Let’s Not Forget

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” Ron Paul

It’s a little hard to nail down the exact date for when the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 as it’s reported as “soon” after the 9/11 attacks by al Qaeda; both September and October are given as timelines.  The official reason and goal for the invasion was to destroy al-Qaeda.  That goal was partially achieved just a couple of months later in December 2001 during the Battle of Tora Bora where the US and its allies drove al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan and across the border into our supposed ally, Pakistan. Despite its protestations to the contrary, Pakistan gave refuge to Osama Bin Laden until his death on May 2, 2011.

So nearly a decade later, both al-Qaeda and its infamous leader were gone.  Why it took a decade to do given that it only took a couple of months to drive them out of Afghanistan and into what we were told was our ally’s hands, where their leader resided for ten years before we killed him, remains a mystery. In the meantime, the US changed its goal in Afghanistan from the destruction of al-Qaeda to attacking the Taliban and setting up a puppet government under a mission entitled “Operation Enduring Freedom”; the US was now on a nation building mission, a doomed to fail one that took the US twenty years to realize. I often wondered why our antagonists like Russia and China said so little about what we were doing; perhaps they understood Napoleon’s strategic axiom that you should “Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.”

While there’s no excuse for the abysmal mismanagement of the withdrawal by the Biden administration, the end results were as inevitable as what we experienced in Viet Nam fifty years ago. While I agree that the administration should be called to task for the embarrassing and dangerous manner in which the withdrawal was handled, the war was already lost when we elected to become involved in the politics of war lord tribalism that, other that al-Qaeda, posed no security threat to the US.  As soon as al-Qaeda was pushed out, our focus should have been on Pakistan to show its allegiance to its allies and rid itself of the toxic element within its own borders.

To Biden’s credit he has consistently opposed the forever war in Afghanistan, as did Trump before him, but it was Biden who actually ended it, poorly managed but done. We are out finally of a black hole that drained and wasted our human and financial resources of a generation; but are we done with foreign interventions and nation building, and the wars that go with them? Well maybe not given the fact that the US runs 95% of the world’s foreign military bases in more than 80% of the nations on Earth. This is a very dangerous and wasteful policy that can only put this country in harm’s way again…and again…and until stopped, yes – forever.

Some time ago I read a book, more like a pamphlet written by a man named Garet Garrett, originally published back in 1952 entitled “The Rise of Empire”, in which he outlined progressive characteristics a nation will assume as it descends in to imperialism.  It’s well worth the read as it’s a frightening, and considering where we are today, a prescient summary of how a nation can devolve to such a state in which they employ totalitarian methods without embracing a totalitarian ideology, not realizing that the methods are the ideology. Consider what one of this country’s greatest generals, Douglas McArthur, had to say about such foolishness:  “Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. Indeed, it is a part of the general patterns of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war.” True wisdom from a man who well knew from experience what he was talking about.

If we forget these lessons from history, then as F.A. Hayek warned “We shall not grow wiser until we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.” Statism is a cancer, it eats away at the liberty, wealth, morality and good will of a nation’s people; it thrives on wars whereas a truly free nation thrives on production. To connect the dots with my prior post, consider the observation of retired Congressman Ron Paul that “It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.”

Lost in the hysteria following 9/11 was a report to Congress on September 10, 2001 by then U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who disclosed under oath to various committees that his department was unable to account for roughly $2.3 trillion worth of transactions.  How did we forget that?!?!? Amazing what fear will do to muddle the minds even of those tasked to protect the finances of this country.  Despite continued Congressional and media follow-up, no answers other than Rumsfeld blaming Pentagon mismanagement came of this. Even by today’s standards, that is a staggering loss.

Prior to WWI this country was loathed to get into foreign conflicts, although we created our own with the Spanish American War. While the destruction of the Maine was later found to be a faulty boiler explosion, and not Spanish sabotage, it was a relatively quick conflict, but one that extended American hegemony deep into Asia and Latin America, ending years of careful avoidance of foreign adventurism. It also paved the way for Wilson’s more extensive exploits, again with fabricated causes, in a European war. Oh how statists love wars!

One recent positive development is pending legislation to limit Presidential war powers. It is embedded in our history and constitution that only Congress has war powers, and legally they may not even abdicate such powers as they had done in Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and who knows where else. It is not only our presidents who are accountable for these illegal horrors, but a national legislature lacking the moral fiber to act as the representatives of the people who elected them. They share the shame and we should call them to task to do their jobs or make way for those that will.

Spinning Out of Control

In anticipation of the upcoming annual Economic Policy Symposium in Jackson Hole that started this past Thursday, many financial news organizations interviewed various Federal Reserve Governors regarding the published program agenda, entitled “Macroeconomic Policy in an Uneven Economy”. While many of the questions were scripted to the Federal Reserve’s narratives, there were some that were well on point regarding Fed policy and actual economic conditions, which the Governors should have, and in some cases did anticipate.  The answers were interesting in the jargon used to either avoid hard questions or spin like Orwellian Newspeak.

One question posed was what did the agenda title actually mean? I imagine that much of the public would not be able to tell the difference between macroeconomics and microeconomics. The phrase and definition of macroeconomics was first proposed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930’s as a proposition that governments should decide on economic policy. Before then autocrats in monarchies and other authoritarian countries simply decreed whatever economic regulations they wished. Keynes attempted to raise such dictates to a science. We have another invented term as a corollary, i.e. microeconomics as the study of those decisions of individuals and businesses; seemingly regarded as the lesser stuff even though it’s what makes for an economy in the first place.

Now go to “…in an Uneven Economy” for more discursive thinking.  The answers were many and varied, but one consistency that became apparent is that no one could provide a coherent answer, but also none of the answers were consistent among the Governors.  This should be expected with an agenda so vague and ambiguous. All economies by nature are “uneven” as the very genesis of the discipline we call economics is about scarcity, i.e. if there was no scarcity in the world the study of economics would be meaningless. Further, no matter what policies any bureaucrat can conjure up they will never make any economy “even”, and empirically have made them worse.

Then we have the telling question for which we get very creative spinning. The question was “Is the Federal Reserve at all concerned about increasing inflationary trends far greater than either its target or its expectations, and the fact that it no longer appears to be transitory?” To the first part the answers were somewhat dismissive as if inflation did not exist or was unimportant; for the second part the answers by some governors were truly creative and included a common theme, i.e. we should not be thinking about the current inflationary trends as “transitory” but “episodical”. Wow, that one sent me to my Webster’s as I was not sure it was a real form of episode, but the Governors were grammatically right on, although regrettably disingenuous. The term itself regards a series of interconnected episodes, or in other words not something transitory, but something of a longer, and perhaps indeterminate duration. So there we have it, spinning a situation in such a way that we can actually see the spin.

Not to be swayed by the spinning, some more adventurous interviewers ventured into the QE area and the related topic known as tapering. The term “Quantitative Easing” first arose in the public lexicon in 2008 when the Fed started buying UST securities in order to increase the money supply.  But what do you buy that with? No problem since the Fed simply orders more Federal Reserve Notes, i.e. US dollars, from the UST’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing; it’s monetary inflation on steroids. Those USDs are in turn distributed to the regional Fed banks, who are required to put up collateral for the new money circulated; they in turn distribute the new money to the various commercial banks and lending institutions. It’s kind of a trickle down process, but the first at the trough are the big investment banks where their large clients in corporate America come to feast. Easy money at Fed repressed rates, creating the booming valuations in stocks and real estate, unfortunately at the expense of those dependent on market determined interest rates.

The spin on this starts with the name itself, which would indicate that there is some unnatural restriction that has to be eased, when in fact the reality is that investments and lending, in many respects similar but not always the same, should actually decrease as risk increases. This is the free market’s way of cleansing itself of bad assets and actors in the economy and redirecting money to where it will provide return on investments that would attract further investments, and so on, leading to real growth and the prosperity and jobs that come with that.   

When the Governors where asked about the plans for the Fed to “taper”, i.e. buy fewer UST securities and/or allow interest rates to return to market functions, and/or cool off the printing press, we get very fluid responses ranging from later this year, 3Q next year, or as late as middle of 2023. Asked if they think delaying tapering or continuing with their other “tools” would overheat the economy, or make our national debt even more of a dangerous burden, and we get varied responses, but again with a new consistent buzz word, i.e. the need to “balance” many considerations.

The first thing to understand is what the Federal Reserve Act mandates economically to begin with, and there are only two considerations, i.e. work to assure maximum employment and minimum inflation; admittedly these are inherently contradictory goals, but who are we to question the wisdom of Congress. The second thing to consider is the word “balance” as in a balance sheet.  One of the Feds financial regulatory duties is to assure stability in the banking system, and one of the procedural tools it uses is a financial stress test focused on a bank’s balance sheet, i.e. a bad balance sheet translates as a bank in financial stress. By all measures in that regard the Fed’s balance sheet is stressed beyond belief, itself dependent on the life support of massive doses of paper money as if it grew on trees….well close, dollars are printed on cotton that grows on a shrub, but let’s not get picky, no pun intended.

In summary the Fed has spun out of control, even by the metrics of so called Modern Monetary Theory; theories are nice as an academic exercise, but empirical evidence shows that MMT is little more than failed economics. When interest rates approach zero while inflation increases, you are essentially already at net negative rates, so the Fed’s open market operations such as QE are not only no longer effective, but are doomed to failure. Consider the fact that since 2008 we have had QE1…2…3 …4…get the point?

Dating back to ancient Rome and its imperial regimes, the need for more and more money to finance its hegemony of the then known western world, so devalued its wealth time and again until it imploded; Rome fell because it failed economically, and politically from within, and not because of some barbarians at the gate. Beware America, history has a way of repeating itself.

Saigon Déjà Vu

While mass media wrestles with the blame about the debacle of Afghanistan, and whose fault it is, and whether Trump lied about his conditions for withdrawal, and whether Biden ignored the intelligence reports on embassy evacuation or just simply lied about them, it’s all so painfully meaningless; so much sound and fury, ignoring the obvious.

The obvious question is why were we there to begin with?  The propaganda narrative, entitled “Operation Enduring Freedom”, was to destroy Al-Qaida, perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, and to destroy the Taliban government. That government arose in 1994 when the Mujahedeen that defeated the Soviets in 1989, in turn went on to defeat the corrupt warlord dominated government that arose in the aftermath of the Soviet defeat.

What we should understand is that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by 19 terrorists, 15 of whom were Saudis, 2 UAE citizens, one Lebanese, and one Egyptian; not only were none Afghanis, but the funding has been confirmed to have been from Saudi elites. Did we get our geography wrong or were we stupid enough to believe the false narrative, and for twenty years!

In that time, the casualty list is appalling: US military 2.5K, US allies about 1.1K, US contractors about 3.8K, Afghan military about 66K, Afghan civilians about 47K, and the “enemy” about 51K; these figures do not include the wounded, many permanently disabled. Please note that the causality rate among Afghani civilians is nearly that of the “enemy”; we killed nearly as many civilians as the “enemy”, so who were we there to fight?

This does not include the devastation to the US economy; while this and the Iraqi War cost Americans about $2T, now $6.5T including interest since the US doesn’t “pay”, it barrows endlessly, the real question is not who ended this wrong; it’s who started this moronic ideology to begin with? The answer to that is not acceptable to those who deflect the issue to who’s to blame for what just happen with the US evacuation of our Embassy in Kabul; that was as inevitable as what happened in Saigon 46 years ago.

So here we are, nearly a half century later than the end of the Viet Nam War, with the same inevitable results, and the real question is what have we learned at these terrible devastating costs? Have we degenerated hopelessly into a warfare state, where by executive order we leash hell on our own, helpless civilians as collateral damage, and an economy so indebted to mindless violence that we kill nearly as many innocents as some poorly defined “enemy”?

While Congress grapples with the stupidity of another $3.5T in spending, consider some simple housekeeping to stop the military adventurism draining this country’s resources; let’s close the 800+ military bases in about 70 foreign countries; stop stupid money like the $1.5T F35 development for a plane that can’t even fly; and above all, return war powers to the only constitutional authority, the Congress of the USA, and end the despotism of executive war powers.

Data Dependent

We have heard from various administration officials over the last few years how their decisions on policy will depend on the data and not some theoretical modeling or a priori intuition. Sounds a lot like empiricism, the basis for the scientific method, which relies on evidentiary proof based on actual life experience.

One of the problems that arise with data is when it’s subjected to an interpretation that supports a predetermined narrative. What’s needed in cases that are inherently subjective is an historical reference to what has been empirically established, if available, and not something viewed through the prism of what conveniently fits into some narrative. Unfortunately, that may not always be available.

Another problem is that quite often the data itself is misrepresented; this may be through omission, distortion or outright lies. We may not know that at the outset, but eventually it will become apparent either through further analyses or just plain calling out those who sought to mislead for whatever reason.

In either case this will create confusion not only about the decision making process, but the purported facts on which it relies. This issue is not isolated to any particular business, political party or institution as the lack of integrity and/or intelligence in policy making has become quite commonplace. We should always keep in mind Hanlon’s razor, which states “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

I am not suggesting that everything can or should be determined by data as neither common sense nor principles are subject to quantitative analyses. However, when seeking to understand natural or behavioral phenomena, good data, objectively researched and interpreted, will provide an empirical basis of understanding. That sounds all well and good, but if we judge our leaders and their so called experts based on experience we are left with a contradiction as the evidentiary proof is contrary to the policies adopted.

In economics, the most data saturated discipline there is, we can see examples of how data was used successfully or irresponsibly. Looking at just more modern presidential administrations provides us with some comparative illustrations. Nixon, who wanted to have no monetary restraints, and readily admitted that he was bored with monetary issues, severed the dollar from the gold standard.  The results were catastrophic as the dollar plummeted to the point where US Treasures’ had to be denominated in Swiss Francs in order to attract buyers; the obvious calamity of runaway inflation and lack of investment caused the infamous “Stagflation” that plagued the US for decades.

Eventually Paul Volker was made Fed Chairman under Carter and Regan, instituted policies that from 1979 to 1987 managed to stabilize the dollar.  With Regan and Clinton we get some data driven sanity through tax, health and welfare reform, fiscal restraint, investment incentives, free trade policies, etc.

I think it was the campaign strategist James Carville that told Clinton’s staff that the most important message they needed to understand was “It’s the economy, stupid!” Clinton’s campaign did not direct that message in those terms to the electorate, but they definitely got the message. The recession was not being properly addressed by George W.H. Bush’s campaign and that cost him the election. 

It took over two decades of fiscal restraint and reforms to eventually manage a recovery, and realize deficit and debt reduction to a degree that actually resulted in a surplus. That’s what honest data driven policies did for this country back then, and we sorely need that now.

Instead we got Trump, a president about as ignorant of economics as he was of ethics, a narcissistic reality show host that was incapable of dealing with reality. True he cut taxes, which mostly benefited the rich and corporate elite, but at the same time spent money with no focus other than to manipulate the market to benefit his cronies on Wall Street; all of that was clearly done despite the data that screamed further deficits and debt. When Jerome Powell started tapering CE in late 2019, Trump threw a tantrum even before Wall Street could, and Powell, the ever ineffective sycophant that he is, immediately reversed course.

Trump’s sole contribution to health reform was to attack the ACA; true, the mandate was a horrible breach of constitutional and ethical standards and should never have been enacted, but he offered nothing else to reform what the data showed was an ineffective and wasteful system.

He eviscerated free trade with an avalanche of sanctions and tariffs that in reality were nothing more than taxes on Americans; you didn’t need a data base to figure that one out. He promised to stop the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but failed to stop the fiscal and physical bleeding. He declared war on immigration, a strange policy considering a nation that thrives on it both economically and culturally.

It would be hard to see how things could get worse, but never underestimate a politician’s power lust.  In just a few months the Biden administration makes Trump’s irresponsible policies comparatively benign. I remember how we were all appalled at the record deficit the Trump administration had created, adding to a debt burden that screamed for relief; Biden’s administration is working hard to make that many times worse.

When even the OMB, ever more Fed governors, the GSA, and even some Wall Street elites who benefit from the most drastic CE in history, speak to rising inflation, we are told by the administration, and of course the ever accommodative Chairman Powell, that it’s all transitory.  Now here’s where the data makes either fools or liars of them all.  Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the US dollar has lost 95% of its value as of 4Q 2019 due to monetary inflation.  Since then, even more to the point where the Fed now owns 76% of the Federal debt, a debt most economists know is likely to end the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, and destroy the wealth of many Americans.

Artificially repressing interest rates has only exacerbated the problem.  With real inflation running over 5%, and the UST 10 year yield at about 1.25%, we have an actual negative rate of 3.75%. Understandably the Fed has had to step in and buy the debt as foreign sovereign purchases declined as the US Treasury is no longer a safe haven. The famous writer of the Dow Theory Newsletter, Richard Russell, once said “He who understands interest earns it. He who doesn’t understand interest pays it.” History has shown that there has never been a fiat currency that has not failed; eventually, in some way, shape or form, debt will take its tool.

The Echo Chamber

“If you don’t read newspapers you are uninformed; if you do read them you are misinformed.” Mark Twain

The 2021 survey of trust in media among 46countries that are deemed to have a relatively free press by The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University ranked Finland first with 65% of its citizens trusting its media, and the US last with media trust at only 29%. The majority of Americans surveyed responded that they found that the media has embraced advocacy journalism, particularly for the “woke” movement, and found the media overwhelmingly biased in favor of the current administration and alarmingly supportive of that same woke movement, resulting in a quasi-state media where journalists are more bound to the government’s embrace of ideology rather than independent and objective reporting.

Those surveyed also expressed dismay at the lack of support for free speech manifested by the call in both government and mass media to pressure social media to censor anyone questioning that trend. In summary, they consider the media in general to be an echo chamber of ideology rather than a reliable information source. This included many that were opposed to Trump, but found Facebook’s and Twitter’s cancellation of his accounts a troublesome example of the slippery soap of the cancel culture regarding free expression.

While this phenomenon is ostensibly different than the PRC’s closing down “The Apple Daily” in Hong Kong for its open criticism of the crackdowns, and arresting its journalists, it is still alarming that the most revered liberty of American constitutional law and free expression culture is so obviously under attack by a minority radical movement whose ideology is embraced by the press and our own government. It was the prior administration that coined the phrase “fake news” in criticism of those in the media that criticized it, and whose supporters embraced such claims even to the extent of accepting the false narrative of a fraudulent presidential election.

Among the news organizations in the US we have Fox at 46% trust and then CNN, MSNBC and Buzzfeed at 37%; things decline rapidly thereafter. So where then can Americans look for reliable, fact based and unbiased news? There then is the dilemma that provides a mere overall 29% trust rating. But what was hopeful is that local news had a 58% rating. Apparently trust of news organizations on the national level declines markedly. Interestingly, trust in government has a similar phenomenon with the local doing much better than state, and state better than federal.

Trust is an easy thing to lose as it doesn’t take much for that to happen. Many political scientists have found that one of the main reasons for the swings in partisan success in America is the extent of wrong doing by those in power. Nixon won because Johnson made so many social and military blunders; Carter won because Ford was so tainted by Nixon’s Watergate; Regan won because of the incompetence of Carter; Clinton won because Bush Sr. ignored the economy; Obama won because Bush Jr. lied about so many things; Trump won because Hilary was such a manipulative politician who alienated so many people; Biden won because Trump was such a narcissistic moron. 

This decay of trust can be seen in differentials of approval ratings of recent Presidents reported by the five top polls; while there are variances in these polls, the average mean is telling. The most radical are found with the Bushs’ at around 60%; Americans don’t like body bags. Clinton, Regan and Obama all were around 30%; while reasons varied, consistency paid off. Amazingly Trump was the lowest differential at 15%, but then again he had consistently low ratings to begin with. For Biden it’s too early to tell; currently he has a 52% approval rating, but he is saddled with a wide ideological gap within his own party. Luckily for him, the Republicans are likewise fractured, perhaps even more so. The percentage of American voters who regard themselves as independents has steadily increased since 2000, now at about 41%, leaving 31% as Democrats and 26% as Republicans, and the balance with various third parties.

So along with the decline in trust, both in media and government, we have a decline in major party affiliation. But the swings in voting tendencies also indicate confusion, which coupled with distrust makes for a volatile political climate, increasingly polarized among shrinking partisan groups. In the past the press played an important role of informing the public somewhat objectively, providing a modicum of a reliable basis for a peaceful realignment and emergence of viable alternative parties.

The echo chamber of current times does not provide that. What we have instead is growing dissatisfaction, alienation and radicalization. History shows that one potential outcome is a chaotic and potentially not so peaceful realignment of political affiliations. Regardless of how it happens, the two major political parties are likely near the end of their era. Depending on what the political landscape that emerges looks like, that may very well be a good thing.

So what do we do about the echo chamber? Unfortunately for the average American there is very little to be done to change the current journalistic paradigm of mass or social media.  The best course may be abstention; shut off the noise, grab some classics to read, avoid sound bites, think in a common sense mode and follow your gut. While you may not be deemed the most informed, you will be a lot less misinformed; but be careful as George Orwell cautioned that “The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”

Somebody’s Lying

In his hit song, “Somebody’s Crying”, Chris Isaak laments that somebody’s lying; it’s a great song and a lyrical wonder by a truly gifted artist. It’s sad but true that in life we cry when someone lies to us, especially when it’s someone you love; so America, by now you should have cried oceans of tears as that someone is your own country, or more accurately, your own government.

I recently read that most of mass media relies on statistics based on what people click on social media to determine what they will print, and how to present it. The usual field is about a million of the most recent from which they will take about the top one to two percent. Most of the “Woke” movement is found on social media, so its migration to mass media is not hard to understand. The publisher’s motivation, besides their political and social leanings, is profits, i.e. income from advertisers; it’s what sells that matters, not what is true.  The result is the suppression of facts and the marginalization of contrarian views, a kind of journalistic cancel culture. Those that don’t fit in the program are either disregarded with whatever label is deemed the current villain, like “racists”, “fascists”, “oppressors”, “privileged”, “sexists”, “ableists”, etc., or simply fired.

A good friend recently told me that people just don’t want to read a lot anymore; newspapers that post articles that go beyond the front page are not as popular as tabloids. So while the above may seem a new phenomenon, it’s really just a variation on an old theme. Lies and labels are the tools of ochlocracies and autocrats, demagogues and dictators, in the sordid history of partisan politics. Think about America’s history just about a century back with all the stuff we were told to believe that was pure nonsense; true, we could go back further, but there’s plenty of material in this time frame.

Try the Spanish American War; “Remember the Maine!” was the cry.  The historical fact is that it was a faulty boiler explosion that sunk the Maine, not Spanish sabotage. Lots of people died in that fabricated conflict.  Yes, somebody was lying, so there was a lot of crying.

Then we have the 1913 Federal Reserve Act, to create a central bank to help stabilize our economy.  Really great job depreciating the USD by 96% to today’s value; now that has to be one of the great lies of all time, and sadly one many still believe. Imagine telling people for more than a century that inflation is a good thing while they wake up day after day with the dollar they have constantly worth less; no imagination needed, the lie continues while the cries go ignored. 

Then we have the 16th amendment, providing for a tax formerly prohibited by the constitution, an amendment the history of which is loaded with as many lies as there were states voting on ratification. Contrary to what many conservatives say today, and many people believe, it was not proposed by the Democrats under Wilson, but by Republicans under Taft. The ratification process had so many irregularities that provide some very interesting questions which have never been resolved.  It also did not provide for payroll withholding at all; that was an FDR manipulation to fund his New Deal. One lie on top of another, and we really need a good cry.

Then we have the Great War, the “War to End All Wars”. The US joined the slaughter because the Germans attacked the Lusitania, a British passenger ship that was carrying munitions and with Americans on board.  That was not the story line reported, so someone was lying. About 4.7M Americans were involved in that war, of which about a half million died, were wounded or suffered from diseases in the trenches; that war should be renamed the “Great Lie”.

What followed the Great War were two catastrophic events that were to lead to so many more deaths. One was the Spanish Flu, which was named not because of its origins as many were told (Spain was neutral in WWI), but mysteriously out of an Army post in Indiana as later reported. Actually not so mysterious as the soldiers there were returning from the horrors of the “Trench Warfare” (more like sewers) of WWI, most likely the origins of this multimillion people killer; big lies cause big cries.

The second catastrophic event of WWI was the Treaty of Versailles, so vengeful and destructive, creating the social cesspool from which Hitler, Franco, Mussolini and Stalin arose. There are so many contrived reasons given for the rise of such dictators, most ignoring the social and economic chaos created by WWI, the Versailles Treaty and the pandemic that followed that we have to wonder at the gullibility of not just those lied to, but the liars themselves. The politicians that caused these horrible events must have lied to themselves to concoct and promote such vacuous reasoning, but the people cried from the suffering they caused.

Then we have the Great Depression.  We were told the causes were things like speculation, unregulated banking, stock market manipulation, etc. Missing of course was the real culprit of what today we would call “accommodative monetary and fiscal policy”, i.e. massive liquidity providing the boom and bust cycle we have come to take for granted, this one particularly chaotic.  We were told that FDR had a plan, the New Deal, to save the country, but it was a raw deal that made things worse; we were told it was for the greater good, and that was really lying, so we kept on crying. The New Deal did nothing to abate the Great Depression, but in fact prolonged it; sadly it was WWII that did more to end it than FDR’s irresponsible policies ever did; now that’s something to really cry about.

The beginning of America as a “Warfare State” really took flight with the Korean War, called at the time the “Korean Conflict”, which we somehow had to get involved with to stop socialism and Red China’s aggression. It was actually a civil war, but that was not the acceptable spin, and so again someone lied, many people died, and many people cried.

But why stop there? Liars love spin, and with the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” you get a really big lie, and with Viet Nam you get a really big cry. In order to stop a fantasy “Domino Effect” we get the lie that bankrupted a generation and caused a social eruption that fractured a nation, and I’m not talking Viet Nam, I’m referring to the US.

Of course we can’t leave out one of my favorite lies, the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” of Iraq. So much a catchy phrase that we gave it initials, “WMD”. Apparently we’re good at that, but not seeing the big lie it was, and after more than a decade of “Nation Building” there and twenty plus years in Afghanistan, we hear stupid stuff like “mission accomplished”; yeah, killing thousands of innocent civilians not to mention US soldiers is quite an accomplishment, together with the inevitable bankruptcy it will contribute to. The bigger the lie, the longer we will cry.  

But we’re even better at the big lies economically, as in the “Financial Crisis”. Now even the name is a lie, it was an intelligence crisis.  We create the bubbles and wonder why they burst, and then we come up with an even bigger lie; we call it “Quantitative Easing”, and in true form we give it initials, QE, because we’re too damn lazy to say the entire phrase, more honestly being corporate bailouts.

Needless to say, the Trump Era (which may not be over yet) saw abundant lying, like the wall against immigration, Russian interference if not collusion, Ukrainian coercion, and of course voter fraud. Amazingly, the crying was more from those in denial of anything that Trump did wrong, but on the other hand, the hypocrisy from those who so dramatically expressed offense yet provided little in the way of meaningful and effective action. It was a circus of lies and ineptitude, but I think the most hurtful crying may still await us.

So true to form, when presented by what we call a “pandemic” for Covid, a true stretch of terms considering a world death toll nearing 0.05% compared to the Black Plague that claimed a death toll of somewhere (best guesses) between 21% to 57% of the world’s population, or more recently the Spanish Flu with a .10% death toll. We were told we needed to “flatten the curve” by cancelling all economic activity for just a few months; that then became a few more, and now we have more than a year and a half, killing the livelihood of millions, likely eventually killing many more than the pandemic itself. 

So when you lie, you find the need to keep lying in the hope of covering up your previous lies, which of course leads to the need to perpetuate the lies, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Now we have the “American Recovery”, as if the very idiots that caused a massive economic catastrophe can somehow bring us to a so called recovery. There’s no Heimlich maneuver for that, but lies are the tonic for fools.

Remember Judy Mikovits? She was the scientist who took records from the NIH that would reportedly expose Fauci’s involvement with NIH funding of the Wuhan Lab’s chimeric experiments with Covid viruses. She was arrested without a warrant, detained and then released, but only after those records were retrieved. What we have now are insistent news stories into the origins of Coivd at those same labs, and an apparent US funding for its research. I wonder what lies await us.

We are told that green energy will lead to a cleaner environment, but what we are told is not supported by basic science and engineering, which informs us that the highest efficiency possible for conversion of the sun’s photons to electrons is 33%, and for wind 60%. Currently our best solar panels have a 26% conversion, and wind turbines 45%, so we are getting closer to maximum efficiency. However, the input to produce solar panels, wind turbines and electric car batteries takes ten times the quantity of materials compared with building machines using hydrocarbons to deliver the same amount of energy.

We also have the disposal issue; by 2050 the quantity of expired and non-recyclable solar panels will double the tonnage of all of today’s global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries will become garbage. Now all this is not to say that we shouldn’t strive for cleaner energy, but to propose trillions of dollars of government funds to invest in technologies that are not only less efficient but actually require more mining of materials and produce more waste does not actually translate as a cleaner alternative.

No doubt the end of the internal combustion engine is inevitable given the accelerating rate of technological progress, but the alternatives being promoted by the cronies of government subsidies are far from sustainable; lies get access to the taxpayer’s pockets, but crying about that does not seem to impress the power elite. 

Lying and crying will not change facts, so Americans need to get the truth and get it out there for all to see. As John Adams said “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Thinking

“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” Oscar Wilde

Often in life we are asked the simple question “So what do you think?” The issue at hand can be business, a friend seeking advice as to some problem they’re having, or just what’s going on with your favorite baseball team. None of the issues matter, what matters is what you think. But do we answer correctly if all we’re doing is providing opinions or beliefs? Actually were not as those things aren’t what we’re thinking, but are what someone else is writing or saying we should be thinking.

So what does it mean to think? This is not meant as a deep philosophical question, but something that is basically common sense. Try to remember the last time you were faced with a problem and despite all the advice you were given, whether you asked for it or not, you decided to move past all that conventional wisdom and came to your own conclusion as what to do based on your own experiences. I wonder what the reactions were of those that gave their advice you did not take?

True thinking is definitely something that is not what many say it is.  It is not opinion as that is something subjective and usually founded on the absence of factual information. Take for instance opinion polls.  All too often the polls show that people’s opinions are based more on what they read and hear others say about whatever the subject of the poll may be. As an example, consider the pool on COVID19 vaccines wherein many hold the opinion that it causes infertility in women. While there is still much research needed on these vaccines, this opinion is contrary to factual information.

Neither is belief based on true thinking. Belief is a “thought” that some have decided is true; it does not require facts, but it does require faith that what we believe is true even in the absence of a factual basis. Thinking on the other hand requires facts, which are irrefutable pieces of information. The trick of course is determining the irrefutable.

So back to the question as to what it means to think. In his last interview in 1996, Carl Sagan said “Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” Taking that word “science”, derived from the Latin word “scientia”, which actually means knowledge or experience, we only need our common sense to understand what really thinking is, i.e. that which we know is fact based on our own experience; everything else is opinion or belief, usually based on what others have said or written.

Is thinking something that can be taught? Based on my own experience, I think so, but that doesn’t mean it necessarily is the only way to learn how to think. While I’m no fan of much that John Dewey represents, he was a humanist who actively supported independent thinking.  It is still odd that as a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist he said that “The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society.” Thinking for oneself is viewed as disruptive by conformist cultures and authoritarian societies, but by its nature, thinking is an empirical process, and since no two people have the same life experiences, how can it be possible for all people to always really think alike?

To put it as simply as George S. Patton did, “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”

What’s in a name?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Words are supposed to have meaning; they are intended to convey a description about something or someone. They are meant to convey a clear idea of what is intended by the speaker or writer of words. If they fail in this regard, it is not the words that are in error, it is the speaker or writer. He or she is in error, is referring to a subject matter obtusely or esoterically, or is being disingenuous. To be in error is commonplace and can be as innocent as not having the correct facts at hand.  To be obtuse or esoteric may be that the subject matter is beyond common knowledge or difficult to convey. However, to be disingenuous is to speak or write in bad faith so as to mislead or deceive.

Shakespeare’s phrase above has come down to us as an expression of the simple fact that names don’t change what things actually are. It’s a poetic way of expressing Aristotle’s law of identity that A is A. This sounds like a simple and obvious idea, but the sad truth is that with all the technology available to us for clear communication we are plagued with so much obfuscation of what is empirically real.

Socially, politically and economically we are bombarded with sound bites, buzz words, slogans, clichés and other linguistic and mental contrivances that leave us numb with frustration that nothing real is actually being said. This leads to mistrust in those that speak and write disingenuously, whether that’s the media, politicians and government, academics, or even medical and health institutions. We could, and maybe should, write down a list of such things we hear and read each day, and at the end of that day read them and see what sense we can make of them without the noise from the sources.

Take for instance the meaning of being “inclusive”. The dictionary definition is a description of being broad in orientation and scope. However, that is not the intent of the word in the context of social justice; in fact it’s quite the opposite as it has become a means test to prioritize inclusion based on race, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. The right name for describing such practice is being “exclusive”.

Consider the definition of “racism”, which literally is a belief that race determines superiority and conversely inferiority among humans, and is manifested by social and political norms adopted to maintain a specific structure accordingly; then consider the various policies and programs at play in the name of social justice. Whether it’s college admissions, stimulus money, vaccinations, employment, or whatever, the justifications are as racially based as that which they are purported to change. The most insidious example culturally is the proposition that all “white” people are inherently racist simply because they’re white. Apparently according to the current thesis of social justice the belief in and practice of racism depends on what race you are, which of course is categorically a contradiction on the actually meaning, but don’t dare say that or you will be accused of being racist.

Economically the current buzz word is “transitory” when discussing the topic of inflation. The word is a synonym for temporary, as in something of brief duration or a period leading to something else. In either case the word is not appropriate in describing inflation considering the fact that over the last century the USD has consistently lost value, approximately 95%, due to the monetary inflation policies of the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury, who maintain the transitory narrative. We are not told to consider that, only to consider price inflation as expressed by the CPI.  This smoke and mirrors game is predicated on the hope that we ignore the fact that price is driven by productivity, technology, supply, demand and trade, among other things; but the true cost is relative to the value of the medium of exchange. The important thing here is the issue of the convolution of words, and in this case “transitory” begs the question, what are we transitioning to? What’s really on the other side of this inflated bubble?

The political word play is equally insidious, especially given the labels the two major parties cloak themselves with. The Republican Party, founded on the consolidation of abolitionist and constitutionalist, and the protection of liberty and individual rights, is fracturing into various camps as evidenced by the Trumpians ousting Cheney who claims to represent the true GOP. Prior to that Justin Amash left the Republican Party because he believed Trump committed impeachable offenses. Cleary we will soon see at least two parties evolve out of that family feud. It’s likely that the Democrats will follow suit by eventually splitting in to some labeled entities such as “Liberals” and “Progressives”.

The funny thing about labels is that they either inform, like those on soup cans, or mislead as the examples above show. In the case of the two major political parties, this fact is humorously expressed by a tweet I recently read that basically says that like Democrats, Republicans are “big government liberals” (i.e. not liberal as in the Enlightenment sense), they just do it cheaper; perhaps a little cynical, but sadly accurate.

The left/right spectrum paradigm of political parties is poorly conceived and totally inaccurate as to defining policy or concept, so those labels are all wrong simply because the proponents of those labels are using words inaccurately or disingenuously. On the left we have “Liberal”, but not as that word defines the political awakening of the 17thC and the 18thC Enlightenment, which was the political thesis of natural rights and liberty in all aspects of life; in current times it is understood to mean support of an ever larger centralized and authoritarian government and therefore poorly designated. We also have “Progressive”, which in reality is a euphemism for socialist, which few kike Bernie Sanders will honestly profess; given the long history of failures with that political thesis, it’s more like “Regressive”. However, we’re not doing so well with the right either; what does it really mean to be a “Conservative”? What actually is being conserved? Conservatives talk of liberty, but support repression of ideas they don’t agree with, spout patriotism as getting into foreign wars of no security interest for this country, initiate the dumbest programs like the War-On-Drugs, and impose tariffs and sanctions that do nothing but make Americans pay more for less; is this what they are conserving?

Not so long ago, our nation embraced free trade as a pathway to economic growth, good will among nations and an expression of the principles of freedom. A free people will always seek to trade in accordance with the simple economic principle of comparative advantage. The two policies that both major parties appear to agree on are trade and anti-trust. Both support a trade policy based on threats, sanctions and tariffs, and both support a regulatory policy of punishing success with anti-trust legislation and law suits. In both cases it’s the American consumer who pays the price. However, note that both parties profess support for capitalism and free trade while practicing the cronyism so antithetical to these fundamental principles. If this contradiction between professed words and actions seems confusing you, it’s because you’re paying attention.

Hopefully Americans wondered as they should have about the recent CDC announcement that those that are vaccinated against COVID19 can now be “free” to resume their normal lives, as if the CDC can assume the power to be the arbiter of our constitutional rights. Such words are exactly the kind of disingenuous practices that cause many Americans to look on such institutions as bad faith actors more interested in establishing another power base than providing reliable medical and health information upon which Americans can make informed decisions, as is their right.

Nor should Americans miss the fact that it was our own governments, never failing to take advantage of any crisis to gain more power, who killed our economy with wonton disregard for our liberties and livelihoods with draconian lockdowns, who then turn around and with a wink and a nod do even further damage with relentless monetary inflation, higher taxes and more distortionary regulations in the name of an “American Rescue”; if that’s a rescue then anchors can serve as life preservers on a sinking ship.

Currently our institutions of a free press and education express ideas and practice policies so contrary to the very meaning of free speech. Historically there have been many instances in America when free speech was repressed, usually later to be corrected, but in truth not always. First, we need to dispel the notion that there is no such thing as free speech due to certain limitations. The idea that libel and slander show that there are limitations is true, but disingenuous as both of these pertain to civil actions available to all against anyone who so abuses them, but it doesn’t mean that they are not free to say what they will, only that there are consequences if what they say is false. Then we have obscenity and pornography limitations, both of which have been rightfully defeated in courts such as in cases involving Lenny Bruce and Larry Flint. Then there are the issues with sedition, incitement, classified disclosures, copyright violations, etc. all of which do not reduce free speech but in fact represent illegal activities. These are noteworthy exceptions but the exceptions do not define the rule, in this case as represented by the First Amendment.

What is most alarming is despite the long and storied history of legal battles and social movements in the cause of free speech we have today movements within mass media, most notably in major newspapers like the NY Times and Facebook in social media, representing a repression of free speech rather than the cause of a free press. Consider the term ‘fake news’, a phrase most infamously attributed to Donald Trump, so vilified by most of mass media but who now cloak themselves as the arbiters of what is permissible to say or write in the cause of “community standards” and protectors against fake news, as if we need someone to choose for us what we are allowed to hear or read; what a disingenuous convolution of terms. William Randolph Hearst once said “News is something somebody doesn’t want printed, all else is advertising.” Apparently most Americans now take that same view of our media institutions as little more than advertising as their words have simply lost a sense of reality and truth.

It’s difficult to believe that in our institutions of “higher learning” the corruption of words used to justify the repression of free speech through such thuggery as shouting down or even preventing speech that students and/or faculty find objectionable; their reasoning is that free speech is nothing more than a refuge for the privileged and therefore a tool of oppression. Now there is such a gold mine of convoluted thinking and a contradiction of words in such a sentiment that its obvious disingenuous nature would provide enough material to write a whole other post, so I’ll leave the obvious to the reader’s imagination.

Perhaps there can be another reason besides those I noted in the opening paragraph to explain the failure to use words accurately which is best expressed by Robert Heinlein when he said “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

Are We There Yet?

If you are a parent and ever took a road trip with your children, I’ll bet that you’ve heard this phrase more times than you care to remember. Impatience is the constancy of childhood. Children can’t wait until they’re old enough for…..well, just about everything that they see adults doing. For a child, sitting in a car for more than ten minutes not “doing” something is boring. Back then we didn’t have super SUVs with video screens or iPads, we had Game Boy. Our kids ripped through that in about twenty minutes.

It takes maturity to learn patience; adolescents seldom do; most college students lack that; and young adults often fail and make poor judgements, not thinking things through before they act.  This is not a knock on any generation, it’s just one of life’s lessons we need to learn on the way to maturity. The problem for American society is that we have stunted the intellectual and psychological growth of our younger generations for quite some time now.  I say “we” because as a society we have lost historical perspective that informs us of the empirical reality of consequences resulting from poor judgement. This has been going on for quite some time, so it’s not just a current phenomenon.

It is an accepted historical axiom that every civilization and society has within itself the seeds of its own destruction. If that’s true, then the corollary should be that as humanity progresses it should be able to root out those seeds to provide a more stable and lasting society. It’s also an empirical reality of history that the more that societies create compulsory structures, i.e. other than those that evolve naturally through the civil evolution of the population, create distortions that lead to some kind of conflict, whether that is environmental, economic, political, etc. that provides for decline and eventual collapse.

It was Alexis de Tocqueville who observed that when voluntary and private associations are allowed to flourish, they become a natural and integral part of society that can not only compliment political institutions, such as governments, but even provide functions without the need for governmental participation at all. Further, they become in effect the means for resolving dissent through civil discourse, provide for an equitably meritorious allocation of resources and a natural evolutionary social experimentation without the need for governmental coercion. This in turn creates societal cohesion and confidence even during periods of governmental chaos.

This idea was not a new revelation to the Founders of our Republic as they were well aware of the evils that were plaguing European nations and sought to construct a political system that would protect the essential liberties necessary for that stability and permanence. What they failed to do regarding slavery was a source of conflict that eventually led to a form of collapse called civil war and continuing civil strife to this day. The test for American Society is how we will resolve this issue going forward.

But because there is confusion among Americans as to what liberty and its attenuating rights are, there is an impediment to resolving conflicts. We seem intent more on changing the past rather than ensuring our liberty for the future.  One of the most glaring examples of this is the corruption of free speech. It is of no small concern that this trend has become imbedded in our educational institutions, nearly all of which in various degrees are regulated by government. It is common practice to have students and teachers disciplined, expelled or fired for expressing ideas contrary to whatever majoritarianism is extant at the time.

This corruption of one of our most cherished liberties, an explicit right stated in our constitution, provides an insight of a phenomenon so contrary to Alexis de Tocqueville’s empirical observation. Historians call the study of societal collapse “collapsology”; while the term may appear a product of modern linguistic invention, it has been around for quite some time. It entails a multidisciplinary approach as there are many factors that can lead to this, but one that is in the realm of sociology, i.e. principally political science and economics, is within society’s ability to avoid; to repress a peoples’ natural right to express themselves, even if that expression is repugnant to others in society, will lead to polarizations and conflicts that will surely be the cause of that society’s demise.

While there are natural phenomena over which humans have no control, such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, that have contributed to societal collapse, understanding and respecting the natural rights of everyone should not be a difficult thing to do. However, history has shown that time and again the draw of power has proven to be stronger than the mutual respect required for a civil society.  The Roman Republic fell in to despotic imperialism, spawning the chaos of the Middle Ages and its varied monarchies. While the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman, it was an absolute monarchy. The French Revolution resulted in the First Republic, which quickly devolved in to despotism similar to the monarchies before it. All during these periods war, famine and plague were the results of just plain really bad judgements, culminating in the Great War, the supposed war to end all wars, a war to preserve democracy; of course it proved nothing of that kind but the source of even greater despotism in Europe and Asia, and also the Americas. There again poor judgements led to economic collapse, societal stress and conflicts, culminating in another world war with even worse atrocities, all contributing to conditions so inimical to a society Alexis de Tocqueville described.

There were many types of repressive regimes that evolved between these two catastrophic world wars, but what they all had in common was the growth of statism, of large all powerful and encompassing governments. They were all forms of socialism from the Marxists communism of the USSR to the gang tactics of the National Socialist Party. In America we had the New Deal, which really was not all that new, just another form of Democratic Socialism.  As A.E. Samaan once said “Democratic Socialism is simply totalitarianism that allows you the illusion of a voice in the matter.” It really doesn’t matter if the form of despotism comes from the ballot box, a coup or devolution from freedom to serfdom as the results are the same. 


Actually, the best way to describe the type of socialism that has prevailed in the US is to understand what Benito Mussolini, in discussions with his star pupil Juan Peron, described as the kind of socialism we have today when he said “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Now we should not be thrown off by the word “fascism”, a term all too often thrown around modern American politics without any understanding of its origin or nature. The term is derived from an ancient Roman symbolism, possibly passed down from Etruscans, representing a magistrate’s power and jurisdiction. Fasces were a bound bundle of wooden rods around an axe, carried by Lictors who were a magistrates body guards. Magistrates, such as Praetors, had both judicial and executive powers, i.e. judge and executioner. Easy to understand is negative derivation.

Often the term is reserved for what is commonly assumed to be a “right wing” phenomenon, when in reality any political party in power can manifest such tendencies.  Here again the right versus left spectrum is such a badly contrived political analysis. As George Orwell so eloquently stated, the real political division is between statists and libertarians; he would have said liberals if we were referring to 18th century political science, another indication of the fluidity of definitions in modern times.

Let’s go back to education in America. In 2017, about 44.4% of adults over 25 years of age had an associate degree or higher; 16.3% had some college education but no degree; 28.8% were high school graduates; 10.4 percent had less than a high school education. In polls taken regarding basic economics, about a third of those under middle age had little to no concept of what that was, and less than half of seniors fared better. When asked if capitalism was a result or a cause of freedom, overwhelmingly few answered correctly. When asked about what was the equivalent term to describe the time preference of money, pitifully few even understood the question. When asked what made for a store of value and a reliable medium of exchange, even less had a clue what that meant. So when we hear that more and more young Americans are in favor of socialism, an invented and compulsory system of societal relationships that has failed time and again, we should understand the lack of basic economics that informs them, an obvious failure of our educational system.

History has shown that socialism will always fail because it is not concerned with the creation of wealth, only the redistribution of it. This is done because socialist confuse compassion with compulsion. In his Second Treatise of Government, John Locke wrote that an individual “…seeks out and is willing to join in society with others for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call by the general name, property.” Where in America today do students even hear the name John Locke, let alone what he wrote. It is doubtful that they even know who Adam Smith really was.  They are likely to hear he was an evil economist promoting selfish capitalism, when in fact he wasn’t even an economist, but a moral philosopher and sociologist.

It does not serve the state well to have students learn what makes for a truly civil society as that undermines the power of the state. How many students have ever heard of Walter E. Williams, recently deceased, but certainly a contemporaneous economist of Klugman and Samuelson, but seldom given much exposure academically despite the fact of his status as a Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Understandably he can’t be in much favor with progressives when credited with his statement that “What our nation needs is a separation of business and state as it has a separation of church and state. That would mean crony capitalism and crony socialism could not survive.” Notice how he included both cronyisms as he clearly understood the essence of Mussolini Fascism.

Now how does this all relate to the title of this blog?  Well as we have traveled the road of our own history, we have made judgements to take a course toward socialism. Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressivism helped set the stage for the Wilson administrations during which the Federal Reserve and income tax were created, all contributing to America’s ability to participate in the obscene conflicts spawned by European and Asian imperialism, together with some of our own militaristic adventures. “Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.” James Madison wrote in the Federalist; he was well aware of tyranny’s insatiable hunger for more and more power and that crises provide cover for that. It’s not a coincidence that the 20th Century was an era of constant conflict and strife aided by this phenomenon.

Americans did not consciously veer toward socialism. Politicians did not explicitly propose such ideas; what they did is argue for the power to protect people from themselves. They often cited the preamble to the constitution as proof that the Founder’s intent was for the Federal government to “…promote the general Welfare,… “. As the primary author of the constitution, Madison clearly stated in his many contributions to the Federalist Papers that the preamble is only an introduction and it does not define government powers or individual rights. He also made clear that the intent of the welfare clause was not a means of benevolence but a means test that a tax is only legitimate if it is for funding clearly enumerated powers stated in the constitution. Further, that charity is not a legislative power.

In more current times, the American economist F.A. Harper expressed the concept of charity toward others more in keeping with Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations when he stated that “Assistance given voluntarily is truly charity; that taken from another by force is not charity at all, in spite of its use for avowed charitable purposes. The virtue of compassion and charity cannot be sired by the vice of thievery. All told, the process of political charity is about as complete a violation of the requisites of charity as can be conceived.”

It has become about as close to an axiom of government redistribution policies that very time there is some kind of redistribution of wealth, the funds distributed are reduced by the inevitable parasitic nature of bureaucracies. This phenomenon was well expressed by President Reagan’s summary of such economic policies when he noted that “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

Regarding any dissent toward such policies, what have you heard? I’m not referring to the partisan practice of the party not in power, such as currently the case with the Republicans, criticizing the tax and spend policies of the Democrats, as their concern about debt only seems to arise when they are not in power. Notice that during the Trump administration, not only was such an outcry absent, but they created the largest deficit to date. True the Democrats will definitely exceed that greatly, but that does not make the Republicans a financially responsible party.

On the issue of dissent, free speech is not an important issue to either of the two main political parties, and both have embraced Mussolini’s methodology by making corporations, specifically media as regards free speech, their instrument of repression. Direct government intervention would surely result in obvious constitutional challenges, but “private” entities have no such restrictions under the constitution. While Trump’s posts on social media are repugnant to most Americans, Facebook’s policies are clearly censorship and Americans should object to that.

One of the most obvious tools that government has to “influence” the private sector in this and other issues is the tax structure. In a recent interview by Joe Wiesenthal of Bloomberg Markets, economist Stephanie Kelton, a professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University, and a leading expert on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), and a Senior Fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research, was a guest. MMT has as one of its principal tenets that governments should print as much money as they want because deficits don’t matter, which she made clear on the show. Wiesenthal, being a fairly intelligent interviewer, asked the obvious question, i.e. “If we don’t need to worry about deficits, why do we have taxes?”

Great question, and Kelton’s answer, while grotesque, was also very insightful. What she basically said was that taxes are still required because “….they remove dollars from our hands, so we can’t spend them,….”; so while taxes make people poorer, they provide more power for the government as taxes can be used to punish certain people by redistributing their money for doing things she finds contrary to what the government wants them to do. Sounds like something right out of Mussolini’s play book.

Now consider what has happened very recently since the new administration took office.  We have proposals for trillions of dollars in programs, some described as “infrastructure” while only a fraction is for that, much of it for further social engineering. To pay for this, we will have increased taxation, further money printing, Federal Reserve “accommodation”, i.e. buying assets and artificially depressing interest rates, etc. When confronted with the growing alarm about inflation, we are told not to worry, it’s only “transitory”. When faced with the jobs reports show a slowing of new jobs and a criticism that related programs are counterproductive, the response is we need more of the same. When business complains that the increased unemployment benefits motivate a stay at home attitude among workers, the government goes in to denial mode. When the dollar dives due to MMT practices, we are told no big deal, we will get more of the same.

In recent reports from various economists who study monetary policies, alternative currencies and precious metals, it was noted that the assumptions regarding the US dollar were woefully out of touch with reality.  Take for example the government noting that the US still has gold reserves larger than any other country at some 8,500 tons. That was true, if you ignore what China has been doing for quite some time now. While their central bank still has less reserves than the US, they have three other institutions that have separate reserves, but still under control of their government, at an estimated total of some 20,000 tons. What is also noted is what China intends to do with all that gold. These same experts have been paying attention to what the Chinese have opening stated is their intent to not only put their currency, the yuan, on a gold standard, but also make it a digital currency. It’s understandable why many of these currency economists predict the end of the USD as the world’s reserve currency or preferred settlement currency for international trade.  China also encourages its citizens to own as much gold and Bitcoin as they can. Yes, China plans while the US and Europe keep drinking the cool aid of MMT.

Now what’s curious of course is why the US government even bothers with gold, or cares about reserves at all given the policies since FDR and Nixon that essentially killed the US gold standard. In reality, the gold standard has never really gone anywhere; it’s still with us, just in a different form.  While an ounce of gold is always just an ounce of gold, it’s the currencies that have changed, i.e. become weaker.  Note that when FDR thuggishly declared it illegal for Americans to own gold, it was set at $20/oz; as of today, it’s more than $1,800/oz, or in other words the USD has depreciated more than 90% of its gold standard value, and falling rapidly.

So when we are told that the new proposed taxes will only affect the rich and corporations, realize that the real, yet stealth but most insidious of taxes, i.e. monetary inflation, will affect us all, and that kind of inflation is not “transitory”, unless of course you believe that the US will cease MMT, pay down its $30T debt, balance the budget, cut spending, and restore a monetary standard for dollar stability; now that would be fiscally responsible, but forgive me if I just don’t see that happening any time soon.

So to all Americans who profess their desire for America to travel the failed route of socialism, sadly I think we’ve arrived, and neither the journey nor the destination is any fun. I’m at the point politically where I am agreeing more and more with the Polish political scientist Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewsk, who observed that “A libertarian is someone who graduated from thinking that there are problems with the state to realizing that the state is the problem.”

A Silly People

Recently a close relative sent me a transcript of Bill Maher’s diatribe at the close of his recent show about how America has become a nation of silly people. Maher used China as a comparative foil to illustrate how we’ve become so focused on meaningless things like renaming stuff, or self-destructive policies like eliminating merit, or woke insanity like debating if Mr. Potato Head has a penis, that we are losing the battle for the future.

While he described questionable feats of infrastructural engineering as fact, he failed to mention that China has built some cities that are vacant, and only briefly acknowledged the atrocities committed against the Uyghur Muslims, his point does have validity regarding the societal silliness that pervades much of our national dialogue.

However, Maher fails the freedom test when he proposes that “There’s got to be something between an authoritarian government that tells everyone what to do and a representative government that can’t do anything at all.” This kind of thinking is what got us into the silliness sink hole to begin with. The woke movement, while silly in so many ways, is also dangerous in a very insidious way. It presupposes that there is but one way to think about everything, and if you don’t agree with that you’re up for cancellation. It really doesn’t matter if such authoritarianism comes from a central committee or a majoritarian occult.

But the message that Maher’s rant provides needs to be considered even if it has these flaws.  America was once a very serious country, and like most imperfect in many ways.  That we were capable of seeing and freely talking about our faults is what made for a civil society, which created tolerance for others who may think and live differently than ourselves. What has happened in America is a decline in civility, the absence of the live and let live ethos where now we must all think alike, even about whether or not Dr. Seuss books need a dose of revisionism. We are replacing what is important to think about with hardly thinking at all; yes, that is a silly people.

It is also true of Maher’s rant that China, while still politically repressive, has made incredible progress since it allowed a more free market. China will continue having growing pains as the results of a free market collide with its statist politics. What still baffles me is how America, with about a fifth of China’s population, remains the largest economy in the world.  That may not last too much longer as China’s economy continues to grow; its outsized population alone is a key factor driving that reality.

The dynamism of the American economy was due to the synergy of a free society and a free market; the two elements were inseparable and essential for its economic dominance.  As we politically veer toward more authoritarianism and economic interventionism, coupled with our insatiable military adventurism that depletes our financial and human resources, our dynamism will decline at the same time as China’s could exponentially rise.

China does not dwell on social justice; fact is it doesn’t really dwell on justice much at all.  It is all about results and at any costs. There is no pluralism in China. If you are not ethnically a Han, which represents nearly 92% of the population, you are treated as a second class citizen, or worse like the Uyghurs. This has been the way in China long before Mao and there is little indication that will change anytime soon. If you are not in harmony with The State Council, the central governing body, politically controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, you will find yourself in a pretty bad place as the people in Hong Kong know all too well.

In recent US media articles and congressional hearings, praise was expressed for how China handles the internet.  Now talk about how silly Americans can be, we the champions of free speech and expression, literally “kowtowing” to a repressive regime like China. This was not a polarizing moment by the way as both political parties are guilty of such obscene behavior. China’s motivation for such censorship is obvious, but what are leaders in a free press and representative government thinking when they say such silly things; perhaps, they are not thinking at all, or perhaps only thinking of how they too can control people.

These tendencies to undermine what made America such a dynamic country is worse than silly, it’s self-destructive. It ignores or denigrates our heritage, both the good and the bad; we need to understand the differences in order to focus on what it takes to make things better. You can’t change the past, and to make a better future you have to live in the present, not some silly Bizarro World where you hold the living responsible for things that happened before they were even born.

You will not see China practice such self-deprecation; they’re all about moving forward, albeit in lockstep if they know what’s good for them. America used to be all about the future.  Now we seem stuck in a hopeless time trap about making amends for things that happened that we had little if anything to do with; there’s no vision in that, and therefore no way to live productively. While it’s important to learn from history, it’s even more important to put what you learn to work for you.

For example, many of today’s financial news reporters were gushing about how many people found jobs last month, far more than expected. Some of the more observant and serious reporters, while positive about the good news, noted the more sobering reality that this was not about real growth but an economy opening up again.  One of the important details they stressed was that many of the jobs will not be coming back as companies are learning the benefits of the technology they had to live with during the lock downs; the future for mindless and repetitive labor means fewer lower end jobs. This was already true pre-pandemic; it just accelerated out of necessity. People will need to change with the times and learn new skills in this technological revolution, or be left behind. It’s no different than what happened during the Industrial Revolution, an historical lesson in creative destruction.  China sees this and is not getting caught up in myopic thinking about how to keep antiquated jobs on life support in order to appease a segment of its labor force. Here in the US, the cronyism between unions and government is continuing to be a drag on real economic progress; another example of what silly people do.

When President Macron of France in a recent speech rejected the woke movement in the US, stating that France needs to focus on and embrace what really matters in life, you know that when such criticism comes from the French you must really look silly in the eyes of the world. The US needs to get serious again and embrace our heritage of ingenuity, productivity, and a great work ethic, and shed this miasma of silly thinking and reject the government’s efforts to make us dependent on their stimulus. After all, it’s our future at stake, and that’s no silly matter.

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