Oh, and let's not even get started on how they can't help but manufacture reasons why Trump shouldn't take a chance on avoiding a war that would lead to thousands of Normal American families burying sons and daughters. Yeah, shaking Rocket Man's hand is pretty much Munich 2: The EnNorkening.
But I shouldn't complain. It's getting so the elite needs to register their activities as in-kind contributions to the Trump 2020 campaign.
Who thinks Normal Americans will be mad about Trump fulminating over how we are putting our cash and our blood on the line against Putin for the Europeans and they won't even meet the piddly 2% defense spending level they promised? One of the elite's favorite fallbacks is that demanding our allies carry their own rucksacks for once is totally playing into Vlad's hands. How? Reasons. And because.
Putin is the all-purpose boogie man now, though the transnational liberal elite was perfectly happy to suck up to him until he became more useful as a pumped-up threat than as a cash cow. A half mil for a speech? Seems legit. Uranium One, anybody? Cool. Weird how the fussbudgets who were AWOL during the real Cold War don't seem upset about that stuff, only about stuff that involves taking America's side.
Who does the elite side with?
Not America.
Never America.
I say we should side with ourselves. So does the president.
I keep asking the establishment shills why America has some moral obligation to tolerate foreign countries imposing higher tariffs upon us than we impose upon them. Seems facially unfair, right? So, there's got to be a really good reason because how can you support our working people facing a higher obstacle to trade than the foreigners do? I'm just wondering what's wrong with a level playing field. Fair is fair, right? But I never get a good answer.
Oh, I do get responses. Most of them are weakly snarky tweets informing me that I don't know anything about economics. The rest are a smorgasbord of puny personal attacks. But no one can seem to tell me why we have some sort of moral duty to engage in trade relationships with other countries that are not precisely equal. Maybe I am an idiot like they say, but calling me one doesn't answer the question.
I don't like tariffs. I like free trade. But in what world is free trade free when we are only free to face higher tariffs than our competitor countries? Apparently, in the world of the liberal transnational globalist elite. They are citizens of the world, you know.
I'm a citizen of the United States. How about you?
And I thought collusion with foreign leaders to influence American policy was wrong. Yet all I see are liberals, their Fredocon travelers, and their media minions commiserating with outsiders, with foreigners, against the guy who Normal Americans elected as the president. Collusion, if you will, to change American policy to what foreigners want. Gosh, it's almost as if all this talk about collusion was a bunch of baloney from the word go.
No wonder the Normals are getting militant.
Actually, the elite doesn't think they are really colluding with outsiders. They are colluding with insiders, their real constituency, the like-minded elites across the globe. They don't represent the United States. They don't care about the United States. And they don't care about the people of the United States. That is not whose interests they are seeking to protect.
When your job gets shipped to Oaxaca so somebody who looks like Mitt Romney can import the products you used to make back into the USA, don't look to the elite to care. Care? They'll applaud.
They are seeking to ensure their own gravy train doesn't get derailed. This is why they tell you, in between informing you how stupid you are, that there are only a few tariffs out there and they don't matter. Well, they sure as heck don't matter to these think tank jockeys and media scribblers. They are not the guys getting up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows or to harvest the soybeans the tariffs target. They've never worked on a vehicle assembly line in their lives, so what's it matter to them if Germany's tariff on US cars is four times ours to theirs? Of course, the tariffs on US products don't matter to the elite. They aren't the guys who lose their jobs when their company picks up and moves to Vietnam.
I don't like tariffs. I'd tear them all down, everywhere, just like Trump proposed. But the elite isn't for that. It's only against tariffs we impose to retaliate for the tariffs the foreigners impose.
And the elite are now apparently against peace talks, but they aren't the ones who would fight the war Donald Trump is trying to prevent in North Korea. Turns out peace talks have been terrible since January 2017. Who knew?
Donald Trump is a disruptor. He is disrupting the fat, arrogant, and corrupt elite and the web of self-dealing it has spun over the last seven decades. Is Trump putting at risk everything that's been built in the last 70 years? I sure hope so. Because the system that was built over the last 70 years is no longer working for all of us. It's working really well for a few of us, but that's just not enough anymore.
We're woke. We're militant. And the tan, tweeting reckoning that is Donald Trump is at hand.
Kurt Schlichter (Twitter: @KurtSchlichter) was personally recruited to write conservative commentary by Andrew Breitbart. He is a successful Los Angeles trial lawyer, a veteran with a masters in Strategic Studies from the United States Army War College, and a former stand-up comic.
Reader Comments
The fact is that they would not (indeed, could not) have done it if the gov't (administration, Congress, and unelected bureaucrats in various gov't agencies) had not set up the system (e.g., tax laws, labor & environmental regulations, tariffs & duties, etc., etc.) so that it became economically advantageous for them to do so.
It is the fiduciary duty of "corporate leaders" to maximize the profits that accrue to shareholders, rather than to work for the best interests of their employees or the general economic benefit of surrounding communities or the country as a whole. Yes, "corporate leaders" did it to increase corporate profits (as is their fiduciary duty), but corrupt gov't officials aided and abetted it in order to collect campaign contributions, cushy post-retirement jobs/consultancies for themselves and their families, etc., etc., etc.
It's simple-minded for critics to only blame "corporate leaders" as they are the most visible and most proximate cause of the current situation. However, it does not serve the agenda of the lovers of big-gov't to also point out the culpability of corrupt gov't officials (that's most of them, BTW) for actually working to bring it about.
Changes at that level would
a) Not reveal the underlying purpose, which seems to be causing misery and weakening America,
b) Make the decision to offshore labor seem like a purely economic one, and
c) Act as a catalyst to a great many other business leaders who might not support the ultimate goal or might not be privy to it, but can recognize on which side their bread is buttered.
We are looking at the results of a carefully laid, long term plan that furthers only a globalist agenda.
". . . more likely that corporate leaders were actually the ones driving the changes in tax, labor and environmental laws as well as tariffs and duties." I won't dispute that.
However, that is an immaterial "chicken and egg" argument - it really doesn't matter who started it (whose conduct is more reprehensible - the offerer of the bribe or the one who accepts it?) The fact remains that corrupt gov't officials aided and abetted the disastrous policies and the current situation could not have happened without BOTH the "corporate leaders" and gov't officials acting as they did.