"The days are coming when men will go mad, and when they meet a man who has kept his senses, will rise up against him, saying, 'You are mad, because you are not like us.' And I said, 'What can get us through such snares?' And then I heard a voice saying to me — humility.” Saint Anthony the Great, Abbot of Colzim Egypt, 251-356 AD
“It could be argued that we are now in the midst of a coup d’état in slow motion. Democracy is weakening; few people would disagree. Corporatism is strengthening; you only have to look around you. Yet none of us has chosen this route for our society, in spite of which our elites quite happily continue down it. Certainly corporatism is creating a conformist society. It is a modern form of feudalism.”
John Ralston Saul
"Donald Trump is not an anomaly. He is the grotesque visage of a collapsed democracy. The creeping corporate coup d’état that began forty five years ago is complete. It has destroyed the lives of tens of millions of Americans no longer able to find work that provides a living wage, cursed to live in chronic poverty.”
Chris Hedges
“A narcissist paints a picture of themselves as being the victim or innocent in all aspects. They will be offended by the truth. But what is done in the dark will come to light. Time has a way of showing people’s true colors.”
Karla Grimes
"Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years. Dissent tolerated when I joined a national newspaper in Britain in the 1960s has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism moves towards a form of corporate dictatorship.
This is a seismic shift, with journalists policing the new groupthink, dispensing its myths and distractions, pursuing its enemies.
The source of 'fake news' is not only trollism, or the likes of Fox News, or Donald Trump, but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it.
Complex stories are reported to a cult-like formula of bias, hearsay and omission. So much of the mainstream has descended to this level. Subjectivism is all; slogans and outrage are proof enough. What matters is the 'perception.'"
John Pilger, Hold the Front Page: The Reporters are Missing
“Narcissism falls along the axis of what psychologists call personality disorders, one of a group that includes antisocial, dependent, histrionic, avoidant and borderline personalities. But by most measures, narcissism is one of the worst, if only because the narcissists themselves are so clueless.
There's a reason narcissists don't learn from mistakes and that's because they never get past the first step which is admitting that they made one. It's always an assistant's fault, an adviser's fault, a lawyer's fault. Ask them to account for a mistake any other way and they'll say, 'what mistake?"
Jeffrey Kluger
“Hate obscures all distinctions.”
C.S. Lewis
All the ruling elite have to offer to us is hate and fear— both of which obscure reason, that instrument of scrutiny which their self-serving actions and policies cannot bear.
Stocks opened significantly lower, but with the support of some determined, price insentive buying programs in the futures markets, were able to finish virtually unchanged.
Gold was trying to break out, but was pushed back down into the close.
Today was the first trading day of this new year of 2019. And it is almost certainly going to be interesting.
Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.
It is not that our age is lacking in self-aggrandizing 'heroes'. We have an excess of them. They cast themselves as our saviours against phantoms of fear and the troubles that they themselves have created. Our two political parties and the corporate monopolies act like competing crime families rather than the organizers and protectors of society.
Rather, there is an alarming shortage of the basic principles of morality being exercised by mature adults. And this shortage is particularly acute in NY and DC, the halls of big business and the government which big money has bought.
Lord, pierce our hardened hearts, enlighten our minds, heal our blindness, and break the self-made chains of our pride and self-deception, so that we may choose repentance, forgiveness, and life.
Batoni, Return of the Prodigal Son
“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him. We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now. We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case.
God beholds you. He calls you by your name. He sees you and understands you as He made you. He knows what is in you, all your peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strengths and your weaknesses.
He views you in your day of rejoicing and in your day of sorrow. He sympathizes in your hopes and your temptations. He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and fallings of your spirit.
He encompasses you round and bears you in His arms. He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears. He looks tenderly upon you. He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing.
You do not love yourself better than He loves you. You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards.
God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission -- I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next.
I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught.
I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.
Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.
He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me — still He knows what He is about.
Let us feel what we really are — sinners attempting great things. Let us simply obey God's will, whatever may come. He can turn all things to our eternal good. Easter day is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they only who sow in tears shall reap in joy.
The more we do, the more shall we trust in Christ; and that surely is no morose doctrine, that leads us to soothe our selfish restlessness, and forget our fears, in the vision of the Incarnate Son of God.
May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.
Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last.”
“The Lord bless you
and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”
Numbers 6:24-26
The wiseguys managed to goose the stock indices up a bit into the close, but the overall performance of the markets into the year end is not a bang, but a whimper.
Gold and silver are pushing the breakouts.
There will be a Non-Farm payrolls report on Friday.
The trade tensions and government shutdown/dysfunction will continue to weigh on the markets in the coming year. Not to mention the lagging economic health of the broader public.
"Don't be surprised if we see these 1,000-point swings in the Dow. That is our new reality for a while," Mohamed El-Erian said.
Terrific.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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