"It is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda.
Aldous Huxley
"The purpose of bread and circuses is, as Neil Postman said in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, to distract, to divert emotional energy towards the absurd and the trivial and the spectacle while you are ruthlessly stripped of power."
Chris Hedges
"Two things only the people actually desire now— bread and circuses."
Juvenal
Stocks were in melt up mode, especially after Europe went home for the weekend, and the denizens of Wall Street had the playground to themselves.
As you might expect most of the gains were centered on five stocks, the usual 'story stocks.'
Gold was off a bit with the Dollar in keeping with risk on.
But silver managed to pull back and close over the 19 handle. Good job.
We are enjoying a tropical rainstorm today. The winds are not bad at all, but the rain is rather intense at times.
Good. We needed it. The lawns were being baked into bricks.
During a 'mystery visit' at Walter Reed hospital Trumpolini passed a 'cognitive test' and boasted about it on Fox News.
Maybe this is the kind of simple verbal test for early dementia and strokes that doctors give to most of the elderly patients during routine visits. You know, like what year is it, the date, draw the hands on a clock, who is president. Very reassuring that he passed, which according to Trump apparently surprised and amazed the doctors. Congrats Donnie.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
Have a pleasant weekend.
"I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times.
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
Abraham Lincoln, Lyceum Address, January 27, 1838
