AGENDA: Friends with no one, hated by all, at war from all sides. Magicians of international relations.

Some of you know I was an active supporter of Ron Paul. As such I often found myself having to address the people that were referring to him as an isolationist. I would correct them and say he is not calling for isolation, he is calling for non-intervention and there is a significant difference.

He is all for having trade deals with other countries, as well as communication. He is against us meddling in their internal affairs. That leads to another term he often spoke about called blowback.

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The mainstream media would try to talk about how crazy he was, and how "unelectable" during the times they actually spoke about him. The rest of the time they just pretended he didn't exist. In fact, the first time I heard him and he was saying things like "Abolish the Department of Education" at first I thought he sounded crazy too. We all need education and it is important to our future, who would be crazy enough to abolish that? Well, I at least took some time to look into this. He wasn't calling for abolishing education. He was calling for abolishing the Department of Education. Well, isn't that the same as abolishing education? It turns out the answer to that is a resounding no. The Department of Education did not even exist until 1980(I've said 1986 before, though it was actually 1979 but first put into action in 1980). This means that the education of our country functioned for 204 years without the need for a Department of Education. Perhaps it wasn't nutty after all.

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So I bring this up primarily as an example of how the media spinning something Ron Paul stated as nutty was in fact no that crazy at all. In fact, if you look at the effect the Department of Education has had on education since its inception then it seems like is actually the wise and intelligent thing to do.

If this is one case, then perhaps there is something to this concept of blowback, and non-intervention. The concept of blowback is that our meddling in other countries affairs often has unforeseen consequences. Often these consequences are worse than what the original reason for interfering supposedly justified. They also create enemies, terrorists, and more.

So he was passed off as the nutty professor type. Our nation did not listen to him and carried on with our policies of extreme intervention. Not only did we carry on, we escalated.

We have been effectively alienating those who might be our friends. They still grudgingly deal with us as we have something to offer. Yet as with having to deal with any unpleasant people, finding a way to not have to deal with them becomes a mission. I personally believe we are seeing signs that nations have been acting this way. They are seeking to become less entangled with the U.S. in it's current approach. The exception to this only relates to globalist agendas.

The globalist agendas were steadily moving us towards one world government with unelected leaders. To some degree and in some areas this already exists. Some of the push was to further solidify this and expand the powers. In the U.S. Trump appears to have blown up this agenda temporarily. I for one am glad of this. Perhaps not for the reasons people may think, but I am. That doesn't mean Trump has not been making some big mistakes as well.

We still have the same old wars on multiple fronts happening. We are still actively meddling in the affairs of other nations, and in fact we've taken that to potentially new levels. With things like Trump calling the President of Mexico and essentially trying to act like that president's boss, as revealed by LEAKED transcripts of recent conversations between those two.

We are kicking our friends, and adding fuel to the hate. Now this is not ALL on Trump. In fact, I'd say MOST of it has nothing to do with Trump and began way before him. It is just a continuation. So the way Trump handled Mexico is an example of a hamfisted overreach and lack of cordial relations with another nation. That was a negative. That doesn't mean things like this don't happen other times. When it comes to Trump really the only difference is he seems to be very overt (blatant, obvious, out in the open) with his approach. Using sweet and polite words to wield a veiled threat is not necessarily better. In fact if you are me you might consider that actually worse. What if the person fails to notice the veiled threat and thus does something to escalate it.

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Trump is more the "If you don't do this I'm going to kick your ass (fire you)" type. The traditional politician is the "You know that you benefit from us, how would you like those benefits to go away? If you don't consider this 'request' then that is on the table" type. They both are essentially saying the same thing. Trump is just more blatant about it.

Have you considered that being more direct might actually be beneficial? The people he speaks to often are not English speaking. So if you're trying to dance around and be polite with your words while hoping they can read your intentions isn't there a greater chance that could be lost in translation if it is not direct?

I can tell you now, I think blatant direct people can be an asshole. I may not LIKE them, but I do prefer to have the truth out front and obvious rather than being things they ASSUMED I knew what they were implying. I'd rather see the guy charging at me with his knife raised, than not see them until it is squarely planted in my back.

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With that said the state of affairs in our nation in terms of foreign relations has been a sham and only getting worse for more than a decade now. This is not Trump's fault. That doesn't mean he can't make it worse. In some cases he has made it better. His dealing with some other nations such as Poland were favorable. How he just dealt with Mexico though was more like the bully on the playground.

I am one of those that the bully even if he beats me up, I used to get even and it ended up far worse for them. That was long ago. Later bullies always backed down from me (I was lucky).

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I think back to Ron Paul's non-intervention and how the media and people liked to spin that as isolationism.

I would consider us far more isolated now. Traditionally Isolation would be to ignore countries outside of our borders. That is not the only way to be isolated. Wouldn't being surrounded by people who don't like you, and in some cases hate you also be a form of isolation?

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If there are no friends willing to support you, are you not isolated? You see isolationism does not have to come only from within a nation.

The United States is on a precarious course, and I actually believe our biggest problem is our media that is intentionally fanning the flames of divisiveness and discord. They have the power to heal things as well as make them worse, and they have become addicted to fear, and "If it bleeds it leads" mentality. When they are not focusing on those they will make the vacuous acts of celebrities seem like the ultimate of importance. They feed into the mentality of so many that sporting events are the most important thing. They over emphasize issues intentionally to increase strife. Strife creates more stories, and increases their profit margin.

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There was a reason that freedom of press is important. That reason remains. Yet, I wouldn't necessarily call what most of our media is as "press" in the traditional sense any longer. They are in fact propaganda, spin machine, agitators.

In fact if you want to truly fight terrorism then you need look no further than the media. They are the ones intentionally amplifying fear and division. They are the ones fanning the flames of terror. They are often the seeds from which future terrorists are born. Is this "press"?

If you study journalism there is an ethics and an approach that is supposed to be followed. That is "press" as it was during the creation of "freedom of press". These days modern journalists have been quoted as indicating that those ethics are silly childish thoughts and are bad business. You see it is actually no longer about "press" or "journalism" it has purely become about business. This means if you can write things that fan the flames of opportunity that can lead to more things. What better way to do that than to have us constantly fighting among each other over political party, religion, race, gender, sexual preferences, etc.?

I see the "press" as a tool that could heal the nation, and go a long way towards healing the relationships between the U.S. and other nations. OR they can be used as they are now to do just the opposite.

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I see them as the number one problem.

The number two problem would be our established political oligarchy that is beholden to lobbyists and corporations and can be entrenched for decades due to the lack of term limits. If the "press" were actually acting as the press should then these entrenched people would have a much more difficult time holding onto their post. The media is now controlled by a small number of corporations, and they actually do what they can to keep these figurehead oligarchs in place. Why wouldn't they? Their profit margins for their media corporations soar under the watch of these entrenched cronies.

There are those that go on the age old capitalism is the problem rant. They are simply puppets feeding into yet another divisive narrative. These crony problems remain regardless of the form of government. There are many forms of power, and wealth is only one and the most obvious of them. The currency of power though can and does extend beyond simple monetary representation. This means it is also in other forms whether capitalism is present or not. The attack on capitalism is a tried and true way of fomenting discontent, discord, and division. It works. Yet, so much of it is driven by propaganda, generalizations, appeals to authority, and dogmatic tunnel vision.

Right now the U.S. seems to be intentionally being isolated. I don't know if Trump is consciously aware of this or not. This does seem to have been occurring for awhile, but it has accelerated a lot recently.

I find myself writing in seeming support of Trump fairly frequently. This is primarily because I see the huge media slant against him. I'll see mischaracterizations, things taken out of context, and often things that are actually completely fabricated passed as the truth. Journalistic ethics and integrity are not good business.

I feel that I must speak up to try to counter balance that some. Sure Trump has done quite a number of things I think were dumb. Though I can say the same about every President we've had. Obama was someone I voted for in 2008 after Ron Paul was out of the running. I did so based upon what Obama said. On every point that made me decide to vote for him Obama did completely the opposite of what he said he was going to do once he was in office. It was a painful lesson. I do feel a bit of shame.

Considering the amount of opposition being leveled constantly at Trump since before he was even elected I am actually impressed he has been able to accomplish the things he has done. So I do have some grudging respect for some of those things. I also see some things he has done as pretty stupid in MY OPINION. Yet, they don't actually yet hold a candle to the stupid things I believe Obama, or Bush did. Does that make them okay? No. I only mention this to poke a hole in the over inflated exaggerations and focus on every single action Trump does, breath he makes, or shit he takes.

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I see the media, and the corporations driving them as our biggest problem. They are the most powerful entity out there as far as I am concerned. They could be used for benevolent or malevolent purposes and as far as I am concerned they have been wielded for malevolent purposes for decades now with that slashing of the sword of division and terror only accelerating with each passing day.