“By intensity of hatred nations create in themselves the characters they imagine in their enemies. Hence it is that all passionate conflicts result in the interchange of characteristics.”
George William Russell
"What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed people will not know who is responsible, and when the problems get bad enough some one person will come forward and say: ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’"
David Souter, US Supreme Court Justice
“We cannot understand Fascism, but we can and must understand from where it springs, and we must be on our guard, because what happened can happen again. For this reason, it is everyone's duty to reflect on what happened. Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
Primo Levi
"Communism and fascism or naziism, although poles apart in their intellectual content, are similar in this, that both have emotional appeal to the type of personality that takes pleasure in being submerged in a mass movement and submitting to superior authority."
James A. C. Brown
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
"A small number of zealous advocates can have an impact on the law that defies both science and conventional wisdom.”
Paul A. Lombardo, Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell
"The perpetrators were scholars, doctors, nurses, justice officials, the police and the health and workers’ administration. The victims were poor, desperate, rebellious or in need of help. They came from psychiatric clinics and childrens' hospitals, from old age homes and welfare institutions, from military hospitals and internment camps."
Tiergartenstraße 4, Berlin, Commemorative Tablet
Stocks did the usual drop and then drift back up, going out nearly unchanged at the close.
Earnings are starting to come in more heavily now.
The VIX has fallen to a level not seen since the beginning of 2022.
Gold and silver were slammed this morning in a preliminary observance of the upcoming stock options expiration.
They recovered into the close. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The Dollar did a similar pop and drop.
Proceed with caution.
To paraphrase George William Russell, we become what we hate.
And then we sacrifice the weak and the helpless and the other to the Moloch of our passionate emptiness.
The Iowa Senate decided in an early morning decision to roll back their anti-abuse of child labor laws on behalf of the Molochs of business.
Have a pleasant evening.
