"The Land of Lies"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"There is so much dislocation, disorientation and overall social, political, cultural and economic crisis all around us. It can be difficult even to glimpse the whole, much less keep up with the chaos. Any single human mind can only comprehend a bit of it at a time. But somehow certain news items boil to the top as perfectly emblematic of the loss of trust in our times.
The top symbol for today is surely that the White House spokesperson Jen Psaki came down with COVID-19 - or I should say at least she tested positive. False positives are common. She says her symptoms are minor “thanks to the vaccine” but there is no way to know that. The striking thing is that her masks, distancing and jabs did not stop infection. Further, her fully vaccinated family is likely the source of the spread.
Why Won’t They Tell Us the Truth? Even at this late date (we are 21 months into this nonsense), the most obvious truths are still being obfuscated by the likes of Psaki, namely that this is a mild sickness for nearly everyone and a severe threat only to those who are approaching the average age of death otherwise or those with comorbidities.
All data bear this out. It has been stable for the entire pandemic and yet you have the presidential spokesperson continue to act as if this virus were an equally mortal threat to the whole population, herself included. She has spent her whole tenure stigmatizing people who get COVID and claiming that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And yet the kabuki dance she has pushed for the better part of a year finally did not protect her against the dreaded fate of contracting COVID. Of course her symptoms will likely be mild, and this is true with or without the vaccine she has personally pushed on the entire population even at the expense of people’s livelihoods.
A more grim symbol of the subterfuge, duplicity and overall fraudulence of the public messaging on this whole thing is harder to imagine.
The Land of Lies: But of course it is only the beginning of the lies that completely enveloped public culture today. Here’s a partial list:
● We’ve got the Fed out there saying that inflation is minor and controllable. False. By every measure, we are already in double digits as bad as in the late 1970s.
● We’ve got the administration claiming that there is no problem paying for trillions in spending, and the debt-to-GDP ratio is at historical highs.
● We’ve got the head of the Treasury suggesting that there is no downside to spying on every bank account in real-time and pillaging billionaires merely for holding assets.
● We’ve got a media that is not even reporting on the massive loss of confidence in the president, who is undergoing a record-breaking slide from tolerance to huge public loathing.
● We have the most striking hatred between the states (red vs. blue) in more than 150 years, with an open war of words happening on a daily basis.
● The U.S. economy is on the verge of another dive into recession following the depression of the last 20 months, further dooming the prospects for the middle class to find their way back to progress.
●The public sector is being shaved of 5–10% of its workforce due to the vaccine mandate, which might sound good to libertarians, but these are people who collect trash, process driver’s licenses, put out fires and drive buses and trains.
● So many professionals are being fired - sorry, put on unpaid leave - that it is impossible to keep up. It is hitting academia and technology.
● Pilots around the country are continuing their full-scale revolt, forcing the daily cancelation of flights in the thousands, making it very difficult even to travel around the country. The companies blame the weather.
● Big Tech is doubling and tripling down on censorship. Just two weeks ago, LinkedIn claimed not to be doing it. Now it is routine, while the rest of the big boys have become mouthpieces for the regime.
If only one of these trends had happened in normal times, it would have dominated the headlines. But in times of chaos, it becomes difficult to focus and easier for the elites to sneak around to intensify the pain on the public.
Safety in Numbers: Trying to read the tea leaves on the historical narrative can be a challenge and filled with fallibility. But based on my reading today, I’m confident that we are living through a major shift in the narrative. It’s good and bad but it is real.
I would compare it to World War II, the Great War, the Civil War or the American Revolution. Something dramatic has changed. Our expectations for stability have been shattered. It is a hinge upon which what happens in the coming year will remake the world in unpredictable ways. We are all learning what it must have been like to live in the Soviet Union in its last decades. We know they are lying and they know we know. But it all continues anyway. I’m thinking not just of government spokespeople but also even respectable media.
For example, I’ve read The Wall Street Journal’s report on the flight cancellations by American Airlines. The journalist certainly knew for sure that the reason was an employee strike against the vaccine mandate. But the journalist said NOTHING about this, not even a hint. He only referred to weather problems and staff issues related to the pandemic. Give me a break. In the old days, at least they would bury the truth at the end of articles. Now they erase it completely. The only way to find out what’s going on anymore is to be part of information networks that exist beneath the surface, like this newsletter.
“This Time It Is Different”: How serious is the unraveling going to get? Generations in the U.S. have been spared a serious monetary crisis. This time it is different. The monetary crisis will unfold in ways we’ve not seen before. When the dollar was last under this much challenge, gold served as a refuge, but mostly for the elites. The rest of everyone else got pillaged. This time we also have these new fun tools called cryptocurrencies. There are thousands of them. They are democratized. Everyone can get involved.
They are so attractive now that governments want to monopolize them. Fat chance! It is too late for that. In fact, with global supply chains broken at the same time the dollar is decaying and U.S. debt is facing possible default, it is too late for the order to hold. I imagined six months ago that we could ride out the next year and a half until a new wave of political leaders could make a go of it. I no longer believe that.
But wait, am I being too pessimistic? Is there a new sign that the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way, that Americans are beginning to fight back against the madness? Tune in tomorrow..."
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