Generally speaking, I’ve always considered myself a “techno-optimist,” sometimes perhaps to the point of  Panglossianism. As a teen, I embraced those new-fangled “microcomputers,” and as a 20-something the World Wide Web, with enthusiasm.

The Information Age, like the Industrial Revolution before it, was a rising tide that lifted all boats: More things, more cheaply, for more people. In general, anyway. In the specifics, we’ve lost a few things as well, and it’s not always obvious whether those losses are good things, bad things, a mixed bag, or a price worth paying.

Lately, the loss I have in mind is the suffocating “no backsies” environment we’ve created via global social media and its seeming permanence.

As humans, we’ve always found ourselves haunted by our past mistakes, both as a personal matter of guilt, shame, or embarrassment and as a communal matter of reputation (up to and including potential ostracism).

On the latter front, I’m old enough — and I’m not THAT old — to remember a time when anyone but the most public of public figures could mitigate, or at least hope to mitigate, the latter phenomenon.

People with earned reputations for abusing alcohol and loved ones could give up booze, get divorces, move to another county and start over, among new neighbors who neither knew of, nor had any reason to suspect, their prior violations of social norms. Clean slates, and if they nailed the “sin no more” part of “go and sin no more,” new and better lives.

Even people who’d done REALLY bad things, perhaps things deserving of severe punishment, could get that fresh start if they moved fast and were able to keep their heads down for the rest of their lives.

How many Nazi murderers died  decades later, of old age and “surrounded by loved ones” as low-profile pillars of communities far from the scenes of their crimes?

For that matter, how many “average Germans” who adored and actively supported Hitler between 1933 and 1945 spent the rest of their lives lying to their kids and grandkids about their attitudes back when?

That kind of thing can’t really happen today … and for the last 20 years or so we’ve been watching what happens instead.

Say you’re a musician, an actor, or politician just on the cusp of prominence and success.

If you posted a racist tweet when you were 13 years old and lived in Memphis, or got a DUI when you were 19 years old and lived in Boston, everyone’s going to know about it, even if that was long ago and you’re living and working in Hollywood or Dallas now.

And that increase in both the archiving and flow of information seems to come coupled with a decrease in the tendency toward commiseration and/or forgiveness. There but for the grace of god I might have gone? You’re sorry? So what? Pile on!

We’ve removed “flight” from the “fight or flight” menu.

If a mistake must inevitably follow you no matter where you go, and if admitting that mistake is just an invitation to kick you when you’re already down, the incentive becomes  clear:

Whatever you did, deny it was a mistake at all. Double down. Proclaim your vice a virtue and defend it to the death.

No, that’s not a new problem. If you don’t believe me, consider the continuing popularity of the “Lost Cause” mythology that rose from the ashes of the War Between the States, bedeviling American politics even today.

As with so many other problems, technology has made this one faster-moving and more personalized.

Solutions? “Love your neighbor as yourself ” is the only one that comes to mind.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In The Joy of Yiddish, Leo Rosten defines chutzpah as “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”

Ladies and gentlemen, meet US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and US House Speaker  Mike Johnson (R-LA).

Thune: “Above all right now, with an enhanced terror threat from Iran and Iran-funded terrorist groups, it is vital that we ensure the Department of Homeland Security is fully funded and fully functioning.”

Johnson: “Perhaps most crucially of all, the military action in Iran makes it all the more urgent and crucial to have a fully staffed, fully funded Department of Homeland Security across all departments.”

From their respective perches atop both houses of Congress, Thune and Johnson have gone far out of their way  not only to ensure that the murderers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis remain thus far unpunished, but to also spare those further up the “immigration enforcement” food chain —  Secretary of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, for example —  any negative consequences for unleashing poorly-trained, ultra-violent goon squads on the American public.

As a direct result, Democrats (and Republicans still holding on to a shred of residual moral fiber) blocked funding for DHS until the matter gets settled.

Now Thune and Johnson, having busted their humps to spare US president Donald Trump the embarrassment of congressional repudiation of his illegal war of aggression and choice against Iran, are using their own fecklessness on congressional war powers as a tool to shame Democrats (and Republicans still holding on to a shred of residual moral fiber) into granting them a get out of jail free card on their PREVIOUS perfidy.

Sure, they killed Mom. Sure, they killed Dad. But lighten up already — after all, they’re orphans!

If that’s not chutzpah, I’m at a loss to say what possibly could be.

With the (weak tea) War Powers Resolution already dead for lack of passage in the Senate and the next round of votes on DHS funding pending as I write this column, we may already know whether their gambit worked by the time you read this.

Or maybe not. But either way, pay attention to the incentives here. Rewarding PAST bad behavior virtually guarantees FUTURE bad behavior … even more so when CURRENT bad behavior gets successfully used as Thune and Johnson are using it.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On February 28, US president Donald Trump took the United States into a de facto, but not de jure, state of war with Iran. That is, he ordered the US armed forces to strike targets in Iran (the de facto part) without first securing the constitutionally required declaration of war from Congress (the de jure part).

Since then, we’ve seen a lot of questions — and received conflicting and mutually exclusive answers to those questions — from, among others, members of Congress.

Why did he do it?

Oh, there was an imminent threat to the US even though there clearly wasn’t.

Oh, yeah, now I remember, it was to destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities Trump already claimed had been destroyed months ago, and to put an end to the Iranian nuclear weapons program that didn’t actually exist.

No, wait! It was because the Iranian regime was violently suppressing protests that had largely ended weeks ago! Yes, that must be it!

Or maybe the weather wasn’t right for a round of golf, or someone really annoyed him with a social media post, or Uber Eats messed up his hamberder order and put him in a bad mood, or who knows?

Why didn’t he go to Congress for that declaration of war as required by the Constitution, or at least seek an unconstitutional substitute for the  declaration (a “War Powers Resolution” or perhaps an “Authorization for Use of Military Force”), or even take the most minimal step, pre-briefing the entire “Gang of Eight” congressional leadership as required by 50 USC § 3093?

That’s an easy one: Because he didn’t have to.

When it comes to foreign policy, American presidents have been ignoring Congress at will and defying constitutional requirements for levying war, for decades. Longer than that actually  — Lincoln never sought or received a declaration of war for the Late Unpleasantness — and especially since the end of World War 2.

Occasionally a president bothered with an easily gotten “Authorization for Use of Military Force,” but more often he just did whatever he happened to want to do, then “reported” it to Congress per the War Powers Resolution’s requirements.

Even that bare minimum has broken down over the last 15 years, starting with Barack Obama’s war on Libya, which administration officials argued didn’t trigger reporting requirements because “kinetic military action,” isn’t the same thing as “hostilities.” Yes, really.

No president has ever been held to account by, and punished by, Congress for exceeding his powers and exercising its, not his, prerogative of declaring war or not.

Why would Trump consider himself an exception? And why wouldn’t he try to stretch past administrations’  ridiculous “unitary executive” claims even further?

We’d live in a much different world today if Harry Truman had been impeached and removed from office over his surprise Korean “police action” instead of receiving a retroactive congressional rubber stamp.

Tens of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, and millions of enemy soldiers and civilian non-combatants, could have lived instead of dying in American presidents’ illegal wars.

Trillions of dollars could have been kept by taxpayers in the productive economy, or at least spent on things other than ships, planes, tanks, ordnance, foreign military expeditions and bases, salaries for bloated armed forces rosters, etc.

As to the current situation, Congress shouldn’t be asking questions — it should be taking action.

If we lived in anything like a “constitutional” polity, the House would have already delivered Articles of Impeachment and the Senate would be trying the matter of Trump’s removal from office right now.

Can we at least agree to stop pretending the Constitution matters anymore (if, indeed, it ever did)?

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY