From 'Mobs, Messiahs and Markets'

"When you are born, you are full of life. It is all ahead of you: years of energy and excitement. But you use them up; you trade them off for experience, wisdom, money.

Little by little, day by day, year by year, your life gets used up, until you are all experience, all wisdom, all memories, and no life left. That is when your life is behind you ... and nothing is left in front.

We are, as Sophocles put it, nothing but a 'deathward going tribe,' after all." -- P.386

"...you have to be suspicious of what people say to you, even when they call them facts. More importantly, you have to be suspicious of what you say to yourself!

... the older we get, the less we know about anything; the more facts, opinions, and ideas we collect, the less sure we are of any of them.

Besides, we get more and more experience with facts that turn out not to be so."
-- P.384

"... in the modern western world, arranged marriages have given way to deranged ones.

People are expected to fall in love with each other-- that is, they are expected to take leave of their senses, and while in this addled state, they are not only allowed, but encouraged, to sign a contract that is meant to last a lifetime.

It is no wonder that half of them end up anting out of the deal. What is amazing is that the other half stick with it." -- P. 24

The Question

To Caucus or Not to Caucus,
That is the Question!

I think I shall, with the following in mind:

"'The voters decide on their own misgovernment' is the accepted formula. Majority rule is the essential math. There is some truth to it. But there is a bigger measure of falsehood. No president in modern times ever got a majority of Americans to come out and vote for him, and the president in office, as of this writing, didn't even get a majority of the votes cast. And even if the system of defining a majority were legitimate, there is still the question -- so what? Whether they vote on it or not, by the time three wolves and one sheep sit down to decide what to have for dinner, the menu has already been drawn up." Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, P. 193

“Public knowledge has its own peculiar character, for it must be dumbed down to a level that can be absorbed by a mob. A learned and thoughtful man may speak before a crowd and get no positive reaction whatsoever. A real demagogue, on the other hand, will distill his thoughts into a few simple-minded expressions and soon have enough admirers to run for public office. Readers who have wondered why it is that politicians all seem to be such simpletons now have their answer: It is a requirement for the job. For, en masse, mankind can neither understand complex or ambiguous thoughts nor remember them.” Financial Reckoning Day P. 168