of soreass like players and the results are slowly and irreversibly becoming obvious only now. Why did sleepy joe open the amriki borders just before he demitted office

Why did merkel open the borders of germany to a similar demographic onslaught just before she demitted office

the somalis have demographically ensured changed voting patterns in many districts and have learned how to control and game the existing system to suit themselves. ilhan omar is the beneficiary of just such a changed demography and she has repaid the favour by allowing wholesale ripoffs of the public finances and moving of such funds to terrorists in somalia

That dumbschitt of a state governor speaks somali. That's how deep the rot has spread. The termites are already deep in the woodwork.

Shades of mumtaz bano!! she who does namaz publicly and grinds down the majority Hindu populace under the sharia jack boot every chance that she gets. What is the source of her deep seated hatred and the need for cultural revenge (in a civilizational sense) that often drives these vermin, like some in the state of assam. BTW, they were/are all congis / (ex) congis in the not too recent past.

In the Indian milieu, the gates of the fortress have always stealthily been opened from within, betrayal is passé, with power and paisa par for the course.

These somali enclaves are ghettoes that are in the initial stages of evolution. Bankruptcy is their future and "michigan" is their destiny, with sharia being their ultimate game plan. Europe has already crossed these civilizational milestones and are only now beginning to even recognize the problem. The britshits are already deep in the sharia soup

This very thing, aided financially, sheltered legally by providing cover fire, and politically sanitized using the constitution and the SC, courtesy the BIF, has been hapenning in large parts of India and the momentum of such change is growing by the day. They are using the Indian constitution to very vocally and also very visibly change the ecosystem.

and some people here respond by using semantics.

No battle was ever won by mere lexicography

Winston S. Churchill — 'While the Hindu elaborates his argument, the moslem sharpens his sword'

[Jay]

But she got 270,000 votes. Obviously those 80,000 Somalis (who would not have voting rights to begin with) voted more than three times each while the white Americans were asleep.

Absolutely. I don't put it beyond Dumbocrats, i.e. letting those Somalis vote three times - MN for ya.

Only 3 times? Fox news said they voted 30 times and my local "patriot" facebook meme page admin confirms the same. They even sponsored flights from europe to mexico, and let them enter via southern border where the guv of the great state of tejas bussed them to heartland, right through the suburbs of overland park, and lenaxa and finally to the nordic communes in minnesota where they were welcomed by madam kamala. After they received their customory gift of a khat bundle, they entered the voting booths where the polling workers embraced them with open arms and open voting machines and they stabbed that switch until their fingers were worn out. I did my research and the above is all truth.