Executive
Who really has the power in 2022?
Hello this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 7th day of January 2022, as well as the first Friday of a new year. Instead of a year in review this Report will focus more on what in my opinion is most likely to happen in the upcoming year. What are the trends that we can expect to continue and get stronger, and what trends will weaken and perhaps die?
Insights from Dickens
I spent Christmas with Joan and my sister, and we had a wonderful time together. My sister told me about the morning worship of the Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, and I’ve been listening to that each day, but perhaps the best gift and the inspiration for this title, was the Dean’s reading of the Charles Dickens novel, A Christmas Carol. He read the book in three parts, and it was wonderful to hear it in his English accent. The ghost of Christmas future, as you may recall showed Scrooge what his future would be like unless he changed. Scrooge asked the ghost if what he was seeing was what had to happen or what might happen, but he received no reply.
Christianity as foundation of Western civilization
Dickens’ novel was and is a part of and an example of the Civilization of the West, or Christian Civilization that I often remind you deserves to be preserved. By way of explanation, I defer to the words of Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.1
Every great family and every great civilization has some roots in sin and crimes. What the western world has forgotten is that they also have roots in accomplishments, moral, artistic, cultural, economic, political. We should not forget that man is fallen. There are good and evil that contend for his soul. It was Christianity that gave the powerless a voice capable of challenging the voice of raw power. It was this voice, together with material interests, that produced accountable government, itself subject to a rule of law.
Well, amen Dr. Roberts and thank you for reminding us so eloquently of what we have lost. Let’s let Dr. Roberts continue for a moment.
Today the rule of law is disappearing. The US Constitution is in tatters. Everyone has become a tyrannical dictator. Not only presidents, chancellors, and prime ministers, but also employers, school boards, university administrators, mayors, governors, airlines, restaurants, sports organizations, issue mandates that are violations of the Nuremburg Laws laid down by the United States at the WW II war crime tribunals. Now the government in Washington refuses to obey its own creation, finding that Big Pharma profits, control over citizens, and perhaps darker agendas are more important than the rule of law.
Battles ahead in 2022
Well, that about says it for Western man and the rule of law except that the war against those things will continue and accelerate during 2022. That is, however, just one of many battles being fought in 2022. It is indeed curious why few if any, especially in congress, raise a voice of protest no matter how many wars are fought and lost, no matter how many trillions of dollars are wasted on them, and no matter how many lives are destroyed or ruined by them.
Right now, in 2022 we confront Russia across the plains of Ukraine. Some experts tell us we must confront the Russians there or we will lose credibility. That philosophy is insane and was probably cooked up by lunatics who have never confronted any armies across anything. Ukraine is on the border of Russia and is therefore a strategically important territory for them. Putin will never allow American or NATO forces to take root there nor should he. Surely there is someone in Washington who is not so blind he cannot see that.
Against China
China’s aggressive defense of what it perceives as its sovereign right to the South China Sea and other Asian territories are another matter. China seems to believe that the water in question has not been referred to as the South China Sea for decades for no reason. In any event the Chinese dump millions of tons of soil and rocks on some below water islands and then start building military bases on them.
They then take the view that because they have bases there, the territory is Chinese territory. Other nations have legitimate claims, but perhaps Russia could help defuse some of the tension and address those claims before the United States goes to war with a nuclear armed country. The US leadership will have to decide how many troops, ships, etc., they are willing to sacrifice to keep Taiwan as Taiwan and not China. Is this just Manifest Destiny now referred to as American exceptionalism or is there more to it. The best study of Manifest Destiny or the moving of Americans relentlessly westward is Frederick Jackson Turner’s book The Significance of The Frontier in American History.
Does war take the place of a frontier of exploration and settlement?
That book portrays how the restless drive to conquer the frontier when no longer there led to the concentration of people in mass cities with all their related social problems. Perhaps this frontier’s end also influenced Americans to continue their move westward to first Hawaii, then other areas of the Far East. Just a thought folks, it’s probably nothing.
People never grow tired of war and there are plenty more wars in Washington’s buffer. We can’t forget about the war on drugs and the war on poverty continuing but already lost. Their vast sums of money wasted and often worse than wasted, and their thousands of harmless people languishing in prison, and millions doomed to welfare dependency and poverty for generations. As pundits say though, money doesn’t disappear it just moves around so many were impoverished, and many were made wealthy.
The dumbest wars in American history are thankfully over at least in part. The 20-year war in Afghanistan resulting in a humiliating loss capped a 30 year 8 trillion-dollar effort in the Middle East that continues in part at least to this day. We are distracted now though and pivoting to the Far East so Middle Easterners can get back to their 1000-year-old ethnic conflicts and killing each other. We are still engaged in the war on terror as far as I know, and the safest bet is that wars and rumors of wars will continue in 2022.
War as metaphor in 2022
War on terror is, I suppose, a war against nobody, and nobody benefits from its continuance except that complex which President Eisenhower warned us about in 1959. Killing, death, economic privation are all things that are undeniably attractive to the average power seeking, world improving, lunatic.
Which war will I talk about next? Will it be virus wars, climate wars, systemic racism, inflation, currency destruction, all claptrap to one extent or another, but all must be fought throughout 2022 with the expenditure of trillions of course. Let’s look at some of the other poppycock that passes for gospel or at least popular belief in 2022. The world’s temperature needs to be controlled and that can be done by reducing carbon dioxide or carbon emissions.
If that premise were true, the next question would be can humanity do anything to control the climate keeping in mind that climate and whether are different. President Biden would have been embarrassed recently if he were capable of feeling embarrassment, by his statement that the tornados in Kentucky were the result of climate change. A host of many scientists pointed out that weather and climate are different. Once again, the expenditure of trillions that do not exist, the destruction of any remaining industry in America and the pushing of the middle class further toward the bottom are all the results of the government’s war on the change in climate that government tells us is a real problem.
Inflation
If that were all folks, it would be plenty but there’s more. We are expected that with grossly inadequate tax revenue and no available credit, the Federal Reserve can simply create all the extra money that it wants and there will be no economic damage whatsoever. This bit of nonsense along with all the other bits of nonsense involves giving the power elite, those who already have plenty, more of everything especially more in their bank accounts, but also more to use for vote buying and to cover the fact that it is all an illusion. More unrestrained power to manage the lives of everyone else.
What do I mean by that? Inflation results when the money supply increases rapidly relative to production. We are not producing enough, we are not making, saving, or investing, yet there is more and more money. Those factors come together to make money worth less and less. When gas is $3.50 this week and it was $3.00 last week the gas isn’t suddenly more valuable, the money is less valuable. The government wants slight inflation, so its debt service is cheaper, but massive inflation like we have now, is destructive and people start screaming.
Government creates problems; it does not solve them.
People scream about food prices and since the government controls everything it is logical to look to the government to solve all problems. Rather that telling the American people the truth and that is that inflation is the result of FED policies over the last 100 years but especially since 2007 when the great bailouts began, the first government response is to blame inflation on the private sector. He could also have truthfully said that the cure might possibly be worse than the disease at this point because an increase in interest rates to slow the economy and take excess money from it will most likely lead to recession or worse.
Given President Biden’s history I expected him to send everyone of a certain tax bracket a pound of hamburger, but no he decided to give 1 billion of our tax dollars (not really, its fake money folks, but you get the idea) to small meat packers to help lower their prices and destroy those evil large meat packers who have caused all this inflation. I suppose the only answer is that after decades of government propaganda disguised as education, he can surmise that we are all complete idiots. What gives him the right to assume such powers? Nothing, he simply grabs the power and nobody in congress does a thing, so their branch grows weaker, but their party grows stronger.
Who is powerful – and culpable – in 2022?
In conclusion, who is responsible for all this war, disease, poverty, privation, bloodshed, and economic destruction, corruption, and stupidity that we predict for 2022? Who really has the power to control events? Is it the president, perhaps the joint chiefs, members of congress individually or collectively, or maybe the media, or the billionaires? It seems that everyone is constrained by something. The president is ruled by public opinion and congress has to be reelected. Billionaires have to make profits for shareholders, and generals have to win battles. Media must please those same few the billionaires must please.
Power, then, is not in one body but in a complex network of individuals and organizations all pulling in different directions. Perhaps that is why it is so difficult to effect change. The complex network is openly contemptuous of the people and of anyone who is foolish enough to attempt change.
Finally, folks, that’s all the war, disease, starvation, economic privation, government corruption, stupidity, bullying and complete idiocy that we can stand in 2022. We are losing and perhaps have lost the battle for Western Civilization and for the constitution so what is the point of continuing the fight. To hold off total inequity and totalitarianism as long as possible. Stay in the fight and be faithful. Happy 2022 folks.
At least that’s the way I see it.
Until next time folks,
This is Darrell Castle.
From the author’s website; appears here by permission.
Reference:
1 Roberts PC, “Russia is the Last Remaining Christian Country,” Institute for Political Economy. Dateline 29 December 2021
Darrell Castle is an attorney in Memphis, Tennessee, a former USMC Combat Officer, 2008 Vice Presidential nominee, and 2016 Presidential nominee. Darrell gives his unique analysis of current national and international events from a historical and constitutional perspective. You can subscribe to Darrell's weekly podcast at castlereport.us
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