âThe individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst.â
-Â Â Â Â Â Â J. Edgar Hoover, 1956.
â
Hollywood warned us. From Paddy Chayefskyâs âNetworkâ (1976):
âYou have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I wonât have it ! Is that clear ?! Do you think youâve merely stopped a business deal ? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back ! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity ! It is ecological balance ! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today ! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and You Will Atone !
âAm I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state â Karl Marx ? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which thereâs no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
(Beale: âWhy me ?â)
âBecause youâre on television, dummy.â
Kleptocracy, or what we might call crony capitalism, dies hard. Where 2008 revealed the regulatory capture explicit on Wall Street, the last few years have displayed the regulatory capture explicit within Big Pharma. Similarly, contrary to the expectations of many libertarians, the growth of the Internet has not led â yet â to the long overdue demise of legacy media so much as the censorial stranglehold by the Deep State over new fringe media platforms. The alarming rise of âcancel cultureâ claimed a notable scalp last week in the form of former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. From his extraordinary 21st April 2023 speech at the Heritage Foundationâs 50th anniversary gala:
âThe receptionist in the office at Policy Review was going to school at night to learn Russian. And then the week I started at Policy Review, the Soviet Union collapsed, which was an amazing thing.
âThe coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the third week of August 1991 was the week I started at Heritage. And in retrospect, of course, you never appreciate the significance of things as they happen.
âYou canât really know what the movieâs about until it ends. But at the time, we didnât really appreciate how, well, two things: One, our entire political orientation was based on this war between the United States and the Soviet Union, this Cold War, but very much a war and every part of our politics.
âAs you well remember, those of you my age and older, remember every part of our politics revolved around that central conflict. Thatâs the first lesson of history: Nothing is permanent except our own demise and God. But we didnât get that.
âIf you told me then that [last] week the Department of Justice wouldâve indicted a group of peopleâpeople I donât agree with, by the way, on a lot of different issues, black nationalist, socialists from Florida, not my demographicâbut wouldâve indicted them for criticizing the U.S. position, the Biden administrationâs position on the war in Ukraine and charged them with felonies for which theyâre each facing 10 years in prison, if you told me that could happen here, I wouldâve laughed at you.
âNo, we have a First Amendment. That canât happen here, but it has. That, and a lot of other things, which are gravely unsettling, actually, in people who were rooted in the Cold War story and the reality of the Cold War, again, my age, 53, kind of know where that goes..
âBut here are two conclusions Iâve come to, which I think are slightly less depressing than the most obvious, which is the countryâs really going at high speed in the wrong direction, yeah, no kidding, in ways that are just unfathomable..
âI would say two things that I think weâre thinking about. The first is, you look around, and you see so many people break under the strain, under the downward pressure of whatever this is that weâre going through.
âAnd you look with disdain and sadness as you see people you know become quislings, you see them revealed as cowards, you see them going along with a new, new thing, which is clearly a poisonous thing, a silly thing, saying things they donât believe because they want to keep their jobs.
âIf thereâs a single person in this room who hasnât seen that through George Floyd and COVID and the Ukraine War, raise your hand. Oh, nobody? Right. You all know what Iâm talking about.
âAnd youâre so disappointed in people. You are. And you realize that the herd instinct is maybe the strongest instinct. I mean, it may be stronger than the hunger and sex instincts, actually. The instinct, which again, is inherent to be like everybody else and not to be cast out of the group, not to be shunned.
âThatâs a very strong impulse in all of us from birth. And it takes over, unfortunately, in moments like this, and itâs harnessed, in fact, by bad people in moments like this to produce uniformity. And you see people going along with this, and you lose respect for them. And thatâs certainly happened to me at scale over the past three years.
âIâm not mad at people; Iâm just sad. Iâm disappointed. How could you go along with this? You know itâs not true, but youâre saying it anyway.
âReally, youâre putting your pronouns in your email. Youâre ridiculous. But no one else thinks itâs ridiculous. âOh no, itâs the pronouns in the email..â
âBut back to my point. So, you see the sadness happening, but there is, as there always is, this is a fact of nature and theology and of observable reality, there is a countervailing force at work always.
âThereâs a counterbalance to the badness. Itâs called goodness. And you see it in people.
âSo, for every 10 people who are putting he and him in their electronic JP Morgan email signatures, thereâs one person whoâs like, âNo, Iâm not doing that. Sorry. I donât want to fight, but Iâm not doing that. Itâs a betrayal of what I think is true. Itâs a betrayal of my conscience, of my faith, of my sense of myself, of my dignity as a human being, of my autonomy. I am not a slave. I am a free citizen, and Iâm not doing that. And thereâs nothing you can do to me to make me do it..â
âAnd in this case, there is no thread that I can find that connects all of the people whoâve popped up in my life to be that lone, brave person in the crowd who says, âNo, thank you.â
âNo, thank you.â
âYou could not have known who these people are. They donât fit a common profile. Some are people like me. Some of them donât look like me at all. Some of them are people I despised on political grounds just a few years ago. I could name their names, but you may not even know about their transformations, and I donât want to wreck your dinner by telling you who they are.
âBut thereâs in one case someone who I made fun of on television and certainly in my private life in vulgar ways, who was really the embodiment of everything I found repulsive, who in the middle of COVID decided, no, Iâm not going along with this.
âAnd once you say one true thing and stick with it, all kinds of other true things occur to you. The truth is contagious. Lying is, but the truth is as well. And the second you decide to tell the truth about something, you are filled with this, I donât want to get supernatural on you, but you are filled with this power from somewhere else.
âTry it. Tell the truth about something. You feel it every day. The more you tell the truth, the stronger you become. Thatâs completely real. Itâs measurable in the way that you feel.
âAnd of course, the opposite is also true. The more you lie, the weaker and more terrified you become. We all know that feeling. You lie about something, and all of a sudden, youâre a prisoner of that lie. You are diminished by it. You are weak and afraid.
âDrug and alcohol use is the same way. It makes you weak and afraid. But you look around, and you see these people, and some of them really have paid a heavy price for telling the truth. And they are cast out of their groups, whatever those groups are, but they do it anyway.
âAnd I look on at those people with the deepest possible admiration. I am paid to do that. I face no penalty. Someone came up to me [and said,] âYouâre so brave.â Really? Iâm a talk-show host. Itâs like I give any opinion I want. Thatâs my job. Thatâs why they pay me.
âItâs not brave to tell the truth on a cable news show. And if youâre not doing that, youâre really an idiot. Youâre really craven. Youâre lying on television. Why would you do that? Youâre literally making a living to say what you think and you canât even do that. Please.
âBut how about if youâre a senior vice president at Citibank? Iâm serious. At Citibank, and youâre making $4 million a year, and youâve got three kids in Bedford and two are in boarding school and oneâs starting at Wesleyan next year. And you need this job, honestly, and your whole sectorâs collapsing and you know that.
âThere is no incentive whatsoever for you to tell the truth about anything. You just go into the little re-education meetings and youâre like, âYeah, diversity is our strength. Thatâs exactly right. We need equity in the capital markets.â OK. All right.
âSo, if youâre the one guy who refuses to say that, you are a hero, in my opinion. And I know some of them. In fact, my job is to interview them. And I sit back, and I look at these people, and I give them more credit than I do people who display physical courage, which is often impulsive by the way.
âAnd Iâm not denigrating physical courage, which I deeply admire, but you interview people who do amazing things, who rush into the proverbial burning building. And every man is trained from birth to fantasize about what he would do when the building catches fire, and you hear a baby crying. You run inside.
âNo one is trained to stand up in the middle of a [diversity, equity, and inclusion] meeting at Citibank and say, âThis is nonsense.â And the people who do that, oh, they have my deepest admiration.
âAnd so, their example really gives me hope. It thrills me. I talk to them all day long, people like that. Thatâs the first thing.
âWe should, in this sad moment of profound and widespread destruction of the institutions, that people who share our views built, by the wayâearlier generations that would agree substantially with every person in this room, they built those, and now theyâre being destroyed.
âAnd oh, thatâs so depressing. But we can also see rising in the distance, new things, new institutions led by new people who are every bit as brave as the people who came before us. Amen..
âSo, when I started at Heritage, the presumption was, and this is a very Anglo-American assumption, that the debates weâre having are rational debates about the way to get to mutually agreed-upon outcomes.
âSo, we all want the country to be more prosperous and free, and people to be less oppressed or whatever. And so, weâre going to argue about tax rates. And I think higher tax gets us there. Iâm a Keynesian and you disagree, youâre an Austrian or whatever, but the objective is the same.
âAnd so, we write our papers, and they write their papers, and may the best papers win.
âI donât think thatâs what weâre watching now at all. I donât think weâre watching a debate over how to get to the best outcome. I think thatâs completely wrong.
âAnd I should say at the outset, Iâm an Episcopalian, so donât take any theological advice from me because I donât have any. I grew up in the shallowest faith tradition thatâs ever been invented. Itâs not even a Christian religion at this point, I say with shame. But Iâm just saying this as an observer of whatâs going on. There is no way to assess, say, the transgender movement with that mind-set.
âPolicy papers donât account for it at all. If you have people who are saying, âI have an idea. Letâs castrate the next generation. Letâs sexually mutilate children.â Iâm sorry, thatâs not a political debate. What? Thatâs nothing to do with politics. Whatâs the outcome weâre desiring here? An androgynous population? Are we arguing for that? I donât think anyone could defend that as a positive outcome, but the weight of the government and a lot of corporate interests are behind that.
âWell, what is that? Well, itâs irrational. If you say, âWell, I think abortion is always bad. Well, I think sometimes itâs necessary.â
âThatâs a debate Iâm familiar with. But if youâre telling me that abortion is a positive good, what are you saying? Well, youâre arguing for child sacrifice, obviously. Itâs not about, oh, a teen girl gets pregnant, and what do we do about that and victims of rape. I get it. Of course, I understand that, and I have compassion for everyone involved.
âBut when the Treasury secretary stands up and says, âYou know what you can do to help the economy? Get an abortion.â Well, thatâs like an Aztec principle, actually. Thereâs not a society in history that didnât practice human sacrifice. Not one. I checked. Even the Scandinavians, Iâm ashamed to say. It wasnât just the Meso-Americans, it was everybody. So thatâs what that is.
âWell, whatâs the point of child sacrifice? Well, thereâs no policy goal entwined with that. No, thatâs a theological phenomenon.
âAnd thatâs kind of the point Iâm making. None of this makes sense in conventional political terms. When people, or crowds of people, or the largest crowd of people at all, which is the federal government, the largest human organization in human history decide that the goal is to destroy things, destruction for its own sake, âHey, letâs tear it down,â what youâre watching is not a political movement. Itâs evil.
âSo, if you want to assess, and Iâll put it in non ⌠And Iâll stop with this. Iâll put it in non-political or rather non-specific theological terms, and just say, if you want to know whatâs evil and whatâs good, what are the characteristics of those?
âAnd by the way, I think the Athenians wouldâve agreed with this. This is not necessarily just a Christian notion, this is kind of a, I would say, widely agreed-upon understanding of good and evil. What are its products? What do these two conditions produce?
âWell, I mean, good is characterized by order, calmness, tranquility, peace, whatever you want to call it, lack of conflict, cleanliness. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Itâs true. It is.
âAnd evil is characterized by their opposites. Violence, hate, disorder, division, disorganization, and filth. So, if you are all in on the things that produce the latter basket of outcomes, what youâre really advocating for is evil. Thatâs just true. Iâm not calling for religious war. Far from it. Iâm merely calling for an acknowledgement of what weâre watching, which is not one âŚ
âAnd Iâm certainly not backing the Republican Party. I mean, ugh. Iâm not making a partisan point at all. Iâm just noting whatâs super-obvious. Those of us who were in our mid-50s are caught in the past in the way that we think about this. One sideâs like, âNo, no, Iâve got this idea, and weâve got this idea, and letâs have a debate about our ideas.â
âThey donât want a debate. Those ideas wonât produce outcomes that any rational person would want under any circumstances. Those are manifestations of some larger force acting upon us. Itâs just so obvious. Itâs completely obvious.
âAnd I think two things: One, we should say that and stop engaging in these totally fraudulent debates, where we are using the terms that we used in 1991 when I started at [The Heritage Foundation], as if maybe I could just win the debate if I marshalled more facts.
âIâve tried. That doesnât work. And two, maybe we should all take just 10 minutes a day to say a prayer about it. Iâm serious. Why not?
âAnd Iâm saying that to you not as some kind of evangelist, Iâm literally saying that to you as an Episcopalian, the Samaritans of our time. Iâm coming to you from the most humble and lowly theological position you can. Iâm literally an Episcopalian. And even I have concluded it might be worth taking just 10 minutes out of your busy schedule to say a prayer for the future, and I hope you will.â
If it seems to you that something has been a little âoffâ about how the institutions of the West have conducted themselves â in politics, in the judiciary, in the media, in academia, in healthcare, in finance, in the military.. â since (at least) 2020, perhaps thatâs because something has been a little âoffâ. Those with an open mind may wish to consider some of the suggestions within a remarkable book published in 2021, â180 Degrees: Unlearn The Lies Youâve Been Taught To Believeâ, by the pseudonymous Feargus OâConnor Greenwood. You can find some interviews with the author here and here.
The term âconspiracy theoristâ, Greenwood informs us, entered the mainstream narrative
âcourtesy of the CIA strategy paper 1035-960 and was used to marginalise and quarantine those with reasonable suspicions of state criminality. That is to say, anyone seeking the truth or questioning the official narrative should be attacked as a âconspiracy theoristâ.â
Students of the English language may be familiar with the principles of functional shift and conversion, whereby existing words or phrases, over time, take on entirely new functions and meanings. This correspondent expects the term âconspiracy theoristâ, over the coming months, to morph from a term of derision to an expression of the highest praise possible.
âŚâŚâŚâŚ.
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Tim Price is co-manager of the VT Price Value Portfolio and author of âInvesting through the Looking Glass: a rational guide to irrational financial marketsâ. You can access a full archive of these weekly investment commentaries here. You can listen to our regular âState of the Marketsâ podcasts, with Paul Rodriguez of ThinkTrading.com, here. Email us: info@pricevaluepartners.com
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Did you read the book of 'I am Legend', Tim? That same inversion is with us now. Cancel culture has been the equivalent of the jester lying dead. If Tucker Carlson is now the rebel, just because he says some basic common sense things, it shows how completely inverted our world is.
Thank you for printing Tucker's comments from his presentation at the Heritage Foundation.....it is somewhat heartening to be seeing them published in multiple places.....hope springs eternal in spite of my own heavy heart about what is being done under the guise of "saving" humanity.