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“Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority, they don't dare to assert themselves.”
Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
"Power will achieve its murderous potential. It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."
R. J. Rummel, Death By Government
“Exceptionalism— the view that the United States has a right to impose its will because it knows more, sees farther, and lives on a higher moral plane than other nations— was to them not a platitude, but the organizing principle of daily life and global politics."
Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, October 2013
"Exceptionalism is no virtue, no mark of the chosen, but merely the sin of pride, wearing the silks of rationalization and self-delusion. And this is at the root of every fallen angel, every lost soul, and every failing nation."
Jesse, The Will to Power in the Exceptional, March 2015
"They defended him, verbally and physically, every time he committed one of his criminal acts. They went blithely on past the suffering of all the bombing victims, the prisoners in the concentration camps, and the religious persecutors, because a different regime would have meant the end of their power."
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair, 1947
"For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children,
unwilling to listen to the commandments of the Lord.
They say to their seers,‘Do not see!’
and to the prophets,‘Say nothing of what is right!
Tell us only things that please us, prophesy illusions."
Isaiah 30:8-10
The volume today was very light, with the activity in the markets falling off notably after noon.
There was quite a bit of profit-taking, as the books are squared up for the end of the year.
The Dollar was flat to a little lower.
VIX was higher.
And the metals were painted, as one would expect.
Have a pleasant weekend.
