"If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”
E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, 2010
“As though you could use violent, unjust means and achieve peace and justice! Means determine ends; and must be like the ends proposed. Means intrinsically different from the ends proposed achieve ends like themselves, not like those they were meant to achieve.”
Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza, 1936
"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
Samuel Johnson, Johnsonian Miscellaniesm, 1897
"People do not wake up one morning and decide to become monsters that will be reviled by all civilized people throughout history. They go down that path one small step at a time, one seemingly harmless and practical decision after another. They are being reasonable, practical, realistic— merely repeating the stories and slogans that 'everyone knows.' We live in a truly cynical age."
Jesse, It Can't Happen Here: Pride, Power, Exceptionalism, 8 May 2017
"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow."
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
"Be not deceived, for God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap. If you sow to your flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary of doing what is right, for at the harvest time we will reap, if we do not lose heart."
Galatians 6:7-9
“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
As the Roman satirist Juvenal once asked, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians?
Who will dare to judge those who have declared themselves to be the judges of the world?
The madness serves none but itself.
Stocks were lackluster today, with the SP unchanged and the Nasdaq slightly lower.
Gold was off a bit, and silver rallied quite strongly this morning and gave back a chunk, but still finishing higher.
The Dollar was flat.
VIX popped higher, and held it.
CPI tomorrow. It *might* move the markets.
There will be a stock option expiration on Friday.
Have a pleasant evening.
