It's even worse than it appears..
Monday January 26, 2026; 12:20 PM EST
  • I'm interested in the movie Darkest Hour. Specifically the scene where Churchill is surprised by a visit from the king, who we learned earlier is pissed off, while Churchill is morose and undecided on what to do. The King wants Churchill to know that he wants to fight, and that the people will be with him if he tells them what's really going on. I asked ChatGPT to summarize this scene in one good-size paragraph. #
    • The king tells Churchill plainly that he does not want appeasement, that he believes Britain must fight, and -- crucially -- that the people will stand with Churchill if he is honest with them about the danger they face. The King’s visit reframes Churchill’s dilemma: leadership is not about finding a clever compromise but about trusting the public with the truth and giving them something worth enduring hardship for. The moment restores Churchill’s resolve, confirming that he is not alone and that moral clarity, not political maneuvering, is what the country needs from him.#
  • That's the leader we need now. Someone who can give a speech like the one Churchill gave on June 4, 1940 to the House of Commons, the We Shall Fight on the Beaches speech. #
    • "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."#
  • We need to make big changes in how things work based on having our limits tested and the guardrails broken, bringing us to the brink. We should be talking about that before the journalists turn this into a debate about what the next election should be about. It must be about everything. Nothing clever. This is what happened and this is what we have to do. For example -- Increase the number of Supreme Court judges, and give them terms of five or ten years, and have an age limit. The Justices must have a personal stake in the decisions they make. They should feel like servants, not gods. And really mean it about the 14th Amendment that says insurrectionists can't run for office. Come on, we were warned amply, and now we're having to deal with a Jan 6 every day in every state. #
  • We all know where this is headed. We need a leader with the courage to name the problem before we're overwhelmed by it.#

© copyright 1994-2025 Dave Winer.

Last update: Monday January 26, 2026; 1:09 PM EST.

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