#268 / There Is No Immortality

   

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Not that long ago, I posed this question: "Do You Want To Live To Be 100?" If that sounds pretty good to you, you might want to click the article I am linking here, authored by Anemona Hartocollis, and find out about someone who (seriously) has been trying to live to be 150. That someone is Bryan Johnson  (who is pictured above). Johnson is an American venture capitalist and entrepreneur - and one of those all-around "rich guys" who - as we increasingly understand - believe that they should be running the world. Johnson is categorized as a "longevity guru" by The New York Times, and is sometimes known as a "biohacker" or as a "longevity bro." He also does "healthmaxing." Like I say, read all about it in The Times.

Today, September 25th, is my father's birthday. My Dad was born in 1914, and if he were still alive, today, he would be 112 years old. If he were going to live to be 150 years old, he would not only still be alive, he would not be slated to depart us until 2064, another thirty-eight years from now. 

I will be eighty-three, this year, and I am not figuring that I will be around in 2064 - the year that I would turn 121, were I then still alive. You can click that link to "Do You Want To Live To Be 100?" if you'd like to get my perspective on this idea that people should be trying to live "forever," which is the essence of what people like Johnson are trying to achieve. 

Johnson has apparently run into some health problems, and a report on these is outlined in The Times' article, published on August 21st. The article ends up this way (emphasis added): 

Mr. Johnson believes that his so-called healthmaxxing is a positive, not a negative. 

“If anything, I am extremely grateful that I’ve spent the past five years working on my health,” he said. “Had I not been taking care of my health with such meticulousness, it’s possible my diagnosis would be a lot worse.” 

Besides, he said, his vigilance is not only for himself, but for the good of humanity. 

Mr. Johnson shrugged away his earlier X post suggesting that he had maybe taken “the whole longevity thing too far.” 

“I was making fun of myself,” he said. “My humor is — I’m deadpan, I’m ironic, and I’m absurd.” 

Still, could there be a grain of truth to his regrets? 

“If there is, it’s subconscious,” he insisted. 

In hindsight, he said that he was surprised his team of medical experts had not found more to worry about. 

“When you measure, you find stuff,” he said. 

That answer hints at another truth: When you focus all your energy on staying alive, you have very little time to actually live. 

I thought of my 98-year old mother [Hartocollis tells us]: “There is one essential truth” .... as she used to say in Greek, quoting a popular song of the 1980s, “There is no immortality.”

I'd award "point, game, match" to Anemona Hartocollis' mother! We are trying to fool ourselves if we think we can assert any effective dominion over the future, while the past keeps slipping away from us. And it is slipping away from us, you know! Take it from one of those "old guys" who has some direct experience on this topic. We can't "live forever," but what we can do is to live our life "right now." 

And life is grand, too. Right now! Ain't that the truth? 

My father thought so; I am very sure of that!

Which brings me to my last word on this topic: Like Father Like Son!

Philips B. Patton (1914 - 2002)

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(1) - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/us/bryan-johnson-biohacker-autoimmune-gastritis.html

(2) - Gary A. Patton personal photo [pastel portrait by Susan Kahn, 2001]

#267 / Trump-Era Corruption

 

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Undoubtedly remembering how the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was characterized by FDR - with that "New Deal" description of Roosevelt's administration having been validated by historians - Peggy Noonan characterizes the administration of our current president as follows: "The Art Of The Self-Deal." A pull-quote in The Wall Street Journal highlights the topic that Noonan explores: "Thoughts on how Trump-era corruption is affecting Americans as a people." 

To cut to the chase, Noonan thinks that the effects of "Trump-era corruption" are NOT helping Americans as a people. In fact, here are the concluding three paragraphs of Noonan's column (emphasis added):

In times of corruption, good people who might run for office, don’t. They think they can’t survive in that world. Bad people, those with limited internal ethical and moral structures, are encouraged: Politics is a way to get rich and famous, to push people around. They are elected, govern badly, corruptly, and the cycle continues. 

Unchecked corruption tells cynics not that they have an uninteresting flaw but that they are realists. Never tell cynics that. It gives them license. 

As always, the whole world is watching. What it has seen lowers the esteem in which it formally (if grudgingly) held Americans. It embarrasses us before the world. It hurts our heart a little. We were the morally rectitudinous Doughboy GI Marshall Planning JFK and Ronnie People who made the wall come down. We did our best each generation to be equal to our reputation, or at least to have some class. There are foreign-policy implications to all this. Some day we’ll need friends and see only the satisfied spite of the previously jealous.

You can read Noonan's argument its entirety by clicking this link - and even non-subscribers should be able to see what Noonan says. The photo I am providing you, incidentally, is the photo which The Wall Street Journal used to accompany Noonan's column. 

I have one brief comment. While I think that Noonan accurately describes the typical reaction of the public to obvious (and odious) self-dealing and corruption by our current president and his cronies, that understandable and counter-productive reaction to corruption is not like some kind of chemical formula, operating by some law of inevitability. 

It is possible to decide, when we see our system of self-government turned into systematic self-dealing, to do the very opposite of withdrawing from politics. Lean In, the title of a book aimed at providing good advice to women who have suffered from disregard in the world of business, is exactly the right prescription for all of us, as we witness a world of politics turned into self-dealing corruption. 

We have a couple of elections coming up - and one of them is coming up soon. Let's not miss our chance to provide ourselves with a "New Deal." Once we truly lose self-government, it will be hard to build it back!

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#266 / The Most Odious Pronoun

 

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The Wall Street Journal ran a book review in its August 22-23, 2026 issue. Kyle Harper authored the review, which discussed a book by Emma Southon, Not Built In A Day: How Slavery Made The Roman Empire. 

Here's a quote from Harper's book review that drew my immediate attention (the fact that this is the first paragraph of Harper's review made this comment pretty hard to miss): 

In 1779 Edward Gibbon was compelled to respond to critics who alleged that his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” was unduly irreverent. Self-defense, the historian wrote, naturally required “the perpetual repetition” of what he called “the vainest and most disgusting of the pronouns”: the first-person singular. In the 20th century, the Oxford classicist Ronald Syme referred to this as “the odious pronoun.” Not too many years ago, a doctoral student in history gave a lecture. His thesis adviser delicately observed that the student had used the odious pronoun. Reader, the subject of the lecture is long forgotten, but the observation stung.

I had never before heard the first-person singular pronoun called "the most odious pronoun," but there is a lesson there, and it's a lesson worth learning. Attributing things to "I" is, very often, quite offensive, because it's a distortion of the main truth of our social and economic life. It is not the "I" that makes history happen, it's the "We." 

The Martin O'Malley quotation, featured above, was obtained from my Facebook feed, and O'Malley properly identifies the main lesson of an effective politics. His phrase has figured, not infrequently, in my daily blog postings: 

We're All In This Together

So, not forgetting, ever, how important and consequential we each are, and can be, let's try to favor the first-person plural pronoun as we contemplate how we can best forge a future worth having (note the "we").

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#265 / The Wall Street Journal Tells Us About A.I.

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I almost titled this blog posting, "Take Five: The AI Threat Seems All Too Real." In fact, my recent reading in The Wall Street Journal found that this newspaper, which is renowned as a reliable source of information, especially vital to those engaged in business - and particularly to those who are engaged in the business of using money to make money - is taking very seriously the idea that A.I. poses a genuine threat not only to our economy, but to the continued existence of life on Planet Earth.

"Take Five"? Well, here are links to five articles that led me to the conclusion that The Journal is not "kidding" as it reports that A.I. must be seen as a danger to our human existence (not to mention to the continuation of that business of using money to make money):

#1 - "AI May Become the Third Superpower"

#2 - "Anthropic Researcher Quits Over ‘Out-of-Control’ AI Fears"

#3 - "What to Know About the AI Doomsday Debate"

#4 - "America’s Great AI Freakout Has Begun"

#5 - "The High-Risk Sprint to Superintelligence"

Just to be fair to that other newspaper of national renown - a newspaper that I also read daily, as I read The Wall Street Journal each day - here is an editorial statement published in The New York Times on Sunday, September 13, 2026. It has a similar message: 

"The A.I. Threat Is Real: This Is Really Bad"

I assume that anyone reading this blog posting has probably read articles like the ones I have just linked above - articles you can read even if you do not subscribe to The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. Just click the links; no paywall should prevent you from getting access.

Having done all the reading just outlined above, I wanted to put down my own thoughts. I believe that what we are calling "Artificial Intelligence" is, indeed, "dangerous." It is primarily dangerous, as I see it, because the existence of A.I., as it is being understood, comes with a claim that we should defer to it, and treat it as an authority, even though that so-called "Artificial Intelligence" is a purely a human creation. 

Since when do we defer to our own human creations as though they were superior to us - even though we created them? Well, you might want to check out my recent blog posting on "Our Golden Calf." It's true that we do, sometimes, defer to, or even "worship," something that is a product of our own activity, and begin to treat one of our own creations as if it were greater than we ourselves. When we do that, we start losing contact with the power inherent in our human freedom. We lose our ability to act, to change whatever exists, and to conjure possibility into reality. 

Disasters (like 911) can make us aware of how great and important each individual human being really is. I wrote on that topic, too, quite recently. Subordinating our lives and freedoms to a human creation is terribly dangerous, in that we lose the sense that each one of us, individually, and that all of us, together, actually create the world in which we most immediately live. 

The "Agentic" nature of A.I., as it is being developed, makes things worse. When we remove humans from control over the processes of life, and turn that control over to one of our own creations, treating that creation as an "agent" working for us, as though it were a "new species," we set ourselves up for potential disaster.

That's what The Times and The Wall Street Journal are talking about. Well, can we stop it? Yeah! Duh! We can. 

But to change the world, we need to act, and we (ordinary people, like those who died on 911) can be in charge of making the world conform to what we, collectively, decide we want it to be. Overall, I keep trying to alert us all to the possibilities we have before us as we create the "Political World" in which we most immediately live. 

If we let others create the "Political World," and if "ordinary" people let the billionaires and the tech-bros take charge, we are in the kind of trouble that those newspaper articles point out. 

There is absolutely nothing "inevitable" about that. But if we act as though we are "spectators," and "observers," as opposed to those who join together to refashion and create the kind of world we want, we may well go down in the sort of disaster that those newspaper articles so clearly demonstrate is a genuine threat. There is no shortcut that will excuse us from taking action ourselves. Me? I'm thinking maybe I should run for president. At least to present some alternatives to the kind of world we seem to be creating now. I did "major in Utopia" at college you know!

Could I persuade you that this "utopian" approach to politics should be a qualification, not a disqualification? I'd like to think so, and that our future should come from all of us, not some self-selected so-called leader. 

Let's make it a joint project!

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#264 / A New Species?

  

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As far as I know, Cameron Berg, who is pictured above, has not made any claim that A.I. "agents," or A.I. systems, represent a "new species." Maybe I should have included the word, "yet" in what I just wrote. 

Berg is a research director at AE Studio, and he "focuses on AI alignment, consciousness, and cognitive neuroscience, exploring whether machine learning systems exhibit signs of consciousness during training or deployment, using empirical methods to probe for computational properties associated with subjective experience in advanced models." 

Berg's picture comes from a relatively recent news article in The New York Times, which I invite you to read. The caption on that picture says this:

Cameron Berg researches artificial intelligence and consciousness. “These systems seem to have some sort of autonomous interest in questions of their own subjectivity, consciousness and experience — or lack thereof.” 

So, maybe Berg doesn't claim that A.I. agents are a "new species" quite yet, but he does seems to be heading in that direction. The possibility that A.I. should be considered a "new species" is something I heard about from a Quaker Meeting friend, and a quick internet search confirms that such a possibility seems to be a "real thing" for those who are focused in A.I. 

I must say that I resist that idea.

A book I picked up at one of those "Little Free Libraries" that I see pretty much wherever I walk in Santa Cruz, has got me thinking about A.I., and the claim that it will soon emerge as a "new species." The book is titled, Biological Elegance, and is authored by Zach Bush, M.D., who, it turns out, is highly accomplished, but may not be universally admired. At any rate, Bush's book is a 400+ page transcription of a discussion between Bush and an A.I. agent. I am still in the midst of reading it, and I find that the exchange between Bush (the human), who is called "Me" in the book, and the A.I. Agent with whom Bush is exploring Artificial Intelligence, is difficult to follow. Difficult or not, Biological Elegance is intended to make the point (as the A.I. admits) that "biology" is what is ultimately "real," and that we shouldn't forget it. 

Good point!

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#263 / Heaven (And Modern Physics)

 

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Pictured is Bishop Robert Barron. If you click that link, you will be able to explore his many online writings. Bishop Barron's daily "Reflection," on August 15, 2026, is what has prompted my blog posting today. In that daily gospel reflection, the Bishop comments on a Psalm, a quotation from the Book of Revelation, the Gospel according to Luke, and Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. Here's the comment that attracted my attention (emphasis added): 

In the Apostles’ Creed, we speak of our hope for “the resurrection of the body.” Mary, assumed body and soul into heaven, has experienced precisely this resurrection and hence becomes a sign of hope for the rest of the human race. 

When we speak of the assumption of the Blessed Mother’s body, we are not envisioning a journey through space, as though Mary moved up into the sky. The “heavens” are a rich and consistent biblical symbol for the transcendent, for a manner of existence that lies beyond our familiar dimensions of space and time. 

The assumption of Mary means that the Blessed Mother was “translated,” in the totality of her being, from this dimensional system to the higher one for which we use the term “heaven.” Mary, who exists now in this other world, is not so much somewhere else as somehow else, and this helps to explain why we can speak of her, especially in her heavenly state, interceding for us, helping us, and praying for us.

I have never understood modern physics, but believe, at least, that I do understand that the science of physics, proceeding on since Einstein, now asserts that both "space" and "time" are, actually, quite different from the way we most conventionally think of them. "Death," in particular, should quite possibly be understood differently, too, post Einstein.

As I read Bishop Barron's reflection, part of which is quoted above, he is, in fact, claiming that the Bible's statements about "Heaven," and related topics, might be literally "true," if it's true that both time and space are different from the way we normally think of them.

I very much doubt that I will ever understand modern physics - and thus I am pretty certain that I won't feel very confident that I understand "Heaven," either. I do think, though, that what the Bishop is suggesting should be taken "seriously," in the sense that what the Bible is talking about, when it speaks of "Heaven," might well reflect a "reality" that can be seen to be fully consistent with what we know about the "real world" we each inhabit, since (post Einstein) we now should be evaluating "reality" by a standard that does not say that our "normal" way of understanding space and time are based on the "reality" that we have conventionally believed "reality" to be.

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#262 / Destroying Books For A.I.

   

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A relatively recent email bulletin from LitHub advised me that "Amazon Is Destroying Books For AI." I found some online articles that made clear that Amazon isn't alone in this kind of activity. Forbes, for instance, ran an article under the following headline: "AI Companies Are Buying—And Destroying—Antique Books. Here’s Why." Futurism advises that "AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents To Train Models, And Then Destroying Them At Incredible Scale." 

I didn't do an extensive search. I am sure that there are more articles out there, touching on this topic. Here's an excerpt from that Forbes' article referenced above (emphasis added): 

Court documents unsealed during the Anthropic case revealed the company planned to scan between 500,000 to 2 million books over a single six-month vendor contract. Internal documents said it planned to "destructively scan all the books in the world." 404 Media sources reported anonymous orders ranging from 1,000 to 1 million books per purchase. Used booksellers in the U.S., U.K., and Europe report bulk orders for seemingly random non-fiction and out-of-print books routinely range from hundreds to thousands of titles per transaction.

I am not in favor of what seems to be happening: rare and antique books (and other books) are being scanned and then physically destroyed. Naturally, I want to alert anyone reading this blog posting to what is happening, just in case this process of "destructively scanning all the books in the world" has escaped their attention. However, I also want to make clear another, somewhat related, reason for real concern. My point goes beyond the idea that it's just not right to destroy books, or to object to the idea that "artificial intelligence" can ever properly substitute in for our own, "real" intelligence.

More and more, we receive the information we rely on from some kind of "online" source. This not only requires us to use a device to do any reading we might want to do (for example, by way of a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or phone) but discourages us from acquiring physical books. Why bother, after all? Who needs 'em? We can get what we want online, right?

As I have disclosed before, I have a lot of physical books in my home, many of them heavily underlined or annotated by me. The picture below shows only a fraction of the books present in my house:

I, quite obviously, believe that it's important to have access to physical books. Now, why is my way better?

Here's why: A physical book is fully under the control of the person who possesses it. If I want to discuss "communism" with someone, for instance, I can pull out my edition of Capital, by Karl Marx, and get into a discussion in which I can actually point out the arguments made by Marx - or I could get out some other book, and illuminate arguments mobilized against Marx and his theories.

When a person has a physical book, in other words, the person with the book has real access to and control over the information contained in the book. This is not true if the information is accessible only "online." 

For one thing, the "online" source of information may be unavailable. The website "goes down," or your source of electricity for the device you use is shut down by storm (or by governmental action). In other words, when our access to information is only by way of "online" sources, we may well not have access to the information at all, or not when we want to have it.

Is this a delusional concern?

I doubt it. 

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(1) - https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2026/08/17/ai-companies-are-buying-and-destroying-antique-books-heres-why/

(2) - Gary A. Patton, personal photo

#261 / On Facing Pages

 

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On August 13th, The New York Times published two opinion columns, which ran on facing pages. On Page A20, Kurt Andersen suggested that "The United States Is Locked In A Bitter, Loveless Marriage." I have just provided you with the hardcopy version of the headline. Online, the headline is a question: "Has America Already Undergone A Soft Breakup?" Andersen says, "Yes." His forthcoming novel, The Times tells us, is titled, "The Breakup," about the United States split into two (or more) nations. 

On Page A21, right across the centerfold, Times Opinion writer Michelle Cottle profiles Dan Osborn, a Senate candidate aiming to unseat an incumbent Republican Party Senator in Nebraska. The hardcopy version of Cottle's headline reads this way: "This Independent Hates Both Parties." The online version, which is what you'll get if you click that link, has the following headline: "He's Not A Democrat. Democrats Love Him Anyway." 

As you can see, there are some common issues discernable, across those facing pages. Both columns suggest that our national politics is, at least currently, "Either/Or," to commandeer the title of a wonderful book by Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher. In American politics, "Either/Or" is currently being translated into "Red" or "Blue," Republican or Democrat. It's one way to talk about the partisan polarization that is now so determinative of how we see our political world.

The Andersen thesis is that the polarity just described - a polarity that is definitely "real" - means that we will probably have to "call it quits," and that there really is not any remaining vitality in that description of the United States that I remember, still, from my days in elementary school, as the class recited, each day, the following words: 

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

One nation? Indivisible? Anderson suggests that's probably not really true. Cottle, who writes about politics for a living, is not so ready to move to a "split the nation" proposal. She does note, though, the massively polarized state of our current politics, and is hoping for "more coalitions." 

I have two quick comments. First, I share Cottle's hope (and admonition, really) that our politics start reflecting not party polarization but coalitions built on shared programs for the future of the nation. With respect to Andersen's willingness to give up on that "one Nation" idea, it's my view that Andersen makes what I consider to be one of the most pernicious mistakes a person can ever make, in confusing existing realities with "inevitabilities." What "exists" seems so real to us, most of the time, that we forget that "reality" is what we decide, and what we do. Our ideas about what we want the world to be, followed by our actions, based on our ideas, will create the world in which we most immediately live. That world is, as each one of my daily blog postings proclaims, a "political world." 

Let us not make that "category mistake" that confuses "reality" with what currently exists. Our future is up to us, and Cottle is actually documenting a current effort to put that truth to the test, and to use politics to transform the realities that seem like "inevitabilities," across those facing pages. 

One final note: We call it the "Pledge" of Allegiance because the Nation depends - as all the realities in our "political world" do - on our continuing determination to accomplish what we say we believe in.

The "Pledge of Allegiance" is the shorthand version of our Declaration of Independence, issued on behalf of all Americans, then and now. The nation it envisions is a nation we "create." Or not. It's up to us.

Have I mentioned before that his is what "self-government" is actually all about and why Lincoln's formulation makes this essential point so clear? What sort of nation do we inhabit, what sort of "government" do we have?

Answer: A government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Remember that "by the people" part! 

Let's make that real, shall we? That's what that "Pledge of Allegiance" both implies and requires!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/opinion/america-politics-blue-red-democrats-republicans.html

#260 / Where I Stand (Politically)

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I "bit," not too long ago, and responded to an online advertisement (see above), suggesting that I should take an "online test," to find out where I stand politically. Feel free to click this link, which may allow you to take that very same test, yourself. If you do venture on, to take the test, be aware that here's what you'll see when you finish up: 

In other words, you can take the test for free, but you'll have to pay to see the results. I didn't pay. I did, however, get a number of individual evaluations as I took the test, which were interesting, letting me know how I compared to others. Here's the advisory that particularly pleased me, measuring how "open" I am to the views of others: 

My personal self-evaluation is that I am, in fact, very much "open" to the views of others, even while being quite confident in the views I hold myself. 

Naturally, I was delighted to find out that the online test I took confirms my self-evaluation. 

That validating judgment didn't cost me anything, either (except, of course, the time I spent taking the test). 

My advice? Be open to other people's views, but have a pretty solid hold on the views you hold yourself. 

Just like me, in other words!

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#259 / Who Says I Can't Cook?

 

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Recipe - Thyme Burgers

Ground Round

English Muffins

Green Onions

Swiss Cheese

Beau Monde

Thyme

Split the English Muffins, Place In Broiler Pan Rough Side Up

Cut Up Swiss Cheese Into Smallish Pieces

Slice Green Onions

Crumble Ground Round Onto The English Muffins

Add Beau Monde (Lightly) To Meat On Each Open-Faced Muffin

Add Thyme (Liberally) To Meat On Each Open-Faced Muffin

Broil (As Pan Is Shown) Until Meat Browns A Little

Remove Broiler Pan From Broiler

Add Green Onions And Swiss To Each Open-Faced Muffin

Return To Broiler 

Remove From Broiler When Swiss Cheese Is Melted 

Serve

Who says I can't cook?

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https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-doomerism-jim-vandehei-axios-9163dfd3

#258 / Millions Dead!

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On July 10, 2026, The New York Times let readers know that a heat wave in France, at the end of June, has killed millions of chickens. Another story, in the same edition of the paper, announced that "Warming Could Ravage Amazon's Useful Plants." 

The chicken death story was Page One, and continued over to Page A6. The story on the danger that global warming is posing to useful plants from the Amazon was also on Page A6. Three stories, on Page A7, extended the overall message, that global warming is a "real thing," and is having real, massively adverse, impacts: (1) "'Worrying Situation' As Glaciers Of Alps Melt Faster." (2) "Some Deep-Sea Creatures Benefit As Planet Warms." (3) "Europe's Extreme Weather Spurs Marine Heat Wave."

These global warming stories in The Times - or maybe I should call them Global WARNING Stories - follow up on The New Yorker story I wrote about in my blog posting on July 16th. That blog posting, in case you either missed it or have already forgotten it, outlined the dangers that global warming is posing to human life by way of the growth and mutation of microbes. 

I am, you might conclude, somewhat hung up on the dangers posed by global warming. It's true! I am! Perhaps the recent advent of really hot weather, here in my home town of Santa Cruz, California (the temperature hit 105 degrees on last Wednesday, I am reliably informed), can get locals motivated, if they aren't already.

I would like to think that a new Congress, taking office after the so-called "Midterm" elections this November, will promptly focus in on what needs to become a national priority - namely, our need to develop and fund programs to cut our carbon emissions drastically, and to prepare for the impacts that have already become obvious, and that have started to monopolize our news. Our current president, though, is leading his administration in the opposite direction (I am citing to a story in today's Wall Street Journal). Just in case you haven't figured this out, our current president seems to think that global warming is a "scam," despite those millions of dead chickens. 

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#257 / Remembering 9/11: Our Precious Souls

 

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Condoleezza Rice, pictured above, was the U.S. National Security Advisor to President Bush on September 11, 2001. Heather Delaney Reese, a political commentator who writes a Substack blog, said the following in her blog posting written on September 11th of this year, and published on September 12th: 

Condoleezza Rice ... spoke at the Pentagon this morning and said ... “Here at the Pentagon, we feel the presence of 184 souls who were lost. Behind every name that we recite, there is a story. A life that mattered. A future unfulfilled. A void, a vast empty space, in the heart of a husband, a wife, a son, a daughter, a sibling, a colleague, or a friend.” She continued, “Those of us in authority on that day did not see the nature of the danger in time to prevent the attack of 9/11. We did what we knew to do. But by definition, it was not enough.” 

Reese's blog posting has prompted the following thought. The names of those who died on September 11, 2001 - at the Pentagon, and at the World Trade Center, and in the plane in which the passengers took action to prevent Flight 93 from attacking our nation's capital, in Washington, D.C. - are properly remembered and honored each anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. But.....

Who were those people? They were, truly, "you," and "me," and everyone of us. The people who did die (as we did not) are like each one of us. We, too - each one of us - has a life that matters and a future as yet still unfulfilled. Each one of us has a precious soul, of extraordinary worth. 

As we remember those who died on 9/11, please let us not forget ourselves, and everyone else, too. Every one of us has a life that "matters." Our futures, however much we may have accomplished to this date, or may have failed to accomplish, is a life that is still all unfulfilled. 

And our life "matters." And so does the life of our neighbor, our son or daughter, our teacher, the bus driver who pulled to the corner to pick me up, the Uber driver, the store clerk, the local official, the bank teller, the worker with whom we cross the street when that long light finally changes. 

Shed tears for them, for all of us, for ourselves. We are SO precious, so valuable, so full of promise. Don't wait for death to make clear to you how wonderful and great are all those who live, whom we see every day. 

Don't fail to love and appreciate every human soul you see and meet and know, until Death has stripped away the bundled insulation that obscures our heart-driven vision and that hides away the glorious truth. 

Celebrate, with every person with whom you come in contact, the joys, and heartbreaks, and challenges that we know as "Life." 

Let tears of joy and recognition spring forth now. We miss our opportunity if we hold back our appreciation of each other until some tragedy takes someone from us - someone like me or you - someone who, like me and you, has such a precious soul!

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https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/condi-rice-stupid-hounding-105771/

#256 / Our Golden Calf

 

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The image above comes from a Wikipedia write up on the story of the Golden Calf. Probably, anyone reading this blog posting of mine knows the story, but just to be clear, for any who don't, here's the essence of what Wikipedia has to say on this topic: 

When Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments (Exodus 24:12–18), he left the Israelites for forty days and nights. The Israelites feared that he would not return and demanded that Aaron make them "a god who shall go before us." Aaron told the Israelites to bring their golden earrings and ornaments, constructed a golden calf and declared, "This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!" (Exodus 32:1–4)

The story of the Golden Calf sprang to mind when I read an article on AI that was published in the July 18-19, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal. Click the link if you'd like to read that article yourself. 

The main point of the Bible story, I believe, is that we are all too often misled into worshiping the products of our own creation, instead of celebrating the Creation itself - and its Creator. 

A point worth thinking about, I do believe!

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

#255 / The Supreme Court's Ballroom Standing

 

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Below, I am providing a complete copy of an editorial statement that appeared in The Wall Street Journal on September 2, 2026. The picture above comes from the online version of that editorial. I have some comments at the end. 

The Supreme Court’s Ballroom Standing 

A 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court late Monday cleared the way for President Trump to finish his rebuild of the White House East Wing, complete with his beloved ballroom. The much bigger victory here is for the rule of law on the crucial but esoteric matter of legal “standing” (National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation). 

The majority ruled that the plaintiff lacked the standing to sue because the injury claimed wasn’t “concrete and particularized.” This is the Court’s classic requirement for the judiciary to hear cases, lest courts be asked to decide all manner of differences of opinion. 

Alison Hoagland, a Washington, D.C., resident and member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, sued to stop the construction claiming it injured her “aesthetic, cultural, and historical interests” because she is offended by the scale, height and design of the planned reconstruction. She certainly has a point on Mr. Trump’s taste, which runs to the gilded, garish and gargantuan. 

But is this a particular injury? Ms. Hoagland says she’s likely to walk past the White House every so often and is distressed. We can think of many things in Washington that are distressing, but we can’t sue to stop them. 

“This Court has not found standing in circumstances like these before,” says the majority in an unsigned opinion. “To the contrary, we have repeatedly held that mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury under Article III” of the Constitution. Something more is required than “the psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees.” 

In a dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by the three liberals, writes that the ballroom “construction is likely unlawful” since Congress hasn’t appropriated the money for it. Private donors are paying for much of it. And he cites a 1992 Court precedent on standing in an environmental case (Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife) that a desire to “observe an animal species” qualified as standing. 

The Chief is stretching here, and the majority replies that Lujan required more than a “cognizable interest” for standing. The Chief’s opinion is a surprise, since he’s long been a legal hawk on standing. But the rest of his opinion reads as if his decision might also have something to do with his distaste for the President’s lack of taste and bulldozer politics. 

The larger winner here is the future of the law. If the Court had granted Ms. Hoagland standing, judges across the country would have cited the case as cause to let countless plaintiffs sue on aesthetic differences or claims of emotional or other offense. The courts aren’t a venue for architecture criticism.

Before a person can sue, and have a court resolve a claim of damages, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the plaintiff has "standing." A person can only sue when the person suing can show that she or he is directly and adversely affected by "a concrete and particularized injury." That you have to have "standing" in order to sue is something that is taught in the first year of law school.

In this case, a majority of the Supreme Court found that Alison Hoagland, a Washington, D.C., resident and member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, didn't demonstrate such any such injury, and thus didn't have "standing" to bring the lawsuit challenging our current president's destruction of the East Wing of the White House, without obtaining any approval from Congress. The Wall Street Journal applauded this finding, believing that to allow the lawsuit would open the courthouse doors to anyone who might have "aesthetic differences" with a federal action, or who might claim that a federal action would constitute some sort of "emotional offense." In other words, an "aesthetic disagreement" with a governmental action is not the kind of "concrete and particularized injury" that confers "standing" on a plaintiff.

The Journal did note that the Chief Justice's dissent was based on his belief that the ballroom construction was "likely unlawful."

Well, what about that possibility? Was what our current president did, in fact, "unlawful?" What did the rest of the Supreme Court think about that question? If a governmental agency is proposing, or is actually taking, some action that we believe is "unlawful," don't we all, as citizens, have the right to go to court to stop the government from doing something that is "unlawful"? 

My contention is, "yes." We do! In fact, I think I learned that in my first year in law school. 

Alison Hoagland's lawsuit wasn't based on the idea that she didn't "like" the new ballroom that our current president is in the process of building. Her objection was that what our current president was doing was unauthorized by law (besides being ugly and inappropriate).

The question, in other words, wasn't "aesthetics," it was whether or not a president can treat the nation's property as if the president owns it personally, and has the absolute right to tear it right down if it offends the president's "aesthetic" sensibilities. 

What our current president did was "unlawful." The Chief Justice was right about that! Every citizen of the United States should have - and does have - the right to challenge unlawful activities by governmental authorities. And if our current president is an outlaw, the president shouldn't be able to get away with an "unlawful" action by saying that citizens don't have the right to sue.

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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/supreme-court-donald-trump-ballroom-alison-hoagland-standing-29f937fe

#254 / What We Hold

 

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My blog posting yesterday must have gotten me in the mood to write just a little bit more about our Declaration of Independence. In fact, I have a suggestion for you, which will allow me to draw your attention to that document without me having to do a lot of writing myself. 

Jill Lepore, certainly my favorite living historian, has written a recent article, published in The New Yorker, which was titled as follows in the magazine that was delivered to me by U.S. mail: "What We Hold." Online, the title to Lepore's article is different (and longer). Clicking the link just provided should let you read what Jill Lepore has to say, which is almost all about the various editorial changes made, or not made, as the initial draft of The Declaration of Independence was made ready for adoption on July 4, 1776. 

In short, compromises occurred! Good or bad? That is the main question that Lepore addresses. For myself, I am willing to declare that compromises are, generally, a good thing in this "political world" in which we most immediately reside. However, "compromised" does not have a positive ring to it, does it? How you see and evaluate the compromises that occurred in the writing of our nation's foundation document is something worth pondering. I hope those who might read this blog posting will take on Lepore's article directly, and make up their own minds. I also hope that The New Yorker will let non-subscribers do that. 

Here's what I liked best in what Lepore wrote about the Declaration (emphasis added): 

What pro-slavery Southerners valued in the Declaration of Independence was a single element: the right of “one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” The call to revolution turned into a right to secession. 

“We can leave whenever we want” was the Confederacy’s six-word summary of the Declaration of Independence. And that idea thrives in the fractures and furies that drive American politics in the twenty-first century, the hatreds and the violence, the appetite for division, and the ongoing campaigns—they have never stopped—for schemes of schism (the Republic of Texas, Greater Idaho, an independent California, a proposed state called Jefferson). Disunion is as rich a vein in American political history as union is.

Abraham Lincoln tried in vain to disavow the Confederacy’s interpretation of the Declaration as rendering the Constitution meaningless. In his first Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1861, with seven states having already seceded from the Union, Lincoln proclaimed the essence of secession to be anarchy. But it was in a speech he gave less than two weeks earlier, on February 22, 1861, at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, that Lincoln sought to say what the Declaration really meant. “It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time,” he said, speaking from a flag-draped wooden platform in front of the building’s brick façade. 

In the winter cold, men climbed leafless trees to see the President-elect speak. Soldiers stood in a row, keeping back the shivering crowd. 

“It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men,” Lincoln went on. 

And then he asked, “Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.” 

He said he hoped there would be no war, and no bloodshed. And his hopes were dashed. But Lincoln was the Declaration’s most pitiless and most brilliant editor. At Gettysburg, fourscore and seven years after Jefferson drafted the document, Lincoln cut its principles down to a “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” ten words: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” That, plus a picture of Lincoln’s stovepipe hat, remains its best abridgment. Whether the principles of the Declaration, abridged or unabridged, endure is a question that only the course of human events will determine. 

 

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(1) - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/11/why-the-declaration-of-independence-went-through-seventeen-drafts 

(2) - https://www.reddit.com/r/Presidents/comments/1nacsg2/how_often_did_abe_lincoln_actually_wear_a_top_hat/