There is an old saying, “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” In the last two decades, Americans have been fooled multiple times into supporting wars for profit in which trillions of their tax dollars have been squandered and millions of innocent people have suffered and been slaughtered as a result.

Though Biden fumbled the withdrawal from Afghanistan, most Americans supported the US leaving. This is a good thing. We are done with seeing out troops come back limbless, broken, and suffering with PTSD. We are done watching video after video of US drone missiles turning children into a fine red mist.

Over the last two years, Americans have been locked down, watched in disbelief as the government destroyed the economy, and seen restriction after restriction handed down as the political class regularly flaunted their own rules. 

Trust in government is at an all-time low and it is a beautiful thing. Certainly, there are factions of individuals who still worship at the alter of the state, offering up their freedoms as a sacrifice for the ostensible perception of safety. But they are a dwindling minority that gets smaller every day. 

There will always be the person alone in their car with two masks on, just like there will always be that person who offers up blind and unquestioning obedience to the corrupt oligarchy. But it appears that most people are moving on and have simply had enough.

The current situation in Ukraine is a perfect example of people reaching their threshold.

President Joe Biden gave his version of the early 2000s neocon’s “freedom isn’t free” speech this week and told Americans that they are going to have to ante up on the new war.

“Defending freedom will have costs for us as well, here at home,” Biden said Tuesday. “We need to be honest about that.”

But what “freedom” are we defending? Does intervening in the decades-long affairs of other countries somehow make us more free? Does provoking the world’s second largest nuclear power into full blown war aid the cause of liberty? Does helping to unite China and Russia by forcing Putin to invade the Ukraine to stop NATO help foster civil liberties domestically?

Biden’s claims, just like every president pushing war before him, are asinine, and designed to appeal to emotion to illicit a response.

But after two years of being fleeced and having our rights trampled here at home, the idea of shelling out more money to fund a conflict on the other side of the world — is not sitting well with many folks.

In fact, according  to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just 26% of Americans want the US to play a major roll in the conflict.

JUST IN: 74% of Americans are actually Russians. pic.twitter.com/7KIrhP4s0y

— Matt Agorist (@MattAgorist) February 23, 2022

You can’t lock people down for two years, destroy their livelihoods, and force them to take a jab to keep their job, only to turn around and tell them they now need to pay for a senseless war in which the US has inserted itself at the behest of the special interests it serves.

It’s not going to happen.

Inflation is through the roof, there is an economic collapse looming on the horizon, the dollar is in the tank, and the country may be on the brink of civil war, and Biden is telling us we have to save a regime with neo-Nazi ties that he helped put into power as the VP. It is insanity.

The AP interviewed a 51-year-old mother from Chicago, Jennifer Rau, who summed up the situation perfectly. Rau told the organization that she is tired of hearing NPR talk about how the US needs to help Ukraine when the city of Chicago is in dire straits.

“I’m so frustrated. It’s enough. We’re bombarded,” Rau said, adding that she now turns the news off when they push for war. “There are other stories in Chicago that need to be covered.”

Rau said she is an independent who voted for Biden but doesn’t want another war for profit as America crumbles from within.

“I just feel like there’s a war going on in the United States, every day, in Chicago,” she said. “And it is really scary. And I feel like no one helps us.”

And she’s right. The pentagon budget this year is nearly a trillion dollars — and for what? Imagine what would happen if a fraction of that money went into unf**king Chicago, or Baltimore, or New Orleans, or any of the other metropolitan areas currently suffering from the policy of decades of warmongering presidents ignoring their plight while building an empire across the planet.

“They want to send millions of dollars of ours to stop a war that we have nothing to do with,” Edward Eller, a 67-year-old retiree told the AP in a separate interview. “I’m sorry they’re involved in a mess, but it’s not our problem.”

Eller and Rau — and apparently millions of other Americans — are beginning to wake up and smell the military industrial complex. This cannot happen fast enough.

As this sentiment spreads, hopefully it serves to unite the population against those who continue to fool us into accepting endless wars for profit and military conflict as the norm. Let’s count this shift as the “fool me once.” If they fool us once more, we deserve it.

Article posted with permission from Matt Agorist