"Hope In a Time of Hopelessness"

"Hope In a Time of Hopelessness" 

by Washingtons Blog

"Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage;

anger at the way things are, and courage 

to see that they do not remain the way they are."

- Augustine of Hippo

"Several long-time activists have told me recently they are overwhelmed, worried, and think that we may be losing the struggle. One very smart friend asked me if there is any basis for hope.

Hope is an act of will, not a passive mood. Admittedly, things are easier when circumstances bring hope to us, and we can just receive the hopeful and inspiring news. But if we care about winning, we have to be able to decide to have hope even when outer circumstances aren't so positive.

I have children who are counting on me to leave them with a reasonably safe and sane planet. As I've said elsewhere, I care too much about my kids and my freedom to be afraid. I care enough about them that it gets my heart beating, connects me to something bigger than myself, and that gives me courage, even when the chips are down. 

If I allowed myself to lose hope about exposing falsehoods, about protecting our freedom and building a hopeful future, I would be dropping the ball for my kids. I would be condemning them to a potentially very grey world where bigger and worse things may happen, where their liberties and joys are wholly stripped away, where every ounce of vitality is beholden to joyless and useless tasks.

Many of us may be motivated by other things besides kids, and only you can know what that is. But we each must dig down deep, and connect with our most powerful motivations to win the struggle for freedom and truth.

I don't know about you, but I don't have the luxury of giving up hope. When I get depressed, overwhelmed or exhausted by the stunning acts of savagery, treason, and disinformation carried out by the imperialists, or the willful ignorance of far too many Americans, I will myself into finding some reason to have hope. Because the struggle for life and liberty is too important for me to give up." 

- http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/

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"Just Because..."

 

"The US Is In Rapid Decline, Here Is The Full Breakdown Of What's Happening"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/8/25

"The US Is In Rapid Decline, 

Here Is The Full Breakdown Of What's Happening"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

"How It Really Is"

 

"Google Fires Over 15,000 Workers as Several Offices Close Down"

Full screen recommended.

Market Gains, 4/8/25

"Google Fires Over 15,000 Workers

as Several Offices Close Down"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Market Gains, 4/8/25

"Over 200,000 Workers Just Got 

Fired as Job Market Gets Worse"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Experts Urgent Warning - Are You Ready?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 4/8/25

"Experts Urgent Warning - Are You Ready?"

"The recession is here, and I’m breaking down everything the experts aren’t telling you! From Mark Cuban’s warnings to a must-have survival checklist by Kain Health, this video covers how to prepare for economic uncertainty. Plus, we’re diving into rising homeowner insurance costs, delays in teens getting driver’s licenses, and why businesses like breweries and pizza chains are struggling. I also share insights from top CEOs and economic leaders who believe this downturn is just the beginning. Make sure you’re ready—stock up on essentials, review your insurance policies, and have a plan in place for whatever comes next. You’ll also hear about surprising industry trends from the National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas and why preparation is key in today’s economy."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "Harvard Men"

Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts

"Harvard Men"

by Bill Bonner

“In every disaster throughout American history, 

there always seems to be a man from Harvard in the middle of it.”

- Thomas Sowell

Youghal, Ireland - "Pete Navarro is in the news. He is believed to be the ‘architect’ of Trump’s tariff policies. Fox: "White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said Monday that an offer by Vietnam to eliminate tariffs on U.S. imports would not be enough for the administration to lift its new levies announced last week. "Let's take Vietnam. When they come to us and say 'we'll go to zero tariffs,' that means nothing to us because it's the nontariff cheating that matters," Navarro said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Say what? Even with zero tariffs Vietnam would still be subject to ‘reciprocal’ charges from the US? How could Vietnam eliminate the ‘non-tariff barriers?’ Make sure its currency doesn’t go down against the dollar? Change its tax policies so they do not encourage exporting? Would it have to give up what Adam Smith called it’s ‘comparative advantage’ – cheap labor -- and raise wages to the US unionized standard, with all America’s labor protections, over-time pay, holidays, and pensions? Will oil rich nations have to compensate for having cheap energy? Cold nations will have to pay a penalty for not needed A/C? Will warm ones need to apologize for their bananas?

White House experts don’t actually analyze any of those things. They just look at trade volumes. So, the only way they will know if Vietnam is not ‘cheating’ is if the balance of trade is even. By this formula the US was a cheater from 1875 to 1971….it ran trade surpluses in all those years. It had a very efficient, advanced economy. Should it have been punished for that?

It was only after Nixon changed the world’s money system that the deficits began…and never ended. The new ‘fake’ dollar -- that the US can effectively ‘print’ at will – is the cause of America’s chronic trade deficits, not NTBs. The real story: after 1971, the US could buy what it needed with its inexhaustible new money; it didn’t need to compete.

Navarro is said to have a Ph.D in economics from Harvard. This makes us very suspicious of Harvard’s standards. But Harvard has figured prominently in US history…and, usually, disastrously. In theory, the role of a Harvard education – we get this first-hand from sharing our marriage bed with a Harvard grad for the last 41 years – is to discipline the mind so it thinks with rigorous logic, and furnish it with enough literature, history and science to give it something to think about.

How then does a man like Pete Navarro end up with a Ph.D. from that august institution? Perhaps its standards have slipped? A bastion of privilege, power and positivism, Harvard cultivates a pernicious weed – the person who believes he can use his brain to know what others should do…and use the government to make them do it. Sprouting from seed in Cambridge, the weed spreads…and soon has covered the ground all the way to the Potomac.

Trump was looking for an economic advisor. His son-in-law reportedly found Navarro’s book (perhaps then on the remainder table, along with our forgotten classic “Empire of Debt”). In ‘Death by China’ the author frequently quotes another Harvard guy, Ron Vara. The only problem is that there is no Ron Vara. He is Navarro’s made-up alter-ego. In effect, the ‘Death by China’ theme is supported by two Harvard men – one fictional, both delusional.

And now word on the street is that Ron Vara is butting heads with Elon Musk. Here’s Politico: "In the early hours of Saturday morning, Musk took to his social media platform X to launch an apparent attack at the president’s senior trade counselor, taking jabs at Navarro under a video in which he explained the Trump administration’s logic in levying tariffs during a CNN appearance. The Department of Government Efficiency head replied to another user’s comment on the video lauding Navarro’s explanation, writing of the economist: “He ain’t built shit.”

Then, Elon’s brother joined the scuffle. Business Insider: "Kimbal Musk, the younger brother of Elon Musk, said on Monday that President Donald Trump's slate of reciprocal tariffs would be like imposing a "permanent tax" on US consumers. The Musk team and the Trump/Navarro Team are not on the Same Team. Musk represents real economic interests…Trump is politics incarnate.

Tariffs are a political move…part demagoguery, part cupidity. They make politicians more powerful as they get to choose who pays what to whom. And they make a few insiders richer as they favor some industries over others. But ultimately, they weaken the economy and make everyone else poorer."

Eventually, the two teams are going to come to blows. And maybe sooner than later. Newsweek: "Musk's open criticism of White House policy is the first time that the relationship between himself and Trump has appeared to be strained." Musk: “A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing. Results in the ego/brains>>1 problem.” More to come…"

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"Are You Ready To Pay A 104% Tariff On All Products From China?"

"Are You Ready To Pay A 104% Tariff 

On All Products From China?"

by Michael Snyder

"How many products do you have in your home right now that were made in China? If you are like most Americans, that number is very high. We should have never allowed ourselves to become so dependent on cheap Chinese goods, but we did. Walmart, Target and our dollar stores are absolutely teeming with products that were manufactured in China, and now those products are about to get much more expensive. The 34 percent “retaliatory tariff” that the Trump administration recently imposed on the Chinese was on top of a 20 percent tariff that the Trump administration had already imposed on them. The White House has confirmed this. Unfortunately, the 54 percent tariff that we were potentially facing will now rise to 104 percent thanks to an additional 50 percent tariff that will go into effect on April 9th. Earlier today, President Trump posted the following on his Truth Social account…

"Yesterday, China issued Retaliatory Tariffs of 34%, on top of their already record setting Tariffs, Non-Monetary Tariffs, Illegal Subsidization of companies, and massive long term Currency Manipulation, despite my warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs, above and beyond their already existing long term Tariff abuse of our Nation, will be immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set. Therefore, if China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th. Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated! Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

The math is very clear: 20 percent plus 34 percent plus 50 percent equals 104 percent. No matter how the pundits try to spin this, the truth is that we will be paying this tariff if we continue to purchase Chinese products. It is easy to say that we should just switch to products made in the U.S., but in thousands of cases there simply are not any similar products manufactured here. And in thousands of other cases, products that are ultimately assembled in the U.S. depend on components that come from China.

Once again, we should have never allowed ourselves to get into this situation. Trying to reverse course now is going to be a major league headache. I asked Google AI to tell me some of the products that we get from China, and it produced quite an extensive list…

Consumer Electronics: China is a major source for smartphones, computers, video game consoles, and other electronic devices.

Toys and Games: A significant portion of the toys, games, and sporting goods imported into the U.S. come from China.

Furniture and Bedding: China is a major source for furniture, bedding, and other home goods.

Textiles and Clothing: China is a major source for textile products and clothing.

Machinery and Electrical Equipment: China is a major source for machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers, and electrical equipment

Other Products: China also supplies the U.S. with items like lithium-ion batteries, plastics, and miscellaneous manufactured goods.

Food: While a small percentage of the U.S. food supply comes from China, it is a major supplier for specific items like apple juice, garlic, canned mandarin oranges, fish, and shrimp.

At this point, a list of things that we don’t get from China might be shorter. I am particularly concerned about what these tariffs will do to the pharmaceutical industry, because Google AI says that the vast majority of the active ingredients in our pharmaceutical drugs are imported from China…"While it’s difficult to pinpoint an exact percentage, a significant portion of raw materials for pharmaceutical drugs in the U.S. come from China, with estimates suggesting that around 80% of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are sourced from China and other countries like India."

We are in so much trouble. Bill Ackman is warning that unless these tariffs are rolled back we are headed into a “self-induced economic nuclear winter”…"Billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman, a staunch President Trump ally, has warned that the world is on the brink of “self-induced economic nuclear winter” as he begged the commander-in-chief to pause his sweeping tariffs. “The President has an opportunity on Monday to call a time out and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system. Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down,” Ackman wrote in a lengthy X post Sunday night. May cooler heads prevail.”

Bill Ackman wouldn’t have become a billionaire if he wasn’t extremely sharp, and I agree with his assessment. The outlook for the months ahead is extremely dismal.

In fact, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is admitting that most CEOs that he talks to “would say we are probably in a recession right now”…"BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that the stock market could see declines deepen by another 20% amid uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s tariffs and that CEOs are telling him they think the U.S. economy is likely already in a recession. “Most CEOs I talk to would say we are probably in a recession right now,” Fink told the Economic Club of New York on Monday. Tariffs are expected to make a wide variety of products more expensive, exacerbating inflationary pressures that have been persistent in recent months."

As I discussed on Friday, our economic momentum has been taking us in the wrong direction for a long time. And now these tariffs are going to introduce a tremendous amount of chaos into the equation. As a result of the tariffs that were just imposed, Volkswagen is actually “holding 37,000 cars at US ports”…Volkswagen is holding 37,000 cars at US ports amid tariff turmoil.

Audi, the luxury arm of the world’s second largest global automaker, has confirmed it’s in a high-stakes holding pattern triggered by President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles. The affected cars arrived in the U.S. the same day Trump announced the sweeping levies. Now, they sit idle as VW considers its next move. Executives are thought to be hoping for either a presidential U-turn or a chance to negotiate a lower rate. How long can they possibly hold these vehicles at our ports?

Of course the U.S. auto industry is going to be hit really hard as well…"If President Trump’s trade war has a physical battleground, it is Michigan, where companies and workers are already feeling the beginning of an onslaught that could blow a hole in the state’s economy.

Nearly 20% of the economy is tied to the auto industry, which has become increasingly dependent on parts and vehicles from Canada, Mexico and China—imports Trump hit with steep tariffs in recent weeks. This trade has grown so large that Michigan ranks fifth in the nation by the size of its imports and exports, even though its total economy ranks 14th."

Even before the tariffs were announced, it was clear that a major slowdown was now upon us. For example, the number of commercial bankruptcies in March 2025 was much higher than the number of commercial bankruptcies in March 2024…"More companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March than a year ago, indicating economic stress among U.S. businesses, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI). “Commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings increased 20 percent in March 2025, with filings climbing to 733 from the 611 filings registered in March 2024,” ABI said in an April 3 statement."

And during the first three months of this year, U.S. banks filed to close hundreds of local branches…"Banks filed nearly 400 notices for the planned closures of some of their locations across the U.S. in the first three months of the year, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) records."

Only some of these branches have already shut their doors. The closure of others has received approval from the OCC but has not yet been carried through by the bank, which may ultimately decide against it. Many are pending approval from the OCC, an independent federal agency which safeguards the U.S. banking system, making sure it remains accessible to underserved consumers and communities.

I have been warning that it was not going to take much to push the U.S. economy over the edge. Unfortunately, we just got a really big shove. We have been through so much economic pain over the past four years, and I know that a lot of people out there were quite eager for better times to arrive. Sadly, what we are about to experience is not going to be pleasant at all."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Canadian Prepper, "Alert! 110% Tariff! Trump Declares War On China On April 9th!"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 4/7/25

"Alert! 110% Tariff! 

Trump Declares War On China On April 9th!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"China’s Next Move Rains Hell on Global Markets - Brace Yourself!"

Full screen recommended.

Steven Van Metre, 4/7/25

"China’s Next Move Rains Hell on Global Markets -

 Brace Yourself!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

A Rousing Musical Interlude: Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"

Full screen recommended.

Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"

Turn it up! lol

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Kindred Spirits"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Kindred Spirits"

"Once we sailed upon the seas. Now we sail among the stars. This song was composed as a tribute to our friend, harpist Hilary Stagg, who left us far too soon. Hilary loved the sea and he loved the stars."

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Few butterflies have a wingspan this big. The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects, and NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the central star of this particular planetary nebula is exceptionally hot though - shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. 

 Click image for larger size.

This dramatically detailed close-up of the dying star's nebula was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope soon after it was upgraded in 2009. Cutting across a bright cavity of ionized gas, the dust torus surrounding the central star is near the center of this view, almost edge-on to the line-of-sight. Molecular hydrogen has been detected in the hot star's dusty cosmic shroud. NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the arachnologically correct constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius).”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111113.html

"The Trick..."

"The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable,

or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same."

- Carlos Castaneda

"How, Then..."

"How, then, shall we face the future? When the sailor is out on the ocean, when everything is changing all around him, when the waves are born and die, he does not stare down into the waves, because they are changing. He looks up at the stars. Why? Because they are faithful..."

- Soren Kierkegaard

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Procol Harum, "A Salty Dog"

"All Earthly Empires Die"

"All Earthly Empires Die"

by Bill Bonner

"'Amor fati' was Nietzsche’s famous expression. It is a Latin phrase with connections to the Stoic writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Literally translated, it means “love of fate.” It is a white shoe yearning for mud. It is a turkey looking forward to Thanksgiving. Or an investor stoically preparing for a bear market.

We use the term to describe the grace and courage you need to meet a complex, unknowable, and uncontrollable future. You don’t know whether the Earth is warming or cooling… whether it is good or bad… or whether you can do anything about it. You don’t know who’s doing “equal work.” You don’t know what equality is… how to measure it… or what to do about it. You don’t know who the bad guy is. It may even be you. It recognizes that we are all God’s fools, living in a world of ignorance, headed towards we don’t know where. Using our brains, we can make progress in our physical, material world. Technical thinking yields pyramids and Eiffel Towers.

Ignorance Everywhere: But there is another part of life, which has a mind of its own. It does not bend readily to our desires or yield to our intelligence. It is the part of life whose purposes are unknown. The first and most important Commandment, according to Jesus, was not to fight it, but to love it.

But ignorance can be a charm. You just have to take it seriously. And appreciate it. Recognizing your own ignorance will inform your newfound modesty. You will be aware of it. And fiercely proud. Nobody will be humbler than you are! And since you are so chummy with ignorance, you will see it everywhere – in every headline, every public announcement, every speech on the floor of the Senate… and every crackpot comment from every dummy voter in the empire.

In private affairs, you reduce uncertainty by getting as close to the subject as possible. That is, you avoid secondhand “news” and try to find out for yourself. The more you know about a company, for example, the more confident you can be about investing in it. That’s why the insiders always have the inside track, an advantage that is increased by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s phony “level playing field” propaganda. In public affairs – policy discussions, economics, politics – as you get closer, you become less cocksure. That is, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.

In an interesting university study, people were asked to pick out Ukraine on a map… and whether they approved of military intervention in that country. Curiously, the further off they were on the geography (the average guess was 1,800 miles off), the more they favored forceful intervention. In public affairs, ignorance and confidence vary inversely.

Moral Certainty: When we first moved to Baltimore in the 1980s, we noticed this phenomenon in another context. Baltimore was a disaster. Crime, drugs, poverty, venereal disease, broken homes, unwed mothers, corruption – name a social problem; Baltimore had it. And while its leaders had been noticeably unable to solve any of these problems right in their own back yard, the city’s politically correct politicians were loud and clear on one issue: apartheid had to end… in South Africa. Had they ever visited South Africa? Could they find it on a map? Probably not. But they were sure they knew how to make it a better place.

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority,” wrote Baltimore’s own H.L. Mencken. “The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on ‘I am not too sure.’”

“I am not too sure,” would eliminate many of the world’s myth-driven, self-inflicted ills – pointless wars, dumb arguments, pogroms, persecutions, and lynchings. And reckless spending of other people’s money.

Imagine a wise Hitler entertaining the idea of building Auschwitz as a “final solution” to the “Jewish problem.” “Hmmm… I’m not too sure that would solve it… In fact, I’m not too sure there is a problem!”

Imagine Simon de Montfort readying to attack the town of Albi to exterminate the “heretics.” When told that half the people in the town were good Catholics, de Montfort replied: “Kill them all. God will recognize His own.” Suppose he had thought twice… “Hmmm… Maybe this is not such a good idea… Maybe killing people is not what Christianity is all about… Maybe the heretics aren’t so bad… Maybe I’ll take the afternoon off.”

Unwarranted Confidence: The whole system of modern public policy is built on false knowledge and unwarranted confidence. The elite claims to know what is best for you. That is how every politician can claim his proposals would “benefit the American people.” But the only program that would benefit the American people would be to let them decide for themselves what would benefit them. Give them back their money. Stop bossing them around. End the wars. Stop the empire. But who would suggest such a thing?

A book that appeared in 2018, "Psychology of a Superpower: Security and Dominance in U.S. Foreign Policy", by political scientist Christopher Fettweis, argued that power really does corrupt, and that when a nation or an empire gets too much power, its elite develops new opinions.

Rather than seeing itself as one of many nations that must get along with each other, its elites begin to see that they have a special role to play. They become the one, “indispensable” nation, as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it. They are the world’s only hope in combatting evil, which they do, as current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo elaborated, with “the righteous knowledge that our cause is just, special, and built upon America’s core principles.”

Thus endowed with a special mission and special powers, and subject to the special rules of the only nation with a trillion-dollar-per-year military/empire budget, the elite develop, in Fettweis’s judgment, a fatal combination of unrestrained hubris, unrealistic paranoia, and unrepentant ignorance. They see danger everywhere, without undertaking any serious study (they assume knowledge comes automatically with raw power). And they think they have not only the right, but the means, to do something about it, even if the danger is largely fantasy.

Damned to Hell: But people always come to think what they need to think when they need to think it. “All earthly empires die,” wrote St. Augustine in 413, a few years before the Vandals destroyed his city and finally brought down the Roman Empire in the West.

The elite contribute, by taking up the myths that help it die. Certainty and ignorance vary proportionally, both on the individual and on a national level. The surer a nation is of its myths… its exceptionalism… its manifest destiny… its policies… and its position at the right hand of God… the more it is damned to Hell."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

“A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus on Our Search for Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation”

“A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus on Our Search for

Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation”

by Maria Popova

“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) wrote in his 119-page philosophical essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” in 1942. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect. Everything else… is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.” 

One of the most famous opening lines of the twentieth century captures one of humanity’s most enduring philosophical challenges – the impulse at the heart of Seneca’s meditations on life and Montaigne’s timeless essays and Maya Angelou’s reflections, and a wealth of human inquiry in between. But Camus, the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature after Rudyard Kipling, addressed it with unparalleled courage of conviction and insight into the irreconcilable longings of the human spirit.

In the beautifully titled and beautifully written “A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning” (public library), historian Robert Zaretsky considers Camus’s lifelong quest to shed light on the absurd condition, his “yearning for a meaning or a unity to our lives,” and its timeless yet increasingly timely legacy: If the question abides, it is because it is more than a matter of historical or biographical interest. Our pursuit of meaning, and the consequences should we come up empty-handed, are matters of eternal immediacy.

Camus pursues the perennial prey of philosophy – the questions of who we are, where and whether we can find meaning, and what we can truly know about ourselves and the world – less with the intention of capturing them than continuing the chase.”

Reflecting on the parallels between Camus and Montaigne, Zaretsky finds in this ongoing chase one crucial difference of dispositions: “Camus achieves with the Myth what the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty claimed for Montaigne’s Essays: it places “a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.”

For Camus, however, this astonishment results from our confrontation with a world that refuses to surrender meaning. It occurs when our need for meaning shatters against the indifference, immovable and absolute, of the world. As a result, absurdity is not an autonomous state; it does not exist in the world, but is instead exhaled from the abyss that divides us from a mute world.”

Camus himself captured this with extraordinary elegance when he wrote in “The Myth of Sisyphus”: “This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together.”

To discern these echoes amid the silence of the world, Zaretsky suggests, was at the heart of Camus’s tussle with the absurd: “We must not cease in our exploration, Camus affirms, if only to hear more sharply the silence of the world. In effect, silence sounds out when human beings enter the equation. If “silences must make themselves heard,” it is because those who can hear inevitably demand it. And if the silence persists, where are we to find meaning?”

This search for meaning was not only the lens through which Camus examined every dimension of life, from the existential to the immediate, but also what he saw as our greatest source of agency. In one particularly prescient diary entry from November of 1940, as WWII was gathering momentum, he writes: “Understand this: we can despair of the meaning of life in general, but not of the particular forms that it takes; we can despair of existence, for we have no power over it, but not of history, where the individual can do everything. It is individuals who are killing us today. Why should not individuals manage to give the world peace? We must simply begin without thinking of such grandiose aims.”

For Camus, the question of meaning was closely related to that of happiness - something he explored with great insight in his notebooks. Zaretsky writes: “Camus observed that absurdity might ambush us on a street corner or a sun-blasted beach. But so, too, do beauty and the happiness that attends it. All too often, we know we are happy only when we no longer are.”

Perhaps most importantly, Camus issued a clarion call of dissent in a culture that often conflates happiness with laziness and championed the idea that happiness is nothing less than a moral obligation. A few months before his death, Camus appeared on the TV show Gros Plan. Dressed in a trench coat, he flashed his mischievous boyish smile and proclaimed into the camera: “Today, happiness has become an eccentric activity. The proof is that we tend to hide from others when we practice it. As far as I’m concerned, I tend to think that one needs to be strong and happy in order to help those who are unfortunate.”

This wasn’t a case of Camus arriving at some mythic epiphany in his old age – the cultivation of happiness and the eradication of its obstacles was his most persistent lens on meaning. More than two decades earlier, he had contemplated “the demand for happiness and the patient quest for it” in his journal, capturing with elegant simplicity the essence of the meaningful life – an ability to live with presence despite the knowledge that we are impermanent: ”We must” be happy with our friends, in harmony with the world, and earn our happiness by following a path which nevertheless leads to death.”

But his most piercing point integrates the questions of happiness and meaning into the eternal quest to find ourselves and live our truth: ”It is not so easy to become what one is, to rediscover one’s deepest measure.”

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

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Freely download “The Myth of Sisyphus,” by  Albert Camus, here:

- http://www2.hawaii.edu/

"I Remember..."

"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more – the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort – to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires – and expires, too soon, too soon – before life itself."

- Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, English writer, "Youth"

"Grey's Anatomy"

"Grey's Anatomy"

“Whoever said, "What you don't know can't hurt you." 

was a complete and total moron.

 Sometimes not knowing is the worst thing in the world." 

-Meredith Grey

"Knowing is better than wondering. 

Waking is better than sleeping, 

and even the biggest failure, even the worst,

beats the hell out of never trying." 

-Meredith Grey

“Yes or no. In or out. Up or down. Live or die. 

Hero or coward. Fight or give in. 

I'll say it again to make sure you hear me. 

The human life is made up of choices. Live or die. 

That's the important choice. And it's not always in our hands." 

-Derek Shepherd

"We're all going to die. We don't get much say over how or when, but we do get to decide how we're gonna live. So, do it. Decide. Is this the life you want to live? Is this the person you want to love? Is this the best you can be? Can you be stronger? Kinder? More Compassionate? Decide. Breathe in. Breathe out and decide."

- Richard, "Grey's Anatomy"

Travelling with Russell, "I Went to a Russian Garden Center: Darwin Supermarket"

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 4/7/25

"I Went to a Russian Garden Center: 

Darwin Supermarket"

"What does a Russian garden center look like inside? Join me as I explore Darwin Supermarket, the first of its kind in Moscow, Russia. The interesting part about this store is its location. What can you buy in a Russian garden center?"

Comments here:

-https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Addicted To Our Enemies"

"Addicted To Our Enemies"

by Paul Rosenberg

"In 1987, Georgi Arbatov, a senior adviser to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, had warned (the West): “We are going to do a terrible thing to you – we are going to deprive you of an enemy.”

"This is not an easy subject, but a necessary one. Please accept my apologies for my inability to present it more comfortably. And I’ll be brief. We in the West, and Americans in particular, have fallen into a very serious trap: a trap we’ve known so long and so well that we accept it as a fact of life. To make this as clear as I can, I’ll state this problem in several ways. I’m quite sure you’ll recognize at least one of them:

- We require continual doses of bad news.

- We require outrages to react to.

- Too long without some new evil to oppose and we become deeply uncomfortable.

- Condemning bad things makes us feel righteous.

The bottom line is that we’ve become unable to feel righteous, except in contrast to evil. That is simply the model nearly all of us have matured within.

This is not a Biblical model, by the way, even if we mix it with Biblical terminology. According to St. Paul, our righteousness is from God, which we have by virtue of being “in Christ.” Jesus wanted us to “do the things I say,” like loving one another, practicing the golden rule and bearing fruit. Moses gave Israel ten commandments to keep personally, and stopped there.

The golden rule, of course, is the best model of morality in practice anywhere, among religious people or otherwise, and it has absolutely no slot for an enemy. Rather, it rests entirely upon self-reference. The enemy addiction, on the other hand, exists only in relation to external points of reference. So, a fixation upon enemies isn’t essential or optimal; it’s simply a trick that generates good feelings, fast and cheap. And however used to it we may be, it is not helping us.

For one thing, this addiction breaks our long-term relationships with better things. When good things come along (as they do in even the worst conditions), we welcome them at first, but rather quickly become bored with them. Soon enough we crave more bad news and let the good news be pushed aside. In other words, our bad news addiction won’t let us hold good news; we’re unable to maintain our focus upon it.

Perhaps even worse, the bad news addiction won’t allow us to build and hold visions of a better future, which we require to move forward with any consistency. “The good place we’re going” can’t maintain a prominent position in our minds, since our model of righteousness requires an enemy to condemn.

I have no intention of continuing on this subject, by the way, but I think it’s worth keeping in mind rather than tossing away. So, here’s a final restatement: Without an enemy firmly in view, our righteousness deflates. Thus unmoored, we are compelled to find yet more bad news. And so we are addicted to our enemies. We need to get out of this cycle, and we are quite able to do so."

- freemansperspective.com

"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"

"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Contrary to first impressions, I am not a doom-and-gloomer; I'm a systems-cycles-er, meaning I'm interested in where systems and cycles are heading. Cycles work because we're still running Wetware 1.0 which entered beta testing around 200,000 years ago and was released, bugs and all, around 50,000 years ago. Since the processes and inputs haven't changed, neither do the outputs.

Nature is a mix of dynamic, semi-chaotic systems (fractals, etc.) and cyclical patterns which tend to operate within predictable parameters. Why should human nature and human constructs (societies, economies and political realms) be any different?

So longterm success breeds complacency, hubris, economic and intellectual sclerosis, draining political infighting and the overproduction of parasitic elites, to use Peter Turchin's apt description. Consumption of resources expands to soak up every last bit of what's available and then the supply of goodies plummets for a multitude of completely natural and predictable reasons (sunspot/solar activity, El Nino, etc.) and a host of unpredictable but equally natural semi-chaotic extremes (100-year droughts, floods, etc.).

Wetware 1.0's go-to solutions to all such difficulties are rather limited:

1. Ramp up magical thinking. If a couple of human sacrifices ensured good harvests in the good old days, let's slaughter a couple hundred now - and if that doesn't work, then...

2. Do more of what's failed spectacularly and slaughter a couple thousand fellow humans, because darn it, maybe everything will turn around if we just kill another couple dozen. This requires ignoring the novelty of the current challenges and clinging to what worked so well in the past even as whatever worked in the past can't possibly work now because circumstances are fundamentally different.

3. Seek scapegoats. It's those darn witches. Burn a bunch of them and our troubles will magically disappear.

4. Go take what we need from some other tribe. What's our oil doing under their sand?

5. Consolidate power and wealth in the hands of elites whose failures exacerbated the crisis. Because the obvious solution (to the elites with cushy offices around the palaces and temples) to repeated failures of a leadership that only excels in one thing, squandering rapidly depleting resources on infighting and self-aggrandizement, is to give us all the remaining wealth and power. Hey, this makes perfect sense once you understand #2 above.

6. Demand sacrifices of the many to protect the privileges of the few. The Empire needs some warm bodies to fend off the Barbarians, because it would be a real shame if the Barbarians reached our palatial estates and disrupted the flow of wine and festivities. No worries when you come back on your shield; the bureaucracy will give you a decent burial and your spouse and kids can join the multitude of half-starved beggars waiting for the dwindling distributions of bread and circuses. But never mind that, did you hear about the upcoming games in the Coliseum? Good seats are going fast.

7. Eat your seed corn to keep the party going awhile longer. Not every human group had the luxury of borrowing "money" to keep the fast-unraveling party going awhile longer, so they consumed their seed corn and drained the last of their reserves--which is the same thing as borrowing "money" from a future with diminishing resources and productivity.

8. Maintain supreme confidence that "it will all work out fine because it's always worked out fine" without any sacrifice required of "those who count." What's forgotten is that the luxe greatness that is now teetering on the precipice of ruin was won by the sacrifices of the elites far exceeding the sacrifices of the many.

Back in the day, joining the elite and maintaining one's position required constant sacrifices on behalf of the common good, and strict adherence to public virtue. Now that's all forgotten, and all that remains are elites possessed by the demons of shameless greed and self-interest. The idea that debt, leverage, speculation, greed, exploitation and parasitic elites can expand exponentially forever is magical thinking. Yet that is precisely what America and the rest of the global economic order insists is true and will always be true, forever and ever.

By all means, reject those horrid, awful doom-and-gloomers who look at systems and cycles. Everything will be fine as long as you secure seats for the next games at the Coliseum - they should be spectacular - but not in the way you expect."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Margin Calls - How Bad Will it Get?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 4/7/25

"Margin Calls - How Bad Will it Get?"

"Is the economy heading toward another financial collapse? In today’s video, I’m breaking down the mounting economic chaos, the ongoing stock market sell-off, and what experts like Warren Buffett and Larry Summers are saying about the financial landscape. With discussions about margin calls, tariffs, and the potential impact on the average family, there’s a lot to unpack. Plus, I share why diversification and holding assets like gold and silver are more critical than ever right now. We'll also cover how companies like Rite Aid and Nissan are struggling, why food bank lines are growing, and how luxury items like Rolex watches and Ferraris might see a surprising surge. And, for a bit of fun, we’ll talk about the dethroning of Olive Garden as America’s favorite restaurant and Tesla’s bold move with a 50s-themed diner. It’s a packed episode full of insights, financial tips, and a little humor to keep things light amidst the seriousness."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"We Are Witnessing 'Lehman-Style Margin Calls' In The Aftermath Of The Biggest Stock Market Wipeout In U.S. History"

"We Are Witnessing 'Lehman-Style Margin Calls' In 

The Aftermath Of The Biggest Stock Market Wipeout In U.S. History"

by Michael Snyder

"We have never seen so much stock market wealth get wiped out in such a short period of time. Unfortunately, many major players on Wall Street that made a ton of money on the way up were not prepared for a rapid reversal of this magnitude. In an article that I posted on Friday, I wrote that “a lot of financial institutions that are deeply overextended” could quickly “find themselves in a tremendous amount of trouble”, and that is definitely turning out to be quite accurate. All of a sudden, hedge funds are being hit with absolutely enormous margin calls, and this threatens to create a “doom loop” which could potentially push stock prices a whole lot lower.

The panic that we are witnessing on Wall Street right now is very real. Since January 17th, more than 11 trillion dollars in stock market wealth has been wiped out. In fact, a total of 6.6 trillion dollars in stock market wealth was wiped out on just Thursday and Friday…"Roughly $11.1 trillion has been wiped away from the U.S. stock market since Jan. 17, the Friday before President Donald Trump took the oath of office and began his second term, according to data from Dow Jones Market Data. Some $6.6 trillion of that figure was lost on Thursday and Friday alone — the largest two-day wipeout of shareholder value on record, Dow Jones data showed."

We have seen larger percentage drops over the course of two days, but in dollar terms we have never seen stock prices drop as much as they did during that two day period…"Markets have seen bigger percentage drops, such as in 1929 when they tumbled 25 percent over October 28 and 29 that year, but never as much in dollar terms."

This was truly historic. And now a lot of people are concerned that we could potentially see a “Black Monday” and a “Black Tuesday”…"The selloff that followed President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement was large by any measure, a Black Thursday and a Black Friday. If they are followed by a Black Monday and Tuesday, then everyone is in trouble."

Hopefully global financial markets will start to stabilize soon. But it certainly hasn’t happened yet. During an interview with CNN, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins openly admitted that the White House knew that there would be “uncertainty”… “The idea that we didn’t know that there would be some uncertainty just isn’t true,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We knew there would uncertainty.” But Rollins urged Americans not to look at Thursday and Friday’s trading and say, “the world is ending; the markets are crashing.” Instead, she argued, “the markets are adjusting.”

I wouldn’t call this an “adjustment”. The Nasdaq is already in bear market territory. I would call this a crash.

But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is insisting that most Americans “don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations” of the financial markets… In an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Bessent called it a “false narrative” that people who are close to retiring may be reluctant after their retirement savings may have dropped last week because of the stock market downturn. “I think that’s a false narrative,” he told moderator Kristen Welker. “Americans who want to retire right now, the Americans who put away for years in their savings accounts, I think they don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations."

I understand that they are trying to keep everyone calm. But it isn’t working. At this point, even the largest Wall Street banks are officially freaking out. They are hitting hedge funds with “Lehman-style margin calls”…"Hedge funds are facing Lehman-style margin calls as a market crash triggered by President Donald Trump’s tariffs raises fears of a looming ‘Black Monday.’ The market’s sharp downturn has forced hedge funds to sell off assets, with major Wall Street banks demanding collateral after the value of holdings sharply declined, according to sources familiar with the situation."

There is now fear that these margin calls could create cycles of forced selling that could drive stock prices down to extremely painful levels. The sheer panic that we witnessed in New York on Friday was unlike anything that we have seen since the darkest days of 2008… ‘Rates, equities, and oil were all down significantly… it was the broad market movements that caused the scale of the margin calls,’ one prime brokerage executive told the Financial Times. While, another prime brokerage executive noted: ‘We are proactively reaching out to clients to assess [risk] across their entire portfolios.’ Prime brokerage teams on Wall Street, which lend money to hedge funds, held ‘all hands on deck’ meetings on Friday to prepare for the increasing volume of margin calls, sources told the Financial Times."

Wow. This is all happening so fast. A lot of major players that were way out on a limb are going to end up getting their clocks cleaned. Leverage can be so seductive. On the way up, it can help you make tremendous amount of money, but on the way down it can feel like the world is ending.

As I have always warned my readers, you only make money in the stock market if you get out in time. Wall Street loves stability, because stability leads to predictability. Unfortunately for Wall Street, we have now entered times that are going to be extremely unstable.

A number of my readers have pointed out to me that the stock market was way overdue for a correction, and I agree with that assessment very much. But what we are witnessing at the moment is not just another run of the mill correction. What we are witnessing is a full-fledged panic. Will the White House be able to settle the markets down? I don’t know, but I will definitely be watching. Without a doubt, it appears that a very “interesting” week is ahead of us."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data