“We the People” Is Dead—Now It’s “Us vs. Them”

In the grand scheme of life, how valuable is a party-sized bag of M&Ms?

The price tag says it’s worth about $18, which frankly seems crazy for 38 ounces of subpar chocolate that melts in your mouth, not in your hands.

CVS in downtown Portland, Oregon, however, says that bag of M&Ms is worth its weight in gold. Or at least the drugstore chain implies that by stashing the bag behind a locked wall of glass. One must push a nearby button that prompts a digital assistant to announce loudly, “Customer service needed in the candy aisle.”

For the record, I did not press that button.

I did, however, press the button over in the aisle for nose spray.

And in the aisle for ibuprofen.

And in the aisle for cough syrup.

And in the aisle for a digital thermometer.

Whenever I’m in the US, I regularly hit CVS or Walgreens to load up on OTC meds I can’t find in Portugal, and frankly, I spent more time waiting for assistance than I did checking items off my buy-list.

The entire store was pretty much secured behind glass.

Which says a lot—nothing good—about America today.

But now I see it’s getting far worse.

From the UK newspaper The Observer:

As President Donald Trump vows to crack down on the “radical left” after the killing of [Charlie] Kirk on 10 September, far-right militias are proving ready, willing and able to act as enforcers, raising fears that the stage is being set for an escalation in political violence.

“I’m torn to say if we’re currently in a civil war, but I wouldn’t doubt it; it’s just not gone hot yet,” said [Cody] Beckner [member of the Virginia Kekoas, a far-right armed militia movement], who blamed the escalation on “leftist politicians inciting violence”.

Since Kirk’s killing, extremism monitors have documented a rise in recruitment and mobilisation efforts by groups across the far-right spectrum, from libertarian militias such as the Virginia Kekoas to neo-Fascist groups such as Patriot Front.

The far-right Proud Boys group is organising a campaign identifying leftwing activists celebrating Kirk’s death, while Stewart Rhodes – former leader of the Oath Keepers militia – is reported to be restarting his group in reaction to Kirk’s killing.

“I did see at least a dozen efforts by people to start a new militia group immediately following Kirk’s assassination,” said Amy Cooter, deputy director at the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism and an expert on US militia movements.

Cooter said it was too early to tell if any of the new or reactivated groups would prove influential. But she said some movements seemed to be preparing in case of any signal from Trump they were needed, for example if he contested the results of the midterm elections next year, or in the event of large protests.

Let’s be clear: This is not normal.

This is not how a supposedly advanced society functions.

M&Ms locked up behind glass because of crime. And far-right militia groups girding for civil war—if and when the president of the United States calls them to action.

That last clause is mindboggling.

People are really prepping—and others are legitimately worried—that the sitting president of the most powerful nation on the planet is already preparing to contest 2026 and 2028 election results by calling on armed militants… or that he might call on his armed poodles to attack US civilians exercising their right to protest a government that, in its current form, only serves one part of the electorate.

Trump has deployed troops to Los Angeles, to DC, to Portland, to Memphis, and to Chicago. He’s threatening to send more troops into other cities, to hell with the Posse Comitatus Act that prevents presidents from using the military domestically.

How odd that all the cities he’s attacking with troops are Democratic strongholds.

Regarding the World Cup soccer tournament to be held next summer in the US, Canada, and Mexico, Trump recently said he wants to move games out of Democratic-majority cities because they are, theoretically, unsafe. Never mind that crime data show Red-leaning states consistently experience higher violent crime than Blue-leaning states.

(Note: I’m not taking sides with the last paragraph. I’m deep purple to the core. But I am a fan of facts, and I loathe any politician, right or left, who vomits BS for a self-centered agenda.)

I’m writing this as the government shutdown progresses, and I find it so telling that Trump said before the shutdown that he and the GOP in Congress will use the shutdown to “get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things.”

None of that is the sign of a mature mind seeking to unify a country racing toward the cliff at high speed.

This is not going to end well for America.

I put the odds of Civil War at greater than 50%.

America is no longer a country of “We the People.”

It’s a country of Us vs. Them… and Us doesn’t want Them to share our country, and Them wants Us to die in a meteor strike that only kills off the other side of the political spectrum.

This is one of the underlying reasons the dollar faces deep and ongoing woes.

The rest of the world sees what’s going on in American politics and society, and the world is slowly backing away as a result. ($37.5 trillion in debt, more than $1 trillion in annual interest payments, and a president hellbent on eradicating Federal Reserve independence, markedly exacerbates those worries.)

If you don’t get some of your wealth out of the dollar and into gold, bitcoin, and Swiss francs, the cleavage that’s coming to America—and the end of dollar hegemony that it will bring about—is going to upend your financial life.

I say this on repeat, and I realize that… but those three assets are going to serve as the best lifestyle insurance you can buy.