Musical Chairs in Washington, D.C.

by
Jacob G. Hornberger
My articles My booksMy videos
Follow on:

Republicans are licking their chops over the Federal Reserve’s ostensible plans to raise interest rates aggressively in the months ahead to combat soaring prices. They view a coming big recession as a grand opportunity to win control over Congress in the upcoming November elections. 

Of course, we have gone through this political musical-chairs nonsense for decades. If the Fed is filling the balloon with newly printed money, the economy appears prosperous. Whoever is president claims credit for “good management of the economy.” Voters reward him with reelection. They also elect members of his political party to Congress. 

But woe to any president who happens to be in office when the Fed starts to reverse course, especially in a big way, as it is ostensibly now doing. Make no mistake about it: When the inevitable recession hits, Republicans will castigate Biden for “mismanaging the economy” and call on Americans to punish him by delivering control of Congress to the Republicans.

And what if voters do that? Will anything change? Of course not. We have seen this process of political musical chairs in Washington over and over again. Nothing ever changes, at least not in any fundamental sense. 

Let’s assume that Republicans regain control over both houses of Congress in November. Let’s also assume that Donald Trump, who is himself licking his chops over the prospect of a big recession, is reelected president. 

Will anything change in a fundamental sense? Of course not. Things will be the same if Trump is reelected in 2024 as they were when he was president, if not worse.

The federal government’s debt is now over $30 trillion. It will be much more than that once the next debt ceiling is reached and raised. It won’t make any difference whether Trump is president or Biden is president. The massive spending and debt will continue to soar. And the Fed will continue to debase the currency as it prints the money to pay off that debt.

And keep in mind something else: That $30 trillion debt doesn’t include Social Security and Medicare obligations. They aren’t considered to be debts. That’s because they are simply welfare programs, just like all the other welfare programs. But as long as they are on the books, those payments have to be sent out.

There is also the massive national-security establishment that needs to be funded. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are not about to let go of any of their warfare-state largess, even though they are no longer occupying Afghanistan. And neither will their voracious army of “defense” contractors. And no one in Congress is going to buck them. The hundreds of billions of dollars will continue flowing into the warfare-state trough from which all these people are feeding. 

Like I say, it won’t matter who is president or who controls Congress. It’s also worth noting that there will continue to be a vicious and destructive trade war against China and that the severe anti-Russia animus will continue to drive the federal government, regardless of who controls Congress and the presidency. There will be a continuation of the deadly and destructive war on drugs and war on immigrants, especially if the Republicans regain power. The drug-war and immigration-war police states will continue to besiege Americans. There will continue to be sanctions and embargoes against the citizenry of nations who are perceived to be “enemies, opponents, or rivals” of the U.S. Empire. There will continue to be state-sponsored assassinations, coups, regime-change operations, crises, and an ever-growing array of official enemies, including North Korea, Iran, and Cuba. 

Statists might ask how libertarianism would address or fix all these problems. But libertarianism is not a philosophy or a system that purports to fix the problems of a statist system. Libertarianism is a completely different, alternative system to the statist system that is embraced by both Republican and Democrats.

In other words, if Americans like the society in which they are living — one in which there is massive out-of-control spending, debt, inflation, state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, coups, invasions, crises, death, destruction, sanctions, embargoes, mandatory charity, socialism, and militarism, then all they have to do is just keep supporting conservatism and progressivism.

But if Americans want to have a society of genuine liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world, that requires an entirely different paradigm — that is, a different system entirely from the one foisted on us by conservatives and progressives. That alternative paradigm is libertarianism.

How would a libertarian system be different? Well, for starters: No more socialist mandatory-charity programs, including Social Security and Medicare. Repeal them. Repeal the federal income tax, leaving people free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth. Legalize all drugs. Lift all sanctions and embargoes. End all trade wars. Bring home all U.S. troops and discharge them into the private sector. Abandon all foreign military bases. Dismantle the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA and restore our nation’s founding systems of a limited government republic. Separate education and the state. End the Fed and restore a system of sound money to America.

The basic question is: What do you want out of life? Do you want a crisis-filled life that continues to bring nothing but death, destruction, and crises? Or do you want a peaceful and harmonious life that brings liberty, vitality, and prosperity? The decision turns not on political musical chairs. It turns on a choice of philosophies, paradigms, and systems.

You Might Also Like

“Patriotic” Church Ministers

2022-05-25

Pope Francis is taking the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church to task for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Francis told Patriarch Kirill not to be “Putin’s altar boy.” If only that same message had been received and understood by Catholic priests here in the United States when it was the Pentagon and the CIA that were the invaders of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The NATO Lie

2022-04-27

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought to the forefront the NATO treaty to which the United States is a party. President Biden and the Pentagon have steadfastly maintained that a Russian attack on any NATO member automatically obligates the United States to go to war against Russia.

The Deferentials

2022-04-20

Let’s have a thought experiment. Suppose that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Cuban president Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez issued a joint announcement stating that North Korea had accepted an invitation to install some of its nuclear missiles in Cuba. The announcement made it clear that although the missiles could reach any American city, they would be entirely for the defense of Cuba, not for the purpose of attacking the United States. 

Pushing toward Nuclear War

2022-03-09

According to Yahoo! News, “More than two dozen foreign policy experts have called for the United States and NATO to institute a partial no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would serve as an escalation of the conflict with Russia.” Joining them is Illinois Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who also happens to be a former Air Force combat officer. That would mean the U.S. military would be shooting down Russian planes containing Russian soldiers. 
So far, the idea is being resisted by President Biden and the military-intelligence establishment. However, given the extreme anti-Putin mentality that characterizes Biden, the Pentagon, and the CIA, their position could easily change on a moment’s notice.
The matter brings to mind what happened during the John Kennedy administration, the

Crisis-Filled Lives

2022-01-20

No one can deny that we Americans live crisis-filled lives. Right now, there is a major crisis in Ukraine with Russia. There is also an ongoing crisis with China. Other foreign-policy crises, such as with Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, Cuba, Iraq, and North Korea. There is a terrorism crisis. Healthcare crisis. Social Security crisis. Drug-war crisis. Immigration crisis. Debt crisis. Inflation crisis. Fiscal crisis. Monetary crisis. 

Abolish NATO

2022-01-12

The New York Times published an article yesterday that denied that U.S. officials promised Russia at the end of the Cold War that NATO would not expand membership to Warsaw Pact countries. 

Clay Shaw, Liar and Perjurer

2022-01-05

In 1969, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison brought a criminal prosecution against a man named Clay Shaw. In the trial, Garrison rejected the lone-nut theory of the assassination of President Kennedy. He alleged instead that Kennedy was assassinated in a highly sophisticated regime-change operation spearheaded by the U.S. national-security establishment. Garrison alleged that Shaw had played a role in that operation.