This report was originally published by Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.com
In the liberty movement, we often refer to the historical tactic of the Roman “bread and circuses” when describing the deliberate mass distraction of the public of today. In the era when Roman emperors supplanted the senate and dominated political and social life, it was deemed advantageous to create various forms of “entertainment,” often violent, in order to keep the citizenry preoccupied and thus less likely to physically act against the power structure as the empire suffered economic decline. The use of bread and circuses continues into our era, but the method has been refined and the manipulations have become in some ways more subtle.
For example, in ancient Rome the horrors of the Colosseum were meant to keep the public’s attention AWAY from the government. Today, the soap opera of government keeps people’s attention away from the true power brokers within global finance.
The White House itself has been molded into just another reality TV show, and mainstream media coverage has been relentless. With Donald Trump (no stranger to reality TV) at center stage, it is difficult for the citizenry to gauge what is politically legitimate and important. What we are bombarded with is an ever escalating drama between Trump, his staff, and the media, and instead of ignoring the theater many people are desperately seeking to interpret the meaning behind a show that is actually meaningless.
Every two weeks or so another episode develops in which Trump, playing the character of the brash and aggressive “populist,” fires one of his cabinet as if The Apprentice never ended, but was simply transferred to the Oval Office. Some people find this entertaining as it is Trump doing what he is most recently famous for doing. Those on the political left interpret this as reckless abandon and confirmation that their fears over Trump being ill suited to the presidency are justified. Still others in the liberty movement who originally supported Trump’s campaign are perhaps desperately looking for vindication. They wanted so badly to avoid the inevitable evils of a Clinton regime that they are now willing to give Trump a pass on almost anything, and they argue that the endless turnover in the Trump White House is Trump fulfilling his election promise of “draining the swamp.”
It is important to note that Trump is NOT draining the swamp of elitism in Washington D.C. The public is so focused on who Trump gives the boot they are forgetting to pay attention to the institutions that never leave. But what do I mean by this?
Let’s look at the some of the more widely publicized staff changes at the White House. Dina Powell, a Goldman Sachs alumni, was recently replaced as National Security Adviser, and so, the argument that Trump is “draining the swamp” persists. Yet, Powell was replaced by H.R. McMaster, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and hardly a stranger to elitist circles.
Gary Cohn, another Goldman Sachs agent, has left his post as Chief Economic Adviser and has been replaced by “conservative” Larry Kudlow, ostensibly as Trump is “cleaning house” and removing globalist influences in preparation for his war to balance the trade deficit. Yet, Kudlow is was a campaign coordinator who worked closely with the likes of Bill Clinton and John Podesta, as well as other major Democrat personalities. He began his career as a staff economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and oversaw the fall of Bear Stearns which was one of the sparks that launched the 2008 credit crisis. This guy is in no way a true conservative, nor is he some kind of anti-globalist replacement for Gary Cohn.
Rex Tillerson’s firing, one of the most recent dramas, has led to the position of Secretary of State being filled by CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Pompeo is often portrayed as a former “Tea Party congressmen”, yet he is a rabid supporter of mass surveillance of the American people by the NSA through FISA related programs, and has referred to Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” First, this only proves further the “Tea Party” label has been so thoroughly co-opted by the establishment that it is laughable to refer to it in any relation to true conservatives and liberty champions. Second, it also shows that Trump has no intention of making any significant changes to the Beltway; only cosmetic changes are allowed.
And so it goes on and on. If one looks closely at the Trump administration, they will find that the people within the cabinet are changing constantly, but the elitist and globalist organizations and ideologies those people represent are always present within the White House. They never leave.
The swamp is not being “drained,” it is simply being shifted around so that the American people can’t keep up with the names of the swamp creatures and the positions they hold.
Ever since the days of Woodrow Wilson, a president purportedly controlled from within the White House by adviser Col. Mandel House (the founder of the Council On Foreign Relations), it has been common practice for globalists to use presidents as proxies. That is to say, the president is generally a mascot held up to the public as a target for political criticism or as a rallying tool to push the population in a particular direction. All the while, the true power brokers work from behind the curtain, dictating policy towards the paths of either globalization or disaster.
Trump is an interesting case as far as this 4th generation warfare is concerned. Never in modern times has a president’s rhetoric been so openly hostile to the globalists, while at the same time harboring those very same globalists within his administration. Never before has a fabricated battle between the White House and globalization as an ideology been used as a distraction from globalism itself. This is something entirely new.
The issue is something I warned about consistently before Trump was even elected, and it is the reason I predicted that he would become president. Trump, in my view according to the evidence so far, is controlled opposition. He is a foil for the globalist battle against ideas of conservatism, sovereignty and nationalism. Instead of attacking these ideas outright (a losing battle), the elitists have presented a strawman in the form of Donald Trump. Trump’s actions seem to follow conservative guidelines but his policies are poorly executed, which sets the stage for future failures on an epic scale.
As I mentioned in my article Trump Trade Wars A Perfect Smokescreen For A Market Crash, the timing of Trump’s initiatives could not be more perfect…for international financiers and central banks, that is.
Currently, the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world are embarking on a process of tightening stimulus measures that have been artificially propping up stock markets and bond markets since the 2008 crash. In particular, the Fed’s move to continue hiking interest rates and cut its balance sheet as negative economic data rolls in has set light to the fuse of a fiscal explosion. Market dependency on cheap debt is total. Corporate debt levels are at all time highs as companies sink further and further into the red in a desperate attempt to inflate their own stock prices through stock buybacks. The Fed has been facilitating this market manipulation for quite some time, but now the party is over.
With each new rate hike and balance sheet reduction markets become more volatile and unstable. The Fed under new chairman Jerome Powell is well aware of what it is doing, considering Powell warned of the consequences of this as far back as 2012. It is highly unlikely though that when the economy crashes central bankers will get the blame.
As March rolls into April, it is also important to note that the Fed’s balance sheet reductions are slated to expand to $30 billion per month or more. So far, the Fed has shown a habit of cutting far beyond their publicly stated goals. With markets dropping by thousands of points every time there is a balance sheet reduction, the instability is only going to increase exponentially.
Also, is it just a coincidence that every new Trump tariff and trade war announcement seems to take place at the same time as the Fed’s rate hikes and balance sheet cuts? This sure does make it appear as though Trump is the cause of the subsequent stock market declines rather than the central bank, doesn’t it?
Trump’s continued soap opera theater is building up the narrative of a slapdash presidency run by a bumbling novice. Trump’s initiation of a trade war without necessary preparations, such as giving corporations incentives to move manufacturing back to the U.S. and creating production independence, is an excellent smokescreen for a collapse of stock markets and a dumping of U.S. Treasury bonds by foreign creditors.
For those wondering why globalist elements would deliberately crash the American economy, I suggest they read my article The Economic Endgame Explained. To summarize, in order to reach their openly stated goals of a one world currency system, as well as total centralization of global economic administration, certain appendages of the current system must be sacrificed. One of those appendages is the American economy as it exists now, along with the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.
Such an attack on our country and our society would not go without notice or possible retaliation. Therefore, the banking elitists need a scapegoat. I have said it before and I’ll say it again — there is no better scapegoat that the Trump White House. Why? Because the Trump White House has been painted since the election as a symbol of stalwart conservatism, even though it is not. The demonization of conservative principles such as limited government, true free markets, personal liberty, etc. becomes much easier when globalists can attach them to an international catastrophe such as a financial collapse.
And, since Trump has been set up as the strawman for conservative ideals, attaching catastrophe to Trump also vicariously attaches catastrophe to the rest of us.
The only way to undermine this 4th generation warfare tactic is for conservatives to ignore the White House soap opera and to question Donald Trump’s policies publicly when they do not meet logical or practical standards. Blindly supporting Trump because of his rhetoric only harms our cause in the long run, and refusing to acknowledge the fact that he has surrounded himself with the very globalists he is supposedly at war with only sets us up for tragedy. If we remain skeptical and maintain our principles, however, it becomes much harder for the mainstream media or anyone else to implicate us in any great calamity that Trump is blamed for.
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You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com
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