In Thrall to Foreign Gods

The days of consensual democracy are clearly over. We are in some kind of Banana Republic/Strongman phase. This was highlighted yesterday in a news item that showed the strongman signing another EO.

Roman Emperor Elagabalus, reigned from 218-222, infamous for attempting to place a Syrian Sun god above Jupiter in the Roman Pantheon, was reportedly also Rome’s first ‘gender fluid’ Emperor

Thursday, November 19th, 2025

Bill Bonner, from Baltimore, Maryland

This is far more than a case of institutional betrayal. It is a vivid window into the decadence of a depraved American elite, a later Roman empire with dozens of tiny Caligulas committing dozens of heinous crimes. It is a story of money, and what it can buy, and power, and what it can conceal. As allies, they can make anything happen, or not happen, as the case may be.

—Esquire Magazine

Lighting up the wires is the Epstein Saga.

AP:

House votes overwhelmingly to force release of Epstein files, sending bill to Senate

The Hill:

Senate unanimously approves bill to force release of Epstein files

Donald Trump has backed down from his earlier position; now he says he will sign it.

And now we will see how far we have come since those days of the Watergate Scandal, when White House counsel John Dean told a Senate committee that there was “a cancer within, close to the presidency.”

We follow the story only to try to figure out where we are in the larger story — the degeneration of the US empire and the likely devaluation of US dollar assets. Where are we? At Caligula...Nero...or Elagabalus?

Already, the days of consensual democracy are clearly over. Now, we are in some kind of Banana Republic/Strongman phase. This was highlighted yesterday in a news item that showed the strongman signing yet another proclamation.

Trump has now signed 212 Executive Orders. In a signing ceremony, POTUS was surrounded by his smiling lackeys, congratulating him for signing so many.

“This makes it twice as many as Biden signed in his whole four years in office,” said one sycophant.

“It’s more than Obama signed in eight years,” said sycophant number two.

The crucial lesson of history — that ‘the government that governs best, governs least’ — has not reached the White House. Instead, the Trump Team has succumbed to the ‘fatal conceit;’ it thinks it knows what is best for everyone.

These EOs (executive orders) cover everything from...

EO 14357:

Modifying Duties Addressing the Synthetic Opioid Supply Chain in the People’s Republic of China

to

EO 14355:

Unlocking Cures for Pediatric Cancer With Artificial Intelligence

But despite the weight and breadth of the issues before him, POTUS still has time to worry about the everyday problems we face:

EO 14264:

Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads

Some people spend their entire careers designing, manufacturing and marketing shower heads. How come they didn’t think of the water pressure problem? Thank God for POTUS.

But how could one man have the intellectual juice to consider so many complex issues, a new one almost every day?

The answer was on the videotape. As the president signed the EO, his flunkeys explained what he was signing; he hadn’t even read it.

Congress is AWOL. POTUS rules by decree.

Most of these decrees are just blah blah...setting up committees and commissions or, such as EO 14276, ‘Restoring America’s Seafood Competitiveness.’ But some are loaded with explosives. EO 14353, for example, seems to obligate the US to defend Qatar (the country that gave Trump a Boeing 747). Another EO attempts to put a Democratic-leaning law firm out of business by denying it federal contracts.

Yes, the big man is large and in charge. No moth can singe its wings on a streetlight in Calcutta without drawing his concerned attention.

Alas, into this happy fantasy barges the ghost of Jeff Epstein, dragging behind him approximately 20,000 documents, 1,608 of which mention none other than the man who is now president of the USA.

According to the New York Times:

In a series of emails with friends and associates — surfacing first in a few messages selected by House Democrats and then in full by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee — Mr. Epstein described Mr. Trump as a “dirty” businessman who was “borderline insane,” untrustworthy and worse in “real life and up close” than the image he sought to portray to the public.

In other words...nothing new.

And now what? We’ll take a guess. More emails will come out...showing that the president is the person everyone knows he is.

Many people would like to see Trump brought down by a salacious sex story.

But the most important documents — the ones that show a foreign government manipulating both Democrat and Republican leaders — will be kept under wraps.

At this point in the empire’s descent, any information the political class chooses to keep from voters is classified as a ‘national security risk.’

Regards,

Bill Bonner