Politics

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty told Alice scornfully, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less. The question is which is to be master – that’s all.” This is an important angle to understanding that America First is whatever Donald Trump says it is, at the time that he says it. His declaration that he is the master of the term, and defines it according to what he sees as America’s interest on a moveable basis, is in no way inconsistent with the foreign policy of his first term or his second: he makes decisions, sometimes snap decisions, based on what he sees as choices standing to benefit the country.

“80-20” issues have become a catchphrase recently. Most voters on those issues favor one policy by overwhelming margins and oppose the other. The “winning side” may poll anywhere between 60 and 90 percent, depending on the issue, but they are all conveniently grouped under the same label of “80-20.” These lopsided issues have three striking features. First, there seem to be more and more of them, especially on contentious social issues and law enforcement. Second, the same constituency that supports the 20 percent side of one issue frequently supports the 20 percent side of other issues, even those that are substantively quite different. Once an issue is depicted as “progressive,” for example, it generates that support.

“This is a big day for America!!! DJT” wrote on his Truth Social account, kicking off the day of his great parade to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States Army. It was good of the President to take the time to speak directly to the public on the “big day” – his birthday – before preparing himself to see the tanks and missile launchers rolling through the streets of Washington, DC to mark his 79th year. Let’s hope he feels special: the kid in all of us deserves a cake and a $45 million parade, full of the country’s best military equipment, to mark their latest trip around the sun.  The real purpose behind the parade remains unclear.

Today, you can choose to follow your inner adolescent and search for one of the Soros-funded “No Kings” protests cropping up wherever the number of Democrats is high and the collective IQ is low. Alternatively, you can pop down to the draining swamp of Washington, DC and watch the United States Army commemorate its 250th anniversary with a snazzy military parade among patriotically inclined Americans.If you think I have loaded the dice somewhat with charged rhetoric, you’re right. The whole “No Kings” wheeze is just anxious left-wing grandstanding that is as desperate as it is ineffectual. There is no Saint George Floyd around to act as a pretext this time.I have no doubt that those protests will be lavishly covered by the Irrelevant Media Complex.

The Trump presidency is giving us all a type of news-related diabetes. So much sensational information is spewing out of our screens all the time. There are so many stories, so much richness and history and irony, and so much silliness and seriousness entwined. We are dangerously overfed and now the lines of reality are blurring and people feel mad and sick. The Trump-Musk saga goes on, as Elon telephones Donald and shows his contrition on X. Trump sends in troops to control anti-ICE protests. Trump attends Les Miserables at his increasingly camp Kennedy Center.

The riots raging in Los Angeles are an unwelcome present ahead of America’s birthday, which is less than a month away. But they’re also a timely reminder of just what that birthday, the Fourth of July, is about. After all, American independence was conceived in rioting and brazen defiance of law enforcement.  Some 250 years ago, Boston was aflame with the spirit of resistance. Then, too, as in LA today, soldiers had to be called out to quell the mobs. In 1770, that led to an incident known to history as the Boston massacre. Violently harassed by hundreds of protesters, seven British soldiers fired into the crowd, killing three people on the spot and wounding several more, two of whom later died.

"I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far," Elon Musk wrote on X at 3 a.m., after six days of soul-searching. Since this wee-hours confession from the onetime right-hand man of the President of the United States, several of Musk's most searing posts about Trump from last Thursday have vanished from the internet – though screenshots are forever. Looking for Musk's post alleging that the President was connected to the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein? Now you'll see, "Hmm...this page doesn’t exist." Based on the X CEO's track record on the topic, Cockburn thinks "Godwin's Law" could use a variation.