So it was me with a pile of preconceived notions.
Expecting four democrats to argue the relative merits of big government while anticipating shame for my lack of regard for order, probably they would call me racist and maybe actually hitler. Instead, two bordered anarchy. Nobody once defended the global team and instead together we ripped the idea of needing a gov stamp to finalize marriage.
Anarchy, like losing religion, is normally a slow process.
Right off the bat I asked the Swede about their coming election and he described the parties involved. I kept going on about AfS but he didn't know them. I predicted them to be the real king makers but he insisted that would be the SD. No one else had much of an opinion on Swedish politics and then it turned out that I was confusing in a German party (Christian Democrats) anyway.
He has been unwinding(?) but his partner still holds team D, but maybe only for lack of options. I think last night may have been a pretty big event for her personally.
Later on we discovered that two of us had each bought a leather jacket in Instanbul's Grand Bazaar, but ten years apart. We discussed the currency at the time, the Blue Mosque and how genuinely decent all the locals were. We laughed about millions of lira being virtually free.
Late in the evening, with just the one, I had a brief and quiet moment. Carefully she asked me, if India and Turkey do ignore the US demand for sanction on Iran, what did I think was going to happen?
Currently the Indian government uses rupees to buy USD and USD to buy oil. If the Indian government can buy oil in rupees, they probably will. And then, if they don't need to keep billions of USD on hand to buy oil, they will probably sell the USD. Which means its coming back home. Prices rise and turkish jackets are worth US$1.5M. In Syria I said, a Mercedes now requires 40 years of average wages.
Understanding economics is different than understanding physics. Physics is pretty straight forward in that there is an actual right answer. Econ is way harder because its subject to a million uncontrollable variables, and because schools flat out lie about really critical parts.
Normally we find an expert and recirculate their theories. However, sometimes those experts aren't right very often, and other times they pitch flat-out lies. To grasp economics, we all must first release our own preconceived notions that money is actually real. Once we accept that there is no money, there is no debt and there is no deficit, when we realize the US prints significantly more than it destroys and thus the supply gets bigger, the mystery goes away. When we realize that the asset is ledgered and the account balanced the day the loan is granted, the Gartmans and Krugmans provide comedy before insight.
In a normal world, say pre-2016, politics would have been an impossible subject. We lost a relationship with a client once because I suggested Trump was the best bankruptcy negotiator in the history of the empire. That was before Crimea was proved unreturnable and hope remained for hegemonic control of world finances.
Team democrat is officially broken. Comey failed the last chance to over turn the election and now the weary reality of Trump as spokes-twit in chief is accepted. There is a deep state and the deplorables want it gone. No longer a conspiracist's theory, that it has instead completely co-opted the Democratic National Committee is accepted as fact.
Once finally conscious that the DNC is controlled by "anonymous staffers" it is soon realized also true for NPR and HuffPo, western medicine and actually the entire system of scientific research. The chain then includes Skripals, Syria and the entire military media.
Echo chambers of chat rooms just don't fill the social void. People want to be accepted. No longer does the maintenance of a narrative decide our circles because the narrative cannot be maintained. And the circle is vanished.
New circles form. Realizing that we've all been captured by the narrative, and now finally released, the air of pretence is lost. Suddenly being the best puppet isn't the key to social strata, and instead it returns to a southern set of values. When wanting to be accepted, no one can act entitled. In fact, no one can act. Once we each accept that we're all just characters from Winnie the Pooh, care for other's feelings is both real and chosen to be shown.
Collectively grasping for truth, we instead found friends.
all photos ©ramsayphotography 2018