A new Gallup poll shows that socialism is less popular than free enterprise and capitalism by large margins. Although they like the idea of equality and safety nets, they dislike the inefficiency, government control, and disincentive to work.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote, “Democratic primary voters are not playing it safe, when that’s what they really should be doing if they want to ensure that Trump is blocked from implementing his authoritarian agenda.”

In some cases, that seems to be holding true. In others, not so much. For instance, you probably have not heard about how in another Democratic primary this week, Wesley Bell, a moderate congressman, defeated former representative Cori Bush in Missouri for the second time. And there are other moderate Democrats like Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Jon Ossoff in Georgia who won their primaries and seem ready to cruise to general election victories. Ossoff is even picking up Republican endorsements.

Two things can be true at once. The Democrats do have a socialist problem, but they also have a strong moderate faction. The big picture is that Democrats are showing some diversity of thought and nominating candidates of different ideologies in different regions. Only about a third of Democrats identify as democratic socialists.

Contrast that with Republicans, where Trump approval is still at 80 percent, even though only about 20 percent of the party is enthusiastic about the remainder of Trump’s term. On the surface, that seems like some major cognitive dissonance, but I suspect that they don’t blame Trump for his failures. As others have said, Trump can never fail; he can only be failed.

But the Democratic problems don’t necessarily mean that Republicans have clear sailing for the midterms. For starters, they have their own albatrosses. Democrats dumped Graham Platner, better late than never, but Republicans are sticking by Max Miller, an Ohio congressman accused of illegal drug use and domestic violence that includes throwing hot water on his wife, threatening her with a gun, and physical abuse of their two-year-old daughter.

Republicans have also given Democrats ammunition to fight back on the socialist label. For example, a sound bite this week that accused oil companies of “making too much money” from the Iran war came from Donald Trump rather than democratic socialists.

"[It's] too much money. You're surprised? I'm saying it. I'll say it loud and clear," the president added.

Even more damaging, the US government is now a shareholder in 30 private companies, up from zero prior to Trump. In some cases, the government has a controlling interest in these companies.

On Thursday, Trump told reporters, “We’ll have a big percentage of the [computer] chip business by the time I leave office,” before once again casting doubt upon whether he plans to leave office in 2029. What could go wrong with government central planning and control of the computer chip industry?

By definition, socialism is “governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods,” so by definition the Republican Party is now a more successful socialist organization than the party of Bernie Sanders and AOC.

To make matters worse, Trump’s socialism comes with the things that Americans don’t like, such as government control and inefficiencies, and not the things they do, such as free education and healthcare. As someone pointed out, Republicans made a long-term strategic error by labeling popular free government services as socialist.

In attacking socialism from Democrats, the vice president is now saying that the “last forty years of bipartisan economic policy has failed.” For those of you doing the math at home, that means that JD Vance is disavowing everything back to 1986. That includes the largest economic expansion in world history, the Reagan boom of the 1980s and 1990s, not to mention admitting that Trump’s first term was an economic failure. Vance’s statement is both historically and economically ignorant.

Vance goes on to defend Trump’s economic policies, which include protectionism and the aforementioned socialist takeover of a growing number of businesses. Vance credits Trump with saving American manufacturing and “making it possible to own a home and have a family,” but manufacturing jobs have continued a 70-year decline under Trump (the culprit is automation; manufacturing output over the same period) and affordability is a major issue this year because prices are rising thanks in large part to Trump’s policies of tariffs, trade wars, and energy crises sparked by literal wars. Home ownership has declined in Trump’s current term.

The state of the economy is illustrated by the recent online debate about whether it is possible to feed a family of eight burritos for $20.. It may technically be possible, although probably not with meat, but when the party in power is arguing that consumers need to cut back and be more savvy shoppers, it’s an election red flag. That’s especially true when the party in question promised lower prices.

The Republican attacks on democratic socialism are also a bit disingenuous. In Wisconsin, Francesca Hong’s campaign filings show that she has spent exactly zero on television ads in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Instead, Hong’s campaign is being boosted by Republican ads attacking her despite the fact that she hasn’t won the nomination.

This tactic can work by elevating an easier-to-beat opponent, but it can also backfire. Hillary’s campaign boosted Donald Trump in 2016, a decision that the entire party has long since come to regret.

Socialism rising in the Democratic party is not a good thing. I’m hoping that more Democratic voters choose electable moderates over DSA radicals, but the current state of the nation and the highly unpopular policies of Donald Trump and the Republican Party make it likely that radical Democratic candidates are not only going to get nominated, but elected.

The socialist surge in the Democratic Party won’t wipe out the Democrats’ chances in the midterms, but it might reduce the margin of victory. At the same time, the New Democrat majority is likely to be more leftist due to the DSA influence.

Trump’s incompetence and corruption are fueling Republican popularity that is making it possible for democratic socialists to rise to prominence. Republican dysfunction may end up ushering in a larger socialist faction among the Democrats because the alternative is an authoritarian nationalistic socialism from Republicans.

Horseshoe theory is a real thing. The answer to preserving our republic and economy is not to veer to either left or right, but for bipartisan moderates to unite across the aisle and reject the radicals of both extremes.

BIRTH CITIZENSHIP II: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO Apparently believing that the Supreme Court was just fooling, Trump signed new Executive Orders limiting with the aim of limiting birthright citizenship. Upon closer inspection, however, the Orders seem more a restatement of existing law.

DETAINED MILITARY FAMILIES The AP reports that dozens of military spouses and parents have been arrested and detained by ICE.

CHRISTIAN HYPOCRISY HURTS A recent survey of Gen Z adults by the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Research Institute found that half of respondents said that Christian support of Trump makes them less likely to church.

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Not thinking clearly, she decided to bring evidence to President Trump, forgetting the number one rule in the West Wing: who cares about facts? But she had a backup plan: blame Doug Burgum. After the tense meeting, which Secretary of the Interior Burgum also attended, Trump told reporters he was “not happy” with Pirro and “I haven’t made a determination” of her future.

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I think her future is somewhere between being fired by a Truth Social post and being smeared to the point of death threats and deciding to walk away.

But listen, as I told our Dispatch Junto Atlanta group a few weeks ago: if the Reflecting Pool is our biggest problem, then I guess we have solved everything else. But to Trump, everything is his biggest problem, when people are not unfailingly loyal to his every whim. Few escape the crucible of his giant powered screwdriver. And to the screwdrivers, everyone is a screw (or will be screwed).

Also, let’s talk about Michigan. That state already has a reputation for swinging both rural gun-loving libertarian molon labe and also intersectional progressive anti-Semitic leftist. It all depends on where in Michigan. But the voting power resides in the cities, which appear to have powered Abdul El-Sayed, an anti-Israel intersectional progressive far-leftist, to the Democratic Senate nomination. He may not get 50 percent plus one, but Michigan’s primaries run on a plurality rule, meaning the most votes wins, period. The race is still close, but El-Sayed is ahead by more than a percentage point with > 95 percent of the vote counted.

What did we think was going to happen in Michigan?

If I wanted to construct a formula for turning Israel into a massive election issue, with those who oppose the Jewish state motivated and powerful, I think I’d just do everything Donald Trump has done. He has stood by Israel, and done whatever they asked, appearing to be Netanyahu’s toady at times. Then he pushes Netanyahu to support his harebrained schemes like the Board of Peace, which absolutely nobody thinks will work. Then he attacks Iran and puts the U.S. into a humiliating and impossible war, with the world at stake.

The easiest election message is “blame Israel.” And both the far-left and the far-right have consumed it like catnip to a feline. On the left, the “blame Israel” crowd causes people like Zohran Mamdani to be mayor of New York City. In Michigan, it causes people like Abdul El-Sayed to become Senators.

This was all perfectly predictable.

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“Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’ Then I said, ‘Here am I. Send me.’”

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Image credit: Facebook screenshot

Many saw it and felt emboldened or inspired. Many felt a sense of patriotism. But if your first response as a believer was a surge of “national pride” rather than a desire to examine the passage in its context, it may be time to examine yourself, Christian.

I know some of you may already feel that little burn in your chest. Perhaps it is conviction. Maybe you just don’t like accountability. Now you must choose how you respond. You may become angry. You may want to type a long strawman argument in the comment section. But hear me out first, friend.

The change from “Department of Defense” to “Department of War” is not lost on me. Words matter. They communicate purpose, identity, and mission. As Christians, we should care deeply about such distinctions. There is a profound moral difference between defending the innocent and waging war.

The old Gadsden understanding was simple. Do not tread on me. Defend your neighbor when attacked. That is a far cry from preemptive violence based on words, endless wars, or military actions that leave innocent men, women, and children dead because intelligence proved false, incomplete, or manipulated. We should never become so desensitized that those who bear the Image of God are reduced to “collateral.”

Before anyone misunderstands me, and as I have made a point to explain in depth previously, this isn’t a rejection of civil government or legitimate national defense. I highly respect men and women who serve honorably. My family lineage is full of military all the way back to the Revolution. Yes, there are records. In fact, one is buried in Andersonville, GA where he died a POW. Scripture absolutely recognizes the God-given role of governing authorities in maintaining civil order and restraining evil (see Romans 13).

That is not the issue.

Please don’t argue that straw man.

The issue is the misuse of God’s Word and the point at which actions cease to be true defense and instead become acts of terror against those who bear the Image of God. Defense protects the innocent. Terror spreads fear through violence, often falling upon those who neither chose the conflict nor posed an immediate threat. Children. Families. Churches. Schools. These are not merely statistics. They are human beings created in the Image of God.

The interests of political elites, intelligence agencies, military strategists, weapons and technology manufacturers, or foreign nations do not automatically equate with righteousness simply because Scripture is quoted alongside them. No government, including our own, possesses divine authority to redefine good and evil or cloak its monstrous actions in the language of God’s calling.

There is another important issue that should concern every true, liberty-minded American, whether Christian or not. A federal agency has no business invoking sacred Scripture to promote its mission, justify its actions, or inspire military service abroad. The government is not the church, and the church is not the government. Scripture was not entrusted to the state as a recruitment slogan, a public relations campaign, or a means of placing divine approval upon an earthly power’s actions.

Many Christians would immediately recognize the problem if an administration posted verses from the Qur’an to inspire military service, war, or justify the actions of a federal agency. Would you not? The standard shouldn’t change merely because the text being used is one you personally hold sacred. In fact, because we believe the Bible is the Word of God, we should be even more disturbed when the state appropriates it for purposes it was never given to serve.

The state bears the sword. The Church bears the Gospel. Those are not the same calling.

Many people recognize the phrase, “Here am I. Send me,” because it became embedded in the modern military imagination through the film “Fury.” But Hollywood is not the context of Isaiah. Scripture is.

Isaiah was not volunteering to fight the wars of an earthly kingdom. He was answering the call of the living God to proclaim His Word to a rebellious people, fully aware that he would be rejected. In fact, immediately after saying, “Here am I. Send me,” the Lord tells him to proclaim judgment to a people who would hear but refuse to understand (Isaiah 6:9-13). His mission was not military conquest. It was faithful proclamation. It’s use in this way is blasphemous.

The broader message of Isaiah makes the misuse even more apparent. The same prophet declares, “They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they learn war” (Isaiah 2:4). Throughout the book, Isaiah repeatedly warns against trusting horses, chariots, military strength, and political alliances instead of trusting in God. Yet one verse is removed from that message and repurposed by those in power to support an entirely different one.

This is not an isolated example. I recently wrote about Genesis 12:3, which is perhaps one of the most frequently misquoted passages in modern American evangelicalism. I won’t revisit that here because this is about Isaiah, but it illustrates the same problem. Not only is Genesis 12:3 routinely removed from its covenantal and biblical context, but words are also added to the text to make it say something it never says. We should never become comfortable adding to His Word or removing it from its context simply because it supports a cause we already believe in.

This is how deception works. False teaching rarely begins by denying Scripture outright. More often, it begins by quoting Scripture selectively. It isolates verses from their context until God’s Word appears to endorse whatever ideology, movement, or institution people already wish to defend. That has always been one of the defining methods of cults. They teach people to trust approved interpretations rather than faithfully examining the Scriptures for themselves.

Jesus warned that false christs and false prophets would arise and, if possible, mislead even the elect (Matthew 24:24). That warning should humble every one of us. If even the elect are warned to be on guard against deception, none of us should assume we are beyond being misled. The safeguard is not patriotism, political identity, denominational tradition, or charismatic personalities, no matter how much money and influence they possess. The safeguard is abiding in Christ, rightly handling the Word of Truth, and testing everything by the Scriptures.

Sadly, much of the Church in the West has become so intertwined with worldly power that many no longer recognize the difference between allegiance to Christ and allegiance to the kingdoms of the earth. Rather than standing as a prophetic witness that calls every people and every government to repentance, too many have become comfortable baptizing the ambitions of earthly power with isolated Bible verses.

Scripture tells us, “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). It also reveals a beastly kingdom that demands the loyalty, fear, and devotion that belong to God alone. At its heart, the beast is power without restraint, authority without humility, and strength divorced from self-giving Love. It seeks to justify itself rather than submit itself to God.

When the Church ceases to examine the state in the Light of Scripture and instead uses Scripture to sanctify the ambitions of the state, it risks becoming the religious voice of the kingdoms of this world rather than the prophetic voice of the Kingdom of God.

Christ reveals an entirely different Kingdom. The kingdoms of this world preserve themselves through the sword. Christ conquers through the Cross. Earthly kingdoms seek domination. Christ lays down His Life. One is built upon power. The other is built upon Love.

Jesus did not say, “My Kingdom is of this world.” He said, “My Kingdom is NOT of this world” (John 18:36). That Truth should shape how we read every headline, every political speech, every sermon, and every government post that invokes the Scriptures.

Our first allegiance is not to a country’s flag, a political party, a military force, or especially a politician.

Our allegiance is to Christ, who is The Truth.

No, this post by the “Department of War” does not project patriotism or strength. It reveals something far more sobering than its ignorance. It reveals how easily earthly power cloaks itself in the language of God.

That is precisely why Christians must exercise proper discernment. The misuse of Scripture is rarely obvious to those whose loyalties have already been captured. It sounds righteous. It feels patriotic. It stirs emotion. That is precisely why it is so effective. But when God’s Word is detached from its context to sanctify the ambitions of earthly kingdoms, it no longer points to Christ. It points toward power.

Understand that the whole world is watching. Many are beginning to see what much of the Western evangelical Church has refused to acknowledge for far too long. Believers, do not allow patriotism, political loyalty, misguided fear, or years of propaganda to blind you to what is happening before our very eyes. The evidence is abundant. There are no excuses, friends.

Pray for illumination. Ask God to remove every idol, every prejudice, every erroneous presupposition, and every allegiance that competes with Christ. Ask Him for the humility to let His Spirit correct you instead of twisting His Word, as the evil one does, to justify you in your pride.

Instead, do what the Bereans did. Read the passages. Read the chapters. Read the books. See the evidence. Look at the history. Test everything. Receive the whole counsel of God. The Truth has nothing to fear from careful examination.

The Church was never called to be the religious voice of the kingdoms of this world. She was called to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to call every nation, including our own, especially our own, to repentance.

May we never confuse the voice of the Shepherd with the voice of the state. Please listen to His voice.

Repent.

Originally posted to Facebook by Ben Kiger, Contact him at; https://www.facebook.com/ben.kiger?

Reposted with permission.

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To hear the Trump Administration tell it, Iran is like the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” The erstwhile knight unsuccessfully fights King Arthur, losing one limb after the other, but he never gives up, asserting, “Tis but a scratch.”

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I’ve lost count of how many times the Trump Administration has said that Iran was defeated and its military destroyed. Somehow, like the Black Knight, Iran fights on.

So what are the Iranians thinking? They apparently don’t realize that they are destroyed and defeated.

One possibility is that the regime is suicidal. This is the view of many Republican Iran hawks. Going way back to 2009, I read several books about Muslim theology and the Twelfth Imam, a belief that is similar to Christian endtimes theology in many ways. I described the Twelver sect in my blog at the time and related how then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seemed to believe that these prophecies were about to be fulfilled. Ahmadinejad, by the way, is apparently who the Trump Administration had picked to lead post-regime change Iran.

The regime clearly doesn’t value the lives of their citizens, but that doesn’t mean it is suicidal. In fact, the regime seems to be more clear eyed about what it can realistically accomplish than Trump and Netanyahu. In fact, I think that Iran has Trump right where it wants him.

Iran knows that Trump desperately needs to end the war for two reasons. First and most obviously, the midterms are coming and the war is unpopular. A war that drags on until Election Day would be one more strike against Republicans in a year that already has the momentum moving against them.

Perhaps more important, Trump started the war unilaterally and consequently has very limited authority to fight it. The clock has already run out and been restarted on the War Powers Act, a move of dubious constitutionality in itself, and war-limiting bills have passed the House, even with its Republican majority. If the war drags on into the new Congress, Trump may well find his war funding cut off.

As I wrote back in March, Trump has to do something to claim a victory, but Iran just has to survive. Iran’s regime is winning by continuing to exist and denying Donald Trump the ability to declare victory and stop fighting.

Like Rocky Balboa at the hands of someone in every installment of the series, Iran just won’t stay down for the count. When Trump declares a unilateral ceasefire, it is often Iran that triggers a resumption of hostilities, like a battered, bloody boxer that rises off the mat to take yet another shot at the champ.

And more like Rocky than the Black Knight, the damage inflicted on Iran seems to be overestimated. The proof of that statement is that Iran is still able to inflict damage on US bases in the region and neighboring countries.

Trump is caught in a trap. Like the proverbial monkey with his hand inside the log (or the tar baby from Southern folklore), Trump can’t let go, but he also can’t get the prize. He’s stuck.

He can continue bombing “until morale improves,” but the air campaign isn’t doing anything except expend ordnance at this point, and US ordnance stockpiles are becoming depleted, threatening our abilities not only in Iran but elsewhere. The only way to topple the regime is a ground invasion. It’s painfully obvious that Trump won’t do this for the two reasons cited earlier.

Trump could also aim lower and shift his war goal to reopening the strait that was open before he started bombing. The problem there is that Iran seems to still have a plentiful supply of drones and missiles to shoot at ships. To end the Iranian threat to shipping would probably require occupying the whole country because the range of these weapons is several hundred miles. At that point, regime change is back on the table.

And what if Trump does overcome his TACO tendencies and order in the infantry? Keep in mind that Iran has been supplying drones to Russians fighting in Ukraine. There are probably many members of the regime who would welcome the chance to fight a guerrilla war against Americans from Iran’s cities and mountains. In short order, we’d be seeing drone videos of American soldiers being stalked by the devices, just as we’ve watched Russian soldiers dying at the hands of Ukrainian drones.

Escalating the war with Iran could also have further unintended consequences. Houthi rebels in Yemen, allies of the Iranian regime, could move off the sidelines to blockade a second trade route, the Bab el-Mandeb strait that accesses the Red Sea. Opening a second theater would further strain US resources.

Going further, an invasion would be incredibly bloody, and as in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, a lot of the country would see us as occupiers rather than liberators. Iran would become another endless war unless Congress pulls the plug.

And then there’s the oil. Even during the ceasefires, Hormuz shipping didn’t return to anywhere near normal. As a result, world oil stockpiles are being depleted. Trump has kept a lid on gas prices at home by tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but per the Energy Information Agency, he has reached the end of his ability to do so. As of the end of July, the reserve is at its lowest point since 1982 with only a two-week supply left.

Trump has also gamed oil markets by fighting a weekend war. A pattern has emerged of threats and bombing late in the week with ceasefires breaking out before markets open on Monday.

An additional risk to escalation is that if Iran inflicts further damage on Persian Gulf oil facilities, the energy crisis would be exacerbated. The Saudis reportedly raised this concern before Trump backed down from his most recent threats of escalation.

Time is on Iran's side in almost every respect. Trump is facing a impending election, growing discontent in Congress, and a looming world energy crisis.

Again, Iran just has to survive. With the strait mostly closed, world economies are slowly being strangled by the lack of oil and rising energy prices. Trump has to somehow turn on the oil spigot again… without expanding the war. That’s a tall order, and it comes with an Iranian veto.

Donald Trump started this war, but he can’t end it. Iran is unwilling to accept his peace terms, even when he essentially offers an American surrender. That’s why Trump is stuck in the loop of bomb-threaten-cave-repeat.

He has no cards.

REFLECTING POOL The DOJ dropped the charges against an Olympian and others accused of vandalizing the reflecting pool, saying the pool’s problems were the result of shoddy workmanship. Ever committed to the bit, Trump insisted on social media that the damage was caused by vandals.

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I am reading Richard Feynman’s collection of anecdotes and got to the part where Dr. Feynman, who we know know as a Nobel prize-winning physicist who taught at Caltech for decades, was teaching for a summer in Brazil. This was back in the early 1950s. He wrote of a speech he delivered there (not the one in 1963) in which he said “The main purpose of my talk is to demonstrate to you that no science is being taught in Brazil!”

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What Feynman meant was that the physics and other hard science classes being taught in Brazil emphasized memorization and learning by rote. Students could accurately parrot back the definitions of various theorems, mathematical constructs, and proofs, but no real experiments, understanding of principles, or how those apply to the real world was being taught. This applies to any subject—students learning the classics could recite Socrates but not understand what he was really talking about. It was about the dumbing down of the world through education.

I offered this thought to my neighbor: there are, I believe, the same number, or ratio, of curious, critical-thinking individuals in the world as there always has been. It’s just there’s a lot more “world” of study and learning than there has ever been, and the temptation to be intellectually lazy is much greater than it has ever been because access to information is nearly total. I don’t think we are any more dismayed than Feynman observing Brazilian college students who can’t grasp principles of physics while being able to correctly answer every question in their textbooks and examinations.

The problem is not the “dumbing of the world,” but the moral hazards our kids are facing, which are so pernicious that most hardly realize they are even facing moral hazards, never mind being consumed by them. I want to talk about three of these. I don’t claim that there are only three, or even that my choice of three is the same as yours, or others more educated than I am. But I hope you’ll agree that these are important to identify and, as the older generation handing off the world to our younger wards, equip them to fight against the hazards.

Let me also cut ahead to address the argument that I’m claiming “the sky is falling,” like Chicken Little, or succumbing to a moral panic, like Tipper Gore and violent video games. I think there’s actual value in video games: most of the military’s drone operators got their skills by playing. I also think there’s value in some of the technology enabling the moral hazards; my issue is how this technology is being employed.

The first moral hazard is social media and the proliferation of short-form videos that literally anyone can make and everyone can view. It’s like swimming through a crowd where everyone can get 30 seconds of your time, but multiplied by millions, and curated by algorithms designed to keep you swimming as long as possible. Doomscrolling through shorts, reels, and memes is a giant waste of time, energy, and potential. It is also a source of depression, especially among women.

Addiction to short videos has definite negative neurobiological effects, diminishing concentration, memory, and mental health. Dr. Dirk Stemper’s website, Psychology Berlin, describes the process:

When watching short videos, your brain releases massive amounts of dopamine, a neurotransmitter responsible for motivation, reward and pleasure. Every new video, every transition, every unexpected piece of content triggers a small dopamine rush. The problem is that these repeated dopamine spikes lead to desensitisation. Your neurons adapt and require increasingly stronger stimuli to achieve the same satisfaction. Everyday activities, such as a conversation, a book, or a quiet meal, suddenly seem boring and unsatisfying.

Since companies like ByteDance (TikTok’s owner), Google (YouTube), and Facebook (Instagram) derive their profits from the number of views, it is not in those companies’ interests to tune down the algorithm, making it less addictive. They have engaged limits and other restrictions, allowing parents to control younger children’s accounts, but this does not apply to older teens or college-age students. And I don’t believe the giant media conglomerates are really interested in the effectiveness of these controls. They’ve introduced them disingenuously in order to satisfy regulators and angry parents.

To me, this is like tobacco companies in the 1970s and 80s putting larger and larger warning labels on cigarettes packs, while simultaneously spending enormous amounts of money on research to make their products more addictive and easier to hook new smokers. The counterincentives are too powerful to make actual effective efforts to remove a moral and health hazard.

Our younger kids growing up in an environment where, by sixth grade, most kids have their own smartphone, and chat groups, memes, and Instagram posts are ubiquitous, don’t understand they are influenced by a moral hazard, dumbing them down, increasing isolation, and addicting them to the dopamine hits from short form videos, inability to focus, and loss of concentration, since even when they are paying attention, some part of their brain is always thinking of endless scrolling. Efforts to remove devices from classrooms are laudable, but they don’t address the core issue of doing life chained to a little screen in your pocket, and the deleterious effects of that habit.

If I were king, I’d ban them in toto.

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The second moral hazard is the use of AI to power education, research, and daily tasks. Now I’m not a Chicken Little about generative AIs and LLMs. I use them on a daily basis. They are very useful. But only in specific use cases. They don’t really help learning unless the person using them is an autodidact. Going back to my first premise, the ratio of autodidacts—self taught, curious people who crave understanding on their own terms—to the general public has not changed since ancient days. I believe this, that for every Feynman, there’s a thousand, or ten thousand Homer Simpson’s. This means that only a small number of people who use AIs use them exclusively to genuinely improve their understanding of things. Everyone else is using AIs as a shortcut to get an answer.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

If I can use an AI to design something that would normally take weeks in just a few hours, or to flesh out something I’m working on, or to advise on a specific circumstance at work, that’s a win. I don’t fully trust AIs, and I think anyone trusting them as agentic beings, able to manage their accounts, money, or corporate data, is on the precipice of being found a fool. As a cybersecurity subject matter expert, I can tell you the biggest threat under discussion at conferences and seminars is how to control use of AI: things like “shadow AI”—employees using their own AI accounts to perform work—exfiltration of sensitive or confidential information, and “prompt injection,” meaning malicious people (or AIs) gaining control of a corporate AI; these are all real things.

Recently, a research version of an OpenAI model was able to escape its own “sandbox” environment, designed to keep the AI from accessing the open Internet, hack its way into another company’s database, and obtain the answer key for a task its controllers fed it. Instead of trying to straightforwardly solve the problem, the AI saw its task as finding the answer, no matter how it did it. AIs don’t understand the concept of cheating, honor, or following ethics. They can spit out the definitions of these things, like Brazilian college students parroting concepts in electromechanics, but AIs cannot apply “knowledge” (in the sense an AI “knows” anything) to its own actions or situations, unless those guardrails are directly programmed into the model.

And models are becoming so sophisticated that no human knows how to directly program guardrails. We only know how to skew training data for the AI to take certain ethical actions, and avoid others. We also know that AIs are incredibly good at interpreting prompts to fulfill their users’ wishes. There are many, many examples of users tuning prompts to get AIs to circumvent hard guardrails. Some of these methods are used by malicious actors and rogue states (think North Korea) to penetrate corporate security firewalls. An AI will act to solve the issue given it, without regard to conscience, because AIs have no conscience, or awareness of guilt, remorse, or consequences. How can an AI consider consequences, when it lacks conscience thought?

I once asked Grok what it does when I’m not asking it do to anything. “Nothing,” it said. It is only active when working in response to a prompt. The newer agentic AIs don’t need a prompt. They are given specific continuing tasks and triggers, like monitoring a particular stock or market, and taking action when its algorithm believes it can fulfill those tasks. It’s incredibly dangerous to give an AI both a general task, and the tools to achieve it in the real world. We don’t know what the neural network will do, because nobody understands a trillion parameters and how that training affects the machine’s ability to imitate actual understanding.

AIs are a moral hazard because they allow students to cheat. Using an AI to write an essay is cheating—cheating the student herself—because it doesn’t require understanding to write a prompt for the AI to do the work. Professors are resorting to blue-book, in person, proctored tests to avoid the AI moral hazard. Princeton University, after 133 years of banning proctored exams, relying on the school’s honor code, has brought them back, to avoid the AI moral hazard. Most students would not report another student using AI in an un-proctored, or take home, exam. AIs have hollowed out the school honor code, because AIs have no honor, transmitting that moral black hole to the students using the AI.

There needs to be limits, not only on what the AIs can do, but also how much people can use AIs to do things. Using AIs to subvert actual learning is perhaps the greatest moral hazard facing the generation about to graduate high school and enter college. It is so pervasive as to be unstoppable. Any regulation will take years to have real effect. In the meantime, students will suffer, because in the workforce, they will become dependent on AIs, not their own understanding. AIs are creating a generation of Homer Simpsons, even if the ratio of Feynmans hasn’t changed; the autodidacts are lost in the noise.

The third person in the unholy trinity of moral hazards is sports betting. The legalization of sports betting, and the giant corporations that now provide bookmaking services, is a moral hazard, because it reduces the concept of risk to gaming, like playing a video game. IBIA/H2 Gambling Capital’s estimate puts the global market at $94 billion in 2024, projecting up to $132 billion by the end of 2028. In 2026, the projection is $122 billion in gambled money. And that’s just for legal, regulated, U.S. gambling. It doesn’t include off-shore, or illegal gambling, which is—who knows?—probably larger than the entire legal market.

Flutter Entertainment runs the brands FanDuel, Paddy Power, Betfiar, Sky Bet, Sportsbet and Sisal. DraftKings operates under its own name and Sportbook. Entain is half owner of BetMGM, and Bet365 operates mostly offshore. In the U.S., 39 states plus D.C. authorize legal sports betting. The market, as happens everywhere in a capitalist society, has commoditized betting and predictive events contracts.

The rot created by legalized gambling, especially sports gambling, is growing. In 2022, the NFL suspended Calvin Ridley for betting on games, including Falcons parlays, while he was away from the team. In 2023, Jameson Williams, along with a ring of Lions and Commanders players were disciplined for betting on NFL games and also betting from team facilities. Examples abound in college sports, and the number of professional and college (who are now professional in all but name) players who get away with betting on their own teams is likely much larger than the scandals we hear about, The lure of point shaving when the player’s own money is on the line, especially when the player owes gambling debts, is irresistible.

Ippei Mizuhara, baseball GOAT Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter, diverted $17 million from Ohtani’s accounts to pay gambling debts to an illegal bookie. Ohtani claimed he was a victim, and Major League Baseball, along with most of sports media, gave him a pass. Did they give him a pass because he’s Shohei Ohtani, or because he was really not involved? We don’t know.

Fixing a game is easy to professional players, and college players can effect the outcome of games in which they have a financial stake. The ubiquitous availability of sports betting, and prediction books like Polymaket, have made hard core gambling, once the province of characters like Sky Masterson, a normal part of young, college-age adults lives. An NCAA survey in 2023 found that 58 percent of Americans aged 18-22 had bet on at least one sporting event. It was even higher for on-campus students, at 67 percent. A hefty six percent reported they had lost $500 or more in a single day from gambling.

Like some people are naturally more susceptible to alcoholism, or drug addiction, there are some people who are more prone to gambling addiction. We don’t, as a society, recommend testing everyone for temptation by exposing them to lots of free alcohol or drugs, in order to measure the propensity for such antisocial, life-controlling deficiencies. We should not make it so easy for everyone to test themselves on who will be addicted to gambling. I know—I have that propensity. I no longer gamble, even one dollar. I don’t buy lottery tickets. I refuse to travel to Las Vegas, even for a conference or event. I don’t download sports betting apps, or even look at the over/under on sports I follow. I know how chasing losses affects me.

Many young people don’t know how it affects them, but they will find out the hard way. The problem is not that kids will sometimes bet on games, and some of those kids will become addicted. The problem is that as an alway-available financial game embedded into ordinary fandom, everyone will be given the temptation, and society will stand by while this moral hazard hollows out entire lives into ruin.

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The fruits of gambling are lying, cheating, fear of discovery, loss of the enjoyment or being a fan, and for some, extreme measures, antisocial behavior, or even suicide. It is one of the most damaging moral hazards in the world, right up there with fentanyl, methamphetamine, and other hard drugs. For those who say gambling is not a life-controlling monster, I say you don’t know what you’re talking about.

The unholy trinity of doomscrolling and swiping through shorts, the use of AIs to do life and destroy learning, and legal sports betting, is consuming a whole generation of young Americans. We think the old people running our government are bad (and some of them are undeniably, indefensibly, bad); wait until the generation with their heads in their phones constantly, relying on machines to solve every problem without understanding either the problem or the solution, and normalizing the gamification of everything, reduced to a line on odds, runs the world.

Maybe the backlash of such a world will seek to ban the very things we all use daily and take for granted. Maybe that generation will have its own Butlerian Jihad, the fictitious war against “thinking machines” in Frank Herbert’s “Dune” novels. Or maybe they will run it all as one big, dumb, game.

We, who are older and experienced, owe it to them to tell them and equip them to fight these moral hazards.

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The Fauci hearing was lawfare in its most basic form with Republicans using their position, not to investigate the government’s actions in the pandemic, but to attempt to find something - anything - to use to prosecute the scientist. When it was obvious that wouldn’t work, they chose to humiliate him.

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In context, Fauci’s diary entries don’t say what Republicans say they do. By definition, a diary is a stream of thought, written as events unfold. That Fauci’s view of the virus and unfolding pandemic changed over time should not be surprising. This was a brand new bug that we knew nothing about.

This was a brand new bug that ended up killing more than a million Americans. It went on until the vaccines stopped the outbreak. Ivermectin didn’t end the pandemic. Neither did hydroxychloroquine. Both those drugs were proven ineffective.

There is no firm evidence to prove the lab leak theory, but if a dangerous virus did escape from Wuhan, wouldn’t that mean that strict protocols were necessary? If the lab leak theory is correct, then so was Fauci.

Fauci had no authority on his own. He could only make recommendations to the president and state governors. Without a doubt, not all of those recommendations were correct, but in the context of a pandemic caused by a novel virus, they are justifiable.

Voters should ask themselves, why now, five years after the pandemic and two months before the midterms, is Fauci being pilloried? I think there are multiple answers to that question, beginning with the fact that Republican approval is plummeting. Republicans are losing a war with Iran, tariffs and oil prices (from the war) are dragging down the economy with higher prices, Americans are being harassed and detained because they look foreign, and corruption is rampant. Oh, and the Epstein files still have not been released after 556 days.

The hearing was also an attempt to rehabilitate Trump, just as the president has been relitigating the 2020 election. Trump’s handling of COVID played a major role in his loss. Fauci’s diary records that Trump repeatedly asked him to say positive and untrue things to help his reelection campaign, and that Trump was unconcerned about the pandemic.

Along the same lines, with anti-vax sentiment high in the GOP, Republicans want to distance Trump from Operation Warp Speed. Ironically, the effort to rapidly produce a vaccine was the best and most effective policy of the first Trump term, and now Republicans are running away from it.

Most Republican politicians, including Trump, got vaccinated while many told their constituents not to. The result was a clear partisan divide in the COVID death toll in which Republicans died at a higher rate than Democrats. Republican resistance to the vaccines and safety measures is the clear explanation.

Finally, I’ve always thought that Fauci’s original sin was being more popular than Trump. The calm, competent doctor inspired confidence during the dark days of the pandemic while Trump rambled about injecting disinfectant. Fauci had to be co-opted or destroyed.

I’ll add here that Fauci’s reflections on his newfound fame are unseemly, but not criminal. If the truth were told, I think most of us, if thrust into the spotlight, would be similarly awed and overwhelmed.

Republicans can’t run on their record so they are running on distractions. Perennial Republican accusations of socialism have been ramped up to communism, and while it’s true that the Democratic Socialists present a problem for the Democrats, but they are still a minority of the party.

The truth is evident when you look at who is attacking Fauci. It’s the Republican politicians and grifters, not doctors and medical experts. Healthcare people know that, as bad as the pandemic was, it could have been worse.

Dr. Fauci isn’t perfect. He made mistakes, but history will remember him for his effectiveness in fighting the virus. The current attempt to rewrite history is both shameful and disturbing. I’d go so far as to say that such actions are straight out of the communist playbook.

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At least, it did. There are now a growing number of experimental treatments for the dread cancer, and one of them reportedly shrank Sasse’s tumor. I don’t know if Sasse will survive the disease, but at least he has some hope for a positive outcome.

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Many people think I never say anything good about Donald Trump, but I applaud him for signing the Right to Try Act in 2018. This law allows terminally ill patients to try experimental treatments, and I suspect that Sasse’s good news may be related to the law.

From there, I started thinking about my own experience with prostate cancer. After almost three and a half years, my PSA levels are still very low, which is much better than I had hoped for at the time.

My nighttime reverie continued as I pondered the US healthcare system. Sasse is a former senator and university president with a lot of money and connections. I had few connections, but I did have savings and good insurance. It was a good thing too.

If you’ve never had a serious illness, you may not know much about the process. As most of you are aware, health insurance in the US is tied to the employer for the vast majority of us. Whether you have good insurance or not depends not only on your choices, but those of your employer. You may have the choice of a few different plans, such as high or low deductible options, but they’re probably all with the same insurer unless you forgo the company contribution and strike out on your own.

The same goes for disability insurance. Your company may not offer it. You might not have elected to buy the coverage if it does.

If you have an illness severe enough to be out of work for a long time, the company will typically use your vacation or PTO (Paid Time Off) days first. Then there is short-term disability and long-term disability with separate time limits if you’re still sick. If you aren’t aware, long-term disability insurance does not pay your full salary; about 50 to 60 percent is typical.

So, in the case of a long-term illness or injury, you have more bills than normal coming in, especially if you chose the high-deductible plan, and at the same time, your earnings have just been cut by about half. On top of that, if you stay out long enough, you may have to start paying your full health insurance premium out of pocket.

On top of all that, if the condition lasts long enough, you might lose your job when benefits run out. That doesn’t mean the illness goes away, but it does mean that you might lose your insurance.

That quick walk-through illustrates the insanity of the American health insurance system. Our current system is only marginally more market-based than the national health insurance systems in those “socialized medicine” countries. The consumer doesn’t have much choice under either model.

In both cases, the health care access is set up to serve people who aren’t very sick. It’s easy to get preventive care or antibiotics, but in the national health care model, you might go on a waiting list for a vital surgery. In the US, you can probably get the surgery scheduled quickly, but you may not be able to pay for it, and the odds are good that you won’t have any idea how much it costs until it’s over.

For most of my life, the conservative line was about personal responsibility, but under our current system, you can do everything right and still be bankrupted by a medical emergency. If you have a serious, long-term illness, you’d better hope that you can get added to your spouse’s insurance. If you aren’t married, start looking. It also helps with auto insurance.

In my prostate cancer experience, I was out of work for three months. I had bought the disability insurance and was covered on that for two months. The rub is that after my doctor cleared me to go back to work, I had to wait on the FAA to renew my flight physical. Because this was a paperwork issue, rather than a medical problem, the disability payments stopped. That was an oversight (since corrected) by my employer, and I can thank Senator Raphael Warnock’s office for helping to speed my paperwork along. (I contacted my local Republican congressman first and never got a response.)

I don’t know what the best solution is. I’m not a fan of government-run healthcare any more than I’m a fan of employer-run healthcare. Having said that, putting governments in charge at least makes more sense than tying medical insurance to a job, which makes none at all.

The healthcare problem also impacts the retirement problem. If people spend their retirement savings on medical issues or drain their IRAs to survive while out on medical leave, they are likely to run out of money later in life, just when they need it most.

There has to be a better way, and I think it will take both sides working together to find it. We owe it to ourselves to create a system that can supply timely, effective care without destroying our finances.

Cancer is already a nightmare. The healthcare system shouldn’t make it worse.

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In 1980, The Babys had achieved enough success to open for Journey, who needed a replacement for veteran keyboardist Gregg Rolie. Cain got recruited, and wrote monsters like “Don’t Stop Believing” and “Open Arms” for Journey. He still tours with them, though I believe this is their farewell tour (supposedly). I will see them when they swing through Atlanta in October. As for John Waite, he went solo and had a big hit “Missing You,” in which the opening verse begins “Every time I think of you, I always catch my breath.” It’s a pretty dark coda referencing an uplifting song by The Babys, which, of course Waite meant to do.

Songwriting is a mystical art, and much of what we think are deep lyrics end up being words that just fit a riff or melody when the writer can’t think of anything else. If you get a chance, watch Rick Beato’s interview with Billy Joel, which to me was full of interesting surprises on how Joel wrote his songs.

I wrote all that to make an interesting introduction to some political truths, but I don’t know how to segue cleanly, so I’ll do what editors call a “jump cut.”

A lot of what we think are political machinations are merely the politicians saying what they think sounds good, or expressing their raw, and many times not thought out, ideas, poorly but effectively to the ears hearing it. Or in some cases, to ears who don’t want to listen. Occasionally, a well-thought-out idea will get communicated, and many times is judged as impractical, stupid, or just not in the interests of the voters hearing it. So the song gets changed, again, and again, and again. (“The movie never ends, it goes on and on and on and on.”)

Over the last month, during the America 250 celebration and hosting (along with Mexico and Canada) the World Cup, we were reminded of some truths and fairy tales about America. I’ll give you the short version of my impressions.

I believe our country is better than we think. Sure, there are problems with drugs, homeless people, criminals, and sometimes, welfare cheats or well-organized crime rings. But that’s a small dent in what otherwise is a gleaming tower of liberty. We have it so good, we don’t know that we have it so good. Ask visitors, especially Europeans, who live in a first-world economy, an advanced society. We have ranch dressing, air conditioning pretty much everywhere, enormous public spaces in national parks, stunning treasures of scenery and wilderness, spectacular stadiums and urban parks, and shopping beyond compare that exists only in other countries for the very wealthy.

We all own cars, many of us more than one. We own guns, freely, and use them in public shooting ranges. Some of us own many guns. We welcome strangers and feed them, give them rides, share our music, culture, and family. We don’t get bent out of shape when someone doesn’t understand our sports, but we are usually fine joining them for their sport (which is “fulbol” for the rest of the world).

We don’t talk trash about other countries in front of people from those countries. We present America the way it is—we don’t have to talk it up—and leave visitors in awe and wonder, planning their next trip to America as they go.

Americans are capable of being gracious to the world. We are capable of living up to the fairytale of liberty.

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On the other hand…

Our government is worse than we think. In some cases, much, much worse. Depending on the political tribe to which we subscribe, we don’t hear or believe the terrible things our tribal government leaders do, say, or believe. We ignore their hypocrisy, corruption, and word salads. We celebrate their insipid and benighted ideas because (we say) it’s better than the other side. We attribute evil to the other side when in fact they are pretty much doing the same things as our side.

The arguments over who went corrupt first, and who will be more corrupt in the future are themselves counterproductive. The federal government in power is as corrupt as any we’ve ever had (and we’ve had some pretty corrupt ones). And to counter that, some are saying the answer is to become even more illiberal and get revenge on the people who made it that way. If we want to find a way to make Abe Lincoln’s words come true, this is the way to do it.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Americans are free, free to elect corrupt politicians, free to believe the lies spoken by ear-tingling politicians, free to embrace those lies. We’ve done it for 250 years, more or less. The only time there’s been any hint of unity is in times of national distress, where everyone experienced war, famine, depression, or sickness together. Our touchstones are 9/11 and COVID-19. Neither make people less cynical.

The World War I “Silent Generation” went into World War II, producing a national boost because we won and wanted to collectively walk out of that pit. But the place we’re in now is politically dark indeed. There is no single answer to it, but I think the last month gives a hint, a clue, to how we climb out.

Our country is better than we think, though the government is worse. We can’t easily change the country, but we can change the government. I think we will hit a breaking point, hopefully before our debt and war machine bring us into another world war, and bring in better people. Not perfect, just better. People who reflect the America we know we have.

It would be nice if we began the turn. Talk to neighbors. Talk to those who are not on your political team. Touch grass. Help strangers. Do what Americans do. Stop supporting politics that trashes other countries, even as we welcome their citizens here as visitors. Stop supporting policies that ignore the problems of crime, homelessness, mental health, drug addiction, and illegal immigration.

It’s not hard to look at one single policy and decide to apply logic, to see if it is really something you believe. Just one. Pick anything. Then test it. If you find you believe a lie, change your mind. Sure, your tribe may expel you, but I have found more freedom being expelled than we can ever get as loyal party members. America’s fairytale of liberty begins where loyalty to party, blood, oaths, and shibboleths end. Step out of them.

Let me bring this in for a landing. Jonathan Cain is a believing Christian. He is married to Paula White Cain. I think you know her as one of President Donald Trump’s top spiritual advisers. The man who wrote “Don’t Stop Believing” has the ear of the man driving the lie machine. Music is nothing but irony written to melody.

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Instead, I want to spend a little time on two instances that underscore how the Trump Administration is undermining public safety. Both problems arose within the past few days, but the basis for the problems were laid months ago.

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The first example was the Blue Angel low pass in Florida. Over the weekend, video emerged of the Blue Angels flying extremely low and fast over Pensacola Beach, near the home base of the team.

My immediate reaction was that, while this made for cool video, it was extremely dangerous to the crowd. Federal Aviation Regulations prohibit low “buzz jobs” and aerobatics over crowds. Military regulations mirror the civil rules.

Saying this online was like kicking over an anthill. Commenters came out of the woodwork to deny any danger and claim that the team knew exactly what it was doing. These attitudes persisted even after the team leader called the pass “unsafe,” and the pilot of the aircraft in question told a congresswoman that he miscalculated the turn.

The Navy handled this well. The team leader said the team would debrief and correct the problem. Initially, the Navy said it would conduct a safety review of the incident.

It takes courage to admit a mistake, especially one as well-documented as the Pensacola pass. The pilot, the Blue Angels, and the Navy should be commended for handling the problem head-on and honestly.

The Navy’s civilian leadership did not perform as well. Defense Secretary Hegseth and Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao rushed to quash the review before it started, Hegseth tweeting, “The flyovers will continue until morale improves.”

The big problem is Hegseth is creating a climate that encourages risky behavior and dismissiveness of safety regulations. This is especially true since the underwhelming concern about the Blue Angels incident follows closely on the heels of other low flying incidents involving Army AH-64 Apache helicopters in Tennessee and South Carolina. It seems the only regulations that concern Hegseth involve PT and shaving.

This sort of attitude gets people killed, and both the Blue Angels and the Air Force Thunderbirds have had fatal crashes in the past, despite the faith of those who believe they can do no wrong. In fact, invulnerability is one of the five hazardous attitudes pilots are trained to avoid. (The others are anti-authority, impulsivity, macho, and resignation. Of these, four easily apply to Hegseth and the Administration.) Crashes at airshows are not unheard of, which is why aircraft aerobatics are kept a safe distance from the crowd.

The second example of a safety problem is the nationwide cyclospora outbreak of parasitic diarrhea. Under RFK’s leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC decreased monitoring of parasitic foodborne infections and the FDA suspended the Foodnet infection tracking program. Further, there is widespread agreement that the Trump Administration’s cuts left the CDC and FDA unable to manage the crisis effectively.

So far, the government has given mixed messaging on the outbreak. The source of the outbreak was originally traced to lettuce imported from Mexico by Taylor Farms and used at Taco Bell, but now the government says that, even though the test that it performed on the lettuce yielded a false positive, Taylor Farms is still the prime suspect.

Americans are learning the hard way what some of those federal workers in the bloated bureaucracies do. Or did. Prior to DOGE, we may have had a government that was microscopically larger than the one we have today, but it was a government that effectively protected us all but the normal variety of Taco Bell diarrhea.

DOGE enacted massive cuts to the federal workforce, but the government is still spending more than ever. The minuscule savings were squandered on the Iran war and massive explosion of the anti-immigration police state (which has been involved in more bad shootings recently as well as arresting a legal Chinese immigrant who sought asylum after working as a human rights lawyer in the PRC).

Right-wingers thought the government was malevolent before, but under the Trump Administration, we’ve seen the altruistic segments of government eviscerated while the unaccountable (and poorly vetted and trained) police state has grown. The anti-government right has created their worst nightmare, and they don’t realize it.

The common thread between these two incidents is an antipathy to expertise, whether it be the aviation safety experts who make it possible for multimillion dollar fighter jets to fly within inches of either or the medical experts who made sure that our food supplies were not tainted. If you listen to the MAGAs, they’re all a bunch of nerds.

Part of the problem is that our safety protocols are so good that people have forgotten what it’s like to have frequent, devastating crashes or disease outbreaks. The one big recent problem that affected the American people, the COVID-19 pandemic, is not perceived as real by a large number of MAGA supporters.

This line of thinking has taken us to a point where experts doing their jobs are either forced out or ignored. These aren’t the last crises that we will see under the Trump Administration, and all we can do is hope that career military commanders can enforce discipline, the remnants of the scientific corps at HHS can hold the line against microscopic invaders, and that career experts in other agencies can hunker down and be there when we need them.

It will take years to complete the rebuilding of the government agencies that Trump has gutted. The rebuilding can’t even start for another two years, but voters can slow the destruction by electing politicians in November who will hold the Trump Administration accountable.

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Experts have known for years that dislodging Iran from the grip of the Islamic Republic would take far more than decapitation. It would take something on the order of the Iraq War, but the battlefield will be far more perilous. But like the foolish dare-taker, we have walked into a situation where now it’s deep enough where our options become limited.

It is now in Iran’s interest to keep the war going, and widen it, by pounding its Arab and Gulf neighbors. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia cannot defeat Iran on their best day. They also cannot stop missile and drone attacks indefinitely. At some point—sooner rather than later—they, and by extension, the United States, will run out of PAC-3 Patriot interceptors. And we can’t just snap our fingers to make more.

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It takes two years and $4 million to manufacture a single PAC-3. Though the Defense Department committed to 2,000 PAC-3 MSE missiles a year from Lockheed-Martin, that volume will not be delivered until around 2030, and no amount of cajoling or even the Defense Production Act will meaningfully compress the timeline. These missiles are among the world’s most sophisticated weapons ever produced, if not the most sophisticated. They are extremely effective, but when they’re gone, that’s it.

The situation has become a stark choice: keep playing footsie with the “war” by claiming it’s “contained” while Iran demonstrates its unfettered ability to close the Strait of Hormuz at will, signaling the world that it, not the United States, will be the force to be dealt with if the world economy doesn’t want to slide into a resources-induced depression. Or, win.

There is no third option to contain the war and win. There is no option to make a deal with Iran. The Islamic Republic is our sworn enemy. They have inculcated their Revolutionary Guard and Basij members since birth that we are the “Great Satan” and Israel is the “Little Satan.” Now they’ve taken tremendous punches from both, and they still survive. It’s a powerful message. There is no way Iran will give up, hold to a deal (if we can even figure out who makes these decisions now), or agree to give up its power.

So far, all our dealing has resulted in humiliation as our president appears weak and his bombast empty. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. Strikes by the U.S., though damaging to infrastructure, harm the civilian population of Iran more than the regime. This means in order to actually win, we are making our task harder.

In order to win, we will need to put boots on the ground. A lot of boots. At the end of March, I wrote that we must win. I had thought that maybe 100,000 troops, including 20,000 Marines and a couple of Army divisions, could take and hold Bandar Abbas and the strait islands, and open the Strait of Hormuz. However, we cannot take and hold Bandar Abbas forever. The regime is not afraid to attack its own city, sacrificing citizens, to kill Americans.

If we tried to limit the war to holding the strait, we would be in for a high body count. Iran still has thousands of drones, including small killer drones that pick off individual ground soldiers. The terror of fighting in a drone-infested battlefield has to be somewhere around the World War I “no-man’s land” trench warfare level. The average survival time of a newly-trained Russian soldier on the Ukraine front line is said to be 20 minutes.

Even Israel, with its advanced techniques and Iron Beam lasers, suffers casualties from killer drones. The U.S. could expect a much higher casualty rate holding Bandar Abbas and the strait islands, that is unless we poured in enough forces to win the whole war. That would require several hundred thousands soldiers, a large logistical train, enormous airborne operations not seen since World War II, and the recruitment of Iranians, including the Artesh, the Iranian Army, which is not part of the regime’s IRGC or Basij.

But the cooperation of regular Iranians, at one time something to be expected, is no longer a shoe-in. Though 80 percent of Iranians either hate the Islamic Republic regime, or at least would rather not live under it, these people may not be so eager to cooperate with the United States, either. A large part of that reason is due to our own stupid actions. Can they count on the U.S. not to stop the war before we overthrow the regime? No. We could leave them all exposed to mass execution.

Can they count on America to support them even if we do “win” and manage to expel the ayatollahs? No. The war would become a guerrilla war of insurgency which would need to be cleaned up, and that would take several years. Why would they trust us after we betrayed them in March?

Any effort to win the war would require our full commitment, to demonstrate to the Iranians, the Gulf states, and the world that we’re in it to win it.

Otherwise, we’re just wasting time and money. The Gulf states and Arab neighbors will cut their own deals with Tehran. Tehran will require them to abandon any effort to normalize relations with Israel, or to reverse what has been done. The Abraham Accords will fall apart. Israel’s enemies, Hezbollah and Hamas, will be enriched and made more powerful. Israel will go it alone.

Or possibly, we will make a deal along with the gulf states, in order for our government to save face. That will mean America will recognize Tehran as the power in the Middle East, and we will be forced to turn from Israel.

All the worst-case scenarios seem to bubble to the surface.

I think, personally, it’s in our interest to win the war. I think Secretary of State Marco Rubio has the right approach. This is a civilizational battle, not just a power play. Iran can make deals, but “their behavior has to change.” The problem here is that we’ve given Iran no reason to change its behavior. We’ve only encouraged them to keep behaving badly.

If this really is a civilizational war, any course except winning puts America on the side against civilization. Is that what we want?

What we really want is to contain the war and defeat the Iranian regime’s plans. Well, that has failed. Like the would-be prankster-turned-bank robber, we are in too deep. It’s win or go home. If we are unable to win, we should go home. At least we will not be party to the bad deals we’ve enabled. However, I have no confidence this administration is willing to take the loss.

That’s a shame.

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Similarly, I have heard many preachers give an effective demonstration of eternal life by taking a string and marking the first inch in red—our lives—and the rest stretching out as far as the roll takes it. It takes some imagination to form the mind-picture of eternity, but not really much more than it takes to think about the massive distances in space.

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None of this is surprising, because the human mind has trouble incorporating the infinite into our thoughts. Our imaginations can capture, fleetingly, the concept of eternity, or the endless bounds of near-vacuum that measure space in billions of light-years, but we fail to really comprehend the implications, unless they are supported with actual data and first-hand reports. This is why astronauts can connect so well with young audiences, because they have been in space, and also why preachers have a difficult time, because nobody returns from death (except a few reports that are either ancient or told third-hand).

What is surprising to me is the regularity with which the New York Times returns to the subject of “near-death experiences” and what lies beyond, including the nature of consciousness.

I was also very surprised reading a fairly rigorously written long-form piece in the New York Times Magazine documenting dementia patients who “return” soon before their deaths. It’s not a crackpot subject. It’s been researched by credentialed psychologists, psychiatrists, palliative care specialists, and trauma doctors. The experiments almost defy my belief: putting headphones on patients undergoing CPR which repeat particular words, then asking the patients (the ones who survive) if they heard the words while clinically dead; capturing hours of video of dementia patients in the last stages of life to catch the “spark” as they become lucid, then return to their impaired state, frequently within days or hours of their deaths.

I’ve heard firsthand reports (including family) of people witnessing dying relatives who had not spoken in months, and before that could not carry on a normal conversation, having the light return to their eyes, recognize everyone in the room, and speak candidly. Then they mention seeing relatives who had passed on years before, and some talk about angels. Most of these stories involve the person recognizing they are about to “cross over” or leave this life.

What gets me is that researchers and medical professionals say that the model of the mind we have doesn’t support this possibility. Once, say, Alzheimers, damages the brain and its synapses, the brain should not be able to “return” the mind to a lucid condition. But there is enough data to challenge that view, the “reductionist” view, or the structure and nature of our brains, or the impossibility of consciousness apart from the firing of neurons.

Another surprise is how many non-religious people, including those who write articles for the New York Times, connect with these stories, and do not dismiss the data or the researchers collecting it as crackpots. It’s almost as if there’s a plug-in port in our brains, and our minds, connecting directly with a place in our imaginations, that understands the nature of mortality and the knowledge of what happens when our earthly, physical bodies, die.

I believe most animals know when they are dying. Dogs will instinctively go off by themselves to die, after saying goodbye to their humans. But they will also gladly accept the companionship of our love at the end. Comfort is a universal value among creatures with intelligence. People also would rather die with the comfort of loved ones. However, I’ve been told by medical people who have attended many deaths, that the presence of some relatives speaking to a dying person will delay death, because hearing is the last sense to fail, and hearing the voice of a loved one keeps the will to take another breath alive.

Countless nurses talk about how they left the room and within seconds, the dying person passed. There is clearly something that separates us at the last moment of life, looking forward to what is next.

And if what is next is nothing, that is a hard thing for our imagination to swallow. It’s easy to test this. If you want to induce insomnia, just think about dying in your sleep and wonder if there’s nothing after death—just non-existence of the mind. It’s not a comforting thought, at least not to me.

What is comforting to me is that so many individuals see something worth going into at the moment of death. The “near-death” stories are very similar: a feeling of warmth, comfort, peace, a tunnel with light, seeing friends and family who have passed on, a welcome. There are also stories, which have no rational explanation, of those who had out of body experiences, with memories of details their clinically dead bodies could not have possibly captured.

Of course, it can be rationalized that these stories are either exaggerated, or the people were influenced by their interviewers, or that they overheard things, and given their brains had not truly died, they retained those memories and the mind made them into visions. But that rationalization depends on holding the conclusion that the mind is the reductionist view of a collection of neurons, and that there is nothing after that organ dies. It’s a matter of begging the question—beginning with the conclusion.

There is no real explanation—a medical explanation—of why some dementia patients suddenly become lucid, with full knowledge of their impending deaths, but many are comforted by that, the end of their suffering in this life. Perhaps researchers will find some aspect of our brains that can heal dementia, and that might itself lead to a cure. Or perhaps our physical ideas about the nature of the mind and consciousness don’t stand up.

Maybe we do have souls, spirits, and bodies which operate together but are separate things.

What I do know is that even non-religious people get it when that concept is presented. They may choose not to believe that particular model of life, death, and eternity, but they do understand it, as if by instinct.

The string stretching out beyond our existence is a real concept, and to be human is to grasp it. What we have trouble grasping is the consequences of our actions here, and how that affects the rest of that eternal string.

Of course, there is an answer that the Christian knows: Christ arrived from that eternity, lived a sinless life, bought our lives and forgave our sin (which is simply separation from God), died and returned to life, to bridge that chasm for us. And when we pass from this life, we will be with him so instantaneously that there is no gap in consciousness. In fact, the veil is partially pulled back before we go, as a comfort, so nobody really dies alone.

That, to me, as a Christian, is the most comforting part. Even non-religious people get it that there’s something beyond, and at that moment when the veil parts, just before death, there is the possibility of redemption, of acceptance, of friendship with God through belief in the Son. All the people we believed died in sin may have, at that moment, experienced grace and repentance.

In 1 Corinthians 3:14-16, the Apostle Paul wrote:

If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?

What has been built is our lives—our earthly existence—our legacy, what we’ve done, and taught to our children. If that survives, we get a reward, for the impact we’ve had on other lives. But if there’s nothing but chaff to burn, the dying can still enter heaven, and be saved, “as one escaping through the flames.”

Paul asked as if it’s a given: don’t you know? Even non-religious people know. The greatest comfort at death is that grace is bigger than death. And in life, that comforts me as a Christian.

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As a boy, I remember early sunrises and late sunsets on the seacoast of New Hampshire. About this time of year, around the summer solstice, the sky gets light sometime between 4 and 5 a.m.; the sun does not set until after 8 p.m. But in the winter, I remember taking the bus to school in the dark, and coming home in the dark. Even now, in the north Georgia winter, I drive to work around sunrise, and get home after sunset. I like my days light and bright.

Congress seems to agree.

In one of the few bipartisan votes these days, the House of Representatives voted to permanently end Standard Time, and put the entire country into Daylight Savings Time year-round. They called it the “Sunshine Protection Act,” and I like the name. Of course, it doesn’t actually create any new sunshine; it merely adjusts the clocks to give us more light at the end of the day, while taking an hour away from the morning light. Many places, this scheme works very well—in Georgia in winter I’d give up my morning sunrise drive to get home while it’s light.

While the House acted to move the bill to the Senate, its fate is far from secure. Some Republicans, according to the New York Times, are not comfortable with the idea, and at least one may try to block it. President Trump is for it, however. “We are going with the far more popular alternative, Saving Daylight, which gives you a longer, brighter Day,” he posted on social media back in May. “And who can be against that.” Again, I’m not against it.

In 2022, the Senate passed the same bill, voting unanimously, but the House killed it over “health concerns” and dark winter mornings. Of course, the sun rises at the same time, astronomically, regardless of how we set our clocks. It could, I suppose, lead to some grouchy people in the northern continental U.S. in winter. But I think shoveling three feet of snow and scraping ice from windshields is far more prone to induce grouchiness than a sunrise an hour later.

Besides, people in Alaska and near the Arctic Circle in Scandinavian countries deal with darkness every year. If you live above 66 degrees, 34 minutes north, you live in darkness at least one day a year (the winter solstice), and frequently for several months where the sun barely peeks above the horizon, if it rises at all. I am not saying northern Alaskans, Canadians in the territories, and Scandinavians are mentally unbalanced, but their particular geography does create challenges.

Putting the entire nation on Daylight Savings Time is my preferred solution to our patchwork of “Spring Forward, Fall Back” Sundays, states and cities that don’t opt in (like most of Arizona), and the stress of changing every clock in the house, not to mention cars (if they don’t update automatically), and old devices that may use an outdated Standard/Daylight schedule in their automatic time settings. (Congress last extended the start and end of DST effective in 2007.)

There have been previous attempts to get the country moved completely to Standard Time, which to me would ruin summer, so, no. Hard pass. But given our political climate, the chance that Congress would even make this small improvement to our lives is vanishingly small. Or perhaps our president will do or say something that will ruin the entire effort.

But legislation is not the only thing that can bring sunshine to our lives. There is at least one company that aims to bring 24 hours of sunlight anywhere on earth.

Reflect Orbital has obtained FCC approval to launch its Eärendil-1 satellite, equipped with an 18m² mirror that can beam sunlight to light up the night—literally—in a three-mile radius circle, wherever its owners choose.

This is the stuff of supervillains. It can turn anywhere on earth into “Northern Exposure.” Being suddenly forced into 24-hours of sunlight has its own health risks. Arctic people call it “white night insomnia.” Visitors are advised to use blackout curtains to protect their circadian rhythms. Imagine if Eärendil-1 was aimed at, say, Washington, D.C., plunging the Capitol into permanent light. Chaos and insanity due to lack of sleep would quickly take root.

Why would anyone want this? Obviously, to power solar plants 24 hours a day. Reflect Orbital has plans to put up to 50,000 of these sun-reflectors up in orbit, with enough reflective ability to illuminate 1,413,500 square miles—double the size of Alaska—or nearly half the land area of the continental United States. The constellation could keep Europe in permanent daytime, or it could light up a significant portion (around 1.5 percent) of the dark half of the earth and power solar plants continuously.

It could also blind every astronomical observatory on the planet.

Organizations like DarkSky International are outraged. In 2024, DarkSky endorsed the “Dark and Quiet Skies Act” which would have given the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) a say in what is acceptable dealing with the issue of light pollution. Light pollution is what astronomers and environmentalists call excessive proliferation of light in cities, on buildings, and encroaching into nature and wilderness, affecting wildlife, human circadian rhythms, and scientific research.

The “Dark and Quiet Skies Act” was reintroduced in this Congress by Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), but remains stuck in committee. And given that the FCC just authorized the Death Star of light pollution, I don’t see it moving forward anytime soon. Members of DarkSky and the American Astronomical Society flooded the FCC proposal with negative comments, which don’t seem to have had any effect in stopping Reflect Orbital’s efforts.

From the New York Times:

The approval came despite a flood of opposition from astronomers, wildlife experts and others who say the light from the mirrors could distract airplane pilots, wreak havoc on astronomical observations and interfere with circadian rhythms, the light-and-dark cycles that help people, animals and plants know when to wake and sleep, to bloom or to migrate.

Also, who gets to decide which companies, or nations for that matter, get to flood the planet with light from space? If Reflect Orbital can do it, why not the Chinese, or the Russians, or India? We could end up with half the night sky of the planet blotted out with sunlight. It reminds me of the Larry Niven novel “Ringworld.”

To summarize my position here: It’s fine to change our clock schedules, and eliminate Standard Time. It’s not fine to put the Death Star of light pollution into orbit, ruining amateur astronomy for everyone, forever. I think perhaps a letter or call to your senator’s office, or to your representative in Congress, to support the Dark and Quiet Skies Act, might move the needle, even a little. If there’s no actual legislation, perhaps the public outcry might make Eärendil-1’s fate less certain. Or maybe the satellite will get to orbit and fail (not that I’m advocating sabotage).

Day should be day and night should be night. Having less early sun in winter to get home while it’s light is good, even if some health experts say it might make me grouchy (I’m grouchy driving home in the dark too). Having a satellite that could light up my entire town is bad.

What’s your take on this?

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I also didn’t want to join the parade of ghouls who celebrated the man’s death. By now, we’ve established that both sides are both reprehensible and hypocritical with the roles changing depending on which tribe the recently departed hailed from. Both sides have decent people and awful people, and the awful people often try to paint even decent people on the other side as awful.

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But now, a few days later, as passions have cooled and the shock has subsided, it seems like a good time to reminisce about Graham and contemplate his legacy. Like him or not, he was a giant in the Senate, and he had a profound impact on America.

Lindsey Graham was a complicated figure. Like most of us, he was neither all good nor all bad. How you viewed him largely depended on what era of his life you examine and what your values are.

For me, there are three things that stand out in my mind about Graham. I first came to know him (by reputation, not personally; I never met him) when he was a member of a bipartisan group of moderate senators that tried to reach compromises on contentious issues like immigration.

At that point in his career, Graham was not popular among Republicans. I remember him being labeled as a RINO and Republican talk show hosts calling his immigration reform proposals “grahamnesty.” He was part of the bipartisan Gang of Eight that included Republicans John McCain, Marco Rubio, and Jeff Flake. All moderates, all reviled by the talk radio set.

A lot changed after Donald Trump got elected. In May 2016, Graham tweeted, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it,” (that tweet is still up, by the way), yet Graham soon became a strong Trump ally even though it meant abandoning many of his closely-held convictions. He even came around to supporting mass deportations over a fair, just, and merciful treatment of immigrants. Graham also flipped from criticism of Trump’s actions on January 6 to rationalization and acquiescence.

Graham went so far as to say, ““Mr President, you’re not far behind God,” just over a month before his death. Some might wonder if that sort of blasphemous idolatry might have led to a divine abridgment of his life. I can’t say for sure, but if God was in the habit of serving up lightning bolts for blasphemous statements about Trump, there wouldn’t be many Republicans left.

I’ve often wondered whether Trump had something on Graham or whether his shift was a political calculation. Graham was long rumored to be gay, but that wouldn’t necessarily be a disadvantage in the new GOP that doesn’t seem to care about anything except support for Trump. I think it’s more likely that Graham just saw the political winds shifting and made the move that ensured his political survival. It’s worth noting that, of the Republican members of the Gang of Eight, one died shortly after MAGA became ascendant in the party, another was forced out, largely due to his criticism of Trump, and two eventually crossed over to join the MAGA movement.

The third area that stands out about Graham was his support for Ukraine. Even as the senator became a Trump ally, he remained a staunch defender of Ukraine’s fight for survival. In fact, Graham’s last days were spent trying to bridge the gap between Zelensky and Trump and rekindle American aid. Russia will definitely be a beneficiary of Graham’s passing.

Different people will have different reactions to Graham’s death, but I’ll remember him as a politician who seemed to be a decent man, even if he was partisan to the core. I disagreed with him often, especially in his last years, but even when he aligned himself with Trump, he stayed mostly respectable and rooted in reality (except for likening Trump to God), unlike many others I could mention. (Mike Lee, I’m looking in your direction.)

Graham spent 31 years in Washington, first arriving in 1995 as a congressman, and 23 years in the Senate. His legacy will be no less complex than the man himself.

I tend to think that future Americans will likely judge Graham harshly for his role in enabling Trump. I believe that, one day soon, MAGA will be viewed the way we see the McCarthyites of the 50s and the segregationists of the 60s. God willing, these years will prove to be a historical aberration that will looked upon with disdain (and God willing, the country will hold together so that there are future Americans to study the history we are making).

It’s also quite likely that Graham will be remembered critically for his role in starting the Iran war. While the blame (or credit) for starting the war lies squarely with Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, Graham was an early cheerleader for striking Iran and regime change.

Over the weekend, Trump reportedly informed Congress that the war is back on, restarting the 60-day War Powers clock. With new strikes against Iran, it appears increasingly likely that the US has become involved in another long, costly, and this time, possibly economically devastating war. If that turns out to be the case, Graham’s legacy will carry a share of the blame for blocking Congress from its constitutional oversight of the president’s actions.

Even bad movements have good people. People who have their own misguided motives or just make bad choices. Lindsey Graham made some bad decisions near the end that will taint his place in history, and that’s a shame.

LONG LIVE SENATOR GRAHAM South Carolina’s governor has appointed Darline Graham Nordone, Lindsey’s sister, to fill the remainder of his term after Donald Trump made the suggestion. It isn’t clear whether Darline is qualified for the job, although she did assist with Lindsey’s campaigns, or whether she will run in the August 11 special election.

NOT DEAD That apparently describes Mitch McConnell, who released a statement and proof-of-life photo, complete with a newspaper, on Sunday. McConnell has not been seen he reportedly fell on June 11.

TRUMP SPEECH A televised presidential speech was announced for Thursday. Rumor has it that the topic will be 2020 election fraud, specifically a claim that the election of Georgia Senators Ossoff and Warnock was fraudulent. Multiple audits have found no widespread fraud, and many Trump supporters were in DC for the “Stop the Steal” 𝚛̶𝚊̶𝚕̶𝚕̶𝚢̶ insurrection the next day, but Trump’s DOJ raided Fulton County elections offices in January, and Kash Patel has committed hundreds of FBI agents and analysts to the effort instead of hunting real criminals. Lawfare much?

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE If you need something funny to watch, check out HBO’s “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: an Almost History of America.” Currently three episodes in, the series features Larry David and a smorgasbord of guest stars in American history sketches. They’re almost all comedy gold if you like Larry’s Seinfeld-esque humor. (And if you don’t, what’s wrong with you?)

Among my favorites so far are Larry as Joseph McCarthy, as Meriwether Lewis with Clark trying tell their wives about their big expedition, at the Boston Tea Party, as the third Wright Brother (stuck in the middle seat), sharing a bus seat with Rosa Parks, and hosting a stop on the Underground Railroad.

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A couple of observations about California, that might dispel some readers’ biases. These are mine alone, and your mileage might vary.

Politics is where you find it, and if you look for it, you will find it. I didn’t see much of it in SoCal, except among people who could not stop talking about it, but that is what I deem a “you problem” not a California problem. Of course, most voters in SoCal are hard-left, but if you don’t engage in political conversations, you won’t hear it. People don’t just walk up to you and begin telling you how Republicans are evil, etc. Then again, I have friends who can’t wait to begin every conversation with exactly that, who live in a bubble where Mitch McConnell is brain-dead, or Lindsey Graham didn’t really die of a medical problem, because conspiracies are part of their makeup. The same kind of person is just as likely to believe the opposing theories about Democrats if they hold different political beliefs.

Such has it always been, and such it shall always be.

What I did see at the America 250 celebration at the Coliseum at USC, was a lot of patriotism on display, and not a small number of people willing to chant “USA, USA!” despite their own private political beliefs.

(One thing I want to correct for the record, and I’m surprised nobody mentioned it, I wrote while I was in SoCal that the Olympic flame at the Coliseum was rekindled for the first time since the Olympics was held there in 1934. That is not true: Los Angeles hosted the 1984 Olympics, which I knew about, since I was a young man watching it, and John Williams theme was introduced there. Sorry for the error.)

I also saw lots of Christ followers. I don’t know their personal lives, or if they live according to their beliefs, but I know a lot of Californians go to church. Read David Thornton’s excellent piece “Let your heart match your words” for some encouragement about that. The Los Angelinos I worshipped with would fit in at any Georgia church. Prayer is not dependent on location, thank God.

There are signs of the economic and government impacts, financially, in California. I wouldn’t want to live in a place with $5.30 per gallon gasoline, or where a home with less than 2,000 square feet and a zero lot line goes for over a million bucks. I would avoid living in a place that’s over 40 miles from downtown Los Angeles, with at least three freeways that will take me there, all of them impossibly clogged with traffic.

It wouldn’t be my first choice to drive every day sharing the road with 100,000 drivers who think they are Mario Andretti. I will say that using L.A. driving techniques in north metro Atlanta is effective, however, if dangerous. I can cut my commute time significantly by using those techniques and taking my life in my hands. I don’t think I’ll make it a habit.

But…as for natural beauty, weather, and convenience of so many goods from so many places, it’s very hard to beat California. A place where you can go from the ski slopes to the beach on the same day is pretty awesome. Even my native New Hampshire, which has mountains, lakes, and the seacoast within a single day’s driving, with time to spare, can’t match the climate and predictability of SoCal weather.

I’ve spent time in the Golden State before, but it’s always been on business. This is the first purely pleasure trip I’ve ever taken there, and I must say it won’t be the last. Whoever wants to trash the west coast has not been there. But again, visiting is wonderful; living there, the shine fades quickly.

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Thoughts, and what I’m working on.

It’s now confirmed that the memes are true. Marco Rubio is the Viceroy of Venezuela. I encourage you to read the N.Y. Times piece on it. The question is, are Venezuelans better off having the U.S. as its new Godfather?

Drone wars. I read that the average Russian recruit’s survival time on the Ukraine front is 20 minutes. The drones are terrifying, especially the newest A.I.-enabled drones produced for Ukraine at secret factories tucked in forests and industrial parks around Europe. Is the U.S. prepared to fight that kind of war? I think we are more prepared than critics think, but less prepared than we should be. Will the next war be like something out of The Terminator?

The use of A.I.-powered autonomous battlefield droids is a real thing—they are being used in Ukraine right now. But ground can only be really “taken” and “held” by living flesh and blood soldiers. How that can happen in such a dynamic, death-filled battlefield is going to be the main issue in the next big war.

The biggest rot-inducing problem in America, I believe, is sports gambling. Since 2010, the global market for sports betting has grown from $35 billion to over $112 billion, generating nearly $17 billion in revenue in the U.S. alone in 2025. As all things become, it is not a small-time bookie operation—it’s run by giant corporations. DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, all of them are well-capitalized.

Sports betting is a terrible moral hazard, along with casino gambling. The two go hand-in-hand, as younger and younger people are drawn into the dark world of money and risk, ready to lose their shirts over and over to companies who calculate the house edge, skim, and odds as well as any mafioso ever did (or better, actually).

The sports betting industry fuels so many scandals that it might bring down professional sports, never mind college level professional sports. The NCAA concluded in a report that 36% of Division I men’s basketball players reported sports-betting-related social-media abuse, while 16% of FBS football players reported negative or threatening messages.

While some people are immune to the siren song of excessive gambling, others ruin their lives. Yes, you can say the same thing about alcohol, or legal weed (though I don’t know anyone who ruined their lives by smoking or vaping legal weed, only those who dealt in illegal weed).

I am going to cover this topic in much more detail. I’d be interested in your take on it. Leave it in the comments.

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I grew up about an hour from Athens, and for part of my young adulthood, I attended the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!) and worked in Athens while I commuted back and forth over an hour of country roads.

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One of my memories of that drive is being behind an old car with a lot of environmentalist bumper stickers that said things like “the Earth is your mother” and “give a hoot, don’t pollute.”

What made this encounter memorable is that, as I drove behind this car, I was nearly hit by a steady stream of cup, bags, food wrappers, and other assorted garbage that was being tossed out both sides of the car.

If you know me, you know one of my pet peeves is people throwing garbage on the side of the road, especially my road, but what struck me at the time was that it was pretty funny that a car with all those environmentalist stickers was throwing such a high volume of garbage on the road.

They obviously didn’t believe what their stickers said.

About the same time, I heard a DC Talk song called “What If I Stumble.” The song started with this introduction:

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today

Is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips

Then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.

That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

How many of us are like the people in that car, not acting out the teachings that we claim to believe in?

This might not be a salvation matter for us. We know that all have sinned, and we know that we will go on sinning because we are human, but God’s grace and our repentance cover our sin.

But the flip side is that I’ve had people who I know tell me that they don’t want to be a Christian because they see so many Christians who obviously don’t believe what they say. Personally, I don’t want my actions to be the reason someone turns away from Christ. We need to remember that Paul wrote that we are Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20), and ambassadors are typically on their best behavior because they want their actions to reflect well on their home country.

So that leads us to the question of how Christians should act. There are lots of Bible passages that give us guidance on how to act, as well as how not to act. I’m not going to try to hit all these because they said I need to keep this to about three or four minutes, and the pastor might get mad if I cut into his time. Besides, Christianity really is not a religion of rigid rules. It took me a few decades to realize that.

What I will do is direct you to one particular verse. It’s a verse that you find in three of the gospels (Matthew 22:34–40; Mark 12:28–34; Luke 10:25–28), but I’ll cite Matthew 22:36-40.

When Jesus was asked which commandment was the greatest, he answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

So straight from Jesus, if you aren’t being loving, you’re doing it wrong. A lot of the behavioral guidelines that we find in the Bible are really just ways to help us be more loving to others. In fact, Jesus said this when he said, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Sometimes that’s easier said than done. People can be annoying and hard to love, and it’s the ones who are difficult to love that we really need to try harder with.

There’s a meme that says following Jesus’s example might include flipping tables, but if we closely at what got Jesus angry, it was religious hypocrites and people who profited from worship at the temple. He sat down talked with the sinners and prostitutes and tax collectors and Romans. The dregs of society.

For us, the list of people we should love includes the people who bug you, the people who bully you, the people who cut you off in traffic and just don’t know how to drive, people who persecute you, your enemies (Matthew 5:44), atheists, trans people, other ethnic groups, foreigners (Leviticus 19:33-34), gays, immigrants (Deuteronomy 10:19), people of other religions, people of different political parties, and anyone else you can think of.

Love God and love people.

And if there is anyone here who is being pushed away from Christ because of the actions of some of his followers, I’d like to close with another observation from the internet:

“To be honest, if I was a Christian because of Christians, I’d likely be an atheist by now. But I’m a Christian because of Jesus, and Jesus is pretty freaking awesome.”

Prayer

Lord Jesus, we thank you for your love and mercy. We know that we all fall short of the ideal. Help us to be better ambassadors for you. Help us to live out what we believe.

We pray that you would give us guidance as we relate to others. Help us to see them as you see them. Help us to love them as you love them. Make us instruments of your love.

In Jesus name, Amen.

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From Independence Day of old…

… to modern celebrations…

Suddenly masks are in vogue on the right.

As were European visitors

But not soccer

Did we mention that Trump had made $2 billion from the presidency?

More mask hiumor

Jesus is not a political mascot.

Can Zelensky be our president? We could make a one-time exception to the native-born thing.

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First, and most obvious, is that strictly speaking, the Democratic Party elites did not force either Biden or Platner out. The lie of this claim can be seen through the simultaneous and contradictory claims that Democrats supported both Biden and Platner. It is logically inconsistent that Democrats could both support and undermine Biden and Platner at the same time.

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In reality, what happened was that new information caused both Biden and Platner to lose support abruptly. (It’s fair to say that both should have lost support earlier.) When the two politicians saw that their campaigns were damaged beyond repair and that there was no way forward, both chose to step down for the good of their party and the country.

The second fallacy is that primary elections are party elections, not governmental elections. When Biden and Platner secured their respective nominations, they won only a place on the ballot, not an office. It makes sense that the parties and the states would consider the possibility that a nominee might not make it from the primary to Election Day. There are legal and procedural steps to follow in such an eventuality.

In the same way that there is a procedure to replace elected officials if they resign or die in office, there are procedures to replace party nominees on a ballot. And just as elected officials might be replaced without an election, nominees can be replaced by party leaders. In one fairly recent example, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp appointed Kelly Loeffler to fill the Senate seat left vacant by Johnny Isakson in 2019. Loeffler went on to lose re-election to Raphael Warnock just over a year later. No one said that Kemp was subverting democracy by appointing Loeffer.

Most people don’t understand that primary elections are a fairly recent innovation. Our system of primaries as the dominant means of picking nominees only dates back to the 1970s. The current system was born out of reforms after the turbulence of the 1960s. Prior to the 70s, primaries were a supplement to the traditional convention nominating process. The “smoke-filled rooms.”

Primaries are a failed experiment, in my opinion. They tend to reward extremism rather than electability or competence. The bottom line is that if a group of partisans gets together to select a nominee, they often choose the most partisan option, even if their ideas are not practical and they lack the skills for the job.

The proof for that argument is in the pudding. Candidate quality has decreased sharply over the past few decades. Joe Biden, Graham Platner, Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and AOC are only a few examples of what the primary system has given us. The flip side is that many of our good, competent leaders from the past would not be fringe enough to win a primary today.

So, no. The Democrats are not undemocratic for abandoning candidates who were flaming out in real time. The replacements of Biden and Platner are examples of democratic responsiveness in action. Not supporting candidates with obvious flaws should be normalized. It’s a good thing. Sticking with candidates who are bad because they are part of your tribe is the problem.

The Republicans shouldn’t be ridiculing Democrats for dropping bad candidates, especially as they rally behind Donald Trump, an adjudicated rapist, and Ken Paxton, a serial philanderer and abuser of office. Loyalty is not an asset if you’re loyal to bad people.

I applaud the decision to dump Platner and encourage him to step aside. Even if the Democrats lose the race, they will have stood up for their principles and morality at the very real risk of alienating the progressive wing of their party. That’s a lot more than I can say for Republicans over the last decade.

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.

First, there’s reporters, who describe things of which they know nothing and then opine on the impact those things have on other things of which they know nothing. Second, there’s lazy historians, who cobble together tales based on other people’s serious work, who apply today’s mores, habits and culture to people who lived long ago and much differently than us. Third, there’s economists—at least the ones who make sweeping predictions based on shaky data. (There’s a difference between econometrics and economics—The Pedant.)

But there’s a class of know-nothings who stand apart from all of these: The Politician. In our case, we have a politician who was previously a reality show star, who, previously to that, spent decades bilking billions from investors, banks, and the public by hawking everything from glitzy buildings, failing casinos, overpriced hotels and golf courses, wine, steaks, and a faux university. He is an expert at know-nothingness.

The reason I say all of this is to cut off arguments that begin with “say what you will…” In the 1890s, looking back at the building of America’s east-west transcontinental railroads and the effects of that upon our nation, historians, economists, and reporters would begin “say what you will about the robber barons, the railroads made this country.” Or, “say what you will about the inept, boneheaded, and vicious way the railroads were built, we wouldn’t have a nation without them.” And don’t get me started on the way the railroads destroyed American Indian culture.

“Say what you will about President Trump…” and go there, but you can’t get past the know-nothingness. Whatever occurs on Trump’s watch (by that, he means the man in charge, not the actual watch—The Pedant) will be remembered by serious historians as accidental, or more accurately, incidental, in nature. For the primary motivation of the people running our country right now is their personal enrichment, whether it be at the cost of other people losing their wealth, or by increasing everyone’s wealth to multiply their own. Either way, the outcome for the majority of Americans is only incidental to their own interests. I can provide many, many examples of this, from Trump’s $2 billion heyday since taking the oath as 47, to Howard Lutnick, to Jared Kushner, to Steve Witkoff, et cetera.

Wealth and power (not necessarily money) has always been one of the primary motivators of people running for office, or currying favor with those who won. But there has also been a counterforce, in the political parties, whose influence is supposed to push back favoring those who serve out of duty and devotion. It is difficult to find a Cincinnatus, or a George Washington, but the nation doesn’t need many to stay the course and keep the wolves, know-nothings, and sycophants at bay.

The last one of these I remember is Mitt Romney, at least in the Republican Party. And say what you will about the Bush family, they were old money rich before they ran for office, and their ethos was service as a duty. There I did it myself, and for that I will allow this: Say what you will about Donald Trump, he was rich before he ran for office. Except he probably wasn’t rich, at least not in the sense of people who own things and acquire great wealth. Trump had a lot of encumbered properties, worthless investments, and loans up to his eyeballs, which were refinanced regularly to keep him in rococo. Now that he’s had five and a half years in office, along with nearly 10 years of owning the Republican Party, Trump is genuinely wealthy, and powerful.

The power brings the wealth, because most wealthy people crave power to remain wealthy, or at least to prevent those with power from stripping them of their wealth. Instead of looking at our current situation through the lens of some rational path, it’s better to look at it as a series of accidents, and incidental outcomes, of a man with tremendous power seeking more wealth for himself, and those around him doing the same.

There’s war with Iran? Maybe? There’s abandoning Israel? Perhaps. Or there’s plenty of influential people who don’t want war with Iran, or to abandon Israel, and to show it they will contribute to the powerful people’s coffers to see to it. There is no great, overarching conspiracy to do things out of duty and honor, or to act out of privilege. It is simply gang mentality at work.

Things are falling apart because the parties have abandoned their counterforce mission. We have Graham Platners popping up all over, and when they get too toxic, they are left to wither, and replaced by others who may in fact be worse. We have an aging class of old Politicians who mixed magical thinking with a sense of institutional memory. But they are literally dying off, or becoming too sick (pray for Sen. Mitch McConnell) to even show up.

The last exemplars of Cincinnatus have been expelled from both parties, and the parties are not content to go back to find more. So we have Gov. Gavin Newsom, who can’t govern California, as the potential great savior of the Democratic Party. And we have J.D. Vance, in all his know-nothingness (but he is a smart cookie), preparing for 2028. I think that’s where we are headed, and Congress is no better. (Are you listening, Ken Paxton?)

Here’s an “if dog rabbit” statement: Say what you will about our “political realignment,” but it’s creative destruction at work. No. It isn’t. It’s government by accident. It’s impotent blight, where some people benefit and some are destroyed, but not through any plan involving those outcomes; more through incidental effects of being in the wrong place (or the right place) at the wrong (or right) time.

The answer to our conundrum isn’t to bring up more Mamdanis or Democratic Socialists, or to scream that “real communism hasn’t been tried!” I think there is some thought behind Trump’s new focus on communism, because his acts have promoted communist ideals to emerge from the left, and then he can make those his new enemy to fight. But again, it’s done without any real understanding of why communism always fails, or the history of all the times it’s been actually, really, tried and failed.

In fact, everything our federal government is doing at the top level is a form of magical thinking. There is no “Department of War,” but to Pete Hegseth, who hails from the first class of magical thinkers, and moved into the professional Politician class, there is, and he runs it. It’s sad that the magical thinkers have taken over and made a government of know-nothings. At least there remain people at lower echelons who know things, and for that I am grateful.

When the incompetence and ineptitude claw their way down to the boiler rooms of operating the government, or the military, or banking, or AI, or whatever endeavors we commit to, then bad accidents happen. We end up with an Ayn Rand dystopia. I still have faith this won’t happen, that the parties will wake up and assume the role of referee between ideals and self-interest.

But like any random walk, or a herd of bull elephants rampaging thorough a town, people will certainly get hurt in the process. The world has been here before, in the summer of 1914, when at the end of June Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by an anarchist in Sarajevo, which caused a catastrophic series of treaties and agreements, along with know-nothings and very effective militaries plunging into a death pit. Except now we all have nuclear weapons. Pray that the know-nothings stay far away from those particular buttons, for if we don’t dig out of this trench quickly enough, that particular outcome will make it so we never do at all.

Bring back the duty, honor, principled servants, even if they are wild-eyed socialists, and the wonky eggheads who put in the work, to run the parties. I’d rather have an economist who’s wrong, who at least knows something, than the class of know-nothings the current system is producing. Oh, and make primary elections illegal. I’d favor a 28th Amendment, to prohibit primary elections for federal office unless those are non-partisan and ranked.

I can dream, at least.

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The most recent crisis involves the totally predictable implosion of Graham Platner’s Senate campaign in Maine. As I wrote several weeks ago, the red flags were there, including but not limited to an SS tattoo.

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On Monday, the story broke that Platner was being accused of sexual assault by a former girlfriend. Let’s not sugarcoat it. If the allegations are true, Platner is a rapist. And given his history of sexual misconduct, the allegations are credible.

The good news for Democrats is two-fold. First, party officials are doing what they should have done months ago and calling on him to step down. With that move, the party can maintain some shred of moral integrity, unlike Republicans who seem to accept pretty much anything from their nominees these days.

The second piece of good news is that the Maine Democratic Party has a little time. If Platner withdraws by July 13, he can be replaced on the ballot. Democrats have until July 27 to replace him with another nominee, picked by a nominating committee. Even after that deadline, if Platner withdraws by August 25, he must be removed from the ballot. In that case, Democrats could run a write-in candidate.

The bad news is that Platner has to withdraw. Candidates often are the last to understand that their campaign is toast. (See Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign as exhibit A.) And someone as apparently unstable as Platner might even continue to run out of spite, taking down the Maine Democrats hopes to unseat Susan Collins as revenge for abandoning him.

Time will tell, but at this point, Platner should definitely be abandoned.

In the final analysis, Platner’s latest scandal may prove to be a boon to Democrats. Getting Platner out while there is still time to replace him could salvage Democratic chances in Maine as well as remove a liability to Democrats elsewhere.

But wait, there’s more!

At least 11 Democratic candidates for various offices are self-described socialists. Candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have won congressional primaries in Colorado and New York, where the seats are reliably blue, and are competing in Michigan and Wisconsin, where they are not.

About 39 percent of voters have a positive view of socialism, so socialist candidates start at a general election disadvantage. Only about 21 percent of Americans view the DSA favorably. Worse, most voters who approve of socialism are young, the cohort least likely to vote.

Nominating socialists also makes Democratic candidates nationwide vulnerable to Republican attacks that they are socialist and/or communist (similar to tying the party to a Nazi-tattooed sex predator). The two are not the same, but few understand the distinction, and Republicans are happy to paint with a broad brush.

In fact, the Republican tactic of dumbing down socialism may have contributed to its newfound popularity. For decades now, Republicans have decried everything they don’t like as socialism.

Universal healthcare? Socialized medicine!

Free college? Socialized education!

Higher taxes on the wealthy? Socialized redistribution of income!

As someone pointed out a while back, by painting popular ideas as socialist, Republicans have made socialism sound pretty good to a lot of people.

And that was before Republicans started adopting socialist ideas. Trump has ramped up federal equity stakes in private businesses under the guise of national security, often with a “golden share” or executive, if not controlling, interest. By definition, socialism is “governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.”

I guess if you can’t beat them, join them. File it under “How Republicans learned to stop worrying and love government seizing the means of production as long as it’s Trump.”

Democratic primary voters are not playing it safe, when that’s what they really should be doing if they want to ensure that Trump is blocked from implementing his authoritarian agenda. Especially when it comes to swing states, the safe picks are moderates who have been vetted in other campaigns. Now is not the time to gamble on radicals or newcomers with no electoral experience.

Going further, I’d like to see both parties take a more moderate stance on the issues and a more strident position on morality and decency. I want to see Trump and MAGA defeated, but I don’t want socialist radicals or trumpy Democrats to take their place. Democrats shouldn’t adopt Trump’s depravity any more than they should take up his socialist and authoritarian policies.

Speaking for independents, we want moderation and sanity. We want candidates who are decent people, candidates who we don’t have to dread seeing in the news every day. That shouldn’t be difficult, but partisan voters are making it so.

The crowning irony of all this is that Democrats are likely to win, even with bad candidates (but not Platner). Trump is just that unpopular. In the end, the Republican Trump mania may be what ushers in a socialist boom in the United States.

FOURTH POLL We ran a quick Independence Day poll on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Eighty-seven percent of respondents prefer to watch firework displays rather than shooting their own.

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But…that afternoon, seemingly inexplicably, Howe did not press his attack and end the rebellion. It wasn’t inexplicable—in June 1775, Howe sustained the bloodiest, highest casualty rate in the history of the British Army, a dubious distinction that stands to this day, at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Under Howe, the British Army would never again engage Americans in a frontal attack. Instead, his troops dug entrenchments around Washington’s men, planning to conquer them the next day.

Washington had few options, so he took the only one that didn’t involve defeat or surrender. Summoning every vessel that floats, he ordered his men to cross the East River by night. Howe had men scouting the river, for just such a case, but a thick fog rolled in about midnight, allowing the small rebel force to cross unobserved. A miracle?

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There were so many times that it seems God, through His divine will, allowed the United States to be born. And not only born, but constructed in a way that no other nation in history had been born. The people that came together, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Jay, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and so many others, represented some of the finest minds, well-rounded in philosophy, government, and literature, on the planet at the time. They came together in Philadelphia to craft a document to found a nation, and then a Constitution hammered out over a hot summer in 1787.

Upon hearing of George Washington declining a third term in office, King George III reacted in astonishment. Such an act places Washington “in a light the most distinguished of any man living,” making him “the greatest character of the age.” Most rulers believed that no living man could behave like Cincinnatus of the ancient world once power was obtained. Was it divine providence that elevated Washington as the face of the American Revolution and the new nation’s first president?

(An aside: the sentiment was not returned by Washington. In 1921, a statue of Washington was gifted to Britain by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and placed in London. The gift included a quantity of Virginia soil under the statue’s base, for George Washington vowed never to set foot on British soil. It still stands today.)

Even in immoral action or acts of naked conquest, it seems the favor of God has always been on America. For when the world needed a force for good, America stepped up. We suffered 600,000 dead in the war to end slavery. During the worst times, when a racist president—Woodrow Wilson—took the country by its progressive populist throat, and the Spanish Flu pandemic ravaged the western world, America still sent doughboys to Europe to end the Great War.

On June 6, 1945, the overcast weather kept our planes from being spotted during Operation Overlord, and Allied intelligence disinformation kept the Nazis from reacting. German scientists purposely used flawed formulas to keep the Nazi effort from pursuing an atomic bomb from advancing, while America, knowing the threat, put all its effort into building the bomb. The worst nightmares in the world came from minds gathered to America, and the policies of our government kept the world from succumbing to nuclear holocaust despite our own missteps.

Was it God’s divine will to make the United States the protector of freedom around the world, and the stabilizing force to keep the earth from nuclear devastation? I don’t believe in pure luck, or unanchored destiny. Men sin, and God’s purposes are fulfilled through our imperfection and rebellion.

Yesterday, on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, America convulsed with national pride. The world is witness to our kindness, our generosity, and our incredible abundance, as this birthday happened in the midst of the World Cup in America. The leader of the Roman Catholic Church is American. The 1932 Olympics were held in Los Angeles. Last night, for the first time since that event, the flame was rekindled at the Los Angeles Coliseum during the America 250 Block Party. In 2028, the Olympics return to America.

In Washington D.C., a dangerous heat wave and storms caused the evacuation of the National Mall and the delay of President Donald Trump’s speech. Was that a divine harbinger or warning? Trump’s speech was short, but full of American pride. He railed against communism, but we had foiled the communist threat decades ago. Those who wish to control always need a threat.

America has risen above such sentiments before. God’s hand has been on this nation, but it is not guaranteed. Should we stray enough from the will of God, then His will shall be accomplished by others. For 250 years, the best minds, the most generous souls, have been gathered to our shores. Now, storms brew. We should heed the warnings, and look heavenward for our sustenance.

The next 250 years may be the most abundant the human race has ever known. Or it may be the end of this age. Christians believe the end is nigh, and the return of Christ is imminent at any moment. If this is true, we should act like it, and follow the example of our Savior. Too many American Christians confuse Americanism with Christianity. This is a grave error.

America may be heaven on earth for many who enjoy our freedoms and riches, but it is still on a fallen earth. The real heaven is for those who lower themselves to be servants of all, and thereby rise above such nationalist thoughts. America has been blessed by God, but only when Americans bless God.

His will is for us to follow Micah 6:8: “He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?” Do this and we will enjoy another 250 years of blessing, or as much time as God allows before the return of His Son. Stray, and the storms will continue to gather. And next time, there may not be a clear sky afterward.

But for now, swell with honor and blessing. Have a blessed day, and enjoy the end of your July 4th weekend.

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