The most cynical never believed it; Trump haters in both parties didn't want it, but there is no doubt he lied to the MAGA crowd over and over again.  American First got Donald "war hero" Trump, as he claps for that king of war heroes, Bibi Netanyahu.

Part of the problem is academic.  The US is an imperial nation, late and deep in its financial, military and demographic collapse.  But to admit this is to get ahead of ourselves as Americans. Imperialism as a concept is a legacy of ancient Rome, pre-enlightenment Europe, Marxist and Leninist language we read about somewhere and it wasn't us.  MAGA voters and most other Americans have been reluctant to use the term, and that's understandable.

Americans have been habituated to believe we are just spreading good government around the world, and that we don't profit from the empire. 55% of Americans today were ten or younger when Nixon unleashed money-printing and took the US off the Gold Standard.  Most of us have known nothing but unconstrained US fiat manufacture and annual inflation far higher than the government admits.  We all accept as normal what was once unimaginable:  the massive and immeasurable depredation of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that has occurred because of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.

What we need is peace and a real republic; to get there we need a better explanation of the philosophy of American foreign policy. For years I thought neoconservatism explained a lot, but that label is really just a play on neoliberalism on one end, and a placeholder for Israel First in all things, foreign and domestic, on the other. Neither of these labels is useful to the average American, and beyond that, they are divisive, arrogant and off-putting depending on where you sit on the spectrum of demographics and politics.  We have seen the term isolationism similarly used, not to explain a preferred approach to dealing with the world, but to politically divide and conquer.  Realism and its variants sound good, if you are over 60, but it is quite vague in a practical sense as to what is allowed.  As we were told in the Melian Dialogue, "The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must."  Realism is Gaza for the past two years, and Palestine since 1948. Realism is an American elite and military consortium that has the power to make permanent war for profit while 95% of America begs for peace.