Condoleezza Rice, in her article entitled The Perils of Isolationism, states that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism.
Well, Condi, thank you for your wisdom and leadership.
You and the ruling class you represent created the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse just as Franklin Roosevelt and his ruling class created the so-called regressive isolationism of the 1930s.
Amazingly and with much chutzpah, you deride those internationalists who had a blind spot for those working class Americans who had suffered under globalization.
I gather somehow that you feel you are different from those leaders who forgot these middle-class Americans.
You are not. You were the Secretary of State. You had a seat at the table. You attended Stanford. Doubtless you are a respected member of the CFR.
Don’t blame the American people, Condi.
Blame yourself.
If people vote for Donald Trump the populist they’re voting for him because he articulates a vision in which they are not forgotten. He expresses a desire to bring manufacturing and well-paying jobs back to the United States. Why he espouses everything you deplore yet created.
What do you offer?
What you offer is more of the same.
You desire for the United States to return to the Cold War, – a Cold War, which enriched the military industrial complex and the owners of Corporate America.
You see bogeymen everywhere.
In your article, Condi, you resurrect America’s favorite monsters.
Putin from Russia, Xi from China, and Iran are your targets. You see them as aggressive bullies in a world where America sits back and does nothing.
The solution presumably is for America to get involved in the same way that it involved itself for the last eighty years.
Let us hope not.
To begin with, I’m not convinced that people who desire that America defend its own citizens economically are entirely opposed to America involving itself in international affairs.
Non-interventionists have always supported honest and fair free trade.
What the critics of the military industrial complex and the current leadership desire is for America to act truer to the principles itt exuberantly expounds through its various leaders on the campaign stump.
We say we believe in a nation’s right to self determination, but do we really? We didn’t in Vietnam.
We say we believe in fairness and decency, but do we really? We don’t in Haiti as we permit slaver Levi Strauss to exploit the slave laborers for less than $5 per day.
We say we believe in equal rights for all, but do we really believe such when we voraciously support an Israel that massacres Palestinians while creating an apartheid state?
Our leaders certainly do not.
Our leaders say they care about the American people, but do they?
They most certainly do not, and they will not. Drug adiction abounds. Homelessness infects our towns and cities. These maladies are the direct result of free trade and its attendant outsourcing.
What our leaders care about is money. Their money. Their yachts. Their Citation jets. Their homes around the world.
Americans desperately desire someone who will be their voice.
If you, Condi Rice, do not approve of Donald Trump’s populism then why don’t you try sticking up for the American people?
Beyond that, no one should support a return to a foreign policy such as what the United States prosecuted (and still does) for the past eighty years in which our leaders bullied, invaded, and raped other nations.
We became a global killing machine in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
If Russia and China are in ascendancy it is precisely because of our behavior.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Condi.
There is no stopping these “enemy” forces as long as the United States behaves in the way it does.
The United States must take a different approach to foreign policy.
What should that foreign policy be?
More buttter, less guns.
Not to sound trite, but the best depiction is that of the quiet, strong man best prosecuted by John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
In that movie, John Wayne’s character, Tom Donophon, wasn’t the richest or smartest guy in town, nor did he even get the girl at the end of the movie.
He remained in the background and did what was required in order to maintain order and peace within the community. He enabled the good guys to win. When he killed it was for good reason – not for sport,money or love.
Contrast that with the Gene Hackman role in The Quick and the Dead in which said actor played the mayor, John Herod, who was the richest guy in town, the most powerful guy in town, and also the nastiest guy in town. John Herod killed people for his own pleasure.
Americans don’t want their leaders to be John Herod They want them to be Tom Donophon.
They want them to be good, moral and strong. And they don’t want them to be glory hogs, beating their chests while telling everybody in the world that we are the most powerful nation on earth.
A good leader is quiet.
A good leader doesn’t brag as our leaders have been prone to do for the past eighty years.
When we help others, we help ourselves.
When we put the good of the global community ahead of ourselves we will win also.
When we put ourselves and our own self importance ahead of the people, we do ourselves and the world harm, and the rest of the world knows it.
To achieve that end we must, following the storyline, kill the Liberty Valances and John Herods of this world.
We must transform ourselves into the kind of nation our Founding Fathers would be proud of for who has behaved more like Liberty Valance and John Herod than the United States of America?
Copyright 2024 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved
Cowboy Archer 
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