From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

“We have a government that consists of 525 lobbyists – and that’s why we have the policies we have.”

Following the news that the U.S. Congress has finally approved $95 billion in “aid” to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor has returned to ask the difficult question – why is the U.S. funding wars when it is bankrupt?

In an April 21 video interview with U.K. member of Parliament George Galloway, Macgregor gave a blunt and shocking answer.

“We have a government that consists of 525 lobbyists – and that’s why we have the policies we have.”

His full remarks open the video with a searing assessment of the level of corruption in the United States government:

I would currently say that we have a government that consists of 525 lobbyists as opposed to representatives – people who are all busy lobbying for money with which they can line their pockets. Now some of them are just ignorant … some are destructive … but all of them, I’m afraid, with very few exceptions, are bought men.

The U.S. is facing disaster, says Macgregor. With the national debt at over $34 trillion, and the total U.S. debt including households and corporations at almost $100 trillion, the economic situation is just one dimension of the disaster of debt and corruption he says has financed the capture of the political system.

His startling description of a blackmailed captive political class would account for why such an indebted nation is so keen to hand over so much money to fund foreign wars. After six months of wrangling, the House voted to approve $95 billion in lethal and non-lethal aid. $60 billion goes to Ukraine, $26 billion to Israel, and the rest is allotted to future flashpoint Taiwan.

With Macgregor and others saying there is no public support for these measures, how is this level of spending possible?

Washington, D.C. ‘a large Epstein Island’

“Friends of mine inside Washington [D.C.] now refer to Washington as a large Epstein Island,” continued Macgregor, as if introducing a tasteless joke. Yet the punchline was that he was deadly serious.

Epstein Island, as you know, is the place where people were set up with underage girls, and it looks like enough of them have been involved in it that they’re all they’re all blackmailed.

Macgregor notes he is not the only one to reach this conclusion:

That was Tucker Carlson’s most recent allegation – that people on the Hill who lead sadly bizarre lives are blackmailed.

Macgregor is referring to this April 3 interview between Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, in which Carlson asks why Speaker Mike Johnson seems “completely disconnected from what we want.” The video below shows a brief excerpt from the interview.

Carlson observed the striking difference between Mike Johnson’s principles and his actions:

Mike Johnson has made a complete departure of who he is and what he stands for – and to the point where people are literally asking, ‘Is he blackmailed?’

Carlson also noted that “70 percent of Americans … and the majority of Republicans do not support funding Ukraine.”

Macgregor’s Epstein Island thesis may explain the mystifying personality change in Mike Johnson. Macgregor went on to conclude:

If that’s the case [the elected representatives] could be compelled to vote in whatever direction the very wealthy and powerful oligarchs in the United States [desire].

We are used to hearing “mogul,” “scion,” or even “philanthropist” to describe the billionaires in the West with state-level influence. This is the reason for Macgregor’s use of the term “oligarch” – usually reserved for the same class of people in enemy nations.

I say oligarch because someone who’s a billionaire hedge fund manager can just as easily buy policy outcomes as an oligarch in Russia or Ukraine.

Macgregor sees this sponsorship of politics as the root of the crisis in America.

I think that’s our biggest problem.  The only way that it will end is with some form of financial collapse – which many of us think is going to happen.

Macgregor points out that the vaunted GDP – the Gross Domestic Product by which the size and health of the economy is measured – “is an illusion.”

“We are currently living on income that is close to 50% of government income,” he said, pointing out that the U.S. is living not only on borrowed money, but also on borrowed time.

“This can’t go on forever. We just don’t know when it’s going to happen but something is going to come along and tip us over,” he warned. “When that happens there will be an opportunity to clean house and hopefully start over – and put an end to this unnecessary overseas empire.”

The domestic crisis is largely ignored, said Macgregor, by a political elite which “acts as if it is still 1991.”

This crisis, which includes that on the U.S. border, and a breakdown in law and order so severe that Elon Musk called for crime to be made illegal again, is one which sees no explanation at all as to why actions are taken to make everything worse.

Time to make crime illegal again

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2024

As Carlson pointed out, no one in power ever really explains why they are taking these decisions, as their policies fuel an expanding global and domestic catastrophe.

Since Joe Biden became president, the U.S. government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting an undeclared war against Russia.

No one in all of that time has explained really the purpose of this war, why it would benefit the United States or the world.

Yet the war in Ukraine is not the only one being funded. The genocide in Gaza simply could not continue without a constant supply of U.S. arms – and money. Carlson added that “ethnic and religious” reasons play a part, but that even these fall short of a convincing reason.

Clearly, at least some policy makers are motivated by ethnic and religious hatred. That’s probably part of the real reason. But officially, no one has told us why we are doing this.

Ukraine war – and NATO – lost?

Regardless of the dark motives for the wars, Macgregor considers the one in Ukraine lost, and the money will make no difference to Russia’s post-war plans. He thinks this defeat will break the NATO alliance, with the Europeans breaking away to forge a different future.

I think even the Europeans, who were even more misguided and utterly confused than much of the American population, are going to realize that there’s no future in this relationship between us and them.

He says the European allies will see “that they too have to save themselves – that they’ll have to chart a new destiny for themselves. So I think that’ll be the end of NATO.”

With a dissolving military alliance abroad, Macgregor turned to the question of Israel. Why has the Biden administration changed its initial tune of “unconditional support” for Benjamin Netanyahu?

Until recently it was unconditional support for Israel. I think the reality has begun to set in with some of the senior people behind the scenes that are instructing Biden and controlling the Congress, that there’s a very real potential for a major war that would draw in Russia and China – and other countries – and could frankly destroy Israel and fatally harm us.

So now I think there’s a sense of helplessness, and that helplessness leads to pleas for cooperation with Mr. Netanyahu.

Macgregor warns that though it is “a good thing” that Netanyahu “did not get his war with Iran,” he counsels that this “doesn’t end the probability of a future war with Iran,” as Netanyahu “continues to enjoy unconditional support [from the U.S. government] for this program of mass expulsion and murder in Gaza.”

‘You’ve got to save yourselves’

With politics controlled by a “donor class” that effectively dictates spending, Macgregor warns against the desperate belief in some national savior.

“I’m one of these people that really dislikes the notion that any one candidate is going to rescue us,” he said, addressing the idea that some “Napoleon” may emerge to save America.

I keep telling people: stop talking about Donald Trump or RFK Jr. or anybody else saving us.

You’ve got to save yourselves.

He thinks this message is getting through – “but we’ve got a long way to go”. Most Americans are “too busy trying to put food on the table,” he adds, with others sadly taking in “the usual nonsense from the mainstream media.”

He thinks perhaps a third of Americans have awoken to the gravity of the situation:

Right now perhaps a third fully understand what’s happening in the country and the dangers abroad- but that’s about it.

Macgregor, a retired US Army colonel, makes an impressive summary of nuclear capabilities in the Middle East, mentioning the widely held assessment of Iran as a “threshold” nation. His appraisal is that the dangers of war are misunderstood, or even ignored, by a political management that is out of its depth and disconnected from contemporary reality.

Speaking of President Biden, he said “we’re dealing with someone now who is eminently incapable of coping with the reality of what you and I have been discussing,” before going on to note that those behind the president are less incapacitated, but deluded.

However, there are others behind Biden who are not total fools. They … are simply amateurs.

He says their assessment is of a reality that no longer exists – and whose God-given rights and way of life their policies are destroying.

They’ve been playing at everything as though America is still what it was in 1991: they are ignoring the open borders which they have deliberately created to dilute our population and essentially erase the American culture and national identity.

Macgregor says they are responsible for the chaos inside what were America’s borders.

They are the ones who are releasing criminals onto the street by destroying the justice system. They’ve ruined the armed forces in terms of morale and capability – it’s at an all-time low.

This toxic combination makes for a bleak prognosis from the retired colonel.

So you add that to the equation and the only thing I can see ahead for the United States right now is total disaster.

Yet Macgregor does not simply pronounce doom. He is trying to mobilize Americans in defense of their nation under God.

Macgregor is the CEO of Our Country, Our Choice – an organization which stresses the centrality of God, family, and country to the American success story whose passing he laments in detail.

Its founder, RJ, describes himself as a “devoted Christian” appalled at the theft of liberties under lockdown and shocked into action by the chaos flowing from the Biden administration.

“We’re driven by an unwavering commitment to protect what matters most: our faith, our loved ones, and the land we call home,” says the founding father-of-four, describing why he created OCOC in 2021 himself. “As I witnessed America’s trajectory under the Biden administration, it became increasingly chaotic and disheartening.”

He tells how he was moved to do so:

I reached a breaking point, realizing that the responsibility of reclaiming our country and defeating the deep state ultimately rests with us, the American people. No one else will step up. So, I made a bold decision, risking everything I had, and founded Our Country Our Choice.

His message to the American people is that they can take back their country and their politics from a class determined to destroy them.

It is one which Macgregor is determined to spread. There is hope amidst this desolation, says Macgregor, who believes that it lies with the American people themselves, and the defense of their God-given rights.

Authors:

Jake Fuss

Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute

Tegan Hill

Associate Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute