After a long line of incompetence, after a long chain of excuses, after a series of failures, the Union cause finally turned around when General Ulysses S. Grant took command. Other generals had focused on pomp and circumstance, they had been anxious and defensive, they claimed they didn’t have the resources or troops they needed.

As the great historian Bruce Catton wrote in The Hallowed Ground, “when Grant showed up things began to happen.” It didn’t matter if he was in charge of a small army or a big one, he was a leader and when leaders arrive, they make a difference. A staff officer noted the same thing. “We began to see things move,” he noted of Grant’s rescue of a besieged army. “We felt that everything came from a plan. He came into the army quietly, no splendor, no airs, no staff. He used to go about alone. He began the campaign the moment he reached the field. Everything was done like music, everything was in harmony.”

This is a lesson that Marcus Aurelius learned from the E

With the proliferation of dashcams and the spread of social media, we see these clips everywhere. It’s basically its own genre of video at this point. A driver is frustrated with someone going too slow in front of them, so they honk. Then they swerve, step on the gas to pass them–often waving a middle finger or honking a horn or shouting out a rolled down window as they do so–only to almost immediately get pulled over. Or violently crash. A vivid, painful demonstration of poetic justice a few miles down the road.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so dangerous.

But at least it is a good reminder: First, that life on the road is dangerous. Any one of us could die in an accident at any moment–in fact, nearly 43,000 people died on U.S. roadways in each of the last two years alone. Our modern cars, modern culture built around highways, is filled with risks, yet we simply choose to not think about it.

It’s also a good reminder that impulsive, emotional decisions are the cause of so much trou