The Danger of a Weak President

Charlie Kirk's assassination was foreseeable. Not his assassination in particular, but political violence in general, because it was already on the rise. It follows the assassination attempt on trump, his pardoning of the violent Jan 6 seditionists and the leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, and an uptick in a number of other acts of political violence since he took office. 

Political violence is symptomatic of the deterioration of rule of law and democracy. It happens when people lose trust in the institutions that support law and order. No American President in recent history has done more to undermine law and order than the convicted felon-President. 

Political violence increases when: 

a. It's outwardly and implicitly encouraged by leaders against political rivals. Violence is rhetorically normalized.

b. There is a breakdown in the rule of law. The law enforcement and criminal justice system are weaponized and politicized. The guilty get off scott free, or get unearned clemency, and the innocent go to jail.

No President is recent memory has done more to weaponize politics, demonize political rivals, and tacitly or actively encouraged political violence, as Donald J. Trump. This has the impact of encouraging violence among his supporters as well as among those who oppose him, a vicious cycle. Violence is contagious. 

This is a perilous moment for America, but for trump who thrives in chaos, it's political gold. An opportunity to crank up the heated rhetoric, when any normal politican who actually cared about his country would be doing the opposite. Predictably, in a statement from the Oval Office he blamed the 'radical Leftists', implictly encouraging further violence. The politicization of this tragedy feeds trump's agenda of consolidating authoritarian power and militarizing the streets. A very weak president, which is what trump is, weaker than ever, is an even more dangerous president because the only way he can maintain power is to further divide the country and radicalize his supporters.     

I would hope that Americans understand the political dynamic underway and resist it. I'm not terribly encouraged that they have the capacity or will.

Strike On Qatar?

Israel bombed Qatar. 

Actually they bombed a residential building in the capital city Doha, purported to house the headquarters of the internationally-recognized terrorist organization Hamas, with whom they are at war, and who holds their non-combatant citizens as hostages.

The international community is almost unanimously wringing its hands or outright condemning the attack. The Prime Minister of Canada called the attack 'an intolerable expansion of violence'. Trump said he was 'very unhappy' with the attack, impotent as usual.  

Netanyahu said that the decision was made to attack the day Hamas gunmen attacked a bus stop outside Jerusalem killing six people.

So let's think about this.

What we see happening in real time is the unravelling of the international order. The power vacuum left by the weakness of the United States is being filled, by new alliances - China, Russia, North Korea, and India in Asia, and in the Middle East, Israel asserting itself as the preeminent military power in that region. In Europe, the power vacuum issue is being fought out in Ukraine. 

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack, saying “I condemn this flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar.” He is saying this because the Israeli action is also endemic of the abject failure of the UN to deal with terrorism. 

At the heart of Israel's action is a question: Do we live in a world where terrorism is acceptable or not? Will we accept countries (member states of the UN) providing safe haven and funding for terrorism?    

On the respected podcast The Rest Is Politics, Alastair Campbell said that if Israel was planning this attack all along it means they were negotiating for the release of their hostages in bad faith. An astonishingly naive comment. So, the government of Israel is in bad faith doing whatever it can to get its citizens released from captivity? Is there no distinction between the government of a nation-state acting on behalf of its citizens and a terrorist organization? Terrorists holding hostages is the very definition of bad faith.   

After strongly condemning the attack, which of course they had to do, the Qatari PM said that it would not deter them from acting as mediators for further negotiation. I read this as a wink and a nod. They either knew or at least expected the attack was coming and tacitly consented.  

I am in favour of attacking terrorists. Even if it means attacking them in sovereign countries who give them safe-haven. And especially if the terrorists hold your hostages. This was not an attack on Qatar, and the Qataris know it. It was not an attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar, as the UN SecGen said. It was Israel acting in defence of the international order against terrorists who want to undermine it. 

Because Israel realizes that if they they aren't going to do it, no one will.    

Rick Davies 1944-2025

Supertramp gets very little respect. For a band that has sold 60 million albums worldwide and had one of the bestselling albums of the 1970s (Breakfast In America, 18 million sold), a decade bursting with classic albums, it’s sort of mindboggling how this band is never in any conversation of the greatest rock bands. 

It’s not about the musicianship. Rick Davies, who passed away this week at the age of 81, was as gifted a pianist as Elton John or Billy Joel, but is never mentioned in that company. Songs like Dreamer, Bloody Well Right, Give A Little Bit, The Logical Song, Goodbye Stranger, are catchy, melodic, lyrically meaningful and expertly crafted. The songwriting duo of Davies and Roger Hodgson, the former a jazz and blues influenced Yin, to the latter's hipppie-folk Yang, has been compared to Lennon and McCartney. Supertramp albums like Crime of the Century (1974), Crisis? What Crisis? (1975), Even In the Quietest Moments (1977) and their massive selling Breakfast In America (1979), are some of the best sounding albums of all time. As a concept album, Crime of the Century must certainly be considered a benchmark of the genre, and yet it didn't make Rolling Stones' top 50 list. 

 

So what gives? I have a theory. 

But first a personal anecdote. Crime of the Century was the first album I ever bought, I may have been 14 years old. I’m sure I’d heard the single Dreamer on the radio - it was ubiquitous on Montreal FM radio - but that was not why I bought the album. I bought it because of the artwork - the image of two hands gripping jail bars, floating through dark space, spoke to me. I didn’t know it consciously at the time, but those hands were mine. I felt locked in the emotional prison of adolescence: I was lonely, not taken seriously by my parents, didn’t care about school, and resented all the crap the teachers were trying to stuff into my daydreaming head. I brought the album home, set the needle down on the stereo, and started reading the liner notes. By the end of Hide In Your Shell, I was a weeping mess. 

Too frightening to listen to a stranger

Too beautiful to put your pride in danger

You're waiting for someone to understand you...

Don't let the tears linger on inside now

Because it's sure time you gained control

If I can help you, if I can help you

If I can help you, just let me know...

It was the first time in my life that I felt like a song was written specifically for me. In fact, I can remember having that strange feeling, the very first time I heard the song, like I’d heard it before, as if in some mysterious way the song had always existed. It seemed perfect.  

That mysterious feeling kept happening on every Supertramp album I bought, and I bought them all. There was one or two songs that reached my very core in that indescribable way, like it was somehow fundamental, like it was part of nature itself. It happened on the orchestral Fool’s Overture, a song that contains the epic beauty and majesty of history. It's a song about Britain during The Blitz, and uses a recording of the famous defiant speech of Winston Churchill marshalling his compatriots during its time of existential crisis to 'fight on the seas and oceans whatever the cost' and ‘never surrender'. If that song doesn’t count as a masterpiece of classic rock, I don’t know what does. 

So why don't people ever talk about Supertramp in the same category as they talk about other progressive/art rock hitmakers like Pink Floyd or Yes or Genesis or Steely Dan? Incidentally, of the preceding list, only Genesis had more Billboard top 10 singles than Supertramp.

My theory is that Supertramp, according to the critics, commits the cardinal sin of rock n' roll: Their music doesn't offend enough. The one defining characteristic of rock in all its permutations and combinations, from hard rock to progressive rock, is edge, and Supertramp's music has very little. Rock and roll is the music of rebellion. If it's not blatantly offensive (like Punk), or ironic (like New Wave), it has to at least push musical boundaries (like Prog). But even when they are singing about serious subject matter, like the pressures that society puts on a child growing up (Crime of the Century, The Logical Song), Supertramp does it with depth, sensitivity, sweetness and consolation. 

Take a song like Bloody Well Right, a Rick Davies penned tune on the edgier side - Davies had the working-class perspective of the songwriting partners - he sings:

So you think your schooling's phony

I guess it's hard not to agree

You say it all depends on money

And who is in your family tree

  

It's an indictment of the British class system, and yet, the round timbre of his voice almost croons, and the carefully arranged horns and Wah-Wah guitar make the song sound almost too neat. Don't get me wrong, there's much to appreciate about the polish of Supertramp's songs. But there is such a thing as being too polished, and that's a rock n' roll no-no. It's also part of the reason their music defies the standard categories. It's not quite as Prog as Genesis or Yes, and not quite as Jazz/Blues as Steely Dan. Supertramp's biggest hits, like Give A Little Bit, have a melodic catchiness and straightforward message, like many Beatles songs (obviously they were a major influence on Hodgson), but none of the Beatles experimental tendencies. Supertramp always stays tightly within musical and lyrical boundaries, and that's part of the reason they fall through all the cracks and are overlooked.

I also think it's the earnest child's point of view that works against Supertramp. It figures in so much of their music, accompanied by Hodgson's almost child-like soaring tenor. At a certain point you grow out of that perspective. Not coincidentally, I lost interest in Supertramp at Breakfast In America, just as they were achieving their major commercial break-through, and I was graduating high-school. 

It's sad to lose Rick Davies, more so at a time when irony is dead, some say rock music is dead, and we can all stand to share a little more goodwill - Give A Little Bit seems written for exactly this moment:

There's so much that we need to share

So send a smile and show you care...

I'll give a little bit

I'll give a little bit of my life for you

So give a little bit

Give a little bit of your time to me

See the man with the lonely eyes

Oh, take his hand, you'll be surprised

A Spoke In The Wheel

"Just a spoke in the wheel."

It’s a line uttered in the operatic, multi-layered 2000 film Magnolia, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The words come from a barfly played with wry perfection by Henry Gibson. If you’re my age you remember Henry from the late-60s sketch comedy Laugh-In, where he played “The Poet,” reciting verse while holding a giant artificial flower. In Magnolia he appears as Thurston Howell — a name lifted from Gilligan’s Island — itself a nod to the absurd collisions of class and circumstance. That’s what Anderson’s film does too, only here it’s not castaways on a remote Pacific island, but lonely souls adrift in Los Angeles.

At the center of the film is a game show, "What Do Kids Know?" The answer the movie suggests is: far too much. Anderson shows us how children absorb more than we’d ever admit — the anger, shame, and regret of their parents. They inherit the fallout.

That’s why Gibson’s line stuck with me, especially when paired with something I heard this week from a dry-witted YouTuber who calls himself The Functional Melancholic. In a post titled "America Alone: How We Lost Connection", he observes, “This is what happens when you have 10,000 Instagram followers, and not a single person to pick you up at the airport.”

Magnolia is about connection. Family, society, love, hate, denial, reconciliation. It insists there’s no such thing as living independently. We’re bound together whether we acknowledge it or not — just as the past binds itself to the present and the future. Anderson hammers this home at the end of the film with a biblical plague of frogs falling on L.A., smashing through car windshields and rooftop skylights, the bloody slimy amphibian carcasses littering the pavement — a warning about the cost of refusing responsibility for each other. 

The movie was released at the dawn of the 21st century, before Facebook (2004), before the algorithms fully rewired us. Today the film almost feels quaint, even naïve, in how seriously it took human connection.

Anderson clearly had scripture in mind. The “spoke in the wheel” line echoes Ezekiel’s vision of a wheel in the sky, a symbol of divine presence and power. Wheels moved by cherubim, in a city named Los Angeles — the City of Angels. That’s why Gibson’s other line in the bar cuts so deep: “It’s dangerous to confuse children with angels.”

Our children are no angels, indeed. They’re not even spokes in the wheel these days. They’re test subjects in the largest uncontrolled social experiment ever attempted. And the results are plain: adolescent addicts, suicidal teens, isolated incels.

If only they were still just spokes in the wheel.

But the wheel is gone.

Always Between

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

I've got me a job,

I guess it's okay.

Don't care very much,

But it's worth the pay.

I got me a girl,

Yeah, she's alright.

Watch movies, have dinner, 

Almost never fight.

Sometimes I think, 

There's another way.

Choices I could make,

Before I go gray.

Take myself down,

A different road.

Where the sky is wide,

The air not so cold.

Ain't as young as I was,

Or as old as I'll be.

It feels somehow,

Like I'm always between.

My girl ran away,

Took a part of me.

All she left behind,

Was a mountain of lonely.

Used to have buddies,

Shared a game and a beer.

They're off doing something,

Or so it appears.

My folks worry 'bout me,

Say my life's a dead-end.

I'm happy they're talking,

Since their marriage did end.

I may not go far,

Whatever 'far' means.

I'm heading somewhere,

I'm always between.

Ain't as young as I was,

Or as old as I'll be.

It feels somehow,

Like I'm always between.

Dangerous Delusions

On Friday Bob Rae, Canada’s estimable Permanent Representative to the UN, a man whose decades long political career includes being Premier of Ontario as a New Democrat and a federal Liberal Member of Parliament, was interviewed on the CBC. The topic was Canada’s plan to recognize a Palestinian State on the first day of debates of the UN’s General Assembly this month, specifically when the Prime Minister will be in attendance on September 22nd. I’m not sure he could see the irony - that day also being the beginning of the Jewish New Year. Although he might, seeing as Mr. Rae is married to Arlene Perly who is Jewish and a past Vice President of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Rae also raised their three daughters as Jews, and perhaps the family will be celebrating the High Holidays at the venerable Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto where they are members. Rae himself was raised an Anglican, but as an adult learned that his paternal grandfather was a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant to Scotland.

In both his personal and public life Rae has expressed a strong affinity for the Jewish people and staunch support for the State of Israel. So I was a little more than disappointed listening to him defend Canada’s decision. He didn’t hedge, as I expected he would, by saying that Canada’s decision was conditioned on the Palestinians reaching several benchmarks, which they haven’t reached and are unlikely to.

Rather he doubled down on the decision, saying that it was long overdue, and harkens back to the UN’s original 1947 Partition Plan, only half of which was ever fulfilled - no mention of the fact that it was the Palestinians who had rejected it and the surrounding Arab states who attacked Israel after they declared independence with the aim of destroying it. He rather obliquely (and shamefully) said, “out of battle and war came one state.”

Rae argued that Canada’s decision was well thought through, and the result of a great deal of discussion and coordination with a number of other countries including France and Britain. He said, the move would in no way reward Hamas terrorists for their October 7th attack, but rather achieve the exact opposite. Instead of wiping Israel off the map, which is Hamas’s objective, recognition of a Palestinian state would be predicated on two states living side by side to ensure the peace and security of their respective peoples. Rae offered no further details about how exactly that would happen, under the current dire circumstances. He said that it would be the PA (Palestinian Authority) which would be supported to provide the new interim government and elections would have to be held within a certain reasonable delay. Hamas would not be permitted to play a role in the new government, he said, although he didn’t provide any idea about how to ensure that would happen. 

Rae, and one presumes France and Britain, are convinced that this maneuver is a logical step to bringing peace and security to the region. The approach appears to be that if the Palestinians have demonstrated over and over that they are utterly incapable of creating responsible and rational political governance themselves, do it for them. It’s never worked before, but hey, we’ve tried everything else. 

Rae even went so far as to suggest that it was Israel who was preventing the Palestinians from self-governance. No mention that Israel left Gaza unilaterally 20 years ago and we see the results. If today there is zero appetite within Israel to let the Palestinians give it another try, maybe it’s because they’ve learned their lesson.

To his credit CBC host David Cochrane pushed back a bit saying with Israel’s operations to take over Gaza City, settlements expanding, and no will in the Netanyahu government, there doesn’t seem to be any capacity to have a state. Rae’s answer: We can’t let that prevent the Palestinian people from exercising their rights. 

Say what? In other words don’t let reality get in the way of our fantasy. I have never heard Bob Rae sound so muddled and delusional. 

Rae ended by saying “If we succeed (in creating a Palestinian State) you know who will be the most unhappy… the people who preach hate… Hamas.”

I think he may have unwittingly admitted why the fantasy he is living in (and Canada’s approach) is so dangerous. 

___________________________________

PS. No sooner do I post the above commentary and Israel suffers the deadliest terrorist attack in two years. Six were killed at a bus stop outside Jerusalem when gunmen opened fire. The perpetrators were two young men from West Bank villages close to Jerusalem. Unfortunately, I fear we are in for more of this kind of terrorism. It should be a signal to the western allies that any move for recognition of a Palestinian State is at the very least premature.    

Rogue Regime, Journalistic Malpractice

The CNN headline reads, “US military kills 11 in strike on alleged drug boat tied to Venezuelan cartel, Trump says.”

I’ve seen several reports on the incident, but not one asks the most basic questions. Since when can the United States attack vessels in international waters and kill their occupants—on mere allegations? No arrests, no trials, no due process?

Even if we assume the boat was filled with narcotics, and further assume those drugs were bound for the United States, do drug dealers suddenly lose their legal rights? In America, being suspected of a crime—even a serious one—does not carry an automatic death sentence.

Trump himself took public responsibility for the strike. “We just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out a boat, a drug-carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat,” he told reporters at the White House. And yet not one journalist in the room pressed him on the legality.

The administration is trying to frame the incident as an act of self-defense, calling the occupants “narco-terrorists.” But that’s a sleight of hand. International law permits interdiction of stateless drug vessels under certain conditions, but it does not authorize extrajudicial executions at sea. Standard practice is seizure and arrest, not summary killing. Even the U.S. Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act—often criticized for its overreach—envisions prosecution in court, not military strikes.

Reuters at least called the operation “unusual.” Adam Isacson, Director for Defense Oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, put it bluntly: “Being suspected of carrying drugs doesn’t carry a death sentence.” Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted, “These particular drugs were probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean.” In other words, the supposed threat to the U.S. homeland wasn’t even credible.

This action raises broader concerns. Domestically, trump has already deployed federal troops into Democrat-run cities under the pretext of combating “rampant crime.” Now he’s sending warships into Latin America to combat drug cartels. What’s next? Every time he wants to distract from scandal (Epstein) he seems ready to conjure a new “war” that expands executive power and erodes the rule of law.

This incident alone should be grounds for indicting trump. It was a deliberate killing outside combat conditions—an extrajudicial execution in violation of international and domestic law. But it’s also an indictment of the press, which failed in its most basic responsibility: to question government power and defend the principles of law. By uncritically repeating the president’s talking points, the media normalizes actions that in any other context would be called what they are—rogue state behavior.

In Praise of Gidget

I’ve been watching a lot of classic movies lately, mostly from the forties and fifties—the post-war period. You might think the attraction is nostalgia for a more ‘innocent’ time, but these were far from innocent years. Many post-war films wrestled with difficult social and personal issues, often rooted directly or indirectly in the experience of war. Noir, the era’s most popular genre, depicted the underside of urban society: crime-ridden cityscapes and the toll of human cruelty. Its protagonists were often returning soldiers, quietly tormented by what we now call PTSD. The war may have ended, the economy may have been booming, but many veterans didn’t feel like winners—or free.

One film I watched recently is 1959’s Gidget. Yes, that Gidget: the much-maligned CinemaScope cultural phenomenon that launched the careers of Sandra Dee and teen heartthrob James Darren, inspired a wave of 1960s beach party movies, spawned a Sally Field TV series, and brought surfing into the mainstream.

Most critics have dismissed Gidget as fluff—the story of a 16-year-old girl reluctantly discovering boys and pulling away from her loving, conventional parents. This isn’t James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Blackboard Jungle (1955), or even Splendor in the Grass (1961). For one thing, the protagonist is a girl—bookish, nerdy, tomboyish, not particularly interested in romance. For another, her struggles are played for laughs, not tragedy. This is a feel-good movie where all turns out well in the end—which may explain why critics dismissed it. They prefer tortured characters, paying in blood or sanity for their lost innocence. Getting dunked while learning to ride a wave hardly seems dramatic enough.

But there’s more to Gidget than critics admit. At its core is a character who places the film squarely in the post-war tradition: the rugged Cliff Robertson as the “Big Kahuna.” He’s the leader of the surf bums, charismatic and unapologetic, living free in a ramshackle hut. Idolized by teenage boys, he represents the rejection of school, work, and parental authority in favor of endless horizons.

Yet Kahuna is no simple hero. We learn he chose this life after returning from the Korean War. Nothing specific is revealed, but the scars are visible. His real name—Burt Vail—hints at the tragic secrets he is keeping. His decorative “tribal” mask, supposedly a gift from a chief, is later revealed to be store-bought. By summer’s end, the fantasy collapses. The teens return to class, and Kahuna to his airline job. He is the tragic figure of the film, emblematic of both the end of the 1950s and the unrest that will erupt in the 1960s.

Inspired by Gidget—a story about a girl struggling to separate from her parents as her society struggles to emerge from its own post-war adolescence—I see a larger theme: the tension between individual freedom and the pull of social and familial attachment. This describes the dynamic of history itself. The pendulum swings: from individuality, the period from the late 19th century to the Roaring ’20s, for example, to collapse (the Great Depression and the World Wars), to conservatism (the 40s and 50s), and back again. Today’s American authoritarian turn can be read as a reaction to the social upheaval and rampant individualism of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. The pendulum swings again, from post-war liberalism and globalism to tribalism, nationalism, and isolationism.

So no, Gidget is not just beach-party fluff. It’s about the most important force in our lives: the struggle between individual freedom and attachment. Zen thinkers tell us attachment is the root of suffering, and so we should resist it. But from birth we are wired for attachment—it literally ensures survival. Alone, we perish; together, we endure. But we attach ourselves not just to other people, but also to material objects, and even to ideologies. The problem isn’t attachment itself, but what we attach ourselves to. After all, what is meaning if not a form of attachment?

It Happened To Us

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

It happened to us,

We called it love.

It came from below,

It came from above.

When we first met,

You had something in mind.

Because you believed,

That I was your kind.

There were things that you wanted,

But you weren’t in control.

It didn't take long,

For it to take a toll.

The mattress has gone soft,

On my side of the bed.

Most times when we talk,

It's all in my head.

It happened to us,

Like it happened to them.

It happened before,

It’ll happen again.

I won’t feel alone,

So go do your thing.

I'll build an altar,

For your next offering.

I'm down for this trip,

Wherever it goes.

Cause half the fun,

Is that we don't know -

But I will admit,

I'm pretty damn scared.

To hand my heart over,

I'm so unprepared.

I'll remember the saying,

Nothing new under the sun.

When one cycle is over,

Another's begun.

It happened to us,

Like it happened to them.

It happened before,

It’ll happen again.

People Who Don't Care

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

Government that doesn't govern.

Leaders who don't lead.

Representatives who don't represent.

Politicians who don't make policy.

Laws that don't make sense.

Legislators who don't legislate.

Judges who aren't impartial.

Courts that don't adjudicate.

Police who don't protect.

Borders that aren't safe.

Institutions that don't serve.

Universities that don't educate.

Doctors who don't heal.

Professors who don't teach.

Media that doesn't report.

Advisors without expertise.

Churchgoers who don't worship.

Clergy that doesn't have faith.

Companies that don't make things.

Jobs that don't pay a living wage.

Artists who don't create.

Communities who don't share.

Citizens who don't vote.

People who don't care.

People who don't care.

People who don't care.

What a good poem does

What a good poem does 

is make you feel 

alive -

reminds you 

but not in your head

in your body

how it feels

to be alive -

because we die 

a bit 

every day 

and barely notice

we work

and barely notice

we eat 

and barely notice

we talk

and barely notice

make love

and barely notice;

a good poem

like a laser pointer

helps you 

notice.

Diplomatic Tetherball

Does anyone actually believe trump is mediating an end to the war in Ukraine? 

Honestly. Has trump ever mediated anything in his life? Does he have anyone in his staff who knows anything about mediation? 

And yet, if you go by the volume of serious press coverage this idea has been getting lately, the answer seems to be yes. I don’t know what they're seeing that I’m not.

Trump is a bully. Bullies don’t mediate—they dominate. They don't understand negotiation, compromise, or diplomacy. They understand force, intimidation, and loyalty. So what exactly is going on here?

What I see isn't mediation. It’s a game of tetherball, with Ukraine and the Europeans on one side, and Putin on the other, batting the ball—trump—back and forth. Analysts keep trying to count the rings on the pole to determine who's winning the "negotiation." But this isn't about negotiation. It's about manipulation. One day, it’s Putin whispering in trump’s ear; the next day, it's Zelensky. And like trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton has said—trump’s decisions usually come down to whoever spoke to him last.

Personally, I don’t think trump has the slightest clue what’s really going on. He thinks he’s mediating a peace deal—but he’s not. The players involved aren’t treating him as a neutral broker. They’re treating him like a mark. Each side is trying to win him over, to pull him into their orbit. That’s the exact opposite of mediation. And because Trump’s so easily influenced, he doesn’t even notice.

Let’s be clear: Trump does not care about dying Ukrainians or Russians. He wants to “end the war” for one reason—because he thinks it will earn him a Nobel Peace Prize. Period. Full stop.

And that’s not even why he called Putin recently. That call was pure political distraction—an attempt to shift headlines away from the politically disastrous Epstein files. Putin obliged because he saw the opportunity: a way to slide back into trump’s good graces after a few cold months. Trump rolled out the red carpet. Putin talked his ear off, made no commitments, and walked away with what he wanted—trump’s renewed attention. At the joint press conference, trump looked dazed and glassy-eyed, clearly reeling from a few hours of psychological rope-a-dope. You could see the satisfaction in Putin’s expression. He’d spun trump like a tetherball on a rope.

Then came team Ukraine-Europe for damage control.

And here’s where Zelensky did something smart. He understood that trump isn’t a mediator—he’s a predator. So he offered something Putin can’t or hasn’t yet: a bribe in the form of a $150 billion security package, combining $100 billion in European-financed purchases of American weapons, and a $50 billion drone production partnership. Zelensky isn’t appealing to trump’s sense of justice or humanity—he’s appealing to his ego and transactional instincts.

The cold truth is that the war ends when Putin decides it ends. As long as he believes he’s still playing trump like a fiddle, he’ll think he’s winning. The only way to shift the calculus is for the U.S. and its allies to fully commit to Ukraine's ability to fight indefinitely. That’s what real leverage looks like.

So why does trump still seem favorable to Putin, despite having almost nothing left to gain from him? That question drives analysts mad. Some speculate about kompromat. But I think it’s simpler than that: Trump sees Putin as a “winner.” And trump sees himself as part of the winners club. Putin’s attention provides him with the narcissistic validation he craves. That’s why trump can’t let go. And Putin, ever the master manipulator, understands this perfectly.

The irony is that trump could help tip the balance—if he put his fist on the scale for Ukraine. But that would require him to knock Putin off the psychological pedestal he’s built for him, and I’m not sure trump is capable of that. In his deeply warped worldview, doing so might feel like a betrayal of a fellow member of the “winners club.”

The only actual mediation we are witnessing is going on inside trump’s demented mind - how to win the Nobel Prize while keeping Putin atop his pedestal. 

We aren’t witnessing a diplomatic process. We’re witnessing a dangerous, performative farce. And the main impediment to progress isn’t a lack of talks—it’s trump himself. The longer the world pretends otherwise, the longer Putin gets to keep smacking that tetherball.

P.S.

About winning games like tetherball, and apparently the Nobel Peace Prize. Here’s the thing. You don’t actually win the Nobel Prize like it’s a cheap trophy at a fake golf tournament. But that’s exactly what trump thinks. To normal people, a Nobel Prize is awarded - not won - in recognition of a great achievement for the benefit of humanity. Trump thinks it’s something to put on his mantelpiece. It’s simply demented.

Controversy in Hampstead

I grew up in the town of Hampstead. Not the one in London. My Hampstead is a tony, upper-class suburb of Montreal—a newer facsimile of London’s Heath, right down to the street names: Minden, Downshire, Harrow, and so on. Montreal’s Hampstead was the town upwardly mobile Jewish immigrant dreams were made of.

Ironically, Hampstead was originally established by a well-heeled Protestant banking class in the early 20th century and was once restricted to Jews. That only made it more desirable to Jewish families looking to escape the cold-water flats of the downtown Yiddish-speaking ghettos. There was a golf course and a curling club. Today, those have been replaced by sprawling McMansions with pools on double lots. It didn’t even take two generations for Jews to become the dominant group in Hampstead—it was already true when I was playing municipal tennis, baseball, football, and hockey in the mid-1970s.

Back then, the Jewish community still seemed politically cautious. The city was run by goyim. There was still a sense among many Jewish residents, that we were guests, and needed to remain respectful of our hosts.

No longer.

There’s a political storm brewing in my once-sleepy, well-heeled hometown. Alongside the Quebec fleur-de-lys and the Canadian maple leaf, the blue and white Star of David now flies proudly atop a flagpole outside Hampstead city hall. The Israeli flag actually replaced the town’s own flag. It was first hoisted in October 2023, in solidarity following the terrorist attack in Israel—and remains flying to this day.

At first, the gesture wasn’t particularly controversial. Today, with global suffering mounting and public opinion deeply polarized, it’s another story.

The mayor, Jeremy Levi, is an outspoken supporter of Israel. So, it seems, are most members of the town council and, presumably, a large part of the 60% Jewish majority. Levi has even advocated publicly for Israel to occupy and annex Gaza. When challenged about the Israeli flag at city hall, he’s defiant: “If they don’t like it, the citizens can vote me out at the next election.”

Not all residents agree. One of them, Adam Ben David—clearly also Jewish—feels the Israeli flag doesn’t reflect the full spectrum of political or religious views in Hampstead. In a letter co-signed by dozens of residents, he wrote: “Raising the flag at town hall effectively removes each Hampstead citizen’s ability to express their personal stance on Israel.”

Montreal-area city halls have long been sites of cultural and political tension. In the past, debate focused on whether religious symbols like Christmas trees and Hanukkah menorahs had any place on civic property. That controversy stems from Quebec’s “Quiet Revolution” in the 1960s—a cultural shift that moved the province away from the dominance of the Catholic Church and toward a proudly secular identity. That secularism has hardened over the decades, most recently in Bill 21, An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, which banned public employees from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs and kippahs. The law remains under court challenge as a violation of individual rights.

Which makes Hampstead’s current controversy even more striking. In contrast to Quebec’s secularism, here we see public resources used to champion the identity of a particular religious or cultural group. It echoes something more American than Quebecois: the way Donald Trump has used government institutions to enforce symbolic loyalty, especially toward Israel, often under the banner of combating antisemitism.

To me, the Hampstead flag fight is a symptom of something larger: the localization of global conflict in the age of social media. We are being pulled into battles far from home in ways that feel increasingly personal. The stakes of daily life in our communities have shifted. What used to be local politics is now global ideology in miniature. And people seem to have lost their sense of proportion.

Some basic questions might help restore that sense:

Is it appropriate for the flag of a foreign country to fly in front of city hall?

If we do that, should we expect to see other flags—like the Palestinian flag —raised in front of other city halls? How would Jewish people living in those communities feel then?

Shouldn’t mayors, and all elected officials, represent all of their constituents, not just those who voted for them?

If members of any group—Jews included—choose to take strong public political stances (which is absolutely their right), should they be surprised when others push back forcefully? Do they still get to label all opposition as antisemitic?

I don’t fully agree with Ben David’s argument that raising the Israeli flag “removes” residents’ ability to express themselves. Individuals can and do fly whatever flags they like on their private property. I, for instance, have had a bright yellow “Bring The Hostages Home” sign in my front window since late October 2023. I feared that it might provoke vandalism, but vowed not to take it down until every hostage was freed. I never imagined that, nearly two years later, it would still be there. It’s never been vandalized.

But while individuals can express themselves freely, public institutions are different. They are meant to unify, not divide. City halls are supposed to belong to all of us. And do we really want our communities to become a patchwork of flags and symbols on every corner, each staking out some tribal claim?

There was a time when political leaders understood that it was their job to foster unity, to build a sense of shared belonging and sense of community. That now seems increasingly rare.

In the end, this isn’t just about one flag in one suburb. It’s about how we live together when the lines between local and global, identity and ideology, neighbor and enemy, are no longer clear.

I Am That

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

I am made of love and wisdom.

Love says: You are everything.

Wisdom says: You are nothing.

- based on words from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The 'Normalization' of Israel

Israel is a normal country. It is following a global trend: the steady drift of liberal democracies toward authoritarianism, especially after major security shocks.

Defenders of Israel often argue that it is unfairly singled out for criticism. That claim is not without basis—Israel has received disproportionate attention for religious, historical, and geopolitical reasons. Many Jewish people interpret this as proof of enduring anti-Semitism.

But there is another way to look at it. We can accept that Israel is a special country and we should expect more of it, especially the Jewish people. Founded in the shadow of genocide, built as a democratic refuge for an historically persecuted people, Israel represents a higher moral standard, and therefore expecting more from our ancestral homeland should be a point of pride for Jewish people. Instead, many Israelis and Jews seem to want Israel judged by the standards of a “normal” country.

And in that sense, they have succeeded. Israel is behaving as other democracies have under similar circumstances.

The U.S. after 9/11 is the most obvious comparison. October 7th has been called Israel’s 9/11, but on a far greater per-capita scale—equivalent to 40,000 American deaths in one day. The American response to its terrorist attack was swift and transformative: the Patriot Act, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. In retrospect, many analysts see this as the moment the U.S. began its slow erosion of civil liberties and expansion of executive power.

The same pattern has emerged elsewhere:

Turkey (2016): After the failed coup, President Erdoğan used emergency powers to purge over 100,000 civil servants, shut down media outlets, and rewrite the constitution to expand presidential authority.

Hungary (2010–present): Viktor Orbán’s government used the migrant crisis and later COVID-19 to justify sweeping powers, weaken judicial independence, and rewrite election laws.

India (post-2019): Security fears following the Pulwama attack and border clashes with China have coincided with curbs on dissent, tightened control over media, and controversial laws targeting minorities.

The dynamic is consistent: war and national emergencies accelerate authoritarian measures. The process is self-reinforcing—security crises demand extraordinary powers, which in turn lower the threshold for further conflict. Wars of defense can morph into wars of choice; necessary reactions slide into dangerous overreactions. Once the cycle begins, it is very hard to reverse.

Seen through this lens, Israel is not uniquely flawed nor uniquely virtuous. It is moving along a well-trodden path, one shared by other democracies in moments of perceived existential threat. The tragedy is that Israel, with its moral history and democratic ideals, could have been an exception. Instead, it risks becoming just another “normal” country in the worst sense of the word.

History rarely forgives nations that squander their highest ideals. For Israel, the true danger is not defeat by its enemies, but becoming indistinguishable from them. The measure of a “normal” country should not be how quickly it abandons its principles in the face of fear, but how stubbornly it defends them when they are most inconvenient to keep.

Regime Change

I recently listened to an insightful interview with Douglas Murray, the conservative British writer and journalist, who has become one of the most forceful public voices of Israel's right to self-defence following the October 7th attacks.

Murray’s stance remains unchanged, even as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has worsened and the Netanyahu cabinet has decided that fully occupying Gaza might be necessary to achieve Israel’s strategic goals: eliminating Hamas, demilitarizing Gaza, and rescuing the remaining hostages—seemingly in that order. While Murray acknowledges that these goals may be impossible to fully realize, he insists that Israel is engaged in a broader civilizational battle against barbarism, fighting for Western values, and believes that the ends justify the means.

In the interview, Murray also referenced an argument from his most recent book, which I’ve heard others make as well. He asks: what army has ever been responsible for the welfare of its enemy’s population? He claims that Israel is expected to do more—unfairly, in his view—than any other country at war. Is Russia expected to feed Ukraine’s people, he asks?

Wait, did I just hear Murray equate Israel and Russia? Yes, I did. And that made me realize something crucial about the moral dilemma Israel faces. In fact, both Israel and Russia are invading forces, which is important to recognize. But their positions are morally very different. Russia launched a war of aggression to defeat an elected democracy, while Israel took military action from a defensive posture against a terrorist organization.

However, Murray’s comment highlights something significant: both Russia and Israel are, in effect, engaged in regime change. 

Maybe it’s time to take a step back and ask: how did we get here? Israel failed to defend its borders on October 7th. In a defensive war, the only legitimate military objectives should be securing borders, restoring deterrence, and retrieving the hostages. Israel has already achieved two of these objectives, and the focus now should be entirely on the third. But this doesn’t seem to be the direction Israel is taking.

Israel’s current predicament stems from a shift in its strategic goals. What started as a defensive war has morphed into a war of aggression, one that will not end until Hamas is fully eliminated. Many analysts doubt whether that’s even achievable. At the very least, we can agree that Hamas has been defeated as a significant short- and medium-term military threat to Israel. Yet, the Netanyahu cabinet doesn’t appear satisfied with this outcome.

Above all, we should not lose sight of the key goal: getting the hostages back. If that requires a full withdrawal of the IDF, then I support it. Would I be concerned that Hamas would declare ‘victory’ and raise their flag over Gaza’s rubble? No. Let them have it. My bigger concern is that Israel is setting itself up to bite off more than it can chew—taking on a costly, unwinnable task that could drag on for many years to come. 

Conquest of Gaza

Some are calling it the full occupation of Gaza. Apparently, this is what’s being contemplated by the Netanyahu cabinet. It may be a bluff, as some commentators have suggested — although to what end remains unclear. Perhaps it’s Netanyahu’s attempt to keep his faltering right-wing coalition intact, by reassuring the hardliners that Israel has no intention of making a deal with the terrorists, nor of halting operations and unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza.

Notably, Israel’s military leadership appears to oppose the idea, and that matters. The IDF understands the implications better than anyone.

In my view, the 'conquest' of Gaza would be disastrous on multiple levels.

First, it would deepen an already horrific situation. A full occupation would likely drag the IDF into a protracted urban guerrilla war, one that would exact a steep toll on young Israeli soldiers.

Second, it would make Israel fully responsible for the wellbeing of Gaza’s entire civilian population. The obligations of an occupying power under international law are immense. Given the current humanitarian catastrophe, this responsibility would be impossible to fulfill and would further damage  Israel’s already very damaged international standing.

Third, it would validate the claims of those who label Israel a settler-colonial state. Occupation would provide fresh evidence to those who argue that Israel's intentions go beyond defense and into permanent territorial domination.

Fourth, it would drain Israel’s resources, manpower, and strategic focus. The IDF is already stretched. A long-term occupation would sap Israel’s military and economic strength, possibly for years to come.

Fifth, it would likely doom the remaining hostages. A campaign of total conquest could destroy what little leverage remains in any potential negotiations for their safe return.

Sixth, it would all but guarantee the collapse of any further normalization efforts, especially with Saudi Arabia. The Abraham Accords would stall indefinitely.

This would all come on top of an already devastating policy failure: the decision to halt food aid shipments from January through May. Dozens of desperate civilians are now being killed every week at food distribution centers. It is a humanitarian debacle of the highest order.

For the sake of Israel’s moral integrity and strategic future, I dearly hope Netanyahu is bluffing.

Meanwhile Back On The Ranch

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

Sure, I've made a few bucks,

Had my share of good luck.

Bought myself a 4-wheel drive,

To haul around all of my stuff.

See ya later alligator,

The well has long since gone dry.

My life will get better and better, 

If we can say goodbye.

Meanwhile back on the ranch,

The man I was holds court.

Kids not doing what they're told,

And the wife I love grows bored. 

The cows are in the field,

The pigs they need their slop.

We're praying for another good yield, 

While we wait for the next boot to drop.

The horses with their gumball eyes,

Grazing 'neath the autumn sky.

Happy in their fenced-in world, 

While their spirits slowly die.

 

Meanwhile back on the ranch,

The man I was holds court.

Kids not doing what they're told,

And the wife I love grows bored. 

I know there's love out there,

Beyond the mountain range.

Count our blessings, muster the courage,

And maybe we can change.

Meanwhile back on the ranch,

The man I was holds court.

Kids not doing what they're told,

And the wife I love grows bored. 

American Authoritarianism

Orban's Hungary and Putin's Russia - and now, unthinkably and unquestionably, the United States of America under trump: Strongman authoritarianism is no longer a fear, it's here. The tactics to consolidate power, silence opposition, and dismantle democratic institutions, are unmistakable.

- Intimidating media organizations.

- Branding political rivals as enemies of the state.

- Weaponizing the Department of Justice against political rivals.

- Stacking the courts with unqualified loyalists.

- Building detention facilities that bypass due process.

- Filling the Executive with cronies and sycophants.

- Rewarding supporters with lucrative government contracts.

- Purging government agencies and filling them with apparatchiks.

- Promoting revisionist history.

Every one of these authoritarian tactics has found expression in the United States. American authoritarianism is no longer something to fear in the abstract. It is here. It is expanding and becoming entrenched. 

The question isn’t whether it can happen here. The question is: what are we willing to do about it?

The State of Palestine

France and the UK, and possibly Canada, are floating the idea of unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state — and doing so in the midst of an active war, with an estimated 50 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas. Let that sink in.

Recognition of statehood, once a hard-earned diplomatic milestone, is now being used as a bargaining chip — or worse, a threat — against Israel. What was once the culmination of internal organization, external negotiation, and international consensus is now being dangled to placate angry domestic constituencies and to pressure a sovereign nation into changing its military strategy.

The implications of this shift are not just dangerous — they are deeply destabilizing.

Statehood is not conjured by proclamation. A viable state needs internal political coherence, functioning institutions, defined borders, a monopoly on force, and economic sustainability. None of these conditions currently exist within the Palestinian territories. Gaza is still being ruled by Hamas after almost two years of war, and it remains a terror organization with genocidal aims. The West Bank is governed by a weak and increasingly irrelevant Palestinian Authority. The two are not only rivals — they are at war in all but name.

So yes, any Western recognition of “Palestine” now is purely symbolic. But symbols matter. They set precedents. They signal legitimacy. And in this case, they dangerously conflate mass terror with diplomatic reward.

An Israeli commentator recently suggested that this was Hamas’s fallback strategy all along: to provoke a war horrific enough to cast Israel as genocidal and force the international community to bestow Palestinian statehood — not through negotiation, but through revulsion. It’s a grim but plausible reading. The Palestinian version of the Jewish genocide giving birth to Israel. This is an historical  simplification. Israel was the result of almost a century of institutional groundwork by the Zionist movement: education, immigration, land acquisition, and the formation of parallel state structures under the British Mandate. The Holocaust catalyzed global sympathy, but the infrastructure of statehood was already in place.

What has Hamas built? What has the Palestinian leadership built? Where is the groundwork for peace, for governance, for coexistence?

If this moment feels historically jarring, it’s because it is. In past cases — Kosovo, South Sudan, even Taiwan — recognition followed a long, difficult process of internal preparation or internationally mediated negotiation. Sometimes recognition was withheld despite state readiness (Taiwan); sometimes it followed a peace process and referendum (South Sudan); and sometimes, as with Kosovo, it entrenched a frozen conflict that persists to this day.

But in none of these cases did recognition follow mass murder and hostage-taking — at least not with the open, barely concealed logic of appeasement we’re seeing now.

For 75 years, the postwar international system was built on a fragile but real consensus: disputes should be settled through diplomacy. Recognition was to be earned, not extorted. That framework is now cracking — not just because of Russia’s war in Ukraine or China’s threats toward Taiwan, but because Western democracies are turning their own values inside out.

If you reward terror with a flag and a seat at the table, you don't just abandon your ally. You abandon the principles that gave your diplomacy any meaning in the first place.

This is not diplomacy. It’s panic masquerading as policy. And we will all be paying for it for a very long time.

PS: Ethics and the State of Israel

Now that we have the state of Israel - we are judged by our ethics.

The pages of history are bloody with the acts of European society – especially in feudal times. Judaism is not better because we are better than them but because we never had to face the challenge. A private person cannot do the injustices that can be done by a state. What if our history had been different, with a Jewish state in the Middle ages? Would we have been just like the feudal law? I have no answer. To say how we would have acted is ridiculous.

Now that we have a Jewish state, will we act ethically? The State in itself is a contradiction to ethics. Will we refrain from injustices, or immoral practices?

The few experiences, so far, are not re-assuring. I don’t know. We are the master now. Will we act like masters? Will we acknowledge that Judaism does not recognize a morality of master and slave, powerful and powerless, victor and vanquished? This is my problem with the State of Israel.

If the state does not live up to our ethical values then the entire past 2000 years, the entirety of Jewish history will be reinterpreted in a different light. It will prove to the world that Jews are not better and only did not act wickedly because they did not have a chance.

- Rabbi Joseph Soloveichik, 1959

This is a postcript to my last post about supporting Israel. Coincidentally (are there any coincidences?) a friend sent me a link to a speech given by Rav Soloveichik, which he thought was of interest. I was a bit familiar with his work having read the book he is perhaps best known for, "The Lonely Man of Faith." I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Soloveichik, heir to a dynastic line of great Torah scholars, was considered one of the greatest Talmud scholars and Jewish thinkers of the 20th century. He was also a strong supporter of the State of Israel, which is why I found the above quotation from a talk he gave in 1959 so interesting. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised that a great thinker like Soloveichik would have concerns about the fledgling Jewish State. He believed that the exercise of power was diametrically the opposite of the ethical teaching and sacred mission of the Jew. Of course, he understood that having a country was necessary for the protection of Jews, but warned of its corrupting potential on the dignity and spirit of the individual. Undoubtedly he would have been completely opposed to the notion of religious parties in the Knesset like United Torah Judaism (Degel HaTorah, Agudath Yisroel). He might say that it represents the very perversion of Judaism that he feared most.  

Supporting Israel

What does it mean to support Israel in these fraught times? It’s a question many have been asking themselves recently, myself included.

The question of support for Israel has nothing to do with its “right to exist,” which I believe is a false framing. Anyone questioning Israel’s legitimacy must be prepared to question the legitimacy of every country — from Greece to Algeria, France to the United States. The fact that Israel is singled out reveals a bias. Some call that antisemitism. It could be. It could also be that Israel is simply a special case: its location, its religious significance, and the consensus manner the UN was involved in its founding, all contribute to Israel's scrutiny. But ultimately, a country's legitimacy comes from within not from without: shared values, shared culture, a shared economy, and a willingness to govern and defend territorial borders. Israel fought for its existence, and continues to do so. By that measure, Israel is as legitimate as any nation-state on the planet — whether others like it or not.

But now we have Gaza: reports of a new military offensive in central Gaza, more young IDF soldiers dying every week, and a worsening humanitarian crisis, with starvation tightening its grip on a helpless civilian population. In my mind, there is no question who is to blame for this war. It was precipitated and perpetuated by the actions of Hamas. Had the hostages been released months ago, none of this would be happening. Hamas gambled that a brutal attack on a vastly superior opponent would ignite a regional war. That was a gross strategic miscalculation. The slaughter of approximately 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, mostly civilians, was a short-term tactical victory that has turned into a catastrophe and tragedy of historic proportions. Hamas has been reduced from a governing entity with a quasi-fighting force to a fanatical martyrdom cult. Their secondary objective — religious salvation through self-destruction — is being realized at horrific cost to the population it claims to represent and protect. They are reaping everything they have sown.

While Hamas may be getting what it wishes for, it is Israel delivering the destruction — and that is undeniably problematic on several levels. Hamas has taken the approach that if they are going down, they’ll take as many with them as possible — Palestinians physically, and Israelis morally and politically. It's also hell bent on taking down the entire rules based international order and the UN system of assistance. For that they should be broadly and fiercely condemned. 

But condemnation of Hamas does not excuse Israel from its responsibilities. The question I’ve been asking myself isn’t whether I support Israel, but what exactly I’m supporting when I do. And lately, it's not very clear, because I’m not sure what Israel is standing for in this historical moment with recent actions. And whatever it is, I fear for the long-term consequences.

It’s not just about Netanyahu's personal political interests, or his far-right coalition. We can support a country and still criticize its leaders. But Israel’s problems run deeper than any one administration. One major concern is the increasingly prominent role that religion plays in political decision-making. Israel was never intended to be a theocracy. Of the 37 signatories to the Declaration of Independence, only four were rabbis. The word “God” is studiously avoided in the document — there’s only an oblique reference to the “Rock of Israel” at the end — unlike the United States Declaration, which mentions God in the very first paragraph.

Israel is undeniably a Jewish country, in the same way that the United States or Canada is a Christian country and Morocco is a muslim country. But Israel was not founded in messianic terms. These days, a form of messianism appears to be motivating many of those in power. In that sense, Israel is beginning to resemble its greatest enemy, Iran — a theocracy animated by religious absolutism.

I’m not naïve. Israel is encircled by threat and cannot afford to let its guard down. That’s part of why October 7th happened in the first place - it let its guard down, tragically so. I’ve long believed that Israel’s internal weaknesses pose a greater threat to its long-term survival than any external enemy. And the current war, in some ways, proves the point. The most lasting damage has not come from rockets — but from headlines.

Israel is taking a huge international hit over Gaza, and a domestic reckoning is underway.

Take the ultra-Orthodox leadership’s recent threat to leave the country, claiming the government no longer supports them. The controversy revolves around long-standing exemptions from military service for religious students. Since the state’s founding, the ultra-Orthodox - who now make up around 13% of the population and growing - have enjoyed privileged status. In recent years, this has bred resentment among secular and modern Orthodox Israelis. Many would not mourn their departure. The idea that the most religious Jews might feel unable to live in the world’s only Jewish state is deeply ironic. But this controversy points to a broader truth: the ultra-Orthodox have become too politically influential, and the imbalance is destabilizing.

Meanwhile, secular and modern Orthodox Israelis — the ones actually fighting and dying — are increasingly disillusioned. The exodus of secular Israelis is real. According to Haaretz, more than 60,000 Israelis left the country last year — double the number from the previous year. Initially, after October 7th, many returned to defend the country. But as the war drags on, the trend has reversed. Young, educated Israelis who are the economic engine of the nation, are asking the same question I am, with much more at stake: What exactly are we fighting and dying for? Israel’s troubling internal fractures — social, religious, economic, political — are widening.

I don’t know if the Israeli government is pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. But I do know that some of the most radical members of the governing coalition have publicly expressed support for such ideas. That alone should trouble anyone who cares about Israel. If the nation of Israel was meant to stand for anything, it was to be a “light unto the nations” — Ohr l’Goyim. That phrase, from the prophet Isaiah, lies at the heart of Israel’s moral mission. The light it refers to is not military might, it’s moral clarity. Yes, part of being a light means defeating barbarity and terror. But it also means doing so according to a higher moral code, and to be seen that it is acting accordingly. In an age of disinformation, that’s a heavy lift, but that does not absolve Israel from trying. And lately, it seems to have given up.

To support Israel, must mean supporting efforts and policies that promote unity, while opposing those that deepen division. This is what makes Netanyahu and his brand of politics so destructive. It’s what makes ultra-Orthodox political parties so toxic to the country’s long-term health. This moment is not completely without precedent. In 975 BCE, after the death of King Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel split into two: the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and the Southern Kingdom (Judah) centered in Jerusalem. It's possible to analogize the Northern Kingdom to a modern, more open nation, and the Southern Kingdom to a more radical religious nation. Centuries ago, the division weakened the Jews as a whole, leaving it vulnerable to conquest. This period culminated in the ultimate political and spiritual catastrophe for the nation; subjugation, destruction and expulsion.  

Support for Israel cannot mean blind allegiance. On the contrary, it must mean open eyes and engagement — passionate, uncomfortable, sustained engagement. We must insist that Israel be not only strong, but just. That it survive not only as a state, but as an idea, and a moral and spiritual aspiration worth fighting for.

The Refinement of Feeling

We are feeling creatures. Actually, we are cauldrons of feeling. Our feelings can be stoked over a hot flame and brought to a boil, or they can be cooled and calmed. Our emotional cauldron can be stirred, seasoned like a recipe—and made into something that nourishes.

We use the word 'feel' as a euphemism for 'think' and our feelings almost always take precedence over our thoughts. The purpose of thought is often to explain, justify, or rationalize how we feel.

Plato didn’t imagine people as cauldrons. He imagined a charioteer trying to control two horses: one wild and unruly, representing our desires and passions, and the other trained and disciplined, representing our reason. He believed that these two forces are always in tension, pulling in different directions, and that the job of the charioteer—our conscious will—is to hold the reins and steer toward virtue.

I think Plato was optimistic. Most of the time, only one horse is steering the human chariot: the wild, passionate, undisciplined one. Reason is often just a passive passenger, taken along for the ride.

But Plato was right in seeing that life is a balancing act between reason and passion. 

In school, we learn the tools of logic, reasoning, and critical thought through reading, writing, and mathematics. These sharpen the intellect. But more important, in terms of shaping our young, developing character, is the refinement of feeling. And this is done through the arts. We are taught about art, how to appreciate it, and how to create it. While mathematics aims at arriving at definitive, logical solutions, the arts exist in the space where skill meets emotion. Art involves craft, and craft has rules. Music is mathematical, writing has structure, painting follows form and technique. But the purpose of this structure is to produce something that moves us—to stir our emotional cauldron with intention and care.

The aim of all true art is the refinement of feeling. The more we experience art, whether as consumers or creators, the more our emotional life is shaped, deepened, and matured. Only art can do this.

There are of course art forms that do not refine the emotions, just as there are foods that do not nourish the body. This is “junk art” designed to momentarily satisfy a craving, but without any beneficial lasting impact. Junk food is to food, as junk art is to art: Product to be consumed and discarded. 

My definition of art is that it must aim to satisfy as well as be emotionally nutritious.

Which begs the question: What happens when people live in a culture that promotes product over art? A culture that feeds its people with junk—cheap, empty, mass-produced—and starves them of emotional nourishment?

The answer: They grow unwell.

Just as junk food undermines physical health, junk art erodes emotional health. If great art helps us balance our passions with our reason, then the constant consumption of shallow, manipulative media throws that balance off. Emotion, untethered from thought, becomes the dominant force. It becomes the standard by which everything is judged—truth, value, meaning, even morality.

This is where we find ourselves today. And it goes beyond the processed food industry, the throwaway fashion trends, and consumer goods built to break. The more insidious damage lies in what we’ve chosen to devalue: the defunding of school music programs, the lack of literacy, the sidelining of art education. These aren’t just cuts to budgets; they’re cuts to the cultural soul.

If we want to live in a healthy society—emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually—we must reclaim the value of art as emotional nourishment. That means elevating it above entertainment, beyond commerce, and seeing it instead as a vital form of education. Art teaches us how to feel well, not just feel more. It trains the wild horse and empowers the charioteer. Without it, we risk becoming a culture of appetites with no direction—a cauldron left to boil over.

Brandy

I was hired

some years ago

(with a little help

from family)

for a job

I never wanted

or imagined.

As it turned out,

I could stomach

the work — despite

the sociopath boss

with a gift

for making money

and hating people.

My co-workers

were usually kind,

we seemed to be

on the same page —

you know,

because

of the sociopath

at the top.

I never got

nauseous

on my morning drive

to work.

Listened to the radio,

and when a song came on

that I liked —

one that brought me back —

like Brandy

"You're a fine girl

what a good wife

you would be..."

I'd sing along

in my car, alone

full-voiced:

"But my life, my love,
and my lady
is the sea..."

and consider

myself

lucky.

Trump and the Personalization of Politics

I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the negative impacts of trump and his brand of politics—the damage he’s doing to institutions, the rule of law, and international relations. The degradation of values and civic discourse he represents. The way he peddles lies, conspiracy, and disinformation for personal gain. His depravity, immorality, and corruption.

But what I haven’t done is try to grasp the larger forces shaping this era of politics—the forces that paved the way for a politician as unthinkable as trump. Most importantly, I haven’t fully explored why trump was seen by so many as a legitimate response to the reality they felt they were experiencing. And no, it’s not because they’re all dumb, immoral, or uneducated.

Data Point #1: Trump was the only candidate in the 2015 Republican primary who positioned himself as explicitly anti-globalist and anti-establishment. In terms of substance—such as it was—this defined his identity and distinguished him from the rest of the field. His political appeal and eventual ascendency were rooted in a populist backlash to globalization and establishment politics.

Data Point #2: Trump’s style defined his campaign more than any coherent policy. His anti-establishment persona became a prop for his personalized style of politics. What most appealed to his supporters was how he personalized everything—especially his attacks which were usually personal insults. This threw his opponents off-balance—it was the exact opposite of the decorum they were used to. Personal attacks were supposed to be off-limits, beneath politicians. But trump didn’t play by those rules. He branded himself a “non-politician.”

This style of personalized politics meshed with his anti-establishment rhetoric. It resonated with people who felt that the institutions to which they had long given their allegiance had failed them. “The system is rigged,” trump repeated—a message that rang true to many. For decades, the rich had gotten richer, the poor poorer, and the whole system seemed designed to benefit the few while disadvantaging the many. “The Deep State” and “The Swamp” were slogans that functioned as calls for individual citizens to reclaim political power.

To trump’s most devoted supporters, he represents “people power.” He’s less their champion than their avatar. An embodiment of their sense of being victimized. They know he’s not like them—he’s wealthy and privileged—but it’s how he attacks and acts out that they identify with. They revel in his irreverence, anger, cruelty, impunity, and indecency. Being associated with someone like that makes them feel strong.

This strain of maverick individualism and distrust of authority is nothing new in American culture. It runs deep. The so-called frontier mentality is celebrated in stories, films, and music. The cowboy who tames the West. The rogue cop who bends the law to get justice. The lone hero who stands outside the system.

Data Point #3: The personalization of politics is fed by social media. I don’t think trump’s political rise would have been possible without it. It’s not just that algorithms stoke anger, conspiracy, and disinformation—though they do—but that social media in general promotes a culture of personalization and atomization. It erases the line between private and public, making every issue feel individual and emotional. The modesty that once defined public life—and used to be a civic norm among politicians—is gone. Trump’s impulsive, reckless style thrived in this environment. He seems more in tune with the times than traditional politicians. His use of social media bridged the emotional gap between politician and supporter in a way that felt unprecedented.

Data Point #4: Trump’s affinity for Putin. Sure, on a psychological level, trump is in awe of Putin’s immense wealth and power. But there are deeper parallels. In some ways, Putin’s rise was shaped by dynamics similar to those that brought trump to power. Putin emerged from the collapse of the Soviet empire—a superpower that, in its final phase, limped feebly toward market-based capitalism but failed to complete the transition. The call for "perestroika' (political restructuring) reflected a deep desire among Soviet citizens to escape decades of subservience, to reassert individual identity after being subordinated to a collapsing imperial project. Putin rose out of the chaos that followed.

While the American-led globalist project was far more successful than the Soviet one, it, too, came to be seen as insufficient. After decades of economic stagnation, many Americans felt their aspirations had been ignored or denied. The Cold War was over—America had “won”—so why were so many struggling? The liberal international order no longer seemed to serve them. The time had come to focus inward. This sentiment seeded the ground for trump’s isolationist, anti-globalist message, and  personalized political style.

Trump’s rise didn’t happen in a vacuum, nor can it be dismissed as a fluke or anomaly. He is a product of systemic failures—economic, political, cultural—and his success reveals just how deep the cracks in the American democratic experiment have grown. By channeling resentment, personalizing politics, and exploiting the emotional logic of social media, he became the symbol of a revolt not just against elites, but against the very idea of shared reality and civic restraint. To confront what trump represents, we need to reckon with the conditions that made him possible: a disillusioned public, hollowed-out institutions, and a cultural appetite for spectacle over substance. Until those forces are addressed, trump—or someone like him, but more competent and potent—will always be waiting in the wings.

No Longer

Government that no longer governs.

Leaders who no longer lead.

Politicians who no longer make policy.

Representatives who no longer represent.

Legislators who no longer legislate.

Laws that no longer make sense.

Courts that no longer adjudicate.

Judges who no longer impartially judge.

Police who no longer protect.

Borders that no longer secure.

Institutions that no longer serve.

Universities that no longer educate.

Professors who no longer teach.

Advisors who no longer have expertise.

Doctors who no longer heal.

Media that no longer reports.

Churchgoers who no longer worship.

Clergy who no longer believe.

Companies that no longer make product.

Jobs that no longer provide a living.

Artists who no longer create.

Families who no longer raise children.

Citizens who no longer vote.

People who no longer care.

Balance

I remember

what it was like

to make a deposit,

standing at the desk

before taking your place

in line,

filling out slips

of pink or green paper—

an amount, no mistakes—

then presenting

your precious little account book

like credentials

at a border,

hoping to be let

back into the country.

I opt for the machine now

to avoid

chit-chat with the Teller,

the fake pleasantries,

straight-faced nod

as she takes

an embarrassing peek

at my undersized balance.

To sum up:

I go for the screen's

impersonal privacy,

sidle up to the ATM

careful not to look

over the partition

at the guy

next screen over,

doing his business—

like we’re side-by-side

at airport urinals.

I slide my card in

for a withdrawal,

try recalling my PIN

(never show it to anyone)

my PIN, my PIN—

it won’t come.

The screen gets tired

of waiting:

"Do you want to continue?"

And I ask—

Do I?

I'm not sure 

it's worth it.

Time Isn't Up

My time is up.

I don’t mean that literally—hopefully. I’m thinking about that phrase and what it really means. Of course, it’s usually said to signify the end of a life. But in a deeper sense, it’s a multilayered description not just of death, but of time itself. Because the way we understand time is inseparable from the cycle of life.

In cosmic terms, we think the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. We say it was “born” at the Big Bang. The Milky Way is a bit younger—about 13.6 billion years old. These numbers are derived from measurements based on the Earth’s movement around the Sun, just as we measure our own lives: in days, seasons, calendars. In this way, time feels intuitive. But it’s also a contrivance.

Time is a mystery that has confounded poets, philosophers, and physicists alike. It’s an abstraction we can only comprehend through what we can measure—planetary movements, seasonal cycles, the arc from birth to death. Time, for us, is inseparable from the instruments used to capture it. We think of it as a clock. But that’s like saying a ruler is space. It’s not. Still, time becomes real to us only through measurement, as units we construct—past, present, future. In this way, time exists only in the mind.

The deeper reality is that even after we die, we continue to exist—just not in living form. Our atoms, molecules, chemical and mineral elements, don’t cease to exist. Only consciousness ends, as far as we know. So saying “my time is up” is accurate only in the sense that the mind—our internal clock—is no longer functioning. Time, as a construct, ends when the mind does. But the body never disappears. It simply changes form. It becomes part of something else.

The implication, then, is that time doesn’t actually exist. But space does. Time isn’t 'up' or down—it’s not anywhere. It can’t be located. Even Einstein’s notion of spacetime—brilliant as it was in showing their interdependence—still leans on the mind’s need to make time legible through space. But really, it may all be space. And what we call “time” might just be our way of experiencing movement through it.

Bob Dylan titled a 1997 album Time Out of Mind. (No relation to the catchy Steely Dan song of the same name.) Tellingly, the album includes no track with that title. The songs circle themes of lost love, alienation, and mortality. But maybe the phrase points to something deeper. Maybe Dylan, as he so often does, stumbled into a kind of accidental truth. Because what is death, if not time falling out of mind?

The Women These Days

The women these days

write a lot of poems,

short stories,

and novels,

the lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals, 

queers, trans, 

and the rest too,

as if they're just discovering

they have 

something to say

and must now

convince us,

and themselves.

The men these days

play video games,

kill zombies,

gamble online,

beat each other

to bloody pulps

in cages

for the privilege

of wearing

the golden belt—

champion 

of the world.

They don't say 

much.

Between the lines

the same old question

and the answer

is always

love.

Frankenstein legs

For the past few days I’ve been trying to comprehend why this Epstein-Frankenstein has such legs. I think I’m finally understanding, and for that I have to thank a trump supporter friend. 

To be fair, she’s not hard core. Like so many Jewish trumpies, her support centers on trump as somehow the bulwark against antiSemitism and defender of Israel. In a conversation she said, ‘Could you imagine what would be happening in the Middle East today if Harris had been elected!” The implication being that Harris would never have the ‘guts’ to order the bombing of the Iranian nuclear sites. My response is that this is pure speculation and not worth discussion - all the while thinking, that her question stems from engrained sexism (against her own gender!) Putting aside the question of whether bombing Iran was a good or bad decision in the long run, I believe Harris is thoughtful and competent and would have made sound decisions based on the facts, the risks and policy, unlike trump. It’s at least just as likely we’d be in a better position and one that is a step closer to actual peace if she were president in my view. But I don’t say this, because my friend is not actually interested in a discussion. 

I do however direct our conversation toward things that can be known. I ask her what she likes and what she dislikes, if anything, about trump. She doesn’t like him as ‘a person’ she says. She finds him crass and vulgar. I often hear that reaction from wealthier more educated trumpies. She also thinks he’s quite mentally deranged, but she considers this a plus, because it means he will do ‘crazy’ things, and that keeps other ‘establishment’ politicians off balance. She likes that he is unpredictable and a disruptor. Of course I’ve heard that many times before from trump supporters as well. And I typically try to point out that being ‘crazy’ and unpredictable is normally not a positive attribute for any position of responsibility, let alone the leader of the free world. And then I pivot to the distinction between supporting the reform of institutions and supporting their craven, abject destruction. My friend, like other trumpers I’ve spoken to, are not thinking about consequences. They are revelling in the spectacle of destruction, and suppose that whatever replaces it has to be better than what we have now. That’s just how bad things are now. Echoes of trump’s ‘carnage’ speeches.

And this is what leads to my insight, again not terribly original. The reason why Epstein-Frankenstein has the most hardcore trump supporters so up in arms, like nothing we’ve ever seen before - to the point where they are publicly burning their MAGA merchandise (heresy!) It’s because they are suddenly waking up to the possibility that trump is not actually one of them. He might actually be playing for the other team. The establishment team.  

To most of us sitting in the bleachers this was obvious. As obvious as his gold toilets, golf courses and Palm Beach private clubs. All the ‘drain the swamp’ stuff was always just BS sloganeering. Trump was always among the super rich and powerful. His interest was their interest. Angry,  tear-it-all down, working class MAGA had somehow been hoodwinked into believing he was their champion. And every time he did something outrageous, every time he acted unconventionally, and was prosecuted criminally, it burnished his reputation in their eyes as their victimized anti-establishment hero. But he never cared about them. He was never on their team. He was always the swamp. In fact, like Epstein, he was the lowest kind of predatory reptilian Florida swamp creature.

And now they are seeing it for the first time. The cover-up may indeed prove to be worse than the crime in this case, although the crime is pretty horrific. The Epstein files has dropped the scales from their eyes. Maybe it’s registering with trump’s crowd that, as in Mary Shelley’s novel, the monster was never the creature, it was always the creator. 

Frankenstein

Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophilic monster. But he has become something more: a Frankenstein created by Trump-supporting MAGA conspiracists. And now that they have power, the creature they built has come back to haunt them.

This is a Gothic tale of a political movement forged on social media conspiracy. It was politically useful to stoke fear, outrage, and anger when they were on the outside. But now that they hold power — and “the file is on my desk,” as AG Pam Bondi so memorably declared on Fox — they’re cornered. Either they produce the goods, or they have to figure out how to destroy the monster before it destroys them.

One tried-and-true tactic: distraction. Launch a new, juicy fake scandal to draw attention away — say, an investigation of former CIA Directors John Brennan and James Comey for the “Russia, Russia, Russia” thing. But it won’t work. First, it’s old news. No one remembers or cares about Brennan and Comey anymore. Second, the Russia investigation already happened — multiple reports, charges laid, convictions obtained. It’s been done to death.

Tactic number two: bury it. This is proving to be a debacle.

The official FBI two-page memo dismissing the Epstein case raises more questions than it answers, giving it the unmistakable stench of a cover-up. One reason is obvious: Epstein and Trump were Palm Beach party besties in the mid-’90s, during the very period when Epstein was most prolifically raping 14-year-old girls. Common sense says the likelihood of evidence linking Trump is pretty high.

“The client list,” which the memo claims does not exist, was always just shorthand for the well-connected, high-powered ‘johns’ to whom Epstein trafficked girls. The overwhelming evidence is that he did exactly that — and we know one of them was Prince Andrew, despite his well-publicized denial. Whether a literal list exists is irrelevant. What does exist, according to the memo, is “a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography.” The memo also claims Epstein had over a thousand victims. Yet no further investigation is warranted? It makes absolutely no sense.

Then there’s Epstein’s jailhouse suicide on August 10th. The memo repeats the official autopsy findings, and to support them, approximately 11 hours of poor-quality surveillance footage has been released — from a camera on an upper floor, trained on a lower-floor common area leading to a stairwell (mostly out of view) that goes up to Epstein’s cell. It settles nothing. It only adds to suspicion. The fact that a minute is missing from the video is almost incidental.**

There are so many anomalies and lapses surrounding the most high-profile, loathed, and feared (by the powerful) inmate in America at the time:

- There hadn’t been a suicide at the facility in 14 years — until Epstein’s.

- Epstein had already attempted suicide on July 23rd. At the time, he had a cellmate: multiple-murder and drug-conspiracy suspect Nicholas Tartaglione. Tartaglione was cleared of any involvement, no details given, and Epstein was removed from suicide watch after only six days.

- His new cellmate was removed the day before his death, on August 9th.

- The evening he died, Epstein met with his lawyers, who described him as “upbeat.”

- Epstein’s last phone call was unmonitored, against protocol, and originally reported as made to his mother by him. It was a lie, his mother died in 2004. In fact it was later determined to be made to his girlfriend in Belarus.

- No suicide letter was left — only a note complaining about large bugs on his body, burnt food, and a guard who locked him naked in a shower cell for an hour.

- The initial report said Epstein was returned to his cell at 7:49 PM. The video (and the FBI memo) shows he was actually led upstairs at 10:30 PM.

- After 10:30 PM, the guards didn’t do their scheduled rounds. Instead, they falsified logs. They claimed to be asleep, but the video shows otherwise.

- The camera near Epstein’s cell wasn’t recording.

- In violation of protocol, Epstein’s body was removed before crime-scene photos could be taken.

- The autopsy raised questions: the neck wounds, whether a bedsheet could cause such injuries, and whether a man of Epstein’s height and weight (1.8 m, 185 lbs) could have hanged himself from the top bunk. There was blood on his neck, but seemingly none on the sheet. Post-mortem photos show bottles and items still standing upright on the bunk.

If you’ve read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, you know the monster is chased all the way to the North Pole by its creator, who dies trying to catch him. Similarly, this Epstein-Frankenstein will not die in the cold. It will survive in the server farms of social media. Those who gave it life will spend their remaining credibility trying to silence it — or be devoured by what they cannot deny.

** Since posting this I have watched a fascinating YouTube deep dive into the facts surrounding the missing minute as reported in the initial investigation which suggests that it may not be as incidental as first thought and could indicate something nefarious occurring. 

The Nervous Breakdown President

Tariffs are on. Tariffs are off. Then on again. Ten percent. Twenty-five. Forty. Two hundred. Back to fifty.

Vladimir Putin is a nice guy. Then he’s not. Bibi Netanyahu? Not a nice guy—until suddenly he is.

We’re withholding arms from Ukraine. No, wait—we’re sending them.

What we’re witnessing is not policy. It’s not strategy. It’s not even chaos in the traditional political sense.

It's a public nervous breakdown of the most powerful individual on the planet.

I’m not a psychologist. But to my untrained eye, trump doesn’t belong in the White House—he belongs in a hospital ward.

When someone is in the midst of a nervous breakdown, they’re in severe mental distress. The stress can cause irrational thinking, paranoia, mood swings, verbal incoherence, sleep disruption, difficulty with basic decision-making, and disconnection from reality. It often looks like someone struggling to function in daily life, stumbling through tasks they once handled with ease.

Sound familiar?

And here’s the thing: there’s a known set of guidelines for how to treat someone going through a breakdown :

1. Create a calm, quiet environment. Remove stressors, noise, and triggers.

2. Keep the person comfortable and secure.

3. Stay calm yourself. Your composure can help stabilize them.

4. Offer non-judgmental listening. Avoid confrontation.

5. Validate their feelings. Offer support, not challenge.

6. Avoid criticism or shaming. That only escalates the situation.

Now think about how successful foreign leaders and domestic allies have handled trump in public settings. They’re not conducting diplomacy. They’re managing a psychological crisis.

Bibi’s figured it out. So has Zelensky. Macron too. Even Keir Starmer and Mexico’s Sheinbaum seem to get it. These leaders aren’t negotiating with a peer. They’re keeping the environment "safe" for a volatile man with immense power.

His advisors and enablers are caregivers.

And the media? They’re not just failing to call this out—they’re participating in the performance. They play a part, obsessing over his outbursts, his latest contradictions, his every move. They shouldn't be broadcasting his daily inane, babbling media scrums. But when they do, they should be followed by panels of psychiatrists and mental health professionals, not political pundits. 

This isn’t policy inconsistency. This isn’t political posturing. This is instability playing out on a global stage, and too many institutions are complicit in pretending it’s entertainment.

He's not getting help. He’s surrounded by people whose jobs and ambitions depend on him staying upright. One prediction I can make with confidence is that it’s going to get worse. The only thing I can't say is how bad the consequences will be.