“You’re Controlled Opposition!”

Readers Attack [The Daily Reckoning] February 16, 2024 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( “You’re Controlled Opposition!” Annapolis, Maryland [Brian Maher] BRIAN MAHER Dear Reader, Yesterday’s reckoning flustered the fish… fluttered the dovecotes… and enflamed the hornets. We insinuated that Donald Trump — if elected — may not prove the dictatorial he is purported to be. That is because the governmental construction is against it. This belief runs contrary to opinion abundant in mainstream circulation. Certain readers even believe we blew a bugle for Mr. Trump. Here is reader S.S.: Since you’re attempting to convince people that Trump is better than Biden, that proves that you’re controlled opposition, and should not be trusted for anything you purport. With the highest respect to S.S.: We never claimed Mr.Trump “is better than” Mr. Biden. We believe both are scoundrels to one degree or other. Yet scoundrels are often amusing. And we find Mr. Trump vastly more amusing than Mr. Biden. Yet comedic value— we concede — is no qualification for office. What did we claim? That we did not vote for Mr. Trump in the two prior elections — and will not vote for him in the presumptive third. Thus we blew a very muted bugle for the fellow. S.S. claims we are “controlled opposition”? Opposition to what? And controlled by whom? We may be for hire, it is true. Yet we are not for sale. Who is for sale? Please see the below article. What is more, S.S. cedes us an influence we altogether lack. This publication exerts no magnetism over men and events. Nor does it aspire to. Next we come to reader C.C.: Trump increased the deficit by over $7 trillion in four years. Biden's budget would decrease the national debt by the largest amount EVER. The choice is clear. Mr. Trump was a fiscal atrocity, we concede. We said it again yesterday. Yet C.C.’s theory, by our lights, stretches and strains all credulity. The sitting president’s budget — under any plausible accounting — would not nick a nickel from the nation’s debt. The national debt has, in fact, expanded some $6.5 trillion under the same sitting president. And it expands yet — we might add — at rates truly prodigious. Meantime, reader M.H. tells us that: The WORD "Democracy" NEVER but NEVER appears in either the 1776 document NOR The CONSTITUTION for the U.S.A...! Pleas CAREFULLY read both Documents especially the Preamble at the beginning of the Constitution. Your ERRORS, Brian, are very commonly made by those who did NOT study in schools. We inform M.H. that we maintain high acquaintance with the nation’s foundational documents. This high acquaintance extends to the two documents cited. We have never claimed — not yesterday or the day before yesterday or the yesterday before that one — that the United States is a democracy by construct. Thus we deny that we have ERRED. Yet we are battened habitually by references to “our democracy.” And so we met the phrase head-on and on its own terms. Yet we are pleased our readers talk back to us. “Love me or hate me,” someone once said, allegedly — “but spare me your indifference.” To our everlasting satisfaction… you, our reader, spare us your indifference. Be assured, we extend you the identical courtesy. Below, Jeffrey Tucker shows you how the intellectual class, so-called, has betrayed us. Why has it betrayed us? Jeffrey argues that the intellectuals are “for sale.” Read on… Regards, [Brian Maher] Brian Maher Managing Editor, The Daily Reckoning [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) Editor’s note: AI is all the rage… But did you know that crypto and Bitcoin were actually the best-performing asset class of 2023? Bitcoin rose 156% in 2023, soaring past $40,000… It just shot up past $51,000… But tech guru James Altucher believes we’re entering [the FINAL crypto bull run…]( and it’s set to be bigger than anything we’ve seen before. But the thing is… the biggest gains will NOT come from Bitcoin. [You see, there are SIX tiny cryptos that could soar 10X, 50X or even 100X over the next 12 months that James thinks will far outperform Bitcoin.]( Why? The SEC recently triggered a $30 trillion shock wave of capital set to flow into crypto for the first time ever. And if you wait to get in, you could be left out. Which is why James is pounding the table on these SIX tiny coins now. [(Click here to get the details.)]( For example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is already using one of these coins’ technology for audit verification. Another is trading for just pennies, which could give us plenty of room for explosive gains. [Click here now to get the details while opportunity knocks.]( [Genesis 47:15 – For the money faileth]( Jim Rickards started out his 2011 book Currency Wars with this quotation from the Genesis: “And when the money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread: for why should we die in thy presence? For the Money faileth.” Now, nearly 13 years later it looks like he was exactly right… Because according to him…The money is beginning to fail. And we are on the cusp of an all-out financial war for the U.S. Dollar. And if you aren’t prepared soon…You’re going to get caught in the crossfire. That’s why he’s recorded an urgent briefing to tell you exactly what you need to do to prepare. Because with the fate of the U.S. economy hanging by a single thread… You don’t want to take any chances. [Click Here To View]( The Daily Reckoning Presents: I’ll say whatever you want, just pay me… ****************************** Intellectuals for Sale By Jeffrey Tucker [Jeffrey Tucker] JEFFREY TUCKER Four years after the pandemic, it’s still hard to predict where any particular public intellectual stands on lockdowns, mandates and the entire calamity of the response to COVID. Very few have apologized. Most have moved on as if nothing has happened. Some have dug into their own apostasy even more deeply. One reason seems to be that much of the professional intellectual class is currently dependent on some institution. It is not lost on anyone that the people today who are most likely to say what is true about our times — and there are some major and brave exceptions to this — are mostly retired professors and scientists who have less to lose by speaking truth to power. That cannot be said for many who have undergone a strange metamorphosis over the last several years. For example, I’m personally sad to see Stephen Davies of the Institute for Economic Affairs, formerly one of the most compelling libertarian intellectuals on the planet, come out for travel restrictions, universal disease monitoring and turnkey crisis management by government, not only for disease but also for climate change and any number of other threats. Why? Because of “unusual vulnerability” to global catastrophic events caused by human activity plus artificial intelligence… or something that is hard to follow. I was preparing a sincere response but then stopped, for one simple reason. It’s hard to take seriously a book that also promotes “effective altruism” as any sort of solution to anything. With this slogan, one detects a lack of sincerity. A year ago, this slogan was unearthed as nothing but a cover for a money-laundering racket pushed by the company FTX, which was accepting billions in “venture capital” funding to hand out to the pandemic-planning industry, including many of the very same catastrophists with whom our author is now aligned. Sam Bankman-Fried’s mentor was author William MacAskill, the founder of the movement who served on the board of FTX’s Future Foundation. His Center for Effective Altruism plus many affiliated nonprofits were direct beneficiaries of FTX largess, receiving at least $14 million with more promised. In 2022, the center bought Wytham Abbey, a massive estate near Oxford University, and currently has a $28 million per year budget. I don’t know all the ins and outs of this as much as I’ve looked. Still, it’s deeply discouraging to see the framework and lines of thinking in this strange new ideological penchant, which is bound up with a several-trillion dollar pandemic planning machinery, show up in the work of a great scholar. Forgive me, but I suspect there is more going on here. And in so many ways, I’m deeply sympathetic. The trouble really comes down to the market for intellectual services. It’s neither broad nor deep. This reality goes against all intuition. Looking from the outside in, one might suppose that a tenured professor at an Ivy League university or famous think tank would have all the prestige and security necessary to speak truth to power. The opposite is the case. Taking another job would at the very least require a geographic move, and this would come with a likely downgrade in status. In order to ascend up the ranks in intellectual pursuits, you must be wise and that means not bucking the prevailing ideological trends. In addition, places where intellectuals live tend to be quite vicious and petty, and instill in intellectuals an eye toward adapting their writings and thoughts toward their professional well-being. This is especially true in working for a think tank. The positions are highly coveted as universities without students. A job as a top scholar pays the bills. But it comes with strings attached. There is an implicit message in all these institutions these days that they speak with one voice, especially concerning the big issues of the day. The people there have little choice but to go along. The option is to walk away and do what? The market is extremely limited. The next-best alternative is not always clear. 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There is a huge shortage of such people so the worker is in a position to talk back to the boss, say no to a customer or simply walk away if the working conditions are not right. Ironically, such people are in a better position to speak their mind than any professional intellectual is today. This creates a very odd situation. The people we pay to think, influence and guide the public mind — and possess the requisite intelligence and training to do so — also happen to be the least capable of doing so because their professional options are so limited. As a result, the term “independent intellectual” has become nearly an oxymoron. If such a person exists, he is either very poor or otherwise living off family money, and not likely making much of his own. These are the brutal facts of the case. If this shocks you, it certainly shocks absolutely no one employed in academic or think tank spaces. Here, everyone knows how the game is played. The successful ones play it very well. Those who supposedly fail at the game are the principled people, the very ones you want in these positions. Observing all of this for many years, I’ve encountered perhaps a dozen or so earnest young minds who were enticed into the world of ideas and the life of the mind out of pure idealism, only to discover the grim reality once entering into university or think tank life. These people found themselves exasperated with the sheer viciousness and factionalism of the endeavor and bailed very quickly to go into finance or law or something where they could pursue intellectual ideals as an avocation instead. Was it always this way? I seriously doubt it. Intellectual pursuits before the second half of the 20th century were reserved for the extremely gifted in rarified worlds and certainly not for mediocre or petty minds. The same was true of students. Colleges and universities catered not to people headed to applied fields in finance or industry but rather focused on philosophy, theology, logic, law, rhetoric and so on, leaving other professions to train their own. (One of the first professions in the 20th century to be devoured away from practitioner-based training to academic training was of course medicine.) I’ve never worked directly at a university but I’m told by many who do that collegiality and the free exchange of ideas are the last things you find in these institutions. There are exceptions to be sure, such as Hillsdale College and other smaller liberal arts colleges, but in major research universities, genuine colleagues are rare. Meetings are not really about big ideas and research but are more often characterized by one-upmanship and plots of various sorts, toxic settings for true creativity. The truth about these places is being revealed these days, with terrible revelations out of Harvard and other institutions. The number of intellectuals who have let down the cause of freedom over these terrible years is astonishing. Some of them used to be my personal heroes. So yes, that hurts. Tom Harrington is correct to nail this as the treason of the experts. That said, let’s grant that many are in a tough spot. They are trapped by their institutions and walled in by a limited range of professional options that prevent them from telling the truth as they see it. It should not be this way but it is. We’ve lived through this and seen too much to have the same level of trust we once had. What can we do? We can rebuild the ideal as it existed in the old world. The kind of genius we know was on display in a place like interwar Vienna, or even in the coffeehouses of London in the 18th century, can return, even if on a small level. They have to, simply because the shape of the world around us depends fundamentally on the ideas we hold about ourselves and the world around us. Those should not be for sale to the highest bidder. Regards, Jeffrey Tucker for The Daily Reckoning [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) Ed. note: AI is all the rage… But did you know that crypto and Bitcoin were actually the best performing asset class of 2023? Bitcoin rose 156% in 2023, soaring past $40,000… It just shot up past $51,000… But tech guru James Altucher believes we’re entering [the FINAL crypto bull run…]( and it’s set to be bigger than anything we’ve seen before. But the thing is… The biggest gains will NOT come from Bitcoin. [You see, there are SIX tiny cryptos that could soar 10X, 50X, or even 100X over the next 12 months that James thinks will far outperform Bitcoin.]( Why? The SEC recently triggered a $30 trillion shockwave of capital set to flow into crypto for the first time ever. And if you wait to get in, you could be left out. Which is whyJames is pounding the table on these SIX tiny coins now. [(Click here to get the details).]( For example, the US Department of Homeland Security is already using one of these coin’s technologies for audit verification. Another is trading for just pennies, which could give us plenty of room for explosive gains. [Click here now to get the details while opportunity knocks.]( Thank you for reading The Daily Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) [Brian Maher] [Brian Maher]( is the Daily Reckoning's Managing Editor. Before signing on to Agora Financial, he was an independent researcher and writer who covered economics, politics and international affairs. His work has appeared in the Asia Times and other news outlets around the world. He holds a Master's degree in Defense & Strategic Studies. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Jeffrey Tucker] [Jeffrey Tucker]( is president of Brownstone Institute and senior economics columnist at Epoch Times. [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2024 Paradigm Press, LLC. 1001 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD 21201. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. To end your The Daily Reckoning e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from The Daily Reckoning, feel free to [click here.]( Please note: the mailbox associated with this email address is not monitored, so do not reply to this message. We welcome comments or suggestions at feedback@dailyreckoning.com. This address is for feedback only. For questions about your account or to speak with customer service, [contact us here]( or call (844)-731-0984. 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