Column 435          December 29, 2023

Before peering into the murkiness of 2024, here’s a brief review of 2023 from my perspective. For the small meat retailers like us, 2023 was quite a battle. On January 6, 2023, the Live Cattle (beef on the hoof) price was $1.56 per pound, already up 13.9% from January 2022 when it was $1.37. By September 22, 2023, the price had soared another 23% to $1.92. While the beef price soared so did the price of fuel, wages, ice, insulation, interest, processing, and about everything else you can imagine. This forced retail meat prices higher and created a battle in the marketplace most consumers never saw.

The battle was between retailers struggling to maintain their share of the market. To keep their customers many retailers didn’t raise prices enough to cover all their costs in hopes that cattle’s prices would soon come back down. Since retail food prices were increasing across the board, consumers never realized that meat prices should have gone quite a bit higher.

When margins are sacrificed to maintain a market share, earnings tank. Currently, the $1.69 Live Cattle price means there’s been some relief, but retail prices still can’t drop as fast as the cattle price increased. On April 17, 2020, the Live Cattle price bottomed at $0.77 per pound. During the following 40 months the price increased an unsustainable 2.5 times. Therefore the odds are that the price may retrace about half of that increase giving us a projected price in the next year or so of $1.35. By then retail meat prices will certainly have moderated somewhat from today’s levels.

So how does 2024 look from here? If the government reins in its spending a little and if the Fed doesn’t start printing money helter skelter, then there’s a good chance we will see lower meat prices in 2024 and beyond. But if our elected representatives in Washington continue the fiscal policies of the past, then price inflation will reappear with a vengeance.

For certain, debasing the currency is a form of taxation on the middle and lower class citizens. The ultra rich and the welfare recipients (mostly illegal aliens) won’t feel the pain to the same degree. In a similar vein it’s the same for small businesses. They always suffer more during economically unstable times when compared to huge businesses. The question then will be, is the current inflating process designed to devalue debts like occurred between 1966 and 1982? That’s something we’ll explore in another column.

There’s no question that during 2024 our entire country will be in a battle for the survival of freedom. Government involvement in our lives has never been greater since 1776. Greed and power in the ranks of the elitists know no boundaries. Many respected scholars in our country are pleading for citizens to become more active in fighting the battle. One of the more outspoken is Victor Davis Hanson.

He recently wrote that: “In sum, we are witnessing an epidemic of leftist nihilism similar to the 16th-century European mad wave of iconoclastic destruction of religious art. Or is the better parallel the suicidal insanity that Mao Zedong unleashed during his cultural revolution of the 1960s? The old politics of right versus left, and Republican opposed to Democrat have now given way to a new existential struggle: Americans must choose between civilization—or its destroyers.”¹

Hanson frequently describes our ruling class as nihilistic. Merriam-Webster defines nihilism as:
●    “1 a: viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless
●    b: a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths
●    2 a: a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility
●    b capitalized: the program of a 19th century Russian party advocating revolutionary reform and using terrorism and assassination”

For many months now Hanson has been asking Americans to vigorously and loudly defend the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Sitting aside and not confronting the brainwashed masses who are following the woke agenda is giving way to nihilism. And, his timeline emphasizes this coming new year, 2024, as the last stand.

Kurt Schlichter from Townhall recently wrote a piece that puts the nihilistic movement into a humorous perspective. Yet he warns about the feckless Republicans who have compromised with the woke crowd for decades. Then he urges us to “fight back” by using their insanity against them.

“We patriots are lucky to have leftists, if only because our own Republicans are so tragically incompetent—right now, the leftists are inadvertently making a better case against leftism than most of our feckless GOP politicians ever could. The secret weapon of the American left as it marched through the institutions was stealth. It gained power and influence, but largely out of sight, in the shadows, metastasizing quietly while normal people paid attention to other things. But today, thanks to stupid leftists, ideological leprosy has come out into the open before it was able to rot away from our society fully.

“These people are a gift. They initiated the ambush before we were fully in the kill zone. Now, we can fight back. For a long time, we did not. For years, we have been hearing stories of far-away craziness. Out there in academia, there were nutty professors and weird rites and rituals, but it was obscure, hazy, and remote. It was not yet in our faces out in the real world, and we could tell ourselves that even back when we went to school, there were always a few nutburgers lurking around the Quad with their ‘U.S. Out of North America’ signs. But now, it's right there, in the open. Social media helps expose them because many of them just can't shut up. In Minnesota, you recently had the wonderful @LibsOf TikTok expose some professional Indians at some college babbling on about how America needs to be ‘decolonized’—which means murdering us, the rightful owners of this continent through our ancestors' glorious conquest of it. Oh, and it's not ‘North America’ anymore. It's ‘Turtle Island’ because, allegedly, some tribe somewhere thinks the continent is riding along on the back of an enormous magical tortoise, and the commies think that we all need to pretend that it's not weird and that we must nod along.”²

John & Nisha Whitehead from The Rutherford Institute have also been asking us to “do no less.” Just prior to Christmas they wrote “Born in a Police State: The Deep State’s Persecution of Its Most Vulnerable Citizens.” It’s an excellent article. One point they made is certainly worth remembering.

“Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebration of miracles and promise of salvation, we would do well to remember that what happened in that manger on that starry night in Bethlehem is only the beginning of the story. That baby born in a police state grew up to be a man who did not turn away from the evils of his age but rather spoke out against it. We must do no less.”³

Paul Craig Roberts admonishes us in his article “Washington Regards Truth As Its Most Dangerous Enemy.” He urges us to wake up and be proactive supporting the most important freedoms in the Bill of Rights. Without freedom of speech, freedom is impossible.

“. . . Washington regards truth as its most dangerous enemy. A country without a media cannot be free or have an accountable government. Americans who think that they live in a free country are completely deluded. They are pathetic.”⁴

Since Elon Musk took over X, the current administration has gone to war against him and his many enterprises. They’ve made the war against free speech as plain as day. It’s the people against the elitists, deep state actors, RINOs, neocons, and useful idiots. Our free press is mostly fake news and a propaganda machine working on the behalf of the enemies of the people. It’s in our face all the time with nihilistic propaganda. Most recently it has been pushing for Nikki Haley for president.

Nikki Haley is a neocon, RINO, bought-and-paid-for darling of the billionaire class just as Donald Trump Jr. says she is when he answered the question from Newsmax host Eric Bolling. In my opinion Eric knows his stuff and he knows all too well many of the politicians in Washington. Eric wouldn’t let Trump Jr. get away with such a statement if he disagreed.⁵

This isn’t about just politics. It’s about preserving America as our Founding Fathers envisioned it. We have one year to hold off any additional nihilistic shenanigans. The nihilists are capable of trying anything—right down to starting another war, postponing the election because of a national emergency, diluting the Supreme Court, instituting more control over small businesses, and banning additional personal freedoms. They have the “free press” on their side. They have many of the corporate leaders from American businesses on their side. They have the government bureaucracy on their side. They are the deep state and, except for today’s Supreme Court, they control our nation’s many government agencies.⁶

So, as citizens we have our work cut out for us in 2024. Will Americans turn the corner or will they be taken in by the propaganda machine? It’s a scary time because very few Americans actually know history. And fewer still have the courage to speak truth to power or even speak truth to those who are woke.

To your health.

Ted Slanker

Ted Slanker has been reporting on the fundamentals of nutritional research in publications, television and radio appearances, and at conferences since 1999. He condenses complex studies into the basics required for health and well-being. His eBook, The Real Diet of Man, is available online.

For additional reading:

1. Americans Must Choose Between Civilization—or Its Destroyers by Victor Davis Hanson

2. We Patriots Are Lucky to Have Leftists by Kurt Schlichter from Townhall

3. Born in a Police State: The Deep State’s Persecution of Its Most Vulnerable Citizens by John & Nisha Whitehead from The Rutherford Institute

4. Washington Regards Truth As Its Most Dangerous Enemy by Paul Craig Roberts

5. Donald Trump Jr.: "I Would Go To Great Lengths" To Keep Nikki Haley Off My Father's 2024 Ticket by Tim Hains from Real Clear Politics

6. Behind the Democrats' Efforts to Regulate the Supreme Court by Matthew Vadum from The Epoch Times