Gold & Silver, Good vs. Evil, and the Triumph of Insanity Principle

Anyone who knows me and/or has read what I have written previously knows that:
1. I am a lifelong student of history.
2. I am a strong advocate of buying gold and silver in these times of economic unraveling.

In a previous piece I raised and discussed my serious differences with one Glenn Beck and questioned who and what was motivating or influencing him in regards to monetary and economic policy. (Surprise, surprise he never answered my very direct inquiry). That said, there are some points on which he and I are in agreement; there does exist good and evil in this world. Whether one wants to call them demonstrations of the existence of God and the devil are a matter of personal decision if not individual struggle of conscience. But for the sake of this piece let’s just call them good and evil. I can’t and won’t elucidate on all the manifestations of good or evil but I do know that one of the manifestations of evil seems to be of a recurring theme.

The arc of history is a long and complex one, but I do know this about it; anyone who tells you that they have the definitive interpretation of it is either a paid shill for some political operation or blindly possessed of an egotistical arrogance out of all proportion to their actual understanding. This writer is no exception to this characterization.

As the child of a WWII vet and growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s I was exposed to my share of the narrative of that war. Whether it was “Victory at Sea” early on or “The World at War” later on or all the myriad war movies in between, the Second World War was almost as much a part of my experience as it was of those who actually went through it. All the details of strategy and tactics, the results and implication of individual battles aside, I think the overarching lesson of WWII is in the uniqueness of its extremes. I can only speak for myself, but perhaps more than any other images of those that came out of the war, the systemic and systematic extermination of people and peoples made the greatest and most horrifying and formative impression. While the Japanese may have conducted the “Rape of Nanking” and indeed the rape of all they conquered out of a manifest cruelty or simply as mindless sport, it pales in comparison to the mechanized efficiency of the Nazi’s concentration camps.

Unfortunately today there are far too many who would try to simplify these events, if not to dismiss or excuse them, but to categorize them as just another example of “man’s inhumanity to man.” By doing so, they also dismiss their historical continuities and seek to separate, even if only unconsciously, from the continued existence of the very same manifest evil.

Even Hitler knew that although much of the German population may have been more than comfortable with their own prejudice and the de facto discrimination against any and all outside the new definitions of the “ideal German”, there would still be those who would be repulsed by an overt and stated policy of systematic genocide and extermination. Yet today we see not just a single nation, but groups of nations and alleged political and religious movements that have transitioned beyond even that poorly exercised moral restraint and into an open and stated policy of hatred, genocide and extermination. A policy that repulsed the entire civilized word not seventy years ago is manifest anew and far too many either turn a blind eye or find justification or excuses for it.

One would be hard pressed to find a credible historical narrative that would separate the rise of fascism, particularly Nazism and the economic despair and chaos of the Weimar hyper-inflation and the subsequent global depression. I’m not saying that there is a direct corollary between the event of the ‘20s and ’30s and today, but I do think that the onset of inflationary increases in the price of food and energy are playing a part in the growing turmoil in the Middle East and it is being used to manipulate the baser instincts in furtherance of the same corrupt and evil agenda.

It would also be a mistake to view its overt racism as the only pernicious danger of fascism that is on the rise. That even some of those who do recognize the corollary between the Nazis and the jihadists ignore its other dangers leaves us all to be sucked into its vortex. The merging of government and business in the creation and implementation of policy is the textbook definition of fascist governmental structure and yet we ignore it. President Eisenhower warned us about the emergence of the “military-industrial complex” back in the ‘50s and yet we ignore it.

How easy it is then if one pays much, or perhaps too much, attention to what is happening around us on a daily basis to become entangled in the minutia of the details of the moment, of the short term view or get caught up in the cause du jure and as a result, either lose or corrupt our long range perspective.

So what then does all this have to do with gold and silver as mentioned in the title of this piece? As I mentioned above I am, and remain an advocate of buying gold and silver in these perilous times. I do so not as a means of making a quick buck but rather as a means of protecting yourself and your family against the uncertainty of the times and the very real and exigent problems of inflation. I do so in recognition that the merging of government and business has produced a market system that nothing more than a rigged game, rigged for the benefit of bankers and business and politicians and to the detriment of the rest of society. A rigged game that has become known as “ponzinomics.” It’s a game that even many prominent politicians and businessmen recognize, but refuse to address because the consequences of it coming undone are too terrible to contemplate. So they go on accepting the lies, damned lies and statistics that come out of government bureaus and tell themselves it can just keep going on as is, if we can only just raise the debt ceiling now and worry about cutting spending later, as if to think that either/or, or some combination of the two will actually fix the problem or delay the consequences at least through the next election cycle or until after the next annual report comes out.

I am not alone in my advocacy of acquiring precious metals or railing against the corruption of the revolving door between banks, business and government. It doesn’t take an extensive search on the internet to come up with dozens if not hundreds of sites that share at least some of this perspective. What bothers me however is that some of the more notable figures in this field have become possessed of a dichotomous if not schizophrenic view when these two subjects intersect. They are all the ready to condemn the “evil empire” of Wall Street for manipulating markets with impunity and the apparent acquiescence of our so-called regulatory institutions, and corrupt and dangerous taxation and monetary policy. Yet at the same time they portray and would have their readers believe, that the chaos in the Middle East and the ongoing “Palestinian question” is all the result of some massive “Zionist conspiracy” to control US foreign policy and the region itself. What bothers me even more is that they come off as so self-righteous and condescending in stating their position as if to issue an unquestionable dismissal to any who might disagree. In this they seem to echo the arrogance and method of the political left in some of it most extreme forms. The climate alarmists for one come to mind. I can almost see it as playing the “race card” in reverse, if that makes any sense to the reader.

Is Israel perfect; is its foreign policy beyond reproach? Of course not, no nation is and no policy is. One of the consistent currents of history, up until the era on the UN anyway, has been that nations that institute wars of aggression against their neighbors and lose, subsequently also lose territory. At their ends treaties are signed, territories are annexed, borders are redrawn and populations migrate, often forcibly, to conform to the new conditions. Apparently when Muslim states wage war against Israel and lose this paradigm no longer applies. The Palestinians remain in refugee camps because their Arab brethren keep them there and refuse to allow them to integrate into their societies, not because of anything Israel is doing. They are a means to a political end, and nothing more.

In the ‘30s the world failed, no refused, to take Hitler at his word when he laid out his plans in “Mein Kamph.” The result was the most costly and destructive war the world has ever seen. Today the world refuses to take the Muslim fanatics at their word when they call for the same thing as Hitler. Isn’t the “Insanity Principle” doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?