“We live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”—Stephen Miller, to CNN's Jake Tapper, Jan 5th, 2026
See my Sept 2025 post discussing Miller at Charlie Kirk's memorial.
Ten patterns that explain the universe
Brian Clegg, MIT Press, 2021
Introduction
We understand the world around us through patterns. These are not necessarily patterns in the visual sense, but rather occurrences that have some sort of regularity, distributed, according to consistent rules. It would be impossible to cope with the world if we didn’t have patterns. It would mean that every time we encountered an object, we would need to learn how to use it a new period instead, we build up patterns—mental models of reality—that inform us of how to deal with, say, an apple or a light switch, so that we don’t have to start from scratch each and every time.
OK, this is funny. From The New YorkerAnthropic’s headquarters, in downtown San Francisco, sits in the shadow of the Salesforce tower. There is no exterior signage. The lobby radiates the personality, warmth, and candor of a Swiss bank. A couple of years ago, the company outgrew its old space and took over a turnkey lease from the messaging company Slack. It spruced up the place through the comprehensive removal of anything interesting to look at. Even this blankness is doled out grudgingly: all but two of the ten floors that the company occupies are off limits to outsiders. Access to the dark heart of the models is limited even further. Any unwitting move across the wrong transom, I quickly discovered, is instantly neutralized by sentinels in black. When I first visited, this past May, I was whisked to the tenth floor, where an airy, Scandinavian-style café is technically outside the cordon sanitaire. Even there, I was chaperoned to the bathroom.
Tech employees generally see corporate swag as their birthright. New Anthropic hires, however, quickly learn that the company’s paranoia extends to a near-total ban on branded merch. Such extreme operational security is probably warranted: people sometimes skulk around outside the office with telephoto lenses. A placard at the office’s exit reminds employees to conceal their badges when they leave. It is as if Anthropic’s core mission were to not exist. The business was initially started as a research institute, and its president, Daniela Amodei, has said that none of the founders wanted to start a company. We can take these claims at face value and at the same time observe that they seem a little silly in retrospect. Anthropic was recently valued at three hundred and fifty billion dollars…
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| Loyal co-conspirator in Trump Obstruction of Justice? |
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| The killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by ICE agents |
There’s a moment in every country’s descent where the brutal men in fearsome uniforms and tall boots stop shoving and start shooting.
We are at that moment.
The body of Alex Pretti is still in a morgue today, still on a cold slab, his remains torn by five rounds fired in his back by an ICE agent drunk on the heady power of brutality and the promise of absolute immunity.
In America, our elite media and political classes have for a decade pretended that moment is always somebody else’s problem, some faraway place with a theocracy, a junta, or a strongman whose portrait hangs in every home and building like a warning label.
But the last few weeks have been a case study in what happens when a government decides the Constitution is an annoying speed bump and the citizenry is a crowd-control problem.
We know the horrors ICE has committed in Minneapolis and beyond. The casual brutality, the arrogant dismissal of rights, the hideous capering and laughter at the suffering they inflict on both immigrants and Americans. They are, in our digital age, recorded for grim posterity.
People of goodwill talk about de-escalation, about easing tensions, about bringing the pot down from an imminent boil to a simmer.
They are fools.
The incentives for the Trump Administration’s armed political force are entirely ratcheting in one direction, and we must consider that direction now. Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, the vast MAGA influencer and propaganda ecosystem, and DHS itself have no incentive to slow down, to turn around, to stop their war on our rights and liberties.
I beg you to understand this: everything happening in Minnesota with ICE delights them. This isn’t a crisis for them; it’s a big shove of the Overton Window toward the fascism they now openly crave.
So let’s talk about the nightmare headline hovering on the horizon: what happens when ICE fires into a crowd of protestors? I wish I could tell you this is an impossibility, that training, doctrine, discipline, and leadership at every level of government will prevent an escalation where ICE murders Americans wholesale instead of retail, but dear friends, I cannot.
The culture of ICE and the entire MAGA political and media ecosystem is driving them toward it, a confrontation where the Trump Era moves to the next level of oppression and terror. Here’s how I see the moment playing out, first as narrative, then as prediction… [click here]
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Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical fascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily defined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has been an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree on its definition. Italy’s original version differed from Germany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from Japan’s.I accepted President Biden’s characterization of the MAGA movement as “semi-fascist” because some parallels were glaringly apparent. Trump was definitely an authoritarian, and unquestionably a patrimonialist. Beyond that, though, the best description seemed to be a psychological one propounded by John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser: “He listens to Putin, he listens to Xi, he listens to how they talk about governing unburdened by uncooperative legislatures, unconcerned with what the judiciary may do, and he thinks to himself, Why can’t I do that? This doesn’t amount to being a fascist, in my view, [or] having a theory of how you want to govern. It’s just Why can’t I have the same fun they have?”Writing a year ago, I argued that Trump’s governing regime is a version of patrimonialism, in which the state is treated as the personal property and family business of the leader. That is still true. But, as I also noted then, patrimonialism is a style of governing, not a formal ideology or system. It can be layered atop all kinds of organizational structures, including not just national governments but also urban political machines such as Tammany Hall, criminal gangs such as the Mafia, and even religious cults. Because its only firm principle is personal loyalty to the boss, it has no specific agenda. Fascism, in contrast, is ideological, aggressive, and, at least in its early stages, revolutionary. It seeks to dominate politics, to crush resistance, and to rewrite the social contract.
Over Trump’s past year, what originally looked like an effort to make the government his personal plaything has drifted distinctly toward doctrinal and operational fascism. Trump’s appetite for lebensraum, his claim of unlimited power, his support for the global far right, his politicization of the justice system, his deployment of performative brutality, his ostentatious violation of rights, his creation of a national paramilitary police—all of those developments bespeak something more purposeful and sinister than run-of-the-mill greed or gangsterism…
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| NY Times article photo |
“We live in a world, the real world, Jake [Tapper/CNN], that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning
of time.” —Stephen Miller
...On Tuesday, giddy after the success of a daring weekend raid to capture the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, Trump’s White House put out a statement threatening Denmark, a nato ally, with military action if it did not hand over Greenland—a threat so reminiscent of Vladimir Putin’s bald demands in the run-up to his invasion of Ukraine that it had Russian officials openly cheering. In the days since, Trump has insisted that the United States simply must have the vast, sparsely populated, and resource-rich territory. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to meet with Denmark’s leaders next week to present terms. Seven European nations put out a joint statement condemning the threats, leading to yet another Trump statement claiming that it was the Europeans who could not be trusted to defend their fellow alliance members.In light of all of this stuff (including the ICE agent killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis this week forward one day later by new federal CBP agent shootings in Portland, Oregon), igs it hyperbolically unwarranted at this point to wonder whether Insurrection Act martial law may soon arrive?
What some of Trump’s own senior officials once viewed as the delusional musings of a dilettante have now become a genuine international crisis, one that could lead—or maybe it already has led—to the effective end of nato. After this week, is there anyone who can credibly claim to be sure that the United States, under Trump, would honor the commitment to mutual defense that is the foundation of the alliance?
Greenland, it turns out, is not a punch line but a template that explains much about Trump’s foreign policy: it’s about a power-grabbing President who looks at territory on a map and says he wants to own it. Trump could not articulate a rationale for acquiring Greenland—“from a strategic standpoint, from a locational standpoint, from a geography standpoint, it’s something that we should have,” he told us—any more than he can elaborate on what his plan is for Venezuela now that he’s toppled the country’s leader and seized some of its oil. Asked by reporters from the Times, on Wednesday, why he couldn’t just settle for the terms of the existing 1951 treaty with Denmark, which grants the U.S. military nearly unlimited use of Greenland’s territory, Trump replied, “Ownership is very important.” He added, “because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success.” There are no limits to his global powers, Trump said, except one thing: “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Welcome to 2026. Trump’s apologists may be right when they say that the martial bluster is no more than a bargaining tactic. It appears that’s what Maduro thought, too, right up until the moment Trump sent the Delta Force into his bedroom in the middle of the night.ON DECK
These instruments can teach, they can illuminate, they can even inspire, but they can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use them to those ends. Otherwise, they're merely wires and lights in a box.
There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance, indifference. It's a fight for the very soul of this republic.
And so the question is a very simple one. Not what power unchecked can do. We have seen that answer. No. The question is what are you prepared to do?
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
Good night and good luck.
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” —Heinlein
"Nature may be red in tooth and claw, but it is not merely so." —Sam Harris (props to Tennyson)One hopes.
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| Donald Trump's Secret Police |
Will things continue to escalate, perhaps culminating in a Trump declaration of "Insurrection Act" martial law in DC on June 14th during his controversial, sure-to-be-angrily-protested self-glorifying military "celebration" parade?
Trump says anyone who protests at Saturday's military parade 'will be met with very heavy force'
Donald Trump warned people against protesting at this weekend’s military parade in Washington to celebrate the US Army’s 250th anniversary.
“For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I haven’t even heard about a protest, but you know, this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.”
Law enforcement agencies are preparing for hundreds of thousands of people to attend Saturday’s parade, Secret Service special agent in charge Matt McCool (his real name) said yesterday, according to Reuters.
McCool said thousands of agents, officers and specialists will be deployed from law enforcement agencies from across the country.
The FBI and the Metropolitan police department have said there are no credible threats to the event. [per The Guardian]
An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran PrisonThe Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador, but said that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to order his return from the megaprison where he’s now locked up…… attorneys for the government admitted that the Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported accidentally. “Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the government told the court. Trump lawyers said the court has no ability to bring Abrego Garcia back now that he is in Salvadoran custody…Trump-administration attorneys told the court to dismiss the request on multiple grounds, including that Trump’s “primacy in foreign affairs” outweighs the interests of Abrego Garcia and his family.“They claim that the court is powerless to order any relief,’’ Sandoval-Moshenberg told me. “If that’s true, the immigration laws are meaningless—all of them—because the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, “whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”…
OK, SHOULD THIS COMFY WASP SENIOR CITIZEN JUST PRUDENTIALLY STFU? RECALL DR/ FRANKS et al...
Improper Ideologies.
I am a 79-year-old natural born U.S. citizen from western Long Island, New York (Floral Park, bordering Queens borough, to be precise). I now live in Baltimore, Maryland. I recently renewed my passport and was shortly thereafter granted a Global Entry Pass by TSA. My Maryland driver’s license is Real ID compliant. I have no criminal record, and have had an FBI background check (replete with fingerprinting) pursuant to my 2000-2005 tenure as an OCC/FDIC regulated bank credit risk officer.
I have never wanted nor owned a firearm (never had a tattoo either). The totality of my experience with physical violence comprises one absurd schoolyard fistfight when I was a sophomore in high school. It lasted perhaps 30 seconds and didn’t resolve anything (beyond confirming my not even coming close to being the cinematic adolescent badass I’d assumed I was).
My wife and I have been together since 1974. We raised three children, and are now retired doting grandparents / great-grandparents. Across my wife’s career as an increasingly senior quality assurance executive, she underwent numerous federal security clearance investigations, and repeatedly held what is known as the (always project-specific) “Q clearance” (for her nationwide work in DOE nuclear waste remediation and worldwide DOD contractor engineering and construction, much of it classified). She has performed QA audits at all of the federal National Laboratories, and at US military facilities around the globe. She has forgotten more about classified information SCIF-level security protocols than our poignant Marvel Comics SecDefBro Pete Hegseth ever knew.
Notwithstanding the breadth and depth of our dispositively documented loyal U.S. citizen histories, it would not surprise me one whit were we to be detained and perhaps renditioned by Donald Trump‘s ICE/DHS thugs the next time we return from visiting abroad.
The unacceptable offenses? Hmmm… suborning Woke Leftist Secular Globalist MAGA/Project 2025-averse “alignment” with “Homegrown Improper Ideologies?”
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| Trump DHS Secretary flies down to el Salvador on your dime to pose for a photo-op. |
