The Morality of Precision

On this day:1431
Joan of Arc is handed over to Bishop Pierre Cauchon.
1496
Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tests a flying machine.
1521
Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem.
1868
Meiji Restoration in Japan: The Tokugawa shogunate is abolished; agents of Satsuma and Chōshū seize power.
1961
The SL-1, a government-run reactor near Idaho Falls, Idaho, underwent a core explosion and meltdown, killing three workers.
1962
Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro.

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“A man is born to work, to suffer and to fight; he who doesn't, must perish.” — Nikola Tesla. Down, boy.

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Michael Burry, of The Big Short, has a newsletter called Cassandra Unchained. He's shorting AI.

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Proof of God is hard, proof of the devil is easy. It's on Netflix, the Watt murders.

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The guy on trial for killing Kirk wants due process.

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The Palisades Fire report has been disavowed by its author. There is always a Truth Bottleneck.

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The Morality of Precision

Trump continues to wade through national and international affairs like a heavily armed CEO. American troops have captured Maduro, the assumed President of Venezuela. So we continue our international rampage from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.

Like the wag said, you can't be a little bit pregnant, but you can be a little bit at war.

There is a lot here. Trump and Rubio mentioned the drugs, the coziness Maduro had with Hamas and Cuba. A big component was the Venezuelan nationalization of American petroleum interests.

Rubio emphasized this was a 'law enforcement effort.'

Is this a change? It is attractive to pull all this together with a new view of nations. There is little community among nations, and we are beset by little bullies, artificial states that live on the edge of civilized behavior for their own advantage, and who have no internal or external controls.

The cartels are Mexico's fifth-largest employer. Cuba has a gigantic spy/disinformation program in this country. Tiny oil countries can extort the world. Lunatics bombing chess clubs are a metaphor for the world.

Who is going to enforce the greater good?

But is that a change? Where does the capture of Noriega fit in? Or Obama as executioner of an American citizen on foreign soil? Libya? Afghanistan? Kidnapping old nazis? The UN's flailing court orders?

Years ago, Jefferson brought war to the shores of Tripoli because the nation's ships were being pirated and its crews enslaved. North Africa wanted 'tribute' to stop, and Jefferson thought that was demeaning extortion, preferring war. Jefferson.

Trump is philosophy-free, and his actions are often seen through utilitarian lenses. But we are a people with a philosophical 

national basis. Does this mean that kind of self-examination and caution is old-fashioned and passé? And, if so, where is the line drawn between 'might' and 'right'?