The Sicilian Offense

I felt like this week might be one to circle on the calendar to mark where current team elite began to lose control of the narrative:

1. HQ2 panned. Even Kirsten Gillibrand!
2. Facebook corruption/shady dealings exposed including an interesting damaging leak about Schumer (by Warner?).
3. While Schumer was re-elected senate minority leader, it appears Nancy Pelosi is having a difficult time
4. Lots of Apple downgrades
5. Lloyd Blankfein implicated in 1MDB scandal

Yeah, and the response to the Saudi “solution” this morning should prove pretty interesting, too. Will make a note to check back in a few months on these. If nothing else, it’s fascinating to see if/when the narratives bounce back to our usual programming.

Nothing exposes Team Elite’s Silicon Valley’s outpost’s hypocrisy (lot of apostrophes you got there, son) more than its willingness to continue to take Saudi money.

Our government - whichever team runs it - is monstrous hypocritical, but we all knew that, but SV held itself out as being so much better (so much better at “don’t be evil”).

There are good people in the world - I’ve been fortunate to know some of them - but today’s institutional moralizing (and variations on the theme, like ESG investing) is just, stealing your term, the cartoonization of values.

“institutional moralizing” = “cartoonization of values”
Brilliant construction, Mark!