The David Knight Show - Fri Episode #2354: The Dollar Weakens as Political Power Centralizes

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

────────────────────────────────────────[00:02:14] Trump Takes Credit for Gas Prices, Just Like Biden DidDrudge's classic pointing photo returns as the Iran war drives pump prices up.────────────────────────────────────────── Interview 1: Melissa Dalton Bradford — How to Save Democracy ──────────────────────────────────────────[00:12:18] US Plummets to 51st Place in Global Democracy RankingsV-Dem's watchdog index cites attacks on elections, press, and free speech.────────────────────────────────────────[00:18:23] Emergency Decrees Without an Off-Ramp Become PermanentBradford warns unchecked executive orders drift into endless "poly-crisis" rule.────────────────────────────────────────[00:42:45] Christian Nationalism Is "a Ploy for Power," Not FaithBradford draws a direct line from Weimar-era church oaths to today's US politics.────────────────────────────────────────[00:59:13] Bannon's "Flood the Zone" Tactic Exhausts ResistanceChaos and outrage overload primes the public to surrender to a "savior."────────────────────────────────────────── Interview 2: Jonathan Dever — The Petrodollar's Endgame ──────────────────────────────────────────[01:17:39] What the Petrodollar Actually Is, and Why Nixon Built ItSaudi oil-for-dollars deal after gold standard's end still anchors global trade.────────────────────────────────────────[01:20:17] Weaponizing SWIFT Sanctions Is "Killing the Golden Goose"Biden and Trump both used dollar dominance as a weapon, accelerating its decline.────────────────────────────────────────[01:22:19] US Faces a 15-Year Countdown as Social Security Cliff Hits 2032Debt-to-GDP already over 100%; a 22% benefit cut looms with no plan to stop it.────────────────────────────────────────[01:39:32] Gold's Safe-Haven Role Grows as Nations Route Around the DollarUAE builds physical oil routes around Hormuz; China buys gold on every dip.────────────────────────────────────────[01:54:08] Dever: History Says We're "Due" for a War, 80 Years OnFourth-turning cycle plus record global debt make conflict the likely release valve. ──────────────────────────────────────── Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to https://davidknight.gold/ for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to https://trendsjournal.com/ and enter the code “KNIGHT” For high quality made in America products go to HomeSteadProducts.shop and use promo code “Knight” for 10% off your purchases Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.com If you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

in a world of deceit. Telling the truth is a revolutionary act. It's the David Knight Show. As the clock strikes 13, it's Friday the 18th of September. You're of Our Lord, 2006. Well, today we've got a couple of interviews. I think you're going to find them very interesting. Our first interview is going to be with Melissa Dalton Bradford.

Her book is How to Save Democracy, the Anti-Atheritarian Playbook. And I think it's a very interesting interview because she's coming at this from the left. And it's been quite a while since I've seen anybody from the left actually worried about authoritarianism. That used to be the case. But now, for the most part, they have embraced that. So we have an interesting conversation. And I think that's one of the things that's key of her book, is that we don't want to have them break us into competing camps that they can divide and conquer us with.

And also to conquer us with the fear. So we're going to talk about the history of it. We're going to talk about the indications of where we are right now. And we also have another interview with Jonathan Deaver. And he's going to talk about the petro dollar. His article is, the petro dollar is not dead, but America's financial free ride may be ending. We'll be right back. Stay with us.

Yeah, speaking of a free ride, we can certainly see that at the pump, can we? Look at the Drudge Report. And he's kind of the classic picture up there, of course. Of course, we did it with Biden, you know, he points at the price and says, I did that. Yeah, I did that at the very beginning because I knew that was what was going to be the result of this Iran war. I did that as soon as he kicked off his dirty little war. I created a sticker just like that.

And I posted it up on social media. You can still see it on my archives there. But of course, when he points, he's not just pointing with his index finger. Trump points with his middle finger at you. because that's really what the guy has done, isn't it? And so again, he'll be joining us to talk about the petro dollar. What happens with the consequences when that starts to disappear? How quickly does he think that it's going to disappear?

But we're also going to have an interview with, as I said, Melissa Dalton Bradford, her book, How to Save Democracy. And I think it is important to talk to people that we are not in 100% agreement with. And I hope you agree with that as well because we've got to find a way that we're we get away from this top-down approach. We've got to do something that is bottom-up. And you'll hear when she's talking about this stuff. She will talk a lot of,

mention a lot of the same buzzwords. As a matter of fact, we even talk about that. You know, the chivalis of the left and the right, you know, and how we say certain things as we frame issues. And it begins with the title of her book. She said she didn't realize that she lives in Germany now.

And she didn't realize that for those of us who are conservatives, genuine conservatives, we see America, of course, as a republic because it is. I didn't get adamant about it, but I just asked her, well, what's your definition? How do you distinguish between democracy and republics? She said, well, I didn't really realize that Democrats talking about democracy is kind of a red flag for a lot of Republicans. She just saw it as the antithesis of authoritarianism. So she missed some of the details there, I think.

But nevertheless, in essence, you know, we're talking about the same. type of thing. How what does it look like when we start going into authoritarianism? How far into it are we already? And as she said, you know, a lot of people think that, you know, because they, Democrats will prefer talking about democracy because it sounds like Democrat. The Republicans will prefer to talk about a republic because it sounds like the Republican Party, but of course, it's more than that. And it is about the rule of law versus the, which we have in a republic, versus just a mob vote. The tyranny of the majority can be just as bad as the tyranny of an individual.

But in a sense, she's talking about authoritarianism. And so we talk about that. I thought it would be an interesting experience to try to talk to somebody who has a different perspective. It's coming from a different place than I am. And we can try to find some common ground. And there is a lot of common ground. We can see a lot of the things that are happening.

It's not to say the Democrats are going to provide the solution, but people are increasingly turning to the Democrats. As a matter of fact, the latest figures coming out show the Democrats have an 83% chance of getting the House, according to the pollsters, a 54% chance of taking the Senate as well. And again, we talk about the free ride being over in this country in terms of the financial destruction, that an upheaval and chaos that Trump is unleashed. leashing on us. That is one part of it. I saw this article about cybercabs in Austin, basically taking people hostage. I thought, well, there's an application of that to Trump. You know, you get into the cyber cab and you tell it, I want to go here. And it says, yeah, sure, I'll take you there. And before you know it, it's taking you somewhere completely different. And you can't get out of the car. And that's the way I feel with politics. And with

Trump especially, you know, Trump says, yeah, where is it? You want to go? Okay, I'll take you there. And yet he acts like a cyber cab that is capturing people and holding them hostage. And of course, the cyber cab doesn't have gas. And neither do we as we're being held hostage by Trump. The reason that it is doing this, however, is a couple of different factors. Number one, these cars are not nearly as smart as they tell you that they are. And a good example of that is Handy. He sent me this information about what's going on with the EMS services in Atlanta.

He said they've got a new thing. It's AI-assisted 9-11 dispatch CAD system. And so what it's supposed to do is to look to see where you are, look to see what the traffic is like, and look to see where you've got to go, and to optimize that, and to dispatch the most efficient way to go. As he points out, it doesn't work out that way. He said they had their first one of these, and he said it took them 45 minutes to get there. And on the way, they passed a lot of other ambulances that were ready to go. They weren't occupied. They were ready to go.

So, again, we see the promises of technology, the promises of politicians are rarely fulfilled. And so in this particular case, that was one factor of it, that they just don't work as advertised. The other aspect of it, of course, which is a little bit more understandable. It's not yet allowed on the interstates, and I'm glad of that. So it had to figure out a different route weaving through the city. But we're not going to bob and weave anymore about this. We're going to go to our interviews. We've got quite a bit of time with our interviews.

So without any further ado, we're going to go to our first interview with Melissa Dalton Bradford. All right, joining us now. Our guest is Melissa Dalton Bradford. She is an author. This is not her first rodeo or her first book, but she's got a book that I think all of you are going to be interested in. This is about the title of the book is How to Save Democracy. The Anti-A authoritarian playbook.

And I like what you had to say, Melissa, and you said, so you don't get play. That's what she puts in there. Yeah, if we understand what their playbook is, it helps us to not get played. I think that is very, very important. And so she's had a lot of experience, just to give you a little bit of a background. She's had 35 plus years of experience living across eight countries. And she wrote an award-winning book, A Global Mom, a Memoir on Loss and Living Onward. You know, I don't know the gist of that book, but I know that travel certainly does broaden

the mine, I think, and the more time you spend in the country, the more it changes your perspective. We all have a very narrow perspective, but I really do think that the solution is at the grassroots level. I'm completely aligned, completely aligned with you. I agree with that 100%. Now, your book came out on the 15th of September. Tell us a little bit as you're doing your book tour, what is the general mood that you see in the country at this point in time? It depends very much on where I am. You know, I just came from a week in California. I made the trek up the coast, the beautiful West Coast before all of the hurricanes hit just before that. So I was in Los Angeles, which is its own ecosystem, isn't it?

It's going to have a more outward looking, a more inclusive, a more progressive bent. And then I went into Fresno, which is kind of a little bit of both. I didn't know this beforehand. I'm really not keen to how there are dividing lines, even in cities, between the progressive and the more conservative communities. And then I ended in the Bay Area. I was in San Francisco. And now, I'm in Utah. I'm going to spend a great deal of time here because I'm involved in some conferences here. And then I'll hand to the East Coast. But to answer your question, the response that I've been getting from people on the ground is a mixture of desperation, sometimes despair, sometimes sort of a shrugging and slumping and what do we do now, we're too far gone.

And I always respond to that by saying, but of course, that is the strategy of the authoritarian playbook. The strategy is to overwhelm with fear, with polarization, with isolation from one another. This is not new. We're in the middle of the unfolding of an authoritarian playbook. Of course we feel desperate. course we feel despair. And unfortunately, some people have checked out. That is the thing that we're trying to fight against you and I, is not letting ourselves or others check out. Democracy begins in our house, not in the White House. We are the authors. We are the authors, not the authoritarian.

That's right. And the hallmarks of all this, I look to, when you look at your book and the table contents, I like, yeah, we check that one and we check that one or check that one. We're You're right. You're right. We're following the playbook, aren't we? Exactly. We are. But I would be, I would have my listeners be very angry with me if we didn't talk about

the difference between democracy and republic and how you see that. Of course, you're talking about democracy, I think, in the broader sense of it as being anti-authoritarian, anti-totelitarian. And certainly my listeners in this program see that. We're very concerned about that. Talk a little bit of it. about, you know, the Washington Post, their slogan, Democracy Dies and Darkness. I think it's getting pretty dark right now. But tell us a little bit about what you're looking at. When you talk

about democracy, what you're thinking of. Well, let me address that really hot topic. I'm glad that you brought that up, the difference between democracy and a constitutional republic. You know, the roots of that debate go back to the John Birch Society. They've been revived since about 2020. And in my online work, if people ever push back on me and I say, we have to say democracy, our beautiful democracy, there will inevitably be somebody who jumps in and says, we aren't a democracy, we're a constitutional republic. That's sort of like saying, we're not a dog, we're a mammal, or we're not a parent, we're a father. You know, a constitutional republic is a subheading of democracy.

And I don't want to be flippant when I respond to people, because this is the language. These are the slogans and the soundbites that they're getting. We are not a democracy. It sounds too much like Democrats. We are a constitutional republic. It rhymes with being a Republican. I understand all of that, and I respect those different points of view. But we're talking, like you just said so well, about democracy as a larger breed, a larger grouping.

And if I may, I want to not to step outside of the United States, but it's important to recognize that, threats to democracy as a general system are global now. It's not just happening in our own country. Right. And perhaps you've already done spots with people from other countries that are saying, oh, we're seeing this where we are. As you know, I'm coming to you right now from my book tour in the U.S., but I've lived for many, many years in Germany.

It's what my area of specialty is. It's what I've done undergraduate and graduate work in. I teach and speak and write the language. So we have some threats to democracy also in Germany right now. That aside, there's a very, there are several large international organizations that are watchdogs for democracy at large. And they sort of categorize democracies. There are electoral democracies, there are liberal democracies, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, one of them that I've been watching really closely for about 10 years is called varieties of democracy. Do you know about it? Have you heard of it? No, I've heard that. Maybe some of our audience members have. It's short for V-Dem. Everyone's going to take a moment today, and they're going to look up V-Dem. They're going to go to their website.

V-Dem is a community of lovers of democracy, scholars, teachers, writers, advocates for democracy for many different countries. And what VEDM does is they set up a group of criteria that define what a healthy democracy is, regardless of what kind of category it's in. What defines a healthy democracy? Oh, a free press, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, equal branches of government, checks and balances, et cetera, et cetera. Well, VDEM has in the last year and a half taken the United States, States of America, again, this beacon of democracy and has said, uh-oh, you're no longer in the

top quartile of the 180 countries that we are rating all of the time. And again, they rate Korea and Norway with the same measuring stick. And they say the United States, which used to be at about place 20, has dropped. In fact, that's not even the right verb. It has plummeted to 51st place. 50 first place out of 180 countries. That's a warning sign for us. And VDM says it's the attack on elections. It's the attack on the press. It's the shrinking of free speech, etc. So that's one thing for us to keep in mind. In my book, I do what I think groups like VDM would really appreciate. and all of us who love liberty, freedom, a healthy constitution, what we would love. And I just look throughout modern history and I say, here are the signs of illness.

Everyone who's gone to like democracy medical school who's done their work, they've done their residency residency and they've studied it. They know that these are the signs of decline of illness. And I've lined up 11 of them. And in the book, I say, here are the 11 signs of illness or rot or decline. And I'm going to give you case studies. So each of these 11 hallmarks, and we can go through those if you want to. We should go through at least three or four of them. In each of those, I give case studies.

I say, well, here's what, for instance, scapegoating minorities looked like in Weimar, Germany. here is what it looks like in India right now. Here's what it might have looked like under Orban in Hungary. I do three case studies, and just between you and me and all of our listeners, in every single one of those case studies, the last case study is the United States. Like you said, we check off every single hallmark in a big way, in a big way. I agree.

Yeah, you know, when we talk about democracy versus republic, I'm sure there's a lot of people who just look at Democrat versus Republican, but at the same time, the founders are very concerned about the fact that we'd have a constitution that's going to be a rule of law that's going to be a guideline and a bar to an oppression of the majority who decide that they're going to oppress a minority. And so, you know, there's that aspect of it. And certainly that is one of the things that concerns me is the decline of the rule of law, this idea that we're going to rule by emergency. And once I can, it is a structural flaw in our constitution and our legal system that one person can declare an emergency. Nobody can contest that. And then once that one person declares the emergency, that one person can issue any kind of order that he wants to as well. And so that is, that I think is one of those dangerous things.

Well, that's chapter number three of the authoritarian hallmarks. I begin with assaulting truth. We know that autocrats or authoritarian They assault truth That's the foundation They tell lies big and small Off the cuff And well-structured

They use vagaries, et cetera And it's not necessarily So that we will believe Any particular lie Like injecting bleach is going to cure this pandemic or something like that It's that we are left blurry-eyed we don't believe that truth is even accessible or that there is a common truth that we can all count on.

Then the second of the hallmarks is politicizing institutions. That's clearing house, getting out of all of the experts and planting in your loyalists. This happens everywhere. But you've just talked about number three, governing by executive order. Now, executive order or emergency decrees, they're built into our system, aren't they? They're built into our system and everybody's used them. The danger is, particularly with emergency decrees, is that, and my case studies show this in different countries, is that when they are used without a specific off-ramp, that this is a temporary measure and it literally is going to have a timeline, they end up being eternal.

They go on and on. There are countries that have been living under perpetual emergency decrees. now for years and years and years. We're watching that. So many of these executive orders that were based on emergencies from both Republicans and Democrats, and they're still on the books, technically.

Yep. You know, I don't know that they've ended the COVID emergency technically or not. But the Insurrection Act. Yeah, the Insurrection Act is not yet tied off at the ends, right? So we need to educate ourselves about that. This is an excellent point.

We need to educate ourselves and also contact a reps and say, where do you stand on having an off-ramp for any potential emergency decree or these executive orders. Now, all presidents have used executive orders to one degree or another. But the question is, the question is the proportionality, how many executive orders, how many executive orders. To the extent that they run this thing out and run with it, you know, it is, we've seen it

used for tariffs. We've seen it used for federalized policing. We've seen it used for, you name it. And they're all still there. Yeah, you're right. And they're all still there. So we need to voice our concern to our reps and say, where do you stand on this? And I want you on the record as someone who's going to push back and who's not going to just allow this to morph into what the Germans call d'aua crisis, nice big compound German word, which just means polycrisis, crisis after crisis after crisis of crisis. And like you've said so well, they can be legit or they can be illegitimate. You have, you do by edict, you just pronounce, We are now in so much danger that we need endless National Guard people in camo and weapons patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., for instance.

That's right. That's one of the end. Yeah, exactly. A poly crisis is a great way to describe this administration. But we've got to find out who Polly is and get out there. But, you know, from your perspective, and again, you go through in your book, you look at the history as well as contemporary examples. of each of these cases that you're talking about. Tell us a little bit about that in terms of, let's just pick the very first one that you were talking about,

the assaulting the truth. We know what that looks like here in America. What are some examples that you use in other countries or in history? Well, I had to narrow. I had to narrow down my selection because there were so many. There were so many, but again, my specialty is German studies in German history. So let's just talk about that. And before I do that, can I sort of...

Yeah, thank you, the big lie. I just need to drape out this caveat. I grew up in the United States. I've spent 35 years living across many countries, as you know. And in my upbringing, the ultimate evil, the cartoon evil that anyone's, used, they picked out of the bunch was always the Nazis and Hitler. That was as far as

one could go on the spectrum of evil. So when I draw examples from that part of history, I think some people tune out, they say that sloppy thinking is not the same, but I want to remind everybody that

the fall of democracy in Germany happened over a whole series of legal turns and lies. And it was long before, the collapse happened long before concentration camps and the Holocaust. We think about Nazi Germany only being the Holocaust. There was a long series of legal maneuvers that brought Germany to that point where

legally they instated a chancellor, an Austrian, Adolf Hitler as the Fuhrer as the dictator. So I just want to put that out there. One of the great German philosophers, I'll bet some of our audience members know her name, and you do, Hannah Arendt, great Jewish, German, American

philosopher, said the ideal subject of a totalitarian state is not a convinced Nazi. And it's not a convinced communist. It's that average person for whom there is no difference between truth

lies who can no longer distinguish between fact and fiction. I paraphrased her. You don't want me given her entire quote in German. Well, that's very much like what Solzhenitsyn said. When he was talking to people living under the Soviet Union, he said, don't live by lies. He goes, I understand that, you know, they control the amount of money that you have for the not you can eat. They control your housing. They control your job. And he goes, you may have to tow the line on some of the stuff. Just don't believe it yourself. You know, which is. That's right. Orwell tells us in terms of getting people to accept double think, to accept the idea that two plus two equals five and to actually believe it.

You've got to really believe it. Or they don't win, you know. Yes. And the lie. And the line in 1984 is that was their most essential, the regime speaking about them, that was their most essential move, was to tell you that you don't believe the evidence of your eyes or your own ears. You stop believing yourself. You lose trust in your own capacity. for judgment and discernment.

I agree. So this is very, very important. Another wonderful scholar that I quote quite a bit in my book is, and perhaps you've already had him on your show, but your viewers are going to know, your audience is going to know. Timothy Snyder, who wrote that great little pithy book on tyranny that should be on everyone's bedstand.

There you go, Dr. Snyder, I've just plugged you. Yale professor now teaching it at the University of Toronto, but he said this, to abandon facts is to abandon freedom. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, all is spectacle.

And he says, post-truth is pre-fascism. Great line. I mean, the man... When you say there's nothing left except spectacle, because now what we're seeing is, we've seen now for quite some time, people come after you from both the left and the right, depending on what you have to say

and that they disagree with, and they want to shut you down, they want to censor you. But we're saying something that's a little bit different now, but I think it's also very dangerous. And that is blurring the truth, I mean, can you believe your eyes when we've got the ability

to do very convincing deep fakes with AI? I think that's a big part of the problem, and I think that's also being basically used with a lot of people. I think that's one of the people. of the reasons that we see, yeah, you know, what Trump will do is to try to get people distracted with spectacle and put up some absurd AI stuff that's obviously AI. But at some point, people are looking at this and saying, well, is this true or is this artificial intelligence? And can I even

believe my own eyes anymore when I see this stuff posted up on social media? That is a very dangerous thing. And I think they're going to really run with that in their playbook. It is perilous. It's perilous. So when we draw, when I draw comparisons between Weimar, Germany, so that period in the 20s before things really got traction and took off in the 30s, I always say, we are living in two very different worlds,

my friends. Weimar Germany is 20th century Germany is not 21st century journey. You had no, or 21st century America, you had no internet, you had no social media, you had no cryptocurrency, you had no AI, right?

So there are so many elements that are central to the peril in which we find ourselves today that put us really in a different place, which is why the onus is on us to be very truthful ourselves and to educate our followers on how to see the lie. How to identify, literally, how do you identify a fake? How do you trace a social media post? Because so many people now get their news just from social media, how many just get it from Facebook. I agree. Yeah. Or Facebook or telegram?

or whatever, yeah, I agree. Or TikTok or whatever. So how do you identify the fakes? How do you trace fake images back to their source? There are useful media literacy tools that we can share with our friends and with our followers, with our audience, to say, here's how you're going to find out. But then the individual responsibility is when you know that you are seeing or hearing alive, when you know because you have the facts.

Let's say you're a trained epidemiologist. And you know that what is coming out of RFK Jr's mouth is counter to medical fact and scientific fact, that it's our job to speak. It's our job to counter the lie. The very first reels that I ever did, way back at the beginning of this second iteration of this administration, they were just about truth. I never talked about policy. I didn't talk about party.

I didn't talk about any given political figure. I said, this is an assault on truth. And we have to, we have to sharpen our ability in a very blurry, sort of a scattershod world where we are being inundated, not even daily, but hourly, with information, much of which is not true. We have to sharpen our ability to determine that. It sounds so hokey, doesn't it? But that's our job.

Well, I got fired for doing that. So I absolutely agree with you. You know, when you see something like that, you have to, well, it was a situation with January the 6th and the guy I worked for was pushing the idea that there was a sting. And, of course, there was absolutely no way that stuff was true. No. It was just a hodgepodge of jargon that was thrown out there without an ounce of substance to it.

I called that and that got me in big hot water and got me fired. But that was fine because I don't want to be a part of an organization that's going to do something like that. I'm never going to be a part of that. So I think it's really, you know, when we look at this, and again, going back to this AI thing, because to me, that is huge. You know, people talk about AI is going to be so dangerous. It already is very dangerous. I think if they really wanted to do something to stop it, they would make a requirement that these engines that are going from an image to video or creating a video, that they would put some kind of a watermark on there. And that would be required. Yeah. But it's the fact that that,

they're not doing that and the fact that they're not demanding that be done, I think is very telling that they want to use that. I think it's telling. Yeah. I think it's telling also that really where these very powerful figures are coming from, regardless of whatever the, I mean, regardless of whatever the speak is in the public forum, it's self-serving. It's self-serving. And and I know that that sounds naive and altruistic on my part, but democracy depends on, a certain degree of altruism that we enter public service and we glean, you know, we glean from the public's support of our great big companies

and we give something back. And that our role in the public sphere is to protect one another and protect the Constitution. But this is all being attacked right now. But I want to just insert right here before the operating opportunity passes that I honor your integrity. I honor your integrity for saying the difficult thing. That's an example that everybody needs to hear. And I think that gives other people listening, that gives them courage to maybe have that difficult conversation at the family reunion, even.

Some people are afraid of losing their relationships because of... Talk about that, because, again, that is, things have become so polarized. I think part of it is because we've given so much power to government and we've laid prostrate before. for government and we've said, you know, give us this and give us that. I know that we've got the right person in there. We're going to get everything fixed. And so everybody is so invested in that, invested in a solution really from the top down that they have so much at stake that they were starting to see all of the, you know,

there's so much that is there that we put on government that people get so invested in it. It becomes so important to them that it's actually turning family members against each other. All of us have seen that to some degree or the other probably. It absolutely is. So I spoke at a large conference for women who are newly engaged in civic activity. Some have had more experience than others, but that's just a description. This was primarily women, and this is really important to them, and they recognize what's going on. I can't even tell you how many came to me post my keynote speech literally in tears.

literally I've lost my sister who was my best friend we don't speak to one another anymore we can't it's stressing my marriage my parents won't talk with me I'm estranged from my children my neighbors I feel alone the sense of of isolation and fear and suspicion is pervasive let me go back to Hannah Arendt I mentioned her before and her comments her brilliant comments about truth right that it's not the convinced Nazi, it's not the convinced communist, who's the ideal subject of totalitarianism, is the average Joe who can't tell the difference between truth and deceit. Well, she also said that a couple of wonderful things in her book,

The Origins of Totalitarianism, she said that fear is the organizing principle of authoritarianism or autocracy totalitarianism, fear, fear of one another. Let's talk about fear for just a moment because fear can make us go quiet. We are so afraid of what our neighbors will say. We're afraid that we're going to get fired. I mean, that's sort of on this end of the spectrum, but we're going to fear that we're going to lose our dearest and most precious relationships. And so people stay quiet.

I know this from reading volumes and volumes and volumes from average people during the Weimar period or the early 30s in Germany, that fear of being seen as unpatriotic, as seen as traitorous, the fear that you're going to lose your job, lose your family, your family's going to be endangered. Those were real fears. This is what is happening in American society right now. People are fearful in not just a vague way, but fearful to drive to work. They might be snatched by eye. They're fearful about taking their children to a bus stop.

They might put their children on a bus and they might be snatched by ice. This pervasive fear again, Hannah Avent said it is the organizing principle of authoritarianism. She also noted in analyzing how this could have happened in Germany. She said it was the word she used was atomization. The atomization. It's the pulling apart of society. It's the isolation of people from one another. You know what I'm talking about.

about so well, and you're talking with people all of the time about this. This is a grave concern. It's pulling. If you think of American society as a piece of fabric, it's already been tested at the seams many, many, many times, many times. And it's gotten a little threadbare on the knees and on the elbows, right? But now what's happening is the picking apart of the fibers that hold us together, and those are neighborhoods and your college roommates and your family. And your family. your marriage is being pulled apart, and that, my friends, is a strategy. It is not a byproduct. That is the strategy.

It's absolutely the strat. Polarization is the strategy. Of course, we've seen that. We've seen that the fear, you know, someone that I interview on a regular basis was on all kinds of network programs and everything until he opposed the wars that came after 2001. And at that point, he got kicked off. And he had a lot to say, of course, about that.

People should have listened to. And we saw the same thing happening in 2020. We saw, if you don't, we have one orthodoxy here. And it's almost cult-like religion. And if you don't tell the line on that, you're going to be expelled out of society or job or whatever. And the atomization that comes there. But we always see that as the fear and there is one orthodox. that you must tow the line, you must agree with us on everything, or you will be purged out of society.

Yes, yes. And I spent some time yesterday because, again, I'm in Utah. Utah is a very conservative, by and large, very conservative state. It has a Republican governor, Republican lieutenant governor, whom, by the way, I'll just slip this in. I'm going to meet with tomorrow. I'm so glad I get to talk with her, remarkable woman. And I'm having conversations here because I live at, outside of this ecosystem. I've lived outside so long and I live in Germany. So for me, it's always, I feel like I'm coming

as a sort of a social scientist. Every time I land in the U.S. and I'm watching how people interact with one another. And I had a long conversation with a very, very bright group of women yesterday who talked about the language that defines

these two camps. And as a linguist, this was fascinating for me. Let me just share something with you. I mean, literally a communication guide, if you happen to lean a little bit left or farther left, and you want to actually talk with conservatives, listen up, listen up, because there's language that we use, unbeknownst to us, that just shuts down certain minds. They just completely close down the garage door and don't want anything to do with it. The language that tends to trigger resistance among those

that are more conservatives. Are things like DEI, privilege, systemic racism, the patriarchy, defunding, climate crisis, can't use that word,

can't use that phrase. The term socialism, obviously, is a very hot, blistering term right now. That's also not new. Identity. politics. As an alternative to those, these very bright women schooled me, they said, using words like

freedom, these are the words that actually speak to our more conservative friends, many of whom, by the way, and I meet them all of the time, are saying, this right here is not what I voted for. This is not, I don't even recognize this. This is not my grandpa's GOP. Yeah, I don't hear you. Yeah, more and more people who are persuadable. So here's the language, talking about freedom and liberty, talking about safe communities, strong families, economic stability. Immediately we could say, are you concerned about the deficit? Let's talk about the deficit. This was supposed to be an economically sound presidency. Everybody, so many people voted for him because he had supposedly run so many

businesses. What is forgotten in that sentence is that he ran so many businesses into the ground. but we can talk about there you go and and and what else the stakes and the alcohol and whatever all the long list of those bankrupted businesses and we don't want him to bankrupt our beautiful republic so we avoid the word democracy and i and i held up my book and i said holy smokes are you kidding me that's that's the cover of my book why didn't somebody tell me that democracy is like a bad word and they said oh because it sounds like Democrat, we are a republic. Okay, I'm just getting that straight. I'm getting it straight. Fiscal responsibility, opportunity, tradition. These are words that speak to

are more conservative friends, many of whom are persuadable because they are seeing that we are embroiled in a war that has no exit. They are seeing the gas prices go up. They are wondering about Epstein. They're wondering about, you know, all sorts of things that were not what they signed up for.

and don't reflect in any way what republicanism means. And if I can add something very obvious, this is not republicanism. No. This is authoritarianism. It's something else. It is a different breed entirely. Let me take a breath. You talk now.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. I don't think it has anything to do with traditional republicanism. And it is amazing to me to say somebody who has been a Republican in all my life, to see the Republicans just laying down and doing nothing. about this because they're so afraid. I mean, we're talking about fear. That can be in the general public, but it certainly can be with these people who are in a very powerful position. They're afraid of losing that position of power. And they will tow the line. Yeah, they really have become supine with all of this, whatever you want. You know, they can't criticize the leader.

Right, right. Because I know he'll take recrimination against them. Yeah. Take recrimination. Now, so we talked about several of these, as I pointed out, looking at your just a table of contents here, assaulting the truth, politicizing independent institutions, consolidating the executive. That is a huge one, I think. Silencing dissent. We've never seen this level of attack against free speech directly by White House before in the past, scapegoating the vulnerable. But I want to go to hijacking faith, because I think that speaks to a lot of people who are traditional Republicans who are looking at

this president and scratching their head as to what's going on with that. What do you see in terms of hijacking faith, co-opting religion? Well, let me just preface this all by saying, I'm a deeply devout Christian. I've done missionary work, so let's just put that out on the table. That's where I'm coming from. I'm not, I'm not a sometimes go to church. I'm, I hold, held volunteer, volunteer positions in my church my entire life. So this is deeply personal for me. And I've posted quite a bit on this. And it's telling because some people are surprised to find that someone who is trying to point out the dangers of this administration is somebody who comes from a deeply believing background.

I don't know why people think that the two cannot be the same, but I digress. Moving forward, Christian nationalism is not a religion per se. it's not seeking for religious authenticity. It's a ploy for power. It's a ploy for power. And the reason I can say that with assurity is because I've done the research specifically in what happened in Germany

and I've seen what has happened in Poland, what happened in Brazil, what happened in Hungary, this use of religion to draw people into a base to use a couple of things. the structure of religion, the iconography of religion, the symbols, the language of religion, but also to use the good faith of people. Yes. So it's not only what religion it is, but it's the faithfulness of people.

Their willingness to follow authority. Good tithe-paying people. Good widows putting their might in the tithing box who are completely convinced of the danger that quote Christianity lies under right now and how it will be saved, how it will you know, it will be redeemed by

a particular administration and so we'll ignore anything that this particular president the current occupant of the Oval Office what his history is whether he really is a believing Christian whether

he is a felon, whether he's a convicted felon, we'll forget all of that because you know there was David of the Old Testament and there was Cyrus of the Old Testament. All of this attempt to make sense and to

excuse the usurping of Christianity, my faith, to gain political power. Now, how did it happen in Germany? Germany was a very, very faithful, faithful country. If you ever come and visit me here and you're invited

or back at home when I'm in Germany, you see churches, churches with the center of every village, prayer chapels on every mountain walkway when you go on your little walks in the mountains, a deeply, deeply believing people. Hitler and the National Socialists knew how to manipulate that deep belief and the organization of the church specifically to their advantage. they could cause the Protestant pastors to make oaths to Hitler. The Catholic priests made oaths to the Reich, to the kingdom. And when you get those strong authority figures recognizing that the only way I'm going to save my back or continue in my job or have any power is to align my

self with this regime, then that trickles down to your parishioners. It trickles down to all of those believing widows that are putting their might in the tithing box, right? And then you couple that with this fear in Germany, it was the fear of Jews, the fear of this other. And all of that scapegoating that created a kind of an enmity, a contempt for their neighbors, of fear, Because not only were they the reason for World War I, the World War I failure, as was the story then that was promulgated everywhere, but they became a threat also to Christianity. And you can understand pretty well why a deeply believing, perhaps isolated person will just go along with that. What eventually happened was the wrapping of the cross literally in the Svostika flag. And I've read stories of people going into their churches where the church, the liturgy or the meeting began with a Sikhael.

There was a pushback to that. You might know the name of Martin Miemö. If you don't, you've heard first they came for the socialists. But I wasn't a socialist, so I did nothing. Well, he was part of what was called Di Bekennen the Kirche. That's the confessing church. One of those main figures was Dietrich Bonhofer. who's one of my heroes, and I write about him more than once in my book.

He was someone who recognized the fearmongering, the othering that we've talked about, the latent violence in this movement, and that they were exploiting faith. If you fuse state and church, you ruin both. Yes, yes, I agree. Because the church is serving the state, not God, and the state is serving. serving the church, not the people. They're working like that in tandem. So they decrease one another's potential power.

And it robs faith in my estimation, and the estimation of many. It robs faith of its beauty, of its purity, which is to serve one another. It is to love one another. It is to do exactly what authoritarianism seeks to not do. It is to bridge our divides. It's to sacrifice for one another.

That is why I believe what I do is to follow my Savior Jesus Christ if I can just add that. And he never would have supported the violence and the othering and the killing that we see that comes out of authoritarianism. So the confessing church led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Himmuller and others came a little bit late. But still I honor them because they gave everything. Literally Bonhofer was sent to the gallows. He was killed. because he also was plotting an assassination of the mustache man. We have to mention that.

I think he died, unfortunately, like about a month before the war ended. Right before. Yeah, just before the very end. You see Jesus used as a beard, and I think the phrase it really sticks with me is, I can't hear what you're saying because I see what you're doing. Yeah, that's right. That's the problem. And for people who are not Christians, it's a block to them becoming a Christian.

and really understanding what it's about. For the people who are Christians, I see their kindness and their good nature being taken advantage of, primarily because they just can't believe that somebody would not be like them. So they're projecting, really, their morality, their system of morality,

and their system of justice. They just can't believe somebody could do X, right? And so they're reluctant to attribute that. But they're using Jesus as a beard, And I've said many times, you've merged politics and religion, what you wind up with is politics. And it really does get rid of it. And I think the founders of this country understood that. And they were very clear about that because they'd come from a situation where there was an official state church.

And we don't want to have that. But the thing that concerns me is to see how it's being used as a beard and how people who want to have access to big audiences who want to have access to popular politicians will basically subject. We'll suck up to this and try to give it legitimacy. And we'll see that over and over again, don't we? Absolutely. And we saw it in technicolor in Viamen, but again, we're seeing it in many other places. We see, if I can just mention Viktor Orban, and we're glad that he's out of office. But for 16 years, 16 years, he wanted to fashion Hungary as this Christian bastion.

And so predictably, he vilified Muslims. He had very strict, very ugly. anti-immigration policies. And then he wanted to rewrite World War II history. Now remember, Hungary was also complicit in much of what happened in the Holocaust. But what Orban wanted to do was whitewash all of that. Whitewash all of that so that looking back, we don't really see how Hungary was complicit in handing over its Jews. But it was this Christian bastion. Aren't we glad for that? It's that longing again for those good old days that never really were so good at all. But Victor Orban also trying to create a Christian state.

What we find out, though, when he was finally ousted from office and replaced by Peter Maggiah, was that he was working the system. He was, on one hand, while trying to present this image of the strong Christian state with family values and everything, he was milking the Hungarians of their money and feeding it into super pet money, right? And he was giving these no-bid contracts to some of his best friends, making them the wealthiest people in Hungary. So there was this really nefarious... I'm glad that doesn't happen in America. Oh, never.

Are you kidding? It would never happen. Speaking of reflecting pools. That's right. Truly is amazing. Yeah, we see the same. things happening everywhere. Throughout history, it doesn't really matter in terms of the time period or the geography because human nature is human nature. And politics tends to corrupt it. You know,

one of the things when you're talking about Nazi Germany, I think one of the things that was used effectively in terms of hijacking the faith was a fear of the communists because the communists were ruthlessly oppressing Christian churches there at the same time. What people don't see, I think, many times looking at what they think are these two polar opposites of the Soviets and the Nazis. I think in many cases, we see that they play each other off. We even see that with a two-party system here in the United States. They play each other part. They get you to be more afraid of the other guy.

They know that you're bad. So let's tell them how much even worse the other party is so that you'll fall in line and support us. And so I think that was a big part of that there. There was real persecution of Christians under communism in Russia, and they could play that off against them and say, well, now you need to run as fast as you can in the other direction to me. And yet these two philosophies take you to the same totalitarian hellhole, don't they? Yes, they do. That's very well put. That's very well put.

And it's just another form of scapegoating. It's another way of shining the spotlight on one group of people and using language. again, the use of language is absolutely elemental to what we are talking about using the language of communist and not distinguishing that from socialism that they are one and the same

that they are the same danger and remember like you've just mentioned it was when the parliament burned down which was an event this is in Germany, Vimar Germany, when the parliament burned down, the Reichstagbrandt is what it's called. When it burned down

It was attributed, it was blamed, the National Socialists blamed it on a communist. Still, there's a great deal of debate about that. But they could use that as their big banner. The communists are coming after us, which then led to the next step. They could enact a law, which means that we can amass. This lets us have more power. I'm just going to simplify it like that. The National Socials have more power.

It was called the Reichstag-Brandt-Fer. ordn. It's the law that followed the burning down of the parliament. And not very much longer after that. I mean, we're talking really weeks after that came what's called the Enabling Act. It's a great big German word. I don't want to bore anybody with it, but I'll just tell it to you. I'm not flexing. It's called the Ammistigungs Gazettes. And that Amistigiegungzegosgesz, this enabling act turned, turned the Chancellor then, the Adolf Hitler Chancellor, into a dictator. He was given full rights. So just a reminder that all of this was legal. It was all within the framework of what was already on the books.

They just manipulated it enough all of the time. But back to your point about this danger about communism and the conflating of terms of socialism and communism, well, we're watching that right now. And I just want to underscore it's another form of scapegoating. We have, it's like saying, look over here, look over here, look over here, when really a grave danger is the anti-democratic technocrats that are standing behind the administration or are even working in tandem with the administration

who are on the record. On the record is anti-democratic, the dark enlightenment philosophies, the Pejotateel, the Curtis Yarvin, the Alex Carp. They're doing the same thing that major philosophers, at that same time in Germany that we're talking about, they did. They said, ah, democracy is a little too sluggish, you know? Democracy is just a little too, it's just not working for us. Can't we just kind of ramp it up and let's, oh, let's have what the Germans then did with national socialism, a dictatorship. But we're hearing people talk about, we need a technocracy now. Well, what we need is to run the country

like a business. Let's just put one of these great technocrats in the highest seat of power. Or you have The entire Project 2025 camp that says, well, really what we need is a theocracy. We need to have somebody sitting in this office who will rule as what we've already talked about, as a Christian nationalist leader. These, I think, are the threats that we need to be. I wonder why the founders didn't think of that, you know, because we had a much more Christian nation at the time of the founding of this country. They had Christian principles. Why didn't they think of that and put that in? But, you know, you're talking about how they just supinely let them do whatever they want.

I'll never get over hearing Mike Johnson say, we can't do search warrants. We don't have the time for that. We've got to expedite this. There's just not enough time. We have to do something more expeditious here. Let's talk about, this is the final chapter in your book. And we're skipping over several of them. There's a lot more to the book as well.

But stoking chaos. I have never seen more chaos deliberately done. And I mean, just to the point of let me throw something out here really absurd. Let me put out an offensive cartoon or something. I'll be beating up the Canadian Prime Minister on a hockey skating thing. Let me put something down there. Just get everybody talking about this. Let me rename this lake over here.

It's just constant stoking of chaos. I talk about Trump being the WWE president. You know, that's what he has thrived on. He sees that heels and heroes thing. He knows how well that works. And it really does work on. the public make this into something of a circus. Talk a little bit about that in history. Well, it's the 11th and the culminating of these 11 hallmarks. We start with the Salton Truth.

We work through all the other ones. And I ended specifically on this because it actually sets me up for the next chapter, which isn't a hallmark of authoritarianism, but I read an entire big, fat chapter on nonviolent resistance. And then after that, I end with hope. So actually the closing chapter is about hope, folks, so don't do anything rash. We are going to end with hope, but let's get back to this idea of stoking violence or chaos, stoking chaos and inciting violence. It does a number of things, and you described it so well. Your nervous system can only digest and metabolize so much. So if we flood the zone, and that's just because we're human and we're wired that way, and it's important that we recognize our limits for digesting and metabolizing schlock.

and offense and outrage. What happens is a number of responses, right? We can, we respond exactly the way Steve Bannon hoped that we would respond when he said the first time around, I'm going to flood the zone. People who were in a flood just barely, barely, barely are dog paddling, just keeping their nose above the water. That's right. So flooding the zone with these outlandish, outrageous, offensive,

sometimes just so brain numbing some of these things, that makes us tune out. It makes us tune out. It also can create this ambient sense of, of I'm always on the defensive or I'm always on the offensive. You want to attack. I've had days where I've wanted to throw a heavy American refrigerator through a concrete wall. Your system can only take so much, right? But what it also does is it creates an atmosphere that is perfect for a savior. Let me describe that.

I think a lot of us out here have seen the picture of Vladimir Putin on a horse, bare-chested. That's right. Right. Well, I don't know whether the current occupant of the White House is going to do something similar. But in a sense, this idea of... I don't want to think about it quite as heavy in his AI... I don't want to think of that image. But it creates a situation where people are so exhausted

and they feel fear coming in from every possible direction. People who are scared and exhausted and isolated, remember, this polarization is essential that we keep in mind, that we're atomized, we're pulled apart from each other. People who are exhausted who are afraid, who are isolated, will sign anything. And they'll say, I just don't have it in me. take care of it. So they're looking for his savior. And then when somebody comes and literally says,

I am the chosen one, they'll say, good, you take care of it. That is handing our precious republic into the hands of an authoritarian. That's what it is, but that's what they want. You exhaust the people. I agree. You confuse them and you isolate them. That is why I use that as the last of the 11 hallmarks, because all of these things we've talked about in the previous, 10 accumulate. It's like an avalanche. It's like a landslide and it ends up with violence and a third point. There's nothing that would justify an emergency decree or an executive order like people going to war with each other. Right? We get angry enough with one another and finally people just pull out the ammo and they're fighting with one another. We cannot be enemies. We

cannot look at one another with such suspicious suspicion and contempt that we're ready to cause harm to one another. That is precise. If we do that, we are playing right into the hands of the authoritarian. You've got to believe me. That's exactly what they want. We'll get people fighting with each other. I agree. Yeah. I've said this before. When I look at Trump, the things that he does, it makes me think back to, it's a hard day's night. I think it was the Beatles movies black and white. One of the guys had an uncle and his whole thing was just to get people fighting with each other. He enjoyed that. But of course, there's more than just the enjoyment that I think that Trump gets out of it. I think it really is a tactic of control. And it's important

for people to understand that. So as you pointed out, the purpose of that chaos is just to get you to surrender and say, okay, well, you take it from this. So what is the antithesis of that? It's for us to not surrender and to do what? It is nonviolent resistance, and I use an entire chapter to describe it. But I've also talked about it already in the course of our really valuable time together. I've said there's language that we can use that will either shut down our counterpart, our much more conservative counterpart, or open up doors. It starts, so much of this starts with language being sensitive, asking questions,

not going in for the kill, not going in to win an argument, but just say, help me understand. Help me understand where you are and why. Help me understand the sources. Let me know where you're getting your information. Oh, let's sit down for a moment. Guess what? Did you know, and don't take this personally, Antilles,

but you know that source that you're watching all day long and around. Did you know that that's not, that can't even be categorized as a news platform? Because they were sued so many times for telling laws, and you know which platform I'm talking about, they had to change their categorization to entertainment because they don't meet certain journalistic standards. And then you say, here's this other source

that gives me kind of a different point of view. Look, we are living in many ways on different planets because we are accessing different information systems. Your aunt Tilly, who's only accessing one, propagandistic platform doesn't even know. I was stunned. I was stunned to watch and listen to interviews with diehard Trump supporters who had never seen January 6th footage. Never. And so they thought it was all concocted. And then somebody kindly, lovingly, thoughtfully, safely sat them down and said

you need to watch this whole thing it was world tipping for them to realize they had and and to watch the cogs in their mind say whoa whoa whoa if my government can lie about that domino domino domino domino domino domino

so so there are practical things we can do it begins with language it begins with refusing the lie I'll just give three points here refusing to participate in the lie. When you see a lie, when you hear a lie, you call it out. It's going to cost you.

Do it kindly. Do it firmly. Don't back down. The other one is rebuild the we. Whoever you can rebuild a relationship with and talk in terms of we are concerned about our community. We are concerned about our immigrant brothers and sisters. We are concerned about keeping our faith pure and unaltered by government.

We are the people. And then the other one is just to reject violence, reject violence and be loud about it. It is not okay for my president to use that violent language. It's not okay. It's not okay, right? It's not okay for them to allow that people at a rally say he should be shot. He should be shot over and over again in the RNC, right? We cannot permit that.

And then again in my book, I spent an entire, METI chapter mapping out practical things you do. And then one of the things that is valuable about my book, and I wish that somebody would have written my book 10 years ago so I could have used it. So I'm writing it now and I'm giving it to you is that throughout the book, there are action plans. In each of those case studies, I give you action plans. I say, you got 10 minutes? Here's what you're going to do. You've got three hours. Here's what you're going to do. You have a little more time. Here's what you can do. in a sustainable way. And it stings as easy as download the Five Calls app.

Download your voting app. Check that you're registered. And I build throughout the book, throughout these action plans. So no one has an excuse. I've given you a field guide. The other thing that I do is that I strongly recommend and I give a game plan for developing your own democracy defense pod.

It sounds so cheesy. But I'll bet you're never going to forget it. It's your DDP. It's your Peps. It's three people. You're going to hold one another accountable. You're going to buy the chips and salsa together. You're going to go to the town hall meeting together.

And you are going to be actively engaged in your community. That's what your DDP is. There's like a 20-page appendix that gives all of us a guide for doing exactly that. Again, we come back to where we started. Really. Politics is local. And so you end with, you know, nonviolent resistance, which, again, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was a key issue when the wall came down in Germany was you had a group of people who kept meeting at a church. And then one day they go in mass and they just passively go to the area where they're not supposed to go because of the guards and that type of thing. And what is it that gives people that kind of strength, I think, to do that? it really is your final chapter there, hope. You know, when I talked to a fellow from Israel that had found a way to have a peaceful relationship with their Muslim neighbors that were there, they were both at each other's

throats, and they found a way, he called it the path to peace and hope. And I think that is the key thing. You know, when we look at that, and as Christians, we should always have that hope, that hope that gives us courage to even stand up against a gun that is pointed at as Bonhofer did, as people in East Germany did as well. What do you mean by Hope's Stone? That is the final chapter there. What is the stone?

I'm so glad you asked that. For those of us who've studied Martin Luther King, Jr., and we know his, I have a dream speech, he says, out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. Okay. And a lot of us, now we're back to the very beginning of our time together, people who are despairing, who are despondent, who are shrugging, giving up.

he talks about scaling this mountain of despair. We are going to have despair. We will not escape fear. We will not escape war and unrest in this world. We won't. This is what mortality is about. This is the challenge. And so having hope is not to ignore that mountain of despair.

It's to climb it and to feel it under our souls of our feet and in our souls. The despair around us. And to look, when we get on that mountain of despair, this is how I envision it. I look backwards and I look forwards. Behind me, I see legions, legions of people who have given so much for my right to be free, who have given life and limb and time and resources, and I want to honor them with how I live now, period. That's great. When I look forward, I look at my children, they're adult children now, my one grandchild.

What is the world that they will inherit? Remember, Victor Frankel in Buchanwald, he said, you've read his wonderful work, Man Search for Meaning. And the thing that kept him alive was this vision of his wife, the image of his wife that she would be waiting for him. She had long since died. But knowing that his beloved was waiting for him and needed him was the thing that kept his soul striving.

Madeline Albright said, she had a refugee childhood in Czechoslovakia, ended up being UN Secretary of State. Right, right. And she said, I was taught that striving is the way to keep faith and hope. Just the act of striving. So it's climbing up on that despair and then having the stone of hope. You know, some people like to kind of mix hope and optimism. I see them as two very different things. Optimism, you might have been born with that personality, good for you. Lucky you. You're bubbly. You're bubbly. You're yellow. You're joie de vivre. Okay, but optimism is carbonated. It's these air bubbles that float to the top. And that'll get us through when we're underwater for a while. While optimism is carbonation, hope is carbon. It is dense.

It is the substrata. It has been carved out in the veil of grief and loss. And all these people behind me have been sustained because they still, strove. They were still striving. That's what I see out of hope. It is heavy. It anchors us. That's what it is. And for our Christian listeners, we understand that. We understand this language of hope being an anchor to the soul. It is not a come and go feeling. It is a moral discipline. I am going to keep on moving. I'm going to keep on scaling. You've experienced, you know, being fired for speaking truth. That must have been a moment of great despair for you and anger and doubt and what was that for. But here you are and

look at the good that you are doing, continuing to speak truth and educate people about these things that are valuable for everyone. That's what I mean by hopes. Yeah. And when we talk about hope as Christians, we talk about confident expectation. We know how this turns out. And we will frequently as Christians will talk about the difference between happiness and joy, you know? Happiness is dependent on what's happening to you. As you're pointing out the bubbles that come up or the things that come into our life, we don't have any control over that, over the circumstances of our life. But if we have that confident expectation, that gives us a deep joy and it gives us an anchor,

doesn't it? That does. That does. And we glean strength from that, and we glean strength from one another. I'm going to just insert right here really quickly. You asked about my previous books. So a global mom was really well received. I was so humbled that people even wanted to hear that story.

But in the middle of that book, we lose our eldest son at the age of 18 to a tragic accident where he was trying to save someone else's life. I don't insert that here to try and, you know, garner any pity or poor woman or anything like that. What I want to say is I know what it's like to have zero. hope in the future and that there will never be joy and that will never be purpose again. How can my life continue when I've lost the thing most precious to me? It was my love for other people that continued my life. I never thought I would ever write again, speak again, certainly not be sitting on your podcast. I never imagined that when I saw my son's beautiful body go into the ground.

But it has been that deep faith and also my commitment to other people, my profound love for other people and my desire to see other people experience joy and freedom and stability and everything that human dignity means. That's also in my writing and in my thinking. Well, thank you so much. It's a pleasure talking to you. Again, folks, we're talking to Melissa Dalton Bradford. And her book that just came out is How to Save Democracy, the Anti-Athoritarian Playbook, so that we don't get played. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's been a wonderful honor. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. You're listening to the David Night Show. Joining us today is Jonathan Deaver, and he has a substack, and he has a series of books coming out, the Grift Trilogy, which seems to be appropriate for today's situations that we've got. But he has on his substack, which is Deaver Dialog.com. You can see an article they just put it. up the petro dollar isn't dead, but America's financial free ride may be ending. So we're going to talk a little bit about what the petro dollar is, what it is the current state of the American

dominance in terms of the dollar, and what is going to happen as we lose that, because I see that devolving from us very rapidly. Is the former state representative in Ohio, a former chairman of the financial institutions, housing and urban development committee. He retired as an attorney. He founded a company. He's a CEO of a Wyoming chartered digital bank and the author of, of course, the Gryft trilogy

that we're talking about. Maybe there's some 3D chess in that. I don't know. But joining us now is Jonathan Deaver. Thank you so much for joining us, sir. Appreciate the time. Let's talk a little bit about what the petro dollar is. And, of course, everybody knows that part of that

was the oil trade, certainly is why they called it the petro dollar. Is it simply the agreement with the Saudis because they're no longer exclusively paying for oil or accepting payment for oil and the dollar. What is going on with the petro dollar in your opinion? Well, so I think the basic idea is very simple. So for folks that don't understand it, you know, oil is traded globally. And the dollar has been the dominant currency used to price and settle the buying and the selling of the raw material oil itself, right? So these oil producing countries, they'll receive dollars when they sell their oil. And then the dollars have to go somewhere, obviously.

So some are spent on imports. Some are spent on investments in other countries. Some find their way into our financial markets here in the United States, which also includes our United States treasuries, which is the backbone of how our system works. And it creates kind of a reinforcing system. So the way I like to describe the petro dollar system is everybody's got a toll road in their state. And everybody's got a love, hate relationship with these things, of course. But

the road becomes valuable because people use it, right? And then everyone else uses it because other people already use it. So it's kind of this cyclical thing. Toll roads get used because people use them. People don't really like them, but it is what it is. And so the dollar position is really much more than oil, but the oil trade has developed this network of dollar-based commerce and it just constantly gets reinforced. Now, the system didn't appear. just one night. We just didn't wake up to the petro system. It really started back in the 70s, for those of us that are old enough to remember the oil embargoes and the hyperinflation of the 1970s. President Nixon was really the one that took us off the gold standard, and that set us

into this really kind of interesting reset of what our dollar means and what it means in the global environment. And he really used his Treasury Secretary at the time was William Simon to create an economic relationship with Saudi Arabia and those other oil-producing states to facilitate using this dollar as the settlement vehicle for the buying and the selling of oil. And so essentially the value of the dollar is really because of what Simon says, right? So we create this fiat currency system and we're able to just create more of these dollars out of thin air and have been able to do that for quite some time. That's going to have a huge impact on us when we lose that.

And I think when we go back and look at the unique financial position that we had with all that, I guess looking back to when Biden began the sanctions against Russia, that was really, I think, in my opinion, when things started to turn against the financial system that had been our superpower. And it's like, you're burning this thing down. You know, if you're going to have a monopoly, you can't weaponize it. You can't boast about it. You've got to kind of, you know, play your cards close to your chest.

but they started using that as a weapon. And then Trump doing the same thing. And, of course, the other aspects, I think, of this trade is the agreement that we're going to be able to provide security in the Middle East. And that has really been kind of burned down. I think when we look at the folly of what's going on with this Iran war, we look at the state of our moves, we look at the inability to even protect and help to protect Saudi Arabia, but the fact that we have been a source of instability.

What do you think about that, the current situation? I think one of the things that people forget is when you were the national or international reserve currency, there's been five or so in the last 500 years. Before us, it was Britain, right? Great Britain, it was the pound sterling. That was the dominant currency before us. And we rose out of the ashes of World War II as the stabilizing currency for the world. Prior to that, it was the British Empire. And they controlled roughly 25% of the real estate of the world. They had the largest Navy, the largest army, and they were the global police officer, for a lack of a better word. So part of the power of the reserve currency, it's a catch-22, of course, is that it gives you the dominance in the economy, the global economy, because it also gives you the military. And you have to be able to print money at nauseam when you need it in order to create that stabilizing force.

So the reserve currency is a very powerful tool in the hands of what I like to call a moral country or moral nation, right? So I would argue that during that period of time, England was a moral nation and a moral country. When they came out of that, we took its place. And our country is found on a lot of those same principles, you know, the Magnicarta principles, the DeJochristian values that shaped a lot of their common law and shaped our nation's constitutions that our framers worked off of. And so that morality that we've used historically has what's created a balance around the world. So, yes, it may be a little irritating when we're involved in all these kinds of things. conflicts out around the world, but regardless of presidency, and you'd pointed out not only President Biden, but President Trump, but before him, it was President Obama and Bush and Clinton and the

original Bush and Reagan and Carter. All of these men had the ability to interject in using the economic power of our reserve currency status to quell conflicts around the world and create that global security. So it's a catch-22, right? And that gives us enormous. advantages, but it also comes with great responsibility. And part of our struggle, right, is the last time we've paid down our debt or even made a payment toward our debt was Bill Clinton in the late 90s. And prior to that, it was in 1969. And prior to that, it was Calvin Coolidge, I believe, was the last one to make some payments on the actual debt. So where we are now is we are accelerating our spend. And we're not being responsible when times are good. And that is the key. And that is the

to Congress. They must be responsible when times are good. They must reduce spending. They must take the advantage of the economic growth to reduce and retire debt, to deregulate us when the time's right, regulate us when the time's right. But the problem in Washington is that neither party has an interest in governing and our politics has gotten so vitriolic that the basic things that you alluded to are just not getting done. And so if we can't agree on what's in the national security best interest of the United States and we turn that into a partisan chess match on CNN and Fox News and on Twitter, we've got bigger problems that are more so structural, but also just our ability to communicate as human beings that have to govern.

I agree. Yeah, it's really kind of become about owning the other side and about sound bites and that type of thing. They are not interested at all in governing. And of course, as I look at it, it seems to me like for the longest time they've been kicking off responsibility to, for instance, the bureaucracy. And, you know, we've got to pass it so we can find out what's in it type of thing. And there's a lot of truth to that, quite frankly. They don't want to work out the details. They would rather have somebody else actually do the details. We'll start this thing and hand them the tools and the power and let them run away with this.

And nobody is really taking responsibility. I like what you're talking about. And as I look at this, I think Uncle Ben would have to say that with great power comes great responsibility. And it seems like we're kind of like the kid with a superpower on the block that starts bullying people. and that kind of backfires, I think, in the long term. It does in the long term. I think where we are, though, is that we've got about 15 years to get our house in order based on just general consensus. There's a couple of big major things that are coming due in the early 2030s that most people are not really paying attention to because, you know, I guess what was it?

Bill Clinton's chief advisor said, don't let a good crisis go to waste. No, yeah. Well, we're going to have a bunch of crises hitting at the same time. Our national debt to GDP is already over 100% as are most of the economic power blocks in the world. By 29, we're going to have the vast majority of the world, the debt to GDP as a ratio, is going to be over 100% for the first time ever. There's no other place to go, sadly, right? That can take on the responsibility that we're shouldering.

We have a Social Security problem that has never been addressed that we've known about since I was a kid. in 2032, they've always known that that's our cliff. There's going to be a 22% drop off in the revenue that's needed to maintain that fund. Congress has stolen from it for repetitively. There's no money in it. I hate to tell people that, but it's true. It's a trust fund with a negative balance. We also have the exponential on our national debt. This year alone, they said it was going to be $1.9 trillion on debt that we were going to add by CBO estimates. Well, we hit that before September. We're now at $2 trillion in climbing. So the estimates are going to be far less than we can anticipate. Interest rates are higher. A lot of the debt that we incurred when it was

cheap money, everybody got those little cheap mortgages out there. But our government did the same thing, and they just refinanced. And instead of taking the differential on the interest rate and paying down the debt, they just borrowed more and spent more. So now we've got this low interest rate debt that has to get paid back at higher rates. And even our own secretary of the Treasury a couple years ago said we're going to need another Brenton Wood sometime by 29. So we have all of these global things coming together at the same time. And then we have all these domestic things coming together at the same time. And Congress is sitting there arguing over details that don't matter to the average American who is trying to figure out how to put food on

their table, pay their mortgage, and retire in a dignified manner. That's right. Yeah, we have this debt spiral that it's talking about the massive amount of debt that we've got, and most of it has been added in the last couple of administrations. And so nothing is being done about that. And I guess the question is, you know, in your opinion, what does this look like in terms, you think we've got maybe 15 years before everything kicks in, or you think it's going to be something happens sooner than that? Well, so there's two different paths, right? It depends on the speed with which we get there. The erosion of the dollar dominance is already taking place. We're seeing the national use is at about 57 per year.

somewhere in that number. I wrote about that in that article, but it's slowly declining over time. And as that declines and other people look at different assets, our ability to be that sovereign power, that ability to be the superpower to maintain our current status, our current lifestyle, et cetera, erodes. So the speed with which we get there is also determining on what we do politically. So if we give away, you know, another trillion and a half or 1.2 trillion in helicopter money to everybody. Yeah, $5,000. That just accelerates that curve. You know, that accelerates the curve, right?

So it takes us from $2 trillion in debt to $3.5 trillion in one year that accelerates it. We have to borrow that at high interest rates, right? Relatively so. So it depends on what Congress does or doesn't do. If we look at Great Britain as an example of what happens when you come off that status, That's a technical modern model. The only problem is there's no one to step into our shoes like we were able to for Great Britain in the 1950s. What about China's role in all this?

We talk about the fact that most Western countries are really underwater in terms of debt to GDP. They have currencies and debts that are looking awful. What do you see happening? Is China the next one to take over the financial rains? Or is it something like bricks? What do you think is going to happen? That's the unknown. China is not large enough economically to step into that role. They're also, their debt to GDP is over 100% as well. They're not nearly as bad as their neighbor

or Japan, of course. Japan's doing the best they can do to get to 300%. But there's really nobody left to step into that role. So that's what's going to get interesting. The advent of some of these new technologies, specifically with quantum computing and AI and the new financial technologies that are out there make things a little bit more interesting. There's ways to make these systems work better. I think what you'll end up seeing most likely is regional conglomerations of nations coming together with their own settlement systems, right? So I think Swift, right, which is what we use. But I think you're starting to see that already in the Asian countries. They're starting to look at how they can do their settlement using their technologies.

and they have coalitions and treaties to service their needs. So I think you're going to see more and more of that. But what the unknown piece is, and this is what I always say about America, we plan for six months, basically election to election. We govern for six months. We campaign for 18. And we need to really start thinking about 5, 10, 15, 20 years down. We need members of Congress who are going to be looking and thinking long term.

We can continue on a path forward. We just have to be disciplined when times are good. When times are bad, we all know what that means. We all got to buckle up. We all got to work together. We got to row the boat in the same direction. But when times are good is when the discipline is really important. It takes me back to, you know, just rereading the story of Joseph and the story of Daniel.

You know, these were men of great responsibility. Joseph knew that there was going to be trouble ahead. He saved and he invested and he was a good steward. Daniel worked across four emperors. And back then, if they didn't like what you did, they just killed you, right? So here's a guy who was able to administer a vast empire and do a very good job. And we just need men and women like that that can serve and get us right-sized. I agree.

Yeah, and I think the real strength of America was that we didn't have central planners and central control. There needs to be, I think, actually, perhaps the government needs to do even less, in my opinion, and get out of the way. Every time they start to get in and start to manage things, then there's different motives for that. And when we look at the Swift system, again, that was one of the things that got weaponized. And so in a sense, we are forcing the hand of people to go to an alternative system. You know, if you get cut out of the system and you can't deal in it anymore, you've got to create some alternative way to trade. And that's what we're seeing in terms of the way this is being weaponized. It's like we have it a golden goose and you decide you're going to use it as a club.

But it's pretty easy to kill that goose, isn't it? Let's talk a little bit about what happens in terms of T-bills, because again, we're already having problems selling the T-bills. I've had to raise the rates and things like that. Ultimately, what happens with that? Do you think this is going to fold into some kind of a stable coin situation? Well, I think what the digital currency components do is it provides a new standard, right? I think that's the utility behind when you listen to a sailor and a few others when they talk about Bitcoin. Bitcoin as an example. What do they stress? They stress the limited supply of 21 million and that

there's a whole bunch of that even that's been lost. So the actual supply is very limited. And theoretically, gold is as well. It's a limited supply and that's why it holds its value in theory. But it's an unknown. It's not quantifiable. It's based on arithmetic and averages, right, that we basically assume is out there and we have some assumptions on what's being mined. So we have a rough idea, but with a digital currency, you know exactly what you've got. There's going to be some challenges in a country like ours because we have this pesky little thing called the Constitution. And we have rights. And the problem with the digital universe is that it's fraught for an opportunity to be abused without the right regulatory environment and without the freedoms with which you were alluding to earlier,

right? Less involvement, less intrusion. If you look at China, they have a digital currency, but they've also tied it to a credit score, which is not based on your ability to pay, but completely on your behavior, whether your behavior is what they approve of or not. And that determines your ability to buy and sell. It determines what kinds of groceries you can get. It determines where you can go to eat, whether you can travel, whether you can go see family and friends, whether you get a good rate or no rate on a house. It's all tied to your behavior, not your financial capabilities. So it's fraught for abuse in the wrong systems. I actually did a conversation. with a gentleman out of Cornell.

Very fascinating. He was Bernie Sanders, chief economist. So we were on opposite sides of the economic debate. But what I found interesting was his philosophy on the utility of the stable coin, which was that when we spend money as a federal government, we approach it like a shotgun. We just shoot it. Anybody who shoots a shotgun knows that when you pull the trigger at a target, the little pellets, they go all out. And at 30 yards, 40 yards, 50, or further way you get from it, the more spread out it is, and the less likely you are to hit the target.

And that's kind of how the federal government spends our money right now, right? Maybe 10%, 5% of the money that leaves Washington hits the intended recipient. But with the stable coin, theoretically, if done correctly, a dollar goes to the person that it's intended to receive because it's kind of like that appellate gun where you can make sure it hits the target dead center. So from his perspective, that's the utility of it. I find that very interesting. So there may be some common ground for the folks like maybe yourself and myself

that are concerned with civil liberties and independence and also the utility of how do we bring a small C conservatism back to our Congress who's held bent on spending money willy-nilly. I agree. Yeah, the problem is the credit system, as you allude to. That issue is there whether you're talking about CBDC or whether you're talking about stable coin,

the ability to prevent somebody from doing a transaction, the ability to seize money just like that. And so that part of it doesn't really change. It seems to me what changes with a stable coin, and I always call it CCBC, which is, you know, crony capitalist digital currency. But when we go from a central bank digital currency to a crony capitalist digital currency, they are requiring now. They back it up with T-bills. And so I don't really know if it has that capability like Bitcoin of a fixed number of these things. It seems to me like if your stable coin is built on something that is inherently unstable,

I don't know exactly how that works, but it does give them control in an unprecedented way over our finances and over our ability to spend and to do things, doesn't it? It very well could, but I also want to kind of, you know, putting my banker hat on for a half a second. The reality of it is, is that I don't carry a lot of cash. I'm sure you don't either. Money moves in and out of your checking account, your saves account. It's zero. zeros and digits, right? It's a numerical, each digit is one to zero, right? One, two, three, four, six, seven, eight, nine, zero.

That moves digitally and electronically. What the blockchain does is it provides a ledger so that there's a source of truth, so that way you know where things are going. And you're right that in the stable coin era, and also with the SPDIs that are kind of the incubator for a lot of this in the banking space, case, every dollar that goes in, if it's not being held in a checking account has to be

held in treasuries, because the difference is as a regular bank can hypothesate, which means they can lend out 100% of every dollar that comes in. They don't have to keep anything in reserves, whereas the special purpose depositories have to have all of your deposits ready at any given time 100% of it. So in that regard, it's a little bit more safe. And then they mandate that those monies are invested in treasuries for that particular reason has to be in a relatively liquid asset. So the idea being that if it's invested in the United States Treasury, you're going to get a rate of return anywhere from like 1 to 4% right now

off the treasury, but your money's safe with the federal government because it's insured and guaranteed in that T bill. So when you came back to me as a customer, you would be able to receive 100% of your money. You can never make a run on the bank. So there's some utility there as well. So again, the devil is going to be in the details on how we manage this. If this is run, you know, at the state level, at the bank level, and this is not a national thing. Again, going back to what you're saying, no centralized control. But the treasury automatic, you know, the treasury in the Fed, they determine the fiscal and the monetary policy.

They determine how many dollars are going to go out of the system and they also print them, right? So between those organizations, that occurs. So the idea being is that the money is already technically digital. During COVID, they just pushed a button and sent $5 trillion out, right, or however many they sent out. So most of it's digital anyway at this current. state in the game, the question is going to be who can control it and whether they can programmatically allow you or disallow you to use your funds. And so when we look at what's happening with the future is we look at the different

situation in the Middle East, how they are changing into new routes in terms of energy trade and other issues like that. Talk a little bit about that, how people are adjusting this. And what is the role of gold perhaps in all of this? Is there a role for gold that you see? Well, there's always a role for gold. That's never going to go away, right? And a lot of these European Union, or I'm sorry, not European Union, but the Gulf states are not going to be just getting rid of the dollar overnight. It wouldn't happen that way. Like the UAE as an example is building physical routes to get oil around the Strait of Hormuth is an option, right?

So there's lots of different physical routes that are being developed. And when they're using this, these other routes, it's going to continue to move that oil through there, right? Kuwait is still at pre-war levels. So we still have a lot of the transportation that's currently going through that area, just a different way. But the United States, we don't use that oil per se for our gasoline. So when people conflate the price of the gas at the pump or the diesel cost with that, it's really not a, a causation issue. Most of the oil that goes there goes east, right?

It goes to the Asian countries. They produce all of our plastics, and then we import all of that, of course. So there is a cost associated with a lot of the things that we consume. And plastics are everywhere. I don't think people realize it, but 90% of the things that move through hospitals has a petrochemical in it.

So it's a vastly used resource. So even though we may not be using it for gas and diesel, specifically, it is being used in other areas where we consume it. So really the international markets for now, the dollar is still using that currency in trade largely because the financial system wants to absorb U.S. dollars. So the fiscal infrastructure and the financial infrastructures of these two things are continually reinforcing each other, which is a good thing for now. But because of what we're engaged in with this war in Iran, we're really watching the systems getting tested on each side. And so for now, the dollar is still dominant, but when you look at the

international monetary funds reports, you have to start thinking about what's going to happen in the next three to four, even 10 years. Yeah. As a matter of fact, even though this, a lot of this oil and diesel is headed for Asia and places like that, not necessarily directly to us, when we look at the first oil embargo from OPEC, that was simply against the United States to punish us for the role that we had in the war that they had with Israel. And at that point in time, we're only getting about 15% of our oil from that area. And yet that disruption to us, even though we were a large customer, that disruption to us created a disruption in global petroleum markets. And it seems to me like, you know, this is an even bigger thing. And it is kind of, you know,

if we go back and look at how in the 1970s, how many things got changed and reset. as a result of what was going on with the OPEC oil embargo. This is a major shock to every system, I think. It is, but I think, you know, when the government faces an energy shock, there are sometimes, there's more of a need for dollars. I mean, that's kind of the ironic part. So when that happens, then everybody's got to sell assets in order to raise the cash, of course. So there's a lot of different reasons why governments move monies and move securities. It's not necessarily tied to oil per se. I think, you know, the one thing about the financial system specifically in the United States, but even internationally, is that it's extremely complicated. So it's hard to put

an actual correlation between one piece and the other directly without a little bit more data. And I don't believe at least at this point that this is a red flag for an abandonment of the dollar per se. I think what this does demonstrate more so is that we do have this amazing advantage, economic advantage in the system, and we benefit enormously because the other part of the world needs and wants dollars. They kind of need them for their management. So we're still remaining dominant.

But what it is is a true test for us on whether or not we're going to manage this correctly and whether we're going to arrest some of the things that are coming to ahead at home. You can't have the international component and a domestic component, scale. at the same time. That's our biggest challenge. And of course, the ability of the Federal Reserve to manipulate things, their hands are tied a great deal by this massive debt that we've got. If they were to raise the interest rates like we saw Volker do in the past, they couldn't possibly do that and still cover the payments, could they? That's kind of the conundrum more in. Volker had a completely, totally different problem he was

trying to solve for. Some people say he got it right. Other people say he got half the equation right. people call them a genius. I guess it just depends on your personal philosophy. But he was able to successfully, you know, tamped down inflation for us, which was great. But it did come at the expense of a larger debt. But I don't blame him for that. That's not, it was not his job. That was Congress's job. So, you know, it kind of gets us back to like getting getting back to these basics. What is Congress going to effectively do? You mentioned it earlier in our segment here that they're offloading most of their responsibility to an unelected and unaccountable bureaucratic environment and bureaucratic state, which largely falls under the auspices of the executive

most of the time, right? Not all the time, but most of the time. And so now we're being hijacked by the politics of our time. So every time a new administration comes in, the policies fundamentally change, and there's a stagnation. So if you're a civil servant bureaucrat, your job is to survive, you know, for the next four years, the next two years, or three years until you have a change over administration or a change of Congress, right, where you get a new rule. And therein lies the problem in the rub. We don't have consistency of policy inside of these agencies and organizations. Yeah, I agree. It seems like their major concern is, let's just raise the debt ceiling or get rid of it altogether. You know, that seems to be the bipartisan approach.

We've got this debt ceiling and we keep having to stop and reconsider that. Let's just get rid of it. there seems to be a total disconnect and disregard for the idea that there ought to be any kind of fiscal responsibility in Washington. I don't see either party talking about that anymore. I think the MMTers must have won the day. That's the only thing I can think of. But, you know, and there's some sound economic theory in that. However, when the rubber meets the road and the bill comes due, they don't line up all the time. So their version is, well, he just raised taxes enough.

in order to set your policy, right? So they just, they'll raise taxes to get where they wanna go rather than sometimes you have to reduce taxes. Sometimes you have to spend more than you take in, but then there's a big chunk of time where you need to pay it off. And when we've had good economic times,

I mean, I can think the 80s, the 90s, man, they were great. We had some really good economic times there. Bill Clinton took advantage of it, but he had a partner in New Gingrich, who was doing the heavy lifting in Congress, who wanted to get it done, who made a contract with America, and actually did it.

Wasn't that amazing? You actually have a guy running for speaker who promises American people something and does it. I mean, it's kind of an anomaly anymore. Well, we don't have that promise from Mike Johnson. We don't have Mike Johnson making your promises. He does know what to say about you and stuff. He'll have to check on it and come back to you later. But he doesn't seem to be interested at all.

I've met the current speaker a few times. He's a very nice gentleman. But again, it's like we're, you know, I kind of wanted six promises for 26. That would have been a good campaign message. You know, at least can we get six things? But that was a good era where you had, it just showed you that you can take a president who's pragmatic and you can take a Congress who's willing to roll up their sleeves and do some heavy lifting and they can come together to pass something for our benefit and for the benefit of the next generation. And they balanced the budget and they paid down, I forget it was like $450 billion as it was a payment to the debt. It was really amazing because it hadn't happened since 1969.

But we had all of these years in between where we've had good solid years where we could have done that. And, you know, I think about it this way. It's, you know, my mother, I lost my father this year. My mom's on Social Security and she's on a limited income. And, you know, to think that if she lives well into her 80s, which she probably is going to live to 100 knowing her, she's great. She's going to see a 22% haircut because Congress can't do their job. And this is something they've known about for a long, long, long time. And it's not necessarily a complicated fix, but they just haven't done anything.

And that's typical of what we're seeing. So my concern is when we have all these domestic components coming together, we have the international components matching at the same record speed. And we have the fiscal realities of the way the world's working. Once all those start conglomerating in the next decade, we've got some serious problems in our country needs serious leaders to start talking about them now and planning for it. And that's my biggest concern. I agree.

Yeah. When we're talking about somebody who's on a fixed income, and it's not that much to start with. and you cut that by 22%. That's in the face of inflation, which is really ramping up as well. So, yeah, it is crazy. Let's talk a little bit about bricks. What do you make of that and is there something that's going to come out of that? How much of a independent system do you think they're going to be able to put together?

Well, I think the, you know, the bricks folks are currently doing what they think they need to do to create kind of an alternative in their side of the world. and essentially what that is, it's just for folks that are not familiar with it, it's a combination of city, states, or states and countries that have come together to kind of create their own, I guess, basket of currencies, right? So a little bit of this currency, a little bit of that currency, a little bit of this currency, it kind of creates some stability in the region, and they settle with one another in that way and or they'll use a commodity.

So I think that goes back to what we were originally talking about, is that as we have these different segments and groups of the world, trying to figure out what they're going to do with the dollar dominance kind of phasing out, like I had said, you know, we have about 57% of the global foreign exchange is in dollars, which in a weird way is slightly up from where it was a year ago, but it's still roughly about the same. And these other nations are filling the gap. You know, China has been promoting greater use of their currency for international trade.

Russia has shifted away from Western markets largely because of the war that they have with Ukraine. And these other Asian countries are, you know, they have some choices now, which they didn't have before. So that's the, that's really the issue. It's like where is this going to go now that there's choice, even though the dollar is the dominant currency in the world? And, you know, a central bank can diversify its reserves. And so if they have their own reserves, they have the right to do that. have their own central banks. They do have the right to do that. There's nothing that can prevent it from happening. But I think as we're seeing the kind of the dollar dominance that slowly tail off

and get smaller and smaller as a percentage, you're going to see more and more of these groups get together and try to find their own path. Yeah, as we're talking about the disruption from the Iran war and a lot of people reacted that in different ways, had some countries seeing their income cut, others seeing other issues that they had to liquidate some of their gold holding. So that's had an issue on the value of gold. China, meanwhile, saw that as gold on sale, and they've been loading up the trucks with that as the price went down. They seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on backing up their currency with gold.

What do you think about that? What about gold's role in all this? Is that going to be a key commodity that they're going to use to back up any kind of alternative system? And I guess really, as we've been talking about macroeconomics, let's talk a little bit about what all this means for us as individuals. You know, what, what is a safe haven for us? Well, I think I can start with the safe haven part and we can back into gold, but gold is a safe haven. It's a, it's been used as money and is used as a commodity for millennia, right?

As far back is any culture, any society. So it's always going to be a solid thing. I personally think gold is undervalued at its current rate. You know, gold has been largely an animal statute until 71 and then it freed up, as you know. So the price was fixed by Congress, not by the market. Gold is always going to be bought and sold depending on the economic and monetary policies of those particular nations. Right. So as their legislators or as their governing bodies, it's in charge of spending dollars or their particular currency, they have to offset that and they have to hold assets.

Right. So sometimes it's in treasuries like we were talking about. So it's treasuries, it's gold. but gold is a hard physical asset. So people do that. So if you're an individual, asset holders win when the government inflates. They always do. For those that can't think through that for half a second, because I know sometimes this stuff's really confusing.

If you looked at the value of a house, say in the 1970s versus today, same house, you probably bought it for 20 grand. Today it's a $400,000 house. Nothing's changed. Other than maybe you painted it, maybe put a new door in it, but it's just the dollar is worth less. The government, every time it touches something, it goes down, or from the standpoint of the value of the dollar. When they touch real estate and they started playing with the mortgage market, things inflated. When they messed with education, higher education, we've seen a massive inflation of education during my lifetime. Specifically, they started, you know, they got involved in it in the 90s and it's taken a nose dive.

Same thing with healthcare. Healthcare used to be very, very affordable. $50 was your average insurance premium per month for someone, you know, all the way up until the 90s until they started playing with health care. So every time the government gets involved, it does add to cost because they're not motivated by the same things that motivate the doctors or the hospitals or the regular folk to provide the care. And so there's a lot of philosophical and political reasons why people do things. But at the end of the day, when the government interferes, they create processes and systems that create costs. So if you're looking to save your money, buy assets. Asset holders win in this game.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it is a very troubling thing. Now, what if we have, you know, how do you see this unfolding? You don't really see this all happening all at once. You see it happening in a gradual way. Some other people believe that it's going to be some kind of a sudden crash that, you know, things get worse gradually than suddenly, to quote Hemingway. But how do you see this rolling? out, assuming that Congress is going to not wake up, they're going to continue down the same

path doing whatever they've been doing in terms of self-preservation, and they're not going to take a statesmanlike position. They're just going to play political games. How do you see this rolling out? Timeline. Well, I think that is the conundrum. Are they going to roll up their sleeves and get to work? Are they going to wait for a crisis and weaponize the crisis for political gain?

Those are the questions that you and I don't have the answer to. I don't have a crystal ball. but what I do know is that the people that are going to be the victims or the beneficiaries of this are going to be the American people and the folks around the world whose nations are reliant upon our security, our safety, and our soundness as a country. So there's billions of people around the world that rely on us to get it right. And so we also have to think about them. It's not just our citizens. So it's important for my family, your family, my children, my mother, your relatives. We want them to be safe.

We want them to be healthy. We want our nation to be stable. But again, it's going to come down to Congress on whether they're going to do the heavy lifting. And I always encourage either side of the aisle, if there's somebody reasonable, roll up your sleeves, get good at something, understand something, and work on it and fix it.

That's why you're there. You're a steward. That congressional seat or that Senate seat doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the people who sent you there. So you've got a job to do. And if we can get folks to start thinking that way again, I think we've got a shot at it. That's the biggest challenge that I think we have facing right now.

I agree. Yeah, my instinct is I think they're going to let this develop into a crisis because they do like crises, right? It's always something that they can use. And I think that they would like to see that happen. And as I look at it, I see such a global crisis happening. I just wonder if that's going to devolve into a world war like we did the last Great Depression. And then that really brought on a war because that seems to be the way they ultimately, when you have a gigantic crisis and a polycrisis, it seems like the answer to that is always

taking us to war. What do you think about that? It seems to be a historical pattern. I mean, we're about 80 years out, so we're due. I know it sounds terrible to say, but we're due, historically speaking, if you look at the historical patterns. Yeah, fourth turning. Exactly. Yeah. The one thing that makes us a little bit different today than then, but it doesn't change human nature, of course, is the speed with which information, knowledge, policy, money can move. Right. We are instantaneous. We can pick up the phone and talk to somebody on the other end of the world. And we can just hang up right now and call someone over there. They'd pick up and it would be just as clear as this conversation. Sure. That didn't happen in 1930. In the 1930s, they didn't have that ability. So the ability to communicate effectively to get your message across. We don't have language barriers. We have Google Translate. We've got all kinds of tools at our resources where we can be human. But at the same token, a lot of that technology has also torn us.

away from our desire or willingness to be human and sit down and talk with people. That's the other side of it. Yeah, the human nature aspect of it doesn't change, even though that technology does it, sometimes just magnifies both the good and the bad aspect over nature, doesn't it? It does 100%. And it's just like they say, you know, money is not the root of all evil, but money magnifies the evil within you, right? So it's going to magnify the good or the evil that you have in you.

But money itself is just an intangible piece of paper. It has no feelings. It has no emotion. It's not a person. It doesn't do anything. But once you put it into the hand of a person, then it becomes either a weapon or a gift and a blessing. So I think that's kind of the reality of it. But you're not wrong, historically speaking, that normally what happens is there's conflict.

And out of those ashes will arise some one nation, typically, we're a group of nations that has the ability to economically drive the next 80 to 90 years. We came out of World War II and before that it was England and they came out of the chaos before that and it's just an economic cycle. Sometimes these things happen peacefully. You know, the Dutch didn't, they just kind of folded. You know, there wasn't a war for the Dutch to lose their status. So sometimes these things just unravel and someone rises. The sad part, though, is that today there's so much conflict everywhere. Yes.

The moral authority with which it's going to take to navigate that is also limited based on the nations that are out there and have the economic power and wherewithal to stand ground when we need to. I agree. Yes. Tell us a little bit about your trilogy that you're working on, the Gryft trilogy. When is that going to be coming out and give us a little bit of an idea about what that's about? Well, sure. My first book will come out the first quarter of next year, and it's called The Gryft for the better part of the last 50s. 15, 20 years I've been just writing and piling things together.

And I noticed a pattern. I like to call it the kind of a pattern of extraction. So, you know, we get these great, wonderful gifts that are God-given. And sometimes mankind comes up with this great thing. And then it turns into this weapon where it gets used for darkness and bad things. And it becomes a tool to extract things from people. And I've recognized a definitive pattern. And so I started writing about it.

And it turned into... way too much to put out in one book. So I broke it into three pieces. So the first book is just to get people to understand the pattern. So when you're watching the news, you're reading an article, you're seeing something on social media, you're going to be able to identify a grift right out of the gate. That was the goal with the first book is to get you to understand that pattern to start get you thinking right. And then the second book is where I really started and that was just the cost,

the human cost of the victims of these types of things. You know, what happens when farmers are, their entire legacy farm is destroyed by either big ag or some big corporate interest or what happens when the government abuses a system or a politician abuses a system and the human cost of these things. And that's where I started. So the second book is humanizing it. So we can understand what it is. And then my last book was, is the solution. How do we fix it? Oh, that's one we need right away.

Well, we anxiously anticipate the revelation. of this trilogy that is there. In the meantime, people can find you at Deaver, that's D-E-V-E-R, Dialog.com. Thank you so much for joining us. It's fascinating, and we're coming into some interesting times. And I think whenever we look at that, that's really, as a crisis, I remember there was an investor, advisor who talked about the Japanese character for, a Chinese character for crisis, was danger and opportunity.

And I think that's really where we live at this moment. I'm going to be living there for the next few years, I think. So thank you so much for joining us, Mr. Lieger. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Appreciate your opportunity. Thank you. The common man.

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