The Dumbest Week In American History – Sunday Reads and Listens
Happy Sunday…
Before I get into it….America is a giving and generous place. Last night, Ellen and I attended the ‘Make-A-Wish Ball’ here in Phoenix. Our good friend Fran Mallace is the CEO of Make-A-Wish, and Jodi Stoken another great friend is their Chief Development Officer. The amazing charity/organization was founded in Arizona back in 1980, by one mom and a $37 wish (she opened the night with the police officer that helped make that wish come true back in 1980). Today, hundreds of thousands of wishes have been granted around the world.
Onward…
This was the dumbest week in American history packed with grifting and gaslighting.
If not the dumbest, it is the relative dumbest considering how much knowledge and truth is available in a few clicks.
We have never had more access to truth and never been more susceptible to lies from the smart and dumb people peddling them.
Me…I get my of relief from the JD Vance memes:
the new re-captcha image puzzles are wild
— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan)
7:25 PM • Mar 7, 2025
Too much of the country is not finding serenity in what humors me.
A couple quick examples from our White House that gaslights Americans and are plain dumb:
Every day it just gets stupider and stupider.
— Ben Hunt (@EpsilonTheory)
2:15 AM • Mar 8, 2025
I imagine dumb is better than evil, but I worry evil and lawlessness is creeping in.
When there is no leadership, people start to take matters into their own hands…remember January 6th?
This week the Democrats showed their weak, miserable behavior in front of the country and the people (I assume angry Democrats and Musk haters) angered at Trump and Musk are taking things into their own hands shooting bullets into Tesla dealerships (this is the WSJ covering it, not some fantasy of the left).
When people feel powerless…some will take action.
Bob Lefsetz sums up my worries pretty well…’if we can’t stop school shootings, how are we going to stop random acts of violence against Tesla’s.’
Elon is sucking from the Twitter pipe and as much as he twists the AI to keep it pro Elon and ‘free speech and reach’ for Elon and pals, but not the rest of us the hate is seeping in. Elon is not handling the hate well. Nobody would.
Here is the completely broken New York Times doing their awful job to feed ‘dumb’ and ‘anger’ to its readers.
SpaceX successfully caught – again – a 230 ft tall, 30 ft wide giant piece of metal falling from space using two posts that stick out and catch the rocket like chopsticks.
This is the NYT headline. I wonder why people think the NYT has lost its way and hates business and… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Tweets from Zach Weinberg (@zachweinberg)
4:04 PM • Mar 8, 2025
Dumb…specifically financial illiteracy is a bipartisan problem
Financial illiteracy is a bipartisan problem.
— Mike Maples, Jr (@m2jr)
11:51 PM • Mar 8, 2025
Yo AOC…Why not 2 percent?
It is no wonder parlays, 0 dated options, memecoins and lotteries …you know …’dumb degeneracy’ explode unabated.
While the dumb, the noise, the gaslighting and the anger is rising and already at deafening levels, two obvious trends continue to stand out for those that are listening.
They are the ‘degenerate economy’ and ‘deglobalization’.
Our firm Social Leverage has long been focusing on the ‘degenerate economy’ trend and as degeneracy accelerates we are more focused more on founders and products that build tools to make you smarter Finchat, Koyfin, FREC, 11th Estate.
Our take on deglobalization is seed rounds at reasonable prices with lean cap tables built for optionality.
Facebook and Twitter won the dumb world. Dumb is where scale lies and AI is here to help the dumb get dumber. AI battling bots that beget more bots to get more AI to battle bots is the punishment these scale players have to live with now. Their own prison.
Of course AI is also helping the lean and smart, stay lean and get smarter.
There will be tens of thousands of lean, smart, profitable AI and tech infused businesses that fly under the radar of the masses and scale. I mentioned four from our portfolio above. Here is one called Lovable, Europe’s fastest growing startup ever. I had Josh Mohrer (ex Uber) on Trends With Friends a few weeks ago to talk about his.
As an investor, what can you do?
Following the money, Europe and China is where money has been flowing for months now.
Apple has hung well because they are in many ways a consumer staple and have a strong subscription business.
Healthcare is one third of the S&P with pricing power and is holding up well.
Gold has been a hedge against dumb and lawlessness throughout history. The gold logarithmic chart tracks dumb and deglobalization pretty well. The chart was shared with me by Lewis Johnson who joined us on Trends With Friends last week to talk about investing in a deglobalized world and the yellow metal.
And of course degeneracy.
Yesterday afternoon, Butthole, Fartboy and PNUT were trending on Stocktwits. Weekends are for memes… (note – this week Stocktwits will separate trending tickers between crypto, memes and crypto and same for watchlists).
No matter how many time people get shouted at or hit on the head with data showing parlays are a bad bet, lotteries are dumb and memecoins maybe just slightly better odds, the trend accelerates.
The good/bad news is it is all in the open now. Degeneracy can’t be put back in the box.
Hit me up if you are focused on beating back the illiteracy and educating the masses as this trend persists.
