You Haven’t Heard from Me in a While…

“There’s something happening here.
What it is ain’t exactly clear.
There’s a man with a gun over there.
Telling me, I got to beware.

There’s battle lines being drawn.
Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong.
Young people speaking their minds.
Getting so much resistance from behind.

What a field day for the heat.
A thousand people in the street.
Singing songs and carrying signs.
Mostly saying “hooray for our side”.

Paranoia strikes deep.
Into your life it will creep.
It starts when you’re always afraid.
Step out of line, the man come and take you away.

You better stop, hey what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down.”

For What it’s Worth –Buffalo Springfield

…..

No, I have not fallen off a cliff or driven one of my fast cars into a barrier. You have not heard from me in several months. Yes, I’ve been a bit busy and I have had some sickness which will lead to sinus surgery in November.

But, those are just excuses.

The main reason I have not written is because I have been quite negative about all that is going on at the moment. I did not want to be a “Debbie Downer” and write you every week about another bad thing that is happening. That would be too much like the 6 o’clock news.

So today, I am going to give you a quick roundup of my perspective on what I believe to be the most important major trends right now. In full disclosure, this is not very positive either. So, perhaps you should not read this if you are above the ground floor of a building near an open window.

This is longer than my usual missives. But please stay with me to the end.

With that understanding, here goes:

Election: Polling has been very inaccurate in recent years. That is not in dispute. So, I rely more on actual election results to tell me what is going on. The results in the primary elections and special elections around the country in July and August were not encouraging for Republicans. The overturning of Roe v. Wade does not have much effect on the middle of the electorate. But those July and August results, particularly in Kansas, New York and Alaska, show that it is a huge motivator for the Democratic base. The Dems are effectively making this about “rights being taken away”. Add that to the “near loss of our democracy” on January 6th, and you have fundamental reasons for Democrats to turn out. They did so over the summer. Will they again in November?

I’m afraid they will and this will offset some or all of the Republican turnout driven by inflation, crime, border and education. Republicans will still win the House simply because the history, the map and the math are all in their favor. I see the Senate, however, as a toss-up right now.

The Dems are not even trying to win over moderates. They are all about turning out their base. And they have way more money than Republicans do since most big corporations and wealthy people in American are Dems now. Republicans can exceed my expectations if their base turns out as well, and the center goes heavy for Rs.

Election Results: People say this is the most important election of our lifetimes. They have been saying that about every election for the last dozen years at least. I don’t believe that. What I do believe is that it will be very instructive. The last 3 elections have all been about that force of nature named Donald J. Trump. The Dems are trying to make this election about him as well, but I don’t think that is taking. So, this election will tell us something since it is not all about Trump. Who does turn out and why? What messages work? Are Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and Georgia now purple or even light blue? Or are the Dems in retreat in those states in which the trends have been positive for them recently? Are there any cracks in the blue armor in places like Colorado, Washington and even New York or cracks in the red armor in Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas? This election will not determine the fate of the country. But it will tell us where the country is now and perhaps where it is headed.

Climate Change Worship: When I was in elected politics, we were always debating what the greatest threat to America was. Was it the deficit or Islamic terrorism or communism? Now there is a new contender that may be taking the lead. It is the incomprehensible worship of the climate change agenda.

I could write an entire thesis on this and why I think it may now be our biggest threat (in part because it will allow the other threats identified in the preceding paragraph to take hold and flourish). This whole movement is nonsensical. If carbon is the problem, why reject nuclear and hydroelectric? The carbon footprint of an electric car including the materials used to make it is greater than a gasoline powered car for the first 100,000 miles. And of course, there is the whole question of the validity of the “science” behind this whole mess anyway. “Science” can’t tell you with any accuracy how much rain will fall next month, but they can predict the temperature of the earth 100 year from now to the 100th of a degree? Come on!

But they use the extreme and ridiculous assertion that there will be a mass extinction event in 10 years if we do not act. With that as the threat, there is no action in response that is too radical.

But, if we go down this path, we will head towards a new stone age. Except that the Chinese (and Russians and Iranians, etc.) will not do it and after we weaken ourselves enough we will be defenseless and communism will take us over.

We must fight this insanity without fear of being a denier. I am a proud denier. The climate change agenda is crap.

A Greek fellow name Ptolemy determined in the second century AD that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun and all the planets revolved around it. That was the accepted “science” for 1300 years. In the 1500s an Prussian guy named Copernicus came along and suggested that the earth revolved around the sun. His book was banned. I have oversimplified the story and there were actually people prior to and after Copernicus who challenged the “science” of an earth-centered universe. Many of them were imprisoned, shunned or kicked off Twitter. (not actually but they would have been had Twitter existed then). The point is that science can be and is often wrong and changed later. So, we should eliminate cheap and abundant energy for all time on the basis of a few people’s calculations?

Propaganda and Deep State: The press in America is no longer biased. They are now into full-blown Goebbels or Pravda style propaganda. When an unarmed black person is killed by a cop, it leads for days if not weeks. The thousands of people killed by fentanyl from illegal aliens or murdered by released criminals get nary a mention. Is there a crisis at the border? Not according to NBC news. Is Biden trying hard to lower gas prices. Absolutely say the LA and NY Times. Priests and pastors have been arrested by automatic gun toting FBI agents for protesting at abortion clinics. Did you see that on CNN? And the indoctrination of the users of big technology is astounding.

You get the point. My concern here is that this is like fighting city hall. You all reading this are engaged and pay attention to everything. Most people don’t. They pay attention to their job and their kids and their vacations. They hear stuff on the radio and get internet feeds. And they believe what they hear, because why would you not believe ABC? Except that ABC is lying.

Relative to the Deep State, it exists. I know several people who were high up in federal agencies under Republican presidents. They would ask the civil service staff to do things reversing Democrat priorities. The staff would refuse. And they can’t be fired. As Bill Barr said in a recent interview, 100% of the leaks coming out of federal agencies have been to propaganda media organizations and have been intended to hurt Republicans. He cited one leak about a federal investigation of then Senator Purdue from Georgia. The investigation had been closed. But the leak failed to mention that little detail. Did this change the result of the election in Georgia that determined the majority in the Senate? It certainly did not help.

If we don’t turn this around, I don’t know how we win long term. The truth is irrelevant. What people think is the truth is what matters. Media and tech are telling them lies that are becoming truth. We must push back on this evil cabal of propaganda.

The gods of the Left: Most leaders of leftist thought are atheists or agnostic. They may be “spiritual” but do not believe in the monotheistic God of Judeo/Christian belief. Having no “higher authority” than themselves frees them up to take positions that would be abhorrent to any God-fearing believer. And, their positions can be completely without any moral underpinning since they make up morality as they go. After all, is there really any higher authority than a liberal arts professor at Columbia?

Take for example the recent law in California signed by Gavin Newsom that allows minors, including those from other states, to come to California and have irreversible “gender reassignment” surgeries without parent notification or consent. That same state of California prohibits that same minor from going to a tanning salon without not just parental notification but actual parental consent. Clearly, the state of California believes that the effect of a potential sunburn in a tanning salon is a much greater threat than the removal and replacement of one’s genitals.

This is insanity. It is what you get when there is no God and you can make any rules you want.

Civil War: Recent surveys indicate that about half of the population believes we are headed towards a second Civil War in America. Given the huge gulf between the left and the right today, I understand why they think so.

I am a bit of a historian (and a member of the board of the American Battlefield Trust www.battlefields.org ) and know a bit about the origins and conduct of the American Civil War.

John Brown was the famous abolitionist who was captured by soldiers (led ironically by Colonel Robert E Lee) and executed for various murders. He was a radical abolitionist who called for arming slaves and instructing them to kill their masters. The abolitionist north saw him as a martyr who died in a noble cause. Southerners saw him as a lawless murderer who incited riots and mass murder. Do you see any parallels to anyone today? George Floyd? Even Donald Trump?

After South Carolina seceded and led other states to do the same, newly inaugurated President Lincoln sent troops to the south to quell the rebellion. If blue or red states were to secede today, would anyone start a war to prevent that from happening. Or would President Newsom be happy to see Texas go or President DeSantis allow the door to hit California in the butt on the way out?

Economy: I am not optimistic here either. (do you sense a pattern?) Years of free money, money printing and negative interest rates have distorted what is real in the economy and what is a mirage. The mirages will go away. They should go away. But that will be painful. A lot of people will lose money and many will go broke. Disruptions will occur. The economy has been on drugs and now comes the period of getting off of those drugs. You have to do it, but it hurts.

Other countries have bigger problems. Europe’s devotion to the climate agenda has caused recession and massive inflation not to mention energy shortages. None of us know what Putin will do. When the US and Europe catch a cold, many emerging market countries get very, very sick.

I don’t know what the Fed will do. But I see a couple of outcomes ahead in 2023. Either the Fed keeps the pedal down and the economy enters a hard and perhaps long downturn. Or, the Fed blinks, and we have many years of persistent stagflation.

Neither one is good. But there is a point where you have to choose the least bad option. For me, that is not long stagflation.

Thank you for reading. I hope you are not too depressed.

The song lyrics I picked for this missive were written by Steven Stills in 1966. You might read them and think they were written last month. I included all of the verses because I think they all could apply today. Stills saw the upheaval in America at the time and obviously was concerned by it. But now, we know what happened next. America survived and came out the other side better for having had the trial.

Maybe we are in a similar place today. Maybe we will come out the other side even stronger. I hope so.

Like Steven Stills, I just have a hard time seeing it from here.

I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive fast and live free