#246 / Friendship (Political Subcategory)

 

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Pictured is Roger Berkowitz, the Founder and Academic Director of The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Roger leads a "Hannah Arendt Virtual Reading Group," which meets (with some schedule exceptions) by way of a Zoom gathering held each Friday morning at 10:00 a.m., Pacific Coast Time. I mentioned Berkowitz in my blog posting yesterday, too, discussing "solidarity." 

Starting tomorrow, the VRG is going to be addressing Arendt's book, The Human Condition. You need to be a member/contributor to the Hannah Arendt Center to be able to participate, which I do recommend! Click right here for more information. 

Recently, I read an interview with Berkowitz, "Hannah Arendt And The Meaning Of Friendship," and it won't cost you anything to read what he has to say on that topic. I am recommending that, too. All you need to do is click the link! In that interview on friendship, Berkowitz made the following comments (emphasis added): 

Speaking and acting means being free. But in the end, the truly human right, I think, for [Arendt], is the right to be remembered, the right to matter, the right to make an impact on the world. That's what humans want: to be meaningful. They want their actions to be seen, responded to, heard, and listened to. 

One important way in which we matter and are seen and heard is through friendship. Both personal friendship and also political friendship, which for [Arendt] means to be respected by your fellow citizens when you're given the right to have your opinions, even when they differ from others, and still remain a citizen. That's the core idea of political friendship, as she understands it: that there's a bond that holds us together, which is not that we agree, but that we respect each other.

I was an elected official in Santa Cruz County for twenty years, and the statement I just copied out for you is very much what I think, personally, having been involved in our local politics at a time of great controversy and change. I like to think - and I deeply believe - that I made many truly significant and enduring "political" friendships, based on the fact that we are all "in this together" when it comes to political decision-making. Despite our different ideas and priorities, those who truly participate in "politics" know that we are conjoined in a momentous and involving task - the task of "self-government" - and that playing our part, each one of us, is a fundamental way that we find and create a meaningful life. We do end up becoming "friends" with those also engaged in this effort, even when we find that our priorities and politics may differ.

Some advertising guy came up with a slogan that somewhat captures the phenomenon that Berkowitz has written about: "Since we're neighbors, let's be friends." Even though this statement was meant to sell groceries, not state an important truth about our lives together, it does, in fact, state the truth of our real situation. 

May I say, neighbors and friends, that we are, in fact, "in this together," and in working with each other to develop and then implement a collective and community decision about what we should do with respect to the incredibly important challenges and opportunities we confront, we not only create the world in which we most immediately live, we find, both ultimately and intimately, the basis for a kind of profound friendship which can, and will, sustain us all.

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https://revisionsjournal.com/en/page/hannah-arendt-and-the-meaning-of-friendship-an-interview-with-roger-berkowitz

#245 / Solidarity

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If you'd like to hear Pete Seeger sing "Solidarity Forever," just click the link to the title of the song. Here's where to click for the full lyrics, plus a little bit of history. 

I am writing about "solidarity," today, not because I have been thinking about this famous union song (one of my favorites, by the way), but because I recently read an article by Roger Berkowitz, titled "Our Concern With Ourselves," which then led me to read another essay by Berkowitz, "Solidarity: What Are We Fighting For?"

Berkowitz is the Founder and Academic Director of The Hannah Arendt Center For Politics And Humanities at Bard College. Here's a picture of Hannah Arendt: 

As you can see, Arendt was a smoker. If you click this link, you should be able to visit a collection of pictures of Arendt, in various situations, and at different stages of her life. Cigarettes clearly played a big part, all the way through. I have forgiven her for that - given that I think that she is one of the deepest thinkers I know of about "politics," and about American politics in particular. Let me state, though, just to be clear, that I definitely do not approve of that smoking habit!

Well, back to the Berkowitz articles. Below, I have copied some of the statements in "Our Concern With Ourselves" that I found particularly worth pondering (emphasis added):

In his reflection on Hannah Arendt’s insight — “In politics, we are concerned with the world and not with ourselves” — Micah White raises a serious question about the boundary between morality and politics. As Arendt writes, “In all moral questions, we are concerned with ourselves. We ask ourselves whether we are guilty of something, whether we can live with ourselves after having done this or that.” We can hear in such a moral question Henry David Thoreau’s insistence on moral purity: If my government uses its taxes to support slavery or a war I disagree with, my obligation is not to end slavery or stop the war, but simply to refuse to pay my taxes and wash my hands of my involvement. 

Such moral questions, Arendt continues, “are entirely legitimate and very important questions but they are not fundamentally political. In politics, we are concerned with the world and not with ourselves. What I object to in the New Left, as I sometimes objected to in the Old Left, is this concern with themselves.” 

White cites these lines of Arendt to indict “an activist culture that thinks winning is living a progressive lifestyle: recycling, eating organic, voting.” For White, “This turn toward a concern for oneself is symptomatic of the shift away from revolution.” Too many progressives want to keep their hands clean and eschew violence as a moral imperative. In doing so, White sees that they refuse the fundamental maxim of politics, which is to take and wield power. 

The idea that any genuine "politics" is focused on what we do together (not individually) is always a point worth making. Here are a couple of further observations from that  Berkowitz essay, making the point that a concern with "ourselves" is not what politic is really all about (emphasis added): 

In Arendt’s essay “Civil Disobedience,” she refuses Thoreau’s moral understanding of civil disobedience and argues that it should be understood politically, as an organized movement of a substantial minority of citizens who are willing to break the laws in order to demonstrate their illegality. Because civil disobedience is, for her, a political and not a moral act, it reaffirms its commitment to civility and legality. It is not about keeping our souls pure but about a political fight about our common world.

Arendt also opposes the world to our concern for ourselves in her essay “What is Freedom?” Freedom, she writes, is the ability to act in public, to start something new. It is the human faculty to interrupt the status quo, the automatism inherent in all politics when “political life has become petrified and political action impotent.” To act freely is to interrupt political processes and will always appear to be dangerous, even violent. That is why freedom depends on courage, and it is why courage is the first virtue of politics. To act courageously is to risk one’s life in order to change the world.

Anyone who is tagging along with my various blog postings will recognize the influence that Arendt has had on my own thinking. The idea that freedom is "the ability...to start something new" is exactly why I so often say that we can "do anything," and why Arendt's book, On Revolution, about the American Revolution, is really, I think, my favorite book of all time. 

And what about solidarity? Here's from Arendt's paper on that topic (emphasis added): 

Solidarity, for Arendt, is the political form of her love for the world. It is what allows a plurality of people — people who have wronged one another, failed one another, and disagreed with one another about almost everything — to live together in a common world at all. 

Arendt develops her thinking about solidarity alongside her idea of reconciliation. Reconciliation is not forgiveness. It is not a moral act, but a political judgment. To reconcile is to accept the wrong and the wrongdoer in the world and to make a judgment that in spite of their wrong, the world is better with them in it. Reconciliation does not excuse the wrong, but says yes to the world inclusive of the wrong and also the wrongdoer. It says, in spite of the wrong, we can all share the world together.... 

If reconciliation is what allows us to live with imperfect friends, solidarity is what allows a plural polity to live together at all. It is the political work of repairing the fabric of the polis where wrongs and divisions have torn it. Arendt’s most arresting illustration of this is her argument about Adolf Eichmann. We hang Eichmann, she insists, not because of who he is but because doing so is an act of solidarity with the world we still wish to share. Even our gravest judgments are, at their best, acts of binding rather than of expulsion. 

From this understanding follows what I have come to think of as solidarity’s double courage. To say no to a world broken beyond repair is an act of solidarity with a future world. But to say yes — the joyful affirmation of life within brokenness — is also a political act, and an act of solidarity with the world we already share. Refusal and affirmation are not opposites but two sides of the same courage: the courage to share the world with others as it truly is. From that double courage solidarity arises. Born of joy, solidarity holds together refusal and affirmation to open the possibility of a truly human world, a world we share founded upon friendship and respect.

Think about what we read, each day, in the news. It is, almost always, profoundly disappointing and dispiriting. We must, in fact, have the courage to accept both the reality of everything we know to be wrong, and dangerous, coupled with the courage to envision and work for the possibilities that are also "true." If we can do that, if we can muster our willingness to act - always with others - we can, in fact, change the world. That is, in fact the task before us, and not our own status and circumstances. Working together to change the world: that must be our main preoccupation. How can we, with others, change the world? That is what "politics" is all about. 

Here's that link again, to let you listen to the song: "Solidarity Forever." It is our coming together in common purpose, uniting in that - it is our "union" in that task, our working together to change the world that "makes us strong."

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8eK9ZXf-Ow

(2) - https://medium.com/amor-mundi/our-concern-with-ourselves-d3163b254d5a

 

#244 / People Acting In A Group

 

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FDR urged Americans to get behind a program of shorter hours and higher wages to create purchasing power that would restart the economy. He explained: “It goes back to the basic idea of society and of the Nation itself that people acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about.”

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Image And Quotation Credits:

Quote: Heather Cox Richardson Blog Posting - heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-24-2026

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt

#243 / The New York Times On Remote Work

 

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On Sunday, June 21, 2026, The New York Times' Business Section proclaimed (by way of a headline) that "Remote Work Has Helped a Generation of Working Parents." The article attached to the headline was written by Claire Cain Miller, who writes articles for The Times on gender, families, and education. 

On that very same date, Sunday, June 21, 2026, The Times' Opinion Section proclaimed (by way of a headline) that "We Liked Remote Work. Then We Looked at The Data." That article was jointly attributed to Emma Harrington and Natalia Emanuel, who are labor economists and authors of a forthcoming book, In Person: How Working Together Fuels Creativity, Productivity, and Growth. 

Naturally, the information above prompts us to ask, "Well, which is it? Do we want to encourage remote work, or not?" I think each one of the articles I have linked are going to be available, even to non-subscribers, so you may want to read them both (as I did). 

My own conclusion is that both articles hit on important truths about remote work. I have some personal experience, from one of my own family members, that being able to work remotely has, in fact, very significantly helped her with a young child at home. Claire Cain Miller is right on target in saying that the opportunity to work remotely has been of real assistance to that family member, a single mother with a pretty young child under her care.

Still, I think we would be pretty foolish to dismiss the findings (the "data") advanced by Harrington and Emanuel, as they urge us to make sure that remote work doesn't become a "default" reality for most workers. Here's what they say: 

Both of us have experienced the advantages of remote work, especially when battling morning sickness or caring for a sick 6-year-old. But on some days, we wouldn’t venture outside or speak face-to-face with another human. We started to wonder whether we — along with the roughly 35 million other Americans who work from home — had stepped into an enormous social experiment. Was remote work as liberating as it felt?

We searched for answers in troves of data, unsure of what we would find. Surveys of over half a million Americans from the last decade and a half revealed an uncomfortable truth: Despite its advantages, remote work has significantly deepened Americans’ isolation and distress. Our estimates, published in Science this month with our collaborator Amanda Pallais, indicate that remote work explains a third of the deterioration in mental health between 2011 and 2024. Our research doesn’t suggest that work can occur only in the office. But it does mean that employees and companies should make a greater effort to prioritize face-to-face time with colleagues (emphasis added).

Let me, once again, provide one of my favorite observations, as I continue to think about and write about politics, and society, and about how we can protect and recover the kind of democratic self-government that we just got through celebrating on the 250th anniversary of The Declaration of Independence. Here's my oft-repeated statement, once again:

We Are In This Together

We are, in fact, in this life together not only as we engage in politics, but as we "live," plain and simple. Our world is shared in common, and when we begin isolating ourselves, and begin finding ourselves isolated, things get worse for us - and for everyone. 

I, particularly, am sorry that post-covid rules continue to be applied by many governmental bodies, including local city councils and boards of supervisors, which now hold their public meetings by way of Zoom calls, or by using similar technologies that allow and encourage us to access these meetings "remotely." What that means, as a practical matter, is that we are increasingly experiencing our relationship to our government as "observers." In fact, we're supposed to be running the place!

We need constantly to be in contact with other people, who often have different ideas and priorities. If we want to have a society (and a government) that brings us together, reconciling our differences, instead of exacerbating them, then we need real and compelling experience - personal experience - that is convincing of the following truth; namely, and....  here we go, again: 

 We Are Together In This!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/opinion/remote-work-depression.html

#242 / I'll Keep It With Mine

 

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For more than sixteen years, I have been publishing a daily blog posting, and I have mentioned my list of "Memorial Songs" more than once. As I go walking around the town, I am, quite often, listening to those songs, which are being piped from my phone directly into my hearing aids. When it's time to say, "hello" to someone, or otherwise to engage in a conversation, I have to take out my phone, and shut off the music.

As I do listen to my playlist of songs - all but one by Bob Dylan - I am sometimes struck by something, by some meaning, that I hadn't really ever thought about before. Not too long ago, as an example, Bob Dylan's song, "I'll Keep It With Mine," gave me a new thought as to what Dylan was singing about. If you click the link just provided, I believe that you should be able to listen to Dylan sing the song. I have included the full lyrics, below.

Up until I had my latest thought, I had always focused on the following lyrics as the most important and central in the song: "How long, babe, can you search for what is not lost?" In fact, this is what so many of us do, don't you think? We don't see our lives as already "full," and "complete," but we labor through our years with the constant sense that something is missing: fame, fortune, love, or accomplishment, whatever it is. We are always "searching" for something that is "missing," that is "lost," and we might not even know, really, what that missing piece is - the one we are so desperate to find and acquire. Dylan's lyrics suggest that, in fact, nothing is "missing." Nothing is "lost." By defining our lives as our own creation, we constantly count ourselves and our lives as incomplete. But Dylan's lyrics suggest that this is the wrong way of looking at life. What if nothing is "lost," after all, and what if we should be appreciating all that we have, and are, instead of looking at our lives as deficient?

This is, I think (and I hope you agree), a pretty important insight as to one way that we should think about our lives. 

I definitely continue to think that's true! However, I recently had another thought about, "I'll Keep It With Mine," and since my newest idea about the song relates directly to the title, I have begun thinking that maybe this is Dylan's "main point." The lyrics I am talking about also appear in every verse in the song, which is perhaps another indication that these particular lyrics are the key to the "main point" of  the song. 

Here are the lyrics I am talking about: 

"If I can save you any time: Come on. Give it to me. I'll keep it with mine."

Our time and our life are equivalent, and particularly as one gets older (my own condition, precisely) a person is tempted to start getting very nervous about how much "time" she or he has left. "Saving" one's time is an effort to stay alive, to "keep on cooking!"

As I think I may have said before in one or another of my blog postings, I believe that Dylan's lyrics are often best understood as if they were coming from God, or the Creator. The person voicing the lyrics may be Dylan, but what's being said is coming "through," not directly "from" him. If the lyrics of "I'll Keep It With Mine" are to be understood this way, and our Creator is the singer, then the promise being made is pretty substantial. The Creator is offering to "save" our time, and to keep "our" time with the Creator's "time," which is actually beyond our own time, and is "Eternity" itself. 

The two ways of thinking about Dylan's lyrics that I have just outlined are compatible, and both proclaim that "our" lives are not, in the end, self-generated and to be attributed solely to our personal actions and efforts. 

Quite a nice little "Sunday Sermon," don't you think?

I hope so!

oooOOOooo

I'll Keep It With Mine
Bob Dylan, 1965

You will search, babe
At any cost
But how long, babe
Can you search for what’s not lost?
Everybody will help you
Some people are very kind
But if I can save you any time
Come on, give it to me
I’ll keep it with mine

I can’t help it
If you might think I’m odd
If I say I’m not loving you for what you are
But for what you’re not
Everybody will help you
Discover what you set out to find
But if I can save you any time
Come on, give it to me
I’ll keep it with mine

The train leaves
At half past ten
But it’ll be back tomorrow
Same time again
The conductor he’s weary
He’s still stuck on the line
But if I can save you any time
Come on, give it to me
I’ll keep it with mine

Copyright © 1965, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993, 1996 by Special Rider Music

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https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/jesus-is-evidence-that-god-exists/

#241 / Mother Nature On The Run

 

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Among the many salutes to Dolly Parton, gone too soon this past August 25th, at eighty years old, was this exchange between Bret Stephens and Frank Bruni, appearing at the end of "The Conversation," published by The New York Times on August 28th:

Bret: Bringing us to the most important, and by far the saddest, news of the week. I’m struck by how hard the news of her death hit me. I remember, as a kid, watching “9 to 5” in a theater and falling for the force of her personality. But it was only when I had kids of my own — particularly my daughters, who are into country music — that I really began to love the songs, like “Jolene” and “Coat of Many Colors,” not just for their musicality but also for their emotional honesty and depth. Also, if you’ve never heard it, watch Parton, with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, cover Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush,” in this 1999 performance on “Late Show With David Letterman.” It’ll bring you to tears. 

Frank: Oh, I’ve heard it. Seen it. Misted up during it. But to me and many others, Dolly Parton was so much more than music and movies. What I perhaps appreciated most about her, Bret, was this: I had no idea what her politics were. I barely had guesses. And while keeping them opaque obviously worked to her commercial advantage, minimizing the possibility that she’d anger and estrange any fans, it came to seem a kind of moral statement: We can have pockets of space and periods of grace in which we savor a shared pleasure and put our differences and our rancor on pause. Her performances were that pause, that space, that grace.

Like Bret Stephens, I invite you to click the link to the 1999 performance with David Letterman. Until the column in The Times, I had never heard about (or ever heard) "After The Gold Rush," but that song, as sung by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris, may well, as Stephens predicted, bring you to tears. If you would like to read the lyrics, You can click this link, right here. 

As I listened to "After The Gold Rush," with its California reference, I was struck by this verse: 

Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies

 

Is Mother Nature still "on the run," as she was when I was first elected to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, in 1974? She should be, of course, she should be running as fast as she can from what's coming for her now, but it could just be (I hate even to think it) that Mother Nature has lost that race, and has been trampled down, defeated, since her valiant run in the seventies. 

I hate to think that.  

The horrendous destruction in Nepal, caused by the global warming that everyone seems to be doing their best to ignore, indicates that it is all of humanity, now, that is "on the run," or should be - and should be recognizing that this is us in our final, desperate stretch, still pulling as hard as we can to outrun disaster and allow our human creations to survive. The video of the disaster in Nepal shows people running. 

We need to run - but I don't think we need to run away; we need to run towards the problems coming for us, and face them, and do what we can.

Dolly Parton, who is properly revered, and who will truly be missed, had the kind of beautiful voice that gave a hint of her beautiful soul. I think she would approve this message.

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Image Credit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHzWhi86vAc

#240 / That Sumerian Solution

 

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The U.S. federal debt has hit $40 trillion. Add the debt owed by U.S. states, corporations and consumers, and the figure rises to about $77 trillion in debt, set against an annual gross domestic product of about $32 trillion. The interest on all of it is compounding constantly. It’s not just the United States, either. Globally, there is $350 trillion in debt, roughly treble global G.D.P. It’s like snowpack on a mountainside. It may look stable right now, but it’s creating the conditions for an avalanche. We are past the point where we can deal with our current debts in normal ways. The options open to us are extremely unlikely or highly destructive: Grow our way out of it, raise taxes, inflate the debt away or wait for the economic fallout.

The quotation above, from a New York Times opinion piece, might be called the "problem statement." Does anyone disagree that our national debt is a real problem? The excerpt I have quoted comes from a Times column by Paul Vigna, managing editor of American Banker. Similar concerns are being voiced in an article from The Atlantic: "Economists Who Weren’t Worried About the Debt Are Now Panicking."  

As the quotation from Vigna says, it's getting harder and harder to believe that we can deal with our debt in "normal ways." So, what does Vigna suggest? Vigna suggests the "Sumerian Solution." 

Ancient societies had another method to deal with debt. It was called an amargi — a blanket declaration of public debt cancellation. All public debts written off. Disappeared. It sounds laughable, I know. But, really, that’s just because the idea has been buried so deeply in history that you’ve probably never heard of it. In the ancient world, it presented a pragmatic solution to an intractable problem. And now, faced with impossible-to-repay debts that are weighing down our economy, is the time to look at the amargi and the lessons it offers about how to think about finance.

I do not mind being called a "radical," particularly if that means being a "radical thinker." As those who read my blog postings know, I claim "possibility" as "my category."

I think we had all better start being willing to consider possibilities we never thought of before - never even heard of before; never thought might be something that could actually be accomplished. Unsupportable debt is only one of the things we need to start thinking about. Only one, but it's right up there on the list. 

Like John Lennon sang, we need to start thinking about possibilities we have never, ever, really considered or contemplated. Really! "Imagine!"

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Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/22/opinion/us-debt-40-trillion.html

#239 / Global Citizens

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My blog posting yesterday was about fires in Canada, and it was trying to make a point. The realities of our world, today, are not best understood through a "nationalistic" lens. We are, in fact, "global citizens." We're "in this together," as I so often put it, and that "we" I am talking about includes everyone in the entire world. 

One day after I wrote out that blog posting published yesterday, I found the picture above, linked to a July 17, 2026, article in the San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle article was a celebration of the World Cup soccer matches then just about to come to a conclusion with the finals match between Spain and Argentina set for July 19th (Spain won). The article was headlined this way: "What the World Cup taught me and family about about being global citizens."

The exuberance of the picture drew me in. It makes that message about our global connection clear, through its moving depiction of Curaçao fans — many chanting, “Bai Kòrsou! Bai Kòrsou!” (go Curaçao) — as those Curaçao fans cheered for their team in a World Cup match against the Ivory Coast played in Philadelphia on June 25.

Yesterday's blog posting was to make a point. Today's blog posting is to make a wish. 

May we all find genuine joy in the truth that we are all together, here on Planet Earth, and be filled not with competitive anger and hatred (unfortunately seen, all too often, in the current leaders of our nation), but filled, instead, with the profoundly wonderful reality of our human connections, around the globe. 

There is so much to celebrate! And so much work to do - together!

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https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/world-cup-soccer-family-22347760.php

#238 / Canadian Fires?

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The image above depicts where fires were burning in Canada in the middle of July. Most of the fires were designated as "out of control." The picture below, from the July 17, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal, shows air quality conditions in New York City on Thursday, July 16th. 

When I started reading my copy of The Journal, picked up off my front walkway on that Thursday, and when I saw a front page picture pretty much identical to the picture above, though cropped differently, I immediately noted the headline: "Canadian Fires Cast Pall Over Wide Swath Of U.S." The online version of the story uses a different headline, but again designates the fires that are being written about as "Canadian." 

You know, the wildfires that were causing the massive air pollution depicted in the photo aren't really, in my opinion, properly called "Canadian" wildfires. As the graphic demonstrates, lots of wildfires were (and are) burning in Canada, but is it really correct - or "fair" - to designate them, specifically, as "Canadian"?

I don't think so.

The forests of the entire world are on fire, from deep in the Amazon, to California, to Alaska, and everywhere else around the globe. These fires are directly related to the ever more out of control global warming that is putting life on Earth in peril. The headline in the paper, accompanying the dramatic photograph, might cause many to think that it's "other people" who are responsible. In fact, we are ALL implicated. The following link will get you to a chart from Wikipedia that shows worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, and relates them to the various nations of the world. 

It is time to reorient our human activities - worldwide - and most emphatically including right here in the United States of America.

We are running out of time! What that picture shows, and what that chart shows, is what's really going on, everywhere in the world. We need to STOP BURNING FOSSIL FUELS. 

PERIOD! AS QUICKLY AS WE CAN! 

NO FURTHER EXCUSES ACCEPTED!

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/where-canada-wildfires-burning

(2) - https://www.wsj.com/us-news/climate-environment/canadian-wildfire-smoke-blankets-u-s-northeast-and-midwest-ace90b6a

#237 / What Or Who Do You Pay?

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I like George Monbiot, who writes for The Guardian, and here is something he said in an opinion piece published on April 23, 2026 (emphasis added): 

The poor and middle pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the very rich pay lawyers – and the ultra-rich pay politicians. It’s not an original remark, but it bears repeating until everyone has heard it. The more money billionaires accumulate, the greater their control of the political system – which means they pay less tax, which means they accumulate more, which means their control intensifies. 

One of the symptoms of the pathology known as “billionaire brain” is an inability to see beyond their own short-term gain. They would sack the planet for a few more stones on the pointless mountain of wealth. And we can see it happening. Last week delivered the biggest news of the year so far, perhaps the biggest news of the century. But partly because billionaires own most of the media, most people never heard it. We might find ourselves committed to a civilisation-ending event before we even learn that such a thing is possible.

 

The real message of Monbiot's opinion column, in other words, is captured in Monbiot's headline: 

A Catastrophic Climate Event Is Upon Us. Here Is Why You’ve Heard So Little About It

If you don't immediately know from this headline what Monbiot must be talking about, please take a few minutes to read his entire column. What Monbiot is talking about is a crucial oceanic circulation system known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This is the main ocean current system in the Atlantic Ocean, and it plays an important role in the climate system. I have written about the AMOC before, and here's a bit of what Monbiot has to say about it:

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – delivers heat from the tropics to the North Atlantic. Recent research suggests that if it shuts down, it could cause both a massive drop in average winter temperatures in northern Europe and drastic changes in the Amazon’s water cycles. This could help tip the rainforest into cascading collapse and trigger further disaster. 

AMOC's shutdown is likely also to cause an acceleration of sea level rise on the east coast of the US, threatening cities. It could also raise Antarctic temperatures by roughly 6C and release a vast pulse of carbon currently stored in the Southern Ocean, accelerating our ongoing climate catastrophe. 

Even when the countervailing effects of generalised global heating are taken into account, a further paper proposes, the net impact in northern Europe would be periods of extreme cold – including events in which temperatures in London fall to -19C, in Edinburgh to -30C and in Oslo to -48C. Sea ice in February would extend as far as Lincolnshire. Our climate would change drastically, with the likelihood of far greater extremes, such as massive winter storms. Rain-fed arable agriculture would become impossible almost everywhere in the UK. 

This shift, on any realistic human scale, would be irreversible. Its speed is likely to outrun our ability to adapt. Amoc shutdowns, driven by natural climate variability, have happened before. But not in the era of large-scale human civilisation. 

The first paper proposing that AMOC might have an on-state and an off-state was published in 1961. Since then, many studies have confirmed the finding and explored potential triggers and likely implications. Until recently, AMOC collapse caused by human activity fell into the category of a “high impact, low probability” event, devastating if it happens, but unlikely to occur. Research over the past few years prompted a reassessment: it began to look more like a “high impact, high probability” event. Now, in response to last week’s paper, Prof Stefan Rahmstorf – perhaps the world’s leading authority on the subject – says the chances of a shutdown look like “more than 50%”. We could pass the tipping point, he says, “in the middle of this century.”

The reason that democratic self-government is the only political system worth having is the fact that so-called "political" decisions have life and death impacts which affect all of us - everyone in the world. In other words, spending our time and money on "politics," instead of letting the billionaires make all the decisions, is to our immense, personal advantage - and that is why it is so important. 

This is not the first time I have made this point.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/23/catastrophic-climate-event-scientists-atlantic-system-collapse-billionaire-existential-crisis?CMP=opinionus_email

#236 / So Many People: Why?

  

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The June 2026 edition of The Nation magazine included an article by Alex Shams. Shams' article was titled as follows: "Why Did So Many People Think This War Was A Good Idea?" The war referred to, initiated by our current president, is the War in Iran.

Shams' article is well worth reading, and focuses on support for the war inside Iran, and support from those Iranians living outside Iran. The article begins with a short summary of what the reader is going to be told. Here is what Shams says by way of his introduction to the article: "The story of how millions of Iranians fell for the regime-change fantasy." 

To let you in on at least one explanation advanced by Shams, many Iranians, both inside and outside Iran, apparently put a lot of faith in the guy who started the war, thinking that he truly was, as he has always claimed to be, really smart, and that he could certainly pull it all off. Hearing this, you probably don't immediately think of the following line from Bob Dylan, but I do (click the link for the lyrics to "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream"): 

I just said, "Good luck"

I will let anyone who becomes interested in the question addressed in this blog posting read the Shams' article themselves (I hope it will be available to non-subscribers). Here's the thought that I want to advance, both with specific reference to the War in Iran and with respect to war more generally (emphasis added): 

There was little discussion of how exactly military strikes would lead to the collapse of Iran’s government. But the possibility raised unrealistic expectations inside Iran. To millions of people still reeling from January’s mass killings, it offered a fantasy that the US could swoop in, remove the government, and replace it with something else—without touching the Iranian people. 

Almost overnight, Iranians who spoke out against war were accused of being “apologists” for the government. 

“Where were you when they massacred 40,000 people in January?” was one frequent refrain. (While the number of people killed in the crackdowns has been extensively debated, the reality is believed to be closer to a still-appalling 7,000 people.) 

“War will kill fewer people than the regime, so it will save lives in the long term. It’s simple math” was another. 

“What’s your alternative?” was yet a third. 

A quieter chorus warned against the lure of war. “We stand for peace,” Masoud Nikzadi, a historian in Tehran, wrote on Instagram. “We don’t need to explain a plan for why peace is necessary. Those who support war must explain how exactly it will bring freedom.” 

A collective of women from the Baloch minority, formed during the 2022 Woman Life Freedom protests, warned: “War should not be sold as an opportunity to people under oppression. Militarization…leads to social collapse and disintegration, just as happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.” 

But these voices in Iran, lacking large social-media platforms, were drowned out by influencers and celebrities abroad, whose message was embraced by those within the country. 

 George Orwell got it right a long time ago.  "War" is NOT "Peace." And we don't achieve "peace" by pursuing "war."

Wouldn't it be great if we had a president who understood this fact?

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https://www.thenation.com/article/world/iran-regime-change-fantasy/

#235 / Do You Want To Live To Be 100?

 

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The New York Times is interested in hearing your thoughts about getting to live to be 100. Sound good? Or... do you have another thought? Here's the link, if you'd like to let The Times know what you think. Here's what I think:

I will be 83 years old on the day after Christmas, this year, and I have had a pretty significant and wonderful life. For twenty years, from 1975 to 1995, I served as an elected member of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, during a time of tumultuous politics in our local community. I was, in other words, elected five times in a row, retiring when I was fifty. At the end of 1999, the local newspaper (which never supported me politically) said that I was one of two people who had the most significant impact on Santa Cruz County during the 20th Century. That might actually be true! 

I went on to head up both a local and a statewide nonprofit corporation, both of them dedicated to the protection of California’s environment, and I taught for fourteen years in the Legal Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For the last sixteen years, I have published this daily blog, called, “We Live In A Political World.” I have never missed a day!  My ideas about personal fulfilment (which The Times did want to hear about) do look a bit different now, from my current perspective, than they used to look when I was younger. Much more than I did before, I understand what a gift and a blessing it is to have been alive – and to be alive now. In a very real way, I now “Fear Not.” That is a change. 

Do I strive to live to be 100? I’d be glad to get there, but I am absolutely at peace with the reality of death, and my understanding of life is now more by way of celebration than striving. I have been married to a wonderful wife for fifty-seven years and have two children in their fifties - plus three grandchildren. Both my daughter and son, particularly, have helped me “appreciate,” not “strive,” as I look to the future adventures yet to come.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/well/longevity-callout.html

 

#234 / Who Knows What About Whom?

 

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The title of a Consortium News commentary dated June 11, 2026, reads as follows: "A Requiem For Privacy." The following observation, immediately following that title, tells us this: "On the eve of America’s 250th anniversary, Americans are asked to accept and pay for a government that knows more about us than we do about it."

For about ten years or so, I taught a course at the University of California, Santa Cruz that was titled, "Privacy, Technology, And Freedom." I am writing this blog posting to confirm exactly what Andrew P. Napolitano is telling us in that commentary linked above. 

When someone knows more about you than you do about them, the one who "knows more" has the upper hand. If Napolitano is right (and I am confirming that I believe that he is right) then "government" has the upper hand over the citizens, who are supposed to be in charge. 

That this is true will not come as any surprise to those reading this blog posting. That's my bet! I think that most Americans would probably agree with Napolitano's assessment. However, I am not so sure that the citizens who will find this assessment accurate fully understand the implications of what we are being told. 

We cannot, as citizens, be "in charge" of a government that knows more about us, individually and collectively, than we know about it. 

Conclusion? We need to change this situation! The next two elections will provide us a chance to do that - the "midterms" scheduled for this upcoming November, and then the next general election (including picking our next president) scheduled for 2028. 

If you, reading this, are a citizen of the United States of America who wants to make real what our Declaration of Independence proclaimed, 250 years ago, then let it be known that you are going to have to get together with others who feel the same way, and you are going to have to devote a considerable amount of time and effort to retaking control of the United States of America. On its current path, the "government" is on course to take totalitarian control of us!

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https://consortiumnews.com/2026/06/11/a-requiem-for-privacy/

#233 / Sal Si Puedes?

 

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I follow the weekly, "Notes From Home" column published each week by Trudy Wischemann. Her column appears in the local newspapers of several Central Valley communities. If you click the link that I have provided in the next line of this blog posting, you should be able to read her column titled, "Sal Si Puedes." That means, "Get Out If You Can." Actually, Wischemann is urging her readers to stay put, dig in, and fight back. Small farmers in California's Central Valley are under incredible economic pressure, and many are getting discouraged. 

In the column I have linked, Wischemann cites to Peter Mat­th­iessen’s book, Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New Amer­ican Revolu­tion. Here's her comment: 

Early in the book, Mat­th­iessen held out this hope: “Before this cen­tury is done, there will be an evol­u­tion in our val­ues and the val­ues of human soci­ety, not because man has become more civ­il­ized but because, on a blighted earth, he will have no choice.” 

I think that this is an accurate statement of where global warming has put us. As I am typing out these comments, in mid July, virtually the entire nation faces a massive "heat wave" unlike anything that we have experienced before. Sure, it's been terribly hot, before, but you don't have to be a climate scientist to begin appreciating the fact that our "climate" is definitely "changing." We are all affected, and we, collectively, are causing the problem.

Could this problem be a "blessing in disguise"? Matthiesen's comment seems to indicate that this might be true. It is now clear, for those who hadn't grasped this before, that we, and I do mean all of us, are "in this together." It is more and more obvious that nationalistic rivalries and wars, and divisive prejudices of all kinds, are no longer something in which we can indulge. We must collaborate, and help ourselves to stop damaging, and start repairing, our natural environment. 

What glorious opportunities we have ahead! 

We do, however, have to "stick around" and join the effort, and not think we can make an "individual" escape. Wischemann is right. "Sal Si Puedes" is the very opposite of what we need to be trying to do. Let the billionaires give it their best shot (because it's clear that Peter Thiel and many of the world's other billionaires really do think they can make a personal escape, somehow). 

Wave goodbye to them, and join hands. Maybe we might get in the mood by raising our voices in this song, inspiring when first heard, and still capable of getting us in the mood for what we need to do, right now. 

Lyrics: "We Are The World"

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https://midvalleytimes.com/article/opinion/2026/07/01/land-that-i-love/