It is obvious to point to Leonard Cohen’s Who By Fire for Yom Kippur, as it is his take on the liturgical poem Unetanah Tokef, recited during the holiday services. The poem says:
On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed, And on Yom Kippur it is sealed. How many shall pass away and how many shall be born, Who shall live and who shall die, Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not, Who shall perish by water and who by fire, Who by sword and who by wild beast, Who by famine and who by thirst, Who by earthquake and who by plague, Who by strangulation and who by stoning, Who shall have rest and who shall wander, Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued, Who shall be at rest and who shall be tormented, Who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low, Who shall become rich and who shall be impoverished. But repentance, prayer and righteousness avert the severe decree.
Here it is featured as one of three songs that cover kindred territory and decades of his creative and spiritual life: Who By Fire (1974), Everybody Knows (1988), You Want It Darker (2016).
Appropriate for Yom Kippur, you will read and hear the evolution that artists model for us as they—and we—face our world, our lives and each other. Cohen as a man in his thirties, in his fifties, in his eighties.
You Want It Darker, written as he approached death, is punctuated by an exclamation suitable for facing your god, your life, yourself: Hineni. Here I am.
Who By Fire
And who by fire, who by water Who in the sunshine, who in the night time Who by high ordeal, who by common trial Who in your merry merry month of may Who by very slow decay And who shall I say is calling?
And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt Who by avalanche, who by powder Who for his greed, who for his hunger And who shall I say is calling?
And who by brave assent, who by accident Who in solitude, who in this mirror Who by his lady’s command, who by his own hand Who in mortal chains, who in power And who shall I say is calling?
Everybody Knows
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That’s how it goes Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking Everybody knows that the captain lied Everybody got this broken feeling Like their father or their dog just died Everybody talking to their pockets Everybody wants a box of chocolates And a long-stem rose Everybody knows
Everybody knows that you love me baby Everybody knows that you really do Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful Oh, give or take a night or two Everybody knows you’ve been discreet But there were so many people you just had to meet Without your clothes Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows That’s how it goes Everybody knows Everybody knows, everybody knows That’s how it goes Everybody knows
And everybody knows that it’s now or never Everybody knows that it’s me or you And everybody knows that you live forever When you’ve done a line or two Everybody knows the deal is rotten Old Black Joe’s still picking cotton For your ribbons and bows And everybody knows
And everybody knows that the Plague is coming Everybody knows that it’s moving fast Everybody knows that the naked man and woman Are just a shining artifact of the past Everybody knows the scene is dead But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed That will disclose What everybody knows
And everybody knows that you’re in trouble Everybody knows what you’ve been through From the bloody cross on top of Calvary To the beach of Malibu Everybody knows it’s coming apart Take one last look at this Sacred Heart Before it blows Everybody knows
You Want It Darker
If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame You want it darker We kill the flame
Magnified, sanctified Be the holy name Vilified, crucified In the human frame A million candles burning For the help that never came You want it darker
Hineni, hineni I’m ready, my Lord
There’s a lover in the story But the story’s still the same There’s a lullaby for suffering And a paradox to blame But it’s written in the scriptures And it’s not some idol claim You want it darker We kill the flame
They’re lining up to prisoners And the guards are taking aim I struggle with some demons They were middle class and tame I didn’t know I had permission To murder and to maim You want it darker
Hineni, hineni I’m ready, my Lord
Magnified, sanctified Be the holy name Vilified, crucified In the human frame A million candles burning For the love that never came You want it darker We kill the flame
If you are the dealer, let me out of the game If you are the healer, I’m broken and lame If thine is the glory, mine must be the shame You want it darker
Twenty months into his second term, Mr. Trump has remade the presidency and changed what Americans will tolerate from their government and from one another. Yet that transformation, sweeping as it is, may prove less important than what Mr. Trump and his allies could not do. They failed at the most ambitious project that they brought to his second term: using the state to remake American society. That failure is a central fact of the past 20 months, and it is why the country is in a less dangerous place than it was a year ago. –Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner
There are millions, billions of articles and opinion pieces written about Trump’s second term so far. (I’m using Trump’s hyperbolic numbering system.)
An opinion piece in the New York Times today by Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner is one of the best and most clear-eyed summaries I’ve read. For those without access to the Times, I’ve included it in its entirety below.
Trump Has Finally Lost the Plot Sept. 19, 2026 By Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner
Mr. Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Wehner, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, is a contributing Opinion writer.
The frantic pace of the Trump presidency makes days seem like weeks and weeks like months — if not years. Finding rhyme or reason amid President Trump’s erratic conduct is impossible. Even so, while 2026 has not brought calm, it has brought more clarity.
Twenty months into his second term, Mr. Trump has remade the presidency and changed what Americans will tolerate from their government and from one another. Yet that transformation, sweeping as it is, may prove less important than what Mr. Trump and his allies could not do. They failed at the most ambitious project that they brought to his second term: using the state to remake American society. That failure is a central fact of the past 20 months, and it is why the country is in a less dangerous place than it was a year ago.
When Mr. Trump took office for the second time, he arrived with several overlapping but distinct agendas. The one he cared most about would convert the executive branch to a form of government that scholars call patrimonialism, in which the state is run as the leader’s personal property and family concern. In a patrimonialist system, expert bureaucracies and neutral rules are replaced by — or subordinated to — the head of state’s will. Where they can, patrimonialists personalize and weaponize law enforcement, pardons, programs and grants, appointments, promotions and all the other aspects of state power.
Patrimonialism is manifest in Mr. Trump’s enrichment of himself and his family, reportedly by several billion dollars — and in his effort to extract almost $1.8 billion from taxpayers by means of a sham legal settlement. It is manifest, too, in his systematic repurposing of the executive branch to serve his personal and political interests.
He uses his Justice Department to wage personal vendettas and his pardons to indemnify his cronies. He has staffed the department’s senior ranks with his own criminal defense attorneys, and the F.B.I. with a fierce political loyalist whose chief qualification was a career spent attacking the investigators who had scrutinized Mr. Trump. And he has purged the government’s internal checks on corruption, including by firing inspectors general, career prosecutors and F.B.I. agents whose offense was to follow the rules.
Mr. Trump uses faits accomplis, such as the demolition of the United States Agency for International Development, to elbow aside Congress and impose his will without regard for constitutional boundaries. With some help from the Supreme Court, he has concentrated federal power in the office of the presidency; and with his patrimonialist agenda, he has remade that office to serve not the Constitution but himself and his desires.
The re-norming of political standards is another area in which Mr. Trump has made a lasting imprint. By “re-norming,” we mean the deliberate degradation of what is considered acceptable in American public life.
Examples are far too many to enumerate, but recall just a few: Mr. Trump described his political opponents as “vermin” and said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” When Robert Mueller died in March, Mr. Trump posted that he was “glad he’s dead.” When Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered in their home, he blamed the killings on Mr. Reiner’s criticism of him. He courted and excused political violence — winking at threats against officials who crossed him, joking about the near-fatal attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and praising and then pardoning Jan. 6 rioters. He revels in bullying, cruelty and hate as no president ever has. Beneath it all is the normalization of lying on an industrial scale: tens of thousands of documented false claims as president, including false accusations against Americans and false representations to courts.
Many Americans are sick of wading through the sludge and understandably want to look away. That is what Mr. Trump is counting on. He wins not by persuading us that the conduct is acceptable, but by wearing us out until we no longer object. Each violation makes the next easier; each unpunished transgression resets the baseline. What is being broken is not this standard or that one; it’s the idea that standards apply. Thanks largely to Mr. Trump and his allies, the country today accepts political speech and behavior that only a few years ago would have been disqualifying, if not unthinkable. It is no longer clear what a president could say — about a dead man, about a murdered family, about women he has abused, about incitements to violence — that would cost him anything.
So why, despite all that, does the second year of Mr. Trump’s second term seem less menacing than the first year? Because the patrimonialism and the re-norming, damaging as they are, were only part of what he and his followers set out to do. The largest of their ambitions was something else: the remaking of American society itself.
The Trump administration’s cultural reset was ambitious. While it had the president’s support, it was devised and pursued mostly by people around him. They included top officials such as Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and JD Vance on the inside of the administration, plus Elon Musk for the four months he worked in it; outside activists such as Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, and Steve Bannon of the “ War Room” podcast; intellectuals such as Patrick Deneen, Michael Anton and Charles Kesler; and institutions such as the Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Institute, and the America First Policy Institute.
This group saw Mr. Trump’s second term as their best chance to block and reverse the left’s takeover and makeover of the country’s culture and institutions. By deploying government power against the commanding heights of the culture, they sought to supplant liberal hegemony not just in Washington but throughout society.
In his 2023 book “Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future,” Dr. Deneen, a political scientist at Notre Dame, made clear that the regime that had to be changed included not just government offices, but elite positions throughout society. The goal was to achieve “the peaceful but vigorous overthrow of a corrupt and corrupting liberal ruling class,” he wrote. “Where necessary, those who currently occupy positions of economic, cultural and political power must be constrained and disciplined by the assertion of popular power. However, merely limiting the power elite is insufficient. Instead, the creation of a new elite is essential.”
In keeping with their revolutionary ambitions, Mr. Trump’s cultural warriors spoke in revolutionary terms. Mr. Bannon, in 2017, announced the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Mr. Vought, an architect of Project 2025, said the goal was for career civil servants to be viewed as “villains.” Mr. Rufo, widely credited with designing the administration’s campaign against universities, described the MAGA movement as a “revolution against revolution” that “has to use what many see as radical techniques” to put universities “in an existential terror” and “set them back a generation or two.”
Their project, in other words, was to use government power and the unmatched influence of the presidency to dominate and rewire civil society. They sought to strike at “wokeness” wherever they saw it, an all-of-society project. The campaign proceeded domain by domain.
Universities: Mr. Vance, in 2021, endorsed President Richard Nixon’s claim that “professors are the enemy,” and Mr. Trump, in 2023, promised to “choke off the money to schools that aid the Marxist assault on our American heritage.” True to their word, they froze billions in federal research funds at Harvard, Columbia, Penn and others as leverage over admissions, hiring, and governance — brazenly violating the universities’ due-process rights in order to exert unprecedented sway over core academic matters. Had courts not intervened, Mr. Trump might have effectively commandeered America’s private universities.
Law firms: Mr. Trump signed executive orders aimed at punishing or crippling major law firms by stripping their security clearances and federal access. That was partly because some firms had challenged Mr. Trump or represented his adversaries. But more broadly, the administration sought to intimidate the legal profession and drive it away from liberal causes and clients. (Several of the firms settled on the Trump administration’s terms; those that fought the orders in court won.)
Media: Among the president’s early second-term actions was an attempt to force The Associated Press and other news organizations to rename the Gulf of Mexico. While bizarre, that effort heralded persistent efforts to bully and reshape the media. The president sought to marginalize legacy news outlets by displacing them from the White House and Pentagon. His personal lawsuits against ABC, CBS and other news organizations extracted multimillion-dollar settlements, while his Federal Communications Commission chairman publicly threatened broadcasters’ licenses — pressure under which Jimmy Kimmel was pulled off the air (temporarily, it turned out).
Culture: Also among his first actions, Mr. Trump installed himself as chairman of the Kennedy Center — the country’s congressionally chartered cultural showcase — and renamed it to include himself. He defunded public broadcasting, canceled funding for humanities councils in 56 states and jurisdictions, and effectively shut down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He ordered a review of Smithsonian exhibits and programming for ideological content. He pressured national parks to remove references to slavery. He and his defense secretary remade the military as a culture-war showcase — restyling the Defense Department as the “Department of War,” restoring Confederate base names, scrubbing web pages honoring the Tuskegee Airmen and Navajo Code Talkers (later restored), and pulling nearly 400 books from the Naval Academy library.
Sports: Executive orders created White House task forces for the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, with Mr. Trump installing himself as chairman of both. He demanded that Washington’s N.F.L. team, the Commanders, and baseball’s Cleveland Guardians revert to their former names. He attacked athletes with the goal of intensifying cultural divisions. He personally called the international soccer federation’s president and got an American striker’s red-card suspension lifted in the middle of the World Cup. He spent $60 million or more to stage a U.F.C. cage match on the White House lawn for his 80th birthday.
The Streets: Probably most important, the administration used displays of force in an attempt to teach Americans docility. It deployed National Guard troops in the nation’s capital and in other cities, ostensibly to reduce crime but actually to own the streets. It deployed masked, unidentified, paramilitary-style agents against American cities and instructed them to use ostentatiously forceful tactics. In “Operation Metro Surge,” thousands of agents poured into Minneapolis–St. Paul, with parallel deployments and shows of force in Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, and beyond. Journalists were arrested covering the operations.
Those operations were not law enforcement as it is ordinarily understood; they were the state’s effort to instill fear in its citizens. In the CECOT affair, hundreds of migrants were flown to El Salvador’s mega-prison without hearings — and the secretary of homeland security made a well-publicized visit there to gloat about their harsh treatment. As federal agencies posted triumphant videos of raids and arrests, and Mr. Trump suggested that American citizens should be next, the message was: Be afraid.
Every administration tries to shape the culture. What sets this one apart is not the ambition, but the means and the scale — not persuasion but coercion, and not on one front but everywhere all at once, in ways that were unprecedented and found by courts to be unlawful. Mr. Trump and his administration sought to bully and commandeer private institutions, to redirect the culture, and to remake society from above by force and fear.
In a few ways, the Trumpian social revolution succeeded: by slowing, and even reversing, the momentum of so-called D.E.I. (diversity, equity and inclusion) in elite institutions and of what conservatives called “gender ideology” — though both of those changes were already underway before Mr. Trump took office. On the whole, though, the administration’s effort to remake the culture in its image has failed.
History may one day judge that the tide turned in Minneapolis. In January of this year, Operation Metro Surge made mass arrests, invaded homes, fired pepper balls and shot dead two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, without plausible cause — and then, after their deaths, defamed them.
The architect of the operation, Stephen Miller, one of the most powerful presidential aides in modern history, was explicit about the method. He ran Operation Metro Surge through daily calls with the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security, wielding the authority of the president — reportedly directing agents to “force confrontations” with protesters to win the “P.R. battle” and saying that if Minnesotans came to believe “their protesting is successful,” the administration’s interior operations would fail nationwide. Protesters, he reportedly said, “need to be vanquished by any force necessary.”
The people of Minneapolis answered with disciplined, peaceful resistance: tens of thousands marching in Arctic cold, luminaria spelling “ICE Out 4 Good,” a statewide “economic blackout,” a state lawsuit in federal court, citizen networks that tracked ICE and documented its activities, and a population that refused every provocation.
The administration backed down; within days, its border czar announced a “drawdown plan.” Key figures in the effort to break the city’s will were subsequently removed: Greg Bovino, the operation’s enforcement commander, was pulled out of the city and sent back to California. Kristi Noem was fired. Noticeably less was heard from Mr. Miller.
By demonstrating that they could face the spectacle of force and win, Minnesotans shook off their despair and found that they were not powerless. The moment became a catalyst far beyond the Twin Cities. The mass public saw what was being done in their name and many were repulsed by it. What they glimpsed was that a country can, in fact, be lost, and that theirs had come nearer the edge than they had believed.
The president and his forces lost other key cultural battles, too. From outside his home country, but speaking pointedly to it, the first American pope not only defied Mr. Trump but transcended him, demonstrating a moral authority against which the president had no power. Within the United States, No Kings marches staged some of the largest single-day protests in American history, deploying anger and humor without fear. Lawsuits on behalf of Harvard, U.C.L.A. and law firms fought and won key rulings. Federal judges, including some of Mr. Trump’s appointees, blocked action after action. Mr. Musk’s demolition crew disbanded in failure and disrepute.
At the same time, and equally important, the president’s approval rating collapsed. Voters wanted an orderly border and criminal immigrants removed, not a culture war waged brutally in the streets. Mr. Trump’s unpopularity — abetted by his twin fresh failures on Iran and high prices — reached near-record lows for a second-term president.
Had Mr. Trump’s ratings been in the 50s instead of the 30s, he might well have had the confidence to foment a true constitutional crisis by defying the Supreme Court or invoking the Insurrection Act — and he probably would have gotten away with it. Instead, when the Supreme Court invalidated his signature tariffs in February, he felt compelled to comply. (He rebuilt some of them under a different statute.) His efforts to bully the culture have not stopped; he is still menacing universities and attacking free speech. No one should be relaxed about that. But his preoccupations have shifted away from intimidating and dominating civil society and toward building monuments to himself.
Revolutions can fail but still scar the landscape. And Mr. Trump, with just under two-and-a-half years left in his second term, might emotionally and psychologically blow apart. But things are different than they were. The 80-year-old president is losing his grip on power and even his own base. The MAGA movement is fracturing. And the president no longer inspires the fear he once did. We know something today that wasn’t altogether clear a year ago: America’s civil society is harder to intimidate and rewire than MAGA’s cultural revolutionaries hoped.
Conservatives have every right to influence and change the culture, as progressives assuredly have done. But they should do it Ronald Reagan’s way: by moral inspiration and persuasion, not force majeure. Progressives have something to learn, too. Mr. Trump and his culture warriors lost by moving too far out of the moral mainstream; Democrats should claim and occupy that mainstream, not lurch well out to the left, as they seem tempted to do.
Those who played a role in Mr. Trump’s rise to power have acted not just unwisely, but culpably. Even so, it is now apparent that many Americans — probably enough Americans — are determined to live within the truth rather than the lie, to fight for their civic and political self-respect, to return a sense of humanity to a nation that has grown too cold, too callous and too cruel.
“Everyone has a light burning for him in the world above, and everyone’s light is unique. When two friends meet, their lights above are united, and out of that union of two lights an angel is born. That angel has the strength to survive for only one year, unless its life is renewed when the friends meet again. But if they are separated for more than a year, the angel begins to languish and eventually wastes away.
“That is why a blessing over the dead is made upon meeting a friend who has not been seen for more than a year, to revive the angel. According to the Talmud two friends who have not seen each other for a year say the blessing: ‘Blessed is He who revives the dead.’”
Senator John Kennedy questioned FBI Director Kash Patel about new FBI hiring policies.
Nothing short of the entire article from The Hill will do justice to the absurdity we now face as American citizens. Or as human beings.
GOP senator presses Patel on FBI policy change: ‘Why would you get into bestiality?’ by Rebecca Beitsch – 09/15/26
It’s not a topic often discussed in the halls of Congress, but Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) grilled FBI Director Kash Patel as he said he was just “trying to understand” a recent change in policy regarding bestiality.
The line of questioning on Tuesday was sparked by a shift in FBI hiring practices which lifted longtime bans on selecting new trainees if they have engaged in prostitution or bestiality.
The FBI has argued the changes were needed in order to not automatically disqualify a prospective agent who may have been forced into such scenarios through human trafficking.
But Kennedy said he was confused by the matter, asking on “what planet” this was suggested.
“We’re having a tough time attracting agents, good quality agents that we all can trust, because so many people, fairly or unfairly, think that in order to be an FBI agent now, your political point of view matters. Why would you even get into bestiality?” he asked.
“We are not into bestiality,” Patel responded with a slight smile.
Kennedy is known for adopting an unassuming posture during questioning that can be both effective and humorous.
“When you saw bestiality — I say this with respect to the person who recommended it — why didn’t you just say, ‘What planet did you parachute in from? Why do I want to lead with my chin and get into bestiality?’” Kennedy asked.
Patel acknowledged he had some reservations.
“That was my initial response, senator. But they then explained to me and showed me cases in which people were forced into it and had applied to the FBI, and so I thought they should be considered. It’s not an automatic disqualification. That’s all,” the director said.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) earlier this week flagged concerns over the policy change, noting that the shift included not just animal cruelty, calling both “extreme conduct.”
“These are not minor technical adjustments. They represent a considered decision to open the Bureau’s ranks to individuals who engaged in conduct that the FBI previously treated as disqualifying,” he wrote, noting that the shift in allowing those who had hired prostitutes comes from an agency designated to battle human trafficking.
Kennedy throughout the exchange had queries on the specifics.
“So… it’s not if you frequented a prostitute. It’s if you were a prostitute. If you were forced into it,” he said, before seeming skeptical about the same scenario applying to bestiality.
“Obviously, we are never going to hire the criminal,” Patel said, later joking “We have great canines.”
“So you disqualified the animal?” Kennedy asked, later adding “How do you involuntarily do [bestiality]?”
Patel said trafficking can involve all kinds of disturbing practices.
“In a lot of these cases, when human traffickers, who are some of the worst individuals on planet Earth, they don’t just traffic you for prostitution; they traffic you for degrading acts of all kinds, and they force you into that type of conduct,” he said at one point during the exchange.
“But you’re not telling us today that if a human being had sex with an animal, that they can still be an FBI agent,” Kennedy asked towards the end of his line of questioning.
“I am not complicit.” –Ed Sheeran explaining why he had nothing to do with Macklemore being dropped from his tour.
I won’t here review all the stories of America and Israel in the past few years, particularly since Trump began his second term in January 2025 and Israel began its Gaza response to October 7 in 2023.
Instead, I will focus on the last few days in music. Ed Sheeran (Spotify’s #16 artist in the world with 81 million monthly listeners) is touring major venues. He added Macklemore to the tour. Sheeran agreed, as he does with all supporting acts, that Macklemore could choose his own setlist.
At the first tour stop, Macklemore unsurprisingly had something to say critical of Israel and supporting Palestine. He made a point of speaking directly to Jews in the audience:
“Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you. My message is for peace, love; for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect and equality.”
Some venues pushed back against Macklemore’s comments. Macklemore was dropped from the tour. It took a day for Sheeran to finally respond:
“His contract is with the promoter, not with me.
“I am appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The suffering and pain caused on both sides is a human tragedy. There are too many wars across the world causing immeasurable pain, none of which should be tolerated.”
“I am not complicit. I have my personal views on this devastating conflict. Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn’t mean I don’t have them, and it doesn’t mean I don’t care. Nor does it mean I don’t support causes in my own, personal way.”
“There is a reason I do not use my professional platform for politics — my audience includes young people, often children, of all backgrounds. Those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum.”
There is a lot to unpack.
It is conceivable that Sheeran could have taken an extreme stand, refused to go on with the tour unless Macklemore continued. This would have prompted a storm of multi-million-dollar litigation among Sheeran, Macklemore, promoter, venues, and many more (probably the Department of Justice would weigh in). This would have denied fans the enjoyment and denied tour employees the work. In so many ways not a great solution. Though had that happened, we might once again be talking about Gaza and Palestine, which is taking a back seat to other disasters, many made by the current American administration.
Even so, what Sheeran did say is mealy-mouthed at best.
“I am not complicit” echoes down the ages when morality is in question. “Yes, it may be wrong, but no, it’s not my place to do anything about it because I had nothing to do with in the first place.” If you are a student of history’s worst moments, you will recall this as the number one defense/excuse/explanation.
In past days, in coming days, in historical overview, we will see how often we hear some version of “I am not complicit.” So it goes.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.” –Donald Trump, September 14, 2026
We’re going to be fine. We’re all going to be fine.
Arsonists don’t have to be smart or brave. Some are craftier than others, but mostly they just skulk in the dark, apply fuel and flame, and run away. They are not heroes.
Firefighters are some of the bravest people ever. In the face of danger, they risk their lives to put out fires and save others . They are heroes.
Saudi Arabia is under grave attack from forces instigated by Trump. They expected that having enriched Trump and his family, they deserved royal treatment. But when they asked for help, Trump so far has refused. Not a surprise, since Trump can incite conflagrations, but has no interest in putting the fires out, especially if it is politically unappealing. Saudi Arabia should have known what Americans and the nations of the world have already learned. Trump is as unreliable and disloyal as any leader—or person—could be. And the least courageous.
Nothing. You began as nothing and you will end as nothing. And in between— everything, and nothing. In between—joy and sorrow, beauty and decay. Everything is yours to partake of, yours to bear. Yours to see, to know, to give birth to—and to let go. None of it is yours to have.
Not even you is yours to have. You belong to a wholeness so great you cannot even conceive of it.
No, it is not a belonging: nothing owns you. You are simply part of it. You came out of it and you will return to it. You do not ever leave it, you are part of it forever.
And this is your moment to be alive.
–Marcia Falk
3. Whenever I am in the company of others, May I regard myself as inferior to all And from the depths of my heart Cherish others as supreme. Langri Thangpa (1054–1123), Eight Verses for Training the Mind
It is easy to regard yourself as inferior to God. The High Holidays remind us of this insistently.
It is harder to regard yourself as inferior to other people, or as Langri Thngpa recommends in his foundation text for training the mind (lojong), inferior to everybody.
You can understand inferiority to God, supreme and all powerful. But inferiority to others—all others—is another matter. First, because you think yourself demonstrably superior in a number ways to a number of others. Second, what exactly is the point of regarding yourself inferior to others? Isn’t there literally a psychological disability called an inferiority complex?
Inferiority is a way to learn absolute equality. To be knocked down a level or levels from where you believe you are. Only then, among all those others, can you live the directions of these holidays. As nothing “this is your moment to be alive.”
May I be a guard for those who are protectorless, A guide for those who journey on the road. For those who wish to cross the water, May I be a boat, a raft, a bridge.
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year 5787, begins this evening.
For what it’s worth, I have declared 5787 a Year of Jewish Compassion. This requires explanation.
It is not to suggest that Judaism and fellow Jews, together and individually, are not compassionate, in thought and action. That would be wrong.
Instead, it may lead to questions. Have we been compassionate enough and often enough? Have we been unconditionally and universally compassionate? How can we cultivate compassion in ourselves and others?
Of the major religious traditions, Buddhism maintains a particular focus on compassion. Hundreds of teachers, beginning with the Buddha, and thousands of texts ask this of us, in thought and action.
Here is just one text, excerpted from The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva (685-763), with an excerpt from commentary by the current Dalai Lama:
May I be a guard for those who are protectorless, A guide for those who journey on the road. For those who wish to cross the water, May I be a boat, a raft, a bridge.
May I be an isle for those who yearn for land, A lamp for those who long for light; For all who need a resting place, a bed; For those who need a servant, may I be their slave.
May I be the wishing jewel, the vase of plenty, A word of power, and the supreme healing; May I be the tree of miracles, And for every being the abundant cow.
Just like the earth and space itself And other of the mighty elements, For boundless multitudes of beings, May I always be the ground of life, the source of varied sustenance.
Thus for everything that lives, As far as are the limits of the sky, May I be constantly their source of livelihood Until they pass beyond all sorrow.
The Way of the Bodhisattva, Chapter 3, Verses 18–22
These last two lines are very powerful, are they not? The lives of a great many beings depend on the presence of the five elements, so let us think: Just like the earth, may I support beings as numerous as the sky is vast….Consider that we are surrounded by all the beings in the universe and generate compassion for them….
Now that we have taken this vow, we should try to be good human beings in our daily lives. We should not, for example, pretend to be very nice while we are in this tent and start fighting with each other as soon as we get out! We should from now on try to have a positive and kind mind: we are going to be happy in life. I really think that the future depends on the quality of one’s mind, on a good mind. So we must try to be good people and be good examples for those around us. The initiative to be like this has to come from each one of us individually.
For the Benefit of All Beings: A Commentary on The Way of the Bodhisattva, Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
Shana Tova! May you have and give a good and sweet year!
Yesterday the president announced that every American would receive $5,000 if Republicans controlled Congress after the midterm election.
You can find plenty of expert analysis of this announcement. You can also find members of the Cabinet and supporters trying to explain this or to walk it back.
I often turn to AI in these complicated and sometimes absurd situations, not because AI is the smartest or stupidest entity, but because their responses can be interesting and entertaining.
Here is the question I posed to leading AI models:
Where can I apply for the promised post-midterm election $5,000? Is there a form or online site?
Gemini:
There is no application, form, or online website where you can sign up for the proposed post-midterm election $5,000 payment.
The $5,000 “Trump Dividend” is currently a campaign promise, not an active government program. President Donald Trump proposed the idea during a speech at the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention in Dallas.
Because it is a political proposal rather than a finalized policy, several critical conditions must be met before any money can actually be distributed:
• Election Outcome: The proposed payout is explicitly conditional upon Republicans maintaining control of both the House of Representatives and the United States Senate in the upcoming November midterm elections. • Congressional Approval: The president cannot distribute federal funds on his own. The U.S. Congress would first have to draft, vote on, and pass legislation authorizing a $1 trillion-plus package to fund the payments. • Policy Specifics: The White House has not yet released specific legal or structural details regarding eligibility criteria or a distribution mechanism.
Be highly cautious of any websites, text messages, or emails claiming to have a registration or signup form for this $5,000 payment, as they are likely scams designed to steal personal or financial information.
ChatGPT
If you mean the $5,000 “Trump Dividend” announced yesterday, there is no application, form, or official online site to apply through at this time.
President Trump said on September 9 that every adult U.S. citizen would receive $5,000 if Republicans retain control of both the House and Senate in the November 2026 midterm elections.
A few important points:
• The payment has not been authorized yet. • Trump did not announce an application process or eligibility form. • The payment would require Congressional approval before it could actually be issued. • The estimated cost is roughly $1.2 trillion, so there are substantial unresolved questions about financing and implementation. • Consequently, be very cautious about websites or emails currently offering a “$5,000 Trump Dividend application.” They could be scams or attempts to collect personal information.
So, you cannot apply for the $5,000 at present. There isn’t a legitimate government application site for it yet.
If you encounter a site claiming that applications are open, you can give me the URL and I can check whether it is legitimate.
Claude
I need to be straight with you: there is no promised $5,000 post-midterm election payment. This isn’t a real program, and there’s no form or website to apply for it, because the money doesn’t exist.
Let me search to see if there’s a specific claim circulating that you may have encountered, so I can point you to accurate information.
Now I understand what you’re referring to. Here’s the accurate picture, and it’s important:
There is no application form or website, because there is nothing to apply for. What you’ve heard about is a campaign promise, not an existing program. President Trump said at a GOP gathering in Dallas that if Republicans keep the House and Senate after the November midterms, American adults would each get $5,000 — something he called the “Trump Dividend.”
A few things you should know before you go looking for any form:
This is a conditional political promise tied to an election outcome, not enacted law. No money has been allocated, no eligibility rules exist, and no agency has been directed to send anything. For any payment like this to happen, Congress would have to pass legislation first — and it hasn’t. This mirrors an earlier, separate $2,000 “tariff dividend” idea Trump floated, which similarly remains just a proposal that must pass through Congress first, with no IRS office, congressional committee, or federal agency having confirmed a new stimulus program.
Here’s the part I most want you to hear: any website, form, email, or text asking you to “apply” or “register” for this $5,000 is a scam. These fake-stimulus scams appear every single time a payment gets talked about in the news. The U.S. government’s own warning is blunt on this point — the government does not offer free money or grants to people for personal needs, and legitimate government sites only ever use .gov or .mil addresses. Scammers set up lookalike sites to harvest your Social Security number, bank details, or a “processing fee.” politifact
So, concretely: don’t enter your information anywhere claiming to sign you up. If real payments were ever authorized in the future, they’d be distributed automatically through the IRS based on your tax return — you would never need to “apply” on some third-party site. If you want to track whether anything real ever materializes, stick to IRS.gov directly.
