"If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body." The White Rose, Munich 1942
“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.”
Hermann Hesse
"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."
Jeffrey Kluger
“Narcissistic personality disorder is named for Narcissus, from Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection. Freud used the term to describe persons who were self-absorbed, and psychoanalysts have focused on the narcissist's need to bolster his or her self-esteem through grandiose fantasy, exaggerated ambition, exhibitionism, and feelings of entitlement.”
Donald W. Black, DSM-5 Guidebook
The silliness of these markets and those who enable them make me laugh.
The politicians of the day are almost unbelievable— stylized caricatures of human beings. If you take them out of their Capitol elements they seem out of place, oddities.
The vanity of the self-important is both sad and amusing. They are truly clueless.
I would laugh harder if I were much further away.
Even a little problem conquered lifts the spirits and renews our energy.
"Rejoice in the Lord, always. I will say it again: rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, give your concerns to God. And the peace of the Lord, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds. in Christ Jesus."
Phil 4:4-7
I do believe that the queen and I are in the endgame now. She requires constant watching and care, and I rarely leave her side. I have been dealing with the short term emergencies and gathering the facts and resources together for next steps, as the situation calls out in its own good time. As anyone who has been involved in this sort of thing knows, it can drag on for much longer than one might expect— in the manner of the Fed's serial asset bubbles achieved through top down stimulus.
There is a kind of a peacefulness amidst all this turmoil that at times seems almost beautiful. And, even when things get very bad, there are God's tender mercies, if we can but keep our hearts and eyes open for them.
Don't get me wrong When a loved one suffers or seems afraid, it still has the power to break any heart. One would think that something that gets broken so often over the years would somehow harden, but no, that does not seem to be the way it is in this case. Love has a transcendent power, as well as a transformative power.
But still, I can see love moving here among us— and He does send His angels in the darkest hours.
I believe that I can provide updates and links to news stories right along, since there is much time spent just being available nearby to her with my laptop. However, access to my office and the larger computer there with the data for the charts and means to generate them appears to be a more occasional luxury for now.
I did manage to link my laptop to the big multi-screened desktop computer for the streaming of video games (Skyrim and Fallout) on a hardwired gigabit ethernet I had installed, so perhaps when my son visits here from his Summer internship out of state later this month I will put him on the case. I could probably do it, but I just don't have the bandwidth for that now.
There are many things I could say about the markets, and about the economic and social and political situation we find ourselves in.
People do not want to hear it. If I have learned anything in the last ten years it is that people just do not want to hear it, even if the truth is presented factually and with transparent reason, in a fairly calm and straightforward manner.
Lately, as you may have noticed, or not, the emphasis of what I have been writing here has shifted to reassuring the faithful, and cautioning them against falling away as things get a little crazier, which they are bound to do, as opposed to arguing for systemic reforms as I and many others have done for so long.
I think the outcome, in general, of all this is 'baked in' now, at least in the broader realization of years of mispriced risk and policy errors. The problem is that I just cannot believe it. It has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion. So the sense of urgency one might have had when they thought that the situation was still manageable is no longer there.
And yet, you never see the good coming when things get darkest. But I don't think they are the darkest yet. I think the next collapsing bubble may usher that one in, with the usual posturing and false flags from the high priests of the god of the markets, caught as they are in a credibility trap.
I see nonsense everywhere. But the truly hysterical part of this cycle is still approaching, and it may get quite a bit worse when it does. There may be blood, if history is any indication, and a great deal of propaganda and distorted information spread by the money masters without a doubt. It is what they do.
Both political parties have failed, and the most sustainable solutions are being opposed vigorously by the very few at the top of the status quo, who will hang on to their privileges, with great indignation and self-righteous anger, to the bitter end. Better to rule in hell to serve in heaven.
What is going to happen is approaching with a kind of inevitability. And I have no more time or patience left for debating this with people whose minds are closed. Still, times like this show us who are our real friends, like stars in the night, and in some of the unlikeliest places.
All in all, we ought to draw comfort from the realization that, despite our prideful ignorance, we are not all that exceptional, and that historically our situation is hardly unique. I draw that same comfort in my own personal situation, and feel the power of the commonality with those of my fellows who have entered, almost without intention and often under the duress of suffering, into the invisible community of those who care for the things of the mind and of the spirit.
Those who have gone before us have stood on similar ground, over and over again. And now it is our turn.
And in the end, the only real tragedy is not to be a saint.
I will probably update the charts and other information over the weekend. Considering that today was a Non-Farm Payrolls report, the action in the markets is not particularly surprising. The talking heads were calling this an almost perfect 'risk-on' jobs report. Right. Plenty of crappy jobs at wage levels for an unsustainable recovery. Not one thing has change in my mind for the intermediate to longer term. Its just that the antics of the major corporate/financial players is becoming more brazen in Donnie-dom.
These quotes are from The Brass Check which was written by Upton Sinclair in 1919.
A brass check was a token purchased by a customer in a brothel and given to the woman of his choice. Sinclair saw the moneyed interests of his day holding brass checks with which to purchase politicians, journalists and their editors, and other thought leaders of the day. In modern times we call them 'speaking fees' and 'consulting contracts' and lobbyist positions' and 'book deals.'
For twenty years I have been a voice crying in the wilderness of industrial America; pleading for kindness to our laboring-classes, pleading for common honesty and truth-telling, so that we might choose our path wisely, and move by peaceful steps into the new industrial order. I have seen my pleas ignored and my influence destroyed, and now I see the stubborn pride and insane avarice of our money-masters driving us straight to the precipice of revolution.
What shall I do ? What can I do — save to cry out one last warning in this last fateful hour? The time is almost here — and ignorance, falsehood, cruelty, greed and lust of power were never stronger in the hearts of any ruling class in history than they are in those who constitute the Invisible Government of America today.
Imagine, if you can, the feelings of a workingman on strike who picks up a copy of the Wall Street Journal and reads:
'We have a flabby public opinion which would wring its hands in anguish if we took the labor leader by the scruff of his neck, backed him up against a wall, and filled him with lead. Countries which consider themselves every bit as civilized as we do not hesitate about such matters for a moment.'
Year by year the cost of living increases, and wages, if they move at all, move laggingly, and after desperate and embittered strife. In the midst of this strife the proletariat learns its lessons ; it learns to know the clubs of policemen and the bayonets and machine-guns of soldiers.
Day by day the money-masters of America become more aware of their danger, they draw together, they grow more class-conscious, more aggressive. The [first world] war has taught them the possibilities of propaganda ; it has accustomed them to the idea of enormous campaigns which sway the minds of millions and make them pliable to any purpose.
American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and assemblies to keep them from doing the people's will and protecting the people's interests; it was the exploiter entrenching himself in power, it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political democracy.
By the blindness and greed of ruling classes the people have been plunged into infinite misery ; but that misery has its purpose in the scheme of nature. Something more than a century ago we saw the people driven by just such misery to grope their way into a new order of society; they threw off the chains of hereditary monarchy, and made themselves citizens of free republics.
And now again we face such a crisis only this time it is in the world of industry that we have to abolish hereditary rule, and to build an industrial commonwealth in which the equal rights of all men are recognized by law.
I hope to update the charts on Thursday, Friday at the latest. For now, here is some other knowledge.
Some say that most of the time everyone wants to be great, because they have a natural desire for acceptance, recognition, and praise. Perhaps this is so. And alas, some wish to be great in order to set themselves apart from the rest of humanity with which they not only feel no kinship, but despise.
In a dark and pathological time, when the better parts of the human spirit are on the wane, this means that everyone wants to have power. Power becomes the standard of value, the coin of the realm in a deeply fallen world. And in such a perverse world the only virtue is greed.
Those who serve the world want to be tough guys, unafraid, quick and intemperate on the attack, harsh. Yes that is the mark of power, the formidable wielders of weapons not for a higher purpose, but for their own ends and pleasures. As if there can be any just weapon that we may take up on our own, that is not given to us by the Lord.
If by some chance that person who seeks power may desire that they could take up the sword like an avenging angel, and smite those enemies of goodness, who are all too often those who merely annoy and offend them. This is because their idea of what it is to be a human being has been subtly poisoned by the times; in their brokenness they exalt themselves.
And all too often that feeling of offense simply becomes a blind hatred of 'the other.' The other may merely be the different, and finally all of the weak. The will to power despises weakness. They no longer of goodness, but give themselves wholly over to the powers of darkness. And they fully become its creatures. Those who take up the sword for their own purposes, even in God's name, will die by it in a death without redemption.
This is a subtle but very effective snare, a sin wholly against the Spirit. We embrace the world and its values not in our love of it, but in our hatred of it as we see it. And so we grasp that same sword of power wielded by the forces of darkness in high places. And we use it as we will with intoxication, and become lost.
This is not service, or greatness. This is a willfulness and a destruction of the self that comes from sin, but that in its own insidious way may encompass many of the trappings of a religion: the ornaments of ritual, and symbols, the language and initiation into the mysteries, the noise and pomp of human office-- but always and everywhere remarkably devoid of God's love.
Worldly power in excess is a perversion of heavenly power in that it expresses itself in the ability not to create and fulfill life, but to diminish and destroy it. And it exults in what it thinks is its power over life, which is death.
How much money, how much power is enough? The will to power is a pathological sickness, that becomes insatiable and all consuming. And thereby it anoints its own angels of death.
Be on your guard, and do not allow yourselves to be among those simple ones who will be taken in during the dark times, as the love of many grows cold. Stand firmly, but humbly, to the end. And you will have your greatness.
"Do you desire to be great? make yourselves little. There is a mysterious connexion between real advancement and self-abasement. If you minister to the humble and despised, if you feed the hungry, tend the sick, succour the distressed; if you bear with the froward, submit to insult, endure ingratitude, render good for evil, you are, as by a divine charm, getting power over the world and rising among the creatures. God has established this law. Thus He does His wonderful works.
His instruments are poor and despised; the world hardly knows their names, or not at all. They are busied about what the world thinks petty actions, and no one minds them. They are apparently set on no great works; nothing is seen to come of what they do: they seem to fail. Nay, even as regards religious objects which they themselves profess to desire, there is no natural and visible connexion between their doings and sufferings and these desirable ends; but there is an unseen connexion in the kingdom of God. They rise by falling...
Let this be the settled view of all who would promote Christ's cause upon earth. If we are true to ourselves, nothing can really thwart us. Our warfare is not with carnal weapons, but with heavenly. The world does not understand what our real power is, and where it lies. And until we put ourselves into its hands of our own act, it can do nothing against us. Till we leave off patience, meekness, purity, resignation, and peace, it can do nothing against that Truth which is our birthright, that Cause which is ours, as it has been the cause of all saints before us.
But let all who would labour for God in a dark time beware of any thing which ruffles, excites, and in any way withdraws them from the love of God and Christ, and simple obedience to Him...
Such is the rule of our warfare We advance by yielding; we rise by falling; we conquer by suffering; we persuade by silence; we become rich by bountifulness ; we inherit the earth through meekness; we gain comfort through mourning; we earn glory by penitence and prayer. Heaven and earth shall sooner fall than this rule be reversed; it is the law of Christ's kingdom, and nothing can reverse it but sin."
John Henry Newman
"Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things...
Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake."
“To escape the pain caused by regret for the past or fear about the future, this is the rule to follow: leave the past to the infinite mercy of God, the future to His good Providence, and give the present wholly to His love by being faithful to His grace.”
Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence
"Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have life."
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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