America First

The vibes in the news and social media have been odd. And you may be asking yourself, why should you care what you have to say about this odd vibe, Shawn? I would respond: "I don’t know, to be honest," but this writing is more for me to flesh out my thoughts on what's going on politically in our country and how they are making me feel. I am generally a non confrontational person, so arguing about politics is something that makes me uncomfortable, and that doesn't interest me. So the writing that follows is my catch all for the happenings in the last couple months. If you're trying to talk politics with me, I will likely send you to this document of my thoughts. Because, for some odd reason, I find long-form, pen-to-paper thinking more useful than short, 240-character ‘quick hits’ online. Maybe that is my hope, that in reading what comes, at least one person decides they will think critically about the geopolitical state of the world, instead of taking a meme they saw on X, Tik Tok, or Instagram, and default to the state of outrage.  

I wrote a paper in college about a book called the Road to Unfreedom by Yale History Professor, Timothy Snyder. And in that paper, I didn’t even realize I was practicing the politics of inevitability. The politics of inevitability is “a belief in inevitable progress, often associated with the idea that capitalism and democracy lead to a prosperous and favorable future.” [1] I trusted our system and thought we as a people, would cycle back into a boring state of government that no longer captivated the minds of the US people 24/7. Politics of eternity, the opposite view, and more dangerous view in my opinion, “presents a cyclical narrative of past victimhood and a constant, present crisis that can only be resolved by a strong leader.” [2] Snyder argues eternity is a core principle of Putin's Russia and can be seen in other contemporary movements. We have seen eternity play out in the American political space since Donald Trump's emergence into the political world. 

When you present yourself in such a fashion, as Donald Trump has, and tell people that they have been the victims of great atrocities, they begin to believe that you, their fearless leader, are the only one who can rescue them. When you captivate your followers in the manner of eternity, you start to create a group of people willing to ignore the values they once held dear. The illusion of victimhood is how we end up with a group of individuals who used to call liberal-minded people “snowflakes,” yet now play the victim online… claiming they are being attacked by the “liberal mind virus,” “cultural Marxism,” “wokeness,” or, as the news has focused on in the past month, undocumented migrants. It is also how you can run an entire campaign criticizing foreign aid to Ukraine, and then, less than a year into your presidency, send $40 billion to Argentina to bail out foreign beef farmers – farmers who will directly compete with the very ones who helped elect you and whose livelihoods you are likely making harder.

While the news has been covering ICE. raids, the billions of dollars that illegals used in healthcare last year (Which is just is unfactual. I “did my own research” like you all told me to. Illegal immigrants are not “using” Medicare dollars. The number everyone references across social media, is all for emergency use. But what is the alternative? Paramedic shows up to a scene where you are unresponsive and just lets you die? Sorry boss… I didn’t have a way to confirm they were a legal US citizen. Ok rant over back to the Oxford comma), and the radical left’s political violence, here is a quick rundown of a couple things that seemingly have been slipping through the cracks in the minds of MAGA supporters. 

First, Trump is finalizing sending foreign aid to Argentina by way of a 40 billion dollar bailout for their farming industry. “On October 15, 2025, it was reported that the Trump administration is working on a massive financing package for Argentina: a $20 billion currency swap line plus another $20 billion from private/sovereign-fund financing — totaling about $40 billion.” [3] In short, the Argentina Beef deal is a great example of the difference between the rhetoric of Donald Trump being “America First” and his policy saying something completely different. It also underscores how foreign aid is treated not so uniformly with the standing president. If he has some sort of strategic alignment with another county like he has with Argentina’s president, Javier Milei. The hypocrisy on claiming that there should be no foreign aid to Ukraine because of its political corruption [4] while supporting large foreign packages of aid in Argentina, which hasn’t been the poster child of an uncorrupt government throughout their history, [5] begs the question, is President Trump being truthful with his followers. When you have practiced the politics of eternity as well as The Don has, truth becomes a matter of perspective. Challenging the president isn’t status quo anymore, so you have his followers testing their moral compass and trusting the process, even if Trump is speaking different languages when it comes to his rhetoric vs his politics. 

Second, following his idol Richard Nixon in the years leading up to Watergate. He has changed the expectations of journalists working within the confines of the Pentagon. From 1969-1974 Nixon tightened control on journalists' credentials due to his suspicions of the opposing party. We now know how far he was willing to go to entice his suspicion of the opposing party, but tightening control on certain DNC leaning news outlets was his first step. Certain reporters critical of the administration (especially during the Watergate era) found their access reduced or credentials delayed. The Nixon administration also introduced a “blacklist,” which consisted of journalists that the Nixon and his team deemed hostile. While President Trump's actions aren’t exactly the same, but... they do follow a similar mindset, [6] restricting journalists ability to report freely. What the Trump administration is asking the journalists to do is agree to a pledge. The specifics of this pledge has not completely come out, but essentially the pledge effectively required reporters to promise [7] not to publish information that hadn’t been approved by the Pentagon… even if that information was true and unclassified. Which conflicts the First Amendment and free speech, something the right used to hold true to their heart. Again though, when President Trump is masterfully practicing politics of eternity, you have people who used to live and die by the constitution saying that silencing free speech is ok if it is silencing the opposition. 

At the end of the day, I don’t write any of this because I think I have all the answers. I write it because I am trying to make sense of the constant state of chaos that we see on social media. The politics of eternity thrives on distraction and outrage, both of which are easy to get caught up in. But maybe if more of us took some time to slow down, read a little deeper, and tried to separate truth from loyalty to a political party, we could start moving towards something Snyder identifies in a later book On Freedom as politics of positive freedom and politics of abundance instead of the politics of inevitability or eternity. I will not bore you with more talk about Snyder politics though. I guess my hope in writing this is that we can begin to think for ourselves again, while staying grounded in reality and worrying more about what rights rather than who’s “winning.”