My Journey Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole (Part 3 0f 3)
My growing appreciation for the role Bitcoin plays in restoring our constitutional republic and the American Dream
If you missed Part 1 and Part 2, you might want to go back and read those first.
In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the main character Winston Smith decides to illegally record his thoughts each day in a diary, a small act of protest against Big Brother and the totalitarian state. However, Winston knows the Thought Police will eventually catch him because whether he writes down his thoughts or not, he is already guilty of Thoughtcrime. And those guilty of Thoughtcrime are invariably arrested and always punished.
In the vast majority of cases, there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.
Now obviously, 21st Century America has not reached the place where this happens on a mass scale, at least not the physical disappearance of people. But while this may not be happening on the physical level, it has been going on for some time on the economic and cultural level. Those the regime deems guilty of Thoughtcrime are de-platformed (abolished), ruined financially (annihilated), and canceled (vaporized). And the National Security State, working with the Department of Justice to change the law, has now declared that anyone who opposes the ruling narrative is a domestic terrorist and can be indicted. I discussed this in my essay on Joe Rogan last month. As I was working on this present essay, members of the "forever wars" bi-partisan ruling elite called those who oppose war with Russia "traitors," which is punishable by death, according to the Constitution. When our oligarchic ruling class and their propaganda office in the mainstream media call for the imprisonment or death of people exercising their First Amendment rights, we are in a scary place. And when this new form of "vaporizing" people becomes the modus operandi of the ruling elite, the American experiment and the American dream will be over.
Bitcoin and the American Experiment
Last July 4th, Alex Gladstein, who we mentioned in Part 2 of this essay, wrote a long article looking at the breakdown of the American experiment, positing that Bitcoin is the solution and may rejuvenate the uniqueness of America.
As the Declaration of Independence says, “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce [people] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
According to Gladstein,
Our ‘new guard’ is Bitcoin. Not just a founding document, but a network designed to fight the despotism of central banking and financial surveillance, a despotism set in motion hundreds of years ago.
In this sense, Bitcoin is animated, thinks Gladstein, by the same spirit as that of the revolutionary generation. It becomes our "new guard" capable of throwing off tyranny and despotism, installing a new financial system that is more just, more moral, and more democratic. It corrects the mistake of the founders—an overreliance on a centralized monetary system, which then got highjacked by the subsequent generations of ruling elites, who have rigged the system in their favor ever since. Bitcoin can fix this problem, contends Gladstein.
Bitcoin is the instantiation of a revolutionary idea: a system that cannot discriminate; that does not wield violence; that does not have special rules for the rich; that does not require identification or a particular status or level of wealth or race or creed to use; and whose rules cannot be manipulated by governments. Satoshi arguably took the best ideas from Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and their colleagues and gifted them to people worldwide.
If Gladstein is correct, then Bitcoin is the fairest monetary system available. It can check the power of oligarchs, return power to the people, and free people, particularly the working and middle classes, to pursue the American Dream. And if Bitcoin can free us from the totalitarian control of the administrative state, it is indeed animated by the spirit of 1776, a spirit worth celebrating.
In Thank God for Bitcoin, a project of the Bitcoin and Bible group, the team of authors also celebrate the revolutionary potential of Bitcoin to restore the American Idea and, ultimately, the American Dream. Here is their exuberant summary, touching all the themes posited by the most enthusiastic Bitcoin proponents, using almost religious language to demonstrate their enthusiasm:
Bitcoin is innovative, secure, competitive, disruptive, highly accessible, uncensorable, and moral. Bitcoin removes stealth theft through inflation, runaway government spending, and misaligned political motives. Bitcoin repairs our dysfunctional relationship with money, brings more meaning to our time and work incentivizes prudence, and frees us from debt enslavement. Bitcoin restores our communities, provides financial access to the poor, aligns community incentives, and allows us to save and plan for the future. Bitcoin is nothing less than the redemption of our corrupt monetary system.
While I am a little uncomfortable using the word "redemption" to describe a new currency, Bitcoin may indeed have the ability to transform the corrupted money supply tainted by selfishness, greed, and sin. In theological terms, God calls Christians to help re-create all aspects of the fallen created order, including economics and money, just as it does education, business, politics, and culture.
As the Bitcoin and Bible group authors point out, money touches every area of life and impacts both the private and public spheres of life. It has been called the base layer under everything. Bitcoin maximalists contend that unsound money, which encourages a culture of consumption and non-savings, and a culture of instant gratification and selfishness is the root of all that is bad in our world. And until we fix our money, that is, adopt Bitcoin as our new base layer, we can't fix these problems.
As the authors contend, their analysis of our current idolatries shouldn't be a partisan issue. People from all sides of the political spectrum recognize something is wrong, that our monetary system is broken, that its boom and bust cycles don’t need to happen. The problem is most people don't' know who and what causes these destructive cycles. But as inflation hits record highs, hurting people in their wallets and causing people’s savings to go up in flames, people are starting to catch on to the monetary scam that has been going on for decades. They are waking up to what our ruling elites have been doing for decades, manipulating the monetary system for their own benefit. The success of Bitcoin has accelerated this awakening, as it engenders a new interest in the history of money and introduces people to a whole new way of looking at the power of bitcoin to check the ruling elites’ power. As more and more people are “orange pilled,” the more the population is awakened. Its populist appeal crosses partisan lines, unifying a huge swath of America's working and middle classes. As one podcaster said recently, Bitcoin is the “people’s gold.”
But this is not a message the ruling elites will like or allow. They are not interested in unity but prefer the cold civil war, where people are divided. Why? Because when both sides are fighting, it increases their power. And that is why a new currency like Bitcoin, which can unify the working and middle classes and reduce the ruling elites' power, will be opposed. They will do everything they can to make sure Bitcoin doesn't replace their fiat currency of choice, the American dollar. There is too much at stake and the ruling elites don’t want to be holding the bag when all the fiat money is transferred into Bitcoin.
The Wrong Family Members Run Our Country
Orwell liked to say about his home country, England, that it is like a big family, where "the wrong members are in control." The same could be said about America as well. We are a big family, and the vast majority share a love of the American Experiment. But we are a family where "the wrong members are in control." So how do we wrest control of the family away from the crazy aunts and uncles? How do we kick them out of leadership, especially when no one trusts elections anymore? And how do we push back, speak out against their corruption, especially when they have the power to "vaporize" any member of the family who resists their authority?
Ultimately, Orwell was not very optimistic about changing the family’s leaders, getting rid of what he called "oligarchical collectivism," especially once it reached the point of no return, as he demonstrated so well in 1984. In the end, as we all know, Big Brother crushes Winston Smith. But as Orwell wrote in 1984,
If there was hope, it must lie in the proles [the working class], because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party [ruling elite] ever be generated … if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.
But would it ever occur?
Orwell was not optimistic they would awaken to their political power because in the end, they lacked the consciousness and initiative to carry out a revolution against the ruling elites. And he wasn’t sure the middle-class, whose virtues he wanted the working class to emulate, would forge an alliance with the working class and take on the ruling oligarchy.
But what if Bitcoin, now being adopted by so many in the working and middle classes, raises the consciousness (understanding the history of money and the need for a sound currency) of the "proles" and provides the initiative (because they now see a better store of value and a censorship-resistant tool) to "rise up and shake off" their slavery to the ruling elites--to take back their economic, political, cultural, and religious sovereignty. Can this happen? The authors of Thank God for Bitcoin think it can. They have written a second book called Bitcoin and the American Dream to prove it.
In a recent article, "Bitcoin's Peaceful Revolution,” Peter St Onge is hopeful that Bitcoin can overcome the oligarchs.
Just in time [Boitcoin is] the decentralized technology we need…to disarm our oppressors, to end their crises, to protect human and sustain the human rights and free markets that guarantee our liberty, indeed our survival.
This new reality may be years away, or it may happen tomorrow. No one knows for sure. Yet if this new awakening happens, it must begin with a first step -- adopt Bitcoin, buy it, trade it, or hold it. Use it to build wealth, yes, and live lives free from the love of money, learn to save for the future, make strong families, underwrite sound institutions, and promote freedom of speech. But as St Onge says,
We need to move fast—they are using money printers and centralized finance to consolidate their control, our window is narrowing. While their litany of victims is growing day by day. Only with Bitcoin can we stop it.
My Final Thoughts
As I end this multipart article, my journey down the Bitcoin rabbit hole is ongoing and subject to change, obviously. I still have a lot to learn about this new revolutionary technology. And I may change my mind. That is part of the learning process. But at this stage of my discovery, I am convinced that Bitcoin provides a unique opportunity for a better store of value and as a way to fix our constitutional republic, a republic that over the past 100 years has been hijacked by a bipartisan ruling elite that uses a disastorious monetary policy to increase its power and control.
And to end oligarchic rule, we must do away with the system of unsound money and adopt a new base layer. This new base layer will eliminate inflation and the boom and bust cycles, promote long-term savings and investment, stop government growth and expansion, protect freedom of speech and property rights, end the funding of forever wars and the military-industrial establishment, and prohibit government censorship and surveillance. All this can be done with Bitcoin. That is what makes it so revolutionary and exciting.
While I disagree with St Onge that Bitcoin is the only “peaceful alternative” to a looming civil war (see my Cold Civil War for other ways we can achieve this peaceful transformation), I do agree that Bitcoin will play an important role. Because as a new base layer, Bitcoin can cut off, in St Onge’s words, “the totalitarian threat at the source, rather than trying to stomp outs its tentacles one by one.” In this sense, Bitcoin will play a massive role in the peaceful transition back to constitutional republicanism, restoring the American dream and unifying our divided nation. What’s not to like about that?
Note: While at the time of posting this article I haven't yet invested in Bitcoin, my enthusiasm for it grows every day, and I plan to keep going down the rabbit hole of discovery.
Can I help you? If you lead a church, non-profit organization, or business and you want me to help you devise a program to train them in the principles found in Cold Civil War and the new vital center, please reach out to me.
Final disclaimers: This article is for educational purposes only. I am not providing any financial advice or recommendations.