This isn’t about Trump vs Britain

This isn’t about Trump vs Britain. It’s about the operating system underneath – service-to-self vs service-to-all – and how we learn to see it.

Intro...

A video is circulating with a loud title:

“Trump Locks Britain Out of Peace: $1 Trillion Deal Shatters the Empire.”

You don’t need to agree with it or reject it.
You don’t even need to like or dislike Trump, Britain, Europe, Russia, America, or anyone else.

What matters is this:

Every story we’re being shown right now is training us to track personalities instead of patterns.

The personalities change.
The pattern stays.

Beneath the drama of “Trump vs the British Empire” there are only two real operating systems:

• a service-to-self system that survives on war, extraction, distraction, and labels

• a service-to-all system that grows through sovereignty, transparency, regeneration, and shared responsibility

Service-to-self doesn’t mind whether the slogan is “global rules-based order” or “make our nation great again”. It simply asks:

• Does this keep wealth, power, and information in the hands of a few?

• Does this deepen dependence on war money, debt, and scarcity stories?

• Does this turn dissenters into cartoon villains so they can be ignored or crushed?

Service-to-all asks a different set of questions:

• Who actually benefits here – households, communities, living ecosystems… or a narrow class of insiders?

• Are the terms visible, simple, and challengeable – or buried inside secret deals and technical language?

• Does this expand our collective capacity to care for land, water, food, shelter, and one another?

In this piece, I am not here to crown a hero or name a single villain.
Rā’id is here to offer you a lens.

We will take this one video as a case study and use it to train our sight:

• How to notice when you’re being dragged into side-picking instead of pattern-seeing.

• How to recognise the fingerprints of service-to-self, no matter which flag or face is on stage.

• How to begin choosing, in practical ways, a service-to-all path in your own life and projects.

The goal is not to “win” an argument online.
The goal is to become the kind of human who can no longer be easily herded by fear, labels, or spectacle.

Read on, and as you do, hold this question in the back of your awareness:

“Underneath the headlines, which operating system is this strengthening – service-to-self or service-to-all?”

From there, the rest of the article will walk you through a simple five-question “reality filter” you can apply to any policy, summit, or peace deal you hear about next.

We are not waiting for better rulers.
We are learning to see – and to build – a different system altogether.

The Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhRfO9ubmCE (14 minutes)

Now, Rā'id's deep dive...

If we strip all the names off this video – Trump, Carney, Chatham House, “British Empire” – what’s left is two operating systems:

• a service-to-self (STS) pattern

• a service-to-all (STA) pattern

The video frames Trump as pure STA and “the British Empire” as pure STS. Reality is messier – but the patterns are still useful.

Below is a structural map you can use without relying on the “Britain runs everything” story.

1. War & peace: how does an STS system behave?

What the video says

• Trump is negotiating peace in Ukraine because he’s excluded “the British” and neocons.

• Europe’s rearmament = “they want more war, more death.”

• Critics of the plan are “profiting” from war.

STS pattern here

Service-to-self systems around war tend to:

• Treat conflict as revenue: defence contracts, reconstruction, energy markets.

• Prefer no clear end-state: frozen conflicts, rotating enemies, “forever war”.

• Frame dissent as disloyalty: “soft on the enemy,” “unpatriotic,” “extremist”.

• Keep real negotiations opaque, marketed with slogans rather than terms.

STA pattern would look like

• Clear, publicly articulated end-state: What does “peace” actually mean? Borders, security guarantees, demilitarisation, timelines.

• All directly affected parties in the room, especially those who bear the costs (civilians, neighbours), not just “great powers”.

• Accountability for war profits: who made how much, on what contracts, under what oversight?

• Built-in sunset clauses on extraordinary powers, emergency laws, and sanctions.

Where we actually are

• You do see STS behaviour in the modern war system:
  arms stocks spike, lobbying intensifies, “peace” is vague while budgets are precise.

• You also see STA impulses: communities pushing for ceasefires, transparency, and real diplomacy.

• No actor is pure. A Trump-branded peace that locks in energy deals, arms guarantees, or weakened oversight might still be mostly STS, even if it ends open fighting.

👉 Lens for our audience:

Instead of “Trump vs British Empire,” ask:

“Does this path reduce or deepen dependence on war money and war thinking?”

2. Economics: $1T vs $50B – what’s the energy of the deal?

What the video highlights

• Carney’s $50B Canada–Abu Dhabi deal at G20.

• A touted $1T future Saudi investment in the US.

• Conclusion: Trump is the real economic architect; everyone else is theatre.

STS economic pattern

• Capital concentration: big numbers, small circle of decision-makers.

• Opaque conditions: secrecy around guarantees, land rights, tax concessions, labour standards.

• Metrics obsessed with volume (trillions) rather than distribution or regeneration.

• Deals structured so backing out becomes almost impossible for the host nation.

STA economic pattern

• Investment aligned with real-world goods: energy, infrastructure, housing, food, health – with explicit benefit to communities, not just shareholders.

• Transparent terms that can be debated, challenged, and revised.

• Structures that share upside and risk, rather than socialising losses and privatising gains.

• Space for local voices: affected regions have veto or redesign power, not just “consultation”.

Where this sits

• Multi-hundred-billion or trillion-dollar flows between petro-states and industrial powers are almost never STA by default. They can be pointed that way, but only if:

  • people know the terms,

  • communities have leverage,

  • and ecological limits are respected.

👉 Lens for our audience:

“Follow the deal: Who gains agency, who loses it? Does this investment regenerate land and people, or just extract more efficiently?”

3. Climate, energy, and “revolts against extremism”

What the video claims

• Trump leads a global revolt against “environmental extremism”.

• DOE is restructured away from climate offices toward “real energy independence”.

• COP30’s failure to firmly phase out fossil fuels is framed as a victory over a de-industrialisation plot.

STS pattern in climate/energy

STS doesn’t care whether the story is “green” or “drill baby drill”. It asks one question:

“Does this keep the control levers in our hands?”

It can show up as:

• Greenwashing: complex carbon markets, big foundations, mega-NGOs – all built on trading abstractions rather than changing material reality.

• Fossil lock-in: pipelines, new fields, and regulatory capture, justified as “jobs” and “security”.

• Turning climate into:

  • a taxation & control tool (if you can meter it, you can monetise it), or

  • a culture-war wedge (“real patriots” vs “climate cult”).

STA pattern in climate/energy

• Grounded in local resilience, sovereignty over basics (food, water, shelter, energy).

• Technology choices based on:

  “Does this reduce harm and increase dignity over the next three generations?”

• Mixture of:

  • decentralised power (microgrids, community energy),

  • restored ecosystems, and

  • honest trade-offs about what we stop doing.

Where we really are

• COP30’s weak fossil language shows STSs on both sides:

  • exporters protecting revenue,

  • importers afraid of domestic backlash,

  • technocrats clinging to complex schemes that preserve their own roles.

• DOE restructuring away from climate offices doesn’t automatically become STA just because it’s anti-woke. If it deepens fossil dependence and narrows who decides, it’s still STS.

👉 Lens for our audience:

“Forget the slogans. Does this path give communities more control over energy and land, or does it simply swap one set of distant managers for another?”

4. Global forums vs back-room deals

What the video says

• G20 and COP are theatre.

• Real power lies in Trump’s bilateral deals and closed-door negotiations.

STS pattern

• Loves both:

  • glossy summits for legitimacy,

  • and opaque back-rooms for the real decisions.

• Uses summits to launder reputations, announce pre-cooked outcomes, and frame narratives.

• Uses back-rooms to:

  • set terms,

  • shape which options are never on the table (de-dollarisation, debt jubilees, demilitarisation, etc.).

STA pattern

• Fewer “spectacle” convenings, more practical councils with real accountability.

• Rules about:

  • what must be decided in public,

  • what data must be disclosed (lobbying, funding, impact).

• Polycentric: multiple overlapping spaces where those affected can escalate their concerns.

Where we are

• G20/COP etc. are losing moral authority but still move very real money and regulation.

• Back-room deals can sometimes de-escalate crises, but without sunlight they skew STS fast.

👉 Lens for our audience:

“Where was this actually decided – on camera or off – and what mechanisms exist for those harmed to challenge it?”

5. Narrative control and labels

The video leans heavily on:

• Heroes vs villains

• “They want more war”

• “British imperial mouthpieces”

You’ve already named the pattern in other contexts:

• “anti-vaxxer” for people who question a rollout

• “sovereign-citizen” as a weaponised label

STS narrative pattern

• Flattens complexity into good camp vs bad camp.

• Uses labels to shut down inquiry:

  • conspiracy theorist, extremist, traitor, “Brit-Empire stooge”, “Putin-propagandist”, etc.

• Keeps attention on personalities instead of structures.

STA narrative pattern

• Treats even uncomfortable questions as data.

• Separates:

  • people (who can shift) from

  • patterns (which can persist through many people).

• Focuses analysis here:

  “What are the incentives, and how do we change those?”

👉 Lens for our audience:

“Whenever someone hands you a villain or a saviour, ask: ‘What structure is being hidden by this story?’”

6. A simple filter you can turn into a graphic/lesson

For any big geopolitical claim – left, right, Trump, Carney, Brussels, Moscow, Beijing – run this five-question scan:

1. Power:
   Does this increase centralised control, or distribute real decision-making closer to those affected?

2. Transparency:
   Can an ordinary citizen see the terms, timelines, and trade-offs? Or is it all “classified”, “market-sensitive”, or “too complex”?

3. Dependency:
   Does this leave nations/communities more dependent on external money, technology, or security guarantees – or less?

4. Extraction vs regeneration:
   Does this primarily pull energy/resources out of land and people, or does it restore capacity, skills, soil, water, health?

5. Voice:
   Who got to say “no” – and did that “no” have any real force?

If the answers tilt towards centralisation, opacity, dependency, extraction, and silenced dissent, you’re looking at service-to-self, no matter which flag or face is on the podium.

Congratulations, and thank you if you've dived this far with me, I appreciate your curiosity and interest in creating a better world/reality together.