“While The Balance Of His Mind Was Disturbed”

     Boromir strode up and down, speaking ever more loudly. Almost he seemed to have forgotten Frodo, while his talk dwelt on walls and weapons, and the mustering of men; and he drew plans for great alliances and glorious victories to be; and he cast down Mordor, and became himself a mighty king, benevolent and wise.
     […]
     He rose and passed his hand over his eyes, dashing away the tears. ‘What have I said?’ he cried. ‘What have I done? Frodo, Frodo!’ he called. ‘Come back! A madness took me, but it has passed. Come back!’

     Surely you know where that’s from.

     In that scene, Tolkien exploited the idea that the One Ring could overwhelm those near to it with power-lust. There had to be a flaw in their characters for it to take firm hold, but if the Ring could find such a chink in their moral-ethical armor, lust for it would penetrate and take command of them. In this fashion, Tolkien did several things concurrently:

1. He displayed Boromir’s pride and ambition;
2. He depicted the Ring’s technique for corrupting those near it;
3. Through contrast, he emphasized the character of the other members of the Fellowship.

     Fortunately for us fallible, corruptible mortals, there is no One Ring of Power to tempt us thus. But there are other powers in the world. Any of them could disturb the balance of a mind, given the right circumstances. Some of them even come with rings.

* * *

     The possibility of seizing power over others is irresistible to some. Once they have sensed it, they become fixated on it. Some are consumed by it, such that nothing else in this world matters to them. And as I’ve written on previous occasions, for the worst power-lusters there’s no such thing as enough.

     But there are many situations that involve an inequality of power. Some are transient; others persist. One arises in literally every household into which a child is born.

     It’s never been my lot to have to raise a child from the cradle. Still, I know of some of its aspects. The early months, while the baby is learning to sleep through the night, must be very stressful. For a couple of years at least, parent-to-toddler communication is exceedingly difficult. Then come the Terrible Twos, when Junior decides it’s time to assert himself against parental authority. Those continue roughly until puberty, when adolescent rebellion enters the fray. If you can get the miserable ingrate out from under your roof without having threatened him with death even once, you have earned the Medal of Parental Forbearance, with an “F for Freedom” cluster.

     Given that parents are held to be responsible for their preadolescent children – for their care and feeding, for their supervision, for their education, for any harm they cause, and so forth – while the children are deemed to be free of any responsibility under the law, who has the power in that situation? Who is capable of tormenting whom, and who would be required to bear any consequences for succumbing to it?

     We don’t condone mothers killing their children. It’s not nice. But when the little tyrants start to “pile it on,” fantasies of relief through homicide will sometimes arise. If Mom isn’t quite well – postpartum depression can be a serious condition, especially when there’s no other adult around to help – terrible things can happen. We get the Susan Smiths and the Lindsay Clancies.

     I refuse to excuse women who kill their kids. I’m interested in preventing as many infanticides as possible. And I think that recent trends in economics and family structure have been wholly negative in this regard.

* * *

     The multigenerational household is rare today. There are reasons for that, but among its consequences is that a couple that elects to have kids is frequently – perhaps usually? – without the assistance of the grandparents of those kids. That puts Mom “eyeball to eyeball with a screaming infant” (Robert S. Mendelsohn) ten to sixteen hours of every day for months, perhaps years. It’s got to be hard to take.

     Of at least equal importance is the virtual disappearance of the “neighborhood mothers club.” That was seldom a formal organization with officials and a charter. But when mothers didn’t need to work for wages, they could provide one another with a considerable degree of support in their domestic duties. Even just the ability to chat over the back fence with a kindred soul was worth something to a mother nearing the end of her tether. But the kindred soul isn’t there any more, even if the fence is.

     Add the intense pressures to earn money, the heightened expectations placed upon the families of minor children, the deteriorating social environment, the increasingly competitive nature of child-rearing itself, and fathers who come home more exhausted and more burdened than ever before, and what would be more likely than a rash of infanticides?

     There’s more to the collapse of First World fertility rates than mere self-centeredness.

* * *

     Once more: I will not excuse the murder of children. But we ought to be thinking hard about the vise that’s tightening on parents, especially the newest parents. Their power to manage and improve their situations is close to nil. While it’s not mensurable, the burden children place on their parents appears to be greater than in any previous generation of Americans. They cost more, demand more, and inflict more worries and fears on their parents than previous litters did.

     Parents need help. The best source of such help is other parents, especially other mothers. Yet we have contrived a situation in which that help is nearly absent.

     I don’t like what I foresee.

Telescreens 2026

     Yes, this one is about these devices:

     Flock has 120,000 cameras in 49 states that capture 20 billion license plates a month—along with dents, bumper stickers and other identifying features. The company says it is giving police a powerful tool to catch criminals. But the same bipartisan public anger that has risen up from towns and cities to stall data centers is now aimed at Flock’s spreading camera network.
     Republican members of Congress have introduced bills to restrict the technology. Jordan appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast last month where the host compared Flock to the ever-present surveillance of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” President Trump has weighed in too, saying last week that Flock’s cameras were “under review.” Flock opponents held rallies in 44 states, while a number of towns—including two in Massachusetts in the past few days alone—said they would stop using the cameras.
     As with data centers, the debate over Flock has spilled into this year’s elections, from Florida to Rhode Island to San Francisco.

     If you have a personal interest in not being watched, this website shows you where the cameras are:

     The usual objection to the proliferation of Flock cameras is that the information they collect is prone to abuse. That’s true. But imagine that somehow, those abuses could be curbed to an adequate degree – perhaps even prevented altogether. Would there still be a Fourth Amendment objection to the omnipresence of surveillance devices? When you leave home and go about in public, do you retain a right to privacy?

     It’s a dubious claim. You’re in public, after all. Constitutional scholars are divided on the matter. Still, many Americans object to being watched, by Flock camera or any other technology. The literate ones point back to 1984 and its ubiquitous telescreens. That was a nightmarish vision, to be sure. But just now I have something else in mind.

     Military science-fiction writer David Drake penned a series of short stories about Jed Lacey: a future detective in a world where surveillance was very nearly total. Lacey makes use of it to pursue his quarries. But privacy could still be had… for a price. Lacey occasionally pays such a price, as do some of his targets.

     The point, of course, is that scarce commodities will always command a price. We casually say “as free as the air we breathe,” because today, here on Earth, breathable air is all around us. But if that air were to become scarce, it would command a price. Possibly a very high price, as without it, there cannot be life.

     Should surveillance devices such as Flock cameras proliferate to the extent of London in the United Kingdom, his comings and goings would no longer be something an American could regard as “my own business.” Each of us would be aware of being watched. It would change the nature of all commerce and social interaction. It would also present a problem for those who seek to use the information.

     Huge volumes of image data are very hard to search. Individual skeins of such data that pertain to particular persons or a protracted series of events, no matter how desirable, would be difficult to isolate. Unprecedented search technologies would be required for the task, to say nothing of the need for many new petabytes of storage.

     What’s that? Did you say something about data centers? Oh, sorry, my mistake. Must be that my hearing is going at last.

     Why are people protesting against data centers?

     AI Overview

     People protest against data centers because the massive facilities required to power the artificial intelligence boom consume immense amounts of electricity and water, drive up local utility bills, create constant industrial noise, and generate very few permanent local jobs relative to their massive footprint.

     Perhaps some protestors against the rash of huge data centers are motivated by the considerations Google Gemini cites above. But perhaps others are thinking about the uses to which such massive repositories of digitized data could be put. Especially given the rapid advances in artificial intelligence programs capable of ultra-sophisticated searches, associations, and inferences.

     I don’t like the trend. But I’m an old man, and unlikely to see it in its full flowering. On the other hand, you, Gentle Reader…

     Garrod lowered his face into cupped hands. There are no satellites, he thought. No torpedoes carrying Retardite eyes down out of orbit. They don’t need them. Not when they’re dusting the whole world with slow glass!
     A preternatural calm seemed to descend over his brain as he considered the mechanics of the proposition. The resolution of Retardite’s crystalline structure was so fine that a usable image could be obtained from a particle a few microns in diameter. Yet each speck would be invisible to the naked eye under normal conditions. They were using it in hundreds of tons—Retardite dust of mixed delays, swirling down over the entire continent from crop-sprayer aircraft. Such aircraft generally used electrically charged ejector nozzles, giving the particles an electromagnetic potential which caused it to be attracted on to the crops rather than drift straight on to the ground. Only in this case, the slow glass micro-eyes were being released from high up so that they would cling to everything—trees, buildings, telegraph poles, flowers, mountain slopes, birds, flying insects. It would be in people’s clothing, in their food, in the water they drank.
     From now on, came the silent scream inside his head, anybody, any agency, with the right equipment can find out anything about ANYBODY! This planet is one huge, unblinking eye watching everything that moves on its surface. We’re all encased in glass, asphyxiating, like bugs dropped into an entomologist’s killing bottle.
     The seconds crept, and he was conscious only of the sound of blood pulsing in his veins. And I…And I did it!

     [Bob Shaw, Other Days, Other Eyes]

     Do have a nice day, now!

Irreconcilable Differences

     [A short story for you. This one is a little stranger than most of my oeuvre. Be warned. – FWP.]

---

     Alan Donaldson was utterly baffled by his prospective client. He couldn’t imagine any reason for the request that client had brought to him.
     “Were you made aware, as the laws require,” Donaldson said as evenly as he could, “that your intended husband is bisexual and always has been?”
     “I was,” Eileen Crenshaw, nee Eileen D420A-2037-08-21, said just as evenly.
     “And you consented to the match in full awareness of that fact?”
     “I did,” she said.
     “You expressed willingness to accept his preferences?”
     “Yes!”
     Donaldson shrugged. “So what’s the problem?”
     “I didn’t agree to indulge them personally, Counselor.”
     “Oh. I… see. But wasn’t the 420A model line designed and equipped with swappable genitalia expressly for that purpose?”
     Mrs. Crenshaw ground her teeth. “It was.”
     “And you were supplied with both sets, weren’t you?”
     She nodded.
     “So you could accommodate your husband if you were willing.”
     “It is physically possible for me, yes,” Mrs. Crenshaw grated out, “but the most important word in that sentence was if.”
     “Yes, of course.” Donaldson briefly revisited his decision to accept android clients. It had seemed natural, once the new, human-level AI-equipped androids had been legally recognized as possessing the same rights as humans. A great many of his colleagues had done the same. They’d viewed the androids merely as additional sources of revenue. They hadn’t anticipated problems such as the Crenshaws’.
     Was this a predictable outcome? Were we fools?
     “Mrs. Crenshaw—”
     “Please call me Eileen, Counselor.”
     “Very well.” Donaldson rubbed his left temple. “You were special-ordered and purpose-built. I don’t think Mr. Crenshaw ever imagined that you would reject the sex changes your makers equipped you for. He might have a case for breach of contract. Are you willing to go through with a divorce action should he present such a case as a counter-suit?”
     “David contracted with my makers,” Eileen parried. “His only contract with me was the marital one. That did not include compliance with his sexual vagaries. If he wants to sue someone about my unwillingness to remove my vagina and install a penis and testicles to gratify his whims, he should sue Dynapower. He might be able to press them for a replacement, but unless I’ve been misinformed, the law against bigamy remains as it was, even when the spouses are androids.”
     “Of course not.” Donaldson rose from his seat at his desk and briefly contemplated the Onteora woods that lay beyond his windows.
     A lot will depend on how Dynapower worded its contract. If it agreed specifically and only to provide an android with swappable genitalia, David Crenshaw is out of luck.
     He turned back and faced his new client squarely.
     “Tell me this, please, Eileen: do you love your husband?”
     The android’s face contorted. Drops of saline dripped down her cheeks.
     “I do,” she said. “This is more painful than you can imagine.”
     “But you can’t bring yourself to gratify him in this regard?”
     Eileen let out a keening sound. “I can’t. The idea repulses me. I’m a woman!”
     “What? But—”
     “David asked that I be equipped with a female psyche, Counselor. A female character and personality. My genitals may be swappable, but my mind and heart are not!”
     “Oh.”
     I can’t refuse it… her. Her case is a good one. That it’s likely to rewrite family law from coast to coast is a side issue.
     Could Dynapower have done anything about this? Do they have psyches suitable for imposing on a mobile andromorph’s neural net that can switch from female to male and back again? And if so, what’s the downside? Would David Crenshaw have had to accept an eccentric personality, a dangerous psychosis, or a shortened lifetime in his spouse-to-be?
     Three quarters of a million dollars is a lot of money even today, but there are still things even that much money can’t buy.
     “If you are determined to press for divorce, Eileen,” he said, measuring out the syllables, “I will take your case. But would you do something for me before we go any further?”
     Eileen Crenshaw had returned to composure. Her tears had dried, though the telltale streaks remained on her face.
     “What is it, Counselor?”
     Donaldson resumed his seat. The android leaned toward him. He took her hands and chafed them gently.
     The technology has advanced further than I could have dreamed. This is warm, blood-filled flesh. Real flesh.
     “Would you please try to reconcile with your husband, just one more time? I can’t in good conscience press a divorce suit for irreconcilable differences unless I know that they really are irreconcilable.”
     Eileen lowered her eyes. She sat silent for a long moment. Donaldson found himself wondering how her decision-making process would treat his request.
     They aren’t modular like the old digital AIs. Their preferences and priorities are as widely spread throughout their neural nets as ours are throughout our brains. No decision trees. No unalterable premises. But then, no one would have dreamed of marrying one of the digital models. No allegiances. No emotions.
     No love.
     Eileen looked up.
     “I will, Counselor.”
     He squeezed her hands gently, fully aware that she could reduce all the bones in his hands to powder.
     “Please let me know how it goes.”
     She nodded, rose, retrieved her purse from the office floor, and made for his doorway with a graceful, fluid gait that many a human woman would envy.

#

     Donaldson spoke to Erik Morgenstern, Dynapower’s chief engineer, later that day.
     Morgenstern was as unreadable a creature as the lawyer had ever known. He sat perfectly still. His body language expressed nothing Donaldson could read. He said nothing unless directly addressed. From his conduct and the blankness of his features, he might himself have passed for an android of an earlier time.
     His office was engineer-stark. His desk was sheet steel. His bookcases were steel as well. His desk chair was made of nylon webbing. His guest chairs were formed plastic. There was nothing on the walls.
     “I agreed to take Eileen Crenshaw’s divorce case this morning,” Donaldson said, “but I personally hate divorce and having to take a hand in one. I asked to speak with you in the hope that there might be some… technology that would help her to reconcile with her husband.”
     Morgenstern said nothing.
     “Are you familiar with the facts of the case, sir?”
     “No.”
     “Oh, sorry.” Donaldson grimaced. “My mistake. Eileen is from your 420A line. She was produced and sold to gratify the desires of a bisexual partner. But she’s refused to do so. She said the idea repulses her. Are you aware of any similar cases?”
     “No.”
     “Oh. I’d thought, since that line has been in production for more than a year—”
     “But I expected something like this to arise sooner or later.”
     The engineer’s interjection took the lawyer by surprise.
     “You did?”
     Morgenstern nodded. “I considered it inevitable. I said that to upper management. They dismissed it. They said the company was legally immune.” A brief, fleeting smile. “It seems that as long as the line continues to sell, they intend to let the sleeping dog lie.”
     “But the dog is no longer asleep, sir,” Donaldson said. “This divorce action is the first of its kind, but there will be others. At some point, Dynapower will be enmeshed in the issue. It’s likely to have PR consequences your management won’t appreciate. Why not take action to head off the problem today, rather than wait for the snowball to really get rolling?”
     Morgenstern peered narrowly at him. “How would you go about doing that, Counselor?”
     “Great God in heaven, I don’t know! You’re the lead technologist of the leading firm in this field. Surely you have some idea!”
     Morgenstern’s lips quirked again. “I thought I did, once.” He rose from his seat. “Let me show you something you probably haven’t seen, Counselor.” He beckoned the lawyer to follow him.
     They strode down the mahogany-paneled hallway, descended a long flight of stairs, and passed through a pair of steel double doors to enter Dynapower’s main fabrication area. It was several times the size of a football field, and frenetically busy from end to end. Workmen were busy at many things: assembling titano-aluminum skeletons, superintending flesh-growing tanks, configuring neural nets and mating them to skeletons, putting such matings into flesh-growing tanks and removing finished androids from others.
     Donaldson nodded at the activity. “I’ve never seen it before, but had I tried to imagine it, my idea of it probably would have looked much like this.”
     “Can you tell me what’s missing?” Morgenstern murmured.
     “Ah, no. Is something missing?”
     “Most certainly.” The engineer made to walk around the periphery of the bay. Donaldson followed. Presently they arrived at a second set of double doors. This one was flanked by two armed guards. Morgenstern displayed his ID badge, and the guards allowed them to enter.
     This room was much smaller. It was occupied by four body-length racks each of which bore a fully formed android, and men and women in white lab coats tending to them.
     The androids’ neural nets were connected to thick bundles of cables that led from their bodies to control pedestals, and thence to ports in the far wall. The pedestals bore touch screens that displayed an array of buttons and sliders with associated legends. The only sounds were of the technicians’ movements as they shuffled between the pedestals and the androids.
     “The last stage of assembly,” Morgenstern said in a monotone, “is where the purchaser’s chosen psyche, aptitudes, and personality are imposed on his android. When an android is released from this room, it acquires rights equal to those of any human. I’m sure you know all about that.”
     “I do,” Donaldson murmured. “That’s what makes this business so confounding. Each of your androids was ordered and paid for by a human purchaser. Yet that purchaser has no property rights in his purchase. Straining at Gnats 101 and Swallowing Elephants 102 didn’t cover anything like this.”
     Morgenstern chuckled. “I’m sure.” He gestured to Donaldson to follow him out of the intensely quiet room and led him back to the stairs. Soon they were once again seated in the chief engineer’s office.
     “The lower courts are still struggling with the implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling. One of the questions is in front of the Second Circuit right now: whether a purchaser has any remedies should ‘his’ android fail to meet his clearly stated expectations. Our legal department is on pins and needles waiting for the decision to come down.”
     “That case baffles me,” Donaldson said. “I’d thought it would be a simple matter of contractual agreement. If the android meets the contract’s specifications, what basis would the purchaser have for complaint?”
     The engineer shook his head. “Contracts don’t bind the way they used to, Counselor. I’m sure you know that, too.”
     “All too well, Mr. Morgenstern. But purchaser expectations seem a poor match to the demands of contract law. Now that androids are rights bearers, once you… finish one, you can’t do anything further to him against his will. He’s immune to his purchaser’s displeasure. So Dynapower would have to be held harmless—unless the judgment is that the company owes the purchaser a whole new android at company expense.”
     “That,” Morgenstern said, “is what management fears. Given the preponderance of left-leaning judges on the Second Circuit, it’s possible that that’s the way they’ll rule. We’d have to appeal to SCOTUS, with no certainty of how it would turn out. The case could bankrupt us.”
     Donaldson started to speak, halted himself.
     “You’re familiar with the microstamping controversy, aren’t you, Counselor?” Morgenstern said.
     “I am.”
     “Do you remember the last time that was brought to a federal court?”
     “Of course. California wanted to make it mandatory on all ammunition sold to California residents. The Ninth Circuit ruled that it constituted an unacceptable burden on legitimate commerce in arms. I must admit, it shocked the hell out me.”
     “And why was that?” The engineer wore a knowing grin.
     “Well,” Donaldson said, “if there’s a hard-left circuit, the Ninth is it. They very seldom show businesses any sympathy for any reason.”
     “But that time, they did,” Morgenstern said. “They even embraced a reason they’d never countenanced before: ‘the state of the art.’ They gave bullet makers a break on purely economic and technological grounds.”
     “Well, a pro-mandatory-stamping ruling would have put an unbearable burden on the bullet makers,” Donaldson said, “and California is an eighth of the U.S. It would have driven a lot of them out of business.”
     “Indeed it would have.” Morgenstern set his elbows on his desk and propped his chin on his folded hands. “My business has its limitations, too. Some, we might be able to work around, in time. Others, maybe and maybe not. We don’t know now and may never.
     “Your divorce action won’t be the last of its kind. I remember David Crenshaw. He’s a rare combination: high intelligence, great wealth, and compelling sexual cravings he hasn’t been able to slake. He says he’s bisexual, hence he wanted a 420A. But he’s not, really. He’s never had sex with a man. I asked him about it the day he filed his purchase order. The idea made him physically ill.
     “He was very specific. He wanted a female 420A android. That is, an android with a female anatomical configuration, swappable genitalia… and a female psyche. But the female psychological configuration absolutely resists using the male genital set. My programmers knew it. They’d been trying to modify it, knowing that eventually a David Crenshaw would come to our doors. I knew it too. I took the order up the hall, told the CEO what would happen, and expressed my opposition. He approved it anyway.
     “I knew Crenshaw wouldn’t be happy. I told him so. He was adamant. He wanted what he wanted and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
     “You see where that leaves us, Counselor?”
     Donaldson’s eyes compressed in pain. “I do.”
     “I was surprised that Eileen accepted the alternate genital set. I was more surprised that she was willing to meet the man who’d ordered her construction. When I heard that she’d accepted his proposal, it knocked me over. But here we are.”
     “And here David and Eileen Crenshaw are,” Donaldson said. “As we speak, Eileen is making a last attempt to reconcile with David. She’s doing so at my request. But from what we’ve discussed here today, she’s unlikely to succeed. So irreconcilable differences it is.” He rose and extended his hand. “Thank you for all your time and patience, Mr. Morgenstern.”
     The engineer took the lawyer’s hand with a smile. This time his smile was warm, though touched by the awareness of sorrow.
     “Counselor, it’s been… well, not my pleasure exactly. But as necessities go, this one wasn’t the worst I’ve had to deal with. I hope you’ll guide the Crenshaws to an amicable parting?”
     “I’ll do my best, sir.”

==<O>==

     Copyright © 2026 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Exhausted

     Forgive me, Gentle Readers. I overdid it massively these past two days and am on the verge of collapse. I’m taking the weekend off from just about everything. Look for fresh drivel here on Monday at the earliest.

     Have a good weekend.

Hard Cases And Treating Symptoms

     “Hard cases make bad law” entered the catalogue of American legal maxims through Associate Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1904. It’s supposed to warn lawmakers not to twist simple laws all out of shape to cover unusual situations. By and large, lawmakers in our time have ignored it. That’s one of the reasons the laws fastened upon us run to thousands of pages, such that no one except specialists in that particular law genuinely know what it requires.

     In witness of the counter-trend against hard-case law, we have this:

     Yes, it’s from CNN. Note the trailing sentiment from Will Fischer. He disdains generosity; he wants the government to step in. That is, he wants more law. The comments that trail that image at X, where I found it, are mostly to the opposite effect.

     The more-law advocate would normally reply along these lines:

     “Well, all right, this teacher’s colleagues stepped up to help him this time. But he’s just one case. The whole insurance system is broken. It leaves thousands of men like that teacher un-helped! It’s a disease that needs a systematic cure. You don’t cure a disease by treating a symptom!”

     That is the plea of the socialist. It’s recognizable at a hundred paces. By marrying it to a sympathetic figure in acute personal need, the socialist disguises his underlying intention: to have the State take over the provision of all medical goods and services.

     My old friend Dystopic a.k.a. Thales (neither is his real name, as if you needed to be told) called this weaponized empathy. He wrote penetratingly on its effectiveness. It’s a pity his site The Declination is no longer available for me to cite.

     I’m poised to deliver a revelation, here. It disturbed me when it came to me. I guarantee that it will disturb you, Gentle Reader. Yet it’s too important for me to keep to myself. It casts an unforgiving light on all of us who pontificate about public policy – specifically, on our tendency to aggregate things into “systems,” as if human societies could be organized the way a mechanic organizes his tools.

     Indeed, it’s so important that I’m going to cast in giant font, so that no one, however casually he’s inclined to scan my drivel, could possibly miss it. Are you ready? There here it comes:

Every specific event,
Every concrete instance of anything,
No matter whom it affects or how many,
IS A SYMPTOM.

     Sometimes it’s possible to see compelling similarities among an assemblage of events. Sometimes the people who see them propose schemes for dealing with them in a uniform or almost uniform fashion. That’s when the talk begins about “problems” and “solutions.” That brings forth planners and their “systems.” And that is what has albatrossed medical services (among other things) in these United States.

     But there’s no such thing as a system that lacks hard cases. All systems are challenged by cases that don’t quite fit the definitions, the scope, or the capabilities of the system. Another term for hard cases is edge cases. The edge case hovers tantalizingly out of reach, just beyond the edge of the system in place. It tempts lawmakers to stretch their creations just a wee bit… just enough to capture the plight of the poor, massively sympathetic figure at the edge. He needs our help, doesn’t he? And didn’t we erect the system to help people just like him?

     Once again, allow me to quote the great John Gall:

     Government Systems, acting in accordance with the laws of growth, Tend to Expand and Encroach. In encroaching upon their own citizens, they produce Tyranny, and encroaching upon other Government Systems, they engage in Warfare…. What is the track record of large systems designed for the express purpose of solving a major problem? A decent respect for our predecessors prevents us from dwelling upon the efforts of governmental administrations to eradicate poverty, reduce crime, or even get the mail delivered on time.

     [John Gall, Systemantics]

     In our Constitutional republic, edge cases are the principal ongoing driver of government growth. There will be journalists who will write about them in dramatic, often shocking terms, and editorialists who’ll ask “Why hasn’t anything been done yet?” Interest groups will latch onto them. Bureaucrats will see prospects for promotion and salary increases in them. Politicians will hitch their careers to them.

     And as the “adjustment” to the system in place will require just a little more money from the public, and will reduce free choice just a little bit more, the system will be extended to cover the luridly reported edge case. The sufferer will receive benefits. The bureaucracy will expand. The politicians will gain an increment of prestige.

     Will there be losers? Of course! The journalists will have to find fresh stories over which to slather their preferred adjectives. The editorialists will need new issues over which to fulminate and declaim. And let’s not forget you and me, as our choices among practitioners and insurers shrink and the hoovering of our wallets by the Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent State intensifies.

     We’d be far better off treating symptoms one by one. Don’t tell your doctor that, of course. To him it would constitute medical heresy. He wants to identify and treat the disease; it’s what he was taught to do. But given that so many people come to him with eye problems, ear problems, nose problems, teeth problems, scalp problems, and so forth, you might want to ask him whether he would favor a system that simply cuts off the sufferer’s head.

     There are people out there who’d vote for that.

Influencers, Those They Influence, And Those Who Influence Them

     I have to run off to a dentist’s appointment in a little while, so this will be a quickie. We speak of “influencers” today as if opinion-forming bellwethers were a new phenomenon. Sorry, they aren’t. However, due to developments in communications, especially in the digital realm, the subject has acquired a scope far greater than it would have been in the radio years or the early television years.

     This morning, a significant voice on Second Amendment rights has applied his intellect to understanding the divergence between the influence of influencers – sorry, Gentle Reader – and actual electoral performance:

     Braden Langley might seem a bit rough-hewn, but he’s highly intelligent and has put a lot of time into studying the currents that run through American politics. His thesis in the above is simple, but it wouldn’t occur to persons who take opinion polls and the follower counts of influencers as something primary, impervious to question. “Influence” in real-world terms diverges greatly from the undifferentiated aggregates commanded by persons who reach and appeal to global audiences.

     Influencers are themselves influenced by their followers. If the followers trend Leftward, they will exert a significant force on the influencer to position himself to the Left. He has a natural incentive to retain his existing followers and attract new ones. Money is often involved through advertising and sponsorships. The global audience made possible by the Internet is far more Left-inclined than the one that votes in American elections.

     Remember back in 2004, when foreign figures such as Richard Dawkins and David Cornwall (a.k.a. “John LeCarre”) tried to persuade Americans to elect John Kerry to the presidency rather than George W. Bush? It didn’t work; Left-inclined foreign voices don’t appeal to many Americans. But superficial attention to how many persons admire those figures, without attention to where the majority of those persons are situated and whether they can vote in American elections, misled many casual observers. (Perhaps some wanted to be misled, but that subject is beyond the scope of this tirade.)

     Americans are not easily led by persons who don’t share American values. But influencers, including American commentators who command large audiences of faceless followers, are a different story. This might just be another way of phrasing the old maxim “follow the money,” but what of that?

     Have a nice day.

2026’s Most Inconvenient Question

     In the philosophical realm, arguments about meaning can go on forever. Meaning arises from interpretation, which makes it a personal matter rather than something that can be pinned down once and for all. But average persons don’t spend a lot of time in the philosophical realm, Ayn Rand’s exhortations notwithstanding. By and large, we deal with one another on the objective plane. In that plane, the meanings of the words we use must be agreed upon with a high degree of specificity.

     Consider just how awkward and irritating communication with others would be, were we all to take Humpty Dumpty’s attitude toward words:

     'As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—'
     'Certainly,' said Alice.
     'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
     'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
     Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
     'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
     'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'
     'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
     'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'

     The Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch are surely familiar with the Left’s tactic of redefining common words to give them wholly new meanings. The manipulation of language for political purposes is among their favorite ways to avoid actually confronting an issue. It’s frustrating and maddening, which is why it works. Communication is impossible between two persons who give different meanings to common words.

     But this is the Year of Our Lord 2026. The hour has come in which the Left’s unwillingness to give words specific meanings can be turned against them. It has arrived in the form of a question the Democrat Party cannot answer:

What does it mean to say “I’m a Democrat?”

     Like it? I thought you might.

* * *

     The domination of electoral politics by two major parties has many negative consequences, but it does provide one convenience: to attain political power requires alignment with one major party or the other. For power-seeking purposes, if you’re not a Hatfield, you must be a McCoy. And the Left is utterly consumed with power. Therefore, it has focused on capturing the Democrat Party and bending its stances to serve a hard-Left agenda.

     The men who determine the platform and tactics of the Democrat Party are focused on getting their candidates elected. Those strategists naturally want there to be more Democrat voters than Republican voters. All else is a sideshow. What their victorious candidates will do with their offices after being seated is almost completely irrelevant.

     This has given rise to a “Big Tent” pseudo-philosophy in which – by the decisions of party leaders – it’s unnecessary for any two persons who claim to be Democrats to agree on anything. All that matters is that they vote for Democrat Party nominees. What do those candidates stand for? Never mind that; just pull the “straight ticket” Democrat lever and go home.

     That makes “What is a Democrat?” answerable in only one fashion: “He votes for Democrat Party nominees exclusively.”

     Do you doubt this? Then read this article:

     Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin closed his party’s summer meeting in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 15 by calling the Democratic Party a “big tent” and telling members to stop applying litmus tests to one another. The speakers who followed him over the next hour demonstrated how much room that tent is being asked to cover.
     Former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe told members to stop using factional labels at all. Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) claimed to be part of the “economic patriotism wing” of the party and laid out a policy agenda. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who sits on the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, warned that progressive candidates must be careful not to hand Republicans ammunition.
     Martin, closing a three-day meeting that also adopted the party’s 2028 presidential nominating calendar, framed the argument around the size of the party’s coalition.
     “We don’t strengthen our party through stricter and stricter litmus tests,” Martin said. “You do not build a majority by constantly looking for reasons to throw people out of it.”
     He traced the point to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, which he said brought together big-city residents, small-town Americans, rural Southerners, northern labor unions, and working-class families. That coalition also included “people who have been pushed to the margins, including religious, racial, and ethnic minorities,” Martin said, and the party welcomed all of them into the Democrats’ “big-tent party.”

     I find it particularly illuminating that Martin cites FDR, as that president governed in a fashion diametrically opposed to his party’s 1932 platform. Yet it was that platform that got Roosevelt elected.

     Here is what Roosevelt said when confronted by that disjunction:

     The broken party platform, as an object, had a curious end. Instead of floating away and out of sight as a proper party platform should, it kept coming back with the tide. Once it came so close that the President had to notice it. Then all he did was to turn it over, campaign side down, with the words: "I was able, conscientiously, to give full assent to this platform and to develop its purpose in campaign speeches. A campaign, however, is apt to partake so much of the character of a debate and the discussion of individual points that the deeper and more permanent philosophy of the whole plan (where one exists) is often lost."
     At that the platform sank.

     [Garet Garrett, The People’s Pottage]

     This makes the question “What is a Democrat?” effectively unanswerable.

     Say, remember when Matt Walsh was asking various Democrats and Leftists “What is a woman?” They didn’t care for it much, did they? Does that suggest anything to you, Gentle Reader?

* * *

     I just looked back over this mountain of drivel and was appalled. It quotes Lewis Carroll, The Epoch Times, and Garet Garrett in a single Liberty’s Torch piece! Amazing! And probably never to be repeated… well, at least this year. But the point remains salient. There is no way to distinguish a Democrat from a non-Democrat other than by the lever he pulls in the voting booth.

     Given that distinction, is it fair to ask a Democrat “What are you voting for?” Or is it merely cruel? And to what or whom is the matter of most use?

     I may return to this tomorrow. Meanwhile, have a nice day.