Trump’s epitaph must include credit for injecting “fake news” into the lexicon. You are reading these words via alternative media born in response to the industrialization of fake news. The news business is zero-sum. Every lost NY Times or Washington Post subscriber becomes a Twitter, YouTube, Rumble, Gateway Pundit, etc. viewer. The industry just experienced a staggering crisis of trust over the Biden coverup.
The overall financial implications of continuous erosion of trust in government have yet to be grasped. For homework, online search: fake+u.s.+government+economic+statistics. Especially significant will be the coming de facto credit downgrading resulting from the Biden fiasco. Credit is from the Latin credere, to believe. Biden shines a spotlight on government/media lies of all flavors, awakening creditors to our extreme government trust deficit.
America’s economy is sustained by creditors’ willingness to purchase our bonds. The Biden affair ripped the bandage off the festering wound from a century of continuous lies, financial and otherwise. Accelerating money creation and debt accumulation relies on lies and wishful thinking. Investors, domestic and foreign, have yet to dump U.S. government bonds. The key word is “yet.” A special kind of stupid is required to exchange cash (even fake U.S. cash) for 30-year Treasury bonds and expect them to be honored. Honor left the building decades ago.
A political reckoning obviously follows Biden’s unmasking, now a distraction preventing focus on a potential November landslide encompassing down-ticket races across the board. Senate and House control is at stake. There are financial and political sides to the coin. Total focus on the political misses upcoming equally significant financial consequences.
In the Great War’s wake in 1919, Yeats composed The Second Coming, the ultimate commentary on his and our chaotic times,
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The “ceremony of innocence” was shattered after the blood-dimmed limousine sped from Dealey Plaza. Subsequent years witnessed centrifugal forces tearing apart the center. The Vietnam War, a 500,000-troop, 58,220-dead atrocity, spawned the antiwar movement. Public trust in government was an additional casualty of Vietnam. Nixon’s Silent Majority arose in response, and from exploitation of the employed classes. It represented a reconfiguration of the center. He was re-elected in a 49-state landslide when voters were offered a centrist alternative. Reagan’s revolution targeted oppressive government; another 49-state re-election blowout followed.
Ponder the “passionate intensity” of the worst among us, the Left: a motley collection of Democrats, state media, lawfare prosecutors and judges, Antifa, BLM, Hamasniks, 51 intelligence professionals, the FBI (perpetrator of the largest armed robbery in American history), etc. Or the passionate intensity of Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney (sadly missed), Stephanie Plaskett, AOC, Rachael Maddow, professional actor Lawrence O’Donnell, or Mayorkas. Or Mr. Congeniality, perpetually perturbed former DCI John Brennan, incensed over the SCOTUS presidential immunity ruling:
By rewriting the rule that has governed presidential authority for the past 235 years — that no one, not even a president, is above the law — the court has given a green light to any future president inclined to wield his or her executive authority irrespective of the laws that apply to all other citizens and residents of the U.S. King George III would be pleased. . . . Their ruling will have deeply disturbing practical consequences if an unprincipled and politically corrupt individual is ever elected president of the United States in the future. . . . potential criminal charges a corrupt and vengeful president could direct the Department of Justice to pursue.
Whatever. One questions the sincerity of these hysterical actors. Our schadenfreude meter’s needle is now pegged as Democrats rush to close the drapes exposing their civil war. The Biden mess is only a sideshow distracting from Democrats’ pre-existing, existential problems.
Yeats experienced the first great movement of history’s bloodiest century. The second movement reached its crescendo at mid-century, including the deaths of 65 million during China’s Cultural Revolution and millions more from the Vietnam conflict as the tempo wound down. Mao’s Great Leap Forward preceded Biden’s Build Back Better.
A new, peaceful center is coalescing. The Ukraine and Hamas conflicts represent ahistorical anomalies running counter to the developing new order. They would never have occurred absent the 2020 election theft. A tide of bloodshed rose over the previous two centuries, beginning with Napoleon’s wars. The Abraham Accords previewed our century’s peaceful destiny as that tide recedes.
This election revolves around issues of trust. Forget all other factors confronting Democrats — Kamala, the economy, or border crisis. The election was decided on June 27. Not only was the emperor naked, his party and media enablers were exposed before the cameras. The debate aftermath only magnifies their predicament. Fool us once, shame on you. Neither voters or media consumers will forget.
There was a time when a majority actually believed our government. Pollsters have quantified the erosion of trust. Pew identified a peak of 77% in 1964, a full 55% above the current level. Gallup puts the current number disbelieving the lone nut gunman explanation for the JFK assassination at 65%, static over the past decade but “higher between 1976 and 2003.” Immediately after the assassination, 52% believed in a conspiracy. The objective of the Warren Commission’s report — 16,000 pages, 27 volumes — was to bury the truth. It failed. Ditto for the J6 “select” committee.
Disbelievers increased to 81% in 1976, followed by a steady deterioration since. Why? Probably because younger generations are unfamiliar with the subject. Why the 1976 peak? That year the House Select Committee on Assassinations was formed, eventually concluding: “The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” And: “The committee believes on the basis of the circumstantial evidence available to it, that there is a likelihood that James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a result of a conspiracy.”
Gallup identified a credibility gap between Democrats and Republicans. “Democrats, [and] college-educated adults [are] less likely to say it was a conspiracy.” 39% of Democrats believe in an assassination conspiracy; 55% of Republicans. Grouped by education level, those least likely to believe in a conspiracy possess graduate degrees. Consider what this implies regarding universities/indoctrination camps. Remaining Democrats increasingly consist of the gullible. Rational ones are fleeing.
The world’s oldest political party crawled into its deathbed by aligning with someone Obama warned must not be underestimated for an unrivaled ability to screw things up. Anarchy was loosed. Down-ticket consequences, reaching every precinct, may be profound. Political trust is ephemeral; once lost it can’t be retrieved. A direct line connects Dealey Plaza to CNN’s Atlanta debate debacle.
Oppenheimer’s quote at the Trinity nuclear test can be reformulated: Biden has become Death, destroyer of worlds. Ably assisted by his press secretary, destroying her party’s little remaining trust while John Kirby sings backup. Democrats are riding a thermonuclear implosion.
Douglas Schwartz blogs about history, politics, and economics at The Great Class War.
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