LOSING VICTORY: America’s New Default?
LOSING VICTORY: America’s New Default?
America Is Becoming Increasingly Unrecognizable To Most Americans
[Note: Please help us grow readership; just click the “Share” button - thank you!]
America has a new default paradigm: Losing. In fact, we’ve become so good at losing that we now reverse victories (and/or never recognize them as such) so as to turn them into losses. We’d better turn things around, and fast.
This is not to indict the American people - particularly those of us still possessed of plain sense and sanity (what formerly constituted common sense - but sense seems to be increasingly uncommon). Our losses are not planned and mounted by us but, rather, are foisted on us by the political Left. I was about to say “the radical Left,” but… it’s all the same now. I don’t wish to be negative and, if it doesn’t sound too trite, I may have a few solutions. But first we have to consider where we are - and what the Left is losing for us:
Afghanistan: We had won. Truly. But, thanks to yammering politicians and supporting propaganda as supplied by the MSM, we gave up and lost the victory. To wit: We had a stable situation, thanks to the 2,500 troops stationed there (less than what we have stationed in Spain) reflecting our commitment, and as a reciprocal bolstering to and from our loyalists; Afghanis who serve in the Afghan military, and as technicians, translators, civilian contractors, administrators, etc. We’d had an 18-month period of no casualties. We’d had a key, strategic, airbase – Bagram – located a mere 500 miles east of Iran, 400 west of China, and even closer to Russia. It has a 12,000-foot runway capable of handling any U.S. military aircraft. What did we do with this victorious situation (after 20 years’ blood and treasure)? We gave Afghanistan away (to the Taliban!). We lost the peace, we lost strategic advantage, we lost $85 billion in weaponry, we lost our Afghani partners, we lost an indeterminate number of Americans through abandonment, and we lost morale, prestige, and influence. We lost. (On purpose).
Border Security: We had won. President Trump had slowed illegal immigration to a comparative trickle. The southern border wall was progressing and working. (The “Walls Don’t Work” crowd never could explain the success of walls bad or good: The Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China, the walls that hold up our homes, The White House wall [a fence is considered a wall], and for any of their exterior estate walls). But, stroll on in, courtesy President Joe’s expressed open invitation to the world and flattened southern border. Endure a campout for a while - until we bus and fly you east, west, and north, in settling you and setting up a regularized income and allied services. Our taxpayers are dealing with zooming inflation and a general breakdown of society, but not to worry; they have plenty of room to absorb ever-greater insults such as rescuing people who won’t rescue themselves from their home-country autocrats. Here, you’ll feel right at home as you join the Americans who won’t rescue themselves from the coming Totalitarian Marxist Uni-Party (I’m thinking of California, etc.). At the moment the southern border is lost; how to argue otherwise?
Fiscal Sanity: We hadn’t quite won, but at least President Trump articulated that reducing the deficit and paying down the national debt were primary goals for his second term - every plan and successful outcome begins with articulation of true goals. Compare that to the $5 trillion+ President Biden is attempting to spend. Don’t worry – that actually costs $0 according to Joe and Nancy. (Joe: Can you throw a modest billion into my bank account? Run the same $0 cost-schema for me). Hey, but what did Trump’s intentions mean when we had a nutjob as Commander-in-Chief with a finger poised over the nuclear button? Of course, in real terms, President Trump was and is a businessman who understands profit, loss, cost overhead, efficiency, products, and solutions that actually solve and serve, in accordance with reality. Rather, it was important to put a dementia-riddled, doddering old man in office (and I say this as someone who’s getting older by the minute), who had never delivered anything of note to the country since the beginning of his ride at taxpayer expense from age 29 forward. With zooming inflation and new “temporary assistance” recipients, it’s necessary to spend $5 trillion on so-called “infrastructure.” As President Obama said, “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” We’re losin’ it all around thanks to the current President (and his handlers).
COVID: We had won. We’d won this one via the model we established in powering our way through innumerable flu seasons since… since the country as paired with flu began. Duh. We’re destroying businesses, livelihoods, schools, and collective intestinal fortitude over a virus that has a 99.9+% recovery rate - assuming you get it. If you have no co-morbidities then go about your business and live… or die. Four people will die in the U.S. of any cause as you read this short sentence. If any measure of a free society and press survives the present government inanities, I’m convinced that history will recognize this as the biggest boondoggle, the biggest “shot ourselves in our own foot,” the grossest incompetency and idiocy of all time. (Well, perhaps spending $5 trillion that we don’t have while inviting the world over a flattened southern border exceeds here… how to judge and rank fatal government absurdities, anyway?) We’ve lost, and continue to lose, on our handling of COVID. (On purpose).
Defense/The Military: We’d won this category, hands down. We had the mightiest, the best funded, the most stocked, the most highly trained, the most successfully integrated, the highest-morale military on earth. (Perhaps in the universe, with the addition of the Space Force - and I’m not even being funny; kudos to President Trump). You can criticize anything, but our military was the gold standard – the envy of the civilized world: Loyal, at peak readiness, and ready to go - thus providing the ultimate deterrent to war. We’re now giving equipment and munitions to terror-states that we create, we abandoned not only a key ally but also fellow-Americans, and if that wasn’t enough of a demoralization, we’re teaching Critical Race Theory (wait for my next post on CRT) as some sort of core, mission-critical, military training. When I was in, we were all “green,” and we all bled red - that was all of it. Now, we actively divide service members from one another through superficial judgments and force our military to lose conflicts they had won. Our subordinate Chain-of-Command elements undercut our Commander-in-Chief. Our military is supposed to be a winner; it is now seen as a loser by our enemies. (As a vet, I say: Stand strong guys and gals; we, the voters, are going to fix the civilian oversight you presently labor under. You’re winners in my eyes).
Defense, Pt. II: Briefly, China just launched a hypersonic missile that is directable in flight, which traveled around the globe, and which can carry a nuclear warhead. Contrary to conventional missiles, it’s virtually impossible to shoot down. The U.S. arsenal has nothing like it. Were in a “lost” status here not only in terms of technology, but in terms of deterrence (safety), and with the associated current Commander-in-Chief. President Trump provided safety in that he was seen as a possible “loose canon” (he wasn’t) which held foreign aggression at bay, and he did what he said he was going to do. Remember his “We’re gonna bomb the sh*t out of ISIS” statement? And then he did it, reducing ISIS’s territorial hold to 10% of what it had been. President Biden is seen as feckless and feeble - because he is, and pair that with our woke military, and it’s dated arsenal in the face of China’s. We’re in the act of losing, here. Let’s fix this.
Law and Order: We’d won. We had the best legal system, policing system, and a crime rate to envy. Things weren’t perfect. Nothing is; nothing will ever be. But it was pretty great. It’s part of the reason people break into our country by the thousands… make that millions. We used to hold rioting idiots at bay via reasonably sane policing and courts, as paired with laws, jails and prisons. No more. Rioting is “protest.” Now you can even steal with impunity in many jurisdictions with no consequences whatsoever. We are losing law and order – by design.
Race Relations: At least that’s what it used to be called. I can’t keep up with the Left’s splitting of atoms, re-assemblies, and regurgitations of all the things they can’t stomach. Up until around 2008 polls indicated that Americans of all backgrounds believed race relations to be at an all-time best, and on the ascendancy. Post-Obama, majorities indicated that race relations were devolving. With the overtly racist Critical Race Theory (CRT), with “race” at the very center of its name and curricula, we are re-segregating people; we are judging people according to the color of their skin (literally practicing prejudice [pre-judgment]); and ignoring content of character. That sounds like a plan for living and the foundation for a solid society (sarc/off). I don’t believe we’ve lost our footing entirely here, but there are those who are laboring mightily to undo a lot of years of extraordinarily hard work (and blood and treasure here, too). My upcoming column on CRT will serve to go into detail on this one. But, let’s not lose here.
Cohesion: We’re losing cohesion; the idea that we are one society, one nation, one human family. Various “identity groups” agitate for special treatment and accommodation - even as they hate America. The Left labors mightily to pound wedges between groups so as to position themselves as “leaders” who can bring us to some sort of peace. Not so. Constant agitation and grievance is what the Left seeks, in maintaining power. Consider the area of Identity/Sexuality/Transgenderism, etc. Folks, this one deserves a column of its own - and there will be one. Suffice to say, as a tease, we’re in the act of losing any true sense of women’s sports, and any kind of sanity regarding such institutions as the Girl Scouts, and anything else that usually aligns with human creatures comprising XX chromosomes, and the associated (natural) primary and secondary female sex characteristics: In other words, those that we know to be women. We’d better start employing some plain sense and sanity in these regards - fast - or we open the door to society-at-large’s slide into madness. Stay tuned… for we seem to be losing our collective wits awfully fast.
Climate Change: The world had this one won by default. Humankind cannot influence climate for good or for ill. To wit: The earth heated itself millennia ago in melting sheets of ice a mile and more thick. (Just imagine the “muscle” at earth’s disposal in doing that). Scientists (pragmatic, non-political, ones) believe the earth to heat and cool of its own accord on a long timeline, having had many ice ages that came and went (with future ones in store). What the climate canard-ists don’t want you to know (and the sincere, albeit ignorant, alarmists don’t want to know) is that humankind occupies less than 1% of land (and some sources say far less), which itself is about 29% of earth’s surface. Never mind that: Whatever the USA’s 330 million people do regarding emissions means nothing against Russia, China, and India’s combined populations of three billion people. Besides, in a generation or two (assuming we fix our schools) we’ll be running everything off the sun anyhow. Relax. We needn’t lose our economy, jobs, and sanity in the comparative short term – but we seem to be.
Energy Independence: President Trump had us there. In 2019, for the first time in 62 years, the U.S. produced more energy than it used. The XL pipeline was going to make us even stronger. Once Biden put the kibosh on the pipeline, he quickly asked NATO to step up their production in order to export more oil to the U.S. In 2020, gasoline was under $2 a gallon. It’s now $3.29, far higher in some places, and like all other goods and services prices are climbing as a combination of inflation and shortages. Trump had us increasing production over consumption at a rate of nearly six to one. We’ve lost here big-time.
America: We’d won for ourselves the greatest, freest, most fair nation on earth. As noted here in my second-to-last paragraph, it was not America who held various groups back, it was specific people who did that in contravention to America’s charters. The fact that America is a country of systemic opportunity for all, as acknowledged by all sane people, and as recognized by the constant streams of people crossing our southern border, is something we must “win,” (protect and advance) on a constant basis. We can never rest. We are now losing America at an accelerating pace with draconian, anti-American, mask and “vaccine” mandates, increasing taxes for destructive spending sprees (in setting up a society of dependence on socialism), and deliberate destruction of a safe society for all - our highly politicized Justice Department is attacking concerned parents after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) labeled them as potential domestic terrorists. Free speech will get you “cancelled,” and a free press only exists in fringe pockets these days. The MSM is a dumpster of wokeism and resultant parroting of socialist dogma as ground out by the Left. Social media is a straightjacketing vise, keeping out all but politically correct thought and commentary.
We are in the very throes of losing America. Will We the People reverse the course?
Stay tuned: As said, I just may have the beginnings of some solutions.
_______________________________
NP: Live, NYC, Studio 61 - Miles Davis, trumpet with John Coltrane, tenor sax; Wynton Kelly, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Jimmy Cobb, drums; and the Gil Evans Orchestra - So What
_______________________________
David Scott Strain is a U.S. Army veteran and a retired Fortune500 I.T. executive. He is also the author of the novel The Grim Grind of Life: A PI’s strange bounces through a surfeit of eateries, juke joints, and dark doorways. Prior, he authored the MBA-text (UofW, UofMD, more than a dozen others) I.T. WARS: Managing the Business-Technology Weave in the New Millennium. Books and expanded bio are available on Amazon.