This week, I wrote on my Substack, Second Thoughts, about voting: not who is elected or what is voted for or against, but about voting as an event in our lives and communities.
Voting
Three From The Military
I write short stories. Check out my book, Elementary Forms of Religious Life, for samples. I’m toying with a story inspired by the saga of a failed-businessman who, I am waiting to hear, has been caught snitching bon bons while taking out the cat litter.
Three military men appear in this strange and dysfunctional spectacle.
The oldest soldier was a pilot shot down over hostile territory, tortured, held as a prisoner of war for five years, was released, and became a U.S. Senator.
The second soldier flew combat missions in Iraq, became an astronaut, and commanded space shuttle missions. He retired from the military when his senator wife was shot in an attempted assassination and was elected to replace her in the U.S. Senate.
The third military man was a part-time member of the National Guard, led small infantry squads and sat in an office during three tours in the Middle East. He became a cable television anchor where he projected a tough persona on camera while presenting his own off-camera spectacle of drunkenness and erratic bullying. But, by golly, he looked the part.
The TV drunk was appointed to a casting couch cabinet as Secretary of Defense. He disclosed classified information on unofficial and insecure media and, in the interest of transparency, I suppose, invited a journalist to listen in. The leak jeopardized the lives of troops on the ground, no doubt more seriously than when he led rifle squads.
The failed businessman derided the prisoner of war senator for allowing himself to be captured.
The casting couch secretary accused the astronaut senator of sedition and tried to strip his military rank and deny his pension when the astronaut quoted the Department of Defense Law of War Manual on social media.
I won’t be writing this story. It’s beyond belief and I’m too busy avoiding cat bon bons from Venezuela in the news.
Anno Mirabilis 2026
Scanning the screens on this morning of 2026 CE, I noted that if 2025 was Anno Horribilis, folks hope 2026 will be Anno Mirabilis, which led me to ask what Anno Mirabilis 2026 would be.
My first thought was that the ICE raids would end, the streets calm down, and the U.S. would return to welcoming immigrants as my grandparents and great-grandparents were welcomed at the beginning of the 20th century.
Next, laws would be passed to re-establish and strengthen the middle class of this country: Tax credits for those at the bottom of the economic scale, moderate taxes from the middle, a fair share from the top, and free access to the best medical services for all.
In an Anno Mirabilis, science would be restored to an honored and supported source of insight, innovation, future prosperity, and reduced suffering. As science has detected that human activity has changed the climate for the last century, let science show us how to improve it in the next century.
An Anno Mirabilis foreign policy would recognize that justly deliberated and restrained international economic cooperation, free trade and markets contribute to well-being and trust among all nations and peoples.
Most of all, from the meekest to the most powerful, from the richest to the poorest, from the foolish and the wise, may 2026 be a year in which we all take a moment to become kinder, juster, and more reasonable before we speak, write, or act.