Why I Hate Politics

November 10, 2021

I hope you didn’t miss last month’s Stansberry Research Conference in Las Vegas. But if you did… so did I. Unfortunately, family obligations kept me from attending, although – don’t tell my family – I would have rather been with my friends at the Encore Resort.

(Stansberry is offering a video replay of the conference and all its dynamic speakers. You can watch some of our favorites, like Doc Eifrig, Porter Stansberry, and newcomer Matt McCall, from the comfort of your own living room couch. And you’ll get access to more than 20 specific stock recommendations from these experts. Click here for details.)

But I did keep tabs on what was going on, and one of my favorite goings-on was the Tuesday evening political panel featuring Dr. Ron Paul, Buck Sexton, and American Consequences publisher Trish Regan… plus John Tamny, the libertarian economist, Dan Ferris, editor of Stansberry’s Extreme Value monthly stock advisory, and Grant Williams, publisher of one of the world’s most popular financial newsletters, Things That Make You Go Hmmm.

Politics shouldn’t affect investment… But they do. And nobody’s better at predicting and explaining those “shouldn’t affects” than Ron, Buck, Trish, John, Dan, and Grant.

Unable to be there in person, I had the honor of making a video introduction to the panel presentation. I doubt my intro gave the audience any deep insights. Everyone on that panel knows a lot more about politics and political policy than I do.

They brought the knowledge. I brought the…

What did I bring? The sarcasm, I guess.

I’ve been covering politics for almost 50 years. My first real assignment as a political reporter was to cover the 1972 Republican and Democratic presidential conventions, both held in Miami Beach that year.

The presidential nominees were, as you may recall, Richard Nixon and George McGovern – Giggles McGiveup and The Dark Lord. I remember thinking to myself at the time, “Well, at least I’m starting on the bottom rung of the muck pit ladder. Politics can’t possibly get worse.” (Wrong.)

So I decided to leave the political wisdom to the panelists. Because, after nearly half a century, I’ve realized that the only thing I really know about politics is… I hate ’em.

Instead, to start things off, I took a few minutes to just flame about politics – left, right, and middle…

(But please allow me to make one caveat about my comments on politics and politicians. None of them apply to Dr. Ron Paul. I’ve watched his entire political career, and I’ve never thought of him as a politician. I consider Dr. Paul a brave – and lonely – citizen who willed himself to climb down into that political muck pit and see if anything could be done to keep it from overflowing. I don’t always agree with Dr. Paul, but I’ll have no aspersions cast upon his character or his firmness in his convictions.)

Anyway, as I was saying…

Politicians are always trying to tempt us to give more power to politics. Power of any kind is dangerous… Political power is particularly dangerous. Politics is a Rottweiler ready to be unleashed on your problems. And you’ve stuffed raw meat down the front of your pants.

Politicians work themselves into a lather arguing in favor of the benefits of government power. Using that kind of “politician logic” I can prove… Anything.

Here, I can prove that shooting convenience-store clerks stimulates the economy… Jobs are created in the high-paying domestic manufacturing sector at gun and ammunition factories. Additional emergency medical technicians, security guards, health care providers, and morticians are hired. The unemployment rate is lowered as jobseekers fill new openings on convenience store night shifts. And money stolen from convenience-store cash registers stimulates the economy where stimulus is most needed: in low-income neighborhoods where the people who shoot convenience store clerks go to buy their crack.

Considering all the good it does, I am simply flabbergasted that everyone in the House and Senate isn’t smoking crack and shooting convenience-store clerks this very minute… (instead of just smoking crack).

But the real problem isn’t politicians, the real problem is politics. Politicians are chefs – some good, some bad. Politics is boiled skunk. The problem isn’t the cook, the problem is the food…

Let me rephrase that… The problem isn’t the cook, the problem is the cookbook. Politics is the idea that all of society’s ills can be cured politically. This is like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried. The soup is fried. The salad is fried. So is the ice cream and cake. And your Pinot Chardonnay is rolled in breadcrumbs and dunked in the deep fat fryer. That’s no way to cook up public policy.

Politicians lie to us. But it’s not like they have much choice. Think what it would sound like on the campaign stump if a politician told the truth. Even an itty-bitty bit of truth…

“No, I can’t fix public education. The problem isn’t funding, or vouchers, or overcrowding, or teacher’s unions, or lack of computer equipment in the classrooms. The problem is your damn kids!”

(Not seeing a reelection there.)

My job is to make fun of politics. But after a lifetime of making fun of politics, I’ve realized that I’m enjoying myself about as much as a grizzly bear getting a bikini wax. I hate politics.

And I don’t just hate bad politics. I hate all politics…

Imagine deciding what’s for dinner by family secret ballot. I’ve got three kids and three dogs in my family. We’d be having Oreos and roadkill.

Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. President Biden would be touting his infrastructure bill in ripped jeans with his midriff exposed.

Politics stink…

Think about how we use the word politics. Are “office politics” ever a good thing? When somebody “plays politics” to get a job or promotion, do they deserve it? When we call a colleague, “a real politician,” is that a compliment?

I know politicians. I like politicians. I am friends with politicians from both sides of the aisle. Politicians are great… until they stick their nose into things they don’t understand, which is most things. Then politicians turn into ratchet-jawed purveyors of monkey-doodle and baked wind. They are piddlers upon merit, beggars at the door of accomplishment, thieves of livelihood, envy coddling tax lice applauding themselves for giving away other people’s money. They are the lap dogs of the Poly Sci class, returning to the vomit of collectivism. They are pig herders tending that sow-who-eats-her-young, the entitlement state. They are muck-dwelling bottom-feeders growing fat on the worries and disappointments of the electorate. They are the ditch carp in the great river of democracy…

And that’s what one of their friends says.