Another Fun-Filled Week

For someone who loves history so much, I’m finding that living through it as it’s being made is no fun. Every morning when I wake up I wonder what will happen next in Washington. The fact that the center of my attention has been captured by that town is galling. For someone who has spent most of his adult life seeking to build a life as far removed from Washington foolishness as it was possible to get, now suddenly it is impossible to divert my eyes from the spectacle it has become. American politics has become the ten car pileup with multiple fatalities on Interstate 95 with 250 million rubber-neckers looking on in horror. It seems like everyday has featured one large block screaming headline after another, each more outlandish than the last. Remember back years ago when the biggest argument coming out of our nation’s Capitol was...Should We or Should We Not Audit the Federal Reserve? Those were the days. Who can forget the riveting national debate about whether or not the government should bail out Chrysler? The only divisive thing about that argument was how to spell Lee Iacocca’s last name. But unfortunately, this isn’t 1979, we did bail them out but Chrysler went belly up eventually anyway, and Lee Iacocca has gone on to meet his maker.

Today’s political debates feel apocalyptic by comparison. Every issue seems like life and death. Protests, demonstrations, riots and other mayhem are ubiquitous. Violence is no longer something that organically boils over, but rather something that is premeditated, organized by elements within every movement you can name, designed to create chaos and the disruption of order. The disrupters may very well be the outliers of the crowd, but when the most extreme elements carry cell phones and gleefully advertise their mischief to the world, its the outliers who define the movement. Perhaps that’s not fair, but that’s the world we live in. Thanks, Steve Jobs.

So, this week I have to meet with nine clients over the next five days to discuss their accounts. I will do so with one eye on their numbers and the other on my news feed. Here are the possibilities:

- The resignation of a sitting President

- Impeachment proceedings

- The invoking of the 25th Amendment

- More armed insurrections at State Capitol buildings throughout the country

- Some nut job or nut jobs with guns and a grudge reeking havoc somewhere.

In other words, just another fun-filled week in America, 2021.