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August Reader Letter 2025
Why?
I’m constantly asking myself why I do this. Can I make a dent in a battleship? The famous WWII Japanese battleship Yamato had 24” thick steel armor. I’m out here with a ball peen hammer. Maybe someone inside will hear me but they won’t be shaking in terror at my approach.
Btw, the Yamato never really made any difference. The Japanese realized a single plane with a big bomb could take her out so they kept her out of harm’s way, which is weird when you build the single largest weapon humanity has ever built.
Despite their efforts, Yamato was sunk by airborne bombs. So it goes.
So maybe the ball peen hammer is like that butterfly in China whose wing flapping changes the weather in Spokie. Chaos Theory, apropos these days. I guess that is one justification for writing this stuff.
I don’t believe that Donald Trump fears mass protests. His aide Stephen Miller this week dismissed protestors as ’90 year old hippies’, which kind of tells you how they see it. Crackpots. But I see another angle which I seem to share with California Governor Gavin Newsom. Mock the shit out of Trump at every opportunity.
He certainly gives us endless material to work with. How do you get to a madman level narcissist? Make fun of him. That might be a great public protest tactic. Who knows…
