Re-branding alert: "The America-first case for globalist status quo"

Don't fall for their tricks all over again. There is now a major PR campaign to re-brand the globalist status quo as secretly good for the America-first crowd. See this editorial in the WSJ by Pentagon boarding party member and NSC Advisor H.R. McMaster, along with Chief Economic Advisor Gary "Wall Street" Cohen.

In it, they explain that nothing will change in America's policy around the world -- we will continue to attempt to militarily prop up our crumbling globalist empire, after so much success on that project in Iraq and Afghanistan, which now belong to Iran and the Taliban, respectively. However, we will officially drop the narrative rationalization that our goals are to spread democracy, free markets, human rights, and all-American values around the world for the benefit of other countries. We are officially only going to pursue our own interests with whoever aligns with us -- is that what you damned nationalists wanted to hear?

This shameless attempt to drop the disguise while maintaining the ugly substance underneath is meant to appeal to Americans whose main gripe is that they have to hear a bunch of altruistic multicultural BS about the need to spread American values and institutions overseas. Re-frame it as a naked pursuit of self-interest, and maybe they'll accept the same old policies that have flushed this country down the toilet.

And to be sure, there are plenty of Americans, even some Trump voters, who are mostly focused on the quality of political rhetoric and theatre. They just want to stop having to listen to all that airy-fairy crap about our duty toward other nations. They will accept Jeb Bush's policies, as long as they are packaged and performed in the persona and style a la Trump.

In fairness, if it does prove impossible to change the outcomes, we might as well enjoy a relief from the multicultural propaganda employed to justify the policies. Still, that's not what we voted for -- to continue the same practice, now with a less annoying theory to justify it.

In fact most Americans are turned off by political theatre altogether, and are only interested in "Is anything in the fundamentals going to change for the better?" Certainly the handful of swing voters across the Rust Belt states that decided the election did not decide to roll the dice on Trump in the hopes of getting to consume more palatable political entertainment. They voted on substance, not on presentation.

If anything, these Midwestern voters don't care at all for the brash no-BS New York persona. Giving them globalist policies they don't want, in a crudely self-interested presentation they abhor, will alienate them, not bring them closer to the GOP. They were hoping for Trump's policies with Kasich's presentation, not the other way around.

Conservatives especially ought to be wary, after so many arguments trying to sell the degenerate status quo as secretly conservative. "The conservative case for gay marriage" -- OK, so we'll stop pretending that gays care anything about monogamy, or raising children without molesting them or pimping them out to pedophiles and kiddie pornographers. We've gotten your feedback on that -- not buying it. OK, well hear us out on this new one -- unless we adopt gay marriage, we will lose elections, and that will prevent us from implementing the rest of our agenda. Isn't Paris worth a Mass?

In reality, these arguments have always turned out to be selling the audience a bill of goods. Adopting gay marriage was not about allowing Republicans to win elections in order to pass other, actually-conservative policies, which they never get around to. It was just Republicans caving in to liberal movements -- or already being supportive of those movements to begin with, and cynically branding themselves as conservative champions in order to get votes.

And in the case of trying to re-brand wide-ranging interventionism as self-interested and nationalist rather than altruistic and globalist, we've already been there once before -- under the Clinton administration, who were worried that in a still semi-conservative climate, they would be targeted as liberal internationalist do-gooders, and made the effort to brand themselves as calculating self-interested realists.

From an NYT article in 1993 ("U.S. Narrows Terms for Its Peacekeepers"):

Reflecting widespread anxiety within the Administration over open-ended peacekeeping missions in Somalia and Bosnia, the Administration is defining new limits for a future role in United Nations operations, senior Administration officials said today.

The evolving policy would require justifying involvement in terms of United States national interests and would limit situations in which American troops would serve under United Nations command, the officials added. ...

"It was not enough to say that the United States might be involved in future United Nations operations," said one senior Administration official. "We have to define what type of operation, and whether it would be something the United States has an interest in, or will only succeed if the United States leads." ...

Now the Administration seems intent on describing the limits of multilateralism rather than extolling its virtues.

[Sec State Warren] Christopher touched on the theme in a speech in New York on Monday, saying multilateralism "is warranted only when it serves the central purpose of American foreign policy, to protect American interests."

"This country will never subcontract its foreign policy to another power or another person," he said.

Less than two weeks after that article, the US fought the Battle of Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down) -- in that utmost of regions necessary for America to control, Somalia. Pure calculating national-interest at work. Then it was on to "blood for no oil" in the Iraq War (credit to Greg Cochran).

But now, thank God, we've finally started to get rational and self-interested. And what better way to promote our national interests than by marching toward Iran, who has never attacked us, as we provide hundreds of billions worth of weapons to Jihad University, sometimes referred to as Saudi Arabia. Hopefully this time, the jihadists won't wind up attacking their patrons in America like they did on September 11th.