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e-commentary turns twenty-one next week, a traditional bench mark of maturity. This project, hopefully, has a long and unexplored life ahead. e-commentary is still:
Peeking behind the curtain, lifting up the carpet, looking under the table. Honing skills, helping folks, having fun. Venturing answers to questions that have not yet been asked, seeking to elucidate as much Truth on as many issues in as few words as possible, striving to leave a “commentary of record” for Clio’s consideration. Chronicling the painful, wrenching, and uncertain transition from a uni-polar to a multi-polar world. Charting the American experiment and the American experience, the theory and the practice, the promise and the performance, the aspirations and the aftermath. Doing something was paramount. Having fun is important.
What is in a name? In 2005, “essay.org” and “e-essay.org” were taken. “e-ssay.org” turned out to be the perfect portmanteau of “electronic essay” and provided the original title for this undertaking. In the first few years, taut, short, cogent, succinct and focused “e-ssays” told people what to think rather than suggesting ideas to think about during the following week. Reveal, don’t tell, they wisely decree. Conversation provides a rapid ping-ponging of ideas. After a few years, “e-commentary.org” emerged as the perfect portmanteau and provided “electronic commentary” using dialogue to allow the reader to listen in on the discussion rather than being told what to think. The pieces are laced with many little lagniappes for the diligent reader to discover and deduce. Stitching these weekly poems together may reveal a . . . novel?
The “Less Government Regulation” Series posits examples where government regulation may suffocate and free markets may suffice. An e-commentary in the series in 2009 advocates for regulation of Google/Alphabet in an economy that is now pockmarked by monopolization of every industry in America. Subsequent e-commentary challenges the overweening role of the Frightful Five – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google/Alphabet and Microsoft. A half dozen mega–banks and six media conglomerates control and manage our money and our minds. In an economy without any price discovery, the completion of the “General Theory of Economics” is forced into remission. The need for free markets is discussed at We Need Free Markets. Oh, And Happy Fourth! (July 3, 2023).
The “Boycott” Series suggests that readers treat dollars like votes in the marketplace and use them to support and reject policies and activities. An e-commentary in the series in 2008 proposed a boycott of Facebook because it and the other tech beasts and behemoths are not friendly. Boycotting the only supplier of an essential good or service is problematic and is addressed. An e-commentary in 2011 proposed boycotting big banks and depositing funds in and supporting local credit unions. An early e-commentary in 2006 implores the reader never to boycott and always to buy into the franchise, even if voting appears to and may be futile in a country with only one political party, the War and Wall Street Party. The notion of purposeful boycotting undergirds the discussion in Read, But Don’t Read (June 26, 2023).
The “First Monday In October” Series debuted in 2010 with a discussion of “strict constructionism/originalism” in the context of gun control that should resolve the debate over the proper paradigm for all and once. Subsequent e-commentary in the Fall series provides insight into the Supreme Court, courts and the state of the law, justice, crime and punishment in America. The emerging irrelevance and illegitimacy of the current Supreme Court is discussed for the first times in 2011 and then in 2012 and developed in subsequent e-commentary. Regular visits to the Supreme Court to observe the hired help further inform the analysis in the draft “Treatise on Law” now on hold. A few issues are discussed at The Government Stumbles; The Judicial Legislature Rumbles (October 2, 2023). Last year, some trends are noted in First Monday In October: Dos-à-dos (October 7, 2024). This year, Trump was in the news and at the Court during the First Monday In October (October 6, 2025).
The greatest threat to the Planet may be the threat to the Planet. However, the plausible challenges to the Anthropogenic Climate Change theory must be acknowledge and addressed. Posed and poised and poisoned by Man. [Wo]Man versus [Mother] Nature? Pl–as–ti–cs and plu–tonium versus People? Is Man the mortal enemy who must be contained by whatever means? Is a carbon fee and dividend program the long-shot market-based solution possibly capable of salvaging the vulnerable blue marble?
Over the years other e-commentary reviews everything from the human causes to the economic consequences of actions and inaction. e-commentary addresses everything from philosophy to foreign policy to domestic polity; from the intertwined 3Es (from energy to environment to economics); from war to war to war; from sports to technology to society; from race to class to gender; from guns to gold to the Great Wall of Canada; from war to war to a possible antidote to war; from newspapers to the press/media to journalism; from the First Amendment, to the Second Amendment, to the Third Amendment, to the Fourth Amendment, to the Eighth Amendment, to the Balanced Budget Amendment and to the Term Limits Amendment; and from A – (AIIB, CFETS, CIA, CIPS, FBI, FDIC, IMF, INE, LIBOR, MICAC, NATO, NPR, NSA, SDR, SWIFT, TARP, USA PATRIOT ACT, ZIRP) Z.
After considerable thought and development, the “Awards and Incentives Project” rolled out and now includes four annual awards with others under construction.
The “Happy Day” pronouncements are a nod to a public event with, at times, a slightly wry twist and, hopefully, sans sarcasm or scorn.
e-commentary provided first–hand on–the–ground dispatches from the March for Women, the March for Science, the March For Our Lives and the April 19 March. Lists of the clever and inspiring signs sported by participants are noted. We march on.
The requisite moving and stirring memoir is now available. The book tour is still not yet booked. However, although “Analog Knowledge Devices (“AKD”)” will soon be worth their weight in gold, this production saves paper and is only available e-lectronically.
Over the years, a menagerie of speakers and characters such as “A” / “B” and “GO1 [Gun Owner1]” / “GO2 [Gun Owner2]” and “3” / “6” / “9” among others debuted and debated issues. In recent years, “J” and “K” emerged as the primary characters in the ongoing dialogue and debate. The events of the last five years have bitterly divided the two of them, however the recent antics of the Supreme Court have “J” and “K” back on the same page on some issues.
The “Bumper sticker of the week” started out as a spoof on the shallow and callow “bumper sticker” nature of our public discourse and became the playful signature sign off concluding each piece every week.
Looking back, the undertaking is an extended serialized novel about life on this planet and the American experience presented in a series of weekly poems developed through dialogue that allows all of us in some small way possibly to . . . immanentize the eschaton.
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Bumper stickers of the week:
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not possibly succeed under any circumstances?
“Do. Or do not do. There is no try.” Yoda [Yet this confident attitude precludes critical risk-taking necessary for one to succeed at a long-shot undertaking.]
“Not being heard is no reason for silence.” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“It doesn’t require many words to speak the truth.” Chief Joseph
Otter: “I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.” Bluto: “We’re just the guys to do it.” “Animal House” (1978)
“It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search.” Bertrand Russell, Skeptical Essays
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.” Thomas Paine
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” Marcus Aurelius
“You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who does what you do.” Jerry Garcia
Think big, think long.
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