I’m an operations guy. I have been my whole professional career. I was an operations officer in SOCOM for the better part of a decade and for most of the last decade […]
The Capacity Problem of Pandemics
COVID-19 and The Case for State Capacity
As the emails go out from the school district where I live that schools are closing, I can’t help but wonder if there is, or ever will be, a stronger case for […]
Thoughts on COVID-19
I’ve been a part of enough things in my life that eventually became news stories to see a pattern. Whatever is reported is either an exaggeration, a partial truth or an outright […]
It’s Still Their Party
Bernie Sanders doesn’t have the support of the Democratic Party. If that wasn’t clear before, yesterday’s thorough beating at the poles by Joe Biden has made it clear. Crystal. The vision of […]
The Election We Want
Four years ago, I was writing the same sorts of essays about Donald Trump’s wire to wire win in the Republican Primary that are being written about Bernie Sanders right now. There […]
Podcast: The Dark Side of Elite
I sat down with an old teammate, Jack Riggins, and did an hour to talk autism, war and a little about writing. I’m not sure you’ll hear a more honest conversation about […]
Impeachment and What it Tells Us About the State of American Institutions
I stopped writing about politics a few months ago. If you take the long view of things and incorporate enough history and objective thought into that sort of work you start to […]
On the Utility of Faith
For those of you who don’t follow the majesty that is @sphughes99 on Twitter…this sort of stuff pops out from time to time… Thread on the utility of faith. Most of the […]
A Bridge to Nowhere
My family has been in America a long time. My first descendant was a Dutch immigrant to New Amsterdam in the 1630’s named Wyckoff. He was an indentured servant who rose to […]
The Systems Problem of Mass Shootings
Mass shootings are a systems problem; a problem that involves complex environments in which multiple inputs of varying degrees of dependency act together to produce some systemic outcome. And while we may […]