CL. No Country for These Men

Editor's Note: The air has turned a bit cool this week, which matches the sense of change in the nation. Everyone is bracing for the November elections. Change is finally coming. Be ready, not afraid.

When I was growing up, I read a lot about John Kennedy. My parents were Republicans but this was a time when most Americans regardless of party affiliation respected the office. Kennedy was a symbol of the time, all of the hope and swagger with battle memories of world devastation but also an eye for the future. As an adult, I realize he was a flawed individual like most of us, but there was never a doubt that his interests were those of the nation’s.

There's a question John Kennedy posed in 1961 that has been quoted so many times it's lost its edge. Maybe that’s the problem. Life got so easy in America, especially the ability to make a buck, that our expectations outgrew our responsibilities.

Ask not what your country can do for you.

Now look at the men running things and consider that question again. Loyalty to country is understanding that living here, building here, extracting wealth here, comes with a corresponding obligation to leave things better than you found them.

The current occupant’s vision for the country is to plaster his name across it. Buildings, currency, historic venues, ballrooms, steaks. His passion for the country amounts to getting contracts and gifts while masquerading as foreign policy.

Elon Musk, an immigrant to America, built an empire with public support. He used his good fortune to put the current occupant back in office, not because it was good for the country, but good for him. Though Musk has been instrumental in shifting auto and energy industries forward, his interest in politics, most especially his DOGE consulting gig that displaced nearly 400,000 families from their livelihoods, deserves far more scrutiny than it has yet received. You do not dismantle the safety net of citizens in a country you claim to love, especially if you are an immigrant who has benefited from being here.

Sam Altman is another interesting case of massive American prosperity. As the face of OpenAI, he has talked a good game about humanity. There is still time to show that he means it, but he uses the word "beneficial" with the frequency of a man who has focus-grouped it. At the same time, he has enriched himself through Gulf sovereign wealth deals worth up to $50 billion.

Altman has so far dismissed most criticisms of his actions and the scaling up of OpenAI, but the fact remains he is at the helm of the most consequential technology in a generation with almost no meaningful public accountability yet, and no honest answer for what happens to the people it displaces or if he loses control.

Peter Thiel may be the strangest of the bunch. He does not want power and attention the way Trump or Musk want it. He’s more interested in being the wizard behind the curtain. He was deeply influenced by The Sovereign Individual, a 1997 book that predicted technology, crypto, and automation would undermine democratic governments and concentrate power in the hands of a wealthy few. In a Democracy Now! interview, journalist Gil Duran says that Thiel’s worldview regards democracy as an obsolete system and not something worth defending.

Thiel was instrumental in establishing JD Vance with both wealth and work. Despite the narrative, Vance is not a self-made man. He did not become a viable vice-presidential candidate through his own force of will. It was Thiel who supported his senate run in Ohio, and brought him to his first meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Vance is not the first Vice President to arrive with a thin record, but he has the potential to be the most destructive.

What connects these men? They treat public power as private opportunity.

How is it that men who have risen to the highest ranks seem to find nothing but personal opportunity instead of public good? Ask any of them what they are building for the people who come after them, and then listen for an answer.

Kennedy's line meant something. He was telling a country barely emerging from war and enjoying the fruits of a powerful economy that loyalty to country doesn’t stop when things get comfortable.

Ask not what your country can do for you.

These men do not understand that. And that is the danger.

If you want to get an idea just how ideologically out of touch the Supreme Court is, Justice Todd Eddins spent eight pages telling the Roberts Court that Hawaii will read its own constitution independently and treat federal precedent as white noise. This is really an interesting read.

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A perfect short video for understanding the modern economy. Watch it before you read anything else this week.

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Because this administration and the tech bros are blowing the rollout of AI to the public, it’s important to notice things that work: researchers have trained AI to hear schizophrenia in just a few minutes of speech, sorting patients from healthy controls at 87 percent.

If you read the news, you have seen it building. Government and the big AI companies are circling each other, and the terms they settle on will decide what the rest of us are allowed to know. Some of that is necessary. We will need real policy so access is broad and the spoils get shared. But look at China before you assume regulation only ever protects you. There you get what the state approves or you get nothing, and even the VPNs that are one click away in the West are being choked off. That is not safety. It is a wall built around the mind. The danger here runs in two directions at once. Government control on one side, corporate control on the other, and individual liberty crushed in the middle. The whole game is balance, and the leaders that put public benefits and improvements as the goal will win.

Watch the company selling the shovels

Want to know where AI is really headed? Watch the company selling the shovels. In the gold rush most prospectors went home broke, while the men hawking picks and pans are the ones that got rich. NVIDIA is that store today, and Jensen Huang is shaping up to be this era's Steve Jobs, the man who dragged the company back from the brink and keeps pushing past where everyone swears the edge is. The loudest knock on AI has been its thirst, the millions of gallons these data centers swallow to stay cool. So NVIDIA went and solved it in a way you would not have guessed, running coolant hotter than a hot tub through a sealed loop that consumes almost no water. A conventional setup burns through roughly 2.6 million gallons per megawatt a year. The new design pushes that toward zero. That is a company that knows AI is here to stay, and that it is willing to rewrite procedures to make it better.

Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins

Every election official in America swears an oath, and it is not to a map. Missouri voters did it the hard, legal way. They forced the Republicans' gerrymander onto the November ballot as Proposition A. On September 3 the Missouri Supreme Court ruled the 2025 map had never taken effect and never would unless voters said so. Denny Hoskins, the state's top election officer, called that ruling a "constitutional crisis" and then instructed local election authorities to use the dead map anyway.

The court brought him in twice in a single day. He chose the map that helped his party and reversed himself only when a contempt finding was on the way. That is a man who used public service to further a specific agenda until the courts and the people said enough. This piece by the New York Times walked through the whole episode. Read it as a warning. We are not done with these types of shenanigans yet.

There are two forces always at work in the United States: Conformity and Creativity. Air Force Major Jason Watson is a man worth knowing because he broke through the need to conform by saying what most of us won’t out loud. He stood on the Capitol steps in uniform and said this president and vice president should be impeached, convicted, and removed. Twenty years in service, on leave from a post in Poland, and he did this. Officers do not risk a court martial for nothing. They do it because somewhere in the chain of command, something has been forgotten.

The language hasn't caught up to the news. We're fixing that.

Holijackass, n. Holiday plus hijack plus jackass. A man who takes a day the country owns in common and turns it into a showcase for himself, part hijacker, part fool for thinking anyone is fooled.

By noon the July 4th parade had become a coronation, sparklers and all, courtesy of the holijackass sleeping in the reviewing stand.

Every republic breeds a holijackass or two. The test is whether it knows it when it happens.

Notes of a Native Son

James Baldwin

Last year I had the opportunity to stand in the upstairs room of an old bookstore in Paris where James Baldwin often passed his time writing, reading, and conversing with friends. I picked this book up from the booklovers dream store in Jacksonville. Baldwin’s writing is on another level. It is deep and full of living anguish with a particularly keen eye on the makeup of America.

I sometimes have to read a sentence more than twice, but oh, is it worth it. He saw the paradox and riddle of America and did his best to explain what it was to be Black. This is one of his best works, and as it was told to me, read the chapter that goes by the title first, and then circle back to the beginning. I find that today's issues are not far removed from what Baldwin lamented about with his pen. It simply means the work, the good trouble, for all of us continues.

Marc J. Yacht

Needs, requirements, wants are small
Little necessary to live
A place to work, play, rest, and home
Peace of mind free of constant stress.

Laughing, happy tots at the park
So much joy watching children's games
Family strolls along the trail
Strangers tip their hats while passing.

Watching young ones grow smart and tall
The seasons will pass so swiftly
Perhaps just a blink of the eye
That's all there is no need for more.

A place where there exists enough
Without demanding much extra
Will remain a cozy haven
Where all have their want and no more.

I’ll be on the road again when you read this one. I welcome your comments and feedback. I wish you all a phenomenal week.

Be a good human.