"Behold, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard, for they will hand you over to the courts, and be flogged in their temples. And you will be brought before governors and kings for my sakes, as witnesses to them and to the nations.
But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. You will be hated by everyone for my name. But the one who stands firm to the end will be saved."
Matthew 10:16-22
"Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not. This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—packing and 'weaponizing' the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it.”
Levitsky and Ziblatt,
How Democracies Die, 2018
"Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength — but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it."
Léon Bloy
"Those who have faith had better keep in the state of grace, and those who have neither had better find out what they mean, for in the coming age there will be only one way to stop your trembling knees, and that will be to get down on them and pray. The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is about."
Fulton J Sheen
Stocks rallied today, because they were smacked lower yesterday.
They did fall back quite a bit into the close.
VIX fell. Complacency is the order of the day.
The Dollar continued to decline.
Gold and silver had a weak trade, with a little improvement into the close.
One exogenous event is going to tear this bloated, corrupt, and festering market apart.
The scandals and awful surprises keep coming, and people are not quite sure how to react to them.
Except perhaps to close their eyes, embrace the illusion, and yell loudly.
It's the American way.
Have a pleasant weekend.
