Shaun Newman Podcast - #621 - Doug Casey

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Best-selling author, world-renowned speculator, and libertarian philosopher. He has lived in 10 countries and visited 175 over his lifetime. We discuss Argentina, the state of Canada and the 2024 US election. SNP Presents returns April 27th Tickets Below:https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone/ Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text: [phone] – and be sure to let them know you’re an SNP listener.

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you know, the Bible, cornerstone, Jesus, we'll see where it goes. We're going to have a little bit of fun Sunday morning, and I hope you'll join us for that as well. Okay, that's all I got for you today. How about we get on to that tale of the tape? He's a best-selling author,

world-renowned speculator, and libertarian philosopher. He's lived in 10 different countries and visited over 175. I'm talking about Doug Casey. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Shaw Numa podcast today.

I'm joined by Doug Casey. So, sir, thanks for giving me some time today. It's my pleasure. I'm speaking to you from Buenos Aires at the moment. I'm going to assume your weather is just a touch better than mine right now. Argentina has one of the best climates in the world. Yes, it is. Northern Alberta.

Not famous for its weather. Famous for its people, I think. Doug, I was saying to this before we started. You know, I've been following along. I've got three older brothers. We read your newsletter, your writing the different people you bring in. That's, you know, show to Alex Craneer because that's how I get in contact with you. And really enjoy your thoughts, your outlook on the world.

But if people have never heard of Doug Casey before, Maybe we could just start with who you are. And you can go for as long or as short as you want with that one. Okay. I wish I could steal Steve Martin's line and say that I was born a poor black sharecropper's son, but it's not true. I guess I first entered the public scene with my first book, International, The International Man, a guidebook to the world's making the most of your personal freedom and financial opportunity around the world.

That book became the largest selling book in the history of Rhodesia, where I spent a lot of time during the war. That was the first thing. My next book was called Crisis Investing, which talked about the decline of the economy, something which got underway in 1971, but has been accelerating ever since then. And a number of books since then. And of course, the blog you mentioned is internationalman.com where I write every week, along with some other really great guys, I've got to say. And I do a podcast weekly with Matt Smith on YouTube called Doug Casey's Take, among other things.

So there we have it. I've traveled to about 155 countries, lived in a dozen. Like I said, right now I'm in Buenos Aires. You know, with, I'm going to pull you back there. You said you were in Rhodesia when you wrote the book during the war. What war are you talking about? And why Rhodesia? Well, a lot of people have forgotten that Rhodesia existed.

It later became Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe and the story of Rhodesia is an interesting one. At the time it had about 250,000 people of the European descent living there. It was the breadbasket of Africa. It was a delightful place. It really was. And there were about 3 million Native blacks, mostly. We were talking about Rhodesia and that it was the bread basket of Africa. I don't know where you want to start again. Well, well, the reason I brought it up, Doug, is you mentioned being, you know, selling a book and it becoming a, you know, a national bestseller.

And then you mentioned Rhodesia during the war. And you were there for the war. I was curious, why Rhodesia and what war? Well, I was in South Africa. Like I said, I spent a lot of time around the world. And my book, The International Man, had just been published in the U.S. So when I was in Salisbury, which is what Herrera used to be called, there were two publishers in the country.

I visited both of them, got along well with one. And he published it. And it was the ideal book at that. time because people of the European descent could read the writing on the wall and wanted to make the chicken run, as they called it, getting the hell out of Rhodesia before it went to hell in a hand basket, which it did, because there was a very active guerrilla war going on at that time. So the book flew off the shelves and I did lots of media. I've been all around Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, consequently many times.

So, in any event, that's a record that'll never be broken to have the best-selling book in the history of Rhodesia. Because Rhodesia doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist anymore. When you say Europeans knew writing is on the wall, I feel like right now where Canada sits, people can see some of the writing on the wall. You might even extend that the United States,

maybe extend that to a few different countries. Having lived through that and witnessed it, When you say writing is on the wall, what was it back then that you, well, you could just see? Well, look, you can make a case that the blacks in Africa got a very bad deal from being conquered by colonialists. I don't believe in conquest. In fact, I don't believe in government as an institution. but that's on the one hand. On the other hand, if it wasn't for the incursions of the Europeans, Africa might today still be beating on earth with a stick. In fact, most of Africa is.

Still, it's very backward where we've got many millions of starving people, lots of bush wars going on. So Africa's a continent that interests me a lot. But in any event, as I was saying, at that time, there were about 250,000 people of European descent living in Rhodesia. Now there are only maybe a couple thousand left. And the population of the country is gone from about 3 million, 3.5 million to about 13 million today. So about the only thing that Rhodesia's, or Zimbabwe has produced in subsequent years, has been more people, and they're almost all poor. And the reason for that is that they're doing their best, the political class there, and in most of Africa, and in most of the world, including the U.S. and Canada, is doing its best to wash away the foundations of Western civilization. which is what's brought us almost everything that's good in the world.

It's the reason why we're not still grubbing for roots and berries, but they don't like it. Wokism has conquered the world, and the prognosis is not good. Yeah, sitting in a different country, staring at what Canada, you know, I sit in Canada, but, I mean, the United States has similar things going on. But, you know, when you talk about wokeism, you know, when you're sitting where you're sitting today, you know, what can you tell the Canadian audience that's listening to? And obviously Americans do. But, you know, we're living it. We're just in the middle of all this, I don't know, upside down, this strange world, you know? They literally just put through an Ontario, Doug, that they're going to pay for a man's surgery to have a vagina constructed, but keep his penis down in the States. We're going, taxpayers are going to pay for that. I can't even begin to tell you how insane at times Canada can be.

You walk out the door, everything looks great. You pay attention to the headlines and what's going on in the judiciary system and through government. And you're like, we are, we're going crazier, not letting off this. You know, you talk about a runaway train. This is what it is. You're sitting somewhere else in the world. You get to stare from afar. You're living in a different culture.

To Canadians sitting in the middle of it, what would you say to him? I would say be afraid, be very afraid, because the whole nature of Canada is being transformed at this point. Look, it's not just these criminally insane laws like stealing money from the average Canadian to pay for somebody to dramatize their psychological aberrations by having their sex changed. I mean, these are people that are mentally ill, but they're getting to enforce their will upon entire countries. It's crazy. The fact that you have immigration from all over the world,

from countries that do not accept the basic tenets of Western civilization, which include things like free minds, free markets, free speech. They don't accept any of these things. And they come to the country and they get on welfare. And it's really too bad what's happening to the West, generally speaking. But I don't blame the immigrants to the country. I mean, they're moving from, you know, poverty in a horrible place to a vastly better place. The problem is with Native Canadians and Native

Americans that are, in effect, opening the doors to a barbarian invasion. Incidentally, I've got to ask you, I understand that Canada has recently passed a law that makes it a criminal offense to say something that makes somebody else feel uncomfortable or unloved. Am I interpreting that right? I haven't read the law. I've only... It hasn't passed. So it's been tabled, but it hasn't passed yet.

And I would say most assume it will not pass in its current form, but it is sitting there. And there's a lot in there that is, well, I mean, by me having this conversation, and several other conversations I might add through the podcast, it would put me probably behind bars, or would at least, you know, under the current form of the law, would definitely put me in the crosshairs of the government if I'm not already there, Doug.

Yeah. Well, if that law passes in any form, not just even in a modified form, it's going to be game over for Canada. You, I forget it, I believe it's, you, wrote, but forgive me, I didn't, I was reading one of your, I believe it was one of your articles, but I always forget to check the author because they're, I mean, all of them are really, really good. So if people haven't checked out your work and the people you showcase, they really should.

One of the things, just a quick line, you said, the worst government's fiscal health gets, which here in Canada, I think we can all agree, we're not getting better there. the more destructive its policies become. I mean, yeah, that's right, because people don't realize that the government, the state, is a creature with the life of its own.

And it does things that in order to its benefit and the benefit of its employees and the people that parasitize on it, but not to the great massive people, for whom it's supposed to be the great father, so that the government takes care of itself and its employees first and foremost. And you people are all viewed as being, well, prey in some cases, but food for the state. it's a very bad situation that has philosophical roots

as I was talking about before Is there no You know This is probably my naivity The Is there no pushing it back From the populace? You know, is there no

Setting things in its proper spot You know, with government And all the, as it continues to spend money it doesn't have and grow the deficits and enact laws that make zero sense. Is there no ability to, I don't know, make things right if there was such a thing? Yes, it's possible, but not likely in today's environment. Because the left, the walksters, the collectivists, the status, they're all the same people, basically. these people put forward their agenda saying that we're morally right.

We're just people. We're righteous people. We're trying to do the right thing. And the people that fight back against them, the conservatives, the libertarians, traditionalists, they only say, well, yes, you have good intentions, is what they say to the left. The left doesn't have good intentions. They're like the Jacobins in France after the revolution.

They don't have good intentions, actually. They actually hate humanity and hate other people. And the counter argument that the conservatives use is basically, no, no, listen, you're going to hurt the economy. It's not efficient to do the things that you're doing. The standard of living will go down. These are stupid arguments. They're not acceptable because people want to believe they're doing the right thing, the morally right thing, not just the thing that's economic or efficient.

So, of course, we're losing the battle because the lefties are winning it from a philosophical, from a moral point of view. And the right doesn't understand that. The right doesn't stand for anything. In fact, the right conservatives hardly even exist in Canada, conservative of Western civilization, I should say. Because their argument is basically to the left. They say, well, yeah, health care is good. Everybody should have it. But you're going too far.

You're going too fast. Slow it down a little bit. That's not an acceptable moral argument. National medical care, health care in Canada, as in the U.S., should be abolished. I mean, you should take care of your own body the way you take care of your car, and you shouldn't be able to force your neighbor to pay for maintaining your car, just like you shouldn't be able to force your neighbor through the national health care system to pay for maintaining your body.

And this goes right down the line to almost everything the government does, which is destructive. And I would say it's morally and philosophically destructive, not just economically destructive, which obviously definitely is, because the standard of living in Canada, relative to that of the U.S. has been collapsing.

That's why the Canadian dollar, which used to sell at a premium to the U.S. dollar, is now around what 71 cents of U.S. and dropping because you've got a complete sociopath running the country. I hope he's not elected again. I think all my listeners would

hope alongside you on that one with the 2025 election. Too far away for this man's liking, but it is coming up and we will, I assume, have a change of government. You know, when you talk about the wolfsters, the lefters, and that there's no conservatives and you can't you know like you can't have that argument can't can't you have the philosophical argument like you're talking about are we not ever going to get to

a place where or does it just have to go to such destructive times Doug where finally you just you have no choice but to stand up and go listen we can't do this anymore this is it we've got us here or are we going to that place before we can ever just have a leader stand up there and go like listen um yeah it nice and we want to, you know, take care of everyone. But at some point in time, you have to start taking care of yourself. Like, we have to take care of, you have to go and take care of yourself. You can't expect all of society to bend to one person to, you know, lose all of the advantages of what we have here to cater to one little tiny portion. Like I, or am I wrong on that? Because when you bring up feelings and, and people's, you know, you play off the emotion, you know,

I totally get that. But I also understand, like, isn't there a whole chunk of society that goes, yeah, this isn't working? And we're seeing it play out right in front of us. Well, I agree with you, of course, but you're not going far enough. The thing is, these people want evil and destructive things. So you can't acknowledge their premises. Sure, it'd be nice if everybody was happy, healthy.

rich, wise, peaceful. But the fact is that it's not the role of the state to provide these things. What is the state? What is the government? The government is Mao Te-sung, once said, comes out of the barrel of a gun. The government is pure coercion. I can hold a gun to your head and put you in jail, or if it really doesn't like you, do worse to you. So the, accepting the role of government to do any of these things is like inviting Dracula into your house. And you shouldn't say that they have good intentions. They want to do good things? No. These people actually have bad intentions, and they're doing evil things, although they've convinced the average Canadian and American that they're on the side of the angels. They're not.

Yeah, anytime you invite the government in to do things in your life, it becomes a, I don't know, a choke point, I guess, is kind of the way I look at it. Like, those are things you've got to try and remove as fast as humanly possible. And COVID taught us all that. The COVID literally showed us, oh, they control way too much. And you're right. under the guise of, you know, like, we're just trying to make your life better.

And I sit here and I go, better. Better means get the heck out of my life. I don't need any of this. But somewhere along the way, they've convinced a lot of people that they're doing what is best for society. And yet society is going down the toilet and we're all watching it. And so I sit here and I go, so then what are people's options? And I feel like you probably get this question a ton, but it feels like, you know, there's two trains of thought. And maybe you can break this train of thought for me, Doug.

There's one, you stay, you fight, this is my home, we're fighting for it. We're not letting bullies take over us. Two, get to heck out. There's just, there's so many different places where you can go and you don't have to live under such tyrannical government, under such insane thought processes where, you know, up is down, left is right. you know, two plus two is five, honestly. Those seem to be the two options. What do you think about the two options Canadian face? Stay here or vacate.

Well, the populations of the U.S. and Canada came to these countries because they wanted to get away from bad things that were happening in Europe at the time. So it's viable to do what your forefathers did and pick up and go someplace better. The only way this battle can be won is by changing the philosophical and moral tenor of the country. And I don't believe you can do that by voting, because generally speaking, voting, look, you're voting for Tweedledy or Tweedledum. Most of the people that are running for office are sociopaths who are doing that

because they're interested in power. They're interested in power. In other words, the kind of person that wants to get into government is almost certainly a bad person. And if he's a good person being surrounded by the kind of people that are in parliament or Congress,

he's going to be corrupted, he's going to be bribed, however subtly, he's going to be intimidated, so that government is not the answer. Look, what you can do if you stay in Canada is to understand the philosophical underpinnings of what's going on, and charity begins at home. talk to your family, your friends, your neighbors about the problem and try to convince them that you have the right position. But that's very, very hard to do for all kinds of reasons. Big trends and history has a life of its own. And right now, if you believe in personal freedom and free markets and limiting coercion in society,

I'm afraid at the moment we're on the wrong side of history. So that's why I spend a lot of time here in Argentina, which incidentally, in the last few months, something of world historic importance has happened here in Argentina. Are you very familiar with it? Enlightened me. Okay. At the last, look, Argentina was one of the most prosperous countries in the world 100 years ago.

One of the four or five most prosperous countries in the world. And ever since they started electing collectivist politicians who promised free this, free that, free medical care, free everything, subsidies for this, price controls on that. Argentina has become a basket case. It's really horrible, where half of the country is impoverished at this point. It's absolutely shameful, criminal, what's happened to Argentina. And the person that really did the most to take it down this road is Juan Perron after World War II.

Anyway, Argentina has been the perfect socialist, fascist country since then. But the average guy has just been getting screwed for decades here. Finally, somebody rose up. His name is Javier Malay. Yeah, Heavier Malay. Yes. Exactly. And he's very unusual.

He's not just somebody that says, oh, we want to have less of this. We want to be conservative. We want to cut back the government. Like myself, he's an anarcho-capitalist, an ANCAP. And what he wants to do is get rid of the government, excise it, like the cancer that it is. And he's been doing, and he said that, he's explained this. Like, if you go to, if you Google him and you look at the speech he gave to the World Economic Forum, a horrible gathering of horrible people, he laid it all out.

on the line there. And what he's been doing in the last three months that he's been the president. And the president of Argentina has a lot more power than the president of the U.S. has for his country. He's fired not just thousands, but scores of thousands of government employees. He's abolishing whole agencies and offices.

He's actually not just talking the talk, he's walking the walk. And things have already started to change here in Argentina. It's gone from running 200% per year inflation, which means that it's impossible with that kind of inflation for the average guy to get ahead. Why? Because you earn in pesos and you save them, but the pesos are immediately destroyed.

So you can't build capital or savings, so you're always on the treadmill. Inflation here since me late, just in the last three months, has dropped from 200% per year, and now prices are only rising slowly. The government from running a gigantic deficit, which they financed by printing money, is not running as a surplus. And as the surplus gets bigger, he's going to start reducing, taxes radically. So that what Milley is doing here is a world historic importance. And it only happened because things were getting so bad in Canada, and especially the young people recognized they

needed a change so that Canada needs its own Javier, Malay. The U.S. needs its own Javier Malay. It's not Trump, incidentally. He's not a... He's a... He's a... He's a... He's a... He's a... double-edged sword. It's got one blade's good, one blade's bad. But anyway, here in Argentina, yeah, things are looking up radically. So you've, um, Argentina, um, uh, we've got a book club here in Lloyd. And there's five of us and we've read a bit about Argentina. I don't, you'd be the resident expert, not me. But certainly, uh, you've laid it out quite well, like a very, very, um, resource rich country. Lots of great. things going for it and then it falls off a cliff and you know so many people

think it can't happen here you know like I can't happen it's Canada it won't happen here when you hear that statement Doug I bet you once upon a time Argentina thought oh it'll never happen here like come on and then they lived through decades of it what would you say to the Canadians that are saying I won't happen here now there's gonna be a whole bunch I I I I will defend my audience and saying they can already see it happening here. But what would you say to the common person who is just like, oh, no, they're just rolling along, no problems here, not a big deal. But, you know, you're talking about Argentina.

Before we get to Malay and the guy who comes in and does it all, Argentina had to go off the absolute cliff, you know, and I don't want that to happen. What would you say to the average Canadian that's sitting there going on? It can't happen here. Argentina, come on. That was, you know, just only happened once, and it was over there. Well, if it happens in Argentina, if it happens in Canada, it'll only be after things get much worse than they are now, where things descend to the Argentine level. And by then, it may be too late for Canada.

One of the reasons is that Argentina is culturally cohesive. The people that live in Argentina are basically Europeans. You don't have the migration problem that we have in the U.S. or you have in Canada, for that matter, where the people that are coming in do not hold the values that we traditionally held. Like I said, they don't believe in personal freedom. They don't believe in free markets. They don't believe that you even own. yourself so that if this goes on far enough,

Argentina, Canada is going to look more like Pakistan or Nigeria or some other horrible place than it does now or for that better the way Argentina looks. Of course, you're not supposed to say something like that because it's racially charged. but I'm sorry that's just the traditions in those parts of the world and they're not good Jeff Thomas wrote on one of the articles

he was talking about homes your home is at risk because the countries in question are heading in a collectivist direction which means that private property may be nationalized or otherwise confiscated you think like I've heard this before I've heard you know as we continue to slide in government debt

and different things that, you know, it's a weft idea, right? You'll own nothing and be happy. Do you look at that and go, that's reasonable to think that that could happen? Or are you like, oh, no, you're far away from that? No, it's very reasonable to think that things are going to get worse. Why? Because this collectivist, statist, wokest poison has totally captured academia so that college, if you're stupid enough to go to college, unless you want to take a STEM

course for which lab work and the formal discipline is important. But if you go to college or university for anything other than that, you're an idiot, spending the foremost valuable years of your life and a huge amount of money to be indoctrinated with crap and swim in a cesspool. And the problems with colleges has gone down to high schools, down to grade schools, so the kids are indoctrinated from an early age at this point. That augurs very poorly. The walksters have control of the entertainment industry completely. They have control of the corporations with these ideas of ESG and DEI.

diversity equity inclusion which is ridiculous poison the fact is that they've totally totally captured people's minds with this belief in COVID and the right of the government to enforce its will on a big nothing which was and take these vaccines which I think are dangerous I'm not against vaccines in general incidentally I mean And I'm all for Edward Jenner, who wiped out smallpox with the vaccine 200 years ago. But this particular vaccine is very problematical. And maybe the big one is global warming or climate change, which is used as an excuse for almost every type of governmental depredation.

So I'm afraid that we're on the wrong side of history, at least at the moment, for all these reasons that I've been recounting. Sorry to be so gloomy and tell you about all the bad things that are happening. Well, I just wonder, you mentioned wrong side of history. And that was a stark realization in the middle of COVID living in Canada when I realized by speaking out against COVID, although there was a galvanized portion of the population that really, you know, we ended up with a freedom convoy, right? It went to Ottawa and stood up. You realized you were in the portion of the population that was kind of being ostracized.

So when you talk about being on the wrong side of history, I'm like, there has to be a way that you can get on the right side of history by not compromising who you are, by going at the philosophical underpinnings of this argument, of speaking out against it, of trying to bring people along to opening up discussion. You know, like I think of people for the longest time. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but I felt like nobody talked anymore. And certainly with the devices and everything.

And so if you weren't talking anymore, you weren't open up discussion, easy to get let along down the old shoot, if you would, of where we're all headed. Now I feel like there has to be a way because the conversation, are happening. There's people talking all the time. It's whether or not we can get to the philosophical underpinnings and meet them head on so that we can divert this sucker from, I don't know, absolute destruction. Because when you look at where we're heading and all the things that are happening here in Canada, you know, you got free drugs, you got made for, you know, we'll assist you in dying. We're going to allow that all the way to mature minors and on and on and on. You got the financial

crisis you got you got to well i mean it's just there's no end to it Doug and yet i when i talk to people most people are are feel like they're like yeah that's all we don't like any of that well why can't we go at the philosophical underpinnings to destroy this before we ever get to any point that is way worse than where we're at and it's pretty bad right now well maybe you can but I'm afraid that the world at large, and Canada and the U.S. in particular, have been captured by mass hysteria, where, for instance, during the great witch hunt that took place in Salem, Massachusetts, where they hung a dozen people accused of witchcraft at the end of the 17th century, If you talk to any of those people as individuals, they would seem fairly rational. But as a group, they did these horrible things.

The same thing with the French Revolution, where the Jacobins executed with guillotines 30,000 people. That was a lot of people in France at that time. Was the average Frenchman crazy? Well, probably not when you sat them down as an individual. but once you put them together with the wrong kind of leadership, same thing happened in Germany in the 1930s, same thing happened in China under Mao.

These mass hysterias take over countries, and it sometimes takes a long time for them to burn out. And since this hysteria is worldwide, and the bad guys have control of the apparatus of the same. state. And they've indoctrinated the younger generation so much. It's a real iffy situation. Listen, I was all four the truckers in Canada. I was heroic of these guys. But they were fighting against the state, and the state fought back against them. And I'm afraid they lost. So what will it come down to?

Listen, in the U.S., I'm not so sure about Canada, but we're approaching something that looks like a civil war in the U.S., an actual civil war, not like what happened from 1861 to 1865 in the U.S. That wasn't a civil war, actually technically speaking. It was a war of secession, which is a different thing. but the red people and the blue people in the U.S. actually hate each other. They can't talk to each other, cannot even talk to each other.

And especially when the financial system collapses, which it's going to, and the economy collapses, which is going to, these people are going to be at each other's throats. And it's going to be more like what happened during the American Revolution, which was not just another war of secession, but that was a real civil war, where it was neighbor against neighbor. You were supporting the king or supporting the sons of liberty,

as they called themselves. I mean, it was a dangerous and unpleasant time during the U.S. Revolution. It wasn't just a few battles like Saratoga and conquered and these things. It was a nasty, nasty time where neighbor fought against neighbor and turned each other in and horrible. So that's the type of thing we're probably looking at in the U.S. in the years to come. You see military men that I'm friends with talk about the patterns of life.

and that you can see these events about to unfold type thing. When you look at the United States and you bring in, you know, the idea of civil war, that seems to be an idea that's being, you know, what's the thing I heard about the upcoming election that made a lot of sense? It doesn't matter who wins. Biden or Trump, the other side won't believe it was a fair election. And you hear things like that. And I go, actually, that kind of makes sense.

And I'll go, if that makes sense, are we that much, closer to what you're talking about in civil war and different things like that. Like are we that close to it when when the sides will not agree? And you look at the last election. I forget what was the percentages, 52, 48 roughly, if you believe those numbers. But all I'm pointing out is that the country is divided. Like, I mean, it looks like it's half and half, right? And maybe it's a little bit more to one side.

I'm not here to get in the argument over what the actual numbers are. Just that it's not 70-30 is like 50-50. It's a coin flip on which side you are in, which means if 50% of the population, as Doug's pointing out, ain't talking to the other 50%, that's something you got to stare at and go, how long until we head off the cliff with that as well? Yeah, it's really serious because basically half of the country at this point is dependent upon the government for their income, for their employment. for all kinds of things, for their mortgage financing, for all kinds of things. So the state has become a huge player in civil society in the U.S. That's something too. And it's probably not 50-50.

It's probably one-third of the country supports the blue side. one-third supports the red side and the people in the middle aren't sure what they want to do. It's going to be a dog's breakfast. It's going to be complete chaos because it's going to happen at a time when the dollar is going to catastrophically lose value while all this is going on. And there are going to be a lot of unemployed people. And it's very unpredictable how this will work out. And between the Democrats and the Republicans, the Democrats across the board in the U.S. stand for absolutely poisonous, poisonous values, wokeism, totally captured that party.

But the Republicans don't really stand for anything except, hey, these guys are crazy. They're going too far, too fast. we kind of like, you know, their basic ideas, you know, free this, free that. That's nice. We don't want to trans. Look, Trump, he's the lightning rod in this thing. It's, he's better than Biden, I guess, because at least Trump is a cultural conservative. In other words, he doesn't want to overthrow the entire basis of American society.

he'd like to see it return to like the 1950s with shows like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. I mean, he'd like that kind of thing. Cultural conservatism. Okay, that's fine. That's not a bad thing. But that's not something that you can, it's not a philosophical standard that you can rally around. So between the in the coming Civil War, between the Red People, and the blue people, I don't know who's going to win.

But I will say this. I suspect that in the coming election, regardless of who gets the most votes, I think the Democrats are going to stay installed in office for a number of reasons that we can talk about. So that prognosis is bad. And the Trumpsters, the MAGA people, are going to be really pissed off because they're going to be really pissed off, believe probably, I think, correctly that it was stolen from them.

And I don't know where that's going to end because this is going to happen in the midst of a financial collapse in an economic depression as well. Well, I would, I got a couple minutes left before I got to let you go. And what we're going to do is we're going to slide over to Substack for my final train of thought with Doug and one final question because I hear everything he's been talking about. And I'm like, oh, man, this is some, some tough topics and different things like that. So if you want to hear maybe some hope or some insight from Doug, slide over to Substack with us. And we'll have one final question with Doug and then let him out of here.