David Siskind | Sunday, 6 April 2025
Wednesday was Liberation Day. Maybe you noticed. It looks like the toothpaste has been squeezed out of the tube. The collected punditocracy across the political spectrum agrees that this is an irreversible event. Everyone from Paul Krugman to Ben Shapiro is stunned at the clownish calculation and broad reach of Trump's tariffs. They all say we can’t go back. The old order is gone. Roughly five trillion dollars of investment capital was wiped out in two days. Combine that with the unconstitutional and cruel deportations and renditions of migrants (and who knows who else - they won’t say), terrorizing people here, documented and otherwise, shrinking the labor pool. It seems like a recipe for a steep economic decline. Free speech is under assault at our universities and law firms and many quislings are knuckling under. This is bad for business and bad for the culture. But the forces for chaos may be way over their skis.
Today is a day of protest. Hands Off. I am receiving reports from friends in New York city and suburbs, Wisconsin, Washington and Salt Lake that the protests are big. Big enough anyway. We’re in a later time zone here and Hands Off LA doesn’t start until 4 pm. I’m going. I’m not sure what else there is to do at this point. I’m kinda too old for this shit but really there isn’t a choice. I can’t believe this is the world I’m leaving to my posterity. You can already smell the rot. It’s almost as if the regime queued up reasons to object on purpose. It’s stunning.
What is saddest is that the lunch-bucket blue-collar middle class isn’t going to come back even if these hare-brained schemes somehow are effective. High capacity manufacturing today does not employ a lot of people. Beating swords into ploughshares and vice-versa doesn’t need a lot of hands, just a lot of robots and a lot of capital. New manufacturing at scale will take time and in the meantime this shock therapy will have a lot of victims.
Because Hands Off LA kicks off late, I was able to go to the River early. This time I broke out my 8wt Tortuga and a nice big popper to do a proper SnakeHeadShot practice. I’ve been leaning in on the SHS this week but only with my 4wt and mostly with weighted carp-sized nymphs. This one I filmed in Slo Mo so I will get some advice from professor Arden. My slip-pickup-to-backcast-shoot is looking good. But for some reason I’m not in position to do an effective haul going forward. My distance and accuracy are OK but my hauls are cramped and short and start too close to my right side. It seems that my body is in the way despite starting with a closed stance - right foot forward. I think a little more shoulder rotation in the horizontal plane might fix this. I’ve got until January to figure it out and am feeling pretty confident. Thank goodness there is fly fishing.
David Siskind