[Editor’s note: this is a special preview—for Mises Wire readers—of Europe’s Century of Crises under Dollar Hegemony: A Dialogue on the Global Tyranny of Unsound Money, a dialogue book by Brendan Brown and Philippe Simonnot newly published by Palgrave Macmillan.]
Watching as Biden and Trump supporters went at it, I found myself bewildered by what was hardly being discussed, by the dearth of coverage of the serious issues facing us today. Differences between competing visions for the future have never been greater, yet even as Americans process election results, the focus remains nearly entirely on ad hominem arguments.
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No Ron Paul supporter will ever forget, or cease being angry about, the theft of his Texas Congressional seat in 1976. The race seemed to be close, and it was. When the polls closed, he was 100 votes ahead. The next morning he was 300 votes behind, and declared the loser.
2020 was a daunting year. Covid-19, crazed government lockdowns, riots in major US cities, and a bruising, divisive national election made all of us sick with worry.
Politics, as usual, made things worse.
Congress and the Fed went crazy with “stimulus.” Debt and deficits soared. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, saw businesses shuttered, and had kids forced to go to school via Zoom. Depression and alcoholism skyrocketed.
