Doug Casey – A new civil war is brewing… Take these steps to protect yourself… In the mailbag: Is the American dream a hoax?
Put simply, if you’ve worked hard all your life to make money… and have been successful… you now have a target on your back.
As we covered yesterday, Legacy Research cofounder and legendary speculator Doug Casey believes socialism has already conquered the U.S.
With class envy rampant, and the eat-the-rich train gaining steam, the Left is turning to its traditional cure-all – raising taxes.
And if you think AOC’s proposed 70% marginal tax rate is as bad as it can get… think again.
In Sweden during the 1970s the marginal tax rate – including a “wealth tax” on assets – was close to 102%.
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You see, Doug recently told our Crisis Investing readers that he sees something far more dangerous and destructive in the cards – an American civil war.
As he explained it (paid-up subscribers to that letter can catch up in full here)…
We’re very possibly on the cusp of a civil war. The situation is not unlike that before the War Between the States, very unstable.
Both sides are extremely antagonistic. The traditionalists – mostly in red counties – and the PC types – mostly in blue counties, simply hate each other. It’s an ugly situation. They can’t be reconciled. With tensions already running high in the country, and racial, cultural and social clashes in the background, it feels like a civil war is in the cards.
If you’re part of the boomer generation, you lived through something similar in the 1960s and 1970s. But this time, says Doug, the situation is a lot worse…
Of course, it seemed like we could have had a real blow up back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when there were not just a few, but thousands of bombings. Not just little riots, like in Ferguson and Baltimore, but conflagrations like in Watts, DC, and Detroit, where the National Guard was raking the ghetto with .50 cals.
But in those days the public at large wasn’t involved, just fringe elements of society. Radicalized blacks and hippies. What we have today is different – it’s wholesale.
Today, most folks are either on “Team Red” or “Team Blue.”
Tensions are running so high, it’s even torn apart families. Almost everyone has a story of a political row causing bad blood between family members.
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The Spanish Civil War raged between 1936 and 1939. It left roughly half a million people dead.
And it was fought over ideology.
On the Republican side, people wanted to see the left-leaning republic take root in Spain. On the Nationalist side, people wanted Spain to have a conservative and religious government.
Here’s Doug with more…
Contrary to what most believe, the U.S. hasn’t had a real civil war yet. The unpleasantness of 1861-65 was actually a war of secession. A civil war is one where two or more groups are vying for the control of the same government, as in Spain during the 1930s.
But this time in the U.S. it could turn into a real civil war. I don’t know what form it would take, but it could be really tough going: economically, financially, politically, socially, militarily.
You might remember the incident with James T. Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old Bernie Sanders supporter and left-wing activist. In June 2017, he shot Republican congressman Steve Scalise, a congressional aide, and a Tyson Foods lobbyist while they were practicing for a congressional charity baseball game in Virginia.
Or take the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, two months later. Far-right groups clashed with left-wing counter-protesters. And one right-wing protester, James Fields, killed a 32-year-old Charlottesville native, Heather Heyer, when he drove his car into a crowd.
Then, this past October, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested a Trump supporter, Cesar Sayoc Jr., for sending pipe bombs to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other prominent Democrats. The FBI said Sayoc’s fingerprints were found on a package he mailed to congresswoman Maxine Waters.
Doug is not saying a civil war is a certainty. And it’s not something he or anyone else would look forward to.
But it’s not something you want to rule out either. And that means taking precautions.
At the very least, you want to have at least six months of living expenses in U.S.-dollar cash.
You may also want to consider what Bill Bonner Letter coauthor Dan Denning calls a “bug-out bag” – the 10 items you’ll want in a bag if you have to leave your home in a hurry. Here’s Dan…
The “bug-out bag” is a reminder that civilization hangs from a slender thread. Like the first aid kit in your bathroom or the spare tire and road flare in your car… it’s the sort of thing you hope you don’t have to use… but shouldn’t be without.
Most of the time, you don’t have to worry that the next crisis could tear apart the fabric of civil society… or tear asunder the Union (again). Events like this that disrupt the routine of normal life across all of society happen rarely. But they DO happen.
For a list of the 10 items in Dan’s bug-out bag, check out Chapter 21 of our Ultimate Crisis Playbook right here.
Yesterday, we talked about the importance of owning gold. People have considered gold to be wealth for thousands of years. And it has survived every single conflict.
As we like to put it at Legacy Research – the publishing alliance between Bonner & Partners, Casey Research, Palm Beach Research Group, and Jeff Clark’s Delta Report – gold is “disaster insurance.”
You want at least 5% to 10% of your wealth in gold – regardless of what you believe is coming down the pike. And in the scenario Doug is outlining, you’ll want to consider having a much higher amount of your overall wealth in gold.
It may sound obvious. But where you are physically situated in the world is going to have a huge effect not just on your standard of living… but also on how exposed you’ll be during the kind of conflict Doug sees on the way.
It’s one of the reasons Doug owns properties outside of the U.S. If the civil war heats up, he says he’ll be “watching it all on widescreen” from his ranch in rural Uruguay…
It’s dangerous to stay rooted in one place when the natives get restless. Ask Russians in the 1920s, Germans in the 1930s, any European in the 1940s, Chinese in the 1950s, Cubans in the 1960s, Vietnamese in the 1970s, Rhodesians in the 1980s – or Venezuelans today.
It’s especially risky if you have obvious assets during real economic upset or ideas that aren’t mainstream when there’s real political turbulence. Or are a minority in a real cultural overthrow.
It’s something Dan has been talking to Bill Bonner Letter readers about, too.
He calls it situational awareness. And it’s why, last year, he travelled thousands of miles by car to find the best places in the U.S. for a “bolthole.” That’s a place you can escape to in the case of a crisis – think civil unrest, natural disaster, or the power grid going down.
As a special bonus, Dan agreed to make his bolt-hole reports available to Daily Cut readers. Just click the links below to access them.
Thursday’s mailbag has your fellow readers up in arms…
After Legacy Research cofounder Bill Bonner said politics is “always a con game,” reader Richard C. called the American dream “a shabby lie.”
And on the topic of digital surveillance, reader Tom S. suggested the U.S. doesn’t have enough. As he put it:
A cop car costs a fortune and one camera can do the work of 10 cops on patrol. The problem is the USA doesn’t want to move into the Digital Age. It’s the only way to go, if you’re not a criminal and the system is being administered by law-abiding police and prosecutors. Corruption of the system is the real problem.
We need term limits, training in ethics, far less cronyism, and more exposure of politics!
But not everyone agrees with Richard and Tom…
In an ideal world, Tom might be onto something, but we don’t and never will have an ideal world. Far too many police, prosecutors, and judges are not nearly as law-abiding and principled as they should be, and corruptibility will never be eliminated. Far better not to head down the road he prescribes at all.
– Al R.
We are going to be a police state and not many people realize that this is happening. We may all end up with a number stamped on us at birth.
– Lavonne M.
I don’t believe the American dream started out as a “shabby lie,” but I am afraid it is becoming an ever-deepening hoax as time goes on. While I agree with Tom S. That “We need term limits, training in ethics, far less cronyism, and more exposure of politics,” I think there is one more component that needs to be added. In order for the public at large to pay attention and be engaged in politics at any level, everyone needs to have skin in the game. We can’t survive as we have historically if close to half the people in this nation aren’t paying taxes.
The public at large has been erroneously sold a bill of goods that it is compassionate and moral for such a large group of people not to pay taxes and/or receive earned income credits. This is just a way to keep people in a position of dependence, while enabling them to keep voting for more ongoing benefits from the half of the country that is paying taxes. This puts everyone in a bad spot, except the politicians, who live like a ruling class. As a nation, we have allowed the American dream to be destroyed through complacency and inaction. How sad.
– Therese H.
Do you agree with Therese H. that inequality can be solved through more taxes? Are you worried about growing digital surveillance in the U.S. – or could it be what America needs, like Tom S. says?
Write us at [email protected].
Regards,
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Chris Lowe
March 5, 2019
Barcelona, Spain
P.S. It’s not only in the U.S. that folks are at each other’s throats. I (Chris) have spent the last five days in the Catalonia region of Spain. And here, the old Spanish Civil War wounds are opening up again – over a bid by about half of Catalans to take the region out of Spain.
Tensions are running particularly high right now because the Supreme Court of Spain is deciding on whether to convict a group of six Catalan independence leaders – including its former vice president – of rebellion. It’s a charge that carries a 25-year sentence.
It goes back to a referendum the independence leaders held in October 2017. Spanish state prosecutors claim it was an illegal, violent attempt to end Spanish rule. The independence leaders say Spain is using the courts as a political weapon to prevent Catalans from pursuing independence.
It’s not that you shouldn’t travel here. There’s no military presence in Catalonia. Life goes on there much like it did before the referendum. But if you are planning a visit, you should be prepared for big protests as the trial continues. In the last one, pro-independence Catalans disrupted underground city trains and blocked roughly 11 highways.