We Are Somewhere Between Autocracy and Democracy

 February 11, 2026

   Got a request from Buckeye Blake to send my Vincent van Gogh vs. Rene Secretan Classic Gunfight coverage to Steve S. in Capitan, New Mexico. So I did.

CG Layout: "A Murder of Crows"

(The true story of how Vincent van Gogh died)

    I had forgotten how good it is.

    I realized today we are all dancing between opposites. Take autocracy and democracy. How do you get efficiency over anarchy? In the olden days chiefdoms answered that question by creating security against roving bands of bandits.       

   Democracy, on the other hand, is granting governing authority to the people or to governing officials through free elections.  A scholar, Mancur Olson introduced the term "stationary bandits," as opposed to the "roaming bandits" that dominate anarchies. Wow. It all makes sense to me now. When democracy seems to be giving away too much power to people who make you uncomfortable, you slide towards autocracy, where a single person tells those upstarts to back off and straighten up and fly right, or else.

   Okay, and here is the second spread of the Van Gogh murder investigation.

CG Layout 2: "A Murder of Crows"

Daily Whip Out: "Freight Train Clouds"

   This is a scene of a storm I witnessed on a trip to New Mexico some years ago. As I was motoring eastward, just around the corner from Magdalena, I soon dropped down into the slot canyon that drains into the town of Socorro,  and it was there I witnessed a fast moving storm that went right over my truck like a freight train. It was so magnificent, I had to pull over and get out and watch it. I imagine some of the passing locals muttered, "Oh, look Honey, another damn Zonie looking skyward and drooling." But, I didn't care.   

"Devote the rest of your life to making progress."

—Epictetus