My first reaction wasn’t outrage. It was curiosity.

I realized I hadn’t asked the most important question. What exactly does Larry Fink mean when he says Zohran Mamdani is a threat to BlackRock’s business?

Is he arguing that BlackRock can no longer be profitable in New York? That the city’s financial infrastructure will collapse? That it will no longer be able to attract talent? Or is he saying something we’ve heard from corporate America for decades: if government asks us to contribute more to the communities that made us successful, we’ll simply leave.

Those are very different arguments, and America has become remarkably bad at asking people to explain themselves before we rush to defend or condemn them.

If Larry Fink believes Mamdani’s policies will genuinely damage New York’s economy, then let’s have that debate. He has earned the right to make his case. But if the underlying message is, “Ask me to pay more and I’ll invest somewhere else,” then I don’t find that persuasive. I find it familiar.

For decades, America’s largest corporations have negotiated with cities from a position of extraordinary leverage. They have sought - and received - tax abatements, subsidies, infrastructure improvements, and regulatory advantages, all while reminding elected officials that they are free to leave if they don’t like the terms. We accepted those negotiations because we feared losing jobs. We feared losing investment. We feared losing prosperity.

Or worse, because the elected officials were on the corporate payroll through campaign contributions, and perks, and in some cases, outright payoffs.

In hindsight, perhaps we should have been asking a different question.

What happens to a society when the wealthiest institutions can continually negotiate their obligations downward while everyone else continues paying for the schools, police, firefighters, sanitation, parks, transit systems, and public spaces that make those communities worth living in? What happens when the burden of maintaining a city slowly shifts away from those most able to bear it and onto everyone else?

I would argue we’ve been living with that answer for years. The widening gap between the very rich and everyone else did not appear overnight. It was built one concession at a time. Every time a corporation suggested it might leave, we blinked. Every time we accepted the premise that keeping capital happy was more important than asking it to participate fully in the communities from which it profits.

There is an irony here that is difficult to ignore. Larry Fink has spent years talking about stakeholder capitalism, about the responsibility corporations have to society and the importance of thinking beyond quarterly earnings. I have agreed with much of that philosophy. But stakeholder capitalism cannot become a one-way obligation. It cannot mean celebrating community until the community asks you to contribute more to sustaining it.

Communities are partnerships. They create the workforce, the legal systems, the infrastructure, the public safety, the transportation networks, and the stability that allow companies to thrive. Asking successful corporations to participate in paying for those things is not punishment. It is membership.

Larry Fink has every right to oppose Zohran Mamdani’s policies if he believes they are bad for New York. What concerns me is something different. It is the suggestion that the appropriate response is to threaten to leave. That is no longer an economic argument. It is an exercise of power.

Perhaps this is where America needs to change.

Perhaps the next time one of our largest corporations says, “If you don’t like our terms, we’ll take our marbles and go home,” the answer should simply be, “We’re sorry to see you go. But you will have to find another piece of asphalt on which to play your marbles.”

Communities were never created to serve corporations. Corporations exist because communities do.

Somewhere along the way, we forgot that. America Interrupted is, in many ways, the story of how we got here, and whether we still have the courage to remember what a community is supposed to be.

Call Larry out on his threats. Do it publicly.

Two statements.

President Donald Trump said, “We’re going to take some of their (Iran) money (frozen funds)... and we’re going to give them food instead. There is a food shortage in Iran.”

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf responded, “Imagine having forty-something million of your own citizens on food stamps and calling another nation hungry. Our money, our choices. Mind your malnutrition rates and keep your advice to yourself.”

Forget, for a moment, whether either man is right. What struck me wasn’t the politics. It was the shift in posture. For most of my lifetime, America has spoken to the rest of the world from a position of unquestioned moral authority. We have told countries how to govern, how to spend, how to behave, and what values they should embrace. Sometimes we were right. Sometimes we weren’t. But we rarely questioned whether we had earned the right to do the lecturing.

Today, the world is answering back. And what they’re saying isn’t really about Donald Trump. It’s about us.

It is about a country where millions of people rely on food assistance while we tell other nations how to feed their citizens. It is about life expectancy that lags behind much of the developed world despite spending more on healthcare than anyone else. It is about rising maternal mortality, addiction, homelessness, political dysfunction, and a nation that increasingly seems unable to solve its own problems while continuing to prescribe solutions for everyone else’s.

Whether Ghalibaf’s criticism is fair isn’t really the point. The point is that countries now feel comfortable saying these things out loud. For decades they may have thought them. Today they no longer feel the need to whisper because America’s influence isn’t what it once was. We no longer hold all the purse strings, and perhaps that’s not entirely a bad thing.

Yesterday I watched for the millionth time what may be my favorite Instagram video ever. A three-year-old is struggling to buckle herself into her car seat. Her father gently asks several times if she’d like help. Each time she politely says, “No, thank you.” Finally, completely exasperated, she points her tiny finger at him and says, “You worry bout yourself!”

Then I realized that’s exactly what much of the world is now saying to the United States.

You worry bout yourself.

Maybe it’s time we listened.

Maybe America needs to send a different kind of message to the world. Not one of retreat or isolation, but one of humility.

“Dear World: We need to spend some time getting our own house in order. We have neglected too many problems at home while convincing ourselves we were the indispensable nation abroad. Give us a little time. We have work to do.”

I don’t see that as weakness. I see it as maturity. The moral leader of the world isn’t the country that claims the title. It’s the country that earns it every day by confronting its own shortcomings before pointing out everyone else’s.

Until the last few years, they were proud. Joyful. Filled with fireworks, family, and an uncomplicated love of country. I believed every word I wrote because I believed the America I had been taught to see.

I don’t regret those columns.

But I still marvel at my own ability to see things the way they wanted me to, rather than the way they were.

This year, I have to go in a different direction. You won’t see me at parades, or waving flags or having a red, white. and blue bar-b-que.

But not toward anger either.

Toward hope. Toward the future.

I owe that much to the men who gave up so much to give us our Constitution. They believed in a country they could not yet see. They built a framework that depended on future generations doing their part. We forgot that part. That America is hard work.

Last week, after the opening of the Obama Presidential Center, North Carolina State Senator, Michael Garrett, wrote something on his Facebook page that stopped me in my tracks.

It gave me hope. There are great people out there emerging from the charred earth we call home.

I have real hope.

Not because he ignored where we are, but because it reminded me where we can still go.

So today, on the 250th anniversary of our country, I have one request.

Let’s give Michael Garrett a million new followers on his Facebook Page. Donate a dollar or two?

We spend too much time rewarding outrage and too little time rewarding wisdom. Today, let’s change that.

Read what he wrote. It’s below, as well as a link here to the actual post if you want to share or comment. Share it. Follow him. Ask your friends to do the same. Let’s spend this Independence Day lifting up someone who reminded us that America’s story is not over and that hope is still one of our greatest acts of patriotism.

As we gather with family, friends, and neighbors who believe America may be interrupted but is far from finished, let’s celebrate this day not only with gratitude for those who came before us, but with a renewed commitment to those who will come after us.

There are remarkable people emerging across this country who want to lead. Who can lead. They deserve to be seen.

Enjoy today. Enjoy each other. Celebrate this extraordinary country.

And tomorrow, we get back to the work of building the America that still can be.

God bless America, my friends.

Now, here are the words that gave me hope. CM

By North Carolina State Senator Michael Garrett.

I cried today. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t.

Four presidents shared a stage in Chicago, a thing that used to be ordinary and now feels almost holy, and I felt the tears come before I understood them. At first I thought I knew what they were. I thought they were grief. I thought I was crying for how far we’ve drifted from that morning in 2008 when so many of us let ourselves believe, all the way down, that America could be better than her history. That we could be better. The distance between that morning and this one felt like the whole sad arc of the story, and for a moment I let myself sit inside the ache of it.

But the longer President Obama spoke, the more I understood I had it backwards.

He told a story I can’t stop thinking about. The line we all know, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice, didn’t start with Dr. King. King was borrowing it from a Boston minister named Theodore Parker, who preached it more than 170 years ago. And here is the part that broke me open: Parker preached it at one of the darkest moments this country had ever seen. The Compromise of 1850 had just made it a federal crime to shelter a man fleeing slavery. In Boston, a young fugitive had been seized, tried, and marched to the harbor by hundreds of armed officers, put on a ship, and sent back south into chains. While the whole city watched.

That is when Parker said it. Not in triumph. In the dark.

He admitted he couldn’t see how it would end. “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe,” he preached. “The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve... I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see, I am sure it bends toward justice.”

He couldn’t see it. He believed it anyway. And then he kept fighting.

As Obama put it today, Parker’s words were “a declaration of faith, a defiant call, not to abandon hope or give way to fear, but to stay true to our better selves, and true to one another, and to keep fighting... even in the face of cruelty and bitter disappointment, even in the face of impossible odds.”

And that’s when my tears changed. Right there. They stopped being grief and became something else, something that scared me a little with how much it felt like hope. Because I realized I wasn’t witnessing a eulogy for a country we’d lost. I was watching a man reach down and hand us back the very thing we had set down in our exhaustion. The arc doesn’t bend on its own. It never did. It bends because people put their hands on it and pull, people who can’t see the end and reach for it anyway. People in the dark, refusing to believe the dark gets the last word.

He would not let the day be about him. He said it plainly: America’s story “isn’t frozen in the past. It has chapters yet to be written, not by one person or a few people, not by Barack and Michelle... but by all of us.” Michelle said the same thing in her own way, that the center was never about them, never for them. Look up at that building and you’ll see three words cut into the stone: You are America.Not him. Not them. You. Us. The ordinary, the unfamous, the tired, us.

And then Bruce Springsteen walked out with a guitar and sang “Land of Hope and Dreams.” If you don’t know it, it’s a song about a train, a train with room for everybody on it. Saints and sinners. The lost. The broken. The ones who’ve been left standing at every other station their whole lives. This train carries everybody. He sang it soft and aching, like a prayer he wasn’t sure would be answered but was going to say anyway, and when the last note left him he turned to the Obamas and said the only thing left to say. “I love you.”

And that’s when I stopped being a state senator, a business owner, a man with a calendar full of things that had felt urgent that morning, and became something simpler and truer. A father. A son. One American carrying the full weight of this moment in his chest, unable to hold it and unwilling to put it down, letting it move through me the way you let grief or grace move through you, because you have no choice.

Because that’s what it was about the whole time. It was never about us. It was about Jack and Charlotte. It’s about your kids, and your grandkids, and your nieces and nephews. It’s about the children down the street playing HORSE in the driveway until the streetlights call them home, who have no idea that grown people they will never meet are deciding right now what kind of country they will inherit. They are why Parker preached in the dark. They are who the train is for. Every last one of them belongs on it.

I don’t get to see the end of the arc any more than that Boston preacher did. None of us do. But I don’t need to see it to know it’s there. And from what I saw today, four presidents on a stage, a city that built a monument to hope on the very ground where a young man once arrived with everything he owned crammed into a beat-up car and a head full of stubborn faith, I am sure which way it bends. God help me, I am sure of it.

I cried today, now I know why.

So today, we celebrate the Obamas. For their grace. Their service. Their stubborn, unkillable faith in who we still are underneath all the noise and the fear and the forgetting.

Tomorrow, we get back to work.

And in November, we honor what they gave this country the only way that has ever counted, by putting our hands on the arc, and pulling. Together. All of us. Until it bends.

Push.

See less. - Michael Garrett

The Economist disappointed me last week. Barack Obama has built a monument to himself?

Not because it criticized the Obama Presidential Center. Criticism is its job. If the editors think the architecture is cold or the building too expensive, they are entitled to say so.

It disappointed me because the headline, the opening paragraphs, and ultimately the article framed the Center as an $850 million monument to Barack Obama.

That is almost the exact opposite of what happened on opening day. And, it certainly isn’t what the Center is about.

After reading the piece, I was left wondering whether the writer had actually listened to the speeches that accompanied the dedication. Or, did he/she actually look at what is at the Center?

President Obama spent remarkably little time talking about himself. Michelle Obama made the same point. They both returned, over and over again, to the same idea that this place was never intended to glorify two people. It was built to remind millions of ordinary Americans that democracy belongs to them.

Three words are carved into the stone.

You Are America.

Not “I Am America.”

Not “Barack Obama.”

You.

That distinction matters.

The Center sits on Chicago’s South Side for a reason. It was not placed among luxury hotels and office towers. It was built in a neighborhood that has too often been overlooked, with the expectation that it will generate jobs, investment, visitors, and opportunity for the surrounding community. It includes public spaces, recreation, educational programming, and a public library branch designed to encourage civic participation, not simply preserve presidential memorabilia.

The building bears Obama’s name.

Its purpose extends far beyond Obama’s presidency.

Nothing illustrated that more clearly than the story President Obama chose to tell.

He spoke about Theodore Parker, the nineteenth century abolitionist minister whose words Martin Luther King Jr. would later make famous.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Most people know the quotation.

Far fewer know its context.

Parker spoke those words after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. In Boston, escaped slaves who had built new lives in freedom were hunted down, arrested, and marched through the streets under heavy armed guard as thousands watched. They were not strangers. They were neighbors. Shopkeepers. Church members. Men and women whose names people knew. One by one they were forced onto ships that would carry them back into slavery.

Imagine standing on that street.

Imagine watching your neighbor being led away while hundreds of officers made certain there was nothing you could do to stop it.

America appeared to be moving backward, not forward. Justice was nowhere in sight.

Yet Parker refused to surrender to despair.

He said he could not see the entire arc of history. His own life was too short. But he believed that if ordinary people kept pulling toward justice, history would eventually bend in that direction.

As I listened to President Obama tell that story, I realized it was no longer just history.

Today, across America, people are watching neighbors disappear. They are watching the parents of their children’s friends. They are watching classmates vanish from classrooms, coworkers fail to show up for work, and families torn apart in communities where they have lived for years.

And too often, we stand on the sidewalk and watch. Actually, mostly all the time that is what we are doing.

That was Obama’s message.

Hope is not optimism.

Hope is work.

Hope is deciding that history is not something that happened to other people. It is something we are writing every single day.

Hope is in all of us. Now we have to activate it.

Which brings me back to The Economist.

I have been a subscriber for years because I admire rigorous thinking. I expect it to criticize presidents, institutions, governments, companies, and ideas. That is one of the reasons I read it.

But I also expect intellectual consistency.

When Donald Trump has repeatedly used the presidency to advance his personal brand, enrich members of his family, market products, and blur the line between public office and private benefit, I do not recall The Economist leading with a headline suggesting that the United States had become a monument to one man.

Yet when Barack Obama opens a privately funded presidential center and spends the entire dedication explaining that it is not about him but about us, the headline and opening paragraphs frame it as an $850 million monument to Barack Obama.

That feels less like analysis than narrative.

The article spends pages describing the granite, the architecture, the cost, the basketball court, the sledding hill, the reading room, and the politics of presidential libraries.

What it largely ignores is the central message of the opening itself.

Buildings matter.

But buildings derive their meaning from the stories people tell about them.

On opening day, Barack Obama went out of his way to make sure this story was not about Barack Obama.

He made it about citizenship.

He made it about democracy.

He made it about the responsibility each of us carries.

President Obama was never a perfect president. In my view, he often carried the enormous weight of being America’s first Black president, and at times that responsibility made him more cautious than I wished he had been.

But one thing became unmistakably clear during the opening of the Obama Presidential Center.

He refused to make the day about himself.

He insisted on making it about us.

There is a difference.

It is an important one.

And if The Economist missed that, then it missed the entire story. Take a moment to let The Economist know they got it wrong, and we are starting to take action when journalism is coloring outside the lines of fairness. I cancelled my subscription this morning.

*******************************************************************************************************

Obama’s favorite exhibit is the room where his letters to Americans are displayed. Every night, he read positive and negative letters written to him by Americans that were curated by his staff. He answered ten every day. But hand. And, here they are.

After the infamous 2016 interview with Donald Trump, where he playfully mussed Trump’s hair and helped normalize a presidential candidate at a pivotal moment, Fallon later admitted he got it wrong. He said he had underestimated the significance of the interview and the responsibility that came with his platform.

Years later, multiple current and former employees described The Tonight Show as a toxic workplace, alleging an atmosphere of fear, emotional strain, and unpredictability. Fallon again apologized. Again, he said he had learned. Again, he promised to do better.

Learning is a wonderful thing.

Unless it only lasts until the next interview.

Last night, Fallon welcomed Conor McGregor back to The Tonight Show as McGregor promotes his return to the UFC after five years away from the cage. During the interview, McGregor reminded Fallon about the last time they were together.

“We went out drinking.”

Fallon laughed.

McGregor said he couldn’t wait to do it again.

Fallon enthusiastically agreed.

You might know the details of McGregor. You certainly didn’t learn them from Fallon’s interview.

This wasn’t simply another athlete making the promotional rounds. McGregor was found civilly liable in Ireland for sexually assaulting a woman. He has denied wrongdoing and is appealing the judgment. During the trial, photographs and testimony describing the extensive injuries to the woman’s body became part of the public record.

Jimmy Fallon knows how to read.

His producers know how to read.

NBC knows how to read.

Yet none of that seemed to matter. The interview wasn’t difficult. It wasn’t probing. It wasn’t even cautious. It was nostalgic. Two guys talking about old times and looking forward to having another drink together.

What is it about Jimmy Fallon that allows him to keep walking away from accountability?

Is it the little boy face that mothers love? Is it that he can sing? Is it that he’s genuinely talented? Quick witted? I love a quick wit. On my best day, I have one.

Or have we simply become so accustomed to confusing charm with character that we no longer notice the difference?

America is interrupted because we continue to elevate men whose public personas overwhelm their judgment. We excuse behavior that, in any other profession, would force a reckoning. We keep rewarding likability while asking women to carry the consequences.

This isn’t about canceling Jimmy Fallon.

It’s about our own personal standards.

Every minute we spend watching someone is a vote. It tells networks who deserves another interview, another season, another multimillion-dollar contract.

Maybe it’s time we cast a different vote.

Turn him off. Tell everyone to turn him off. Tell the advertisers, not so much.

Stop rewarding the ratings.

Stop giving one minute of your attention to men who continue to normalize or celebrate those whose actions toward women have already been laid bare in public.

Some people belong on center stage.

Others shouldn’t even be backstage.

End of story.

Heather Cox Richardson pointed out something in her column today that deserves far more attention than it is getting.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 23% of Americans believed the conflict with Iran had made the United States stronger. Think about that for a moment. In a country that can barely agree on what to have for breakfast, fewer than one in four Americans looked at what happened and concluded it made the nation better off.

Then something interesting happened.

Congress noticed.

After years of behaving as though war powers were somebody else’s responsibility, members of Congress suddenly rediscovered the Constitution. The Senate passed a resolution requiring congressional approval for continued military action against Iran. Four Republicans joined Democrats. The House had already passed a similar measure.

Apparently, when enough voters start paying attention, elected officials discover something they rarely lack but often misplace.

Balls.

Now, before everyone rushes to talk about John Fetterman, yes, he was the lone Democrat who voted no. I disagree with him, but I also don’t find it particularly shocking. Fetterman has been consistently hawkish on Iran. He’s not suddenly changing positions. He is who he has been. Ignore him and ask those who voted for him to correct that error next time around. Enough about him.

The more interesting story is not the Democrat who voted no.

The story is that Congress finally said yes.

Yes, we have a role.

Yes, we have authority.

Yes, we intend to exercise it.

For years we have complained that Congress has become little more than a collection of spectators while presidents of both parties accumulated more and more power. Yesterday, Congress stood up and reminded the country that declaring war was never intended to be a one-person decision.

That’s the story.

Not Donald Trump.

And this is where we have a choice.

Last week I wrote about the good guys having a good week. We watched people come together around something positive. We spent a few days talking about belonging instead of outrage.

Can we do it again?

Because Trump is going to do what Trump does. There will be another comment, another distraction, another social media post, another shiny object swinging in front of the national conversation.

The question isn’t what Trump will do.

The question is whether we will take the bait.

What if instead of spending the next week reposting whatever fresh outrage appears, we spent it rewarding behavior we claim we want?

What if congressional offices woke up to emails that said:

Thank you for remembering your constitutional responsibility.

Thank you for putting country before party.

Checks and balances matter.

More of this.

We noticed.

Politicians hear from angry people every day. They hear from activists. They hear from donors. They hear from people demanding something.

They rarely hear from citizens saying, “You got this one right.”

Maybe they should.

Because if we want more independent thinking, we should reward independent thinking when it happens.

Now comes the hard part.

What happens if Trump ignores Congress?

That is the real story moving forward.

Congress has made a statement. The question is whether it becomes a backbone. If the administration continues military action without congressional approval, Congress will have to decide whether this vote was symbolic or substantive. Hearings. Funding restrictions. Investigations. Additional legislation. There are tools available.

The question is whether Congress is willing to use them.

The Reuters poll gave Congress the courage to stand up.

What happens next will tell us whether they have the courage to stay standing. And, let’s make sure this is what we speak about today…

********************************

Some headlines to get you started on posts you could make today about what happened and encouraging more of the same….

“BREAKING: Congress remembers it is Congress.”

“In a shocking development, elected officials located the Constitution.”

“Congress found its spine. Please do not startle it.”

“Today’s bipartisan effort was brought to you by 77% of Americans.”

“Apparently reading the Constitution is back in style.”

“Congress just exercised a muscle that hasn’t seen daylight in years.”

“War powers. Not a suggestion. A job description.”

“Congress finally checked the box marked ‘co-equal branch of government.’”

“Reminder: Congress is not supposed to be the audience.”

“Checks and balances are not a software update. They came with the original model.”

“The Founders would like to thank Congress for attending today’s meeting.”

“Congress did its homework. Extra credit available.”

“Today’s civics lesson: Congress isn’t a fan club.”

“Imagine being thanked for doing your job. Let’s try it.”

“Congress remembered the difference between a monarchy and a republic.”

“Turns out Article I wasn’t just decorative.”

“Congress took a stand. Now let’s see if they can walk.”

“When Congress acts like Congress, everybody wins.”

“Dear Congress: More of whatever happened yesterday.”

“For one brief shining moment, checks and balances trended.”

A few that fit American Interrupted particularly well:

“The distraction is Trump. The story is Congress.”

“America Interrupted: Congress did something important and we’re already talking about something else.”

“The shiny object is swinging again. Keep your eyes on Congress.”

“Every time Congress acts like a branch of government, we should probably notice.”

“Stop asking what Trump thinks about Congress. Start asking what Congress thinks about Congress.”

“The poll gave them courage. The next vote will tell us if they have conviction.”

And my favorite:

“Congress finally stood up. Before we move on to the next outrage, maybe we should applaud the standing part.”

“Stop fighting,” he’d say.

One of us would inevitably protest.

“But she started it!”

And my father would simply say, “Well, I’m going to finish it.”

We were children. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t trying to punish us. He was simply ending it.

He knew his own power. And, he knew we had none.

I was reminded of my father recently when I read a story from the Korean War.

In 1952, the battleship USS Wisconsin was operating off the coast of North Korea when a North Korean artillery battery opened fire. One shell struck the ship, injuring three sailors and leaving what would become the only battle scar the Wisconsin ever received from enemy fire.

The Wisconsin did not take it well.

Within moments, all three of her massive turrets swung toward shore. Nine 16 inch guns. Each capable of firing a 2,700 pound shell roughly the size of a small car. The response was swift and overwhelming. The North Korean battery, along with quite a bit of surrounding landscape, ceased to be a military problem.

According to naval lore, the destroyer escorting the Wisconsin flashed a message by signal lamp:

“TEMPER TEMPER.”

The Wisconsin is said to have replied:

“But they started it.”

Historians believe the first message may well be true. The response, however, has never been documented. It may simply be one of those stories sailors polish over time because it’s too good not to tell.

But here’s the thing. Regardless of whether they said it or not, they acted it. It’s the reaction they had that created the response.

Or more precisely, the absence of contemplation before the reaction.

My father’s response to our fighting was measured. He did not react. He responded.

He knew exactly who had power in that house.

People who know they have power rarely need to demonstrate it.

Lately, our politics feels like the opposite.

This administration reacts before it contemplates. It lashes out before it reflects. There is no pause between provocation and response. Not even a short breath, let alone a deep one.

Whether on his ridiculous social media, or spending billions without including congress to attack Iran, there is no plan, not response that shows intelligence discipline and consideration.

And if we’re honest, after more than a decade of living with this style of politics, many of us have begun behaving the same way. Myself included.

We react instantly.

We rage instantly.

We post instantly.

As though power lies in immediacy.

But real power rarely behaves that way.

My father never sounded angry when he said, “I’m going to finish it.” He sounded certain. Because he knew his own power.

When you think you have no power, you behave in a reactionary way. You reach for it constantly. You display it. You perform it.

When you truly possess power, there is far less need to do that.

So perhaps the task before us is not simply to win arguments or defeat opponents.

Perhaps it is to stop behaving as though we have no power.

And Dad, thank you. I wish I had told you that before you were gone.

The good guys had an amazing week.

How about we celebrate a little?

Congratulations to the Knicks and to the entire city of New York, which just reminded America what a melting pot is supposed to look like. Millions of people from different backgrounds, neighborhoods, faiths, incomes, and generations high-fiving strangers in the street, singing songs together, wearing the same colors, and sharing an unlikely triumph after nearly half a century of disappointment.

And then there was the mayor.

Virtually unknown to most Americans a year ago, he sat in the nosebleed seats during the game and then delivered a speech about a city coming together behind a basketball team. It wasn’t really about basketball. It was about belonging. It was about what happens when people stop staring at screens and start sharing experiences.

And then there were the children.

For some of them, this will become one of those memories that never leaves. The kind of memory my generation has of where we were when President Kennedy was shot. The kind of memory they will tell at dinner parties thirty and forty years from now.

“Do you remember 2026?”

“The year the Knicks finally won again.”

“The year New York City roared.”

In a time when so many young Americans are growing up surrounded by anxiety, division, and endless bad news, I am grateful that millions of children got to experience pure joy. A moment that belonged to all of them.

And then there was Chicago.

This week the Obama Presidential Center opened on the South Side, a stunning campus dedicated not simply to one presidency but to citizenship, community, and the idea that ordinary people can change the course of history. The center includes a museum, public spaces, a library, athletic facilities, and gathering places designed to inspire future generations.

Michelle Obama delivered a tribute to her husband, speaking about the privilege of walking beside him through a journey that no one can reasonably describe as anything less than remarkable. He cried. I cried. Do yourself a favor and watch it.

"You told me all those years ago that you couldn't promise me the world, but you could promise me an interesting life. And of course, you outdid yourself and managed to give me both, I know it hasn't always been easy, but there hasn't been a single second through this experience that standing by your side hasn't left me in awe. Eight years in The Crucible and not once did you melt from the heat. Not once did you let it harden you. Instead, you used it to reveal your truest essence, your stubborn optimism and unflinching courage. Your dazzling brilliance and unpretentious decency. Your ferocious work ethic and absolutely unshakable moral fiber."- Michelle Obama June, 2026

Former Presidents Bush, Clinton, Biden, and Obama stood together. For one afternoon, the headlines were not about what divides us. They were about what we have built together. (Axios⁠)

And the people came.

Thousands gathered on Chicago’s South Side. A community often discussed for its challenges was instead celebrated for its history, its culture, its resilience, and its future. (Reuters⁠)

It was a great week, fellow humans, in an interrupted America.

A great week for New York.

A great week for Chicago.

A great week for basketball fans.

A great week for people who still believe communities matter.

These are the stories we should be talking about. These are the moments worth celebrating. These are the reminders that America is still capable of joy, pride, achievement, and unity.

And perhaps if enough of us spend our time amplifying these stories instead of feeding outrage, we can begin to change the trajectory of the national conversation.

The negative narrative is not the only narrative.

This is the kind of thing we want to talk about.

This is the kind of thing we want to build.

This is the kind of thing that will carry us through dark moments and into better ones.

Have a great weekend.

I can’t wait to see what next week brings.

*******

From Obama’s Remarks….Read the entire speech here.

For millions of people in this country and around the world, the future feels uncertain, the ground unstable beneath our feet.

And as algorithms keep feeding us a steady stream of distraction and outrage, as only the loudest, most extreme voices get attention, fanning our prejudices, appealing to our basest, most tribal instincts.

It’s tempting to give in to cynicism and even despair, to stop trying.

We start thinking that appeals to democracy and civic participation are corny and old fashioned and boring and naive. That the very idea of working on behalf of the common good is a sucker’s bet and that in order for us to win, somebody else has got to lose.

I get it. I am not immune to anger or doubt. But I do know this.

When we lose faith in each other. When we stop believing that voting matters, that citizenship matters, that our collective voices matter, that how we treat each other no longer matters and we give away our power to decide our own futures, we open the door to the most ruthless, or the most careless or the most fearful among us. Who see some groups and some people as more equal than others. And see government is nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies, and keep those who are different in their place.

I do not believe that is the story of America that prevails in the end. I don’t believe it because for us to give up, for us to give in now, after all this country’s been through, to cynicism and division would be a betrayal of our founding ideals.

A betrayal of our faith.

And I remain convinced that the overwhelming majority of Americans feel the same way. That as unsettled as we are, people aren’t looking for perpetual anger and division. They are looking for fairness and common sense and mutual respect. That deep in our gut we want to find a way to turn towards each other again, not further away.

I believe this because I’ve seen it, all across our country. In cities that have worked together to reclaim their streets from crime, in rural communities that have rebuilt their economy and businesses that are finding new ways to make housing affordable.

And those ordinary people in the Twin Cities who braved frigid temperatures, risked their own safety standing shoulder to shoulder to look out for their neighbors and sometimes look out for strangers because they knew that was the right thing to do. I’ve seen it.

And I’ve seen it in a new generation of leaders here and around the world.

My friend died a few weeks ago, and this was part of the eulogy I wrote for her.

She hated Trump. And she would fall for every ridiculous thing put on the internet about him because she so wanted him gone. She wanted people to have dignity and the simple things in life that everyone deserves to have: a decent meal, a roof over their head, education for their children, and the earned right to call themselves an American.

Here is the thing.

Her posts, her rage at their behavior fed the fires and kept their headlines exactly where they wanted them to be. We tried to stop her. She couldn’t. It was the only outlet she had for her pain.

So I get it.

I understand the urge. I understand the anger. I understand the exhaustion.

But attention is currency now. And outrage is fuel.

In the early 80s, women were finally allowed into the New York City Fire Department.

Yes, the fire department was filled with Irish male legacy, testosterone, courage, and a culture earned the hard way as men raced into burning buildings, saving damsels in distress and small children without fear or regard for their own lives. And they paid for this bravery with their lives. More often than they should have.

But women wanted to fight too.

So we fought, and we got in.

There was a story in the newspaper about how men harassed the women firefighters, and one particular story has stayed with me all these years. A tired, frustrated woman firefighter went over to the bulletin board, where there was a Playboy photograph or some such nonsense hanging. She reached up to take it down. Another firefighter took a knife and pinned her hand to the bulletin board.

I can’t remember what happened to him, but I do remember she had to go on leave because her hand no longer worked properly.

This is not a new scenario. We have been fighting it for years, but not by posting outrage. By fighting in ways that make change.

So, my question to you, fellow fighters of our beloved America that’s been interrupted, is this.

How many times have you clicked on, shared, or written about the outrageous comment about Michelle Obama yelled from the bloody stage on Sunday, shattering the dignity of the White House? How many times?

I promise you, Michelle Obama is fine. Just fine.

In fact, she and her husband and family will be opening the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago tomorrow! And, here is what they are posting and wish you were too. This was on Obama’s Instagram account last night. Isn’t this what we should be sharing?

OK, let’s think this through.

What do you think the Trump cohort wants you to write about?

What was said about Michelle Obama on Sunday?

Or celebrating and sharing what is happening at the library and its mission and what will be inside it? Maybe even sending a small contribution this week to support that mission?

What do you think will bother them more?

What do you think will make you feel better?

The serotonin rush of negative diversionary explosions created by this administration, which I understand because it actually works in their favor, is not helping our interrupted nation.

What would help our interrupted nation is if we stop falling for it every single fucking time.

And I mean every single time.

Do yourself a favor.

Action today?

Post something about the Obama Presidential Center opening (tomorrow!) and how excited you are. Tell journalists you hope they give it as much time and front-page access as they give negative news.

And maybe send a girl you know who’s graduating from high school or college a subscription to Ms. Magazine.

Ms. magazine has been doing amazing work for decades, making sure that if someone who doesn’t have Michelle Obama’s circle of protection and collaboration is harassed by the old boys’ network, including, more and more, the new boys coming up behind them, she will at least have some tools in her toolbox.

Do you want to fight them?

Do you want to fight them in their boxing ring or ours?

I vote for ours. Post that which will stop their freight train and clear the tracks for ours. I beg you. (By the way, I clicked too many times too.)

Dear Kamala,

You can’t run for president again. Not because you are Black or because you are a woman, but because the country cannot go back ever again. And you being on the ballot and going on tour would be more than we can take.

We must move forward. Toward something. Not retreading anything. And, to be honest, you are a retread.

The country does not need a sequel. Hollywood knows most sequels disappoint, and Washington should learn from Hollywood. American politics has become a revival tour, and I would like to suggest we stop booking the old bands. Your movie was released. The critics weighed in. Relaunching the same film in a different year rarely improves the box office. Ticket sales do not suddenly go up because the calendar changed.

And let’s be fair and frank. You didn’t get it done.

You had a shot, and what you did was cater to those whose vote we already had. Your rallies were full, your crowds adored you, and your ego undoubtedly loved it. But we had those votes already. Your job was to expand the tent, not decorate it.

You were tone deaf to a good chunk of America that must be heard and included if we are ever to be a country again. I think like you. I vote like you. And I still saw it. Some of us even tried to tell you so at the time, but you knew better.

If we can do this, it will be a new country. Not one where one side or the other gets its entire agenda in order. The way I see it, it is a country that is centrist in the true sense of the word. Whatever your one-off issue is, it is probably not my business and not the government’s business either.

The government’s business is running the inner workings of the country. Infrastructure. Tax dollars. Education. Public safety. Scientific research. Roads. Bridges. Air traffic control. Water systems. The electrical grid. The thousand boring things that make civilization possible.

Nobody throws a parade for functioning sewer systems until they stop functioning.

Look at Denmark or some of the Scandinavian countries. People still disagree. Human beings remain gloriously human. But government is largely there to make society work. Your sexuality is not my business. Your religion is not my business. Government should be set up to serve the entire nation in a fair and even-handed way.

You know what is my business? Your education. Your health. Clean environments. Safe streets. Fair business practices. Everyone paying taxes. Let’s repeat that. Everyone paying taxes. Less war and spending more on our people, not war games.

This should not be an election about special groups. And you had your time on the stage, and you blew it. It has to be said.

Now there is a real possibility that we were cheated in 2024. That Elon Musk stole the election. That is a possibility, and perhaps even stronger than a possibility. But you should have been aware of that and prepared for it. Winners do not prepare only for what should happen. They prepare for what might happen.

Your handling of Biden or … all of it, rules you out.

Please do not run again. Do not waste our time. Do not bring back that painful, horrendous past to us again. I am not sure we can take it. I really am not.

Our energy now needs to be collaboration with everyone. With a single-minded purpose that says government exists to pay the bills, maintain the infrastructure, educate the children, and create the conditions so Americans can live their best lives.

I wish you well. I do. I think you are incredible woman, who has much to offer. But President of the United States is not on your bingo card in 2028. Trust me on this. Lunch soon?

Love to you and Doug.

Christine

It sounds academic, but it isn’t complicated. It is what happens when thousands of people experience the same emotion at the same moment. Joy. Hope. Belonging. Something larger than themselves.

And something extraordinary happens in our bodies.

Look at New York. The streets filled. Strangers hugged. People in Knicks jerseys screamed together as though they had known each other for years. For a few glorious hours, people were not Democrats or Republicans. Rich or poor. Young or old.

They were simply New Yorkers. Not a MAGA hat to be seen, I might ad. Or a blue tee shirt either.

Maybe our crisis is not just about Donald Trump. Or the ever-growing number of people whose power exists only because they stand close to power.

Maybe the deeper problem is that the thing we surround ourselves with most is not each other.

It’s our phones.

We live inside tiny digital rooms curated by algorithms that feed us outrage, fear, and certainty. We mistake connection for community and followers for friendship.

Human beings were not built for that.

We were built to gather.

I am also a film critic, and years ago I attended the first Bentonville Film Festival, founded by Geena Davis. Much of her life’s work now is devoted to gender representation in film because she believes something very simple. If a girl can see it, she can be it.

She may be one of the reasons we have made so much progress for women in film.

At one panel she discussed background actors in movies. Researchers had studied crowd scenes and discovered that only about ten percent of the people gathered in town squares on screen were women.

Geena held out her hands, looked up, and asked, “Do they think we don’t like to gather?”

Everyone laughed.

And of course it wasn’t funny.

Women have gathered since the beginning of time. Around fires. Around tables. In kitchens. In churches. In circles of grief and circles of joy.

I wrote an entire book about it, Circles of Collaboration. I have long believed that collaboration is more powerful than leadership and that perhaps we have spent too much time celebrating leaders and not enough time building collaboration, which is way more fun too.

But that is another story.

The task before us now may be very simple.

Gather more.

Not just for politics. Not only to protest. Not merely to complain.

Anyone who has been reading this column knows I don’t believe most protests accomplish anything. They often make us feel good without changing very much.

Community changes things.

I recently moved to a small town on the North Fork of Long Island. I call it Main Street USA. I actually live on Main Street.

You know who else does? Latino families. Families who, like me, are searching for a different kind of life than the one we left behind.

I have decided to invite some neighbors over for dinner. But I am absolutely going to invite the people next door for a barbecue. Phone not invited.

Not to talk politics.

To get away from our phones.

Last night, a gathering took place at my beloved White House. Everyone knows what happened. But I can tell you one thing with certainty.

It was not collective effervescence. Nope. Not for a second.

Collective effervescence cannot be manufactured. It cannot be ordered from a stage or imposed from above. It rises from shared purpose, shared joy, and shared humanity.

Get behind something that isn’t political.

Join a book club.

Volunteer.

Go to the high school baseball game.

Attend the concert in the park.

Cheer for the local team.

Because community builds a good country.

And if America is interrupted, perhaps the repair begins not in Washington, but around dinner tables, in town squares, and in crowded streets filled with people wearing blue and orange and believing, if only for one night, that they belong to one another.

The divisions are real. The anger is real. Too many people profit from keeping us separated from one another while they consolidate power for themselves. And, fill their pockets with more money than anyone needs in a lifetime.

And we’ve got to take action. Yes, it’s true.

Voting. Organizing. Showing up. Paying attention. Refusing to surrender to cynicism or exhaustion. Helping those who are in harm’s way.

But there are also moments to celebrate our humanity and joy. That remind us of what we are capable of. What we are without ‘them.’

I marvel at other living things and how, as I examine them more, they often seem to be more evolved than us. It frightens me sometimes, because I was led to believe (yet another smoke and mirror in my education) that we are the most evolved of all the species.

Think about it.

We live on a planet where trees warn one another of danger through underground fungal networks.

Where octopuses appear to dream. Yes, it’s true.

Where elephants return to the bones of their dead and linger there, getting strength, solace and perspective maybe?

Where bees dance directions to food sources.

Where crows recognize human faces, remember those who harmed them, and teach that information to other crows, even their offspring.

Where ants build cities, with nothing for themselves personally in return.

Where cats purr at frequencies that may actually promote healing.

Where after a forest fire, the first signs of life are flowers.

Nature seems to understand something we struggle to remember.

Survival is a collective act.

Until a moment like New York City this week. A city of more than eight million people. Different races, religions, politics. Poverty and great wealth living within a great divide.

People who agree on almost nothing.

And yet, for a few remarkable days, they became one thing.

The New York Knicks have not won a championship since 1973. Entire generations of New Yorkers have lived their whole lives without experiencing one. And yet hope alone was enough to send people pouring into the streets. Together.

Strangers hugged strangers. People sang together. People celebrated together. People belonged together.

And it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that if we can truly come together against the evil at the top of the food chain and celebrate something like the New York Knicks with such joy, abandon, and true communion, then they can never beat us.

The action item today is simple.

Remember the energy in New York City this week tomorrow.

Carry it with us over the coming months as we pick up the fight yet again to take back our country. Remind your neighbors that we are a nation that can do this.

After all, we’re only down 29 points at halftime.

And anyone who has ever watched sports knows the game is far from over.

I’ve come to realize, my heart is easily broken. But I had coping mechanisms. But this last year? It was too many things too often. I reached my limit.

I cried watching the movie CODA when she sang Both Sides Now with her deaf parents sitting in the balcony. She started signing the song so they could “hear” her. I cried from someplace deeper than my eyes, where the tears carry pieces of you with them out into the world.

I cried when I was twenty-something and my sister told me about being at Hermès buying a Christmas gift. A man came in wearing a tattered coat, and no one wanted to help him. And finally she said to the woman behind the counter who asked her what she needed, “He was here first.”

He pulled out a bunch of fives and tens and ones and said his daughter was in Cleveland and he wanted to send her something beautiful because he couldn’t afford to go for Christmas. My sister helped him. I cried all those years ago at Christmas dinner when when she told me the story, and I’ve cried every Christmas since. It reminds me to be grateful. That lovely man, who was treated so badly, saved up to buy his daughter something pretty. And he went where he was uncomfortable because he loved her so much.

Last year, I stood behind a man at the pharmacy who couldn’t pay for his heart prescription, so me and the person behind me paid for it. He was ashamed, and tired and old. And wearing a baseball hat from the armed forces. But it was our country who should be ashamed. And we told him that. But all I could think about was who’s going to pay for it next time? I cried in the car on the way home.

I used to take those moments one by one. One man in Hermès, one man at the pharmacy, one song in a movie where parents couldn’t hear their daughter sing. I could carry them one at a time. I could make room for one heartbreak, one act of cruelty, one reminder that there is still beauty in the middle of pain. A tear or two.

But now the sheer number of evil deeds this administration has enacted has enveloped us more quickly than I thought possible, and it has felled me. I knew it would be bad, but this? No. I don’t have the tools for this.

That one man in Hermès is now thousands, no millions, of men and women who can’t buy what their children need, who are living without heat or medicine or shelter. That one man at the pharmacy is now entire blocks of people rationing pills, deciding between insulin and groceries, between dignity and survival. Hundreds of people are in cages in what we politely don’t call concentration camps but we should, and there are children who can’t find their parents and parents who can’t find their children, and I cannot, no matter how hard I try, make my brain adjust to the sheer numbers. I don’t know how to cry in multiples. I haven’t learned how to do that.

And weighing that against the same images of billionaires on their yachts and their $300 million weddings and their private islands, watching them float above it all without a single thought for the cost the rest of humanity is paying, is more than I can bear. And so many around me seem able to go about their lives not noticing any of it. And I can’t unsee it.

Sometimes I remind myself that I get to decide what my mind thinks about. That I don’t have to think about all these things if I want to. And why would I want to?

But I also hope I never look away. I don’t want to look back and realize I looked away.

I used to go to music to find comfort and solace. I would put on the songs that knew me better than I knew myself, and they would hold me when nothing else could. But now it makes it worse. The sad songs, the ones I used to let wash over me, don’t soothe me anymore. They cut deeper instead, and sometimes when the wrong song comes on it’s like being slapped across the face with a wave of pain that I didn’t know existed without the accompaniment of a knife. They remind me of everything I’ve lost, everything we’re losing, everything we will still lose if this continues.

I am grief-stricken. I feel like I’ve lost my beloved country. Or at least what I thought she was. I see now she was never what I thought she was. The real her was hiding behind the propaganda that worked so well on me. God, I loved believing it. Believing the entire world thought we were amazing. Simply the best. Right out of Tina Turner.

And some of the people I’ve been close to, I don’t feel so close to now, because they seem to be just fine. Going about their daily business. Talking about their day animatedly. “I don’t want to talk about it.” The truth is, maybe they cope differently than I do. Maybe they think it won’t affect them. Maybe they see something different than I see. I don’t know.

Either way, it’s a lonely road. No one seems happy.

And then, after feeling sorry for myself these last months, suddenly this past week, I got angry. No. Enraged. At everyone. And then at myself. How dare I give up?

I took a an online course in managing anger. She started it with a five minute meditation. I was out of there after two. I refuse to bury my anger in conversing with my toes and breath. Enough said.

So then? Well, I did what we all do when there is nothing left to be done. I sat up and made plans.

Five steps back, motherfucker.

Now there’s a song I could sing. Five Steps Back Motherfucker. In fact, maybe Taylor Swift could write it for us. She’s good at those songs that cut people to shreds who have hurt her. I don’t need sad, comforting songs. I need angry, get your shit together songs. Put your boots to the ground songs.

And you know what? I have a feeling there are a lot of people who are just like me out there who are putting themselves back together again just like I am. People who spent the last few months grieving. Exhausted from it all. People who got knocked flat. People who wondered if they had the strength for what comes next.

I did. But I’m done sitting Shiva. My period of mourning is over. This was my eulogy.

I had a diversion during the month of May. It’s June. I’m back. This is nowhere near over. This is my country. See you on the road back to making America the place I used to call home.

First up: 60 Minutes Cannot Go Lightly Into the Abyss

Action Item: Tell the advertisers you will not buy their products until they reinstate the show that was decimated. (see information below)

Watch the Interview here.

Do yourself a favor. Watch Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s interview with Scott Pelley, who you will remember was fired last week after standing up to CBS management in a meeting (in house) challenging the firings of the 60 Minutes staff. It’s time to start standing up to - and for - the journalists who are cow-tailing and - standing up to - this administration’s outrageous demands to lie to the public about the news. It begins with educating ourselves. And, check the facts after you watch. I did. Journalists are starting to stand up. Let’s help them. Reward them. -CM

Lulu Garcia-Navarro writes: It’s hard to overstate the impact of “60 Minutes” on journalism. It’s the most-watched television-news program in America. Since its debut on CBS in 1968, it’s been the home of some of the most-storied broadcast journalists, from Mike Wallace and Ed Bradley to Lesley Stahl, Anderson Cooper and, until this past week, Scott Pelley.

Pelley, who was at the network for 37 years, including as White House correspondent, anchor of the “CBS Evening News” and “60 Minutes” correspondent, was fired after an explosive series of events and much turmoil over the past few years at CBS. These events include a controversial financial settlement with President Trump over a “60 Minutes” segment; the sale of the network to David Ellison; and the appointment of Bari Weiss, a former New York Times Opinion staffer and founder of The Free Press with no television-news experience, to lead CBS News.

Pelley’s firing came after Weiss dismissed several of his colleagues and hired a new “60 Minutes” boss, Nick Bilton, whom Pelley then clashed with in a staff meeting. Pelley, along with a number of other “60 Minutes” correspondents who were fired, have now accused Weiss of editorial interference and bias, charges that CBS News and Weiss deny.

In his first sit-down interview since he was fired, Pelley told me about the specific incident he viewed as interference, about his experiences at CBS News over the past weeks and months, and about what he hopes will come of this very tumultuous time at the network where he spent most of his career.

***********************

Here are the advertisers for your attention: CM

CBS does not publish a standing advertiser list, and it changes week to week. However, because 60 Minutes attracts one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most educated audiences on television, the advertising mix is remarkably consistent. Healthcare and pharmaceutical companies are among the largest categories.

Typical 60 Minutes advertisers include:

• Pfizer

• Eli Lilly and Company

• AbbVie

• Bristol Myers Squibb

• Merck & Co.

• Johnson & Johnson

• AARP

• Fidelity Investments

• Charles Schwab

• Vanguard

• Edward Jones

• Morgan Stanley

• T. Rowe Price

• Mercedes-Benz USA

• Lexus

• BMW USA

• Audi USA

• Rolex

• Consumer Cellular

• Cologuard

• The Farmer’s Dog

• Allstate

• AT&T

What’s more interesting is what this list tells you. 60 Minutes isn’t selling eyeballs; it’s selling affluent, older decision-makers. If you’re watching the commercials, the audience CBS believes is sitting on the couch is:

• Age 55+

• Homeowners

• Investors

• Retirees or near-retirees

• High household income

• Frequent healthcare consumers

• Luxury buyers

In other words, the advertising often tells you as much about the audience as the program itself. These are the voters Trump needs to continue to keep in his camp.

I was thinking about wars the other day and something occurred to me.

We almost always name wars after the country getting bombed instead of the people doing the bombing.

Vietnam War.
Afghanistan War.
Iraq War.

As though those countries simply wandered into the middle of history and accidentally exploded.

It is an interesting little linguistic magic trick.

The active verb disappears.

We do not say:
“America’s Rage Assuagement of 9/11.”

We say, “The Iraq War.”

Which sounds almost mutual. Like Iraq and America got into a disagreement over parking validation instead of one of the most powerful nations on earth invading another country over weapons that did not exist.

Or more accurately, weapons the administration needed the public to believe existed.

And this is where the naming becomes dangerous because once language softens the action, the actual story starts disappearing too.

The vice president of the United States, Dick Cheney, had unfinished emotional business with Saddam Hussein going back to the Gulf War and the moment George H.W. Bush left him in power. Bush Sr. was criticized by some conservatives for not going all the way to Baghdad after Kuwait. Saddam became unfinished business for an entire generation of Republican foreign policy hawks.

Then 9/11 happened.

America was grieving, terrified, furious, and psychologically shattered. The country wanted somewhere to place its rage. And instead of limiting the response to the actual perpetrators, the emotional opening widened into Iraq.

Suddenly intelligence became theater.
“Could.”
“May.”
“We believe.”
“Possible weapons capability.”

Fear filled in the blanks facts could not.

Colin Powell stood before the United Nations holding up diagrams and presentations that now feel almost tragic to revisit. Careers, media outlets, intelligence agencies, and politicians moved in synchronized certainty around weapons that did not exist.

And the American public, still bleeding emotionally from 9/11, followed.

Not because people were stupid. But, maybe because fear rearranges critical thinking.

I am beginning to think that is one of the oldest truths in politics.

And then I started thinking about World War I and World War II.

Those names are fascinating because they sound so organized in retrospect. As though humanity scheduled them in advance.

World War I sounds almost like a trade convention.

World War II sounds like the sequel nobody asked for but the studio financed anyway.

But neither started as a “world war.”

They started exactly the way these things always start. One country. One border. One grievance. One assassination. One “security concern.” One speech about protection and stability and national pride.

Then alliances activate.
Then economies get involved.
Then resources matter.
Then men who will never see a battlefield begin talking about honor.

And suddenly half the planet is on fire.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand did not “cause” World War I any more than one dropped match causes a forest to exist.

The forest was already there.

Wars almost never introduce themselves honestly.

They arrive wearing better clothes.

Defense.
Security.
Liberation.
Protection.
National interest.
Stability.

Nobody says, “We are about to destabilize an entire region because powerful people think the upside outweighs the body count.”

And then there are the wars that arrive right on schedule whenever a leader is politically cornered.

Those deserve entirely different titles too.

Because history has a habit of laundering responsibility through language.

And before anybody says this is dramatic, let me remind you of something else we named.

“The Monica Lewinsky Affair.”

Think about that for a second.

A twenty-two-year-old intern becomes the title character while the President of the United States somehow linguistically disappears into the wallpaper.

Not “Bill Clinton’s relationship with a young intern.”
Not “Presidential abuse of power.”
Not even “The Clinton Scandal.”

No.

“The Monica Lewinsky Affair.”

The person with the least institutional power became the headline.

Exactly the same mechanism.

Language redirects accountability.

Over and over and over again.

And maybe that is the real issue here.

Not semantics.

Power.

Who gets named.
Who disappears.
Who becomes the location of the damage instead of the source of it.

We the people should stop accepting the passive language governments and media hand us.

The press should stop allowing the naming of wars after the injured party.

They should stop allowing administrations to workshop language until aggression sounds procedural and civilians sound responsible for their own destruction.

Call things what they are.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
“Bush and Cheney’s Iraq invasion.”
“Netanyahu’s destruction of Gaza.”
“Trump’s diversionary bombing campaign.”

History becomes dangerous when language becomes obedient.

And maybe the first responsibility of journalism is not access.

Maybe it is refusing to help power hide behind grammar.

I am so tired of realizing these things so late in the game. But it’s not too late to stop it. It’s not. So, Gaza is the Trump Netanyahu Attack on Gaza. Don’t call it anything else. And, Iran. It’s Trump’s War on Iran. Please. Correct the journalists. One by One. One reference after another.

And, Monica? So very very sorry.

“As we digest the fact that tens of millions of women around the world have experienced sexual violence, including being drugged by their husbands, raped while they slept, and in some cases even sold to other men, and people online fight about whether it’s “some men” or “all men,” I think it’s worth remembering, it’s not men at all. It’s the system.

“We have been living inside a patriarchal social system for thousands of years where men hold primary power and dominate political leadership, moral authority, social privilege, control of property, and control of women and children. This structure has been reinforced over time by cultural norms, legal systems, and religious institutions, including Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. I know my Christian friends want to focus on raising “the right” men to lead inside this system, but that misses the point.

“Before these systems consolidated power the way we know them today, many societies were organized very differently. Women were centered as life givers. Spiritual life in many cultures was tied to a Great Goddess or Mother figure, representing fertility, birth, and the cycles of nature. Women were often the healers, the leaders, the keepers of knowledge. Belief systems were tied to the earth, to renewal, to interconnection, not dominance. Men were part of these worlds, but they didn’t dominate them.

“But here’s the part we keep skipping over. Patriarchy was never built to benefit all men. It was always an extractive, hierarchical system designed to benefit a small group at the top, kings, lords, presidents, CEOs, oligarchs. Its modern cousins, colonialism and capitalism, locked those dynamics even deeper into American culture.

“Men were asked to survive inside a brutal system. Compete. Climb. Win. Don’t feel. Don’t ask for help. Don’t break. And in exchange, they were given a kind of conditional power, dominance over women and marginalized groups, so they wouldn’t look too closely at the fact that they weren’t actually winning either. Overworked. Underpaid. Emotionally shut down. And told that any vulnerability was weakness.

“So where does that pressure go. It goes somewhere. Too often, it gets taken out on the women in their lives, especially when those women start stepping into spaces that were never supposed to be theirs. Education. Sports. Boardrooms. Government. When women enter those spaces and start competing, or even winning, it doesn’t just feel like change. It feels like threat. And that’s why we’re watching laws and policies try to push women back out.

“And let’s talk about Mary Magdalene for a second, because this part matters.

“She was not a prostitute in the earliest texts. The Church made her into one. That characterization shows up centuries later, most notably through Pope Gregory I, when she was merged with other unnamed women in a way that stuck for generations.

“So we have to ask, why?

“If she was one of the closest followers of Jesus Christ, at the crucifixion when others weren’t, the first to witness the resurrection, someone clearly trusted, then what does that mean. It means a woman was sitting at the center of power, insight, and spiritual authority in one of the most influential movements in history.

“And if that’s true, then what the hell do you do with that if you are building a system that depends on male authority?

“You don’t erase her completely. You can’t. But you can reshape her. You can shrink her. You can turn her into something that fits your system instead of threatens it.

“We can’t prove that was a coordinated decision made for that exact purpose. But come on. We can see the pattern.

“A powerful woman in the original story becomes a diminished one in the institutional version that follows.

“That’s not random.

“Friends, we are in the collapse of this entire way of being on earth. Finally. This is not something to be afraid of. This is not something to mourn. This is the moment to ask what it actually means to be human again.

“And for those who follow Jesus Christ, this isn’t some radical departure. It’s a return. His teachings were not about dominance or hierarchy. They were about compassion, humility, care for each other.

“The version of the story many of us were raised on was shaped over centuries by institutions with power, including the Roman Empire, to reinforce a certain kind of order. I felt that disconnect in my bones as a kid. And now we’re watching it all strain and crack in real time as these systems fight for dominance in a zero sum game.

“Spoiler alert. They all lose.

Because what’s coming next is not about replacing one hierarchy with another. It’s about building something more human, more equal, more connected.

“And honestly, it might be the closest thing to heaven on earth we ever create together.” - Teri Hagedorn

Teri Hagedorn is a recovering advertising executive who spent thirty years helping for-profit companies grow and develop their businesses. She’s now using her powers for good with non-profits through her consultancy, Accelerant, including one that is designing a framework to take businesses from extraction to restoration, demonstrating that when we pivot from patriarchy to matriarchy, everyone wins.

What makes the story of George Soros and Viktor Orbán so unsettling is not just the political betrayal. It is the historical inversion.

Soros was a Jewish child in Budapest when the Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944. He survived because his father secured false papers and placed him with a government official posing as his godson. Soros later said surviving fascism shaped his lifelong belief that closed societies begin by teaching people to fear one another.

After the war, Soros studied under Karl Popper at the London School of Economics. Popper’s idea of the open society became Soros’s governing philosophy. Once Soros made his fortune, he began funding scholarships, civil society groups, universities, and democratic institutions across Eastern Europe. In Hungary, he helped support a generation of young thinkers and reformers emerging from Communism.

One of them was Orbán.

In 1989, Orbán received support from Soros’s Open Society Foundations to study in England. He was part of the young democratic class Soros believed could help build a freer Hungary. Soros over these past years, never played on that fact.

Years later, Orbán built his political machine in part by destroying the very values that helped launch him.

His government turned Soros into a national villain. Just like our government is doing. Billboards with Soros’s face and slogans warning that “Soros must not have the last laugh” spread across Hungary. Critics widely condemned the imagery as trafficking in old antisemitic tropes, including exaggerated features and coded messaging about shadowy Jewish influence. Soros became the symbol Orbán used to stoke fear of outsiders, immigrants, liberalism, and the West.

The attack was not symbolic. Orbán’s government forced the Central European University to move most of its programs out of Hungary. Civil society groups were harassed. Independent media shrank. Courts were weakened. Fear became policy.

Soros rarely responded directly. He seemed to understand something larger than personal betrayal. Authoritarianism always needs a scapegoat, and Jews have too often been first in line.

Now Orbán is gone. After 16 years in power, he has conceded defeat to Péter Magyar, whose Tisza Party won a sweeping parliamentary victory today. The result ends one of Europe’s most entrenched illiberal governments, at least formally.

But removing a man is not the same as restoring a country.

That is the lesson for Hungary, and it is the warning for the United States.

People talk about democracy as if it is a switch. One election goes badly, another goes well, and everything resets. It does not work that way. Institutions are not abstract. They are habits. They are trust. They are the invisible muscle memory of a society that has agreed, however imperfectly, to play by rules larger than grievance.

Once that is broken, it is never rebuilt in the same way.

You can restore courts, but not the years of faith lost in them. You can reopen universities, but not recover the professors who left, the students who scattered, or the ideas that never got to flourish. You can restart programs, but not restore the momentum of decades spent building expertise, continuity, and belief.

That is what people in America still do not fully understand. If a country spends years hollowing out agencies, intimidating institutions, politicizing justice, punishing dissent, and teaching people that facts are optional, the damage is not temporary simply because the authoritarians eventually lose.

The scaffolding may still be standing, but the load bearing beams are cracked.

Hungary is about to begin the long work of repair. It may recover some of what was lost. It may even surprise the world. But it will not be the Hungary that could have been had Orbán never taken power.

That is the part Americans should sit with now.

Democracy is not only about defeating the person doing the damage. It is about understanding the cost of every year that person is allowed to keep doing it.

An open society can come back. But it comes back altered, chastened, slower, more fragile, and carrying the memory of what it allowed. Germany still is recovering from the crimes of World War II. The question is never simply whether freedom returns. The question is what shape it is in when it does.

And by the way, the country of Hungary owes George Soros an apology.

I always loved the latin, “Corruptio optimi pessima.” Corruption of the best is the worst. I take solace in the fact that these people in our government are the worst, always were, never the best. It gives me hope. But we must use the right language in describing them to give clarity to this moment. - Christine Merser

We have to stop using honorable words when describing Trump’s relationships. Or describing him at all. We give them and him a credibility they don’t deserve, and we blur the truth, we cloud the clarity around how his government actually functions.

Look at the word loyalty. Its roots matter.

“true or faithful in allegiance,” 1530s, in reference to subjects of sovereigns or governments, from French loyal, from Old French loial, leal “of good quality; faithful; honorable; law-abiding; legitimate, born in wedlock,” from Latin legalem, from lex “law.” Identical with legal, which maintains the Latin form; in most uses it has displaced Middle English leal, which is an older borrowing of the French word. For the twinning, compare royal/regal. Sense development in English is feudal, via notion of “faithful in carrying out legal obligations; conformable to the laws of honor.” In a general sense (of dogs, lovers, etc.), from c. 1600. As a noun meaning “those who are loyal” from 1530s (originally often in plural).

That is what the word means. That is what it carries.

So let’s look at his people.

Take Pete Hegseth. He wasn’t rising, he was falling. Pete Hegseth faced allegations of misconduct during his time at Fox News and in the period leading up to his 2025 nomination for Secretary of Defense, including reports of heavy drinking that impacted his work, a 2017 sexual assault accusation, and a 2016 incident at a company Christmas party. He had a reputation that had already begun to erode. No clear path forward. And then, suddenly, there is one path. One man. One system.

And the deal is simple. You say what I say. You do what I tell you. You defend me, no matter what. In return, you sit at the table of desserts. You get power. You get wealth. You can do whatever you want to fill your own coffers. You get people beneath you who now have to answer to you. Corruption? No worries.

That’s not loyalty. That’s a transaction.

And everyone around him understands it. They fall in line, or they fall out. They praise, they protect, they perform. For a while, it works. For a while, it feels like everything they wanted.

Ice cream at 9 PM while watching the last episode of something mindless. It feels good in the moment. We all know what comes next.

Look at the list. Pam Bondi. Rudy Giuliani. People already on the downslope, already compromised by their own decisions, their own behavior. They weren’t at the height of their careers. They were looking for a way back in.

And he offers it. Briefly.

Because this is not a two way street. There is no shared code. There is no honor being upheld. There is only usefulness. As long as you are useful, you are protected. The moment you are not, you are gone.

And sometimes, even when you are still useful, you are gone.

That’s the system.

So when journalists use the word loyalty, they elevate it. They make it sound like something it is not. They bring it into the language of honor, of allegiance, of something that belongs at my dinner table, in stories about family, about commitment, about standing by someone through something real.

It does not belong here.

This is a one way arrangement. You obey, you benefit, until you don’t. You are allowed to break rules, until the rules matter. And then you are the one who pays.

And Trump? He finally got the title he chased his entire life. President. The word used to carry weight, awe, history. It used to mean something beyond the man holding it.

Now it doesn’t. Not in the same way. Not after this.

So please, stop using the word loyalty anywhere near this. It doesn’t clarify what’s happening. It distorts it.

Call it what it is. Subservience.

Call him not President, but Dictator.

I moved from Maine to New York last week. In four days, I packed up my entire life and started over. It’s been a week.

Last night, I picked up my sister at 5:30 and we went for our Tuesday night ritual, sushi at the bar.

We talked about the move. We talked about an upcoming family wedding. And then we talked about Iran, and the Armageddon that was supposed to arrive in three hours, while we sat there eating sushi.

In Iran, as I understand it, young people were preparing to hold hands and circle electrical plants and other targets Trump had threatened to annihilate, fully aware that doing so could cost them their lives.

As far as I know, not one of us in America was lining up anywhere other than outside a movie theater.

Oh, there’s a lot of talk. Social media, Threads. X. Phone calls. Conversations at dinner.

“When are they going to stop him?”

And from all across the world, people are looking at us and wondering why we don’t understand who they is.

Why we aren’t circling the White House.

Why we weren’t marching all day today, demanding a session of Congress, demanding this stop.

Instead, most of the pundits are talking about how it’s up to the military to refuse to carry out the orders of the commander in chief. And, in the end, up to individual men and women to not carry out orders of distruction passed down from DT.

I looked into that.

The man or woman responsible for arming the drone, for pushing the button on the missile, makes approximately $50,000 to $70,000 a year. Every part of their training tells them to follow orders.

And this is our expectation?

This is not about Trump. He is a demented old man. When he is gone, I will echo his own words, “I’m glad he’s dead,” and millions, maybe billions, around the world will echo it too.

But this moment is not about him.

It’s about we the people.

We’ve lost our way.

Each and every one of us.

There is something quieter sitting underneath all of this, something we don’t like to look at.

We keep searching for a they because it allows us to stay seated, to stay safe, to stay removed. They is comforting. They is distance. They is the belief that someone else, somewhere else, will absorb the cost of action.

But history doesn’t work that way.

When people act, it is rarely because they are braver or stronger. It is because the distance between what they believe and what they are doing becomes unbearable. The tension closes in until action is no longer a choice but a release.

We are not there.

We are still comfortable enough to talk about war over sushi. To check our phones. To ask the question and move on to the next topic.

That is not apathy. It is something more complex. It is a learned dependence on systems, on structure, on authority, combined with just enough distance from consequence to keep us still.

We are waiting for a signal that will not come.

And until the discomfort of inaction outweighs the comfort of watching, we will keep waiting.

That is the real danger.

Not him.

Us.

Amazing women. Inspiring women. Powerful women.

One post showed women from the same industry, one for every day of Women’s History Month. Every one of them American.

International Women’s Day. Thirty one Americans.

And it made me pause.

Not because I object to celebrating women. We should. Women have pushed through walls for generations to get where we are. Recognition matters. I celebrate women every single day.

I saw another woman earlier today say that on International Women’s Day she immediately thought of the suffragettes. I get it. It is a natural place for many people to go. Their courage changed history. The ridicule they endured and the determination they showed reshaped our lives. But international?

So reading through so many of the posts today made me think about something else.

The word international. And, the lack of international women posting. Maybe it’s my algorithm, but after some homework, I do not believe it is.

Most of the celebrations I am seeing are Americans celebrating American women or reflecting on American history. Again, that history matters enormously. But the story of women gaining rights did not end there, and in many places it is still unfolding right now.

Across parts of the world today, women are still fighting for the very rights those early suffragettes fought for. In some countries women cannot vote freely. In others they are pushed out of public life entirely.

Iran comes to mind right now. Women there have been risking imprisonment, violence, and their lives simply for demanding autonomy and freedom.

A few days ago, we bombed their country. We leveled a school with many girls left dead. Perhaps hundreds.

They are not posting lists. I don’t think we should either. There is immediate, emergency work to be done that overshadows this month’s celebration.

And it made me think about the extraordinary energy we women put into Women’s History Month. Anyone who has ever organized a panel, an event, or even a thoughtful post knows the work that goes into it. The planning, the outreach, the coordination.

We women are very good at getting things done.

So I find myself imagining something else.

What if all of the panels this month were redirected to women in Iran and what they are facing.

What if the awards given this month were used to bring an Iranian woman to speak, to be heard, to be protected.

What if the money spent on events and celebrations were refocused toward organizations supporting the women leading that fight.

What if this month became less about recognition and more about action.

So this year I am trying something different.

I am setting aside Women’s History Month for myself. Every ounce of energy I might have spent celebrating it, posting about it, or organizing around it, I am going to focus instead on the women in Iran and what they may need from those of us watching from afar.

They are fighting the regime inside Iran and the American invasion at the same time. We owe them. We owe it to ourselves.

International Women’s Day can certainly be a moment of celebration.

But it can also be a moment of solidarity.

The suffragettes did not fight so we would simply celebrate them.

They fought so the work would continue.

And right now, in places like Iran, that work is still very much underway.

For anyone interested in learning more or supporting women’s rights efforts there, here are several organizations doing important work.

Center for Human Rights in Iran

United for Iran

Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran

Iran Human Rights Documentation Center

Women Living Under Muslim Laws

If International Women’s Day is truly international, perhaps one of the best ways to honor the women who came before us is by paying attention to the women who still need the women of the world to notice them now, and to take action now.

Over the last year, the one thing I have learned that stands out is this. Two opposing things can be true at the same time, and sometimes one is not bigger than the other.

The fact that Ayatollah Khamenei (the ‘k’ is silent, by the way) died in attacks by America and Israel means that one of the most repressive leaders on earth is gone. I do not mourn that.

At the same time, an unprovoked attack by us is horrifying. Again.

I felt this same duality after our invasion of Iraq, which eventually led to the death of Saddam Hussein. Realizing the Cheney and Bush lies about weapons of mass destruction, and suspecting a son’s desire to vindicate his father after what was seen as humiliation in Iraq, opened my eyes to the inner workings of my country. Workings that had always been hidden from my view. My fault for not seeing them earlier, but I did not.

As a film critic for Screen Thoughts, I am always struck by how film mirrors life. Every story on screen reflects something we have seen before.

The film Wag the Dog comes to mind now. You may remember DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman’s brilliant portrayal of a PR man and Hollywood director who manufacture a fake war to distract from a presidential scandal. I watched it just after my daughter was born and felt uneasy in a way I could not explain. Looking back, I realize I sensed that it was not out of the realm of possibility. I watched it again last night and I think it’s worth the time.

I think DT starting a war serves as a diversionary explosion from what has been heating up around him, including renewed scrutiny of his ties to Epstein, ongoing questions about his financial dealings, multiple legal exposures, and the broader pattern of alleged misconduct that continues to shadow him. Just because the conflict is an enormous diversion does not mean the media should stop pursuing accountability for the Epstein crimes or any others.

I’ll say it again. Distraction works only if we allow the spectacle to eclipse the unresolved.

I don’t like the word just unless it’s about justice. “Just one for dinner tonight,” irks me no end. “I’m just someone’s mother?” Don’t get me started.

But it’s the word that keeps coming to me today.

Just because we can does not mean we have any right to attack other countries.

Just because Congress did not sanction this war does not mean they are not responsible for it happening. Trump and his lackeys had no fear that there would be a repercussion for an action that is totally illegal. It should have already happened. Congress should be in session as we sleep.

Just because we are committing war crimes, there’s some good maybe just maybe could come out of the crimes we are committing.

Former intelligence officials have long warned (a report a few weeks ago) that assassinating the Ayatollah would create a vacuum that is even more dangerous. The concern is that once a central figure is gone, decision making often shifts to a more diffuse military structure that may feel less constrained by political calculation or international optics. In that environment, retaliation can become less measured and more ideological, driven by institutional momentum rather than strategic restraint. The result is that actions taken in the name of deterrence can instead unleash forces that operate with fewer human considerations, escalating conflict rather than containing it.

Our task as Americans now is to personally, one by one, inch by inch, support the brave Iranians who will have to step up now, without any planning or warning. We have seen the on the streets over the last few years protesting at great personal risk to ensure that the strong arm of the military does not make us wish Khamenei was back on planet earth. Their task now is enormous.

Back to my ‘just’ sentences over the last twenty-four hours.

Just because American Jews are terrified of historical context and believe that Israel is the only safety valve that will keep them safe in the future does not mean that everything Israel does is justified, and if anything, in my opinion, it keeps individual Jewish humans less safe in the world at large.

Just because this is an enormous diversionary explosion does not mean the media should stop pursuing accountability for the Epstein crimes. Two things can happen at once.

Just because we might not know anyone affected in Iran personally does not mean that it is not personal. We have to open up our minds enough to look at the individual stories coming out to make it personal. If anything, it should be personal.

The world is more complicated than it’s ever been. My brain is weary daily from the enormous amount of micro information plots that I seem to feel the need to put in front of it. Too much information is not a joke.

We are carrying a heavy load as history unfolds for the next generation right now. We don’t have to do it all, but we don’t get to do nothing just because there are so many things happening. That is the fear and that is their hope, those enemies around us, that we will do nothing because we will be too busy watching everything.

The people of Iran? I offer my apology and my assistance. Give me the list of what you need, and I will do it.