Bask in the depth of the banal

For as the furnace of a dusty desert wind

Still blasts my sun soarched skin

So does the caress of a love once known

To cherish ever bit of a new tapped wellspring

To savor all of the little moments that I once hurried along

To live the dream of quiet moments, and soft smiles

To inhale her tresses rich from a life scarred and lived

To linger just a bit longer

To drink down greedily of Aphrodite’s heady brew

To make what time we have left stretch out

Into a succession of mundane daydreams

Keep Trying

Even if it’s awkward

Even if much as you fail

Keep Kindness

Even if the anger rises

Even if it’s not deserved

Keep Consistent

Even if you don’t feel it

Even if you can’t see the progress

Keep Love

Even if the flames are coals

Even if you’ve lost it for a time

Keep Dreaming

Keep Going

Just... Keep Living

Keep Trying

Even if it’s awkward

Even if much as you fail

Keep Kindness

Even if the anger rises

Even if it’s not deserved

Keep Consistent

Even if you don’t feel it

Even if you can’t see the progress

Keep Love

Even if the flames are coals

Even if you’ve lost it for a time

Keep Dreaming

Keep Going

Just...

Keep

Living

Gents. This piece is a logical, and rhetorical trap. It is designed to see who is so arrogant, so deep in patriarchal thinking that they’ll argue with what I’m saying no matter what.

This piece is purposefully designed to argue a point of view without showing detailed evidence. And not matter how persuasive it is, no matter how is self evident it is there will be some of you that will fall for the trap.

You can’t help it. But believe it or not this piece is speaking directly to you.

Why Should Believe All Women

Every woman has experienced not being believed about sexual harassment, or assault.

Every single one. Unless a woman has had zero contact with men, even then there’s still a chance she’s been sexually harassed, or assaulted and wasn’t believed.

That’s really what the revelations of the Rape Academy are all about. That’s why it’s hitting women so hard.

Again this piece for men. Women already experience what I’m talking about. We’re not even having a conversation about rape being bad. I hope that we can agree that it’s fucking bad. If you disagree with that you can fuck right off. There’s no need to entertain a discussion with you.

But instead of support and understanding, instead of taking a step back and sitting with the shock of the revelations what I’ve seen from too many men are nitpicking about the scope of the issue, the quibbling over numbers, or some saying it’s a hit piece and demanding women apologize for being rightly upset by it!

Now this isn’t another piece of chastisement even for men. It’s to provide context as to why women are so upset, and demanding they look at the numbers, no matter how well intentioned, is showing you don’t understand what their plight is nor do you care that you’re deepening their trauma.

Because part of the trauma is not being believed that the problem exists at all. That it’s not as widespread as it is. It’s gaslighting on a global scale. It’s really that bad.

Now before we move on I’m gonna remind you I’m setting a trap. The bait is out. Proceed at your own arrogance.

Why This and Not That?

If you’re a man I want you to imagine for a second of not being believed. Some of you might have been through that situation with sexual assault. Some of you might have been molested at a young age. I was. My abuser was a woman. A grandmother in fact. I told my parents the woman at daycare, a sweet grandmother to the rest of the world, was touching me and they didn’t believe me. It was too horrible to comprehend, and I was five years old. Five year olds make up stories they hear elsewhere right? They get confused, right?

At the time I lashed out in anger one day and punched through a pane on a glass window because the abuse was ongoing and no one believed me. The anger just welled up inside me and I shoved my fist through the pane. I can still see it in my mind. I can hear the glass shattering. By some miracle I didn’t get a scratch on my hand.

My dad bought a new window pane and replaced it. My family never spoke about it. I wasn’t punished for it but my father didn’t allow me to go to therapy. “That’s for crazy kids. My son isn’t crazy,” he told my mother. That’s how therapy was viewed in the early 1980’s especially in a patriarchal household even if my father was enlightened in other ways.

Fortunately for me we moved to Hawaii shortly thereafter and I was never molested by another adult.

After that I was a “troubled kid”. I had behavioral problems all throughout school and up into my adulthood. I didn’t really know the root cause of it. I kept thinking there was something wrong with me. Something I wasn’t doing. I was unloveable. I was angry. I was suicidal even as far back as ten years old. I used to sleep under my bed at times when I was anxious. I’d sleep in my closet up against the doors or hide behind my toys and clothes like they were cover.

I wanted to be extra manly. I always wanted to do the manliest thing I could. I played the roughest sports. I fought a lot with bullies. Any kid getting picked on I picked on their bullies right back. I would hit my head a lot when I got frustrated. I would daydream about dying in glorious ways usually combat. It’s why I joined the Marine Corps instead of all the other branches offering me signing bonuses at time when those were rare.

I had trust issues, the lack of feeling worthy of loved, the depression, the PSTD, the anxiety, being very careful when I was in the room with people, not wanting to have a door closed in a private meeting. I self-destructed romantic and platonic relationships over minor things because someone had “revealed their true self”.

All of that stemmed from that molestation at a young age.

None of that is a lie. That’s my lived truth. It was painful and horrible. It’s affected me, and still does. It’s not something I’m proud of, and something I never thought I’d write about.

Now… Do you believe me? If you do, why do you? If you don’t, why don’t you? I know it’s true. I’ve lived with it for most of my life. I’ve been ashamed to talk about it for most of my life. And I don’t need you to believe me. But do you or don’t you?

Men are sexually abused. It’s underreported. We need to talk about it more which is one of the reasons I talk about it. But women suffer sexual abuse at higher rates and they aren’t believed like they should be.

Why?

Because we minimize their suffering for a multitude of reasons. Maybe we don’t wanna believe things are that bad. We’d rather deny it because it might shatter our faith in a system that not only doesn’t deserve it but takes advantage of that unearned faith.

It’s the same reason we don’t believe men like me. So why would it be wrong to not believe me, but okay to not believe women in the same way with the same standard?

“But The Data Says…”

Sooner or later the “but the data says” folks flood in trying to tamp down on the outrage that women have over something that’s absolutely horrendous.

And it’s not just with this topic. It’s with any topic where a system of oppression’s wrongdoing is brought into the light. The first response by those who are invested in that system is to minimize the harm being caused.

“It’s not that bad.”
”You’re blowing things out of proportion!”
”How did you come by that data? That seems suspect.”
”The people pushing this out have an agenda!”

You see this with war, economic inequality, racism, sexism, basically any social issue that doesn’t have an easy answer, which none of them do, and requires a change in behavior or giving up a bit of privilege.

Step outside of the Rape Academy issue for just a second. I want you to think of an issue that affects you personally. Doesn’t really matter what it is.

Now how do you feel if someone who isn’t personally affected by said issue keeps telling you that you’re wrong? That you’re overreacting or worse your reaction is impacting them in a negative way.

And even if they tell you any of the above in a nice way there’s one thing in common with all of them: they don’t believe you. And because they don’t believe you they’re not truly listening to you.

That’s what women are going through right now. It’s what they’ve been going through. It’s what they will keep going through if men don’t actually stop quibbling over shit that really doesn’t matter and believe them.

Because if you actually believe someone you have to accept the possibility that what they’re saying is valid. It might not be true to a 100% certainty but please tell me in what issue do we accept that as the benchmark for being true?

“Yeah but I deal in facts.”

Awesome. So do women. So do I. So does this piece.

Do you wanna know what a factual statement is? It’s a statement that has a truth value. That can be falsified and measured against empirical reality.

It’s not something that’s 100% unfalsifiable. That’s an opinion. That’s a matter of faith. This isn’t that.

“That sounds like an opinion.”

Nope. An opinion might only have a truth value to the holder of said opinion.

For instance “I think chocolate ice cream is the best flavor of ice cream” is a matter of opinion. There are probably a lot of people who hold with that opinion. Is it factually true? No.

However the statement “Frederic Poag thinks chocolate ice cream is the best flavor of ice cream” is factually true. You can point to evidence that I think that about chocolate ice cream. Does that make my opinion true? No, but you can say with certainty I stated that. In fact that factual statement might change over time. I might think about vanilla tomorrow and you would be incorrect saying that about me even with the evidence you have of me writing it. I could also be lying.

That’s the same with believing women. When they’re telling you they were assaulted it’s factually true. You can believe them without telling them that they’re wrong. That they shouldn’t feel that way. Sure some of them might be lying, but all of them? How about most of them? How about half? See the problem?

You don’t need to say “Are you sure that’s what happened?” “Maybe you took it wrong.” “Oh he’s just that way. You just need to ignore it.”

“It’s not 62 million men. It’s just 62 million visits.”
”How many of those videos are real rapes though?”
”You know you’re actually hurting women by spreading false information.”

Here’s the bottom line. This isn’t ice cream. This is rape. There are terrible consequences for not believing women in terms of migrating rape culture than believing someone or not about how much they like fucking ice cream.

These are horrific violations of trust from intimate partners. Women who slept beside someone they trusted and were violated in horrific ways for the sick, twisted pleasure of other men.

If your go to response is to quibble about the god damn data you’re already on the wrong fucking side of this.

Because again for the majority of women, probably damn near all of them, this isn’t a matter of opinion. It’s a sad fucking fact of life. And when you try to minimize that pain, that shock, that fear you’re minimizing what they’re living with. You’re not listening, and you’re damn sure not believing them.

And if we don’t believe them how the fuck can we even begin to fix it?

All Men Are Responsible for Rape

All men are responsible for the suffering of women inflicted by other men.

Now I’m using the word responsible purposefully here. I’m not saying we’re all rapists. But what I am saying is every time you don’t believe women you are keeping space for rapists to continue operating.

Every time you minimize the pain of women being violated, or harmed you are keeping status quo going.

Every time you don’t push all out for shit heel men to be held accountable you’re telling other shit heel men they can act with impunity.

You’re making it harder for other women to speak out because of the fear of not being believed. Because there’s a cost to speaking out. They have to weight that cost. What if we lived in a world where they could speak out and be believed on the suffering they’re enduring? What if we acted on that? What kind of world would we be living in right now?

So if you want to be a “good” man, or at least a “safe” man, because it’s down to women thinking there really aren’t any good men left only, maybe, safe ones, then you have to do your part to dismantle a system of oppression that makes space of Rape Academies, and Jeffrey Epstein to thrive.

And if you don’t think the world is that bad then how did Donald “Grab ‘Em by the Pussy” Trump become President of the United States twice?

Stop quibbling about data that really doesn’t make a difference because I guarantee you it’s not that fucking far off. Even less than 10% is horrific.

Stop silencing women by not listening to them.

Start supporting them by just believing them. That’s the bare minimum. That’s the start.

We’ve come to the end of the piece. Did you get this far fellow gents? Or did you leave a comment slamming the fact I didn’t include any “data”? If you did you fell for the trap.

Hell you still might. And just know you’re hurting women by doing that because they see it. They see what kind of man you are by arguing semantics.

If you didn’t, kudos! You’re on your way to breaking patriarchal thinking. Now the next step is to go read what women are writing about this and sit with it. You don’t have to believe every single thing they’re saying right away, but you can believe that what happened them, what’s happening to women all over the world, is real.

Start there, and sit with it. Then let’s do something about it.

This isn’t a polemic from a saintly man who is without a spec of blame or tarnish. I’ve a flawed, imperfect man with a past. And while I’ve never raped, sexually assaulted, harassed or physically struck a woman I’ve done my share of hurting women. Of having weaker moments that I might not have used a position of power to exert undue influence I certainly didn’t examine it.

See I know how those guys come to be. I know the choices they make, or don’t even consider because those choices have been put before me. I know the brazenness they operate with because they understand systems of power that will not hold them accountable because I’ve seen it. I’ve been mocked for calling it out and not participating in it.

I’ve been in leadership positions throughout my professional career which mostly focused on operations in heavy male dominated industries. When I say I’ve lead thousands of people I’m not being hyperbolic. I’ve literally lead thousands of people from all different regions of the United States.

I’ve worked with saints and shitheels. Mostly men but a good portion of women too. And I’ve seen what it’s like when women aren’t believed, and trust me when I say this as a man they aren’t believed when they absolutely should. Not some of the time. Damn near all the time.

I’ve been a part of an investigation where a male employee punched a woman in the face, and knocked her out cold at work. It was caught on camera. Did he get in trouble? Nope. Why? Because they were dating and she found out he was dating other women at work. She confronted him in his work area where she didn’t work. And because she grabbed his shoulder as he was walking away she “instigated an altercation on corporate property that wasn’t in her work area”.

She was put on a final warning for not taking it to her supervisor. He was given a verbal coaching and coached to say he reacted out of fear.

Didn’t matter that my findings were dismissal for the male employee and bringing the evidence to law enforcement for possible charges. I was just a manager who did the investigation. I wasn’t an executive who had to concern themselves with “corporate liability”. Basically I wasn’t protecting the company.

I was never asked to do another potentially sexual harassment or sexual assault investigation again.

When I backed up a female co-worker who happened to be my direct supervisor over sexually explicit language and discussion about her that I was witness to with several other male counterparts was I lauded for bringing to light another manager who it was an open secret that you didn’t wanna be alone with him at work?

Oh heavens no! I was instead questioned if I had a sexual relationship with my direct supervisor who happened to be a woman and was mentoring me because she was a good leader. “You spend an awful lot of time together with her. We just have to ask these questions because some accusations have been made.”

Didn’t matter that she was a married woman. Didn’t matter that I was incensed at the accusation that I would sleep with a married woman. I mean that was the norm after all wasn’t it?

I’ve also had a department head who was my direct boss dismissed because he was sending sexual explicit text messages to the women employees in his own department. All the younger ones. What did him in? The one he was dating who got pissed at him because he was sending those text messages to all the other women even though no of them were engaging with him.

Now you might be tempted to blame the young woman on that one. A lot of other managers did She was dating him after all and then finding out she wasn’t the only one dropped a dime on him.

Wasn’t her fault. He was the department head. He shouldn’t have been doing that in the first place. And all those other women, many of them who were married absolutely didn’t deserve that. And after his ouster our department didn’t really recover. The one woman employee who was dating the boss eventually quit after the retaliation, and the other managers carried on with their own dating employees just quieter.

What happened to him? He got a job with a competitor through a friend and one of the other supervisors followed him over there and they began dating after he got her job working for him.

See everything I went through is the same playbook that Swalwell survivors and Epstein survivors are going through. It’s about a system, and the people who make it up, protecting itself over protecting victims. That’s what I failed to sign onto time and time again when I worked in corporate America. I was under the impression if you protected your employees then they would perform their best and that would protect the company.

That’s not how it works.

If you wanna climb that ladder and keep grabbing those brass rings the higher uppers need to know you’ll protect the system first and foremost. Otherwise you’ll only climb so high.

It’s why I’m no longer a manager in corporate America. I didn’t ever quite drink enough Kool Aid. And no I wasn’t ousted because I took a stand. No back biting or machiavellian plot from people eager take their revenge on me for helping to expose them. Most of the time the exposure didn’t matter because the system protected itself.

I just simply got sick of it and I never wanted to go back. The open secrets were a big reason why.

(Author’s Note: I dated an employee who I was a direct supervisor over. It was consensual. I’ll reference that relationship in this piece. How can I claim it was consensual? Well it was a union environment and I had no say over her schedule or the area she worked in. That was part of the union contract. I also had no say in determining her schedule from week to week. She put in a bid on a line and won that line, and she could adjust it based on the needs of the operation put out by another department I had no say in. I couldn’t kill any overtime she got either. I couldn’t stop any raises in pay she got which were part of the contract.

Also any discipline I issued could be grieved through her union which would automatically get it tossed out if it was known we were dating.

That’s one of the big benefits of a union contract: employee protections from management.

She was older than me, and though I asked her out she agreed after we’d known each other for a few more months. I’d actually forgotten about it.

But I was still a manager and she was an employee. I violated company policy dating her and I absolutely showed her favoritism in time spent with her, and if she needed it I would’ve gone lighter on her in terms of coaching and discipline. I shouldn’t have done that as her leader. It ultimately put a strain on our relationship even if that’s not what broke it off.

Thankfully she never needed me to do anything extra for her. She was a great employee and an awesome worker. One of the reasons I was attracted to her.

Can’t talk about open secrets being bad if you wanna hide your own amirite?)

The Open Secrets That Keep the Status Quo Going

I’ve only mentioned the most egregious ones. I haven’t mentioned just the normal, day-to-day abuse of power and sexual shit that goes on.

Now I’m not a prude or some self-righteous asshole. I’m a sinner just like the rest. I’ve dated women co-workers and colleagues. I’ve even dated a woman I was a direct supervisor over after she let it be know she’d be okay with that.

It tends to happen when you work 60+ hours a week in a job that most people outside of it don’t really understand.

Was it an abuse of power? Yeah it was. I could say I didn’t let it interfere with my work but that’s that not true. I inevitably would spend a little more time with the woman I was dating when she was at work than other employees. When we felt it was okay we’d even have lunch together to spend more time together. We’d even take trips together using our company benefits. We’d try to line up our days off together.

Because at a certain point our little office romance was kind of sweet to a lot of people though to others it absolutely wasn’t. Still it was tame compared to others in power who flaunted it.

Multiple women they were “dating”, many who knew about each other and vied for attention. Or male managers who were like a pack of hungry wolves whenever a fresh faced, young woman was hired. She would immediately get extra attention, and that would set her up to be somewhat shunned by her counterparts. Or the real predators that would inevitably get a woman alone somewhere on company property.

And while I was never a manager who you couldn’t be alone with I made pains to make sure women who needed to see me felt safe because of the environment and my own hypocrisy.

I kept doors to my office open. I’d have coaching or mentoring sessions in the public eye. If it was something difficult I always encouraged a woman employee to have a witness or a shop steward. If she wanted privacy she got it and I never violated what she told me in confidence.

If I saw sexual harassment like catcalls to woman flight attendants walking through a ramper break room, which they had to do at PHL, I’d bark like a Marine Corps NCO to the room “Knock that shit off!” which got chuckles but it stopped it. If I was dating a woman at work even if she was a colleague and everyone knew we tried to at least keep it discreet.

Because again that was the status quo. “People are gonna get together,” a male mentor told me with shrug one time. “That’s men and women. Might as well try to stop water from being wet.”

However I wasn’t the exception to the rule that made everything work out. Work relationships didn’t work because they were strained. If I had to be a manager instead of a romantic partner invariably I knew I’d go lighter on the woman I was dating or be tempted to ignore it where I wouldn’t be with someone else (thankfully that didn’t but I knew what I’d do if it did).

Or there was always the suspicion that I was like “all the other” managers who had multiple girlfriends. If I was dating her why wouldn’t I be doing the same with another woman in another area?

And of course that didn’t help when I had be a witness or support a woman colleague who was really being harassed or abused.

“Have you ever dated a co-worker?”

“Have you ever dated an employee you supervised?”

“Have you had sexual relations with a co-worker you knew was an in a committed relationship?”

“Have you engaged in romantic encounters, sexually or otherwise, on company property and on company time?”

I admitted yes to first two, and damn sure said no to the last two. Thankfully all of that was true. Because they don’t fire you for those if they’re consensual but they will fire you for lying during a company investigation. And they will fire you for “stealing company time” or exposure to legal liability. And if you’re trying to expose wrongdoing that could hurt the company’s financial position they will find a way to fire you if that costs more than what you’re delivering.

So dating co-workers or even employees was fine as long as it was consensual, or at least it couldn’t be proven it wasn’t.

That’s all the company cared about. But that’s business. Politics is a whole other animal of awful.

Politics is Worse Than Anything Else

Having worked in politics, even just at the state level I can say with certainty and experience I don’t like most politicians. Most of them are slimy, self-obsessed, and morally dubious. Not all. There are some good ones but if they’re not the exception they’re definitely not the majority.

And unlike working in corporate America there’s an added component that creates an atmosphere where predators thrive: ideals.

See politics has ideals even if they’re not good ones, or even well thought out ones. They evoke feelings. They make you feel like change is possible. That the world you want to see is possible, and a politician embodies those ideals.

Then you add in the power projection they possess because they’re running for an office with real power and it becomes a heady aphrodisiac.

I saw it in graduate school when I was organizing for the first time. Young women who I was ten years their senior who wouldn’t give me the time of day absolutely did when I was talking about progressive politics. And the temptation to take advantage of that situation was absolutely real.

That’s where you make a choice, and I did. Do you care more about the work or do you want to take advantage of the work for what you can get for yourself?

That is the struggle you’ll always have, and there will be no perfect people in politics who always make the right call in every situation.

Which is why when you have shitheels like Eric Swalwell they have to go.

“But Frederic you just said there are no perfect people.” Yes I did. But there are patterns of behavior that are unacceptable, so egregious, so flagrant that they need to be addressed and those who violate them held accountable.

Because Swalwell violated the obligation he had as a leader again, and again, and again with an impunity that leaves little doubt he gave two fucks about the seriousness of the office he held or the women under his watch. So much so it was an open secret on the Hill that you didn’t want to be alone with the guy. I’ve worked with guys like that. I’ve called those guys shitheels to their face after HR refused to do anything about it. I know exactly the kind of man Eric is

This beyond “stepping outside your marriage” for an affair. Or fraternization between two people who are at different levels, and there’s a power imbalance in position, age, or status. That shit does happen, and while it’s not right it’s not the gravest of wrongs either if it’s consensual. But it’s still wrong. It will still cause problems. And the level of wrong Swalwell did goes way beyond even the most charitable understanding of men and women being men and women.

And yes you can have levels. That’s what makes this shit murky. It’s what makes it hard. It’s what makes victims imperfect but still need to be believed. It’s what makes giving the benefit of doubt a temporary position until you investigate. But there are some situations where it’s clear cut, like punching a woman in the face even if she’s not in her work area.

Because at its core wrong is wrong even if determining how much wrong will always be imperfect. Rape is still rape even if the woman was seen being flirty with her attacker earlier in the evening. Rape is still rape even if she didn’t think it was rape the first couple, dozen, or more times she and her abuser had sex.

And you can be a man who believes women even if you’re not a shiniest of shining examples. Even if you’ve been wronged by a woman in the past, and you’ve in turn wronged other women. Even if you’ve been abused by a woman, and in turn while you never physically hit a woman you definitely left scars emotionally and mentally from anger outbursts. Or you were molested by a woman when you were five. Even if you were a manager who dated a woman he supervised who knew it was wrong but you had an attraction and then feelings for her.

Because we can absolutely do better than all or nothing. Every situation will have some degree of inconvenient timing. There will be imperfect victims who need to be believed. And there will be situations where an investigation is all about unnecessary.

Because I’ve worked in environments where bad men know they will get away with it. Because the system wants to protect itself way more than protect the victims within it. Because flawed, but good men are too cowardly to say anything either because they have to think about their own position, which will hurt them and their family if they lose it, or they’re afraid of their own hypocrisy being exposed even if the scale isn’t the same.

And when you apply that impossible standard of having perfect victims, and perfect supporters, and unimpeachable evidence then doing nothing will always be easier than to do than something. And if you give people in power, the status quo, an opt out they were take it every time.

That’s why Eric Swalwell has to go. We’ve seen enough. We have to believe the women on this one, and on the next batch that’s coming. We have to change the way we deal with this.

Otherwise we’ll keep allowing the Swalwells, the Epsteins, the Trumps, and fuck knows who else is still another “open secret” out there.

It’s why we have to tear down the systems that protects itself, and the people in it, over the victims of those systems.

That’s why we have to believe women who are more often than not the victims.

If we want change we have to get rid of Eric Swalwell because when we do that we start to shift that balance of power. We demand the system do something to get just for victims, and if it has to do that it’ll start doing more to protect victims.

It’ll make it easier for more women to come forward if they see they’ll be believed. Then we can get rid of the Epsteins, the Trumps, and the Swalwells before they amass more and more power.

Then maybe… Just maybe… We can start to move closer to living in a world we say we want to live in.

Throughout my life I’ve been a juxtaposition of conflicting modalities.

I joined the Marine Corps at 18 which is one of the most conservative, and oppressive branches of the military. It’s also one of the most raucous, and “Go Fuck Yourself” branches. So I fit right in… and very much didn’t.

I was a good church going lad who attended morning bible study just before class began in high school who then thought about fucking every girl I saw without an ounce of guilt.

I was shy guy who got tongue tied blushing cherry red around girls I liked and brashly bombastic in my shit talking around the ones I didn’t or didn’t think I had a shot with.

I supported the United States by choosing to serve in the Armed Forces while reading Malcolm X and digesting artists like Public Enemy, KRS-One, and Rage Against the Machine.

I believed in compassion and kindness while also hitting shitheels who did shitheel shit right in the fucking mouth.

Again conflicting modalities.

Basically I’m an American. A real American.

Not one of these bootlicking fascistic fucks who’ve never, ever questioned a damn thing in their lives. Nope. I’m one of these Americans who continually questions whatever’s served up to me as deliciously nutritious from billionaire fascistic fucks and their enabling cucks.

The difference now is there’s a lot more of people like me than there used to be.

This is for those who are over here for the first time, or once again after a long hiatus.

Firstly, welcome brothers, sisters and those unaffiliated. The Revolution is picking up steam and we’re excited you’re here.

Second, there’s a caveat to all of this. Shit’s gonna break. It’s gonna break bad most likely. And no I’m not talking about looting, rioting, and general mayhem. That may come and you may or may not be apart of it.

I most likely won’t. That’s not my lane.

No, what I’m really talking about is the breaking of culture, and not necessarily the physical stuff. It’s that pre-programmed shit you feel in the pit of your stomach whenever a deeply core belief is challenged. It’s the gunk that doesn’t quite feel right when it’s questioned.

Now I’m not telling you to toss out all your beliefs. Some of them are spot on. They’re reason you’re choosing to culturally rebel in the first place.

But ingrained frameworks of oppression are the toughest stains to remove. That’s the shit that needs to be burned out through skepticism, and doubt. Reexamined with new information based on empirical evidence and good data. And then polished up with reason and experience to become something changed.

Not necessarily something new, but changed.

Because change is rebellious. It’s a lash out against stagnation and that’s where we find ourselves at this moment. As a nation, as a People, as individuals.

You’re gonna hear “we need to go back to normal” when that normal is what led us here.

You’re gonna hear about the dangers tearing it all down even though those same people who were supposed to protect it are the reason we want to tear it all down. And even though we’re not talking about tearing everything down. Some of the frame and pieces of timber might still be good.

The voices who’ve been oppressed are gonna shout with all their strength and they’ll be told they need to “wait a little bit more” but shitheels in reasonable clothing who never had any intention to do a damn thing to help them.

That’s why it’s gotten be broken.

But…

I mean…

We couldn’t break it could we?

The only reason you fear that is you believe you have access to it. That you’d be losing what you got. The question you need to ask yourself is not is it worth saving because you can always find a reason to preserve something.

The question is does it work? Did it ever really, truly work? Could we have something better that actually works for all of us and the rest of us.

I’ve always wanted something better. Something closer to the mythos they told me what an American was supposed to be, supposed to strive for. An imperfect union that was on its way to better.

And I’m fucking furious to find out that was all bullshit. That the higher ups who sold me on that “we’re family” in the U-S-A HR orientation have really just been looting the company and handed me a pink slip while fighting me on collecting unemployment insurance.

So guess what? I’m fine and daddy with breaking some shit, because sometimes you gotta break down the thing standing in your way before you can rebuild on the same spot.

Breakdown those cultural givens about who should control the wealth we’re all building but not actually receiving.

Breakdown who gets access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness because it sure as shit ain’t everybody who rates it.

Breakthrough the red tape, the red scares, and the lines of jackals with blood dripping from their jaws who are holding back progress.

And while I’ve evolved, and calmed in my close to a half century on this planet there’s still very much apart of me that’s a-okay with breaking some shit even though I don’t really fuck on the floor anymore.

It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.

The lies are so blatant now, and so cartoonish that it seems pointless to refute them even though I will, as will others. It’s a farce, a parody if government whose effect is all too real.

I’ve said for a while that there’s no middle ground left. A middle ground implies there’s still some room for debate, a place for compromise even if both sides don’t particularly like it.

We’re no longer in that world. That’s not this place in history or at least it shouldn’t be.

Pete Hegseth came out deflected like Trump normally does. Calling anyone who challenged him “rude” or that they were “fake news”. Proclaiming some great victory that was divinely ordained in Iran when it absolutely wasn’t.

There was no victory, just bodies and rubble. All the concessions were made by the US who is desperate to get out of the debacle of their own making.

As an atheist I find it amusing that Hegseth was insistent on a non-existent victory that was brought about by a deity that in all likelihood doesn’t exist. A fiction backed up by a fictional character. How I wish that were true of Trump and all the heinous shit he’s done.

But the lies aren’t a fiction. The deaths in Iran and the US service personnel are all too real. The harm that people across the globe will suffer because of this are very much real. The threats that Donald Trump made about wiping out a civilization are really fucking real even if he didn’t care them out… yet.

And no doubt the regime will come out today and talk about what a great victory it was. The greatest victory ever because for Trump if you’re going to lie you might as well lie in the biggest, boldest, most shameful way possible.

If the ceasefire holds, (Edit: Before I hit publish it has reportedly already failed thanks to Israel escalating the bombing of southern Lebanon, including hospitals in Beirut and more than likely Iran wanting Trump to look foolish) and that’s a really big ‘If’ because if Israel has anything to do with it, and according to the NYT they had a lot to do with it, they’ll push even harder to scrap it because Netanyahu has to keep Israel’s multiple conflicts going in order to avoid indictments in the same way Trump has to keep his distractions going in order to avoid the Epstein Files.

The problem with the lies being told now is that even with corporate media, and a lot of thumbs pressing on the social media scale it’s getting harder and harder to sell them.

With political spin, which that’s not what these are, there’s the creation of doubt not necessarily a lie. It’s not so much about winning an argument, or convincing the other side you’re right. It’s not persuasion even though it might be persuasive.

It’s about creating enough doubt to keep a base of support in line. That’s why good political spin at least touches reality at some point.

“We have to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

“Saddam is a clear and present danger more so than Bin Laden.”

“We have to stop Al Qaeda from attacking the US again.”

“We need a fair tax system.”

“Debts and deficits don’t matter.”

“The money will trickle down.”

These are all talking points that are designed to keep people on the side of the political spectrum they’re already front loaded with in terms of confirmation bias before a policy debate even begins.

But with Trump it’s just lies that fly so hard in the face of reality it’s like a bird slamming into a large window.

It’s truly mad king territory. It’s Nero, Caligula, and King George III in terms of delusion, corruption and mental illness. And because the systems and people who make up those systems don’t want to hold Trump, or Bibi, or Putin, or Elon, or any of the shitheels that are ruining our world accountable all that’s left are the lies they tell.

And there are those among us who will keep swallowing the lies because it’s either too painful to reconcile that they’ve been conned this whole time, or they’re benefiting in some way from the current status quo that makes those lies powerful.

But it can’t last forever. We’re reaching the end of those lies being effective because reality doesn’t give two fucks about how many lies you tell, or how good they are, or how many people believe them.

Reality is what it is, and the arrogance of the shitheels is to think they can twist it to their own ends in every circumstance when the underlying, inescapable fundamental truth is the further you move away from what’s actual the less likely you’ll be able sell your horseshit.

They can’t keep pissing down our backs and tell us it’s running to paraphrase John Vernon in The Outlaw Josey Wales.

And they won’t if we don’t let them. Because the lies are all that’s left, and the moment enough of us get fed up with eating the shit of those lies are baked with that’ll be it.

After that we’ll see if we can sit with the truth of it for a little while before we ask for another helping of lies that go down a little easier.

Sit with that statement for a moment before you launch at me.

That’s because nations are really just an idea piled on top of culture. Ideas can change, or be tossed aside on the ash heap of history. Cultures can, and do shift.

Therefore nations do not have a right to exist.

People have a right to exist.

I’m saying this because any criticism leveled at Israel, and by extension the United States, is always back stopped in two ways.

1. Israel has a right to exist. (This is more their defense than the US. With the US it’s usually phrased as “We have a right to protect our national interests” which is essentially the same thing, but that’s more talking about US imperialism.)

2. Well you can’t paint everyone with a broad brush in that country. You can’t get rid of the whole country for a few bad apples!

These are misguided on both counts, and that’s because nations do not have a right to exist.

But people do.

What is Nationalism as a Concept?

Nationalism came about during a period known as the Age of Enlightenment. It was a time that challenged major systems that had been in place for millennia.

The earth revolving around the Sun instead of the other way around. A single church ruling all over Western Christianity. Kings and Queens being given their authority from God. All of it was being challenged with supposed logic and reason.

There were wars over religion, brutal subjugation of indigenous peoples through colonialism, the African slave trade, the birth of the United States, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution closed out that era.

Out of this age came the concept of “the nation”. It was an identity that was borne off of the backs of ethnic and regional identities. Instead of Saxon, Norman, or Frankish it became “French”. Or English instead of Saxon, Norman, some Dane, Welsh or Scottish even though those last two would hotly declare they aren’t English.

It was an attempt to get out of the petty regional feudalism that was characterized by wars fought over strips of land, peasants or serfs tied to said land with minimal rights, and an economy tied to agriculture.

In many ways nationalism was tied to the birth of capitalism which now put the flow of wealth in a class that wasn’t from the nobility; what would be called the bourgeoisie by writers like Karl Marx.

In many ways the concept of a nation was merely the evolution to something greater than regionalism, or tribalism. Without the concept of nationalism organizing so many people outside of a singular ruler, or ruling class was all but impossible. Even powerful rulers had a difficult time organizing lands they conquered under feudalism.

It’s why Italy and Germany were late to the nationalist party. Same thing with Japan and China respectively.

And yes there were still monarchs in many nation states but increasingly they lost their control to the concept of a nation. The nation was something altogether separate and above the monarch.

Monarches died. Nations could live on.

When Nations Forfeit Their Right to Exist

There comes a point at which nations forfeit their right to exist. Here you need to separate the concept of a nation state from the people who live within it.

I’m not talking about genocide. That’s a whole separate affair. I’m also not talking about killing off all the people within the borders of a nation state.

I’m talking about the concept of a specific nation. Their existence is conditional on how they treat their citizens or people who live within their borders who might not be citizens, and how they co-exist with the rest of the world.

This is not a radical position to hold. In fact we hold this position with so many other enemies we’ve had in the United States.

Did Nazi Germany have a right to exist? Of course not. They were bellicose and murderous. They committed the Holocaust. Even if you parse out and say “Well that wasn’t the whole of the German people” that’s fine. But the nation of Nazi Germany started a world war and tried to wipe out not just the Jewish people but everyone they thought was an “undesirable”.

And when it was all said and done the Allied powers created the Nuremberg trails just to deal with it. The Germany that came after the Third Reich created laws to make sure there wouldn’t be a Fourth Reich.

When Trump in his bumbling, school boy bully way tried to be snide to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on the anniversary of D-Day saying it wasn’t a “good day” for Germany Merz said:

“In the long run, Mr. President, this was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship."

That’s because there are atrocities so heinous that a nation state can commit which make it irredeemable. And while the people might still live within the geographic area of the former nation state there are conditions where forfeits its right to exist.

Thus no nation state has the absolute right to exist without conditions. That means a nation’s right to exist is conditional.

And because nation states are an idea, and not necessarily tied up in personhood or a group of people they can be scrapped.

This is where we are with the United States, Israel, Russia, North Korea, and a host of other shitty countries.

But Israel is Different!

So it is… And it isn’t.

Israel is absolutely tied to the Jewish people… to a degree. It might be a large degree but it’s not an absolute one to one.

And honestly the Jewish people shouldn’t want that just as we in the United States shouldn’t want our identity tied to the United States.

Part of my background was the study of religion in college. It was a reaction to the fundamentalist christianity that would later become Christian nationalism I encountered in rural Texas and East Tennessee. And a big part of the reason I left the Christian church and eventually religion altogether was because of the growing radicalization within American Christianity.

So Israel is absolutely tied not just to the Jewish people but also Judaism. It’s part of the justification used to resettle the land Israel resides on.

Now I’m not going to get into whether Israel had a right to do that. That’s a separate argument, but the reason I bring it up is whenever criticism is leveled at Israel for something it does invariably the fall back is an accusation of antisemitism.

I wanna be very clear here. I think all people, Jewish people included, have a right to exist. I will state that about any people. That is the fundamental ethical problem with racism of any kind. In that it will always lead to one group claiming to be above another one and once that occurs atrocity follows sooner or later.

So when you create an ethno-state where one group of people is given preeminence over another group of people, no matter how well intentioned or justified from a history of trauma even a Holocaust, it will inevitably lead to oppression.

So why should Israel be given an exception when other nations who did the same thing were not?

Apartheid South Africa was essentially dismantled by USAID even though the regime was supported by Reagan in the 1980’s.

South Korea was a military dictatorship, one supported by the United States, until it became a democracy. That’s one of the reasons when the former President Yoon Suk Yeol attempted a coup it was quickly put down and later prosecuted.

So while we can never forget the Jewish people have suffered throughout their long history from racism, oppression, pogroms and genocide Israel as a nation state does not have an unconditional right to exist. It has the same conditional right to exist as every other nation, including the United States.

The Social Contract Says A Citizenry Owns The Horrors Committed By Their Leaders

Germany had to struggle with the evils that were committed by the Nazis after the end of World War II. Children who were born later had to contend with the reality that their parents, grandparents, and extended family committed to a cause that left deep and lasting scars on the world.

Japan had its struggle to come to terms with their role as well even going so far as to not teach the full history of the atrocities that were committed in China, a source of contention that exists to this day.

The United States is no different in that regard either with the white washing of the genocide committed against indigenous peoples, and the African slave trade and subsequent terrorism and oppression against people of color. Not to mention the oppression of women, Chinese exclusion acts, Japanese internment, and up to today with the rounding up those of hispanic descent in ICE concentration camps along with the starvation of the Cuban people, and the bombing of Iranian citizens and non-military targets.

These are all being done with the cloak of “national interests”, a self righteous shield that excuses atrocities being committed.

At some point we’ll have to answer for it when the Trump regime falls.

Because as John Locke stated in the social contract theory rulers only have power with the consent of the governed. Now it’s not so cut and dry as all that, but enough of our own citizens are a-okay with horrible shit being committed in our name.

You can blame it on propaganda, and that’s fair.
You can blame it on cultural conditioning, and that’s fair.
You can state you were in the resistance and you did what you could. That’s fair too.

But isn’t it also fair that other countries who are suffering under the tyranny unleashed upon the world rightly blame the nation that’s carrying it out?

Would it be fair if after a certain point of really horrible shit they demand that nation not exist anymore?

That their cultural heritage is so flawed, and so fucked up that there’s no saving it?

We did that with Nazi Germany.
We did that with Imperial Japan.
We did that with Fascist Italy.
Apartheid South Africa.
We did that in Iraq.
We’re attempting to finish the job on Cuba, and Iran.

So why would the United States or Israel get a pass? Why would those nations be immune to the consequences of violating the conditions needed maintain their existence as a nation in the world?

And while some of those countries still have the same name how they are in practice has radically changed. Effectively those nation states that committed those atrocities no longer exist.

That’s the problem when you put that kind of evil, tyrannical shit out into the world. You can’t be surprised when a coalition of nations decides enough is enough. That they don’t give shit about your past achievements or the trauma you’ve suffered. You hurt them so badly they’re going to make sure you never do it again.

That’s where we’re heading.

When Israel declares that Palestinians are so hated they can be hanged exclusively if they commit a crime that’s a step into forfeiture of your right to exist. We saw that with the Black Codes in the US. We saw that with the Nazis against the Jewish people.

We’re seeing it now with the US towards so many nations across the world, Russia towards Ukraine, and Israel towards Lebanon, Palestine, and now Iran.

And because of that they’re all on a slippery slope to giving up their rights to continuing existing in a world that can’t exist with them peacefully.

Because every nation doesn’t have a right to exist if that existence is predicated on the stamping out the existence of other people.

If you look at a lot of temples in the Middle East from an archeological perspective you’ll see that at various points they were a holy site for one religion or another. The name of the god on the temple changed but the site didn’t change.

As a professor of mine pointed out it’s easier to change the name of the god on temple than it is to change the practice. It’s how we got Saturnalia turned into Christmas. It’s how we got local gods from animatic practice turned into saints. That’s how we’re wired as human beings. It’s why it’s so damn hard to change a habit.

But the good news is we can change them. On an individual level it’s called psychological adaptability. On a societal level it’s about changing the super structure. In order to do that we have to change the dominant culture.

The billionaire backers of Trump, and those who want to maintain & expand this kleptocracy/oligarchy the “Epstein Class”, are pushing for that change. They’re forcing us not only to reckon with their own excess and depravity but the cultural super structure that allowed for them to become what they are, to have as much power as they do without being checked or held accountable/

Because they didn’t just come from nowhere and they’re not alone in making America the current hellscape it’s becoming. It’s taken four decades with Reagan (Voodoo) economics to essentially dismantle the effectiveness of FDR’s New Deal but we’ve finally arrived at a point where it’s not going to be able to go any further without serious damage to everyone outside of the Epstein class.

Oh sure they’ll try and sell the Baby Boomers that their overpriced homes make them millionaires now even if they can’t sell them because no one can afford them. Or if they’re unfortunate enough to not have a retirement and decent medical care they’ll be able to find a very generous group of people who donated to a GoFundMe. So what if the home’s equity that you were supposed to pass down to your children mother got e eaten up by medical care costs that so many other countries in the world don’t deal with.

So what if you don’t have a community to speak of anymore because everyone’s always working and can barely afford just to survive. You didn’t need time off right? Working only 40 hours a week is for lazy people. And retirement? What’re you a taker? You’re supposed to work until you die for the Epstein Class aren’t you?

Even as that same Epstein Class is All-In on AI doing away with your job while they shred the last of any social safety net left. Not too difficult to add up that grisly calculus is it?

And yet in this moment we’re already seeing the pivots coming. The Ellison Family owns most of corporate media in this country now, and whatever they don’t own is buying up every scrap of media distribution they can.

For those at home keeping score vertical integration was outlawed in the 1940’s. That’s where a studio owned everything: the production studios, the actors, the workers, the theaters, all of it. It was an exploitative system and after it changed we got all the great movies we remember today.

The reason was really simple: consumer choice. People voted with their dollars on the movies they wanted to see, and they were given more choice because movie theaters wanted to make money so they showed more movies, not what the studio dicatated they had to show. Sleeper hits became a thing. Whole genres of movies were born because creatives and investors alike found there was a demand for them.

But it’s not just that way with movies. It’s that way with our corporate media. It’s that way with our grocery chains. Healthcare. Politics. Social media. Education. Almost every facet of life in America, including residential housing, corporations are owning more and more of it.

So is it any wonder there’s always a segment, the majority of them, of political leaders who seem to side with monied interests time and time again?

We’re at a place in our culture where we tacitly accept the status quo because for most of our lives it’s what we’ve known. For forty years corporate backed politicians on both sides have chipped away at the New Deal that built the middle class. That gave working class families union protection, and at least a shot at a livable wage.

Slowly but surely we’ve been sold on the lie that the American Dream is still working but we’re all just not working hard enough. That the wealth will trickle down any day now. Just gotta keep working, keep sacrificing, keep letting the rich take more and more.

After all they earned it by getting us to do the work right?

We’ve been distracted by culture wars that really were pointless, but there were enough of people out there to get outraged, and folks who wanted to make a buck stoking that outrage, to keep those home fires burning.

David Simon, creator of The Wire, said that the real damage occurs in those boring city council meetings that no one likes to attend. It’s happens in those committee hearings on the Hill. In the riders of omnibus bills that don’t take effect until after the election so politicians can dodge accountability.

But there is a glimmer of hope. Right now we’re going through one of the most brazen, most corrupt, most traitorous regimes in US history. The truth has been laid bare for anyone who cares to look at it with open eyes.

And there’s enough of us who are.

Our job now is to keep people looking. A lot of folks will want to turn away. They’ll want to rebuild the temple because they don’t know what else to put there. They’ll tell us “don’t get distracted”, or “it’s too important right now to focus on that”.

I know. I used to be one of those people.

Or instead of just changing the names of the gods on the temples we can actually tear down the practice that made those old gods so powerful, and awful.

Maybe… Just maybe we can actually progress to the better version we’ve pretended to always be.

A Sexually Transmitted Infection.

I have herpes. I’ve had it for a while now. As far as infections like this go it’s extremely manageable. In a lot of ways I was lucky.

I can detect when I’m about to have an outbreak, and when I have one it’s barely noticeable or really not too uncomfortable at this point.

I got it while in a committed relationship by freak happenstance. My girlfriend at had an outbreak and I caught it from a small abrasion in the skin. She didn’t mean to give it to me, and honestly the chances of me contracting it were really small.

And I was angry with her. It put a strain on our relationship. It didn’t lead to us breaking up, but it was definitely on the scale as to why.

Still it wasn’t because I contracted it from her, but the lack of empathy she had for me getting it. That was a big problem in our relationship. When it came to showing empathy and support in those moments of emotional tension she wasn’t there in a meaningful way. In fact the opposite.

Add to the fact the inherent shame in having an STI just made things worse. It’s a shame I’m all too familiar with. It’s affected my dating life, or lack thereof. I’ve met people who’ve talked to me about their own diagnosis’ over the years, many of whom didn’t tell their partners or seek medical attention due to the cultural stigma surrounding STIs.

So that’s why I’m writing this piece. To hopefully bring some clarity as to what it’s like living with an infection that you think makes you “dirty”, or “tainted” because that’s how society at large treats these infections.

And because of that it makes spreading it even worse.

The Shame of Being Tainted

With close friends I was pretty open about having herpes. Open when I felt it was safe, and I wouldn’t be judged too harshly.

That was always the scariest part truth be told. I worried how their opinion of me would change once they found out I was “tainted”.

That shame is very real. I didn’t date for a long time because of it. It was hard enough disclosing it to friends who I knew cared about me but to strangers I hoped to have a romantic spark with? Terrifying.

So I just didn’t date. More than that in the first few years of having my infection I didn’t think I was allowed to date. I had “fucked up” and caught an infection.

“No one’s going to believe you. They’ll think you’re a piece of shit,” that voice in my head told me. That eventually festered into me feeling unlovable.

Because even though medical professionals will assure you that the chances are remote that you’ll give it to someone else that’s how I got it after all. I’d be crushed if that happened, and while I’d like to think I’d deal with it better than my former partner how do you adequately express remorse at giving an infection to someone else?

Because there is absolutely a stigma so ingrained with our culture concerning STIs of all kinds that it feels like a scarlet letter. All the jokes about it, and revulsion & disdain that comes with any discussion about it.

You can’t help but feel tainted, and while I don’t feel that shame to the degree I once did I still feel it.

I feel it every time I disclose it to a potential sexual partner and the bow out soon follows. And it’s never graceful. It’s never kind. At best it’s a text like an HR letter, or worse it’s anger at me for having the condition. Then follows the days of wounds being reopened, and that shame of being tainted creeping back in.

And every time you go on a date you expose yourself to that. You have to weigh when you should disclose it. Always before sex but it can’t be right before.

Now for those that don’t have it you might say “It has to be up front!” but let me ask you this… Do you disclose your deepest shameful flaws on a coffee date when you first meet someone? You ever disclose too much and then you wish you could get that back?

However if you want a shot at an honest relationship you can build on you can’t fail to disclose on something like that. People do though. About that and so many other things.

Learning to Be Brave

At some point you’re confronted with the kind of person you’re going to be with your infection. You make a choice of when you’ll disclose it, or if you will at all.

I would say I’m shocked by how many people I’ve known that never disclose their conditions to their sexual partners, or even get tested for STIs but sadly I’m not.

In fact because I’ve been more open about it to close friends I’ve talked to friends of friends about their own condition. How to cope with the shame of it, and how to move in the world.

More than a few have said they’ll never tell their partners in fear of them leaving. That is never the right course of action. Besides lying to someone you supposedly care about it will likely lead to the person with the condition acting out against their partner in order to hide their condition.

And yes I know couples where one or both partners have a condition and they’re fine. They have fulfilling romantic lives like anyone else. They’re just more careful and more aware. If anything that’s what my condition has helped me with.

The Benefits I Got from My Condition

Before my diagnosis I never cared about my stress levels. Not one bit.

In fact I used to think being stressed was a failure on my part. It was a sign that I “couldn’t hack it”, a holdover of toxic military culture that said if you can’t “suck it up” when it came to stress and anxiety then it was a character defect.

But with herpes it doesn’t care where the stress comes from. It just reacts. It’s biology. Eating too much stress leads to an outbreak. In the first year of my condition I had an outbreak every couple of months. One stretch it felt like it was back to back to back.

It was then that I realized just how much stress I was carrying, and unless I wanted to keep having outbreaks I needed to get it under control.

That was really the first time I started seriously caring about my overall health especially my stress levels.

It was the first step to taking my depression & anxiety seriously and not just something I needed to “get over”.

I learned how to manage my stress levels better. When I needed to step away from something I did. When the stress came because I was holding onto things I didn’t need to I let it go.

In a strange way it forced me to get the help I needed. Yes, it added the tension and stress of the shame associated with it but I got the tools to deal with stress, and mental health overall because of my new reality.

Why Write This?

I suppose in a way I’m just tired of hiding it. I’m sick of the shame for something I didn’t ask for, and really something that shouldn’t have so much stigma attached to it.

I have all sorts of medical conditions that don’t have as much stigma attached to them today even though they used to.

Depression
Anxiety
Obesity

And herpes.

Yes dating is much harder because every time I feel an attraction to someone I know I’ll have to disclose what I have. There will always be that risk they’ll walk away, but honestly there’s so many other things that make people walk away that we can’t control.

I’ve had women refuse to date me because I write about politics, or because I’m fat, or a leftist, or an atheist, or because I worked in a blue collar field, or I wasn’t into the yoga lifestyle like she was, or I ate meat.

This is just another thing. But even with that it’s always best to be honest, to present who you are in the most authentic way you can.

Yeah rejection will still suck. It always sucks, but it’s also not the end of the world.

But there is a stigma attached to having any STI no matter how minor. There is a shame associated with it that I’ll always feel in some way.

However what would feel worse would be to live with a lie. To feel like you have to hide something like this from a partner you want to be intimate with physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

If anything this condition has helped me become more vulnerable. To learn that even though I’ll be rejected I’ll survive it. I’ll be better off for it because if I can be open about something I used to feel an immense amount of shame about the other stuff isn’t that big of a deal.

So if you’re living with an STI, or some other condition you feel ashamed about don’t be. Chances are someone else is going through the exact same thing you are, or maybe something worse.

Yeah you’re gonna be judged, but so what? We’ll all be judged about something. That’s just how most people are. It doesn’t change anything about you or your world. In fact it’s always better to know the truth than carry on a lie to avoid a truth.

Trump doesn’t do hard.

Neither does Elon. Or any of these so-called Alpha Male types who abuse women and children.

They don’t do harm and yet they cause a lot of damage.

Still it doesn’t quite seem to encapsulate the terrible anxiousness we’re all living through right now does it?

Watching the Middle East suddenly become engulfed in a region wide conflict that absolutely didn’t need to happen.

Even Joe Kent, a rabid white nationalist whose only claim to fame was that he really liked Trump’s white nationalism has head enough when he resigned from the regime earlier this week.

And yet it’s true. Think about it for a moment. Try to think of a time that Trump delivered on something that required to do more than ramble for a couple of hours? Something that required days, weeks, months of preparation that he personally oversaw?

Maybe January 6th, but that was carried out more by his advisers. He just made the phone calls and personal threats because he’s a shitty mafia boss. His saving grace is the powers that be don’t want to hold him accountable.

But without taking credit for someone else’s hard work, or putting his gold plated shit of a surname on something has Trump ever been the guy who got it across the line?

I’ve been in leadership positions where I didn’t do the frontline work, but I definitely had to coordinate things. I had to make sure everyone was staying on task, understood the assignment, support systems were in place so the frontline workers could do their jobs to the best of their ability, and it all came in under budget.

I’ve had to get creative in problem solving. I had to be compassionate in conflict resolution. I had to keep everyone’s spirits up when times got tough. And I had to say “No” when I couldn’t find a way to say “Yes”.

Trump has never done that. And that’s why, thankfully, fascism is failing in this moment even though it’s doing a whole lot of damage. A smarter Trump would be so much deadlier.

That’s because Trump doesn’t have a key component to being a strong willed person: self-control

(Note: I say men because that’s my experience. All of what I’m saying could just as easily apply to women, and non-binary folks. These are human qualities after all. But for the purpose of this essay I’m focusing on the shitty men who currently rule over us.)

Self Control Is the Ultimate Expression of Strength

You ever been on a diet? Counting your macros or just cutting back on your portions? That shit is hard amirite?

Ever failed to stay on a diet? Yeah you’re not alone. In fact most people bail out of a diet less than 3 weeks in. Same with an exercise routine. It’s why most New Year’s Resolutions emails stop getting opened by over 90% recipients around January 18th.

That’s because self control is one of the hardest character traits a human being can cultivate. It’s also why it’s advisable to do whatever you can to make sure you have the highest possible advantage in maintaining that self control.

You like chocolate or wine? Make sure it’s not in the house when you start your diet.

Don’t like going to the gym? Either get a personal trainer or a workout buddy. If you can’t get either one of those give yourself a reason to go. “I can have a single cheat meal once a week if I go to the gym three times.”

Now those are just basic physical stuff.

What about traumatic stuff? You know the really hard stuff that we all struggle to control?

Is there something or someone that’s triggering for you? What are you doing to minimize that?

“If uncle Ted starts his shit I’m just gonna politely walk out of the room. I’m not taking the bait.”

“I can’t believe Sarah blasted me in that company wide email! I’m gonna… No. Nope. Gonna not respond angry. Just gonna leave it for now.”

That’s when the real work of self control starts to pay off. It’s controlling how you react even in the worst of circumstances, when your trauma triggers push you into fight or flight mode. Can you get back to what the stoics call “Reasoned Choice”?

So when have you seen Trump ever do that?

When have you seen him not lash out at a woman reporter with name calling when he was asked a question he didn’t like?

When has he not taken the flattery bait from someone who wanted something from him? Doesn’t matter if it’s a sycophant looking for a position they’re unqualified for, a billionaire donor looking for special consideration, or a foreign leader looking to get something for nothing. Trump always acquiesces for a kick back and a lot of flattery.

That’s because he’s ruled by his passions, his traumas, his horrible nature. There is no attempt at self control because his narcissism and insecurity tell him he doesn’t need to. Everything he does is amazing after all.

There’s no strength in that. There’s only failure.

Unfortunately we’re all now living through the failures of weak men. There’s no mystery to figuring them out. They’re weak because they lack self-control and when you couple that with no accountability whatsoever this is the result.

Unless we do something about it so we’re never ruled over them again.

I’m really fucking exhausted.

Currently in CO4 the democrats are fighting it out in the primary because a former Rear Admiral decided she’d be the best candidate to take on Lauren Boebert even though she was a Republican until recently. She says she stopped supporting Trump after January 6th, but didn’t change her party affiliation until 3 years ago.

So instead of spending their time getting their shit together to take on Boebert they’re currently arguing back and forth about someone who changed their Voter Registration 5 minutes is the “right” candidate.

Now we’re in another conflict in the Middle East, only this time it’s not gonna be something Trump will declare victory and move on. This is something that’s not going away. This is a permanent fuck up.

Because unlike raping little girls, which the powers that be don’t really seem to give two shits about in the US, the rest of the world cares when your bombing spills over into their backyard.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say this hits me harder because of my military career that was cut short due to a training accident that left me with permanent knee pain, neck and shoulder immobility, and a fucked up right hand where I just lose my grip strength sometimes for no reason.

Not that I wanted to be part of any war. Just that someone else took my spot, and did the work I signed up to do. Even though we went into Iraq based on lies and fucked around in Afghanistan not changing a damn thing in the end it was still my job to do.

I got out of it, eventually got therapy that I didn’t think I deserved because again I wasn’t there. Hard to ask for that when your therapist at the VA is missing a kidney because of toxic fumes he suffered over in Iraq. Names you remember from training that are on tombstones. Guys who will never be the same who made it back here.

It’s why I don’t give a fuck about a baseball hat. The orange turd is already a turd. It’s not new information. Why I never cared about the yellow magnet ribbons on the minivans, or “buy a solider a coffee” performative bullshit.

No one was held accountable for the devastation the US brought to the Middle East. The lives lost on the US side and the other side. d

Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Nigeria, Somalia, and whatever other convenient explosive distraction that’ll pop up next month are just more names added to a butcher’s bill. A list that’s already too long.

And fuck am I tired of it.

I’d be lying if I said I was still optimistic. I’m not.

It’s hard to keep hope alive when you’re seeing the same patterns repeat over and over again. The same shit but worse. And I don’t wanna pretend for the sake of keeping a “stiff upper lip” anymore.

Fuck I’m tired.

Tired of the procedural, legal, “gotta do it the right way” delays that mean more people get hurt, more people get fucked, more justice being denied.

I might be smart but I’m not brilliant enough to know how to fix any of it, or at least make it stop.

Tired of feckless opposition leaders that have to protect their pedophile donors.

Shit…

I’m just tired.

I tired of writing about it.
I’m tried of the protesting.
I’m tired of trying to keep up with the latest madness that should be an automatic disqualification.
I’m tired of endless wars that no one wants to pay for but the powers that be seem to wanna fight.

I’m getting sick of even opening Substack.

I’m not sure if I’ll always feel this way but trying to talk intelligently about yet another war in the Middle East where men and women who look like, act like, and are the same age as I was get hurt and killed to protect pedophiles might just be the line for me.

I’ve been doing this since November 2024 and my mental health has steadily declined since then.

So I’m going to step away for a bit. Not sure when I’ll be back, and in what form.

I appreciate all the support everyone has given me. I think it’s why I was able to go on for much longer than would have.

But I’m tired… And if I don’t take care of myself being tired will turn into something worse.

My life is hard, but I have a lot more advantages than I did even a year ago. This is by far from the worst I’ve ever been through personally in my life.

I have more patience, more understanding, more practice in dealing with the depression and anxiety than I’ve ever had in my life. Episodes that would’ve derailed me in the past have been difficult but manageable now.

And yet I’m struggling. I feel like I’m hanging on and bracing for impact at the same time.

The world feels like it’s falling apart doesn’t it?

That’s because it is. The old world where rich, mostly white or European men dominated the globe is failing apart and while there’s some hope for a better today is fucking terrifying.

It’s difficult to wake up on a Saturday ready to play some dungeons & dragons with friends only to read about school children being bombed in Iran. Can’t even have a weekend without the Epstein Commander in Cover Up green lighting some more horrible shit.

It’s hard to shut it out when the handyman you call up for things you can’t do wants to talk about it. The guy you never talk politics with starts that conversation. It feels like there’s no respite.

And even though I talk politics, study politics, and try to understand politics I. Fucking. Hate. Politics.

I loathe politics especially this era’s politics.

It’s why my worst self can get the better of me when dealing with the shit heels who cheerlead fascism and oppression. It takes me to dark places.

But that inescapability is precisely how you know it’s changing. It’s the barometer that you know everyone is watching the car crash of the Epstein Regime.

Still when you write about it, talk about it, and try to have something intelligent to say that puts things in perspective you unfortunately have to swim in it. That’s why I hate it. I feel like we’re all forced to be here when there isn’t a need to be. We’re here because enough of us couldn’t be bothered and now we have pedophile grifters bombing school children in some far off country.

There’s no living long term in this.

That’s why I’m struggling.

Why we all are.

But what I’ve done for myself is I don’t beat myself up anymore for struggling. I give myself grace for falling off a diet, or not writing what I “should”, or not being my best self.

My best self isn’t a state I can reach all the time. It’s a goal I strive to be sure but it wouldn’t be special if it was routine.

I struggle.
I make mistakes.
I can be mean.
I can be lazy.
I will let my depression and anxiety get the better of me sometimes.

I’m all those things.

And…

I can be compassionate.
I can be insightful.
I can be witty.
I can be funny.
I can show love.
I can step it up.
I can give myself the same grace I give others.

I’ll most likely never eliminate those flaws, but I can mitigate them. And I give myself credit for the good in me more than I normally do which I never used to.

It’s okay if you’re struggling. Life is a struggle. From birth to death. We struggle to be born, we struggle to grow, and we struggle until we meet Fate along the road. So why would you chastise yourself for struggling? Why would you demand Life be something it isn’t?

I’ve seen friends open up about their struggles and I’m glad they did. Private struggle is a trap. It closes you off. It feeds the thing that wants to keep you down.

Maybe you struggle with depression? Maybe you don’t but you know someone who does? Maybe your struggle takes on a different form? That’s okay too. Maybe you don’t think it’s worth it because other people have it harder? While that’s true hard is hard especially when it’s your hard to deal with. Chastising yourself for struggling won’t make it any easier. Yes perspective can help but self inflicted punishment never does.

It’s okay to be struggling in this moment. To be afraid. To not understand what’s happening. Hell, I don’t most days. No one really does. Something like this you don’t get both arms around it.

Just know it will end. I don’t know what comes after but it will end. It always ends. That’s the one constant in this world is that Fate comes for everyone and everything at some point.

So give yourself permission to recognize your struggle. Give yourself grace if you don’t think you’re handling it “like you should”. Struggle is messy. It’s never clean. It’s just about getting through it and doing what you can.

Do what you can when you can.

Don’t beat yourself up if you’re not perfect in this moment.

This shit is hard. It’s brutal. It’s un-fucking-fair.

But it will end, and you’re doing your part.

You got this.

Because more moments are coming, good and terrible. Be grateful you’re here to meet them because one day you won’t be.

I’m gonna stop referring to this regime as the Trump Regime. At this point he’s little more than a cult figurehead. His handlers are making more and more of the decisions, and given that his health is obviously failing we’re entering into the next stage of this nightmare that really can only be described as the Epstein Cult.

Because that’s really what this is: a cult. It’s moved beyond a cult of personality behind Trump, which got the rubes on board by playing into their grievance politics of small minded bigotries enabled by an all too eager corporate media to package that into legitimate economic concerns for ratings and revenue.

Now before you give me the “Now hold on” just watch some of the clips from West Virginia contractors who made good money off of the Biden Infrastructure Act who voted to cut their own economic throats.

But now we’re coming to the rub for MAGA and for the rest of us.

Because now we’re being asked to accept the deification of Jeffrey Epstein and soon after his demise it’ll be Donald Trump’s turn. Saint Reagan wasn’t enough. Jesus is just a buzzword that the cult leaders use to get the sheep to reflexively mouth the mantras of “Praise Him!” all while looking away from the horrors their masters are infecting on the rest of us.

American is becoming a fascist necrocracy where Jeffery Epstein will have to be redeemed as a saint in order to save their “Anointed One” Donald J. Trump because without that deification it all collapses. The Epstein Class of billionaires loses everything.

Sounds crazy right? Stick with me.

North Korea, not Hungary, is the blueprint for the Epstein Cult

I used to watch Christopher Hitchens back in the day when he’d debate religious scholars about atheism. Although I disagreed with him politically on foreign policy and women incapable of being funny he made a salient point about North Korea, which was his go to peccadillo.

Hitchens pointed out that North Korea is a necrocracy where the head of the state is still Kim Il-sung who was named “Eternal President” in 1994 after his death. Sure they’ve had living heads of state but they’re all technically ruling in Kim Il-sung’s name.

The Soviet Union had remnants of that with their deification of Lenin.

But when you look at North Korea with the culture they’ve built up you seem shades of MAGA. With the parades, state sponsored propaganda, how the government seems to infect every aspect of daily life it starts to make sense why their government is set up the way it is.

What we’re seeing now in the United States is similar in many ways to North Korea. The current powers that be in DC are asking us to submit to the Cult of Epstein. With Nick Fuentes advocating for women to be rounded up into concentration camps, and the amount of people who are in the Epstein Files who are part of Trump’s cabinet, and the billionaires who supported this regime is it too much of a stretch to see the creation of North Korean style “Joy Brigades” for the pedophile rapist class?

ICE is already buying up warehouse space to house hundreds of thousands if not millions of marginalized people for human trafficking and slave labor. They’ve already destroyed any form of due process or simply ignore it.

They want what Epstein did out of the shadows and into the light of day. They’re not going to apologize for it once their base accepts it. They’re just going to do it.

That’s why Trump wants everyone to move on from the Epstein Files. It’s bigger than one man, even though he might be the worst amongst Epstein’s client list.

We’re being asked to deify Epstein and accept the vile creation he wrought upon the earth.

They’ve already tried to whitewash Jeffery Epstein as much as they could. Sure he “liked ‘em young but who doesn’t right”? Or “well maybe he had inappropriate relationships with young girls but he wasn’t a sex trafficker!”

This is deification. It’s not the same way we normally view deities in the Judeo-Christian sense but it is in the most basic cultish way. It’s in the way that the Romans would define the shame cultural notion of religio or Pax Deorum which as a concept means do ut des (“I give so that you give”).

This is the heart of what the deification of Trump and soon to be Epstein. “You have to accept this otherwise it all collapses” is a favorite threat we hear about exposing the Epstein Files and holding those in them accountable.

It’s Pam Bondi saying “Look at the DOW! How could you think about anything else?!”

It’s bigot and christian nationalist Matt Walsh openly stating that 16 year old girls, children, are at “peak fertility” and should be married off so pregnancy isn’t a moral issue. Evangelicals like Walsh have said even girls, again children, as young as 12 could be married.

It’s Nick Fuentes, anti-semite and Hitler admirer, laughing as he told women “Your body, my choice” after the defeat of Roe v. Wade. It’s him recently advocating for all women being put in concentration camps to be given to mean like chattel slaves.

It’s not “for the clicks”. It’s not to be “edgy”.

They really believe this shit.

That's why they’re asking us to ignore Jeffery Epstein. That we need to move on. That we should just accept some in the Epstein Class “like ‘em young”. Because that’s who they are and they can’t be that without a majority of permissibility from those of us who aren’t.

So the next best thing for the Epstein Class will be to get their base to give them tacit approval as long they promise that they’ll still hate the people they hate. They’ll still get to keep their small petty bigotries rather than self examine even if it costs them everything else.

That’s why it’s a cult.

This will not be a polite disagreement.
It’s not a “political difference”.

This will come down to are you a believer in the Epstein Cult or are you an apostate? An infidel? A heathen? One of the uncivilized who doesn’t understand what made western civilization under Christ so miraculous?

Now that’s hyperbole to be sure but haven’t you heard something akin to that from the Epstein Class lately?

And how do you keep a base of support from falling away? You demand they treat their support as religious devotion. You turn a sex trafficker into an instrument of the Almighty. The images of staked out, violated children become sacrifices on the altar of the Christian God for the greater good.

That’s how you create a cult.

The Epstein Cult.

And just like most, if not all cults it’s to benefit those at the top at the expense of everyone else.

The question is will those of us outside of the Cult of Epstein simply accept it, and live under its auspices?

Or will we tear down the temple?

That you can still breathe

That’s there still time

That you’re still here

Even with all the cruelty and suffering

Amongst all the wicked and profane

Love that you can still make your mark

That you can still show your measure

When all else falls away cling to the love you have for others, yourself and your place in a better world that you’re setting out to make

Love you can still do what you can

Because you’re here, right now

All signs of a so called “manly man”.

Somewhere after being a piece of shit drunk, and telling his daughter he didn’t care if she were raped because he had two other daughters, presumably he wouldn’t care if they were raped either, he beckoned his daughter to come upstairs to his bedroom where Lucy Harrison was shot and murdered by her father. He claims he only meant to “show her” the gun and it somehow went off. Also he was drunk. Lucy’s murder was ruled an “accident”.

From The Guardian the Coroner’s findings were as follows:

“Harrison was a “secret drinker” who had, on the balance of probabilities, been teasing his daughter with the gun when he shot her dead. She said she accepted that he did not know the gun was loaded when he pointed it at her and pulled the trigger.

She added: “His actions have killed his own daughter and in the cold light of day it is hoped that he now recognises the risk he posed to her life in circumstances in which he had no experience of guns, had undertaken no training and had never fired a gun.”

Now it’s not murder according to a Texas grand jury. It’s not really anything. Not even a slap on the wrist or a “shame on you”. Even the coroner “accepted” that Lucy’s father was so bumbling and ignorant he couldn’t have possibly known that a firearm he bought for “home defense” when pointed at someone and the trigger is pulled will fire if it’s loaded. Who could’ve known?!

Again Lucy’s murder was ruled an accident i.e. nothing of consequence. A mistake. I mean if Lucy hadn’t been so outraged by Trump maybe her father wouldn’t have felt the need to show her a firearm he had no business possessing. Right?

That’s what the life of Lucy Harrison meant to her father and that Texas Grand Jury. Nothing. It’s what the lives of women mean to MAGA/Manosphere Men: nothing.

This isn’t an outlier especially in Texas where they’ve all but outlawed women having any sort of agency over their own bodies even if they leave the state for their own medical needs.

It’s not an outlier for all the Trump supporters like Lucy’s father who didn’t think Epstein was a deal breaker even before all the revelations started coming out. They were already out there. Or the fact he didn’t care if his own daughter was sexually assaulted.

It’s not an accident. It’s not a mistake. This is the standard for MAGA/Manosphere Men who claim to be “protectors” but really are predators.

Just like their anointed one Donald J. Trump who absolutely was up to his neck in it with Jeffrey Epstein.

I’m sort of numb to the Epstein revelations at this point. I know that whatever keeps coming out will be worse than the last. And yet, right on time, there aren’t many calls from the MAGA/Manosphere faithful calling for the heads of sexual predators, and rapists of children that Epstein frequently partied with, and blackmailed.

It’s not that shocking if you’ve ever been around one of the clapping seal faithful of the party of pedophiles. They’ve made it very clear over the decades that they’re just fine with their own abusing women, and children. They don’t view them as people after all.

But you might’ve thought there was a bottom with these folks especially with all their talk of being “protectors” of women.

Sure they might be pro-life, and view abortion as killing babies but they’re just trying to protect them right? I mean that’s their whole rationale even though they don’t seem to give a shit about children once they’re born, or the mothers who give birth to them.

Or what about their views on men playing the protector role even if they’re sexist? Isn’t that just a flawed ideology based on physical differences of men and women as a whole? You might point to the fact that more men physically abuse women than women abuse men.

But still this protector myth exists among certain men, just like the accountability and personal responsibility myth they identify with but never actually intend to live up to.

I wanna make a clear distinction here. There’s “failing” to live up to an ideal. That happens for a lot of us. We intend to live up to a moral standard we set for ourselves but end up falling short. This could be for any number of reasons: fear of consequences, greed in the moment, reckless behavior, etc.

We might feel bad about it later, justify our behavior, or a mix of both.

But in failing to live up to an ideal means we actually will strive to be better in the future. Hopefully we learn for our shortcomings.

Then there’s ideals carried forth as a lie. Ones you have no intention of ever living up to, and more than likely are used as cover to hide the real values you hold: selfishness, greed, lust for power, sadism, etc..

A lot of men who go on and on about being a “protector of women” usually fall into this category.

Here’s the problem with these men besides their abuse of women and children.

They’re weak, and they don’t want to look at their own weakness as something to work on. In fact they want to lie not only to themselves but the rest of the world. They’ll even go so far as to create entire movements to facilitate the lie.

There’s little to no hope for these men if they stay in that space. Nor should you view them as anything but the liars they are. They aren’t flawed men who just need support to become better. They’re cowards. They’re abusers. They’re pieces of shit wearing a human skin suit.

“But how are we supposed to tell the good men from the bad?”

Easy. Are they acting as protectors?

Here’s how protectors actually act. They care about the well being of the person, or people they’re protecting. It goes beyond displays of gallantry like walking next to the side of the street with moving vehicles.

Do they support equality for women?

Do they condone the actions of abusive men in public and/or private?

Are they honest with women and children they care about?

Do they sacrifice so those in their care might have what they need? That sacrifice might be male privilege in a patriarchal society. It might be suffering ridicule from shit heel men.

Do their politics match the values they live by? For MAGA men it most certainly does.

That’s what a protector of women really does. There’s no ambiguity in how he presents himself to the world.

There’s no saying he respects women while he’s with women, and then behind closed doors goes along to get along with the likes of Trump & Epstein.

A protector of women views women as people and thus protects women because he protects all people who are oppressed, and abused. Women, children, animals, his fellows, his home, his nation, even the planet.

He’s considerate of others because he tries to protect people as he’d want to be protected should he find himself in need of it.

This isn’t some unrealistic, absurd ideal.

It should be the standard for all good men.

And you won’t reach it. You’ll always be striving to reach it. To do better. You will fall short, but in even falling short you’ll have at least made the attempt to close the distance.

But MAGA/Manosphere don’t make the attempt at all because they don’t really believe in being an actual protector.

They’re simply predators.

And it’s far past time we treated them accordingly.

But what about the deeper meaning associated with an image?

Show the Statue of Liberty to someone who’s proud to be an American and she represents freedom. For others who’ve been on the opposite end of American Imperialism it might be a lie Americans tell themselves or a symbol of oppression.

That’s how propaganda functions. There has to be a value system that someone puts into the image. Without it the meaning is simply lost on the viewer, or at best not as effective.

Would you look at Trajan’s Arch the same way as a Roman citizen? How about an Italian citizen during the medieval period when Italy was made up of fractured city states? Or during the 1920’s with the rise of fascism?

Now given what we know about the Epstein Files and Trump’s name in them what’s the purpose of the following image?

Or this image which was just posted on the White House official website.

Now table the rage just for a bit because there’s a reason you’re seeing these images on social media and it’s not to just troll liberals.

This is the administration subtly trying to blunt the impact of the Epstein Files.

It’s impossible for Trump to come out and say he cares about women, and actually mean it. Most die hard MAGA know deep down he doesn’t mean it. They’re actually okay with it. It’s part of the MAGA brand after all.

What some of them aren’t okay with is the rape of children. That’s the bridge too far especially for women who’ve gone along with all this to try and save themselves.

So this is a way of soft selling to the cultists who desperately want to ignore all the horrible shit that’s coming out with Epstein. It’s one thing to disbelieve survivor claims. After all women wanna destroy powerful men, right? I mean that’s what they’ve been taught to internalize thanks to the Patriarchy.

But when you add up all the survivor accounts, and the emails, and the accountability happening overseas it gets harder and harder to justify that faith in the cult.

So the propaganda has to shift. They have to present a symbol of how they want Trump to be, not how he really is.

It’s a desperate attempt to hold their base together by trying to keep that once unshakeable faith from starting to doubt.

It’s “Look at this picture! That’s way better than some old PDF copy of an email right? That’s fake news! This is what you believe in right? Don’t lose faith!”

Images are much more powerful than words because they don’t require the viewer to conjure up the image on their own. They just require the faithful to put their own subtext onto them.

Trump protecting little white girls? Of course he’d do that! He’d never rape them. Would he?

They have to get rid of that “Would he?” part. That’s the doubt creeping in. And once they give into that doubt and the blinders come off that once fervent cultist starts to see just how far from reality they’ve been pulled.

It’s why to the MAGA gym bros Trump is always the very powerful body builder even though he’s said he’s never lifted weights a day in his life. In fact he undoubtedly would mock a gym bro on the time spent in the gym, and the diet they have to adhere to. He’d probably mock them about the “gear” (steroids) they take for that look.

It’s the same thing with those faithful who really believed Donald Trump is the “Anointed One” who’s going to expose the satanists, the pedophiles, and the perverts.

It’s not about empirical evidence at this point. It’s about faith being tested, but unlike faith in a divine, unseen power Donald Trump is very real which means that for every member of the Trump Cult there is a point where they want their faith to be validated.

But what happens when it’s not?

Or worse when that faith is shattered because it finally sinks in that it was all a lie?

That is a collective backlash no one is truly prepared for. And it doesn’t have to be all of MAGA. Just 5% of white women will do it.

5% of white women who look at their daughters and realize that she looks just like the victims on Epstein’s Island. That she’s around the same age. She’s someone’s child. Someone’s baby. One who might never have come home because they were tossed down a trapdoor to let the sea claim her.

5% of white women who know someone whose daughter almost died, or can’t have children anymore because something went wrong with a pregnancy. A woman was denied timely medical care that wouldn’t have been a question ten, or even five years ago thanks to the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

5% of white women who really think abortion is killing babies and the so called “protectors of women” had abortion doctors on call to abort fetuses from sex trafficked children.

5% of white women who see where this is going with “head of household” voting. With the talk about “partying with Epstein isn’t a crime”. Or the excuse that “So Trump likes ‘em young. What’s the big deal?”

5% of white women who went to watch Melania and started to do the math on all the affairs, the rapes, and all the bullshit that goes into making it appear as if Trump is “normal”.

That’s what those pictures are for. The 5% of white women who are posed to break away after seeing the hellscape Minneapolis has turned into. 5% of white women who didn’t confront their own trauma about sexual assault and buried it to survive.

Because in order for White Christian Nationalism to function they have to have those 5% of White Women. They lose them it’s pretty much over.

So you’ll see more propaganda like this as the drops keep coming. They’re desperate because the “open secret” is now out in the open.

There’s nothing secret about any of this shit anymore.

It’s our job to make sure we keep it in the light of day and demand accountability.

For the sake of the victims.

For the sake of the children.

For the sake of our soul.

It’s a phrase I heard more than once growing up and into my 20’s especially in the military.

It wasn’t a phrase that denoted technical skill or brute strength. It was about heart, and stamina. It wasn’t just about throwing a punch, but also taking a punch.

It’s about who wants it more. You might still lose if you can fight. Sometimes it goes that way. But if you don’t have the heart to fight, if you’re a coward then you’re on the clock for taking a fall. It’s just a matter of time.

When you first start training to fight you have to get over being scared to take a hit especially to the face. You have to get over the very natural inclination to tense up, to close your eyes or turn away. You have to stop that flinch most people do when they see something coming at them.

Some people get out of the way, but most people aren’t natural fighters where they keep watching as the blow is about to land.

But in order to be an effective fighter you have to train yourself not to flinch. Dodge for sure but if you take your eyes off your opponent that’s when another trained fighter will brutalize you.

It takes training and heart to willingly conquer that fear of being hit. How you do that is you have to actually take hits. You start to understand that while they hurt, and you need to do what you can to mitigate them you’ll survive.

Once you get to that place then you can start to actually learn how to fight for real.

That’s where we’re at as a country. Those of us in the resistance are learning how to fight for real.

Not make suggestions. Not leave it to feckless political leaders who give tacit responses to a number of emails and calls receive. They don’t care about the calls and emails anymore.

We the People have been taking hits and while it’s been very painful we understand where we’re at as a country. But more than that we’re starting to understand what will be required. That we’ll have to fight.

That We can carry on, and take the fight to the people who’ve been throwing shots at us.

Here’s why that makes us very dangerous. The Trump Regime and their billionaire enablers? They can’t fight.

They don’t have it in them. Oh sure they’ll spend time, money, and resources to get other people to fight for them but that’ll only get you so far.

Because at the heart of every mercenary is a calculus of self-preservation. They’ll only take so much punishment, put up with so much misery until it reaches a point where it’s simply not worth it. Even the most cruel sadist who's in it for the sick, twisted pleasure of inflicting pain on others is a coward at heart. They love dishing it out, but taking it? Not so much.

And while all Americans might not have a fighter’s mentality there are enough of us who are starting to understand what’s going to be required if we want a better world.

We’re gonna have to fight for it.

Not with fists to the face though that may be required at some points.

But with feet to the pavement.
Words that stoke the fire of freedom and justice.
A hand held out that helps another to hold on for another battle.

That’s what our side has that the monied class doesn’t.
Because you can’t buy character.
You have to build it.
You can’t sub-contract out heart and guts.
You can’t day trade love for higher ideals, and the bonds of community.

Minnesota is showing us that. What was meant to show power through intimidation and fear is doing the opposite. It’s strengthening resolve. It’s creating fighters.

And if you get enough fighters who are willing to stand shoulder to shoulder, to hold a line together, and not abandon each other when it gets really rough you’ve got something.

You’ve got a resistance that turns into a revolution.

“What about Hooters?” He said casually.

“Why do you wanna go to Hooters?” He said ribbing him a little bit. I knew the answer already.

“They have good wings,” He replied still casually.

“Not a fan of their breaded wings. Daytona style is pretty good,” I shot back casually. I wanted him to say why he really wanted to go. “Better wing places if that’s what you’re in the mood for.”

“I’m in the mood for wings and looking at pretty girls,” He said unabashedly. I mean he was a married guy at the time, and this was probably just a little bit of a safe thrill for him.

And after I thought about it I wouldn’t mind seeing some pretty girls myself. “I can get down with that.” I said with a non-judgmental smile.

So we went to Hooters, and I wasn’t sorry we did. Daytona wings, a pitcher of beer, good conversation and pretty girls to look at. It’s not something I did all the time, but there’s a baser part of me that enjoys that kind of thing every so often.

And this is the frame of mind you need to understand with Jeffrey Epstein and those who are in the Epstein files. Just like Hooters everyone knew the service Epstein provided. Just like Hooters there’s wings, there’s beer, but that’s not the reason you go to Hooters. There might be handful of people who’re just oblivious to the not so subtle business model Hooters uses but I’m willing to bet that percentage is so infinitesimal it’s not worth considering.

Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t a renowned thinker, or academic. He wasn’t a great artist. He probably didn’t have particularly witty insight, or was as avant garde as Andy Warhol.

He was a pimp.
A sex trafficker.
A rapist.
A blackmailer.
A piece of shit human being.

Everything else about him was window dressing and just like Hooters he didn’t do much to hide his business model.

And neither did the people he serviced which were the rich, the famous, the powerful and even royalty. They knew.

“What did they know, and when did they know it?” is not the right question to ask with the Epstein files.

Because they knew.

You’re not around a guy like Epstein in a significant way and remain blissfully ignorant of who he is and what he does. In fact you hang around that guy precisely because of who he is and what he does.

Maybe you’re not going full blown Trump in terms of depravity. Maybe you just wanna “look at pretty girls” but unlike the women who work Hooters they’re not legal, and are most likely being trafficked.

But you don’t think about that. You convince yourself that they really think you’re funny. A good looking teenage girl you could’ve never have talked to in high school thinks a 30, 40, 50 or 60 year old is “sexy”. You’re gonna ignore the problematic circumstances of what’s happening because you’d rather feed your ego than see another human being that’s in a horrible predicament.

And of course Jeffrey Epstein is gonna take a picture with you because that’s what blackmailers do. But it’s okay right? You didn’t do anything wrong. You just hung out, and chatted with the girls that seem to always be over there. He’s a popular charismatic guy right?

But he’s not though. He’s a predator and his clients were as much the prey as were his victims. The difference between the clients and the victims was the clients knew who Epstein was and either ignored it or simply didn’t care.

You need to keep reminding yourself of that. Because once this comes out fully into the light of day there will be a lot of people that we once respected who maybe didn’t do as much horrible shit as the worst of them, but they didn’t sound the alarm for the vulnerable, for the victims either.

And that makes them culpable. Maybe not to the same degree but do we really wanna split hairs over Epstein?

We are at a cultural moment where we have to hold even the rich, the powerful, and the seemingly righteous accountable.

Zero Tolerance.
Zero Exceptions.

That’s how we ensure this might never happen again, or at the very least it doesn’t go on as long and destroy as many lives as Epstein did.

There is violence in America. It has always lived just beneath the surface, but now it is being carried out in public, by the state, in our name, paid for with our taxes, and terrorizing our children.

Never again.

It’s something that seemed abstract to me, not a warning that required heeding in my lifetime. Neither the stories of my maternal grandfather nor the countless books I read or movies I consumed about that time could bring this picture into focus. That is one of the adorable American behaviors, this inability to truly understand or act until you experience it yourself.

I don’t think this is a uniquely human trait. We see time and time again our neighbors standing up for what is right, putting their bodies on the line for people they don’t even know. No, this is a trait that has been conditioned into the American psyche, based on 20 years of targeted marketing, dividing us into smaller and smaller subsets. Keeping us digitally compartmentalized from diversity of thought for the purpose of selling us something, a product, a person in power, whatever the widget du jour and whoever is paying the most for the marketing.

It’s happening faster than my grandfather experienced. His fear turned to anguish when the daily radio news devolved into state propaganda against his own community. His fear was how fast that misinformation was traveling over the airwaves.

My grandfather, a soccer star and all-around popular student, had his friends turn against him when he had to wear the star on his school uniform. They would chase him after school, on the way home or at soccer practice, to assault him and pull down his pants to see if he was circumcised. This was one of the only stories that he shared with us as he explained to my mother that the experience before they left in ’39 was horrible to live through, and he didn’t want to talk about it. And he was one of the very lucky ones.

Fast forward to instant access to targeted and manipulated information, as easy as pinging everyone’s pockets to get their attention.

While all areas of our current government pillage the country and the world, they distract us daily through state violence, by shooting American patriots in the face and in the chest for protecting their neighbors, while simultaneously sponsoring genocides around the world for waterfront property, minerals, oil, and natural gas. This includes the unreported physical laborers who toil at the expense of our consumption in lawless places that allow atrocities daily.

By the way, those labor camps overseas, this is where our government would like to send our neighbors, our legal naturalized and asylum-seeking citizens.

Meanwhile, I have to explain to my child, named after the very grandfather who escaped this exact behavior from his homeland, what to do if, or at this rate when, people in masks pound on our door, where to hide, what to do if his parents are taken from him, and how to protect his sibling.

I say these things to my elementary school–aged child, who understands completely how to hide from an active shooter or lockdown situation because he has been trained by his school. In fact, he tells me with pride he hides in this very particular part of the cubby because even if they shot bullets, it would take a lot of layers of wood to get to him.

And here I thought I was robbing him of a childhood.

Even my younger child seems to know more about hiding from an active shooter than I do. This is America.

You, keyboard warrior, podcast consumer, if you are so concerned with the economy, please go and work on a farm, like immediately, because we need YOU now, patriot, to help provide foodways to your country.

Your government has gutted the labor force of America, and we are crumbling under the lack of infrastructure. Why are you not picking oranges in California right now, you who feels that our people have conspired against you, if you care about this country? Stop using MY hard-earned taxpayer dollars to get tax breaks on your podcast, and go work in a factory to process some chicken.

Go work in a slaughterhouse if you are so in love with the necessity of beef.

You know what is more patriotic than shooting our neighbors in the face or snatching them off the street? It is working for your country through community engagement, health care, and education, rather than channeling boredom and grievance into state-sanctioned violence. It is choosing work that builds communities instead of compliance over morality.

Jump-start the economy by working the jobs that all of the hardworking immigrants who DID pay taxes but reaped little to none of the benefits, since you have now corralled these humans into detention centers.

If you, Podcast Host, claim to be so learned, so scholarly, then approach your knowledgeable debates with Socratic honesty, those who claim to be so obsessed with the classics and Western thought.

We time travel when we don’t know what else to do, looking backwards and analyzing the exact moment when it became too late, searching for that point of no return academically, maybe even empathetically, but rarely personally. It’s personal if you are a patriot.

I take personal offense to a tyrannical government taxpayer-funded police force permitted to terrorize everyone into submission illegally and openly.

The highest offices of our government have given a brutal, untrained, trigger-happy, militarized police force, paid for out of my taxes, permission to use fear and force against American citizens. Who are we?

My taxes paid for a mother of three, Renee Good, and an ICU VA nurse, Alex Pretti (say their names), to be brazenly murdered during daylight commuting hours for the entire world to watch from multiple angles, serving to attempt to terrify the nation into silence.

We all watched, on every media format.

Dissenters are labeled domestic terrorists, while January 6th insurrectionists are treated as heroes, even as members of their own party who followed the law were targeted. Let’s think about that for a moment. It seems the mob can turn on anyone.

An ICU nurse was protecting an unarmed woman being assaulted by a heavily armed agent twice her size, then chemically sprayed in the face, beaten, and pistol-whipped by six or seven heavily armed men twice his size, who then, on camera, stole his gun out of his waistband and unloaded shot after shot into him.

If you are a heavily armed man working with five or six other agents of similar weapons and strength and you are fearing for your life, you may be in the wrong line of work.

If you are a heavily armed agent who experienced an injury, later reported PTSD, was cleared to return to the field with a firearm, then shot a woman in the face going less than five miles an hour while claiming fear for your life, you are in the wrong line of work.

If you are a government official using the victimhood of a murderous agent as justification, you have chosen the worst prepared and poorly trained federal force that America has ever seen.

If you stand by this, then you are not only complicit. You are embracing mediocrity at best and celebrating failure as our current reality.

Imagine being so terrified, so ashamed of what might be revealed, that power is protected at all costs. Imagine being so beholden to campaign donations, speaking fees, and lifestyles that politicians sell out their constituency while claiming it’s better to stay with the devil they know.

You are all complicit. You are all protecting a system of white supremacy and sexual exploitation that spans generations.

Black and brown people have been telling us about this for hundreds of years. Now here we are again, shifting the invisible lines of humanity backwards to a time when dehumanization was required to steal people’s land, people’s women, people’s children, and people’s freedom, reclassifying humans as “targets.”

If these agents don’t see us as people, they may not think twice about shooting us when they are told we are the enemy. Keeping people’s minds empty and their pockets full of money is the American way.

Targets. Let’s think about that.

When you go to your local bakery and grab your fancy fresh cupcakes for your kid’s birthday, do you look at the woman who just baked them as a target? Are they a danger to society?

Did you know that the majority of violent crime is committed by white males in pretty much all categories (FBI crime data shows this here:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-42/table-42.xls
and
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-43/table-43-overview
).

Don’t you get it, folks, that power does not care about you.

Where is it when you are freezing in the snow, worried you can’t buy groceries? Where is it when you are choosing between filling your prescription or your child’s prescription?

Where is it when you realize that even the jobs you were told were a waste of taxpayer dollars were keeping entire communities alive? It all trickles down.

To the godly and religious people of America: if you are at peace with the way our government treats our neighbors, it may be time to return to Matthew 25 and examine what Christ teaches about mercy and responsibility. Bless your hearts.

When your grandchildren ask why you let this happen, just as I asked my grandparents about the 30s and 40s in Europe, and my parents about the Jim Crow laws they lived through, what are you going to say?

America has countless stains upon its history, but none so televised as this one. Now we can all see this country for what it is.

The question is, who will we be as people? What values do we believe in? What comforts are we willing to give up to save our country and our neighbors from terror, destruction, and tyranny?

And then I look at my children, playing outside in the snow, safe for now, while hundreds of children we know of cry out for their parents in detention, living in third-world conditions right here in America. And I am terrified. Are these children not deserving of hope and compassion?

What can I do? Educate my kids about their rights? Teach them to protect their neighbors? Teach them to protect each other and not fall prey to propaganda meant to divide us for profit?

That’s not enough.

I commit to protect my neighbor. I commit to defend my home when this starts marching down my street, just as it has marched down streets across the country.

When someone knocks on my door, will they be safe? Will I be shot? Will they? Will the hiding place be enough? Did I leave enough provisions? Are they together? Do they know how to survive?

Please, America, remove the veil from your eyes and understand that it’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when.

God help us.

We’re at 58% where we should be at this time in snow pack accumulation, and experts are saying we’d need a monster blizzard, about 4 feet, just to catch up where we need to be right now.

And the Colorado snowpack feeds multiple other states for their water needs. If you’ve seen recent picture of Lake Meade you know we’re in a bad spot.

Top it off there’s pollution in our water supply to rural communities in the distract I live in, one repped by Lauren Boebert. A lot of people voted for her thinking that Trump would be more receptive to “Ultra MAGA” as she liked to call herself.

In a lot of ways this where our politics has settled into since the Reagan administration. Right wing regimes strip away social safety nets, and give publicly built infrastructure to private interests who sell them back to the public at higher cost and shittier service.

Eventually enough of the public gets annoyed and votes in a Democratic administration that promises reform, and by playing by every rule they can find and some they seem to make up we get a tenth of that promised reform.

Then there’s a backlash and the next right wing regime is even worse.

The problem we’re facing now is the same one Colorado is facing with their snowpack. Each year the problem seems to get more and more extreme, and the solution is more and more costly.

And yet Democratic corporate leadership can only seem to muster up the same lackluster initiative as they have for the past twenty years. They have to give an increase of funding in ICE because what else could they do?!

The moment is never met. There’s never an “Ah-ha!” realization. That was fine when the stakes weren’t this high but not anymore.

We’re in American Fascism something a lot of our current political leaders don’t wanna say outright, or

This isn’t a policy disagreement on where the jumping off point between public and private interest should be.

We’re not talking about a rezoning initiative for a neighborhood.

We have an unaccountable secret police violating Americans civil rights, abusing them, and murdering them. 97% of the people they arrest have no criminal records. That’s not a training issue. That’s fear and intimidation.

And the best that Democratic leadership can come up with, in this moment, is “our hands are tied”?

“We don’t have the votes.”
Or “We have to wait until the next election.”

Oh you mean the one the fascists are actively trying to suppress right now? Because just like Roe v. Wade, which was never codified into law, we didn’t get the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. So who knows what desperate fascistic tactics they’ll use come election time.

“That’ll never happen,” is the refrain I’ve heard over and over.

How many times has that phrase been uttered about Trump until it does happen? How much faith do you have left in the guardrails of our system, or in our so-called leaders to reinforce those guardrails?

Maybe we can’t fix what’s broken because our so-called leaders don’t think it’s broken?

For a long time I was one of those folks who insisted we needed to work within our of system in order to fix it. I agreed with other centrist Democrats in 2012 that gay marriage needed to be pushed to the background.

“We don’t wanna turn moderate voters,” I said. “Let’s refer to it as a civil union,” because separate but equal always works right?

And then Obama supported gay marriage and it wasn’t such a big deal anymore. For the first time I felt ashamed by buying into the bullshit of “not right now”.

That’s what the pundit class, the consultants have done to our politics. It’s focused tested, means tested, everything but doing what’s actually morally correct tested. All it took was for President Obama to say “Yeah we need to do this” and that was it.

What we’re left with instead is a feckless, toothless, spineless, weak-willed opposition that in effect, if not intent, looks a lot like it’s on purpose.

And inevitably what follows is the old chestnut of “Well who else are you gonna vote for?” Or “Don’t worry! The democrats are gonna really turn things around in this next election.”

Here’s the harsh historical truth about how political change comes about. It’s never given. It’s taken. The old guard rarely retires. They have to be pushed out of power because anyone who has power rarely wants to relinquish it.

Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Gavin Newsom, all of the corporatist democrats either need to go or be more afraid of We the People than their billionaire donor class.

Because we’re at a place in our politics where the status quo, the cycle of doing things cannot continue. And the current Democratic leadership will not do what is necessary to make the case to the American people that they will make their lives better in a meaningful and measurable way.

How is it Australia is able to pass a law forbidding any donations above $50,000 but we can’t strike down Citizens’ United?

Because too much money is at stake for the current crop of politicians in Washington to conceive of doing anything different.

At some point it’s either the current corporatist democratic leadership is too incompetent to stay in their positions, or they’re playing the role they’re supposed to for the oligarch class. Whatever the mix of it doesn’t matter. Either one of those is cause for dismissal.

We’ve reached a place where “a little bit better” isn’t good enough anymore. Major reforms need to happen within our political system. One party needs to be taken from the monied class or another party needs to rise like a phoenix from the ashes.

Either way it’s going to be tough.
And no I don’t have all the answers.

But something has to give because we can’t keep doing this.