The True Crime Prestige Limited Streaming Series - The Teenage Bodyguard?

In 2013 I wrote a screenplay based on a true crime story about a teenager who was asked by a terrified woman to protect her for a week until she could leave town. She needed to avoid her former boss, a captain in a local mafia family. It's won 17 international screenplay / film festival awards.

I've now worked on it with a script consultant and a producer. I'm not talking to a UK writer/director who got me thinking about it in a different direction. Rather than a screenplay, it could be two films.

Or a prestige streaming channel limited series.

I hadn't considered that so I did some research and it looked like my best bets were Netflix, which I was leaning toward, HBO, which seems more difficult, or FX, which I liked that idea a lot. And so I've been working up materials for that.

Why did the woman need protection? Because she had witnessed a murder.

There is a newspaper clip about it. She gave it to him to read. 

But she said, that's not what happened. They had killed their own. She knew that, she said. She didn't see it, although she was in the parking lot when it happened, but they thought she saw it and that...is the problem.

All she needed was for someone to help her get through the week. to protect her from them. What she didn't tell him was she also needed protection from herself. And an emotional support person to keep her from breaking down...or just turning herself in to them. 

Go to the police he said.

They own the police, she replied.

Oh, shit, he said.

Yes, exactly, she despondently concluded.

So yes, it's a fascinating tale. A seventeen year old protecting a 20-something woman from the local crime family who was looking for her, over a murder. And how do they typically deal with that kind of thing? Another murder? Likely so.

So you get it into shape, first. I entered contest, used their reviews and suggested corrections (some obvious, some occluded, some just wrong), then I used a script consultant. Years later I worked with a known producer to rewrite it in better screenplay format, with budget in mind and for a lower budget production. 

He got me three working directors who wanted to shoot it. But they didn't have my vision. I'd heard many times from processionals that it's better to wait than go with production if it's not your vision. Sure, shape your vision, don't be unrealistic (and that's where "they" get you). But also stick to what you know in your gut is important, or important to you.

And so I have.

It's been a journey, writing this story, in screenplay format. It's hard for fiction authors to adapt to, but I had studied this decades before at university. So I had a leg up. Still, after years of fiction writing, you want to write fiction in your Action sequences in a screenplay and that pretty much is a bad idea. 

A good Action element in a screenplay reads like fiction, it's interesting, engaging, even fascinating, but it's in Action format, not fiction format, which takes up far too much space.

And that's why I bring this up today. One of the things you do as a screenwriter is to get help. You can enter contests, but only ones that offer help. A conversation. A review. A critique. Or "coverage". 

Screenplay coverage is a written summary and opinion of a movie script that helps producers decide quickly if it is worth developing or passing on.

I only have two projects on The Black List website

One of the well thought of coverage types is The Black List. IF you can get on their list, you're doing really well. But you can also get on their website, you can pay to be a member, and you can pay for their coverage. Which I've done several times. I cleaned up my screenplay, and resubmitted. 

As I say above, I only have 2 screenplays there. I have more on Script Revolution and Film Freeway.

And so, that's why we're here today. Something about one of those coverage reports.

It is in sections. It rates your screenplay for Overall, Premise, Plot, Character, Dialoge and Setting and then offers a summary via Era, Locations, Budget, Genre, Logline and Pages.

Then there are three major sections of Strengths, Weaknesses and Prospects.

I'm going to share what the Prospects section said in one of my Black List coverages from years ago. I've since gone through multiple rewrites. Why? Because of a mistake by the script reader — also known as story analysts or coverage readers in the industry:

"There are a number of sequences in this screenplay where the pace of the dialogue really stands out.

When conversations move quickly - as the exchange does between Gordie and Sara from page 44 to

46, for example's sake - it keeps the reader's (meaning prospective buyer's) eyes moving down the

page and gives the scene an energy that can translate to the screen effectively. (But, be sure that those

characters have distinct voices; a character's personality really comes to life on the page when their

voice is unique and idiosyncratic.) There are some useful details early in the piece as well. For

instance, the fact that Gordie doesn't pull his backup parachute during his skydiving malfunction -

because he's wary of the $250 fee - is telling. Similarly, Mark laughing with Deputy Fiori on page 9

alerts the audience to the fact that the mobsters and police have a working relationship, which is

important later in the story (when Sara fears going to the corrupt police for help). Gordie's discomfort

with Marlon's suggestion on page 74 is a memorable moment; Gordie's hesitance with Kelp is

authentic, and we get the sense that it stems from his feelings for Sara. Finally, it's interesting to see

on page 113 that there was a serious reason Sara never called after landing in New York."

OK. I bring this all up because in the screenplay, "Gordie" says he cannot afford the emergency parachute repack of "two fifty". 

The script reader took that to mean two hundred and fifty dollars, when in reality it was two dollars and fifty cents.

Why bring this up? Because of a vast change in tone and meaning.

IF it's $250, most even today would think, 'well, I can see why he'd at least hesitate." But if it's only $2.50, then one might wonder what the hell is wrong with this guy today. While back in 1974 one has to consider that gas was 30 cents a gallon, if not less.

Getting past a belief that this guy must be nuts to avoid deploying a lifesaving emergency chute when he "main" had failed, we get to his embarrassment that he did not have that small amount of money on him. The fact however that he might even consider that as an issue in such a dire situation (which to should also be noted that he did not see it as dire, but that's another issue entirely), one needs to know that character's mindset, and history.

It had already been exposed that he had emergency services training in search and rescue, landed his first plane at twelve years old, and started fighting in Karate tournaments in grade school and so had fasted fear in multiple venues over a period of a decade by time this story unfolds as he was plummeting to the earth at around 90-110 MPH (terminal velocity is 120MPH but a streaming parachute would slow that down due to drag forces). 

So, again. Why bring this up?

Mostly because it's an interesting story for an audience.

But also for aspiring screenwriters. Yes, coverage is important. Especially very good and relevant coverage. But they aren't always right, certainly not about everything.

You have to "follow your gut" so to speak. You have to know when to, as Kenny Rogers put it in the song "The Gambler":

knowing when to hold ’em

knowing when to fold ’em

knowing when to walk away

knowing when to run...

Use whatever tools you can get your hands on, but use your brain first. Do not buy your way out of thinking. Spend money only when it earns its keep. Free beats stupid every time. Trash what does not work. Learn what does. Learn when it does.

If you start something, finish it. Put a real product on the table. But also know when a thing is dead and cut it loose. That is not quitting, that is survival. Yes, it is a contradiction. So is life. You get better at it by screwing it up and learning.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!


Pages: Start Here | About JZ Murdock | 

Timeline: Heather Cox Richardson and the Roots of Today’s Political Crisis

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

The New Appeasement: What If We Treated World War II the Way We Handle Aggression Today?

There is a hard truth many leaders in the West do not want to face:

If this cautious, incremental, risk-averse mindset had guided the democracies of the 1930s and 1940s, we would be living in a very different world today. We would not be talking about defending democracy in Ukraine. We would be talking about how democracy died a lifetime ago.

Hesitation always extracts a price. Caution, when elevated into a governing principle without forward motion, becomes paralysis. Moral clarity, delayed long enough, stops being clarity at all. It curdles into complicity. Caution is defensible only when it leads to action. When it does not, it becomes an accomplice.

A World Afraid to Act

What has defined the last three years of Western policy toward Russia is not strategy. It is fear.
Fear of escalation.
Fear of economic disruption.
Fear of political backlash at home.
Fear of provoking a cornered dictator.
Fear of the unknown if Russia actually loses.

This is not the mindset of a global coalition committed to defending freedom. It is the mindset of leaders who want stability more than justice, comfort more than courage.

Imagine this posture during World War II.

If 2025 Mentality Had Guided 1941

Picture a United States and Britain debating whether to send outdated tanks to the Soviet Union because better ones might “provoke Hitler.”
Picture leaders arguing that striking German industrial sites would be “escalatory.”
Picture endless meetings about whether bombing rail lines carrying Jews to death camps might “worsen the situation.”

This is the world we would get under today’s doctrine of careful steps, incremental supply, and never doing anything that might upset a dictator.

Hitler counted on that.
Putin counts on it now.

Comfort Over Courage

In today’s Europe and America, political leaders often frame caution as wisdom.
They talk about “avoiding World War III.”
They talk about “managing escalation.”
They talk about “strategic patience.”

But patience for whom?
Patience for what?

Because what Ukraine experiences every day is not patience. It is destruction.
What Russia experiences is not fear. It is opportunity.

Western caution is not slowing Russia. It is giving Russia room to adapt, reorganize, recruit, and push forward. It is giving Russia time to turn a temporary invasion into a permanent occupation.

In the 1930s we had a word for this. It was called appeasement.

History Does Not Reward Cowardice

The truth is simple.
When democracies fear doing the right thing more than they fear the triumph of authoritarianism, the authoritarians win.

This is not about starting a war with Russia.
It is about preventing Russia from rewriting the map of Europe by force.
It is about preventing the collapse of the basic principle that borders cannot be erased by tanks.
It is about preventing a world where democracies tiptoe around dictators while dictators do whatever they want.

If that principle dies, we do not just lose Ukraine.
We lose the 20th century.

The Hard Lesson From WWII

The democracies eventually won World War II.
But not because they were cautious.
Not because they managed risk.
Not because they calibrated support in small increments and waited to see if Hitler got upset.

They won because they finally decided that survival of free society required courage.
The willingness to act.
The willingness to take risks.
The willingness to accept sacrifice.

Today the West has convinced itself that courage is reckless, that decisive support is too dangerous, that standing firm against a nuclear-armed dictator is irresponsible.

But the alternative is not peace.
The alternative is the slow death of the international order that has preserved peace for eighty years.

We Are At a Historical Fork

When future generations ask what happened in this era, they will ask one question above all others:

Did the democracies stand up when it mattered, or did they hide behind excuses while another autocracy trampled its neighbor?

Because history is clear.
Freedom survives when free nations choose courage.
Authoritarianism spreads when they choose fear.

Right now, too many Western leaders are choosing fear.
And that choice, if allowed to continue, will not just cost Ukraine. It will cost us all.

The West keeps telling itself that caution is strength.
But caution in the face of aggression is not strength. It is surrender in slow motion.

If this is the posture we adopt when a nuclear-armed dictator redraws borders by force, then what exactly is the red line? What principle are we still willing to defend? How many democracies must fall before we remember that deterrence is not built on fear. It is built on the credibility that free nations will act when it matters.

Ukraine is not asking us to fight their war.
They are asking us not to be cowards in ours.

History will not judge us by how carefully we tiptoed around Vladimir Putin.
It will judge us by whether we chose courage while we still had the chance.

Because if we wait until the cost of defending democracy becomes unbearable, the lesson of WWII will repeat itself in the worst possible way:

We will find ourselves fighting a much bigger war, against a much stronger tyranny, at a far higher price, all because we failed to stop it when it was still possible.

Courage is cheaper than regret.
We need to start acting like it.

We NEED to end this, and NOT in Russia's, in Putin's, favor. What do we not get about NOT rewarding this kind of behaviors?

While this is not World War II, it is our moment in history, and we cannot allow Putin to repeat the mistakes the world once paid for in blood. IF we do, it's just pushing down the road, a repeat, more death, when only one is really called for. 

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Ethical Ramifications of Pardoning “Criminal Types” for Loyalty, Connections, or Power

Regarding: 

Trump Pardons Tim Leiweke, Months After DOJ Charged Live Entertainment Mogul With Bid-Rigging

The co-founder of Oak View Group has denied any wrongdoing

Photo from Deadline

When Power Pardons Power: The Ethical Collapse Behind Trump’s Leiweke Pardon

When Donald Trump pardoned Tim Leiweke—months after the Department of Justice charged the live-entertainment mogul with bid-rigging—it didn’t come out of nowhere. It came out of a pattern. A long, grim line of politically connected people, grifters, extremists, and outright criminals learning one lesson over and over:

If you’re useful to the president, accountability is optional.

That is not strength.
That is the ethical decay of a presidency treating the justice system like a private concierge service.

And the rest of us are forced to live with the rot.

---

Pardons Are Supposed to Be an Act of Mercy. This Is Something Else.

The pardon power is one of the strangest things the Constitution gives a president: the ability to overrule the courts in the name of justice, compassion, or correcting judicial mistakes.

But using that power before a case is even tried?
Before evidence is examined?
Before wrongdoing is determined?

That turns mercy into a preemptive excuse.

It signals one thing: your political network matters more than the rule of law.

And when this happens repeatedly—as it has under Trump—it stops being an anomaly. It becomes governance by favoritism, not governance by principle.

---

The Ethical Fallout: A System That Teaches the Wrong Lessons

1. The Rule of Law Starts to Look Optional

When wealthy executives, ideologues, and political operatives can evade consequences with a signature, who exactly is the law for?
Not them.
Just the rest of us.

This is how trust in the justice system dissolves.

2. Corruption Becomes a Rational Choice

If breaking the law on behalf of the president or his allies comes with a get-out-of-jail-free card, the incentives shift.
Corruption isn’t a risk—it's a loyalty badge.

We’ve seen this story in other nations. It never ends well.

3. Federal Prosecutors Get a Message They Should Never Hear

When DOJ charges someone with a serious economic crime—like bid-rigging—and the president immediately nullifies the case, it tells prosecutors:

“Your work is conditional on my alliances.”

That’s devastating to a system that depends on independence.

4. Accountability Becomes Selective

Pardons are for:

• wrongful convictions,

• disproportionate sentences,

• rehabilitated individuals,

• humanitarian mercy.

They are not meant to rescue elites from consequences of their own making.
When they do, justice becomes a tiered service.
The wealthy and connected get tier one.

---

This Is What Weak Leaders Do

Strong leaders let cases proceed.
They let the system work.
They distance themselves from friends under indictment.

Weak leaders use power to shield their circle.

Weak leaders build patronage networks.

Weak leaders surround themselves with people who owe them favors because that’s how they maintain control—through loyalty, not competence.

And weak leaders convince their supporters that corruption is “normal,” so long as the corruption benefits their side.

Democracies deteriorate that way. Not suddenly. Gradually. One pardon at a time.

---

The Leiweke Pardon Is a Symptom, Not the Disease

This particular case matters because it’s so blatant:

• A powerful executive

• Charged in a major antitrust case

• Not yet convicted

• Pardoned instantly

There’s no ethical reasoning. No judicial review. No humanitarian justification.

There is only political utility—and the loud, unmistakable declaration that the president’s friends live under a different legal code than the rest of America.

We should stop pretending this is normal. We should stop lowering the bar because we’re exhausted by the spectacle.

A president who uses the pardon power to protect insiders is not defending the country.
He’s defending a network.

And a network cannot run a democracy.

---

The Real Danger Isn’t the Pardon. It’s the Precedent.

If this becomes the standard—if future presidents feel entitled to sweep away charges for allies, donors, and ideological enforcers—then we lose something fundamental:

The idea that justice can stand independent of political power.

Once that belief collapses, the system collapses with it.

Not immediately.
But slowly, quietly, predictably.

Exactly the way weak leaders throughout history have hollowed out democracies until the shell is all that remains.

---

In the End, This Isn’t About Tim Leiweke

It’s about a president who keeps telling us, with every pardon, every commuted sentence, every absolution handed out to cronies:

“I reward loyalty, not lawfulness.”

That philosophy is incompatible with democratic governance.
Because democracies cannot survive leaders who see justice as a personal tool rather than a public trust.

The Leiweke pardon is just another reminder—sharp, clear, unmistakable—of how fragile the rule of law becomes when power pardons power.

 

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Three Years From Now: What Happens If the Trump Slide Continues?

The Dangers We See—And the Ones We Don’t Look At Yet

Every time we think we’ve hit the limit of what a president can degrade—civil norms, institutions, basic decency—we learn the limit can keep moving. The past year under Trump has already shown abuses of immigrants and U.S. citizens, weaponization of federal agencies, open hostility toward reporters, chaotic tariffs, and a presidency driven by grievance, not governance.

But the real question isn’t what’s already happened.
It’s:
Where are we in three years if this trajectory keeps going?
And even more important:
What aren’t we seeing yet?

Trump is exhibiting signs of accelerated aging, a phenomenon not uncommon among individuals occupying high-stress executive roles. Traditionally, factors such as physical fitness, ongoing education, cognitive engagement, structured information intake, and a robust professional support network help mitigate these effects. 

Trump demonstrates limited investment in these stabilizing practices. Instead, he relies on a leadership style characteristic of certain autocratic systems: he articulates broad preferences or grievances and delegates the substantive decision-making and operational execution to subordinates. 

This indirect governance model resembles the approach used by hierarchical criminal organizations, though typically those groups exhibit greater internal discipline and strategic coherence.

This article looks beyond the obvious to the structural, invisible, and long-term consequences—alongside the pressure points that could still stop the slide.

---

1. The Slow Institutional Repurposing of Power

The most dangerous shift rarely comes with sirens or soldiers. It comes through paperwork.

A second Trump term has already hinted at:

• Agencies transformed into tools of political loyalty

• Regulations applied differently to allies and critics

• Emergency powers quietly expanded

• Civil servants replaced with “yes people”

This is the path by which republics lose their internal guardrails—not dramatically, but through bureaucratic corrosion.

Three years of this leads to a government that operates legally, technically, procedurally…
but not democratically.

---

2. Courts Become the Primary Battlefield—But Also the Shield

Judges are still the major barrier—but also increasingly the target.

A sustained erosion brings:

• Broader executive immunity

• Fewer checks on misuse of law enforcement

• Weaker protections for journalists

• Expanded authority over protest and dissent

None of this looks like tyranny at first glance.
What it feels like is:
“You don’t win cases that threaten power anymore.”

Courts won’t collapse.
They’ll just tilt—and that tilt becomes the new terrain for everything that follows.

---

3. The Quiet Integration of Surveillance and Political Targeting

This is the blind spot most Americans do not see coming.

With AI, data-mining, and interlinked databases, agencies like DHS, ICE, and DOJ can track:

• Protest networks

• Journalists

• Advocacy groups

• Dissidents

• Whistleblowers

No midnight knocks required.
Just pressure, fear, and the chilling effect of being watched.

In three years, the landscape of dissent could feel fundamentally different—not illegal, just risky.

And risk alone is enough to change a nation’s behavior.

---

4. The Economic Decline That Doesn’t Look Like a Crash

The danger isn’t catastrophe—it’s slow-motion decline.

Tariffs, retaliation, subsidies, flight of foreign investment, and politicized monetary pressure create an Argentina-style environment:

• Everything costs more

• Innovation slows

• Corruption becomes normalized

• Public frustration becomes the ambient background noise

Trump’s economy won’t collapse outright.
It will rot invisibly, one policy at a time, until Americans adjust to a country that feels worse every year without a single “crash moment” to blame.

---

5. Normalized Political Violence

Once leaders mock the press, encourage dehumanization, wink at militias, and describe political opponents as “vermin,” something shifts in the public:

• Lone-actor attacks rise

• Threats escalate

• Local officials work under fear

• Armed intimidation becomes routine at civic events

This doesn’t produce a civil war.
It produces quiet civic trauma, the kind that accumulates until people simply stop participating.

That’s how democratic culture erodes—not by force, but by fear.

---

6. The Strategic American Brain Drain

Here’s a consequence almost no one talks about:

Over three years of chaos, you lose:

• Scientists

• Researchers

• Doctors

• Public health talent

• University leadership

• Military career officers

• Policy specialists

These people don’t wait for collapse.
They leave before collapse is visible.

And you cannot replace that expertise.
Not fast.
Sometimes not ever.

---

7. Foreign Leverage Becomes a Force Inside U.S. Politics

A weakened, fractious America is easier to manipulate.

Expect increased:

• Covert funding of political “culture wars”

• Foreign-controlled online narratives

• Economic pressure campaigns targeting strategic U.S. industries

• Intelligence gaps with allies

A country that prides itself on independence becomes strangely puppetable.

And that vulnerability lasts long after a leader leaves office.

---

8. The Generational Impact—Kids Raised Under Normalized Cruelty

Children growing up during this era absorb a worldview:

• Power matters more than law

• Cruelty equals strength

• Truth is tribal

• Compromise is weakness

You don’t fix that in an election cycle.
You fix it over decades, if at all.

This is the deepest cost of democratic rot:
the emotional and ethical deformation of a generation.

---

9. The Trump Effect Outlives Trump

Even if Trump leaves office before the three years are up, the infrastructure remains:

• The permission structure for cruelty

• The loyalty-first governance model

• The normalization of seeing fellow citizens as enemies

• The idea that law is optional if you’re powerful enough

• A public trained to shrug instead of resist

This is the most dangerous consequence of all.

Trumpism, once culturally rooted, can be wielded by someone far more competent.

---

What Could Still Stop This Slide

Three things—realistic, not magical thinking.

1. Courts that continue resisting

If they keep blocking unlawful overreach, they can slow the damage long enough for electoral correction.

2. States with backbone

Federalism can save democracy when Washington won’t.

3. Public burnout transforming into action

Authoritarian systems often collapse when they mistake exhaustion for obedience.
People stay quiet until suddenly they don’t.

Pressure builds in silence.

---

The Pressure Points That Matter Right Now

These are the actual, tangible leverage points:

• Local elections

They control policing, school boards, election administration.

• State attorneys general

They are the last line against federal abuse.

• Whistleblower protections

If whistleblowers fall silent, the public goes blind.

• Independent journalism

The last oxygen supply for democratic transparency.

• Civic coalitions

Cross-ideological groups (veterans, scientists, clergy, educators) have the power to halt political extremism faster than partisan actors.

These aren’t abstractions; they’re load-bearing beams of the republic.

---

Why Authoritarian Movements Always Collapse—But Often Leave Ruins

Trumpism can’t sustain itself forever because:

• It feeds on outrage it cannot infinitely produce

• It relies on loyalty that inevitably fractures

• It damages the very institutions it needs to survive

• It generates economic decay that eventually breaks public tolerance

• It elevates leaders who self-destruct

Authoritarian movements collapse under their own contradictions.

But the tragedy is this:

They often leave civic, economic, and moral wreckage behind—wreckage that takes decades to repair.

That’s the real cost of letting the slide continue.

---

The One Truth That Should Stay With Us

America isn’t in danger because of a single man.
America is in danger because we are slowly accepting what would once have been unthinkable.

Democracies don’t die with tanks in the streets.
They die when enough people shrug.

But they also recover when enough people stop shrugging.

And that remains—despite everything—the unfinished story of our time.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Pete Hegseth: Worst, Least Qualified Secretary of Defense in Modern U.S. History

Every few decades, America ends up with a Secretary of Defense whose tenure becomes a cautionary tale. Rumsfeld’s mismanagement of Iraq. McNamara’s sterile metrics and disastrous Vietnam escalation. Louis Johnson’s budget hacks that left us unprepared for Korea. Each one left scars. Each one earned their place in the history books.

But none of them arrived in the job with as little preparation or understanding of the role as Pete Hegseth. And that is the real story of this moment. For the first time, the United States has a Secretary of Defense who is, by near-universal assessment among defense professionals, unqualified from day one. Not questionable. Not inexperienced. Unqualified.

Hegseth didn’t need years to unravel strategic credibility. He did it immediately.

Brief aside from Mary Geddry: Secretary of War Crimes and the Ministry of Poisoned Air - Hegseth’s kill orders, Trump’s anti-climate crusade, billionaire baby bonds, and the CDC’s anti-vax makeover, your daily tour through America’s authoritarian renovation project.

One more...

This incessant disrespect coming from Trump and his underlings isn’t random. It’s the whole point.

It’s dominance theater. It’s a loyalty test. It’s chaos as a tactic.

They tear down norms, mock institutions, and belittle anyone who pushes back because contempt is how authoritarian-minded movements signal power and keep followers unified.

What’s “wrong” with them is simple:

They’re driven by insecurity, a craving for control, and a culture that rewards cruelty over competence. That’s why the behavior keeps getting worse…it’s not weakness slipping through, it is the operating system.

Why is this incessant disrespect attractive to his supporters? Because it feels like power. For people who feel ignored or left behind, a leader who insults critics and breaks norms looks like someone fighting on their behalf. It is emotional politics, not rational politics.

Disrespect becomes a show of strength. Cruelty reads as authenticity. Every outrageous moment feels like payback against institutions or groups they believe have dismissed them.

They are not drawn to policy. They are drawn to the feeling of revenge wrapped in the idea of empowerment.

It is in a word:

Regressive.

It signals a slide backward into emotionally stunted politics where tantrums look like strength and cruelty feels like empowerment.

Or to be clearer:

• Performative
• Immature
• Infantilized

Moving on...

---

A Job That Requires Mastery He Has Never Demonstrated

The Department of Defense is the largest and most complex organization on Earth. It requires a leader who can manage 3 million personnel, oversee the most expensive budget in the federal government, interpret intelligence from multiple agencies, interact with dozens of allied militaries, and maintain the institutional stability that prevents nuclear miscalculations.

Hegseth has never run a federal department, never handled a global budget, never overseen a chain of command larger than a battalion, and has never demonstrated fluency in modern defense strategy. His background is a combination of cable television, political activism, and military service that is honorable but far from what the job demands. Prior secretaries often disagreed with generals, sometimes disastrously, but they at least understood the terrain they were operating on. Hegseth is a tourist in a role that cannot survive tourism.

---

The “Secretary of War” Stunt Says More Than He Intended

Within days of settling into the Pentagon he rebranded himself with an old title: “Secretary of War.” It was meant to project strength. Instead it signaled something else. A lack of awareness of the civilian nature of his role. A return to language abandoned for good reason after World War II. A view of the military as a political weapon rather than a stabilizing institution. The job demands sobriety. He delivered theatrics.

That alone would have been concerning. Then came something far worse.

---

Carelessness With Sensitive Military Communications

The December news cycle was dominated by reports that Hegseth used a commercial messaging app to discuss operational details regarding a missile strike. No Secretary of Defense in living memory has made such an elemental mistake. Not McNamara in Vietnam, not Rumsfeld in Iraq, not a single SecDef during the Cold War.

There is a difference between making strategic errors in complex wars and mishandling classified information because you never fully understood the protocols in the first place. One is tragic. The other is reckless.

---

Alienating the Professionals Who Keep the Country Stable

The Department of Defense is built on norms that protect civilian control while maintaining professional continuity. Hegseth has broken those norms faster than any modern predecessor.

Reports of tension between himself and senior military leadership are already surfacing. Morale is strained. Policy discussions are overloaded with ideological rhetoric. Internal confidence is low. This is not how a functional Pentagon looks. This is how institutions begin to wobble.

Every prior SecDef had disagreements with the generals. The difference is that previous secretaries were taken seriously even when they were wrong. Hegseth entered the building without that baseline credibility. And credibility once lost is almost impossible to regain.

---

He May Surpass Rumsfeld and McNamara for All the Wrong Reasons

Rumsfeld was arrogant, but he understood the machinery of government. McNamara was disastrously technocratic, but brilliant, and capable of self-reflection. Their failures were large, but they emerged from experience.

Hegseth’s failures are different. They come from absence. Absence of depth. Absence of strategic fluency. Absence of administrative competence. Absence of respect for the institution. And an absence of the hard-earned knowledge required to make life-and-death decisions that affect the entire planet.

He may not yet have triggered a disaster on the scale of Iraq or Vietnam, but it is early. And the warning signs are already louder than most Americans realize.

---

The Most Dangerous Secretary of Defense Is the One Who Doesn’t Know What He Doesn’t Know

A Secretary of Defense can survive being wrong. The system is built to handle that.
It cannot survive a leader who operates at the edge of his depth on every issue. The margin for error in this job is microscopic. The stakes are planetary. The secretary sits atop the nuclear chain of command. This is not a role where political theatrics can substitute for competence.

Yet here we are, with a Secretary of Defense calling himself “Secretary of War,” stumbling through protocols, and alienating the professionals who actually keep the country secure.

History will not be kind to this moment. And it shouldn’t be.

About those tats…

It would be one thing if Pete Hegseth’s tenure were attracting criticism only for policy decisions or administrative missteps. But even his tattoos have become part of the conversation, and not because people suddenly developed an interest in body art. The issue is the symbols he chose, the history behind them, and the modern groups that have attempted to repurpose those symbols for their own agendas.

The large cross on his chest is the Jerusalem Cross, a medieval Crusader emblem. Historically it belonged to Christian pilgrimage and the old Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the modern era, however, it has been adopted by some far-right and white nationalist groups who rebrand it as a “Christian warrior” symbol. A Crusader cross isn’t inherently extremist. But a Secretary of Defense wearing a symbol that contemporary extremist movements have appropriated is bound to attract scrutiny. Context matters, especially when the individual in question is responsible for overseeing the most powerful military on the planet.

The armband-style tattoo on his right arm leans into Viking knotwork. Again, Norse imagery has a long, rich, and perfectly legitimate cultural history. It is also true that various white supremacist movements have co-opted Viking symbols to create a kind of mythologized “warrior identity.” Does that mean everyone with a Norse tattoo holds those views? Absolutely not. But it does mean a public official should expect questions about why he chose symbols that extremist groups have spent years trying to fold into their branding.

None of this proves intent. But optics matter when you sit in the chair Hegseth occupies. Symbolism is part of power. History is part of symbolism. And when your leadership is already under fire for inexperience, mishandled communications, and overt political theater, the last thing you need is centuries-old iconography sparking associations you probably didn’t intend. Yet here we are, adding tattoos to the long list of things this Secretary of Defense has turned into an avoidable controversy.

If leadership is partly about judgment, Hegseth keeps choosing symbols that make people question his.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

A New Global Order?

The West’s Last Chance

How to Build a New Global Order Before It’s Too Late

by Alexander Stubb

An interesting article. 

Stubb’s argument lands because it names the moment for what it is: the old post-WWII order isn’t “straining,” it’s collapsing in plain sight. The institutions that kept great-power rivalry in a box for 80 years weren’t built for a world where China is ascendant, Russia is openly revisionist, the U.S. is half-retreating from multilateralism, and the global South finally has the leverage to demand a seat instead of a sermon.

What he gets right is this: history isn’t drifting, it’s pivoting. And the next world order won’t be written in Paris or Washington but in the tug-of-war between West, East, and a newly self-aware South that no longer wants to be anyone’s geopolitical staging ground.

What he also nails...quietly, but unmistakably...is that the West has burned an incredible amount of credibility. Iraq, financial crises, selective morality, and transactionalism have hollowed out the “rules-based order” the West still claims to champion. If the West can’t return to consistency over hypocrisy, dialogue over monologue, it doesn’t get another century-long run. It won’t deserve one.

The question is whether the U.S. and its allies are still capable of the thing that actually built the post-1945 system: sharing power. If not, the future looks a lot more like Yalta...great powers carving up spheres of influence—and a lot less like Helsinki’s rules, norms, and actual cooperation.

Stubb is right about the stakes: this is the last chance. Not because the West disappears if it blows it, but because the next order will harden...one way or another...for decades. And if it locks in as pure multipolar transactionalism, we’ll miss the window for a world that’s merely turbulent instead of openly hostile.

The hinge is here. The door is open...for now.

And this is where Donald Trump becomes more than an American political complication—he becomes a global liability. Stubb argues that the West’s last chance relies on credibility: on showing the world that multilateralism is more than rhetoric, that rules apply even when inconvenient, and that the post-1945 order isn’t just a Western inheritance but a shared framework worth preserving.

Trump undercuts all of that. His foreign policy treats alliances as extortion opportunities, international institutions as enemies, and global norms as obstacles to be ignored or monetized. He drags the United States away from the very values and commitments that once gave the West its moral leverage. And the world notices. Allies notice. The global South especially notices.

If the coming world order depends on dialogue, consistency, and cooperation, Trumpism represents the opposite: noise, impulsiveness, and a return to spheres of influence where raw power decides everything. That’s the Yalta model, not Helsinki. It’s the world Stubb is warning against—the world that emerges when the West stops believing its own principles.

Whether the West still has the will to choose something better is an open question. But one thing is clear: history is pivoting again, and it won’t wait for us to get our house in order. The future will be built with credibility or without it—and the cost of blowing this moment will echo for decades.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear: Growing Up With Asimov and Watching AI Catch Up

I was born in 1955 — right in the middle of the era when science fiction was reshaping the imagination of an entire generation. By the early 1960s, when I was old enough to start pulling books from library shelves on my own, I was already devouring anything I could get my hands on. But nothing hit me like Isaac Asimov.

I didn’t just read Asimov. I grew up with him.
I grew up through him.

His books were everywhere — on spinner racks, in dusty libraries, in my hands at night when I should’ve been asleep. And even as a kid, I could sense that Asimov wasn’t writing just about robots and rockets. He was writing about thinking. About ethics. About human choices in the face of new intelligence.

He was telling kids like me:
The future isn’t something you wait for — it’s something you help build.

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A 35-Year-Old Writer Paying Tribute

Fast-forward to 1990. I was 35 when my first short story was published. I titled it “In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear,” a deliberate homage to Asimov’s autobiography In Memory Yet Green.

That title wasn’t a wink — it was gratitude.

Asimov helped shape my sense of story, my sense of possibility, and my belief that science fiction was more than entertainment. It was philosophy disguised as narrative. It was a way of thinking about people, machines, society, and responsibility before those conversations became real.

When you’re 10 years old reading Asimov, you don’t think you’re preparing for adulthood.
But you are.

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Rediscovering Asimov Through My Son

Recently, my son sent me a video — “What Happens If AI Just Keeps Getting Smarter?” — which dug into several Asimov short stories I somehow missed as a youth. It was surreal to watch.

Here I was, nearly 70, revisiting the same imaginative terrain that shaped me as a boy — but now from a world where AI isn’t theoretical. It’s here. It’s growing. It’s accelerating.

And suddenly the distance between a 1960s kid reading Asimov and the world of 2025 doesn’t feel as far as it once did.

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Asimov Saw Further Than We Realized

Asimov imagined robots not as monsters but as partners.
Not as threats but as moral puzzles.
Not as fantasy but as inevitabilities.

His “Three Laws of Robotics” became the first mainstream attempt to wrap machine intelligence inside a moral framework. Even then, he knew the laws would fail — and half his stories are about those failures.

But he also assumed something beautiful:
that humans would care enough to try.

He believed we would approach intelligence — even artificial intelligence — with thoughtfulness, structure, and humility.

Today?
We have brilliant developers and researchers…but we also have corporations racing each other, governments barely understanding what they’re regulating, and a society catching up to technologies released at breakneck speed.

Asimov’s optimism wasn’t naïve.
It was aspirational.

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The Questions Asimov Asked — And That AI Forces Us to Answer

The video my son sent me raised the same unsettling ideas Asimov was wrestling with decades before AI became real:

• What happens when intelligence grows faster than our ability to understand it?

• What happens when machines become better than us at the very things that define us?

• What happens when decisions move beyond human comprehension?

• And — critically — what happens when we fail to build the equivalent of “Three Laws” into real systems?

Asimov used fiction to explore these questions safely.
We’re having to explore them in real time.

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Where My Childhood Meets the Future

It’s strange — and a little poetic — to be a writer who grew up on Asimov, wrote a story in 1990 as a tribute to him, and now lives in a world where AI is no longer a distant speculation but a daily presence. I can have conversations with AI systems today that feel like stepping into one of his stories.

The difference is that this time the story is ours.

And that makes the stakes real.

Asimov taught an entire generation that intelligence — human or artificial — is something we guide, shape, and take responsibility for. He believed in rationality, ethics, curiosity, and the possibility that science could improve the human condition if we approached it wisely.

That message feels more urgent now than it did in 1960, or in 1990 when I published that first story.

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A Final Thought: Staying Asimovian

If there’s one thing I’ve taken from a lifetime of reading Asimov — and from watching these modern debates about AI — it’s this:

Asimov trusted us to be worthy of what we create.
The real question is whether we trust ourselves.

We don’t need to fear intelligence.
We need to fear carelessness, short-term thinking, and moral laziness — the opposite of what Asimov spent his life warning us about.

And as someone who was shaped by Asimov’s words as a boy, carried them into my own writing at 35, and now watches AI become smarter by the month… I hope we choose the Asimovian path:

• curiosity over panic

• ethics over profit

• imagination over stagnation

• and humanity over fear

Because the future won’t be written by machines.
It will be written by the people who decide what those machines become.

And Asimov — if he were still here — would remind us that the future is always, always a human responsibility.

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I highly recommend watching the video, I think he did a very good job on it. 

“What Happens If AI Just Keeps Getting Smarter?

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT