People talk a lot about their love of freedom and peace, but we have been in a heightened state where people are a little too eager to sign both away.
October 30, 2023
By: Bobby Casey, Managing Director GWP
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
We are entering the hard times that make strong men. That’s the threshold where people of principle and fair weather virtue signalers get sorted out. Any GenXers out there might imagine the scene from Never-ending Story with the Southern Oracle where individuals were trying to pass through believing they were virtuous and being struck down to dust.
Withdrawal from Afghanistan was long overdue. People were eager to end that occupation. And the best we can say about President Biden’s execution was that he failed successfully. The US is technically out, but by no means was that a clean, precise, or seamless exit. The US went on in reluctant appreciation, while the Ukraine-Russia war was underway.
People, corporations, and countries all rallied behind Ukraine. This of course came in the wake of four years of “Russia Bad!”, and “Russia Collusion” in the news, and no one talking about the influence peddling of Joe and Hunter Biden with Ukraine.
Then support waned for that. People are watching prices hike, wages stagnate, the debt climb and grew tired. The more pressing matters in their respective lives swiftly rose in priority.
And juuuuuust as Republicans in the United States started running on their anti-war platforms, righteously posturing about non-interventionism and America first, here comes an attack on Israel, and the doves instantly turn to hawks.
Here comes another proxy war. The next 12 months are leading up to a general presidential election so you can bet the chest beating and the pissing matches for who wants Hamas deader is going to be spicy.
You got people weary of $4/gallon gas, outrageous grocery bills, and wondering what corners are left to cut to make it through a winter with their electric bills, and Janet Yellen is drunkenly telling us we can totally afford another proxy war. No problem. *hiccough*
Where does it end? Are we jumping in on some China versus Taiwan action next? I hear there’s some fun happening between Armenia and Azerbaijan if we find ourselves bored and not broke enough.
2020 was the advent of a different era. On the one hand, virtual and remote work became widely normalized. On the other a wave of massive civil liberty infringements ran through humanity worldwide. The last time the US saw such a wave was after 9/11 where the NSA just took off with unbridled abandon. Everything from the TSA to the Edward Snowden revelations, and by the way the Patriot Act just quietly gets renewed at every sunset.
People were so fearful, they let it happen. And the same thing happened with the pandemic.
There was a half-hearted attempt to bring back a Covid revival in 2023, but that flopped. So here we are with another proxy war with our most favored nation, Israel.
This nation is so favored, there are 37 states that have laws either banning or discouraging boycotting it in the United States. You can literally boycott other states in the union before you can boycott Israel.
This nation is so favored, you can’t express sympathy for Palestinian civilians, much less question or criticize the Israeli government. You can literally criticize the United States government to no end without issue, question everything it does, and nothing happens. You do that to Israel, in the US, you lose your job.
In case you were wondering, this initiative is brought to you by the right wing politics that was calling the culture warriors on the left snowflakes for their cancelation of everything that offended them.
It used to be when you condemned the riots in 2020 you were a racist. If you challenged the gender stuff on college campuses your existence was “literal violence”. Today, if you say, “please spare the innocent civilians in Palestine”, you’re anti-Semitic.
The same thing happened when you spoke of “blow back” after 9/11. You were “victim blaming” the US and making justifications for what happened. When you questioned the motives of the lockdowns during the pandemic you clearly didn’t care about the elderly and wanted them all to die.
There’s no winning. The substantive conversations that SHOULD be coming out of the dissent and conflict are not. Instead it’s just incoherent shaming and screaming until one side shuts up.
The blows of cancel culture are resulting in people losing their livelihoods for simply holding an opinion. An opinion, albeit, that might not be popular or might offend every corner of your sensibilities, but an opinion nonetheless.
These blows are coming for jobs now, but when wrong speak elevates to a point where political action is tolerated, we have major issues. Governor Ron DeSantis, for example, banned the organization Students for Justice in Palestine from state college campuses.
There are politicians ready to take legal punitive actions against the speech they don’t like. It’s concerning because legal, punitive action in the name of “National Security” coupled with Central Bank Digital Currency is a recipe for dystopia.
On March 9, 2022, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14067. Pay particular attention to section four.
The Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, shall:
(i) within 180 days of the date of this order, provide to the President through the APNSA and APEP an assessment of whether legislative changes would be necessary to issue a United States CBDC, should it be deemed appropriate and in the national interest; and
(ii) within 210 days of the date of this order, provide to the President through the APNSA and the APEP a corresponding legislative proposal, based on consideration of the report submitted by the Secretary of the Treasury under section 4(b) of this order and any materials developed by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
The progress of this has been stalled by House Republicans:
Republicans in the House Financial Services Committee cleared a bill that Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the panel’s chairman, said would ensure “any U.S. CBDC must be explicitly authorized by Congress” and also “protects Americans’ privacy and our financial system from the risks a CBDC would pose.”
…The bill was designed to ban any CBDC pilot programs before they’re proposed, outlaw the Federal Reserve issuing a retail digital currency that could be used for citizen surveillance and require any progress on a government-backed token be explicitly empowered by Congress. While the House progress on CBDC legislation is unprecedented, its future in the Senate is more doubtful.
The US dollar is already hanging by a thread. Tensions are high. But people need to grasp that the times we are in are no longer unprecedented. In fact there is tremendous precedent. There are generations of people who do not know any different from what is happening now, and there are still generations of people that remember a time before 9/11.
Cooler heads must prevail if there’s any chance for freedom and peace. Conversations and ideas are not our enemies. Driving them underground, not only precludes a measured response, whatever freedom and peace you hoped to achieve through tyrannical means will be lost. The moral hazard of chaos and poverty waiting to compound on that is even worse.
The image on this blog is a picture of a boa and a king cobra. The boa is freedom; the king cobra is peace. They are both dead: one from constriction the other from venom. Is this where we are headed?
These are deliberately sensitive and terrifying. The headlines, the constant barrage of news and updates, the heightened responses from all sides… is that not unto itself a form of terrorism on the rest of humanity?
Terrorism is defined as: the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
While there’s nothing unlawful about the shoving of all this information down our throats, the intimidation against civilians in pursuit of political aims is indeed present.
I hope people can have the presence of mind to consider who benefits from your panic. I further hope that people have the presence of mind to recognize that by indulging their panic, they invite another layer of surveillance, control, and manipulation. The situation of the US dollar is precarious to say the very least. Take the necessary precautions to protect yourself and your assets.
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