As one of my Twitter followers put it so succinctly: “Globalization: Where leaders from any country get to pick US Presidents.” As the Clinton campaign’s Robby Mook tears a page out of Joe McCarthy’s book and smears Donald Trump as being “Putin’s puppet,” the irony is that this election has seen foreign interference in American politics to an unprecedented degree – on Hillary’s behalf.

In the past, foreign actors tried to hide such activities, rightly thinking that they might encounter resentment – or even legal consequences – for trying to meddle in affairs that are none of their damned business. Not anymore. Now that we’re a global empire, with our leaders proclaiming the supreme importance of exercising “US leadership” and sticking our noses in every petty squabble on earth, our client states are openly interfering in our internal affairs. After all, if we can engage in “regime change” campaigns, and dictate the terms and results of Lower Slobbovia’s elections, why can’t they interfere in ours? To this end they employ legions of publicists, lobbyists, and tame congressmen to pursue their national interests, mostly at our expense: the billions in “foreign aid” we ship overseas come back to our shores in the form of exorbitant fees paid to PR firms – a rare trade deal where American firms actually come out ahead!

Most of this is relatively subtle, and covert – or, at least, it has been up to now. However, the Trump phenomenon has changed the rules of the game, and foreign actors are now openly coming out of the closet – so to speak – and brazenly attacking the GOP candidate. I can’t recall a presidential contest where a foreign ambassador has written an op-ed piece attacking one of the candidates, but this election season has Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, Valeriy Chaly, publishing a piece in the Ukrainian Weekly echoing the Mookarthyite charge that Trump is the Manchurian candidate. Trump’s comments on the Ukraine issue “have raised serious concerns,” we are told, as Chaly goes on to write that:

“Since the Russian aggression, there has been bipartisan support for U.S. sanctions against Russia, and for such sanctions to remain in place until the territorial integrity of Ukraine is restored. Efforts to enhance Ukraine’s defense capacity are supported across the aisle, as well, to ensure that Ukraine becomes strong enough to deter Russia’s aggression.

“Even if Mr. Trump’s comments are only speculative, and do not really reflect a future foreign policy, they call for appeasement of an aggressor and support the violation of a sovereign country’s territorial integrity and another’s breach of international law.”

Chaly doesn’t get it, but that’s not surprising – he’s a foreigner, after all. Trump doesn’t care about the “bipartisan” consensus that has ruled Washington and mandated US intervention in every two-bit border dispute. The whole point of the Trump campaign, and the reason for his overwhelming victory in the primaries, is that the bipartisan internationalism of the past is over, finished, kaput. Trump isn’t buying into the new cold war hysteria being drummed up by the political class: he has said he wants to get along with the Russians, and for that the Mookarthyites in the Democratic party and their journalistic camarilla are up in arms. Well, let them rant and rave all they want: the American people couldn’t give a sh*t about Ukraine – a ramshackle “nation” of corrupt oligarchs, neo-Nazi skinheads, and a national “cuisine” consisting of greasy dumplings and sour cabbage – and if that be “isolationism,” let Hillary Clinton and her neocon allies make the most of it.

The rest of the Ambassador’s tiresome screed excuses the Kiev regime’s vicious war on its own people – they’ve killed thousands of their own countrymen – on grounds similar to the Clinton campaign’s conspiracy theory: it’s all a Putinist plot. This ignores the indisputable fact that what’s happening in Ukraine is a civil war, pitting Ukrainian against Ukrainian, and has little to do with Russia. The fact of the matter is that the people of the Donbas region don’t want to be ruled by Kiev, perhaps because “President” Petro Poroshenko – who came to power by violently overthrowing the elected President – says things like this about them:

“We will have our jobs – they will not. We will have our pensions – they will not. We will have care for children, for people and retirees – they will not. Our children will go to schools and kindergartens… theirs will hole up in the basements. Because they are not able to do a thing. This is exactly how we will win this war!”

That the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign are embracing a thug like Poroshenko comes as no surprise: these are the same people who are in the pocket of the Saudis as they bomb helpless Yemenis in one of the worst atrocities in modern times

It’s very odd that the Clinton campaign is raising a fuss about Trump’s lack of support for Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist regime, which has some pretty unsavory characters in high office, especially considering that they and their friends in the media are trying mightily to tie the GOP candidate to racists and neo-Nazis here in this country. The Speaker of the Ukrainian parliament is one Andriy Parubiy, founder of the “Social-National Party of Ukraine,” an openly neo-Nazi political formation, which has understandably changed its name to the “Svoboda” (Freedom) Party. Neo-Nazis have been prominent in the “Maidan Revolution” from the very beginning

Kiev’s support for the Clinton campaign goes far beyond their Ambassador writing op-ed pieces. The Ukrainian government leaked documents looted from the offices of the opposition Party of Regions supposedly tying former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to illicit payments. One can only wonder how President Hillary Clinton will reward her allies in Kiev

The voices of foreign leaders raised against Trump have been quite loud: they haven’t been shy about expressing their contempt for the candidate who wants to put “America first.” And from their point of view as free riders who snark at us even as they huddle under the American defense umbrella, this is quite understandable. After all, if Trump should take the White House, they won’t be getting any more free stuff. They’ll actually have to pay their own way, and it’s only natural that they find this outrageous. But, guess what – the American people don’t find it at all outrageous. In fact, they are delighted by the prospect.

“In Europe,” says Olli Rhen, Finland’s minister for economic affairs, “we are concerned about the U.S. possibly turning toward a more isolationist orientation. That would not be good for United States, good for Europe, good for the world. We need the US engaged in global affairs in a constructive, positive way.”

To Mister Rehn I have this to say: Tough! We have had quite enough of being “engaged” in foreign wars, shipping our troops and treasure to overseas shit holes only to see both go down the drain for no good reason – and with little or no thanks from the recipients of our generosity. If Trump wins, the free ride is over, buster – so you had damn well better get used to it.

From the Saudi head-choppers to the socialist cranks of the European Union, every foreign parasite feeding off the Washington gravy train is rooting for the Clinton Restoration, and hating on Trump. What these ticks on the body politic don’t quite understand is that their loud jeers aimed at Trump don’t hurt him – they help him. So keep it up, boys – the louder the better!

Say what you want about Trump, he has revealed the extent to which America’s client states exercise their influence on our internal affairs

As for the Clinton campaign: their sickening attempt to label Trump a “Putin puppet” is designed to divert attention away from their candidate’s extensive ties to foreign governments. From the Middle East to Europe and East Asia, governments with business before Clinton’s State Department poured millions into the Clinton Foundation in a “pay for play” scheme so brazenly corrupt that it has no precedent in our history as a nation. No wonder they’re rooting for Hillary so openly – because if she wins, our Election Day will be their payday

This is what it means to be a global empire. The price we pay for claiming the “right” to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries is that this habit becomes reciprocal. We hold their fate in our hot little hands, and so it’s only natural that they should want to either stay that hand, or else force it this way or that. Interventionism is a two-way street

We need to put up a roadblock on that particular byway, and the only way to do that is by instituting a mutual nonaggression pact: we’ll stay out of your business if you stay out of ours. This requires nothing less than a 180-degree turn in our interventionist foreign policy, away from a reckless globalism and toward a mindset that puts America first

Please Note: No, I’m not going to hector you about contributing to our fund drive. I’m just going to say that it’s still ongoing – and we need to make our goal so we can get down to the business of warning you about how close we are to another stupid futile war. Please contribute today.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.