“War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” – Bertrand Russell

Baby Boomer Narcissism: It’s All About Us, and Our Game Is War 

On Zoom calls, my colleague Bill Bonner and I sometimes talk briefly about current events. I told him my view is that the COVID lockdown is another symptom of baby boomer narcissism. Ever since we came into the world, in droves, the American economy has been all about us.

Bill tends to be a deeper thinker than I am. So, when he began writing about this issue, he did so from a more interesting perspective. He framed his exploration as “the sellout of America by its geriatric elite.”

By geriatric elite, he means old white geezers like Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell. But he also includes himself. And presumably me. Basically, he’s talking about the millions of baby boomers that have benefitted from the government’s actions and inactions over the last 50 years.

He reminds us that, despite our early flirtation with peace and freedom, we became the generation that chose war as our principal vehicle for improving the world.

First, we launched the war against poverty. Then we began the war against drugs. Then we threw ourselves into a war against terrorism. And now we are in a war against the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, we’ve kept the conventional wars going. First with Vietnam (1965-1975). Then with the Persian Gulf (1990-1991). Then with Afghanistan (2001-Present). And then with Iraq (2003-Present).

He didn’t say, although he’s said it before, that each of these wars cost us a lot of money.

The Cost to Us of Recent Wars 

* Vietnam: $880 billion (adjusted for inflation 2020)

* Persian Gulf: $121 billion (adjusted for inflation 2020)

* Afghanistan: $925 billion

* Iraq: $1 trillion

All told, they’ve cost American taxpayers more than $30 trillion. That came mostly from the middle class and ended up in the pockets of baby boomers in government and private industry.

But the war that has cost us the most, Bill says, is the war against the dollar.

“After Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker ‘rescued’ the system in 1980,” he says, “the resulting fake dollar and fake interest rates produced fake wealth on a scale the country had never seen before. The Dow rose 29 times.

“But the wealth was heavily concentrated in the richest zip codes. The rest of the country got, relatively, poorer…. Wealth migrated from the towns where people made things to the towns where people just made money.

“The Fed launched five major assaults. There were three waves of interest rate cuts – 1989-1992, 2000-2003, and 2007-2008 – along with a $3.6 trillion heavy artillery barrage after the crisis of 2008-2009 and $3 trillion more to fight the COVID Shutdown.

“Almost every penny went to the richest, oldest 10% of the country… leaving 90% of the population behind.

“This COVID Shutdown – another attempt to protect the old at the expense of the young – forced much of the economy onto the internet, leaving behind millions of face-to-face, hand-to-mouth workers.

“Waiters, parking lot attendants, landlords in some areas, clowns in Disney World, strippers in Las Vegas… whole industries were decimated…. Meanwhile, the Boomer Elite… bless their hearts…  are living high on the hog.

“Maybe we weren’t as lucky as The Donald or The Nancy, but we can’t complain.

“We went to college. We avoided the assembly lines and shop floors. We punched a keyboard, not a time clock…. And come the coronavirus… we could work from home.

“And we made investments… partaking of the great promise of degenerate American capitalism – that the government would make sure we didn’t lose money.

“Three times this century, the markets have tried to correct… and three times, the Federal Reserve has fought back, making sure the wealthy elite retained its ill-gotten gains.”

Not to worry if you are a baby boomer, Bill says. No matter how bad things get in the coming years (and they will surely get bad at some point), we of the Geezer Elite will be safe and unscathed.

“We can leave behind the whole complex of crime, poverty, job losses, politics, and social disruption… and live far enough away from the big city, where it is safe, beautiful, and pleasant… but still with enough bandwidth to let us ‘visit’ with our children and grandchildren… and carry on with the rump ends of our careers.”

File this under: War

Wars are always expensive – in deaths, in property destruction, and in dollars. And with very few exceptions, they never achieve their stated goals. Since President Eisenhower warned us against the military industrial complex, we’ve fought and lost wars on foreign soil that benefitted only the stakeholders of that industry. These wars cost us trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. But our high-minded wars against drugs and poverty have cost us even more.

Yet none of that has diminished our attachment to war. We continue to declare new wars almost every year. This most recent war against COVID and the continued wars against fossil fuels are costing us trillions. But the biggest war of all is our secret war against the stability of our currency. We are devaluing it, by a trillion dollars, every 60 to 90 days. We are standing at the precipice of national bankruptcy – and nobody, not the media or our elected politicians from either side of the aisle, seemed the least bit concerned about it.

Protect yourself. This war is coming to you.

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