8.12.2026 – pursuit of money

pursuit of money
renders no longer worthy
of citizenship

Adapted from the book, The Bully Pulpit : Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster: New York, 2013), where Ms. Kearns writes about the impact of Ida Tarbell’s profile of John D. Rockefeller serialized in nineteen articles that ran from November 1902 to 1904.

Ms. Kearns wrote:

As her narrative progresses, Tarbell’s indignation at Rockefeller seems to grow, and her language sometimes slips into the same metaphors for soulless mechanical power that cheapened White’s portrait of Boss Platt.

She describes his eyes “as expressionless as a wall,” notes the “downward” droop of “his mouth,” his “cruelest” and “most pathetic” feature, and the repellent puffiness of his cheeks.

More than a touch of personal vindictiveness colors her representation of Rockefeller as she describes how his pursuit of money renders him no longer “a human man” but rather “a machine — a money machine — stripped by his overwhelming passion of greed of every quality which makes a man worthy of citizenship.”

According to Wikipedia: Magazine historian Frank Luther Mott called it, “one of the greatest serials ever to appear in an American magazine.” It would contribute to the dissolution of Standard Oil as a monopoly and lead to the Clayton Antitrust Act. Tarbell concluded the series with a two-part character study of Rockefeller, perhaps the first CEO profile ever, though she never met or even talked to him. Rockefeller called Tarbell, “Miss Tarbarrel”.

We talk a lot about citizenship today.

We talk a lot about what qualifies a person for citizenship today.

We talk a lot about who qualifies as a citizenship today.

I put it to you readers that the pursuit of money renders anyone no longer “a human” but rather “a machine — a money machine — stripped by their overwhelming passion of greed of every quality which makes anyone worthy of citizenship.”

As an exercise, I asked AI, which is as numb to feelings as numb can get, what are qualities which makes anyone worthy of citizenship?

AI responded: put the emphasis on character and conduct rather than wealth, education, religion, or political affiliation.

AI then said, some of the strongest qualities are:

Respect for others – Recognizing that fellow citizens have the same basic rights and dignity, even when you disagree with them.
Respect for the rule of law – Accepting that laws apply to everyone, including those with whom you agree and those with whom you strongly disagree.
Personal responsibility – Taking responsibility for your own actions rather than constantly blaming others.
Honesty and integrity – Telling the truth, keeping commitments, and acting ethically when nobody is watching.
Civic responsibility – Voting, staying informed, serving on juries when called, paying taxes, and contributing to the functioning of society.
Tolerance – Understanding that a free society necessarily contains people with different beliefs, cultures, religions, lifestyles, and political opinions.
A willingness to contribute – Contributing to the community through work, service, volunteering, raising a family, creating businesses, teaching, helping neighbors, or other productive activity.
Respect for freedom – Valuing your own freedoms while recognizing that other citizens possess those same freedoms.
Courage – Being willing to stand up for what is right, including defending the rights of people with whom you disagree.
A sense of community – Understanding that citizenship isn’t simply “What does my country give me?” but also “What do I owe the people with whom I share this country?”
Willingness to learn – Being open to evidence and changing one’s mind when facts demonstrate that one is wrong.
Commitment to the country – Not necessarily blind patriotism, but a genuine desire for the country and its people to prosper.

Easy to dismiss as AI but lets go back to that sentence, stripped by their overwhelming passion of greed of every quality which makes anyone worthy of citizenship.

Now imagine some of the folks I have in mind and take these 12 points as a check list and review them one by one against these folks and answer yes or no for that person.

I get 12 for 12 in the no column.

Stripped by their overwhelming passion of greed of every quality which makes anyone worthy of citizenship.

8.10.2026 – peerless brightness blinds

peerless brightness blinds
you like a spell; you feel you
could follow it to hell

The men who can’t remember when they learned to swing a pack,
Or in what lawless land the quest began;
The solitary seeker with his grub-stake on his back,
The restless buccaneer of pick and pan.
On the mesas of the Southland, on the tundras of the North,
You will find us, changed in face, but still the same;
And it isn’t need, it isn’t greed that sends us faring forth—
It’s the fever, it’s the glory of the game.

For once you’ve panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust,
Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell;
It’s little else you care about; you go because you must,
And you feel that you could follow it to hell.
You’d follow it in hunger, and you’d follow it in cold;
You’d follow it in solitude and pain;
And when you’re stiff and battened down let someone whisper “Gold,”
You’re lief to rise and follow it again.

From The Prospector as published in Ballads of a Cheechako by Robert William Service (Toronto: William Briggs, 1911).

8.9.2026 – to repudiate

to repudiate
Yalta, Marshall Plan, ties with
UN and NATO

“… the first issues that were going to come up in the Eighty-third Congress would be foreign policy issues, and in foreign policy the dominant Republicans in Congress (and in particular in the Senate, which would, because of its treaty-approving power, be the focus of foreign policy debate) were not Eisenhower’s natural allies but his natural enemies.

It was the support of the eastern, internationalist wing of the party that had given Ike the presidential nomination over Taft, but the Taft wing consisted mostly of Republicans from the Midwest, bedrock of isolationism.

The Ohioan’s midwestern allies — Jenner, Bourke Hickenlooper, Welker, Ferguson, Molly Malone — had yearned for years to dismantle the Roosevelt and Truman policies that the liberals thought were so wonderful.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

They would, Johnson was certain, move at once to repudiate Yalta, slash away at the Marshall Plan, and loosen or sever America’s ties with the United Nations and with NATO.

But Eisenhower was not merely a supporter of NATO; he had been commander of NATO.

Says George Reedy, who was down on the ranch with Johnson and was familiar with his thinking, Eisenhower “had actually spent most of… the preceding twenty or thirty years in virtual support of the foreign policies of Roosevelt and of Truman.

The Republicans … under Taft were opposed to that policy, [so] he and the congressional Republicans were just bound to be at loggerheads.”

All the Democrats had to do was “take advantage” of the situation.

Isolationism was back on Capitol Hill, and it was back strong. Journalists who remembered the America First Committee filling the Senate galleries in 1940 and 1941 saw what Richard Rovere called a “resurgent isolationism” in the way the galleries were filled in 1953 when Joe McCarthy was scheduled to speak.

The thunderclap of Pearl Harbor may have demolished in an instant the arguments of the Borahs and Nyes, the thunderclap of Hiroshima may have made it even clearer that in an age of nuclear weapons and modern air forces, the oceans were no longer moats; but those thunderclaps seem to have been heard only faintly in Senate Republican councils, in which the views of quite a sizable bloc (including, of course, the Republican leaders, the defiantly isolationist Taft and the suavely isolationist Bridges) sometimes seemed to resemble the views of the Republican senators who had helped Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. defeat the Treaty of Versailles.

From Master Of The Senate: The Years Of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro (Random House: New York, 2002).

And of course, Mr. Caro is writing about events in 1952.

The phrase that rang my bell?

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

I remember a chat in the early 2000’s about George W. Bush and the feller I was chatting with said something along the lines of “We thought we had our guy in there and he is such a disappointment.”

He was one of those fellers who felt the United States had no business, no defined role in any world affair – just stay home and take care of us.

That feller felt, their time had come at last.

They got behind George H.W. Bush.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

And H.W. Bush led the coalition of world powers against Saddam Hussein and watch the Soviet Union dissappear.

They got behind Ronald Reagan.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

And Reagan led the coalition of world powers to strengthen NATO and call on the Soviets to tear down that wall.

They got behind Richard Nixon.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

And Nixon stunned the coalition of world powers by establishing relations with the Peoples Republic of China.

And they got behind Ike.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

And, as Mr. Caro writes, “But Eisenhower was not merely a supporter of NATO; he had been commander of NATO … Eisenhower “had actually spent most of… the preceding twenty or thirty years in virtual support of the foreign policies of Roosevelt and of Truman. Eisenhower ‘had actually spent most of… the preceding twenty or thirty years in virtual support of the foreign policies of Roosevelt and of Truman.“”

Prior to Ike were the years of Franklin Roosevelt.

The man who had been on office so, a good part of America thought his first name was President.

The man who was elected President 5 times but the last time he was elected, it was Harry Truman’s name on the ballet.

There is a strong school of political science that feels Truman’s surprise reelection was just that, the 5th time FDR won.

There was a joke that after FDR died, a Republican said to the Democrat … Who are going to vote for now? The Democrat replies, We’ll dig some one up … NO NO PLEASE.

Prior to FDR you have the 12 years of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover that led to that blip in history known as The Great Depression.

Good name though there was nothing great about it.

And before those three guys you have Woodrow Wilson.

When they said, their time had come at the last, they were thinking back to the time when the views of the Republican senators who … helped Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. defeat the Treaty of Versailles.

Defeat the Treaty of Versailles and Woodrow Wilson.

There was no winner in World War 1.

The world at war decided it was time to call it quits, arranged an armistice on Nov. 11th, 1918 and agreed to meet and work out a treaty to settle the game.

President Wilson showed up with 14 points for a peace plan that caused French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau to famously remark, “Even God only had 10.”

One of those points, which was accepted by other nations involved was the formation of the League of Nations where problems of international importance could be settled and, maybe, future wars avoided.

President Wilson brought the treaty to the United States Senate, the body that had to approve all treaties by a 2/3 vote.

Back then the United States Senate took its role as a part of the Government of The United States seriously.

That and the fact that that 2/3 vote meant that for anything to pass, you had to get votes from both sides.

It came close in a vote several times, but the Republican party controlled the Senate and every effort was made to reject the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations.

As a point of trivia, the United States of American and the German Empire did not official end World War 1 until August 21, 1921.

Another point of trivia is that in the election of 1918, the Republican Party won control of the Senate by 1 vote.

Had one seat in 1918 gone Democratic, the vote would have been tied and the Vice President would break the tie giving Democrats control on the Senate and the Senate Foreign Policy Committee.

That year Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company fame and supported of Woodrow Wilson ran for Senate in the State of Michigan.

He entered BOTH the Republican and Democratic Primaries (which was allowed back then) and had he won the primaries he would have be awarded the Senate Seat.

Ford lost the Republican primary and ran as a Democrat and lost the general election by 8,000 votes out of 430,000 votes cast.

Michigan sent Republican Truman Handy Newberry, former Secretary of the Navy to the Senate.

Republican’s organized the Senate by virtue of the 8,000 Michiganders who voted against Henry Ford and the League of Nations was formed without the United States.

The league clearly operated less effectively than it might have. Standing apart from the league also made it easier for the United States to turn inward over the next two decades and to view growing world crises as someone else’s problem. After Pearl Harbor, many Americans concluded that Wilson had been right—fueling support for what became the United Nations.

And here we are today.

Now, they felt, their time had come at last.

There IS nothing new under the sun, is there?

8.5.2026 – criterion of

criterion of
history is truth; motive
in its being true

Adapted from the passage:

There is nothing that more divides civilized from semi-savage man than to be conscious of our forefathers as they really were, and bit by bit to reconstruct the mosaic of the long-forgotten past. To weigh the stars, or to make ships sail in the air or below the sea, is not a more astonishing and ennobling performance on the part of the human race in these latter days, than to know the course of events that had been long forgotten, and the true nature of men and women who were here before us.

Truth is the criterion of historical study; but its impelling motive is poetic. Its poetry consists in its being true. There we find the synthesis of the scientific and literary views of history.

In English Social History by George Macaulay Trevelyan (Longmans, Green: New York and Toronto, 1942).

To weigh the stars,

or to make ships sail in the air or below the sea,

is not a more astonishing and ennobling performance on the part of the human race in these latter days,

than to know the course of events that had been long forgotten,

and the true nature of men and women who were here before us.

As written in Wikipedia, “What is perhaps most frequently forgotten, or ignored, is the skill of his literary craftsmanship. Trevelyan was a born writer and a natural storyteller; and this, among historians, is a rare gift … If one quality is to be singled out, is should be this, for all historians he is the poet of English history.”

There will come a time when what happened to the United States in the early 21st Century.

Someone will bit by bit reconstruct the mosaic of the long-forgotten past and say, “What happened here …”

I am reminded of the story of the feller interviewing the old businessman and asking, “You worked during the three martini lunch era? What was that like?”

And the businessman replied, “I can’t remember much but I’ll tell you this, nothing happened in the afternoon!“

Angell Hall – University of Michigan – carved into the building above the columns it reads: *Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.*

8.4.2026 – no longer will fool

no longer will fool
be called noble nor scoundrel
highly respected

Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed,
and the ears of those who hear will listen.
The fearful heart will know and understand,
and the stammering tongue will be fluent and clear.
No longer will the fool be called noble
nor the scoundrel be highly respected.
For fools speak folly,
their hearts are bent on evil:
They practice ungodliness
and spread error concerning the Lord;
the hungry they leave empty
and from the thirsty they withhold water.
Scoundrels use wicked methods,
they make up evil schemes
to destroy the poor with lies,
even when the plea of the needy is just.

Isaiah 32: 3-7 (NIV).

Some biblical scholars say that this passage of the Bible is in full accord with the prosperous and happy times of the reign of Hezekiah. (Commentary on Isaiah 32, Barnes’ Notes on the Whole Bible).

According to Wikipedia, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges describes verses 1 to 8 as “the ideal commonwealth of the Messianic Age” and dates this section “to the close of Isaiah’s ministry, when his mind was occupied with the hope of the ideal future.

I can see how the text fits in with Isaiah’s other chapters that due cover the Reign of Hezekiah.

And as someone who grew up in the Evangelical Baptist Church, I can easily see how the Prophet Isaiah was looking to a time when The Kingdom of Righteousness would exist on earth through the Reign of Jesus someday.

For myself, today, so many answer boxes are filled in on a test to apply this scripture to where we are that to me, Isaiah is offering a word of hope for today.

Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed, and the ears of those who hear will listen.

The fearful heart will know and understand, and the stammering tongue will be fluent and clear.

No longer will the fool be called noble nor the scoundrel be highly respected.

For fools speak folly, their hearts are bent on evil:

They practice ungodliness and spread error concerning the Lord; the hungry they leave empty and from the thirsty they withhold water.

Scoundrels use wicked methods …

they make up evil schemes …

to destroy the poor with lies …

even when the plea of the needy is just.

Regardless of when this happens, Mr. Barnes also states:

… there would be a proper estimate put on moral worth, and when illiberality, hypocrisy, and falsehood would be no longer held in repute and when the character of the nation would be that of a people which devised and executed large and liberal purposes.

Needing some help, I turned to my good friend, Google’s AI Tool, Gemini and I asked … when barnes notes uses this term … that of a people which devised and executed large and liberal purposes … What did he mean by liberal?

I have used my AI friends a lot of questions and always get lightning responses but this asking about Barne’s note brought Gemini to halt and it took a long time to answer …

Gemini said:

In 19th-century commentary—such as Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible—the word “liberal” is used in its older, classical sense rather than its modern political context.

When Barnes wrote about a people who “devised and executed large and liberal purposes,” he meant generous, noble-minded, public-spirited, and magnanimous.

In his commentary on Isaiah 32:8 (“But the liberal deviseth liberal things”), Barnes explicitly defines liberal as:

Generous & Benevolent: Driven by a desire to promote the welfare of others rather than self-interest or avarice.

Broad-Minded & Large-Hearted: Thinking on a broad, selfless scale rather than being narrow-minded or petty.

Public-Spirited: Planning and executing actions that serve the greater good of society or the kingdom.

In short, Barnes meant “liberal” in terms of open-handed generosity and noble intent, contrasting it with being covetous, selfish, or miserly.

Generous & Benevolent.

Broad-Minded & Large-Hearted.

Public-Spirited.

As opposed to:

Being covetous, selfish, or miserly …

Like I said, I felt the verses could be applied to today.