Why read my substack?

Will it be worth your time?

So you somehow found your way here. I found a lot of substacks that way. Some nice person posted a link and subscribed and you said, hmm, let me read.

Who am I? I am a child of the former paradise that was California, having been born before the Watergate break-in. I have multiple degrees (BA in History and International Relations, MA in History, and a JD) and a mostly finished dissertation for a PhD in history that I will never finish. I have studied foreign relations and politics since elementary school.

Some have even told me I have a good writing style and good insights. You might enjoy reading it just for that.

One of my earliest memories was watching TV when I was a child and hearing the words “Fall of Saigon”. It might have been in 1975 or a year later. I asked my mother what that meant and she couldn't explain it to me. I have been trying to understand our world ever since.

Growing in the Late Cold War meant internalizing that “Russia is bad” and “communism is evil” and the “USA was wonderful and good.” The more I studied the issue the more those answers became less clear.

With the end of the Cold War, I carefully followed the policy discussions about the future. The end of the Cold War also meant I lost my post college job in DC. I had obtained a double major in History and International Relations (in 2 years no less) and ended up instead going for a MA in History, focusing on Early Modern Europe. A multipolar world appeared to be coming and becoming an expert on a previous multipolar era would be useful.

I was oddly struck that most of the DC foreign policy establishment couldn't get out of their former training. So many were locked into the bipolar framework, black and white division, and a designated enemy. And others foolishly thought we would have a “unipolar era”, with the benevolent USA ruling the world and helping everyone. Ha, ha.

I gave on the idea of working in national security establishment in the 90s and went to law school. As a lawyer I am a litigator. I help people solve problems. I have handled cases in a myriad of fields including death penalty appeals, domestic, bankruptcy, property, employment, construction, business, etc.

At some point, I got burned out with law and pursued a PhD in History, studying with an accomplished scholar in the area of US foreign relations. For various reasons including the ridiculousness of modern academia, that didn't work out and I returned to law.

So, TL;dr version: I have thought long and hard about history and international relations, among other topics and hope to share my insights with others.