O, IOWA

    So, the Iowa Republican were held last night, and the President-in-Exile won the majority of the delegates. The actually numbers were 52% for Trump and 48% for RNC Establishment candidates with one of the lowest voter turnouts in Iowa history.  The Controlled Opposition Media is spinning this as some political shock-wave, the harbinger of a Red Tsunami whereby the GOP will sweep into office, wave a magic wand that solves all of our problems, and saves us from ourselves. They seem to forget that when Trump was in office before, he got almost no support from his own Party and that most of his accomplishments were things he could do through the Executive Branch. He was constantly being sabotaged in his own Cabinet because he couldn't find enough qualified people to carry out his agenda. 

   One of the wise guys in the out-of-touch Conservative Punditocracy opines that a Trump resurgence will parallel the Reagan Revolution of 1980. The basic problem with how most of these people think is that American culture in 2024 is no different from what it was in 1980. 

   For example, Reagan rebuilt the US Military, which was suffering from low morale after Vietnam and the Carter malaise. But Reagan had a military infrastructure that he could build upon. Trump didn't have that, and certainly won't have it in 2025. Recall that Trump ordered the Pentagon to withdraw from Syria; end patrols in the South China Sea; submit annual performance audits; remove the base in Okinawa and relocate it Guam; and discontinue military exercises on the Korean Border. The Pentagon ignored every one of those orders. Trump forced the Pentagon to review convictions under Obama's purges, several were overturned, but the officers and contractors involved were never punished. Low recruiting standards and Pentagon DEI programs went on as before; and ultimately during the 2020 riots, Trump could barely scrape together a force capable of defending the District of Columbia. In the end, his own Chief-of-Staff General Milley was preparing to overthrow him if he contested the election.

   The Administrations of both the Clinton and Bush years gutted essential military services and farmed them out to their Wall Street cronies who get lucrative government contracts which cost the taxpayers far more than when the Pentagon ran them. In addition to that, it took away professional and educational opportunities for young Americans who joined these support services to obtain valuable training that they could use in civilian life in exchange for service to the country. Additionally, that service had the by-product of a trained and experienced Reserve Force upon which we could draw in a national emergency. That infrastructure is gone; and despite what GOP candidates say, nobody is going to wave a magic wand and bring back our military infrastructure. Not only do we not have personnel to do it, these same corporate crooks reinvest their largess into lobbying firms to pay Congressmen to keep the Status Quo in place.

   Speaking of military personnel, by the Pentagon's own admission, nearly 3/4 of young Americans are unfit for military service. What they have in the ranks is hardly any cause for celebration, the standards having been lowered to include known mental illnesses. Corruption is rife throughout the Pentagon's higher ranks and crime is out of control among the enlisted ranks. They can't control either their supply chains or guard sensitive information. The rank-and-file personnel is struggling with obesity, drug addiction, and gender dysphoria. How is an election going to solve any of that? 

   The failure of our society to invest in future has led to this situation, and trying to shift responsibility onto one political party or another instead of facing reality has brought us here. Where are we, for example, supposed to get generals like Ike or MacArthur from? They're supposed to appear out of thin air and turn our military back into a fighting force overnight? West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy have been churning out Diversity Officers and Human Relations Experts instead of commanders for decades. The results of this are shown over and over again in actual practice. 

   Another example, which we discussed here is the fantasy that somehow, some way, American productivity will re-appear magically on our shores if we just change Administrations. The Reagan Administration strengthened our sagging economy; but in 1980, again, he had a skilled workforce and an economic infrastructure to work with. In 2025, we haven't. Since Reagan left office, Wall Street freebooters have outsourced most of our industrial base and we have invested no training whatsoever in either skilled labor or skilled management. Meanwhile, these same Robber Barons have been allowed to concentrate even greater and greater segments of our domestic economy into their own hands. How is voting going to change that?

   

    Contrary to what the pundits say, and most people believe, societies rot from the bottom-up and not from the top-down. True; once the cultural rot has reached the upper levels changing it from below becomes more difficult, but at the root of the matter is that our own negligence, selfishness, and desire to evade responsibility has brought us to where we are. Say what we will about the state of young America: parental failures, negligence, and shifting responsibility to outside institutions produced what we have. None of these candidates will dare to say that; but it happens to be the truth.

   So what do the politicians and pundits tell us instead? Give us more power; vote harder, work harder, sacrifice more, make do with less, and pull yourselves up your bootstraps. Or, more accurately: they promise that you won't have to make such sacrifices, but your neighbor will. A self-absorbed, risk-adverse, opportunistic people shouldn't be surprised when they get leadership of the same stripe and ultimately such a social attitude leads to Authoritarianism.