"Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Constitution of the United States, Amendment I
"Representative institutions no longer represent voters. Instead, they have been short-circuited, steadily corrupted by an institutionalized system of bribery that renders them responsive to powerful interest groups whose constituencies are the major corporations and wealthiest Americans. The courts, in turn, when they are not increasingly handmaidens of corporate power, are consistently deferential to the claims of national security."
Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Inverted Totalitarianism, April 2008
"Intellectual freedom is essential — freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship."
Andrei Sakharov, Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom, July 22, 1968
"The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it."
Simon Wiesenthal, Introduction: The Sunflower, Paris, 1969
"When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows."
Martin Luther King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, August 1963
"There is nothing so threatening to systemic evil as those willing to stand against it regardless of the consequences. It’s unbelievable— or we’re supposed to think it is— that a president was murdered by our own government agencies because he was seeking a more stable peace than relying on nuclear weapons. It’s unspeakable. Our collective denial of the obvious, in the setting up of Oswald and his transparent silencing by Ruby, made possible the Dallas cover-up. The success of the cover-up was the indispensable foundation for the subsequent murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy by the same forces at work in our government—and in ourselves. The unspeakable is not far away."
James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, Maryknoll, 2008
I always thought that there would be a strong movement for the suppression of speech in the aftermath of these market bubbles, and the rising tyranny of a powerful few that would impose on the freedoms of the many, with increasing force and fraud.
The only example in my own memory that occurs is the McCarthy era, in which the threat of being labeled a 'communist' terrified otherwise people of conscience into silence in the face of the abuse of power and the Constitution.
But I never saw it coming as it is upon us now, wrapped in the guise of civility and the 'cancel culture' wrapped around the iron heel of big Money. The irony and shamelessness of its hypocrisy is astonishing.
Stocks did their usual pop and flop again today, as Wall Street breathlessly awaiting the Nvidia numbers after the bell. They hope to be able to keep the tech bubble alive with AI.
The Dollar drifted higher.
Gold and silver were slammed hard, as the expected follow up to the recent Comex option expiration.
But they managed to come back and provide a decent showing as the shenanigans were only for the morning's entertainment.
I am pretty convinced we have been shocked into accepting, in silence, the outrageous assault on freedoms that form the basis of the American republic in favor of a wealthy few.
Have a pleasant evening.
