MAGA and Iran

Let us begin with the truth. Iran seeking nuclear weapons is a grave matter. No serious American should dismiss it. And in the first days of a crisis, when facts are uncertain and events are moving fast, there is a time to put aside criticism, to withhold judgment, and to stand with one’s country. Our president is in office, the one we trusted, the one we believed in. In such an hour, a patriotic citizen may support his country, support his armed forces, and wait for the matter to unfold.

But there also comes a reckoning. When the smoke begins to clear, the people must ask what the objective was, whether it remained the objective, whether the goalposts were moved, and whether what once would have been called failure is now being praised as victory. The people have seen this before. They have seen grand words at the beginning and shifting purposes at the end.
This is what MAGA must remember. It was not born to become an obedient chorus for every foreign crisis. It was born from the knowledge that the American people had too often been misled and sacrificed by a ruling class that did not live as they lived or pay as they paid. Skepticism is not disloyalty. It is memory.

For the real divide in this country is not merely between Democrat and Republican, and the real enimies are not always foreign. Beneath that contest stands a larger order, political, bureaucratic, corporate, financial, and technocratic, joined in spirit with the ruling classes of Europe. On lesser matters they quarrel. On the greater matters they stand together. Their interests are not always our interests. Their enemies are not always our enemies.

That same divide appears in economics. The lower, middle, and much of the upper middle class live mainly by wages, salaries, skill, and productive work. The ruling class lives far more by ownership, dividends, asset appreciation, and rising paper wealth. That is why they defend free trade, outsourcing, easy money, and asset inflation. One weakens the productive nation. The other enriches those already secure. Their interests are not our interests.

So when a new enemy is named and the people are summoned to unity, one question must remain. Whose enemy is being named, and in whose interest is the cry being raised? In the beginning, be patient. Be supportive. But at the end, be a judge. What was the objective? Was it achieved? Was the danger removed, or merely delayed? Was there victory, or only better language for failure?

A free people must not be swept up at the beginning and put to sleep at the end. If there has been deception, then let the reckoning come.