When you hear a statement like, “No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.”, what is the first thing you think of?  That some store owner has not paid their periodic “bill” for their protection to the Mafia (if it still exists)?  How about the IRS saying that you are required to pay your taxes?  Or did you wonder about who is “them” in this statement before anything else?

No matter how you look at this, it is a scary statement.  Who knows what the Mafia would do if you did not pay? Would it be a physical act of violence to cause pain and suffering?  The IRS may garnish wages and/or do other things, but at least you know it is not physical, though it could be painful.  And, if you are willing, they will collaborate with you.  As far as the “them,” if it isn’t the Mafia or IRS, who could it be?

There is another thing that you might hear in this statement which is even more concerning.  It is very plain that the person making this type of statement is worried about one simple thing.  Money.  In the hierarchy of this statement, money comes first, and the rest is a distant second.  It should be more important to collaborate with a person on a structure to pay bills, than to worry about whether they pay for the protection. Why? In a very roundabout way, the protection includes the person making the statement.

As far as the store owner is concerned, if he doesn’t pay, it appears that he may never be able to.  If someone else takes over the store, they may be more of a problem to the Mafia than the previous owner.  The Mafia loses both ways.  With the IRS, if the customer can’t pay, no money goes into the coffer.  There are many companies that will help people that owe money to the IRS.  In the long run, however, it seems that the IRS gets less than the original customer would have paid.  The IRS loses both ways.

Of course, the statement I have been referring to was the statement made by Former President Trump about the possibility of our NATO allies failing to make their contributions to NATO as they pledged to. The statement, as reported at the beginning of this article, was quoted from New York Times web site at nytimes.com.  But this statement is confusing.  There are small contributions made to NATO each year for funding budgets and programs which equals 0.3% of the members’ defense spending. In 2023 this equated to about $3.6 billion, a small amount of the total program.

As for the rest of the assets that would be available when NATO countries go to war, these are not in a fund or any other available account.  NATO members pledge that they will spend 2% per year of their GDP on their individual countries’ defense spending.  This is to ensure that when needed, each country can supply the defense equipment and forces needed to fight a war.  You can find out more at the web site NATO.int.

According to forces.net, a British site that keeps up with military forces and deployment in the world, NATO had 11 countries in 2023 that spent more than 2% of their GDP.  The country that made the largest purchases as a percentage of GDP in 2023 was Poland.  I have not heard of any other countries worried about members’ defense fund spending, so why would this be a game stopper to world defense?

Why do we think other countries are silent?  I would imagine that it’s because it’s nobody else’s business outside of NATO membership.  Also, a statement like that undermines NATO as a whole. But the most important reason is that what happens to any one country in NATO, happens to us all.  We must deal with any negative occurrences before they happen if we can.  These types of statements just bolster Putin in his position against Ukraine and his desires for more conquests.  Are other autocrats or dictators taking these words into account in some way?

It is clear to me in this statement that Former President Trump does not know how NATO works, or doesn’t want to.  And, as I look back at other statements, it appears that he has always shown us who he is.  When discussing others, some of the time it seems he is talking about himself.  The most recent example of this is the following:

“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”  Posted by Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor on MSNBC.com.

What he seems to mean in the second part of this quote is that he is the one leading America down the path to destruction.  The “Radical Left” is really the “Radical Right” in his mind.  He has always done this in his talks, comments and statements.  He tells you flat out how he feels, what he thinks, and where he stands.  Yet just about everything he says appears to be a statement about himself disguised as if it is about someone or something else.  Could this have resulted in the phrases “false truths” or “alternate facts”?

According to an article on thehill.com by Dr. Fiona Hill, Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institute “Since when have we been assassinating our opposition candidates in this country? Since when has the president of the United States been wanting to take out political opponents through poisoning or through imprisoning them in, basically the equivalent of Arctic penal colonies?” she continued. “What President Trump is doing is degrading the United States.”

Enough said!