Wrestlers in a boxing ring

A Deadly Game

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April 12, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Imagine you and your buddy stop off at a grocery store. You wait in the driver’s seat while your buddy goes in to get a few drinks. A few minutes later, he comes running out of the store, hands stuffed in his poncho, but no drinks. As he settles into the passenger seat, you ask where are the drinks. Just go. Get out here, he urges. Both of you have had some minor scuffles with the law so you don’t ask. You go. Later, you are both arrested on suspicion of armed robbery. What neither of you know is that the security camera wasn’t working and the cops have no hard evidence.

You are taken into separate interrogation rooms. The detective and a district attorney enter the room. The detective offers you a deal. Confess to the crime and testify against your buddy and the police will let you off Scot free but your buddy will get ten years in prison. The detective cautions you that they are offering the same deal to your buddy, so you need to make a decision quickly. What if we both confess, you ask. The detective looks at the district attorney. Five years, the district attorney says. Your public defender asks, What if both of them act on their Constitutional right and remain silent? The district attorney reminds you of your record and assures you that they will get you on something that will probably keep you locked up for a year.

What do you do? Your strategy is to minimize your time in jail so the best tactic is to confess, hoping that you are the first to do so. A safe strategy would be to remain silent, take the year in jail, but that only works if your buddy cooperates and also remains silent. Otherwise, you get ten years in prison. So the default tactic is to confess, unless you trust your buddy. The game illustrates how people acting in their own best interest can achieve a worse outcome than cooperating with each other. In the 1950s, Albert Tucker first developed this scenario known as the prisoner’s dilemma as a concrete way to visualize a mathematical payoff matrix (Source). The RAND corporation later used it to illustrate the dilemmas of nuclear annihilation during the cold war between the United States and the USSR.

Under the anarchic system of international relations, there is no cop, no district attorney. Nations honor multi-lateral agreements out of necessity and advantage. Might makes right. While their leaders may give voice to moral principles, those principles are subordinate to the prime directive: survive. Survival was the primary motivation for the thirteen American colonies to join together under a new Constitution in 1787. In Federalist No. 11, Alexander Hamilton warned of the threats from the European nations who considered “the rest of mankind as created for her benefit,” referring to Europe as a unified threat. On the western and northern borders were the French, English and allied Indian nations. To the south were the Spanish and French. “Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!” (Source).

In his 2024 election campaign, Donald Trump evoked those Hamiltonian sentiments. Let America stay out of far-flung foreign wars to chase the dream of American empire at the expense of our republic. In a recent interview with former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, Professor Glenn Diesen noted that America First was a promise to consolidate our national interests, to preserve our republic over the dreams of empire (Source). To join with Israel in an unprovoked attack on Iran prompts the question, what happened to that idea? In short, religious zeal and paranoia.

The Trump administration has been infected with a Crusader passion that makes America look like the gigantic octopus in Jules Verne’s Twenty-thousand Leagues under the Sea” (Source – trivia). In a March 31st New York Times op-ed, Thomas Friedman noted that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth holds “extreme Christian nationalist beliefs” and that “In other words, it’s now our religious warriors against Iran’s” (Source).  Friedman could have included Israel in that coalition of religious warriors.

Because of Israel’s Proportional Representation election system, there are at least a dozen parties in the country. In such a system, common in some form in many European countries, people vote for a party, not a person. Each party that passes a minimum threshold percentage of the vote receives a proportional number of seats in the country’s parliamentary body, the Knesset (Source). Each of the two main parties, Likud and Labor, often forms alliances with minority groups to secure a 61 seat majority out of 120 seats. In cases where the majority advantage is slim, the loyalty of these minority groups is crucial and they are able to drive bargains that are out of proportion to their number in the general population. This means that a party with less than 10% of the vote might have non-negotiable demands that one of the major parties has to meet. When these demands are not met, those crucial votes are lost and Israel’s government collapses. New elections are called.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, Likud, often partners with religious extremist groups to secure a majority in Parliament. The primary group is called Shas and represents the Mizrahi/Sephardi ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews (Source). Like Muslims who believe that Sharia law should be followed instead of secular law, many ultra-Orthodox believe that Jewish religious law should be the law of Israel. Many support the illegal settlements in the West Bank as the return of the ancient kingdom of Judea in Biblical times. They insist on being excluded from mandatory military service, but support military action to achieve a goal. Some believe in the notion of a Greater Israel, a land that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, a land governed by Jews for the benefit of the Jewish inhabitants.

If the United States had a proportional system, the Evangelical Christians would probably form at least one minority party and have seats in Congress. In the United States our winner-take-all system favors just two formal parties which incorporate minority coalitions within each party. Like Likud, the Republican Party partners with evangelicals, promising to promote their causes in exchange for their vote (Note below). There is no Evangelical Christian Party but they do influence who serves in government. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, states strong Christian nationalist views and has two tattoos that evoke the imagery of the Crusades (Source). He believes in religious war as an existential battle between Christianity and Islam. President Donald Trump may have promised “no more foreign wars,” but chose Hegseth, a Medieval Crusader, to steer the country’s war machine.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatens the supply of oil, fertilizer and helium used in electronics manufacture. As critical components of the global economy, shortages in those materials may trigger a global recession or worse. Trump wants an exit from this dilemma, but the other prisoner in the dilemma is not Iran. It’s Israel. In this version of the game, Israel and the United States are not in separate rooms but fighters on a tag team in the same boxing ring (Note below). One fighter wants to declare a tie and fight another day, while the other is determined to fight on but can’t survive alone.

And on that cheery analogy, I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Claudia Raya on Unsplash

Note: The Democratic Party also partners with social justice groups like the ACLU and the NAACP. If the United States had a proportional representation system, these groups that focus on fairness, equality, and protection of human rights might form a Social Justice Party. If the Democratic majority in the House were slim, votes from the Social Justice Party would be critical to maintaining the majority. In our system, the influence is informal but it allows small groups to have a lot of policy leverage.

Note: The political scientist John Mearsheimer sometimes refers to the United States and Israel as a tag team.

America first, Americans last

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April 5, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

I keep a thought bin of ideas for articles, then weave some of them together into a single essay. Sometimes finding that thread is difficult. This week, I am going to write on an assortment of these ideas.

The Nonchalant President

In early March, President Trump was nonchalant about rising gas prices. In an interview with the Reuters international news agency, he said “if they rise, they rise” (Source). A lot of Americans who voted for America First didn’t bargain for Americans Last. To elites like Trump, born with a golden spoon, the concerns of everyday Americans are trivial. The only thing Trump wants is their vote. Then comes the betrayal.

Energy as a Weapon

Green energy is locally produced, which can make many countries less dependent on the major producers of oil. I think that is a major reason why President Trump dislikes green energy. The U.S. is the leading producer of oil (Source) and that gives our country a geopolitical edge. The Middle Eastern countries account for a third of global oil production, which gives them a great deal of geopolitical importance despite the fact that their combined population is only 380 million, slightly more than the U.S. alone. International relations is a chess game of power played by individual nation states. The more powerful states, particularly a regional hegemon like the U.S., want to maintain or increase their economic edge over other countries to preserve their dominance.

There are several examples of dominant powers who sabotaged production in other countries to preserve their economic dominance. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain imposed punishing tariffs on India’s textile industry so that India could not compete against Britain’s textile industry. Britain’s Navigation Acts mandated that British colonies could only trade using British ships. Britain actively suppressed manufacturing in its colonies, using them only as a source of raw goods which were finished by Britain’s own manufacturing industries. In 2010, China imposed restrictions on the export of rare earths, giving them effective control of key components of industrial production around the world (Source).

Strategic Power

Some of the president’s many miscalculations in the Iran War arise from a lack of appreciation for strategic power. Volume, not cunning or planning, appeals to him, so he engages in “bomb, baby, bomb” and “drill, baby, drill.” More, more, more is not always better. China controls production of most of the world’s rare earths, a key component in many electronics systems, including those of our military systems. When Trump threatened high tariffs on China last year, they threatened to choke off the supply of rare earths and he capitulated. Did he learn his lesson? No. Iran controls 20% of oil production that is shipped through the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow strip of water where Iran can destroy any oil tanker that does not play by Iran’s rules. Did Trump consider that? No. Strategic control of resources can be as powerful as a fleet of bombers.

Declining Leadership

President Trump has the attention span of a tweet and so his staff has to keep his daily security briefings short. His daily updates on the war consist of two-minute compilations of targets bombed (Source). This would not be unexpected in an adolescent. We should expect more from a grown man who is the leader of the most powerful country on the planet. Why have the American people put Biden and Trump, two doddering seniors, in such a position of power?

Sacrifice

More American soldiers have died in the Iran war than Israeli soldiers. It is the young who give up their lives in war, sacrificing many more years of life than the older men who commit them to that fight. The question of reinstituting the draft has come up. The 62-year old comic Rob Schneider thinks we should have a military draft (Source). He was 12 when the draft was ended and is not eligible for the draft at his advanced age so it is easy for him to be rah-rah about the draft. It would take an act of Congress to reinstitute the draft but Trump has shown a persistent ability to bypass the subservient Republican majority in Congress. In 2018, the CDC reported that the military considered 71% of eligible youth physically unfit for military service (Source). They have had trouble filling the ranks of a volunteer military service.

A Policy of War

As I wrote last week, we are “celebrating” 25 years of continual war. John Mearsheimer is a political scientist known for developing the theory of Offensive Realism. This theory focuses on states which are great powers, a state which is dominant in its region of the world. The U.S., China and Russia are examples of great powers. India, Japan the European Union are sometimes included. The theory claims that these great powers must maximize their power relative to other countries to ensure their survival.

The international system is anarchic, meaning that there is no central authority. In such an environment, a great power cannot know the intentions of other countries, so the safest course of action is to become as powerful as possible while preventing rival countries from gaining greater power. This leads states to compete aggressively, expand influence, and exploit opportunities to weaken other countries. This view sees international cooperation as a temporary aligning of opportunities because gains by one state are often at the expense of other states. Conflict is a structural feature of international relations. To demonstrate his point, Mearsheimer reminds us that the U.S. has been at war of some type since the end of World War 2. These include the Cold war with the U.S.S.R, or hot wars like Vietnam, Iraq, the Balkans, and Iran. He referred to the U.S. as a “crusader state” (Source – video).

The Ethics of War

On February 28th, the first day of the war against Iran, U.S. planes bombed a girl’s school, killing about 170 students. The incident happened because military leaders had used out of date maps and failed to double check before setting the targets. Trump was unconcerned about the deaths, absolving the U.S. for any responsibility. At first, he suggested that the Iranians might have been at fault. What I noticed was that signature shrug of his shoulders, indicating his casual dismissal of the deaths. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Access Hollywood tape recorded Trump saying he was entitled to grope women because he was a star (Source). Does his casual dismissal arise from that sense of entitlement? Trump dislikes rules and institutions. For him, there is only power. He has the same cold-blooded look of nihilism in his eye as the character Malcolm McDowell played in the 1971 movie Clockwork Orange.

Taking Back Power

Congress passes the laws but doesn’t deal with the consequences of their implementation. Perhaps if they did do more administration, they would write better laws or more readily modify those laws which they have written. In the 19th century, Congress took a more active role in administering the programs they enacted. The National Archives contain the records of Congressional committees that decided the pensions of soldiers, an administrative task now done by the Veterans Benefits Administration, a department of Veterans Affairs and part of the Executive branch (Source).

Searching for Truth

In grade school, we are presented with questions where there are many wrong answers but only one right answer. When was the Declaration of Independence? How much is 3 times 4? We get the answer.

In high school, we are presented with questions for which there are several “right” answers. In English class, students might be asked “Why did the character in this story make this decision?” In History class, they might be asked, “What was the primary cause of this war?” In Social Studies class, students might be asked, “Should an individual sacrifice for the greater good?” In a Science class, they might be asked, “How to best design this experiment to test this hypothesis?” We explore the answers.

In college, we study the methods of answering questions. These include the frameworks of investigation, various models and schools of interpretation, the types of evidence and which are more reliable. Lastly, we are asked to formulate our own question and design a method of answering that question, often having to explain why we chose that method. We create the questions.

In the comments to a well written essay on social media, I have noticed that the comments often neglect the reasoning we learned in high school. The writers of these comments seem to be stuck in grade school, believing that there is only one answer to complex social and political problems. Coincidentally, they have that one answer and are willing to share it in their comment! Yes, we are so grateful for your generosity and wisdom. And with that, I hope to see you next week.

Finally

P.S. check out this anime video of a solution to the immigration issue and have a chuckle.

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Photo by Nils Söderman on Unsplash

America at War

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March 29, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

This year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This year we mark, not celebrate, the 25th year of America At War. In those 25 years, we have sextupled the nation’s public debt from $6 trillion to $38 trillion to pay for our forever wars. Trump got elected a second time on the promise of keeping America out of foreign wars. He forgot to check with his puppet masters, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel lobby in America, before making that promise. That promise of putting America’s interests first swayed many marginal voters to cast a vote for Trump in 2024. Many must feel like gullible Charlie Brown, who never succeeded in kicking the football because Lucy kept yanking the ball away (Source).

Carl von Clausewitz (1780 – 1831) was a Prussian officer and military theorist who stated that “War is merely the continuation of policy with other means” (Source). The two primary negotiators for the U.S. are the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his close friend Steve Witkoff. Neither of them have any experience in international relations. Both men are pro-Israel and are likely to favor Israel’s economic and strategic interests in any negotiations with Iran. In 2024, Kushner advocated a policy of moving the Palestinians to the Negev desert and developing the Gaza strip as waterfront property (Source).  In 2025, Witkoff stated that he was working collectively with Netanyahu for the reconstruction of Gaza (Source). Netanyahu has said that Israel will take control of all of Gaza (Source). Clearly, both Kushner and Witner are negotiating for the best interests of Israel, not the U.S. Neither Kushner or Witner see little daylight between the interests of the U.S. and Israel.

Both the Israel lobby in America and the Christian Zionists believe in the restoration of the ancient kingdom of Israel as part of God’s plan. Some Evangelicals believe that this restoration will precede the Second Coming of Christ. This system of beliefs has been called Dispensationalism and includes the belief that the Bible should be taken literally and historically, that salvation only comes through Christ and that God has a plan for mankind that includes the restoration of the land of Israel (Source). Billionaire Miriam Adelson is a strong supporter of Israel’s interests, owns the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, and is aligned with Christian Zionists. She contributed over a $100 million to President Trump’s 2024 campaign and has been lauded by Israel’s Knesset (Source). In their 2010 Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court ruled that money is speech and constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. The elite can shape our domestic and foreign policy as they wish.

This year we also celebrate the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Smith is the most cited author in economics literature, according to Avner Offer and Gabriel Söderberg, authors of The nobel factor: The prize in economics, social democracy, and the market turn. Writing in an age of hard currencies like gold and silver, Smith observed that countries fund their wars by printing paper money instead of raising taxes. He suggested that having to raise taxes to pay for war would result in fewer wars. Unfortunately, it is the elite, the “princes,” as Smith called them, who push nations into war and the elite don’t want to pay higher taxes. Instead of paying taxes that would enhance the common welfare, they spend their money on political contributions to benefit the political elite and shape policy to their liking.

The U.S. has issued more and more debt to pay for the never ending wars. The global elite have bought that debt, trusting that the U.S. can always borrow more to pay its existing debt and the interest on that debt. Since the financial crisis in 2009, the ratio of federal tax receipts to its outstanding public debt has remained low, at 10% (Source). As economist Herb Stein said, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop” (Source). Trump’s erratic behavior, his past personal bankruptcies and his distaste for rules may cause investors to grow cautious and lighten their exposure to U.S. debt. It is no longer a risk-free instrument because Trump could, at any time, announce on his Truth Social platform that he is temporarily suspending interest payments on U.S. debt. Who will stop him? Not a paralyzed and fearful Republican majority in Congress. Not his servile cabinet members.

Despite Trump’s loyalty to his son-in-law and his friend, he wants an off-ramp from this conflict, an exit that allows him to save face. Netanyahu oversold him on the likelihood of a “shock and awe” strike that would result in a quick war. Instead, this is turning into a war of attrition that advantages Iran. After Friday’s losses on the stock market, the SP500 is now in correction territory, 10% from it’s all time highs a few months ago. Trump pays attention to the market. Will we see some positive steps to a resolution in the next week? I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Conflict and Deceit

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March 22, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

In our popular imagination, the Garden of Eden was a paradise but Genesis 2:15 says that God put Adam there to “dress it and to keep it.” Adam was the gardener, not some guy lounging around in paradise. A single act of disobedience, eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, earned Adam and his companion Eve a one-way ticket out of the Garden and into a world of hard work and conflict. Eve was punished even more harshly because she was to  endure “sorrow” in childbirth and be subject to her husband. In Chapter 4 of Genesis, Cain, one of the children of Adam and Eve, gets jealous of his brother Abel and kills him. This week I want to explore conflict and the ways that various cultures have tried to explain the origins of conflict.

Ancient philosophers and religious traditions were especially focused on origins. An origin lent authority and authenticity. The Greek philosopher Aristotle based his philosophical study on first causes. He was convinced that knowing a first cause would enable him to understand why things are the way they are. This focus on origin would lead Greek philosophers like Zeno (circa 390 B.C.E. to 320 B.C.E.) to a number of paradoxes that made it difficult or impossible to understand movement (Source). The one I am familiar with is the race between Achilles and a tortoise who is given a head start. If distances were infinitely divisible, Zeno argued that Achilles could not catch up to the tortoise. Many of these paradoxes were resolved by the invention of calculus almost two millennium later.

Greek mythology also contains an origin story for conflict that results from a single act, the opening of Pandora’s box. In the Bible account, Eve committed that first act. She was the dupe of the serpent who also sold used cars. In the Greek account, Pandora was the first woman created by the gods as a punishment for mankind (Source). Nope, I’m not making this stuff up. Pandora’s affliction was curiosity and yes, she passed down that disease to Galileo, Newton and Einstein. Poor lads. Anyway, Pandora opened up the box, or urn, and out came all the evils that afflict the world.

In the western tradition, women are the scapegoats for male philosophers and religious leaders who cannot admit that men are not inherently docile creatures. Freudian analysis continued that tradition, explaining that schizophrenogenic mothering  caused the violent havoc of schizophrenia. In his book Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky notes that this was still the dominant explanation for schizophrenia until the 1970s.

Helen of Troy was the primary cause of the Trojan War (1194 B.C.E. – 1184 B.C.E.) between the Greeks and Trojans, the ancestors of modern day Turks. Surely, it must have been a woman who caused Israel and the U.S. to cut off negotiations with Iran and attack the country three weeks ago. The Trump administration has given more than a dozen different explanations for why they started the war (Source). Trump has always blamed women for his troubles, so he might as well continue the tradition.

In Norse myth, it is a half-giant, half-god called Loki who ushers in conflict both here in the world and in the universe. In ancient Persia, now Iran, the prophet Zoroaster led a religious movement that emphasized belief in one God, Ahura Mazda. He taught that conflict was the result of an epic battle between good and evil, between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman (Source). The Bible contained no reference to a battle between good and evil until Judaic and Christian religious leaders reinterpreted a passage in the Book of Isaiah to tell the story of a rebellion of angels. In the 5th century A.D., the patriarch Augustine wove several Biblical passages into a story of a cosmic battle between good and evil, between God and Satan (Source below).

Revelation 12:09 refers to Satan as a deceiver, similar to the Nordic myth of Loki. Deceit is the second axis I want to explore this week. According to the Biblical account, mankind’s downfall was the result of the serpent’s deceit. Pandora’s opening of the box came about through self-deceit, that she could ignore warnings from her brother about what might be inside the box. Yet we are social creatures who rely on others to satisfy our wants and needs. To accomplish that, deceit is a useful tool.

Elena Hoicka, a professor at Bristol University led a study which found that some infants at ten months engage in deceptive practices like pretending not to hear or exaggerating. By the time we reach the age of three we are frequent deceivers (Source). Growing up Catholic and having to regularly confess my sins, I could confess to lying to my parents even if I could not remember lying to my parents. No, I didn’t hit my brother. I certainly did not steal my sister’s candy. Of course my homework was done so I could go out to play basketball. I didn’t hear that dinner was ready or I would have stopped playing baseball. No, I didn’t drink the last of the milk and forget to write it down on the grocery list.

Politicians elevate deception to an art. In the 2016 Republican debates, candidates with years of  experience in public life were astounded at the baldfaced lies that Trump told. Trump had made hundreds and thousands of deals and was worth many billions and blah, blah, blah. He was a frequent liar but an inartful liar. He lied about things that were easily checked. In politics, lying is an art, damn it! The Apprentice was a game show. Some voters thought it was Trump’s real resume. Lincoln didn’t get it. Politicians only need to fool some of the people a lot of the time.

Our most frequent act of deception is self-deception. On little evidence, President Bush and his staff convinced themselves that Iraq did have weapons of destruction. They then smothered any evidence contradicting that belief in presenting their case to the American public and the world. Such a commitment of force and resources requires more evidence than mere suggestions of a threat.

At the end of the 12-day war with Iran in June 2025,  President Trump announced that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been obliterated (Source). In a June 25th press release, the White House maintained that the word “obliterate” was the proper term (Source). Deception or self-deception  or both? Yet, eight months later, Iran was supposedly two to four weeks away from deploying a nuclear weapon (Source video). Is there some other interpretation of the word obliterate?

Israeli and U.S. intelligence have two separate criteria for what constitutes a nuclear weapon. Israel’s Mossad classifies any crude nuclear device that Iran might produce as a nuclear weapon. U.S. intelligence has a stricter definition. It must be a deliverable nuclear device (Source). President Trump will not state that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is deciding U.S. military strategy in the Middle East because that makes him look weak. Netanyahu is a skillful politician who  wanted U.S. involvement to maintain military dominance in the Middle East. Trump is both inexperienced and very much influenced by the billionaire donors of the Israeli lobby like Miriam Adelson, who donated more than a $100 million to his 2024 campaign (Source).

We engage in deceit as a tool to resolve or avoid conflict. I wanted to play basketball while it was still daylight, so I lied about the homework. I could always sneak upstairs and do my homework after it got dark. No harm, no foul. Even as the stakes are raised, we use those same justifications as adults. Why not? That kind of thinking has worked for us in the past and we are practiced masters of self-deception.

Pandora’s brother had warned Pandora that the box, a gift from Zeus, was dangerous because Zeus was not to be trusted. She was different, of course. Zeus wouldn’t do that to her. When Helen fell in love with Paris and followed him to Troy, she didn’t think her husband, King Menelaus, would actually start a war to get her back.

President Trump has fired any advisors who didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. The war on Iran would be over in a few days, just like the downfall of Venezuela’s Maduro. Sometimes, our deceit invites an escalation of conflict. How to deceive the American public leading up to a midterm election? If only politicians put as much care into governing as they do in covering up their deceit. I hope to see you next week and I am not lying about that.

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Photo by Chris Sabor on Unsplash

Coogan, M. D. (Ed.). (2018). The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (5th ed.). Oxford University Press. (See commentary on Isaiah 14:4–21.) The reference to the King of Babylon as the “light-bearer” was reinterpreted to mean Satan. The serpent in the Garden of Eden became Satan after a reference in Revelation 12.

The War President

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March 15, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

This week I watched the blinking numbers on the fuel pump as I filled up with gas. $1 per gallon more than it was on February 26. Last year we had to get used to paying higher prices because of the Trump import tax. Now there is the Trump gas tax. I look over at the diesel pump. Almost $5 a gallon, up from $3.80 a few weeks ago. A semi holds about 150 gallons, far more than my Subaru. That gas tax will factor into price increases for groceries each week. The higher price for oil has been a boon for Russia, whose oil revenues had been declining in 2025. Russia produces 10% of the world’s daily consumption and exports 80% of that (Source). For those of us filling up at that gas station, it was like we were putting money in Putin’s pocket, ammo for him to kill more Ukrainians.

I hung up the gas nozzle and got in the car. On the radio, a reporter asked, “Senator, can you comment on the rising price of gas and the effect it has on the budgets of everyday working Americans?” The senator answered with a mantra “short term pain for long term gain.” Some clever marketing geek in Republican Spin Central thought up the slogan, then broadcast it to every conservative media outlet. Republican politicians downloaded the phrase into their brains so that they had a quick answer to an uncomfortable question. Democrats have a similar mechanism but are not as disciplined in their messaging.

In the 2015 and 2016 Republican debates, Trump was the outsider candidate. His every response broadcast skepticism and anger at the political system. Obama had made a bad deal when he negotiated the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA (Source). Trump had made deals all over the world and he would get a better deal. The Iraq war was a huge mistake. He attacked candidate Jeb Bush for supporting his brother’s bonehead decision to go to war and the lies he told in the lead up to the war (Source). Trump, the greatest Presidential liar of all time, calling out a former President for lying. We need a younger Trump to debate the old Trump and call him out for this stupid war.

In the book of Genesis, Chapter 22, God tells Abraham to take his son, Isaac, up to a mountaintop and sacrifice him to show his fealty. Abraham did so. Did he think “short term pain,” the death of his son, for “long term gain,” the fealty of a powerful God? Why would the thought of such a sacrifice even come into Abraham’s head? In Chapter 17, God had told Abraham that He would make a covenant with Isaac. Did Abraham remind God of that earlier promise? Hey, God we had a deal. At that point, Abraham was at least a hundred years old and Isaac could have easily refused to submit. Best not to analyze these stories because they are stories, like the many stories that Trump and his team have told about the reasons for getting into this war.

Rubio said that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the driver’s seat on this one (Source). How to make sense of this escapade? There was little consideration given to the consequences. Trump seems to be the leader of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Reminiscent of other laughable failures like Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage (Source). There’s a rumor that Netanyahu has evidence of Trump’s escapades with Jeffrey Epstein and is holding that as a threat over Trump’s head. Oh, now it all makes sense.

Several thousand years ago, people believed that what happened in the material world was the result of spiritual forces and gods. If this war were the result of a feud between the Greek gods Athena and Ares, then it would all make sense, of course. Pete Hackysack, the Defense Secretary, or as he likes to be called, The Secretary of War, certainly personifies Ares, the Greek god of war in all its fury and chaos (Source). But wait, Athena was the goddess of wisdom and strategic war (Source). This is not a strategic war by any stretch of the imagination, so how could Athena be involved? “Tonight we speak with an expert who is doubtful that wise Athena has a hand in this ill planned war. Our second guest this evening will be a Jewish scholar who claims that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is guided by the hand of Athena towards the final apocalypse and Israel’s victory.” The news media loves to cover the controversy. Political analysis would be much more entertaining if we adopted a spiritualist interpretation of current events.

Meanwhile, several thousand people have died in this war so far. They are the Isaacs, the sacrificial lambs not to some chieftain God of the Old Testament, but offerings to appease the vanity and folly of our leaders. I hope to see you next week when the price of gas goes up yet again.

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Image by ChatGPT

The Legend of Donald Trump

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March 8, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

In a familiar Hollywood plot, a loner comes to a sleepy western town. He harbors some dark secrets from the Civil War and prefers to be left alone (Source). He wants someone to tend to his horse plus a good meal and a room for the night. While eating in the saloon he is interrupted by a bully who challenges him. Or maybe the bully gets physical with one of the saloon girls. The bully makes some aggressive action to the loner and the loner either knocks him out or wounds him with a gunshot. The townsfolk are scared because the bully’s gang will come back and do terrible things.

“Where’s the sheriff?” the loner asks. The gang killed the old sheriff, one of the terrified town folk tell him. So the loner becomes the new sheriff. It’s a job he is reluctant to accept, but no one else can take care of the problem. Eventually, the loner is forced to defend himself and kill the gang’s boss and the rest of the gang because the loner is fast with a gun. President Trump fancies himself as the new sheriff in town. The town, in this case, is the world. For his efforts, Trump expects to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Billions of us around the world are extras in Trump’s fantasy western, the Legend of Trump.

Shortly after taking office for the second time as the sheriff, Trump had to get rid of many of the gang members, i.e. federal employees, who worked in Washington. Many of these people were engaged in helping others, a criminal activity that Sheriff Trump vowed to stamp out. Employees who helped Americans during natural emergencies (FEMA) were part of the gang. People providing services for veterans (Veterans Affairs) or helping provide medical aid to those in poor countries (USAID) were part of the gang and were cut (Source). For that task, Sheriff Trump turned to Chainsaw Muskrat who promised to carve off the fat like a Wisconsin woodcutter carves a tree trunk into a statue of an American eagle. Turns out the Muskrat was about as artistic as a beaver chewing a tree trunk. Then the Muskrat left Washington, taking his chainsaw with him.

Next the new sheriff rid the town of brown skinned varmints who took jobs away from God- fearing townsfolk. They were worse than horse thieves. They were stealing social benefits. The sheriff had ‘em rounded up and put in cattle pens in Texas. Next he sent his posse to the town of Venezuela to capture the gang leader Machete Maduro and throw him in a Brooklyn jail where other notorious criminals had waited for the firm hand of justice.

For decades no one had been able to bring peace to the Middle East. The violence and hatred was worse than the range wars between cattlemen and sheepherders in the 19th century. This time the sheriff gathered up a big posse with lots of dynamite that they could hurl down from the sky. Ka-boom. They took out the gang leader Ayatollah and some of his henchmen. The townsfolk in Iran danced with joy. “You’re welcome,” the sheriff told them as he rode off with his posse, the sunset casting an orange glow on the sheriff’s face.

This is the Legend of Donald Trump who brought law and order to the wild frontier. I hope to see you next week for another thrilling episode.

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Image by ChatGPT

An Urgent Situation

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March 1, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

This Friday marked the 93rd anniversary of the burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin, the home of Germany’s Weimar Parliament. A month earlier, Adolph Hitler had been elected Chancellor, the Chief Executive in Germany’s Parliamentary system. In the aftermath of the fire, police found a communist sympathizer who was accused of starting the fire. The following day, Hitler urged President von Hindenburg to issue an emergency decree granting Hitler extraordinary powers to prevent a communist takeover of the German government. The decree suspended Constitutional liberties like freedom of speech and assembly, guarantees of private communications and protections from arrest. Within weeks, political opponents were arrested, press freedoms were crushed, and the constitutional order hollowed out (Source). The “emergency” ended twelve years later after the utter destruction of Germany and the deaths of as many as 8.8 million German soldiers and civilians (Source). This week I want to explore the many meanings of emergency.

A hospital emergency room treats conditions with many degrees of urgency. The Latin word emergere refers to anything that comes up suddenly. When they are busy, emergency room doctors perform triage, an assessment of the urgency of a condition or illness. Many years ago, I slipped on the ice and dislocated my shoulder. Urgent? The nurse glanced at my eyes, then held up two fingers. How many? Two, I said. What day is today? Friday, I answered. No concussion. Have a seat. I waited in pain for over three hours in an emergency room in the Bronx, while doctors treated knife stabbings, gun shot wounds, heart attacks, and other conditions deemed more urgent than a dislocated shoulder. I was surprised to learn that neither the degree of my pain nor the short time it would take to fix the problem was a consideration to the doctors and nurses that night. Learning lesson: do not get hurt.

In 1787, a Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia to resolve a financial crisis. The country could not pay its bills, or make payments on the war debt it had sustained through the eight year war for independence from Britain. Foreign investment had slowed to a trickle. Because each state issued its own currency, foreign investors were subject to currency risk and volatile exchange rates. The federal government had no power to directly tax businesses or people and states often neglected to meet their share of payment for war debts, weakening the credit of the colonies. Congress had no power to regulate commerce so the states fought among themselves for control of interstate waterways. In 1786, several months before the convention, four thousand people rose up to protest Massachusetts’ tax laws. This uprising, known as Shay’s Rebellion, demonstrated the need for a new compact among the states (Source). The acronym SNAFU was invented during World War 2, but the term aptly describes post-independence America. Despite these crisis conditions, the Constitution does not contain any reference to emergency, crisis or exigency (Source).

Hitler’s seizure of power in Weimar Germany raises issues of constitutional design. How does a country respond to a genuine crisis without empowering political leaders with the power to destroy constitutional order? In Federalist No. 70, Alexander Hamilton argued for a unitary executive, a President who could swiftly marshal resources in case of an attack from a foreign power. In response to insurrections like Shay’s Rebellion, Hamilton wanted a President who could restore domestic civil order (Source).

Carl Schmitt (1888 – 1985), a German conservative judge, argued in his 1922 book Political Theology that emergencies reveal the political structure underlying the ordinary norms in a country. He wrote that, in actuality, the sovereign is the person that decides when the rules can be broken (Source). Robert Bork (1927 – 2012) was a strong proponent of what is called the unitary executive, a President who has supreme power in the executive branch. According to Bork, Congress has no constitutional power to limit the President’s executive powers (Source).

The conservative justices on the Supreme Court have decided several recent cases that support this expanded power, rejecting the idea that Congress can impose limits on a President’s ability to hire and fire officers in the executive branch. This year the court will decide whether to overturn the court’s 1936 precedent set in Humphrey’s Executor and allow President Trump to fire the head of the Federal Trade Commission (Source). What is the limit of that executive power? Can a President fire the head of the Federal Reserve and install someone who supports the President’s political agenda? Can a President declare an emergency and invoke extraordinary powers? What is the limit of executive authority?

In France’s Constitution, Article 16 allows the President of France to assume exceptional powers when the normal functioning of government is interrupted. Should the U.S. amend its Constitution to give some clarity to what an emergency is? If there were such an amendment,  could the President suspend habeus corpus and other liberties when the Federal Government has a shutdown because of a budget fight in Congress? He could claim that the government is not functioning normally and take control. The U.S. relies on a political tension between the three branches of government rather than an explicit constitutional clarification of what constitutes an emergency.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, arguing that the rebellion by the southern states made such a violation of individual liberty a necessity. Shortly after his inauguration in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a national emergency and temporarily closed banks. Did Roosevelt have such a statutory power? Three days later, a Democratic Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act, effectively ratifying Roosevelt’s emergency decree. In 1952, in the midst of the Korean War, President Truman responded to a steelworker’s strike by declaring an emergency in which he nationalized the steel industry. Within two months, the Supreme Court ruled that he had exceeded his authority (Source).

In 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act to check a President’s discretion to declare open-ended emergencies. According to the Act, the President must specify which statutory power they invoked during an emergency. Secondly, either house of Congress could unilaterally vote to end the emergency. Seven years later, in INS v. Chadha, the Supreme Court invalidated that unilateral power as unconstitutional (Source). After that decision, Congress had to pass a joint resolution subject to Presidential veto and a two-thirds majority to override that veto. With little effective oversight from Congress, any president could declare an emergency. Checks and balances be damned.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a national emergency and claimed certain statutory powers under the National Emergencies Act. In April 2025, President Trump declared an emergency, not in response to a terrorist attack, but to persistent trade imbalances. What was the emergency? The need for Trump to exercise a discretionary power over other countries as he had done with contestants on the reality show The Apprentice. This month, the Supreme Court decided that Trump had exceeded his authority.

Emergency powers rarely disappear on their own. Once activated, they tend to be normalized. The extraordinary becomes routine. Surveillance powers expand. Administrative discretion widens. Political rhetoric justifies urgency. Democratic societies must be on guard against the temptations of power and the possibility of abuse. They must question whether the policy response is proportional to the danger and how long the response should last.

Constitutional safeguards cannot rely solely on the good faith of leaders. There must be effective institutional boundaries to check the desire for power. An executive can act with decisiveness in a true emergency but decisiveness has to be balanced with restraint or a country descends into autocracy. We want to tame rather than eliminate emergency power. I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Aconitum on Unsplash

People and their Rights

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February 22, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

On Friday, the Supreme Court announced its decision that President Trump’s tariffs had exceeded the bounds of his authority. Trump has declared that, as President, he has a right to do anything he wants if he thinks it is in the best interests of the United States (Source). Alex Pretti was trying to shield a woman protesting ICE immigration enforcement when he was shot down by border patrol officers (Source). Newly elected mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani supports the principle that everyone has a right to decent, quality housing (Source). We use the word right to describe a broad set of claims. This week I want to explore the concept of rights.

President Trump claims an authority rather than a right. An authority is attached to a person’s job, or their role in society. Alex Pretti was exercising his First Amendment right at a protest in Minneapolis. Video of the incident shows that his posture to ICE agents was defensive. He was carrying a handgun, thereby exercising his Second Amendment right, but made no move toward his weapon. In wrestling Pretti to the ground, an agent discovered the weapon, yelled that Pretti had a gun, then threw the gun away from the scuffle. Another agent a few steps away shot Pretti in the back several times. The agents clearly did not recognize Pretti’s First or Second Amendment rights.

Both the First and Second Amendment are considered first generation rights. These arerights that prohibit or restrain the government and its agents from taking certain actions. The rest of the Bill of Rights except the Sixth and Seventh have similar characteristics. Some background. A few weeks after President Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, nations around the world met in San Francisco to create a framework for a United Nations (Source). A few weeks after that conference, Germany signed a final surrender on May 8, 1945, known today as V.E. Day. Several months later Japan surrendered and the United Nation was formally created on October 24, 1945.

In 1948, the U.N. issued a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or UDHR, in which they recognized five categories of rights, civil and political, followed by social, economic and cultural (Source). These categories were familiar to political scientists and sociologists but this was the first time that an international body had recognized them. Like the First Amendment, it recognized the natural rights of speech and religious belief, the first generation rights. It also recognized a freedom from want and a freedom from fear that President Franklin Roosevelt included in his State of the Union speech on January 6, 1941 (Source). These are second and third generation rights.

As I noted above, civil and political rights are considered first generation rights. They protect private citizens from government interference and are called negative rights (Source). The first amendment, for example, states that the government shall not prohibit or abridge the freedom of speech. These are restraining verbs. First generation rights assumed that all people had certain natural freedoms, like the freedom of speech and worship. They had a right to privacy from government snooping. The government does not have to provide these freedoms to individuals because they are assumed to exist. Some people insist that these natural rights come from God.

A person might have a right to free speech but the government does not have to provide a printing press to each person. That would be what is called a positive right. The last three rights, social, economic and cultural, are considered second generation rights. They are positive rights stipulating what the government should or must provide. Education is an example. It is difficult to make a direct case for a natural right to public education but human rights organizations advocate for a right to education as an issue of equality, considered a natural law of civic society. The Equal Rights Trust, based in London, has published a guide on how to compose such arguments (Source). However, conservative judges in the U.S. have a distaste for litigation involving economic rights, considering them non-judiciable and best left up to the legislative and executive branches of government (Source).

Second and third generation rights become judiciable when they involve constitutional first generation rights. In a 2020 decision in McGirt v Oklahoma, the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Government had never formally disestablished the reservation of the Creek Indians in eastern Oklahoma. That meant that the Creek Indian Reservation had jurisdiction over certain criminal cases, not the state of Oklahoma. The court’s recognition of the 1833 Treaty set a precedent for the sovereignty of other tribes as well. The case was decided on a 5-4 vote when the conservative Justice Gorsuch sided with the four liberal justices on the court. Recognition is the other axis I want to explore this week.

Rights must be recognized. If Gorsuch had agreed with his fellow conservatives, the vote would have gone against the Indians and for the state of Oklahoma. Institutional recognition depends on the ideologies and sympathies of key human beings within an institution. Rights are fragile wisps of thought smoke. Without formal recognition by institutions with power, there are no rights.

Notice that first generation rights generally save the government money because they stipulate that a government not take action. Second generation rights cost the government money since they call for the government to provide certain material comforts. Third generation rights are international accords, or what some call international law (Source). Because there is no central body to enforce international law, these rights depend on cooperation between nations. President Trump has indicated that he doesn’t need international law because he has his own morality and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone (Source). What of the  75 to 100 killed in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro? (Source) What of the hundreds or thousands of civilians at risk if the U.S. attacks Iran? (Source) Like many leaders who counts the loss of human lives, there is a great deal of discounting included in the count.

The words of the Declaration of Independence recognized an equality that was contradicted by the realities of political rights in the colonies in 1776. The words of the Declaration stated that “that all men are created equal” but those sentiments were merely a composite of popular sentiments, Jefferson wrote (Source). In the latter part of the 18th century, idealist sentiments had to exist within a class system familiar to the founding generation. The rationalist aspirations expressed in the Declaration were goals, not descriptions of political, economic and social life at the time. Perhaps we can read the sentiments of the United Nations’ UDHR with the same understanding.

Excluded from the union of all men were women, those without property, indentured servants, Indians and slaves. In most states, only white men with property who paid taxes were allowed to vote. Over 200 years, these excluded groups were awarded political rights. During the four decades after the Constitution was written in 1787, most states dropped the property qualification for men over 21 to vote.

For many decades, women lobbied for suffrage. Women’s rights activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony felt that the 15th Amendment granting the vote to black males but not women was an insult to all women. The argument against women voting was that a wife or unmarried daughter would vote however her husband or father told her. This effectively gave married men and men with children an unfair advantage over single men and childless men. In a representative republic, that just wouldn’t be fair, would it? If this reasoning doesn’t make sense to you, it’s because you are living in the 21st century.

In 1857, when the Dred Scott case came before the court, Roger Taney, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, thought that he could end the decades-long disagreements over slavery and the rights of slaves. In Taney’s reading of history, slaves had no standing to sue. Six other justices agreed with Taney. In writing the majority opinion, Taney stated, “When the Constitution was adopted, [negroes] were not regarded in any of the States as members of the community which constituted the State, and were not numbered among its ‘people or citizens’” (Source). Case dismissed.

But Taney went further, despite two justices in the majority who urged him to keep it simple. Taney wrote that when the Constitution was written, negroes were regarded as “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Ouch, an ignominious sentiment that anti-slavery advocates like Thaddeus Stevens used to tarnish Taney’s reputation. But Taney wasn’t done. His reading of historical jurisprudence convinced him that Congress had no constitutional right to prohibit slavery in Federal territories acquired from the French after the Constitution was written. The decision nullified Congress’ legislative power in this regard. Instead of rendering the issue of slavery moot, the Dred Scott decision made it clear to many in the north that civil war was the only way to tame the rebellious southern states. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 made it clear to those in the south that secession was the only remedy. The Dred Scott decision demonstrates that some questions can not be resolved by judicial decree.

In 1973, the court recognized a right to privacy in the Fourteenth Amendment and that right  justified the court’s ruling that state laws prohibiting abortion were unconstitutional. At the time, 36 states had laws prohibiting or restricting abortion. Justice Ruth Ginsburg, an advocate for women’s rights, thought the decision was too hasty. Twenty years later, President Clinton appointed her to the Supreme Court. Fifty years later, a decidedly conservative court overturned that recognition.

Rights do not exist on some separate plane of existence. They must be recognized by civic institutions. Recognition is an evolving process, not a fixed point in time. It must be maintained and nurtured.Throughout our lives, we must fight to maintain our rights or to win official recognition of other rights that we think are intrinsic to the human experience. I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

The Doer and the Deed

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February 15, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

The game show Jeopardy! features contestants who can memorize vast catalogs of facts, react with split-second timing, and manage to remain charming under pressure. When they answer correctly, they are rewarded with applause and game points. When they miss, the game’s host rarely says, “Wrong!” He uses a short and gentle “No” before moving on to another contestant for the correct answer. It is a small distinction, but not a trivial one. “No” is a neutral acknowledgement of the error in the answer. “Wrong” feels closer to correcting the person. This week I want to explore several shades of wrong.

There are wrong answers. Some are entirely wrong; others are nearly right. In school, one teacher may award partial credit; another may not. A student might miss a problem by a sign error or by misreading a date. The final answer is incorrect but the student’s methodology is sound. Students should be developing their problem solving abilities, not regurgitating answers.

On the other hand, the inclusiveness of the K-12 education system requires a certain degree of industrialization. These include efficient methods like multiple choice tests which can be graded quickly. Answers are either correct or incorrect, a binary framework that is at odds with the problems and choices that students will make throughout their adult lives. Students are not rewarded for recognizing subtleties that confuse a distinction between two choices. Too often, our schools do not make the time to explore these distinctions because the schools themselves must meet certain curriculum standards.

One of the mysteries of any language is why we use the same word to describe entirely different phenomenon. Language itself is a deception. The word wrong describes a misplaced decimal on a math test and the killing of a small child.

We are often guilty of judging others using a binary scale. They are wrong or they are not. When we judge ourselves, however, the edges blur. We were almost right. We lacked the data. Our timing was off. Circumstances interfered. Our error was circumstantial. When others are wrong, it says something about their character.

Economists and financial analysts are famous for this subtle dance. The forecast failed not because they were wrong, but because new variables emerged. They offer their predictions in a confident manner then disregard their errors. Instead, they shift their explanations. The model was sound, but the inputs changed. The thesis was correct, but the market behaved irrationally. Being wrong is reframed as being early, or misinformed, or misunderstood. Most economists failed to predict the 2008 financial crisis because their mathematical models regarded money as neutral. According to Wharton finance professor Franklin Allen, the models “failed to account for the critical roles that banks and other financial institutions play in the economy” (Source).

In his 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman distinguished two types of reasoning. The first is fast and intuitive, able to generate a coherent story from limited information. Despite the thin evidence, the coherence of the story gives us confidence in the story. Not only are we inclined to make errors in forming these quick impressions, but we feel certain while doing so. The discomfort of discovering we were wrong threatens that internal narrative coherence. It is easier to revise the story than to accept that we misjudged it.

Children are especially prone to fast thinking because the capacity for slow, deliberative thinking takes time to mature. We have to learn sustained attention, abstract reasoning, and an impulse control to check our first impressions. Secondly, a child’s ego boundaries are porous. There is often little distinction between what they do and who they are. An incorrect answer does not merely indicate a mistake but an indictment of a child’s identity. “I got it wrong” becomes “I am wrong.” A hurried or impatient remark from a teacher can seal that association. The act and the person committing the act become fused together in a child’s mind.

Part of growing into adulthood is learning how to separate the act and the agent. We learn to distance ourselves from our mistakes as we grow older. We distance our present self from the self we were twenty years ago to help reconcile our mistakes. Our fifty year old self groans at some of the choices we made when we were twenty. We tell ourselves that mistakes are part of our growing process. A child is more likely to feel shame for the error, to feel exposed and vulnerable. Being wrong may feel as though one’s self is diminished. Even worse is the feeling of being a fraud, as though the child has been deceiving others. Deception is the other axis I want to explore this week.

Is deception wrong? Like so many of the topics I discuss each week, this question does not have a yes or no answer. Within the confines of a game, deception is a strategy. This is true in poker, in football, and in politics. In The Prince, Machiavelli wrote that rulers should be like foxes, masters of deception. In a democracy, politics is a team sport which requires some deception. Politicians often broadcast the talking points of their party’s leadership. Only in the waning days of their political career do they share their private thoughts with the public.

However, deception requires craft. President Trump uses a different strategy, tossing out exaggerations and lies like nuggets of fool’s gold. The greatest economy in the history of the country, the greatest deregulation, the greatest blah, blah, blah. Deception implies disguise. There is no disguise here. Just a shot gun shower of exaggerated and false claims. Liberal media organizations pick up each nugget, examine it and reveal the fact that there is no gold! Conservative media attacks not the claims themselves, but the methods and assumptions of liberal media organizations. It’s a media melee like the closing section of the 1974 comedic movie Blazing Saddles, but this is not a comedy. These are adults with the power to change or destroy lives.

In his book Determined: A science of life without free will, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky (2023, pg. 388) writes that our capacity for self-deception helps us cope with the capacity for understanding truths about life like our own mortality. According to evolutionary biologists, self-deception can be a survival strategy. We are social animals. If we can convince ourselves of something, it makes the task of convincing others much easier. If we refuse to admit error to ourselves, we can convince others that we did not commit an error. I couldn’t have done something as stupid as a misplaced decimal point on that answer. No, my pencil must have broke while I was writing out the answer and the pencil made a stray mark in the wrong place. We smooth out the edges of our narrative then present it to others. We are not deceivers, but craftsmen polishing a story to bring out its luster.

A newspaper may carry a misleading advertisement in the middle of an article debunking a politician’s claim. Media outlets claim that they are common carriers. They are merely hosts selling space to advertisers. They are not responsible for the content of the advertising unless expressly illegal like advertising that promotes illegal drug use. They disavow any association between their hard hitting journalism and the dubious claims made by their advertisers. Is that a deception?

Why do people get into politics? The belief that they can do some good is one reason. People do not agree on good policy though and that leads to a bitter and divided politics. Helping the poor? One side believes that it is good policy, that it is right. Leviticus 19:10 of the Bible says that we should leave some of the grape harvest for the poor. The other side says that helping the poor is not a duty for the federal government so such programs are bad policy, that it is wrong. They are betrayals of the Constitution. They cause harm to the poor by making them dependent on charity. When a government takes from one person and gives to another, that is a forced charity, a moral offense.

Why do we have a low tolerance for being wrong? If we could tolerate being factually incorrect, we might be less inclined to use deception. We might hear a politician say, “I was mistaken,” or an economist admit, “My assumptions were wrong.” We might build a greater trust in public figures. Being wrong is inevitable yet the experience of being wrong is intolerable for some of us. A simple error becomes a moral failure we when we try to cover up the error. To admit we were wrong requires a confidence in our identity. Perhaps that is the ultimate self-deception, the failure to admit that we don’t have confidence in who we are. Something to think about and I hope I will see you next week.

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Photo by Volodymyr Yarossvit on Unsplash

Being Careful

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February 8, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

In the AFC championship game between the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots, the Broncos scored in the first quarter (Source). On a subsequent possession, the Broncos were deep in Patriots territory and chose to run a 4th and short yardage rather than take an easy field goal. They were unsuccessful and turned the ball over to the Patriots at that point. To many fans, the decision seemed reckless. Why turn down an easy field goal in the early part of the game? As the weather turned ugly in the 2nd half of the game, that field goal represented the difference in the final score, Patriots 10 – Broncos 7. This week I want to explore the theme of careful. In sports as in life, we must take calculated risks. When are we too careful or not careful enough?

A high school graduate may decide to take a job offer rather than continue their education. In the short term, this can be a prudent decision. Presumably, that person gains some financial and emotional stability as they begin to build a career. But data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that the time, effort and cost to earn a college degree has a better long-term outcome. Which is the more careful decision? It depends on the time frame.

The 2008 financial crisis exposed a Ponzi scheme with an estimated market value of $65 billion. The mastermind of the scheme was Bernie Madoff, whose securities firm helped develop the digital quotation market that became NASDAQ. Madoff also ran an investment advisory firm that employed the Ponzi scheme. For about thirty years, Madoff issued statements to his clients showing consistent returns of 10 – 12%. He achieved these abnormally consistent returns using a proprietary risk and timing strategy based on his long experience in the stock market. At least that’s what his clients believed. His scheme lasted so long because he was careful. Despite that carefulness, the scheme unwound in late 2008 and Madoff went to jail.

Joe McCarthy was a Republican Senator in the post-war period who rode a wave of Communist fear. Like Donald Trump, he drew attention by making unsubstantiated claims against prominent people. In a 1950 address, McCarthy claimed to have a list of Communists who were working in the State Department. A Senate subcommittee determined that McCarthy’s claims were a hoax but his claims gained credibility when a former State Department employee, Alger Hiss, was convicted of lying about his Communist associations during the 1930s (Source, Source). For three years, McCarthy led a Senate committee that investigated hundreds of people. The committee found not one Communist but ruined the careers of many in government and the media (Source). Casting about for a likely target, McCarthy turned his sights on the Army in 1954. This showdown was carried on the TV networks where the public witnessed his bullying tactics, his reckless accusations and his fondness for drink. McCarthy was politically marginalized and died three years later from cirrhosis of the liver. He was only 48.

Donald Trump has not made careful investing decisions with the money that his father gave all his children while they were growing up. He has branded himself as a builder but often leaves the building and management to other companies. Before becoming President, Trump’s role as the star of a reality show was his chief accomplishment. That, and a showy, gilt-edged product known as the Trump brand. His poor financial decisions led to six bankruptcies. Nearing 70 in 2015, his losses and reckless spending had made him a pariah to banks (Source). His 2016 run for the Presidency was a long shot with little chance of success but guaranteed to keep his name in the news.

Trump’s cruel comments and behavior drew media attention in a crowded field of Presidential candidates. The Bush administration had spent eight years “spinning” the Iraq war. Spin was a euphemism for the carefully constructed blather from Washington that was designed to cover up policy failures and judgment errors. The Obama administration had spun the government’s response to the financial crisis and the passage of Obamacare. The public was skeptical of carefully chosen words and chose a candidate that shunned political convention.

Some of us make careful choices in our diets and living habits yet we still get cancer, arthritis and other diseases. On average, careful choices should protect us from harm. A feeling of betrayal descends on us when we are diagnosed with a debilitating or life threatening disease despite our carefulness. McCarthy drank too much and died of cirrhosis. That makes sense. Cause and effect. Random events frighten us. Getting heart disease despite prudent lifestyle choices makes no sense. Being diagnosed with arthritis at the age of 30 seems like a cruel prank.

Where is the dividing line between careful and timid? We may have a caution that is inappropriate to the risk involved. A teenage boy may not ask someone out for fear that they will be rejected. Most of our parents and grandparents who grew up during the Great Depression have died. Many never bought a stock or mutual fund during their lives. The 1929 stock market crash and subsequent Depression had taught them that stocks were dangerous. Careful investors put their money in guaranteed savings accounts. They bought a house, CDs or government bonds.

The other avenue I want to explore are institutions. I have been talking about the degree of carefulness that individuals have, but we create institutions that feature carefulness, or the lack of it. A pass receiver who throws himself through the air to catch a football, then gets slammed by a defender, is not being careful. From the safety of our couch, we enjoy that practiced lack of carefulness. Two boxers face each other, each being careful to avoid a punch from their opponent. However, to throw an effective punch, a boxer must let his guard down for a moment, effectively reducing his level of carefulness. It is a dance of alternating defense and offense with split second timing.

Nations build a military to protect their sovereignty. Smaller nations seek alliances with larger powers, being careful not to threaten a nation dominant in their region. The political scientist John Mearsheimer has argued that an eastward expansion of NATO, the U.S.-European defense alliance, was a threat to Russia. In the late 1990s, Putin stated that position clearly to President Clinton. Despite those warnings, U.S. and European nations have continued that expansion (Source). Is the war in Ukraine the result of a lack of carefulness? A cause of many wars can be attributed to a miscalculation of risks and response.

There are many industries where careful precision is critical. The computer industry is probably the ultimate in precision manufacturing. The foundation of the legal profession is a precision with words. Lawyers draft contracts with a string of verbs that are near synonyms. An example of a verb string in a contract is sell, assign, transfer, convey, or dispose of. Lawyers do this to close loopholes in the interpretation of two words with similar but not exact meanings. Often lawmakers use wiggle room words like reasonable in order to secure some legislative consensus. Lawyers and judges must then apply these broad terms to specific cases. When there is conflict in interpretation, the Supreme Court becomes the final arbiter of how the term should be applied.

The Supreme Court has three levels of scrutiny. This describes how carefully they read a government statute which has an impact on individual freedom or rights. The most careful approach is strict scrutiny. The government has to show a compelling interest and that the law is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. Most arguments do not survive strict scrutiny. One of the few was Grutter v Bollinger (2003), in which the court held that race-conscious admissions at a university had educational benefits. The court stipulated that each admission must be based on an individualized review of the candidate’s circumstances and strengths. Secondly, the law could not stipulate any quotas like 25% of a particular race.

The second level of judicial carefulness is intermediate scrutiny and is the most used standard. Under this type of scrutiny, a law only has to further a legitimate government interest. Regulations of speech that are content-neutral are a justified restriction of individual freedom. There is a clear connection between the means and the ends that those means serve. Noise ordinances are an example. The least restrictive interpretation is rational basis. The court basically defers to the government body claiming a health, safety or moral public interest.

That brings me full circle to today’s Super Bowl. In 2018’s decision Murphy v NCAA, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could ban online sports betting, but could not force states to keep it illegal. At the heart of the decision was the concept of federalism, the separation of federal and state authority. The decision states “Congress may not simply ‘commandeer the legislative process of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program’” (Source). Today, the majority of states do not ban sports betting because it is a source of state revenue (Source). Illinois and Delaware charge a 50% tax on the winnings from sports betting (Source). Although many fans are careful with the amount of money they bet, approximately 25% of those surveyed by the National Council on Problem Gambling report some problems (Source).

So be careful this Super Bowl Sunday and I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Vivek Doshi on Unsplash