Celebrating Allies' Refusal to Aid

Reactions to Trump's call for help to secure Strait of Hormuz:

JAPAN Japan does not currently plan to dispatch naval vessels to escort ships in the Middle East, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said on Monday. AUSTRALIA Australia will not send naval ships to assist in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a government minister said on Monday. BRITAIN Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday he would not be "drawn into the wider Iran war" whilst reiterating he was working with allies to reopen the Strait. EUROPEAN UNION EU foreign ministers will on Monday discuss bolstering a small naval mission in the Middle East but they are not expected to discuss expanding its role to include the choked-off Strait, diplomats and officials say. GERMANY Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Monday that Germany would not participate with its military in securing the Strait. "What does Trump expect from a handful of European frigates that the powerful U.S. Navy cannot do? This is not our war, we have not started it," Pistorius said. ITALY Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Monday that diplomacy was the right way to solve the crisis in the Strait, adding there were no naval missions Italy was involved in that could be extended to the area. GREECE A government spokesperson said on Monday that Greece would not engage in military operations in the Strait of Hormuz.

Being profoundly anti-Trump, and recognizing the attack on Iran as an effort to drown out Epstein revelations, performed in a way to make freedom-seeking Iranians cling to their regime and recharge the bitter anti-American hatred that fueled their revolution, these reactions from foreign countries give me a heady rush of pleasure. Even leaving aside the deserved comeuppance after a year of spitting in allies’ faces for no reason beyond juvenile posturing.

However, when Republicans consorted with foreign governments to foil Obama's foreign policy, I was enraged by their anti-Americanism. And I've got a character flaw: I can't do the clean-wipe brainwashing my fellow citizens, both left right, have mastered. I repel from hypocrisy. Not just in my withering view of Them Out There, but in Me In Here. I hold myself to the same standard. I've got a screw loose.

Allies are steadfastly refusing to help the United States out of a predicament, and the left feels the same delight I feel, but they're gushing over it. They're basking. As if there were no other possible side to the story.

I wish there were a way to resolve 1: my insistence that citizens—while always free to disagree—must never work against American foreign policy or delight in its thwarting with 2: my thirst for this Iranian "excursion" to be thwarted, and my delight over allies’ refusal to help.

There's no answer —no right behavior—because the morality is upstream from our present moment, so all we can do presently is struggle in tempestuous effluent. The moral decision-making is behind us. We've sealed our fate and forced our hand. So at this point I can only shout backwards:

Don't eagerly defy norms. Don't be extreme. Stay moderate. If you find a politician (be it a Trump or a Bernie) vowing to tear it all down and rebuild from scratch in a way that feels satisfying to your more visceral thirsts, lean away from that movement, regardless of any agreement with policy proposals or tribal signalings. Stop seeking personal satisfaction in politics. Build a government that's competent, mild, and boring, even if you don't agree with everything and don't want to have a beer with the person in charge and s/he doesn't look/talk/seem like you. Find some other mirror to peer into!

We didn't (and won't) take that route because we're bored haughty aristocrats who have, alas, upgraded to luxury politics. Our stories must be tales of glory, leaving us feeling staked—or, even better, victimized.

Poor people don't need glory, they need food and safety. We've got those things, so glory's the sole objective. Trump represents one sort of cosplay glory, while the progressive left palpably thirsts for a demagogue of its own.

Will we ping-pong, or will we moderate? Americans were always known to course correct toward moderation, but we may have broken the bungee cord.

The Pain of Success

A restaurateur is doing great work at steep odds into a headwind with inadequate support in a poor economy with loads and loads of potential customers who simply don't get it. As her adrenal glands prove sickeningly inadequate long-term engines, she's beginning to panic. So I sent her this:


I understand that you feel like you're holding up the whole world. You're running a one-person operation, juggling more pieces than anyone could competently handle, so pieces keep dropping. You are tortured by the growing sense that you can't possibly keep this up for much longer. Let me share what I learned when I was forced to juggle more pieces than I could handle with my internal organs screeching deep survival signals that this is not viable.

I never grew comfortable with the balls I was forced to drop, which was why I never stopped trying not to drop them even though there was no choice. I never stopped aiming for perfection even while acknowledging its impossibility. And it never stopped feeling like torture. The survival signal blasted day and night.

Having spoken to a bunch of other people who've done one-man impossible things, I understand that this is How It Is. We all vary in our tolerance level to howling survival signals, but no one ever for a moment imagines it as long-term viable. Yet some persist. The ones who don't quit. The locos who keep going.

Failure becomes something to reduce and manage, not to eliminate, even while paradoxically shooting for perfection. To a perfectionist (and only perfectionists get this far) it's exquisite torture, and it's hard to do your best work under such conditions. Many would imagine it impossible, but that's why most people don't run great restaurants or do groundbreaking work. They dismiss even the possibility. And that's not unreasonable!

Greatness is rare. Groundbreaking is rare. When you spot it, there's always some tortured schmuck somewhere, fraught over inevitable failure. The quality of what they turn out stems not from superhuman competency. They've just learned to stabilize in chaos, and stick with circumstances that would make most people run screaming for the hills. They don't flinch.

They don't flinch.

This all might seem grandiose, so let me hastily point out that I'm also describing parenthood. At least, the good parents. And there actually are good ones! I've even met a few!

A parent can't control every detail, and must persist, in perpetuity, with very high standards inside an agonizing failure engine. The predicament is not so unfamiliar after all!

Of course, most people are horrible parents, "sticking with it" only in the most dialed-in sense, and with perfectionism long-abandoned if ever present. Nominally committed, they either draw very hard lines to forcibly try to stave off failure (think supermax prison management) or else shrug into lassez faire, figuring the children will find their way. The golden ability to hate failure...while accepting failure...while guarding against future failure...while knowing failure will happen anyway...and not flinching, is not common.

Great parents willingly stick with the impossible, declining the escape routes of supermax wardenhood or resigned wraithhood. Impossibly high standards somehow persist along with a grounded recognition that they're a distant and unattainable mirage. It's torture, but they focus not on the local climate, but on the doing. Unflinchingly.

If all this seems too horrific to consider, then don't have kids, don't open restaurants, and don't try to be a groundbreaker. At the other extreme, if you imagine you have what it takes to simply plow right through and make it all work, I hope I've splashed cold water over your cartoonishly false view. You're not so indomitable. No one is. There will be failure and there will be torture, but also perhaps a great result—for others, at least, as you hang your head in shame for the failure filling your visual field.

You can't accomplish while escaping adversity, and you can't endure adversity without unceasing survival warnings. Panic, even. The trick is to stop flinching. That's all. Keep doing what you're doing, but stop flinching.

So all this, really, was to reassure you that you're in good company and that all is well. Carry on!

'Better'

When I left CNET/Chowhound, I gave myself a couple months of yoga, meditation, and self-indulgent relaxation on a cozy porch in an idyllic village before taking out my trombone for the first time in many years and discovering that I couldn't make a sound on it.

I work like an ant, so I rolled up my sleeves and did my ant thing, playing long tones for a couple minutes every day, adding an extra minute per week. I drilled exercises. I started from scratch, rebuilding muscle structure and relearning fine points of control and endurance. When I could play for 15 minutes without bleeding, I started playing along with jazz records, slow at first, then building to medium up-tempo.

At a certain point, months in, I felt sufficiently recuperated to play in public, so I went to a local bar where a jazz trio played. I knew the guys, and had told them about my hotshot musician past, and they'd invited me to come play a tune when ready. And I felt ready.

Kindly, they called an easy medium-tempo blues. I began to play the melody, and a mere two notes in, I realized I had no business being there.

In one huge wallop, the realization landed that 1. my tone was thin and spindly, 2. my tuning was shaky, and 3. my tongue was spastically struggling to keep up with even the medium tempo. I played well enough to have convinced myself, in the shelter of my own home, that I could more or less play. But having spent 10,000 hours performing jazz in bars, I was calibrated like a Swiss timepiece to precisely gauge my lack of even minimal competence.

I could sense musicians' eyes rolling behind me, and could relate much more to their position than to my own. I wanted to be the groaning professional. That's *my* job!

It was sickening. Not in the cartoonishly tearful sense of "I'm not good enough!" or, the long sad story of abandoning my musical career to run a web site. It was sickening in the here-and-now, not in the propositional self-story-telling. I was like a cat stuck up a tree. I'd managed to get up, but had no idea how to get down. Ascents feel valiant, but, seeing where you've actually landed, you instantly understand what a fool you've been.

"Better" isn't "good". It's sickening to discover how easily you can mistake the two.

---

My dad suffered from major depression for years, but managed to move across the country and find a like-minded colony of Republican hippy artists to create with. He had a diner breakfast table full of buddies to linger with over coffee in dry desert air, and he was productive with his sculpting.

Better! Though one day I returned from a shopping trip to his new house and discovered him sitting alone in the dark staring glassily at the wall. "It's such a relief to have overcome the depression," he cheerily announced at breakfast the next day for his approving chums. And he meant it.

"Better" isn't "good".

---

I have healed a long line of maladies over the past two years, many of them supposedly irreparable (fwiw here are some self-healing tricks). I haven't even considered whether I feel "good" or "bad" in a very long time, with my eye on the ball of fixing this or that, honing methods, adhering to med schedules, and warily watching for reoccurrences of grave problems in stomach, heart, pericardium, intestine, eyes, ankles, feet, and shoulders which would require a swift trip to the ER. It's been my full-time job, and I don't bemoan it. I am an ant.

But the other day, walking easily across town, I felt an uncommon sensation: a glow of good health. This, finally, might be time to reschedule my long-delayed trip to Taipei. I haven't had a speck of Chinese food in years! It seems absolutely feasible. I feel BETTER!

"I'm not going anywhere," I declared to a friend. This time I'm wiser. This time I won't get stuck in a tree.

But nah. Taipei, here I come. Because comfort zones are for pushing, and complacency, in the long run, is more perilous than peril. Cats that remain sensibly on level ground are less than full cats.

Step-Down Definition: Weirdness

Weirdness is creativity for shmucks.


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Step-Down Definition: Obsessive

"Obsessive" is how numb normies characterize the deeply alive.

(Obsession can be a serious disorder, of course, but I'm talking about common parlance rather than psychiatric diagnosis)


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What if AI Arrived but the Humans Couldn’t Pass a Turing test?

Back in the day, I had stupid friends who used the Internet stupidly and pronounced it "stupid".

It's the exact same thing with AI. And in many cases, it's the same stupid people, being stupid in the same stupid way with this stupid, stupid AI.

Expatriating Within the Bounds of Reality

I'm echoing this posting, but expressing it better and more leanly, and adding an expansive footnote:


I've chatted with umpteen Americans who viewed some YouTube video where some preternaturally well couple hoisted goblets of wine toward the camera, inviting them to join them in The Portuguese Lifestyle™ and thought "Yes! I want that!"

"Why not me? Why can't I be the one hoisting my goblet from the golden embrace of Mother Portugal, smiling vibrantly for the envious rabble?'

Entire Facebook groups are devoted to "We're here!" photos of random American couples ebulliently emerging from customs in Lisbon Airport with loads of luggage. It's a big moment for all of us, naturally. They actually call Portugal their "Forever Home", like fairytale princes and princesses set to live happily ever after in a magic kingdom.

If I need to tell you that it will not go well for them, then this essay won't go well for you. But enough seek out my advice that I've honed my thoughts to a very sharp edge. Obviously, it extends well beyond Portugal. But here goes:

Portugal does not give a fuck about you. Portugal will never give a fuck about you. This is not a resort where you will be welcomed and congratulated. No. No one gives a fuck. No one.

At this point, if they're still listening and haven't thrown their coffee in my face and run off down the street to get away from the bad man, we can have a conversation.

If you treat Portugal as a fresh backdrop for you to be who you already are and do what you already do, without expectation of anointment, then ok. That works. If so, there are two approaches:

1. You can preen in front of the backdrop, extending wine goblet toward camera with a glorious smile, flaunting your golden awesomeness.

You'd better be that person to begin with, because you won't transform into that via the power of make-believe.

2. Or you can lightly enjoy the fresh backdrop, generally keeping up your normal activities, no big deal.

Me, I didn't come here to preen, nor to be transformed into a preener, nor expecting welcome, support, or congratulations. I write, I play music, I cook, I eat, I watch movies, I walk, I ponder. Just like back home, only with great food and weather, low expenses, non-existent crime, and low narcissism (if I avoid American expats). I like the sound of Portuguese and share their sense of humor. I'm not able to gab full spiel, but enough to seem like part of the backdrop, and not some dropped-in astronaut bobbing languorously in zero G. And that's about it. It's not a vacation wonderland, it's just where I live.

No activities director is tasked with stoking my glee. It's more akin to, well, to actual life. It's what you make of it. You've enjoyed a minor refresh, not a systematic reset. Humans don't reset, sorry.

There are other ways to modestly swap in a new backdrop. You might be raising a family, or trying to start an online business, or drinking yourself to death. Just don't expect to become some new you because you're standing in front of a new backdrop. If you are the type who can utter the words "it's like home, but with a new backdrop" without your face falling in aggrieved disappointment, then it might work. If you can say it with amiable perkiness, then you'll be just fine.

Happiness is a simple flip of perspective: Say "This is as good as it gets" without gnashing your teeth or throwing a tantrum or retreating under the covers. Say it with sighing relief and blithe surrender to the moment—which is always lovely if you don't tell yourself stories about it (e.g. deliberately ballasting your happiness via gratuitous lamentation of your late hamster, Freddy).

If you can do that and then swap in a nice new backdrop like Portugal, it's pure delight. If you're ok as you are and where you are, you can drop in a fun new backdrop without demanding that it slake your neurotic thirsts. Being real is always an option. And even in the year of our lord 2026, reality has its rewards.

Limping Heroes

When I was younger, if I saw someone limping, or hunched over, or generally struggling to perform normal functions, I'd feel sympathy. But after a few years of battling an almost amusing cavalcade of maladies, my view is transformed. Now I see triumph.

Their public appearance represents triumphant reemergence, not sad deterioration. To me, they look like champions. Celebrities. The struggle to walk requires the resilient determination of a Michael Jordan twisty layup. Both represent achievement past limitation.

There's no one more celebrated than a "Cancer Survivor", but while it certainly beats the alternative, and getting through that pain, grief, and disruption is certainly an accomplishment, such a person mostly just endured. But a limping, wheezing, drooling, and/or mumbling person walking down the sidewalk is an actual hero. You see losing while I see winning. In fact, there is no greater example of winning in the human experience than someone walking who does not take walking for granted. That's way better than whatever you're doing, even if you're going triple-speed.

Dysfunction can be seen through two lenses: 1. failure to be normal, or 2. refusal to be defeated. The defeated are not seen. They're off the table, out of the spotlight. Anyone you can actually see— even sitting forlorn on a plastic chair with cloudy eyes and walker close at hand — has defied defeat. They're not trying and failing to be normal; they're triumphant heroes.

Not "Aren't You Special!" patronized heros.

Not "Hey, buddy, you just ate that cookie like a champ!" heroes.

Bona fide heroes.

I'm mostly not limping most days, and it's been a while since I've needed to shift, mid-step, from "many errands to perform" to "how can I possibly get home without falling down and making a scene?" But when I spot people bravely making that calculation (you don't notice, but now I do), it's like watching a gifted athlete make an amazing play. Whatever they did to get out that door in the first place—overcoming situations severely impeding that escape—is great. The fact that they are out in the sunlight with the rest of us, is wonderful.

Not sad-wonderful.

Not chin-trembling, curve-graded wonderful.

Not "I guess it's come to this..." wonderful.

It's wonderful like a great symphony or a fantastic plate of lasagna or Willie Mays' iconic 1954 World Series over-the-shoulder catch.

Full-on unqualified wonderful...full stop.


ChatGPT insightfully observes: "Anyone upright and ambulatory is already negotiating entropy. Some are just doing it on expert mode."

The Janitor

Hiya.
I'm the janitor,
just as you suspected.

Not from my uniform,
as I'm dressed unremarkably.
Nor some badge,
because I'm not in your org chart.

See, I know the building,
The whole thing,
Including the crawl space.
So, so much crawl space.

You remain occupied,
with bold dreams,
scarcely registering enclosure
with such boldness to pursue.

The audacity feels real,
The building mundane.
Little stuff.
No match for aspiration and triumph.

Me, I'm earthy.
Simple.
Far less than captivating.
And yet...impertinent.

Not that I'm rude.
Oh, no, never that.
But I lack deference
Toward my betters.

The higher floors are HIGHER floors
While I'm consigned to basement—
Yet am at ease everywhere,
Which seems weird.

I'm never seen sweeping,
Mopping or fixing.
Though my presence
can be oddly reassuring.

Who is this guy,
Simple and floating,
Rolling his eyes in mild amusement,
While you all contain multitudes? 

The Puffy Parkas of Portugal

It's 72 degrees and the sun is shining for the first time in weeks (literally), yet all my neighbors are shuffling around in puffy parkas. And I kind of love it.

I'm in polo shirt and cords, and they're all gaping at the crazy foreigner, and I deeply enjoy the whole situation. Let me map it out:

I'm finally warm, which is great.
They're warm, too, so I'm in no position to gloat.
Yet they're in parkas, which tickles me.
Triple win!

Humans are irrational, even more so than they realize. And since sanity is not an option, one must seek the sort of irrationality one finds adorable. It's not that they're still cold. It's that they can't quite let go of the suffering so quickly.

The fact that spring starts here in mid-February is a nice fact to add to the spreadsheet of positive things about (southern) Portugal. And while the parka thing may not strike you as a significant decision factor, tiny stuff like this is what counts, not spreadsheet facts.

What can I say? I'm a devoted practitioner of nano-aesthetics.