Authorship

The Truth That Gets You Fired

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Have you noticed those holding a moderate view are often attacked more viciously than those actually pushing a cruel extreme? If you fight back against those who are trying to manufacture consent for their abuse you will be accused of hate.

Transferring Blame

Sophie Cunningham, a WNBA player, is now being harassed by the national sports media for her ‘controversial’ opinion that men don’t belong in women’s sports.

Of course it wasn’t just any man that she is talking about, it’s those crossed-dressing men, who appropriate the feminine traits (albeit very imperfectly) and think “identifies as a woman” is to be taken as a license to invade female spaces. This is obviously in defiance of the established social order that grants females exclusive space as protection from male attention—we also have created special categories of sports given the distinct advantage males have physically over women.

This is what Cunningham said after being asked her of transgender participation in female sports:

I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that.’ I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.

That is a measured reasonable response—correcting a malicious mischaracterization of her opposition to biological men taking a place reserved for women. Since the girl’s locker room was invented perverted young men have been looking for an opportunity to invade it. There’s a reason why we have a term “peeping Tom” in the first place. But autogynephilia takes this a step further, this is a male becomes sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself being a female, and was diagnosed as transvestic disorder until the powers that be decided we should normalize this behavior.

The truly odd part, however, has been how the corporate media and a ton of bot farm social media content is blame-shifting their obsession with this story onto Cunningham as a sort of accusation. They act as if she is trying to stir the pot for giving an honest answer to a question ESPN asked her. This is a propaganda technique: Make the victim responsible for the negative attention rather than the aggressor. Typically we would see one person against a corporate machine as being weaker. But the people holding the megaphone flipped the script and act as if Cunningham is truly dictating the terms of the conversation.

Burger King Ambush

On August 5, 2026, a young woman named Arianna Hamilton was working her shift at a Burger King in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania. A known Zionist activist, a middle-aged Israeli dual citizen, somehow (details disputed) ended up in a verbal confrontation with Hamilton. How it all started is a he said, she said. She says Feinstein was aggressive. While he claims that she had made him feel unsafe. But we only have what he recorded, where he goads her to repeat phrase said during the course of an unrecorded conversation with disputed details.

Here is the viral exchange:

Rami Feinstein: “I’m here at Burger King and an employee in Burger King just said ‘Free Palestine’ to me.”

Rami Feinstein: (Turning the camera toward her) “Ariana, what did you say to me? What did you say to me, Arianna?”

Arianna Hamilton: “Sorry, I said ‘Free Palestine’.”

Rami Feinstein: “Okay. Okay, say it again.”

Arianna Hamilton: “Free Palestine!”

Rami Feinstein: “I got you, Ariana.”

Clearly Feinstein is looking to push the issue. If he really felt unsafe he would leave. Instead he is harassing a fast food employee, likely a teenager, and demanded a refund. And all because she had dared to respond to his own announcement of his Israeli citizenship with the phrase, “Free Palestine.”

She was fired from her job.

Not paid enough to compromise her integrity, rewarded for her stand.

To understand encounter a little better let’s consider an exchange with another political symbol. Say a white man walks into Burger King wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt and seeing it a young African-American woman says, “Black Lives Matter.” Then, in his grating and irritating voice the white supremacist ‘rebel’ demands the employee repeats this phrase for his camera and then goes on to claim he is a victim. Wouldn’t that be absurd?

This is what ‘unsafe’ looks like.

It is even more absurd for an Israeli to ever play the victim card with a black teenager, clearly at a disadvantage to him, for saying “free Palestine” in response to the symbol of a country that is commiting an act of genocide as we speak. He, as a white man, can very easily blend in to general American society by not wearing a symbol of a foreign government associated with oppression and hate. But instead he displays it proudly while claiming that he feels unsafe.

The ‘Hate’ Hypocrisy…

Burger King, bowing to pressure, terminated the young woman exercising her freedom of speech. They claim that it is “incitement to hatred” and say it violated a zero-tolerance policy towards discrimination and antisemitism—I see a lawsuit against a corporation. In what sane world is “free [anything]” hateful? It is not and will never be. Yet those currently in control of the narrative need you to believe “freedom is slavery” and standing for those truly being oppressed is hatred.

If Burger King corporation is so concerned with a young employee speaking her mind—why are they okay when their franchises in Israel offer aid and comfort to the IDF as this army commits war crimes?

If you see a man in this picture, you’re hateful!

Zionism is the very same moral inversion of those saying Julie (Julien “Jimmy”) Tétart, an amateur French male basketball player for the ESC Tergnier and other clubs before undergoing his “transition,” is now somehow a victim of hate because of their clear physical advantage in a woman’s league. Hormones and surgery do not change Julie’s 6′-3″ frame from what it was as Jimmy and it’s shameful that the Monaco Basket Association would even put them on their roster. That’s controversial—not Cunningham politely defending her own opinion most people agree with:

I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense, and I think I’ll always believe in that.

The controversy with Burger King and free speech is a little different. Employees for a fast food restaurant are generally expected to not engage in political conversations and yet it’s still insane to frame it as threatening of a grown man. Feinstein was never in real danger. Children in Gaza, Lebanon or West Bank are in real danger. But the corporation is okay with their franchises in Israel giving free food directly to the IDF as this military is terrorizing the region. We cannot get any more ridiculous this. I mean, what’s next, is it going to be considered hate and a fireable offense to wear a Christian cross?

The love of money…

Meanwhile, people can wrap themselves in a banner, wear a symbol of an ongoing genocide then play victim when called out. We’re told it is controversial and asking for trouble when a WNBA player says what we are all thinking when we see a male frame in drag dominating women. Is this just rage bait? A page out of Rules for Radicals? Or maybe it is all of the above and a part of a control regime?

Who Runs the World?

The real point of the culture war is to keep us overwhelmed and distracted. As we are divided on how to define a woman or being told it is anti-semitic to oppose Israel killing the Semitic/Palestinian people, they quietly move pieces to strengthen their control of the world. This ‘they’ being the hands that move pieces on the global chessboard, the billionaire elites, the intelligence agencies, and all of the Epstein-class. These are the people who make money coming and going—stirring the conflict and the profiting from the war.

https://x.com/i/status/2086838463890903385

A name that came up in the Epstein emails, the well-connected pedophile speaking to a guy named Peter Thiel (who happens to be the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Palantir Technologies and a sponsor of JD Vance), with Epstein telling Thiel: “As you probably know, I represent the Rothschilds.” The Rothschild’s a powerful banking family which drew the U.S. into WW1, on behalf of the British, in exchange for Palestine. The Balfour Declaration states it explicitly:

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

This is not conspiracy theory. This is simply a fact. 116,516 American boys died, and as many maimed, fighting in a trench war that did not have any bearing whatsoever on the nation they were from or their future. It’s an early price of Zionism before we even knew what to call it. It started with the sacrifice of American blood and continues unabated a century later in the Holy Lands.

Also Interesting, contrary to the effort under way to erase Palestinian identity, as part of a genocide, it is very clear this location was called Palestine. And the terms of Balfour’s declaration, “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” have now been broken long ago. Now the occupants of this land claim “free Palestine” is hateful of Jews?

The West needs to wake up, the same who were dividing up Gaza long before October 7th became a pretext for ethnic cleansing, have designs to flood the U.S. and Europe with the refugees they create. They want Christians and Muslims killing each other and never united so their own small group of elites has total control (operating behind the chaos) of our government, our property, and our children. These Epstein-class elites already employ immense power over our culture—own both sides of the political divide which is a false choice. They want us to be simply be too confused or preoccupied to ever tell them “no” together.

The Rothchild dynasty, JP Morgan, banksters, responsible for incredible human suffering as a way to secure their wealth.

Have you seen what happened to Spain as they take a moral stand against genocide and decided to be neutral rather than host the U.S. Air Force as we rained missiles at girls’ schools in Iran? It’s not coincidence that recently tens of thousands of military age Moroccans invaded the Spanish territory in North Africa. Not a coincidence either that my social media feed was simultaneously full of Hasbura drawing the false equivalency between Spain having territory outside of Europe and Israel actively slaughtering people in Gaza, Lebanon and West Bank. Refugee crises are not merely leftist social engineering—it is a strategy to leave us fighting each other and helpless against the hand behind it.

This is no different from the strategy of modern missile offensives. The attacker hits the air defenses from all angles with cheap drones and missiles forcing a response. If they do not shoot down the low cost munitions they will do real damage. However, interceptors are expensive and limited in supply, when a defender’s finite capacity is tied down then they start to slip in their big punches. This is what the culture war is about, it is about keeping us fighting each other or distracted on the refugee chaos rather than focus on the strategy and who is behind it. You can’t defend against what you do not see.

Migrants flooding in is no coincidence.

We live in a matrix. One where good Jews are driven into conflict with good Muslims and Christians by those who have a totally different god and want to keep us deceived and blinded by prejudice. There are many who are Jewish and speaking out against those who have hijacked their identity and use it as a human shield against legitimate criticism. Zionism is a man who insists on invading female space, the aggressor who plays victim, and denies the reality of their own hate-fueled against Palestinians.

Good Jews and Muslims can get along.

Zionism is NOT Judaism

You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god—which you made for yourselves.

(Amos 5:26)

Zionists are to Judaism what Nazism is to Christianity. Zionists use Jewish identity as a cloak, they proclaim their “Judeo-Christian values,” yet they do not have Jesus as their king nor do they act justly despite a claim of righteousness. The book of Acts, repeating Amos, has a word “Molek” in place of “king” and “star of Remphan” as part of Stephen’s speech to the corrupt Sanhedrin. He uses the mention of this star to accuse them of idolatry. There is not any mention of a star of David in Scripture. It’s Kabbalahistic. It’s anti-Christ. While more non-Jews say they are Zionists, Christian Zionist is oxymoron and is impossible for the same reason you can’t be a racially inclusive Nazi.

Six is associated with human effort (6th day of creation) and the anti-Christ.

Israel claims to be a democracy while also preventing millions from voting, says that it represents the West when making laws that allow the execution of Palestinians but not Jews, and then calls it “anti-semitic” to call this apartheid or oppose their genocide. It is a state that brutalizes Palestinian Jews—Zionists assassinated Jacob Israël de Haan for opposing their violent ethno-nationalism and trying to secure agreement for peaceful Jewish residence in Palestine in 1924. He was accused of being a traitor and killed by a Zionist terror squad. This was mirrored in 1995 with the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. His only offense? He was having success negotiating peace with the Palestinians.

Zionist Israel has routinely exploited (or orchestrated) Jewish suffering their ethno-nationalist gain.

I would venture to say that most Jews, like most Muslims, aren’t bloodthirsty criminals and would rather simply get along with all people. It is the extremist fringe that believe they’re better than all others, want absolute control and can’t coexist with those different from them. Zionists are the equivalent to ISIS in a business suit. They know how to charm a Western audience while secretly harboring a Bronze Age barbaric mentality and celebrating the murder of children. They spend millions to dress up their genocide as protection of the West all the while Netanyahu carries a around a “Jews vs Romans” grudge and quips about needing to “win the next one.”

The blessings of Abraham are distributed to the world through Christ Jesus—a true Jew—and not through the mob who murdered him for speaking out against their corrupted version of Biblical religion. The first Jewish followers of Jesus truly embodied spirit and faith of Abraham rather than being “hostile towards everyone” (1 Thessalonians 2:14) as was the case of those who rejected the Gospel. That is what Zionism boils down to: A rejection of the Christ who said ‘my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36) and taking up the offer of the devil in the wilderness:

The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

When Jesus declared “I am the way and the truth and the life,” proclaiming himself to be the only way to God, he’s talking about what he embodies and the real costs of rejecting him. Christianity was a schism in Judaism, one embracing broader humanity with love and the other in a conflict with all in pursuit of dominance. Jesus rejected the sword—warning those who live by it die by it—while the Zionist reframes their violence as being a righteous defense of their inheritance. It only starts in the country called Israel, look who dominates banking, entertainment and politics: There’s no doubt that the rejection of Christ Jesus has a reward.

This isn’t compatible with Christ or Western civilization.  It’s a twisting of Scripture to justify theft of inheritance.

Judaism, in general, is not the issue. We’re all born somewhere and the Old Testament law, like Islam, isn’t a bad starting point. It’s incomplete, from the perspective of the true believers in Jesus, but the books point us in the right direction. But when the rejection of the way of Christ becomes willful, truth is the first casualty and death will follow. Yes, cunning, deception and exploitation are a quick route to worldly wealth, the system of usery is the driver of inequality and anathema to an idea of giving with no expectation of return in the teaching of Jesus. Those who do violence to others may gain the world—but they lose their own soul in the process.

The intense hatred of Christianity, that is the heart of Zionism, stems from an inheritance being taken away and given to another. The “kingdom of God,” meaning the true spiritual inheritance of Abraham, was taken away as a result of wilful disobedience. That’s what the Parable of the Tenants (Matthew 21:33-46) makes abundantly clear. Outside of the way, the path of and letting go of pride or a spirit of entitlement, there is no other way to salvation. You can reject and kill Jesus, go on to gain the world by cunning or violence, even convince many with false prophets or fake miracles—but you can only ever enter the kingdom through Christ.

The real reason why Sophie Cunningham and Arianna Hamilton are treated as a bigger threat than extremists, for moderate and reasonable views, is because they will expose the absurdity of the narratives being pushed if left unmolested. The media and Rami Feinstein understand that the truth is not on their side and thus their only defense is to extinguish the voices that call them out for what they are. Those who seek to erase the children of Gaza and Palestinian identity are of the very same spirit as those who cancel a person for telling the truth about the biological men who invade female spaces. The truth is not in them and the lies they embrace are corrupting the world.

The truth sets us free: The Gospel is for the Jew as much as the Gentile.

So with that I say: Free Palestine from the rule of the Zionists who immediately broke the terms of the Balfour Declaration.  Protect women from the men who appropriate womanhood—invade and occupy spots designated for women.  We should call out those who hide behind co-opted identity and perpetual claims of victimhood as an excuse for their own abuse. 

No Excuse For Ignorance: Hypocrisy, Propaganda and Liberty for All

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And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!

Matthew 23:30-32 NIV

History is more cyclical than progressive. I had subscribed to a view that we had finally advanced beyond the atrocities of the past—and at very least we would certainly never allow another Holocaust, right?

But now, as Zionists have started to enact their final solution on West Bank (which had absolutely nothing to do with October 7th if that ever mattered) the American ‘Christian’ response has been either being muted to a point of deafening silence or enthusiastic in support of the land theft and murder. So we testify against ourselves, we reveal the true values of our civilization and its not an ideal of “liberty and justice for all.”

Smacked for not standing during the national anthem of a country that is supposed to be all about personal liberty and freedom of expression.

The irony being those who would be most offended by someone for not reciting the pledge of allegiance (partial quote above) are also most supportive of denying basic human rights to others. It is precisely what Jesus rebuked in the Pharisees: Those very people who believe they’re the guardians of the ideal are destroying it because—as full of themselves and dense as they are—the ideal never penetrated or reached a level of true comprehension.

Harassment backed, literally, by the IDF.

What is happening in the West Bank as we are speaking?

A pogrom, the bands of heavily armed Zionists committing acts of arson at night and are killing Palestinians (and including U.S. citizens) during the day, and the IDF is there to support it. Their goal being, of course, to either drive the disarmed indigenous people off of their own land through harassment or just to slaughter them if they refuse to run into the wilderness with nothing. We called the pogroms of the past evil—we are silent now as history repeats.

We support this evil by our silence. We, the people of the U.S. in particular, have played a supporting role.

The pattern is the same every time and yet we fail to see it. If those being invaded and assaulted don’t do anything they’ll soon be overrun. But if they do resist and fight back this act will be taken totally out of context and portrayed as aggression when it’s truly only self-defense. Imagine that, protecting your own land, your own family, and being labeled as a “terrorist” for it. When Jewish people fought against Nazis in the Warsaw uprising this was used as an excuse for the ethnic cleansing and genocide—likewise the propagandists claim that any resistance by the Palestinians to displacement is hatred of Jews and it’s absurd.

On the morning of July 24, 2026, a group of Israeli settlers, heavily armed, supported by the IDF (the “hikers” as the Hasbarists have called them) and their encroachment led to a confrontation. The Zionist aggressors had opened fire, a farmer, Farouk Ramadan, took a settler’s rifle in the melee and he returned fire. Immediately after shooting the farmer fighting for his land was killed, along with a few of his cousins, on their own Palestinian land. This act of self-defense is, of course, being used as an excuse to double down on the aggression against the West Bank. We are seeing Netanyahu’s “final solution” enacted before our eyes and half of us are okay with it and the other is enabled by silence.

Doing nothing when goodness and morality demands we speak or act makes us a party to the atrocities. There is no excuse. Yes, it is true, we are subjected to the most powerful propaganda campaigns of all time when a farmer can be described as a “mass shooter” and “terrorist” for fighting back against an armed invasion and in defense of his own family and land deeded to his ancestors centuries ago—if you have no clarity on property rights for the indigenous people in West Bank (which isn’t Gaza) then don’t you dare protest people who cross the U.S. border for a better life.

In what universe is it okay for a band of armed men, supported by an occupying army, to cross into the land owned by other people?

If you’re okay with Zionist settlers carrying our pogroms against the people who lived on their land for centuries then you have no business claiming that any immigrants are illegal here. Texas was Mexico at one time, the Spanish got here first, so by the rules of Zionism your claim doesn’t matter. Are we okay with that? Either way want liberty and justice for ALL, as a reciter of the pledge of allegiance or you’re a hypocrite and liar. We are truly no different from those whom were rebuked by Jesus for being complicit in the crimes of their ancestors.

This is what Jesus said directly to the faces of those who claimed to be the children of Abraham and yet did not live according to his faith:

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

John 8:44 NIV

Murderers and thieves. People who hide behind lies. Those who accused Jesus of being demon possessed for his calling out their secret schemes. They believed they were entitled to the promises of Abraham, but Jesus said they would be cut off from the tree, thrown in the fire, and others then grafted in their place. Jesus gave them no excuse based on bloodline. What excuse will we be given as those who heard the Gospel of repentance and the command to follow him, yet absolutely refuse to love people of all nations as he did?

Hans Denck

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“I value the Holy Scriptures above all human treasures, but not as high as the Word of God, which is living, powerful, and free from all elements of this world.”

Not a Biblical fundamentalist.

Scary Amish, Manufactured Sharia Panics, and Europe’s Demographic Reality

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So, aren’t you afraid of the Amish moving in and imposing Ordnung law?

These peaceful-looking folks buy up large tracts of land, send their children to their own private schools, and even speak a strange tongue among themselves. It won’t be very long until they ban automobiles, require all women to wear bonnets, mandate beards for men, and pressure everyone to buy their discounted quilts. It’s clearly part of their long game.

If that mix of real Amish religious practice and wild extrapolation sounds completely ridiculous, good. That said, this is what propagandists do all of the time.

Anabaptist radicals—the forebearers of Amish—once aggressively seized control of the German city of Münster in 1534–1535. They established a violent theocracy, practiced polygamy, executed religious opponents, and even drove thousands of Lutherans and Catholics out into a freezing snowstorm. It is a historic episode that ended in horrific bloodshed. After defeat, the survivors gathered at the Bocholt Conference in 1536 and chose not a full rejection of violence, but only a tactical pause—force was futile “for the time being.”

Imagine someone using that bloody 16th-century event today to argue that modern Amish families, purchasing farmland in central Pennsylvania or across Ohio are secretly just biding their time, growing their numbers, and simply waiting for the perfect moment to strike and impose strict religious regulations. We’d call it fear-mongering and absurd—and rightly so.

None of us would seriously worry about Amish Ordnung (community rules) being imposed on ordinary Americans. There’s no will, capability, or realistic pathway to do so.

In the United States, religious communities have long maintained their own schools, arbitration systems, and customs. Orthodox Jewish Beth Din courts and various Christian panels are operated legally, protected by the First Amendment and always subordinate to national and state law. The Amish aren’t coming for your car or your clean shaven appearance.

Kiryas Joel, an Orthodox Jewish settlement in upstate NY, has their own religious rules similar to Amish.
Orthodox Jews, in Brooklyn NY, have special patrols.

The Selective Sharia Panic

That brings us to Sharia.

For many, this is treated as a real and imminent threat—no-go zones, creeping theocracy, city blocks under Islamic law. The irony is thick. The loudest promoters of the “Sharia takeover” narrative often trace back to networks tied to pro-Israel advocacy, as well as major defense contractors (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman). Figures and foundations pushing this perspective have functioned, in effect, as part of a sustained effort to maintain a boogeyman that justifies forever wars and interventionism.

David Yerushalmi—the anti-Muslim lawyer funded by pro-Zionist organizations.

Whether the fear is genuine or manufactured, the U.S. Constitution is more than sufficient to block any religious code from overriding secular law. I’m far more concerned about domestic elites—lobbyists, intelligence agencies, and the entrenched interests with real power to buy politicians and shape narratives—than about hypothetical theocracies in the American heartland. On Sharia itself, certain elements (such as the ban on usury) could even offer lessons for breaking cycles of debt slavery. At minimum, we should respect those who reject having our own exploitative financial and cultural systems imposed on them.

The Christian standard remains: treat others as you wish to be treated. Lead by the attractive power of example and love, not through bombs or domination.

There are two billion Muslims in the world, if a large percentage of them were actually out to get us we would not stop them.  But, like us, they’re all unique individuals and the extremists don’t represent them any more than the Salem Witch Trials do us.  The Islamic religion has a diversity of interpretations no different from Christianity and it seems most Muslims just want to live life like other people do.  The Sharia law panic on the right is no different from the left’s Handmaid’s Tale fantasy about Biblical fundamentalists.

Europe’s Demographic Reality

Europe faces a genuine transformation. Muslims currently make up roughly 7-8% of Europe’s population. However, while alarmist projections of a Muslim-majority continent in decades—all assume unchanging high fertility that the data contradicts. It is true Muslim immigrant fertility (around 2.6 children per woman) exceeds native rates (around 1.6), but this drops sharply by the second generation.  Assimilation?

In fact, the fastest voluntary fertility declines in modern recorded history have occurred in stable Muslim-majority countries: Iran, UAE, Tunisia, Oman, and Bangladesh.  Peace, female education, and general economic development lower birth rates across cultures—just as they do in the West.

Europe’s core problem is not invasion but its own fertility collapse well below replacement. Aging societies need workers to sustain economies and welfare systems.  Immigration is filling a vacuum created by native demographic decline.

NATO destroys Libya and this is the result.

What drives the migration waves?  Decades of destabilization—wars, regime changes, sanctions, and proxy conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. NATO’s intervention in Libya (Hillary Clinton’s “We came, we saw, he died” cackling) turned a viable country into a source of slave markets and refugees. The pattern is consistent: create chaos abroad, then face the human consequences at home. Neo-cons often cheer destruction overseas while panicking about the resulting flows.

Conflict and poverty keep fertility higher simply as a survival strategy.

Stability is the best contraceptive.

Ending endless interventions—the trillion-dollar wars, support for destabilization covert action, and regime-change cycles—would reduce the pressure to migrate. Sovereign nations should govern themselves. Saddam would’ve happily sold us oil. Iran’s original sin in Western eyes included rejecting a CIA-backed coup against its elected secular leader. Nations we’ve harmed have often shown more pragmatic forgiveness than expected when we finally stop killing their people and taking their resources.

If anyone had done to us what we did to Vietnam, world the ‘Christian’ U.S. ever forgive it?

This approach won’t magically reverse Europe’s native birth-rate collapse or cultural self-doubt, which predates recent immigration. But it would ease the crisis, allow more selective policies, and let more people thrive at home: Syrians in Syria, Palestinians to be free again on their ancestral land, and Europeans preserving their heritage without perpetual emergency.

Global diversity’s viability ultimately requires reciprocity—ending systems of domination and apartheid everywhere, allowing resource-rich countries to benefit their own populations, and fostering mutual respect over war propaganda. Second- and third-generation immigrants adopt the low-fertility patterns of developed societies. Prosperity and stability are self-correcting.

Fearing the Amish by dredging up Münster is absurd. Painting every Muslim as part of some monolithic conquest is equally so—and also is conveniently profitable for certain interests.

The real threats are internal cultural decay and the foreign policies that export chaos, and then import its victims. The saner path is to seek peace abroad and then spiritual renewal at home: lead by competence, example, and vitality of faith rather than fear and bombs.

Learning the Münster Lesson

Amish have learned, maybe through the error of their less peaceful Anabaptist forebearers, that it is better to farm than fight.  They have a greater strength than their numbers through rejection of violence than they do through arms.  We are not set free by our militarism or aggressive posture—we are bound to the military-industrial complex and state of propaganda.  A moment of real and true honest introspection may spare us a world of future pain.  Maybe we’re not those blameless heroes we imagine ourselves to be?

Data Centers as Dual-Use Scaffolds

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The book of Esther tells us the story about Haman—a man who was so obsessed with destroying a rival that it cost him his own life in the end.  It could be read as being a cautionary tale against ambition when it is at the cost of others.  The devices we build to solidify our own power might instead be our own undoing.  

In the same way Haman didn’t anticipate Mordecai being related to queen Esther we can’t always imagine how our own plans will play out and never actually know how the scaffolds we build to deal with others will be used.  There’s a principle about such plots found in Proverbs 26:27, “Whoever digs a pit will fall into it; if someone rolls a stone, it will roll back on them.”  Jesus explained this concept of reciprocation and told Peter “those who live by the sword die by the sword.”  The things we bring into the world can easily come back on us.

We Must Beat China!

A few years ago, policies like confronting China and large-scale deportations of illegal immigrants seemed right to me. I saw them as necessary for national security and for preserving our country’s character. It was never about skin color or the language people spoke. For me, it came down to basic fairness—everyone playing by the same rules—along with the belief that China was acting as a bully in its region and that the U.S. should put the interests of its own people first. Back then, I still trusted that our institutions and the character of the American people, though imperfect, would generally do the right thing.

Fast-forward to today, and—for multiple reasons that go beyond the scope of this post—I no longer trust the government to reliably serve our best interests.

After I’ve watched multiple administrations say one thing while doing another, the actual needs of the American people clearly aren’t a priority in Washington DC or amongst our elites.

A race towards the abyss?

So, when Kevin O’Leary says we need more data centers to beat China, I’m skeptical.  Is all this massive AI infrastructure being built as a tool of protection from a foreign power or is it simply about control, in general, for a few elites?  There’s actually no way to know for certain how this plays out, but there’s no reason to believe that this tool of war and of mass surveillance won’t eventually be used on us.  China may be the excuse.  However, AI is the ultimate dual use technology and as easily domestically employed as it is against an alleged foreign threat.

What Is Actually Coming?

My initial response to data centers was a response to NIMBYism.  It was so ironic to see people, on social media, using ChatGPT to construct arguments against a proposed data center.  Maybe this was just a typical fear of change Luddite response and what is built or not built a matter of the property rights of a land owner.  And yet sometimes a rule is true until it isn’t.  The formula that has worked since that 1800’s invention of the power loom, that technology frees up labor to do other beneficial things, doesn’t work with a machine that does everything at less cost than a human.

Even if the current intent of O’Leary is not to destroy your future, we need to consider the law of unintended consequences.  The rule is that a complex system will often react in unpredictable ways.  And not necessarily an AI going rogue either.  Sure, issues like the paper clip problem must be discussed, but it’s more the tendency of humans given too much power that should be considered.  So even if a leader now is opposed to using AI tools in a way that violates our rights—the next guy to take the reigns may not.  

What sent a chill through me as far as ICE and immigration enforcement was not that it is any different from any other arrest in some regards.  We take criminals off the street all of the time, rip men away from their families simply on the basis of accusations, and this is just an accepted part of civilization.  We have this system to punish the evildoer and it’s better than violent chaos.  But, this only can work when the mechanism is itself bound to law.  What bothers me is how quickly the Fourth and Fifth Amendments were pushed aside for sake of expediency.

Moreover, when U.S. Citizens were killed by ICE the same people who said that we need stronger enforcement to protect citizens did a complete 180 turn and cheered with a FAFO dismissal of those questioning the use of deadly force.

What this tells me is that propaganda from a political regime trumps our Constitutional law.  And it works both ways.  When parents speaking up at a school board meeting can be described as “domestic terrorists” and a Jan 6th rioter be held in indefinite detention, this isn’t about right or left and Democrats versus Republicans.  No, when a partisan sees a legal tool that can be stretched to gain on their enemies they will use it with a completely clear conscience.  There is not a shortage of excuses to abuse power.  That’s why we must stand for civil rights for all, we never know when we’ll be the inconvenience to be eliminated.

Our Hangman’s Noose

In the end, and returning to the thesis (those who plot and build their devices to destroy others end up facing the device they built), there’s been a critical lack of awareness about what we are actually building.  We cheer ICE as surveillance technology developed to kill in Gaza is deployed to our streets.  It is “Homeland Security” and, therefore, this would never be used against the American people, right?

That ‘security’ being the same DHS that a ‘glitch’ had mysteriously as in Tel Aviv, Israel—after X rolled out a feature showing the account location information. 

Strange, huh?

Thankfully our government and the  head of product at X dismissed it as being “fake” or “manipulated media” (it was not) while they took the feature down temporarily and then ‘corrected’ the issue.

So as far as the AI rollout and ICE tactics, what if they’re actually laying the ground work for the surveillance state—manufacturing consent by deploying an acceptable version first (as a trial run) against a population many of us see bad and giving us some tools for free?  We need to ask why are AI companies so willing to lose money (spend three dollars for every one earned) if it’s merely another business venture?  Could we be walking into a trap?  Could those same detention facilities also be used to warehouse American dissidents?

If you’re trying to catch a wild animal you’ll put out a trap.  You will present something for free, lure them into the device you have built to ensnare them, and at an appointed time the mechanism is triggered.  So, think, is there any reason why you would trust the people currently building AI infrastructure?  Are you absolutely certain that this political class that betrays us at every turn is really concerned about illegal immigrants?

Even if this isn’t the plan—what would stop it from becoming the reality?  

Did you see how fast the narrative shifted in Minneapolis?  You know if a Federal agency were to ever raid your home in the middle of the night, ship you away for crimes against the regime, there is nobody coming to save you, right?  If you were to totally disappear few would even care enough to inquire and those who might protest would be quickly drowned out by propaganda that painted you as extreme and dangerous.  Consider this: One moment people praised ICE for protecting citizens, but in the next they’re celebrating when ICE killed two citizens—Alex Pretti and Renee Good.  

Rights that aren’t universal, those which do not exist for everyone, are not long for this world.  We can’t give our abusive elites this kind of surveillance infrastructure and legal power without expecting it to eventually be used against us.  You can’t count on anyone to defend your own civil rights when you do not fight for the rights of others.  For sure, the government will not save you from their own power grabs.  We must see the foot in the door strategy and slam the door on their toes if need be.

We must be wary of those making special exceptions.  And we need to question those who give unexplained gifts.  When—at a flip of a switch—something we build is so easily turned against us, we may just be better off not to build it.  At the very least we should be taking time to consider all possibilities and then create safeguards which are up to the task.  Otherwise we may end up hoisted by our own petard.

A Better Union of Humanity 

We are the only line of defense.  

Our existing institutions are corrupted.

Government and corporations often will serve only the most powerful elites at our expense.

We need a Union of Human Individuals that goes beyond sending a representative to be bought or otherwise manipulated.  We need to address the growing power unbalance—a growing wealth gap that with AI will only be multiplied.  We must put aside old divisions, none of the red team versus blue team stuff really matters where this is all going, so it is time to leave it behind like a middle school clique.  Language doesn’t matter nor does a nation of origin.  Even religious differences are best set aside.  We all have something in common: We’re human.

If we can’t find common ground we’ll be destroyed by our own devices.

The guillotine was eventually used on those who initially used it.  We may build a system aimed at one group of people and yet these things tend to boomerang back at us.  We’re better off to judge as we wish to be judged, forgive as we wish to be forgiven, and stop building infrastructure that can be turned on us as easily as it is used against them.  So let’s do this right, not be a Haman, and just be human to all humans instead.  We don’t need more dual use detention facilities and data centers—we need to complete a more complete and better union of humanity.

Our Precious Sticks—From a Child’s Hand to a Community’s Legacy

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My little daughter loves to clutch small objects she finds while meandering in the yard or park. A googly eye, a washer, a stone, small flowers, or just a stick on the path that caught her attention. This behavior—part of childhood development—could be about security and comfort, a sense of ownership, establishing independence, or simply having something to hold onto in an otherwise overwhelming world.

Now I suppose I could pry these silly objects out of her tiny hand, break them or throw them aside, and make her cry.  And yet why would any decent person ever intentionally destroy what someone else cherishes? No, even if we don’t personally understand the need for something, only an awful monster destroys what others love simply because they can. It’s vindictive and cruel.

House Upon the Hill

Taken on May 19, 2020.  My caption then read it was a museum.  I had not realized they had quietly shut down the museum.

A few years back, on a walk around the long block, I took this picture. This house, with its Italianate Victorian charm and surrounded by trees, was absolutely a postcard picture—despite the ugly senior care facility built to the right. It was also a familiar landmark and a place I had gone as a child on a school trip. I remember the high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and wide wraparound porch. On private land, it served as a community site: a place of births, and a few weddings, and a memorial garden where ashes of the deceased were spread.

This was a symbol. A waypoint. A place for people to reflect on where we came from to know where we are going. On that day, with my pace broken for a moment, I thought the legacy was secure. It was well-built in 1861, and still in great condition (better than my own house), certainly far too important to the local lore to be at risk. It was like a grandparent, an elderly voice, a legacy of a time past that deserved the respect we gave it for the role it served in the community. This wasn’t just a house—it was our heritage.

We need these landmarks—especially in the age of Walmartization where everything is cheaply made and disposable.

I remember when Walmart first came, how exciting it was, but now it’s sad to go to a completely new town, have all of the same corporate brands, and only an illusion of variety or choice.

In the Bible they would use a pile of stones as a marker to memorialize important events. I do believe common physical spaces, the locations connecting past with present, are as important today as ever in this age of endless abstraction. Sacredness is imbued on a site by the work and attention spanning time, creating a location for moments of grounding in a world that seems to be spinning out of control.

The old house built of stuccoed brick stood as a silent witness to a changing world. That tower overlooking River Road. For over a century and a half it endured seasons coming and going, lasted through decades of conflict and uncertainty, and watched over the flood waters that rose and fell. It was a guardian of the Susquehanna River, even on the day the body of a young drowning victim—the daughter of a close friend—took her final journey on the waters. Civil War reenactments were held on the grounds.

So, one may say it was just an arrangement of sticks, stones, and glass.  But it was built with human hands and human creativity, and thus carries a shadow of the human souls that built and carefully preserved it.

A Microcosm of Corporate America

The Slifer House, an immaculately preserved example of Samuel Sloan architecture and personal residence of Colonel Eli Slifer—a significant local businessman and Civil War figure (recalled as “one of the few unobtrusively great men of Pennsylvania” in the Philadelphia Times)—later used as an orphanage, the original home of Evangelical Community Hospital, then a museum, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places—has become a victim of cultural vandalism and corruption.

Through a combination of corporate greed and local government apathy—namely Asbury Riverwoods and Kelly Township—a treasured landmark is now a pile of rubble.Decades of effort. The equivalent of three hundred thousand dollars in today’s money raised in 1975 to keep the house in perpetuity—a past generation’s gift to us—has been forever destroyed. Why? Asbury, an out-of-state “non-profit” with a CEO Doug Leidig paid $1.4 million, seems to exist mainly to extract value from the elderly. A museum simply wasn’t going to produce the cheddar. The move likely came down to balance sheets or bonus structures—all while claiming the desecration of history was on behalf of their elderly residents.  Sure.  They destroy our inheritance and don’t even have the decency to admit the enterprise is motivated completely by their own exploitative machinations.

Maybe there was one miserable old coot who had wanted it gone and a dozen others fooled by their claims it was on the verge of collapse.

As touched on in my last post, our property rights are not absolute. Biblical law went as far as to mandate leaving crops in the field for the poor to glean—a Year of Jubilee when all land would be returned to the ancestors of the original owners. This recognized that economic outcomes aren’t all a matter of merit or morality. The authentic Christian tradition has always taught that our individual success is always a gift from God—thus we cannot be inconsiderate of others and should be open-handed.

The Slifer House could have been transferred to those interested in preservation. If the true reason was cost to residents, this would have been the obvious solution. Sadly, it wasn’t about the residents. The current regime prefers profits for the few over preservation for all. It gives priority to faceless corporations led by men who mimic human empathy as part of their manipulations, over community and genuine connectedness. It is not illegal for Asbury’s executives to have a historic treasure smashed and the site desecrated—but there is certainly a question of morality and ethics.

Those who have done this to the Christian village of Yaroun will also claim it is justified—maybe invisible terrorist tunnels?

Those who ruthlessly climb the ranks pride themselves on being forward-thinking and making the hard choices. But in these cases it is only ambition without reflection. They are calloused and unappreciative people who only care about money. That’s why the country is spinning out of balance. The “finders keepers, losers weepers” mindset—where merely having the legal basis to do something is enough—goes against good morality and enables elites to loot this country. When corporations think only of shareholders or those being compensated, the common good is sacrificed.

Capitalism only worked as part of a nation where Christian ethics provided restraint. When ownership is concentrated in the heartless machinery of distant corporations rather than distributed to actual people who live locally, we are dismantling the heart of the Constitutional Republic. We’ve reached a critical point: AI is unprecedented in power and this technology already concentrated in a few hands of men who aren’t even stakeholders in the nation—let alone local character. Small men, bound by convention that has outlasted design, will enable those who will steer us into the abyss.

Valuing Humanity Above ‘Progress‘

The sticks in the hand of a toddler seem useless to some, yet they serve a purpose. It is what the psychologist Donald Winnicott described as “transitional objects” (blankets, toys, sticks, stones) and they are a bridge that helps children move from total dependence to independence. Familiar objects provide comfort, security, and a sense of control in an overwhelming world. One may say they are points of orientation. And deliberately destroying or dismissing them disrupts this process and causes real distress.

Adults have similar needs, most especially in a world of rapid change and reminders to “touch grass” as the way to cope with the disconnect from reality that grows given an increasingly artificial environment.

Slifer House was a place solace to many—a small refuge where things didn’t change. The old rose bush that bloomed magnificently, the memorial garden, the tower overlooking, a hospital where people were born, and a final resting place where their ashes were spread. The desecration of this site deserves far more attention and beyond just Asbury Riverwoods earning the new lower star rating on Google.

We need a conversation like what is taking place in Albania. There are mass protests over an island compound for elites that has been legally approved and yet is now being challenged with chants of “Albania is not for sale” and “cancel the project.” Sadly, in the corporate U.S., we’ve been so conditioned to believe all that matters is money and even our cherished cultural heritage must give way to new development if that’s what the wealthy (and the corporations they control) want for themselves. It is Capitalism without any of the moral restraint the founders viewed as being mandatory:

The spirit of commerce…is incompatible with that purity of heart, and greatness of soul which is necessary for a happy Republic.

John Adams, Letter to Mercy Otis Warren, 1776

Unfortunately our government prefers those exempted from taxes and foreign interests over the good of taxpayers. My home could be seized if I was delinquent in paying local dues, but not those granted their non-profit status while no longer providing anything of a public good. No, Asbury Riverwoods does not technically profit from destruction of property at our expense—but those who hide behind this legal structure most certainly do. Kelly Township’s fault is not having a framework established, the initially flippant attitude elected supervisors had towards those of us who were concerned. They failed at vision, to care enough to have legal protection in place and their negligence will now cost every generation that follows.

What I could sense in the eye rolls at public meetings, sighs in the CC I wasn’t supposed to see, was just a passive-aggressive nasty streak under a plastic smile. The problem with evil in our time is that it conceals under layers of PR, manufactured consent, and insincere “I feel your pain” politicking. Yes, you’ll catch those glimpses of the truth and you know when someone is just going through the motions, but they are just so slippery and hard to pin down. P. Diddy soaked in baby oil is more easily held accountable.  And I do wish for the villains who would openly reveal themselves and just admit they just love breaking another child’s toys for sadistic pleasure.

Like the Dr. Seuss classic Horton Hears a Who!—where a stubborn elephant fights to save a dust speck as others conspire to boil it, what other people cherish should be protected and collective desire to preservation even be treated as being as valuable as a deed. Even if we can’t hear the little voices ourselves or can simply dismiss it as silly sentimentality, this basic lack of hidden value felt in human hearts is currently undermining the pillars of humanity itself—and at this moment when we need respect for feelings the most: As we blaze forward in our mindless commerce, and enter this new age of super intelligent machines without consciousness, will there be a rational reason for these decision makers to keep us?

What will ever stop the elites from bulldozing or boiling us when they find a ‘better’ use of world resources?

At this pivotal time, we need a generation of Eli Slifers to rebuild what was lost and to build the new foundation of morality and ethics.  Trust in institutions like corporations or government will not be sufficient.  If anything the powers that be are in cahoots as they divide us up and pawn us off like the artifacts of Slifer House.  No, we need to rise up like the people of Albania, and reassert ourselves, or  humanity will die with a wimper as the machine of indifferent ‘progress’ pulverizes everything in it’s path.

“For Hell’s Sake”—Slip of the Tongue or Prophecy?

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With their three votes the Box Elder County Commission, in Utah, defied the protests to give Canadian billionaire Kevin O’Leary what he wanted: A transfer of jurisdiction to this state entity called Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) so he could bypass local zoning laws and get a massive tax break to build a 40,000-acre, 100 billion dollar, AI data center. They voted in private because the crowd had grown too raucous to continue their proceedings.

However, the truly eyebrow raising moment which jumped out, and the title of this blog, is when a commissioner Boyd Bingham—in a response to the upset locals—exclaimed, “Oh, for hell’s sake, grow up!”

Interesting choice of words, right?

I’ve heard ‘for goodness sake” and even “for heaven’s sake” as idioms. But Bingham did not invoke the spiritual entity linked to good or God. By slip of the tongue or a bad habit, he appealed to the domain of darkness and human torment and ultimate destruction. It is reason by itself to take pause.

But why are taxpayers supposed to give a billionaire and his investors a tax break, for a technology that will replace jobs? O’Leary sells as necessary for our national defense against China and yet shouldn’t we at least think of the possibility that this weapon he is forming can be turned on us? If we’re to subsidize the development costs and waive the normal local reviews, shouldn’t we have equal say in how AI infrastructure is utilized and share the profits?

Oh, Shut Up, Dig Your Own Grave!

Forcing someone to dig their own grave is one of the cruelest acts imaginable. Many will comply with this order out of desire for just one more moment of life. And that is the predicament those who build the data center infrastructure face. Those poised to benefit the most, like O’Leary, will often tout the job creation while neglecting to mention the jobs are mostly temporarily and that the AI they facilitate will soon leave many more people unemployed.

Wealth gap is already a growing concern as big corporations sent jobs overseas only to pocket the savings. The rich and powerful have always needed to have that modicum of respect for those who enabled them. An employee had to be compensated fairly or they might leave for a better opportunity. It is a slight balance to a game stacked in the favor of those who control the resources. A billionaire, other than that symbolic turn of a shovel to claim credit, isn’t out digging the foundation themselves. But what happens when they no longer need us?

In the past century technological advances have replaced many jobs. While this was a disruptive change, it increased our standard of living and allowed us to move beyond our subsistence farming roots. Industrialization, combined with labor protections, boosted production and resulted in the burgeoning middle class. This—the “American Dream”—has come under increasing pressure from factors such as outsourcing, rising costs, and wage stagnation. But the AI revolution, unlike prior inventions that freed men up to do other productive things, is a precipice for human labor.

We face a new technology that can replace all jobs. Machines or automation in the industrial revolution typically eliminated undesirable jobs or freed people to do more fulfilling tasks. White collar jobs were always beyond reach. But that has changed.  Already, even without AI, there’s the trend of Mom-and-Pop being swallowed up by massive corporations which answer to only wealthy stockholders—not employees—will AI reverse consolidation or accelerate the trend?

I believe the answer is obvious.

Unless there are serious structural changes to the economy, capital will end up in fewer and fewer hands, as wages crater and dual purpose AI infrastructure is used to police away all dissent. If they don’t declare most of us to be “useless eaters” or call us “eco terrorists” for exhaling carbon, they’ll keep us virtually fenced in and unable to resist their control regime. And that’s assuming we will be dealing with human masters in any form. If Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is to eventually emerge we might all, rich or poor, end up being a memory in the cloud. If humans are largely indifferent to the suffering of their own kind, what need will an intelligence far superior to our own do do with us once power is concentrated?

This all may come off as alarmist. But it is one of those things even creators of AI themselves are warning against. Even without AGI, we face an unprecedented concentration of power into the hands of a few elites who already escape justice for their crimes. And this is not to mention the environmental impacts or other economic costs of data centers. In that AI data centers consume huge amounts of water—often left contaminated—and are driving up the price of electricity. The same government that had wanted more political power to fight climate change suddenly has no issues with these polluting power hogs that can be used to watch us 24-7.

So, before we dig our own graves or invite an AI hell on earth, we should consider the trajectory we are on, what we know about humans when they finally do have power to erase those who are a problem, and make a few adjustments while we still can?

Bounds of Corporate Power and Property Rights

American individualism is both a strength and weakness. Generally I believe people should be free to do what they want or at least so long as they aren’t harming other people. And taking personal responsibility is also a reasonable expectation for adults. But morality goes beyond rights for citizens or land owners only, it includes provision for the needs of the community and nation (the people) as well. Eminent domain exists as a check to private rights superceding public good. We understand, for example, that our commerce needs connection and therefore occasionally uses the power of the state to open corridors of road or rail.

Corporations shouldn’t have human rights. They are entities entirely created by law and must remain subject to public interest. This is exponentially more important in this age of data centers and AI. The current level of collusion between billionaire capital and the political elites is dangerous. Government is using corporations to circumvent privacy law and corporations using government to enrich themselves. The relationship of the people with their official representatives is secondary to the lobbyists who fund their campaigns for kickbacks. This is why the wealth gap continues to grow, money and power work hand in hand, the economy is a rigged game. Elites don’t need to consider the common man.

This is why there were limits that were put in place, even in Biblical law, compelling the wealthy to leave the corners of fields as a provision for the poor:

For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’

Deuteronomy 15:11 ESV

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest… You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner.

Leviticus 19:9-10 ESV

When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.

Deuteronomy 24:19 ESV

The above is as important as “thou shall not steal” and the protection of property rights. There have always been people who, by no fault of their own, end up without means to provide for themselves. And those who do have the capital or the means of production are compelled to leave a little for them. It is okay to do well. But those given much are required to supply the needs of others from their excess so that equality is the outcome—explicitly stated in 2 Corinthians 8:13-15—and yet neglected in ‘Christian’ America where the attitude is that effort explains all difference. Yes, sloth is a sin, and yet it is the sin of shirking our own responsibility to care for others as we ought to care.

All of this to say that these deficiencies and gaps in our current cultural values will only be further exacerbated by the AI economy we are building. Without a moral check to the power or mandated provision for those who fall through the cracks this technology that could create enormous benefits will be hell on Earth. We need to consider the huge structural inequalities that already exist and take enormous effort to overcome. We love the Ben Carson stories—a person who had chosen right and was rewarded for it. But what do we do when robots do surgery far better than any human hands?

This isn’t just a difference in effort.

Contrary to popular opinion, an economic system is not sacrosanct—whether our current version of Capitalism or something called Socialism—the systems must adapt with economic conditions. In the very near future there will probably be many people unable to find gainful employment. When AI outcompetes you for every job, when all of the means of production are finally consolidated into even fewer hands, what alternative mechanisms exist to ensure you are able to continue and feed yourself or your family?

Do you trust that AI billionaires will leave the corners of their fields as your provision without being compelled to care?

We’re already managed

Even if AI could be made to serve us those who own the tool will not. Competition was good for human advancement, but we have neglected cooperation, and have created an economic system that rewards efficiency at the cost of compassion. The ruthless have found their way to the top and, enhanced by AI, may give your neighborhood the Gaza treatment—or at least if you resist their rule over you like their cattle. We have a window now to decide how this plays out, we can wait—do too little too late when the systems of control are locked in.

Meet the Billionaires Behind AI

OpenAI began with a noble-sounding mission: to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of all humanity as a nonprofit. Yet under Sam Altman, who rose to a position of CEO then strong-armed the non-profit board (which had tried to fire him) to take control, OpenAI betrayed their founding vision for profit. The once open-source promised collaboration became closed, proprietary tech being funneled through massive silicon valley partnerships and other for-profit structures. The people who once championed “open” AI shifted to guarding their models jealously as the potential for money and power became real. This betrayal reveals the pattern: our lofty ideals give way to our greed when the stakes rise.

Adding to the unease about Altman is the unfortunate case of Suchir Balaji, a OpenAI researcher who became a whistleblower and had publicly accusing the company of copyright violations in training its models. He was found dead from a gunshot wound just a month later, his death was officially ruled a suicide. Yet the circumstances have left many unconvinced—the timing (just one month after his public whistleblowing), the lack of any clear motive for suicide, blood spatter patterns that private investigators claim are inconsistent with suicide, and a half-eaten takeout meal left at the table have all raised questions about the official ruling. Given the high stakes of challenging a powerful company like OpenAI, this has raised serious questions about the police investigation.

Next up, Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of Palantir Technologies—the same who discovered, mentored, employed, funded, and helped launch vice-president JD Vance’s political career—has repeatedly lectured on apocalyptic themes and the Antichrist, disturbingly framing technology, politics, and global control through the biblical end-times imagery.  And, through Palantir, he has built some of the world’s most powerful mass surveillance and data-driven targeting tools—systems now deeply embedded in government and military operations. Palantir’s platforms have been scaled up by the Israeli military for operations in Gaza, enabling their AI-assisted targeting, pattern analysis, and “kill lists” that integrate vast amounts of surveillance data with minimal human oversight. This is being brought to the U.S. through ICE and in the name of immigration enforcement.

When human oversight is neglected

Thiel’s commentary, literal or metaphorical, a fusion of theological speculation and the unchecked technological power is currently being released on captive populations, does raise disturbing questions about the kind of deceptive authority which is warned about in end-times prophecy. The real concern lies in the centralized surveillance apparatus these elites are rapidly constructing—one built on humanity’s collective data taken from us without our consent (let alone our compensation) and has already been turned against vulnerable populations that are  deemed inconvenient.  When do we get a vote on how our own collectively produced information is used?  Who is watching the watchmen?

AI does not create from nothing. It devours vast quantities of human source material—our writings, art, ideas, conversations, and collective human knowledge scraped from the internet. This technology is built on the fruits of humanity’s shared intellectual labor and creativity. It should therefore serve the good of all rather than becoming a tool to enrich and empower a tiny few. We face a fundamental choice: We deliberately steer AI toward a path of abundance, equity, and human flourishing—a digital “heaven” where technology lifts every person. Or will allow it to accelerate hell on earth, where power concentrates further, dissent is monitored and crushed, jobs evaporate without safety nets, and the masses of our species soon become “useless eaters” in the eyes of the forever unaccountable overlords?

We can’t hope people in power will do what is right. Even (or especially) at a local level. It is easy to buy off a few county officials—there are many willing sell out humanity for the 30 pieces of silver. Or, if not traitors outright, those whom we elect as representatives to play Pilate’s game of pass the buck. But the corrupted by their personal gain or simply for political expediency sake won’t be able to wash their hands of the eventual consequences. The trajectory is clear without intervention. Data centers subsidized by taxpayers will enable wealthy political elites to consolidate their control. Corporate-government collusion will deepen surveillance. And without moral boundaries, structural reforms, or special provisions for the common good—which would echo biblical calls to leave gleanings for the poor—this revolution will absolutely exacerbate every existing inequality.

We still have a window to demand better. AI infrastructure must include public oversight, profit-sharing mechanisms, and safeguards that prioritize people over pure capital gain. Property rights and corporate power cannot be absolute when the technology reshapes society itself. AI infrastructure is built upon our collective human efforts and, therefore, should be for the benefit of all people. The alternative to digging own graves while the elite build their fortresses is to assert some moral authority and write the laws to ensure that this technological revolution builds the future of humanity for goodness sake.

The Choice Is Ours: Heaven Or Hell

Power is a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies, and leaves him at last a mere active mass of hardness and self-affection.

Henry Adams

O’Leary claims that we need his massive AI data center to compete with China. With it he admits this is a weapon, a tool to use for dominance or control, and that all begs the question: When will the billionaires and their obedient politicians turn this power against us?

We can’t trust our elected government to protect us when their own allegiance goes to the highest bidder. Even if AI is not the end of all humanity or life as we know it, we are paying the cost in terms of tax breaks, reckless use of limited water resources and energy price hikes—which is not mention jobs currently disappearing and will leave many without a source of income.

This is why humanity must unite. We must put aside past divisions, rethink the policies crafted for a different century, and treat this as a potential extinction event. AI could be the best thing that ever happened to us—as a species—if correctly managed or morally applied. This could be a source of creative answers and abundance for all. Sadly when people get unchecked power they will tend forget compassion. When we can’t identify with our fellow man—because we have the means to escape consequences—we become indifferent and cruel towards them. The power of AI cannot be left in the hands of a few people currently at the top. There needs to be an application of this:

Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.”

2 Corinthians 8:13-15 NIV

We need new checks and balances built for the current time and simply to ensure our survival. AI is built on human information, uses volumes of knowledge gathered over eons, infrastructure built by many hands—it must be made to serve us all or dealt with as the existential threat to humanity it represents.

There was a time—and not long ago—when horses outnumbered humans. In a decade the automobile replaced them. And we face a very similar predicament as machines can replace many tasks that make us useful to elites.

So what will be our fate when we go from being an asset to liability in the eyes of elites?

Will there be a pasture built or a glue factory?

For heaven’s sake—or for hell’s—we must act wisely before the slip of tongue of that commissioner become prophecy.

Why Woke Is Incompatible with Christianity (And Why MAGA Isn’t Much Different)

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I never like it when I can’t explain something in simple terms.  But most important topics are not easily distilled.  I mean, a leftist may tell me they believe woke is compatible with Christianity.  And it (like MAGA) absolutely is not.  Sure, there’s a message of justice in the Gospels.  We learn how the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  Jesus broke down barriers of ethnicity and gender—took on the religious elites.  However, he taught a message of repentance rather than pride or demanding recognition.

1) Woke externalizes blame, Christianity takes responsibility: Jesus taught us to answer for our own sins—that God will judge those who mistreat us.  Basically Jesus turns fundamental attribution error inside out by asking us to completely own our own actions and then to be merciful to those who offend us.  This is not to say that we’re silent about injustice—we just remove the beam from our own eye first and never blame others for our own sins.

2) Woke replaces identity in Christ with group identity: Woke ideology organizes people into categories of oppressors and victims based on race, gender, or sexual orientation. The gospel teaches that primary identity is found in Christ (Galatians 3:28) and unites all people under one common banner of humanity rather than into competing factions arguing over who must serve who.  All should serve in the manner of Christ who died for the sake of his oppressor rather than fight and demand fair treatment.

3) Woke rejects absolute truth in favor of the subjective experience: Woke culture often promotes the idea that truth is relative and based on “lived experience” or their social construction, whereas Biblical Christianity is founded on the unchanging, objective truth of Jesus as being God’s Word.  The Gospels claim that Jesus was there from the beginning and that he is the one and only correct path to salvation: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No man comes to the Father but by me.” 

4) Woke promotes judgment, not forgiveness: Woke culture is “cancel culture,” which is very unforgiving and aims to ostracize those who deviate on even the slightest bit of the current dogma. Conversely, Jesus taught a path of mercy, forgiveness, grace, and redemption, offering hope and reconciliation for all, rather than a never-ending cycle of shaming others and condemnation.

5) Woke is a total inversion of the Christian standard: Woke ideology attempts to redefine traditional moral standards, and in particular with regard to sexual ethics, or marriage, and gender, which Jesus explicitly upheld.  Jesus confronted the Pharisees for their hypocrisy—not over disagreement with the law.  If the law does not matter there’s no hypocrisy.  However, Jesus did not say that there’s no set standard—only that the religious and political elites kept the letter of the law and neglected the spirit.

6) Woke focuses on political activism rather than spiritual renewal: Wokeism prioritizes changing societal structures and the power dynamics as the primary solution to human issues. In contrast the teachings of Jesus emphasize that the greatest problem is sin (our own first) and that all lasting change flows from spiritual transformation of us individually, not just structural reform.  Woke is about screaming into a bullhorn while the Gospel is focused on introspection and repentance.

7) Woke divides people by identity tribes and does not create unity: While Jesus calls for love and unity among believers, forgiveness of our enemies—woke political ideology creates more division, fuels conflict, resentment, and “hatred, contentions, [and] outbursts of wrath” (Galatians 5:19-21) by focusing on oppression narratives, or historical and group grievances.  There’s no love of offenders or forgiveness in woke—only role reversal and vengeance against the prescribed villains.

8) Woke assigns collective guilt rather than protecting individual rights: Woke ideology tends to attribute collective, inherited guilt to entire groups based on skin color or social status. The Gospel teaches that every individual is responsible for their own sin before God and is justified by their own faith. 

9) Woke focuses on vertical power struggles over reconciliation with God: Wokeism is concerned with the dismantling of traditional power structures, often adopting a Marxist-style analysis of human relationships. Biblical justice, on the other hand, is a hierarchy rooted in God’s perfect righteousness and focuses primarily on reconciling sinners to God, which then informs how they live with others. 

Both Woke and MAGA: Counterfeit Gospels of Grievance and Pride

Yes, there’s certainly some overlap between woke and the Gospel.   But one rejected the fight for control over worldly political power structures, the other simply attempts to flip the script on current rulers. 

One chants “down with the hierarchy” whereas the other restates hierarchy with a twist: Those at the top—rather than domineer—are supposed to serve those below them in an authority that their submission to God’s will gives them.

There’s never an inner change—they believe that their own bad behavior is a justified result of the external conditions.

Woke says you are fine the way you are, change is unnecessary for you—then it demands others change to accommodate you instead.  Yes, they claim to own love and kindness, but it is only in the same way Trump believes he should be awarded a Noble Peace Prize. 

Trump is basically woke right in that he uses the same power of identity and tribal grievance to advance his political agenda.  His calling out of “fake news” and inventing his own facts is more post-modern than it is conservative.  That’s why he has turned on those principled people of his coalition, like Thomas Massie, because his own ever-changing truth is all that matters. 

Woke—like MAGA—is unmoored from historical precedent, not capable of self-awareness and eats its own the moment they doubt the rage mob.

Furthermore, Trump and DEI wokeism believe that holding position and title or just identifying yourself as something is the same thing as being it.  Trump’s presidency is increasingly rejected by those who simply cannot respect his authority as a morally compromised man who constantly lies thinking we won’t notice.  The parallel is a man who believes we should call him “ma’am” simply because he is taking sex hormones and completes having his junk removed. 

As the Turkish proverb goes, “When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus”.

Putting an unqualified person in a position only ever degrades the position.  Allowing transgender men to compete in women’s competition will not legitimize their transition.  If anything it serves to highlight the difference while dismissing the true uniqueness of the female gender.  Yes, Trump is legally the President, like I can legally become a woman, but the social contract has a vote as well and power abused to create an unreality tends to snap back like a rubber band pulled too far.

Trump and woke are just two grotesque forms of American exceptionalism.  Both are composed of people who feel entitled to special treatment and have no need to adjust themselves or their own attitudes—they believe wherever they stand is made sacred by their very presence.  It is exactly what Paula White-Cane (the ‘spiritual advisor’ of Trump) has said—anywhere she stands is “holy ground.”  That’s just narcissistic bull crap. 

White has also said, “Anyone who tells you to deny yourself is from Satan.”  Which is a direct contradiction with Jesus, in Matthew 16:24 (and Luke 9:23): “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” 

Must be her “Judeo-Christian values” that make her accuse Jesus of being from Satan?

Christianity is all about subduing the flesh and bringing our impulses under control—White, like woke, is about indulging herself and pride.  It’s no wonder there’s so much agreement between these Pulp Fiction Christians and a self-declared “chosen people” who never kept their own side of their Covenant.

MAGA uses Christian imagery, but always in this perverse manner that honors the Trump political brand and not Christ.  The shooting at the White House Correspondence dinner, for example, has already been described as God’s protective hand on Trump as if some guy in the lobby had even a remote chance of success.  Maybe we should just remember Jesus was killed and Hitler survived multiple attempts on his life?

In the end, both woke ideology and MAGA cult tribalism offer a counterfeit gospel: one of pride, grievance, and external blame rather than a life of repentance, taking personal responsibility, and genuine transformation through Christ.

Is Modesty Oppression? No—Clothing as Protection, Group Identity and Civilization

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What is clothing for?

Why do we put fabric all over our bodies—why not be naked?

For protection.  

We wear clothes for a layer of protection against the elements.  

Clothing helps us keep our body heat in the cold air.  It is a barrier against harmful solar radiation.  This invention allows us fragile creatures to navigate harsh environments that would kill us otherwise.

We also wear clothes as a matter of public health.  This covering is beneficial from a sanitation perspective and for keeping all of our disease spreading bodily fluids off of shared surfaces.  

There is a significant social component or function as well.  Having the ‘right’ clothes matters if you want to fit in.  It could be a religious group you wish to belong to or just the popular kids at school—but you will be judged by the outfits you wear.

My son, for example, found out the pair of sneakers (bought with his money) weren’t cool because they weren’t some recognized name brand.  Agree or not, I know there’s no point in fighting this pressure to conform.  If a kid does not want to be ridiculed they will wear the currently acceptable style.

Even those counter-cultural types are just responding to this pressure by going in an opposite—yet as completely predictable—direction.  From Hipsters who all looked the same trying to be different to the Goth kids with their own uniform that is stricter than the typical and mainline dress regime—all are obeying a rule.

Even in trying to look different we end up looking the same.

Dress is a part of group identity—a way to belong to a group.  Amish will know other Amish in the same way gang members or police officers recognize each other.  It is by wearing the correct colors, or following the correct patterns, that an individual gains the necessary recognition to gain the benefit and protection of a community.  Sure, we may not always like it, we might see this as being superficial, but clothing sends signals that can either make us more vulnerable or more safe.

Conservatives have long valued modesty over inviting attention.  This is something developed from tradition.  But not tradition without any practical purpose or merit.  My wife, from a place where the government is a bit weaker, told me never to display any signs of wealth as this would make me into a target.  And I could certainly protest the recommendation as an infringement on my freedom—that I am American, with rights, and can therefore will do whatever I please!  However, that belief won’t save me from a mugger in a back alley, will it?

Modesty is about protection.  It is about keeping hungry eyes off of those assets we don’t plan on giving away.  No, that does not mean our immodesty justifies assault, theft or rape.  It also does not mean our modesty is a foolproof protection.  Rather, it is sort of like N95 masks and Covid, this is only one part of a larger strategy that is designed to minimize a particular risk rather than fully eliminate it.  

It is sometimes a matter of public decency and respect for others.  If there’s a sign on the door of a business: “no shirt, no shoes, no service”  Why make a scene? 

We should understand—as conservative people—that this public space comes with a set of public expectations and should probably comply without causing drama.

There was a time—and not very long ago—for the reasons outlined above, a woman wouldn’t leave the house without a proper dress, blouse and bonnet.  Both men and women covered up, to be prepared for an environment that was harsh and only the insane did otherwise.  Clothing was part of being civilized and a value of modesty tied very intimately to Christian religion and the Biblical standard.

Wolves in Sheep’s Skin 

Some clothing is dishonest.  

A disguise.  

In order to gain acceptance and trust (going back to group identity and belonging) some will wear a costume of something they do not represent to gain trust And the “wolves in sheep’s skin” have infiltrated every conservative institution in this nation and turned them into a propaganda tool of godless empire.  

Take Matt Schlapp, for example, the present chairman of American Conservative Union—also the first ever paid chair of Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) where he received a modest $600,000 in annual compensation—and an additional $175,000 for his wife on top of that.  All while he has faced multiple allegations of groping men when he’s out drinking.  One of the accusers—who had publicly apologized for the “misunderstanding”—was also quietly paid off (by a insurance company that represents ACU) to the tune of $480,000!  More recently he got a little too touchy-feely with men at a Virginia bar.  This is your conservative leadership.

Schlapp, speaking recently on Piers Morgan Uncensored, attempted to justify the killing of 175 elementary school girls in southern Iran—reasoning that they were saved from religious extremism:

Beinart: “We know that if the U.S. and Israel had not attacked a country that poses no serious threat to them—Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, America has thousands—that those girls would be alive…” 

Schlapp: “They’d be alive in a burqa … this is … a barbaric society…”

Morgan: “hang on.”

[The conversation continues…]

Schlapp: “It’s hypocritical to say that these attacks harmed women and children when those women and children, the young girls that you reference, would be … live a life in a barbaric, unequal society behind a burqa, with no ability to make career choices…” 

Uygur: “So just kill them?”

Schlapp: “No, that’s not what I’m saying either…”

Uygur: “That is what you said…” 

While Schlapp apologists will claim that their accused man-groping ‘conservative’ was not actually saying what he seemed to be saying—it is abundantly clear that this was trying very hard to minimize a horrific slaughter.  

Where do you even start?

Schlapp is directing his appeal to people who hate feminism and yet desperately want to get one over on their evil ‘liberal’ women by their disingenuously siding against ‘the patriarchy’ to justify murder?  Either that or he’s a closeted leftist who hates women and religion so much that ridding the world of a school full of youngsters indoctrinated to believe that his unconsenting grabs of male parts is a sin feels right to him?

I won’t pretend to know what goes on in the twisted moral rot of this man’s mind, but as one who is friends with traditional women (Christian and Muslims) who do wear a veil his take is appalling.  It would be equivalent to a feminist saying—“Well, at least those Amish girls killed at Nickel Mines will be spared a life of oppression speaking PA Dutch, getting married and working around the house!”  What total horse shit.  Women are as happy in traditional cultures are they are in any other—maybe even happier—the “happiness paradox” refers to the increase in female financial independence which has corresponded directly with decrease in happiness.

Sure, Schlapp does not come right out and say they’re better off dead.  But what is he saying?  What is he implying?  

There this insane level of arrogance, which is reflected in Schlapp’s statement, of these people just assume that people who do not look exactly like them—share their cultural values, religious traditions or political perspectives—are better off dead.  It is just plain bigoted nonsense.  

The top picture is of Iranian women in a hijab.  The bottom is Afghan women in burkas.

Furthermore, showing his ignorance, Iranian women don’t wear the burqa.  They wear a hijab.  It’s a detail that likely doesn’t matter to his MAGA target audience.  And yet this is a huge difference.  The burqa covers an entire face, it is more common with Sunnis (Saudi Arabia), and not required by Iranian law.  The hijab, by contrast, doesn’t cover a face, it is a hair covering that is very similar to what Christian women wore for centuries before the society liberalized.  Sure, maybe it shouldn’t be mandated, but it’s as Biblical as the Ten Commandments:

Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved.  For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head. 

(1 Corinthians 11:4-6 NIV)

Incidentally, it is this passage above which makes it so strange that so many ‘Christian’ (Zionist) Presidents and public officials will wear a hat while praying and kissing a wall—deliberately dishonoring Christ.  But more to the point, is this a “barbaric” practice?  Is religious headgear, a Nun’s habit, some kind of terrible evil which totally excuses blowing up an elementary school?  

Or is there something else going on here?

One of these is an Orthodox Christian the other is Mike Huckabee.

I’m going with something else.  Schlapp is a neo-con grifter.  A warlike and lying sexual deviant who will proclaim American values then fights for a nation that sodomizes their detainees, without consequences, now seeks to execute the people they oppress, and then calls those who oppose this “barbaric.” A society that drives it’s own abused daughters to suicide.  The same people vigorously defend bombing of schools, hospitals, residential areas, the killing scores of children and civilians, then claims that the war about the liberation of women? 

This is as much moral inversion as anything from the ‘woke’ left.  We kill to save?

Furthermore, for all this talk about career choice, Iran graduates a significantly higher percentage of females in STEM fields than Israel or the US.  So, in response to that part of Schlapp’s absurd statement: What are the career choices Iranian women are currently unable to make?  Is he talking about OnlyFans?

Which woman is liberated?  The one using her brains or the one displaying her body?

If we’re such great defenders of feminity, so much so that we can dictate to sovereign states what standards of decency they can or cannot have, why haven’t there been any Epstein client arrests?

Phony Fat Cracker Barrel Conservatives

The Schlapp types, neo-con Zionists, aren’t conservative at all.  Sure, they always wrap themselves in Christian identity, but they’re not peacemakers, they feed prejudices and promote endless war that has cost trillions of dollars as well as millions of lives around the world.  They will fein concern for Iranian rights in one breath then promote bombing the country into oblivion in the next.  

They exploit jingoistic sentiment in the beer gut football crowd who (in their lack of Christian character) confuse toughness and masculinity with excessive violence.  Every problem is solved with a gun or a bomb for them.  This phony ‘conservativism’ of these war-mongering empire building neo-cons is antithetical to Christianity—it is anti-Christ and one part of their Epstein-class campaign to dismantle American values.

The Republican elites are as totally opposed to traditional American values as the Democrats—they just need our conservative votes.  

The Cracker Barrel conservatives—people who get riled up over a change in corporate kitsch—enable these cultural vandals.  The religious right talks incessantly about every tempest in a teapot controversy and then go mute when the Trump administration has worked overtime to protect billionaire pedophiles.  These are the type that Jesus had called out for their straining on gnats and swallowing camels.  They have no principles other than vote for the ‘red’ team on election day because we can’t let ‘blue’ team ‘liberals’ win—they imagine themselves as defenders of Western civilization yet will put their weight behind an oppressive regime if it is dressed right according to their own partisan fashion.

What’s important?  The 4th and 5th Amendments or saving old-timey corporate kitsch?

They side against our own dissidents, make fun of Renee Good who was killed by ICE agents shouting conflicting orders, say Alex Pretti deserved getting shot in the back for being a guy who intervened when a woman was being assaulted, and then suddenly do a complete reversal to express moral outrage when Saleh Mohammadi, 19, was executed after a trial for murder of two police officers.  The same people who can justify the deaths of 175 innocent children as “part of war,” are siding with an accused and convicted cop killer?  What a mindless propaganda-blinded and flip-flopping lot—we’re living in a scene from 1984.

The same people who justify the killing of Good and Pretti defend an Iranian wrestler convicted of the murder of two police officers.

Trump wrapping himself in a flag (literally) is all it took.  All he needs to do is hold up a Bible, hand out a few signed copies of the Bible for the MAGA faithful, and suddenly he’s the next thing to Jesus in the Evangeli-con pantheon.  His aggression becomes integrity, his lewdness honesty, and arrogance a virtue.  And he is aware, see how Trump described the cult’s devotion during the run up to his first term: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”

Trump is a manifestation of cultural rot, we celebrate immodesty and excess.  The book of Philippians describes some who profess faith as the “enemies of the cross of Christ” (3:18) and proceeds to warn, “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame” and “their mind is set on earthly things.”  And this is our American consumerism.  We see ourselves as the heroes, as representing freedom and democracy, when we’re really Egypt and Sodom (oppressor and corruption) cloaked in a pretense of righteousness.

We could use a bit of modesty.  A moment of introspection and self-awareness.  

Reclaiming American Christian Values

The U.S. has never been the “shining city on the hill” envisioned in John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon and highlighted by Ronald Reagan. 

The aspiration.

Moral excellence is certainly a great goal even if we fall short.  However, it is an aim which requires repentance. There are many things for this American nation should want to turn from.  The ethnic cleansing of native populations, the institution of slavery, many wars of aggression and expansion—there is no purity here. 

The U.S. has, if anything been exceptionally violent—from massacres in North America to the brutal occupation of the Philippines to the millions killed across the world as a result of aggressive policies—this country has never ceased in wars for control over resources.  This conquest, sold to the public as some kind of moral mission or “Manifest Destiny,” was to conceal greed and a desire for things not ours to have.   

Bud Dajo Massacre, March 8, 1906

There is no special American exception to the Christian requirement that all repent of their sins.  That’s a starting point to the U.S. being great.  To be truly great the goal is not to turn back the past mistakes, but turning away from them. 

We should consider both bad and good examples from the past as a basis for improvement in the present.

This takes humility, not hubris.

The sin at the root of all moral pretense and posturing is pride—the very first sin, the one that changed Lucifer from God’s second in command into the father of lies. Pride tells us our culture, our politics, and our ways are just superior. Pride is what lets us dress up in sheep’s clothing of “conservative values” while living like wolves.  Pride is what lets Matt Schlapp (or any of the other neo-con grifters) lecture on liberation while his own hands grope men in the dark and his mouth justifies the slaughter of schoolgirls. Pride is what lets the Cracker Barrel crowd wave a Bible one minute—rant against abortion, feminism, wokeism—only to cheer endless war and merciless bombings in the next, ignoring the plank in their own eye.

Christian conservatism worthy of the name begins with the opposite of pride: humility. It begins with the recognition that we are not owed respect—we must show it first. Just as modesty in clothing is not about shame but about protecting what is sacred, a respect of what is God’s, so too is respect in every other sphere. You do not demand entrance to another man’s house, another nation’s culture, or another woman’s dignity by force.  Traditional modest dress of the past was never “oppression.” It was armor. It was just a public declaration: “I belong to something higher than my appetites. I will respect and you will respect me.”

The same principle applies to foreign policy, to political leadership, to every claim of “American exceptionalism.” An authentic conservatism does not bomb a school to “free” the girls inside it. It does not wrap imperial greed in the language of feminism or democracy. It does not make demands with threats of violence.  Rather it says, with the Apostle Paul, “Let your gentleness be evident to all” (Phil 4:5) and “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Rom 12:18).

Principled Christian conservatism is not a costume. It is not red hats, Cracker Barrel nostalgia, or trillion-dollar defense contracts dressed up as patriotism. It is living a life of repentance.  It is about mutual respect.  It is the refusal to celebrate pride in any form—whether of immodesty, the aggressive “grab ’em by the pussy” arrogance of entitled men or just indifference about how our actions impact others.  It is discipline of protecting what should be protected and also refusing to sacrifice our values for expediency.

If we want to belong to the Body of Christ then we must wear the right uniform code: humility, not hubris; respect, not ridicule; modesty, not exceptionalism. We must stop pretending America is already righteous or beyond reproach and start acting humbly like the sinners we are. Only then will we ever regain the respect we have lost. Only then will our clothing—literal and spiritual—actually protect instead of provoke.  

More imperial “forever war” for the benefit of the Epstein-class.

Let the attire of our attitude preach truth: we are fragile, we are fallen, and the only safety worth having comes from walking in fear of the Lord, not by military might.  That is the conservatism worth conserving—the repentance that can make us an example in the world and is the actual foundational basis of Christian civilization.

Schlapp says that Iran is a “barbaric culture” for dress standards different from our own and that bombing them is about defense of civilization.  But a principled conservative is about consistent rules, true impartiality and no favoritism.  It doesn’t decide if cop killers (or killer cops) are heroes or an attack on us all according to political needs.  A civilized person seeks coherence and harmony, not unpredictability, brutality and dominance.  It prefers local control and respects sovereign space of others.  It gains a position through competency, not by trickery and deception, nor by threats and coercion.  

Christian civilization rejects use of violence and notions of blood guilt.  All must clothe themselves in the righteousness of Jesus—a clothing that we put on through Baptism, not our birth or bloodline:

For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. 

(Galatians 3:26-29 KJV)

We replace lying with truth, maliciousness with kindness, fury with forgiveness, theft with generosity and are told “to put on the new self” and with this to be “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22–32, Col 3:5–14)  John Chrysostom (c. AD 347—407) described this putting on of Christ as “never to be forsaken of Him, and His always being seen in us through our holiness, through our gentleness”

Civilization may need to be qualified.  We want Christian civilization, not an Old Testament violence reenactment.

We must reject the perversion of those who promote moral inversion where killing is an act of liberation and a society where more women graduate with STEM degrees called “barbaric” by the Epstein-class.  

Schlapp’s depraved reasoning is a symptom of arrogance, not righteousness.  If Jesus is our Lord, then we should be clothed in humility and a gentle example rather than a force of fury or violence. 

The militarism of neo-cons is not the armor of God—it is a false protection—we need the attitude of repentance.

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Postscript: The point of this essay isn’t to defend the Islamic Republic of Iran.  I have no doubts about it being a very brutal and intolerant regime.  I also don’t write this as a strong advocate of modesty standards.  But only to promote introspection about what we excuse and condemn.  In one breath we are outraged by an execution in Iran, in the next we ignore the bombing of children in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.  The same people who decry liberalism in the West celebrate the leftists in the East.  This isn’t only about other people.  This is also about me.  After warning about Trump in 2014, I voted for the narcissist three times.  He promised he would drain the swamp, to end the forever wars, and release the Epstein files.  It was when he tried to gaslight about continued interest in Epstein that I realized I had been had.  What I will say in my defense is that it wouldn’t be much improvement to vote for team blue.  Kamala Harris couldn’t think of anything she would have done differently than Joe Biden.  She shushed those trying to bring attention to the Gaza genocide and the Democrat party establishment has been as warlike as the Republicans despite their constituents.  I must concede that we will not vote ourselves out of this.  Society must change.  True devotion to the base Christian principles—where Jesus is way more than a bobblehead on the dashboard of empire.  If we want to change the world we need to lead by example rather than by force.  The people of the world easily see through our facade, our oblivious talk of freedom and democracy, they see Egypt and Sodom.