Remember in 2015 when Hillary Clinton lost the election and disappeared into her dressing room suite for 12 hours after the 2016 election, sending John Podesta out to concede to her disconsolate supporters and her privately calling to concede to President-elect Donald Trump?
To make matters worse, recently we were subjected to the hubris of her reading her presumptive acceptance speech, this has to be the height of ego, a case of no shame, or maybe just a monumental lack of self-awareness.
Even if you were, or frighteningly you still are, with Hillary you surely know that this pathetic bit of navel-gazing pablum has been re- messaged and lovingly massaged by her and several professional speech writers who at some point must have pled with her to just ‘let it go’; even you have to be grateful that this woman never led America.
She so obviously loves herself so much and hates America so thoroughly that in her campaign she asks her minions to be with her, shouldn’t she profess that I’m with you’ rather than wanting her supporters to tag along like ducklings?
But that is not what this epoch has given us. The society, and the politicians that represent it are mostly narcissistic backbenchers, relying on pollsters, talking heads, and handlers to tell them which way the political winds blow, not so they better know how to serve the people but so they can get elected and govern in their own best interest or more usually the interest of their benefactors to reap financial gain and political power. I suppose this is to be expected when you need ever-increasing piles of money and campaigns that stretch from election to election to ‘serve the people.’
We are living in a political and economic paradigm that is not unique in human history; while there are definite differences between our present situation and the Weimar Republic and the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and Bourbon France, you can still draw parallels that bring some of our problems into focus such as out of control monetary debasement by the government, vote-buying by political and monetary favoritism, and political retribution against detractors of the regime.
The Roman Empire was the technological and political wonder of that Epoch. It gave us the Appian Way, the Coliseum, and bathhouses (running water) but also gave us gladiatorial contests to the death, Nero, and feeding Christians to the lions. And the Romans were fated to deteriorate for many other reasons not least of which was the propensity of every great power to overspend their treasury and have to resort to the debasement of their currency to pay for wars and social programs.
That is exactly what has happened in America and as Senator Robert Dole said “A government that seizes control of the economy for the good of the people ends up seizing control of the people for the good of the economy.“
This is easily seen in the situation in not only the American government but the relationship to governments and their citizens around the world. This is profoundly apparent in Australia. That country, originally founded as a penal colony of the British empire and, I assumed to be, a tough contrarian society not given to having their freedom curtailed, is currently fighting against authoritarian covid measures, lockdowns, and the like, and is losing. Protests are met with stricter measures and quarantines enforced by incarceration.
Governments are like children, they will be as bad as we allow them to be. This is true everywhere and in all ages.
Exileseries.com shows what happens when totalitarian governments are left unchecked.
The regimes of the CCP and Western Asia, Iran, Syria etc.. are brutal and totalitarian and bent on bringing their ideology to the West. China is well documented in watching each citizen in pursuit of assigning a credit score for behavior that is good or bad according to the issue the CCP is judging at the moment. But should you be caught not doing what you are commanded, punishment can be awarded anytime the regime wants.
Of course the Western countries are not innocent of these excesses themselves. If you live in the US, as I do, you must have noticed the proliferation of ‘spy’ cameras. On every corner, intersection and large retail complex are camera arrays. Innocuous, but ever-present, traffic cameras, security cameras public and private, watch silently from perches that are both obvious and not obvious. Some are meant to convey a sense of security that your car or your person is safe in this parking lot. Or maybe the intersection is monitored in case you are involved in an accident your lawyers can determine fault. And some cameras are tucked away in hallways or behind smoked glass. I can find no literature specifically admitting to monitoring the citizenry via these eyes in the sky but knowing what we do about CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, EPA, JSOC, etc. With that massive data collection and retention; do you still think they have any problem with ‘spying’ on us?
The West is committing financial and cultural suicide and the left’s insistence on achieving as quickly as possible speaks to an intentional destruction of Western values and their institutions.
Deficits don’t matter until they are the reason for the collapse of the dollar, after all. Just look at the financial collapses of the aforementioned regimes- Rome, Bourbon France, and Weimar Germany. Money printing matters, whatever Jerome Powell and Co. say.
What is clear is that the West isn’t in a good spot. When you look at our drift toward despotism and the destruction of our currency, it’s more obvious than ever that we’re in a tight spot from which we need to make massive changes to recover. Otherwise, our path will be that path of Rome in the 5th Century, Weimar Germany under von Papen, or France under Louis XVI.
By: David Gignac
