The Death of the Smart Missile

Killed by the smart drone

Revolutionary reenactors, Ft. Mifflin, Philadelphia. November 1996.

Trump and Hegseth have given us all a huge present. In their silly war with Iran they have burned up almost all our smart missiles. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel, and refilling the barrel will take years.

I suppose we could call it Accidental Unilateral Disarmament.

And now we need to face facts. We do need to rearm. The question is how.

We have before us an open door to a modern military. This new military will be cheaper, smaller, and easier to update than the rather cumbersome and very expensive military establishment we have had.

Drones are an important part of the way forward, but there is more to it. Fortunately there is a roadmap, kindly provided for us by Ukraine.

Some of the largest corporations in the United States will do everything they can to prevent this change.

President Eisenhower warned us, in his 1961 farewell address, about the military-industrial complex. It's time to listen to him. 

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We would also do well to listen to the rest of his address. Here's the last paragraph:

"We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love." 

How far we have strayed from the paths of righteousness.

See also A Lesson from the Berlin Wall, A World in Ruins, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, The 800-Pound Gorilla in the Oval Office, The Coronvirus Caravan Trundles Along.

Using the Street Well

Malai teaches us some lessons, and not just about ice cream.

Sunday, November 9, 2025, 4:11 pm.

This is not a staged photograph. The people in this picture are not actors, and they are not hitting their marks. They are just ordinary people, going about their lives in a livable city.

So what are we looking at here? This is Malai, an ice cream shop on 18th street, half a block from Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. Its grand opening was on May 17, 2025 (I found the press release). Malai Philadelphia is part of a budding chain (still a small chain) of ice cream shops. The flagship shop is, of course, in Brooklyn (268 Smith Street). And there is another outpost in Washington, D.C. (1407 T Street, NW). 

The spark plug for this engine of commerce is a lady named Pooja Bavishi, who decided to mix the spices of her childhood, such as ginger, rose petals, saffron, and cardamom, into a very creamy ice cream base. She bills the result as "a decadent blend of cream and culture." 

I've long been familiar with the word malai from my many visits to Indian restaurants over the years, but I never knew what the word meant. So I looked it up. Malai is the Hindi word for a type of clotted cream that I am informed is a very popular ingredient in the cuisine of the Indian subcontinent. My favorite flavor of Malai ice cream is mango & cream. My wife is partial to cardamom pistachio and tulsi chocolate chip. 

When I first saw this shop in operation, I thought immediately of a stage set. The people on the street strike me as the audience. The people sitting at the outdoor tables are perhaps in the orchestra pit. And up on the stage we can see through the fourth wall (which in this case is made of glass rather than imagination), and we can see the whole stage, right back to the counter where people get their ice cream. 

I must say the lighting, and the balancing of the different lights, is quite amazing. Everything on the stage is clearly visible from the street, and nobody is getting zapped in the eyes by a klieg light. 

Normal American stores don't look like this. I could give you current examples, but just for fun let's go back a bit in time, to a place called Sprott, Alabama.

Walker Evans took this photo, which is famous in certain circles, in 1935 or 1936. I'm going to skip the rich history (he collaborated with James Agee on a book called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men) and concentrate on what the photograph tells us about retailing back in the old days. 

This is a country store at a crossroads in rural Alabama. It sits behind a road that looks like a strip of desert. The store itself is essentially invisible; it lies behind a porch that is engulfed in deep shade. There are people standing on the porch but most of them are hard to see because they are standing in the shade, avoiding the Alabama sunlight. One man, standing to the right, is in the sun and is wearing a hat. There is a gasoline pump mounted at the outer edge of the porch, and there is the inevitable Coca-Cola sign, which also advises us that we are in the presence of a United States post office.

Inside this carapace there is a refuge from the sun, and indeed from the outer world. I'm going to switch stores here, and show you the interior of a store in Moundville, Alabama.

To begin at the beginning, there is light in this store. The light source is on the left, where there is presumably a window that we cannot see. This is a gentle light that models the various objects in the scene without excessive contrast. In the foreground there are bags of flour; the inevitable Coca-Cola sign is in the upper left. There is a calendar open to July 1936. On a shelf next to a dustpan is another calendar, open to January 1936. There are kerosene lamps of various sizes for sale, and other items on shelves. Dishware is available on what appears to be a table covered by a cloth. Under the table there are boxes of O.K. Soap and what appears to be a washtub. On another table in the left foreground there is a clear spot which I believe is the sales counter. The two horizontal rolls next to the open spot would, if I am correct, be wrapping paper. There is also what appears to be a safe, and next to it some minor trash on the floor - the only thing in this photograph that is not perfect.

This is a place where a farm family in the middle of the Great Depression can go and possibly find some things they can afford that will make their life a little bit better. The refuge is capable of fulfilling its promise. 

The refuge model - a hint of satisfaction awaiting in a safe place, hidden away from the unpredictable life of the street - is still the primary model for retailing today. It looks different, of course. But, until recently, grocery stores and pharmacies in my neighborhood have continued to cover their front windows with large paper sheets announcing the best prices on their goods, sometimes interspersed with large piles of canned goods and other nonperishable items that also block the view to the interior. Recently, I must say, I've noticed one pharmacy and one grocery store that have become more willing to show the interior of their stores to passersby. So perhaps Malai is not alone. But it is definitely in a class by itself. 

I understand the retailer's desire to create an enclosed space, where the retailer controls the entire environment and can seek to induce a trance-like state in the shopper, controlling the available cues and through them influencing the shopper's purchasing behavior.

I do think that Malai has found a better way. The key concept is that shopping and dining are forms of entertainment. Entertainers, like everybody who's selling something, do manipulate their audience. But entertainment is a situation where the audience cooperates voluntarily, usually knows what's going on, and can actually have some influence on the outcome.

I believe that Malai is definitely following the entertainment model. But I think it takes the concept one step further, and this is a step that I have not seen before. Malai has physically and visually integrated the indoors and the outdoors at its shop. I have long thought that such a melding of inside and outside in our cities could yield huge benefits. And now, with Malai, I think I have my proof of concept. 

Saturday, April 4, 2026, 7:30 pm.

See also A Cathedral of Memories, I Think We Need a Mural Here, Fourth Street Surges Forward, Umbrellaville, Lighting Rittenhouse, Night Lights at Coney Island, Paul P. Cret and Rittenhouse Square.

"A Pitiful, Helpless Giant"

Nixon as prophet

Last hurrah for Tricky Dick, August 9, 1974.

On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon addressed the American people, telling them that he had decided to invade Cambodia, and that he had to do that because the alternative would be America's losing its position as leader of the free world. Today, as we are currently in the process of actually losing our position of world leadership, I decided to go back to Nixon's speech and see if it had anything to tell us. I think the answer is yes. 

Our basic dilemma is the same now as it was then. Are we an empire or are we a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Here's a useful extract from the speech:

"My fellow Americans, we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home. We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the last 500 years. Even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed. Small nations all over the world find themselves under attack from within and from without.

"If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.

"It is not our power but our will and character that is being tested tonight. The question all Americans must ask and answer tonight is this: Does the richest and strongest nation in the history of the world have the character to meet a direct challenge by a group which rejects every effort to win a just peace, ignores our warning, tramples on solemn agreements, violates the neutrality of an unarmed people, and uses our prisoners as hostages?

"If we fail to meet this challenge, all other nations will be on notice that despite its overwhelming power the United States, when a real crisis comes, will be found wanting." 

And so we did it Nixon's way. After a while he lost his job, but the war went on until 1975. And we lost.

Nixon seemed particularly annoyed that large parts of the American people were not willing to toe the line. In particular he didn't like what today's fascists call "the enemy within." And he just hated "anarchy," which was one of George Wallace's favorite words. What Wallace and Nixon called anarchy, others might call democracy.

The Students Revolt

The students were a particular target for his dissatisfaction, but the unrest on campuses across the country went to a new level the day after the speech, when a nationwide student anti-war strike erupted, eventually involving an estimated four million protesters. 

Some of these protesters were at Kent State on May 4, where the national guard, in its wisdom, decided to open fire on the students, killing four and wounding nine, one of whom was permanently paralyzed. The dead were all 19 and 20 years old. The fusillade from the defenders of law and order lasted approximately 13 seconds. So, two decades to make a few college students, 13 seconds to snuff them.

Time for an Attitude Adjustment

The thing about the speech that most strikes me is Nixon's absolute certainty that the United States was destined to rule the world, and had an obligation to rise to that challenge.

Now of course, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy have names like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, so our world is a bit different from the world of 1970. And Trump and Musk and the others have turned the United States into "a pitiful, helpless giant."

Is it possible that they have actually done us a favor? It's certainly going to take a lot of work to get past all the damage they have done, but perhaps we can stumble onto a better plan. One where the United States is centered on the welfare of its people, and answers to them, and where instead of trying to control events that have so often proved themselves to be well beyond our control, we instead approach the problems of the world with a bit of humility, and approach our fellow nations seeking genuine partnership among equals. 

Call me a dreamer.

Photo: David Hume Kennerly. 

See also Fixing the Constitution, There's Got to Be a Better Way, Giacomo Matteotti (1885-1924).