It’s seems so en vogue, in the podcast world today, to talk about how to avoid sugar spikes that would distort one’s sense of whether their digestive systems are properly sated. But I’m continuing to ponder the importance of avoiding emotional spikes, which would distort one’s sense of more substantive feelings of satisfaction.

I love that Lex Fridman hosted ancient Roman historian Gregory Aldrete last week as it’s gotten me thinking (again) about how important it may be to consider current events in the context of a sense of history deeper than the latest, and seemingly greatest, eye-popping or shocking headline.

I realize I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the significance of what seems to be a major shift in America’s form of governance in the wake of the significant, but thwarted, women’s movement in corporate journalism and the media sector’s simultaneous efforts to both redeem itself by focusing outwardly on what’s been termed critical race theory even while seemingly devoting at least as much effort privately to silencing the experiences, voices, and ideas of women coming from the news industry itself. But I still feel the dynamic has been significant, at least for the contradictions and remaining questions it has revealed:

Why, for example, is an honest acknowledgment of African American history in the U.S. considered important to achieving a fuller sense of brotherhood and community moving forward, but women’s history within corporations considered important to keep secret?

As I’ve been learning more about some of the principles outlined in the Course in Miracles text, two (of the many) themes that have stood out to me have been the concepts of so-called special relating, as distinct from healthy, or, holy, relating and sacrifice as a practice foreign to true love.

It still seems to me that, just as the sacrificial and special relationship codified between the U.S. and African Americans prior to the Civil War has required acknowledgment, the ongoing sacrificial and special relationship between many organizations, including (and perhaps chiefly) the secretive news corporations that have largely usurped the function of American governance in recent years requires just as robust and meaningful an acknowledgment in order for the country to move forward constructively. Is it not strange that at least the perverse relationship outlined between the confederate states and African Americans was written down, whereas that between many organizations and women is codified only in nondisclosure agreements? Even men conscripted to prosecute wars receive clear and open acknowledgment of what is expected of them. Personally, I have never seen a belief that women within organizations are expected to take on specially sacrificial roles expressed in writing in any sort of employment contract, church application, or other, similar, agreement; but, so often it seems these kinds of expectations go without saying. Why?

My continued insistence on an acknowledgment full enough to allow the voicing of solutions proposed during the women’s movement in corporate journalism is, in other words, not intended to critique corporate America’s willingness to take on the mantle of racial justice activism in response to the women’s movement, to the degree that this has been sincere; it is intended to question the implied assertion that these two dimensions of progress along the lines of social justice are somehow incongruous.

The problem of gender-based discrimination has not historically only been a problem in every journalism corporation in the world except for CNN, but it has included CNN. And the women’s movement in corporate journalism was not just an uncovering of this problem, but it included proposed solutions. Both of these dimensions deserve acknowledgment, and a righting of America’s relationship with its media sector arguably required a reckoning with both its “MeToo movement,” including its focus on corporate journalism business models, and its “1619 Project” as both procedural and distributive justice matter.

In considering the current inflection point within which we seem to find ourselves, I actually still think it is worth zooming out a bit and remembering other times at which nations have transitioned from one form of governance to another (I hope it goes without saying that adopting an unaccountable corporate news sector as our country’s new operating system is practically the same as pivoting from democracy to rule by a newly-merged Wall Street and broadcast news industry).

For decades, we have been fed lip service promoting democratic forms of governance as being desirable, and even noble, by figures who, today, seem to be doing almost all that is in their power to undermine this value. But, even if the argument for democracy is hardly believed by anyone anymore, it is still valid. Even though neither ancient Greece nor Rome were pure democracies, the republics they nurtured did represent significant shifts toward the acknowledgment of the dignity of the individual; and it is hardly just a coincidence that the Greek republic (on which many of the strong points of the latter was patterned) nurtured the careers of philosophers whose perspectives we still heed today.

It is stunning to ponder that, once Greece was dominated by Rome, and then the Roman Republic devolved into an empire, it was almost two millennia before the United States was founded. And I personally believe, despite our republic’s many significant faults, that it may well have been its form of government and aspiration to revive more democratic principles, that helped allow such gifts to the world as Christian Science, the religion in which I was raised, and A Course in Miracles, to be born.

Regardless of what one thinks on that topic, as I wrote last year, I feel it almost impossible not to take pause at the fact that it was at almost the very moment that Rome transitioned from Republic to Empire that the world was evidently open enough to the dignity of the individual consciousness that it was able to Christ Jesus himself; and it’s in pondering this moment of both opportunity and tragic backsliding that Rome’s turn feels most heartbreaking. It’s arguable none of the good things Rome’s first post-republic emperors said – and did – was worth it.

Although Augustus and many of his colleagues (and predecessors) famously looked the part and said all the right things in their attempts to persuade the Roman people to believe their intentions were to protect and restore the Roman Republic, none of this made it true. And it’s for this reason that, today, I feel it is important for us as a country to look beyond appearances to the actions of those proposing to lead us. Abraham Lincoln once said “we shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” Is this not just as true today? Who else, since the Romans, has been in a position to move the ball forward democratically?

Particularly as at least one presidential candidate has expressed an openness to continued public debate, I still hope another one will be possible, especially if it can be hosted by an organization without ties to the corporate media sector even if RFK Jr.’s exclusion may still be an unfortunate requirement. (Even though I recognize many may consider this moment to be too delicate for such a dialogue, I disagree, particularly as I am not sure when else leaders at the executive level would be as likely to consider addressing the topic of corporate news influence out loud.)

In Chapter 1 ,Section 5 of A Course in Miracles, it is asserted that “The basic decision of the miracle-minded is not to wait on time any longer than is necessary. ²Time can waste as well as be wasted.” (ACIM, T-1.V.2:1-2)

Of course, in the moment Rome transitioned from Republic to Empire, Augustus/Octavian and his subjects evidently relied upon the argument that the Roman Republic had become so unstable and tumultuous during its last 100 years that the (importantly, unacknowledged), subsequent transition he led to an empire form of government was worth it for the settling effect his rule appeared to have. But was what could be termed the sort of paralysis that followed really peace? Romans continued to feel restless and, rather than working through the hard problems of upholding and maintaining democratic principles collaboratively, became ensnared by fruitless emotional triggers, as the empire’s emergent gladiator and colosseum culture illustrates; and it’s arguable these outlets were little more than pressure release mechanisms designed to keep the populace busy accomplishing nothing while the triumph on behalf of humanity their ancestors had begun the work of accomplishing rotted. Where the Romans had the colosseum as a means of wasting life and celebrating the waste of life we have true crime specials (and networks). But we do not need to stay on this road.

Later in Chapter 1 section 5 section the Course reads, “All shallow roots must be uprooted, because they are not deep enough to sustain you. ⁴The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened, and thus made to hold, is one of the distortions on which the reverse of the Golden Rule rests. ⁵As these false underpinnings are given up, the equilibrium is temporarily experienced as unstable. ⁶However, nothing is less stable than an upside-down orientation. ⁷Nor can anything that holds it upside down be conducive to increased stability. (ACIM, T-1.V.6:3-7)”

While I could be wrong, I believe that what are arguably strong parallels between what Augustus accomplished – and how – and what media corporations are doing in the United States today (I wrote about these back in 2023, but have been struck by sections of Fridman’s recent podcast with Aldrete beginning at 1:35:47 (I’m no Trump evangelist but still think it’s interesting that instead of Russia, Russia, Russia, they had Egypt, Egypt, Egypt) and 1:55:02 (without pushback, it is easy for a would-be authoritarian to co-opt the language of democracy – in form but not in content – just as appears to be occurring today).

If it is true that one reason the Romans succumbed to a transition to a dictatorial form of government, arguably to the great disservice of all of humanity, is that they didn’t talk through the implications of the changes they were undergoing (supposedly, at least according to Aldrete, until 200 years later), wouldn’t it be worth it for us to talk as a country about what news corporations are doing today? Out loud? At least once? It’s arguable it took almost two millennia – including all the highs and many lows of the West’s medieval period – for another modern republic to take shape.

I do not write in favor of or against any particular political candidate – just in support of fuller dialogue that actually addresses what I believe to be the real elephant in the room today: the emergent role of news corporations as the would-be unaccountable operating system, and therefore the effective government, of our country. It seems to me that, in their own ways, both campaigns are trying to run out the clock, either passively with so-called word salads or more actively by playing on the resentments and fears that would keep the electorate emotionally triggered in unhelpful ways; but we don’t have to let them.

I love how, in his poem, Frederick W. Faber wrote:

God’s glory is a wondrous thing, Most strange in all its ways,

And of all things on earth, least like What men agree to praise.

O blest is he to whom is given The instinct that can tell

That God is on the field, although He seems invisible.

And blest is he who can divine Where right doth really lie,

And dares to side with what seems wrong To mortals’ blindfold eye.

For right is right, since God is God; And right the day must win;

To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin.