The Cultural Barometer

I watched an interesting talk this weekend by David Brooks titled How America Recovers From All This. It’s worth watching—if only because it ends on an optimistic note. And we could all use a bit of that.

Still, I was left unconvinced that his optimism is entirely justified.

Brooks’ central thesis is that it is not technology, economics, or even politics that ultimately shapes society—it's culture. Politics, in his view, follows culture, which itself reflects what we collectively value. Change the values, and you can change the direction of society.

To make his case, he sketches a sweeping cultural history of postwar America. Following the mass trauma of WW2, the 1940s and 1950s, he argues, were defined by the values of humility, self-effacement, and trust—in institutions, community, and church. The 1960s were a reaction: a culture of liberation that rejected conformity in favor of authenticity, experimentation, and social upheaval. The 1970s consolidated these trends into what he calls "chaos," it was characterized by egocentrism, social fragmentation (family breakdown), distrust in institutional authority (think Watergate), personal excess and rising crime rates.

The 1980s brought a neo-conservative “bourgeois backlash”: a return to self-discipline, order, and free-market faith and excess. The decade of "Greed is Good," but also the end of the Cold War. 

The 1990s attempted a synthesis—reconciling the bohemian ethos of the 1960s with the bourgeois values of the 1980s, as the former counterculture youth had grown into the educated professional class. But by the 2000s, Brooks sees a collapse of that synthesis: not just a loss of trust in institutions, but in one another—a fraying of the social fabric and what he characterizes as a loss of moral knowledge and  ethos.

It’s an elegant narrative. But it rests on broad generalizations that raise as many questions as they answer.

Most notably: what actually drives cultural shifts?

Brooks largely sidesteps the role of anomalous major events, technologies, and personalities—factors that seem less like background noise and more like catalysts. It is difficult, for instance, to understand the 1960s without the Vietnam War, or without powerful figures like JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. Likewise, the shocks of 9/11 or the financial crisis loom large over the cultural mood of the 2000s. Today, it is impossible to ignore the impact of the Covid pandemic, social media and the advent of artificial intelligence.

If anything, the forces he identifies as symptomatic of the age, act more like the engines of change. To my mind there is a complex interplay between politics, economics, social phenomena and unforeseaable events that shape our times. Culture does not determine where we are—it expresses it.

There was one part of Brooks’ talk that resonated with me. His discussion of humiliation as a driver of political behavior. Humiliation, as he defines it, is the sense of being denied the dignity or status one believes they deserve. It is a powerful emotional force—one that can easily turn into resentment and hatred.

That dynamic is clearly visible in contemporary American politics. The rise of trump tapped into something real. The anger, the intolerance, the sense of grievance—these are not inventions. They are expressions of lived experience, however distorted and politicized.

Where I part ways with Brooks is in his faith that we will naturally gravitate back toward higher values—that we will tire of division and rediscover meaning, justice, and humanism.

Perhaps. But it is far from clear why or how that turn would occur.

If anything, our culture today seems to reflect something else: disconnection, narcissism, and a certain emptiness. Much of popular music feels repetitive and inward-looking. Increasingly, it is even generated or shaped by AI. The broader cultural landscape often feels less like a shared conversation and more like a fragmented echo chamber.

Brooks believes that most people instinctively understand that a life of meaning is more valuable than one devoted to pleasure. That may be true in the abstract. But it sits uneasily alongside what our culture actually rewards and amplifies.

It is entirely possible that we break the cycle, as he suggests. But it is just as plausible that we continue down a different path—one in which technology, especially AI, further erodes agency, deepens isolation, and amplifies cynicism.

If Brooks is accurate that the cycles we experience tend to swing from a decade of change to a decade of consolidation and back, then the worrisome social and political trend of the last decade may well consolidate in the next one. 

That would take us further from pursuing the humanistic 'higher values' that he predicts than ever, and there is no telling where that takes us.  

American Exceptionalism

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I heard the term my whole life

and wondered, 

what's that all about?

I knew

a few things: Elvis, 

The Supremes, 

Charlie Parker and Monk, 

the Beach Boys and Jimi Hendrix,

the Yankees vs. the Dodgers,

Ali vs. Frazier,

the lights of Times Square 

and the Hollywood sign,

Gilligan's Island and The Beverly Hillbillies, 

Laugh-In and Carol Burnett,

The Love Boat, Charlie's Angels,

and Fantasy Island,

Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry

and Luke Skywalker:

One small step for a man...

JFK, RFK, MLK and Vietnam,

D-Day,

The Bomb,

and the Marshall Plan;

a decision not to humiliate 

the defeated

but instead

to invest in them -

for the first time in history

someone understood,

together 

we live in freedom

or die in chains,

it was called 

American Exceptionalism

and it belonged 

to all of us.

Facing The Reality of Israel's Project

This post was inspired by an important recent discussion on the Ezra Klein show. Highly recommended.

Many of us staunchly supported Israel's right to defend itself after the attack of October 7th 2023. 

It's now clear that the current Israeli government has chosen to leverage its response to October 7th to launch another project: The one state solution.

A decision - intially implicit but now largely explicit - was made to not just destroy Gaza in every functional way to make it unlivable, but also to kill the Oslo Peace process once and for all. This means an effort to render the Palestinian Authority completely ineffectual and to annex the West Bank by building settler communities at a rate that would make any hope of a Palestinian State impossible.

From 2020 to 2023 no new Jewish settlements in the West Bank were approved by the Israeli government. In 2023 nine new settlements were approved. In 2024 it was five. In 2025 the number is fifty-four. 

This has deep roots. Netanyahu has been laser focused throughout his political career on two main goals. The first was to eliminate the terrorism that has plagued Israel. The second was to eliminate the nuclear threat from Iran. 

The terrorism came in two forms: Palestinian terrorism that emanated from the West Bank, and Iran-backed proxy terrorism that came from Hizbollah based in Lebanon and Hamas based in Gaza.

Netanyahu viewed the post-October 7th response as a strategic opportunity to advance his long-term agenda. Trump’s reelection provided the final tool—total military carte blanche with U.S. backing—and that is what we are now witnessing.

He could now, not merely attempt to set back the threat of Iran's proxies (the so-called Axis of Resistance) and their nuclear program, but equally important (and much less discussed) end the two-state solution. 

Which begs the question: Assuming Netanyahu is successful in his military objectives, where does that leave Israel with respect to the Palestinians?  

There seems to be only two possibilities: 

1. The West Bank and Gaza are formally annexed and the Palestinians become full citizens of Israel. Any Palestinians who don't want Israeli citizenship will either leave voluntarily and/or be forcibly expelled. 

It seems pretty clear that the Palestinians won't want this result under any circumstance and won't ever accept it. Israelis won't want it either because it would threaten the Jewish majority.

2. The West Bank and Gaza are controlled but not legally annexed and the Palestinians are subjugated permanently.

In other words, ethnic cleansing or apartheid.

The unworkability of this situation is one thing. The immorality and illegality is another. In either case, it puts Israel in a terrible bind both domestically and internationally. 

Previous Israeli governments made it a policy to remain non-partisan as far as the United States is concerned. Netanyahu tied Israel inextricably to trump, which was a risky move that offered short term benefits but other dangers. 

Those chickens are already coming home to roost. We are seeing Israel's support in the US plummet to historical lows, even among the 'America First' evangelicals.  

So what is the endgame?

At best: Israel secures a period of dominance, under conditions of simmering resistance, growing international isolation, and deepening moral compromise.

Whatever this is—it isn’t a just peace.

Trust

I was recently watching a YouTube video from Big Think featuring the philosopher Alain de Botton.

De Botton became widely known for his essay "Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person", which resonated because it dismantles a comforting but damaging myth: that we can find a perfect partner and live happily ever after. We can’t. Every relationship contains difficulty, friction, and disappointment. And that’s not failure—it’s reality.

Compatibility, as De Botton puts it, isn’t something you find. It’s something you build. It is the fruit of love, not its prerequisite.

In the video, he returns to familiar ground, but what stood out to me was the idea of trust—what it is, and where it actually lives.

I think there are two kinds of trust: helpful trust and unhelpful trust.

At the heart of both is a simple truth: no one is 100% trustworthy in every circumstance. We are all imperfect, inconsistent, and shaped by forces we don’t fully control. Some people are more trustworthy than others, of course—but perfection is not on offer.

Helpful trust begins with oneself. It’s grounded in self-awareness and accountability. It asks: "Am I acting in a way that aligns with my values? Can I rely on myself to respond honestly, to repair when I fail, to leave if I must?" This kind of trust is aspirational without being harsh. It is steady, reflective, and rooted in growth.

Unhelpful trust, by contrast, is rooted in expectation of others. It quietly assumes that another person will behave as we need them to. It is less about trust and more about control—about outsourcing our sense of safety to someone else’s consistency. And because no one can meet that standard indefinitely, it often leads to frustration, disappointment, and eventually resentment.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect anything from our partners. Of course we should. Honesty, loyalty, and care are the basic conditions of any relationship. But there is a difference between expectations that guide us, and expectations that attempt to control what we cannot.

No one can ever be certain that another person is trustworthy. At best, we make a judgment based on patterns over time. Trust, in that sense, is always a kind of informed risk. It's trust in our ability to acknowledge and accept reality.

Which is why the real work of trust is self-work.

When we feel disappointment in a relationship, part of that feeling may indeed be directed outward—at something real that the other person has done. But a bigger component, I believe, turns inward as well. It confronts us with our own limitations: our misjudgments, our fears, our unwillingness to see things clearly.

That tension is uncomfortable. And it’s often easier to convert that discomfort into resentment toward the other person than to examine what it reveals about ourselves.

The message I think is to place our emotional energy where we have agency.

There are no guarantees in relationships. Being honest, loyal, generous, and loving does not ensure that your partner will be the same. But the inverse is almost certain—if you are not those things, the relationship will not hold.

Trust, then, is not the elimination of risk. It is the cultivation of self-reliance within risk.

The more confident you are in your own trustworthiness—in your ability to act with integrity, to recognize reality, and to respond accordingly—the less fragile your relationships become.

Not because others will never fail you.

But because you won’t fail yourself.

The Breathing Pattern of Politics

Politics is often described as a pendulum swinging between left and right, progressivism and conservatism. But that familiar spectrum feels inadequate to explain the moment we’re living in. The deeper oscillation may not be ideological at all. It may be civilizational.

What if politics doesn’t fundamentally swing between left and right—but between 'inclusion' and 'exclusion', between openness and closeness?

This framing shifts the question from “How should society be organized?” to something more primal: "Who belongs and who doesn’t?"

Periods of inclusion are marked by expanding boundaries. Immigration rises, trade flows more freely, cultures intermingle, and institutions assume that difference can be integrated without breaking the whole. These are times of confidence—when societies feel stable enough to absorb complexity.

Periods of exclusion move in the opposite direction. Boundaries harden. Membership narrows. National identity becomes more sharply defined. The priority shifts from expansion to cohesion, from openness to protection. These are times when societies feel under strain and begin to question how much difference they can sustain.

After the devastation of World War II, much of the world moved decisively toward openness—building international institutions, lowering trade barriers, and promoting universal rights. That trajectory accelerated after the Cold War, culminating in a high point of globalization where borders softened and integration deepened.

But openness, when extended far enough, begins to generate its own tensions—economic dislocation, cultural anxiety, and a sense of loss of control. In response, the pendulum swings back. The past few decades have been defined by this reversal: a turn toward rigidity of borders, identity, and sovereignty.

This helps explain why traditional political categories feel scrambled. Figures like trump do not fit neatly into conventional ideological boxes. Their defining characteristic is not a consistent economic philosophy, but a clear orientation toward closure—restricting borders, renegotiating trade, and redefining who is and who should not be included within the national community.

Importantly, neither pole is inherently virtuous. Excessive openness can erode shared identity and create instability. Excessive closure can harden into authoritarianism and conflict. 

The movement between them is not simply a battle of good versus bad ideas—it is a recurring attempt to rebalance competing needs: expansion and cohesion, diversity and unity.

Rather than a straight line, politics may be better understood as a kind of 'breathing pattern'. Societies inhale—expanding, including, absorbing. Then they exhale—consolidating, defining, protecting.

The critical question is not whether the cycle exists, but whether they are short or long, and what drives their turning points. Are these shifts inevitable responses to material pressures like economic disruption and migration? Or are they shaped—and perhaps accelerated—by narratives, leadership, and perception?

If the latter is true, then the pendulum is not just something we experience. It is something that can be pushed and we can influence. 

Donnie Two Weeks

I think I first heard the nickname sometime last summer. “Donnie Two Weeks.”

It came up when trump was threatening tariffs against just about every country on the planet. The pattern was always the same: a deal had to be reached in two weeks. And when the deadline inevitably passed, it was extended—by another two weeks.

And now, here we are again. Another two-week deadline. This time for a ceasefire and a deal with Iran. Make a deal, or face destruction.

A President of the United States has never talked like this. Like a mafia boss. It’s the language of a protection racket. I’m giving you two weeks. Pay up—or else.

There’s a reason Presidents never talked like this. Political messaging is meaningful and layered. Agreements between countries are complicated. They take time, patience, and sustained negotiation. Nothing meaningful in international diplomacy happens in two weeks.

According to Wendy Sherman, the Deputy Secretary of State under Obama who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, it took eighteen months to reach an agreement. 

So when another two-week deadline gets announced, you already know what’s coming. Not a deal. Just another extension.

But the nickname is so apt for another reason. Trump thinks like a mafioso.

Loyalty matters more than competence or rule of law. Relationships are personal not institutional. Power is territorial. And everything eventually comes down to making money.

Look at how he talks about countries. About “running” places.

Think of the Venezuela operation. It’s hard not to see it as one operator muscling out another—Nicolás Maduro replaced, territory absorbed, assets controlled.

Or take his response to a question from reporter Jonathan Karl about the Strait of Hormuz. When he was asked if he would accept Iran charging tolls on global shipping, trump answered that he was considering "a joint venture."

We get our cut. They get theirs. "It’s a beautiful thing,” he said. You can almost hear the mobster-accent.

Vladimir Putin runs a a mafia state—leveraging the power of government to skim his cut off the top of every transaction. Donnie Two Weeks wishes he could do the same. 

So, every time he threatens 'two weeks' think of it that way.

A Whole Civilization Dies

There is a new question circulating in my mind on the day trump announced that he will be ordering his military to kill an ancient civilization, in his words: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."

Will the members of the military willingly participate in an unambiguous, self-admitted war crime?

And if they do, will there be military tribunals in the United States and/or war crime trials in the Hague to hold the perpetrators accountable?  

And a somewhat related question: What has become of America when the terrorist-supporting, theocratic autocracy of Iran seems like the reasonable party to a conflict? 

Trump has backed himself into a corner. Basically made an exaggerated impossible threat that just shows how panicked he is. 

My guess is that he'll extend the deadline again, saying there are 'very good' fictitious negotiations going on. Or do a little more bombing and say the job is done.     

But let's say I'm wrong - it wouldn't be the first time - and he goes through with a Dresdan-style bombing campaign of Iranian infrastructure.   

The one thing we know about trump is that he is nothing if not narcissistically, dementedly, transparent. He thinks out loud through his social media posts. Almost everything he says publicly is projection. 

When he says the Democrats are trying to steal the election it's because he is.

When he says the Democrats are weaponizing the Department of Justice against him it's because he is weaponizing it against them.

When he calls something 'fake news' it's because he is lying about it.

So there is always truth to what he's saying, it's just the exact opposite.

We may be able to add to the list, "a whole civilization will die tonight" - he's not talking about Iran, he's talking about America.