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Articles by Frank Robinson
Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari
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“Active Shooter” Drills: Craziness Upon Craziness
September 20, 2025 American school kids undergo frequent “active shooter” drills — New York law requires them four times annually. Not only reducing actual learning time (which they can ill-afford) but upsetting and scaring them. To what purpose? Is there any evidence that these drills reduce harm in actual school shootings? Has anyone ever said afterward, “Good thing we had those drills”? Conceivably teachers should get pointers for handling such situations. But why involve students?
Faith and Reason and Occam’s Razor
September 17, 2025 A 1998 Encyclical by Pope John Paul II was titled “Faith and Reason.” Actually condemning pure faith as the basis for religious belief — claiming it’s instead supported by reason and science. How pretty to think that. Mark Twain defined faith as “believing what you know ain’t so.” But what does the word “know” there mean? How knowledge and belief work in one’s brain can be tricky. Nobody “believes” something they “know” is false. But some things people resist knowing.
My Jeremiad
September 15, 2025 Are we losing our democracy, becoming an authoritarian police state? Let me count the ways. No, let's not. Sentient Americans know all too well. There's much talk of tipping points, red lines, frogs in boil pots, points of no return. Querying, "Are we there yet?" But here's what gets me: the public's response. Or lack thereof. Like a broken record, I'd long been a Jeremiah, warning that God did not ordain America eternally a democratic paradise.
Reading the Daily (Bad) News Paper
September 13, 2025 The lead story in Friday's Albany Times-Union concerns how non-profit groups helping immigrants are struggling to cope with escalating ICE depredations, often targeting people long embedded in their communities, whisking them away. While the groups' funding has been slashed. Page A3 is topped by news that Trump sycophant Elise Stefanik will co-chair a Congressional review of post-9/11 intelligence reforms.
Hannah Arendt on The Human Condition
September 10, 2025 We watched a PBS documentary about Hannah Arendt (1906-75), a German-Jewish-American intellectual best known for her book Eichmann in Jerusalem with its "banality of evil" trope. The program was quite timely, given Arendt's deep concern with the phenomenon of authoritarianism (which had up-ended her own life).
"Money, Lies, and God"
September 2, 2025 "'Tis the time's plague, when madmen lead the blind." - Shakespeare, King Lear Katherine Stewart's 2025 book quotes the above; it's subtitled Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. It's not hyperbole, and it's not some fringe movement. It's the MAGA right, but really the whole Republican party now. This book is a penetrating, unflinching analysis, looking under the hood of this movement.
Covid in Hindsight
August 31, 2025 My March 9, 2020 blog post was headed, "Don't Panic, It's Just Flu." Within a few days, that looked pretty dumb. Less so five years later. Early on, there was obviously a huge trade-off between Covid's potential harm and the certain harms of trying to curb it via draconian measures like lockdowns. China had immediately imposed fierce restrictions on Wuhan, where Covid started - seemingly with much success, extended to many other places.
Attention Perversion
August 29, 2025 Chris Hayes's 2025 book is titled The Sirens' Call - How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource. The title nods to Odysseus's striving to resist the Sirens' song that could destroy him. The subtitle is a bit off: attention is not "endangered" but becoming a giant sinkhole. Hosting an MSNBC show, Hayes is much concerned with how people pay attention. He explores the biological substrate.
Masked Men
Who was that masked stranger? Without a badge, in a gang, An unmarked car, Grabbing someone off the street, In Massachusetts, And hustling her away, To parts unknown. Yes, a criminal gang, Minions of a criminal regime, That prattles “law and order.” On May 14, 1938, Seventeen years old she stood, On a ship’s deck, Welcomed by a lady with a torch. Leaving Germany behind, Where twenty years before Her soldier father took a bullet for his country. A lot of thanks he got — that Jew.
Consciousness, Qualia, Reality, and the Universe
Federico Faggin’s 2024 book is Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers and Human Nature. He was a microprocessing pioneer, laying some of the groundwork for modern information technology. He propounds a startling theory of consciousness. Before we get into that, the book extensively discusses classical physics versus quantum mechanics. We know that something seemingly solid, like a hammer, is made of atoms that are mostly empty space.
Syntax Matters
Today’s Albany Times-Union wrote of a local spa owner busted for alleged prostitution, including this sentence: “The 19-page complaint filed against Xie includes photographs of her and a different woman depositing cash in ATMs, as well as a large number of condoms — used and unused . . . “
The Gerrymandering War and Other Political Follies
August 19, 2025 Congressional redistricting — gerrymandering. For readers from Mars, that means Republicans (for example) setting boundaries to concentrate Democratic voters into a few districts they win overwhelmingly, while all the rest go Republican. And Republicans do predominate in this game, with Democratic states (like California) more commonly having non-partisan districting systems. Press enter or click to view image in full size Gerrymandering, we’re told, “disenfranchises” voters.
How Minds Change
August 17, 2025 That’s the title of a 2022 book by David McRaney, a Mississippi journalist who saw first-hand people’s hostility toward information and ideas (like in science) at odds with their pre-existing viewpoints. He thought it futile trying to change minds. The gay marriage issue seemed a case in point. Then public opinion about it flipped dramatically. Which changed McRaney’s own thinking.
Kitchen Still Life #3
August 15, 2025 Commentary: Still Life has a long tradition in art. Before, human imagery predominated. The categorization “still life,” though, conveys having something to do with life. The “still” element suggestive of repose, or freezing something in time. Then there’s found art (like Duchamp’s urinal), though usually the artist actually modifies the thing in some way.
My Beloved Country: Somaliland
The Ambassador’s speech said we’d “never be forgotten in the history of the country.” Meaning my wife and I (and a few others). I’ve written of our involvement in a Somaliland educational project. Now consisting of the original Abaarso high school, plus a teacher’s college, and a growing chain of Kaabe schools for younger kids. Recently we attended a reunion of mostly Abaarso graduates. A wonderful joy-filled gathering.
James Lovell, Apollo 13, and Human Triumph
I remember initial TV coverage of the “Houston, we have a problem” story, and thinking, those guys are toast. On that 1970 Apollo 13 Moon voyage, an oxygen tank exploded. Surely fatal to the mission — and the crew Lovell headed. But then, together with teams on the ground, they got to work. That’s what humans do. And incredibly, against horrendous odds, they found a way, and those men returned unhurt. Apollo 13 might be deemed a catastrophic failure, in our space exploration saga.
The Lights Are Going Out
Such birds were used as warning devices, because they’d quickly succumb to poisoned air. Our warning signs actually began earlier. Colbert is a comic hosting TV’s top late night show. That cachet didn’t prevent its cancellation by CBS — “for financial reasons” — just after he’d called CBS’s $16 million payoff to Trump a “big fat bribe.” Supposedly settling a lawsuit; Trump had sued over “60 Minutes” editing a Kamala Harris interview. That lawsuit a big fat joke.
AI: “This Changes Everything”
Ever since Luddite days, “automation” has been feared as a job-destroyer. But even as technology advanced beyond anything imaginable then, more jobs were always created than lost, and as I write in 2025, unemployment in advanced nations is near record lows. While greater productivity has made life much better for most humans. But many say, “this time is different,” with AI capable of performing so much work now done by humans. Yet that transformation seems stalled — so far.
Trump and Epstein - Did He - ?
So: did he screw underaged girls trafficked by Epstein? That was what Epstein was all about. They were bosom buddies. And Pussygrabber was a big lech too. Barging into beauty pageant (un)dressing rooms. Raping (excuse me, “sexually assaulting”) E. Jean Carroll in another dressing room. Stormy Daniels. And so on. MAGA world’s “Epstein files” firestorm relates to their QAnon madness, believing top Democrats were in some deep state pedophilic conspiracy, even including eating kids.
Rise of the “Nones” - Faltering?
For several decades the big religion story in America was the rise of the “nones” — people saying “none” when asked their faith. Only 5% said that in 1990; by 2019 it was 30%. Church attendance fell even more. Religion seemed in permanent decline. That trend in other advanced countries was even stronger, without the church-state separation that has actually benefited American faiths, incentivizing their dynamism. This mainly concerns Christianity.
Why Nations Fail (An abridged version of my recent library book talk)
Why Nations Fail was published 2012 by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. To begin: what do we mean by a nation failing? The term failed state originated in the 1990s regarding Somalia, whose whole civic structure collapsed into chaos. But the authors here are talking about something much broader. After around 1800, the industrial revolution propelled wealth and income and living standards. But while some nations prospered, many others have been left behind, stuck in poverty.
Just How Sick is This Republican Party?
July 9, 2025 I get fund-raising e-mail blasts from both parties. The Democratic ones are always sober, serious, fact-based. The Republican messages unnervingly dishonest and deranged. Republican Congressman Mike Collins wants to run for Senate in Georgia. You’d think the standard shtick of smearing a Democratic opponent as a “crooked communist lunatic” would suffice. But no, seems that would not rile up Republicans enough. Better to be running not against a Democrat but a RINO.
Seeking Attention
July 7, 2025 I’m an inveterate introvert. Never got fully socialized like most people. Yet a constant in my psychological substrate has been wanting attention. (Maybe why I write stuff like this.) This isn’t some psychosis; rather actually a human universal. What’s up with that? Chris Hayes’s 2025 book, The Siren’s Call, elucidates it. Hayes is an MSNBC host. His subtitle is How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource.
The Big Boastful Bullshit Betrayal
July 5, 2025 America’s great modern political realignment is less educated, economically stressed working class voters going Republican. Trump called them “forgotten” and postured as their champion. They latched onto him as to a life raft. What poor fools. The giant bill Trump just got passed screws them over royally. A total betrayal. Its real beneficiaries are the richest.
July 4, 2025 - A New Declaration
July 3, 2025 July 4 was always my favorite holiday, celebrating the ideals that defined America. At my local humanist group’s party, I’d join in our reading of the Declaration of Independence. This year it feels like ashes in my mouth. So I suggested a new, revised Declaration, reflecting today’s reality, and it’s been approved.
Supreme Court Says: Yes, a King
June 30, 2025 “No Kings” headlined June 14 nationwide protests. The Supreme Court wasn’t listening. The millions of demonstrators called out Trump’s assaults on rule of law. With Congressional Republicans co-opted or terrorized by him, courts have provided the only check. Our Supreme Court should have been the ultimate bulwark — the final defender of the judiciary as a constraint upon the President, so necessary to our democracy.
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June 27, 2025 Fed up with the dating scene? With all those apps, with relationships? All those people not what they first seem? It’s all so hard and frustrating. Human beings so maddeningly complicated. Well, now there’s a fix. From the tech geniuses who brought you the Oople iMplant™ — putting the functions of all your devices right inside your brain — Get ready for the Oople Lover™.
Adios to Mexico’s Democracy
June 3, 2025 A big story of our time is the global democratic recession. For a while in the 1980s and ’90s, democracy seemed to be on a worldwide roll, an unstoppable force. Epitomized by the Second Russian Revolution. Thus Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book, The End of History. But then history made a comeback. More precisely, autocrats did, figuring out how to thrive in a Fukuyaman world, exploiting loopholes in democracy to neuter it. A current victim, a big one, is Mexico.
Trump Pardons Himself - In The Mirror
The Constitution’s presidential pardon power has no express limitation. Just the kind of power Trump loves. Yet commentators have always assumed the purpose there was for presidents to correct injustices or extend mercy where appropriate. That’s surely what the founders had in mind — not empowering a president to act capriciously or basely. Indeed that’s a standard implicit in every presidential power.
Revisiting Biden’s Decline
May 28, 2025 The firestorm new book by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson is titled Original Sin. The term Cover-up is in the subtitle. Perhaps a bit much. “Cover-up” implies a crime (as in, “the cover-up is worse than the crime”). “Original sin” invokes a supposed primordial transgression that condemned all humanity to perdition. Well . . . arguably so, if the “sin” here resulted in Trump’s second presidency.
How to Build a Golden Age - And Destroy One
May 26, 2025 Recently, talking with my daughter Elizabeth in London, we discussed Britain’s public amenities and services crumbling. A similar syndrome afflicts America. But then, to put such modern malaise in perspective, I remarked that life overall was far worse in past epochs. A theme of my 2009 book, The Case for Rational Optimism. Right afterwards, I happened to read The Economist’s review of another book, Peak Human, by Swedish historian Johan Norberg.
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May 20, 2025 Trump’s last campaign darkly threatened “retribution.” Now we’re starting to see the horror. Former FBI Director James Comey is a particular Trump target. Somewhat ironic, since Comey was arguably responsible for Trump’s 2016 election win — by reopening (on dubious grounds), shortly before the vote, the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. A focus of public attention, while the FBI never revealed, before the election, its also investigating the Trump campaign.
Trump Regime Welcomes Refugees!!
May 18, 2025 Think the Trump regime hates refugees? Guess again! In Mid-May a group of refugees was fulsomely welcomed here, indeed given VIP treatment. Flown in on a private charter plane and greeted by a delegation of top U.S. officials. After short-cutting the usual vetting process. They’ll be lavished “with housing, furniture and other household items, and expenses like groceries, clothing, diapers and more,” reports the AP. That’s a “stated priority of the Administration,” following a Feb.
Evolution: Climbing Mount Improbable
May 14, 2025 A good rule of thumb in my reading is that I can’t go wrong with a Richard Dawkins book. So I picked up this 1996 one, Climbing Mount Improbable. The title is a nod to the workings of evolution by natural selection. Its results may indeed seem improbable, something that has always confuzzled doubters and “intelligent design” advocates. Unable to accept that the Nature we see in all its complexity could have emerged without some conscious force.
The New DEI - Discrimination, Exclusion and Inequity
May 10, 2025 “DEI” has stood for diversity, equity and inclusion. Then the Trump regime declared war on all that. So now DEI is transmogrified into discrimination, exclusion and inequity. We had improved so much, growing as a more open, welcoming, humane society, with ever more fairness and opportunity. Now we’re rushing away from that — becoming a nasty, cruel, less just society. It’s actually ironically happening in the guise of fairness, non-discrimination, and color-blindness.
The Trump Regime: Bullshit All The Way Down
May 3, 2025 For a decade now, U.S. news media have struggled over how to cover the maelstrom that is Trump and Trumpism. Trying to treat it all as normal news, when it’s anything but. For example, there was long hand-wringing over using the word “lie.” News media are still flummoxed. Still striving to maintain a facade of normalcy about it all, speaking in measured tones even as craziness goes ballistic.
Ethical Jews Must Renounce Israel
May 1, 2025 My neighborhood still sports some “We Stand With Israel” lawn signs. This confounds me. I grew up Jewish, my mother escaped from Nazi Germany. Israel was a bright shining light. Embodying the hopes and dreams of a people who’d suffered ages of persecution, culminating in a mass genocide. “Never again,” we said. Did that apply only for Jews?
AI: The Consciousness Problem
April 24, 2025 At a 2016 presentation, computer guru David Gelernter insisted no artificial system could ever be conscious, lacking neurons. I challenged him, arguing that if the functioning of neurons could be replicated, then in principle there’s no bar to consciousness. It was a stand-off. That was before the AI explosion. The best that today’s science can say is that consciousness somehow emerges from the highly complex functioning of our neurons. How exactly, we don’t know.
America: The Enemy of the World
April 20, 2025 America was once the envy of the world. Now the enemy of the world. Trump’s tariffs attack every country (except Russia!) as an enemy. All concretely harmed, making everyone poorer. Some may negotiate, under duress by this mafia bully, to reduce the damage, but they won’t forget. Eighty years of building a global network of friends destroyed overnight. China is chortling. We’re made poorer too, everything will cost more. And all this for what?
AI and Religion: The God in the Machine
April 17, 2025 Artificial Intelligence is changing the world in huge ways we’re only beginning to see. My poet wife, much into AI, recently used it to help choreograph a dance to a poem, and showed me the interaction’s screenshots. It was like two people working collaboratively — the chatbot unnervingly humanlike. But it also utilized its almost infinite knowledge base. The word omniscient came to mind. A characteristic ascribed to God. Indeed, this exchange seemed like talking with God.
The American Crisis: Can Democrats Save Us?
April 13, 2025 My wife and I were invited to a day-long (8 AM to 9 PM) April 8 New York City conference run by James Carville’s “Democracy Matters” organization. Including three meals, plus snacks, and a cocktail hour. The programs, full of big names, were intensive and hard-hitting, dissecting today’s political landscape. I didn’t hear a single word of bullshit. All fact, data, and reality based. Contrasting with the monstrously dishonest, destructive, corrupt Republican administration.
The Political is Personal: How I’m Feeling Now
April 9, 2025 Shortly after Trump’s first term began, a group of friends were like, “We didn’t realize how bad it would be.” “I did,” said I. But I was wrong. It got even worse. Culminating with January 6, 2021. And, partly because of what it would mean to re-empower the man who’d thusly tried to overthrow our democracy — as November 2024 approached, I was talking “end of the world.” Meaning the improving world of my 2009 book, The Case for Rational Optimism. That progress thrown into reverse.
Strength and Leadership
Frank S. Robinson · Follow 5 min read · -- March 31, 2025 “Strength” was a key psychological factor in the 2024 election. Osama Bin Laden famously said, “if people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” Evolution programmed us to venerate strength, as needed to overcome our forebears’ tough challenges. Thus the attraction of machismo maleness. One kind of strength we still need is moral courage.
The Ugly American
Frank S. Robinson · Follow 2 min read · -- March 28, 2025 Not issues or policies. What tortures me most is the sheer ugliness, the disgusting classless crassness, the dishonesty. Degrading my once-beloved country. Epitomized by the “Signal” scandal. Mistakenly including journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in an online group chat among top officials planning military action.
Trump War on DEI Promotes Not Merit But Racism
Frank S. Robinson · Follow 4 min read · -- March 13, 2025 In 1972, as a young Public Service Commission lawyer, cross-examining a utility company executive in a rate hearing, I asked how many employees they had. He gave a number. Then I asked, “How many are Black?” Was I an early social justice warrior, ahead of my time? Or just a wise guy? It did not go over well. Oddly enough, I was a conservative Republican then — though cognizant of historic racial discrimination.
Trump’s Golden Opportunity
Frank S. Robinson · Follow 4 min read · -- February 3, 2025 My readers know I love The Economist news magazine — a voice of reason in a world gone mad. But after their pre-election endorsement of Harris, I sent a letter-to-the-editor calling it “disgracefully weak. Reading as though penned by a Trump lover under duress in a hostage video. Making support for him seem arguably reasonable, merely risky . . . There’s little sense of the thoroughgoing dishonesty . . . You virtually ignore his twisted psyche.
The Golden Door (Until Now)
Frank S. Robinson · Follow 3 min read · -- January 27, 2025 Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. On May 14, 1938, Lotte Dreyfuss, 17, standing on a ship’s deck, saw the Statue of Liberty welcoming her to America. A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, her next 83 years were a blessing to this country — and to me, her son. America as uniquely a haven for people from all over, seeking better lives and “to breathe free,” was always central to our national character and story.
Shithole Country
Frank S. Robinson · Follow 3 min read · -- January 25, 2025 Trump’s inaugural speech bloviated that he’ll restore America’s greatness. Then he did something throwing it in the toilet. Pardoning 1500 criminals imprisoned in literally the biggest law enforcement effort in U.S. history. Most having pled guilty, or been convicted by juries, for violent offenses. Against law officers themselves — to overthrow our democracy no less.
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