#182 / Back To School At Pali High?

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An article in the May 18, 2026, edition of The New York Times was titled as follows in the hardcopy version: "In Pacific Palisades, A Mother's Agonizing Dilemma." Click that link for the article online (but be aware that the online headline will differ from what I have given you here). 

In the hardcopy edition, there was a picture on the front page of the paper that immediately attracted my attention since it showed an old Sears store, repurposed with a new sign reading, "Pali High." I, personally, am a graduate of "Paly High" (class of '61), meaning Palo Alto High School, located in Palo Alto, California. I wasn't, actually, offended by the "Pali High" sign, but I can't help thinking that my own highschool is the original and authentic version. 

At any rate, Palo Alto High School has not (to date) suffered the kind of fate affecting the "Pali High" located in Pacific Palisades. The Pacific Palisades wildfire - one of the "most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history" - badly damaged the high school, but it was "still standing" after the fire. However, the real problem about repopulating the school with students, like Pearl Villemaire, pictured above, was the accumulation of toxic chemicals. Pearl's home was "smoke-damaged," too.

If you read the entirety of the article, you will find that it may well be that students are being sent back to a highschool that is, in fact, a hotbed of toxic dangers (and Pearl's home is in the same condition). This brought a thought to mind. As we enter a time in which wildfires will, almost certainly, continue to erupt during warm weather - thanks to the global warming which our nation, and the world entire, is failing to address - we are going to have a lot more problems like the ones documented with reference to "Pali High." We are constructing our cities with plastics and other materials created not by nature, but by human artifice, that may well leave us with a toxic legacy, after such fires, that will then doom our children to a life of chemical pollution, dangerous to health. 

One way to begin addressing this problem (which is referenced in the article) is just to "pretend" that the toxic residues are "ok," and are not a mammoth health danger. This is, possibly, what is happening in Pacific Palisades, and this is what constitutes the "agonizing dilemma" that the article discusses. Pearl wants to go back to school; she is experiencing real panic attacks and depression because of the disruption to her life caused by the fire. Her mom wants to help with that, as do the other parents of students at "Pali High." It's agonizing for such parents to send their students back to school, however. While the parents  know that this will make their children happier, immediately, they also know, at some level, that this decision may condemn them to future disease and an early death. 

Pearl's going back to school, at Pali High. Let's cross our fingers! However, there could be another way - a lesson drawn from the situation documented by the article in The Times. Maybe we could start seriously confronting and dealing with global warming - on an immediate and urgent basis - and since global warming is caused by the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels (oil and gas) that would mean phasing them out, immediately (as quickly as is humanly possible).

That is a possibility, and there are some (I am raising my hand) who don't think a decision to do that should really be "agonizing." The decision to do that, I think, should be "obvious." 

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#181 / Jeff Bezos' Billions? He Earned Them!

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The headline on an opinion column that was published in the May 27, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal reads this way: Jeff Bezos Earned His Fortune. 

Marian L. Tupy, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is the person who is making this argument. In a typographical "pull out," Tupy sums up that argument by telling us that "The Amazon founder's innovations save customers 22 hours a year on average, giving them the gift of time." Here's a more extended explanation: 

Modern debates about wealth start in the wrong place. They begin with the fortune. They should begin with customers and their time. Mr. Bezos is worth roughly $275 billion. That number offends many people because they assume wealth must have been taken from someone else. But Amazon didn’t become valuable by force. It became valuable because hundreds of millions of people chose to use it. 

Consumers weren’t forced to buy books, batteries, diapers, cables, razors, tools, groceries or printer ink from Amazon. They did so because Amazon saved them time, money, effort or uncertainty. Sellers weren’t forced to use Amazon’s marketplace. They did so because it gave them access to demand. Firms weren’t forced to use Amazon Web Services. They did so because renting computing power was cheaper than building and maintaining their own information-technology infrastructure. That is capitalism: People get rich by creating something others value enough to buy.... 

Consider the arithmetic. Suppose an hour of labor is worth about $64, roughly the average gross domestic product per hour worked in the countries in which Amazon operates. If Mr. Bezos’ fortune corresponded to the total value that Amazon created, his $275 billion would represent about 4.3 billion hours of saved time. Divided among Amazon’s more than 300 million active customers, the saving comes to about 14 hours per customer over Amazon’s life. That’s nothing. Many customers save that in a month. 

At $64 an hour, that means Amazon has saved its customers about 214 billion hours. Across 300 million customers over roughly 32 years (Amazon was founded in 1994), the saving equals about 22 hours per person a year. That is 25 to 26 minutes a week, or a little less than four minutes a day. 

So the question isn’t whether Mr. Bezos has too much money. It is whether Amazon has saved the average customer four minutes a day. The answer is yes. A single avoided trip to a store can save 30 minutes. Finding a product online instead of driving to three retailers can save an hour. Reading reviews can reduce the chance of buying the wrong product. Automatic reordering can save repeated errands. Price comparison can save money and time. Fast delivery can substitute for inventory kept in closets, garages, offices and warehouses.

Tupy makes a pretty good argument, don't you think? I think he does, but I do want to note that there are some costs he doesn't tally. Amazon's successful business model has not only made it possible for the buyers of everyday commodities to save time, it has also helped destroy many small businesses - and even some large businesses - and has mightly contributed to what is sometimes called the "death of downtown."

Still, let's give credit where credit is due. Bezos' commercial innovations (and let's not forget the contributions of his former wife, MacKenzie Scott) have received an endorsement from the market. His new idea about how to use the "Internet" to sell things was, perhaps, an idea whose time had come. Granting all that, and affirming the arithmetic propounded by Tupy, I think there is something else we need to consider. 

Who made Amazon successful? Just as Tupy points out, its customers made Amazon successful. And who are those customers? You, me, and the entirety of the public. So, shouldn't the public also share in the economic benefits, along with the guy who had the good idea? Granted that those four minutes a day we've each gained are worth something, I am suggesting that our willingness to transform the American economy on the Bezos' model of commercial enterprise should also result in a direct sharing of the economic benefits by the public taken as a whole. 

In other words, since we, the customers, and we, the public, have made Amazon successful, it would be - and in fact is - totally appropriate to impose a tax on the profits we made possible, to fund such things as downtown urban revitalization, childcare, health care, and the armed forces that defend our American "way of life."

Anyone see anything wrong with that? We have had a progressive income tax for a long time, and as the success of Mr. Bezos' good idea reveals, when the willingness of the public to change its buying habits has made it possible for one person to amass amazing sums of money ($275 billion buys a lot of merchandise, like Bezos' super yacht, pictured below), a tax on some of the profits, to benefit the public, is absolutely in order. 

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(2) - https://www.yourboatholiday.com/flying-fox-the-mega-yacht-owned-by-jeff-bezos/

#180 / Same Problem, Different Message

 

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As The New York Times has reported, former Vice President Al Gore is still talking about global warming (usually called "climate change," which I think, personally, significantly understates what's really happening). We all do remember the story of the boiling frogs, right? 

Some say that this story about the boiling frogs is truly misleading, and that frogs actually will not sit around in a gradually warming pot of water until they're boiled to death. 

Humans? Well, there is some evidence going the other way!

The main point made in The Times' article is that Gore now argues his case on "economic," not "moral" grounds: 

Onstage in Nashville, Mr. Gore made a central argument that would have been inconceivable two decades ago. Rather than directly invoking morality, he led with economics. 

The cost of renewable energy had plunged. He talked about “market forces” and about the “spectacular, unprecedented” technology revolution — including low-cost solar panels and wind turbines — that now make aiding the planet an affordable choice. 

“We’re in a different world now,” Mr. Gore said in Nashville. “The options are terrific.” 

The moral aspect of climate advocacy has had a long legacy, burnished not only by Mr. Gore but also by Pope Francis, who portrayed a link between environmental degradation and societal rot. In the late 2010s, a wave of youth protesters argued that political leaders and corporations had a duty to safeguard the planet for future generations. 

But as that movement waned, some felt the moralizing had at times brought a political backlash. After the documentary’s release ["An Inconvenient Truth"], Mr. Gore was criticized in some right-wing circles for hypocrisy given that he traveled widely and lived a lifestyle reliant on fossil fuels for energy. Later, to attend climate events, the activist Greta Thunberg twice crossed the Atlantic by sailboat in a conspicuous effort to avoid polluting air travel, a move that some critics called a publicity stunt out of reach for noncelebrities. 

Environmentalists, meantime, made a new case: that wind and solar energy were becoming cheaper than fossil fuels. Bill McKibben, a founder of the campaign group 350.org, said climate advocates no longer had to “fight against the force of economic gravity.”

Lawyers, who make arguments to juries as part of their normal business, quite often seek to persuade a jury by making multiple, and different, arguments. They always do keep urging the jury, though, to take the specific action for which they are arguing. 

One way to look at Gore's recent shift in emphasis is that this is probably a good thing, since the "problem" is to get us to change what we're doing, instead of lounging around in the pot debating whether the temperature is really going up, or not. 

I am "ok" with that, but my advice would be to do what the lawyers do. Present all the arguments! Candidly, I am getting quite tired of hearing public policy matters discussed, for the most part, as if "economic" issues were the only issues of importance. Public policy choices do, of course, quite often have very significant "economic" impacts, but there are also moral imperatives that I think are more important than the economic probabilities. 

We live in a world into which we have all been born, most mysteriously, a "Natural World" that is not our own creation, and I continue to think that we need to respect that fact, while certainly understanding our own powers and prerogatives and all those very real "economic" impacts that flow from our human choices. 

I would like to think that Al Gore (and all of us) would not forget that!

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(1) - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/climate/al-gore-an-inconvenient-truth.html
(2) - https://skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=403

#179 / A Few Words From Pope Leo XIV

 

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"We are as gods, and might as well get good at it." - Steve Jobs

Pope Leo XIV (pictured above) begs to disagree with Mr. Jobs. Pope Leo has recently issued an "encyclical letter," an official statement by the Pope on religious matters, and the Pope is warning the world that "artificial intelligence threatens to normalize an anti-human vision.” 

According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, the Pope's statement should be understood as both a "criticism" and a "rebuke," coming from the first American Pope, "challenging a technological revolution incubated in the U.S. and supported by our current president, who has lashed out at the pontiff for criticizing the war in Iran." The Journal goes on to say that "Leo’s emphasis on threats to individuals’ human dignity and opposition to autonomous weapons casts him in contrast to techno-optimists who argue that AI will usher in a productivity revolution and that the U.S. must deploy its advances militarily before rivals such as China do."

The New York Times has also chimed in on the Pope's recent statement on articifical intelligence:

Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, published with great ceremony on Monday his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, or “Magnificent Humanity.” The 42,300-word policy statement is respectful and named no names, but is at heart a sharp rebuke to Silicon Valley’s assertions that it alone can be trusted to develop the future.

Whether we denominate the Pope's encyclical as a "religious" or as a "spiritual" statement, the essence of what the Pope is saying is clear. The reality upon which we ultimately depend (for everything) is not a "human creation," and our periodic and presumptuous assertions to the contrary are not only misguided but (if I may be excused for using this word), "demonic." 

According to the Lord's Prayer, "Evil" is an actual reality, and is not just a word that we employ to categorize something that we don't particularly like. Those who recite the words of the Lord's Prayer, which acknowledge also the reality of God, ask the Creator of the World to "deliver us" from evil. 

The Pope does not, for a minute, think we are "as gods," and he knows evil when he hears it - and hears of it. Let us all, like the Pope, refuse to succumb to the temptation to elevate our own creations to be equal to, or even greater than, The World That God Created.

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#178 / As We Thinketh

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I have already recommended the book I have pictured above. The book was written in 1903. Click right here for my earlier review and comment, which mentions my father, who gave me the book on Christmas in 1961, just as I was about to turn 18 years old. At the time of my earlier mention of the book, I had not yet posted anything showing how the lesson of Allen's book motivated my father's incredibly successful life. Later, I did exactly that, and I invite anyone reading this to find out a bit about my Dad! Just click the link.

As you will note, the title of my blog posting today is not quite the same as the title of the book itself. This is to let you know that the book is most emphatically not delivering a message that is gender specific to males. Let us forgive our forefathers predecessors for their failure to understand that the language that we use, when we talk about the world, needs to be inclusive!

I have returned to James Allen's book in my blog posting today because The New York Times Magazine recently ran an opinion article by Sam Anderson, "Mind Reader," which made fun of the book, and suggested that it wasn't worth reading. Anderson is a staff writer for the magazine, and if he is correct, there has been a recent surge of interest in As A Man Thinketh, which Anderson describes as "a musty old book from 1903." The new "fans," Anderson says, are mainly male. Let me reiterate, this book is a book for everyone!

Anderson more or less ridicules Allen's book because he presents its basic argument as a claim that "you are your thoughts," which he reads to mean that "thinking" is "self-executing." I think this is a fundamental misreading. Thinking does not "make it so." Acting does!

What Allen's book claims is that we can do "anything." I happen to believe that is true, and invite you, again, to read about my father's experience in his life. My own experience has not been so different - thanks to my Dad. 

The message of Allen's book isn't that "thinking" is all we need to do. It is, rather, an encouragement to "think" about what we want to do, and who we want to be, and what we really "have to do." Do not think yourself into a life limited by your own failure to appreciate "possibility." 

Possibility is "my category" - and that is because (thanks to my Dad) that I read and believed what Allen says (and what my Dad said, and proved to me was true). We will not ever be able to go beyond what we think is our limit. 

So, don't be someone who is self-limiting (particularly now, as we must face down various ways in which our world might be brought summarily to an end, should we not change our destination). If we don't think beyond the "realities" that seem so absolute, we will never know what is really possible.

Please do not think that you're going to change the world by "thinking" alone. "Think." Then "Act." That's what James Allen is talking about! As we thinketh, so we can "make it so."

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#177 / Tax The Rich

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I have written about today's topic before, more three years ago. My blog posting back then was titled, "Taxing The Rich." I was reacting, at that time, to a newspaper column by Dan Walters, whose opinions frequently appear in Cal Matters. 

Today, under a slightly different but obviously related title, I am expressing pretty much the same opinion I did last time around. The grammtical formulation I am using for my title today, however, pretty much gives away my own thoughts on the matter right upfront. A blog posting titled, "Taxing The Rich" could announce an even-handed exploration of the pros and cons, with no actual opinion ever being voiced. My title today, "Tax The Rich," is in the "imperative mood," which is grammatically utilized to convey a "command or request." 

Grammar is important, you know!

Today's posting is written with reference to two different newspaper articles, each of the articles having been published on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. One of those articles is from The New York Times. The title of that article, in the hardcopy version of the paper, was, "Developer Blasts Mayor For Pushing Taxes On Rich." Online, the title is a bit more strident. When you click that link I have just provided, the online headline reads, "In Attack On Mamdani, Vornado Chief Likens ‘Tax The Rich’ To Hate Speech." Vornado Realty Trust owns and operates a lot of real estate, including nearly 20 million square feet of prime office properties," to cite its website. The person with the somewhat dyspeptic expression shown above is Steven Roth, the chief executive of Vornado. 

The link to Roth's name will take you to Wikipedia, and the Wikipedia article about Roth says that Vornado Realty Trust is "the largest commercial landlord in New York City." The Times' article, by Dana Rubinstein, discusses a proposal by New York State Governor, Kathy Hochul to increase property taxes on second home properties, and lets readers know that New York City's Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, thinks that's a pretty good idea. In case you don't have a visual image of the Mayor, he is pictured below. His cheery smile provides a mighty contrast to Roth's grim and dissatisfied countenance. 

On the same day The Times' article appeared, Nicholas G. Miller wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal. That article was headlined, "Taxes On Second Homes Divide Owners, Advocates." Among those whose taxes would go up, if the so-called "Pied-a-Terre" tax is ultimately enacted, is Taylor Swift.

I am not voicing any explicit opinion on the specific tax proposal that is the subject of these two articles, since I haven't reviewed the text. However, I do think that it is completely appropriate to ask those with extreme wealth to step up to the plate to provide support for the government that represents all of us. It is is not unfair, in my opinion, to ask those who have more to pay more. Certainly, those who advocate for this proposition are not engaging in "hate speech." They're just asking those who have the ability to do so to help, according to their ability, to support the society that is home to us all. 

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(1) - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/nyregion/roth-mamdani-griffin-rich.html

(2) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zohran_Mamdani 

#176 / A Paradigm Shift

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Jeremy Lent, pictured above, describes himself as an "Author and Integrator." Among other things, Lent produces periodic postings on a Substack blog that he titles, "Ecocivilization." On May 8, 2026, Lent's blog posting posed this question: "Is  A New Copernican Revolution Already Underway?" Let's hope so, says Lent! Our human survival may well depend on such a (yet unrealized) "paradigm shift."

The "Copernican Revolution" was a very significant change in perspective. As Copernicus proved, the Earth is not the center of the universe, as had been assumed, with the sun, the planets, and everyting else rotating about it. Quite the contrary! What an irony, says Lent:

The same scientific worldview that displaced Earth from the center of the universe placed “Man” at the center of the living world—as nature’s supreme conqueror and its rightful master. The very methods that revealed our planet’s cosmic insignificance were used to establish something else: the principle that nature exists primarily as a resource for human use, a complicated machine whose mechanisms can be deciphered and controlled by human endeavor. One decentering gave birth to another, far more consequential, centering—and we are still living inside it.

To put this in slightly different words (my words), we live, ultimately, in the "World of Nature," or in the "World That God Created." Any claim to "human supremacy" in that world is fundamentally wrong, and our acceptance  of the proposition that human beings are able to do whatever they want to do, as "masters of the world," will lead, inevitably, to human demise - if we are talking about the "World of Nature." Global Warming, often called "Climate Change," is one example. Many are starting to realize how high the stakes really are. 

Having said that about the "World of Nature," I do continue to insist on my "Two Worlds" hypothesis, which holds that while we are ultimately subject to the laws and requirements of the "World of Nature," we live most immediately in a human world that we create ourselves. The problem is, we underrate our ability to create any kind of world we choose, within that "Political World" which we most immediately inhabit, at the same time that we fail to understand the limits imposed on us in the "World of Nature." 

If you read my blog postings with any regularity, you will already know that I am in agreement with the warning that Lent has authored in his own blog posting. I am just saying it one more time - and am providing you a link to what Lent has to say about our human misconceptions, and where they are taking us!

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#175 / Your Chance To Learn A New Word

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I get a daily email from a website devoted to "Words Trivia," challenging my knowledge of vocabulary. If you click that link, maybe you can sign up yourself. Here's the challenge that hit my email inbox last month, on Friday, May 22nd: 

Do you already know what "kakistocracy" means - or is this blog posting going to be an opportunity for you to learn a new word? If you don't already know the right definition, here's the answer to the quiz: 

"Kakistocracy" means "government by the worst." The quiz is quite timely, don't you think? 

The book cover at the top of this blog posting pictures a book I have just recently read. It's a book I picked up at one of the "Little Free Libraries" that abound in my community. The book's objective, essentially, is to document, historically, the ups and downs of what might be called "good government" in the United States of America. 

Jon Meacham, the author of the book, suggests that our history represents, really, a "battle for our better angels." When those "better angels" predominate, we get "good government." When they don't, we get "bad" government, including, in some extreme cases, genuine kakistocracy.

What word do you think applies to how we're doing right now?

 

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(1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_America

(2) and (3) - https://www.wordstrivia.com/trivia/definitions/what-does-kakistocracy-mean/results/63a2844094143b224dcc03cd

(4) - https://www.gapatton.net/2026/06/164-we-want-to-get-along-well.html

#174 / The Seduction Of Despair: Just Say, "No"

 

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Jürgen Habermas, pictured above, died on March 14, 2026. He was ninety-six years old. 

Wikipedia identifies Habermas as "a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism." For those who would like to understand what that description might actually mean, let me refer you to an excellent article in the June 22, 2026, edition of The New Yorker. The article, by Alex Ross, is titled, "The Dream of Reason." 

Unfortunately, I can't give you a guarantee that the link I have just provided will let non-subscribers read the Ross article. Here, however, is the concluding paragraph of that article, which outlines why Habermas is said to have "offered a philosophy of hope in a darkening age."

Philosophy is a discipline of abstractions, yet it raises achingly elemental questions. The august Kant asks, “What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for?” The answers are seldom simple or bright. The seduction of despair can be intense, whether on the personal or the political level. But the fact that most of our hopes remain unrealized should not revoke the reality of our fitful, painful progress. This was Habermas’s core conviction; he was an incrementalist, though a radical one. On the other hand, in his almost manic drive toward consensus, he blunted the edge of his critical inheritance. If we are to say no to the monstrosities that we have unleashed, we need the uncompromising fury that the Frankfurt School writers invested in their work. We need Adorno to tell us that the confusion of truth and lies “makes it a Sisyphean labor to hold on to the simplest piece of knowledge.” In the end, we need both voices: the critical and the reconstructive, the savage and the sage. The dialectic moves between crashing despair and hovering hope (emphasis added). 

My brief commentary would be to remind anyone reading this blog posting that "possibility" is what I call "my category." As noted in that paragraph from the Ross article, the deadly enemy to "possibility," and thus to any hope for the future, is the "seduction of despair." 

Despair is seductive. Oddly enough, despair comes to us as a tantalizingly attractive explanation and invitation. If (by any chance) any such invitation comes to you: 

Just Say, "NO" To Despair

It's not that easy to do, you know! But that's what we have to do, and what we're supposed to do, and let's not forget it!

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#173 / Old Goats

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Wikipedia tells us that Jonathan Alter is an American author, political analyst, columnist, documentary filmmaker, and television producer. Alter served as a columnist and senior editor for Newsweek magazine from 1983 to 2011, and he has written extensively on American politics and history, including several books about U.S. presidents. The picture above does not depict Alter. 

The picture above shows us Leon Panetta, who represented a Congressional District that included a large part of Santa Cruz County. He served as our elected Member of the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993. Alter is currently writing a Substack blog with this title: "Old Goats." Panetta was featured in that blog on May 15, 2026. As far as I know, Panetta has not contested this characterization of him as an "Old Goat," demonstrating that he continues to be a person of rare good humor. 

Leon did have a couple of things to say in the "Old Goats" column that I want to highlight. First, Leon said that our current president "operates by the seat of his pants. He looks for simple solutions and quick exercises of power. There is no diplomacy. There’s no real effort to sit down, work through these issues, and truly negotiate. He’s reached the point where he thinks that if he says something loudly enough, it will happen. And if it doesn’t, he resorts to threats and bullying tactics to get there."

Second, speaking directly about the war with Iran, Leon said this: "Look, you’re not going to bomb your way to regime change.... It has to happen from the bottom up."

Real change always occurs from the "bottom up." That is my personal experience, too. That's not only true when speaking of international relations. 

Leon is five years older than I am, but I could probably be classified as an "Old Goat," too.

So, here's a thought: Take some advice from the "Old Goats." They often know what they're talking about. From the smallest county (geographically) in the State of California to the Executive Office of the most powerful country in the world, take some advice from a couple of "Old Goats" who actually do know how government works.

Fundamental change comes from the "bottom up." Let's not forget that!

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https://oldgoats.substack.com/p/panetta-iran-war-a-terrible-mistake

#172 / A Cartoon From A Naked Pastor

 

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I don't consider myself to be deeply immersed in "social media," but maybe I am more immersed than I have actually realized.

Wikipedia lists a lot of "social media" platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, WeChat, ShareChat, Instagram, Pinterest, QZone, Weibo, VK, Tumblr, Baidu Tieba, Threads, and LinkedIn. Wikipedia also lists other popular platforms that are sometimes referred to as "social media." That list includes: YouTube, Letterboxd, QQ, Quora, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, LINE, Snapchat, Viber, Reddit, Discord, and TikTok. Wikis and Roblox. Not mentioned by Wikipedia, I note, is TruthSocial, the social media platform maintained by our current president. He often posts there during the middle of the night, as I understand it. I am not affiliated, and I am happy to be left out!

Anyway, with respect to my own social media affiliations, I have few to list. I do have a LinkedIn account (which I scarcely ever utilize), and I maintain a Facebook Profile, too. I always upload these blog postings of mine onto my Facebook page, and I send out greetings to Facebook Friends, when I am alerted that one of my Facebook Friends is having a birthday. When someone asks to be one of my "Facebook Friends" I check out who asked, and then will sometimes say, "yes" to a new Facebook Friendship. While there is an overlap, of course, between "Facebook Friends" and "real" friends - people whom I know and have actually met - I am generally happy to establish connections with people who, for one reason or another, have decided that they'd like to see what I am posting, even though I have never actully met them in "real life."

And what is it that I post on Facebook? Mainly, besides my daily blog posts, I try to alert my Facebook Friends to political, economic, environmental, legal, and social issues I think are important, and I frequently spotlight local news, affecting Santa Cruz County and the Monterey Bay Area, including advice on upcoming local meetings of various kinds.

Probably because I have taken, on Sundays, to posting blog items that I think might have some "religious" or "spiritual" message, it seems that I have attracted a new "Facebook Friend." Back in late May, I got a "Friend Request" from "UniLu Elcm," a name I definitely did not recognize, and that I first postulated might indicate that someone from one of the Baltic States was seeking a Facebook Friendship with me. 

Not at all, as it turned out. "UniLu Elcm" turned out to be the Episcopal Lutheran Campus Ministry at Stanford, which also identifies itself as "Progressive Christians at Stanford." I am delighted to be connected, and I very promptly found, through this new Facebook "friendship," that there is a "Naked Pastor" cartoonist, who is providing religious messages by way of cartoons like the one I have placed at the top of this blog entry. 

The cartoon Jesus, whom you can see, above, does have a good "Sunday Sermon" message, a message that does ring true to me. Thanks to my Facebook Friend UniLu Elcm for passing it along!

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https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1487456809615773&set=a.722607852767343

 

#171 / Fire Versus Fire?

 

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According to the website where I found the image above, that well-known adage that it's appropriate to "fight fire with fire," may have originated with Shakespeare. "Be fire with fire" is a line from Shakespeare’s King John play. I am no Shakespeare expert, but it does seem likely that the "fight fire with fire" recommendation stems from that "be fire with fire" Shakespearean observation. 

Today, in this blog posting, I am reacting to what William Galston has to say about this "fight fire with fire" subject. Galston writes an opinion column for The Wall Street Journal, and in his "Politics & Ideas" column, published on May 20, 2026, Galston's headline pleaded as follows: "Democrats, Don't Fight Fire With Fire." 

What Galston is worried about is that future Democratic presidents might treat the office of the president the way our current president has. Here's Galston's comment:

During his first term, Mr. Trump told an audience at a 2019 event: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” His actions since are evidence that he was serious about this, as are the people who work for him.

In fact, Article II of the Constitution does not confer such plenary, unlimited powers upon our elected Chief Executive. In fact, Article II says just the opposite, stating that the president is supposed to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." The "laws," just in case this is not obvious, are those laws enacted by the Congress, as outlined in Article I, which comes first for a reason.

Galston fears that "influential Democratic voices" are urging that any Democratic Party president, in the future, treat the presidency just the way our current president has. Specifically cited as advocating this approach are Senator Elizabeth Warren, Congress Member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and former Vice President Kamala Harris. 

All women, note. That does seem worrisome, doesn't it? Women, grasping for power, are such an obvious danger to American democracy!

Anyway, I actually agree with Galston that the responsibility of all persons who may later serve as the nation's Chief Executive should follow what the Constitution says, not what our current president has done and is doing. It's my bet that this is what all elected Democratic Party officeholders will demand. 

And that does include those "grasping women" called out and so feared by Galston.

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https://nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/famous/fight-fire-with-fire/

#170 / An Examined Life

 

Daniel Ellsberg

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"The unexamined life is not worth living."

- Socrates 

 

A while back, I mentioned a book by Daniel Ellsberg, Truth And Consequence, but I didn't dwell too much on the book itself. While I didn't say so in my past blog posting, I hadn't yet finished the book as I wrote that blog posting, which was mainly focused on "The Ellsberg Paradox." 

I have now finished Truth And Consequence, and it brought to mind the saying, attributed to Socrates (and duplicated above), that "the unexamined life is not worth living." 

Ellsberg's book is, essentially, a selection of Ellsberg's thoughts - and his "self-examination" - during the period from 1963 to 2021. His editors looked through all his papers, and his voluminous notebooks, in which Ellsberg put down his thoughts, just as he had them. The book demonstrates that Ellsberg's life was a very thoroughly "examined life." 

If Socrates is convincing, and we recognize that we should all be seeking to lead an "Examined Life," then we might each start up our own notebook habit, and see what we come up with, as we consider our own challenges, opportunities, victories, failures, and successes. The following few observations, excerpted from the many such observations collected in Ellsberg's book, provide us with a pretty good model of what it means to live that kind of "Examined Life." 

I would further like to think that those reading this blog posting, and the very abbreviated selection of Ellsberg's thoughts that I present here, will decide that Ellsberg was right, and that his call for a "moral revolution" is not only appropriate, but actually necessary. Should any reader, in fact, come to that conclusion, the result of their examination of themselves, and the realities we confront, will convince them that they must change their lives - even just a little bit - and that they must work to ensure that this world into which we have been born can and will continue to exist:

• Viewing ourselves as powerless, as "not responsible," is a way to escape feeling guilty about what we are collaborating in." [Page 55, 1971]

• Someone told me recently, "I wish I had your guts." My reply: "What makes you think that you don't!" [Page 57, 1971]

• "They who can treat secretly the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace." [Page 75, 1974]

• "The loss of awareness of evil, of the meaning of what one does, is the evil of our time." [Page 82, 1975]

• "I believe, against most but not all historical experience, that popular sovreignty can be achieved and can avert the worst." [Page 154, 1987]

• The U.S. may have been closer to a right-wing coup more often than is generally realized.... We are in a struggle for the soul of this country." [Pages 166-167, 1988]

• "Fortunately, with the help of other Americans, the resistance to presidential pursuit of the war taught me a new form of courage and patriotism, as well as better ways of serving my country. That is why I am writing a memoir now: to tell future officials, don't wait." [Page 205, 2000]

• "We are all passengers of United Airlines Flight 93. How will we use this precious time?" [Page 209, 2001]

• "This is a time for ordinary people to do extraordinary things. It is time to defend the American Revolution." [Page 239, 2006]

• "My research of the last 62 years deserves attention. My beliefs and predictions (not in my books) and the questions I raise have never been more relevant." [Page 272, 2020]

• "We need a moral revolution of caring about the distant future, even if we can't get there in the end. What can we expect? Prepare to step into the moment when sudden surprise opportunities for change arise.... Knock on doors, many doors, not knowing which may open. Be ready to drive through." [Page 275, 2021].

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https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2023-06-16/daniel-ellsberg-pentagon-papers-vietnam-dead

#169 / The Water Doom Loop - And Another One

  

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Read this column, by Gary Ferguson, to damp down your enthusiasm for where human beings and human civilization are heading today. 

Ferguson's column appeared in The New York Times on Monday, May 18, 2026, and his column is titled this way: "A Water Doom Loop Is Coming." Using the words "damp down" to describe how I think you might best temper your enthusiasm for those who claim that things are going really, really well (and, yes, I am thinking of you, Andy Kessler) might reflect the fact that the entire point of Ferguson's column is that "damp" conditions are becoming scarce indeed in various environments where the presence of water has, historically, been taken for granted. 

For example, in Tucson, Arizona and surrounding areas (nobody's idea of an environment rich in water) Ferguson tells us that what was already scarce is almost disappearing entirely (emphasis added):

Ecologists warn that in just 25 years, more than 70 percent of the Southwestern needle leaf evergreen forests, which include ponderosa pines, may be replaced by grass in what might qualify as the first significant post-climate-change shift in the landscape of America. 

One of the biggest consequences is the loss of shade. Without the forest canopy overhead, snow can evaporate quickly instead of trickling into rivers, streams and aquifers. In the mountainous parts of the West, where roughly 70 percent of freshwater runoff originates as snowpack, that’s a huge deal, a sign of a catastrophic feedback loop that is beginning to form.

Lands that are no longer covered by snow also absorb more heat from the sun, which dries them out and leaves them more vulnerable to large wildfires. Those fires in turn put more carbon into the atmosphere, warming the climate even more. In 50 or so years, by some estimates, snow could virtually disappear from the West, making life there exceedingly difficult....

The government should treat this situation as deeply threatening to the habitability of the West. But as heat and drought battered the region this spring, the federal government, utterly dismissive of climate change, was shredding an astonishing number of forest-related conservation efforts. At the end of March, the Trump administration introduced a reckless plan to restructure the Forest Service, gutting much of the scientific research into how we might mitigate the effects of climate change on public forests. The threatened (or in some cases, abandoned) studies looked at climate-related insect and tree disease and wildfire behavior — the understanding of which is essential to public safety.

While I (and I hope you) read about ecology, and take it seriously, what I mainly write about is "politics." 

We're in a "political" doom loop, too, you know! Our political representatives are failing us, so more and more we are walking away from our own participation, having decided that "politics" is corrupt and counter-productive, and not worth our effort. 

I would like to suggest the opposite approach is needed, in just the same way that more scientific research on how to mitigate the impacts of global warming is needed - not less!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/opinion/water-southwest-climate-change.html

#168 / 5,840 Blog Thoughts (And Counting)

 

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One of my family members, who has had a personal blog, and who has made periodic blog postings for the last several years, has decided to stop doing that. Below is a recent message I got, responding to a message from me, saying how sorry I was to hear that news about my family member's blog, since I have been reading those blog postings, regularly, and have really been enjoying them: 

I find that blasting things out into digital outer space is not very gratifying. I was working for a tech company in Berkeley in the early nineteen nineties and the CEO called us all in for a meeting one afternoon and told us that “One day we’ll have a computer that we can hold in our hands. It will also be a camera and a phone.” He was so enthusiastic about how great that was going to be. In my opinion, au contraire....  

There were so many great letter writers in history and I think those more personal and deep exchanges were much more interesting than what’s out there now. It’s such a wasteland and there is little direct connection made between people any more. I wonder if people are just getting stupider and stupider all the time. They are definitely more isolated, despite all the “social media.” It really should be called antisocial media. 

I’m reading a book by Ross King called The Bookseller of Florence. It’s a biography of an intellectual from the Renaissance who collected manuscripts of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Those guys, both the ancients and the Renaissance ones, sat around thinking about and discussing much more intriguing questions than most of the people I know do now.

Well, I definitely agree about the virtues of personal letter writing, and that communications as currently practiced, "online," are not nearly as satisfactory as either direct personal conversation, or personal correspondence. But.... as someone who has been blasting out my own blog postings every day since January 1, 2010 (more than sixteen years), this message from my family member has certainly made me pause and reflect. What the heck do I think I am trying to accomplish with my blog postings? And am I accomplishing it - or accomplishing anything else worth doing?

As I have reported (and more than once), the main reason that I write out these blog postings each day is to be sure that I "think" about things that come to my attention - mainly from the newspapers and books I read, and sometimes from conversations with other people, or events, and sometimes from "internal" conversations I am having with myself. In other words, I am not attempting to correspond with anyone, or to have a "conversation," when I write out a blog posting. I am just using the "writing it out" process as a way actually to "think" about something that I believe is likely to be important. I could be wrong, of course, but if I didn't document the thoughts that come to me, by writing them out, I am not sure that I would really have those thoughts at all!

Anyway, that is the "purpose" I am, and have been, attributing to my daily blog postings. Those blog postings are my way of thinking about things I believe are important. That makes at least some sense to me, but then why should I "publicize" my thinking by sending out my blog thoughts for the world to review? Why not just write down my thoughts in a notebook, each day, and keep a file?

Actually, I did do that, in the past, before the online world emerged, and I still have a number of my notebooks, but when I have reviewed those, I have not found them to be very "articulate." By writing out my thinking on a daily basis, and publicizing my thoughts, I believe that I really am improving the quality of my thinking. I'd be embarrassed to "publicize" some thought that wasn't given serious attention, and that wasn't expressed as well as I could express it, so going through the process of making my thoughts available to anyone who might want to read them does help me better to articulate my thinking.

As time has passed, I have come to realize that I actually do not have thousands of separate "thoughts" (16 years of thoughts x 365 days per year = 5,840 individual blog postings - and counting). Instead, I realize that I keep coming back around to a few fundamental beliefs that I have come to think are thoughts worth having. For instance, I really do think it is important that we try to understand our personal/political power within the arena of what I call the "Human World," or the "Political World," and that we appreciate that we are fundamentally constrained when we act in the "World of Nature." I also think it is important that we understand that "self-government" (if we want to keep it) does require us, as citizens, to be personally involved in the political process - and not just by way of voting every couple of years, as important as that is. Comparing our present day politics to politics during the time I served on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors (1975-1995), we seem to be losing that thought! Voting "Red" or "Blue" is not quite the same thing as the kind of personal involvement I am talking about!

In conclusion, my long-established practice of thinking about what's going on (and about what ought to go on), and by writing out my thoughts in a daily blog posting and publishing it, really does help me understand what I think - and what I am willing to do about it! 

I am going to continue writing out my daily blog postings. I am not going to quit, but family members, and friends, and others are definitely invited to correspond with me personally, should they want to do that. I will respond!

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