Nathanael Blake at TheFederalist has encountered a Learning Moment. He’s a total neocon who suddenly realizes that aggressive free trade gets in the way of aggressive militarism.
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Industrial policy is defense policy. The ability to build is essential to our national defense, but our leaders have spent decades degrading our manufacturing capabilities and boosting that of our rising rival. This was done in the name of free trade, but trade with a communist regime is unfree by definition. And while genuinely free trade has benefits, it is the duty of our leaders to balance these advantages against other national interests, of which defense is the first.
We are being taught this lesson at the expense of Ukrainian lives. Hopefully, we learn it before it costs us American lives as well.
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This is the linkage that led me out of the neocon cult. 2008 rubbed my face in the evils of an abstract financialized economy. I started reading the old Populists like Graybill, and recognized that aggressive global trade and aggressive militarism are two sides of the same evil coin.
Deepstate has three pillars. Stocks, soldiers, and spies. All three work together to invade the world and destroy real business.
What we’re seeing now is a self-liquidation in the natural sense, not the Jones sense. Offshoring started when our manufacturers decided to concentrate solely on defense contracts. They neglected consumer products, letting Japan and China take over. Now we can’t even do defense contracts because the SKILLS and SUPPLIERS and ENGINEERS are all in China as well.
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Later: No, that’s too simple. The first century of Deepstate from 1812 to 1912 was properly mercantilist and colonialist. We were controlling third world countries to acquire raw materials for our industries. When Wilson picked up the ball in 1913, he switched to abstract ideological pure-power imperialism. He immediately went too far, and Harding returned us to neutrality, where we stayed until 1946. Never attack, always defend.
In 1946 the Wilsonians reinvented Deepstate, again as pure ideology and power, specifically serving the stock market instead of real business. Our wars since 1946 DO NOT ACQUIRE RESOURCES. Usually we DESTROY the foreign resources so Russia can’t have them. We are no longer trying to support our own industries.
Deepstate didn’t predict the rise of a serious MERCANTILIST power like China. We still don’t seem to recognize that China is MERCANTILIST. We’re using all of our tired old ideological insults, even though China is vastly less “socialist” than we are.
Polistra's Mill 