End of Year Thoughts
“I heard the bells on Christmas Day.
Their old, familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet,
The words repeat,
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The Belfries of all Christendom,
Had pealed along,
The unbroken song,
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair, I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth”, I said.
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song,
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail,
The right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”
This poem was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Christmas Day, 1863. Longfellow had lost his wife to a fire, an infant daughter to sickness and his oldest son had suffered a severe wound at the Battle of Mine Run. America was still in the midst of the great national nightmare of the Civil War. The poem was first set to music in 1872. But the more familiar tune to us was written nearly a century later by Johnny Marks (who also wrote Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) and was first recorded by Bing Crosby in 1956. During the recording Crosby quipped to Marks that he had “found himself a pretty good lyricist.”
I have shown above the four verses that were included in the 1956 Crosby version. The poem has three others that you can look up to fully understand how Longfellow wrote about where the pain in life meets the joy and hope of Christmas.
Funny how history can be intertwined. My great, great grandfather, Alonso M. Conaway, was also wounded at the Battle of Mine Run. And my namesake, Bayard Taylor (my two middle names) was a contemporary poet with Longfellow. Longfellow wrote and delivered the eulogy at Bayard Taylor’s funeral.
This will be the last missive from me until likely mid-January. I think we should all take a respite from politics, economics and culture during the final two weeks of the year to reflect on the birth of the Christ Child, and the turning of another year on the calendar.
Additionally though, I will be having a sinus surgery on January 3rd. I have had sinus problems for decades and have put this off but my effort to cure without surgery has not succeeded. It is a fairly major surgery expected to take four hours under general anesthetic. My sinuses are truly a mess and need a roto-rooter of sorts.
I am not sure how long the recovery will be. Hopefully two weeks or less but time will tell. I will be back at my laptop as soon as my condition permits. And I hope I am at least more cogent than Joe Biden when this is over, as low as that bar may be.
So, just to keep you engaged in the coming weeks, here are just a few tidbits of thoughts that I have at the moment. No forecasts yet. I will wait until after inauguration day for those.
Trump: A regular reader of this blog told me a story about the USC and Pro Football Coach, John Robinson, who has now passed away. He was once asked in the summer if he couldn’t wait until the season started. “No”, he replied. “This is my favorite time of year.” “How’s that,” the reporter asked. “We’re undefeated,” he said.
The Trump administration is currently undefeated. But on January 21, the contact sport that is politics and policy will begin. Right now, it seems as though everything is going great. But soon, there will be failures and compromises and unexpected problems. Don’t misunderstand, I am optimistic. But I am also a realist. Mr. Trump is inheriting a bunch of problems. They aren’t all going to just go away.
The Plan: How do you stay undefeated economically? I will steal from a Manhattan Institute Paper. “Slay inflation, achieve energy dominance, execute meaningful deregulation, control federal spending, reorder unsatisfactory trade agreements, reassert control on immigration and project strength internationally.” Unlike so many elected Democrats and almost every leftist academic at Harvard and Columbia, I cite sources rather than plagiarize them as my own. I would only add that the deficit as a percentage of GDP must be put on a glide slope of decreasing. The incoming Treasury Secretary wants it halved by 2028.
Easy to say. Hard to do. But, at least we know the objectives. I am cheering the team to win every game!
Drones: To me, the biggest story here is not what the drones are or who is flying them. It is the fact the our government is incapable of telling us the truth, or they actually don’t know the truth, which may be even worse. Public trust in institutions hit a high some time in the 1950s. It is continuing to sink. Do you believe the FBI, the CDC, NIH, CBS News, Drug Companies or Google? I don’t. More and more Americans agree with me. These organizations, and many others, have all lied to us repeatedly and earned our disdain.
Healthy skepticism of what our “betters” tell us is healthy. But a society where there is no trust in the very foundations of that society is not healthy.
Bubbles: So, a guy pays over $6 million for “art” that is a banana duct taped to a wall. He then proceeds to eat the banana. This crypto millionaire did this to demonstrate how little $6 million meant to him and how easy it is for him to make many multiples of that amount in crypto. The fact that FartCoin is now worth more than 70% of the companies in the S&P 500 ($1 Billion as of this writing) is another example.
There are sentiment indicators here. First, he could have used his outsized wealth to help people or do something meaningful or employ people or even just enjoy building something. But he chose to simply throw it away demonstrating his vacuous character, which is unfortunately all to common these days.
Then of course, there is the bubble asset sentiment, where making money is ridiculously easy in some quarters. We saw this before in the 1920s and from 2005-2008 and at many stages in world history before that. It won’t last. It may last longer than I think it will or than it should. But it will end. This is a big Ponzi scheme. What makes it that is simple. These are assets that do not generate cash or wealth or anything of societal value. The only way you make money is to buy it, and then find someone else to buy it for more than you did. Eventually, there is no one else to buy, at which point the price of these assets go back to their intrinsic worth, which in some cases is zero.
This may be Mr. Trump’s blind spot. I hope some of his advisors will lead him to understand that this is not growth. It is ephemeral. Animal spirits are fine. But those spirits should be directed towards products and services that provide value and growth.
Syria. No. Turkey: Many are praising the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. He was a brutal miserable dictator for sure. But we cannot yet know that his replacement will be any better. What I am more concerned about than Syria is where Turkey will come out in all of this. Turkey has always been a strategically important country going back millennia to the Ottoman Empire, the Byzantines and the Eastern Roman Empire. Turkey is in NATO and wants to be in the EU. But they are very close to Russia (which is supposed to be what NATO is against) and have become more Islamic under Erdogan reversing a prior secular trend. They probably would like to exterminate the Kurds and likely Armenians too if they could. They also have a large military.
We don’t want Turkey as an enemy. But where Erdogan is taking them is not good. It is a place to watch.
Israel: The United States for decades has kept the bad guys and commies under control. For the last year, we all need to thank Israel for that. What they have done, with their blood and treasure, has been remarkable. They have single handedly greatly weakened Iran, all of it’s proxies, and by extension Russia and China as well. And they did it, by ignoring everything Joe Biden told them to do. Mazel Tov! And thank you. You will have an ally in the White House soon.
Democrats: We will have time to assess after Joe Biden spends the next month doing more terrible things. But, I’m trying to figure out what the Democratic Party stands for these days. Republicans are now occupying much of the political ground that Democrats owned for ages such as working class voters, education (people don’t want woke), protection of women in sports and from crime, health care and being anti-war. As far as I can tell, Democrats are now the party of abortion, economic destruction through unreasonable climate change policies, war through weakness, transgender promotion and….I think that may be it. This will not go well for them. They are counting on Trump failing so they can go back to just being “not Trump.” But, when it comes to what they are for, it’s a pretty sorry lot. I honestly don’t know how any thinking person can vote Democrat right now.
Hot off the Press: As I am writing this, the text of the omnibus spending bill in Congress has just been released. It is awful. I would vote no. Elon Musk just tweeted that he opposes it as does Donald Trump, Jr. And literally just before I push “send” on this, Trump himself came out against it. I understand that Democrats still control the Senate and the White House for a few more days. They love to spend which this does. I hope it fails and they just do a “clean CR” until some time in February. But this shows what I have been warning you about. Getting Congress, even many Republicans, to go along with DOGE is going to be difficult. The divisions are already appearing. And as far as the Democrats, there is nothing that pleases a minority party more than watching the majority fight with one another. I pointed out that the Dems have no real issues anymore. But, they may be happy again with just being “not them,” if Republicans hand that to them.
Again, as I am writing this, the Federal Reserve decides to cut rates again. They should be raising. This is another institution that was once revered but now has many critics, including yours truly. They are simply encouraging more $6 million bananas. Bubbles need air let out slowly so as not to affect the real economy. The Fed is setting us up for a bubble pop, which will create innocent victims.
As I have been saying, there is much positive change going on. But the path to that change will be chaotic, if the change occurs at all. Hence, the title of this website is still accurate.
There are a few things for you to chew over during the next month.
Until some time in January, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and here’s to a bright new year!
I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free