ANOTHER ANGLE

Sina’s introduction to the Security Forum is right about one thing: the post–Cold War holiday is over. The assumption that globalization alone would secure peace has proven naïve. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the weaponization of supply chains, and the militarization of emerging technologies all make clear that national security is once again paramount.

Strength matters. Deterrence matters. Leadership in AI, cyber defense, advanced manufacturing, and space systems is not optional if the United States intends to protect itself and its allies. We cannot outsource critical capabilities and still expect genuine strategic independence or long-term resilience.

But security is a means, not an end. The purpose of strength is peace. An arsenal of democracy must ultimately defend a democratic peace grounded in sovereignty, stability, and the rule of law. When conflicts exceed legitimate defense or violate shared norms, the international community should respond with clarity, coordination, and moral seriousness…

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On Monday, November 20, 2023—two years ago today—my brother walked outside his home in Georgia, lit a cigarette, took one long final drag, pressed a gun to his right temple, and pulled the trigger.

With that, he became yet another addition to the staggering number of men in America and across the world who are dying what we call “deaths of despair”—lives ended by weapons, drugs, alcohol, or the quiet, crushing weight of sadness.

I did not come to the City Club because of my brother’s death, or at least I didn’t believe so at the time. I came here after surviving a cancer battle that was supposed to end my life. Instead, I became what doctors call a medical miracle—someone now studied by the NIH and several of the country’s top cancer centers for having somehow placed a blood cancer with a single-digit four-year survival rate into hibernation. My physical recovery is unexplainable, and yet my mind and soul lagged behind my body. I needed a place to exist safely, and I found myself here…

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I understand the concern expressed in The State of the Union. America is yanked apart by the loudest voices at the edges. That is not who we are.

Most Americans do not fit neatly into any one box. A mix of views defy simple categories. We agree with Bernie Sanders on the need to confront inequality and still believe in the power of markets to create opportunity. We share AOC’s concern for justice and still value fiscal responsibility. We cheer Mamdani’s commitment to affordability and still believe that lasting change comes when public purpose meets private ingenuity. We pull life lessons from religious text without embracing related political dictates.

The figures who dominate make good television and profit off “rage entrepreneurship.” They do not, and cannot, reflect the real views of the moral center. Technology has given them a louder microphone, but amplification is not representation…

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In homes across the world, lamps flickered to life this month. The Diwali festival of lights celebrates the triumph of light over darkness. This year that message is more urgent than ever. Darkness has taken many forms. It is the rising cost of groceries and housing that clouds the American promise. It is the exhaustion of division and failure to find common ground. Farmers struggle, small businesses tighten their belts, and families question whether hard work will deliver a stable life. Trust in government, media, and even in one another is frayed. Many wake up with anxiety about jobs, safety, health, or simply what is to come.

Diwali teaches us that light is not a passive thing. It demands participation. It demands hope in a world dimmed by despair. To light a lamp is to declare that faith still matters, that empathy still counts, that humanity is stronger than our ideological fractures. The story of Diwali is about endurance, courage, and the quiet insistence that the smallest flame can pierce the dark…

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To suggest September 10, 2025 as the moment we should finally “sense a disturbance in the Force” is telling. To recognize the fracture in our civil society only now, after the tragic killing of Minnesota public servants and countless acts of violence toward Jewish citizens and school children, demonstrates the problem. The warning signs started long ago and treating them as isolated instead of systemic has allowed them to deepen.

The disturbance should have been evident when a sitting president incited an insurrection against the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. That was not an ambiguous episode but rather a violent attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. The fact that this individual was subsequently reelected and then pardoned those who engaged in that very violence, underscores how tolerance for anti-democratic behavior has grown. These were the moments that shook our foundations of stability…

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Gandhi believed that “all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.” True joy is not passive acceptance of suffering but an active force, expressed through service that assists those in need, resists injustice, and works to overcome oppression.

It coincides with empathy: standing alongside families stripped of Medicaid, unjustly terminated workers, neighbors crushed under unaffordable living, and immigrants terrorized by criminal enforcement. But empathy is not sufficient. Joy is a disciplined commitment to justice, a refusal to normalize cruelty, and a rejection of acceptance of despair…

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After two weeks of provoking Trump vitriol, the most recent Highland OpEd throws a curveball (certainly designed to knock this author off his game). I must acknowledge my lack of qualifications to opine on philosophical questions. That said, as discussed, age is the lens through which we see life’s meaning morph. At 40-something, my perspective on these questions differs from that of someone 70-plus, and that contrast is what makes this exchange meaningful.

I cannot match the decades of exploration into faith traditions, wisdom, literature, and the mind’s architecture. I can, however, appreciate how thought frameworks transform. The “three-brain” theory may have evolved into complex coexisting systems. Because these layers are now understood to be interconnected, true understanding of the brain is revealed not only from looking inward, but also at outward interactions with others…

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“How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again.” Twain’s quote aptly describes America in 2025, where many mistake spectacle for strength. Trump has sold Americans the illusion of economic power and geopolitical dominance, but the recent Highland Club OpEd suggesting that Trump may be the person to address the worldwide crisis, symbolic of the Fourth Turning, is laughable.

Preliminarily, Trump’s ongoing assaults on democratic institutions and the rule of law eclipse any discussion of his foreign policy agenda. When the foundations of constitutional governance are at stake, other considerations must necessarily take second place. Notwithstanding, the OpEd ignores the reality of the last six months.

Economically, the U.S. Dollar Index has plunged 10–11% since Trump's inauguration—a decline not seen since the 1970s. Trump’s idiotic tariff policies, inhumane expulsion actions, and hypocritical deficit spending have destroyed market confidence and infected the US tourism industry (estimated to decrease $50 billion in 2025)…

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Highland City Club's OpEd, “On Projecting,” draws from authoritarian history, Bolsheviks, Nazis, and modern strongmen, but fails to name the most blatant perpetrator: Donald Trump, convicted felon, and his Republican enablers. He launched a meme coin to enrich himself, promised dinners at the White House, and then called for investigations into those who fought Russian election interference. He smeared U.S. foreign aid workers as “corrupt” while building a $200M White House ballroom and accepting a $500M Qatari jet. He called Fed Chair Powell “the most destructive person in government” while simultaneously cutting a trade deal and opening a golf resort in Vietnam. He fired the BLS head after an unfavorable jobs report, screaming that the report was rigged. This is daily life under Trump. Not a red vs. white wine debate, but democracy vs. deception…

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Philosophical abstraction about Trumpian uncertainty is misplaced—except to the extent we don't know how deep into the abyss Trump and his henchmen will take us. He is anything but an unknown. We know where he’s headed based on his past behavior, Project 2025, recent rhetoric, and the grossly underqualified–but easily manipulated–underlings he has hired. He is taking us to a level of ugliness unprecedented in this country. Some will benefit handsomely, just as some people did in Germany when fascism rose from the 1920s onward.

Historian Timothy Snyder notes Trump will "let the hydrocarbon oligarchs drill away at the earth and the digital oligarchs at our minds. A weakened government can control neither... The people who claim to want individual freedom are the same who clamor for mass deportations. America's hydrocarbon and digital oligarchs support this kind of libertarianism; social media guides men (and it is usually men) from believing they are solitary heroes to demanding other groups be punished. Fascism is now in the algorithms, the neural pathways, the social interactions."…

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As a dog lover and an owner of a veterinary care center, the treatment of pets is at the center of my world. Supporting veterinarians and veterinary technicians to perform at the highest level is of foremost concern - including ensuring there are adequate veterinary professionals to staff the various clinics and hospitals. But Colorado Proposition 129 is NOT THE ANSWER. The Proposition, which will appear on the November 5, 2024 ballot, purports to create a new veterinary professional – a Veterinary Professional Associate – who can avoid the robust and necessary medical training required to care for our pets. There is no structure to provide evaluation and certification for of this new veterinary professional nor is there an accredited curriculum. Instead, it is contemplated that online classes and a single semester internship would be sufficient to satisfy the requirements. An individual certified under this new regimen would then be permitted to diagnose diseases and perform complicated procedures, including surgeries. Not shockingly, this effort is driven by private equity and corporations looking to cut costs and drive revenues to dubious corporate-funded online college programs…

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In the spirit of furthering Sina’s commitment to educating ourselves and our Community about the promise of up and coming technologies, here is a short overview of this trending topic and why we believe that Blockchain and NFT’s are here to stay and how these technologies provide some non-obvious but extraordinary power that we believe will improve our world in the years to come.

Let’s start by taking a look at something referred to as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens); a great innovation, not because of its application in such areas as buying and trading virtual assets like digital artwork and baseball cards, but because of how this technology will likely be applied in the real world and used in many common transactions. One compelling example is in the area of ticket sales…

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Recently a small group of colleagues and I had the opportunity to participate in a Zoom call with Senator Sinema (D-AZ) to discuss politics, infrastructure and taxation. I would like to posit that at this time in our history, no politician exemplifies The American Center better than Senator Sinema, who has a unique personality for a Senator, evidenced by her colorful dress and wigs, confident to walk a road less traveled by herself. Progressives who are frustrated with Sinema for opposing a bigger spending bill, and conservatives who are frustrated that she still supports massive new spending, both agree that Sinema has a mind of her own.

Senator Sinema is extremely knowledgeable, highly confident, and not the least bit rattled by recent attacks on her from the left of her own party. Although she did not disclose anything she had not already stated publicly, she did emphasize the fact she sees a way to get new social programs launched without damaging the economy. She has been consistently public in her opposition to tight price controls on the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, but favors some federal help for access to off patent drugs. She believes in the entrepreneurial economy and what it does for Arizona and the US. Substantively she still wants to see progress on the same issues as the Progressive Democrats, but at a more incremental pace.

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When I first read the headline for this week's article for the newsletter, I cringed. Sina had sent it to a couple of members asking for our thoughts before posting it. My knee-jerk reaction was “pick your battles.” And what I meant by that was how do we - the privileged descendants and beneficiaries of a radically different historical experience - weigh-in and take a stand on something we can and will never fully comprehend? Where empathy and compassion are not enough; where judgements are loaded with privilege and ignorance; and where efforts and opinions run the spectrum from guilt and fragility to rage and victimization - taking a stand in this multi-dimensional, omni-verse of quantum complexity is fraught with, well... pick your battles.

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