International Man: There seems to be a concerted effort to blur the lines around gender. For instance, it’s now common for schools to introduce bizarre gender theories to prepubescent children.
What is going on here?
Doug Casey: The reports are so bizarre and crazy that you’d think that they were made up, but apparently, they’re not.
Different societies throughout history have had different standards of morality and attitudes towards bringing up children and sexual morals. But at this point, in the West, the nuclear family itself, and everything that’s been considered traditional and normal, is under active attack. How else to explain Mayor Pete, the Secretary of Transportation, playing with his husband, or whatever he or she is? Or the bizarre tranny, Rachel Levine, sporting some kind of an admiral’s uniform? Or the new national Press Secretary, whose main qualification is that she’s a strident black lesbian?
However, this type of thing often happens when a society is heading towards collapse. The dissipated practices of Roman emperors like Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, Elagabalus, and others gradually filtered down into the common people, and the Dark Ages followed. More recently, look at the things that went on in Germany after WW1, during the Weimar Republic. Sexual debauchery and moral (as well as economic) degeneracy ruled. These things destabilized society, evidenced by street fights and riots between the Nazis and the Communists. It all resembles what’s brewing in the US between the Red people and the Blue people. History rhymes.
My personal view has always been that if somebody is gay, bi, queer, trans, or whatever, it’s their business, not mine. It’s not something that the State should be involved in either. In fact, marriage between consenting adults of whatever real or imagined genders is none of the State’s business either. The State is here to provide protection from force and fraud. Period. It’s not here to enforce views on morality or customs.
But that’s not a commonly accepted view. In today’s world, hundreds of racial and sexual groups don’t just want freedom from oppressive laws. They demand special privileges and laws forcing others to observe them. They’re very vocal, screaming that it’s not enough for people with psychological aberrations of one type or another to simply be acknowledged and left alone, which is the most that anybody can—or should—ask from anybody else.
If, for example, someone is born with the apparatus of a male, and feels (an emotion) or thinks (an intellectual belief) that he should be a female, that’s his business. He should be able to change his clothes or surgically alter his body in any way to reflect that—as long as he doesn’t force others to pay for the process. He may be a perfectly good and normal human in all other ways. But it’s clear, at least to me, that he’s suffering from a serious neurosis, which I define as a stumbling block to getting along in life. It tells me that part of his mental wiring is askew. And maybe other parts are as well. In effect, it’s a warning to others, saying, “Caution: I’m unstable.”
Most neurotics recognize they have an abnormality and attempt to deal with it to limit its adverse consequences. Some, however, don’t want to. They openly dramatize their aberrations and act irrationally. If it’s serious enough, we call them psychotics. A psychotic is, in effect, wearing a sign saying, “Danger: I might seriously harm you, myself, or others. I may be a ticking bomb.”
A thoughtful and reasonable person keeps the appropriate distance from deranged individuals or groups.
But we’ve now reached a point where those with serious psychological problems are trying—and succeeding—in actively imposing their values on society. It’s one thing to wrestle with your own demons. It’s something else again to try to influence, or even force, other people’s children and families to endorse or even mimic your aberrations. People who parade and flaunt their abnormalities used to be called degenerates and avoided like those with a communicable disease. Now they’re recruited.
Lunatics have captured large parts of society and are transforming it into an asylum. They own the education and entertainment industries and control many aspects of government. That’s really serious, because government can legally coerce you to accept their values.
People with purposefully destructive beliefs—things like Marxism, Progressivism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Collectivism, Statism, etc., are now accepted as normal and reasonable. They’re not. These things have destroyed general civilizational values.
True, it’s intentional destruction only on the part of a fairly small minority. But they’re serious, dedicated, and extremely vocal. Most of the public goes along out of apathy or ignorance. The average person doesn’t know what to believe about almost anything. And as has been said, when you believe in nothing, you’re capable of believing anything. That’s what’s going on today.
International Man: Large corporations like Disney and Netflix have openly promoted a woke agenda.
As a result, Disney faced enormous backlash from parents, and Netflix has recently seen a massive drop in paid subscribers.
Companies are supposed to seek profits. But as these examples show, many ostensibly profit-seeking corporations are destroying their businesses to promote a twisted ideology.
What is your perspective?
Doug Casey: Once again, it’s part of the overall collapse of Western civilization. Let me refer to the twelve elements of Western Civ from our last conversation.
The rot started in the education system. Professional “intellectuals” have learned to make a living inventing and justifying ideologies that allow the elite to control the “masses.” Since the days of the Fabian socialists—not to mention the Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, Peronists, and many others—they’ve actively inculcated values that are not just different but exactly the opposite of everything that made the West great and unique.
One major problem with companies like Disney and Netflix—although I understand that the CEO of Netflix is trying to turn things around—is the concept of “stakeholders.” That’s the notion where a company is beholding to people in general as much as its owners.
My view is that a company should work first of all and primarily for its shareholders. Then to its customers. Then to its employees. You certainly don’t want to harm anybody outside of those groups, but a company shouldn’t be a charity. Managements, perversely, often become the enemy of shareholders in that regard. They bow to stakeholders, making charitable contributions because it’s to their personal benefit. They get to act as bigshots with shareholder funds.
And the money generally flows to places the “intellectuals” (who are concentrated in universities and NGOs) designate. Not surprisingly, a huge amount of charitable giving goes to universities and NGOs.
Instead, business should recognize—as a moral imperative—that it owes nothing to the public at large.
But, to the contrary, the concepts of DIE (diversity, inclusion, and equity) and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) have inundated corporate culture like a tidal wave of sewage. They’re viewed as being good, positive, and something that everybody should observe when they should be thrown out with the garbage. They’re purely destructive.
One of the causes for this, other than our corrupt education system, is that corporations today are usually not run by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs, the founders, generally have one way of thinking. Later, managers take over. The company is then run by suits, heavy with lawyers and accountants. They’re what the French call “petit fonctionnaires.” These are people with bureaucratic mindsets, better at backslapping and backstabbing than creating value, who come to consider themselves as masters of the universe. It’s not good.
I hope the situation turns around, but the issue is very much in doubt at this point. Psychological aberrations, whether it’s in sexual mores, racial perceptions, philosophical attitudes, economic theory, fashions, social attitudes, or what-have-you, have gotten out of control. Society as a whole is experiencing mass psychosis. It’s Weimar Germany veering towards China during its Great Cultural Revolution.
These are good reasons to be bearish on the fate of the country—forget about the stock market.
International Man: It seems this trend is not a grass-roots, bottom-up dynamic where ordinary people are demanding companies go woke. Instead, it appears to be an orchestrated, top-down dynamic where powerful companies and individuals inject this ideology into all aspects of society.
What is going on here, and what is the purpose of all this?
Doug Casey: The Wokesters, social justice warriors, and leftist would-be revolutionaries are following a Leninist model—which is to say that the “cadres” lead the way. They’ve captured the moral and intellectual high ground of society, and they’re bending it to their will.
They rely on the fact that the average person basically does what he’s told by those in authority and those who have an air of certainty. They follow leaders.
The public has become convinced that what they’re seeing—basically crazy people acting out—is good. That’s because they no longer have an idea of personal ethics. It’s because the twelve factors that built Western Civ are no longer part of the social fabric. The cadres I’ve been talking about intentionally promote perverted sexual attitudes, racism, and destructive political and economic beliefs because they want to overthrow the values of Western Civ.
They’ve captured the moral high ground with NGOs and most churches. They’ve captured the intellectual ground through academia. They’ve captured the emotional high ground with the help of the entertainment business. They’ve conned the public into believing that they’re not just good and smart, but they’re warm and cuddly.
The bad guys have done a very good job of basically capturing society’s very soul. The trend is not only very much in motion, but still accelerating. On the bright side, it’s clear a counter-revolution is underway, at least in the US. But it may be too little, too late. I say that because the bad guys have a pretty firm control of the apparatus of the State. And peasant revolts almost never succeed.
International Man: Given the trends we discussed, where do you think the culture is headed? What does that mean for future generations?
Doug Casey: Trends in motion tend to stay in motion until they reach a climax. At which point, anything can happen.
But unfortunately, at great revolutionary turning points in civilization—which we’re involved in now—things usually get worse even after the old trend stops. This happened in Russia in 1917 and in France in 1789. Just because the old trend finally runs into a brick wall doesn’t mean that things get better right away. There’s a period of chaos after that.
So the answer to the question is that the current trend is still in motion and accelerating. It’s going to hit a brick wall, but even after it hits a brick wall, there’s going to be a period of serious disorder. That’s because the traditional elements of society have lost their moral bearings. The public no longer knows which way is up or down or the difference between right and wrong. We’ll experience a long period of chaos.
I’m not sure that the values of Western civilization are going to survive. It’s a pretty gloomy prospect. It’s strange and scary days, especially for those of us who are classical liberals, libertarians, and AnCaps. The lunatics and criminal personalities who’ve gained control over society have cleverly turned the twelve features of Western Civ upside down, so we live in Bizarro World. It won’t be fun.
On the bright side, technology will hopefully keep improving. But even that’s a double-edged sword since the State of morality and philosophy are declining.
Editor’s Note: It’s clear there are some ominous social, political, cultural, and economic trends playing out right now. Many of which seem to point to an unfortunate decline of the West.
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