Former President Trump released a video last week in which he railed against the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Ukraine. “A global conflict between nuclear armed powers would mean death and destruction of a scale unmatched in human history,” warned Trump. “It would be nuclear Armageddon.”

It’s clear that permanent enmity between America and Russia—and by proxy, Ukraine and Russia—only endangers all parties involved. As a result, any institution or individual committed to maintaining this enmity no matter the cost should be as far from the levers of power as possible.

Whatever one’s opinion on Trump’s bid for presidency, his words on this issue address something key for America’s future. In the video, he specifies what needs to be done:

“We must be absolutely clear that our objective is to immediately have a total cessation of hostilities. All shooting has to stop. This is the central issue. We need peace without delay. … There must also be a complete commitment to dismantling the entire … establishment that is perpetually dragging us into endless wars, pretending to be fight for freedom and democracy abroad while they turn us into third world country and a third world dictatorship right here at home.”

So not only must the war stop—the power structure responsible for it and other wars must be dismantled. This is a radical proposal, one assured to be poorly received in Washington D.C.

And Trump has paid quite the price for suggesting it. The retaliation he’s faced for questioning the status quo in Washington boggles the mind: the Mueller investigation, double impeachments, and the multiple criminal probes he’s currently dealing with.

But perhaps the most insightful of Trump’s comments in the video is this part:

“These forces are doing more damage to America than Russia and China could ever have dreamed. Evicting this sick and corrupt establishment is the monumental task of the next president.”

Americans are used to being told that our nation’s existential threats primarily lie abroad. Russia, Iran, China, Syria, and so on—our overlords benefit from us directing our focus toward these regimes, rather than toward our own. Not only does this distract from our rulers’ corrupt dealings, it bolsters their legitimacy by allowing them to tell us that they are keeping us safe.

Whatever their faults, it is not Russia or Iran that poses the greatest threat to the American people—it’s the globalist regime in Washington. We can’t blame Putin for the opioid epidemic, outsourcing American jobs, affirmative action, critical race theory, mass immigration, or the LGBT agenda. But we can and should blame those in power here who, through either indifference or outright malice, have presided over the decline of America.

Scapegoating is a tactic common to totalitarian regimes. In communist China, Mao Zedong embarked on a ruthless campaign to root out what he claimed was a counterrevolutionary capitalist conspiracy. While he might have truly believed such forces were plotting against him, one cannot ignore the fact that this campaign, which came to be known as the Cultural Revolution, followed his regime’s failed attempt to collectivize Chinese agriculture. This effort, known as the Great Leap Forward, is estimated to have killed 30 million people.

Whether it’s the constantly mentioned, yet ever-elusive, threat of white supremacy at home or so-called rogue regimes abroad, Americans should be deeply skeptical when our ruling class directs our attention elsewhere. There are many threats to our great nation, but the greatest is often the very same elite telling us their actions and ideas are keeping us safe.

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Image credit Wikimedia Commons-John Morgan, CC BY 2.0

ITO