THE SCOPE OF THE UNITED STATES EMPIRE IS TRULY AWE INSPIRING

Being a citizen of the United States, it is often hard to grapple with the fact that the nation I was born into is an empire. When you read history, it never felt like the United States was comparable to the Romans, the Russians and the Brits on the imperial scale. Our Constitution was developed to limit the scope of the government, which should make an empire impossible. But if we are being honest, the expansion of the United States in the early to mid-1800s mixed with our agricultural prowess and the industrial revolution made our nation an economic powerhouse. During the presidency of William McKinley from 1897-1901, the United States engaged in its first war outside of its territory. Up to this point, every American War was on our soil; the American Revolution, War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War and the Wars against the Natives. All of them to fulfill the goal of manifest destiny and the creation of one nation from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. But in 1898 due to the controversial and still debated explosion of the USS Maine, the United States engaged in its first imperial war. After defeating the Spanish in eight months, the Treaty of Paris was signed which gave the United States possession of the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. The war also allowed us to annex the Hawaiian Kingdom and take the Samoan Islands. Cuba became an independent nation in 1902 after three and a half years of American occupation after the Spanish defeat. Our first “nation building” war followed in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902, when the United States defeated the Filipino revolutionaries. From 1898 until the present day, the United States has been an EMPIRE. But our politicians since McKinley (Who was assassinated by an anarchist in September of 1901) have often downplayed American influence even though:

Approximately 750 military bases in 80 countries exist according to CATO.

The United States dollar became the Reserve Currency of the planet due to the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944.

The United States is the dominant economic powerhouse of the globe. We are the biggest financial empire that has ever existed.

The United States is the largest cultural empire since Austria-Hungary.

Despite these facts, the lack of territorial holdings creates a dispute about whether the United States is an empire.

Well, enter DONALD TRUMP into this equation.
 
Since Trump took the oath of office a month ago, the news cycle has gone into a cocaine induced overdrive. Every day, hundreds of different stories hit our wire. By the time you finish one story, four more have replaced it. All this is due to DOGE, the new Department of Government Efficiency, created by Executive Order by and run by Elon Musk and his crew of young tech nerds. There are too many discoveries to list here. But the purpose of this new “agency” was to reduce wasteful spending and corruption. And boy, has it done that.

If everything that DOGE has discovered could be discussed, this blog would quickly reach novel size. Due to my own personal interests though (And a potential 4th soon), I want to focus on three incredible discoveries that have been unearthed.

1) INTERNEWS - This one is a personal victory for me. From 2002 to 2014, I worked in the television industry monitoring television networks and working on local newscasts. After moving into the utility industry, I pursued a master’s degree at Arizona State in Media Studies. During the time working in television and the media, I always felt there was something wrong with the information given to the American people. The opinion of one point of view always seemed to stick out over any counterarguments. This problem first appeared in 2002 when the pro-war crowd seemed to drown out the anti-war voices. This led to the Iraq War of 2003 as the very efficient propaganda promoted on the nightly newscasts led to the American people supporting an attack on that nation. The overwhelming narrative that existed in the media and posted inside dozens of websites, magazine, and newspaper articles always seemed to mirror identically to what the United States government wanted. Pointing this out to family members and friends, no one saw what seemed so obvious to me. We were being propagandized and brainwashed all the time. Last week, the twenty-year long theory I held was proven to be a factual truth. An NGO with the generic name of INTERNEWS was given 472.6 million dollars to basically control the global content of news and frame stories with a pro-United States bias. The scope of this propaganda is incredible when evaluated. Here are a few facts.

Internews worked with 4,291 media outlets, producing 4,799 hours of broadcasts in one year alone, reaching up to 778 million people globally. It also “trained" over 9,000 journalists in 2023 and supported social media censorship initiatives.

USASpending data shows that 87% of the funding, equivalent to $415 million, came from USAID in the last 17 years, while an additional $57 million was awarded by the US Department of State in the same period.

USAID (United States Agency for International Development) was acting like its own intelligence agency not only influencing the American people domestically but a large portion of the globe. In addition, they encouraged and supported anti-Constitutional social media censorship organizations that began to escalate the removal of content online during the COVID-19 lockdowns (And were exposed in the Twitter Files). Even though I suspected this going back to the propaganda operation that got us into Iraq in 2003, I NEVER COULD HAVE BELIEVED that it was this large in scope and operating with such efficiency.

2) SUBSCRIPTIONS - I have been confused for years as to why any person on this planet would pay hundreds or even in a few cases, thousands of dollars, for a media subscription. It seems like a failed business model unless you promote a truly independent point of view like many successful Substack authors who charge between 50 to 300 dollars a year depending on the content. But these publications promote the same pro-government ideas with a slight ideological spin. They do create good journalism on occasion and many of them specialize in a specific topic. But often, a good media evaluator notices that the publication has the same opinion on climate change as NOAA, or Iran poses a threat to the United States inside every foreign policy publication which aligns with the Department of State, or that white people created a system of oppression that seems to infest all recent history books and is being pushed by our Federal education departments. Thinking about the scale of this manipulation is astonishing. Then, you read that the government basically kept many of these media outlets in business with thousands of paid subscriptions using your hard earned taxpayer money. When the government is keeping a business afloat with public money, this is not the free market. This is a government run form of capitalism where our politicians decide which media organizations survive. It is the definition of corruption.

3) SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES - DEI (Diversity, Equality, Inclusion) issues have never been my forte. Over the past half decade, it appears that the LGBTQIA movement as a minority appears to be the most well-funded oppressed group in global history. Some of their initiatives even appear to be racist by classifying certain groups as more important than others. The fact that we have a society trying to legitimize a biological male who identifies as female who proceeds to destroy females in athletic competition as a new normal always felt like one of the most unethical and crazy things ever. Because of this, the rapid acceptance of DEI never felt like an organic movement that sprouted out of the public. It felt like a psychological operation. Now, we know that this was the case. DEI money is why corporations and media figures jumped onto the bandwagon. DOGE has eliminated 100 million dollars from the Department of Education and put all the states on notice that the insanity of this movement needs to be halted.

4) MILITARY - This is in the process of occurring and will be discussed later. I do believe that the two trillion in savings promised by Musk can be accomplished by the time Trump leaves office in 2021, but this can only happen if Pentagon spending is reduced 40 to 50% via cutting its over bloated staff and the elimination and reduction of some of its programs. No cutting of Federal money will get me more excited than the reduction of the largest bureaucracy that has ever graced this planet, the Department of Defense.

Next week: The failure of libertarianism and why Trump is reducing government more effectively than any libertarian could ever dream of.