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I don’t think that’s the case. It’s not that America First has no plans, it’s that most of them run on the premise of lowering taxes and regulations and reducing government involvement. The reason they don’t have a government plan (which is what most commentators mean when they say “what’s the plan?) is that they don’t think government should be doing those things. They aren’t communists, and therefore their housing plan is “lower the tax burden so people have money, remove the zoning laws and the environmental regulations that prevent homes from being built, and let Americans do their thing.” That’s not going to show up as a plan, because the plan is to get out of the way.
A big part of this is of course not blowing trillions of dollars a year doing silly unproductive things for everyone else with taxpayers money. Funding Ukraine is a marginal case at best, it’s a billion dollars a month to prop up the Nebraska of Eastern Europe until they inevitably run out of people to kidnap for the front lines. Funding kids shows in Iraq is a loss because Middle East TV simply pushes Islamic fundamentalism and jihad. Going down the list most of these “aid” programs are basically grifting— pay an NGO full of PMC kids to pretend they’re doing something important overseas, while doing nothing more than paddling their pockets from the three figure salary they get for pretending to help out. At this point, freeing up the public money wasted on these grifter programs and giving the money to average Americans who would build businesses and make things and cure diseases and so on.
I've seen television in the middle east...hours of it. You know who the big star was? Oprah Winfrey. After that there were tons of music video stations for each of the different leading countries. Sexy lebanese videos, super sappy Saudi Orchestras with lame poets, Emirate gun twirling and cane dancing...and Iraq? It was all blue jeans in night club dancing shows, like a very tame American Bandstand. I would not be surprised at all if Iraqi Sesame Street was popular. that's one of the USAID expenditures I find least offensive--even admitting that modern Sesame Street is peak Wokoso.
Anyway, it's not all fundamentalism. That's what's on the radio...
At the same time, though, Hamas made their own Mickey Mouse ripoff.
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