A Week That Changed The World

From a major step forward in U.S.-Russia relations to bureaucratic streamlining, to the release of the JFK files, the events of last week were a significant pivot point in history.

“There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks in which decades happen.”

It’s a quote from Vladimir Lenin, and while I’m generally not prone to citing the original dictator of the former Soviet Union, there was a lot of truth to this one. Last week was one of those weeks.

As we went about everything from the penitential works of Lent to the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day and St. Joseph’s Day, to the onset of March Madness NCAA basketball (a lot of that in this house!), several events occurred that amount to nothing less than the quiet transferring of the United States into an entirely new era.

Here’s what went down over the last several days:

The Trump-Putin Phone Call

On Tuesday, President Trump spoke with Russian president Vladimir Putin. While no final agreements were made, the framework the two leaders agreed on was breathtaking in its scope. They agreed that a normalization of relations between the world’s two largest nuclear powers must happen, and that the war in Ukraine must end.

Trump further persuaded Putin to agree to a limited ceasefire—where Russia would no longer bomb Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Whether this ceasefire holds—Ukraine quickly launched on attack on Russia, a curious move for the country that’s losing the war and seeing its citizenry massacred—remains to be seen. But Trump’s desire to end this war and end the suffering in Ukraine is apparent.

Once the war is finally ended, Trump and Putin said a “major economic deal” between the two nations will be announced. We’ll see what the specifics are, but we do know that Putin is offering to sell the United States rare-earth minerals, a substance that’s needed for technology, and in which Trump has given high priority. I would assume that will be part of it.

Trump and Putin further agreed that the United States and Russia must collaborate to get peace (or at least something that passes for stability) in the Middle East. Russia is allied with Iran, and Trump’s rhetoric towards Iran has gotten increasingly bellicose, due to terrorist attacks based out of Yemen coming against U.S. shipping—attacks which can ultimately be traced back to Tehran.

I woke up Tuesday morning deeply concerned about the possibility of bombing strikes on Iran. We’re not out of the woods yet, but a key fruit of forming an alliance with Russia is having a relationship with a nation that can put real pressure on the Iranians. Russia further agreed that it would not be good for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and that Iran should not be in a position to destroy Israel.

Delegations for the United States and Russia are meeting in Saudi Arabia to work out the specifics of all of this, so it will be an ongoing story. But the ultimate scope of this potential alliance is historic—it amounts to nothing less than the end of the post-Cold War era in geopolitics and the beginning of a new global order.

Europe’s Response

The Trump-Putin rapprochement drew quick reactions from NATO. The European nations decided they wanted to build a future without the United States and announced that they would start a 5-10 year plan to gradually assume leadership of the alliance, as the United States withdrew.

NATO was formed after World War II for the specific purpose of counteracting the Soviet Union and what were then its satellite governments in Eastern Europe. When those satellites fell in 1989, and the Soviet regime itself collapsed two years later, NATO should have taken the win and folded up shop.

But bureaucracies being what they are, they needed to find a continued reason for their existence. Hence, we became subject to NATO-backed bombings in places like Bosnia, and the ongoing expansion to include Eastern European countries, until they finally overreached and crossed Russia’s red line in Ukraine.

If Europe’s governments don’t want to participate in any new alliance with Russia, that is their prerogative and should be respected. If Europe wants to stand on its own two feet for the first time since the end of World War II, financing its own military and making its own decisions, that should not only be respected, it should be celebrated. This is exactly what the United States was aiming for back in the 1940s when it instituted the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after the war.

It’s unfortunate—though perhaps predictable, with human nature being what it is—that this desirable outcome has to come by Trump needing to treat Europe like a lazy college grad, kicking them out of the house and forcing them to get a real job. And it’s unfortunate that so many elements in the security apparatus of the United States have gotten career dependent on the proud nations of Europe being vassal states for the U.S. But this has to happen. The United States cannot forever be in a position of having to involve itself every time a territorial conflict in Europe turns bloody.

How about we make this year, the 80^th anniversary of the end of World War II, the year we finally come home? The NATO announcement of plans to transfer leadership of the alliance away from the United States is a good start.

The Department of Education Is Shut Down

Closer to home, Trump signed an executive order that effectively shut down the Department of Education. This is something that has been promised by Republicans going all the way back to the DOE’s founding in 1979 but never been close to being fulfilled. The objective is to remove Washington D.C. from the public school system and put that system exclusively in the hands of states and local governments.

We should note that the power of the president to act alone is limited. DOE functions were authorized and funded by Congress, and unless there is obvious waste, fraud, and abuse (the finding of which is the purpose of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency), the executive branch has to carry out what the legislative branch authorized. Some of what we are seeing is certain DOE functions transferred to other departments.

However, even this action to reorganize the bureaucracy is a significant positive step. The reason is that the Department of Education as it existed was basically a place where left-wing activists could bury themselves and act as hostile actors to any agenda they disagreed with—even if it was the agenda the public had voted for through their elected officials. By streamlining the bureaucracy, you take away these places for political guerrilla fighters to hide.

The DOE is far from the only place where excessive bureaucracy existing to carry out legislative mandates hampers true self-governance. But it was a big culprit. Now, it’s gone.

The Release of the JFK Files

President Trump had already signed an executive order to release the classified documents related to the assassination of JFK in 1963. That order was fulfilled this past week. There are thousands upon thousands of documents and the task of piecing them together now begins.

The corporate media platforms, led by The Washington Post, sought to immediately proclaim—within 24 hours of release(!) that there was “no smoking gun.” Let’s set aside the absurdity thinking anyone went through all the documents in the mere hours it took the Post, and other True Believers to allege vindication of The Approved Narrative that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Instead, let’s focus on what reasonable observers and critics of that Narrative actually expect to find.

No one (at least no one reasonable) thinks there’s a document saying, “I did it,” in the basement of the CIA or any other agency in the Military-Industrial Complex. The precise truth of how it all came together will likely take a long time to piece together, through disparate pieces of evidence—and it’s quite realistic to think it may never be fully known.

But the precise truth is less important—and less relevant—than the bigger truth (or what many of us believe to be the bigger truth) that unelected bureaucrats, entrenched in the federal government, took it upon themselves to get rid of an elected president pursuing an agenda they didn’t like. Whether that agenda pertains to Vietnam, Cuba, the Middle East, organized crime, or anything else remains to be determined. But the bigger truth of a Bureaucratic Insurrection against the will of a supposedly self-governing people is the most important question.

By that standard there is already notable documents. The one that most struck me was the reveal that Jack Ruby (who killed Oswald five days after the Kennedy assassination) had in fact met with Oswald prior to the tragic events of November 22, 1963.

The explanation for Ruby’s killing of Oswald given by purveyors of The Approved Narrative—that Ruby was just an outraged citizen who took justice into his hands—always felt a little ridiculous, in light of the fact he owned a nightclub that mobsters frequented. It looks even more absurd now. Ruby and Oswald knew each other and at least someone in the government was aware of that fact.

It's going to be important to unearth these facts, but it’s even more important that the proper connections to all of the events discussed in this space today (and more) be made.

What do I mean? I mean that if a Bureaucratic Insurrection killed Kennedy and that was covered up by promulgation of an Approved Narrative, it can mean that in today’s context, President Trump’s desires to push forward on a new geopolitical order abroad, and a streamlined bureaucracy at home are going to be resisted by those who have shown a willingness to commit murder in the past—and perhaps in the present, this past July 13 in Butler.

Anna Paulina Luna, a rising star from Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives, chairs a committee that oversees declassification of JFK and other files that have people curious. That committee will eventually hold public hearings. It’s up to Congresswoman Luna to help piece together all the thousands of disparate documents and make the connections to our modern day.

The world is at a threshold era of change, whether we like it or not. The events of this last week—helping shape that order in a way that allows the United States to prosper, getting control of education, and starting the long, painful process of learning, how many lies have been pushed as truths for the past several decades, formally began last week. It was indeed a week “where decades happen.”

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