The Doge and the DOGE
Lessons for DC from the Sacking of Constantinople
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DC was only sieged once, by enemies. In the War of 1812, the British retaliated against American incursions into Canada by invading and burning Washington, DC. The city would burn for 26 hours before a storm put out the flames. (Mental note: Burning a city in a swamp is maybe not the best siege tactic.) DC got better, though in my own experience it fundamentally grew in wealth and cosmopolitan aspirations after 9/11. It seemed every year I came home from college or from my job on the West Coast, new buildings went up, the restaurants and bars got better, and prices for everything went way up. All that seems to have come to an end.
From the moment the second Trump administration (T2) took office in January 2025, they went about downsizing the federal government in the name of efficiency, led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Efficiency in technical terms is about delivering the same thing with fewer resources. From what I can tell, T2 has no interest in doing the same things for less, they want to do less, regardless of the value it provides. This fact is evidenced by the number of workers with high marks in critical functions who were dismissed (see the stories on reddit’s r/fednews for anecdotes). Popular programs, like the National Parks, have seen significant cuts, potentially imperiling the park program entirely. If there is any analysis of how and why cuts were made, it has not yet been shared with the public besides claims posted by DOGE on X devoid of much context. More so, the cuts are executed with a certain callousness and cruelty for the people being shown the door.
Set aside the “efficiency” branding and ask—what exactly is the nature of what is happening in DC? A leading framework is a purge—removing bureaucrats that blocked the lawful authority of the president, draining the swamp, or ending the deep state. Choose your favorite euphemism according to your partisanship and mental wellbeing.
makes this case in What I think DOGE is really up to. Yet even a purge feels odd—there is no ideological purity test. Many Trump supporters are getting shown the door. It does not matter if you share the same values, you are in their way—the wrong place at the wrong time. Ultimately, the Federal government will be permanently smaller for the foreseeable future, and DOGE’s actions have fundamentally altered the expected stability of a job in the federal government.
The messaging from the administration and their allies refuses to be pinned down to a specific strategy besides “America First” and “Let Trump Be Trump.” How that applies to any given scenario seems intentionally left to Trump’s discretion. The closest I have found to a success criteria for their decisions is from their supporters. Brad Gerstner is the founder of Altimeter Capital who invests in both public and private companies. He has professional connections into the T2 admin and is optimistic about DOGE’s long-run effects. He claims on his BG2 podcast that DOGE’s goal is to reset the size of the federal government to the baseline of 2019 and a standard growth rate, effectively removing the higher expenses and growth rate T1 and the Biden administration embraced through the pandemic. Gerstner argues that doing so could balance the budget by 2029, the end of the T2 admin. Respectfully, we had a stable National Park Service and PEPFAR in 2019. As of March 2, 2025, PEPFAR is apparently done, and the National Parks are in flux. While the overall size of federal expenditures may (and probably should) end up closer to 2019, even if they achieve this in scale, the funding mix and set of capabilities will be different. The character of DC as a city and as the seat of federal power and capabilities will be fundamentally changed by these events, which is the entire point.
What stands out to me the most about this are the tweets/posts from DOGE. The typical post includes details about contracts, waste, and sometimes a complete misunderstanding of what they are looking at. They get much smaller over time, starting with USAID and ending with b2b SaaS.
The posts transport me back to a place with their own rich history with a doge: Venice. Standing in the Doge’s Palace, the Venetians display huge paintings depicting themselves leading a Crusade against Constantinople. It has the distinction of being the only Crusade when Christians mostly focused on assaulting other Christians. The Venetians are extremely proud of this history, with the loot from it still prominently on display.
Rather than a purge, I have begun to wonder if a better framework for these events is a sacking. And when Venice sacked Constantinople, it did not get better. It permanently redefined Western civilization.
The Sacking of Constantinople, 1204
The Sacking of Constantinople in 1204 was the culmination of the Fourth Crusade, a sequence of events that I consider the funniest time Constantinople has been sacked.
To set the stage, let’s start with the crusaders themselves. A bulk of the attacking force were French knights, though in this case they were on Venetian ships and under Venetian orders. As was common at the time, the French and the Venetians answered to different authorities simultaneously. Both acknowledged the power of the Roman Catholic Church, which in the Western countries made them Latins, referring to their status as the diaspora of the Roman Empire. When Pope Innocent III called for a crusade to retake Jerusalem via Egypt, the French knights answered. They contracted the Venetians to build their ships and carry them to Egypt. Besides the Church, the French ultimately answered to a monarch, but the Venetians answered to a doge, a democratically-elected ruler with relatively weak power.
The Venetians are funny in several respects. Venetian history is full of great stories for students of history like myself, though I found the actual city effectively dead and colonized by tourists. It is a pile of rocks across the mainland of Italy in a lagoon. It is a harsh place to survive, which is why the original Venetians went there to avoid Mongol invaders. They would live off the sea, its fish and its trade. What remains of Venice is a monument to their history as hilariously successful traders, pirates, thieves, and forgers. The fresco above San Marco’s Basilica commemorates them stealing the bones of San Marco (St. Mark) from Muslims. San Marco’s bones are on display now, though they were “lost” for a bit until “an angel brought them back”, leading one to suspect this might be a completely different Marco’s bones. As one of the naval superpowers of the region, they were one of a few suppliers able and willing to get an invading army to the Holy Land—if the money was good.
Uniquely, Venice was a republic and the doge (from the Latin dux for leader, which in English became duke) was their executive authority, albeit one with poorly defined powers. They had their own intentionally complicated system for electing the doge to try to prevent fraud and power consolidation, as well as a punitive system for poor leadership. If selected to be doge, one had to hand over all their assets, to be used as collateral against their own ineptitude. If the republic did not grow, their assets would be used to pay back the republic. The sitting doge could not invest their money during this time at all. The opportunity cost of being doge was so high that few of the elites even wanted to be doge, preferring instead to see to their fortunes while also trying to ensure no other family gathered too much power as doge.
The defending force was the also-Christian city of Constantinople, the seat of power of the Byzantine Empire for over 800 years at this point. The Byzantines claimed their own spiritual authority, as the capital of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church, while claiming the title of the true heirs of the Roman Empire. There was truth to this claim as they had a direct lineage to Roman Imperial authority, though they lacked the ability to subjugate their neighbors the way the original Romans had. Part of this was due to a leadership style and system of governance that was so convoluted, the word “byzantine” is still used as a pejorative for an overly complex, opaque process. These were truly people that cared about process over outcomes. While this empire was in decline, they were an important barrier region between Christian Europe and Muslim Asia Minor.
As compelling as the whole story is, I want to isolate a few critical events and themes that resonate with the current situation:
Moral Justification: “They started it”
Tensions between the Latins and Byzantines had been high throughout the Crusades. The Byzantines found themselves trapped between aggressive neighbors, Muslims and Latins, who were both hungry for land, control of trade routes, and the symbolic power for their religions of control of the Holy Land. There had been skirmishes as the Latins traveled through Byzantine lands to Jerusalem. As Christians, the Latins expected their loyalty, while also deriding the Byzantines as too weak and accommodating of their Muslim neighbors to retake the Holy Land. That is why the Latins must do it.
In May 1182, 22 years before the siege, the Orthodox inhabitants of Constantinople attacked the Roman Catholic ones, in an event known as the Massacre of the Latins. The primary victims were Italian merchants that the Byzantines believed had accumulated too much power and wealth in their home. Political relationships between the Western kingdoms and Byzantine Empire had been tense since this event, with many Latins calling for revenge.
Trigger: Debt Crisis
Constantinople became the target of a crusade because a debt needed to be repaid. Doge Enrico Dandolo of Venice saw the crusade as a chance to get rich and had taken on a significant debt to finance building the ships for the crusade. The ships were ready to depart for Cairo on June 24, 1203, but the French knights who commissioned the ships could not pay because they had made a crucial logistical error. The Venetians would force them to repay by becoming their own private military, to be directed at whereve the Venetians believed would be most profitable. This targeting was despite the fact that, when the pope ratified the agreement between the Venetians and crusaders, he had explicitly banned this army from attacking Christian states.
At the beginning, when Pope Innocent III called for a crusade to retake the Holy Land, he was mostly ignored. The Germans were feuding with the pope, and the English and French were busy killing each other. The French would decide they would rather fight for the Holy Land than England. Having experienced both French and Mediterranean climates, I do not blame the French for shifting their focus, but it was not the weather they were interested in. The pious crusaders wanted to prove the superiority of Christianity to Islam, the greedy crusaders wanted the land and control of trade routes of silk and spices, and the bloodthirsty crusaders just wanted someone else to fight. To get there, they needed ships, and there were only a couple places that could provide ships in that quantity: Genoa and Venice.
Building a navy is expensive, in both real costs and opportunity costs. The crusade wanted transport for 33,500 people, which would take several years of the entire capacity of shipbuilding production from either city. Furthermore, the crusaders would pay upon arrival to board the ships, such that each city would have to go into years of debt for one customer who might not pay. Let’s not forget the crusaders would also show up armed to the teeth, ready for war, and potentially desiring a better deal. Genoa had no interest, but Doge Enrico Dandolo of Venice wanted to take the risk. He agreed to terms with the French knights and the pope.
Critically, the crusaders forgot to get a binding agreement that all crusaders would sail from Venice on these ships. Many departed from other ports, leaving only 12,000 to show up in Venice out of the 33,500 they expected. Worse for the ones who arrived, they could not pay in full. So the doge imprisoned them, then told them they would work off their debt by looting nearby towns…Christian towns. Towns that had been problems for Venice. Zara was a key target, having successfully rebelled against Venice in recent years. Some crusaders found this morally abhorrent and left, either for home or the Holy Land via other means. (Note: I have no idea how debt and contracts worked during this time, but presumably the Venetians had to decide if they wanted to fight the French crusaders to stop them from leaving. It might not have been a risk worth taking in the field.) The pope threatened leadership with excommunication. All the same, the crusaders sacked Zara, and the pope excommunicated them…via a letter that the Venetians promptly decided not to tell anyone about.
Leaders More Interested in Advancement than Governance
Constantinople became the target of this renegade crusade after Alexios IV Angelos, the son of a recently deposed Byzantine emperor, proposed they take back Constantinople, depose Alexios IV’s brother named Alexios III (everything with the Byzantines is this complicated), and put Alexios IV back on the throne. In exchange, he would pay the entire debt owed to the Venetians plus even more rewards. Alexios IV even offered the crusaders a way to repair their relationship with the pope, by offering to place the Eastern Orthodox Church under the authority of the pope. More French knights would balk at attacking Christians, taking some ships with them to attack Syria; but the Venetians loved this plan and bribed the rest to go along with it.
The infighting between Alexios IV and Alexios III was commonplace in the Byzantine empire. From 1180 to 1203, there were at least 4 different rulers of the empire, compared to the 2 leaders that had ruled from 1118 to 1180. During this time, Byzantine leadership was focused on their own survival by securing against internal threats and allies with riches. Expanding the empire, fostering trade, and even repelling invaders were all afterthoughts to getting power and keeping it.
The city would be sieged twice in as many years, with each siege itself an interesting bit of military history, defined by the city’s strategic location between the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. What ultimately matters is that the crusaders breached the walls in August 1203 and put Alexios IV on the throne without destroying the city outright. The city would have an uneven peace until the citizens of Constantinople deposed Alexios IV, whose usurper executed him before he could make good on his promises to the Venetians. The Venetians demanded their contractual payments from the city leaders. When the city leaders balked at paying them, the crusaders went back to assaulting the city in March 1204. It was not a certainty they would successfully breach the city, in part due to unfavorable weather, and priests had to fight low morale with claims that God was testing their resolve. However, when the weather turned, the crusaders would ultimately overwhelm the city by sea. That assault by ship is what the painting commemorates, the eighth day since their initial siege.
Looting and Pillaging
The crusaders sacked the city for three days. Eyewitness accounts point to ruthlessness towards the citizens, with widespread murder, rape, and theft. The city’s churches and monasteries were defiled and looted.
Notably, the Venetians took the golden horses that stood atop the Hippodrome and put them on top of San Marco to celebrate their victory. They are still visible at San Marco, but replicas adorn the roof while the originals are kept indoors to prevent any additional environmental damage.
The elites of Constantinople fled the city. Nicetas Choniates, an eyewitness who wrote about it afterwards, claims that the ordinary citizens were all too happy to see the incompetents driven off:
The peasants and common riff-raff jeered at those of us from Byzantium and were thick-headed enough to call our miserable poverty and nakedness equality...Many were only too happy to accept this outrage, saying "Blessed be the Lord that we have grown rich", and buying up for next to nothing the property that their fellow-countrymen were forced to offer for sale, for they had not yet had much to do with the beef-eating Latins and they did not know that they served a wine as pure and unmixed as unadulterated bile, nor that they would treat the Byzantines with utter contempt.
Source: Angold, Michael (1997). The Byzantine Empire 1025–1204. pp. 327–28.
Aftermath and Legacy
In the immediate aftermath, the French and Venetians would install their own rulers, and some would take lands around Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire lay in tatters, and former nobles had to decide how best to fit into the new political environment. Some would rebel, some would negotiate with the new rulers. Venetian rule would last for 57 years, before being deposed by Greeks, who would claim they had restored the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople itself was not dead, but it would never recover. The empire would struggle in the face of new challenges, including a plague and open war between the factions remaining.
Venice delighted in their newfound power. Their experience was one of victory after victory. Excommunication was a small price to pay to own an empire of land, trade, and control of the Eastern end of the Mediterranean sea.
The Roman and Orthodox Churches would schism over religious beliefs, power, and trust. No longer would Christians view themselves as simply Christian. After Constantinople, and long before the Protestant Reformation, the answer to “What kind of Christian are you?” mattered substantially in many places of the world.
Ultimately, Constantinople would fail as the European bulwark against Muslim Ottoman conquest of 1453, who would rename the city to Istanbul. Prior to their conquest, the citizens took comfort knowing their defenses, the Theodosian Walls, had withstood many sieges over a millennium. However, the walls failed in the face of a Islamic technological revolution: the gunpowder-powered cannon.
Constantinople’s fall put an end to any lineage of the Roman Empire. Their leaders had 250 years to fix their problems and never did, and the mortal wound was dealt by people they considered allies in a common cause.
Is America crusading against itself?
Maybe by now you have recognized some of the themes rhyming with modern times.
Moral Justification: “They started it”
The culture of suspicion and critiques between Latins and Byzantines is recognizable in our modern political landscape. Allegations that other citizens and allies are weak, effeminate, and requiring leadership would not be out of place on the Joe Rogan Podcast or other right-wing podcasts that fixate on soyboys, alpha males, Europoors, and chads. Perhaps a little on the nose for this piece, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has the crusader rallying cry, deus vult or “God wills it”, tattooed on his bicep. The phrase exists in modernity in a superposition of religious fervor, macho signaling, cultural identity, literal threat, and white supremacy that has the useful quality of collapsing upon observation into whichever framing is most expedient. Like the Latins, strength, action, and conviction of purpose are core ideals of Trump’s movement.
Specifically though, DOGE’s actions to date are fundamentally about revenge in the form of ending careers. For example, there is only one FBI. An agent removed from the FBI cannot sell their services and expertise to the next FBI. They have to take their skills to the market and possibly retrain to suit the market’s needs and their career goals. Their career is effectively over, and they must find a new path.
One does not have to look far into the past to see a time when Trump’s supporters’ careers were threatened by political rivals. I have no interest in making this a culture war blog, but I will broadly highlight there was a culture war, people launched moral crusades to end jobs for an increasingly blurry line of actual sexual assault, bad behavior, morally repugnant opinions, and finally just bad opinions that are constitutionally protected speech. Turnabout is fair play, and just as many crusaders wanted revenge, DOGE wants blood for blood.
Trigger: Debt Crisis
For the Venetians, the debt was an opportunity. The leverage over their debtors let them settle old scores and flip the balance of powers in the Mediterranean. To do so, all they had to do was overlook morality, the value of allies, and a shared strategic goal of checking Ottoman i.e. Muslim expansion. In the immortal words of C. Montgomery Burns: “Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.”
The French crusaders were pressed into a war they did not expect, due to a debt others agreed to, for a world that would never come to be. As a Millenial, I get it.
The US has an unfolding debt crisis to the tune of ~$36 trillion, created by unsustainable national expenses, slow growth, and high interest rates to keep inflation in check. When the US had low interest rates and low inflation, servicing that size of debt was simple. But with higher rates, paying the interest will begin to take up a disproportionate part of the budget. The debt is real and is the motivating factor for DOGE’s efficiency drive—the debt sits at 13% of the national budget, just 1% behind what the US spends on Defense. Most critiques of DOGE center on the fact that most of the budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, and National Defense, which are politically difficult to reform, let alone reduce. Federal employee compensation is 4.3% of the budget, though they would not have much to do if the government only paid their salaries and did not give the other resources to do their jobs.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Donald Trump once proclaimed, “I’m the king of debt.” Concerns about government spending were a moderate factor in this election with 45% of right-leaning voters citing it as “extremely important” to left-leaning voters’ 16%. As of March 4, 2025, popular support for DOGE remains high, as the public questions the utility and prudence of government spending. Dealing with debt responsibly is never fun, and it forces conversations of priorities, waste, and lesser evils.
Leaders More Interested in Advancement than Governance
The Venetians and Byzantines both shared this characteristic, but it was fatal for the Byzantines. It strikes me that the Democrat political party and the leadership of Federal departments found themselves in similar positions.
From personal experience with federal employees and contractors at Government Owned, Contractor Operated (GOCO) departments, there is an intense lack of confidence in leadership. The mission and stability of these jobs attract idealists, but the fact that it is nearly impossible to get fired also attracts workers aiming to do the bare minimum. They are often the first to complain about how much bureaucracy restricts their ability to do a good job. Leadership often does not want to expend the political capital to remove them, and productivity drags. There are also limits on promotions and salary increases. Do an OK job? 2% raise. Do a great job? 2.5% raise. Performing on par with someone 3 pay levels above you? It is faster to quit, take a job elsewhere, and get hired back at a higher level than to go through the normal performance process.
When I step back to the entire Federal apparatus, I see these self-inflicted wounds everywhere. Permitting and Defense Acquisitions are problems that can be fixed with a stroke of a pen, yet there was no leadership to do it. Everyone plays the game to stay in the game, even if they hate the game. Because if you leave, you can’t change anything, but you may also end up doing things that you are not proud of, like the French knights pressed into service.
This critique of the federal culture as a Byzantine creation seems increasingly bipartisan.
served as Deputy CTO under President Obama, helped found the US Digital Service, and served on the Defense Innovation Board under both Obama and Trump. She reviews Why Nothing Works by Marc J. Dunkelman, which chronicles progressive’s mistrust of power and the stasis that has resulted from emphasizing complicated processes over desirable outcomes. In this quote, she is synthesizing conclusions from Dunkelman with her own thoughts and another upcoming book, Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson:“Yes, we’ll need profound changes in things like the structures that allow for public participation. But I think Dunkelman is right that it has to start with the left challenging its own conventional wisdom. As Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson write in their upcoming book, “What is needed here is a change in political culture, not just a change in legislation.” I’d add a change in bureaucratic culture, even knowing how hard that can be. And it’s particularly hard right now.”
Especially in a republic, if the system is not working well, the constituents will notice. If people are still getting promoted without meaningful, positive change, you get a situation like the citizens of Constantinople spitting at the nobles as they flee the city, unaware of what was to come.
Looting and Pillaging
While there is plenty of cruelty towards rivals and leveraging rival’s tactics against them, it is not actually looting. What is explicitly looting is using government funds to profit yourself. There is no evidence of that.
Modern Lessons From Ancient History
Here is where I give a big disclaimer about ancient history: the people of the 13th Century are very different. Their cultures, values, and priorities differ immensely from our own. Periods of great conflict are useful only in as much as they amplify human nature, which does not change. The themes and decisions resonate with modern times because we share that nature with them.
I do not truly believe DC got sacked. Resetting the executive branch has far more in common with the American tradition of the “bloodless revolution” that shocked the world when the US successfully switched parties in power without a war. Waging war followed by mass executions and rape are categorically different way of changing leadership, which is a major reason the founders endorsed a system that could reform itself. Indeed, self-reform is the key lesson.
At the moment, DOGE seems to have hired a bunch of brilliant people then proceeded to start a wildfire, mindless yet cruel, consuming whatever it can touch. Right now, the Kalshi prediction market expects DOGE will save $1 billion by the end of 2025. Note that it is a net figure, such that any increases in spending elsewhere would offset DOGE cuts. By the end of 2029, Kalshi predicts spending will be $447 billion lower. Recall that the national debt is ~$36 trillion. The expected benefit of this revenge-fueled period for Americans remains elusive.
And yet the analogy of a sacking works. DOGE’s wildfire has left the US in a position of vulnerability, while its proponents revel in their revenge against fellow citizens. That is why the Sacking of Constantinople echoes so loudly in my head. The FBI and Department of Justice are seeing immense layoffs. A pivot towards Russia in diplomatic orientation has former allies wondering if they still are, in fact, allies. Singapore believes the US has pivoted from a force of “moral legitimacy” to “a landlord seeking rent”. While the CDC performed dismally in the last pandemic, my confidence remains low that the country is better situated to deal with one, especially one more lethal than COVID-19. In fact, a measles outbreak has already claimed a child’s life, the first time in a decade. The Atlanta Fed projects GDP to contract 2.8% this quarter, an outlier among forecasts at the moment but an ill-omen. The executive branch has disrupted itself, leaving not just DC, but an entire nation on edge and wondering what happens next.
Coda
The sacking of Constantinople is famed among history buffs because it marked the end of the medieval period and the start of the early modern period—it certainly seems likely this is a similar moment. It was extremely bad times for the citizens of Constantinople-then-Istanbul, creating entirely new risks for Europe. One interpretation of the Fourth Crusade is that this is just the blueprint for how tribes split, an end state of polarization when the in-group becomes the out-group, the bonds dissolve, and an empire ends.
Like Constantinople, there is a lot of blame to go around for how the US reached this point. Trust is low, adding a level of difficulty to building newer, better social institutions. I am skeptical that the man holding the knife can build anything that requires trust and buy-in from the whole country, though it would not preclude him from improving the efficiency and productivity of whatever persists. There is one version of this that looks like the looting of Constantinople, chiefly if government contracts are directed only at allies of the administration's companies. In that circumstance, expect to be greeted without any assumption of goodwill by the public, regardless of the quality and need for those products.
But we are not them. In the immortal words that echoed across time via a bootstrap paradox:
The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.
The people that stand out the most to me in the saga are the leaders of the Byzantine empire, who had 250 years to reform themselves and never did. Their decline made space for new institutions better suited to the challenges of the new era, leading to the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras whose ideas still shape modernity because they work. We either build those institutions now, or they will be built by others on the grave of our civilization.
I do not think we have 250 years to fix our problems—a rival will force a crisis far before then. It is difficult to believe that the country could or would mobilize to face a crisis when trust is this low. And that is where we have to start. I put my faith in the American people by extending them grace. Grace in their mistakes, grace in parsing their actions, words, and intent, and grace in victory and defeat. I do not believe Trump values grace or magnanimity, but I do believe his administration can still help Americans in practical ways big and small. (May I suggest automating taxes for people with simple taxes?) But grace in America is up to you and me. I know some people involved in T2, and I know more of their supporters. I trust their values and their competence, which gives me some confidence for the challenges to come, though I question the administration’s judgement. As I wrote this, T2 seemingly shifted into a new phase of the mass firings, removing authority from DOGE and putting it in the hands of the Cabinet members. Hopefully, the revenge phase of the siege has ended.
As for the administration, get on with the creative part of creative destruction already. How will history remember you? As the proud Venetians, enriching yourselves through self-interested destruction, the wildfire that sets the stage for others to build on? The weak, infighting, scheming leaders of Constantinople that brought about their ruin? Or something new?
Ultimately, we are still living with the consequences of what happened in Constantinople in 1204—the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches never reconciled, Istanbul’s status as Europeans remains debatable, and you still probably shouldn’t go into debt with a Venetian.
When I ask T2 supporters how to understand the last few months, the answer I hear is, “In the end, this pain will be worth it.”
What rings in my ears are Alan Moore’s words from Watchmen. After completing a conspiracy to kill millions in the belief it will save billions, the antagonist Adrian asks a character cursed to see all of time, Dr. Manhattan, if his destruction was worth it, in the end. To which Dr. Manhattan responds:
Thanks to , , , and for feedback on drafts of this work.