War, Algorithms, and the Lie of Retirement

Ultimize. Let's begin with the part that's not partisan, not radical, not left-wing, not right-wing, not hysterical, not anti-military, and not anti-American. It's simply constitutional. The United States Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. That's an exact quote, to declare war. That is in Article 1, Section 8, the War Powers Resolution of 1973, says its purpose is to ensure that the collective judgment of both Congress and the president applies when US forces are introduced into hostilities. In other words, war is not supposed to be one man or one king freelancing with missiles while Congress plays the role of stunned interns. And yet that's exactly the spectacle we are watching right now. According to the New York Times, Republicans in Congress are now, quote, growing more anxious about the administration's handling of the war in Iran. Well, no kidding. With questions about its objectives, its cost, and whether ground troops will be needed. Now they're anxious. Okay, that's adorable. Now they're becoming concerned after giving the president broad latitude to wage war with no meaningful congressional input. After resisting public accountability, after treating the Constitution like a suggestion box at Marriott, now they're emerging from briefings looking confused. My favorite quote in the whole piece came from Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, previously thought to be a powerful position. He said, quote, we want to know more about what's going on. And then even better, we're just not getting enough answers. Really? You want to know more? What a moving moment. The arsonist would now like a briefing from the fire department. Because this is the scam. These Republicans want the macho photo op of backing war, but they do not want the constitutional inconvenience of voting for war. They want the chest-thumping without the accountability. They wanna act like Churchill on Fox News and then like helpless toddlers in a classified briefing. Gosh, we just don't know what the plan is. You don't know what the plan is because you deliberately surrendered your role in making the plan. This is not statesmanship. This is abdication wearing a flag pin. And let's be clear, the article says senior Pentagon officials failed to provide, quote, basic details about the scope and direction of the military campaign. It says lawmakers came out asking about the cost, the strategy, and even whether U.S. ground forces might be used. It says the Pentagon is preparing to deploy nearly 7,000 additional troops to the Middle East, including Marines and elements of the 82nd Airborne. While lawmakers brace for a possible $200 billion funding request. You do not get to act shocked by escalation when you helped create the political permission structure for this very escalation. And then comes the most sinister part, the language game. White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt defended the administration by saying congressional notifications and briefings had been provided out of courtesy and out of respect. Oh yes, how courteous and respectful this White House is. I know if you're like me, the first thing you think of when you think of this White House is, wow, are they courteous and respectful. And she said the White House does not view this as a war but as a major combat operations against Iran. And then there's the excursion word. Okay. Well, if it's only major combat operations, that changes everything. That's like saying, Your Honor, I didn't rob the bank, I just engaged in unauthorized cash redistribution. We've reached the point where Washington thinks if it changes the label, it changes the constitutional reality. If bombs are falling, troops are deploying, billions are spent, and Congress never authorized it, I don't care if you call it a war or Operation Freedom boner, the issue is the same: who decided and under what authority? Now, to be fair, and I do want to be fair, this is not a sin unique to Republican presidents. Democratic presidents have also stretched or ignored the constitutional balance. The Constitution noted— notes that President Truman ordered U.S. military intervention in Korea without a formal declaration of war, And modern practice has drifted even further from the original allocation of war powers. Congress has not formally declared war since World War II. Instead, it has often relied on authorizations or simply tolerated presidential initiative. Bill Clinton's Kosovo campaign, Barack Obama's Libya intervention both fueled major arguments that presidents were bypassing Congress or sidestepping the War Powers Resolution. So no, I'm not pretending this began yesterday or that only one party has dirty hands here. Democratic presidents have sinned, Republican presidents have sinned. The imperial presidency is a bipartisan monstrosity. But, and this is a big but, this case is different in one especially grotesque way. In this case, even the president's own allies cannot explain the objective. The Times reports that Representative Nancy Mace said, quote, the justifications presented to the American public for the war in Iran were not the same military objectives we were briefed on today. She called the gap deeply troubling. Exactly, that's the story. Not just overreach, not just constitutional rot, total incoherence. In a functioning democracy, if a president is going to drag the country into war, there is at least supposed to be a stable rationale. You may agree with it or disagree with it, but there is supposed to be one. Here, the rationale appears to mutate day by day, sometimes minute by minute. End the threat, send a message, restore deterrence, protect shipping, pressure Tehran, negotiate peace, Demand surrender? Demand unconditional surrender? Keep the oil flowing? Maybe no regime change? Maybe yes regime change? This is not strategy. This is verbal jazzercise with cruise missiles. Reuters reported this week that Trump said the US was negotiating progress with Iran, while Iran officials publicly said no, there were no negotiations, and one Iranian military spokesperson mocked Washington as negotiating with itself. At the same time, the White House has been threatening to hit Iran harder if it does not accept defeat. The Associated Press has also described Trump's messaging as mixed, noting he's talked about winding down the war and easing some pressure even while sending more troops and ships into the region. This is not firmness. This is not genius. This is not four-dimensional chess. This is a man shouting three different things from three different sides of the same mouth. And this is where I wanna hammer Congress, because Congress is not some innocent bystander here. Congress is the branch the framers expected to be jealous of its powers, not roll over and play dead. They're supposed to be jealous of their own powers, protective of its prerogatives, and terrified of one person dragging the republic into war on impulse. The War Powers Resolution literally says it was enacted to restore that collective judgment. Instead, what do we get? We get lawmakers acting like Yelp reviewers of a war they never voted to approve. Service was slow, objectives unclear, might not recommend. No, your job is not to leave a mildly negative comment after the appetizer. Your job is to decide whether the meal should be served at all. And yes, I'll go further. In a normal functioning democracy, this level of congressional dereliction would trigger serious impeachment talk. Impeachment of the members of Congress as well, not necessarily because every member has committed a technical impeachable offense, but because a legislature that knowingly surrenders its core constitutional duty in matters of war is betraying the system it swore to defend. At minimum, there would be hearings, public votes, subpoenas, and a genuine political penalty for this kind of cowardice. Instead, too many of these Republicans behave like cult members who think their highest constitutional office is to bow down to the dear leader. This is the real sickness here, not conservatism, not patriotism, not hawkishness. Submission. Because once you decide the leader cannot be questioned, everything else collapses. Facts collapse. Oversight collapses. Language collapses. And eventually bodies collapse. So here is the sane centrist position. If military action is necessary, Make the case publicly. State the objective clearly. State the cost honestly. State whether ground troops are possible and needed. Tell the truth about whether negotiations actually exist. Then go to Congress and get authorization. Force every member to vote yes or no. Make them own it. That is how a republic behaves when lives and trillions and history are on the line. What we have now is the opposite: a president or a king improvising, a White House euphemizing, and Republicans in Congress wandering out of classified briefings in essence, "Gee, uh, this war we enabled is surprisingly mysterious." No kidding. That's what happens when you treat the Constitution like optional reading and war like a branding exercise. You don't get strength You don't get serious, you get government by fan club. And fan clubs are great for Taylor Swift, they are less impressive for launching a Middle Eastern war. This is dismaying, there's no doubt about it. Now, I spend most of my time helping people with personal development issues, things like self-development, self-esteem, and I just can't imagine how any Republican member of Congress can look in the mirror and say, wow, you're a big loser, you're a coward, you have no self-esteem. I don't know how they do that, just willingly giving away their power. I mean, I do understand the incentives. If they criticize Dear Leader, they get a nasty tweet, a nasty Truth Social, and before you know it, they're inundated with threats to their person and their children, and their political careers are over. But what is the point of having a political career, regardless of where you are on any policy? What's the point of even having a political career if you can't stand up for anything you believe in? If you just have to say whatever dear leader wants today, I'll be for that. And if they say something 100% opposite of what they said yesterday that I agreed to yesterday, I'll agree with that. I don't get what the point is. I'm TJ Walker. More to come. Filtered is brought to you by the following. Get the deeper takes I don't post anywhere else. Subscribe now at substack.com/@tjwalkersuccess and stay in the loop. For years, people have asked how they could get one-on-one coaching from me inexpensively. Well, now you can anytime anywhere with the TJ Walker AI clone. It's like having me in your pocket, ready to help you prep for a speech, polish a pitch, or calm your nerves before a big meeting. You talk to it, it responds like I would, based on my real-world coaching of thousands of leaders and communicators. Check it out at tjwalker.ai. It's not just smart, it's personal. Okay, moving on to our next story here today. Let me start with something that should terrify every parent, and frankly, anyone with a brain. According to the Times, two juries just did something Congress has failed to do for more than a decade. They actually held social media companies accountable for harming kids. We're not talking about vague concerns. We're talking about real verdicts, real money and real damage. Well, almost real money, not real to these companies. Here are the facts. In Los Angeles, a jury awarded $6 million to a young woman who said platforms like Meta and YouTube hooked her with addictive features starting at age 6. And in New Mexico, we talked about this yesterday, a jury hit Meta with a $375 million penalty for failing to protect children from predators. Let me repeat that. Not maybe harmful, not needs a little more study. A jury looked at the evidence and said this caused real harm. And here's the key quote that should make every executive in Silicon Valley lose sleep. That's not a blogger. That's a child safety advocate summarizing what juries just validated. Now, the company's pushback Meta says mental health is complex. Well, yeah. YouTube says the case misunderstands their platform. Well, maybe, maybe not. And hey, I'm on YouTube now. Let me not be a hypocrite, but there are problems with YouTube and Facebook. When they say this is complex and you don't understand, that's exactly what big tobacco said for decades. Let's talk about big tobacco for a second. They said No proven link to cancer. We're just providing a product. People choose to smoke. Sound familiar? Because today we have no proven link to mental health harm. Talking about what social media companies say. We're just a platform. Users choose what they consume. It's the same script, just with better lighting and more emojis. But here's where this gets even worse. Cigarettes damage lungs. Social media, it's rewiring brains. The jury in Los Angeles didn't focus on content. They focused on design. Infinite scroll, autoplay, algorithmic reinforcement. That's not neutral. That's engineered addiction. And here's the devastating comparison. Tobacco companies made something addictive. These companies made something addictive and then optimized it in real time using AI to make it even more addictive. It's like giving cigarette companies a dashboard saying, hey, if you tweak the nicotine 3% higher for this 13-year-old, she'll smoke 22% more. That's essentially what this is, and the legal system is finally catching up. One legal expert put it this way: this is tough, this is a problem, because these are not just apps. They are behavior engineering systems. Now, here's where I'm going to push this further than most commentators because people say, well, what do you want to do, shut them down? No, that's lazy thinking. These companies could still be wildly profitable and not do this. They could stop rewarding outrage over truth, stop amplifying the most extreme voices, stop designing features that trap kids for hours. They could still make billions. They just might make slightly fewer billions, and apparently that's unacceptable. Let's be honest about what's really going on. A business model is simple: attention, addiction, ad revenue. And the fastest way to get attention? Not truth, not nuance. It's outrage. It's lies. It's fear. It's tribalism. It's saying anybody who disagrees with me isn't a real citizen. They're from another continent or another planet, or they're a space 'Alien.' It's when you say, 'Because someone has a difference in public policy from me, they are now therefore a child molester.' That is what gets outrage. That's what gets attention. And that's what makes these companies rich. They don't say, 'Here's something accurate.' They say, 'Here's something that will keep you from putting your phone down.' And now we're seeing the consequences. Kids starting at age 6, body dysmorphia, self-harm ideation, and parents sitting in the rooms listening to verdicts about their children. And here's the part that should really worry Silicon Valley: it's just not going to be ignored this time. Now, what's really going to happen here? Do I live in some fantasy world where, uh, Congress is just going to take over? No, but there are juries, and the juries are increasingly giving cash awards. But $6 million is nothing. That's less than you or me finding a penny on the ground. Even the $370 million that was fined to Meta earlier this week, it's insignificant. But at some point, penalties are going to have to get real. It's going to have to be 10, 20% of the market cap of these companies. Then and only then are we likely to see real reform. Want to communicate like a pro? Go to MediaTrainingWorldwide.com. Millions have already transformed their speaking skills. Why not you? This show doesn't run on a lot of corporate sponsorships or big media backing. It runs on caffeine and your support. If you like what you're hearing and want to say thanks, you can buy me a coffee. Coffee. Really, just go to buymeacoffee.com/tjwalker. It's quick, it's easy, and yes, it helps cover editing, hosting, and staying relatively ad-free for as long as possible. buymeacoffee.com/tjwalker. Your $3.95 makes a real difference. What? Okay, our final issue for the day Let's start with something that sounds like it came straight out of a wellness brochure but actually has real scientific backing. According to The New York Times, a growing body of research shows that having a sense of purpose, optimism, and feeling like you matter can actually increase longevity, especially as you age. We're not just talking about feeling good emotionally. We're talking about measurable physical and cognitive benefits. Here are the facts. One woman featured in the article today in The Times, Nan Nealon, retired after 40 years as a dentist and initially filled her time with reading, exercise, and hobbies, but she felt like, hmm, something's missing. So, she started volunteering 15 hours a week, and her explanation: she wanted to matter. And researchers are saying that feeling, what they call mattering, is critical. Another doctor studying older adults found something even more striking. Many patients weren't physically sick because of disease. They were sick because they had no purpose in life. They felt like they didn't matter. Let that sink in. It's not cancer, it's not heart disease. No reason to get out of bed— that was their problem. Studies back this up. People with higher optimism lived longer. People with a positive view of aging maintained better cognitive function. Volunteering, helping others, increased physical strength and mental sharpness. So yes, mindset matters. Purpose matters. It's not that you have to walk around all day long saying, oh, everything's wonderful, everything's great, everything's going to work out my way. No, it's not about that. But it's about knowing you're doing something that helps somebody other than yourself. Purpose matters. Feeling useful really matters. Now, let me translate all of that into plain English. Retirement is one of the most overrated ideas ever sold to humanity. Now, before anyone panics, I'm not saying if you worked in a coal mine for 40 years, you need to keep doing that until you're 103. No. Stop inhaling the coal dust, but don't stop being useful because here's what I've noticed. Okay, I'll be candid. I live in Florida. I have, let's call it distinguished silvery hair if I'm being charitable. And within about 90 seconds of people meeting me, they usually ask 2 questions. Are you retired? Or when did you retire? And I always want to say, do I look like I want to die? But I don't say that because that would be rude, especially if they're retired and standing right there holding a margarita at 10:30 in the morning. But let's be honest about what retirement actually looks like for a lot of people. Not all, but a lot of people. I ask my retired friends, so what did you do today? There's always a pause, sometimes a long pause, like I just asked them to solve a physics equation. And then they say, "Well, I got up, I had coffee, a little breakfast, read the news, kind of puttered around. Then it was time to think about lunch." Time to think about lunch? That's the highlight? That's the big strategic decision of the day? Then, "Well, I checked my phone, answered some emails, maybe watched some cable TV news, maybe a movie, then went to bed." Here's the kicker. That was today. That was yesterday, and that was the last 10 years, and they're not happier. They're not glowing with joy. If anything, they're angrier because now they have unlimited time to consume content that is literally engineered to make them outraged. So, instead of working 8 hours a day, they're now working full-time as unpaid employees of outrage media. And this is where the science actually lines up perfectly with common sense. Of course, you feel worse. You're removed. Structure, challenge, contribution, all those things are gone. And it replaced it with passive consumption, oftentimes isolation, cable news. That's not retirement. That's slow emotional decay with snacks. And here's the deeper point. The idea of retirement is built on this fantasy. One day, I'll do whatever I want. Every day. Sounds amazing until you realize that only works if it's contrasted with something you don't want to do or something different. Vacation is amazing because it's not your normal life. If every day is a vacation, then nothing special. You don't have a vacation, you have Tuesday forever. And here's where I'll bring this back to personal development. The people who thrive as they age are not the ones who stop working. Now, you don't have to keep working for money, but you do need to keep working. The people who thrive are the ones who stop doing meaningless work and start doing meaningful work, volunteering, mentoring, building something, teaching, helping, creating, because the human brain does not want just comfort. It wants purpose. And if you don't give it purpose, it will find something else to latch onto, usually something negative, usually something that makes you angry, usually something on cable news. So when people ask me, when are you going to retire? What they're really asking is, when are you going to stop being useful? And my answer, politely, silently in my head, is never.