(LifeSiteNews) — To understand the state of the United States today, I approached former NASA and U.S. Treasury analyst Richard C. Cook to explain how the world’s most powerful democracy came from constitution and proceeded to catastrophe.
Having retired from serving the U.S. government for almost four decades, Cook has written a convincing account of the conditions which produced the political and spiritual crisis we inhabit as subjects of the late American Empire.
The author of Challenger Revealed, Richard Cook is the man who blew the whistle to NASA on the faults which, after his warnings were dismissed, led to the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster.
In a further book, We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, Cook argued for the abolition of the Federal Reserve, drawing on his professional insight. He left NASA to work at the U.S. Treasury for two decades.
His 2009 volume America the Betrayed argues that the Deep State has corrupted not only the youth of America, but hijacked its entire civilization into a culture of consumer and drug-fueled degradation and the worship of war.
He speaks these strong words softly. Cook, despite his lack of Christianity, is a convincing ambassador for an alternative to the permanent state of emergency into which the U.S. and its liberal-global order is resolving.
His account of the past, present, and likely future of United States is the best I have read. It is the basis for his interview today, as it revives the voices and the vices of the past to explain the spirit of our times.
In the book Our Country, Then and Now, Cook traced the present day crisis in America from its roots, showing how far its financial, political, and moral framework has departed from the foundational principles of the constitutional republic.
This is a history like no other. There is none of the revisionist Marxism of contemporary historians of the school of Howard Zinn, and the exquisite detail of the passage from American dream to nightmare is punctuated with a parallel narrative.
Cook’s European ancestors were amongst the founding generation of the U.S. – but also from the Native Americans who preceded them. Every second chapter presents the story of the American people themselves, through the eyes of Cook’s own forebears. These accounts, seldom witnessed today, provide voices and faces to the people who were the earliest passengers on the ship of the American state.
The forces which made modern America have deep roots, which Cook excavates with an absorbing narrative flair. Light in touch but deep in resonance, his writing is careful with the detail of a history informed by his near 40-year career as a federal analyst.
Having worked for the U.S. Treasury, his explanation of the influence of debt-based banking on the domestic and diplomatic culture of contemporary America is convincing. A credible modern book on the evils of usury is not impossible to find, but few are as entertaining to read as this one.
There are hidden treasures in Cook’s account that will surprise even the closest students of American history. One is a tale of Donald Trump we have all seen – but never heard.
Cook relates a plot to destroy Trump and limit his tenure to 1,000 days. On Day 1,017 of his presidency, impeachment proceedings began. As the refusal of his generals to obey him showed, Trump was ineffective because he was isolated at the top.
So why did the plan to take him down fail?
Cook maintains that Trump survived impeachment because those in the middle and those lower down actually admire him. Many of those voting with him saw in him a populist future.
Donald Trump is not perfect. He was, as Cook pointed out, “the least dangerous” U.S. president we have seen in decades. No wars were started under his presidency. His running mate has vowed to end the regime change wars which have been, according to him, “genociding Christians.”
Cook is also strong on the faction behind this industry of death, promoted in the export of the “liberal” values – also dissected here with insight.
Richard Cook’s volume is not a mere history. It is a manual, a human story, a means of understanding with wisdom, facts, and compassion the profound spiritual and political crisis which grips the United States today.
In this interview, Cook communicates not only the roots of the radical factions which have captured America, but also of the means of rebalancing the disorder that has displaced American civilization.
In these times it is surprising to end on a note of hope, but that sounded by Cook is not only optimistic – he presents a practical solution to many of these problems.
Another world is possible, says Cook. Listen to him explain how the U.S. got here – where it came from – and how its people can get a better future back.
Our Country, Then and Now is published by Clarity Press.
Richard C. Cook is co-founder of the American Geopolitical Institute. A frequent commentator on various broadcast media, he writes on foreign and domestic US affairs at VT Foreign Policy.