Being clear-eyed and full-hearted doesn’t mean being passive, weak, or silent.
It means resisting every effort to supplant our autonomy of mind with symbols of identity, no matter the source.
Extreme language during election season isn’t anything new.
But this time it really is different. Our response must be different, too.
The question is not whether Trump will accept the election result if he loses. He won’t.
The question is whether a Missionary with actual power will join him.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m thoroughly despondent about the calcification, mendacity, and venal corruption that I think four years of Clinton™ will impose. Trump, on the other hand … I think he breaks us. Maybe he already has. He breaks us because he transforms every game we play as a country — from our domestic social games to our international security games — from a Coordination Game to a Competition Game.
The outcomes of NFL games are inordinately influenced by officials relative to other sports. This is not new. The Narrative environment faced by the NFL in 2021, however, IS new.
I’m not sure they’re ready for it.
When a famous person shakes his or her finger at you, they’re not telling you a fact.
They’re telling you how to think about a fact.
Called It - Election Edition
Men of God in the City of Man is a nine part series about a narrative virus that infected the charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the United States. It isn't a story about Christian Nationalism. It isn't a story about January 6th. It isn't a story about why people voted for Trump. It is a story about a story. It is a story about the language that created a self-sustaining movement defined by its unwavering belief in a fundamentally corrupt electoral system.
Recent Notes
Overserved
Everyone is in a tizzy about day traders and Robinhood. “Ooooh, they’re going to have such a hangover when the bubble pops.”
Pffft. They’ll be fine.
The investors facing a hangover are small family offices, plied with endless offerings of fee-heavy SPVs and SPACs by multi-billion dollar asset managers.
The Stupid War
The war over reopening schools is a proxy war.
The real war is between political parties, but they’ve set up the fight as teachers on one side vs. parents on the other.
This is not our war. This is THEIR war.
How to stop it? We refuse to fight.
Snip!
Both Trump and Biden have proposed $2 trillion spending plans for next year, confirming exactly what we wrote last December. To the dollar. To the word.
We can’t always write tomorrow’s headlines today. But we do try!
We the People? We the Pack.
I still believe this will be our finest hour.
Not of the America that was. But of the America that can be.
As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
An Advantageous Contagion
Sometimes good news comes from unexpected places.
And sometimes it’s best just to go with it.
The Anti-Anarchist Cookbook
Defund the police? No.
Demilitarize and Deunionize? Yes.
Police reform is just the start.
Harrumph!
There is an emerging narrative structure that places a lot of demands on us as citizens – and justifiably so.
But the claim that “silence is complicity” becomes something else entirely when we redefine silence as the failure to say exactly what we demand.
The Lost Art of the Jawbone
Market propaganda used to be an art form, I tell you! What happened to us?
The transformation of capital markets into political utilities happened.
Office Hours – 6.30.2020
It’s the June 30th edition of Office Hours, an interactive livestream in which Ben and Rusty discuss all things narrative in the world today.
Sideways: Observations on Pain and Privilege
A sideways moment is when your life becomes a probabilistic exercise, where you are at the mercy of one of two merciless social institutions: hospitals or the police.
My life went sideways a week ago, and here’s what I learned about pain and privilege.
What is Permissible
The slow wave that has moved America’s largest asset owners from direct positions in American companies to indirect pools of passive ownership has been a good thing for costs and diversification. It has, however, contributed to our present breakdown in corporate governance.
The past revolutions to fix this have failed for predictable reasons. Future revolutions don’t have to.
It is time to take back your ownership.
The Lystrosaurus
There is practically no information in knowing that everybody is talking about something. There is some information in knowing that everybody is using the same language to talk about something.
But there is a lot of value in knowing that people and publications with no underlying connection are simultaneously inspired to use the same language to talk about different angles of the same issue.
No Country for Old Men
We all know someone who is in urgent-but-not-emergency need of some medical procedure that can’t be scheduled while Covid-19 is storming the hospital ramparts.
I’m one of them.
Misfortune vs. Carelessness
What’s happening with the Bureau of Labor Statistics with recent employment data reports is an intentional, political carelessness that supports status quo cartoons of control.
It’s not a Democrat thing and it’s not a Republican thing.
It’s a power thing.
Never Forget
Since June 4th 1989, the Chinese government has tried to erase any record of the Tiananmen Square massacre from history.
Can a Tiananmen Square massacre happen in the United States? I doubt it.
Can a Tiananmen Square rewriting of history happen in the United States? Absolutely. It already is.
No Accident
Our bi-modal political environment doesn’t just impact our politics. It shapes our social and cultural narratives and channels our responses to every event.
Yet Americans are large. They contain multitudes. And they can reject the political archetypes into which narratives seek to channel them. If this is to be our finest hour, then they must.
Office Hours – 6.2.2020
In this Office Hours, Ben and Rusty discuss all things pandemic recovery, markets and the narratives of protests surrounding the death of George Floyd.
Self Assured Destruction
Our leaders have botched the Covid-19 war, and we are defenseless against a now endemic disease.
15,000 to 20,000 Americans officially sick. 500 to 1,000 Americans officially dead.
Every day.
The free world does not easily survive a globally endemic Covid-19.
The Hertz Story Isn’t What You Think
The Hertz bankruptcy is not a story of financialization by an entrenched, self-dealing management team.
It’s a story of financialization by an entrenched, self-dealing minority ownership.
A New Gilded Age
A Gilded Age isn’t an age of prosperity. It is an age of the narrative of prosperity, and narratives of prosperity are always top-down political narratives.
There is but one way to tear down top-down political narratives: action.