"The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to.
Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945
"Representative institutions no longer represent voters.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, Inverted Totalitarianism
"It seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.
The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him.
He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison
"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
Samuel Johnson
Stocks and precious metals largely kept jogging in place, with a little excitement thrown in here and there to keep the tourists interested.
Gold and silver are poised below the breakout level, when even the financial media might have to recognize that, slowly but surely, something is happening.
But isn't that the antithesis of what we have been led to believe, that really nothing unexpected could happen because the very best among us, our elite are 'in control?' And if the unexpected does occur it must always and everywhere because of some unavoidable act of God, or even worse an outside interference from someone who is our enemy and hates us? Markets crash and towers fall, and no one knows why, in a culture devoted to deception and diversions.
Our national attention is run along the rails of distractions, of panem et circenses— bread and circuses.
Have a pleasant evening.
