Sunday, July 6, 2025 →
Ken Burns, on Face The Nation:
The pursuit of happiness is not the acquisition of things in a marketplace of objects, but lifelong learning in a marketplace of ideas. That’s what the founders said. To be virtuous, to live a virtuous life, to continually educate yourself is what was required to sustain this republic. And I think that’s what we’ve gotten away from. Everything is sort of all individualized. We’re all free agents. We don’t realize that freedom, the thing that we tout is not just what I want, but also that’s in tension with what we need. And I think what happens is that when we study these words, we can go back to the sense of newness and freshness that they represented and rededicate ourselves. And that means me for me and you for you to this idea that the pursuit of happiness is about lifelong learning. It’s about becoming ever more educated to the responsibility of citizenship. And that’s a huge, huge responsibility.
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 • 1 min read
Governor Newsom, addressing not only the L.A. protests, but also the situation the U.S. finds itself in:
California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault right before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.
There are no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility. The rule of law has increasingly been given way to the rule of Don.
The founding fathers didn’t live and die to see this kind of moment. It’s time for all of us to stand up.
Along with comments I seem to remember Governor Pritzker making a month or so back, by my count this is now two Governors speaking frankly and honestly about the United State’s decline into authoritarianism. I’d like to hear others in positions of power do the same.
Thursday, May 8, 2025 • 1 min read
Tony (or possibly his brother Dan) Gilroy, writing for the character Mon Mothma on Andor:
I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.
In an interview, Gilroy notes that across human history, times of peace are the exception and sentiments like these could be equally relatable to people in virtually any time period. It sure does feel relatable to this moment though.
The series this quote comes from is, obviously, a work of fiction. But its prescience is a testament to how fiction often acts as a mirror for reality. The resonance of the quote instructs us that the hour is later than is easy to admit, and that the loud, hungry, greedy, malevolent monster is here, now.