C. S. Lewis
“They support freedom for themselves and slavery for everyone else, and they use the freedom of the market to disguise this.”
Robert Peate
"If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”
E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World
“Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty. Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction."
Simone Weil
"Then it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not."
C. S. Lewis, 1944
"True opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, that we are not going to be judged.”
Czeslaw Milosz, The Discreet Charm of Nihilism
The CPI came in hot as expected, especially if one is looking at the short term and year-over-year comparisons.
Stocks managed to shake off their early malaise, and powered ahead back to within reach of the all time highs.
Gold and silver managed a bit of a bounce, but are still caught up in a trading range.
The Dollar slipped a bit, but managed to hang on to the 96 handle.
VIX is finding a place on its moving averages, but is significantly off its highs.
People always seem to think that it is different this time.
What is less recognized is that they always think that they are somehow different— exceptional.
Sometimes when I communicate with people I wonder that they understand anything that I include here at all.
It always applies to some other guy, especially someone they don't like, or who are far off in history.
But the rules, the judgement, the consequences, never seem to apply to us.
We're special by whatever rationale we may choose to apply. Master race, special knowledge, magic words, enhanced pedigree, powerful friends, some ideology rooted in fantasy, some theory promoted by very important people, etc.
Or as so many prefer, just blithely ignore the issue all together, and resent being reminded of it.
Caught up in a cycle of pride, greed, and fear, they become deluded and enslaved by the very things that they think they stand far above, and even despise.
And so they cannot bear to see things are they are and may go to monstrous lengths to protect their illusions. And create a hell on earth.
Have a pleasant weekend.
