Thoughts of an old steelworker.

In 1962 I was fifteen years old with a shovel in my hand helping my dad bury canned food in our back yard. The Russians, led by Nikita Khrushchev, were erecting missile bases in Cuba just 90 miles from the coast of Florida. John F. Kennedy had presided over the botched Bay of Pigs invasion which American intelligence naively believed would inspire the Cuban people to overthrow Fidel Castro. A ragtag invasion force of Cuban exiles financed and trained by the US landed on Cuban shores to carry out the plan. It did not go well.


The invasion had little to do improving the lives of the Cuban people; it was really to protect corrupt US corporate interests that made it impossible for average Cuban citizens to escape poverty. Much like today where Washington is nearly wholly owned by the People’s Republic of China, in those days Cuba was a bonanza for American business interests. Castro was driven into the arms of the Soviet Union by US capitalist greed and congressional mischief. Of course, it was not presented that way. Washington propaganda went into high gear to protect itself by blaming Castro as a threat to democracy when in truth Castro was a creation of the US government. Castro could have been dealt with much differently but instead Cuba became an unfortunate poster child for Democracy Vs. Communism which was the plan in Washington all along.


The failed Cuban cavalry fiasco showed weakness and incompetence to Khrushchev, and he quickly moved to take advantage of the situation. Kennedy’s jack-leg leadership provided Khrushchev with the perfect excuse to paint Cuba as an embattled ally under attack from US imperialistic expansion. So, US intelligence and the Kennedy administration nearly started World War Three with presidential ineptitude eerily comparable to what is happening today. Most boomers remember where they were when they got the news that CIA operative Lee Oswald and others assassinated Kennedy in Texas on November 22, 1963. Kennedy was not impeached, he was removed. He got the same retirement package a mob earner gets when one Mafia family is embarrassed by another. The line between Washington intelligence and the Mob has always been a thin one.


To be fair, Kennedy inherited the plan from Dwight Eisenhower’s intelligence apparatus, but it was his failure to carry it out competently instead giving it a half-baked effort that walked right into Russia’s wheelhouse. Surveillance photos clearly showed Russian nuclear missiles stacked up in staging areas aimed at the US. US propaganda platforms swung into action and Kennedy died the standard bureaucratically dispensed hero’s death after he came remarkably close to ending humanity. Washington then made use of another individual with CIA connections, Jack Ruby, and Oswald was dispatched on live TV just two days later to keep him from implicating US intelligence. But Kennedy is remembered as a great leader because he fit a narrative of young, good-looking example of what was proper and desirable for the people and the people were blinded beyond reason to see it that way even if it meant their mesmerized shallow adoration of another gullible government puppet could bring about the end of civilization.


How is this relevant? It is relevant because we find ourselves in the same position today. Washington is like an insular powerful club that makes the Mafia look like a Boy scout troop. It fools the people into believing that there is a difference between political parties. The truth is that Washington has no connection at all with average people on any side of its existing power structure. Washington exists for Washington’s sake and nothing else. When the people get hip to this and intuitively reject Washington by choosing an outsider like Donald Trump, the club is threatened. The new danger today is that there is no buffer between Washington and the people consisting of a free press questioning the motives of Washington as there was in the past. The American press has been corroded into a public relations arm of Washington and acts that way. US journalism is increasingly like a gaggle of Mob lawyers defending Washington against the people.


Expanding technology that gives us Facebook, twitter, and Tik Tok make it possible to empower propaganda in unprecedented ways that join forces with toxically recruited print media weaponizing and manipulating information disguised as legitimate news reporting. This is how an entirely absurd story of Russian Collusion was reported to the people while dissenting opinions were smeared as conspiracy theories and automatically blocked as dangerous Russian disinformation. This is precisely how the former Soviet Union functioned prior to 1989.


Incredibly, many contemporary Americans acted just like those of the past. They fell prey to propaganda that caused them to focus completely on Donald Trump’s form while totally ignoring his function. His function was to supply an alternative to Washington’s sellout of the working population. Washington is willing to risk nuclear war to protect itself and the people need to understand that. Given the extent to which America has been degraded by Washington corruption it is not surprising that it was able to preside over a fraudulent presidential election to remove the people’s chosen interloper that threatened it. It is what replaced the threat that mirrors the Cuban Missile Crisis today. The physics of an atomic bomb blast is the same today as it was in 1962. Readers are encouraged to research the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and realize that thermonuclear bombs today dwarf those used in 1945.


Joe Biden is a mentally disabled figurehead installed by Washington and he has no awareness of what is happening. Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine for the same reason that Nikita Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba. He saw weakness and confusion in an enemy. But there is a difference with a distinction. Putin is being backed into a corner like a wounded bear. He has his finger on a button he could press at any time. One nuclear missile launched purposely or in error could cause the dominoes to fall. There is nothing preventing any nuclear capable nation from using the atom to touch off a nuclear cataclysm to rearrange the global gameboard. Wahington won with that corrupt election; we may lose it all if we are very lucky.


My dad is long gone but I still have that shovel.

 

The OP makes some good points. Our country can't survive if we keep electing the same people to Washington D.C. Trump was an outsider and a loose cannon but he had the right ideas and policies. We need to elect more people from outside Washington if we expect them to put the USA first. We can start with the next election. Do not re-elect any D.C. politician.

 

I am 75 years old. I watched these things unfold in real time. If I paint a bleak picture, it is because the world is again in a bleak state. I see it all happening again. We got a reprieve the first time. We need to fix this fast, or our luck could run out this time.

 

Still think it's funny that folks think billionaire Donald Trump who loves power and fame and adoration is somehow an "outsider" to Washington. It wasn't his outsider status that was the problem, it was his brash arrogant incompetence, his megalomania, and his love of fake narratives(like the narrative of him being anti-establishment).

Politicians like him will always get elected when people invent these fanciful narratives to cover up what they truly are. Just ugly human beings out for the same power and recognition and influence that every other politician wants, but they've fooled you into thinking that's not who they are because they told you that's not who they are.

There is absolutely positively no reason to think a Washington outsider is going to be better because they are an outsider. You wouldn't grab some chump off the street to be your brain surgeon just because you don't like the surgeons at your hospital. Trump's power came from his popularity which mostly came from his near constant trolling of the left(which is not to say they didn't deserve it). He's a spectacle, a rolling dumpster fire whose smoke sometimes blows your way and keeps the mosquitos off you, which is then translated into Trump caring about you and the country instead of it being the pure coincidence it happens to be. But everyone needs a hero, or in this case an anti-hero, but unlike the stories this anti-hero never transitions into the good guy. He never will either, because his self-obsession and fear of appearing weak will always keep him from taking responsibility for anything and always taking the easy road.

 

Maybe so, but he had two policies that made him different -- he didn't take a salary and he was working to close the southern border. Closing the southern border made him an outsider to both dems who want votes and repubs who want cheap labor.

 

You bought the salary thing? Come on, that was stupid. Even though Trump is probably not the billionaire he claims to be, he's probably still got many millions and 400k a year isn't anything to cry over. He gained more from the symbolism of refusing it(as you've illustrated) than he would have by keeping it. But it means nothing.

And his southern border strategy was more about getting a Trump monument wall built than anything else. Would have been great spending all that money to keep out the poor people. The criminals, terrorists, and traffickers would have still gotten through, but at least we'd keep those dirty poor people out.

 

This is a classic example of focusing on form and ignoring function. This is what happens when people are propagandized to buy the fertilizer while those they listen to are stealing the crop. You cannot argue with people like this; it is a waste of time.

 

It also saves you from having to defend a man like Donald Trump so I can understand your reluctance. And I'd be willing to bet, based on your tone and what you've written, that you're pretty solidly set in your beliefs and arguing with you would be the same as you just described.

 

he charged the Secret Service rent, even rented them golf carts, Trump made more off the tax payers then any previous President

not to mention the special golf course tax cut he gave himself

Trump was caught having hired illegals.... the right knows all they have to do is make it a felony to knowingly hire an illegal, treat it like a drug crime, confiscate their $$$ and property when caught, the problem goes away overnight - illegals come here for the jobs, to live a better life.... simple

 

Lots of supposition.

 

Washington did not just create Castro, it created Putin-watch:

 

Never re-elect a politician at all. It should be a temporary office. People should enter government temporarily to contribute to its government and then go back to what there doing before the election. If we don't get to a single term limit for elected officials, we will eventually fail at the hand of government.

 

How about not voting for the politicians you don't want to keep around? I know of no law that says you have to vote for an incumbent.

 

Nonsense. Your devotion to Trump hate means that once again the only people controlling our southern border are the. Cartels and please we haven't the resources to provide an an American middle class lifestyle for our own poor let alone the teeming billion the Dems seem hell bent on importing.

 

I'm for single term, no perks, no pension, no free medical care, return to the private sector and live under the laws they pass.

 

Much more preferable than electing politicians who flood the country with illegal immigrants, support criminals by defunding the police, wreck public education.

Really, stop bitching and moaning about Trump and start endorsing policies that at least won't undermine the country.

 

Very astute and accurate assessment; so good I re posted it in its entirety. Your analogy is right on with just one minor exception. JFK always had misgivings about the Bay of Pigs invasion, and his support was tepid..... which showed. But he was a better president (I voted for Nixon) than you imply and he handled the Cuban missile crises well, BTW, with the help of a then free and independent media as you point out which kept JFK's feet to the fire, and mitigated the corrupt establishment aka the swamp. That, as you describe, is probably the greatest difference between then and now: We no longer have a free and independent media but we have what is primarily a non-journalistic Democrat propaganda arm. And we still have the swamp but its only true enemy, Trump, is out of authority.

 

Electing a successful business person is not a bad idea. Electing a narcissistic, business person with multiple bankruptcies, a history of possibly defrauding
students and his cancer kids charity - a person mainly famous as a reality TV personality ... not such a great idea.

 

Sorry, but what exactly are you seeing happening again? People think the world if coming to an end because that's what their media 24/7 and political talking heads keep parroting, but this is NOTHING compared to the 1960s.

When people don't have bigger things to whine about than wearing a mask, or hurt feelings over corporate training materials, or price of gas, then things must be good.

We dodged a bullet when he was fired after only one term.

 

You can't make such a blanket statement. Reagan was a movie actor. He did OK -- won every state except one. Truman was somewhat of an outsider. Had failed as a partner in a haberdashery. He did OK. Only a narcissistic person would run for the POTUS.

The media will denounce anyone who runs for POTUS who is not part of the Washington scene. We saw it with Trump. Saw it with Perot. Saw it with Forbes. Saw it with Carley Fiorina.

 

So his people should work for free?

 

No, he shouldn't have used his own establishments for government business. That's the first rule of preventing COI. Of course, Trump, as the grifter he is, didn't think twice about financially benefiting from his position as the president of the US.

 

No its not.

 

electing a profit motivated business person with the standard autocratic management style is no way to run a democracy.

government is not a business. efficiency is not as important as accountability.

 

so Trump should charge the secrete service rent and golf cart fees to protect him?