Two years after winning in a
landslide, with his Labour group being given its largest majority in Parliament
in decades, PM Starmer found himself polling as the least favored PM on record
and was forced by the political reality of his political group to resign. Why?
I contend that the actual reason, behind and obfuscated by the headlines, is
rather basic, or fundamental.
The full essay is at "Starmer Resigns as British Prime Minister."
Like the coronavirus in the
early 2020s, HIV/AIDS in the mid-1980s and for at least a decade after then paid
little or no attention to national borders or even to nationalities. Even
though coronavirus freely walked through the boundaries of our various group-identities
with the implication being that they are actually artificial demarcated
constructions, AIDS showed us that sub-societal cultural differences do exist.
In fact, within a given sub-culture and thus group-identity, one set of values
may be ethically and psychologically better than another set, so broad-strokes can
be understood as over-simplifications.
The full essay is at "Downtown."
The 2026 film, I Want Your Sex, is
ostensibly about sex, for the film is saturated with that leitmotif, but the narrative
is actually a critique of California culture, with European culture playing a minor
role to provide a contrast. Generally, comedy can be used by screenwriters as a
means by which audiences can accept, or at least acknowledge criticism that
would otherwise be met with ferocious denial befitting a drug addiction. In
2026, the sheer dogmatism of ideologically-soaked imposing at will, as
if with facts of reason rather than the gloss of merely subjective opinion, was
the mentality of the day afflicting (young) adults under 40 years-old in California. Film can expose such banality to the light of day
and thus serve as a self-correcting agent for a societal or sub-societal
culture, for the human brain, standing on its own as arrogance on stilts, may be woefully and even unretrievably vulnerable to purblindness when beliefs and values are in the grip of
ideological idolatry.
The full essay is at "I Want Your Sex."
Hatred warps reasoning as well
as ethical judgment along the lines of a warped time-space fabric around a large
mass. In other words, the sheer gravitational pull of self-centeredness can bend
both thought and judgment. As essentially egoist, this phenomenon can itself be
considered to be unethical, for what are actually equivalent ethical harms are
perceived as unequal at the expense of other people or peoples. Even though Israel’s
military attacks in, and invasion of, Lebanon in 2026 could be said to be in violation
of international law, Israel’s national security minister said on June 19th that all of Lebanon must burn because four Israeli soldiers had just been
killed in combat when their tank was hit near Kfar Tebnit. The official’s
statement is significant in that it lays bare the false equivalence of the
lives of four Israelis and the entire population of Lebanon. The warped judgment
and related ratiocination behind such a baseless equivalence can be grasped
from the standpoint of utilitarianism.
The full essay is at "Israel in Lebanon."
As the protagonists in the
film, Iván
& Hadoum (2026), neither Iván nor Hadoum, who fall in love, are
heterosexuals even though by all appearances, save the long surgical scares
under Iván’s former breasts, the couple is a man and a woman, and indeed Iván
psychologically identifies himself as a man and Hadoum is a woman both biologically
and in how she sees herself. To claim that Hadoum is heterosexual simply because
Iván views himself as being a man, even though Hadoum is sexually attracted to
Iván’s vagina, would be utter ideological nonsense. Besides being gay or
bisexual, and thus easy targets for discrimination by agriculturalists in
southern Spain, the two people are of different national origins, for Iván was
born in Spain whereas Hadoum’s family hails from Morocco. Additionally, Iván is
Caucasian whereas Hadoum is an Arab, and Iván is Christian whereas Hadoum is
Islamic. Even in terms of labor-management relations, the couple is ripe for
division by other people, for Iván is on a management tract—the warehouse being
still owned by his uncle Manuel—whereas Hadoum is a greenhouse/warehouse worker,
and a disgruntled one at that. It would seem that Ian de la Rosa has written
and directed a film in which many ethical tropes are in play; which one is subject
to the most unethical harm goes unanswered. Even so, by including unethical
conduct on all of them, the film takes a step in the direction wherein
audiences can think philosophically in weighing the ethical harms
relative to each other.
The full essay is at "Iván & Hadoum."
I contend that in having both
federal and state-level officials attending the G7 international meetings, Europe is over-represented even as the E.U. itself is sidelined. At least this
was the case at the meeting in June, 2026 in the E.U. state of France. The
staying power of the seven countries comprising the Group could be considered
as antiquated, given the relevance and importance of the E.U. in international
relations. The very intractability of institutional arrangements (i.e.,
structures) even in the face of a changing political environment can thus be
viewed as problematic. By implication, the exclusion of the E.U. from the United
Nations international organization can be viewed as effectively relegating the
UN as a structurally-frozen “has been” by the 2020s.
The full essay is at "Europe."
The medium of film has the potential to not only to move audiences emotionally, but to speak to fundamentals in the human condition so that we may know ourselves (and each other) better on the subterranean level of essences. The 2017 film, Call Me by Your Name, is not “gay cinema” even though 17-year-old Elio falls in love with Oliver, a 24-year-old beginning doctoral student when the latter is staying with Elio and his parents at their villa in Italy during the summer of 1983. Falling-in-love, so unmistakable once it has hit, is so utterly human at the gut-level that the twists and turns in a narrative are but superficial in comparison, and even the gender of the beloved may come to matter less than would typically be assumed. In fact, both Elio and Oliver are attracted to women, and after his summer stay Oliver calls the Perlmans during a winter Jewish festival to announce that he is engaged; for even though Elio fell for Oliver, Oliver is not in love with Elio. Elio must take the unrequited love as a given, as about as hard as reality can be felt, and so Elio has the choice of whether to suffer the loss or "stuff it" emotionally by burning emotion itself from his very being. Precisely this decision is the subject of a father-son talk that he has with his dad after Oliver has left. It is the substance of that talk that anchors the film firmly in the human condition, such that even the narrative, not to mention the fact that Elio has fallen for a man, is transcended. It is just such a transcendence that renders the medium of film so substantial, even meaningful, even if mostly just potentially. Parsing the father-son dialogue will lay bare this thesis.
The full essay is at "Call Me by Your Name."
During times of global peace,
it is easy to suppose that increased economic interdependency between countries
reduce the likelihood of war due to the ramifications on the business projects.
By a similar logic by analogy, a couple could suppose that by getting married, the
increased interdependence would make breaking up more difficult, and thus less
likely. What is overlooked here is that emotions, whether in a romantic
relationship or between governments, can, if allowed to go unchecked, break
through the parchment barriers that we set up as if they could constrain even
intense, ongoing emotions. A couple using marriage as a substitute for going to
couples-counseling could actually make a break-up more likely once in
the marriage. Similarly, peace abroad and domestic tranquility can be thwarted
by international real-estate development projects themselves. Such a situation
was unfolding in Albania in mid-2026.
The full essay is at "On the Politics of International Real-Estate Projects."
On 1 June, 2026, the E.U.’s
two legislative chambers agreed informally on text for a law called Return
Regulation, which is oriented to facilitating the return of illegal aliens to
their respective countries. Both The European Council, the “upper chamber,” and
the European Parliament, the “lower” legislative “chamber” (roughly
corresponding to the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives,
respectively) worked in what in American parlance is called a Congressional reconciliation
or conference committee to agree to text enabling state police to enter the
domiciles of illegal immigrants and state governments to set up detention
centers outside of the European Union. That the federal law relegates implementation
to the states illustrates just how different E.U. federalism differs from U.S.
federalism even though both systems are “modern” rather than confederal in that
governmental sovereignty in both unions is split between the federal and state
levels. Even though the E.U. after thirty years was like the U.S. after its
first thirty years in that most of that sovereignty was at the state level, the
use of state governments to implement a federal law differentiates the European
federal system from the American one. Both advantages and disadvantages go with
leaving implementation largely up to the states.
The full essay is at "The E.U.'s Immigration 'ICE'."
An
organizational policy, whether in an educational, religious, or business
organization, is not law. Accordingly, “police tactics” are
inappropriately used on people who violate policies. The proliferation
of off-duty police officers in retail in more than one of the U.S. states (and
perhaps in the E.U. as well), complete with lethal weapons, renders the
distinction between policy and law especially relevant and even
pressing. To be sure, trespassing is indeed a crime, even though some municipal
police departments in Florida have refused to recognize it as such, as, for
example, when a property owner illegally enters a rented apartment, but in a
store, absent a decision by a manager to have a person removed from the
premises, store “police” cannot legally act violently against the public as
long as no crime is being committed—even if a store policy is being violated.
The full essay is at "Police Enforcing Texas School Policies with Violence."
As evinced by Canada’s prime
minister Mark Carney likening a planned referendum on whether Alberta should
vote to separate from the rest of Canada to “Brexit,” in which Britain seceded
from the E.U., as if the UK in the European Union were equivalent to Alberta in
Canada, political category mistakes can run rampant without being detected as
such. Referring to the referendum in the province, Carney said, “That is a very
dangerous bluff.” He was “pointing to the turmoil that followed the United
Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union.”[1]
The implied false equivalence of Canada and the E.U., as if the former too had
been formed out of countries, is as incorrect as that which Carney was more
directly assuming between Alberta and Britain. A region of a country, even if
the latter has a federal system, is not equivalent to a country that joins a political
union such as the E.U. and U.S. That Britain was once the host kingdom in the
British Empire, and thus equivalent to other members of the empire, including
Ireland and Virginia, does not mean that the UK as a state in the E.U. was
equivalent to the latter, or to other political unions consisting of early-modern-scale
countries.
The full essay is at "California and Florida."
To be a neutral arbitrator of
a conflict between two other countries, a government cannot favor one of the
two; otherwise, the veneer of neutrality is undercut by the interest of preferring
one position over the other. The duty to act neutrally, which the role of arbitrator
includes or implies, can be exploited by the subterranean—or even explicit!—non-normative,
private-benefits interest to support one of the two sides. To put one’s own private
interest above a broader-benefitting interest, such as in entailed in a duty to
act neutrally, is to exploit a conflict of interest. Governments can exploit
conflicts of interest. With regard to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the E.U.’s
foreign minister (or de facto commissioner) disabused the public of any thoughts
that the E.U. could, and thus would, be a neutral arbitrator between Russia and
Ukraine. Such transparency lies in stark contrast to the illusory impression by
the U.S. that it was in any position to arbitrate between Israel and the
Palestinian Authority in Gaza, for the U.S. was firmly on the side of Israel.
The full essay is at "The E.U. as a Mediator between Russia and Ukraine."
Speaking on his first “social”
encyclical, Pope Leo said the Roman Catholic Church, whose membership stood at
1.6 billion embodied souls around the world, was “called to interpret ‘new things’
of the age in the light of the Gospel and the dignity of the human person.”[1]
He was on terre firma from a distinctly religious standpoint in being
anchored in the Gospel stories, which include direct and parabolic preachments
by Jesus of Nazareth. Regarding the dignity of the human person, which pertains
as much to a humanist as a theist, that basis is not distinctly religious and
thus can occasion or permit wandering into other domains such that virtually
any topic relevant to mankind could be roped in and even subjected to
supervening religious criteria even over criteria native to the topic’s own
domain!
The full essay is at "Pope Leo on the Ethical Dangers of AI."
1, Linda Bordoni, “Pope Leo Presents ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ Calling for Disarmament of AI,” Vatican News, 25 May, 2026.
Sometimes it pays to go behind
a piece of writing to conduct a genealogy of the writer himself or herself, rather
than to dive into the writing itself. On May 25, 2026, the fourteenth Pope Leo
of the Roman Catholic Church spoke at the Vatican on his first “social”
encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (magnificent humanity), which he had signed
ten days earlier. An encyclical is known as a teaching (magisterium)
instrument used by the papacy to communicate the Church’s position on a topic. In
presenting his encyclical, the pope “described the current technological
revolution as an ‘epochal turning point’ comparable to the upheaval confronted
by Pope Leo XIII during the industrial Revolution.”[1]
That pope’s emphasis on the ethical dimension of an economy, especially with
regard to inequality and the related marginalization, was the reason why Robert
Prevost chose the name Leo when he accepted the vote in favor of him becoming
the next pope after Francis, another social-justice-oriented pope. Lions may
indeed come late in the summer, or, sadly, not at all (for even willful,
bullying Leos can actually be cowardly, as in Oz), but Leo XIV was already
charging voraciously ahead in May, consummating his nomenclature-rationale in words
that ensconced his Church firmly in the twenty-first century (in utter contrast
to Joe Ratzinger’s antiquarian corrupt administration). All of the media buzz
aside, however, if the previous Pope Leo (XIII) actually had had little or no
normative influence on what would be harsh (even child!) labor conditions later
in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe and North America, then a
clear-eyed observer in 2026 could already be skeptical as to the practical significance
of Magnifica Humanitas on managers and programmers in Silicon Valley
going forward. Moreover, the foray of religion onto AI technology, and even
ethics, the latter of which is distinct from albeit related to religion, can be
criticized as an instance of dogmatic over-reaching.
The full essay is at "Magnifica Humanitas."
1. Linda Bordoni, “Pope Leo Presents ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ Calling for Disarmament of AI,” Vatican News, 25 May, 2026.