Book Review: Ship of Fools by Tucker Carlson

“Trump didn’t invade Iraq or bail out Wall Street. He didn’t lower interest rates to zero, or open the borders, or sit silently by as the manufacturing sector collapsed and the middle class died. You couldn’t really know what Trump might do as President, but he did do any of that. There was also the possibility that Trump might listen. At times he seemed interested in what voters thought. The people in charge demonstrably weren’t. ~ Tucker Carlson on the 2016 Presidential Election

by Catherine Austin Fitts

I was inspired to read Tucker Carlson’s new book, Ship of Fools after watching his recent presentation at the Independent Institute in San Francisco.

I am a Carlson fan. Carlson falls into that group of reporters and commentators who get a great deal of good things accomplished while staying in the bounds of what is socially acceptable. Peggy Noonan is another favorite in this category. So it was not a big leap to purchase Carlson’s book. It was a big leap to move it to head of the pile of 300+ books on the “must read shelves.” I skimmed the introduction when it came in the mail and got hooked.

Ultimately, finding economically feasible solutions requires punching outside of the lines of social acceptability. That requires focusing on the big, deep financial trends. If you look at the themes of the Solari Report Wrap Ups you can not miss them – Pension Funds & the Deep State, the Space Based Economy, the Rise of the Asian Consumer and Megacities were the Wrap Up themes in 2018.

Consequently, both my training and my focus require that I view the cultural wars and divide-and-conquer politics as a control tactic. I tend to ignore them as noise in my search for the real power lines and financial flows. Reading Carlson reminds me that the cultural wars have reached a level of seriousness that require attention.

The cultural wars are so bad, in fact, it’s hard for a sane person to believe what is happening. Since I can calculate the full extent of the financial corruption and the extraordinary economic harm and opportunity costs, it is easy to appreciate how foolish the establishment has to behave to keep the general population on the defense. It requires one tsunami after another of sexual, racial, and religious criticism and micromanagement. After all, the best defense is a good offense.

Carlson attributes this to the foolishness of the US establishment. In my experience, the people at the top are far from fools, They do however, promote a thick class of fools to represent and manage for them. They fund a great deal of foolishness, as complexity and incompetency are two of their most effective tactics. Why not manufacture lots of it?

How many people are willing to illuminate or touch the so-called “third rail” where the real power lies? The real question is how loudly can the shriek-0-meter scream before they do?

Want to get current on the state of the cultural wars in America? I highly recommend Carlson’s book. It is well written, well researched and both enormously informative and entertaining – a rare combination these days.