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(if I were) King of (the) Forest Posts

Duty, Honor, Country…

Published July 6, 2026

Our President — Trump by name — has no honor, disparages duty, and will always place himself above country.  As such, he has yet again (and again) dishonored us by his perfidious behavior as Head of State.  And, so, it is now up to us, as citizens, to defend our honor by consciously and at a cost doing the right thing.

Bench Folarin Balogun for the game against Belgium.

Whether or not his original suspension was fair or foul is, at this point, irrelevant.

The ruling was the ruling.  That’s how the game is played.

But Trump has now made it all about power, rather than about competition.

But Trump has now made it all about ugly dominance rather than about sublime human spirit.

To allow Trump’s interference to stand besmirches our honor.

To reclaim that honor, we must demonstrate honor.  Accept the rules and the ruling as if that interference had not befouled them.

Perhaps that means we will lose.  Better to lose with honor than to win with dishonor.

Winning with dishonor is simply a particularly execrable way of losing…

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America at 250: The American Story, the American Character, and Patriotism

Published June 26, 2026

That there were clearly strains of geographic and economic nationalism mixed in with the political liberalism that fueled the revolution does not diminish the fundamental distinction of the American nation: that it was born as much a philosophical entity as a sociological or cultural or geographical one (and much more so than as an ethnic or religious one) and that American patriotism has always been driven as much by fealty to a political ideal – the ideal of power in service to  the  individual rather than the other way around – as by a fealty to country or to nation or to government.

In that sense, American patriotism is not so much ‘conservative’ as ‘conservatism’ – in particular the form of moral ‘conservatism’ which concerns itself with those founding ideals, with individual liberty and democracy and the rule of law – is patriotic.  And, in that sense, certain forms of ‘liberalism’ (and, alas, of ‘conservatism’) which would place the individual in service to power in the name of some superseding social good may be fairly and accurately described in the American context as unpatriotic.

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Religion in Politics (redux)

Published June 24, 2026

In light of this week’s big Washington Post story about Tulsi Gabbard’s appearance of taking public policy orders from her new-age guru, I point us back in time to my take on the underlying problem of mixing religion with politics (from back in 2007, when the concern du jour was about Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Mormonism).

Religion in Politics

FWIW, I consider cults to fall into the same category — in fact, at the extreme end of the category — of “hierarchical” religions that I found to be of particular concern…

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More from the archive: Wolves and Sheepdogs

Published April 18, 2026

More spelunking through the archive….

Another piece from someone else that I think everyone should at least be familiar with, even if they disagree with it.

From the 2008 book, “On Combat“, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman; excerpted here:

Wolves and sheepdogs

Make of it what you will.  I find it to be a valuable frame for how to think about certain aspects of the world, particularly about the uncomfortable ambiguities and gray zones and contradictions created by the friction between civilization and the non-civilized institutions — specifically policing and, even more, the military —  which defend the borders of civilization from those who are distinctly uncivilized.  Which is, of course, the specific context in which that metaphor was intended to operate…

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Zoning nannies

Published April 15, 2026

There has been much talk recently about adopting a “YIMBY” attitude and policy, in government and in society, as a way of unblocking archaic impediments to solving persistent problems, including our pathological inability to build adequate and affordable housing and our similarly pathological inability to build out the infrastructure required to support even highly desirable ends like a green energy transition.  I would suggest another attitude and policy which should both precede and augment that one: “NOYDB!”

Because, as long as I’m doing it without imposing any costs or pain on others — as long as I’m dumping my waste into a proper sewage system rather than randomly into the ground water, and as long as I’m meeting the fire codes so I don’t set myself and the woods on fire and drag the fire department into it — whether or not I provide myself heat and a toilet and a sink to use inside my private workspace, out of sight of and without consequences for anyone else, really is and ought to be None Of Your Damned Business!

Tell me: why am I paying such high taxes to “own” my property when you are all so eager to stop me from doing useful things with it?  If you want the right to control my property, then you pay the bloody taxes!

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War and Contradictions

Published March 5, 2026

I think the current war on Iran is a bad idea.  It was poorly planned, not properly (or even sort-of) justified to the American public, and pursued through extra-legal means under the terms of the American Constitution.  The outcome is highly unlikely to be what we want — the current medieval and anti-western Iranian theocracy replaced by a modern and pro-western (or at least neutral) democracy.  To the contrary, it seems nearly certain that the outcome will be, at best, ongoing chaos and a wave of terrorism on American soil.  At worst, it will be a continuing anti-western theocracy with even more reason to be both brutal to its own people and hostile to the rest of the world (and also a wave of terrorism on American soil).  And there seems to be a fairly strong possibility that this war is as likely to expose an underlying weakness in America’s military productive capacity as it is to highlight America’s front-line military prowess.

That said, I can keep multiple and seemingly contradictory thoughts on the situation in my head at the same time.  The world is almost never as simple and straightforward as we wish it to be.

Whether we should have started something — under the conditions that prevailed at the time — is quite often a separate and divergent question from whether it is now realistic to stop, after we have already and irreversibly altered those conditions by our actions so far.  Alas, under current conditions I can’t think of a plausible way to end this without finishing it.

And I will admit that, as much as I lament the fact that we chose war with Iran in this moment, I cannot bring myself to muster much sympathy for the Iranian government or for its complaints about American duplicity and malice.  My objections are practical and procedural, not moral.

And I also cannot bring myself to wholly absolve the Iranian people — who, by all reports, in great measure loathe that government and deserve our sympathy — of all responsibility for their predicament.

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They can’t have it both ways!

Published February 20, 2026

Today, the Supreme Court ruled, notwithstanding Donald Trump’s assertion to the contrary, that the Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give the President the unilateral authority to create tariffs or to set tariff rates.

Three justices dissented in the ruling and, as part of that dissent, they complained about chaos that the ruling would create as a result of previously paid tariffs needing to be refunded and of trade agreements contingent on the tariffs suddenly being voided and needing to be renegotiated.  Per the New York Times story reporting on the dissent:

“The United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEEPA tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, referring to an acronym for the 1970s emergency statute Mr. Trump invoked to impose tariffs. He noted discussion at oral arguments about how such a refund process was likely to be a “mess.”

He also noted that the administration had used the leverage of tariffs to enter into key trading deals with other nations. Mr. Trump, he wrote, “helped facilitate trade deals worth trillions of dollars — including with foreign nations from China to the United Kingdom to Japan, and more.”

The court’s ruling “could generate uncertainty regarding those trade arrangements,” he wrote.

I’m afraid I must declare that concern to be…utter bullshit!

Oh, I don’t dispute that the ruling will create “a mess” and “uncertainty” and even, perhaps, some degree of utter chaos.

But I must ask, “Whose fault is that?”

It is, of course, primarily Trump’s fault.

But it is also the fault of the Supreme Court, which allowed his usurpation of Congressional authority, his blatant and immediately disputed Presidential overeach and its subsequent policy effects, to drag on for over a year before deigning to do something about it.

Worse, in earlier decisions, it forbade lower courts from applying more timely relief — by imposing injunctions against those policies — while the dispute was working its way through the judicial system.

They can’t have it both ways!

If they refuse to stop the illegitimate exercise of authority by preventing the disputed policies from taking effect in the first place, they can’t then later complain that undoing the harm they allowed to accrue is somehow too big a burden to bear!  And they certainly can’t use that burden as an excuse for not providing relief in the first place by allowing the illegitimate policies to continue!

Shame on them!

If those dissenting Justices — or any of the Justices — are concerned about the “chaos” of undoing policies that should never have been in effect in the first place, then they should damned well figure out how to stop those policies before the damage is done.

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Will AI kill us? Or will it merely make us poor and stupid?

Published January 5, 2026

There have been volumes written about AI in the last few years and, especially, in the last year.  And yet, most of it didn’t address — or not directly and completely, at any rate — the things I think are both most important and most interesting.  This is my attempt to remedy that.

 

Although there is an overall and integrating topic to the article — Artificial Intelligence and how it will affect society — and although there is a (somewhat loose) narrative arc from beginning to end, the article is divided into 7 distinct sections with very different subjects:

What is Intelligence?

Whether it is ‘artificial’ or ‘real’, intelligence is fundamentally ambiguous and, therefore, fundamentally unreliable.

Artificial Bodies…

…and Artificial Minds

These two sections together talk about the development of ‘artificial’ replacements for and/or augmentation of human functions, both physical and then mental, throughout history.

The second, in particular, provides a crude taxonomy of the elements and ‘progression’ of cognitive function, and an assessment of where AI is now/will eventually go along that progression.

Evolutionary Threat?

Will AI kill us by out-evolving us?  Probably not — but it’s complicated… What would it take and why will we probably not get there?

Purpose + Agency + Authority = Dominion

Will AI kill us by mistake or in ignorance or out of malice?  Perhaps…  so how do we make sure it won’t?  Hint: not through technology and not through law/regulation.

Beyond Scarcity

Will AI make us poor?  To the contrary, it will probably make us rich — if we can agree with each other about how to let it do that for us…

Artificial Nanny

Will AI make us stupid?  That is a real possibility — because that’s what humans will demand of it…

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