One of the great things about the Internet Age is the opportunity to discover the words and ideas of people who don’t have publishing contracts or university tenures. Usually written anonymously or under online handles, there is genius lurking everywhere (even in the comment sections of these articles).
One such jewel caught my eye recently: “Imagine a government operated so poorly they had to import an entire nation of new voters because they lost the citizen vote.” Another argued, “If your country has enough money to give to other countries, your taxes are too high.” If our celebrity intellectuals were as pithy as some of the unknown writers who drop pearls across the Internet, critical thinking skills would return to America in no time.
Both those observations above masterfully capture our predicament, don’t they? Now that the USAID scandal has pierced the public’s consciousness, people from all walks of life are admitting that the U.S. government is little more than a money laundering operation for political and financial elites. Congress creates spending bills that award trillions of dollars to bureaucratic agencies, “non-governmental” organizations, and foreign governments. Agency employees take their cut, promise fidelity to the federal Leviathan, and allocate the rest to well-connected private businesses and third parties. The NGOs take their cut, bribe voters and special interest groups, and advocate on behalf of the government and wealthy political donors. Foreign governments take their cut, hand over their countries’ natural resources to multinational conglomerates, and start or manage wars that benefit the military-industrial complex.
Spending bills include funds for NPR, PBS, and countless other state-funded propaganda organs — both inside and outside of the U.S. — so that an army of liars exists to parrot the federal government’s preferred “narratives.” These “narratives” are monetized to enrich corporate firms and further empower central banks. Endless stories about “climate change” justify new carbon taxes, central bank digital currencies, and the nationalization of entire industries. Endless stories about why Americans should fight and die for a corrupt Ukrainian dictatorship justify new defense spending. Endless stories about emerging pandemics justify lockdowns, censorship, and billions more for Big Pharma’s gene-altering “vaccines.” At every step of the way, the Federal Reserve is ready to leverage its power over the U.S. government by conjuring new money with its magic wand that can be used to pay for all these boondoggles, unwinnable wars, and expensive misadventures.
In turn, the companies, banks, and financial elites who most benefit from the U.S. government’s money tree never forget to tip the politicians who allow the great American money laundering operation to continue. Whereas the rest of us go to prison for profiting from insider trading, politicians (and their families and friends) get obscenely wealthy. They invest in defense stocks before starting wars, invest in pharmaceutical stocks before releasing Wuhan bioweapons into the world, and invest in “green energy” companies before passing laws that subsidize solar panels, wind farms, and electric vehicles. Politicians start family foundations that attract a remarkable array of “charitable” donors from the very industries that those politicians regulate, as well as from a slew of prominent foreign officials currying favor with the United States. When those politicians run for re-election, they find that the same multinational corporations that benefit from the federal government’s regulatory and spending priorities are first in line to write new campaign checks.
Hellbound and Down 