Category: Blog

The Fourth World

In modern history, First World nations are described as mostly democratic/capitalist countries that are politically aligned with NATO and the United States. Second World nations refer to Communist countries politically aligned with the now-defunct Soviet Union, now Russia. Lastly, Third World nations are other countries that failed to choose a political side.

Now, we see the birth of the Fourth World, a morphing of the First, Second, and Third-world countries into a new worldwide alignment. It is centered around Populist theories like Climate Change, Marxism, and a mishmash of pop culture. All of these lead us to a new kind of Secular Humanism implementing a theory of basic minimum existence for all, and an end to its arch-enemy…Individualism.

Let’s explore the well warn path of one country’s birth to maturity cycle as illustrative of what the future may hold for us:

Life evolves. People, places, and the weather change as do entire countries. Great Queens pass on. Great Britain is an excellent example of the rise and fall of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known. A thousand years ago, England was largely agrarian and London was barely a square mile in size. The entire country was home to just over a million. From those meager beginnings, England became the dominant empire for hundreds of years with the slogan “The Sun never sets on the British Empire.” At its peak, in the early 20th century Great Britain controlled about 25% of the world’s surface. What then changed that?

Three things contributed to the downfall of the British Empire:

1. Inevitably, running any vast endeavor is fraught with challenges. Eventually, these challenges overcame the political will to keep the Empire together.

2. London’s ability to effectively manage its Empire made it less profitable and particularly after the First World War, Great Britain was no longer able to muster the resources that a Great Power needed to hold its colonies together.

3. The Colonies matured. Like maturing children, many colonies were happy to take what they learned from their British Parents and make their own way forward. Some did so successfully, others not.

Are we here in the US following Great Britain’s path? The US never really had a colonial past, compared to the various European powers which had extensive holdings and who sucked the resources and treasure from their colonies.

The US stepped into the Empire’s void left by Great Britain and offered a new way forward. Our heyday likely peaked in the 1980s with President Ronald Reagan’s famous line, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech in 1987. The Soviet Union collapsed four short years later in 1991. Arguably, this marked the day, our country lost its reason for being engaged throughout the world to the degree we once were.

Great Britain and the US share a similar experience when we were challenged to reinvent ourselves. Our country’s potential breakdown is about forty years behind that of Great Britain.

Britain did not meet the existential call to reinvent itself but instead morphed into a strong European player without a major central world role left for itself. Now we see the US following the same path of retreat.

China now sees itself as the heir apparent to world leadership, and we ignore her at our peril. China is not a “free” nation but shares many of the same aspirations and designs as Germany did with the rise of the Third Reich. Those parallels are similar in several key ways:

1. China believes itself to be “superior” to other nations of the world. Its Belt and Road Initiative is premised on a philosophy of co-opting weaker nations and exploiting them, much as did the Germans, except so far, China has found a way to conquer those assets through nonmilitary ways.

2. Germany had several inherent challenges. First, its population of 80 million was insufficient to conquer and then control the rest of Europe. China has the population needed but lacks many resources and technology necessary to pursue military conquest.

3. Germany was strategically disadvantaged by its geography. China is, as well. Not having good relations with all of its neighbors creates a tactical problem. China fears threats to its maritime trade routes within its sphere of influence. Hence, its continual push in the South China Sea to keep its enemies further away and constant bellicose threats to neutralize nations that could interfere with strategic and tactical objectives. For example, Taiwan is more than just a political issue. It is the world’s largest aircraft carrier in the event of a China war.

The West is weakening itself both politically and militarily due to its current focus on reengineering our social structure. Perhaps a temporary reprieve is visible as Europe and the US fight Russia in a kinetic war the likes of which have not been seen since WWII. Such battles remind us of what is at stake. Broadly revealed by events in Ukraine is the ridiculousness of the now popular “words are violence” as compared to real violence, death, and destruction in Ukraine. If true at all, it is only so in La-La land.

Europe and America are experiencing the cold-water treatment that only reality can bring to a philosophical fight. As has been said…” Nothing focuses the mind more intensely than the imminent prospect of death.”

So, what does a manifested Fourth World look like? It likely will look like “Perfected Equity”. Read this definition by ODI an independent, global think tank says about “Perfected Equity”:

“The intrinsic argument in favor of equity states that equity or fairness is important in and of itself. The idea of equity comes from theories of distributive justice or social justice. This looks at what things people get, and why they get them. This matters for policy because citizens can hold the state responsible for ensuring that all citizens are treated as equals and for influencing how things are distributed.

Genuine equity would mean that everyone would have equal life chances, and they would be rewarded based on merit. Your gender, where you are born or the color of your skin would not affect your quality of life or your access to opportunities. Goods and resources would be allocated according to need, rather than power.”

So here, laid bare, is the goal behind the Equity strategy. Eliminate competition for resources, including Capitalism, Individualism, and heck, even the idea of Patriotism in favor of the elimination of individual countries and borders. Freedom must be sacrificed when it conflicts with their new God “Equity.”

In reading dozens of source documents, you can see and understand that these people’s view of the world is that it should be smaller, equitable, and flat; with the richest and poorest being eliminated in yet another attempt at a form of New Communism. But, of course, this time, they think it will work.

Their motto? “Peace on Earth and goodwill towards “cisgender”.

Ladies and Gentlemen, isn’t it obvious how far we have fallen for this mind trap? Perhaps billions of people buy into the rhetoric of this new form of “Equity” Marxism, only the latest in a series of shiny objects too many of us seem to be so enamored of.

Spread the word fellow Patriots.

God bless America, its values, traditions, and especially the Ukrainian people who endure the unendurable at this moment.

Allan J. Feifer
Patriot

God Bless America!

Throwing Republicans to the Lions

Hello Fellow Patriots:

Biden is frequently inarticulate and famous for often going off the rails, leaving you wondering as to his possible senility. Is it just a clever tactic for the supposedly addled President or a carefully thought-out plan? Biden clearly is not as brilliant and totally clear-headed as some Democrats proclaim. And, he is not jacked up on mind-altering drugs all the time as some Republicans claim. Like all things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Recently, we heard Biden start using the then-new term “MAGA Republicans” with little definition. That messaging has been sharpened quite a bit with the message: “…that MAGA Republicans allied to former President Donald Trump fit the “definition of fascism” and play a part in “attacking our democracy.” This tells me that this is not Biden making another gaff, but a midterm elections line of attack.

Even the Dems can’t completely gloss over the 74 million votes Trump received; a record, except for the official total of 81 million votes Biden garnered. I’m not a fan of polls, there are too many variables in how questions are posed and the real ringer…Republicans are less likely to participate in polling in general. Consequently, Democrats are consistently over-sampled by several percentage points vs. Republicans. Read the hyperlinked article to understand why. The upshot of published polling is that it frequently has the effect of reducing the turnout of some groups while increasing that of others.

This is by design with Democrats the masters of this technique, hands down. Here’s a good example of how voter enthusiasm is manipulated. Just over one month ago the Democrats were running for the hills, or so it was reported. With Biden’s numbers in the toilet, Democratic Strategists knew they had to change the messaging. Biden’s legislative teams have had a string of recent wins. But largely the electorate does not seem to care much about them. Evidence of that is in his Favorability ratings which have moved from 38.5% favorable up to 42.7% favorable. Still, historically low numbers. This is the definition of a bounce. Bounces, typically don’t last. The average loss of seats in the House for an incumbent President in a mid-term election is 37 seats for an unpopular President. Biden is, almost by definition, very unpopular with the majority of likely voters dinging him on almost every important subject. With the media putting out reports that the “wave” election is more likely to be a “puddle”, you are witnessing organized voter suppression in action. “Why to go and vote when your guy is so far back in the polls” is the not-so-subtle messaging.

But, there’s a new element in play today. The messaging of Extreme MAGA Republicans is designed to shame Republicans in the same manner Liz Cheney is doing so against Trump. Cheney has been nothing more than a useful shill for the Democrats. Her hatred for Trump is real, visceral, and unrelenting and trumps her supposed constitutional fears. Certainly, one would think she would understand that the House Select Committee is just using her as a hatchet woman against other frightened elected Republicans and nervous Republican voters who still believe, flaws and all, that Trump delivered more accomplishments than any other Republican President in the last hundred years. Let’s see how many Democrats back her in her next political pursuit! In the final analysis, her hatred for Trump is greater than her loyalty to her Republican conservative principles. Cheney never acknowledges the obvious imperfections of politics in an age of instant communication and focus group message testing.

The DNC realizes that they can’t let the Trump issue/factor go away or they will lose. He has to be “the” issue that every persuadable voter is hammered with over and over again. Listen to CNN, except for commercial breaks, you have a better than 75% chance of CNN talking heads expounding over something to do either with the J6 Witch Hunt or something else Trumpian. Our new Roman Games are held in a Democratic Coliseum with Trump thrown to the lions on an endless loop. A spectacle Emperor Biden must deliver to his people to divert them from focusing on, God forgive me, his record!

Think for a moment about what MAGA stands for if you’ve forgotten. Make America Great Again. Who could be against such a message, as tens of millions of Americans believe instinctively that yes, they’d like to see their country return to the way it used to be? We are unabashedly for a return to when we were at our best, even as we acknowledge the terrible mistakes that sometimes accompanied our best of times. Yes, we want to return to those days, no, we don’t intend to put people back into chains. Those genies are out of the bottle and good riddance. Democrats know that what MAGA stands for is a call to action understood by millions of activated Republicans. By parsing MAGA by adding other taglines like Dark MAGA, Ultra Maga, or MAGA Fascists, they seek to not just demonize Republicans, but employ a military-like tactic of preparing the ground ahead of the next attack in a form of psychological warfare. And, it works folks! Voter apathy ebbs and flows according to both the severity and frequency of such messaging. Democrats are spending vast amounts of money essentially running against a non-candidate for the moment. They have calculated that the worst thing that could ever happen to them would be for Emperor Biden to stand naked on his record in the cold light of day without anything to hide his utter nakedness.

Do you have to ask yourself how all this plays out? Keep in mind that Republican ideals and principles tend to be reliably conservative, almost by definition. This makes them, in the absence of some kind of major blunder…predictable. Democrats, on the other hand, are almost always in flux. Democrats live in a frat house of widely diverging underlying views. This is papered over by an almost Stalinist approach to how their people are kept in line. Only the most far-left elements of the Democrats, the so-called Squad, and their supporters toe a different line and get away with it. It’s how liberals see their children. We love our cute little socialists or precocious niellists. It’s a kind of pressure relief valve for the many leftist supporters of the party not actually in power, but see today, right now is the left’s best chance to completely overthrow democratic institutions in favor of whatever they conceive of as to what’s next. Watch those Squad members ‘go’ as their proud parents light up in awe!

But those leftists carry a terrible secret. For the Democrats, their far left is also their Kryptonite. They scare the bejesus out of not just Republicans but millions of Democrats as well. The Dems just don’t say it out loud, thinking the child they keep in the closet is a secret when it’s not. At any time, the Democrats will face their next existential crisis which will force them to try and reform it in time to limit their midterm losses. History bets against them getting such a pass.

God bless America, its values, traditions, and especially the Ukrainian people who endure the unendurable at this moment. Oh! And, my salute to Queen Elizabeth’s passing. Quite a lady!

Allan J. Feifer
Patriot

The Good Guys

Hello Fellow Patriots:

One of the joys of wide distribution of my musings is the people I get to meet. The other day, two of my readers, while in general agreement with my writings, pointed out, and I’ll paraphrase, “there’s no going back to the good old days”. Where does that leave us? I wrote back that I have a different vision, a different take on what is inevitable and what’s not. I’ll start with a little personal story of what the Good Guys sometimes looked like in the past and then move on to a few answers. I hope you find this not just interesting reading, but both inspiring and useful as a roadmap.

Early in my life, I rubbed shoulders and sometimes worked with people associated with freedom movements in Latin America and beyond. Names like Air America, White Hand, Southern Air Transport, Alpha 66, and the Contras among a smorgasbord of sometimes aligned and at other times non-aligned organizations all fighting for freedom in their respective countries. Once you start living outside the bubble of the media elites telling you what to think and believe, you find out there are different truths than reported. Back in 1979, a powerful earthquake hit Managua, Nicaragua while I was there. When I got stateside, I watched an NBC story that featured a school that was badly damaged. The on-air personality said this was the scene of a deadly shootout between government forces and communist guerrillas. Except, I knew that the school had been damaged in the earthquake and not by a government assault. I reached out to NBC in New York and was astonished at their lack of interest. And so, I learned that the national media cannot be trusted.

Why is this important? The world is moved by the actions of the few, not the many. 6% of all the colonists at most fought for our future freedom in the American Revolution out of just under 3 million people living here at that time. Small numbers of people can and do make a profound impact on the rest of us. Thinking people understand that the unresolved and divisive political issues at play are a threat to our future.

There are actions and events contemplated by the ruling Democrats that threaten us at our most basic level. For example, the doubling of the size of the IRS is a profound political statement. On one hand, it’s a statement that the government needs more of your money, that even with record-high tax receipts, it’s not enough. On the other hand, It’s a statement of control. You may remember last year the Biden proposal to give the IRS routine access to your bank accounts. Public opinion was so universally against this draconian idea that it was quietly dropped. Having been stymied there, Biden and the Democrats created an omnibus spending bill that is much more about control of the populace and staying in power than anything having to do with bringing down inflation.

America is a country built on three fundamental principles:

1. Patriotism
2. Capitalism
3. Freedom

This interlocking triad only works in concert. Take away any part and the other two principles mean nothing. When you view the news through the prism of what’s important and true you see a never-ending deliberate and focused attack on traditional America. All three of these principles are systematically being driven out of our daily lives. Not everywhere, because there is resistance, but bit by bit, America’s enemies, foreign and domestic are continually taking bites out of who we are. Through the process of incrementalism, our country today is very different than a generation ago.

Patriotism is under attack. An NYT daily brief describing the J6 “attack” stated “Jan. 6 was a political action that became a federal crime, and politics infuses these cases. Some defendants have argued that they’re being persecuted for their political beliefs…” And, in a broad sense, they are. Ask yourself this question. If you believed that your government had turned on you, and elections were no longer a viable way to save your way of life; what would you do?

Our government is no longer reliably responsive to its citizens and even more important, the government selectively enforces laws and rules depending on whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. Tens of millions of people believe this. Ignore us at your peril, as Patriots are only now coming to the realization that there may be no other course before them other than to fight the tyrants.

Capitalism. Too many Americans question if Capitalism is past its prime and there is a better way forward. Here’s one popular example of the diatribe being taught in our schools today:

“Capitalism is the main power behind most modern societies today. Private owners, i.e., the minority that has the hold over the greater piece of the pie create businesses and decide the means of production and the outlet for the revenues, making the economic decisions for the rest of the people (those that do the labor work).”

The problem with the above statement is its gross over-simplification. The obvious counter should be, what other system has lifted more people out of poverty and in that way enriched so many lives? The answer is of course none. A dumbed-down American education system spends more time talking in glowing terms about Nelson Mandela than it does about George Washington and Capitalism. And, every year, the telling of American history continues its march to the left with many students believing the worst, instead of the best of their native country. Heck, some schools fly Mexican flags instead of US flags! You reap what you sow!

Even Freedom is being redefined. Freedom of Speech, our ability to pray, and an entirely new class of “thought crimes” now exist as if we are living inside the book Nineteen Eighty-Four. Hate crimes are an offshoot and early warning of what is yet to come. You would have to be living under a rock if you have not heard the now-semi-official “Feelings are Violence.” “If it feels right, that’s enough,” says your newly brainwashed youngster. But a feeling is not truth.

So, Allan, where’s the uplifting hope for the future you promised? You, my readers, are those future Good Guys! An appreciable portion of the J6 defendants are the good guys. People reading conservative blogs, books and podcasts are those Good Guys. The Good Guys are the doers. They are the people who figure out tough problems and solve them! They are the entrepreneurs, professionals, and truth seekers who will become an Army of many. Already, the Democrats fear us; that’s why they call us out, prosecute us, and call us evil.

One overreach, one miscalculation by the ruling class, one more attack against our children, and an organic uprising may be inevitable. It’s happened before as the Bonus Army once marched on Washington and it will happen again. Governments that fear their citizens don’t last. The time will come once again when we’ll realize the wisdom of the Founding Fathers expressed within our Constitution and the power it vests in “We the People”, which means you and me. Never give in to those that seek to bring us low. Don’t believe their lies.

God bless America, its values, traditions, and especially the Ukrainian people who endure the unendurable at this moment.

Allan J. Feifer
Patriot

Washington is Running Out of Your Money to Spend

Hello Fellow Patriots:

Democrat leadership is frantic. But not for the reasons you may have heard. The just-passed Inflation Reduction Act is one of the largest revenue-raising bills ever passed. Slated to raise $725 Billion over ten years through raising the corporate minimum tax to 15%, Billions for assumed Prescription Drug pricing reforms, and $128 Billion through enhanced IRS enforcement. The promised $300 Billion debt reduction is a farce and will never happen. That’s the public face of this very misleading bill.

Let me share with you some of those mysterious moving pieces I’m always talking about. Budget tricks are legion. Let’s look under the hood at the issues at play.

Issue I: The National Debt now stands at naat about $31 Trillion and rising fast. The estimated shortfall in this year’s budget is $1.15 Trillion. Trillion-dollar budget deficits are slated to continue to rise indefinitely. When we have a deficit, as we do now, we owe that money frequently to foreign countries like China and Russia. Just as important, the change from a creditor nation to a debtor nation influences how we are perceived in the world and reduce our political capital. Keep in mind that these countries are now “investors” in our country and, that we would not like to see wholesale redemptions from them. This is self-induced blackmail. Becoming a debtor nation has no upside.

Issue II: Interest on the National Debt is swamping us. “Over the next 10 years, without any changes in current policies, CBO estimates that net interest will total $5.4 trillion and become the fastest growing component of the federal budget. In 2031, interest costs would account for 12 percent of the entire federal budget.” That is more than double the current percentage. This means there will be less money available to run our government.

Issue III: Entitlements. Entitlement spending is about to surge. Why? President Biden will have brought in somewhere between 6 to 9 million illegal immigrants by the end of his term if the current rate continues. No one knows if that rate will slow or God forbid, increase. The majority of those immigrants will likely become eligible for entitlements in one form or the other. The growth of entitlement spending was steeply up even before the border onslaught. Entitlements now make up more than 51% of the Federal Budget. This percentage is likely to increase, squeezing out other discretionary government spending and threatening national defense.

Issue IV: The number of working Americans is not growing commensurate with our population. Less than half of us work. And of those that do, older Americans are skewing historical numbers by working longer and returning to work after retirement for economic reasons. This fact is rarely tracked and is not a good sign. Millions of young people are delaying their entry into the US labor market by staying in school longer than in previous generations and on credit to boot. What is that telling us?

Issue V: The world is becoming ever more competitive. Our multinationals have sold our seed corn, i.e., our Intellectual Property to other nations, by creating Innovation Centers all over the world, staffed by local highly qualified STEM graduates as a result of America’s deficit of qualified grads. This has come to pass as we become a nation of service workers rather than the innovators we once were. Whether these Innovation Centers are owned or controlled for now by US companies does not stop technology transfer. America must critically focus on regaining our “Can Do” spirit and incentivizing work and effort; the opposite of what we do now. Our focus on social issues and a perceived climate threat see our competitors all over the world laughing at us. The United States has voluntarily given up its competitive edge. I find this stunning.

Issue VI: The US is in an expensive proxy war with Russia.
The United States has spent or committed to spending $54 billion, so far on the war. It’s an entirely different matter of the “why” and “what” for this. Just keep in mind that we are just as committed financially as we were in Afghanistan and Iraq, just in a different way.

Takeaways:

We have not been transparent with the American people. Whether it is taxes, social programs, or military adventures, the American people need to be read in. We don’t do that at our peril as it sets up a dynamic of one party criticizing the other. And, in doing so, we destroy our needed unity and are frequently forced to retreat after spending our blood and treasure. What a tragedy. While we likely won’t get to universal agreement on much, treating thinking Americans as adults is essential to the issue of trust.

We have voluntarily given up our position as number one in so very many technical and industrial areas, from building aircraft to steel making, from leading in Chemistry to mining. Decades ago, I visited a GE “lights out” dishwasher manufacturing facility. At the time, I thought that was our future. To use our advanced technology to reduce the labor content of formerly labor-intensive products. Today, those dishwashers likely are built in China or Mexico.

Certainly, the model for advanced technology factories did not play out as imagined. Our technology was up to the task; however, political factors crept in and changed the calculus. Perhaps we traded it for broader worldwide access. This has certainly been the model for many other products and services.

Why do we work against our own best interests? You only have to look at the Alinsky Model, breaking the American government financially, for that reason. Only by equalizing poverty through the destruction of existing systems can the few radical Marxist hope to reboot America’s engine into an egalitarian, socialist utopia. Beware, the powerful adherents of Mr. Alinsky which include Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven (the Cloward-Piven Strategy), Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, and Frank Marshall Davis, just to name a few.

Look over the American political landscape and view their progress visible in rampant immigration, indoctrination of our children, our young people sucking up resources as they stay home or work at menial service jobs while holding costly undergraduate and advanced degrees. Entitlements growth is out of control. People go on disability at younger and younger ages to avoid working. The entire redefining of who we are is centered on Identity Politics rather than the importance of a great work ethic, the value of free speech, and the understanding of our history. Lost along the way is the importance of “We the People” to the success of the America in which we live, faults and all.

One day, a desperate need to access more capital may find us forced to make painful choices that will inhibit our ability to govern and lead, based on historical precedents that have kept us in good stead since our founding. We are far along in a process of incremental societal and economic change that reflects our new reality as we now face what it means in practice to be a debtor nation.

God bless America, its values, traditions, and especially the Ukrainian people who endure the unendurable at this moment.

Allan J. Feifer
Patriot

War Warning

Hello Fellow Patriots:

Last week we focused on the China threat from an economic and political perspective. This week, we’ll attempt to peer into the mind of President Xi and forecast his intentions; not an easy task. It’s difficult for peace-loving Americans to believe other nations covet what we possess and do more than just look on from a distance.  We should take the lesson of Putin’s War in Ukraine as proof positive that there are those despotic leaders who are willing to set about a path of conquering other nations in the 21st Century. 

Freedom-loving people never want war. As evidence of that, in more than a thousand years no Democracy has attacked another. Up until the beginning of the Second World War, the U.S. has been protected to the East and West with the distance created by two oceans. We could absorb the first blow and have time to get ready both politically and militarily and still prevail. 

That luxury no longer exists and the likelihood of a conventional first strike at one of our outposts all over the world is more likely than you might imagine. Diplomacy has an important place in our history and practice. But you only have to look at Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia and how they use Diplomacy to enhance their ability to conduct wars of aggression and terrorism. They hide behind Diplomacy by being disingenuous and duplicitous.  China will use all the levers of Diplomatic power they have and still unsheathe its sword regularly to try and force bloodless victories through means other than actual war. This does not mean they are afraid to go to war, their calculus is that it is better to win a war without actually fighting whenever possible. 

With this caveat, let’s begin. I’ll start with a simple and fundamental truth based on history and current events:

“A nation that is unprepared for war holding a belief in the goodwill of nations, will find itself at war anyway.”

China has several restraints holding them back from obtaining its ultimate goal to be the Great Power in the World:

1. China is the most dependent nation on earth in matters of trade. Any military actions on their part will likely result in less trade rather than more.
2. China is keenly aware that an unstable world economy will inevitably reduce its economic output.  This restrains their militaristic designs to a degree.
3. China’s chickens have come to roost with its well-known one-child policy that has now been modified. China has a very large and ever-expanding class of older people who live long lives and require State support.
4. China’s recent crackdown on both capitalism and other freedoms has hastened the departure of too many of China’s best and brightest to other countries.
5. The Renminbi, China’s currency is overleveraged. China’s propensity to build and make things that are not economically viable are vestiges of its old Command and Control economy. Regional governments, until recently, have stoked the real estate markets into something that will have consequential and negative repercussions for years to come. Read about Evergrande here to understand this issue more. 

Don’t overestimate the tendency for China to be overconfident. China has been militarily insular until recently. This translates into no real-world experience in the myriad disciplines of power projection and tactics; both strategic and tactical. It is one thing to read about the U.S. Order of Battle.  It is another thing entirely to assimilate hard-won lessons of war that then lead you to train as you intend to fight. China is counting on quantity over quality to overcome various deficits and to counter more sophisticated Western weapons, vastly better Command and Control, and advanced war-fighting doctrines.  China is also counting on its more disciplined psychology and control of its population than the West is likely to muster.

There are other important facets that we could mention, but space does not allow it here. China is by no means a paper tiger. But China lacks the battle-tested and institutional memory of what works and what doesn’t.  That is layered on top of a political system that is autocratic and hierarchal by nature.  The National People’s Congress elects a 25-member Politburo that runs the country. President Xi in actuality has not just effective control of the country, but dictatorial powers. China watchers will be looking to see if there is any effective challenge to Xi winning an unprecedented third term as president. Keep in mind that Xi is also the Communist Party leader. As I always mention, the Communist Party and the country are one in the same. 

The topic of this article is “War Warning.” Our history of relative failure on the battlefield since WWII has imbued us with a defeatist mentality. We lose because we have political leaders who don’t know how or don’t have the will to fight winning wars. Yes, war is horrific. But necessary at times to defend our freedoms.  Giving up on the use of force unilaterally makes us a target for every tinhorn dictator in the world. 

We would be unwise to become a pacifist nation as we were in the run-up to the Second World War. Public opinion is fickle. The day before Pearl Harbor, public opinion on entering the war in Europe was 84% against. The day after Pearl Harbor that number changed to 97% in favor. When Americans are up against the wall again, I would expect a similar change of heart. Surprisingly, 42% of Americans are already in favor of “direct military action” in Ukraine. While not a majority; it appears as if we are starting to wake up to the larger threats in the world. There is hope for us yet!

One does not have to be a warmonger or a ‘War Hawk’ as one friend refers to me.  You only have to have a basic understanding of geopolitical history to appreciate what all those moving pieces mean to us. America’s internal weakness and its flawed leadership, not to mention the political infighting that sees us do stupid things, is not lost on our adversaries. An illustrative example is a monstrous idea of trading an imprisoned WNBA basketball star for a convicted mass murderer, Russian arms trafficker, Viktor Bout.  This is what non-serious people do. I can be sorry for Griner but like so many other uniformed Americans, why the heck do these people go to places like Iran, Syria, Russia, and other hotspots that our State Department issues dire warnings about? 

Miscalculations cause wars. A serious and thoughtful government needs to keep pace with the changes, not in public opinion, but in the dynamics of world power, and get ahead of it.  Issues that distract us, both our government and the American people, keep us from seeing the truth that very much matters. Wishing away threats or offering appeasement only leads to worse situations. Life is not easy. Let’s not live a life of fantasy. Sooner or later, reality always catches up.

Although now disestablished, the Strategic Air Command’s motto was “Peace through Strength.” Never, in its entire history, did it drop a bomb in anger. And, this was during the Cold War, with arguably the highest tensions ever between the US and Russia. The reason why is obvious…our enemies believed we were too strong to take on. 

I hope we remember that lesson of peace through strength and demand our leaders remember it as well.

May God bless our country and help Ukraine prevail. 

Allan J. Feifer

Patriot

China Syndrome

Hello Fellow Patriots:

Remember the movie “The China Syndrome”? Well, we’re not discussing that kind of nuclear meltdown today. But instead, we are discussing another kind of meltdown…economic. Most realize that China has eaten our lunch. But what most don’t know is that China was a reluctant participant early on. Every subsequent action is on us!  It was only later that American companies got greedy and decided to trade their patriotism for corporate growth. How else to explain the wholesale exodus of American jobs and technology overseas; particularly to China? The reason: to make our goods more competitive on the world market by utilizing cheaper labor which results in higher corporate profits.  China is not just another country among many who got America’s manufacturing jobs; it was THE country, the number one country that took our jobs. China has cornered 28.7% of all manufacturing jobs in the world. Think about it for a moment. 

Today, we’ll talk about how that came about and discover, in the process, how both corporations and our government put blinders on to make a bargain with the devil. When you look at the logic of trade with China, you realize quickly that our motives were capitalistic, but we neglected to understand the ramifications of building up a country that one day, was likely not to just be a rival, but an adversary, a Marxist Communist adversary. Someone was asleep at the switch as this trainwreck slowly unfolded over decades.

On a secret trip to China in 1971, it was Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State who got the ball rolling. The strategy was twofold:

1. To fracture the relationship between the Soviet Union and China, which did happen
2. To attempt to bring the world’s most populous nation into an alliance with the West, both economically and hopefully and in that way, perhaps naively, change their system of government.  At this point, we can state…not so much.

Alfred Coucher, an old China watcher said “In 1978, two years after the death of Mao, and during the period in which the ‘four Asian Tigers’ began their journey to prosperity, Deng Xiaoping initiated policies designed to reduce dependency on state ownership and central planning, and introduce private incentive to revive the Chinese Economy which had been dormant since Mao initiated comprehensive nationalization in 1956.”

And so began a period of nearly 40 years that unleashed economic reforms in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) encouraged capitalism as a way to prevent the possibility of a populace in revolt who had experienced a severe famine, stark living conditions, and other deprivations under Mao who killed at least 65 million Chinese.  Capitalism there helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and created trillions of dollars in wealth, but also led to rampant corruption and eroded the ideological basis for continued Communist rule.

Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 when he was elected to head the CCP. Xi lived a carefully curated life designed to assure his ascendancy to control of the CCP. In 2021 the Wall Street Journal ran an article that laid out the rationale for Xi’s change of heart. For him, the capitalistic experiment was over:

“Xi Jinping’s campaign against private enterprise, it is increasingly clear, is far more ambitious than meets the eye… He is trying to roll back China’s decades-long evolution toward Western-style capitalism and put the country on a different path entirely”

The question is why now? To be blunt, the West’s main usefulness is no longer as operative. Thanks to the West and especially the US, China has been transformed from an agrarian economy to a modern high-tech powerhouse. They accomplished that through voluntary and forced technology transfer from Western nations and then, for what they could not get through that avenue, through the theft of intellectual property. It is that IP issue that is of utmost importance today.

The West’s IP is our secret sauce. It is the only thing that China does not already possess. China has an estimated 25,000 spies in the US. Most of them are stealing not only military but economic secrets and technology. They are Vampires sucking our lifeblood. We should see this as economic warfare just short of actual war and thus respond accordingly. 

The biggest question is, what happens when they have sucked us dry? Time will tell, but there are many signs that this won’t end well.  One only has to read the current news of China’s military current encircling Taiwan, ostensibly as punishment for Speaker Pelosi’s visit. It is not.  I believe that was only a convenient tripwire for actions already in the pipeline. 

The American Enterprise Institute has stated that China sponsors the theft of IP because its main challenge is a lack of Chinese innovation. Beijing’s preference for large firms and state funding at the expense of genuine competition ensures it will struggle in key areas, from aircraft development to shale. The main challenge is China’s acquisition of IP and the use of regulatory and financial subsidies to develop products from that IP is to drive the U.S. out of global markets. 

You can read article after article explaining how China has manipulated foreign companies by promising large orders in exchange for technology transfer. 

At the moment, China is withholding fulfillment of orders placed with Boeing and promised under President Trump, even as China just ordered another 292 aircraft from Airbus last month.

China made that deal with the Trump administration back in 2017 to buy 300 Boeing jets. China, as it frequently does, is using this order for political leverage against the US. This is par for the course with them. China became the last major nation to recertify the Boeing Max just last month. Their delay in recertifying was a studied tactic, not to gain concessions from Boeing, but rather from our government. Whether we can get any on-order aircraft delivered is subject to the approval of the CCP. China only lives up to its word when it is good for them.

For those readers that don’t fully understand it, there is no Chinese government, there is only the Communist Party instructing government functionaries on what to do. The CCP requires all government entities, companies, and even individuals to fully follow its directions, mandates, and orders regardless of the law or China’s Constitution. End of any discussion. 

CCP policy is ultimately anti-American, so our ability to either influence or even require compliance with written agreements is limited. China is a monolithic entity that Americans can’t comprehend. Everyone in China is watched, evaluated and in the end, freedoms recently received are being rescinded.  No court or politician can offer redress. Look up Jack Ma for a better understanding of what can happen to someone who strays too far from government edicts. An order from Xi can be compared to an order from God himself. China shoots or imprisons those that dare to disagree. 

Understand what we are up against. There is no trying to outfox this fox. As a country, we hue to a set of rules that many of our adversaries laugh off as quite quaint. China is playing chess. We dare not allow them to Checkmate us.

Allan J. Feifer

Patriot