“Heritage Americans: ‘You’re less American than I am because my ancestors built this country.’ Also Heritage Americans: ‘Don’t blame me for slavery or segregation. I’m not responsible for what my ancestors did,’” – Avik Roy.
Source: https://intellectualoid.com/2026/01/16/friday-1-16-26/
I was taught to not be a hypocrite, the implication being such a person cannot be trusted because you don’t know their true values. My childhood friend once told me what he dislikes the most is hypocrisy. I think we all at one time or another are a hypocrite, but the real problem is not recognizing it as a problem enough to be embarrassed by. In fact, it seems as though most people today have so little self-awareness that they can’t be embarrassed.
In his essay today Om Malik shared this quote from psychologist Rollo May, observing 1950s America:
The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
Malik says May diagnosed this when McCarthyism was literally hunting down anyone who thought differently. The subject of Malik’s post was technology platforms, but I think in reality the quote is most applicable to where we are in the United States today. Supremacy does not seek peaceful co-existence, which is the alleged premise of the founding of the U.S., but rather conformity and compliance to a hierachial world view of winners and losers.
I don’t understand how anyone can think the U.S. annexation of Greenland is a good idea. First off, if you were a citizen of Greenland why would you want to be a U.S. citizen? Second off, in what way does that annexation help us normal citizens of the U.S.? I thought we were all “America First.”
Bumbling Cubs Front Office
Kyle Tucker signed a 4 year, $240m contract with the Dodgers. In my opinion the Cubs trading for Tucker last year and giving up a top prospect is one of the worst decisions made by Jed Hoyer. The mistake the Cubs keep making is that they seem unwilling to pay for the positions of need and then to appease the fans just sign whatever player regardless of the position, and that is a bad way to run a team.
Last season the Cubs need was at third base and Alex Bregman was available, but the Cubs were not aggressive in filling their need and for some reason settled on renting Tucker for a year. The only way the trade for Tucker made sense is if the Cubs had extended him before the season started, once the season started with no extension it was obvious the Cubs had made a mistake. Redemption for the front office would have been a deep playoff run, but instead Tucker was injured for most of the second half of the season and the Cubs lost to the Brewers in the divisional round.
Now the Cubs have signed Bregman to finally fill their need, but they could have done that last year and not given up any prospects in the process. It would have been much smarter for them to have taken the money they gave to Tucker and spent it on Bregman. All around, these were bad decisions and even bad business decisions by the owner. Of course, Ownership showed their bad business skills by extending Hoyer last year before the trade deadline, effectively rewarding Hoyer for mediocre work.
I received the Day One book version of this site. It’s a very cool bounded book print out of what I wrote here during the past year.
I have created the list of the books that I read in 2025. Unfortunately, I did not reach my goal for the number of books that I read but I am expecting to be able to exceed this number this year as I have more time to read. I have also updated my large outline of the books that I have read since 2020.
I accidentally bought the fat free version of the coffee creamer that I use and I am amazed by how much of a difference, for the worse, there is between it and the version that I regularly use.
I am shocked that the Chicago Cubs signed Alex Bregman to what will be the third most lucrative contract in team history. Ownership has not shown a willingness to sign big contracts since the one they gave Dansby Swanson. What I see from BleedCubbieBlue.com is that the math pegs the Cubs right at the luxury tax threshold, which I suspect is ownership’s upper limit. Being that the Cubs are in a large market, they ought to be more willing to pay the luxury tax, if they are willing I would love to see them pursue Cody Bellinger for a one year deal, but that won’t happen. The article reports that the Cubs are spending 36% of their revenue on player salaries, putting them at 26th in the league. Comparable big market teams New York Yankees and Los Angelas Dodgers are spending 50% (11th) and 73% (2nd) respectively.
While earlier this week it felt like spring, today Mother Nature sent a reminder that it is still January.
Military Not Law Enforcement
The killing of Renee Nicole Good by that ICE agent is bad enough, but the words of people in government, particularly J.D. Vance is what I am most troubled by.
Law Enforcement in the United States is vested by the state with the ability to take a life. The social contract between citizens and the state in this matter is that Law Enforcement is held to high standard.
Note to every news pundit and reporter. Let’s stop saying ICE is law enforcement, instead say what ICE is, a military force on U.S. soil. Law enforcement generally does not shoot first and ask questions later, that is how the military operates and which is why we do not want the military on U.S. soil. Let’s not be hung up by org charts and focus instead on how they act and describe it accordingly.
I received my Exist 2025 year in review today. This year I recorded 3,174,492 steps for a distance of 1,440.5 miles. The number of steps is down 1% while the distance walked is up 1%. My highest step day was 14,259 on March 9 when I was in Mesa Arizona attending a Chicago Cubs spring training game.
According to the weather app on my phone we are experiencing 20 mph winds, a bit of which I attempted to capture below. I think this might be the first time I have tried to share a video snippet here.
Just received an email from our condo association that there is a power line down at the entrace to our complex preventing access in and out.
It has been a fantastic weather day for January in Michigan. Plenty of sunshine for all creatures to enjoy!
What Is The Purpose Law?
Police in the United States have a blank check to kill because people in power have convinced citizens that if an officer feels threatened there is no consequences for their actions. Feelings cannot be proven or disproven so the result is immunity. The combination of fast, mass hiring of officers to fill law enforcement positions with a likely low threshold of evaluation on the hiring, is a threat to all citizens in the United States.
A government for the people must treat the use of lethal force against citizens with the utmost care. Any person given a gun, bullets, a badge, and the blank check to kill citizens must be throughly vetted.
Why should it be acceptable that disobedience of an officer’s orders be grounds for killing?
Further, why if you are telling a person in a car to move, does one stand in front of that car to “block it?”
Is shoot first ask questions later by officers justice? Or is this really a show of force to create a state of fear? And if the answers are yes, then how is the United States different from any of the “socialist” or “communist” or “dictatorships” of any other country in our past or current times? Isn’t shoot first ask questions later how the military works? While ICE may be organizationally apart from the military, I think their actions are of the military and should be treated accordingly.
You may think you are creating order through enforcement of law, but that is not justice and it is certainly not freedom. What we have right now in the United States is a standing army on U.S. soil killing citizens.
I agree with Cory Doctorow’s idea regarding teaching writing, but I also think he missed an important part of writing. I remember a time I had with a middle school history teacher, who having graded a test in which I had to write responses he asked me how much I read. Of course I told him a lot, to which he responded “I can tell by your writing.”
A part of becoming a good writer is reading good writing and that is not for what passes for writing on most of the Internet. You certainly don’t find good writing on social networks. Reading is implied in Doctorow’s examples of writers workshops, but it should be obvious that reading is fundamental to writing. Much of how we learn is by mimicking others, so we cannot write well if we never see or read good writing.
Article on Talking Points Memo claims January 6, 2021 is when we lost the plot in the United States. I think the train went off the tracks much earlier, probably on 9/11. I personally consider our lack of response to the murder in Sandhook Elementary as the moment because I want to believe that in a prior time the country would have been shocked in to a consensus. The reinterpretation and idolization of the Second Amendment completely blocks any form of agreement in the U.S. and I do think that is exactly what the Powers want.
Who Can Be Accountable?
I think most people trying to interpret Trumps actions in Venezuela are making a mistake of doing so through a lens of what is thought to be normal, or how or why things were done in the past.
The same formula seems to be repeated: “Trump claims the reason why he did this is because X but here is an instance of Y that is completely opposite of X.” The implication is, Trump’s claim cannot be true because it’s inconsistent. I think the real problem is paying any attention to any claim made by Trump.
Everything that Trump does appears to be in the moment, his actions are mostly emotional and whoever has access to him last greatly influences what he does. In my opinion the real root problem is that Trump believes he can do whatever he wants and doesn’t need to convince anyone, neither Congress, the Supreme Court, nor citizens, that what he is doing is good or right or just. Sure, he very much wants us all to like him, but in the end nothing matters, the only thing that matters to Trump is what is in his head at any given moment.
I think we need to spend much less time on Trump and much more time on his enablers. Why is all this happening? It’s happening because the Supreme Court ruled Trump is above the law and made him king and the majority in Congress is only there for the LOLs and not there do their job, and a wealthy class of people willing to pay and participate in tearing it all down for the sake of keeping what they imagine to be their wonderful life.
The response to every action Trump takes should be a push to remove any enabler and make them accountable. All this has to start with us not reacting to anything Trump does from what we think to be normal. Making claims that what he did is illegal does not matter because there is no accountability of him. Pointing out Trump’s hypocrisy does not matter. Nothing you can do or say about Trump matters. What does matter is how we view and consider those people who enable him now and work to replace them.
Today Sarah Bessey announced a new book, a compilation of Rachel Held Evan’s blog posts, titled “Braving The Truth Essential Essays For Reckoning With And Reimagining Faith.” Held Evans, who wrote of her faith deconstruction and reconstruction, died much too soon in 2019.
As bad as the insurrection on January 6, 2021 was, what is worse to me is general apathetic reaction to it from more than half the country. Having grown up in the 70s I can’t help but compare these our current times to back then and the reaction to Watergate, when it was clear to me that there was a line by which citizens believed a President cannot cross and that citizens did not think the President is above the law.
Even more important, back then more members of Congress and the Supreme Court had a backbone no matter party affliation. I imagine today’s Supreme Court would have ruled that Nixon did not have to give up the tape as they view the Supreme Executive as not accountable to any branch of government.