To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, never has so much attention been paid to milestones that mean so little.

Last week, American number 300,000,000 was – according to whomever speaks loudest – born in Atlanta, landed at LaGuardia Airport in New York, jumped the U.S.-Mexico border or, maybe, breezed across the Straits of Florida from Cuba in a 1957 Chevy rigged with spinnaker and sail.

And then, on Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 12,000 for the first time in its history, opening the floodgates of postulation and punditry from such financial luminaries as Donald Trump, who dazzled on Fox News with these following pearls of wisdom regarding the Dow:

“We are very, very concerned about North Korea. We’re very concerned about nuclear, because, with nuclear, guess what? All bets are off, OK? All bets are off,” said Trump on Oct. 18, about whether the market is strong. “And we ought to be focused on that. I think, as a nation, we ought to be focused on that, much more so than we have been. But, you know, my group of friends feels very bullish about the economy.”

Thank you, Donald.

The rush to bestow faux milestones obscures their true significance, and the line of talking heads interpreting them only muddies the waters. These figures are remarkable only in the context of what they were and where they’re going, and what impact they might have on society.

And only in time will the importance of the 300th million American, or the Dow’s record close, become clear. For today they’re meaningless, nothing but harmless markers on civilization’s highway.