THE LOSS OF SOVEREIGNTY
There is a deeper issue underlying the idea that what’s going on in the world today is simply a battle between “nationalist” and so-called “globalist” ideologies. Over the course of the last 4 to 5 decades, nations around the world have been de-industrializing. They’ve been shifting from a production based system of operation to a debt-entrapped finance based system. As a result of this change, consumption and consumerism have replaced production (the building and making of things) as the central feature of a continually growing number of nations’ economies. This switch from production based economies to consumption based economies has made nations that were formerly self-sufficient weak and dependent. We see this happening across Europe (most glaringly in Germany), in the US and in countries outside the Western sphere as well.(1) As a result, many of these formerly powerful countries have become nearly helpless as individual entities. By giving up their industrial bases, by giving up producing their own stuff, these countries have left themselves at the mercy of a usury-fueled international banking system that has been gaining more and more control of the global economy with each passing decade since the middle of the 20th century.
AN INVITATION TO REFLECT ON YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE
I’m sure you’ll agree that what’s been spoken of here so far is not new information. Heck, we’ve all been living amidst the transfer of wealth and power away from the middle class into the hands of a ridiculously wealthy few for decades now. Just for a moment, reflect on the changes you’ve seen and heard with your own eyes and ears that have been occurring over the course of the last 10, 25, 40 years. In the case of the US, think about the fact that real wages have not risen here since the mid 1970s, yet previous to the 1970s real wages rose for 14 straight decades! Think about how in the US and Europe most manufacturing has been outsourced to other countries where labor costs are a fraction of what they’d be here. Think about the products we use and how poorly built they are in comparison with the way products were built in the early-middle 20th century. Take a moment to reflect on the overwhelming imposition of (personal and collective) debt that has piled up these last 30 to 40 years. Think of how much more buying power an average middle class paycheck had 25, 35 or 50 years ago, if you can remember that far back. Think about how “wealth” is now measured not by what one has produced but almost solely by abstractions such as diversified stock portfolios. Many don’t realize that this way of measuring wealth and prosperity is actually a new phenomenon. In fact, extremely few people even had a credit card until the mid to late 1970s.
THE INVISIBLE BRITISH BANKING HAND
Notice also that none of what’s being spoken of here has anything to do with “left” versus “right” or a clash between capitalism and socialism. Those arguments have all been distractions from the main point: What’s needed is a recognition that it is the current credit and debt-centered monetary system along with so-called “free trade”, across the board deregulation and the deification of quasi-religious “market laws” that have ended up shifting power and wealth into the hands of bankers and their affiliated oligarchs over the course of the last 40 to 50 years. *Many have confused this deification of an “invisible market hand” with what it means to be an American capitalist or with what it means to be an American conservative. This is absolutely untrue though. In fact, the deification of unfettered markets was initially a British concept, not an American concept.(2)
And so, it’s a good thing when countries want to reclaim their sovereignty, their individual strength as democratic nations. This desire for self-sufficiency is often negatively labeled by critics as “nationalism” which they then automatically correlate with racism or some other regressive impulse. In reality the desire for self-sufficiency is just common sense – to want to strengthen one’s home base. The wish to become a sovereign nation that produces its own technological products, its own energy, its own food and other goods is in no way at odds with the wish to trade with other countries or with the possibility of different cultures commingling and learning from one another. In fact, it’s been the duplicity of the so-called “globalist” agenda that has conjured up false dichotomies between national self-sufficiency and converging diversity in order to confuse people and to trick them into dividing their energies in dead end “left” versus “right” struggles.
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
It must be acknowledged here, that this is the part of the governing equation that Donald Trump and his administration have gotten right. Unlike all of Trump’s predecessors, arguably since FDR, he has been addressing the essential problem of deindustrialization and the need to regain American sovereignty via the growth of industry as opposed to playing finance-based economic casino games. In a future article I’ll go into the details of how the Trump administration has been taking on the banking system as well as making clear strides in the realm of reindustrialization and the creation of US jobs.
REGARDING MY POSITION ON TRUMP
Overall, I am not in favor of the way Donald Trump conducts himself as a representative of the US. Nor am I in favor of his administration’s use of violence or the unnecessarily brutish way they’ve handled the US immigration issue. It must be said though that Donald Trump’s implementation of diplomacy in relation to China, Russia and other members of the Global South along with his administration’s emphasis on reindustrialization is, in my opinion, the correct way forward in this 21st Century. The other option being continued deindustrialization and the absurdity of moving toward a World War with Russia and China, as the neocolonialists/”globalists” (Macron, von der Layen, Merz, Starmer, Blair, Obama, Carney, etc.) are proposing.(3) In fact, I would argue that communication and mutual cooperation among the world’s major powers is the only sane way forward in this century.
Furthermore, if the current “mainstream left” doesn’t do an about face on its position in relation to the dominance of the banking system and the problem of deindustrialization, they’ll soon be finished as a serious political option. As of now the so-called political “left” are acting as donor-controlled instruments of the banking system. People are onto their duplicity and are no longer fooled by their posturing and their empty platitudes. The same goes for the “mainstream right”, of course.
CODA
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles: I am, first and foremost, a humanist and an anti-war advocate who reasons and writes from first principles. Other than presenting the truth as I see it within the context of that which aims to overcome human suffering and violence in its myriad forms, what I write is not shaped by allegiances to any news media narrative or any political party be it blue, red, purple or other.
CITATIONS
2-https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adam-Smith
