As we start the new year, what might we expect to see in the year 2024? What are the likely surprises? And what is not even talked about at all by the MSM, but is on the minds of many Americans?
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It’s a presidential election year, which many prognosticators claim should be a normal-to-good year in the stock market as incumbent politicians seek to assure voters and investors that all is well in Washington, DC and all the state capitals.
Americans would love a return to normal times after years of the government’s Covid Chaos and a quarter century of the Fed’s Frankenstein monetary policy.
Opening the WSJ (1/2/24) Tuesday morning, the lead headline was Investors’ Hope for 2024: A Return to Long-Lost Normalcy: Many think markets can find a more stable equilibrium after recent rate increases. Everyone can hope!
Our collective hope--investors and otherwise--however, seems very misplaced and a moment’s reflection reveals that we are a very divided people in 2024. Biden voters hate and fear Trump and the Republicans; Trump voters hate and fear Biden and the Democrats. Vilification, impeachment, and criminal charges are the new political process. What does that tell you about the outcome of the election in November where one of the two will win?
In the last episode of the Minor Issues podcast, I pointed out that all the primary sectors and markets of the economy have been greatly disturbed by government intervention and are in various states of disarray, a bad thing. Also, we pointed out that our traditional political institutions are also in chaos, which is potentially a good thing. The problem is that while markets have built-in systems of correction and renewal, the political sphere could potentially vacate its traditional orbit and cause catastrophic consequences.
As a people we have been whipped up into a millennialist fever, but one led by self-anointed surrogates, i.e., Neocons, Progressives, Globalists, and Environmentalists who gleefully pass judgements, proclaim imagined “new eras” and back utopian fantasies, such as the Great Reset. The prospects are scary and disastrous, but with the US government’s evil fingers dug in on both the Western Front and in the Holy Land, you can almost hear the Doomsday’s Clock ticking. More stable minds must prevail.
Even stepping back a bit, it certainly can conjure up images of revolution and civil war, even here in the USA. In one public opinion poll 52 percent of Republicans, 36 percent of Democrats, and 23 percent of Independents sided with the idea that the US is facing a new civil war. The Center for Politics recently reported polling results from last fall that more than 2/3rds of Biden and Trump voters viewed the other side as doing lasting harm to the country, with half viewing the other side as threats to the American way of life and 40 percent of both agreeing it is acceptable to use violence to prevent the other side from achieving their goals. HT: Michael Oliver @MSA
Revolution and civil war would have, as they always have had, disastrous consequences and that is why I mentioned above that “the political sphere could vacate its traditional orbit and cause catastrophic consequences.”
Peaceful secession is obviously a better way out of this mess. Breaking up or “National Divorce” would at least put disgruntled groups at a distance and allow them to pursue their own peculiar majoritarian agendas. However, secession is messy, time consuming, and can degenerate. It’s certainly not what the leaders of the evil cabal overlording this political mess want and it’s a good way to start.
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The most direct way to a peaceful solution is that we all be willing to put the self-enrichment of the individual as our highest goal and the highest goal of society. This means denigrating the State in all its aspects and the neutering of all its functions. It means no subsidies or special privileges, it means sink or swim, it means no grand schemes to control the world or for micromanaging the buying and selling between persons, and it only requires respect of other peoples’ property rights down to the level of not forcing your neighbor to mow her lawn.
The solution requires a Founding Father’s view of Religion and other ideals. It requires an Anti-Federalist view of the State, and it requires us to put William Gramm Sumner’s “Forgotten Man” in charge of all taxes and government spending.
To paraphrase Carl Jung, you can put a million zeros together, but it does not add up to a single “one.” Ultimately, the quality of society depends on the quality of the individual. The quality of the individual requires a rebirth of the spirit, and the rebirth of the spirit requires freedom, not obedience to the State. That should be clear.
That’s what made this country great and Americans the most hardworking, happy, and charitable people, a most literate, inventive and entrepreneurial people—a people of great character and a nation of great characters.
Right now, Americans have circled the wagons and are ready to fight. That is exactly what the vile cabal wants. If instead we could all agree on the social principle of freedom and the self-enrichment of the individual, we could begin to dismantle the State and recover the American dream.
