What a trip!
As I was sitting in Reagan International Airport getting ready to jet home, my head was still spinning from the whirlwind of information, conversation, and observations made during the three jam-packed days traveling out to Washington DC for the Debt Crisis Fly-In. That was Friday night, and it’s hard to believe it’s already Monday!
Honestly, I’m still processing it all…
This trip was a gathering of people from across the country, including crypto experts like Conor Carney of Robin Hood and political strategists like Ryan Grant of the Leadership Institute, as well as liberty firebrands like Congressmen David Schweikert (AZ), Reid Ribble (WI), and Tom Reed (NY23), the FreedomWorks team, and of course the three dozen passionate liberty loving activists from all across the fruited plains—including your favorite fuzzy peasant, yours truly.
It was truly an honor to be there, to be in the discussion, and to be able to connect with so many movers and shakers in the liberty movement and learn from people who are in the trenches and in the know.
The purpose of the gathering was to discuss the national debt crisis, in depth, from multiple angles, in order to ascertain some sort of plausible path forward. With over $130 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities—which is an unfathomably high number—with Social Security, Medicare, and the skyrocketing interest on our absorbent national debt all on a direct collision course with maturing treasury bonds (which are set to be refinanced at ever higher rates in the near future), and myriad other macroeconomic factors too numerous to list… it’s a lot to process.
In simplest terms, our country is so broke, we ain’t getting out of this without a whole lot of pain. That pain will come in the form of getting hit with higher and higher taxes, while simultaneously watching the value of your hard-earned dollars get utterly destroyed by third-world level inflation. While Modern Monetary Theory hypothetically means the powers that be can simply print an infinite amount of money to cover the ever rising cost of kicking the can down the road, everyone living in Realville knows damn good and well the math doesn’t work that way.
We will have to pay the piper—and soon.
Hence, the need for high-level discussions on how to fix this mess, which is precisely what the Fiscal Commission Act of 2023 (H.R. 5779) was written to address, and why this group of people had been pulled together to discuss the details. The purpose was to put our heads together to a) try to wrap our minds around the situation, b) to properly prioritize the many different interrelated problems, and c) identify the limited number of options to prevent a total economic collapse in the very near future.
Now, all that said, as an ignorant peasant I took copious notes and did my very best to keep up, but there was such a torrential flood of information I’m still processing it all. For that reason, and because my mind is still running on caffeinated fumes at the moment, I’m going to save the technical analysis for a separate report, and instead focus here on trying to share some immediate takeaways from the experience.
Once again I found myself sitting in the hustle and bustle of a busy airport, considering the bifurcations of society, extending upon the recent reflections from Chicago—wherein I was comparing the various contrasting perspectives and experiences of city dwellers, with that of the average everyday American living in Small Town USA.
It feels to me as if there is a massive need to reconcile these two different worlds. Remember, we are a mostly rural nation, by far, even though our economy and national politics are largely being ruled by the big cities. Those who’ve been with me know I’ve broken down the statistics and tried to put the dynamics of the rural-urban divide into proper context many times before:
TR 240 - Putting Politics into Perspective: Exploring the connection between money, power, and control in our nation's capitol.
TR 269 - Country Folk vs The Global Cabal: Sizing up the competition by looking at the numbers and applying a little logic.
TR 436 - Mask Madness & the System of Control: The threat of fresh mask mandates is a distraction from the destruction of our country.
TR 463 - Is Local Resistance a Losing Game?: We're getting out played on the hometown field. Here's what we can do about it.
TR 482 - Understanding Taxation Without Representation: Why this threat has reverberated throughout the halls of history.
The reality of our situation is vastly complex.
While discussing the national debt crisis may seem somewhat obtuse in the face of all the other threats we’re currently facing—you know, like the climate crazies and the global commie cabal trying to cull the herd and conquer us all, for example—the case was made throughout the week’s discussion that the national debt is in fact the greatest threat to our national sovereignty.
Maybe it really is the greatest threat, or maybe it isn’t. Personally, I can think of a few other contenders. But, regardless, the national debt is an existential crisis, and it is looming on the horizon, and it will be affecting us all in a massive sort of way, soon.
Currently, we are adding $1,000,000,000,000 to the national debt every 104 days, and 95% of this is being used to fund Medicare, Social Security, and interest on the national debt—which are legally considered mandatory spending, which means the government has no choice but to continue raising the debt ceiling (which they’ve done over 140 times now), and selling more government bonds to the international banksters (like the CCP) at higher and higher rates. As one Ph.D. economist made clear, we are currently circling the toilet bowl, accelerating into an unstoppable death spiral that ends in a dark, nasty place.
But that’s the wonky talk that I don’t feel like getting into right now. That’s not where my head’s at. It’s not where my heart’s at. It’s not what really needs to be said.
Let’s zoom out.
An interesting layer of consideration that was kept front and center throughout the discussion was the massive generational shift that is currently underway, wherein Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha are set to become 62% of the voting population by the year 2036—which, politically speaking, is just three short presidential elections away.
This is the kind of thinking that the strategists on Capitol Hill obsess about. There is a lot to learn about this inescapable trend, and there are any number of implications that are worthy of some serious consideration—like where these younger generations are getting their information (think social media), the indoctrination that’s been engrained through public education (think socialist values), and of course how all of this inevitably impacts the outcome of our national elections.
But this too I want to set aside for later.
I heard a new term this week: The Conservative Industrial Complex.
Put differently, you might think of the concept as the business of conservative politics. Quite refreshingly, the majority of the people I had the pleasure of engaging with throughout the experience were level-headed, logical minded, libertarian leaning independent thinkers. In fact, at one point we were talking about messaging and how we might best approach these younger generations to pitch the foundational American priniciples that have been intentionally obfuscated by political propaganda.
I shared how I like to describe my personal politics, because it tends to open the door:
“I’m a fiscally conservative, socially conscious, politically independet thinker with a libertarian bent.”
Everyone loved it, and I had to repeat myself about fifteen times so that everyone in the room (many who were over 60) was able to write it down. Kinda fun.
At any rate, just as the national debt must be dealt with in order to preserve our Republic, so too must we deal with the shifting demographics—specifically by building bridges and bringing the younger generation into the folds of the liberty movement—or else we are going to lose our country for good.
In Washington DC, there’s is a veritable army of 20 year old congressional staffers who know more about the American political system than about 99% of adults in the country. In reality, as was discussed, these 20 year olds often act like gatekeepers, essentially granting access to our elected represenatatives at their sole discretion.
It’s really a pretty fascinating dynamic, and I got to experience it first hand. After emptying my pockets, passing through the body scanner, getting thoroughly patted down, and making my way through the long marble corridors up to Congressman Dan Newhouse’s office, I met six of these staffers face-to-face.
It was an interesting experience, to say the least. We’d been scheduled for a meeting, and we’d arrived on time. As the receptionist was checking the schedule, Newhouse walked by nonchalantly, stopped and looked straight at me for a moment, and then kept on walking without saying a word.
The purpose of the meeting was to present HR 5779, discuss it, ask questions, and ask him to endorse it. Instead, my two cohorts and I met with his Chief of Staff, his Public Relations officers, and his Communications Director. My wingmen volunteered me to do the talking, which I was happy to do. The conversation went well, everyone was nice, and the staffers said they’d talk to him about it.
Whether they do or not, I’ll probably never know. That’s the power of gatekeepers.
But I suppose that’s getting lost in the weeds a bit.
HERE’S THE POINT:
These staffers, who are acting as gatekeepers, are getting paid for with taxpayer dollars. They are but one element of the Conservative Industrial Complex. BUT, they are a very important part of this whole puzzle, for the many important reasons mentioned above—namely that they are rapidly overtaking the Boomers and Gen Xers as the dominant voting block, and though many of them do in fact believe in our founding constitutional principles, they still have radically different worldviews when it comes to hot topic issues like abortion and Social Security.
And, to reemphasize, at this point, in many ways, millenials are now the gatekeepers of our representative government. They decide which phone calls and emails make it through to our elected representatives in congress. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate how all this will inevitably affect our elections. In fact, it already is.
Friends, as I was looking toward the boarding gate and contemplating the long road home, these are the things that were rolling through my mind. I couldn’t wait to get in the car and drive the long dark road home, past the sign that says “No Gas for 65 Miles,” past the sign that says “Pavement Ends,” over the hill and through the woods, to my happy humble home. It’s my sancutary and oasis.
Rural living is a vastly different world than the one that I just left behind. Personally, I cherish the little things that make country living what it is—BUT, I’m keenly aware that if we rural Americans don’t up our political game, we are going to lose our way of life for good. That’s why I’m engaging in this fight every way I can to prevent that from happening.
RESIST WE MUST!
TR 570 - How Massive Demographic Shifts are Fueling the Debt Crisis & Changing the Nation