Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Let’s Go, Jamie!

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As I padded my way downstairs to my home office, I had the usual sense of anticipation about what the screens would hold for me. Many days are disappointing. Some are terrifying. And, from time to time, they are delightful.

This, I think, is going to be one of those days.

There is red splattered all over the screen, and even better, that punchable leach Jamie Dimon is having a bad morning. Any time the crooks have a bad day puts a spring in my step.

Indeed, long before I started making the trek to my favorite room in the world, I was thinking to myself what a galling kleptocracy we are living in right now. You’ve got people like Federal Reserve Vice Chair “Big Dick” Clarida actively trading the stock market ahead of Fed announcements. You’ve got Pelosi trading hundreds of millions of dollars in options on companies with active business in front of Congress. And, lest you think this is confined to a red state/blue state sort of thing, you’ve got good ol’ boy “Coach” Tommy Tuberville actively trading stocks, futures, and options in such volume that it rivals Pelosi’s.

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Gulag Reflections

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As I mentioned about a week ago, I took it upon myself to read the book The Gulag Archipelago by Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The actual Archipelago series is three volumes, and about 1200 pages. I read the approximately 500 page trimmed-down version of it, making copious highlights along the way.

The book certainly had an impact on me, and I wanted to offer you a smattering of snippets, with remarks along with each one, and perhaps by the time I get to the end, I’ll have some personal insights to offer

I originally was going to break this into multiple parts, due to its length, as well as to satisfy my neurotic need for a large quantity of posts every day. But this post is very long for a reason, and some people will want to consume it all in one sitting. So this will be the only post for twenty-four hours. It took a tremendous amount of work, and it deserves the time.

These snippets are not meant in any way to substitute for the reading of a 500 page book (which itself is less than half the content of the original work), but to instead serve as small jumping-off point for various thoughts and impressions I had. We begin with a description of the ubiquitous and omnipresent risk of being arrested anytime and anywhere during the era of the gulag

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Daring to Look Evil in the Face

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gulad

As some of you may recall, I learned about Jordan Peterson and his work less than a month ago, and I dived into it feet-first. One book that he mentioned repeatedly, which likewise I had never heard about, was The Gulag Archipelago by Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

I figured, well, Peterson thinks it’s an incredibly important read, the author won a Nobel prize, and some scholars consider is the best non-fiction book of the 20th century, so, yeah, maybe I should buy it. So I did.

I am only 10% of the way through the book, so it’s somewhat presumptuous of me to write a post having anything to do with a book whose surface I’ve barely scratched, but even with this modest exposure, I have some thoughts I’d like to share based on what I’ve read so far and what thoughts it is conjuring.

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