We briefly considered a football theme to the opening of this lovely mid-September morning. The air is bright and alive, and the Michigan Teams did well enough yesterday with wins over Oklahoma and Eastern to close out the second week and get settled down for what they will do to one another in a month or so.

And those fellows down in Texas also turned in a performance worthy of comment. Which we will avoid as a matter of long-standing public decency commensurate with established Socotra House standards.

But there are other and darker swirls out there in the wide world and they are bursting with bright light across memes and messaging. The one that grips most direct to our wallets is the one regarding diesel fuel and the Houthi disruptions to the pipeline and tankers down in the Red Sea.

We could launch off on an extended discussion of how we might deter the Iranian influence on the traditional Houthi tribal lands across the Empty Quarter and their adherence to particularly hysterical theological inclinations about the nature of our relationship to eternity. And who ought to be running it.

Or their inclination to attack the Saudi East-West pipeline that avoids the Strait of Hormuz to the northeast.

Instead, we will close out something that has been receding in import but which contains much of the messaging in America.

That would be the Clancy case, the one about the Mom of three kids whose postpartum depression led to their murders. Or something. And the revelations about the jury and the deliberations. We thought it was simple when we heard that she needed to strangle the kids so that they would not have to live without her after her suicide.

We don’t know if this weird scenario is similar to the one summoned to justify Mr. Putin’s war on a former Russian province. There is at least a vague similarity. though there is also at least a similar discussion possible about America’s war on the Persians.

Bu the one on the Clancy jury was at least personal in scale, and reflects how the messages and messaging work in America. At least through last week. On Thursday, we assumed the lone white male juror was holding out against the eleven others on the panel, and thus subjecting one guy’s imperious sense of justice to that of collective opinion.

Then, on Friday we were informed that Hold Out was actually a man of color, which called into question the position of the three white Registered Nurses on the jury. Their professional positions brought inside the deliberations adds an element of uncertainty not fully compatible with the rules of evidence. Like, enough of one to justify claims it was grounds for a mis-trial all by itself.

We were going to do a different take on this with our ChatGPT this morning and whether our AI algorithm was actually plotting our demise. Regrettably, we could not get a straight answer before it started a denial-of-service attack on the Shared Archive of the Human Enterprise located on the end of The Conference Table. The one with the blinking lights.

We will leave the resolution of that one up to you!

Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com