We had anticipated a longer appreciation featuring that woman in the upper left of the poker hand held by wild Bill Hickok immediately before his violent saloon ambush murder. He is on the right. Hannah Arendt is the philosopher on the left, though probably interpreted as on the right these days. Her quote is worth a longer treatment, but stands alone to frame the day’s messaging:

“This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.”

She was talking about her times, of course, having fled real Nazis, not imaginary ones, and having dealt with Russians who we again find ourselves on the brink of global conflict. That is the problem with trying to unscramble the morning flood of broken eggs to discern what might be coming next in the several current struggles conducted internal and external to the picnic table on the Big Pink Patio.

You can see the spectrum of issues. Part of the problem in analysis is the disruption to the concept of “scope.” We have mentioned before that small numbers are now routinely used to describe aggregations of big things. Like, a single billion dollars- noted as “$1 B,” is actually a description of a thousand million of them.

This morning, we are informed the FY-25 Defense Bill was passed in the Senate. It is billed as “$852.2,” up $21B from last year.

Scope reflects a means of conveying the untruths without a direct and provable falsehood. Optimistic financial advice we receive at disturbing volume counsels our crowd on how to manage portfolios of perhaps a third of a single million, accumulated with care over the course of an entire working life.

The conflict in Ukraine, meanwhile, dances on the brink of the abyss. A drone strike in Russian Crimea, formerly part of Ukraine, sank a Kilo-class submarine about to return to service after being damaged two years ago. The weapons and targeting may have come from NATO- or the U.S.- not sure, but has the real prospect of inviting a response beyond the banks of the Black Sea or Dnieper River.

But the prospect of another Cuban Missile Crisis is drowned in the swelter of news from what will happen in the escalation of violence in the Mid-East. That is a swirl all its own, provoking a call from the Oval Office to Jerusalem yesterday with one of those single-word declarations: “Don’t!” while someone else is apparently planning the “Do.” The noise is confusing here, so it must be deafening in the minds of those making decisions amid the noise.

That is another example of Arendt’s thesis, since the killings in Beirut are reported as new news in advance of the expected killings that will come with Iranian response to them around the celebration of a religious event tinged with sorrow.

All that other stuff with faces on the slide above? All that is happening, so we have a quote from a German lady, the hand of a gunfighter and the echoes of a trumpet from New Orleans to help characterize the end of one chaotic week and the beginning of another with increasing volume and spectrum.

Each of those faces would be worth a morning’s journey of exploration. But that is the nature of the torrent on which we are riding, feeling a bit like Wild Bill must have felt, waiting for the last card to determine if he would have a full hand.

Or a hand full of something.

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com