#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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Image Credit:

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/

#253 / Correcting Our Current President

 

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Our current president is known, among other things, for his incredibly robust sense of self-regard. The truth, he says, is that he, and he alone, can fix what is wrong with the United States of America - and (for that matter) what is wrong with the world at large. You will probably remember this famous claim: 

"I, Alone, Can Fix It"

There's actually a book about our current president's record of success (or not) in making good on this claim. Without giving too much away, let me report that Carol Leoning and Philip Rucker have concluded that our current president's claim, quoted above, is simply not true.  

I have to confess that I have not, actually, read the book just pictured. I have read about it, though, and I do read the newspapers. I think my brief review of I Alone Can Fix it is quite accurate, and the authors of the book (and I join them) properly denounce our current president's claim as totally unjustified and inaccurate.

Let me draw your attention to an alternative phrase used by our historically most revered president, as he described the government of the United States and how it is supposed to work. President Lincoln said that our system of government was "of the people, by the people, and for the people." That's from the Gettysburg Address, in case you have forgotten. 

"The People," to make a grammatical point, is a plural noun and includes absolutely everyone. Another famous statement (found in the Declaration of Independence) is similar, in its claim that "all persons are created equal." 

Historically speaking, in other words, the "I alone can fix it" claim runs directly contrary to everything we have always believed about the United States and its government. Here's how I would transpose our current president's assertion into an assertion that conforms to what we have always believed (and have  actually demonstrated to be true): 

 "We, Together, Can Fix It,

Whatever The Problem May Be"

That's the truth, the way I see it. Whatever may be going wrong, we can take collective and corrective action, and if we do, we can fix the problems we confront. By the way, we had better start doing that "fixing," too, before it's too late!

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(1) - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donald-Trump/Presidential-election-of-2016

(2) - https://www.abebooks.com/products/isbn/9781526642660 

#252 / No Savior Should Be Expected

 

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That's Skye Perryman, pictured. Perryman is an American lawyer and nonprofit executive who has served as the president and CEO of Democracy Forward since 2021. On September 2, 2026, The New York Times ran an opinion column by Perryman that was headlined this way: "Our Democracy Is at Stake. Stop Waiting for a Savior." Click the link to read all about it.

Perryman's essay documents how our court system has, though not unfailingly, stood up for our system of democratic self-government. However, she is not sanguine about how much the courts can really do: 

Many of the excesses of the Trump administration have been successfully challenged through our judicial system. My organization and others have leveraged the power of the courts to block destructive initiatives, from Mr. Trump’s proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund to threats against the First Amendment to draconian — racist, in some cases — immigration policies. Our legal system has at times buckled, but it hasn’t broken, so it can be tempting to think that the long list of judicial rulings secured against the administration, combined with a midterm election wave, will get us past the crisis. It’s understandable to anticipate — to hope — that as we come out of the midterms and head into the next presidential election cycle, a savior, something or someone, will emerge to usher in a return to democratic norms and show would-be autocrats the door. 

Here’s the problem: Waiting for a savior has led many of us not to exercise the greatest power we have — our own.

What does that mean? What "power" is Perryman talking about? I think this excerpt makes the point quite well (emphasis added): 

Many of us confuse consuming political news, engaging on social media and participating in group chats with doing the things that we, as individuals, can do to help change our country’s trajectory. Instead of doomscrolling, we can organize our neighbors, work at local polling places or join community groups. We must not be satisfied with watching the decline of American democracy from our phones.

"Spectatorship," a word Perryman uses in her column, is the opposite of our personal engagement in politics and self-government, which can be practiced at the local, state, and national level. Here is the formula we need to follow: 

1. Find Some Friends
2. Create A Group (Or Join An Existing One)
3. Make Certain That Group Regularly Meets In Person
4. Have The Group Decide What It Wants To Make Happen
5. Figure Out A Strategy To Accomplish The Changes Desired
6. Implement The Strategy Developed
7. Modify As Needed; Rinse And Repeat

That set of instructions is how self-government is supposed to operate, at all levels - and what I have just outlined is the only way it does. 

In somewhat different words, this is how our national government is supposed to work, according to our Constitution: (1) The president takes orders from, and works for the Congress, carrying out the president's one basic duty, making sure that "the laws are faithfully executed." (2) Members of Congress work for us. We, the people, in other words, are supposed to be "in charge." That is what a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" requires. The citizen "groups" I have just described are supposed to make sure that our government, at all levels, does what we want it to. With respect to our national government, our task as citizens is to make sure that Congress does what we want it to do (one elected Congress Member at a time).

Is such a government, as just described, going to "perish from the earth," to use President Lincoln's language at Gettysburg? I think Perryman is suggesting that this is, in fact, exactly what seems to be happening.

Well, that is not any kind of inevitable outcome. The future of self-government is truly up to us. If you want to "watch," on your phones or otherwise, you have decided that you are willing to let someone else decide what happens. You don't have to do that!

If you're not willing to do that, if you are not willing to let someone else act like a king, and make self-serving decisions to enrich himself and his family, and to antagonize the entire world, and to wreck our economy, and destroy the environment, and to take all that is best in America (there is, and has always been, a lot that's wrong, but there have been some wonderful things, too), then not much work will be required of you. You can vote, but that is not going to solve the problem (as Perryman says).

If you are willing to let someone else be in charge, please feel free to bitch, as you watch (on your phone or otherwise) as our system of self-government sails down the drain.

If that is NOT something that you believe that you can tolerate, please revisit that list I have provided above. Find some friends! Start meeting with them. Take back control over the government that is ours to command - you can start local, too!

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Image Credit:

https://www.businessinsider.com/skye-perryman-democracy-forward-lawsuits-ceo-interview-2022-8

#251 / I Can't Help But Comment

 

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As of September 1, 2026, John Ternus is the new Apple CEO, replacing Tim Cook. Ternus is pictured above, with the photo having been appropriated from an article in The Wall Street Journal. Click right here if you'd like to read that Wall Street Journal article yourself. 

One statement in the article captured my attention, and I just couldn't help but comment. Here is what that article said about Apple's ability to maintain its leadership as a company that sets the standard for the design of the electronic devices upon which we more and more rely: 

In the age of AI, Apple has lost its status as the company that defines how consumers interact with devices, a title it held for 40 years, from the Apple II to the iPhone. That leaves it vulnerable to a new generation of devices built specifically for AI, which OpenAI and SpaceX are working on, for instance.

While I am certain that the kind of business challenges described above are real, I have to say that when it comes to design issues, I think I'd bet on Apple over SpaceX, any time. SpaceX has now absorbed Tesla, and Elon Musk is the "decider" when it comes to design issues relating to his companies. Here, just to jog your memory, is one of the most recent design initiatives brought into the world by Mr. Musk:

I see a few of these cybertrucks tooling around my town, and based on that experience, I am going to be betting on Apple, not Tesla/SpaceX, when it comes to the development of new devices that will appeal to, and meet the needs, of consumers. 

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-ceo-john-ternus-2a4fad48

(2) - https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/tesla/cybertruck

 

#250 / Is This What City Residents Want?

 

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Some time ago (I think back in December of 2024), I published a comment on Facebook that was accompanied by the photo at the top of this blog posting. I asked this question, to go along with the photo: "Is This What City Residents Want?" The second photo shown, below the first one, which I published more recently on Facebook, is another example of new developments along Front Street in Santa Cruz - and in other locations in the city, as well. In fact, two new developments, not unlike the downtown developments pictured above, are under construction within a couple of blocks of my Eastside, Santa Cruz neighborhood (a single-family area where even two-story homes are scarce), and there is a serious proposal to tear down a number of much-loved and neighborhood-supporting businesses at the corner of Seabright and Soquel, replacing them with a seven-story residential development not unlike that second development pictured above.

As I just reported, I posed a question of anyone who might see my initial Facebook posting: Is this kind of transformational, high-rise development what a majority of the residents of the City of Santa Cruz want? I did have a tentative answer to my own question. Here is what I said in my Facebook comment: 

I don't think so, though I may be wrong. If you are a resident of the City of Santa Cruz, and this is not what you want for the city (and there is a lot more planned - just like this, and even bigger) then you can bewail what is happening, and feel distressed, or you can get organized, with others who feel the same. Those are the choices. Getting organized takes lots of time, and lots of effort, but past experience indicates that it can make a real difference. 

I received comments from a number of people who said that they did, indeed, want more high-rise, dense development like the new developments pictured. I also got a number of comments indicating the exact opposite. As you will note, my suggestion in my original posting is that if you don't like this kind of development, you should be organizing with others to influence the future decisions to be made by the City Council. If you're happy with what's happening now, you actually don't need to put out a lot of additional effort, since state law and local decisions within the City are absolutely supportive of the kind of development pictured. 

I made a similar comment in my recent blog posting about the upcoming November election. I continue to suggest that organized political activity can (no guarantees) change the decision-making that so profoundly affects our future. My personal experience, as a member of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors for twenty years - from 1975 to 1995 - has definitely convinced me that this is true, so if you don't like the current way that City government is operating, the burden is really on you to see if you, and others with whom you get organized, can compel a change of direction. Again, if you're happy with how things are heading, no big changes are needed!

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Image Credits:

Gary A. Patton, Facebook Page (12-4-25 and 7-23-26)

#249 / Bliss

 

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Dan Neil, writing in The Wall Street Journal, reports that he has been "Driven To Bliss In A Lotus Emira." Pictured above is a Lotus Emira, captured as it is escorting Dan Neil to "bliss."

I am all in favor of "bliss," but my idea is different! Maybe out and about in a place like this: 

How to "find your bliss" is a serious question. I am suggesting that the best way to do it is by glorying in the World of Nature, not by seeking bliss in one of our own creations (however sleek, powerful, and attractive that human creation may be).

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(1) - https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/cars/dan-neil-is-driven-to-pure-bliss-in-the-lotus-emira-8553f2c2

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

#248 / A Tough Political Choice Is Coming Right Up

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Above, I have provided pictures of two candidates who will face off at the polls in November. Both Ryan Coonerty (top) and Ami Chen-Mills (next) are running for Mayor of the City of Santa Cruz. 

A column by Stephen Kessler, published in the June 19, 2026, edition of The Santa Cruz Sentinel, has stimulated this blog posting. While I am writing out my thoughts shortly after the day that Kessler's column appeared in the paper, I decided that these comments would probably be more timely, and relevant, if I put them into actual public view closer to the date that the runoff campaign will actually get started. Traditionally, local political campaigns really get going around Labor Day, so my observations, here, written in June, are anticipating that upcoming, next-Monday kickoff to our Fall political campaign season. 

Kessler's column, which was titled, "Santa Cruz machine gets gears gummed up," is reproduced, in full, immediately below. After reading Kessler's column, you can read my own comments, if you have any inclination to do that.

oooOOOooo

Santa Cruz machine gets gears gummed up

By Stephen Kessler | Santa Cruz Sentinel
PUBLISHED: June 19, 2026 at 11:54 AM PDT

In March, before the campaign for mayor of Santa Cruz had even begun, and the City Council and various other local officials had already unanimously endorsed the veteran politician Ryan Coonerty, I wrote that it was as if a Soviet politburo or Vatican council of bishops had pre-emptively anointed the next mayor — to succeed retiring Mayor Fred Keeley, who with similar backing and many of the same campaign donors (certain Realtors and developers) had won his election four years ago in a landslide. Both were candidates of the political establishment, also known as the machine, which has dominated local governance for a couple of generations.

A late-emerging opposition, consisting of four more-leftish candidates, seemed to me at the time evidence of progressive disorganization, an inability to coalesce around one strong candidate to go head-to-head against the favored native son Coonerty. I said there was “no contest” between the machine and the upstarts. But I was wrong. It turns out that four heads were better than one, and by giving the electorate a choice of several alternatives they enabled their constituents to spread themselves around thickly enough to deprive Coonerty of an outright majority in the primary and force a runoff in November.

The lucky second-place finisher — nearly 30 points behind Coonerty, but still — is Ami Chen Mills, a relative newcomer to electoral politics (four years ago she ran for supervisor and lost) who now, if she can consolidate the collective support of the opposition, actually has a chance to pull off an upset. It remains to be seen whether she has the organization, campaign skills, clarity, realism and fundraising to compete with the seasoned and well-funded powers of the machine. But at least there will be a contest for votes in the fall, which is a sign of a healthier political culture than uncontested one-party rule.

We know that Coonerty is highly qualified to serve, with eight years of experience on the City Council, eight on the Board of Supervisors, and other gigs as a consultant, an operative, an entrepreneur, an author and an educator. He served twice as mayor when that was a rotating slot on the council, and he knows the ropes of city and county government. The establishment likes him as a known quantity and the incarnation of continuity. 

Chen Mills is more of a wild card. Her previous public engagement has been mainly as a journalist, an advocate for the homeless and the chief organizer of the Get the Flock Out campaign against the license-plate-reading surveillance cameras liked by law enforcement for fighting crime but disliked by those who don’t want local cops to share with outside agencies (such as ICE) identifying information about drivers. She has succeeded, for now, in ridding the city of such cameras — so chalk one up for her as an activist.

One key question for Chen Mills is how her experience as an activist citizen and protest organizer has prepared her to lead a civic organization of more than 900 full-time employees (run by a city manager) and an annual budget of nearly half a billion dollars. Another is how she expects to advance her agenda with just one vote on a City Council whose other six members favored her opponent and do not necessarily share her priorities.

For Coonerty, the elephant in the room is the real estate industry and his alleged alliance with and reliance on developers and Realtors for financial support. My guess is that the people who voted against him in the primary want to slow down the pace of rampant growth transforming the town in the name of housing, both “affordable” and unaffordable. How he may handle any possible conflicts of interest when the interests that backed him have business before the council is an open question.

The fall campaign is just getting started and there is time for both candidates to spell out their plans and make their pitches. I’m keeping an open mind — and open eyes and ears — before deciding who I’ll vote for. I am less interested in ideology than credibility, integrity, intelligence, management skills, demeanor, character and competence. I want to feel confident that whoever is setting the city’s agenda knows what they’re doing.

oooOOOooo

My comments and observations, stimulated by the Kessler column, are these: 

(1) I think that Kessler is basically on target in his comments, and that the bottom-line issue in November will be [and should be]: Do you, as an individual voter, and do we, collectively, think that things are basically going "OK" in the City of Santa Cruz, or do we think that things aren't going OK and that significant changes need to be made?

(2) In considering that fundamental question, here are a few specific things that voters might want to think about (this is by no means a complete list):

• What about the proposed City Charter Amendments, which were summarily pulled from the November ballot when Coonerty and Chen-Mills both qualified for the November runoff? Chen-Mills has criticized these proposals, which would reduce the current requirement that the City Council meet two times a month, requiring only one meeting per month, and would allow the Council to increase its own compensation, without the current Charter-mandated limits and procedures. My Letter to The Editor in the Santa Cruz Sentinel outlines my own thoughts. What the candidates think about these proposed Charter Amendments should be a major issue in the Mayoral campaign this Fall, at least in my opinion.

• What about the so-called "overlay" proposal that would remove any public hearings for "affordable" high-rise developments in local residential neighborhoods in large parts of the Eastside, and in some (though only a few) Westside neighborhoods, too? NO public hearings at all: is that OK? What do the candidates think about that?

• What about the lack of adequate parking requirements for new high-density residential developments, making nearby residential areas into parking "war zones"?

• What about shutting down certain City offices during the typical working day hours, making it hard for ordinary members of the community to deal with the City?

• What about high administrative salaries throughout the City bureaucracy, coupled with a continuing reliance on extremely high-paid consultants on top of that? 

• How about the ability of ordinary community members to participate in the City's business and to have an impact on the decisions that affect them?

• Is the City properly planning for potential droughts and water shortages? (Personally, I'm not convinced it is, and I'd like the upcoming campaign to address this question as a major issue). 

To my mind, the election campaign period should illuminate what the candidates think about the issues I have just listed, and undoubtedly many other issues, too. The questions posed to the candidates for the Mayor's job should help illuminate the fundamental issue: Are things going OK in our City right now, or are significant changes needed? If the latter, what are you, if elected, going to do about it?

I think that City voters who don't think that things are going OK have a particularly difficult choice as they pick a new Mayor, and I join with Kessler in hoping that the upcoming campaign will illuminate what the two candidates offer to those who do think that significant changes are in order.

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.ryancoonerty.org

(2) - https://www.facebook.com/amichenmills/

#247 / Learn A New Word

 

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Solastalgia

A form of emotional or existential distress caused by negatively perceived environmental change.

Last Monday, thanks to one of my climate activist friends, I learned a new word (presented and defined above). Today, if you are reading this blog posting, you may be learning that new word, too. 

Before last Monday, I didn't know the word, "solastalgia," but I do know the feeling! It's part of my current experience. Is it part of yours?

Do you think that there might be something we could do to make solastalgia go away?

I think there is a way to do that. I know there has to be! Anything is possible. 

But to change the world, we do need to take action. We do need to change our lives. Global warming, now put in motion by our past actions, is not going to disappear on its own. It's not going to disappear unless we take some new action. Pretty dramatic action is called for, actually. 

Worth doing that, though, don't you think? 

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Image Credit:

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/warming-gaining-pace

#245 / Solidarity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Image Credits:

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

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

 

#244 / People Acting In A Group

 

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

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Image And Quotation Credits:

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

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

#243 / The New York Times On Remote Work

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We Are In This Together

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

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

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

 We Are Together In This!

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Image Credit:

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

#242 / I'll Keep It With Mine

 

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the lyrics I am talking about: 

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

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

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

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

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

I hope so!

oooOOOooo

I'll Keep It With Mine
Bob Dylan, 1965

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

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

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

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

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