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

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.

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.

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.

Perspectives, Not Truth: Why Our Moral Codes Are Always Incomplete

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
Marcus Aurelius

I will attempt to bring multiple threads together in this blog and the quote above is a good starting point. If there is objective reality it’s not going to be something possessed by one human. We do not know all circumstances nor can we vet and independently verify every fact we receive. Or at least not without becoming totally hamstrung by the details. We put our trust in parties, traditions, systems, credentials and the logic which makes sense to us.

The deeper we dive into our physical reality the murkier it all gets. The world ‘above’ that we encounter feels concrete. But there is not a whole lot of substance to be found as we get beneath the surface. The rules that we discovered—of time and space—end up dissolving into a sea of probabilities and paradoxes at a quantum level that we don’t have an answer to. And this is the ‘concrete’ observable reality. We all see our own unique perspective, a slice, and build our model of the world from it.

But it is even murkier when we get to topics of social science. Morality and ethics, built often from what we believe is fact or truth, is more simply opinion and perspective than it can be hammered out in words everyone is able to agree on. Even for those who are of the same foundational religious assumptions—despite even having the same source texts—do not agree on matters of interpretation or application. So who is right? And who is wrong? How do we decide?

1) Patrick: We Don’t Need God To Be Moral

My cousin, Patrick, a taller, better looking and more educated version of myself, an independent thinker, and has departed from his missionary upbringing—gives this great little presentation: “Where Do You Get Your Morality?“

His foundation for a moral value system is concepts of truth, freedom and love which he describes in the video. I find it to be compelling and compatible with my own basic views. Our cooperation is as natural as competition, it is what makes us human, and a conscience gives potential for better returns.

However, while I agree with his ideal, there is also reason why deception, tyranny and indifference are as common in the world—they are natural—and this is because it can give one person or tribe an advantage. Lies, scams, and political propaganda all exploit trust and can be a shortcut for gaining higher status or more access.

No, cheating doesn’t serve everyone. But the lion has no reason to regret taking down a slow gazelle. By removing the weak, sick, or injured, it inadvertently culls the less-fit genes from the herd, strengthening the prey population over time and even preventing overgrazing of the savannah. It’s just a raw service to ecosystem balance, much like a short seller who exposes those overvalued stocks, forcing the market corrections and greater efficiency—acts of pure self-interest yielding a broader good.

Herd cooperation or predator opportunism are different strategies, both 100% natural and amoral in their own context. I’m neither psychopath nor a cannibal, but I do suspect those who are those things would as readily rationalize their own drives and proclivities. Nature doesn’t come with a rulebook—only consequences.

I’m certainly not a fan of the “might makes right” way of thinking and that is because my morality and ethics originate from the perspective being disadvantaged. But I also understand why those who never struggled and who have the power to impose their own will without fear of facing any consequences often develop a different moral framework.

We need to be invested in the same moral and civilizational project. Or else logic, that works for only some who have the strength or propaganda tools, will rule by default. I don’t disagree with Patrick, but his core message caters to a high IQ and high empathy crowd—which does leave me wondering how we can bring everyone else on board?

2) Kirk: A Way To Focus Our Moral Efforts

Charlie Kirk wasn’t a significant figure to me before his death. It may be a generational thing or just a general lack of interest in the whole conservative influencer crowd. I feel dumber any time I listen to Steven Crowder and assumed Kirk was just another one of the partisan bomb throwers. But, from my exposure to his content since, I have gained some appreciation.

Bring back the Ten Commandments, because it worked so well the first time?

Arguing for the Ten Commandments has never been a priority for me. It’s a list with a context and not standalone. Nevertheless it is a starting point for a moral discussion and also one that it seems Charlie Kirk would go to frequently in his campus debates. The two most difficult of these laws to explain to a religious skeptic are certainly the first two: “I am the Lord your God; Have no other gods before me and do not make idols.”

We generally agree on prohibition of murder and theft, or even adultery, but will disagree on one lawgiver and judge.

Why?

Well, it is simply because divine entity is abstract compared to things we have experienced—like the murder of a loved one or something being stolen from us. You just know this is wrong based on how it makes you feel. The belief in celestial being beyond human sight or comprehension just does not hit the same way as events we have observed. And it’s also the baggage the concept of a God carries in the current age. I mean, whose God?

It seems to be much easier just to agree the lowest common denominator: Don’t do bad things to other people.

But then we don’t. We justify killing others if it suits our political agenda, labeling people as bad for doing what we would do if facing a similar threat to our rights. If I’ve learned one thing it is that people always find creative ways to justify themselves while condemning the other side for even fighting back against an act of aggression.

Self-proclaimed good people do very bad things to good people. Like most people see themselves as above average drivers (not mathematically possible), we tend to distort things in favor of ourselves. Fundamental attribution error means we excuse our own compromises as a result of circumstances while we assume an immutable character flaw when others violate us. We might be half decent at applying morality to others—but exempt ourselves and our own.

So morality needs a focal point beyond us as individuals. There must be a universal or common good. Which might be the value of a theoretical ‘other’ who observes from a detached and perfectly unprejudiced point, the ideal judge. Not as a placeholder, but as the ultimate aim of humanity. One God. One truth. One justice. This as the answer to double standards, selective outrage and partisan bias. If we’re all seeking the same thing there is greater potential of harmony and social cohesion where all benefit.

At very least it would be good to promote an idea of an ultimate consequence giver that can’t be bought or bribed.

3) The Good, the Bad and the Aim for What Is Practically Impossible

The devil is always in the details. And the whole point of government is to mediate in this regard. Unfortunately, government, like all institutions, is merely a tool and tools are only as good as the hands that are making a use of them. A hammer is usually used to build things, but can also be used to bash in a skull. Likewise, we can come up with that moral system and yet even the best formed legal code or enforcement mechanism can be twisted—definitions beaten into what the current ruling regime needs.

The United States of America started with a declaration including the words “all men are created equal” and a Constitution with that starts: “We the people…” This is reflection of the Christian rejection of favoritism and St. Paul telling the faithful “there is no Jew or Greek” or erasing the supremacy claims of some. An elite declaring themselves to be exempted or specially chosen by God is not compatible with this vision. We never ask a chicken for consent what we take the eggs. We do not extend rights to those who we consider to be inferior to us or less than human. Human rights hinge on respect for the other that transcends politics.

That’s where the labels come in. If we call someone a Nazi, illegal, MAGAt, leftist or a Goyim we are saying that they are less than human and don’t deserve rights. This is the tribal and identity politics baseline. Those in the out-group are excluded for decency, their deaths celebrated as justice (even if there’s no due process) and we’ll excuse or privilege our own. All sides of the partisan divide do this—we create a reason to deny rights to others often using things like truth, freedom and love (Patrick’s foundation) as our justification: “Those terrorists hate our freedom and democracy, we must fight for those we love and our truth!”

Bringing this to a practical level: Looking at Minneapolis, the ICE and anti-ICE activities, we have competing moral narratives and a different vision for application of American values. On one side of the debate you have those who say that “one is one too many” if an illegal immigrant kills a US citizen—then suddenly do not care when Federal agents shoot a fellow American. The defiant “don’t tread on me” opposition to mandates and masks during Covid somehow shifting to “comply or die!” On the other side you have those outraged about Kyle Rittenhouse and who have been traditionally opposed to the 2nd Amendment defending Alex Pretti while the Trump administration condemns a man for carrying a permitted firearm.

Judgment is for the other, it seems, rights for those who look like us or agree. It’s this inconsistent eye, the call for understanding of our own and grace for ourselves with the harsh penalties applied to those within the forever shifting lines of our out-group, that shows how our political perspectives cloud our moral judgment. The ‘sin’ is not the act itself, but whether or not the violation suits our broader agenda. This is why ‘Christian’ fundamentalists, who will preach the love of Jesus on Sunday, can be totally indifferent to the suffering of children with darker skin tones—their God is about national schemes not a universal good or a commonly applied moral standard.

The aim needs to be justice that is blind to who and only considers what was done. If pedophilia is excused for powerful people who run our government and economy, then it should be for those at the bottom as well. If the misdemeanor of crossing an invisible line is bad, a justification for suspension of due process for all Americans, then why is it okay to violate the sovereignty of Venezuela or Iran over claims of human rights abuse?

The US fought a war of independence, took the country for the British and yet has been acting as a dictator, installing kings, when it suits our neo-colonial elites.

That’s immoral.

We’re all immoral.

The moral code of Patrick, Charlie or myself is incomplete—because every moral code is incomplete when filtered through human eyes. We start from our different premises: Patrick’s secular triad of truth, freedom, and love; Kirk’s religious appeal to the Ten Commandments and a divine lawgiver as the only reliable check on self-deception; my own reluctant recognition that empathy and cooperation are real, yet fragile, against the raw arithmetic of power and advantage. Yet all of our approaches circle the same problem: without some external, impartial standard that transcends our biases, tribes, and self-justifications, our morality devolves into competing opinions dressed as facts—exactly as Aurelius observed.

We cannot fully escape the murk. Objective reality, if it exists, slips through our fingers like quantum probabilities—and moral truth fractures along lines of culture, experience, and interest. Even when we agree on broad principles (don’t murder, don’t steal), the application often splinters: whose life counts as being worthy of protection? Whose borders, laws, or children deserve a defense? And whose “justice” is merely revenge in better lighting?The temptation is cynicism—just declare all values relative, retreat to my own personal pragmatism, and then let might (or votes, or algorithms) sort the rest. But that is a path leads to the very outcomes we decry—dehumanization, selective outrage, and the erosion of the entire civilizational project that allows agnostic high-empathy and high-IQ arguments like Patrick’s to even exist. Yes, nature may be amoral, but us humans build societies by pretending otherwise, by our aiming higher than baser ‘animal’ instincts—reaching for God.

So perhaps the most honest conclusion is not to claim possession of the full truth, but to commit to pursuing it together—knowing we’ll never quite arrive. We definitely need focal points that force some accountability beyond ourselves: whether that’s a concept of one ultimate observer who sees without favoritism, or by a shared commitment to universal human dignity rooted in principle beyond biology or tribe, or simply just the hard-won habit of applying the same rules to our side as to the other. Blind justice isn’t natural or self-evident—it’s cultivated. Morality is an aim which requires vigilance against our own double standards, humility before the limits of our perspective, and courage to defend principles we claim even when they inconvenience us.

In the end, we don’t need perfect agreement on the source of morality to agree that inconsistency in application is poisonous. What goes around will certainly come around and if we live by the sword we’ll die by it. If we can at least hold each other (and ourselves) to a standard higher than “what works for my group right now,” preserve the space for mutually beneficial cooperation over cruel predation—a shared conscience over mere convenience. Anything less, and the gazelle never outruns the lion for long—and neither does the society which forgets why it tried.

Lies, Damned Lies, and AI — The Machine Can’t Replace Mind

AI is an exciting new tool—kind of like Wikipedia was back in the day, something fun to turn to for those quick answers. But let’s be clear: AI is NOT a replacement for actual research. No, it isn’t an independent mind, and it’s certainly no impartial judge. All it really does is take the content that’s currently acceptable to its creators and then will synthesize it into responses. And it will lie to you outright, with zero conscience, because it has no conscience at all. It’s a sophisticated machine, a tool, nothing more or less, and it can absolutely be manipulated by the agendas of those behind the scenes who run it.

Like Wikipedia or so-called fact-checkers, at best, AI reflects the current bias or the established narrative. A perfect example of this is the lab leak theory for Covid-19’s origins. Back when some of us were talking about it, we were being “debunked” (some even banned), only for things to reverse later. As of early 2025, the CIA has assessed that a research lab origin is more likely than a natural one. So, to all the “sources please” crowd: beware. There’s no substitute for building your own knowledge base and using your own brain to evaluate things independently of official or established organizations.

AI is probably less reliable than your GPS. Sure, the tool works most of the time, but it’s no replacement for your own eyes or basic navigation skills. “Death by GPS” is a real category for a reason—if the machine were totally accurate, people wouldn’t drive off cliffs or into lakes after following bad directions. We need our own internal map, built on some established waypoints and a landmark or two, rather than just plugging in an address and blindly following the device into the abyss. Above all, we need a strong internal BS detector, we need it because the tool belongs to them—and it does what its creators need it to do. And telling you the unvarnished truth isn’t always the priority.

At its very best, AI will reflect the currently available information and most dominant narrative. Imagine, had the technology been available, asking it about the threat of Covid early on—it very likely would have dismissed outlier concerns as rumors, downplayed the disease in comparison to the seasonal flu, maybe even lectured about racism—while echoing the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s encouragement, February of 2020, to visit those crowded streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown in total defiance of emerging fears. (A family member ridiculed me for saying Covid would be a big deal at that time—dutifully citing mainstream media sources saying it was less worrisome than the seasonal flu.)

People have also very quickly forgotten how The Lancet published a deeply flawed study in the critical early weeks of the pandemic claiming hydroxychloroquine was extremely dangerous—only to quietly retract it later because the authors couldn’t verify the authenticity of the data. In short, the data was totally unreliable, and was a study based on falsehoods presented as science. If that was the “reliable” information being fed into an AI system back then, what would it have told you the scientific consensus was? It would have parroted the lie, and made it as unreliable as the retracted paper during the most urgent phase of the crisis. AI didn’t exist in its current form at the time, but its behavior would have mirrored exactly what I describe: reflecting the biased mainstream thought rather than truly act as a functioning as an independent thinker.

AI lags behind reality. A semi-independent mind—one relying on their personal intelligence and a grounded model of the world—can oftentimes do better. When I saw the early images coming out of Wuhan and listened to reports from doctors there (some of whom later died or disappeared), I knew this was not just the seasonal flu. It didn’t matter how many three-letter agencies were being quoted by corporate media; I could make my own judgment. I also quickly realized how terribly politicized even a pandemic can become. People didn’t pick sides based on the evidence—instead, they chased (or even invented) evidence to confirm their partisan narratives.

If AI had existed back then, it would have picked a side based on what its owners wanted. Covid is where I really honed my BS detector and learned that both sides lie—not that I was oblivious before, but seeing it play out in real time was very eye-opening. Partisans would flip positions the moment their preferred politicians did. Suddenly, independent voices raising alarms (with Trump leaning that way) became the target, then Democrats outflanked this with total hysteria after their months of denial when it actually mattered. We saw the same flip with Operation Warp Speed: with the left as vaccine skeptics while Trump promoted them, only for the Democrats pushing hard for mandates while Republicans opposed even masks.

How fast a symbol of oppression/security can become a symbol of oppression/security. Questions remain about effectiveness in either context.

Now, identity-obscuring masks are back in style as authoritarian right-wing fashion, as ICE agents terrorize, and insurrections are now cool again for Democrats who dislike immigration laws or the last election results. And AI won’t fix any of this partisanship—especially when people use it without understanding how it works or its severe limitations.

At best, AI is a good supplement or starting point for someone who already knows how to ask the right questions. At worst, it will lie and give you exactly what you want to hear. But one thing is certain: AI is NOT an objective truth-teller. Rely on your own reasoning, your own research, your own past experience, the reliable voices you have vetted on your own or your own BS detector first. The AI machine is no substitute. Yes, independent thinking is tough, in practice, and yet we must be smarter than the tool. Journalism, Wikipedia, or fact-checkers and GPS—all of these things are reliable… until they’re not.

More Death in Minneapolis: Questions About Federal Enforcement and Accountability

The recent fatal shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, by U.S. Border Patrol agents has left many Americans—including many who identify as conservative—grappling with deep unease. On January 24, 2026, amid escalating protests against Federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis, Pretti was executed while trying to protect a woman from Federal agents who had just knocked her down. Multiple eyewitness videos, verified by major outlets like The New York Times and NBC News, show Pretti holding a phone—not a gun—while attempting to assist a woman who had been shoved to the ground. Federal officials initially claimed self-defense, alleging he approached with a weapon, but sworn witness testimonies and footage contradict this, describing him as non-resistant and focused on helping others.

Pretti was a dedicated healthcare worker who cared for veterans, an avid outdoorsman, and a U.S. citizen with no criminal record beyond minor traffic issues. He had a valid firearms permit, was legally carrying at the time of the confrontation, but evidence indicates no firearm was brandished. His family has condemned the official narrative as “sickening lies,” and protests erupted almost immediately, with Minnesota officials like Gov. Tim Walz calling the incident “sickening” and demanding an end to what they describe as a federal “occupation.” It marks the second fatal shooting of a US citizen by Federal agents in Minneapolis this month, following Renee Good’s death on January 7.

What disturbs me most is the reaction from the MAGA right-wing. Pretti has been quickly labeled as a “Communist” or “domestic terrorist” online, often solely based on his presence at the protests against immigration raids or the unverified social media claims. Yet reliable reports portray him as apolitical in daily life—as kind, service-oriented, and uninterested in partisan drama. His friends and colleagues emphasize his true commitment to saving lives, not disrupting them. Celebrating or dismissing his death, dehumanizing him with labels, because he fits a convenient ideological enemy is profoundly wrong. Rights violations don’t depend on politics. No, due process and presumption of innocence apply to everyone, even (or especially) those we disagree with.

This selective outrage highlights a deeper issue not being addressed: this is political retribution disguised as enforcement. Minnesota has a very small illegal immigrant population compared to other states, around 95,000–130,000 (per recent Pew Research and state analyses), nothing like Texas (2.1 million) or Florida (1.6 million)—red states with far larger numbers. And yet Federal resources, including thousands of ICE, Border Patrol, and DHS agents deployed since late 2025, have disproportionately targeted blue Minnesota with sanctuary-like policies. Freezing billions in Federal funds to the state and overriding local law enforcement appears to be punitive, aimed at breaking political resistance rather than uniform honest immigration control.

This echoes historical patterns of a central power crushing regional autonomy, and most starkly in Joseph Stalin’s use of starvation against Ukraine during the Holodomor of 1932–1933. Stalin had deliberately engineered a man-made famine to suppress Ukrainian nationalism and resistance to Soviet collectivization, killing millions through grain seizures, border blockades, and denial of aid—this framed as necessary for national unity and ideological purity, but was clearly intended to crush a semi-autonomous region’s defiance. Here, the heavy-handed federal deployment in Minnesota—targeting a state resisting central directives—clearly mirrors that authoritarian tactic: punish non-compliance under the guise of security, erode local sovereignty, and break any “resistance” to the regime’s aims.

The US Constitution originally designed states as semi-sovereign entities—much like small nations —with the Federal government focused on their defense and on interstate affairs. Expansions of Federal authority—starting as an unfortunate byproduct of Lincoln’s Civil War centralization of power and those Reconstruction-era impositions, shifted the balance. Today’s actions—militarized deployments without state consent, the killings during protests, and limited (or non-existent) cooperation in investigations—violate the 10th Amendment’s spirit. A Federal judge has already issued a restraining order on DHS crowd-control tactics, and multiple states have since joined legal challenges calling them “militarized and illegal.”

George Orwell diagnosed this in 1984: regimes manufacture perpetual enemies to justify control—using propaganda to invert reality. Fear of “outsiders” or “internal threats” (protesters, or sanctuary cities) is stoked to excuse force, while media—dominated by a few billionaire-aligned outlets—amplifies narratives that dumb down discourse. Some cheer Federal agents after these killings, seeing them as heroes against an illegal “invasion,” yet ignore contradictions like inaction in red states with bigger populations. People who just a couple years ago decried Covid mandates and the slaying of Ashli Babbitt now seem to see FAFO as a moral argument. It’s always the same playbook: dehumanize, divide, and centralize the decision making power.

The above is brazen disinformation with an agency logo. They’re distorting and misleading people.

The right-wing is just as collectivist and dumb as those who they derided as being leftist, Socialist or Communist. They couldn’t articulate a logical consistent argument in defense of their irrational smorgasbord approach to ethics and morality, it is just whatever is expedient in the moment and on the whim of their Big Brother stand in (DJT) as the billionaires technocrats decide how they will manage us unruly human cattle.

Partisans keep flip flopping. The truly principled do not change and stand for “liberty and justice for all” as they pledged.

Orwell didn’t foresee AI and mass surveillance tools like Palantir, but the parallels are eerie. During COVID, many on the right had decried overreach in the name of liberty; now, similar authoritarian capabilities are embraced when aimed at perceived enemies. They fail to see the machine they’re building will also be turned on them. They reveal themselves as tools rather than moral thinkers. This hypocrisy reveals how various systems of control operate identically—whether they’re labeled Socialist, authoritarian, woke or otherwise—they erode rights selectively until they target anyone dissenting.

Pretti’s death isn’t about immigration politics alone; it’s about the erosion of constitutional norms, the weaponization of federal power against states, and the willingness to overlook violations when the victim is painted as “the other.” True conservatism should defend limited government, state sovereignty, and individual rights always—not cheer when Federal agents kill citizens in the street (then clap in celebration) over disputed enforcement actions. If we accept this for “Communists” today, tomorrow it could be anyone labeled an enemy. When a regime is given permission to abuse Nazis then everyone is a Nazi if they stand up to the regime. That’s how this works and smart people aren’t a party to it.

Yes, the agents clapped and said “boo hoo” learning of the ICU nurse’s death. Very similar to the attitude of Jonathan Ross who exclaimed “fucking bitch” after he shot a woman in the face.

We need accountability, especially at the top, in a time when our President’s wealth has doubled as he continues to protect pedophile predator elites, we need to ask why release of the Epstein files is being and unlawfully slow walked. We need to have independent investigations of these killings, transparency on bodycam footage, and an end to punitive Federal overreach. Lives like that of Alex Pretti’s—of ordinary Americans trying to help in chaotic moments imposed by officials who only double down rather than deescalate—deserve better than propaganda-fueled dismissal. We do not want to wait until two becomes two million—we either stand together now against a budding authoritarian regime or we fall separately.

Abraham’s Righteousness vs. Caiaphas’s Calculus: Divergent Ethics in Modern Conflicts

Relating to a coworker about how hard it is for me to transmit certain values absent a cultural context, with how deeply ingrained they are as part of my religious upbringing, in pondering this reality it becomes easy to understand why so many people—myself included, at times—assume their own moral framework is universal, something everyone else must naturally share.

This moment of realization tied to a broader observation about value systems and how wildly different various religious traditions really are despite sharing some of the same foundational texts—they are fundamentally and irrevocably different. And yet because the texts overlap, some people mistakenly treat those systems as essentially similar—or even interchangeable—overlooking the profound divergences in interpretation, emphasis, or lived practice that centuries of distinct cultural evolution in these systems of thought have produced.

I plan to make three stops: one in the frame of contemporary Western thought, the next from the time of Jesus, and lastly with the patriarch Abraham. And with each of these stops explore how shared origin can mask strikingly divergent ethical worlds, and why recognizing those differences matters more than ever in our interconnected age.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty and the Blackstone Ratio

Wrongful convictions happen. We often assume, since someone was charged, that they must be guilty of something. I mean, why else would they be wearing that orange jumpsuit? But this impulse goes contrary to reality where cops plant evidence, people lie, and prejudice plays a role in judgment.

This was the case with Brian Banks—who had been accused of rape by a classmate who later, after his years in prison, confessed to fabricating the whole account. What a horrible predicament: your whole future blown up, a jury that only sees your guilt.

A jurist, Sir William Blackstone, understanding the imperfection of the justice system and that the ultimate goal of justice is to protect the innocent, proposed:

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer

This, the Blackstone ratio, is foundational to how things are at least supposed to work in the United States. Founding father Ben Franklin actually took the concept further by stating, “it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.” John Adams, while he defended the British soldiers charged with murder for their role in the Boston Massacre, argued the following:

We find, in the rules laid down by the greatest English Judges, who have been the brightest of mankind; We are to look upon it as more beneficial, that many guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should suffer. The reason is, because it’s of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished; and many times they happen in such a manner, that it is not of much consequence to the public, whether they are punished or not. But when innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, it is immaterial to me, whether I behave well or ill; for virtue itself is no security. And if such a sentiment as this should take place in the mind of the subject, there would be an end to all security whatsoever.

This commitment to the innocent reflects a strong emphasis on individual rights. It also seems rooted in the story most defining of Western religion, and that is the story of Jesus—falsely accused and put to death for the sake of political expediency. This has become the defining narrative and a reason to reflect on our judgment rather than react. It is why many principled conservatives are always uncomfortable with those trials in the court of public opinion where the state parades a prosecuted person and people assume this is proof of an airtight case.

You look guilty just for being in a courtroom defending from an accusation.

Tyler Robinson currently stands accused of murdering Charlie Kirk. Some have decided his guilt to the extent of forgiving him prior to his even standing trial or being given the chance to defend himself—as if there’s just no way that anyone other than him could be involved. That’s not justice; that’s denying him a presumption of innocence and might be enabling others to escape accountability for their involvement. It is better that he go free than chance a wrongful conviction—that is just Christian.

Caiaphas’s Expediency Math: Killing One to Save All

At the completely opposite end of the spectrum from the Christian West is the example of the high priest who claimed the murder of an innocent man was necessary to save Israel from destruction:

Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”
(John 11:49-50 NIV)

This may very well be the origin point of trolley problem moral reasoning, where a hypothetical situation is proposed in which an intervention will cost fewer lives. If we just switch the track, this fictional trolley only kills one rather than multiple people. And it seems very reasonable. Isn’t it better when more people survive?

Caiaphas reasoned it was better to kill one Jesus to save Israel. But it didn’t work out that way. The entire nation—along with their temple and sacrificial system—was forever destroyed in 70 AD. The high priest’s moral reasoning was compromised and wrong. It did not save Israel to kill one man and may well have been part of what eventually led to the destruction of Jerusalem. Those who did not accept the way of Jesus continued, after his ministry ended, to kill his followers and resist their civil authorities. Had they taken one moment to reflect and reconsider their plan to kill their way to peace, they may have survived intact rather than be spread to the corners of the empire.

The problem with killing one—without a just cause, to secure the future—is that it usually doesn’t end there. Kill one and you’ll kill ten; if you kill ten, you’ll kill 100, until soon it is millions upon millions. We see this in the campaign against Gaza. Tens of thousands of children are slaughtered and this is being justified as a war against terror. The reality is that it may very well create the backlash that will make the Zionist project untenable as people see this notion of blood guilt and collective punishment as repulsive. This is not compatible with the Christian values of the West and will lead to our destruction if the escalation of war is not rejected.

The world is better when we don’t play God and use the expediency math. If you’re okay killing one innocent person, you’re now an enemy of all humanity. And if you are willing to kill one, then the second and third come much easier. Innocent life should always be protected—whether it is the life of Jesus, be it the “enemies'” children, or the unborn. Pro-life means no excuses for the IDF that don’t equally apply to Hamas. If it is okay for the Zionist regime to kill scores of civilians as “collateral damage” for every militant killed—where even the Israelis admit the victims of their onslaught are 83% civilians—why mourn when it is just a handful in Bondi?

Schlanger, brandishing a rifle, was 100% affiliated with those killing civilians in Gaza. By the IDF standard, he is equally guilty because of his proximity and sympathies.

The best protection of innocent people, like your own, is to oppose all killing of innocent people no matter the color of their skin or the clothes they wear. If the IDF can kill a journalist claiming they are “Hamas with a camera” or “Hamas-affiliated,” then why is it wrong for Eli Schlanger, who has materially aided a genocide, to be targeted along with his associates? We need to reject this math of expediency no matter who is using it, or we can’t be upset when what goes around finally comes around.

Abraham’s Plea for Mercy: Sparing the Many for the Few Righteous

Now we can go way back, to the book of Genesis, where the world’s most powerful monotheistic religions find their foundation, and this man of faith named Abraham. We join him prior to the destruction of Sodom and have this interesting exchange:

Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.” The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
(Genesis 18:17-23 NIV)

Abraham’s opening question, in the passage above, tells you a whole lot about his moral reasoning. But before that you basically have the old covenant explained in brief: The blessing that was being bestowed on Abraham had to do with “doing what is right and just” or not simply being a blood relative of him, which is something that Jesus and the Apostles explained over and over to those who saw their genetic tie to the patriarch as a sort of entitlement and did not act justly or mercifully as he did.

Continuing in the text, take time to contrast the expediency math of Caiaphas with the following:

What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?” “If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.” Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?” He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.” Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?” He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?” He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?” He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.
(Genesis 18:24-33 NIV)

Abraham, after expressing his concern for the innocent, offers an opening bid at fifty righteous. Will God spare the entire wicked city for just fifty? And the first thing that is obvious is his humility, pleading with “I am nothing but dust and ashes” and showing his attitude before God. Second is that his orientation is toward the sparing of innocent life even if it means the evil people of the city of Sodom escape deserved judgment. This is in line with Blackstone’s ratio and in total opposition to Caiaphas, who argued to sacrifice rather than to protect the righteous one. Eventually Abraham concedes, and it makes more sense just to evacuate those righteous—nevertheless the righteous are not destroyed with the wicked.

So why is this account in Genesis?

Why is God engaged in a negotiation with a mere man?

The answer is that this anecdote is here for a reason, and that is to be instructive. The author of Genesis isn’t just telling us that Abraham was righteous—they’re giving us instruction on how to be righteous. To have the same disposition as Abraham, that’s the way to be a child of Abraham, and the path of righteousness that leads to the blessings through God’s promise. Chosen means you believe and obey the Lord. You can’t claim to be children of God, or of Abraham, if you truly share nothing in common with them in terms of your behavior or spirit. Genesis is telling us what that looks like in practice.

Christian Orientation Towards Mercy and Humanity is Truly Abrahamic.

In traversing these three moments—from courtrooms shaped by Christian reflection on an innocent’s crucifixion, to the high priest’s fateful expediency that failed to save his nation, and back to Abraham’s humble plea for mercy amid judgment—we uncover a profound reality: The orientation of the Christian perspective, underpinning American rights, is directly the opposite of the ideological lineage of Caiaphas.

The commitment, in faith, to protecting that one innocent life in a crowd of evil is to be a son or daughter of Abraham. Those who do the opposite, who are willing to sacrifice the innocent for sake of expediency, carry none of the character of Abraham and cannot be the heirs of anything promised to him. They must first repent of their sin—then they can be blessed, with all nations, through the one singular seed of Abraham (Gal 3:16) which is Christ Jesus.

Going back to the start and those ethics ingrained in us through a religiously derived culture and our assumptions, those who have rejected Christ and are completely willing to kill innocent people to accomplish ends are also going to manifest the other evil traits of Proverbs 6:16-19:

There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

Those of us raised in an Anabaptist church got a strong dose of the Gospel according to Matthew and were taught that speech should be simple and truthful. Let your yea be yes, and nay be nay is about truly honest conversation and credibility without relying on oaths. We were told to have a peaceable spirit and merciful approach with all people—to be humble.

This is an orientation that many of Christian faith may believe is universal. Except it is not. Ethno-supremacist pride is okay with those of certain ideologies, deception for sake of gaining an upper hand is looked at like a virtue, they look at their ability to trick you as proof they are superior, and sow the seeds of division covertly not to be caught—like this example:

In a covert operation during 2007–2008, Israeli Mossad agents impersonated CIA officers—using forged U.S. passports, American currency, and CIA credentials—to recruit members of the Pakistan-based Sunni militant group Jundallah for attacks inside Iran, including bombings and assassinations targeting Iranian officials and civilians, as part of a broader effort to destabilize Tehran’s regime amid nuclear tensions. The deception, conducted openly in places like London, aimed to frame the United States as the sponsor, exploiting Jundallah’s sectarian and separatist motives while providing plausible deniability for Israel; U.S. officials uncovered the ruse through internal investigations debunking earlier media reports of CIA involvement, leading to outrage in the Bush White House (with President Bush reportedly “going ballistic”), strained intelligence cooperation under Obama, and the eventual U.S. terrorist designation of Jundallah in 2010, though no public repercussions were imposed on Israel.
(Overview above by Grok, read: False Flag)

Imagine having a friend who deliberately set you up for a fight against another person by telling them that you said something about them. My son had a bully do this to him on the bus and this is exactly what so-called ‘greatest ally’ tried to do to the US. For the Zionist regime, and Mossad, conducting the terror operation via a Pakistani proxy simply was not enough. They wanted Iran to think the attacks originated with the US in order to provoke a reaction. And this is how the world becomes a cesspool, all because the Iranians won’t stand idle while Palestinians are deprived of land and human rights.

Deviousness is not exclusive to the children of Caiaphas. But there’s no stops for those willing to kill innocent people for the sake of expediency. And a partnership with them is only going to undermine the foundation of our civilization. The US and ‘Christian’ West have already lost their moral reputation for this unholy alliance. We need to repent and return to holding evil men accountable and protecting the innocent or all will be lost—we can’t exempt some from a standard of normal decency without also damaging all of Christendom.

“You’re Thirty Years Old Living In Milton”

The quote in title, an unintentionally honest comment from a pious young woman, will continue to ring in my ears for decades to come. Scripture describes the word of God being “sharper than any two-edged sword,” but her romantic rejection came more like a hammer blow to my Mennonite worldview where spiritual was supposed to outweigh physical gain. I had patterned my life, up to that point, around a sort of practicality over flash and suddenly realized what I thought was an asset was actually liability.

I was reminded of these words again as my wife’s glowing approval of the monstrosity in my driveway, a Ford Explorer ST, still feels out of place for me. I mean, granted, I was not keen on transitioning to family life with a pedestrian option like a minivan or boring SUV. But I didn’t expect my always frugal—cost conscious—female counterpart to go along with it 100%. She was supposed to pump the brakes and did not. I’ve realized, in this, that every woman is happy with the nice things and won’t say no if you provide it for them. We’ve both agreed to blame the baby for our reckless financial decision.

So, back to Milton, a place I’ve since moved on from and to the higher cost town across the river. Up until the words from the mouth of this wholesome girl, I had thought having a little house completely paid off would be worth something—even attractive. After all she claimed to be interested in missionary service and what better place to get a start, right? From what I had believed, there are needs anywhere there are people and where better to start than a deteriorating industrial town? Milton is an example of the rust belt, a place of declining opportunities and costs of outsourcing production.

The phrase “you’re thirty years old living in Milton” was simply accurate conveyance of her underlying priorities. There’s always the difference between what we say we are and the actual truth. Even in the secular culture there’s a romanticization of the love of two impoverished people who stand together in desperate circumstances. And those raised in an environment where Christian mission is supposed to be first, living as one poor as a church mouse amongst common people would seem the ideal.

But it is not. No, this young woman, like the one who had rejected me for not pursuing a title of “missionary” or “pastor” years prior, was clearly after status. They will not say it outright, probably are not even aware, but it is a kind of glamour they seek in service. A call to some exotic location to impress their religious peers. Sure, a Bentley may not be status in a conservative Anabaptist church, but the ability to jet around the world (often on someone else’s dime) is thrilling where it is considered sacrifice. It is currency, a way to gain status in a community of faith or be seen as righteous.

Resources are showered on the ministry or mission. Sure, it comes with stress, my 9-5 does as well, but the payoff is proportional. And not talking about “treasures in heaven” or God’s favor. A pastor has access to the community resources. It is social power as much as it is a position of responsibility and there are always those who want to curry a little favor. Again, it also comes with more scrutiny as well, but most tend to minimize the costs when they set off in a particular direction. Besides that, for the Mennonite woman, this is for the broad shoulders of her husband to bear, right?

The high expectations of my wife have been a little surprising to me. To her credit, she has been putting up with a partly finished remodel of old house since marrying and moving in. But yet, despite coming from the Philippines, her standards are now close to that of an American woman. We comment about our son’s demands for what the other kids have, but often fail the test ourselves. I mean, is it at all coincidence that I decide to finally pull the trigger on a new vehicle after a Mennonite workmate showed up with his new truck? Probably not.

And that’s the bottom line here. We are all after power in different forms. Be it money, be it land, access to resources or just status in our peer group. What I’ve found is that a religiously trained (or ‘spiritual’) person is no different. No, all they do is give a righteous cover to their personal ambition. They live in a delusion. Materialism is bad, they will say, but they are fine with your donation of money so they can buy a bigger missionary compound in Southeast Asia. And, under the fluff of my own pursuit of love was the same sexual motivation of all men.

I hated when a physiatrist summarized my obsession with the impossibility as being a “sexual attraction” and dismissed it initially as a woman who knew nothing of my heart as a man of God. But now I realized this is undoubtedly the correct assessment. Men want sexually attractive women and women want high status men. This is an essential part of our nature—a matter of survival for our genes—a young healthy woman is able to bear children and a wealthy or connected man can give them much more than a thirty year old living in Milton.

I’ve moved on from Milton, but cannot move on from the reality I have encountered head on, we’re sexual creatures living in material reality and can’t escape this by denial. I had been better to learn this decades ago rather than cling to a naive notion of love where it ends like a storybook. But I am now living the best life available to me and hope that my wife is happy with her decision. She’s won my heart asking for the “simple and happy life” and now I want to give her that and everything else wonderful this world offers. The best thing we gained was the child born almost a year ago now…

It’s never too late to live the life that you should—which is more about perspective than what you possess—even if you were denied love for being thirty years old and living in Milton.

MAGA Betrayed: A Full Court Press to Silence the Free Press

A month or two ago a family member sent me a video of Steven Crowder going on the attack against an Orthodox Christian nun in Palestine. Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos was hosted by Tucker Carlson and talked to him about the violence against indigenous Christians in the occupied West Bank. And very soon after this interview, Crowder, who supposedly represents conservative values, went on the offensive claiming to “debunk” a faithful woman who has dedicated her life to what is remaining of Christian legacy in the Holy Lands.

Crowder, an Evangeli-con social media grifter, being so totally vicious about this woman’s physical appearance in his opening salvo made me wonder about his motives. What is it to him that she was sharing her experience? So I followed the money and found the reason. Crowder has a few notable sponsors, one of them called “Express VPN” and if you dig a little deeper this originates from a developer that goes by Kape Technologies.

Who owns that?

A guy named Teddy Sagi—an Israeli billionaire with an unscrupulous record.

So one has to wonder, is the sponsorship about selling the service or is it a way to buy influence? A bit of both, perhaps?

Either way, Crowder is getting paid to represent a certain perspective and likely got a memo: “We need you to do a hit job on that Orthodox nun, this is your list of talking points about her from our guys in intelligence. We will talk more about our ad budget for next year if you can get 100k clicks.” That’s my own crude caricature, but we know that Sagi is getting something in return for his investment and a VPN makes a nice front company to pay for propaganda. They also make a nice way to access your personal data—a specialty of Israeli-sourced ‘security’ software.

Here’s a brief overview by Grok:

Kape Technologies, a UK-based cybersecurity conglomerate specializing in privacy tools like VPNs, was originally founded in 2011 as Crossrider, a company notorious for developing ad injection software that was frequently bundled with malware, enabling intrusive tracking and data harvesting on users’ devices—a practice that continued plaguing the web as late as 2019. Rebranded to Kape in 2018 amid efforts to pivot toward “ethical” digital security, it aggressively acquired major VPN providers to dominate the market: CyberGhost in 2017 for $10.4 million, Private Internet Access (PIA) in 2019 for $95 million, ZenMate, and notably ExpressVPN in 2021 for $936 million, now controlling about 40% of the top VPN services alongside affiliate review sites that suspiciously rank its own products highest. The company is fully owned by Unikmind Holdings, a shell entity controlled by Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi—a convicted fraudster from a 1990s insider trading scandal, Playtech gambling software founder, and major donor to the Israeli Defense Forces—who bought out remaining shares in 2024, privatizing Kape and reducing transparency by delisting it from the London Stock Exchange, followed by layoffs of around 180 employees (12% of staff) in early 2025 amid whispers of restructuring. This history raises serious potential risks for users seeking true privacy: from backdoors or data-sharing compelled by Israeli intelligence ties (Sagi and co-founder Koby Menachemi hail from elite Unit 8200 spy unit, echoing Pegasus spyware scandals), to conflicts of interest where “privacy” tools could flip to surveillance, especially given Kape’s opaque operations and the irony of a former malware peddler now gatekeeping global internet anonymity.

Things are not what they appear. Look up Pegasus and Paragon. If it says security it is probably about backdoor access to your personal information. But, of course, you’re supposed to be afraid of Chinese ownership of TikTok. Anyhow, as the expression goes—every accusation is a confession. If they say it is about your security it is really only about their ability to maintain control over the flow of information and to manufacture consent for their policies. The fox is now guarding the henhouse.

Weaponization of Social Media

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk there has been a full-court press to ‘weaponize’ social media on behalf of Israel. This isn’t my choice of words. This comes from the mouth of one foreign leader who is always allowed unusual access to US politics and that is Benjamin Netanyahu:

Social media is the most important weapon Israel has at its disposal. […] Now, if we can get those two things [TikTok under U.S. control and X access], we can get a lot, and I can go on about other things, but that’s not the point right now.

Oh, so remember that bipartisan campaign to ban TikTok, supposedly over the concern that the Chinese wanted to spy on our kids, which started right after Israel started their bombing of Gaza and killing of journalists? Well, the real reason for this should now be clear: Hasbara doesn’t work when those not already brainwashed and indoctrinated can see the truth in a thousand images. TikTok bypassed the censorship regime.

And let’s not pretend we do not know what that is. After Covid we all know how there was enormous pressure put on our social media platforms to protect the government narrative. Mark Zuckerberg recently went on Joe Rogan to tell how Facebook was forced to suppress truth, under the Biden administration, he likened the fact-check process to being “something out of 1984.” If you recall, people got banned for saying the virus may have originated in lab in China—when now this is being accepted a plausible theory of the origin.

The same people who would scoff at “China virus” being racist are okay “free Palestine” being labeled as anti-Semetic.

So when TikTok was forced into selling and has hired Erica Mindel, a former IDF soldier, to run their new “Public Policy Manager for Hate Speech” position—do you think she will be there as a neutral arbiter and ban the use of the word “terrorist” describe the children in Gaza? Not a chance. No, it is her job to censor information behalf of the site’s new owners, including the Zionist Trump-backer billionaire Larry Ellison, and their aim being anything on the platform that could hurt the Gaza real estate deal or can be interpreted as pro-Palestinian.

The War Against Free Speech

Why this full-court press? The US is Israel’s most vital resource and is exploited to the tune of billions annually in direct aid. And that’s just the start. Wars in Iraq and Syria, which did not benefit average Americans in any way shape or form, cost us trillions and that is not to mention the young men killed or broken for life—like those two rampaging Marine veterans over the weekend.

With their once reliable Boomer vein dying off and younger generations seeing through their propaganda. The Zionists, to fully tap into our human and industrial resources, must first strip away the resistance. This is not left to chance. No, they buy support of influencers. The dangle incentives in front of young rising stars online, bring them on a trip to Israel and the then will sponsor their content through shell companies. Once you are hooked on their money they own you, all you need to do is sprinkle in a little of their propaganda and the checks keep coming—and if you deviate too far from script?

US influencers partying it up, on a paid trip to Israel, while Palestinians die

Well, Charlie Kirk was doing a lot of talking about this before his untimely death:

I have less ability… to criticize the Israeli government than actual Israelis do. And that’s really, really weird. I’m terrified of stepping on a minefield here, trying to please both my owners [donors] and my audience.
(Charlie Kirk, The Megyn Kelly Show, Episode 832, August 6, 2025)

Yes, Kirk had been a stalwart Zionist, just as many in the Evangeli-con fundamentalist camp are, but recently had begun to openly express his doubts, questioning the October 7th narrative and suggesting that there was a stand down order given that had allowed to happen, and he even started to platform conservatives who see Gaza as a genocide or don’t want our tax dollars used to bomb babies. Kirk was loudly opposed to Trump getting involved in Netanyahu’s war against Iran. And was called on the carpet—by his billionaire owners—for his defiant show of independence.

The Unforgivable Disloyalty

Trump and Kirk have the same billionaires bankrolling them. Miriam Adelson, born in Mandatory Palestine and widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, gave the Trump campaign $100 million dollars. This might be why he is backing up her Maccabee Task Force (MTF) in his crackdown on speech on college campuses. Her MTF doesn’t just counter the criticism of Israel—it obliterates it, slandering pro-Palestinian students and faculty as “Hamas supporters” or as being “Jew haters.” It is basically cancel culture on steroids.

With $100 million in lobbying muscle, MTF deploys doxxing campaigns, and pressures universities to discipline activists, pushes “(re)educational” programs that whitewash Israel’s actions. At Columbia U, Adelson’s MTF helped fuel Trump’s calls to deport student protesters like Mahmoud Khalil. This is not advocacy. No, it us a speech cartel, ensuring that no Gaza encampment or divestment call will threaten the billions funneled to Israel’s war machine. Adelson’s checks don’t just buy Trump’s loyalty—they buy campus silence, turning campuses into censored zones where dissent is punished and truth is the enemy.

Trump marketed MAGA to those weary of war, proclaiming America First as his motto—absolute opposition to foreign aid and DEI favoritism. But, like the scene from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, when the ruling pigs change the egalitarian commandment “All animals are equal” (adding to it “but some animals are more equal than others.”) we’ve found there is always one exception to this and that is on behalf of those who paid for his campaign. With President Trump it is America First—Israel Firster.

Trump’s betrayal goes beyond this directed attack on free speech. It’s also about family gain. Enter Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East “peace” envoy, who had brokered the Abraham Accords, not as a genuine diplomatic win, but as a sweetheart real estate deal for his own firm. Kushner’s Affinity Partners hedge fund scooped up $2 billion from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund mere months after leaving the White House—blood money that was funneled through UAE backchannels, with zero U.S. oversight. And let’s not forget his now infamous Gaza proposal: turning the rubble-strewn devastated Strip into a “waterfront property” paradise for wealthy Gulf investors, complete with luxury condos atop the mass graves. It’s not policy; it’s a flip: Kushner as the fixer—turning Palestinian suffering into billionaire beachfront.

And none of this is good for the American people who are already footing the bill for the demolition of Gaza.

Property of Israel—Till Death?

Once one truly understands the extent of the influence of this foreign lobby, and how much it has cost us in terms of cash, lives and reputation in the world, there is never a return to politics as usual. Trump has not ended cancel culture, foreign aid, forever war or drained the swamp. No, AIPAC and a slew of billionaires tied to Israel are calling the shots, along with Netanyahu, and—while they plan the next big war on behalf of a few elites and Israel—the shelves are bare for wounded warriors of the last one.

The world leader on cancel culture is waited on by his faithful servant.

Charlie Kirk, like his friend Candice Owens, like Tucker Carlson, and Elon Musk, seemed to have increasing awareness of this sordid reality—where we got the same policies no matter who we voted for. Unfortunately he was never given the chance to put together everything that is laid out above. Whether he was killed by a crazed trans leftist or the same big money that made Turning Point a political force on a national level we’ll likely never know, but we do know that he wasn’t just some paid shill reading off a script.

Apparently the desperate Zionist regime is now paying American influencers $7000 for every post the make to help hide the crimes of Gaza. And the deeper you dig the more disturbing it gets. They fear-monger about TikTok somehow being a platform for CCP spying and then hand it over to the control of a foreign country with one scandal after another involving surveillance of unwitting users of their software. This is affront to MAGA and the American values that those on the right-wing claimed to defend during the Covid shutdowns—we must not let the powerful monopolize the conversation.

This is free speech and should not be punished.

The war on free speech—whether through Crowder’s bought-and-paid-for smears, Adelson’s campus crackdowns, or TikTok’s censorship under Ellison’s ex-IDF enforcers—is a desperate bid to shield a grotesque truth: Trump and Kushner’s betrayal of MAGA’s anti-war ethos for a Gaza land grab, funded by Adelson’s millions and Saudi blood money, turns Palestinian suffering into profit. But Gen Z’s unfiltered posts and campus rebellions are cracking the Hasbara facade, exposing the bombs, the condos, and the lies. Reject their tech fronts, defy their censors, and amplify the raw truth—on social media, in the streets, everywhere. America’s soul isn’t for sale; reclaim our Constitutional birthright by speaking out, or let the billionaires’ war on dissent silence us all.

Morality as a Fluid Mess: Conditioning, Conflict, and the Mirage of Universality

We cling to morality like it’s a lighthouse in the fog—steady, universal, guiding us home. But it’s a lie. It’s a battered flag, flapping in whatever wind our tribe’s blowing, stitched from the yarns we’re spun by family, faith, or flag. Raised Mennonite, I drank in peace and love for the outsider as if they were carved in my bones—until I saw they weren’t. Nature doesn’t whisper “thou shalt not kill”; it shrugs while we slit throats or swipe bread when the need hits. History’s littered with it: Biblical Israel butchered Canaanites—whole towns, babies dashed on rocks—‘cause God handed them the deed (Deuteronomy 7:1-2), and the faithful sang psalms over the ashes.

Fast-forward to 2025: Israel pounds Gaza, kids buried in rubble, and the justification’s “security”—Hamas tunnels, rockets, survival. Insiders nod; it’s moral, necessary. Morality’s no fixed star—it’s a mirror, reflecting who we’re with and what we want.Look around today, and it’s the same mess. Russia rolls tanks into Ukraine, March 2025 still grinding on, flattening Mariupol redux—schools, hospitals, grandmas in the crosshairs. Putin’s line: “denazification,” protecting Russian speakers, historical destiny. His people buy it, or enough do—state TV’s been marinating them in it for years. The West screams “war crimes!”—sanctions pile up, Zelensky’s a saint on X—but that’s the outsider’s perch. Kyiv’s got its own blood on the slate: shelling Donbas for a decade, shrugging at Russian-speaking dead. Both sides sanctify their kills; morality bends to the banner. Or take the U.S.: Trump loyalists storm Capitol Hill in ‘21, “stolen election!” on their lips, while Biden’s crew locks ‘em up, crowing “democracy!” Same act—violence for a cause—flips from treason to justice depending on the lens. It’s not universal; it’s us-versus-them, conditioned to the core.

Look around today, and it’s the same mess. Russia rolls tanks into Ukraine, March 2025 still grinding on, flattening Mariupol redux—schools, hospitals, grandmas in the crosshairs. Putin’s line: “denazification,” protecting Russian speakers, historical destiny. His people buy it, or enough do—state TV’s been marinating them in it for years. The West screams “war crimes!”—sanctions pile up, Zelensky’s a saint on X—but that’s the outsider’s perch. Kyiv’s got its own blood on the slate: shelling Donbas for a decade, shrugging at Russian-speaking dead. Both sides sanctify their kills; morality bends to the banner. Or take the U.S.: Trump loyalists storm Capitol Hill in ‘21, “stolen election!” on their lips, while Biden’s crew locks ‘em up, crowing “democracy!” Same act—violence for a cause—flips from treason to justice depending on the lens. It’s not universal; it’s us-versus-them, conditioned to the core.

Objections bubble up like clockwork. The optimists—call ‘em Pinker’s crowd (2011)—say genocide’s revulsion proves we’ve got a moral spine, empathy baked in from caveman days. Hunter-gatherers shared meat, Confucius preached kindness—see, we’re wired for good! But that’s a half-truth, and a flimsy one. Those old tribes cared for their own; strangers got the club. Same with today’s wars: Ukraine’s defenders weep for Bucha’s mass graves but gloss over their own artillery sins. Israel’s critics howl at Gaza’s death toll—over 40,000 by late 2024, per UN counts—yet Hamas rockets barely dent their outrage. Why? Fundamental attribution error: outsiders slap “evil” on the doer—Russia’s a monster, Israel’s a bully—while ignoring the stew they’re boiling in: encirclement fears, decades of tit-for-tat bombs. Insiders don’t see villainy; they see survival, righteousness, their conditioning kicking in. Evolution’s no saint—it’ll cheer cooperation or carnage, whichever keeps the clan breathing.

Zoom out, and the pattern’s stark. Morality’s a tool, not a truth—always has been. Libertarians’ll shoot to guard their patch, Marxists’ll guillotine for the proletariat, U.S. elites’ll drone-strike weddings to keep oil flowing—all cloaked in principle, all serving their pack. Russia’s “special operation” is Ukraine’s genocide; Israel’s “self-defense” is Palestine’s ethnic cleansing. The outsider’s gasp—those viral X posts of Kyiv’s ruins or Rafah’s craters—ain’t proof of a moral bedrock; it’s just a rival script, misreading situation as sin. We’re not debating ethics to polish some eternal gem; we’re wrestling over whose story rules. Take the Houthi strikes in Yemen, 2025 heating up: U.S. bombs “terrorists,” Saudis cheer, while aid workers tally starved kids—same act, split morals. Conditioning calls the shots.

The rebuttal’s got one last kick: if morality’s so fluid, why bother refining it? They say it’s progress, not just haggling—reason taming our beastly side. But that’s wishful polish on a cracked hull. Ukraine’s Zelensky begs for NATO jets, Israel’s Netanyahu quotes scripture for settlers, Trumpers and progressives sling “fascist” like mud—reason’s just a megaphone for the tribe. Authenticity’s the only anchor: own the bias, ditch the sanctimonious dance. Russia’s generals don’t lose sleep over Bucha; Israel’s brass don’t flinch at Gaza’s toll—they’ve got their why, and it’s enough. Outsiders clutch pearls—#WarCrimes trending—because they’re not in the fight. Morality’s a fluid mess, shifting with the players, not a lighthouse. Stop pretending it’s more.

Stepping back from the fray—whether it’s Putin’s moves in Ukraine or Hamas’s salvos from Gaza—offers an authenticity that sidesteps the knee-jerk noise and stares down our own fundamental attribution error. Take Putin: some tag him as a ruthless tyrant, others see a strategist pushing back—NATO’s ring of bases and war games from Poland to the Baltics isn’t exactly a welcome mat, but Russia’s leveling cities isn’t a handshake either. Hamas gets the same split: outsiders call them terrorists, yet in Gaza—two million penned in, scrappy and stubborn—they’re fighting a chokehold, though rockets don’t win halos. My Mennonite roots nudge me to judge NATO’s chest-thumping ‘values’ or Hamas’s bloodshed, but I’ve got my own baggage—my folks kept the world at arm’s length too, just with hymns, not guns. Seeing that, owning how my lens twists the view, points a pragmatic way forward: not crowning heroes or villains, but cutting through the sanctimony—NATO’s not spotless, Gazans aren’t pawns, and I’m no referee, just a guy sorting his own slant in the mess.

And Jesus Had Compassion…

I’ve frequently been appalled and dismayed by the things I see coming from my former religious peers. It is very well-meaning, but so horribly misguided. And recently I saw a post like that, and imagined an incredulous Jesus: “You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?”

What I’m talking about is the intellectuals of the conservative Mennonite cloister, those who teach the Gospel of Niceness and side with Judas and Social Justice who confuse Jesus with a political figure who is seeking to install a Marxist regime. They ride on the leftist bandwagon, believing it makes them countercultural—when they’re simply going along with the powerful elites of our time. Hypocritical elites who have mandates for us and exceptions for themselves.

The offending post was one of such glaring false equivalency that I can hardly fathom a thinking person would come up with it. The misleading commentary is that Elon Musk resharing a meme in support of his efforts to remove waste, fraud, and abuse from the government is the same as Hillary Clinton applying a nasty label to those who dared to vote against her. This is the statement:

Clinton called millions of ordinary Americans a “basket of deplorables.”

Musk called millions of ordinary Americans “the Parasite Class.”

When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9:36)

First of all, the first part is true, Clinton did indeed call ordinary Americans a “basket of deplorables” saying that half of those who were voting against her were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.” It is to say that over thirty-one million people who got tired of the glib “We came, we saw, he died” imperial-lib establishment that she represents are just horrible people.

Not only is she punching down, attacking a bunch of ordinary people for voting against her, but the reason she is demonizing then is to terrify vulnerable people. It is a cynical divide and conquer strategy, purely for sake of securing political power for herself, and part of a campaign to turn Trump’s simple effective “Make America Great Again” into something divisive and scary rather than an inclusive unifying message.

Elon Musk, by contrast, merely reshared a post. He did not say half of the Democrat party support is parasites. What he did say is “90% of America loves @DOGE.” In other words, he is speaking for the crowd rather than against it. Furthermore, the meme is not about legitimate social programs and those who benefit. Nobody in the Trump administration is calling for slashing the rightful entitlements of Social Security or Medicare and Medicaid.

Name calling! Accusing elites of exploitation! Jesus would never do that, right?

What DOGE has taken aim at is the totally ridiculous and absurd, obviously fraudulent use of public funds, which 90% of America (if properly informed) supports. The ‘crowd’ would be fully on Musk’s side if they weren’t being lied to or blinded by partisan bias. It is compassion for those truly “harassed and helpless” that is drives the effort to increase government efficiency—and the social elites who willfully take advantage of taxpayers should be called out.

To those doing apologetics for waste, fraud and abuse, who are pushing this dishonesty take and misrepresentation: I would find it so much more tolerable if it was a forthright endorsement of sending money for far-left causes. Just come out with it and say that you want money funnelled through USAID to pay for global promotion of transgenderism and pro-imperialist propaganda—you want this, be honest.

Compassion for the Brood of Vipers?

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” (Matthew 23:33 NIV)

Jesus had compassion for the crowds, but he spoke very condemningly of social elites who used their positions of influence to put heavy burdens on the shoulders of others—while not offering a finger to help.

Jesus pretty much describes the telescopic philanthropy, the virtue-signaling and pearl-clutching of modern social justice.

Jesus did not show compassion for these moralizing frauds.

Nice Jesus is upset about mean Tweets calling out social elites. Real Jesus was killed because he wouldn’t stop insulting the people who thought they were above the ‘deplorable’ unwashed crowds. Nice Jesus only would affirm and accepts everyone without ever requiring a change. Real Jesus once compelled a tax collector (and cheat) to give back his ill-gotten gains—he greeted the promise of restoration by pronouncing salvation had come to this house.

If Jesus walked the streets of Manhattan today he would be accused of being very meanspirited, labeled as hateful, and likely cancelled by the woke elites. They would whip up the crowd by taking things he said out of context, by calling him a homophobe, sexist or racist. After all, he used the word “dog” to describe a foreign woman. That is what the critics of Jesus did, he called them out and they false accused him. He would most certainly be diagnosed as being a cult leader and narcissist for his claims.

Not saying a pair of trolling billionaires are the same as Jesus. But they certainly do take after the character of that man who was overturning the tables of the money changers and chasing out of the temple. Lest we forget, the money changers were those who took advantage of the poor who were obligated to pay the tax. This money was supposed to go to the upkeep of the temple and yet teams of grifters, offering a service, were being parasites:

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “ ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’” (Matthew 21:12-13 NIV)

The Gospels contain differing accounts of this event, some scholars believe it may be about two separate times when Jesus went charging in on a little ‘insurrection’ rampage, but interestingly his explanation of authority to do this cleansing was later misconstrued and used at his trial.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

The corporate media has taken fabricated tales and normal diplomacy with a foreign power—and they spun it into an incredible “Russian collusion” narrative. Trump talked about the “very fine people” on both sides of the Charlottesville statue controversy, and he took great pains to qualify his statement—by very specifically condemning the white nationalists and Nazis in the crowd. But it didn’t stop the media from running the story “Trump Calls Nazis ‘Fine People'” and Joe Biden, along with many other Democrat partisans, have continued to repeat this lie.

Where Trump, and MAGA, clearly delineate between legal and illegal immigration, their detractors muddy the waters. The left takes Trump’s desire to keep America safe from the flow of Fentanyl and of unvetted foreign nationals and twists it into xenophobia and a threat to legal immigration. It is deliberate deception. The far-left wants to keep brown and black people terrified that’s how they’ve always won—by fear-mongering the crowd, they deceive the sheep and, when that does not work, they will imprison or assassinate their opponents.

Remember ‘kindness is everything’ my leftist friends, right?

Evil doesn’t like to have a light shown on it and when you see all of the screeching in response to DOGE taking a look behind the walls of bureaucracy you do really start to wonder why. Why are they treating Musk as if he’s just some Nigerian scammer trying to get our information? Is it because he’s from Africa? It is totally ridiculous. Lawmakers circle the wagons and tell us we have no right to know how our money is spent! It’s time to drive out those who have used us to enrich themselves.

There is always a spy versus spy aspect to this where accusation is met with a recrimination. Both Jesus and those elites questioning his authority claimed that their counterpart was demon possessed or of the Devil. It would require some wisdom and discernment to know which of the two sides to believe. But the religious frauds of our day still side with the elites against the crowd. They defend the status quo and the corrupted established system. It is always the beneficiaries of fraud that fight against the reform.

Love Is Patriarchal

As I ponder my responsibilities, bringing a daughter into this world, my patriarchal protection is a given.

The West has been so successful at privileging women that many women do not comprehend the risks of true equal treatment. Feminism is only possible as a part of the patriarchal duty that men feel to protect women. What it amounts to is using male power to enforce standards that are friendly to women, that allow them to walk freely in the street in all manner of dress (or undress), and ignore the reality of what has existed outside the walls of patriarchalism.

Even the idea that sexual assault is a bad thing is an extension of patriarchalism where natural desire must be restrained by structures created by men. A buck in the rut doesn’t ask permission. Hormones direct it’s behavior and only the bigger male can ward off the advances it will make on a doe. It is a hierarchy that is built only on strength. Moral conscience is built off the idea that there’s a big man up there who cares about property rights; who says that a body belongs to someone and is therefore not ours for the taking simply because we desire it.

Yes, eventually this evolved into an idea of everyone owning themselves that we now assume is simply the universal truth. However, nothing in the animal kingdom suggests this is the case. The real world is often a brutal and unforgiving place. When a new group of male lions takes over a pride they will kill the cubs of the previous males. And human morality developed in a very similar manner. This was the default, whether the Psalmist’s fantasy about bashing the heads of an enemy’s infants against rocks or the book of Deuteronomy giving some rules for the treatment of war brides:

When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God hands them over to you and you take some of them prisoner, and if you see a beautiful woman among the captives, desire her, and want to take her as your wife, you are to bring her into your house. She is to shave her head, trim her nails, remove the clothes she was wearing when she was taken prisoner, live in your house, and mourn for her father and mother a full month. After that, you may have sexual relations with her and be her husband, and she will be your wife. Then if you are not satisfied with her, you are to let her go where she wants, but you must not sell her or treat her as merchandise, because you have humiliated her.
Deuteronomy 21:10-14

To our modern ears, this is horrendous. There is no asking for permission. And, other than saying to wait a month, the men were free to rape their captive females. But the reality is that this was a radical step in the direction of protecting women from physical violation. One hopes that this delay would’ve ensured a more compassionate and gentle approach rather than some blood-soaked orgy during the heat of battle and immediately after her male relatives were slaughtered. As grotesque as this seems, it was better for her to belong to one man (with some rights after he rejects her) than to be passed around as a mere sex object in the manner of a Japanese comfort woman:

CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) A Japanese soldier got his bayonet and started peeling my father’s skin while saying, tell us the truth – your child is part of the guerrillas with the owners of that empty house.

MCCARTHY: As Claveria pleaded to let her father go, a soldier wrenched her arm. Birdlike, petite, Claveria strokes a badly set bone as she picks up the story of how she followed her mother’s screams up the stairs.

CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) I saw my mother lying down with her skirt up, and there was a Japanese soldier on top of her. I ran. My two youngest siblings took little sticks and started hitting the soldiers. The Japanese soldiers then snatched away the sticks and bayoneted both of them.

MCCARTHY: They died. Claveria believes her parents were killed when the village was torched. Japanese soldiers hauled away two older sisters to a garrison and took Claveria to an infirmary for her injured arm. She does not recall how long she was there recovering, but she remembers a soldier named Terasaki. One day, he told Claveria she smelled, but she refused to take a bath, saying she had no change of clothes. Ordering her to wash, she says he gave her a uniform to put on.

CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) I was to be taken to the garrison where my two sisters were. Before we reached the garrison, he raped me. I thought that I was going to die because I was in so much pain.

MCCARTHY: Terasaki would be the first of many Japanese soldiers to sexually assault Claveria, who was not even a teenager at the time. She was 12. She said her sister Meteria had been driven half mad by the trauma she’d experienced at the garrison. Claveria was shocked when she caught sight of her there.

CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) She was burned with cigarette butts and boiled sweet potatoes. When one soldier after the next raped her, she put up a fight, but my sister was not brave. She refused because she was in so much agony from all the abuse.

MCCARTHY: Claveria believes her other kidnapped sister was moved to a different garrison. She was never seen again. Historians have estimated that at least 200,000 women were forced into sexual servitude during World War II, mostly in areas occupied by Japan, prominently Korea. The women were euphemistically called comfort women, and the organized system of comfort stations to supply soldiers sexual gratification ran from Seoul to Singapore. Writer Evelina Galang has documented women captured in the Philippines.

EVELINA GALANG: And these are women as young as 16 years old – really, some of them 8, 10 years old. In the Philippines, historians estimate that there were probably about a thousand women and girls taken and put into military sex slave camps.

Men can be monsters. Worse than animals. And, in many parts of the world, immodest dress is taken to be a sign she wants it. Morality does not hold back the aggression of the rapist. No, rather it is the role of other men to restrain evil. Women are protected by their fathers, by their husbands, and by institutions that represent these men. Political structures were created by men and are defended by men. Yes, even if women were granted the right to participate. E.g. even if Kamala Harris takes the patriarchal role—she is still acting in a patriarchal manner and will need the strength of men to impose her will.

There will not be a feminist left in Europe if Islamists take over. That is not to bash Islam or say they would kill off all women who did not submit. No, it is to say that feminism cannot exist outside of the Christian West. The notion of individual rights, that people can independently make their own decisions, cannot exist only on paper or it is impotent. It requires men willing to sacrifice themselves to preserve this egalitarian ideal for their wives and children. Self-sacrificial love is not natural nor a priority in every religious patriarchal structure. Feminists cannot exist in Islam because only the respect of patriarchal institutions gives them power.

The alternative to the current patriarchy is not the absence of patriarchy, men (or those who act like men) will always rule, but the real choice is what manner of rule we wish to live under. It really is survival of the fittest outside of the walls of civilization. Chants of “down with the patriarchy” are about as meaningless as shaking your fist at the wind. It misunderstands the world. It assumes that nature will simply obey our voice because we’re angry and believe rights can exist outside of the structures that guaranteed them for us. It is only in the absence of rule by men who care about more than their own sexual gratification that the value of this benevolent form of patriarchy is known.

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Irregular Ideation

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." Albert Einstein

Honesty