O Say Can You Please Entry 1

O Say Can You Please Entry 1: Shutdown!

Hello, everyone. In the series that is about to begin, we take current events and purposely put a spin on them. No, not like CNN or Fox, but rather more in a biting, meme-filled direction. From political hot takes to having no brakes, we have it all. This is O Say Can You Please.

Congress has failed some of its constituents yet again. Granted, that’s nothing new, and neither is what’s actually going on, but I’m getting ahead of myself. To stop beating around the bush, I might as well reveal what we all know: Another government shutdown has occurred, and this time, both sides have only themselves to blame.

Let’s start with the man-child himself, President Trump. This is a man who never takes blame for anything, even if he has said and tweeted that he would (at least in this particular instance). However, he is deflecting more than a force field ever could, and all the vitriol he can muster is going to the Democratic Senators who would not compromise. You see, the Democrats don’t want to give Trump a win in his eyes, and vice versa. Neither side will go down without a fight.  It’s just bad politics. With this, it’s all come back to bite them both in the behind.

The reason for all of this is Trump’s desire for a wall on our border with Mexico. It’s not really even a wall anymore, as by his own admission, it’s a bunch of steel columns that act as a wall. To be fair, this Wall 2.0 would be an improvement over his initial plan of a giant concrete slab, as it allows nature to cross the border, but it’s still expensive and not especially practical. Despite this, if Mexico actually paid for it, I’d be more open-minded with this version of the wall. However, Mexico is not paying for it at all. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this wall is now completely pointless, as the next President will probably be a Democrat due to Trump’s low approval ratings, making the wall highly unlikely to ever be finished.

Not to mention, I doubt we can even afford a wall right now without some financial wizardry. This is due in large part to the tax cuts that Trump signed into law last year that lower and remove taxes that primarily affect the rich. This leads to a larger budget deficit should spending not be cut in response, and that is the problem at hand here. The Republicans may say they are for small government, but they are not acting that way right now.

Believe it or not, Trump’s own words argue that he should take all of the blame for the shutdown, and he should own up and honor them. Believe it or not, during a debate with Congressional Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, he said “he was ‘proud’ to shut down the government,” according to Politico. Therefore, any attempt at deflection is completely and utterly pointless when he said he’d take the blame for a shutdown at a press meeting with Congressional Dems. He also basically said in a Fox News interview once that the problem starts with the President when there is a shutdown, but I digress.  To sum this up, we are dealing with a government shutdown, an economically terrible “solution” to the border problem, and a hypocrite in the Oval Office.

Next up, we will cover the resignation and subsequent forced departure of our soon-to-be-former Secretary of Defense, James “Mad Dog” Mattis. What happened here is that Trump got outplayed on foreign policy again by an autocrat. This time, the manipulator was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Now, Erdogan is far from a good leader, and in fact, a military coup happened during his administration, although a debate exists about whether he was involved in it to gain more power or not.

The story says that on December 14th, Trump and Erdogan had a phone call about various topics, with one of them being the “defeat” of ISIS. In actuality, ISIS still has some remaining pockets of territory in Syria, so calling this particular group defeated is a fairly misguided move at the moment. Worse still, their ideology will live on, as we found out when we did the same thing to the Taliban in Afghanistan back in the middle of the Bush Administration. Any ideology is hard to snuff out, and with every suppression, the risk of re-emergence grows, especially in a war-torn wasteland like Syria.

As a result of the phone call with Erdogan, Trump prematurely pulled out thousands of men from Syria, meaning that our military presence there is gone. This would have the effect of ceding influence in the region to Turkey, who would have a much tougher time standing up to Russia (Syria’s chief ally) without us. This would put Russia in an extremely favorable position to expand their influence in the Middle East to dangerous levels. This is what likely pushed Mattis over the edge, and he resigned shortly after the plan’s announcement roughly a week after the fateful phone call.

Now, let’s elaborate on what this all means in the long term. First up, Turkey will probably leave NATO and ally with Russia and Syria in order to pursue their own interests. I won’t miss them much, but a way to stop a prospective Russian Navy advance before it gets to the Mediterranean will be missed. Next, without NATO, Erdogan will be allowed to consolidate power even further, thus putting dissidents and non-Turks in the country at risk. The group most at risk in my opinion is the Kurds, and that leads me to the final point. That final point is that the Kurds could face actual genocide from Turkey and Syria, forcing them to flee to either Iraq or a Western country. This is without taking into account oppression (from Syria’s government) of other groups that would likely flee West as well, continuing the refugee crisis that has indisputably damaged many Western democracies. It’s an awful feedback loop that will only lead to more and more dictatorships emerging. This would all be because a naive American prematurely ended military operations in one Middle Eastern country.

Speaking of the military, Trump finally visited troops in a combat zone. To be more specific, it was in Iraq. It was going well, and even the most liberal sources were praising our President for visiting our troops. This is despite the same sources chiding him for being a day late according to tradition, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, he was being widely praised for once and he had to opportunity to right the ship that is his Administration just a bit. Then, he tweeted.

However, this was worse than his typical gaslighting. In fact, I’d call this tweet a mild danger to our national security. You see, when a Navy SEAL team is deployed, their whereabouts and identities are generally classified. Granted, the President has the power to declassify this info, but Trump apparently did this completely by accident. This accident could lead to several American casualties in a conflict we had to re-enter in 2014 because of a catastrophic withdrawal three years earlier. Now do you see why I think this Syria withdrawal is a bad idea? Before I go on too much of a tangent, I shall leave you with one last meme.

Happy New Year!