Do you know what the equivalent of Covid was in the 1840s? It was the American Indian, it was risk versus reward at America’s finest. That’s right as the more daring individuals took off from St Louis Missouri and started the long journey west across the sunlit plains, they encountered the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Kiowa, the Apache, and the dreaded Comanche. Some of those wagon trains had their oxen shot, the women raped, and their children murdered. Americans understood risk, but today we are sheltered from it. Some people died, but others made it to a new settlement where they were still constantly at risk, but wrote back how great America was to give them the opportunity to create their own future. Other less brave souls were content to be merchants or laborers in St Louis or Chicago and they waited for it to be safer to venture out into the frontier. The next few decades brought the American Army and the railroads and gradually it became safer and more people moved west, but it doesn’t happen without those first brave souls, the risk-takers. Those were the ones that risked it all when they went out during Covid and if they died, they died and they knew the risks. Eventually others seeing that they survived would start to follow and some of them would die, but life must go on. The government didn’t shut down the border of the US on the west and say that you might die or cause someone else to die if you go west so we decided to close it to everyone. The people would have laughed them out of office or hung them for treason. The new risk takers are sitting on our southern border. We will explain in a minute.
The settlement of the west was truly the second or maybe third rebirth of the country, because the first rebirth was literally a group of risk takers and rebels that moved across the great ocean and avoided the icebergs and landed in a new land and decided that they would not answer to the British Crown. That’s right they thumbed their noses and said we shall be free, free to rule ourselves and decide our own future, and free to decide how we will live. They had to fight for that belief, and they did, and only the guile of George Washington and the threat of French assistance allowed us to become the free colonies that we became and eventually uniting to form 13 united states. United, but very different states. Free to choose how they wanted to live in their state. The next generation would have to fight for that right again, again against the British in 1812. The country then started settling the west and fought the Indian wars, then the Mexican war, and then another generation got to experience the Civil War. That was brutal enough to leave a lasting image for a couple generations, and then another generation got to fight World War I, and then another generation got to fight World War II, the greatest generation perhaps. Since then, we have fought in wars playing our role of global policeman, but the average American hasn’t had to experience the difficulty of rationing, sacrifice, loss or the poverty that comes afterwards because wars are expensive and war funds must be paid back. Being the land of the free hasn’t been easy, until the last few generations.
We used to have to produce if we wanted to eat or buy something, but now we print money. That money allows us to eat, travel, and enjoy leisure. We have social media degenerates that go to clubs and order fancy champagne and then just pour it onto the floor to show how little money means to them. This wasn’t possible for the greater part of our history because dollars were a green foldable symbol of work performed. It was a trading vehicle backed by gold, the real God’s money for 5,000 years. It was valuable, hard to acquire and worth fighting and dying for. Now we allow hooligans to steal $950 from stores without even charging them with a crime because the dollar is worth so little. The work performed is so little that the dollar is little more than a printed parchment with a dead person’s picture on it. We have talked about the brilliant quote from G. Michael Hopf about “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” We have the weakest men in our country’s history and that saddens me to no end. It’s depressing. I know that our society is creating hard times, but it isn’t some far off mirage. It’s happening already, our cities have become sewers of drugs, mental illness, and crime. Our politicians are drooling morons, insider trading at best and committing treason at worst, and being told who to vote for by their aides. That woman Diane Feinstein died recently so our country is improving already. Having one of our 100 elected senators being an invalid has been an embarrassment to our country. Don’t think I’m being political against the Democrats here, having Mitch McConnell freeze up and not be able to speak because his brain doesn’t work anymore is just as bad and yet he is still in office. These are just some of the problems that have been allowed to fester in America and they will create harder times. Don’t get me started on John Fetterman, he had a stroke and is best known for wearing shorts and hoodies around the Senate floor. The hardest times in our history are coming, and we, the worst group of voters in history, deserve them.
I’m sure that most of you quit listening and reading because it isn’t entertaining to listen to this kind of talk. You want to watch cats dance on a record player or see who won the big game or whatever else makes you feel good and warm and safe and entertained. That’s fine, and also the problem, the very problem and why we will have hard times. Every generation before the baby boomers had to fight to refresh the American ideal, they had to earn and re-earn the right to have our freedoms. And for three generations, we have seen the collapse of American morality, education, rule of law, and economy.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Thomas Jefferson was clairvoyant when he uttered these words and that’s why I can be so positive after running off all the softies for whom this message isn’t directed. America isn’t a land mass bordered by two oceans, but an idea. It is an idea that men and women can be free. It is about controlling your destiny and creating a life for yourself and your family. We have simply forgotten that and allowed our very own controlling baby boomer led generation to place these shackles on us at the enrichment of a generation that never had to earn it and that were never told no. When I see Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy debate on the political stage, I see two second generation immigrants arguing over how to shape our country. I see Diane Feinstein and the old guard dying and paving the way for new leaders and I remembered that I believe in cycles as strongly as anything in my bones. I see waves of new immigrants trying and dying to get into this country and I realize that I am the problem as well. I take for granted the freedoms bestowed upon me and I ask myself, have I had to earn my way to deserve to live here? I will get that chance as we enter these hard times. We all will. We have fucked ourselves into a corner, and it will be with those immigrants and their understanding of how great America is that will lead us into a future that is so foreign to us that we might not recognize it.
How exactly are immigrants going to lead us into the future C Thomas? It is because that is all that will be left in a couple generations. The people who built this country are not reproducing fast enough to keep it. The demographics are very clear on this. Just because white and black people were here first don’t mean that they get to keep their demographic advantage. The new immigrants are grabbing the American dream and running with it. America has always been a melting pot and it is now. The only difference is that the immigrants are already poverty hardened, morally different often through religion, have a stronger nuclear family structure, and they are using America for what is was designed for: opportunity. They have earned the right to be here by immigrating here and many have to traverse the Darien Gap in Panama. It’s a 66 mile jungle where floods, rape, robbery are common and roads, medical services and law enforcement are not. It is the humid version of the Oregon Trail and it carries with it the same dangers that the American Indian offered the pioneers. But like the American forefathers, these hardened migrating souls don’t see the glass half empty like C Thomas does, but half full because it is so much better than the places they are coming from. These immigrants will soon be voters and they will never tolerate giving their hard earned money away to people that choose to sit on their asses and collect a check. They will not carry the guilt of living in this country and never earning the right to be here and assuaging that guilt with handouts to the less fortunate, as if their consciences could be eased by giving things away. The incumbent’s conscience knows that they didn’t earn the right to be here, their grandparents were weak, and their parents were weaker still, and their generation is the weakest of all. The immigrant has no such feelings of inadequacy only the triumph earned through progression.
An entire entitled confused generation of do nothings, piercings, tattoos, poly genders, dyed hairs, phone obsessed, video game obsessed, TikTok dancers where entire high schools that aren’t proficient in math aren’t going to lead this country forward. Self-immolation is the recognition and desire to destroy yourself and that is why drug use is becoming more and more prevalent among youth (recreational or prescription)- simply to take away the pain of being a human that is failing to live up to their potential. A human that doesn’t know how, and simply wants to stop feeling that way. They will fail, they are destined to fail, and they are the legacy of multi generations of failed Americans. They exist to want. Want doesn’t pay the bills in a broke society. They will have to learn to earn or they will perish.
America will have to wish them well, because there are a few legacy Americans and there are lots of soon to be Americans and it is to you that I write. You will have to work harder than ever to throw off the weight of these failed generations, but it can be done. It will require thought, conscious thought which can’t be accessed while surfing cat videos. It will be the battle-hardened immigrants who treasure the opportunity and idea for which America stands. The next time you hear an American say that we need to secure our borders I would evaluate that speaker closely and ask yourself which person is more deserving of opportunity? The immigrant that has earned the right to be here or the entitled windbag descendant of someone that also earned that right. It is likely the immigrant. Which is good because we are likely going back to a more conservative time, a more frugal time. We are going back to the days when there was only one phone in the house and it was used for things important because everyone will not have a phone because they won’t be able to afford it. They will have to put on a sweater because it will cost so much to heat your home, and you will have to share vehicles because the price of one will be unable to be afforded to you. If you come from the favellas of central America that doesn’t sound bad to you, but if you are the entitled windbag descendant, it sounds like the end of times. I can assure you that it is not. It is the beginning of times, the beginning of hard times being upon us and it will be the greatest opportunity in this country’s history. That is where our new leaders will emerge, it will be where our new ideas will be discovered, and it will be where we find morality again. Neil Howe, the demographer, calls this the “Fourth Turning”, but I call it the refreshing of liberty and the rebirth of America. The last time this happened, the country was found in speak-easies flaunting the law of Prohibition, getting drunk on bootleg liquor, speculating in financial markets, and flaunting their wealth as a central bank stimulated the financial system into a fervor. Then came the Great Depression and America had its come to Jesus moment because it had seen hell. Those people are almost all gone now, but there are those of us that learned their lessons at the knees of our elders and we are anxious to prepare those who will listen that those times can happen again. There are those of us self aware enough to know that we hit the geography jackpot by being born in the US and we work to earn that right every day. We are out there earning it now, but banging out a podcast is far from crossing the Darien Gap, so group me in with the entitled and I will try and earn my place in this country as well, perhaps by educating a few potential voters should they happen to stumble into a voting booth one day.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
On this date in history…92 years ago to be exact, inventor Thomas Edison died in New Jersey.
Today’s thought experiment has bothered me all weekend as I have been thinking about it. It is brought to me from a clip I saw this weekend. A Palestinian was sitting on the rubble in front of a building where his store used to be. The building was destroyed by an Israeli missile or bomb. The man simply asked, “Everything I have is destroyed, where am I to go and what am I to do.” When you think about your own portfolios and investments, always think and look outside the box. We are in unpredictable times and as we always say, “our goal isn’t to make it to the penthouse, it is to avoid ending up in the outhouse.”
Also born on this date… Chuck Berry, the cousin of Marvin, Marvin Berry and one of the godfathers of rock and roll.