International Man: In 2016, you accurately predicted that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States.
It came as a complete shock for most people. What do you think of his chances of winning a second term?
Doug Casey: I’m not a fan of Trump, per se. He has no philosophical center, no core beliefs. He’s an opportunist who flies by the seat of his pants.
His economic policies are disjointed and inconsistent. Many are idiotic. It’s true he wants to deregulate the economy, and he deserves kudos for that.
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But he’s encouraging reckless monetary policies—zero-percent interest rates, gigantic increases in debt, massive public-works projects, and the creation of trillions of new dollars. He’s just building the house of cards higher while enriching the Deep State and corrupting the 30 million Americans making more not working than they made working.
Almost as bad as that is the way he slaps on import duties, embargoes, and quotas at whim. He devastated American farmers by provoking China into a trade war, then spent billions in subsidies to keep them from bankruptcy.
His foreign policies are dangerous. Provoking the Iranians and the Russians is counterproductive. What’s worse, he’s started a cold war with China that could easily spin out of control and turn into a hot war.
But on the bright side, he’s a cultural conservative. And that’s why people support him. He wants to see the US return to the golden days of yesteryear, the world of Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, and Father Knows Best. We’d all like to see domestic tranquility and rising prosperity. But that’s not the world we’re going to be living in, not just for 2020, but the whole decade.
For years, I’ve joked that I planned on watching riots on my widescreen from a secure location, not out my front window. Things have now become so predictable that when I turn on the news, I kill the audio and just put the Stone’s “Street Fighting Man” on a continuous loop.
Given a choice between Trump and the Democrats, if you like what’s left of the US, you have to be a Trump supporter. But since we’ll be in the midst of a gigantic political, economic, and social crisis in November, people will want a radical change. That’s what the Democrats are promising, so they’re likely to win. But there are other factors.
The last election was close enough, but now, four years later, there are four more cohorts of kids that have gone through high school and college and been indoctrinated by their uniformly left-wing teachers. They’re going to vote Democrat overwhelmingly.
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The only bright spot for Trump is the stock market. That said, I’m not optimistic about the stock market. It’s at current levels not because the economy is doing well, but because of the avalanche of money being printed. Where it is in November is a question of how much more money the Fed will print, and how much of it flows into the stock market.
For reasons I’ve detailed in the past, the economy is going to be worse, however. And people vote their pocketbook. Bill Clinton was right when he said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” If stocks fall, it will compound this effect. A high stock market can give the illusion of prosperity.
On top of all that, the conservatives are completely demoralized. It’s impossible to defend being a white person anymore; propaganda has made it shameful to be white. If you object to the race-baiters, you’ll be shouted down in the media—even by other white people. It looks like everything you grew up with and thought was part of the cosmic firmament is being washed away as unworthy.
Here are two examples.
Recently, in Stone Mountain in Georgia, there were 1,000 uniformed, armed black men who went out of their way to say that they were looking for a fight. “Where are the rednecks that want to fight with us?”
Well, that would have been out of the question at any time in the past, but no rednecks showed up to the party. That’s partially because they’ve been psychologically cowed, and partially because they recognize that if they did, and if law enforcement was brought in, they’d be the ones that were prosecuted, not the black people.
It’s a complete inversion of what would have been the case only a generation ago. Then the blacks would have been too psychologically cowed to turn up for a fight, and the legal system would have railroaded them.
Just to be clear, I’m opposed to any kind of identity politics, regardless of the group. The point is that there’s been a sea change in mass psychology.
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There’s also the case of the Black Lives Matter sign painted in yellow on 5th Avenue. A couple of white people only got as far as painting over a couple of letters before they were arrested. They’re being prosecuted for defacing public property. But the people who recently destroyed statues are not being prosecuted.
It’s a matter of psychology. Whites and conservatives no longer believe in themselves. When that’s true, it’s game over. Yes, I know it’s not true of all of them—but I believe it’s a fair generalization.
If I were to bet money this time on who will win the election, with great regret, I’d have to pick the Democrats.
International Man: For the entirety of Trump’s presidency, there have been nonstop attacks on his legitimacy.
First, it was the allegations of Russian collusion, and then there was the impeachment trial and Ukraine-Gate.
What do you make of this?
Doug Casey: In a way, it’s evidence of the old saying, turnabout is fair play.
For many years, the US government has cultivated regime change in foreign countries by interfering very overtly in their elections.
Why should we be surprised if it happens here?
Although, as far as the Russians are concerned, it’s not even a tempest in a toilet bowl. I’m sure that some Russian kids played around on their computers to see what they could do, but it was totally trivial and meaningless.
The real problem is that when you have a cultural split—such as developed in the US—a country cannot, and more importantly, should not stay together.
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At this point, politics has become a contest of who gets to impose their will on the rest of the country. When that’s the case, a country is best off dividing. People should have freedom of association, generally with those whom they share culture, traditions, and general worldviews.
The alternative is chaos, such as we’ve seen in the last few months, or maybe a civil war. And this one wouldn’t be like the unpleasantness of 1861–1865. That was a failed war of secession. The South simply wanted to go its own way. Slavery was an issue, but not the issue. Perhaps we should analyze the war in a future conversation.
The South should have been allowed to break off, much the way that Slovakia and the Czech Republic separated, or the way that Yugoslavia divided into six republics—or, for that matter, the way the Soviet Union broke up into 15 republics.
Abraham Lincoln created the poisonous meme that the states had to be held together by force. Most people now think it’s some type of a crime to even intimate that the US could—or should—break up.
The US is no longer a country that is united by culture and language, ideas, or anything else. It’s become a multicultural domestic empire. It’s too large to be governable. The central government is totally bankrupt. It should break up peaceably before the situation gets completely out of control.
Going back to the idea of foreign interference in US elections, there already are millions of foreign citizens—illegal aliens orchestrated by the Left—interfering directly in the outcome by voting. That’s much more of a change than some random Russians making political comments on Facebook.
International Man: There is no question that tensions are running high in the US. Recently, we saw riots take place in most US cities, a takeover of part of Seattle, and the tearing down of historical statues and cultural symbols.
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Is the country on the cusp of a full-blown cultural revolution?
Doug Casey: It appears to be—and these things can come out of almost nowhere.
It’s like the witch hysteria in Salem, among other places in the late 17th century. It just came out of nowhere and took hold—complete irrationality. But if you argued against the prevailing hysteria, you too could be accused and hung.
Look at what happened in Rwanda a generation ago. The Hutus and Tutsis had lived together, more or less amicably, for generations. Then, all of a sudden, a million people got hacked with machetes. The wave blew over, and now things are peaceful again. But if you weren’t out there slaughtering Tutsis during the hysteria, you might be accused of being a sympathizer and killed yourself.
It happened during the Terror of the French Revolution. Over a short period perhaps 40,000 people were murdered, mostly guillotined.
It happened in Cambodia with Pol Pot, when a quarter of the population was murdered. That was a cultural revolution against the educated, and essentially anyone who wasn’t a peasant.
Of course, China is the largest of all, the Great Cultural Revolution of the 60s. The whole country, or at least what looked like the whole country, was bamboozled into overthrowing what they called the Four Olds—old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas.
Right now, the same meme is spreading in the US.
The people promoting a US cultural revolution aren’t getting much resistance. The old regime—the conservatives, the Republicans—are totally bamboozled and intimidated. They’ve been brainwashed into accepting the righteousness of the Left’s cultural, political, and social agendas. They don’t like it, but they sheepishly accept it. The schools, the NGOs, corporations, Hollywood, the media have inculcated their notions into society.
This is a real problem. When these things get out of control, the consequences can be genuinely terrible. Trends in motion tend to stay in motion—and this one is even accelerating.
America is unique among the world’s countries because it was founded on the premises of individualism and capitalism, free minds and free markets. More than any other country, it’s lived up to those ideals.
But these people don’t want just a change of government; they want to overturn the actual things that have made America, America. There’s no other place to go once America goes.
Where can you run? In fact, the whole world is moving in the same direction.
International Man: Let’s talk about the Democratic Candidate for president, Joe Biden.
It’s clear that Biden is in cognitive decline.
What do you think this means for his chances of winning in November? If he does win, who will really be running the country?
Doug Casey: Maybe it doesn’t make any difference who the Democratic candidate is at this point. They could probably run a chimpanzee in his place and expect the same result. This election is all about hating Trump. It has little to do with what Trump does or doesn’t believe—because he has no philosophical center. Unfortunately, he’s an authoritarian and a jingoist at heart. His supporters equate that with strength.
The fact that Biden is borderline senile is irrelevant. What’s much more important is who’s going to be his vice president. Biden has said it’s going to be a black female. Which, in today’s heated environment, means basically a crypto-communist.
That’s really dangerous because the president has a lot of power: including the power to make several thousand direct appointees with immense influence. Trump has been very unsuccessful in all his appointments. Philosophically, he might as well have picked random names out of the telephone directory. The Democrats, however, can be counted on to plug in fully vetted idealogues.
If Biden wins, he’ll probably get the Senate and the House too. The Democrats will get a vast array of programs and departments approved. The changes will be much more radical than either Roosevelt’s New Deal or Johnson’s Great Society.
They’ll finance it with unlimited money in a world of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). The US will get a makeover. America will cease to exist.
It’s really serious. The consequences of the Greater Depression will go far beyond a simple bear market.
We’ve survived borderline incompetent and crazy presidents before, of course, like Woodrow Wilson. During his second term, he was rarely even seen in public. It’s known that his wife was making all the decisions. She was, in effect, speaking for Woodrow. Incidentally, he’s my candidate for our worst president. He gave us the Federal Reserve, the income tax, World War One, and much more.
Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944. He would have been elected for life if he hadn’t died in office. Maybe Americans really want a king or a dictator, if Roosevelt is any indication.
Of course, the Constitution now prohibits more than two terms. But perhaps, that no longer makes much difference.
Sure, the president is important. But the fact of the matter is that the Deep State—which is to say the top senators and congressmen, heads of the Praetorian agencies, generals, top corporate guys, top academic guys, top media people—really runs the country.
Since the Deep State supports Biden and despises Trump, they’ll do everything in their power to defeat him.
The 2016 election hit them out of left field. They were taken completely by surprise; they didn’t think it was possible. This time they’re going to be organized, and the Deep State is going to be working actively against Trump’s reelection. That along with everything else I’ve enumerated here and, in our conversation, last week makes for a gloomy scenario.
The chances are overwhelming that the Democrats will win.
Then the cat’s out of the bag. It’s all over for the Old America. Even if we don’t have an actual civil war.
Reprinted with permission from International Man.
