I was amazed to hear the press coverage for Donald Trump’s and Vladmir Putin’s joint press conference that happened in Finland on Monday.  Unintelligent comments from the press included a journalist’s description of the kinds of responses that Americans would have to the conference even before it happened (oh no!).  A journalist actually described discord breaking out as she imagined it would between people who support the President and people who oppose him.  I was appalled that a journalist was describing effects that she wanted to happen, probably as a response to press narratives just like the ones that she was giving.

That journalist didn’t recognize the possibility of change.  She didn’t recognize that peace could be good for almost everyone.  She didn’t acknowledge that American debt already calls for a cessation of wars.  She must have been a practicing neoliberal reporter who wanted to continue with advantages to the media and to the military industrial complex that have happened under a system of constant war making.  I think that her reporting was even worse than the circus-like atmosphere that the U.S. press has exhibited in response to the President over the last two years.

This reporter and others like her have overlooked millions of American brains that can think for themselves.  Americans can be open minded enough to avoid being always either for or against President Trump.  Don’t be surprised, American press corps, when much of America turns the sound down whenever you characterize people’s responses to events even before they happen as though you are a tailor that can shape those responses to your foolish whims.

I am in favor of fewer military bases and less military adventurism.  I see war as another form of malinvestment that hurts more people than those few who profit from war making.  Neoliberalism has led to numerous kinds of malinvestments that surround us all today including car loans and house loans and student loans made to people who can’t afford to pay them off. Bad loans hurt the economy.  We’ve also seen experimentation in finance with the use of derivatives which crashed the American economy in 2008.  And of course we see full-blown risk engagement in the stock market.  Neoliberalism leads to perverted uses of money that destroy rather than build.  Neoliberalism is the ultimate example of highway robbery.

When President Trump speaks in favor of a strong military to support American defense, when he negotiates for a dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapon program in favor of economic development instead of war posturing, when he conducts diplomacy with Russia to improve our relationship with them, he garners increasing support from Americans who also want that.  I am one of them.

If you are puzzled by our strange American press coverage, by the discord that we see around us, if you’d like to learn about the ideology of neoliberalism and other earlier American political ideologies, grab a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries: Liberalism, Pragmatism, Opportunism, available at Amazon.com.