#144 / Look On The Rising Sun

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One of William Blake's most wonderful poems has a title that I think probably rings quite strangely to modern ears, "The Little Black Boy." 

The poem is from Blake's Songs of Innocence And Experience, published in 1789. Click that link to the title of the poem to read Blake's poem in its entirety. 

The following lines from the poem came to me on a recent Sunday, as I participated by way of Zoom in an online Quaker Meeting held in Patagonia, Arizona on Sunday, May 3, 2026: 

Look on the rising sun: there God does live

And gives his light, and gives his heat away..... 

And we are put on earth a little space, 

That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

These lines of the poem moved me to understand that final phrase, "the beams of love," to be true in the two different meanings of the word "beams." 

We are here, indeed, "a little space," to feel and absorb, and to learn how to bring into ourselves those "beams" of love that irradiate our persons and our lives, and do so for everyone, and the world entire. 

But we are also called to learn, in this life, how to utilize and carry those "beams," like the sometimes heavy timbers with which we build any kind of edifice, and from those beams of love, given to us so freely, to construct a home, a society, a world that is created, and fashioned, from "Love" itself. 

Those words from Blake's poem came to me, quite unanticipatedly, in that Zoom Friends' Meeting, as I sat with my wife, and a friend, in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, and those words from the poem were not unfamiliar. Those very words, as I have presented them above, were written on the invitation to our wedding, held in September 1969 at the Palo Alto Friends Meetinghouse. 

How I hope I have done something, in my life, that would qualify me as having accomplished what the mother told her son was ours to do - to learn to "bear the beams of love," to receive in gratitude and joy the love that is the essence of the gift of life, and to meet the challenge of those words, in their other sense, and to bear and carry those "beams of Love" and to use them to build a better home, and a better society, and a world that can shelter, protect, and be a joyous place of residence for every one us.

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https://poemanalysis.com/william-blake/the-little-black-boy/

#143 / Funded By "The Government"

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I read The New York Times every morning - in a hardcopy edition tossed onto my lawn sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m.. Quite often, I am struck by some little turn of phrase in one or another story, and that was the case with respect to a story published on April 28, 2026, documenting how the "Ballroom Builder" Got A "No-Bid Deal" for a nearby job. Click the link, and you can read that article, too - but you will be reading it in the online version, which does come with a headline slightly different from the headline from which I have just quoted.

As I presume that anyone reading this blog posting knows, our current president has destroyed the East Wing of the White House (without any prior approval or authorization by anyone, including the Congress), and is attempting to build a huge new "Ballroom." The initial good news for America was that this would, allegedly at least, not cost the taxpayers anything. Munificent "donors" (not expecting anything in return, we are supposed to believe) were supposed to have made free-will donations to take care of the costs of the current president's "Ballroom" demolition and rebuilding project. 

The Times' article I have linked above notes that the same contractor who is undertaking the "Ballroom" project is now, in addition, refurbishing the fountains in Lafayette Square, just a block or so from the White House. In the photo at the top of this blog posting, you can see Lafayette Square in the foreground, with the White House in the background. The main point of The Times' article is that the contract to refurbish the two fountains located in Lafayette Square was awarded to the "Ballroom" contractor by our current president without being put out to bid, as it should have been: 

In January, government documents show, the Trump administration secretly gave the company a no-bid contract to do another job at a sharply inflated price.

The National Park Service wanted to repair two ornamental fountains in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. The Biden administration in 2022 had estimated the work would cost $3.3 million. But Mr. Trump’s government agreed to pay Clark $11.9 million to do it, and later added tasks that increased the contract to $17.4 million, the documents show (emphasis added).

Funding for the fountain rehab project is NOT going to be provided by those "Ballroom" donors. The Times informs us in the article that the inflated costs involved will be funded by "the government." 

I just want to highlight how that "the government" phrase fails, at least so I believe, fully to convey what has happened. As I believe we all understand, when we talk about "the government," we are really talking about you, and me, and everyone living in these United States. "Donors" and "the government" sound pretty much the same, unless you think about it. Whoever they are, "donors" and "the government" seem to be someone other than you and me. 

But that's not true. Instead of describing how the "inflated" costs of the fountain project will be paid for by "the government," a better description would have said something like this: 

The highly-inflated costs of the work on the fountains, which was assigned to a contractor admired by our current president without any competitive bidding having taken place, will be paid for by every person residing in the United States. The current cost estimate is $17.4 million dollars, up from an estimate by the Bidden Administration, four years ago, that the work should cost $3.3 million.

 

My point? It's the same point I make so frequently in my postings to "We Live In A Political World." WE are "the government." When "the government" takes action (starting a war or awarding a contract) that means that the project is being done in OUR name, and it almost certainly guarantees that we will each be personally affected, in one way or another.

Because we are, all of us, affected by what "the government" does, and because we truly do want a system of "self-government," our elected representatives are supposed to be making the decisions that will affect our pocketbooks, or perhaps cost us our lives. 

While the president is, of course, one of our "elected representatives," the job to which he has been elected in the job of "executing" the decisions made by our elected representatives in Congress - hundreds of them, who come from all over the United States and who because of this, are thought to be more directly in touch with the people (all of us) whom they represent.

If we don't keep remembering this, and if we don't take action to be sure that our governmental system operates the way it is supposed to, we are, essentially, standing by and watching the demolition of our system of self-government (in much the same way we have been compelled to observe the demolition of a significant part of the White House by a person who doesn't want to play by the rules that the Constitution has established). 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/us/politics/lafayette-park-fountains-trump-contract.html

#142 / The Rich Get Five Times Their Share

 

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Pictured is Mike Hsu, the Chief Executive of Kimberly-Clark. Hsu was mentioned in an article in the Saturday-Sunday, March 21-22, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal. That article was largely focused on Huggies, a very popular brand of diapers, which are manufactured by Kimberly-Clark. Probably, that article is blocked by a "paywall," meaning that only subscribers will be able to make use of the link.

No matter! In fact, I am not really wanting to talk about either Huggies or Hsu. My purpose in this blog posting is to comment on the following statement contained in the article I just linked:

The wealthiest 10% of Americans account for almost half of consumer spending.

Normally, given what I am pretty sure is a resident "paywall," clicking that "acount for" link in the quoted paragraph (that link furnished by The Wall Street Journal, not me) is unlikely actually to take you to the article referenced. However, I am told that the following "gift link" should get you there. If it does, you will be able to read an article headlined as follows: "The U.S. Economy Depends More Than Ever On Rich People."

The point of my blog posting is to make note of the fact that "rich people" are getting more than what might be called their "fair share" of the economic benefits provided by the American economy. Our economy is supported, and made prosperous, by everyone. Thus, I suggest, the overall benefits should be flowing to everyone. Instead, the benefits of our economy are increasingly sequestered by and made available only to the rich - and as The Journal notes, this is increasingly true. 

Various laws have had this result. As we all pay our taxes (hopefully, you made the April 15th deadline), let's think about how we could change those laws and solve that "affordability" and "abundance" crisis that has become such big news. 

Just producing "more" won't do it. Other policies will! 

We do need to change the laws, however, to change what's happening. In case you might have missed this, that is what "politics" is actually all about. 

When I say that we "Live In A Political World," I am trying to suggest that we should be developing and using our political power to make sure that our world is actually a world we want to live in! 

A world in which economic "abundance" is fairly shared, not sequestered by the wealthy, should be a top priority. 

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Image Credit:

https://businesschief.com/news/kimberly-clark-ceo-mike-hsu-bets-on-growth-with-kenvue-deal

#141 / Manda El Pueblo

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I am a real fan of Rebecca Solnit, pictured above. Because I am, please let me recommend one of her recent columns in The Guardian (full text at the bottom). The article is headlined this way: "We live among statues of lone heroes. But change comes through collective action." If you read my blog posting yesterday, you know that I most definitely agree!

Getting us to picture one of those statues of a "lone hero," of which we have so many, is a great way to get us to think about the fact - the reality - that Solnit so accurately describes. We have lots of statues of "lone heroes," but the reason for the success of the heroes we immortalize, when their stories are truly told, is almost always the result of "collective action." 

Here is a quote, in Spanish, that Solnit included in her column. I love this quote: 

“Aquí manda el pueblo y el Gobierno obedece.” This translates as “here the people rule and the government obeys.”

Solnit tells us that this was a key motto of the Zapatistas, the Indigenous revolutionaries who rose up in 1994 in southern Mexico and who, says Solnit, "continue to hang on to some autonomy and vision in their villages."

WE are "the government." That is what "self-government" means. That is what I was writing about in this past posting. Self-government is more than a right to vote for one's rulers. 

As always, it's good to be reminded about that! Here, in the United States of America, the people are in charge, and the government obeys! At least - and don't we all know it - that's the way it's supposed to be!

oooOOOooo

We live among statues of lone heroes. But change comes through collective action

Rebecca Solnit

As Cesar Chavez Day becomes Farmworkers Day, we must remember that the hero is the movement.

The way we commemorate history is often – too often – by celebrating an individual with a statue, a place name, a holiday. While some have been torn down – statues of Gen Robert E Lee have given way in some parts of the US to statues of Harriet Tubman – Republicans are trying to reverse the shift in statuary. To that end, the Trump administration recently plunked down a Columbus statue on the White House grounds, a replica of one thrown into the harbor in Baltimore in 2020 as the Black Lives Matter protests addressed racism and colonialism.

Still, maybe the age of individual heroes is fading. This year, Jon Wiener, a retired history professor and current Nation magazine editor, nominated Minneapolis for the Nobel peace prize for its residents’ valor and solidarity in opposing ICE and defending their neighbors. The magazine’s editors wrote: “Through countless acts of courage and solidarity, the people of Minneapolis have challenged the culture of fear, hate, and brutality that has gripped the United States and too many other countries. Their nonviolent resistance has captured the imagination of the nation and the world.” The Nobel is a longshot, but the Twin Cities – both Minneapolis and St Paul – got the John F Kennedy Profile in Courage award “for risking their lives to protect their neighbors and immigrant community members ... with extraordinary courage and resolve.”

This Tuesday, California will for the first time celebrate Farmworkers Day – a holiday declared by the state legislature in a quick pivot after revelations about the farm worker organizer Cesar Chavez’s history of sexual abuse. Maybe we’re beginning to recognize that the hero is often the collective, the movement, the community, and that plucking one person out of the crowd to anoint and celebrate often doesn’t work out for a lot of reasons. Cesar Chavez is only too useful an example: too many people made over into heroes did things that should have disqualified them. But even when the individual in question is irreproachable, most of the time, the world doesn’t get changed by solitary individuals. Sometimes one person as a writer, a preacher, a visionary inspires the many to do the work of changing the world. Sometimes one individual works directly with a group to do that work. Such people often get called leaders, but I think of them as catalysts.

To call someone a leader is at least implicitly to call everyone else a follower, and followers obey, are shepherded and managed, while in so many uprisings and movements, each person chose to be there, and contributed to deciding what exactly would happen. (I grew up in an age of cults, when followers followed their leaders into catastrophe.) The term leader may come from an era when military higher-ups literally led their troops into battle. But most of the best changes of the past several decades didn’t come at the point of a gun. Beyond that, at the heart of most democratic movements are many people taking on responsibilities and participating in making decisions. In this moment when we’re trying to defend democracy, democracy within movements is a must. And maybe democracies are antithetical to heroes, at least heroes as people put on a pedestal and presumed better than the rest of us.

“Aquí manda el pueblo y el Gobierno obedece,” which translates as “here the people rule and the government obeys,” was a key motto of the Zapatistas, the Indigenous revolutionaries who rose up in 1994 in southern Mexico and continue to hang on to some autonomy and vision in their villages. A catalyst is someone with a gift for motivating people and holding the group together, for finding common ground, but you’re not a catalyst unless there’s a population to catalyze into a community or movement. A lot of the heroes we celebrate are part of movements, and it’s a mistake in my eyes to give prizes to individuals who didn’t do it alone (and when they’re environmental or democracy activists in dangerous places, it can put a target on their back). The Nobel peace prize has often in recent decades gone to collectives, including Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties, the World Food Programme and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (with Al Gore).

In the wake of the report on Chavez’s assaults, the United Farm Workers and people who were part of the struggle were quick to say that the hero was the movement, was all the people who marched, picketed, risked, struggled. Chavez’s name was picked in part as a kind of shorthand, as if he was supposed to represent the whole, but when you put up statues and murals and name things after one person, the real history gets lost.

I’ve always thought that lone heroes of the Hollywood action-movie variety give people a mistaken sense of what change looks like and how to do it; they’re mostly musclebound or heavily armed guys whose special talent is face-to-face violence.

You can see that the men in the Trump administration have watched too many of these movies or played too many of these video games: both the Department of Defense’s Pete Hegseth and the FBI’s Kash Patel seemconvinced the people under their command should focus on push-ups and hand-to-hand combat. Patel even got UFC fighters to “train” FBI employees, apparently in the delusion that FBI work consists of macho slugfests, rather than, mostly, the cerebral business of information gathering, while the military requires everything from pilots to data scientists to doctors.

The heroes of Minneapolis engaged in no violence: they faced down heavily armed, faceless invaders in brutally cold conditions, day after day, week after week; they are still delivering groceries to those who can’t leave their homes, ferrying children to school and organizing neighborhood watches. They were hugely impactful in defending their neighbors and their city, and like the people of Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, Memphis and other cities, they inspired those who watched from afar.

While Farmworkers Day has come about through something ugly, it is itself a lovely and timely thing, here in California where most of our farm workers are immigrants of exactly the kind ICE has been persecuting. Perhaps a monument to the unknown farm worker, or rather to the millions of them over the years, would be apt. At least giving them their due and their day is a beginning.

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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/26/rebecca-solnit-if-i-were-a-man

#140 / Orion

  

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The image above was published along with an article about the Orion Constellation, which is visible around the world. Click the link to read about the constellation. 

My blog posting, here, is not about the constellation. I am reacting, instead, to a social media posting by a young man named Orion, a resident of Santa Cruz County, California, which is where I live - and where I have lived since 1961. 

Orion's posting, on a Facebook page maintained by "Santa Cruz Against Runaway Development," discussed our local politics. Here is a slightly truncated version of his commentary (emphasis added): 

My family has been in Santa Cruz since the 30s. I’m 19 and under the ideology that without action there is no progress and without communication there is no action. 

One of the main ways that politicians get around public opinion and remove the ability for pushback is the slow erosion of public spaces and the division of people in general. I wanted to like Ryan Coonerty and Renee Golder [Coonerty is currently running for Mayor in the City of Santa Cruz and Golder is running for reelection to the Santa Cruz City Council], but after doing my own research they are completely influenced by the major development companies working with workbench who are actively destroying the identity of this beautiful town. 

That said. Building housing in high rises is not a bad thing. The way it’s happening is bad. The removal of public voice, opinion, and input while simultaneously ignoring pleas to listen is going to strip Santa Cruz of the very thing that made it special. 

We need infrastructure. It’s a basic support that holds up a city. It sounds backwards if I were to suggest fixing the utilities after building your house so why would that be different here? Well it’s simple, the city and county have failed at their task as public servants in providing basic services to the people of Santa Cruz and I don’t believe electing Ryan Coonerty will solve any problems. 

A local government on a fiscal sense is similar to a non-profit where the money that comes in goes out. That’s a simple way to put it and there much more nuance to it but the city spends and spends on things that it can’t afford. Every time there’s a new tax it puts a burden on the people who run the foundation of this town, the fast food workers, downtown workers, and the owners of those businesses. 

The basic local economy is at stake. These housing projects aren’t affordable for the people working in Santa Cruz and attract remote workers who can afford them which makes the problem worse. 

THE SALES TAX WILL KEEP INCREASING 

They will get less and less money coming into the city, worsening the budget deficit to the point of total collapse of our local economy. 

We need leaders NOT politicians. 

You can’t build a pyramid from the top down. You need a foundation to build from. 

Right now the city is pushing the foundation away. We are only in the beginning of the end and we can stop the end from coming.

I am always happy to see people who want to "make progress," and to do so by way of "action." And "action," of course, almost always does require some kind of effective "communication" before the action is taken, with that action then making the change that brings on "progress." When I talk about "action," of course, writing in a daily blog titled, "We Live In A Political World," I am most usually thinking of "political" action. 

The posting I have copied out, above, got a lot of positive reactions, with many people agreeing with Orion - and a number of those who commented hoping that he would run for political office. In a response to one of those comments, Orion said, in essence, "maybe next time." 

When I first ran for public office, in 1974, I did so after various people asked me to do so. I didn't think up the idea on my own. It's a very good sign when people are asking you to run for office, which is exactly what seems to be happening with Orion. I do want to make a cautionary comment, though. While it's definitely true that we need "leaders," as Orion says, genuine leaders are, by definition, part of a "group." Nowadays, our politics tends to be driven by individuals, who step forward, individually, to run for public office. This is true at every level of our government, and that's really not the best way.

I think it's important to start with the "group," first, not with the "leader." What makes the right kind of politics work is the engagement of various "groups," who are meeting regularly, and in person, and who are working for something that those in the group believe is in the public interest. The paucity of such small "groups" of interested citizens is what concerns me most about our current politics. Self-government isn't advanced by individuals, who individually decide to be "leaders." It is almost always advanced by small groups of those who come together to accomplish some particular public policy objective. 

That's my experience, at least, and I think that's still true!

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#139 / We Want To Get Along Well

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Pictured above is Milly Zhu, a 34-year-old who recently met up with Ana Swanson, who was covering our current president's visit to China for the New York Times. It seems that their meeting was mostly by chance. Zhu works in China in film and TV promotion, and was walking around in a shopping mall in Beijing when she stopped to talk with the New York Times reporter. Here's what Zhu said: 

We don’t want war, we want peace. We want to get along well with the United States, and we want to develop our economy. Only peace can create a better economy.

Another person interviewed by Swanson was Peng Shuiming. When he was asked about our current president's visit, his comment was this: "My impression of him isn't very good; he's quite brutal." Pictures from our current president's recent visit to China can be seen below. Also, as I mentioned in my blog posting yesterday, our current president has also recently issued a so-called "Counterterrorism Strategy" that promises to kill those whom the president believes threaten the United States. Click here to read that statement. 

Now, take a look at the pictures. How could Peng Shuiming have ever gotten such a bad impression of our country?

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/world/asia/trump-china-people-street.html

 

#138 / We Will Kill You

 

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Here is a quote from an article in The Intercept:

The Trump administration’s new official counterterrorism strategy outlines in broad terms who it views as terrorist threats and priority targets, ranging from anti-fascist activists to ISIS and so-called narco-terrorists. The line "We will find you, and we will kill you" appears in the memo. 

Please do click that link just provided, if you'd like to verify the claim. The "we will kill you" promise appears in an official document, immediately above the distinctive signature of our current president. 

If you'd like to read the article in The Intercept, try clicking here.

According to The Intercept, this official promise, made on behalf of all of the citizens of the United States, actually puts U.S. citizens "at risk." I, personally, think that's probably true. When told by someone that he or she is planning to kill you, the temptation is to kill the person who said that first. Note that the statement by our current president does use the word "we," thus promising, on behalf of all of us, that "we" will kill the persons identified.

I do agree that this statement puts U.S. citizens "at risk," but I want to raise a related but slightly different objection to the statement made by our current president. Since the statement, potentially, affects every U.S. citizen, many of whom travel widely in the world, and who are thus exposed to those who might like to kill them, I believe that any such statement (or promise) should have been made, officially, by the United States Congress, and signed by the president only then. 

The president's role in our government, of course, is to serve as our "Chief Executive," which means that our president is assigned the job of carrying out and "executing" the directives enacted by the elected representatives who must first debate what makes sense, before issuing the orders that the "Chief Executive" is then supposed to put into actual effect. 

The failure of our current president to understand this basic principle (and the apparent failure of a majority of members of the U.S. Congress to understand it,) not only puts U.S. citizens "at risk," it threatens what most like to call our "democracy." 

Everybody is aware of this, I think, but it never hurts to reiterate the point, especially when what our current chief executive is doing puts all of us "at risk" of being murdered by those who believe that American citizens, in general, have sworn to hunt them down and kill them first.

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https://theintercept.com/2026/05/15/podcast-trump-counterterrorism-strategy/

#137 / When Cruel Death Surrenders

 

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When the first number comprising the entire number that states your age starts rhyming with the word, "great," you had better start contemplating that "Memento Mori" topic I have advertised from time to time, here in this daily blog of mine. As I do my personal "Memento Mori" contemplation - and I do, and particularly as I go out for one of my walks around town, listening to Bob Dylan, and to those "Memorial Songs" of his that I have amalgamated into a personal playlist - the topic of "death" most certainly comes to mind. 

I, personally, have gotten quite fond of the last verse of Dylan's song, "Changing Of The Guards," which goes as follows: 

Peace will come
With tranquillity and splendor on the wheels of fire
But will bring us no reward when her false idols fall
And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating
Between the King and the Queen of Swords

As I trust we are all aware, there is no doubt that we, each one of us, are going to have to surrender to death. As for the possibility that death itself will surrender, as false idols fall - a possibility that Dylan advertises in his song - I think that we get access to that place of peace, and tranquility, and splendor only by "faith," not "works," to allude to a common theme of religious discussion. 

May peace come to us all (as promised here, in Dylan's song)! 

And may we also, all of us (my wish for anyone who chances upon this blog posting) come, ourselves, to a personal peace! 

oooOOOooo

Changing of the Guards
Written By Bob Dylan

Sixteen years
Sixteen banners united over the field
Where the good shepherd grieves
Desperate men, desperate women divided
Spreading their wings ’neath the falling leaves

Fortune calls
I stepped forth from the shadows, to the marketplace
Merchants and thieves, hungry for power, my last deal gone down
She’s smelling sweet like the meadows where she was born
On midsummer’s eve, near the tower

The cold-blooded moon
The captain waits above the celebration
Sending his thoughts to a beloved maid
Whose ebony face is beyond communication
The captain is down but still believing that his love will be repaid

They shaved her head
She was torn between Jupiter and Apollo
A messenger arrived with a black nightingale
I seen her on the stairs and I couldn’t help but follow
Follow her down past the fountain where they lifted her veil

I stumbled to my feet
I rode past destruction in the ditches
With the stitches still mending ’neath a heart-shaped tattoo
Renegade priests and treacherous young witches
Were handing out the flowers that I’d given to you

The palace of mirrors
Where dog soldiers are reflected
The endless road and the wailing of chimes
The empty rooms where her memory is protected
Where the angels’ voices whisper to the souls of previous times

She wakes him up
Forty-eight hours later, the sun is breaking
Near broken chains, mountain laurel and rolling rocks
She’s begging to know what measures he now will be taking
He’s pulling her down and she’s clutching on to his long golden locks

Gentlemen, he said
I don’t need your organization, I’ve shined your shoes
I’ve moved your mountains and marked your cards
But Eden is burning, either brace yourself for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards

Peace will come
With tranquillity and splendor on the wheels of fire
But will bring us no reward when her false idols fall
And cruel death surrenders with its pale ghost retreating
Between the King and the Queen of Swords

Copyright © 1978 by Special Rider Music

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Swords

#136 / Party Off!

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The photo above, from the Daytona Beach News Journal, accompanied a story about how the community of Smyrna Beach, Florida, was seeking to discourage Spring party-goers, way back in 2023. My own focus, in today's blog posting, is on political parties, not on the kind of parties that are held in various seaside locations (including Santa Cruz, California) as good weather draws crowds of young and old beach lovers to gather in large numbers, usually armed with alcohol, and to behave themselves badly.

In fact, my ruminations here stem from the fact that I recently ran across one of my past blog postings, from July, 2024, which was titled "Party On!" In that past blog entry, which was written after the disastrous demonstration, in a televised debate, that our then-president Biden was almost certainly not going to prevail against the challenge facing him from then past-president Trump, I suggested to the grandees of the Democratic Party that they should "use some of their money to assist working class voters, Latinos and others, to build an organization that can deliver for the working class this November." 

Let's eliminate "Top-Down" party politics; that was the essence of my message. That is still good advice, in my opinion. That's still what I think! 

This current blog posting is titled, as you can see, "Party Off!" I am once again suggesting (as I also did yesterday) that our political involvements should not, ideally, be initiated and solely mediated by our political parties. This is a suggestion that I have made rather frequently, going back quite a long time, as I found when I reviewed my past thinking:

#284 / The Crisis Of American Democracy - October 10, 2020

#335 / Unity, Unity, Unity - December 1, 2021

#244 / "Typical (Put Political Party Here) Bullshit" - August 31, 2022

#211 / Common Enemy - Common Cause - July 30, 2023

#343 / "Both Parties" (And What We Do Next) - December 8, 2024

#160 / An American Party - June 9, 2025

Many believe that our political choices are two: "Red" or "Blue," "Conservative" or "Liberal," "Republican" or "Democratic." That perspective, I think, which promotes party polarization, is the main cause of the kind of political constipation that is so horribly evident in the United States Congress, and that blocks effective action by our elected representatives. Effective representation of the diversity of this nation demands discussion, debate, and compromise. The kind of polarized politics presented to us by both political parties is effectively preventing our system of democratic self-government from operating in the way it is supposed to. 

Policy debate, not party-line power struggles, is what we need to promote - at least that's what we need to promote if we want to be able effectively to confront our challenges, and to realize our opportunities. So, "Party Off" is my suggestion!

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https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/local/volusia/2023/02/15/new-smyrna-beach-proposes-permanent-youth-curfew-ahead-of-spring-break/69906770007/

#135 / Read My T-Shirt!

 

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That's Rob Sand, pictured. He is currently serving as Iowa's State Auditor, but he is running for Governor. According to The New York Times, Sand has Iowa's Republicans both "nervous" and "worried." The "worried" description comes from the hardcopy version of the headline to the article I've linked. The "nervous" description is what you'll find when you go online to read that article.

Personally, what caught my attention as I paged through The Times on Saturday, May 8th, was the T-Shirt that Sand is wearing, as he is depicted in the picture above. I especially liked the first part:

 BLUER. 

REDDER.

I am REALLY tired of people thinking that "politics" is all about making a binary choice between "Red" and "Blue," and "Blue" and "Red." There are usually very real differences between those who run for office as "Republicans" and those who run as "Democrats," but when you want to "talk politics," and decide which candidate to vote for, talk about the differences, not about those party "colors," or those party titles. I was very fortunate that my personal involvement in politics, as an elected official in Santa Cruz County, California, for twenty years, was always as a "non-partisan" candidate and as a "non-partisan" local official. I was involved in LOTS of debates about "differences," but on the policy merits not on some "party" basis.

Real self-government, emphatically, is not about whether a candidate is "Redder," and more "Republican," or "Bluer," and more "Democratic," than the other choices that might be available. Partisan polarization, which has helped lead us into our current political situation, is absolutely the wrong way to go about the task of self-government. 

I am not sure that trying to differentiate on the basis of "Truer" and "Better" is exactly the best way to do it, either, but as I think about that "Redder" / "Bluer" dichotomy, the warnings provided in that long-ago Bob Dylan song come to mind: "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." 

Click that link just provided to read the lyrics. Click this link to listen to Bob Dylan sing the song. There are lots of "warnings" provided in Dylan's lyrics, and here's one of them: 

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him

Is that clear? Maybe not, really! Dylan is nothing if not "poetic" in his way of making a point, but those who pursue the "Red" or the "Blue," as a way to achieve their political goals, are never going to get there. Like Dylan says, "God bless them!"

 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/us/rob-sand-iowa-governor-democrat.html

#134 / I Believe In The Impossible

 

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oooOOOooo

CONFLICT PROVEN

FRONTLINE READY

AEVEX designs and delivers autonomous precision strike systems to dominate the modern battlespace. Proven in conflict and frontline ready, AEVEX engineers to need, delivers at speed, and enables the United States and its allies to thrive in contested and denied environments. AEVEX. Faster. Farther, Forward.

oooOOOooo

A full-page advertisement for AEVEX ran in the Friday, April 17, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal. I am talking about the hardcopy version of the paper that was delivered onto my front walkway sometime in the early morning hours. 

I wanted to find a copy of that advertisement, and to paste it into this blog posting, but I couldn't find it online. The picture I have provided, from the AEVEX website, is only a pale imitation of the picture used in the ad, but you can probably get the idea. Basically, AEVEX builds and deploys drone killers, with a big, omnivorous "eye" at the front, the better to track you down and kill you (if you are chosen as a target). 

The text, above, at the very top of this blog posting, is the actual text from the advertiserment I am writing about. As you can see, AEVEX says its drones are "frontline ready," which means ready to kill you (if you are chosen as a target). The advertisement assumes that the reader will identify with whoever is deploying the killer drones that AEVEX builds, those "autonomous precision strike systems," as the company calls them. Funny, though, I found myself identifying with the persons whom AEVEX promises will be tracked down and killed, and did not feel very much aligned with those doing the killing. Investors, though, may not see things the way I do, at least according to an article in the April 18-19, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal. According to the news story I have just linked, AEVEX stock "took off," and rose 35% in it debut on the New York Stock Exchange, that debut occurring on the same day that AEVEX ran its full-page ad. 

I was an antiwar activist at the time of the War In Vietnam, and I personally refused induction into the armed forces. My antiwar sentiments have not diminished. They have grown. Whole cities are being turned into rubble - homes, schools, and hospitals gone. Our current president is quoted as promising to extinguish an "entire civilization." 

Bob Dylan's song, "Masters of War," pretty much sums up my position on companies like AEVEX. Click the link for the lyrics. Dylan's song is a pretty robust rejection of the idea that we should be celebrating the corporations that are building the latest edition of our death machines, and here's my thought. Along with global warming, income inequality, massive environmental pollution, and species extermination, let's get rid of nuclear weapons and remote control death-dealing machines, too.  

I know. I know. That's a pretty tall order, but to refer to Bob Dylan one more time: "I believe in the impossible; you know that I do." 

When "the impossible" becomes "the necessary," it's time to make it happen!

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Image Credit:

https://aevex.com/

#133 / Such A Mistake

  

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An article in the March 10, 2026, edition of The New York Times reports that plans are afoot to launch a "Space Mirror" that would "bring daylight to the nighttime." You can click right here for the article, and I am informed that there won't be any paywall to defeat your effort to learn about this newest high-tech plan to turn Planet Earth into a human-built environment. After all - don't you agree? - "night" is just plain inconvenient. With this "space mirror" idea, we can bring sunlight to places on our planet that would otherwise be shrouded in nighttime darkness.

My "Two Worlds" hypothesis postulates that our "human world" is constructed within a "World that God created." We do, ourselves - and there isn't really any doubt about this - build the world in which we most immediately live. One term that describes that human world is "civilization." 

Ultimately, though, whatever humans think up and then construct turns out to be completely dependent on the "Natural World" that came before us, and before any of our efforts to construct a "human world" within its confines. Not to understand this is a really, really big mistake. 

[Think "Global Warming" if you want an example of just how big our mistakes can be.]

That article I cited in the first paragraph indicates that we continue to make the mistake of thinking that we can do anything we want to. Our job is not to start trying to "run" Planet Earth, or to replace it. Our job is to find good ways to live, happily, and together, in the Natural World that is absolutely not the product of human action. 

Those humans who have been out in space seem to agree with this perspective!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/climate/space-mirror-satellite-solar.html

#132 / Sasse's Suggestions (And Mine)

 

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Pictured is former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. If you click that link to his name, you'll get some information about Sasse, provided by Wikipedia. Here's a quick excerpt, though, to save you the click: 

Benjamin Eric Sasse was born February 22, 1972. He represented Nebraska in the United States Senate from 2015 to 2023. He is a member of the Republican Party. A critic of Donald Trump, Sasse is one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial. Sasse resigned from the Senate in January 2023 to become president of the University of Florida, and he resigned his position at the University in July 2024, citing his wife's health issues. In December 2025, Sasse announced that he had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.

Sasse is now writing opinion columns for The Wall Street Journal. Click the following link to read one of his columns, published in the Saturday/Sunday, May 9-10, 2026, edition of the paper. Sasse's column is titled, "Habits For Humanity In The Age of AI." It's a "gift article," which I believe means that no paywall will prevent your efforts to find out what Sasse has to say, even if you're a non-subscriber. 

Among other things, Sasse says: (1) We're lonely; (2) We don't trust our institutions; and (3) We don't trust one another. Nonetheless, Sasse also says that "this is an incredibly exciting moment to live." The challenge, Sasse says, is "how to live with virtue and technology when technology tends to erode virtue and place and human texture." The proper response, Sasse says, is to "cultivate habits, community and a revivification of place."

It is encouraging to me that Sasse is up front about the difficulties we face, as we try to navigate our current situation. He is suggesting four starter habits: (1) Reading; (2) Hard Work; (3) Tech Sabbaths (and he doesn't mean a weekly worship of technology and its advocates, either; he means "abstentions from tech"). Finally, Sasse is recommending: (4) Serious Travel.

I think that what Sasse has to say is worth thinking about, and that his suggestions are pretty good. This is why I have provided you with his column in The Journal in the form of that "gift article." Let me just pile on with my own favorites, in addition to Sasse's suggestions: (1) Find Some Friends; (2) Get Involved In "Politics," along with those friends! This is really what we need to do, if we want to indulge ourselves in the satisfactions of "self-government."

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https://www.facebook.com/sassefornebraska/

#131 / Agentic?

 

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The New York Times Magazine has spotlighted the word "agentic" in an article that appeared in its April 12, 2026, edition. Here is a link to the article, which was authored by Nitsuh Abebe. The article is fairly short, and no paywall should prevent you from reading it in its entirety. Just click that link provided.

The word "agentic," according to Abebe's article in The Times, is being used as a way to talk about "having agency - possessing the capacity to influence and control outcomes through assertive individual action." Abebe cites to the Oxford English Dictionary in providing this definition. It is worth noting that this definition does come from a list of "new entries" into the OED. Abebe observes that Silicon Valley aspirants are "eager to apply it to themselves," sometimes talking about "being agentic people," or applauding the "Highly Agentic Individual," the "kind of person who simply acts, assertively, to shape the world, rather than seeking approval or meekly following the herd (emphasis added)." 

Abebe is thinking about those who are involved in "high tech," but see if the defintion of the "agentic individual" that I just provided doesn't remind you of someone who isn't, but wishes he were, a "king." 

As Abebe notes, most Americans remain connected to a more traditional meaning of the word "agent" than the definition that emphasizes the "agent's" ability to act without seeking approval. In fact, as Abebe says, "we're used to the agent as representative - someone who acts on behalf of." 

Right! Absolutely right! Almost everyone who is reading this blog posting (presuming that somebody is actually doing that) will undoubtedly remember that it has been our idea that the United States government is a "representative" democracy. Our elected officials are "agents," responsible to us.

My suggestion is the following: Despite the "new definition" in the OED, let's go back to our traditional understanding of how our elected officials (our "agents") are supposed to act. They are supposed to do what we want. 

And what if they don't? 

We get rid of them, remember? The time is coming to do just that, in both June and November. Wouldn't it be nice to have a Congress that took seriously its obligation to act on behalf of those whom it represents, instead of doing nothing, as millions protest that our current president is trying to turn himself into a "King"?

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/magazine/agentic-ai-agency-tech.html