Slaying The Dragon

“All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither; deep roots are not reached by the frost..”

― J.R.R. Tolkien

The newscycle moves so fast these days that I often have to slow down and take a moment to sit in silence to think about the cultural and political landscape.

I want to take a moment to explain why because I think that doing my best to offer some level of understanding will help me to communicate to you why I take the time to do this perhaps for reasons that you may or may not be able to deduce even if you’re a regular reader, or listener to this show.

First of all, I have often heard people over the years talk about how they wished that the media would just report the news without injecting their own bias. Now on the surface that sounds nice, but in reality there’s just simply no such thing as unbiased media. Humans by our very nature are biased. Personal bias is an inherent trait within all people and as long as humans have anything to do with the reporting and creation of stories there will always be bias within those stories.

In fact, every news story involves an intentional bias because someone had to shape the story in a way to create a narrative before the story gets pushed out in front of the cameras, or onto the printing press.

Typically such stories need to be sensationalized with eye catching headlines which drives viewership, subscriptions, and ultimately more advertising dollars. After all, for years the common phrase if it bleeds, it leads was the motivation for which stories would be pushed to the frontlines in order to drive viewership for the mass Administrative State Media (ASM). At the end of the day catchy headlines drive views and sooner or later those views turn into money.

I mean in reality all media requires sponsors, or financial backing of some kind because people have to earn a living. However, the problem with the ASM is that it’s been an apparatus that has been in complete control of the flow of information for the majority of the country now for a very long time.

Because of this they have had the money, manpower, and distribution to reach the masses with whatever narrative they have desired to push forward to their viewing audience. When you take this combined with the fact that they have been in bed with the government for so long they have had a monopoly on the flow of information.

This uncomfortable reality is something that still may not sit well with a bunch of people reading, or listening to this episode, but it’s a fact. In addition to this with everything going on in the world during this Fourth Turning the newscycle moves really fast which means there’s a flooding of the zone with information.

It’s because of this flood that I have to sit in silence to focus on the cultural and political landscape so that I can get a visual on the narrative that I want to create in order to present my own story to you.

That’s right, I’m narrative driven as well and I’m not going to pretend that I’m not because that would be dishonest. However, at the end of the day in the world of information warfare you will have choices placed in front of you concerning narrative and counter-narrative and it’s up to you to choose what you want to believe, as well as which media outlets you choose to support in the process.

The Accurate Meaning of Labels

I know it’s close to Christmas and given the current digital world we live in I realize that you probably do a great deal of your shopping online, however the reality is that many customers still hit the malls and department stores and turn out in big numbers during this time of year.

Even if you’re an online shopper I’m sure you’ve still managed to venture out to the malls and department stores during this part of the year from time to time. You’ve probably even managed to make it in after the holidays too whenever the stores are looking to clear out the rest of their inventory in order to make room for an entirely new stock of products to kick off the new year.

It’s typically during this time of clearance that you’ll get to benefit from the clearance sales that these department stores and malls will put up to move the old product out in order to make room for the new. It’s at this time that you as the consumer get to benefit from these clearance sales.

In much the same way as our department stores will initiate a clearance after the holidays it’s also apparent that the current state of our country, our government, and economy are in need of a clearance, or a purge, of a bureaucratic and ideological element. It’s obvious that this corrosive element has been rooted in and is directly at fault for both the domestic and global instability that’s spreading throughout the world.

So I want to talk about the word systems and identify which systems are to blame for a significant portion of our domestic and global hardships.

Well to be fair that’s a loaded topic, but for the sake of this discussion I will start by singling out and explaining the current economic system that we find ourselves in regarding our current situation on trade and the dangers associated with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) nefarious mercantilist practices.

I’ve always considered myself to be open minded and able to evolve my thinking of how I view the world, particularly when I learn something new in an area I previously might have been ignorant about until I was able to get my hands around all the information.

I understand that we like to use labels to describe our views and to reflect our belief structure, but in reality I’ve discovered that labels such as Republican, Democrat, Conservative, Liberal, and Libertarian in the reality of the world tend to be fluid in their meaning over time.

The reality is that we have been living in a postmodern society for one, but in addition to this certain terms have been misrepresented, or hijacked by groups of people throughout the political landscape. When this happens these people consistently misuse, or misapply their meaning on a consistent basis over a long period of time which brings a different interpretation of the meaning to such words in the eyes of society over time.

Essentially we should all be more willing to blend the meaning of such labels to describe our own beliefs as those beliefs evolve within the given political and economic system that we find ourselves in. I’ll come back to explain this point further in a bit. In short, we must remain strong on our principles, but be willing to understand where our principles apply to a given situation.

So what do I mean by nefarious mercantilist practices when I reference the CCP?

Well, to explain this we first need to define what mercantilism means in the first place. Basically the goal of mercantilism involves a trade practice where the goal is for a state to increase its supply of gold and silver reserves with exports rather than to deplete them through using imports.

This mercantilist practice was also a strategy that was implemented by the British Empire starting back as early as 1651 to control trade and commerce within its own colonies, as well as with other countries in the outside world through laws that were known as the Navigation Acts.

In fact, the British government had banned a lot of U.S. production so that the manufacturing of military equipment could remain within Great Britain. Fast forward to today and we’re seeing the same sort of strategy regarding our current economic trading relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). We currently find ourselves within an economic system of elite capture.

From Elite Capture To Elite Merger

Once again we tend to use labels to identify ourselves in regards to what we may be more closely aligned with along the political spectrum. In terms of myself I have always considered myself to be more Libertarian in nature.

Now having said this I’ve also evolved in this because the Libertarian philosophy, like everything else, has been turned on its head in a lot of ways in the past four years, particularly regarding the traditional Libertarian stance on foreign trade. Because of this I would say that I’m now probably more accurately described as a Libertarian with a strong Populist lean if there is any such a thing that can exist.

I’ve known many Libertarians, along with many Republicans and Democrats, over the years to refer to the issue of trade, particularly as it relates to our economic trading relationship with China, as being a relationship of free trade. Because of this I’ve also heard many of them say that Donald Trump’s stance on tariffs would result in a very negative outcome leading to a tariff war with China, as well as our other trading partners.

So remember when I said I would come back to talk about how certain words and their meanings get misused and are misapplied to certain situations on a consistent basis? Well this example here with many of my Libertarian, Republican, and Democratic friends using the word free trade to describe the economic trading relationship between the United States and China is a perfect example of the misuse and misapplication of the word and the circumstances that surround it.

This is because the United States and China’s trading relationship doesn’t have anything to do with free trade. No, the United States and China definitely have a trading relationship, but it’s nothing close to being a free trade relationship.

This is not the case because we (here in the United States) have for far too long placed ourselves into a precarious situation by offshoring so much of our manufacturing to our biggest enemy here with China that it has left us all vulnerable regarding our own supply chain and not securing the availability of our own products and goods.

China has obviously not been engaging in free trade, but rather has been engaging in mercantilism. On that note we have allowed this to happen to our country and have found ourselves being more a chief importer from China rather than a dominant exporter of goods.

With that being said, guess who has been trying to stockpile the world’s largest gold supply? Well, since we defined the act of mercantilism as the goal of a state working to increase its gold supply by being a chief exporter of goods, China has shown a record increase of gold stockpiles since 2020 following a dip in gold reserves from 2016-2018. (Source: Statista)

So what changed with China’s gold supply since 2020 compared to their lower accumulation of the precious metal in the three years between 2016-2020?