‘AMERICA FIRST’ DOES NOT MEAN ‘AMERICANS FIRST’
S omeone yesterday mentioned that our children’s brains are being shaped by new media... that their attention spans are shrinking. If you can’t say something in 20 seconds, don’t even bother to try. They’ll flip the channel or hit the delete button... or whatever it is they do. But some ideas take time to understand. Eventually, the idea can be compressed into a sound bite... but only after it has been studied and understood. New ideas need brain space... and time. This is one of those ideas. Someone with a short attention span will hear the phrase “economic nationalism” and think... “Well, that sounds pretty good.” It takes time and attention to get beyond that... and to really understand what it means. What I’m talking about today is not really a new idea... but it is new to most people.
Recently, I saw this quote from Steve Bannon. He described his core belief... It is that “we’re a nation with an economy, not an economy just in some global marketplace.” When I read that, it sounded familiar. Then I realized... it is almost a direct translation of a remark by Juan Perón: “The nation does not exist for the benefit of the economy. The economy must serve the nation.” This is what is known as “economic nationalism.” It is not necessarily either wrong or right. Neither good nor bad. But it is packed with myth, magic, delusion, and cockamamie groupthink ideas. And when you unpack it... when you deconstruct it... when you peel away the layers, what do you find? Something you might not expect.
By Bill Bonner
76 | July 2017
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