'The House With Nobody In it' - In Washington D.C.?

Our White House is not just a residence, it is a command post. The Free World depends on it. If there is no apparent occupant, how will the U.S. contend with threats to our allies and us? (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

"The House with Nobody In It" by Joyce Kilmers (1886-1918), brings to mind a certain house in Washington, D.C. -- the White House. Our White House is not just a residence, it is a command post. The Free World depends on it. If there is no apparent occupant, how will the U.S. contend with threats to our allies and us?

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are "the new 'Axis of Evil,'" according to Politico, hardly a right-wing outlet. How worried should we be? Probably very.

The United States is already facing two wars at full tilt, and another, it seems, on the way. Russia is still trying to seize Ukraine the same way it seized Crimea. In the Middle East, Israel, the size of New Jersey, is fighting a defensive war on seven fronts to protect its existence and that of civilization from a genocidal Iran -- about to have nuclear weapons -- and its proxies. In the Pacific this month, warships from Communist China have been encircling Taiwan, threatening Japan and the Philippines, and seemingly preparing to crush US naval assets should they try to intervene.

At home, the United States has in recent years been overrun by more than 10 million illegal migrants, including an estimated 1.7 million "gotaways" about whom nothing is known, such as how many there actually are. More than 323,000 children who have crossed the border are "missing." No one even knows their names or where they are, or who might be abusing them. Presumably they have been forced into slavery, sex slavery or dangerous labor. All those are in the U.S. in addition to an estimated 10.5 million illegal migrants who were here before 2021.

Violent gangs, such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, which are made up of youths mainly from South America, have been increasingly infiltrating the U.S. been commandeering apartment blocks at gunpoint and terrorizing people in Colorado, Texas and New York.

An unprecedented surge of 55,000 illegal migrants from China have entered the U.S. in recent months. China does not grant visas to its people to vacation in the Adirondacks. While some of these migrants might be seeking a better life, others seem to have the "the makings of a Chinese army" inside the US. There has been a "massive surge" of unaccompanied "military-age Chinese men," with "many of them having 'known ties' to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People's Liberation Army," according to Rep. Mark Green. They are possibly waiting for orders from CCP headquarters to sabotage the US electric grid, air traffic control, bridges, ports and other infrastructure. Some of these men have been trying to enter US military facilities. FBI Director Christopher Wray has already warned that Chinese hackers might be waiting for "just the right moment to deal a devastating blow."

China has already exported cargo cranes, loaded with hidden listening devices, which are installed in US ports. "A great concern is that they could remotely operate these cranes, and therefore disrupt these port operations at critical times," says China expert Gordon Chang. The Chinese Communist Party could, in a crisis, use them to shut down all maritime commerce or drop shipping containers onto US vessels to destroy them.

The US also has China to thank for the death by poisoning of more than 100,000 Americans each year in the last few years, from fentanyl and other synthetic opiates. The Biden-Harris administration has warned them to stop murdering Americans, and China has said that it will -- but so far, two weeks before a presidential election, has does nothing.

Then of course there was Communist China's spy balloon. It hovered over the most sensitive US military sites and sent information to Beijing in real-time for a week. When it was back out at sea, the president had it shot down.

Americans have also been plagued with mushrooming inflation, called "the silent tax." It eats away at one's income as the cost of staples skyrockets. People are reportedly having to choose between "heat or eat" -- and that does even include medicine or rent. Much of the inflation has been propelled by the administration's effective hobbling of domestic energy exploration from its first week in office. The move resulted a spike in the price of oil and gas, tripling the price of oil -- from less than $42 a barrel in 2020 to $130 a barrel in 2022 -- and producing enough financing for Russia to invade Ukraine, and for Iran and its proxies -- thanks to oil-sanctions lifted or waived by the Biden-Harris administration -- to attack Israel on October 7, 2023 and every day thereafter.

A U.S. national debt of $34 trillion-and-counting threatens to collapse the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. The cost of interest on the debt is now higher than the entire US defense budget – and in a world that is aggressively militarizing to replace the US as the world's leading superpower.

Education in the US is, bluntly, a disaster. It is the most expensive in the world per student but is graduating youths who can barely read or do the simplest arithmetic. With a disadvantage like that, how can they ever hope to participate in the American Dream?

Our children are also being manipulated on social media by the Chinese Communist Party's anti-American propaganda on TikTok, and all of us have been manipulated on social media by an administration that is censoring speech with which it disagrees. This suppression has gone from the real origins of the Covid-19 virus, to possible cures for it, to the "Russia Hoax" -- lies by government officials "to clear Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump," that he was under the influence of the Russians – and cover up and deny the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop and alleged influence-peddling. The administration even tried to establish a "Disinformation Governance Board," until a court swiftly ruled that it was a vehicle for censorship by the government.

The journalist Wayne Allen Root wrote that in addition to failing to increase the US defense budget, the government has instead been "rooting patriots and warriors out of the military and replacing them... brainwashing our children with critical race theory; and using the FBI to arrest and intimidate parents speaking out at local school board meetings."

As we head to the polls, perhaps we should vote for a White House with somebody in it?

Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.