“When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose”

“Like a Rolling Stone”

Bob Dylan

1

Back in the MySpace days, when I still responded to complete unknowns, which I no longer do, a guy sent me his music and…

I’m never going to lie. I’m never going to give false hope. But I’m also not going to slam you to the wall. So…I told him it was interesting, and to keep at it.

Fine, case closed.

Only it wasn’t.

About a month later, this same guy sent me an e-mail telling me to tell my entire list to vote for him in some MySpace music competition. Yeah, right. I didn’t respond. But he kept e-mailing me, and after the fourth time…that’s when I made my big mistake, that’s when I crossed the line and ultimately learned my lesson, this interaction proved to me that ten percent of the public is crazy, and you don’t know which ten percent it is, so unless you know someone, or they’re famous, or established in the firmament, DON’T RESPOND!

Yes, after the fourth missive, because I’m a f*cking idiot, I sent an e-mail to the guy saying if he didn’t stop, if he kept telling me to send a missive to my list telling people to vote for him, I’d send a missive to my people telling them NOT TO VOTE FOR HIM!

There, done, problem solved.

I got up, went out for an appointment…this was in the days before ubiquitous smartphones…and when I came back to my computer…

My e-mail was rolling. I mean seventy or a hundred e-mails were downloading every few seconds. What the hell? I consider my inbox inviolate, I don’t want junk in it. But this was worse, how could I find the good stuff, I couldn’t just delete it all, I’d lose the important stuff too.

So diving into one of the e-mails, it turned out that this guy went on MySpace, gave people my e-mail address, told them what a prick I was and got them all to e-mail me telling me off.

Wow.

So, I’m not the average bear, right? I got ahold of MySpace and had his account frozen, because this was a gross violation of the terms of service.

Whew, problem taken care of.

NO!

This guy just started all over again under a new address. Of course this too was a violation of the terms of service, but what did he care, what were they going to do to him, he had nothing to sacrifice, he was nobody, and he knew it and was weaponizing it.

2

That’s what you get from playing online. You see how the world really works. Whenever I write something positive about social media my inbox goes berserk, people tell me about Jonathan Chait’s book, say that social media is the ill that is killing society, and they wouldn’t give TikTok or Instagram Reels a minute of their time, they wouldn’t go on the services, because just like Spotify, THEY’RE THE DEVIL!

There.

Only that’s where all the people are. This is how both Republicans and Democrats missed the affordability crisis. Because they don’t interact with the general public, they have no idea what people think. The same way the so-called “Greatest Generation” missed rock music. You think there’s hatred against hip-hop? You’ve got no idea how much an entire generation decried the Beatles and what came after. Dylan might be lionized for going electric today, they even made a movie about it, but back then it wasn’t only the folkies who hated him.

So the oldsters missed “Like a Rolling Stone.” They didn’t know you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. That an entire generation was enthralled by rock and roll and there would be an upheaval, which some called a “youthquake,” and society would ultimately be changed forever. Free love? Well, it might not have been so easy to get, but having sex before marriage became de rigueur, divorce became rampant, the social fabric was ruptured and rebuilt.

And the oldsters missed it.

Just like Trump missed Iran,.

3

You could come up with a plethora of reasons why Iran should be neutered. But Iran isn’t America, just like Vietnam was not America. These people don’t have the same values as Americans, they don’t see the world the same way, they’re willing to sacrifice, just about everything, to maintain power.

We’ve seen this over and over. Even with the Taliban. We think they’re fighting by our rules. They’re not.

So life is all about reading the room. And Trump failed to do this. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has always been a big swinging dick, a bully… Fly commercial? He ain’t got a little Gulfstream, he’s got a 757. He got Qatar to give him an entire plane. (Just know, a gift is never free…you learn this in business, get a favor, owe a favor.) He’s got no idea how the “little people” live. Nor does he want to.

And it’s not only Trump, it’s the billionaires.

Okay, you made all this money on the backs of the public, not that you believe that, you think it’s all you. And the people are pissed not only that you have all this money, but that you pay little or no taxes. And they want not only a level playing field, but retribution. And what do you do? YOU FIGHT!

How f*cking ignorant are these people? They don’t understand this is a bad look, that will haunt them? Moving to Florida… As if there’s any respite, as if there aren’t agitated people everywhere. You STFU. Maybe pay a few dollars more. It’s not going to affect your lifestyle. But these people are so removed from the general public, and want to be, that they’re unaware of how people think. And if there’s a big problem, they figure they can pull some strings and fix it via their relationships. This is why they all hung with Epstein, not for his money, but for the relationships he yielded, and that’s where you truly gain money and power.

And now it’s not only California, but Washington. And New York City. We can debate the efficacy of wealth taxes all day long, but this is now a movement.

4

So the Strait of Hormuz is closed and Trump looks over his shoulder, looking for reinforcement from the little people, all the countries he’s dissed, and what does he hear? CRICKETS!

So now he tells Iran if they don’t open the Strait, he’s going to bomb their electrical plants. And not only does the nation’s powers not care, they double down, saying if Trump does this:

“Iran dismissed the ultimatum as it launched a new round of attacks on Israel and issued its own warning. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an Iranian military spokesman, vowed on Sunday that if Iranian energy sites were attacked, it would strike more infrastructure in the region used by Israel, the United States and American allies, such as fuel depots and desalination plants.”

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/22/world/iran-war-oil-trump

There, take THAT!

There’s nothing Trump can do to stop them. As for regime change, unless he puts boots on the ground and invades the country, it ain’t gonna happen. We can say it should happen, that what is going on now, the stranglehold of a theocracy, is terrible for the world and the nation’s people, but these clerics, these powers, they don’t give a f*ck, they’re willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING!

5

And you can extrapolate this concept into other areas. Live Nation went behind the court’s, even the litigators’ back. But this ain’t gonna satiate the public, which is incredibly pissed. And will continue to be pissed. And you can only piss off the public for so long.

Live Nation is just a headline,, because it directly interacts with the public on a sexy issue, music. But it’s all these corporations ripping off the public in an era where the masses are hurting. But they’ve got flat panel TVs and smartphones, even SUVs. They’ve got it better than they’ve ever had in history, they should be happy!

Keep telling them that. See how that works out.

Remember Napster? And who saved the recording industry, not anybody in it, but a techie from Sweden.

These are immutable rules of life. We all live together in a society, we’ve got to get along, and it’s a delicate balance, and you can only push so far.

Used to be you learned this via records.

Today, despite preaching fealty to their fans, the acts are brands, mini-corporations, selling not only t-shirts, but perfume and…

Don’t listen to a musician if you want to know which way the wind blows.

But they grew up in a mercenary society. They want what the rich have. To fly private, to separate themselves from the general public. They want to WIN! Art? SCHMART!

Society never changes. A strongman, a dictator, can maybe keep the lid on it for a while, but only a while.

At some point you have to accept the opposition’s values, you’ve got to start from there. Make fun of them at your peril. Believe they’re going to act like you at your peril. BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT COMING FROM WHERE YOU ARE!

You’ve got so much to protect, they’re willing to burn the house down.

Amazing how so many people in power don’t know this, they believe the system will save them.

The system couldn’t save me at MySpace. Well, eventually. And then MySpace died. But I know contracts are just a starting point. You can sue, even win, yet good luck trying to collect. And some people are judgment-proof. If I had all the money people owed me…

But I had to leave it on the table, as a cost of doing business.

How come I know this and the people running the country don’t?

Because they’ve been getting their way for so long they’re oblivious, they think the rules don’t apply to them.

But they do.

“The Threats and Bare-Knuckle Tactics of MAGA’s Top Antitrust Fixer – Mike Davis pushed DOJ officials to approve his deals—and went over their heads if they pushed back”

Free link: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/lobbyists-antitrust-trump-davis-f6a02e04?st=HbDgTW&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Apple News: https://apple.news/AX8kAqCnUQlOyghTpggdLTQ

This will make your head spin.

It’s been flying around the internets all day. And you should read it, at least part of it. Because it explains how Live Nation came to a settlement with the government, but much more than that.

Remember, this is in the right wing paper of record, “The Wall Street Journal.”

I’ll leave it at that.

The records that were hits at the same time as the British Invasion.

Tune in Saturday March 21st to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

I was just having lunch with a bunch of buddies, we know each other from Jim Lewi’s Aspen conference. And it’s a free-ranging conversation, concentrating primarily on travel. Peter and Barb just took a five week trip to Asia. Nichol said she had no desire to go to Japan. And as we’re eating our ribs and burgers, it occurs to me, there’s a war going on.

The most impactful article I read in the past month, that I keep telling people about, was in the “New York Times,” how during the Second World War, life went on as normal in Germany. Of course you didn’t want to be a Jew, but assuming you were Aryan…

“Almost until the last stages of the war, when the Soviet Army conquered Berlin in a devastating battle that reduced the city to rubble, the cinemas were full, the dance revues were in full swing, the soccer competition went on, and people visited the zoo and sunbathed on the Wannsee opposite the infamous villa where the logistics of the Holocaust were worked out over glasses of brandy.”

Free link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/opinion/history-hope-delusion.html?unlocked_article_code=1.UlA.06Hc.H2MgIqTlyAO6&smid=url-share

This was a wake-up call. I assumed everybody was hunkered down, after all, the Allies were raining bombs down upon them and…

Life went on as normal.

Now if you read the linked piece, which I recommend, you’ll find out it has a lot to do with authoritarianism, how people are complicit, believing things will get better. And that’s interesting, but that was not what I was feeling at lunch.

What I was feeling was we were jocular, without a care in the world, and not quite halfway around the world, people not only were losing their homes, they were losing their lives.

Now when it comes to the Iran war… I’m numb. You could call it overload. From DOGE to ICE to so much more, and now there’s a war?

If you’re a boomer, you consider war anathema. We couldn’t understand it. Yes, World War II happened, before we were born, but that set the record straight. Of course there was the cold war, but that was no reason for people to lose their lives.

Yet that was what was happening, on both sides in Vietnam. We had to stand up against the Domino Theory, which proved to be completely false.

The seventies were about licking our wounds, recovering from the turmoil of the sixties.

The eighties were about an economic run-up, the boomers cashing in.

The nineties were about the fall of communism.

And the twenty first century has been about tech and income inequality.

But, for a while there, we were convinced there would be no more wars.

You’ve got to know, the boomers had nuclear paranoia. We crouched under desks to protect ourself from fallout. The bomb couldn’t be dropped. And then we were convinced it never would be…we even had SALT treaties. We felt that the stalemate would go on forever.

But the wars that did exist… It was all old school, sans nuclear bombs. But North Vietnam did introduce us to guerilla warfare, turns out big bad America could not compete with hearts and minds, that’s how strong belief systems are. And then we got Ukraine… I expected Russia to run over the country in a matter of weeks, if not days, and so did Putin. But it turns out that drones not made in sleek factories, but basements, could keep the Russians at bay.

But we still could not understand the war in Ukraine…in that in a first world country, that had come so far, that such destruction could take place. As for Russia, it has sustained 1.2 million casualties, with somewhere between 190,000 and 480,000 killed.

That’s a lot of people. Losing their lives for exactly what?

This is another thing that bugged us in the sixties, the fat cats and their children did not have to fight, it was the underclass who had no other financial options and the youth of America, that was being drafted in droves.

And the big discussion today is about the perils of social media. Well, when I was a teenager, your biggest fear was being drafted and KILLED! It could happen, to many it did.

So how did we get here, to this era of bellicosity? We truly thought this was behind us, no matter how delusional we were.

Now on 9/11 America was targeted. A good portion of the public wasn’t even alive back then, certainly not aware. But the anger and hysteria in the wake of those attacks… You see, we believed it couldn’t happen here, that we were inviolate. But then it did.

And now you’ve got Newt Gingrich saying to drop atomic bombs in Iran to win the war. And he wasn’t joking.

But this isn’t really about the war. It’s about life. I’m living a normal life.

Sure, my assets have taken a hit. As for gas… My car requires premium, but it’s nearly twenty one years old and paid for, it’s not an F-150 or giant SUV that I’m paying a grand a month for that costs a fortune to fill.

People are dying.

And, of course, when the Jews killed people in Gaza, there were mass protests on college campuses. But when thousands of protesters were killed in Iran? Crickets. Almost as bad as Trump saying “help is on its way,” and then not showing up. Yes, these people were EXECUTED!

But I’m not going to debate Trump with you. I’m not even going to thread the needle with the Israelis, other than to say whatever rationalization Netanyahu has for his actions, the consequence has been increased antisemitism, and it was already high.

But I go skiing. I talk at lunch about my bucket list. Before that we were discussing financial advisors. It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Then again, what exactly can we do?

I, for one, no longer believe in the system. The useless Democrats and the press tell us it’s all about elections…if only it were.

But, once again, I don’t want to get into the nitty-gritty, but I do want to talk about the cognitive dissonance. People are losing their lives, innocent people, and for most Americans it’s like it doesn’t even matter, if they think about it at all. Sure, it’s happening far away, but the internet has shrunk the world, we’re not as isolated as we once were.

Never mind that we all have our own news sources, and you can’t convince anyone their opinion is wrong.

Meanwhile, the goal is to create your own personal brand…

Like I said, I can’t wrap my head around the war. It’s far from static, the morning’s newspaper is already out of date. And the apps online…there’s information there, but there’s also a lot else. Like the Oscars, baseball…life is going on like normal.

Like it did in Germany in the thirties and forties.

I could ask how that turned out, but that’s not even my point.

I guess my point is that everybody’s going along with their everyday business. Planning for tomorrow like we’re still living in the nineties.

And will that continue?

Will the AI bubble burst?

There are big issues in the world, and you’ll see them being addressed, but we’re all so overwhelmed…we can’t keep tabs on everything.

So we continue to live our lives, oblivious.

It’s very weird.