"Around the world, authoritarian leaders are on the rise – from Russia and Hungary to the U.S. They're working from a common playbook: They use violent rhetoric. They attack the media. They see their political rivals as existential enemies to the nation.
Demagogues are willing to do or say anything to gain office or to consolidate their power. Unconstrained by ideology, they have no concern for the consequences of their actions. Anything that serves to make them more powerful is good enough for them — even if the political system that facilitated their rise should be destroyed in the process."
Daniel Ziblatt, Saving Democracy from Demagogues, 2022
"From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principle that restraint is at the heart of liberty. In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a shabby political effort to isolate the Republic from the world and to punish political criticism as seditious libel. The architects of fear have converted a wholesome law against conspiracy into an instrument for making association a crime.
We have also seen a sharpening and refinement of abusive power. Pretending to fear government they have asked government to outlaw private protest. They glorify 'togetherness' when it is theirs, and call it conspiracy when it is that of others. Those who love the twilight speak as if public education must be training in conformity, and government support of science be public aid of caution.”
John F. Kennedy, October 1960
"I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that they may not wish to come out of hell, but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free."
C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 1940
“What they were doing was unconstitutional. Sometimes I worry that people take the oath of office or the oath to the Constitution, and it’s just a set of words that mean nothing. They really don’t feel in their heart the weight of those words. They came out in this phalanx, running, and then they plowed into a bunch of protesters in the intersection of the street and knocked them over. They are thugs and goons. I couldn’t recognize anything tactically that they were attempting to do that was even remotely related to crowd control. It looked to me like a gang of guys with sticks. I’m not a redwood tree. I’m an overweight 53-year-old man.”
Christopher David, Navy Veteran Beaten for No Reason by Trump's Federal Agents, Portland, Oregon, July 2020
"The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people."
Theodor Adorno, Education After Auschwitz,
"Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist. Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate."
The White Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich 1942
Stocks rose today, purportedly in response to a less bad than expected unemployment report.
And more impressively, they managed to go out near their highs. No pop and flop today.
We won't be getting any significant economic data until the PPI and CPI next week.
Gold and silver rallied sharply, coming back to their rising trends.
The Dollar chopped sideways with a notable spike higher midday.
VIX continued to fall.
The world is waiting to see what comes next in the regional conflicts in eastern Europe and the Mideast.
Dancing on a volcano, in the service of money and power.
Have a pleasant evening.
