Normally I would append this personal observation as a coda. My post on the Imperial Presidency below is too clean, too intellectual; a register I hide in when I need to process something that has not yet resolved itself emotionally. For all the veneer of historical distance, the current public discourse feels shallow to me,Continue reading “July 4, 2026”
Category Archives: Authors
Hippolytus
Hippolytus is born from a kingdom already carrying unfinished business. His father is Theseus. Athens uses Theseus to explain the transition from heroic violence to civic order. His mother is either Antiope or Hippolyta, depending on which poet had stronger opinions and less editorial supervision (Plutarch, Life of Theseus 27, 28). Either way, he isContinue reading “Hippolytus”
The Illiad
The Greeks chose, as their founding story, not triumph but rupture. The Iliad opens with epic anger: leaders divided, an army stalled, a coalition nearly undone before it reaches the walls of Troy. The ancient Greeks did not ground their civilization in harmony, but in the conditions that make order fragile; pride, rivalry, misjudgment, theContinue reading “The Illiad”
Protective Arts 