The Official Substack Of Brandon Richey is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
“If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected .”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
In the days when I practiced Muay Thai kickboxing I remember when we would spar in the gym and how sore I would often be after doing so. However, like anything else the more I practiced the more my body adapted to the stress.
In the beginning this adaptation phase was very uncomfortable and it took a few months before I could get to a point where I felt like it was a more normal training stimulus rather than a complete shock to my system. The physical and mental adaptation from this period of time was also something that impacted my body in more ways than one.
You see, the reason we sparred was to start the process of getting used to the act of fighting. As you might imagine fighting is not an easy thing to do and it is certainly a skill that requires many hours of repetition and training before most can become more accustomed to it and comfortable with engaging in a very uncomfortable physical activity.
During this time sparring I remember when I first started to learn the real value in it one day when I had a very skilled partner who was blessed with speed and could move really fast. Fortunately, I was also blessed with the ability of speed, but at this particular point of my sparring experience I hadn’t had a lot of repetition in order to coordinate my movements to an effective level just yet. I’ll just say that I was still in an early learning stage at this point of my training.
However, on this particular day I remember watching this guy that I was sparring with and I started to notice something that got my attention. I started noticing small physical cues with the way he would move his body into position to throw a punch or a kick before he would actually throw the punch or the kick.
In other words, I could see him setting up his body to deliver a certain strike before he would actually deliver the strike. In short, he was telegraphing his moves and I was starting to reach a point in my training where I could actually read his body language and pick up on what he was telegraphing with the nonverbal communication that he was signaling with his body’s movement.
Now once I started to get better at reading these movements I found that I could counter his strikes much easier because it was something that started to become more natural to me the more time and repetition I put into my training.
So why did I bother to share my Thai boxing experience with you here in today’s post?
The reason I shared it with you is something I’m going to come back to in order to connect to the theme of today’s message here in a bit because it involves the uncomfortable process of adaptation.
Mark To Market
I just recently watched an interview that Tucker Carlson had with Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam’s case is world famous, but just in case you don’t know who he is, he was, at one time, one of the richest people in crypto thanks to his widely known FTX exchange and his Alameda Research trading firm. Sam was very successful and made some strides with the venture before his empire came crashing down in November 2022.
Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with fraud and his case was one of the most notorious involving white collar-crime ranking right up there with Bernie Madoff according to many that followed his case. Now I’m not here to discuss Sam’s innocence or his guilt because I don’t want to get into the weeds of all of that here.
What I do know is that Sam’s case had a political component to it as he had been a big donor to the Democrat party on top of the fact that he was involved with crypto. However, in his interview with Tucker Carlson he had communicated that he had been shocked at the level of corruption in Washington D.C. regarding the regulatory authorities surrounding the area of his business where he was looking to gain some traction regarding the crypto market.
However, according to Sam towards the end of his time he had actually transitioned to making donations to Republican causes in an effort to get some movement with his business after hitting multiple dead ends with his previous efforts.
Oddly enough, and as a sidenote, Sam was at one time being detained at the same prison facility as Sean Diddy Combs, but that’s currently no longer the case.
Regardless of all of that I wanted to touch on a few things that really stood out to me in Sam’s interview with Tucker that really caught me by surprise.
For starters, to be completely transparent I never really followed Sam’s case that closely when he was in the news on almost a daily basis. Yes, he was everywhere I and I knew what he was involved with, but given my normal dive into things when exploring the current events of the day I never really did that deeper dive into Sam’s story.
There’s no particular explanation as to why I didn’t, other than to say that at the time I had been preoccupied with other stories that I had more of an interest in.
Now having said that at one point during his interview Tucker started asking him about some of the main differences in prison compared to his experiences in the free world. Like most of Tucker’s interviews they had a very candid conversation with one another about the circumstances of his life.
During one point of the conversation Sam was telling Tucker about the prison environment and how much different it was from everything involving the activities that he was able to engage in to what he spent most of his time doing, which according to Sam, involved a lot of reading and working on his case whenever he is given the opportunity to do so.
In addition to this he also spoke about the challenge of his environment not allowing him to really pursue something of higher purpose. I want to briefly interject here as I know people who serve inside prison and are definitely pursuing a higher purpose, but this is obviously Sam’s perspective at this moment. However, given what he had lost with this crypto business I suppose I can see where he’s coming from.
After communicating this, and many other differences he has had to adjust to in prison, it was almost a passing comment where he told Tucker that the one thing he noticed with the other inmates is that they really liked playing chess.
This was surprising enough to Tucker, but what Sam told Tucker next was even more surprising. Sam said that many of the guys in the prison where he was that played chess barely had a middle school or high school education, but despite that fact they could beat him at chess on a regular basis.
Sam elaborated on this further by stating that the reason he believed that they could do this was because he recognized that people possess a wide range of talents, instincts, and inherent gifts that just don’t always match up to what’s on paper beside their names. When Sam communicated this it was something that really stood out to Tucker and quite honestly it stood out to me as well.
The reason this got my attention was because this demonstrated to me that Sam Bankman-Fried has a good amount of self-awareness to even be capable of making that observation.
Given the fact that he’s now in prison after having been where he was before this was obviously a very honest attribute that I saw with this man as he continued his conversation with Tucker Carlson. I believe he already possessed this trait when he was out in the free world, but the fact that he would also share this as an observable moment of fascination for himself in prison is also quite astute. In other words, it was a learning experience and one who is willing to learn is on a path towards wisdom.
Now I want you to hold onto that and I want to talk about another video that I saw this week with Glenn Beck that revolves around this entire idea of people who have been blessed with good instincts.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
-Proverbs 1:7
So in my recent article/podcast titled Thermonuclear Boycott I took the time to dive into the geopolitical concerns surrounding the weakening of the dollar, the current rise of gold in the financial system, and my concerns surrounding the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) current efforts to achieve global hegemony.
I would strongly encourage you to listen or read that episode as I highlight many of the real concerns that you won’t hear coming from the Administrative State Media (ASM). However, Glenn Beck shares my same concerns, but he also came out with a video this week where he offered a different take on the role of gold, the U.S. dollar, and the possible direction concerning the financial situation of the United States.
Like many of us Glenn has been expressing his same concerns surrounding the weakening of the dollar and the rise of the price of gold as in the past week gold has skyrocketed to almost $4500 per ounce.
Up till now Glenn has also been saying what I’ve been hearing from many other people about the fact that they don’t really want to be around in a world where gold actually hits $5000 per ounce. The reason for this is because of the inverse relationship gold has with the strength of the dollar and this would signal a strong loss of trust in the U.S. dollar. Obviously this would be a tremendous concern and is something that many people have been warning about now for several years.
However, in his talk this past week Glenn Beck offered an alternative perspective in terms of what actually could be happening regarding the current upward path of gold and the financial situation of the United States, and if his hypothesis is correct we are on the verge of witnessing one of the most incredible events in our nation’s history.
So to properly frame this I want to give you a snapshot of the current perspective on the United States financial situation along with what’s going on across the geopolitical landscape. The common line of thinking regarding the financial situation of the United States has been one that looks grim. After all, up until recently there’s been a series of wars breaking out signaling global instability, the national debt is now $38 trillion and counting, and there’s absolutely zero political will in the U.S. Congress and Senate to cut any meaningful spending whatsoever.
At the current trajectory we’ve seen gold explode in value, we’ve seen the balance sheet of the country explode, and we’ve seen the threat of the CCP’s economic warfare with their attempt to cut us off from rare earth minerals…a threat that could theoretically grind our manufacturing to a halt in a matter of five or six weeks.
When you take all of this into account it seems that we are living on the edge of a cliff with no other options in sight, but just like what always occurs with the usual habits of human nature we always seem to hyperfocus on the negative while allowing it to distract us from our faith and the positive actions that are going on right in front of us.
So what exactly am I talking about?
Well in his recent talk this past week Glenn Beck offered up a very different perspective on everything that has been happening across the board.
First of all, as we look at all of the chaos that’s happening with the recent surge in the price of gold, the bombing of the drug boats down in the South Caribbean, and the recent economic warfare regarding tariffs and rare earth minerals with China it seems like things are spinning out of control.
However, like anything in life where there are significant changes taking place there’s going to be an uncomfortable adaptation phase. Now where did you hear that before?
Oh yeah, I touched on that already when I explained this to you earlier regarding my own experience in training in the discipline of Muay Thai. I explained this to you with the uncomfortable phase that my body went through during the process of physical adaptation before I was able to reach a point where the stimulus of the stress became more settled. Once I had obtained this elevated level of physical performance I could function on a different plane than I had previously been accustomed to prior to the adaptation taking place.
Now keeping this in mind this is essentially the hypothesis that Glenn Beck highlighted this week regarding what our country is going through now with President Trump at the helm. As Glenn Beck pointed out, the usual grim look regarding what the price of gold traditionally signals in terms of the strength of the dollar is obviously very concerning.
However, he also reminded us that we’re not living in traditional times as the one outlier that is known for having the ability to completely invert everything because of his own gift of having very good instincts is President Donald J. Trump. Like Sam Bankman-Fried was able to recognize this gift of good instincts while playing chess with the inmates at his detention center, I know you can recognize this with the President in the current political arena.
Now regarding the concern surrounding the growing debt, Glenn points out that the one thing we all naturally want to focus on that none of our politicians ever want to do is to cut spending. This is obviously needed in a very significant way, but the simple reality of the world that we’re living in is that nobody is going to step up to cut any significant spending through the usual political process.
However, he reminds us that what President Trump believes in the most is growing the bottom line. In other words, his viewpoint is that as a business or a country we can grow our way out of things and it’s with this perspective that the picture of all the chaos starts to change when you start paying attention to what’s going on.
For starters, this idea of growth is a strategy that could drastically pull down the deficit if it is carried out in a way that makes sense. As Beck points out one of the ways this can be done right out of the gate is with the revaluation of gold.
In other words, right now the government only values its alleged store of gold reserves of 260 million troy ounces at $35 an ounce.
Now why is this the case?
The reason that the price of this gold is valued at $35 an ounce is because that’s what FDR set the price at back in the 1930’s. Therefore, on paper our 260 million ounces of gold is only valued at $9 billion.
However, the current value of an ounce of gold is priced at nearly $4500 per ounce in the current market. This is obviously far greater of an adjustment in the price per ounce compared to the set price of $35 an ounce that FDR placed on the precious metal in the 1930s. Now with this adjusted value that $9 billion value now suddenly goes to $1.1 trillion in value.
This adjustment is what is known in accounting as the mark to market value which means you mark the price to what the market value is at the time. As an example, if you bought and paid for a house in the 1980s the price of that home, if it is kept up to quality, in today’s market would be worth considerably more when you adjust its value to today’s real estate market.
In other words, the United States is actually sitting on a trillion dollar asset and we’re not even counting it. Now knowing this it is absolutely insane that this hasn’t been thought about before.
This adjustment would be massive as it would drastically shift the debt to asset ratio of our country while also strengthening the dollar and simultaneously shrinking the deficit on paper literally overnight.
Now as you look at this and then combine it with all of the multiple deals of $8-$10 trillion that President Trump has closed with foreign investments coming into the country, his belief in the growth of the economy, the newly implemented H1b visa fees, and the trillions of dollars of tariff revenue that is expected to flow into the economy next year, all of the sudden the picture doesn’t look so desperate because we’re actually growing at a massive scale.
In other words, by looking at these actions taking place it’s like you can start to take notice of the movements of the economic and global landscape before the actual movements take place. Just like with my example of when I was sparring in fight training, these actionable events involve President Trump telegraphing his moves just as that fighter’s body telegraphed his moves when I was sparring with him. The difference is that you and I are already familiar with this fighter and know that he’s quite dangerous because despite all of these years many people still don’t know how to read him. After all, this is what makes him such a great fighter.
There’s also more to this story here involving the possible selling off of millions of acres of federal land. As Beck reiterated this has absolutely nothing to do with selling national parks. This land does not involve any national parks, but is rather unusable land that can be used for the purpose of development in the private sector.
Now it gets even better because what do we currently find ourselves in the middle of right now? Just in case you need a reminder we’re in the middle of a government shutdown where the hope is that head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russ Vought (aka Darth Vader) can kick in some meaningful cuts to eliminate hundreds of thousands, or hopefully millions, of redundant and wasteful government bureaucratic positions in order to enforce some actual needed cuts.
Now if all of this isn’t shocking enough the actions of the President are possibly going even deeper with the termination of the drugboats down in the South Caribbean.
You see the elimination of those boats down in the Caribbean have been sold to the public as being a part of a modern day drug war. Granted it’s true that the U.S. military is hammering the cartel’s supply chains and wreaking havoc on their bottom line with these targeted drone strikes on their drug boats.
However, the other problem is that Venezuela has descended into Communism and the CCP has been all over South America as they’ve been aggressive in the expansion of their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) throughout all of that region.
You see, the CCP, Venezuela, and Colombia have all had a strong alliance now for quite a while and those drug boats we’re blowing up with our heavy military presence in the Caribbean creates a strong pressure cooker for the CCP and their presence in that region. Sure the hits on the drug boats are framed by the ASM as being a modern day drug war, but in reality it has more to do with making life difficult for the CCP.
This not only stalls their efforts to enforce chemical warfare against the United States with their trafficking of fentanyl, but it also slams the brakes on the BRI campaign and drives a wedge between the CCP’s alliance with Colombia and Venezuela.
The more pressure we can create in South America the more we stand to create a natural scenario of possibly triggering a grassroots regime change to naturally occur within those countries among their own citizens.
Just as the Sun Tzu quote states that I Ied off with at the beginning of this episode If sovereign and subject are in accord, we could be putting division between them. This could also lay the groundwork for a new alliance among the United States, Colombia, and Venezuela.
Keep in mind that Venezuela is probably the richest country on the planet in terms of its natural resources as well. A new alliance between the United States and Venezuela would shore up the Western Hemisphere in a modern day version of the Monroe Doctrine.
The Wrap Up
Look, there’s no doubt I believe our country is going through some transitional pains right now, but the fact is that President Trump was left with an absolute dumpster fire of a mess to clean up due to decades of inept leaders that were controlled by a corrupt system that we now identify as the Administrative State (also the Deep State).
The fact is that to correct such wide scale corruption and failure, when it involves fighting against domestic enemies of the most powerful nation in world history, the transition period is not going to be smooth. In fact, such a transition is going to be very nasty and as nasty as it has already been, it’s going to get even worse before it gets better.
If you think about it, the entire country has had to adapt to getting used to understanding how to combat this modern version of asymmetric warfare. We’re literally seeing the worst elements of evil that have infiltrated all of our major institutions now calling for the literal death of their opposition.
Whether you like it or not, this is the reality that we’re up against. However, the country has been able to make it this far after the corrupt election of 2020, after going up against a multi-billion dollar propaganda media, and direct violence to political opponents that fought against the system.
Now it’s you and I (the citizens) that drive the narrative along with alternative media platforms such as this one that tirelessly work to be the needed forces of nature in order to take the fight to the enemy. The reality is that the country is still going through an adaptation phase on its way to getting into fighting shape for this modern age of cultural and political warfare.
However, thanks to the Lord almighty there’s a giant revival happening across the globe, and the more we lean on Jesus the more victories we’ll continue to pile up.
The reality is that defeating these evil Marxists is unfortunately an uncomfortable process that is needed to save this Republic. Just like we need to adjust the value of gold with the day’s mark to market value, we need to act to adjust the mark to market value of our human individuality for this modern age in order to achieve victory in this Grand Strategy chess match between good and evil.
Do you see the reordering of the entire geopolitical landscape taking place with President Trump’s plan of action?
Do you see the revaluation of gold or some other asset playing a huge role in this Grand Strategy?
Remember that this is a reader supported publication and your support is what keeps me going so if you like this message please make sure you hit the like button, share this article, and post up your feedback in the comment section below.
I hope you enjoyed today’s article/podcast.
If so I hope you would choose to support this platform as part of the patriot economy as well. Be an Emissary of Freedom and help to push this piece out to your friends, family, and coworkers. In order for BOTH you and me to influence and strengthen our society we must not stay idle so please make sure you hit the subscribe and share buttons here below.
Spreading messages like this one is how we influence our culture and I need your help in order to do it. If you would like to support the message please make sure you hit the like button here below, drop a comment, or share it out to your friends.
Also to connect with me please make sure you join me here on Facebook, GETTR, Truth Social, and now Substack’s new social media called Notes.
Stay strong. Stay focused. Stay active.
