It needed to be done, but the adults hadn’t done it, so I thought I would. The result was a useful lesson. One that was painful both to me, who was guilty, and to many others, who weren’t. I never would have supposed that many years later it would become the kind of mistake the president of the United States would repeat on a much larger scale.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was obvious, wanted to be as far away from this stinker as he could get. He didn’t, it seemed, want to be soiled with whatever the Secretary of Defense (“secretary of war” in his own delusions of grandeur) had been rolling in.
So far, 2026 brings to mind Dorothy Parker’s legendary sigh, “What fresh hell is this?” It’s said to have been uttered when her doorbell rang, but it has other uses. Applied to our current year it makes Parker seem a prophet (though her politics and choices of friends tended to be terrible).
There’s been a lot of news lately, as you might have noticed. You might, too, have noticed that getting actual, accurate news coverage seems all but impossible.
In a parallel universe last week, Iranian drones and missiles were launched against two pro-Western democracies. The same two that received those volleys in our universe; just one bit was different in Universe Two: there, the West scrambled jets to protect Ukraine, leaving Israel to fend for itself.
Babies. They beheaded babies. They are proud of it. It is particularly troubling when acts are so horrific that people of good will are sad that they are not there to personally kill the offenders. But that was my instant, immutable response to a video I saw on Saturday.
We’re in a mess. The country is in the weakest place it’s been in a very long time. If what I suspect and fear comes to pass, it could soon be far worse.