Why are most people so eager to accept the suicidal climate change narrative?

Most people probably don’t realize what terms like “net zero” really mean in terms of their way of life. I use the words “way of life” purposely instead of “standard of living” because I don’t believe the latter term conveys the magnitude of the effect eliminating fossil fuel use would have.

Eliminating fossil fuels would return civilization to a pre-industrial existence, one which a large percentage of the current world population would not survive. Those who did survive would live at a level far below what anyone living in the fossil fuel-powered world could even imagine.

So, why are so many so eager to embrace a narrative that promises such hardship for themselves and their children? Certainly, there is some delusional belief that “renewable” energy will replace most fossil fuel energy, but it seems impossible that most people honestly believe that. Regardless, their leaders are coming right out and telling them a substantial lowering of their standard of living will be necessary – what Barack Obama often called “shared sacrifice.”

Whether Mr. Obama or his ilk will be doing any of the sharing is a subject for another day.

Before trying to explain the average American’s willingness to believe, I will tell you my own reaction to the climate change narrative from the perspective of one who remembers when it was not a major issue, even for environmentalists. It is only fair that I do my best to explain my own biases as they were when “climate change” first became a thing.

Unlike most people I know, I’ve always had a predisposition towards the free market. I had it long before it would have ever occurred to me to say the words “free market.” But even while working those first, minimum wage jobs everyone works in their teens or early twenties, I had a general impression that commerce was a good thing and business owners were making a positive contribution to society.

This despite a liberal arts education that, in retrospect, did everything it could to convince me otherwise.

This impression was bolstered by my even earlier interest in history. History, or “social studies,” as it was called in my Catholic grammar school, was my favorite subject. I did well in it. If you asked any of my grammar school classmates in 1979 what I was going to be when I grew up, most would have guessed history teacher.

An interest in history and a predisposition towards the free market aren’t mutually exclusive, the overwhelming anti-capitalist bias in modern college history departments notwithstanding. In fact, any objective look at the history of the past five hundred years would only confirm one’s belief in the free market.

All this is relevant to the way I saw the climate change narrative when it first became one of the dominant narratives in the major media. Having a knowledge of history that supported my pro-free market disposition, I found the climate change narrative extremely dubious right from the start.

Let’s review what we were asked to believe at the time. We have a certain political movement that promoted an alternative economic system to capitalism for hundreds of years. That economic system was implemented to various degrees in virtually every country in the world. And at the moment it spectacularly failed, its proponents suddenly discovered a threat to the planet that could only be solved by adopting that failed system.

Are you kidding?

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupidand Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

The Trump show trial is just the Clinton impeachment fiasco all over again

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Most Americans have an unhealthy and unjustified reverence for the federal government. The presidency is the apex of this misplaced devotion, such that any diminishment in its hallowed trappings is an existential crisis. Thus, when the supposed “dignity of the Office of the President” is compromised, one can always count on sanctimonious calls for its restoration, both sincere and insincere, in language one would normally expect to be used while deploying holy water and incense.

The Trump show trial is no exception. His supporters correctly object to its purely political motivation for charges no one cares about related to alleged crimes with no discernible victim(s). In that sense, this is just a replay of the 1990s Clinton impeachment, also over a sex scandal, and also about a crime with no victims other than the sanctimony of the oath taken in a Congressional hearing.

Clinton lied under oath to a room full of liars. No one but the most fervent partisan supported his impeachment. It ended up boosting his approval ratings.

Trump’s case sets the new precedent of bringing criminal charges against a former president. Even those who support the prosecution see it as some unimaginable journey beyond the pale from which only a president who satisfies the divine requirements of the holy office can restore “our democracy.”

This thinking is completely upside down. If anything, Americans should be ashamed it’s taken this long to indict a president given the crimes virtually all of them commit. Prosecuting former presidents is something the framers clearly anticipated when expressly providing for it in the Constitution. They knew executive power was dangerous and fully expected to make use of the criminal justice system for any presidents that got out of line.

The problem today is almost everyone in imperial DC and far too large a portion of the American public approve of, or at least do not strongly object to, most of the crimes U.S. presidents commit. And so, we are left with politically motivated impeachments and prosecutions over trivialities like the Trump trial and Clinton impeachment.

Obviously, these powers to check the executive were created for far more important matters. Abusing war powers would be an obvious example. Presidents Biden, Trump, and Obama have all violated the War Powers Act of 1973 and that certainly is not an exhaustive list. This isn’t a theory. Here is the relevant language from the statute:

The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

Every president named above has bombed Syria under circumstances when none of the three required circumstances applied. They broke a law that actually matters, risking war with Russia and inviting further terrorist attacks against the United States. They also killed innocent civilians in a country that had never attacked the United States; just in case anyone cares about the moral question anymore.

Not only were these presidents not prosecuted; they were applauded by the media and most of DC. For Trump, it was one of the few times he was complimented by the establishment, with even Bill Kristol tweeting out his unbridled joy that the president was being “presidential” for a change.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Why haven’t Republicans indicted Obama (or done anything else)?

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“He pulls a knife, you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.” – Officer Jim Malone, The Untouchables

CNN gleefully reports, “Trump is just days from his first criminal trial after latest legal gambit fails.” According to the “analysis” piece, Trump being the first president to be brought to criminal trial would mark him with a “historic stigma.” If convicted of a felony, it could also render Trump ineligible to hold public office, even if he were elected president in a landslide.

Whether or not the Democrats would risk overturning an election in such a way is anyone’s guess. Odds are they would. Either way, they have nothing to lose in moving forward with these indictments because, as usual, Republicans are putting up no resistance whatsoever. Yes, they’re crying about it, calling the persecution of Trump “lawfare” and wringing their hands about the precedents being set.

No one cares. No one ever cares when Republicans complain about Democratic enormities. Republicans complain (and fund raise) and Democrats continue to act. This cycle needs to be broken.

The Republicans must indict Barack Obama and arrest him. And they have to make it look worse than Trump’s arrest. Issue a warrant and film him, cuffed, being put into the back of a police car, with the cop helpfully pushing his head down as is their custom for the suspect’s safety.

He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue, figuratively speaking.

It’s not as if this is some Herculean task. Every president commits indictable crimes while in office. They all use the IRS to go after political opponents. Obama did. Republicans screamed about it. Indict him for it. Find a right-wing court in a red state and bring the charges. As the Democrats have shown, they don’t even have be legit. “Trumped up” charges will do just fine, pun intended. Let Biden know he’s next, the minute he leaves office.

The Republicans could even bring legitimate charges, like violating the War Powers Act while in office, which Obama did on hundreds of occasions. He bombed Syria not only without Congressional approval but after Congress refused to grant his request for authorization. Who cares if Trump and Biden did it, too? This isn’t about fairness or consistency or proving some academic point. It’s war. You either fight, surrender, or die.

I can already hear the sanctimonious objections from conservatives who “don’t want to live in a country where the sacred trust of enforcing the law is abused in this manner.” Newsflash: you already do. The only question is whether you’re going to do something about it other than cry.

But cry about it is all Republicans ever do. When in power, the Democrats act; the Republicans talk (and fund raise). Consider a sports analogy.

Back in the early 1990s, the Buffalo Bills had one of the most explosive offenses in NFL history. They scored so many points so fast that Jim Kelly’s and Thurman Thomas’ statistics were actually muted in some seasons because they were taken out of the game so early. The Bills blew out teams that badly (and then lost the Super Bowl four straight times).

During a playoff game in Buffalo against Kansas City, analyst and former coach Bill Walsh remarked that the Chiefs’ strategy of “dive right, dive left” for three yards and a cloud of dust was never going to work while the Bills were busy gobbling up yards throwing the ball downfield.

He was right. The Bills were up 17-0 by halftime and never looked back.

This Republicans have been the 1992 Chiefs for the past one hundred years. When the Democrats have power, they make one great leap forward after another in expanding the reach of government. Republicans kick and scream while they’re doing it but when handed the reins of power they do nothing. Once the Democrats are back in, another great leap forward. Lather, rinse, repeat.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupidand Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Trying to ‘create jobs’ is dumb

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It is the first week of the month, meaning we can expect a new ADP jobs report on Wednesday and the foolishly much-anticipated BLS jobs report on Friday. Based upon whether jobs created in March based on the report beats or misses expectations, President Biden will either gloat about the results or talk about something else.

Biden is certainly not unique in this respect. Every president since the report was created has tried to take credit for the jobs created during his administration. In most cases, pronouncements on this subject are carefully worded to read literally that “XXX jobs were created during my administration,” acknowledging that perhaps some other factors contributed to the supposed new jobs than the dear leader’s will and mighty actions alone.

So, at least we have that.

Nevertheless, the tweet we can expect from the president on Friday, BLS willing and the creek don’t rise, will imply heavily that it was his policies that are directly responsible for the hundreds of thousands of new jobs the report says were created the previous month.

There are several problems with this whole scenario, the most serious among them being that the Federal Reserve considers this report (or an alternative report based on the same methodology) in deciding how to conduct monetary policy going forward. Voters also take these reports seriously, to the extent they remember them on election day, and certainly the pronouncements of the incumbent president on the total number of jobs created during his previous term.

The first thing people should understand is the jobs report is largely fiction. It is not a literal tabulation of the total number of jobs created minus those lost. No one knows that information. Rather, the BLS conducts a phone survey, applies some formulas, and largely guesses how many jobs were created. It’s not as if there is nothing to it, but it is a very imprecise tool. That’s why it is common for the BLS to significantly adjust its findings for previous months while reporting the latest findings. And even the adjustments are based largely on voodoo.

Think climate change models. Or Covid mortality projections from March 2020. The BLS jobs report may or may not be quite that bad. But as the great Vincent Vega would say, “It’s the same ballpark.”

But while poking holes in the methodology of the jobs report is good fun for nonbelievers in the government religion, it misses the main point: trying to ‘create jobs’ in the first place is dumb. It is economically counterproductive. It’s the opposite of what any for-profit business should be trying to do.

Whether bringing a new product to market or simply trying to remain competitive in an existing market, businesses are constantly trying to produce more products at lower cost. The most significant costs for most businesses are labor costs. Therefore, businesses are constantly trying to produce more output with less employees.

Less jobs, not more.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

There is no such thing as ‘regulatory capture’

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I was in the hearing aid business a few decades ago. As a minority shareholder and chief operations officer, it was my job to build out a network of retail stores, manage our manufacturing operations, and manage the relationship with a foreign manufacturer that provided us products not previously available on the American market. We also had a plan to sell less expensive hearing devices in pharmacies.

Opening our first retail store was an exciting endeavor. We had a good location in a plaza with a solid anchor on a very busy intersection. We prepared our grand opening for months and were understandably excited for our first day of business. We ran ads in all the local newspapers and looked forward to our first patient walking through the door.

The advertisements did generate phone calls, but the first one was not from a potential customer. It was from the State Department of Health, informing us there had been a complaint about one of our newspaper ads. We were required to submit a response to the complaint after which the department would make a determination of its validity and any further action against or required of us.

Obviously, the complaint didn’t come from a customer; we had no customers yet. The complaint came from a local competitor who literally waited for our first hour in business to call the state. This is the way the world works.

The complaint was found to be without merit – our ad was not misleading or out of compliance with any regulations – but it certainly took the edge off an otherwise happy day. We lived and learned.

A few years later, after confirming there were regulatory barriers to selling “assistive listening devices” (not quite hearing aids, but helpful for mild hearing loss at about 1/10^th the price), we tried to lobby the state legislature ourselves. We successfully got our revision to the applicable statutes into a bill about other matters that was sure to pass and were told by the lobbyists we hired that it appeared we would be successful.

Then, on the very last day of the legislative session, the language was taken out after an all-out assault by a much better-funded set of lobbyists claiming our devices would be dangerous if not fitted by an audiologist.

Obviously, our device that peaked at 30 decibels (the average iPod at the time peaked at over one hundred decibels) posed no health risk to those who used it. But it did pose a revenue risk to those who hired the lobbyists – the audiologists. They also argued that hearing loss in some cases indicated other health issues that may not be discovered if the patient didn’t have an exam by a licensed professional before attempting to treat their hearing loss.

In 2022, the FDA approved the sale of full-blown hearing aids over-the-counter (OTC). Apparently, those other health conditions are no longer a concern. The big corporations have finally adapted their business models to include lower cost products and thus they can be allowed without small upstarts like our little firm disrupting their dominance. So, for almost twenty years, consumers were deprived of a significantly lower cost option for hearing loss for no valid reason whatsoever.

This is the way the world works.

One might ask, “How can you say there is no such thing as regulatory capture after having those experiences yourself?”

Simple. The term ‘regulatory capture’ implies there were once regulatory agencies that operated in an adversarial relationship with large corporations for the so-called “public good” that were later ‘captured’ by those corporations and made to serve the corporations’ interests. But that never happened.

‘Regulation’ itself is and has been from the very beginning a practice created by large corporations for the sole purpose of crippling or eliminating competitors.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupidand Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

The bloodbath hoax and the myth of the unbiased, apolitical journalist

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It’s been four days since former President Donald Trump vowed to make American streets flow with blood if he is not elected in November. The media has moved on to provide other valuable information to a grateful public.

And if you believe that…

The #bloodbath farce is the latest media-driven hysteria that only serves to confirm for Trump and his supporters that the establishment media are “enemies of the people” who cannot be trusted to honestly report the time of day. It’s hard to argue with them when it comes to news about the Donald.

Less partisan or politically interested observers wistfully yearn for the “good old days” when journalists simply reported the facts of the stories they covered, regardless of their political biases, without slant or distortion. But like most memories of the 20th century, the hard-nosed, objective, just-the-facts-ma’am journalist reporting the news without prejudice or bias is a myth. Journalists were never unbiased and have distorted the news, by slant, omission, or pure fabrication, for all of American history.

The idea of the unbiased, apolitical journalist is largely a product of the Progressive Era, as are the myths of the apolitical bureaucrat, the apolitical government scientist, the apolitical government schoolteacher, etc.

These myths were central to the progressive movement because its primary goal was to replace the free decisions of individuals with the coerced decisions of government “experts.” It was essential that people believed these decisions were made purely on their technical merits and “benefit to society” and were not, in part or in whole, made for political reasons.

Nowhere was belief in this myth more important than in journalism, the conduit through which flowed the information upon which people would base their support or resistance. That’s why journalists are constantly glorified by the establishment, including by other journalists. Throughout the 20th century, they were lionized in books and films. But who were they really and did any truly “speak truth to power” in service of the public?

The early Progressive Era featured “muckrakers” such as Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell. The mid-20th century brought us Edward R. Murrow and the irreproachable Walter Cronkite. The later 20th century gave us Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Supposedly, these are all heroes whose courage and relentless pursuit of the truth informed the public and checked the powerful. So says the myth. Reality begs to differ.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupidand Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

A Tik Tok ban is the epitome of China hysteria

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Well, Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) agree on one thing: Congress shouldn’t pass a bill banning Tik Tok from operation within the United States under current ownership.

MTG said she opposes the bill on First Amendment grounds, citing her own ban from Twitter (Now “X”) under its previous ownership and subsequent restoration of her account once Elon Musk acquired the platform. She correctly noted that such a bill could set a precedent for a similar ban or forced sale of X, the freest of the major social media platforms and friendliest to MAGA Republicans.

MAGA jefe and current frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election, former President Donald Trump, has also publicly opposed the ban despite his own call for such a bill while president.

For her part, AOC said it “just doesn’t feel right to me.” As much as we need less feelings and more reason contributing to legislative decisions, we’ll take the win on feelz this time.

Whatever the motivations of the various players, it is refreshing to see at least this minor check on the full blown China hysteria that pervades most of the political spectrum in the U.S. As China has now become a rival world power, the D.C. empire has preyed upon all of its subjects’ worst instincts to drum up fear of all things China.

The most irrational of these is “the CCP obtaining your data.” CCP stands for Chinese Communist Party, a moniker at least as inappropriate as that of the very nationalist “Federalist Party” of 1790s America. China is an authoritarian country but no longer a communist one. As I’ve been saying for many years, the only reason China has become an economic power is because it has largely abandoned communism and embraced a market economy.

I’m old enough to remember what things were like when China was communist. When I was a child and didn’t want to “clean my plate,” i.e., finish whatever I had been served for dinner, my mother would say, “Don’t waste food; there are people starving in China.” I never agreed with the logic of this statement (how is my eating more going to help them?) but it certainly rested upon a correct premise. People were starving in China by the millions. That is the eventual end in all communist countries.

The Chinese aren’t starving anymore. The transformation didn’t take long, either. Once the decision was made to transition to a market economy, China became one of the largest economies in the world in just a few decades. As Fred Reed wrote, “the Chinese are a commercial people.” It only took the political will to abandon communism to free those commercial instincts.

This is not to say China has a laissez faire free market economy. Neither does the United States. Both countries operate market economies with massive government intervention. Which country intervenes more? That’s hard to say at this point. The U.S. has seen economic freedom greatly decline over the past several decades. China has seen economic freedom greatly increase, albeit with some pullback under current President Xi. Which one is economically freer at the moment? It probably depends upon your measuring stick.

This is all important to understanding the proposed Tik Tok ban. The legislators promoting it correctly point out that Americans having accounts on the platform are allowing their data to be mined. That data, they say, eventually ends up in the hands of the Chinese government. That’s probably also true.

So, what?

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupidand Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Progressivism, Trump or Biden-style, is one giant rip-off

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2024 is a presidential election year which means both major political parties will be telling their fairy tales about how they have in the past and will again in the future, if you will only elect their man, “save America.” It’s important to remember that both political parties are “progressive” parties, however one of them may object to that appellation. The Republicans merely embody the original progressive profile: fervently Christian, Republican, and corporatist.

The only difference in the Democratic Party is the Christian part. They are equally as religious but have replaced Jesus Christ with “Gaia” or more commonly “the environment.” But otherwise, they’re essentially the same.

We will hear much this year about the supposed gulf in ideology between the two parties. One claims to champion free markets, individual liberty, and limited government, while the other claims to look out for the little guy, protect the earth for and from future generations of humans, and pursue a more “equitable” distribution of wealth.

But once in power, either party will essentially do the same thing with only slight differences in emphasis. They will both govern as progressives have governed for the past one hundred plus years. And it is important to realize that, once the sales pitch about “progress” is set aside, progressivism boils down to one, giant rip-off. Military adventurism, business regulation, fighting climate change, and even “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are all part of it.

Certainly, there are people who genuinely believe in these things, just as there were during the early progressive movement. But they are the true “useful idiots.” The people who will actually make any of the latest progressive initiatives reality are all crony capitalists in bed with the government, just like a century ago.

Before the progressive era, the traditional way for governments to rip off their citizens was military spending. The highwater mark was war. A war that would cost $150 billion in today’s dollars was made to cost $500 billion instead, with the “profits” flowing to contractors, politicians, and other parasitical fauna. So, every government that thinks it can win is on the lookout to gin up a nice, juicy little war.

But even outside of war, military spending has been and remains a scam. The United States fought a 20-year war in Afghanistan, accompanied by several other military adventures in the Middle East including the large one in Iraq. When the last of these was supposedly ended in 2021 – and before the war in Ukraine began – military spending was still scheduled to increase in 2022.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Capitalists are terrible for capitalism

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U.S. President Donald Trump, flanked by Senior Advisor Jared Kushner (standing, L-R), Vice President Mike Pence and Staff Secretary Rob Porter welcomes reporters into the Oval Office for him to sign his first executive orders at the White House in Washington, U.S. January 20, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

When Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016, the familiar notion that a successful businessman would “run the government like a business” reemerged. We’ve heard this whenever a successful entrepreneur, usually a Republican, has run for president. Of course, the government cannot be run like a business for reasons I provided in 2012 when Mitt Romney was the latest candidate who would purportedly do so.

In short, the private marketplace runs on voluntary exchanges while the government runs on force. Success in the former does not prepare one for success in the latter. It may even make one less prepared for the intrigues of politics, as Donald Trump, Jr. seemed to be saying in his recent interview of Matt Taibbi.

But free market proponents often make the further mistake of assuming that a successful business owner will at least be prone to pro-free market policies. After all, who knows better the blessings of capitalism than a capitalist himself or herself?

This is also mistaken. While running their businesses in the marketplace, successful entrepreneurs are a great boon to society. But when it comes to policy, capitalists are terrible for capitalism. Among history’s most successful capitalists this has virtually always been true.

For the entire history of commerce, business owners have sought the aid of government power to limit or eliminate competition. In 1807, long before the Progressive Era, the New York State legislature granted Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, a 30-year monopoly on steamboat traffic in the state of New York. As Thomas DiLorenzo writes in How Capitalism Saved America, this allowed Fulton to charge exorbitantly high prices until Cornelius Vanderbilt defied the legal monopoly and undercut him.

The Progressive Era itself was a bonanza of crony capitalism. The popular myth about this period has so-called “robber barons” forming monopolies and exploiting customer and employee alike until progressives like Teddy Roosevelt came along to save the day with heavy government regulation.

As Murray Rothbard proved beyond any reasonable doubt, literally no element of this popular myth is true. In fact, it is the opposite of the truth. It is true that hugely successful business owners like John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan attempted to form monopolies over various sectors of the economy. However, every attempt to do so without the government’s help ended in failure.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

The big, dumb empire stumbles back into the Middle East

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“You asked for miracles, I give you the F.B.I.” So said Hans Gruber, one of the greatest movie villains of all time, played to perfection by the late Alan Rickman. Gruber and his gang are thieves posing as terrorists and need to defeat an electromagnetic lock protecting hundreds of millions of dollars in securities. Although they are unable to do so themselves, Gruber tells his hacker, Theo, not to worry.

What does Gruber know that Theo does not? He knows the U.S. federal government and what local cop Al Johnson calls their “universal terrorist playbook.” The F.B.I. arrives on the scene of the supposed terrorist hostage situation and immediately orders a reluctant city employee to shut down power for ten square blocks of Los Angeles in order to cut off power to the target building. The worker complies and power to the building and the electromagnetic lock protecting the securities is cut off.

One can’t help but laugh as the criminals gleefully charge into the vault to the tune of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But it is no laughing matter that this is a perfect metaphor for U.S. foreign policy in general, and Middle Eastern policy in particular.

In the mid-1990s, Osama bin Laden effectively said the same thing as Gruber. Knowing he could never invade or otherwise fight the United States in its own hemisphere, he said he intended instead to provoke the U.S. into invading the Middle East where it could be defeated in a war or attrition, just as he and his fellow Mujahideen had previously defeated the Soviets. That provocation came on September 11, 2001.

It is unclear if Bin Laden was actually involved in the attacks. But they were certainly carried out by likeminded people and Bin Laden had no problem with allowing Americans to assume he was the mastermind. The attacks did just what Bin Laden hoped they would do – get the U.S. to run the “universal terrorist playbook,” meaning going to war in the Middle East where its soldiers could be killed more easily, and its finances drained.

Twenty-three years later, the big, dumb U.S. empire hasn’t learned a thing. In those two decades, federal government debt has skyrocketed from less than $6 trillion to over $30 trillion. Interest on the debt alone is now over $1 trillion per year. And what have American taxpayers, present and future, received for this enormous expenditure? The Taliban has been replaced with the Taliban. Iraq now has a Shiite government that is allied closely with Iran – the same Iran whose “influence in the region” Washington constantly warns against. Libya now has the most vibrant slave trade in African history.

The real tragedy here is success or failure in any of these endeavors doesn’t affect the lives of people living in the United States one way or another. It’s just a giant rip off that funnels trillions to connected defense contractors while allowing lifelong bureaucrats in the Administrative and Deep States to continue in the delusion that they’re running the world when instead they’re running the U.S. into the ground.

“Big Johnson” from Die Hard exemplifies these would be masters of the universe perfectly. He displays the precise combination of unbridled arrogance and cluelessness as he condescends to the local rubes while being played like a fiddle by Gruber as do the Tony Blinkens and Victoria Nulands of real-world D.C. Every faction in the Middle East has played the empire for its own ends while the empire stumbles around the region like a drunk looking for a brawl. Both Israel and its regional enemies have done so, often simultaneously. So have Washington’s supposed Islamic allies. The empire sees itself as James Bond; in reality its more like Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Puppies and pretty girls beware.

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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?