Natalie Smolenski: "We're In Dark Times" — The Rise of Counter-Elites & the Bank-State War Machine

“There's something about the relationship between bank and state that isn't good for the people. Banks, they were in a position to issue credit. Who's, you know, the biggest customer for bank credit? Governments. And what do they use bank credit for? Largely to wage war, which in turn, the banks profit off of. And so what we've seen over the last few hundred years is this kind of social ratchet effect.”

“The challenge that Americans have right now is that it's not possible to solve this problem by voting it away. The most effective thing you can do is take back financial sovereignty and actually as an individual, be your own bank. Bitcoin self-custody is the most powerful political act available today.”

“I think we're living through a collective national identity crisis. Who are we? First of all, who have we become as a country? Second of all, where are we going to go from here? I think we have a lot of questions now about the efficacy of democratic institutions, even something as simple as elections to meaningfully change the direction in which the country is going.”

“I think freedom of speech is probably at the top of my radar right now. I think we've gone from a climate where maybe there was cancel culture in the culture itself to one in which that cancel culture has now moved to the state. And we're seeing increasing calls for censorship and for government sanctions against individuals who are exercising that right.”

“First of all, just the insistence at the individual level that I don't need to have a device. I don't need to be on a network. I don't need to do these things that have become taken for granted as just kind of part of the infrastructure of everyday life. But there's nothing in our Constitution that requires identification, that requires being visible at all times. And so just remembering that privacy is your sacred prerogative and living from that.”