Every Parent Grieves

Michael Gloss, a twenty-one year old American, was reported killed fighting for Russia in its war on Ukraine. This is news primarily because Gloss is the son of a relatively high-ranking official with the CIA.

In his obituary, his parents noted his love for "JRR Tolkien and his depiction of fellowship among heroes", and described him as "forging his own hero’s journey" when he was killed in "Eastern Europe."

It's easy to make fun of this. And Gloss' "journey", which took the form of a particular virulent type of anti-American tankie-ism that saw him volunteering to fight for a reactionary imperialist invasion of a democratic nation, is repellant to me.

But perhaps it's a function of being a parent, but I cannot fault any parent for how they grieve their child. When I saw that obituary, all I could think of was how Gloss was twenty-one years old, which meant that his fascination with J.R.R. Tolkien probably began only five or ten years ago. Twenty-one is an adult, but it wasn't that long ago he was a child, and no doubt his parents still vividly see him as a bright-eyed adolescent jabbering about orcs and hobbits and wizards and Gollum.

This doesn't mean he wasn't an adult now, or that he shouldn't be judged for his choices. Many other people, and from far less advantaged backgrounds, have judged as severely or more for the choices they've made at similar ages. 

But if anything that makes it worse for those who are grieving him; knowing that in some way the rest of the world cannot join them in their grief. Like all parents, I have a persistent background fear of someone hurting my baby; of something terrible happening to him. But I also have nightmares of him growing up to hurt others, of him being in a position where something terrible would happen to him and in the eyes of the world it being warranted. What a horrible, helpless, lonesome feeling that must be.

Everyone is someone's child. The victims are someone's child and the perpetrators are someone's child. I read today about a nineteen-year old man arrested in Berkeley for attempted murder after stabbing someone during a fight outside a bar (as it happens, a bar I periodically frequented). When I read that, I was hit with a wave of despondency -- in part over the senseless of the stabbing, but in part as a sort of third-party grief on behalf of his parents. Didn't he know he had people who loved him? Didn't he realize how much him doing this would hurt them? How awful they must feel, and how alone, given that (understandably, and reasonably) the bulk of the community's care and concern will be directed at the victim and his family, not the perpetrator.

Does this mean that people who stab others should be let off without consequence? Of course not. But I can't expect the parents to abstain from fully grieving a child who is (or is practically) lost to him.

The 615th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Let Trump Define What it is To Be a Jew

Tradition holds that there were 613 Commandments given to the Jews at Sinai.

A more recent tradition, pioneered by Emil Fackenheim, identified a 614th Commandment: "Thou shalt not give Hitler a posthumous victory." There are several interpretations of what this means, but the basic gist is that Hitler tried to eradicate the Jewish people and failed, but we cannot let him win in death by allowing the Jewish people to disappear. Be religious, be secular, be in Israel, be in the diaspora, but don't stop being Jewish or transmitting your membership in the Jewish community forward.

As many have remarked, we seem now to be in the twilight of a Jewish "golden era" that began out of the ashes of World War II. Old hatreds that slumbered now are past stirring and roar awake, and new threats emerge on all sides. And a large part of that threat (though not all of it) emanates from Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.

Of course, the connections between Trump and his lackeys and far-right antisemites of the worst sort are easy to document. But one of the more insidious features of their antisemitism is how they anoint themselves speakers for the Jews. It's more than just the old saw "a philosemite is an antisemite who likes Jews". Trump and his followers arrogate to themselves the right to define what being Jewish is in the public eye. Right now, most people in America only encounter the concept "Jew" in the context of various MAGA policies that pretend to be about fighting "antisemitism" -- the deportations, the funding cuts, the speech cancellations. Whether they support or oppose these initiatives, these events swamp any other context in which they might encounter something that is (or claims it is) Jewish. Through his efforts, many people understand "Jewishness", in its public persona, exclusively through the lens of Trumpism -- Jewishness is free speech crackdowns and mass deportations and destroying the academy and promising to turn Gaza into a beachside resort.

I wrote about a form of this in my "Liberal Jews and Religious Liberty" article under the moniker "the new supersessionism": "the ability of non-Jews to possess, as against actual Jews, a superior entitlement to declare what Jewishness is." Certainly (albeit regrettably) it's true that some Jews support some or all of the above things Trump is seeking to place under the umbrella of Jewishness. But the point is that Jewish endorsement or not is largely irrelevant to this popular perception -- it is a seizure of control of Jewishness from the Jews.

Against this, though, I feel like I'm witnessing an organic and largely inchoate emergence of a potential 615th Commandment: a compulsion to not let Trump define what it is to be a Jew. The various cries, against Trump's attempt to make us into fig leaves for his fascism, "not in my name!" is a version of this -- but I think it goes deeper than that. I'm seeing more and more liberal Jews making a point of being publicly Jewish not (or not just) in a political context, but simply out of desire to reclaim the public meaning of Jewishness. It's not cynical, and it's not opportunism. If anything, it's inspiring in its earnestness -- the category "Jewish" matters to us, and where we see that category being purloined out from under us, the best way to fight back is to claim it louder.

Every time a public-facing Jew talks about eating bread again after Passover, it resists this. Every time a Jew mentions their Bar or Bat Mitzvah, it resists this. Every time a Jew casually drops in the Yiddish slang they grew up with, it resists this. I'm not saying the "political" displays -- talking about what Jews actually think about reproductive freedom, or marching with the families of the hostages enraged that Netanyahu has kept this war going not to redeem the captives but to save his own skin at their peril -- doesn't matter. They matter a lot. But it is very important that it's not just that. It's not as-a-Jew-ing. It's not being indifferent to one's Jewish identity except as an occasional political cudgel. It is people for whom being Jewish matters to deeply, at every level, and who cannot countenance letting a sick antisemitic authoritarian steal that identity away from us and claim it for his own project.

Perhaps placing this in the realm of one of the Commandments is too august. But the instinct, I think, is one I'm not alone in feeling. Being Jewish is meaningful, and beautiful, and historic, and a privilege. It is our obligation, as Jews, not to let this intruder seize our very identity from his and redirect it to his perversions. To borrow a very non-Jewish concept, we have a duty to bear witness to our Jewishness every day, simply by being Jews others see, so that they have something that stands against the torrent of articles and news stories and press releases that relentlessly associate "Jewish" with ... that. In doing so, we resist. In doing so, we assert that it is Jews -- not Donald Trump or his minions, not right-wing media outlets, not conservative Christian "allies", but Jews -- who determine what it means to be a Jew.

Bill Kristol: Warrior for Light

One of my favorite subplots of what has been an overall awful political season has been the redemption arc of Bill Kristol.

For people of my generation or a bit older, it is genuinely hilarious to watch him sound not just like a NeverTrumper, but as a full-blast Resistance Lib.

At one level this didn't come completely out of nowhere. Back in 2016, I predicted the possibility that the neoconservatives might return to the Democratic fold. For those who know their history, neocons were liberals once (as I said then -- not mix media properties -- this is much like Saruman describing the orcs: "they were elves, once"). They turned away from the progressive movement based on aversion to what they saw as reflexive anti-westernism and a deep, almost messianic, belief in America's ability to spread democracy and liberal values worldwide. 

The latter commitment in particular took them to some pretty dark places, and a lot of, shall we say, "compromises" occurred along the way. But as we reach a crisis point for democracy here at home, some of them -- Kristol being the most prominent -- reached back deep into himself and remembered what nominally was motivating him as an idealistic youngster.

It's not, of course, like Kristol has some profound influence on the right these days (or the left, or the center). And it should be obvious that none of this requires one to view Kristol as some sort of heroic figure or forget his past "interventions" (forgive the pun).

But as a narrative arc, I can't help but enjoy watching it. And there's so little joy these days; please don't begrudge me for indulging in this one.

The Tenth Plague in 2025

My least favorite part of the Passover Seder, by far, is the recitation of the Ten Plagues. It is tradition to spill a drop of wine for each plague, to acknowledge the suffering of the Egyptians and how it lessens our own joy at liberation.

For nine of the ten plagues, I'd consider this sufficient. For the Tenth Plague -- death of the first born -- I never have. A single drop of wine as a response to dead children is woefully, horrifyingly grotesque; even when those deaths are in pursuit of the most noble cause of liberation from slavery (though I continue to assert that, as told in the Passover tale, the Tenth Plague was absolutely unnecessary -- it was the Lord who "hardened Pharoah's heart" and precluded an earlier resolution). 

Again, this is something I've believed for many, many years (the above-linked post is from 2007). But it is all the more resonant right now. When one thinks of the Israeli children butchered on October 7, or those murdered in Hamas captivity, or the Palestinian children torn asunder by bombs, or dying in want of adequate nutrition or medical care -- what kind of holiday treats such horrors as a literal drop in the bucket? How can we think that way?

Here, too, the lesson is that such atrocities must not be downplayed, in particular downplayed on the grounds that some overarching "cause" behind them is just; here, too, the lesson also is that what is presented as "necessary" rarely actually is.

Next year without murdered children.

The Global Right Ascendance Will Leave Israel in the Wreckage

Many people have taken note of recent poll data regarding American attitudes towards Israel, which are (to summarize) cratering. Among Democrats, 69% now view Israel unfavorably. This doesn't surprise me, as Israel has done everything it possibly can to spit in the eye of Democrats and liberals (and yet somehow seems ever-so wounded that it's resulted in declining support). To paraphrase Chidi from The Good Place: In order to be a liberal, you have to do liberal things!

But what really should get people's eyebrows up are the numbers amongst young Republicans, where a majority (50%) also view Israel unfavorably (this is in contrast to older Republicans, who overwhelmingly like Israel; amongst Democrats there is a little generational gap). The MAGA Young Turks have no reservoir of good will towards Israel. They may sometimes find it a useful rhetorical trope to instantiate other goals (like xenophobic nativism), but it's a purely instrumental play. Ultimately, the rising tide of antisemitism amongst young Republicans is going to swamp whatever residual utility Israel has in the toolkit of right-wing domestic authoritarianism.

Indeed, reading this poll data reminded me of Robert Kagan's article a few years ago about Israel's future in an illiberal world -- namely, that Israel is delusional if it thinks that, in a world governed by reactionary nationalism combined with short-sighted faux-realpolitik, it will retain any sort of "special relationship" with its erstwhile patrons. Negative polarization alone will accelerate already deteriorating relationship Israel has with other western powers as Israel becomes associated with the new illiberal bloc; but if you look at the prime players in said bloc (Russia, China), Israel's never had an especially warm relationship with them either. Add that to the waxing influence amongst young MAGA sorts of figures like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, and why would Israel expect to remain anyone's favorite? Why wouldn't the right jettison Israel the moment it becomes an inconvenience to dealmaking with nations possessing more people, more territory, more wealth, and more oil?

We're already seeing inklings of this in how Israel has been treated in the tariff, er, "negotiations." First, they were slapped with higher tariffs than Iran. Israel tried to preempt that move by dropping its tariff rate for the United States to zero, but it didn't work even after an embarrassing bit of personal supplication from Bibi. Turns out Israel isn't Trump's special favorite; the best it can hope for is to be relegated to a pure client-state, begging for scraps (even antisemites, after all, sometimes are willing to tolerate Jews when they sit in states of permanent abasement).

This is all, of course, leopards-eating-faces on a geopolitical scale. But Israeli conservatives are, I think, in complete denial as to what's happening here. There may or may not be an ascendance of illiberal conservatism over the next few decades. But I predict that, of all the countries that might identify with and try to hop aboard that bandwagon, Israel is the most likely to be left behind in the wreckage.

The Columbia-Boycotting Judges Should Recuse from Columbia-Related Cases

A Seventh Circuit panel has dismissed a judicial ethics complaint levied against one of the judges who announced a boycott of Columbia University graduates in his clerkship hiring.

This was, I think, the correct decision, and I have no substantive quarrel with the panel's analysis. Moreover, the complainant, who "is serving a sentence in a state prison after a jury found him guilty of arson, terrorism, and other crimes stemming from his role in firebombing and vandalizing Jewish houses of worship" and who loaded up his complaints with spurious conspiracies of foreign influence and control, is hardly the ideal party to raise concerns about judicial behavior in this context.

That said, while I agree that there is no ethics violation to be found in the Columbia boycott, I do think that the signatories to the boycott letter are obligated to recuse themselves from any Columbia-related cases -- including cases where a party is represented by a Columbia attorney who matriculated in the targeted time period. An academic boycott of this sort necessarily signals bias against persons under the umbrella of the targeted institution, and both the university and its graduates can fairly wonder if they will be treated fairly in the courtroom of a judge who participates in this boycott.

To understand why, it's important to be clear about what a boycott is. One point that is often emphasized in this conversation is that judges have extremely wide latitude in deciding who their clerks will be and on what criteria they will be selected. For example, the panel here wrote:

Except to the extent prohibited by these regulations and guidelines, judges have wide discretion to establish their own screening and selection criteria in appointing law clerks. This latitude permits judges to make distinctions among applicants based on their own determinations of the relevant criteria or qualifications, including where the applicants were educated. Some judges only hire graduates of certain law schools. Some tailor their preferences to the specific needs of their court or chambers—for example, by looking for candidates from law schools with excellent writing or trial advocacy programs or strong core curricula in relevant subject areas. Relatedly, some judges only consider candidates with a GPA in the top 10 or 20 percent of their law-school class (or some other academic cutoff). Some require membership in the law review or moot court team. Others prioritize candidates from law schools in their state or circuit.

This is quite right. But then they continue to say that "[i]n the same way, a judge may refuse to hire law clerks from a law school or university that has, in the judge’s view, failed to foster important aspects of higher education like civility in discourse, respect for freedom of speech, and viewpoint nondiscrimination."

I don't think these are the same. And one hint that they're not the same is that you would never hear any of the examples cited in the first paragraph described as a "boycott". A judge who will only hire (or more likely, strongly prefers to hire) applicants for law schools in their state would not characterize herself as "boycotting" the other 49 states. A judge who only hires students in the top 20% of their class would not say he is "boycotting" the bottom 80%. A "boycott" by its nature is different from the ordinary and normal processes of selection that judges (and all of us) do on a daily basis. And -- more to the point -- one calls what one is doing a "boycott" precisely in order to draw that distinction and to signal that one is departing from the normal and unremarkable exercise of discretionary selection.

Consider another example: there are many restaurants in Portland. In deciding where I go to eat, there is a wide range of screening and selection criteria I might use, from taste to price to convenience. Even with those criteria, the vast majority of restaurants I never have and never will eat at -- but nobody would say I am "boycotting" them. In other cases I have eaten at them, but decided that (for example) the food was bad and so will not return. Again, under ordinary usage nobody would call that a "boycott". 

If I announced I was boycotting a given restaurant, the ordinary listener would understand that I am doing something different than identifying the place as among the many, many restaurants I don't eat at for "normal" reasons. A boycott, rather, is a decision to not patronize or transact with a given establishment, based on reasons that lie outside the normal evaluative criteria one typically uses to select a restaurant and in order to effectuate some change in behavior that also lies outside the normal bases one uses to select where to dine (one might say, with respect to the restaurants I no longer visit because the food is bad, that my non-patronage is an attempt to "pressure" them to improve their menus and I won't return until my demands are met, but this would again be highly idiosyncratic usage). The expressive meaning of a boycott -- what makes it a boycott as opposed to an unremarkable decision not to patronize -- is a declaration that "I will not transact with you even if you do meet the criteria I normally use."

This highlights another feature of boycotts: by their nature and by design, they stand in opposition to individualized consideration of a candidate on his or her merits. Return to the law school example. Contra the above paragraph, I actually think it is quite rare for a judge to have a flat rule -- as opposed to a strong preference -- to only hire clerks from a certain state or with a certain GPA or possessing a certain academic background (the repeated use of language like "preferences" and "prioritizes" is again a hint here). They would not reject on principle an oddball candidate who doesn't meet one of the normal screens but for whatever reason still stands out to the judge as extraordinary. Now, it may be that given the surplus of qualified candidates, in practice no such "oddballs" ever emerge; there are always enough candidates who fill the normal criteria and are also deemed extraordinary. But again, the point of a boycott is precisely that it entails refusing, in advance and without exception, to even consider the applicant no matter what their merits might be. One refuses to dine at the boycotted restaurant no matter how tasty one of its dishes may be. One refuses to hire from the boycotted school no matter how superb one of its graduates may be.

And this is where the issue of bias does creep in. The putative justification for the blanket boycott of Columbia is that the university is so suffused in antisemitism and broader censorialism that all of its graduates are indelibly tainted -- so much so that the judges are outright refusing to engage in any individualized consideration or assessment of any members of the community. I've observed before and I'll observe again that not only are the nominal victims here -- Columbia's Jews and/or conservatives --covered by the boycott, they are in fact its most likely targets (those harassing Jews on campus were not likely to be applying to the judges in question in the first place). Assessed as individuals, it would be weird to impute the sins of Columbia writ large onto their heads. But the entire point of the boycott is that substitutes collectivist grievance for individualized consideration:

[T]he point of the "boycott" is an announced refusal to judge certain law school graduates as individuals, on their individual merits. There is surely no quarrel with Judge Ho [or other signatories to the boycott letter] declining to hire a clerkship applicant who he deems to have discriminated against conservatives on campus -- one doesn't need a "boycott" to do that (one also suspects those suspects would not be applying to Judge Ho's chambers). Rather, those most impacted by the boycott are most likely to be those victimized by the alleged predatory behavior Ho identifies, or at the very least innocent bystanders. Again, no matter: the payoff -- and indeed, the point -- of Ho's "boycott" is to make it so that these applicants do not get evaluated as individuals. Their individual merits and demerits do not matter. They fall under the umbrella of an enemy collective, and that is all the thinking he needs to do about them.

I recognize, of course, that at some level there is no such thing as truly "individualized" consideration and there is inevitable mushiness around terms like "normal evaluative criteria" (I recognize that; I wish the courts understood it better in the context of affirmative action). But my position is that the very invocation of the term "boycott" is a declaration and a concession to that point: one says one is boycotting because one wants to express that you're not just doing the ordinary work of meritocratic selection. 

To put it starkly: the core, distilled message the signatories of the Columbia boycott are sending vis-a-vis Columbia students is "because of your association with Columbia, we will not assess you as individuals or on your merits. Your association is enough to render you irrebuttably tainted in our eyes." 

Given that, could an attorney who matriculated at Columbia in the relevant time period feel confident that one of these judges would abide by their judicial duty -- will assess their arguments, behavior, and comportment based on their individual performance and "on their merits"? I don't think they can have that confidence, and I think those fears are reasonable.

None of this constitutes an ethics violation -- a judge does not commit an ethics violation simply by engaging in conduct which would, given the right parties or circumstances, compel a recusal. But I do think that any judge who announces an academic boycott of a given law school, in circumstances where that necessarily entails an announced refusal to judge that school's community members as individuals and on their individual merits, can reasonably have their impartiality questioned when later asked to assess the merits and demerits of that school or its graduates.

(There's one other element of the boycott that I haven't heard talked about much: the extent to whether it crosses over from permitted "jawboning" to impermissible government efforts to censor speech. The boycott imposes official sanctions on Columbia unless it makes various alterations to its school speech and disciplinary policies to the satisfaction of the boycotting judges. Obviously, Columbia has no First Amendment right to, for example, violate Title VI. But while it can, as a private university, suppress antisemitic speech, it is not obligated to; and the government cannot compel it to. Less obviously, but perhaps more importantly, as a private university Columbia is not required to abide by any commitment to viewpoint neutrality or "evenhanded" treatment of different types of protesters. While I doubt Columbia would concede the premise that it does engage in any sort of biased behavior -- and my recollection is that the letter was in fact purely speculative on this point -- the point is that Columbia's choices as to what views it does or does not favor are an exercise of its free speech and associational rights, and official efforts to punish the university for expressing itself incorrectly seem to raise significant First Amendment problems).

Be Wary of Rationalizing Hate: The Specter of Park51

The recent wave of government anti-immigrant repression, justified (in part) as a means of "fighting antisemitism", made me think about (of all things) the 2010 effort to scuttle the Park51 Islamic community center in South Manhattan. Opponents of the center, which at the time included the ADL, argued that the center would be insensitive to the victims of 9/11.

Jonathan Greenblatt, to his credit, apologized for the ADL's position (this was, needless to say, before his heel turn). And he's also walking back the ADL's initial support for Trump's deportation wave. I don't give him points for that (or rather, I do, but nowhere near enough to offset the points lost for backing the repression in the first place), but it is worth noting.

In any event, the reason it came to mind is how the logic of the Park51 opponents might extend to how the victims of Trump's anti-immigrant repression will think of Jews. The argument against Park51 is, when you boil it down, that because the 9/11 attack was one perpetrated by Muslim terrorists, the victims of 9/11 were now justified in being biased against Muslims tout court (see also Jody Armour's discussion of the "Involuntary Negrophobe"). It is important to note the extension -- the bias said to be justified is not against al-Qaeda, or even against whichever Muslims provided backing, support, or sympathy for the 9/11 strike (nobody accused the Park51 project of having any such sins on its head). The position being defended was that those victimized by 9/11 were reasonable and justified in being biased against all Muslims, and that their bias was one owed sensitivity and respect from the rest of us -- which is why it could allegedly justify opposition to the mere existence of an Islamic Center in their vicinity.

Under that same logic, it seems clear that those persons harassed and detained under the auspices of Trump's "antisemitism" initiative would be justified in hating Jews. Not just those Jewish groups who are actively assisting in the deportation regime, nor just those which have evinced support or sympathy for it, but all Jews. If we take the Park51 position seriously, if some of these deportees do turn into full antisemites, then we would owe them sensitivity and respect for their hatred.

To be crystal clear: this would be wrong. The ADL got it right the second time; no trauma, no matter how grave, justifies blind and sweeping hatred for an entire religious group. I only mention it because it provides a good warning of the consequences of trying to rationalize hate -- the logic will always come around to bite you too.

The Constitution is in Exile

One of the small mercies of the past few months is that because I'm paternity leave, I am not teaching Constitutional Law right now. Even before the election I was dreading having to incorporate Trump v. United States into my syllabus. Obviously now, things are much, much worse.

When I was in law school, conservatives spoke of teaching about "the constitution in exile" -- the true and proper legal order that for decades had been flouted and suppressed by the courts. Of course, what they meant by that was a world where Social Security was unconstitutional. But today I think it is fair to say that the constitution is, truly, in exile. 

The upper ranks of the federal judiciary is controlled by a cabal with complete and utter contempt for the most basic constitutional values that are meant to guide this nation. Lawless disappearances, dictatorial executive power, impunity for corrupt officials, sabotaging of democratic elections -- it's all here, and it's all embedding itself into the official accounts of constitutional law as recorded in U.S. Reporter. In the foreseeable future, the prospects of undoing these decisions, or even stemming further decay, feel grim. Certainly, legal arguments don't seem likely to save us.

It is tremendously, tremendously depressing to feel as if the "law" one imparts on one's students is irrelevant; that no legal argument they can make, no matter how well-warranted or justified, will make a difference in legal outcomes if the powers-that-be prefer something different. Robert Bolt once characterized the essence of law as "a causeway upon which so long as he keeps to it a citizen may walk safely." When rule of law breaks down, this causeway turns into a mirage -- the citizen (to say nothing of the visitor or resident alien) who tries to keep to it is acutely aware that it might disappear under his feet at any time. The constitution that was supposed to guarantee us the ability to walk safely is, practically speaking, no longer present. It has been exiled, replaced by an usurper.

So what does one do as a constitutional law professor? I've always believed that my primary job, albeit not my only job, is to teach my students what the law and doctrine is, as it is declared by the Supreme Court. This view of my role is not in contrast to taking a more critical perspective -- to the contrary, the point is that foundational knowledge is a prerequisite to any effective critique. One has to know what the law is, in order to know whether the law is good, right, or should remain the law at all. Those more normative conclusions are for my students to draw for themselves; but it is absolutely in my ambit to give them the resources to make those critical judgments.

That view has not changed. But going forward, it will be even more important to contextualize the law as its being articulated today in terms of other possibilities and roads not taken. The law that we have is not something inalterable or inexorable; it is a choice. There are other choices. What are the reasons behind the choices that were made? What are the arguments for making different choices? Which choices fit better inside the broader corpus of legal values and commitments that were meant to guide the American constitutional project? And if we do currently live in a legal order that lies decisively outside the proper constitutional vision, what results? 

There isn't, I think, any need to be didactic about this. The original "constitution in exile" proponents had faith that simply laying out their alternative vision of what the constitution should be would suffice to gain them acolytes. I have similar confidence that the articulating the actual constitution -- the causeway of safety meant to guard us from predatory abuses and overreach -- will earn similar loyalty. And I do not know how long it will take for this constitution to return from its exile. But one must have faith that with enough support and enough commitment from persons who retained their faith in the rule of law, it will return, and will bring its just reckoning.