"Then the devil led him up a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, saying, 'I will give you all this power and their glory, for it is mine, and I can grant it to whomever I please. All this will be yours, if you will fall down and worship me.'”
Luke 4:5-7
"But we must be completely clear — if nationalism is truly the hallmark of a people in the prime of its youth and energies, how does it happen that under its aegis morality decays, ancient customs die out—that men are uprooted, the steadfast derided, the thoughtful branded, the rivers poisoned, and the forests destroyed? Why, if this is a high watermark of our national life, has our speech been vulgarized in this unprecedented way?
I do not know if the end of the world is at hand, as Dostoyevsky said. But this I do know, that these are years of a turning in human affairs which can never be changed again, and that the tyranny of an arrogant civilisation is at an end.
No good can come to a country whose foundations are propaganda and treason — no good to a people
which pharisaically and self-righteously shifts the burden of its
own sins onto ancient symbols, takes its oath to criminals,
and is ready to take any oath and make any contract with Satan.
You made this monster, and as long as things were going well you gave him whatever he wanted. You turned Germany over to this arch-criminal, you swore allegiance to him by every incredible oath he chose to put before you. And so you made yourselves into the Mamelukes of a man who carries on his head responsibility for a hundred thousand murders and who is the cause of the sorrow and the object of the curses of the whole of the world.
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.
It does sometimes happen that a would-be great man is allowed to toy with the levers of the gigantic machinery of history. But suddenly the wheels begin to move, faster and faster, and he is thrown into the machinery and crushed. A miserable hysteric may play Alexander the Great before the world for a while. But sooner or later, history comes along and pulls the mask off of his face.
This people is insane. And it will pay dearly for its insanity. The air of this summer is full of foreboding, and fire and iron must heal what no physician can cure."
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair, 1947
Stocks popped on the overnight and rallied early, but faded in the afternoon.
VIX rose also during the day.
Tomorrow is a triple witch option expiration.
The Dollar rose.
Gold and silver were hit again, but rebounded back.
The holders of miners were sitting pat for the most part it seemed.
When the hammer drops, I wonder how some true believers in their selfish fever dreams are going to react, as reality turns their pipe dreams inside out.
Cognitive dissonance is no joke. Especially for the pathologically self-deceived.
There won't be any talking to them, then as it is not possible now.
They will have to be healed by fire and iron.
Sadly, that's the way it is with willful selfishness - a hard ending for a hardened heart.
Have a pleasant evening.
