Governments are able to enact radical policies when people are fearful.

What is your take on the situation and the media's role in it?

Doug Casey: The great American journalist H.L. Menken once said, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

He was right.

Fear is one of the most powerful and primal emotions, and government has always used fear to unite the people behind it. Government—which produces nothing—only exists because of fear. Fear of foreigners is allayed by its army. Fear of domestic chaos is allayed by its police.

The media is an ideal way to transmit fear. The media has transformed itself into the government's lapdog. It has the same talking points and communicates "the narrative" in the same way.