“It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born.”
Étienne de La Boétie,
The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude,
2015
"In all these instances the large multinational bankers were actively supporting both sides. It is a shocking fact that both British and American banks continued to do business with the Nazis even after the War was well underway, even as Germany was invading Europe and bombing London."
BBC,
Banking with Hitler, 1998
"Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know."
Wendell Berry,
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, Collected Poems: 1957–1982
"It is so important to understand that one of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance that is. And the American people are more than willing to be held in this state because to know the truth — as opposed to only believe the truth — is to face an awful terror and to be no longer able to evade responsibility."
E. Martin Schotz,
History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, and the Murder of President Kennedy, 1996
Once again stocks managed to shake off risk-weariness in the morning, and gave a little and hold it into the afternoon.
VIX drifted lower.
Gold and silver rallied. We may have established an end to this most recent correction.
And so we toddle on into another, risk-fraught weekend.
Have a pleasant evening.
