The past few days have been disturbing. A brutal death caught on tape. Peaceful mass protests and organized civil unrest on an order of magnitude not seen in a generation, evolving in a few places into looting and rioting.
An image in the Times of the LA Farmer's Market was the gut punch - that's where I used to take my great uncle for coffee well into his 90s, often bringing a toddler in tow. To see it as a front in the conflict over police brutality was a new reckoning.
It's not that I hadn't considered such scenarios might happen. It was more the experience of dissonance when what I had only ever regarded in the abstract began to overlap with my map of reality.
A while back, Gasem linked to a video by Ray Dalio (hedge fund billionaire with a delightfully pugnacious Queens accent) that was so fantastic and intuitive, I sat down and watched it with the wife and kids. Twice.
One of the privileges of having a network of invisible friends through this blog is the ability to be continually exposed to new or uncomfortably complex ideas that don't necessarily support my world view. Gasem is one friend who continually challenges me to approach problems from a different point of view, and helps me probe for weaknesses in my financial thinking (there are many).
I also maintain email correspondence with Dr. S, who was interviewed for the Docs Who Cut Back series. Dr. S has a much wider historical scope of vision, both from an upbringing in Europe and from a family history of grandparents who lost significant property in the chaos of World War II.
Dr. S has previously endorsed the purchase of gold coins to keep as a rainy day backup plan. If you suddenly need to leave the country, having gold immediately available (not in a precious metal fund or even a bank safety deposit box, both of which may be inaccessible in a crisis) can be useful in arranging escape, obtaining black market supplies, or starting afresh in a new country.
Think it could never happen here, to you? My book club just read volumes one and two of Maus by Art Spiegelman, a graphic novel about his father's survival in Nazi concentration camps. The books show a complacent and acculturated group being progressively stripped of rights, property, and eventually humanity. Even slight advantages might determine who lived or died at any given moment during that period.
All of which makes me think that my belief in the stability of our government, American way of life, and our well-laid plans for the future have been resting entirely on a thin veneer that has been peeled back. Revealed are the violent collision of politics, scarcity, and inequality that will reshape our future like shifting tectonic plates.
It's jarring, and we may not recognize the world that results. The measures we take now to prepare for that uncertain future might offer the slim advantages (the accrual of marginal gains so important to investing strategy) that will mark the difference between those who exist and those who thrive.
Comments 5
Well put CD. Uneasy times. Seems like a lot of factors coming together to create the perfect storm. Whether it was heightened because of everyone feeling cooped up from shelter in place orders for so long and now releasing it out in backlash or whether it would have been like this regardless is an interesting point to ponder.
Author
Uneasy is the key word.
I think it’s worse than we think. What if the outrage is feigned? What if the outrage is a made for TV movie? A car burns. That burning car is rebroadcast every 10 minutes. 6 x 24 = 144 burning car impressions playing all day in the background as the bobblehead blond speaks pensively of the OUTRAGE and the RACISM. Yet in your own home is a concern for potential injustice, because we all desire justice, but you know you’re not a racist.
We don’t even know the facts of the death. The man was loaded on fentanyl amphetamines and had Covid. We have no data on how the drugs were administered. Was the fentanyl from some ingested fentanyl patches, 2mg of fentanyl peaking in the blood? What does fentanyl do to breathing? Did you know fentanly causes chest wall rigidity and “difficulty breathing” beside the obvious CNS effects? When I did high dose fentanyl anesthetics for cardiac surgery I HAD to have muscle paralysis on board immediately or I may not be able to ventilate. Did the amphetamine cause an MI in the face of increased agitation? Was the lungs blown out with Covid? It’s hard to breath when your lung tissue turns to shoe leather. Maybe the brutality was self induced. I have no idea but it’s just as rational a speculation compared to a white man, a black man, a Hispanic man and a Asian man, all cops, teamed up to do a racist murder.
Why did the looting spread almost immediately to 140 cities? It’s almost like the “spontaneity” was planned. This is typical of asymmetric warfare. Why did the weather underground blow up college math department buildings in the 70’s? How is my 35 years spent serving all people with the exact same intensity of care, suddenly defined as an implicitly racist life because of my skin color? What is the truth and from where comes the narrative and what is the desired effect? Munger says show me the effect and I’ll show you the motive. The CEO of BET want’s 14 trillion in reparations. Does a few burning cars some smashed windows and stolen TV’s played Q 10 minutes, create enough fear?
Author
Gasem,
On my last shift, I had a few quiet minutes with a lovely black nurse I’ve known for a decade. George Floyd’s killing and the protests that ensued opened an avenue for conversations we’ve never engaged in despite being on friendly terms for a long time.
She asked me if I’d ever had a conversation with my kids (ages 10 and 12) about how to interact with the police. I had not. She then revealed that her mother had this conversation with her and her siblings by the time they were 12 (Always reply respectfully. “Yes, sir. No, sir.” Do exactly as you are told. Make no sudden movements that might be misinterpreted.) She has already had this conversation with her 10 year old son. That breaks my heart.
It was devastating to watch a man die like that.
I sincerely hope that you do not feel less valued for your decades of saving lives because the media or extremists are using the current moment to advance a particular agenda for personal gain.
I’m spending time thinking about the world as it exists, and the world as I’d like it to be for my kids and my colleague’s kids, and what I can do to effect change from the former into the latter.
I’m also spending time listening to differing perspectives. I imagine you have colleagues, friends or neighbors where a level of existing trust might make it possible to ask someone to tell you their take on current events – not because you will or ought to agree with them, but because listening to someone you know and trust can reframe a narrative in ways it can be hard to anticipate.
I have always valued your candor, and I hope you feel similarly about mine.
Because I share the outrage, and it is not feigned.
I am trying to figure out how to channel it into action that results in a world where my kids and my friends’ kids don’t need to live such disparate experiences.
Sincerely,
CD
I have close black friends, not acquaintances. My children are adopted Chinese kids, but they are every ounce MY KIDS. My black friends and I share a history since we are about the same ages. We share a God. We share a country. We have families and concern for our families. I always wanted to play bass guitar for James Brown’s band, and so did they. I never had to be told when a cop approaches me I had to behave. I’ve been stopped “just because” more than once aka without apparent cause. I was never trained to take offense, cop an attitude, steal a taser and try to shoot the cop with it. I was trained it was my civic responsibility to uphold the goal of civic order despite some personal inconvenience and potential injustice. That is the cost of being a citizen. I never stole a TV or broke a window or set a car on fire. I did protest Viet Nam in 1970 and 1971 in Washington. I did protest when MLK was killed in ’68 and I was in the Chicago riots in ’68. I also raised my right hand and swore to defend the constitution and every citizen in the country with my life as a medical officer in the United States Navy Medical Core, and prepared to go to war during the Gulf 1 conflict against Hussein. I filled out the will and the paperwork which would give my wife and my kids survivor benefits just in case. Being a citizen has associated responsibility, and the administration of justice is not uniform because the situations are not uniform. Neither are the situations as simple as black and white, as the political narratives would imply. Narratives exist because people make money and acquire power off the narratives.
Here is an example from my life. I was in the Walgreen’s rounding the corner of an isle on a Saturday and there was a black man standing there, a guy probably about 60. The guy had 2 bottles of Tylenol in his hands trying to decide which one to buy. One bottle had rose hips or some crap like that, a “new and improved” label and cost $2 more. He spied me turn the corner and said HEY DOC WHICH ONE? and held out the bottles. I took the bottles looked at the price and said THIS ONE, the cheaper one, and handed the bottles back. The guy thanked me and I had made a connection. I didn’t know this guy from Adam, but he knew me. I was a big deal white physician but he felt comfortable enough with me, a white stranger but also his neighbor, since we were in the same Walgreens, in the same isle at the same point in time, to ask me to help him. I felt blessed to be able to help. I had probably taken care of this guys aunt or something and my name had filtered through his community as someone that could be trusted. Someone who treated people as people and not as political symbols and units of commerce. I went home feeling pretty good I made the connection. It’s a small thing but it’s THE thing. It’s the thing that I have control over and the thing I can be steward of. It’s the thing that does not require the heavy hand and injustice of some damn GOVERNMENT to accomplish. The thing is Kindness. Kindness is when you use your power to benefit another without regard to profit. That’s the thing I control and the choice I can make. If I’m stopped by a cop, to be kind is a choice I can make because in this guys mind I maybe the one who makes his wife a widow. That fear is as real as it gets. I can make that choice and I can not let my mind be overcome with political narrative and manipulation that works against the thing I can control.
I don’t take offense CD and I don’t try and prosecute an agenda. I’m comfortable in my own white skin based on how I lived my life. I merely stand for what I understand to be the truth, and I will stand against an agenda being prosecuted against me, and my non-white 100% Asian first gen. immigrant children. Teach your children truth and to be wary of agenda. Teach your children to be kind. Teach your children to be comfortable in their own skins and to not be victims. The problem in this country is the institutionalization of victim hood. You can be a victim just as many minutes as you want, and then you can go do something constructive.