Thomas Merton, The Root of War, The Catholic Worker, October 1961
"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."
George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts, 1999
"Cliches, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality."
Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1978
"I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Why should we not form a secret society with but one object— for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire."
Cecil John Rhodes, Confession of Faith, 1877
"The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."
R. J. Rummel, Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, 1994
"The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."
The Project For a New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses, 1997
"The selling of the Iraq War to the American public was an exploitation
of mass gullibility.
Current circumstances give little or no hope that the public response
would be much different to the selling of some future untoward war."
Paul Pillar, Selling the Iraq War: Gullibility and Mass Hysteria, March 15, 2023
Exceptionalism in any guise, whether it be for a race of people, a religion, an organization, or a nation, often turns toxic, and is the catalyst for aggressive war, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder.
The Non-Farm Payrolls report came in fairly hot this morning, but after some wild swings the Street decided that they could just ignore it for the day at least.
Stocks finished largely unchanged.
The Dollar chopped sideways and finished largely unchanged.
VIX fell.
Gold and silver ended slightly positive after a wide daily swing.
Exogenous risks remain unusually elevated.
Have a pleasant weekend.
