Leadership

Dr. King spoke more than once about Mother Pollard. She inspired and sustained him and the movement. And yet we don't even know her full name. Like today, the work is sustained by people (mostly women) who will never get a national holiday in their honor. 

Waiting for Nothing

Almost everybody predicted that Hillary Clinton would win in 2016. We are now faced with the common perception that we will have a vaccine soon and this pandemic will be behind us. Maybe not. There is more to it than common sense. Still it is helpful to keep in mind that things we all agree on, or that we wish was true, might not be so. And it is helpful to realize that things we all know to be true can be ignored if they contradict what we wish was true. We know that vaccines against polio, smallpox, diphtheria, and others have changed history. We also know that there is no vaccine for HIV, a mostly useless vaccine against the seasonal flu, an everyone knows that despite centuries of study there is no cure for the common cold. Add to that the wild claims for genetically modified antibodies (never before used or tested even on animals) and the millions of people who are reflexively anti-vaccine and we have a long wait ahead of us and no return to normal, ever.

Stock Market Okey-Doke

Did you have a good second quarter of 2020? I had a tough time. We had a tough time. Work is way down, we're all concerned about our health and the health of our neighbors, it looks like it will be many months before we can visit friends and family, political leadership is concerned only with self-promotion, and racist violence is in a dangerous death spiral. But do you know who had a great quarter? a record high? NASDAQ.    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstocks/nasdaq-hits-record-high-fedex-soars/ar-BB16dXxb 

I have tried to learn about and understand the economy. Finance capital has been especially hard to figure out. This all looks like paper chasing, with no actual goods produced or delivered. Wall street looks like theater to me. The trading floor closed for months because of COVID, with no discernible effect on the market. We are all offered 'the market' as a goal, a dream, the only legitimate way to understand value and values. But it's all a bunch of lies.

I've been predicting the end of this rotten system since about 1840 (I was a precocious child). But this time seems like the real thing.