We have gone to war.

"War is the health of the state."
Randolph Bourne, American public intellectual, 1917

We are in the startle phase this morning. The startle phase is the orientation: "Wow. It happened. War."

The "shock and awe" phase comes shortly, when we see video of our missiles and airborne firepower. The U.S. likes fighting from the air. That's our wheelhouse. There is something exhilarating about sitting in a safe, comfortable spot, seeing what looks like fireworks, when viewed from the shooter's view, and far away.

This is the honeymoon period. 

We can hope that this comes to a good end. What would that be? Maybe a friendly Iran, no longer a state sponsor of anti-west terror. Maybe it becomes a secular, multi-ethnic, democratic state seeking peaceful trade deals with the world. In the honeymoon period, anything is possible.

Notice that Congress did not declare war. Indeed, it was not consulted. The American people were not consulted either, beyond the fact that we elected Donald Trump. We did not elect a dictator; we elected a president within a constitutional structure. We did not sign off on this war.

Congress has abdicated its responsibility. Every president wants to accumulate power. Under Trump, Congress became an advisory body: partly Greek chorus, partly hands-off board of directors, partly a bullpen and audition space for future executive offices. They have let this president accelerate the transition to an imperial president. Trump wants all of that power and more, and he takes it. Congress lets him.

"There will be casualties," Trump said early this morning. This is war, it is intentional, and we are taking the initiative. There are questions deserving debate and the consensus envisioned in a constitutional republic. Is this war in our interest? What are our war aims? Are we willing to put boots on the ground?  How are we going to pay for this?

Randolph Bourne warned that the war concentrates power in the executive. This war has a second front, in the multi-decade war over our form of government. 

In a battlefield war map, officers would mark this month's tariff case in the Supreme Court as a setback for the executive in the battle line of power. (The Court acted independently, as a temporary but inconsistent ally of Congress.) Congress fought back the tariff bulge initiative.

This war as a second purpose: the presidential power battle. It reasserts presidential primacy in major policy decisions. He just did it. Sit back and watch. This war is a back-door way into better control of state and local government by triggering the "wartime" exceptions and special powers. The president had asserted special powers because we were at "war" with drug gangs and unauthorized immigrants. It was a stretch, at best. But this is real war, with aircraft carriers and fighter jets. It opens the floodgates of new powers. He can make certain that the right people vote in November and that ballots are counted and reported by people loyal to Trump.

I don't feel hopeless. Congress could assert itself. The time to have done so is weeks and months ago. Congress will rise up off the mat if and when the war goes badly. Then voices will emerge saying that the president had no right to do this. 

I want success and safety for our troops. That would be a good outcome. But there are consequences to that. If things go well, Trump will say it is proof that he alone knows how to win and that we should cede him even more power. And he will take it.

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Epstein files keep dripping out

"Exonerated."

That is Trump's position. Not just "not guilty." Not just "unknown," nor "unknowable," nor "unproved guilt based on admissible evidence in a court of law." 

"I have nothing to hide. I've been exonerated. I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein."
          Trump to reporters on Air Force One

Democrats who get their news from a mix of "mainstream news" and from social media feeds derivative of those sources think Trump is surely guilty of something illegal or hugely embarrassing as regards Jeffrey Epstein. After all, it is Trump-the-Lothario-predator. Otherwise, why his ham-handed coverup? And look at all the evidence. Photos. Flight logs. Birthday cards. Testimony from victims. 

Trump has protectors, not defenders. The Justice Department and his allies in the Congress withhold information the best they can. When they are forced to release information they mess it up with haphazard redactions and point at Democratic-coded people and institutions. That is why they questioned Hillary Clinton yesterday. 

No Trump defender says, "Manipulate a young woman into sex play? Why Trump wouldn't do anything like that." 

Being a sexual predator sounds exactly like something Trump would do if he could get away with it. He has had a lifetime of experience doing it. He bragged about being able to walk in on undressed contestants in teen beauty pageant dressing rooms. Trump's supporters heard the Access Hollywood tape and voted for him anyway. It was "just Trump being Trump," evidence of his forceful will, his ability to take what he wants. Trump-the-winner in sex, politics, and war. Maybe we can get Greenland.

Democrats who consider Trump to be a malicious sociopath, a narcissist, a flagrant liar and lawbreaker, and a man unfit for any position of responsibility -- a reasonable position -- have a hard time crediting Trump for his talents. Democrats overlook his skill in transactional negotiations. Trump takes an outrageous opening position. Greenland. DOGE. Tariffs at 100 percent. Ghislaine Maxwell -- herself negotiating for a full pardon -- asserts that Trump "was a perfect gentleman." Exoneration is a negotiating position.

I doubt the Epstein files will resolve anything, although I expect more resignations and public shaming, some well-justified, some guilt by implication and accusation. The files have gone through many hands. I presume some files were shredded, some are intact but haphazardly redacted, some released, some withheld for good reason, and some withheld for corrupt reasons. Even photos and videotape with clear images of Trump doing criminal acts with very young girls can be discounted as fake, manipulated, or created by AI.  No credible proof is possible. 

That is the real lesson Americans will learn: No one knows, and some people will get away with bad behavior. The result will be a general cheapening of America's respect for our business and political leaders and an overall sense that there is no true anything. The news is fake. Elections are rigged. Tabulating machines flip votes. Obama's birth certificate was faked. The CDC hides that vaccines are dangerous. College admissions are rigged. Sports are rigged. Members of Congress trade stocks on inside information. There really was an elite ring of powerful pedophiles, only it wasn't in a pizza shop basement. It was on a private island. 

Trump is hurt by the Epstein mess, but so is everyone else. Trump is adept at riding out a scandal: deny, accuse, deflect. Trump's malignant sociopathy gives him a powerful weapon: shamelessness. Others will resign. They will admit to some error in judgment. They will feel shame. Not Trump. After all, he was exonerated.

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Report from Mexico (A Trump-free post)

February 22: State Department Travel Warning: Avoid much of Mexico.

February 25: Travel Warning lifted.

"All restrictions related to the events of February 22 on U.S. government staff in Mexico have been lifted.  The U.S. Embassy and all consulates in Mexico are operating normally."

What the heck was going on in Mexico this week?

The Mexican government, apparently with U.S help, killed a leader of a major drug gang while trying to arrest him. That triggered a well-established response in the form of localized violence staged by members of the drug cartel.

From my home in Medford, Oregon it seemed dangerous. Roadblocks. Burning cars. The State Department travel warning confirmed my concerns. College classmate and Mexican expat Erich Almasy seemed quite sanguine when I telephoned him. I didn't hear gunfire in the background while we talked. Quite the opposite. He spoke of concerts and dinners with friends. He said there is a pattern to these events and he doesn't expect trouble. He agreed to send me his perspective.

Erich Almasy and wife Cynthia Blanton

Guest post by Erich Almasy

México has an extremely violent history. Although, to be fair, many of the over 70 countries my wife and I have visited can claim a similar heritage. Including the United States. When they think of the Mexican Revolution, fought between 1910 and 1920, most Americans imagine a bandolier-wearing mustachioed Pancho Villa. During that conflict, a population of roughly 15 million was reduced by an estimated 19 percent due to disease, famine, and warfare; that's more than the German Army lost in World War I. The late 1920s were not much better, as 200,000 died in the Cristero Wars fought between Catholics and anticlerics. 

During Prohibition, the families of the Tequila empires of José Cuervo and Cenobio Sauza fought pitched gun battles on the streets of Guadalajara. Since the founding of the Mexican Republic in 1824, three of its presidents have been assassinated, including two in the twentieth century. (NOTE: The United States tops this with four presidential assassinations, including two in the twentieth century). Partly because of this history, by law, Mexicans (and expats) are not allowed to own guns, even for hunting. The weapons used by the cartels, 

including the surface-to-air missile that recently damaged a police helicopter, were all bought in the United States and illegally smuggled into México.

NBC News headline

The death during arrest on February 22 of the New Jalisco Generation cartel head Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, better known as “El Mencho,” has sparked concern of major political and social upheaval in México, with cartel members blockading roads, burning buses and vehicles, and shooting National Guard members. On Sunday, tourist areas in Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara were placed under lockdown. Many American airlines canceled flights to México, and in San Miguel de Allende, our mayor called for a curfew. By the next day, all was calm and back to normal. My Mexican friends tell me this is par for the course and cite some compelling evidence that both the capture (and sometimes death) of major cartel heads, followed by noticeable violence, is actually a choreographed element of Mexican politics. Known as the Kingpin Strategy, it began with the capture and extradition to the United States of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, head of the Guadalajara cartel in 1989. Since 1995, nearly every Mexican president has conducted a major raid on cartels.

• 2022 (Andrés Manuel López Obrador presidency) witnessed the capture of Rafael Caro Quintero, head of the Guadalajara cartel.
• 2016 (Enrique Peña Nieto presidency) witnessed the third recapture and transfer to the United States of “El Chapo” Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa cartel.
• 2013 (also Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidency) saw the capture and extradition of Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, boss of the Los Zetas cartel.
• 2012 (Felipe Calderón presidency), Heriberto Lazcano, known as “El Lazca” (the Crazy One), head of Los Zetas, was killed by Mexican marines.
• 2010 (also during the Felipe Calderón presidency) saw the deaths of “Tony Tormenta,” the boss of the Gulf cartel, and “Nacho” Coronel, leader of the Sinaloa cartel.
• 2002 (Vicente Fox Quesada presidency) saw the death of Ramón Arellano Félix, head of the Tijuana cartel.
• 1997 (Ernesto Zedillo presidency) saw the death of Amado Carillo Fuentes, head of the Juárez cartel.

The follow-up to these raids is always the same, with blockades, threats of assassination, and vehicle-burning. They are not to be taken lightly, but again, my Mexican friends are both cynical and sanguine about these violent demonstrations. They point to the apparent appearance of “captured” cartel heads in places like Bali, years after their supposed incarceration. They have a point that this is theater. It is not in any of the cartels’ interests to harm tourism and damage an industry that welcomes 48 million people, employs nearly 8 million people, and accounts for 8 percent of México’s GDP. As of today, Tuesday, February 24th, the U.S. State Department has removed all warnings for Americans. The peso stayed steady at about 17.3 per U.S. dollar.

My wife and I moved to San Miguel de Allende in the fall of 2019. The town is almost 500 years old, and its colonial architecture and UNESCO World Heritage Site designation make it one of the most popular tourist attractions in México. We are surrounded by twelve-foot colonial-architecture walls, and we pay for a nightly neighborhood security guard. We have suffered no personal or property crime, unlike our six-years in San Francisco, where our car was broken into twice, and our home was attacked with an ax. Just as we did in San Francisco, New York, and Toronto, we are vigilant about our surroundings.

 

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You did not need to watch the speech.

Trump's State of the Union speech was a long, hard slog. 

A friend emailed me: "It is now 7:24, and I have turned to another program.

I emailed back: "I stopped at 6:33."

I watched excerpts and highlights this morning. I guessed wrong about Trump blasting the Supreme Court. By the standards of Trump, he gave them a pass. 

He simply called their ruling on tariffs "unfortunate."

Just four days ago an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court -- it just came down, it came down -- a very unfortunate ruling -- but the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made. . . before the Supreme Court's unfortunate involvement.  Despite the disappointing ruling, these powerful countries' saving -- it's saving our country, the kind of money we're taking in, peace protecting many of the wars I settled was because of the threat of tariffs.

It sounds like near gibberish. Trump was "weaving," doing free association. The takeaway is that he did not repeat calling them "fools" and "lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats." 

I stopped watching because the 15 minutes of celebration for the U.S. hockey team and repeated chants of "USA, USA, USA" near the beginning of Trump's speech bored me. We defeated Canada in a hockey game. Canada, that great evil empire? Say, what? We won a close game in overtime, and somehow this is the triumph of a great nation? It got tiresome for me.

Democrats know Trump's interpretation of events is laughably false, full of made up statistics, lies, mischaracterizations, self-aggrandizements, and unfair insults. Nevertheless, some 40 percent of Americans believe him. Or, don't exactly believe him, because it is so hyperbolic that it is obviously a salesman's puffery, but it is at least directionally true. Sort of true. It is a welcome truth that fits a comfortable partisan mindset. A person loyal to the GOP brand can relax into agreement.

Trump asserted:

--  Everything was terrible under Biden, just as it was under Obama. Trump inherited carnage upon his inauguration. Life under Democratic presidents is utterly different from life while Trump is president. 

---  Trump fixed everything. Inflation, the price of eggs and gasoline, immigration, crime generally, the murder rate, taxes, trade relations, and world peace. 

---  Democrats can win elections only if they cheat. If they win, it is because they cheated.

--- Trump has made the U.S. respected in the world. Under Democratic presidents, foreign leaders laughed at us and took advantage. Now we are feared and respected.

---  Tariffs are paid by foreign countries and they knuckle under because we have a strong president. It is bringing in lots of free money for us.

---  Trump has a medical plan in the works, and it will be great. Stupendously great. Just wait and watch.

---  Military power is solving the problems of the U.S. and the world. It brings us cheap oil, it stops drugs, and it settles wars between foreign nations. 

---  Trump is a full-throated patriotic cheerleader for America. America is good and great and always has been. We have nothing to regret.  

Support of Trump by Independent voters, in yellow, ticked up during the hockey celebration

Expressions of patriotism should be easy for a Democrat hoping to lead the party, but it will not be. America's mistakes are an integral part of the Democratic interest groups' understanding of today's problems. We own the past in order to improve and make that "more perfect union."

Trump tells Americans that they should be proud of themselves and their history, period. Forget any bad stuff that Democrats keep bringing up. It never happened, or if it did it is the fault of Democrats. We are strong and we are good. We are number one. We are winning and winning. USA! USA! USA!

There is a lesson here. Democrats may need to adopt a glass-half-full-and-filling-up tone. We are getting better all the time. Democrats are the party of progress, not regret. 

Remember: the speech that launched Barack Obama was one of pride and optimism. He said there are no blue states, no red states, no Black America, no White America. We go to church. We coach Little League. We are OK. And in the end, he said, the bedrock of this nation is the belief that there are better days ahead.

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Watch tonight. Trump will attack the Supreme Court.

I am betting on Trump being true to form: selfish, petulant, on the attack, partisan, and nasty.

He is going to criticize the Supreme Court justices who voted to disallow his tariffs.

That would be a political mistake.

The State of the Union speech gets enormous staff input. Other minds have gamed this out with him. He will have considered the pros and cons of laying into the Supreme Court, so this will be a calculated decision. It is possible someone will tell Trump to surprise people. Cajole the Supreme Court and be nice. That would generate a big headline: Trump accepts Supreme Court decision on tariffs. It would be news. 

I think Trump will go the other way. He will be nasty. He is on a roll:

--  He has said, "They're just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats." 

--  He has said, "It's my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests."  

--  He has said they are "an embarrassment to their families, to one another." 

Trump's brand is defiance: You can't tell me what I can't do. He immediately announced a work-around after being denied tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by announcing a 10-percent -- no, make that 15-percent -- tariff under color of a different law. So there!   

Trump knows the Supreme Court holds weak cards. He sees that they are treading softly, trying not to provoke him. He knows he is being "handled" because they cannot risk his wrath. He has the power. He can destroy the courts. He can make the judicial branch merely advisory, as concerns presidential power. 

That will be Trump's calculation: He is strong and the Supreme Court's only weapon is a reputation for fairness, and events have largely squandered that. The Republican senate majority leader gave the game away when he stalled seating Obama appointee Merrick Garland and then rushed through the seating of Amy Coney Barrett. It is power politics. It is a Republican Supreme Court. 

The victory exacerbates a trend:

Pew poll, September 2025

Support for the Supreme Court has become thoroughly partisan:

Republican support for the Supreme Court is where the peril lies for Trump. A majority of Republicans think the Court is fair and reasonable with 63 percent calling it "middle of the road." A majority of Americans as a whole, and a large majority of Republicans (71 percent), think the Supreme Court has "the right amount of power."

It is a strange situation. The public is skeptical of the Supreme Court's fairness and objectivity, but they still want it to have power. Even if the refs are biased, the game is still better if there are refs on the field. There is a lesson there for Trump.

Trump is miscalculating his power to be the high-handed, norm-breaking strong man he likes to be. Trump understood that Americans wanted something done about unregulated mass immigration, but people are increasingly critical of his methods. That is the growing read on Trump: OK ideas, bad execution. It is impossible to keep Americans happy, not when there are problems in every direction: inflation, affordability, employment, wars, drugs, crime, health care costs, Jeffrey Epstein coverup, and indeed everything. Everything could be better.

There is an idea rising in the political atmosphere that Trump is unconstrained, careless, and unreliable, now more than ever. He is unpredictable. The 10-percent, then 15-percent, tariff in back-to-back days is an example. What the heck is he doing? So far he has gotten away with the crony grift -- apparently people don't mind him enriching himself -- but the Epstein coverup looks worse than merely suspicious. Trump isn't "totally exonerated." Other countries are cleaning house, but the USA keeps protecting its elites, including Trump. Everything about Trump is getting louder, crazier, worse. 

People are noticing:

I don't think there is anyone on Trump's team telling him to chill a little. To show some respect for others. To be a good sport. Trump's mistakes are ones of excess.  

Trump is widening his legitimacy gap. A six-three court is not validation enough for Trump, giving him a platform from which to expand his power while people think he is playing by democratic rules. He could stay within their blessing, but he wants more. Trump is making the case that something or someone needs to put the brakes on Trump. 

That is what midterm elections are for. 

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Did my amicus brief affect the tariff decision? Maybe it did.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch laid into his colleagues.

Gorsuch also cited the same data that I cited in my amicus curiae brief. Who knows? Maybe my brief made a difference.

The Wall Street Journal

Neil Gorsuch's concurring opinion is getting attention from the media because, in a polite, non-snarky way, he points out the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the three liberal justices --  Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan. Then he does the same with the two justices -- Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito -- who fully defer to Trump. 

In Gorsuch's telling, the three liberal justices are just as blindly partisan as Justices Thomas and Alito. Gorsuch wrote that In multiple instances occasioned by Biden attempting to implement policies by executive order (e.g., forgiving student loan debt), the three liberals voted to expand presidential authority, citing "broad" and "expansive" powers. But in this Trump tariff case, the justices were sticklers for the opposite, demanding specific delegation language.

Gorsuch did the reverse job on Thomas and Alito. So now, with this president, you think a president can interpret language expansively to give open-ended authority to a president.

I find reading primary legal texts, including the opinions in this case, difficult, but here it is. Scroll to the bottom. Understanding legal opinions usually requires fluent knowledge of how prior cases cited in the opinion built legal precedent. But it is no great feat for a non-lawyer to see that Gorsuch was enjoying pointing out his colleagues' hypocrisy. He had a second mission in his opinion, asserting that in both tariff matters and "administrative state" matters, responsibility for making the rules belonged to Congress, not the president, not experts in the federal agencies, and not the courts. 

Detail of cover of printed copy of the brief, as submitted to the Court

The centrality of Congress was the point my attorney and I made in the amicus brief, as did most of the other amicus briefs. I drew from the text of the first tariff act to document the odd, amusing particularity of the tariffs placed on early-Republic items of commerce. Such detail. I hoped the quirky list would catch attention and drive home my point. I wrote:

In 1804, Congress amended the Act of 1789. It added a list of items exempted from tariffs: rags of linen; cotton, woolen, and hempen cloth; bristles of swine; regulus of antimony; unwrought clay; unwrought burr stones; and the bark of the cork tree.

Bristles of swine could be an attention-grabber.

I argued that only Congress could evaluate the particular hardship and inconvenience of items that specific. I was thrilled to see the argument again on pages 37 and 38 of Gorsuch's opinion, citing the particularity and detail of import items as evidence that Congress and only Congress could impose tariffs. 

How did Congress exercise its all-important tariff power? It debated every detail of the first tariff Act. Stanwood 39– 71. Ultimately, Congress said, imported malt would incur a charge of 10 cents a bushel. Brown sugar one cent. Loaf sugar three cents. And so on.

I read this hoping to see in Gorsuch's argument a giveaway mention of "bristles of swine," the oddest item in my list, but I did not, alas. Still, maybe the quirky nature of the list caught the attention of Gorsuch and his law clerks, and it helped solidify his thinking on the issue. Who knows?

Gorsuch concluded his long concurrence with an opinion that makes me optimistic for future decisions regarding Trump's ambitions for presidential power. He said Congress, not the president, makes policy, and for good reasons. Congress is deliberative, he said, and that tempers impulse. Without mentioning Trump by name, he warned against rule by a single unpredictable, impetuous person. Who might that be? Better to trust the legislative process:

For those who think it important for the Nation to impose more tariffs, I understand that today’s decision will be disappointing. All I can offer them is that most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs) are funneled through the legislative process for a reason. Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions. And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day. In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future. For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious. But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today’s result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is.

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Easy Sunday: Cheer up.

      "I get up every morning feeling cynical about politics, but then I watch what's going on and realize I was not cynical enough."

My reflection upon finishing yesterday's post

Try to do good things. Don't give up.

A reflection on Lyn Hennion.

People who read yesterday's post learned that I had a low opinion of the Supreme Court. I said the Supreme Court was a purely political body, pretending to be fair umpires calling balls and strikes, but that this was a lie.

All the parsing of the law and precedent is window dressing. It is pretense. When it involves Trump, the Supreme Court is all politics all the time.

The game is rigged, I wrote. My attorney's brief, formatted with all their citations and footnotes, submitted per the Supreme Court's detailed rules for printing and binding amicus briefs -- all that work was irrelevant. I wrote that the Supreme Court decision on tariffs was based solely about how four Republican judges could hide their profound partisanship by denying Trump a win on this issue, while mollifying an unpredictable, emotionally unstable president by writing it so that he had workarounds. This decision was a public relations gambit.

I said it: The Supreme Court members are partisan hacks. The robes are a sham. Lady Justice's blindfold is a lie. People who think otherwise are naive. 

Yeah, that is a pretty cynical view of our present condition.

Then, yesterday afternoon, I attended a celebration-of-life event for Lyn Hennion.

Lyn seemed to me to have have been a genuinely good person. I knew her as a wholesaler-representative for Franklin Funds, then as a Financial Advisor for about 20 years for a rival firm, and for all of her adult life as an active board member for community institutions. She was a philanthropist, fundraiser, and cheerleader for them.

The event's speakers told funny, upbeat stories about how Lyn helped them and their organizations. She was a community builder. A Good Samaritan. She cared about everything, but especially early childhood education for the "itty-bitties," as she put it.

My big takeaway from the program was appreciation of Lyn personally. I reflected that it was a life well lived. I sat quietly with that idea for a couple of minutes after the meeting broke up. 

Lyn changed my mood and attitude. Lyn wasn't cynical. Of course the world is unfair, and misfortune is inevitable. The poor we will always have with us. No matter. Lyn rowed against that current. She kept tying to make things better. She kept trying to build community. 

There's a lot to be cynical about, but there is work to do that makes the world a little bit better. Do that work. Don't give up. 

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