I’ve never been a conspiracy nut, honest.

I don’t believe in Bigfoot (we’d have found a body by now, if there was a population large enough to sustain a species – accidents befall even the most careful of us), alien visitation (too far, and there’s almost no science supporting the idea that FTL is possible), any of the popular – or momentarily in-the-news – ideas, like baby sacrifices going on in pizza parlor basements, or secret cabals running the world.

So, not a conspiracy nut.

But…

One has to wonder how the United States has so quickly fallen. It hardly seems like this is something we would deliberately do to ourselves, but it seems we have. We’ve gutted important government agencies, stopped aid to needy people around the world, broke alliances that had served us well since World War II, and disrupted the very fabric of our nation. Republicans in Congress have ceded their authorities and powers to the President, and the Democrats can’t seem to get their act together to present a unified resistance.

If I were an adversary of the United States, I would know one basic thing as truth. Nobody on the planet can seriously challenge the United States military, if the U.S. decided to stage an all-out response to attack. Military force is not an option.

However…

Americans are terribly myopic. The business world only sees as far as the next quarterly report. Politicians only see to the next election. People who are educated and study world affairs are ignored, most of the time. The general public is to focused on social media (now). Those who have been and are still watching television are enamored of “reality” TV, watching instigated drama in groups of people staged to be either physically attractive, or sufficiently sinister. News programming is increasingly dropping facts and analysis for ratings and clicks. Nobody is really “minding the store” that is the United States.

So how would a theoretical adversary on the United States overthrow them, destroy their leadership in the world, fracture alliances, and generally make them pariah in the world’s eyes, all without firing a single missile or bullet?

Now, this requires some long term planning, which at the very least, China has demonstrated they are willing to do. Russia keeps shooting itself in the foot, but it, too, has a longer outlook than does the United States.

Get compromising information on people who might end up in office. The most determined to attain power will probably have something in their closet they don’t want exposed to the light of day. If not, a honey-pot trap often works. Infiltrate other organizations, businesses, and universities. Feed disinformation to the internet and legacy news media. Be relentless with all of it. Convince people that “they, those people over there, the brown ones, the liberal ones, the media, the ‘others’ “, are the real enemies of the state.

Then along comes Donald J. Trump. They’ve already got all the kompromat they could possibly have over him (Epstein files? Pee tapes?), and they understand his narcissism and greed. Promise him money, threaten him with what they know, and he eats out of their hands. Feed his supporters with constant refrains of “only he can save us”, “only he can fix it”, “it’s the liberals fault”, “it’s the illegals fault”, “things will get better if you elect him”. Lie to them, but do it in a way that strokes their egos. Make them feel like they’re smart, they know what’s going on, their dire straights are not their fault, but the work of “them”. Elect Trump President.

So they did. What did we get?

He and his supporters in Congress and the Courts are systematically tearing down the framework of the United States, and putting long-time alliances that have kept the peace in Europe since 1945 in the position of no longer being able to trust the USA. Taking Greenland? Cuba? Venezuela? The Trump regime is creating chaos around the world. In the middle of it all, Trump is raking in the money faster than any one can count it. The rich oil states are shoveling money at him.

That, and more, might be what someone would do to undermine and diminish the United States, without firing a shot.

But that’s just conspiracy talk, right?

Right?