who do you think you are I am

Nike wiped out $200B+ in market cap since November 2021. And the chart actually understates how bad it is. This company made one bet that destroyed everything: the direct-to-consumer pivot. During COVID, Nike's online sales surged, and management convinced themselves the stay-at-home economy was permanent. They pulled product from Foot Locker, Dick's, and thousands of wholesale partners to push buyers through Nike.com and Nike stores. That ceded physical shelf space to On Running, Hoka, New Balance, and every competitor happy to fill the void. By the time Nike brought Elliott Hill in as CEO, customers had already moved on. The China numbers are staggering. Seven straight quarters of declining revenue. Greater China sales dropped 17% last quarter. Next quarter Nike expects a 20% plunge. Meanwhile Lululemon is posting double-digit growth in the same market. Anta and Li-Ning are eating Nike's share from below. Nike's China revenue contribution fell from 18.6% in 2021 to 14.2% in 2025. Yesterday Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Bank of America all downgraded the stock on the same day. Net income fell 35% year over year. Gross margin has declined for seven consecutive quarters. And the stock still trades at 38x forward earnings, a premium over the S&P 500 average of 22x. This is what a slow-motion brand collapse looks like with a luxury multiple attached to it. The turnaround keeps getting pushed further out. Management promised growth by early 2027. Wall Street priced that in. Now it's late 2027 at best. The scariest part: Nike is still the #1 sportswear company by market cap. If this is what #1 looks like, the rest of the industry is running a different race entirely.

Yes, the Founders did not want Caesar, BUT they also well understood that the Republic was a dessicated husk long before he crossed the Rubicon. Look at what elites, "Optimates," did to the Gracchi Brothers, both of them on separate occasions. Was that preservation of the Republic? There was Marius & Sulla before Caesar. Did they preserve the Republic? No. They showed it was decayed & that order was more necessary than chaos. We should understand Caesar, & Augustus after him, not as heroes but also not as villains. They were the tragic necessity that happens when institutions decay & faith in then erodes to the point where violence becomes the true currency of the realm & chaos reigns irrespective of what may be argued through clever rhetoric on the Senate floor. So we should pray our Republic never decays so much that a Caesar becomes the tragic necessity. The best speech on this is Lincoln's Lyceum speech, abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speech… Lincoln understood it was no easy task to avoid the rise of one from the "family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle"- an Alexander, Caesar or Napoleon. He argued eloquently, "I do not mean to say, that the scenes of the revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten; but that like every thing else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the bible shall be read;-- but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then, they cannot be so universally known, nor so vividly felt, as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or brother, a living history was to be found in every family-- a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related--a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.--But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but, what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls. They are gone.--They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left only, here and there, a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage; unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs, a few more ruder storms, then to sink, and be no more. They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.--Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON. Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, 'the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.'" But this requires understanding more deeply why republics do fall so as to instill that "cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason," of which Lincoln spoke. No easy task.