April 26, 2026

Billions of people of faith around the world are, like us, doing the best they can see to do to care for their communities; to keep their loved ones and neighbors healthy, safe, at peace.

There are many different faiths - and many people who believe that there is no God or Creative Power, however named, other than the laws of nature.  And it is natural for people to want to be right about, and defend, their beliefs and those who share their beliefs. This tendency has for millennia, and still today, created countless us-versus-them conflicts, from the small and personal to the global and catastrophic.

Imagine if billions of people each lived by two fundamental human commandments or principles - thus setting an example for others: love YOUR God or Creative Power, as you believe or have experienced It to exist, and love others, whatever their beliefs, as you love yourself.

Tears, and things deep and true.

This morning I finish​ed The Four Winds, a novel by Kristin Hannah​.  The end was both sad and inspiring: I was moved to tears. When that happens, I often remember my late mother saying something like, "When tears come, you know you have found something deep and true."

To many people, crying - especially when a man cries - is a sign of weakness. Surely, it is a sign of vulnerability - but that is not a bad thing!  It is sad that many people seem unwilling to act on, or even fully experience, what is deep and true for them.  There is a lot of ​"keeping it together,​" for our self-image and others' image of us.  At what cost? Vitality? Joy? Connection?

I would rather be deeply and openly moved and inspired by stories of courage, strength, grace, perseverance, and love than be stoic at the cost of experiencing the emotions that flow from those experiences. 

I find a kind of freedom and joy in being reminded that, if we look for them, there are as many occasions for deep and true emotions as we can bear - each moment of Life, wretched and horrifying or glorious and inspiring, being uniquely amazing.

Examining reactions to unfulfilled expectations

Though shared values and beliefs in what is right and what is wrong are essential to peaceful and just societies and cultures, the perception of right and wrong varies from person to person.

How we react when our expectations are not met - in matters large and small, personal, social and political - is important to the quality of our daily lives and our relationships. Usually, there is a major subconscious aspect to our reactions to life's events, including to unfulfilled expectations. And often - because it is human to want to be right - we accept our reactions as right: we don't examine them.

Yet we decide, consciously or not, whether to accept unfulfilled expectations and find and focus on other things that brings us gratitude and joy, OR to judge ourselves wronged by disappointment - somehow victimized by Life or by another person.  

The habit of reacting to - of judging - unfulfilled expectations as wrong makes it hard for us to be happy and to maintain our relationships. In particular, the more entitled we feel to have our expectations of another person met by them - especially if we disregard how we may be failing to meet their expectations of us! - the greater the frustration and misery for both. And "minor" issues often become major ones.

So, dear readers, I invite you to join me in striving to cultivate the habit of examining our reactions to  life as it unfolds, and retaining only the helpful ones - ideally, the loving ones - as an important part of self-knowledge and being a good, peaceful and happy person, partner, friend and citizen.

Where will presidential excesses stop?

Two questions inspired by Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 query, “I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop?”

I should like to know, if majorities in both houses of Congress stand by while the President of the United States, acting outside “his exclusive constitutional authority” (Trump v. United States, slip op. at 21), starts and escalates a war without a Declaration of War by Congress (Const. Art. I, sec. 8), where will it stop?

I should like to know, if majorities in both houses of Congress stand by while the President makes threats to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” and the Secretary of War threatens to show “no quarter, no mercy” and not to follow “stupid rules of engagement”, which threats are “plainly illegal”; see When War Crimes Rhetoric Becomes Battlefield Reality: The Slippery Slope to Total War on Iran, M. Donovan and R. VanLandingham, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret.); where will it stop?

 

Published on Substack as "Where will it stop?"  

An homage to Nathan Hale

When my time is up, I aim to repeat what my mother said were my very first words - "Lee happy" - and to have no regret that, having only one life to give to my family, my community, my country, and humanity, I gave less in that service than the best I was given to see to do.

War, dictatorship, and American voters' choices

Four days ago, without a Congressional declaration of war (Constitution Art. 1, Sec. 8, clause 11), the Trump Administration joined Israel in starting a war against Iran. The U.S. government provided the location of Iran's brutal Supreme Leader so that Israel could assassinate him. Simultaneously, the U.S. began to destroy Iran's military infrastructure.  As well stated by nuclear policy analyst Joe Cirincione in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "This is not how democracies go to war. It is how dictatorships do."

We can criticize President Trump, and I do every day. But voting Americans - almost 50% of those who voted - legally elected this aspiring "I alone can fix it" strongman a second time in 2024. (Over 1/3 of citizens of voting age left the voting to others.) More, majorities of us around the country elected the members in both houses of Congress who have enabled this President by practically never challenging him.

To paraphrase Prof. Timothy Snyder, many Americans like the idea of strongman rule.  But that idea is based on the fantasy that the strongman will be good for the nation, or at least for those who believe that he will honor his office and the people and legal process that put him there. History teaches us that the strongman does not well serve, let alone unite, the nation.  He becomes a bully - a dictator.  He foments distrust between groups in society. He sows fear by false claims that some groups of citizens are criminals or traitors; by using the vast power of government in heavy-handed, even illegal, ways; and by vengeful treatment of dissenters.

Rejecting the rule of law, common civility, and citizens' criticisms of his actions, the dictator focuses on advancing his personal interests and making up justifications for doing so which he is confident his subordinates will praise and defend, his supporters will believe, and his adversaries will be too few, weak, divided, and slow-acting to challenge effectively. He will measure himself not by the integrity of his administration or the reputation, power, security and wealth of the nation, but by his own power and wealth, and that of other dictators.

The 2026 congressional elections will be crucial for the future of our nation. Life, as ever, is choices - individually and collectively. Will those of us who hold the office of citizen love our nation enough to treat our fellow citizens as we would like to be treated, to support the next generation of civic leaders, and to persevere in educating ourselves on the issues, current events, and the Trump trajectory?  Will we vote?  Will we actively urge our fellow citizens to vote and defend their right to do so without new barriers?  Will the majority of us say, by our daily actions and our votes in November, that the Trump administration and its supporters in Congress are representing us as we wish - or that we will tolerate neither a dictator as President nor his enablers?

Honoring our own experience

In religion, politics, public policy, ethics - any realm where one's point of view or personal history might filter one's lived experience - we may believe someone who tells us they had an extraordinary experience.  However, when another's experience is inconsistent with our own experience, respectfully accepting another's reality does not require us to discredit our experience.