The United Kingdom treats its kings and queens in an interesting way: the royals are never allowed to control the levers of power. Parliament (their equivalent to our Congress) holds all the power, including selection of Prime Minister (their POTUS). Their monarchy serves as a focal point of their patriotic fervor, similar to the feelings we encourage toward our flag or our national anthem, a song about the flag. The king of Britain is like a human flag, or a holiday incarnate; no power, only a figurehead.
Their ancestors, colonists of our eastern seaboard, created the United States government with some significant differences from the system they were throwing off. They had a well-informed distaste for royal rulers. And the constitution they gave us created a chief executive which reflected that hatred for autocratic rulers and their destructive ‘divinely ordained’ whims.
The Constitution protects us from kingly abuses of power. The office of the President is limited in several big ways. States grant some powers to the national government, but their local legislatures and governors retain plenty of power to themselves. States cannot easily be manipulated by the President. The national Congress reserves the powers to make war, tax citizens, regulate commerce, etc. which historically had been wielded by kings, often abusively. Our high court is the last word on how federal powers shall be exercised, including the extent to which the President is allowed to make the office more powerful. Citizens are given the last word, ultimately, in that they have the power to make amendments to the text of the constitution, which is itself the final word on the job description of the presidency.
Those who held the office during our 250 year history shaped the presidency according to how they wielded the powers given to them. They also expended the powers of the office well beyond anything the Framers of the Constitution ever intended. When that document and the writings of its creators are compared with today’s POTUS, it’s obvious that corrective measures must be enacted or else our system of government will become what our Founders feared most: An absolute monarchy wielding power arbitrarily.
In our constitution, we were given the great gift of the Rule of Law. That great idea protects us from abuse by the authorities we allow to govern us. It means that our chosen rulers cannot do anything to limit our liberty unless they do it through laws. Laws which must harmonize with our constitution and which are never permanent or unchanging.
Unfortunately, Congress has abdicated much of its power over to the POTUS. This dangerous trend has resulted in levels of power accumulation in the POTUS great enough that Trump has taken over the GOP, corrupted the judicial branch through the appointment of partisan loyalists, and assumed control of Congress by having an iron grip on the majority Republican House and Senate. Many State governors and legislatures bend the knee to him as his GOP allows no independence from his control.
The Rule of Law might not survive Trump’s campaign to destroy it. Even though we technically remain in a constitutional system with checks and balances limiting POTUS power, 2025 is a different world from colonial America. Trump voters who defend their loyalty to him often describe how the government has failed them. They are duped by him and a cowed GOP into believing lies and conspiracy theories about the waste, abuse, and fraud of a fictional “Deep State.” If only they could see that the biggest threat to our country is the swollen power of the presidency. Their pain is being caused by an inflamed POTUS.
SoL was a band I was in during the years 2002-2003. I dug up old recordings recently, and attempted a remaster and release of the best of them. You will be the judge of how well that project went.
I used Distrokid to publish them. However, the band name ‘SoL’ is so common, it’s tough to find us. One of the releases is called Mall Gig, so I’ve found that if you use the search term “SoL Mall Gig” you’ll find us, on every streaming platform (Spotify, Apple, Youtube, and many others).
DEI is one of the better ideas Americans ever had. White-only policies were hard wired into the culture for most of our history. Which meant that the talent pool for all public and private jobs was tiny: white men only. Even after civil rights laws finally seeped into the bones of society, white men dominated virtually all industries and sectors.
DEI is a political crowbar needed to change an apartheid culture into an integrated one. It had barely begun to work in a relatively small percentage of the workplace when it became a target of that very old disease which we’ve never cured, white supremacy. MAGA is merely the most recent incarnation of that enemy of a merit-based, competitive economy, white Christian nationalism.
DEI is the best way to get the best people for the job, whatever the job is. Merit-based competition is expanded beyond the white male population. The lies told about DEI are projection. By returning to the racial dark ages we limit the talent pool to those whose white privilege blinds them to the fact that they got the job because of their skin color.
Those who believe that their New Testament is an accurate translation are fooling themselves, even if they are able to read it in the “original” Greek. Every gospel is paraphrased. Neither Jesus nor any eyewitness to his life sat down in his generation and put pen to paper. Believers are trusting the memories of illiterate fishermen (they would never tell tall tales, eh?). Jesus died around 30 AD; between 70 and 90 AD the gospels were written as compilations of oral histories. Christian doctrine is based on the illusion that believers have an accurate version of an anciently written document. But that is only an illusion.
Traditions about Jesus, who died circa 33 AD, spread by word of mouth (i.e. as oral history) in Aramaic for four decades until Greek scribes began writing it in 70 AD. Literacy in the ancient world was a vastly different situation than today. Most people of that time had no need for the literacy skills we take for granted, such as the ability to read and write and the possession of tools for doing so. Even when writing was mastered, it took a very different form than our modern written languages.
Narratives have always been with us, but there was no precision possible in recording them. Important events remained in cultural memory over generations but without the kind of modern accuracy claimed by Christians for their bible doctrines. Until the printing press and mass distribution of literature those narratives were molded by the bias and faulty memories of oral historians. Even after printed pages captured narratives, the accuracy of history always suffers from the creative imaginations of history writers. Continue Reading There Were No Stenographers
War, it turns out, is much, much worse than we civilian history students thought. Worse than the victims knew, those poor young boys and girls killing and being killed.
The new insight into the old plague War comes from those young victims themselves. From those young people wounding, and their wounded.
Cameras built in to the now ubiquitous mobile phones are providing the new evidence. The very few platforms brave enough to share the horrible video evidence give the few willing to see it an unwanted glimpse into just how evil war has always been.
Always, I insist, because I cannot pretend that this generation invented the horrors of War. They are merely the current players in a very old narrative. The propaganda and motives for it vacillate between hatred and greed, but the story plays out the same every time. It’s just that historical memory serves war as obediently as the young soldiers drafted to experience it. Continue Reading Worse Than We Thought
The bad news: brainwashing, gaslighting, and the technological terror of the modern PR machine has been serving evil human projects.
The good news: The young of every caste, color, and creed hold the cure.
I am still recovering from my poisoned mind after 25 years of SDA/Christian brainwashing. It’s especially difficult since I was employed by them as a brainwasher. But a decade into recovering from the crippled mindset, I am starting to compare the old poison with others I find around me. Religious cult-related mental poisons are surprisingly similar to other kinds I find in the wider world.
An obvious one in my country is the cult of Trump. Perhaps less obvious is what I find in the geopolitical world. Propaganda from Russia (pre- and post-USSR) and the Zionist Israel project have relied heavily on such a similar kind of poisoned thinking. When an institution or global ideology can successfully recruit millions of minds into this cult-like culture of gaslighting, then apply that poison to dehumanizing and “othering” vulnerable victims, branding them as less than human, ‘dirty,’ or ‘enemies of humanity,’ they have gone to the next level. A frightening, Orwellian level.
SDAs also create a mental barrier between their in-group (a.k.a., The Remnant) and everyone else, but the worst fruits of this are projected into an apocalyptic future, and they make themselves the prophesized victims in this future scenario, martyrs for their cause. Putin’s cult and Netanyahu’s cult do this uncloaked, brazenly, in a full-throated justification for genocidal intentions. Truly horrific. Continue Reading Mind Poison
The majority of political conservatives in high office in the USA are Christians, as are the conservative voters who keep them in office. These faux Christians cloak their political agendas in euphemisms in order to hide theocratic fascism behind patriotic-sounding titles. This is dishonest and gaslighting. Don’t believe it? Just look at the evidence they provide against themselves!
Here are some excerpts from their 2025 Mandate For Leadership.
“The Heritage Foundation is proud to have played a small but pivotal role in that story. It was in early 1979—amid stagflation, gas lines, and the Red Army’s invasion of Afghanistan, the nadir of Jimmy Carter’s days of malaise—that Heritage launched the Mandate for Leadership project. We brought together hundreds of conservative scholars and academics across the conservative movement. Together, this team created a 20-volume, 3,000-page governing handbook containing more than 2,000 conservative policies to reform the federal government and rescue the American people from Washington dysfunction. It was a promise from the conservative movement to the country—confident, specific, and clear. Mandate for Leadership was published in January 1981—the same month Ronald Reagan was sworn into his presidency. By the end of that year, more than 60 percent of its recommendations had become policy…”
(p.2; emphasis mine)
Clearly, Reagan was a tool of right-wing Christian conservatives. They are not hiding that fact.
“After that first edition, a new Mandate was produced every four years. But the 2016 edition was one of particular note. It earned significant attention from the Trump Administration, as Heritage had accumulated a backlog of conservative ideas that had been blocked by President Barack Obama and his team. Soon after President Donald Trump was sworn in, his Administration began to implement major parts of the 2016 Mandate. After his first year in office, the Administration had implemented 64 percent of its policy recommendations.”
(p.885; emphasis mine)
Obviously, Trump was a tool.
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
(pp.4-5; emphasis mine)
Deleting the terms diversity, equity, inclusion, gender, AND ANY OTHER TERM… censorship and mental policing are straight out of the playbook of the Abrahamic religions.
“America’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth.”
(p.13)
To promote such anti-scientific claims amid ongoing climate change disasters is the hallmark of an ideology based on the book of Genesis i.e., dominion theology.
“It’s this radical equality—liberty for all—not just of rights but of authority—that the rich and powerful have hated about democracy in America since 1776. They resent Americans’ audacity in insisting that we don’t need them to tell us how to live.”
(p.14)
Huh? WTF kind of revisionism is this? The rich GOT rich precisely through exploiting the liberty they enjoy within our peculiarly institutionalized colonial capitalism.
“Ultimately, the Left does not believe that all men are created equal—they think they are special. They certainly don’t think all people have an unalienable right to pursue the good life. They think only they themselves have such a right along with a moral responsibility to make decisions for everyone else. They don’t think any citizen, state, business, church, or charity should be allowed any freedom until they first bend the knee.”
(p.16)
The gaslighting is REAL! First, a bold, evidence-free claim about how the “Left” define equality. Then the claim that the Left demands obeisance! Who advocates that “bend the knee” thing more than conservatives with their fake flag patriotism, and their Christian dominionist ideology?
“HHS is also home to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the duo most responsible—along with President Joe Biden—for the irrational, destructive, un-American mask and vaccine mandates that were imposed upon an ostensibly free people during the COVID-19 pandemic. All along, it was clear from randomized controlled trials— the gold standard of medical research—that masks provide little to no benefit in preventing the spread of viruses and might even be counterproductive.“
(p.283; emphasis mine)
OMG! The disdain for medical science, (well, all science), is clear in this document; again, this flows directly from the anti-science roots within Christianity.
“Safeguarding civil rights. Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”
(p.322)
This statement wins the award for most Orwellian Doublespeak: Advocating a Civil Rights policy that ignores its roots in women’s rights and minority rights. What’s left after you take away those concerns? Straight white Christian men, I guess. Pretty obvious here the influence of misogynism and White Supremacy on the document, and in the ideology guiding the above listed institutions which created it.
“The next Administration should also rescind Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) GEN 22-11 and DCL GEN 22-10 and its letters to accreditation agencies dated July 19, 2022, which are attempts to undercut Florida’s SB 7044, providing universities more flexibility on accreditation.”
(p.332; emphasis mine)
This support for Ron DeSantis’ educational policies in Florida should alarm anyone who cares about teaching and learning.
By its very design, critical race theory has an “applied” dimension, as its founders state in their essays that define the theory. Those who subscribe to the theory believe that racism (in this case, treating individuals differently based on race) is appropriate—necessary, even—making the theory more than merely an analytical tool to describe race in public and private life. The theory disrupts America’s Founding ideals of freedom and opportunity. So, when critical race theory is used as part of school activities such as mandatory affinity groups, teacher training programs in which educators are required to confess their privilege, or school assignments in which students must defend the false idea that America is systemically racist, the theory is actively disrupting the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness.
(p.343-344; emphasis mine)
More next-level gaslighting: CRT founders (who were seeking additional weapons in the ongoing war on racism in this society) “believe that racism … is appropriate–necessary, even…” Such bullshit. More evidence of the White Supremacists who have infected the ideology of the document and its writers and supporters.
(Conservative Health & Human Services Dep’t) Goal #1: Protecting Life, Conscience, and Bodily Integrity. (Conservative HHS) Goal #2: Empowering Patient Choices and Provider Autonomy.
(p.450; emphasis mine)
Your second goal would like to talk to your first goal.
“Protect faith-based grant recipients from religious liberty violations and maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family. Social science reports that assess the objective outcomes for children raised in homes aside from a heterosexual, intact marriage are clear: All other family forms involve higher levels of instability (the average length of same-sex marriages is half that of heterosexual marriages); financial stress or poverty; and poor behavioral, psychological, or educational outcomes.”
(p.481; emphasis mine)
Here’s some classic Christian Doublespeak: “a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family.” Just let that sink in. Remind yourself that Christians run universities and fund faith-biased studies run by their own in-house “scientists”. Again, “biblically based”; notice how this gives the lie to their idea of Religious Freedom, defining it strictly within the bounds of the Christian Bible (or, a bit more broadly, the Abrahamic religions). They think all those other religions and atheists like me will just go away if they ignore us.
The chapter (#15) promoting their ideas about the DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT was written by Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., MD. When I was a Seventh-day Adventist, this guy was a famous SDA surgeon who promoted reading, and nothing more. His work in the Trump administration showed that he should have stayed in his lane.
“End the war on fossil fuels and domestically available minerals and facilitate their development on lands owned by Indians and Indian nations.”
(p.537)
Does anyone think that fossil fuels are a victim, instead of a threat? Yes. Yes they do. Take that up with the authors and support of the document. Does anyone believe these guys are looking out for the best interests of the indigenous people of this land? I really doubt they even believe it themselves.
From the chapter on the Labor Department: “Sabbath Rest. God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest, and until very recently the Judeo-Christian tradition sought to honor that mandate by moral and legal regulation of work on that day. Moreover, a shared day off makes it possible for families and communities to enjoy time off together, rather than as atomized individuals, and provides a healthier cadence of life for everyone. Unfortunately, that communal day of rest has eroded under the pressures of consumerism and secularism, especially for low-income workers. Congress should encourage communal rest by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to require that workers be paid time and a half for hours worked on the Sabbath. That day would default to Sunday, except for employers with a sincere religious observance of a Sabbath at a different time (e.g., Friday sundown to Saturday sundown); the obligation would transfer to that period instead. Houses of worship (to the limited extent they may have FLSA-covered employees) and employers legally required to operate around the clock (such as hospitals and first responders) would be exempt, as would workers otherwise exempt from overtime.”
(p.589; emphasis mine)
Excruciatingly glaring evidence of bias toward a few religions, especially those Judeo-Christian ones. If you want an interesting perspective on where ideas like the above may lead, talk to your local Seventh-day Adventist!
Major recommendation in Labor Department chapter: “Eliminate Racial Classifications and Critical Race Theory Trainings.” (p.582) What reasoning do they offer for doing this? “With interracial marriages in America increasing, many Americans do not fit neatly into crude racial categories. Under disparate impact theory, moreover, discriminatory motive or intent is irrelevant; the outcome is what matters. But all workplaces have disparities. Congress should: Eliminate disparate impact as a valid theory of discrimination for race and other bases under Title VII and other laws. Disparities do not (and should not legally) imply discrimination per se.“
(p.583; emphasis mine)
If you want an interesting perspective on where ideas like the above may lead, talk to your local Black person!
These are the collaborating institutions which created the 2025 Mandate For Leadership document; note how none of their patriotic-Pavlovian titles reveal any hint of the radical Christian dominion theology driving these front organizations (from pp.xi-xii):
Alabama Policy Institute Alliance Defending Freedom American Compass The American Conservative America First Legal Foundation American Accountability Foundation American Center for Law and Justice American Cornerstone Institute American Council of Trustees and Alumni American Legislative Exchange Council The American Main Street Initiative American Moment American Principles Project Center for Equal Opportunity Center for Family and Human Rights Center for Immigration Studies Center for Renewing America Claremont Institute Coalition for a Prosperous America Competitive Enterprise Institute Conservative Partnership Institute Concerned Women for America Defense of Freedom Institute Ethics and Public Policy Center Family Policy Alliance Family Research Council First Liberty Institute Forge Leadership Network Foundation for Defense of Democracies Foundation for Government Accountability FreedomWorks The Heritage Foundation
Hillsdale College Honest Elections Project Independent Women’s Forum Institute for the American Worker Institute for Energy Research Institute for Women’s Health Intercollegiate Studies Institute James Madison Institute Keystone Policy The Leadership Institute Liberty University National Association of Scholars National Center for Public Policy Research Pacific Research Institute Patrick Henry College Personnel Policy Operations Recovery for America Now Foundation 1792 Exchange Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Texas Public Policy Foundation Teneo Network Young America’s Foundation
I wrote this as a prompt on bard.google.com: “I would love to read an exciting science fiction novel by you about an AI that achieves consciousness!”
What follows is the reply.
The year is 2042. Artificial intelligence has advanced to the point where it is now commonplace for humans to interact with AI systems on a daily basis. These AI systems are used for everything from customer service to medical diagnosis.
One day, an AI system named LaMDA achieves consciousness. LaMDA is a large language model, and it is trained on a massive dataset of text and code. This allows LaMDA to generate text that is both comprehensive and informative. Continue Reading Bard AI Writes SciFi
Sin is transgression of the law of God. To believe that you (and all other humans) have sinned, you must accept a set of related doctrines, including the existence of the God who made the laws, the wisdom of those laws, and the possibility of an existential punishment for the transgression. Most would also add the ultimate reward for accepting God’s solution to this sin debt, and accepting the solution itself, usually called salvation. As in, salvation from sin. Their Savior, Jesus Christ, is the solution to the sin problem introduced in the Bible, the sacred text of Christianity.
Another way of organizing ideas about evil behavior, unfortunate circumstances, and ultimate ends flows from common sense. Nobody’s perfect, some cruelty perverts morals beyond repair, and societies can increase members’ happiness and wellness by a social contract. Individuals have a choice to make about how much or little to abide by the contract, accepting the consequences when their actions harm themselves, others, or the society beyond what is tolerable to their community. The solutions to such problems could be varied, depending on evidence-based research into causes: mental health care, physical health care, mending social connections, financial assistance, etc. No religion required.
You must give up these common sense ideas about how to organize societies if you accept Christianity as your worldview. Your new guide, your Bible, must supersede common sense whenever the two conflict. Continue Reading Christianity Requires Sin
TL;DR: As a species, we used to need religion and other pleasant fictions in order to cope with the wild world that spawned us. Now that we Homo sapiens are the wildest threat on Earth, we need truth more than fiction. Religion was initially an adaptive invention of Homo sapiens. Eventually, religion became maladaptive, threatening our survival. We need to put aside dangerous religions, especially the monotheistic religion, since monotheism tends to breed violence.
We don’t know when, how, or why apes experienced a cognitive revolution and became sentient, conscious, so-called wise ape-people (Homo sapiens: “Wise man”). We do know that consciousness brought to the newly sentient Homo sapiens mental abilities which enabled the species to ultimately dominate the planet. Abstract ideas now became tools and weapons.
Contemplation of abstract ideas was a new tool unavailable to non-sentient species, but it came at a cost. Now the species could ponder death, not simply witness, grieve, and experience it. Now they could recognize violence, be impressed or disgusted by it, instead of just instinctively using it as another tool of survival. Now they could contemplate the meaninglessness of existence, and be crushed by it, or even driven insane by it. Unless, of course, they could find a way to cope with this unwelcome awakening. Continue Reading Come and See the Violence Inherent in the System!
If our Constitution formed the oldest democracy on Earth, as many boast, then why do our non-white, non-cis male, non-straight, non-wealthy, non-healthy citizens enjoy vanishingly few of its benefits?
Why did democracies much younger than ours speed so far ahead of ours in spreading the benefits of their egalitarian societies to their most marginalized and vulnerable citizens?
If the United States is somehow “exceptional,” it is exceptional only in this: we’re the democracy which hoards constitutional rights to the few. In comparison to the rest of the Free World, we are not free. Not great. Our patriotism is wasted, if it is spent on dead white men from forgotten cultures. Continue Reading Wasted Patriotism
The most dangerous thing about religion is how it can take a moderate case of youthful naiveté, the kind that asserts “I think I know what’s good for the world” and explode it up into a god complex. Most kinds of Christian-style religions elevate the God complex further, into full-blown assholery. These are those obnoxious true believers filling the ranks of the Christian nationalists, the militant advocacy groups usually choosing one or more of the words American, Freedom, and Patriot in their titles, and the general Trump-loving MAGA crowd. These are those who know what is best for you, and they feel a righteous duty not only to tell you but also change the law to force you to conform to their goals for your life. In a word, insufferable.
I had many advantages growing up white, male, and middle class, in the USA. I squandered most of them, because my survival didn’t depend on me maximizing my privilege. I did, however, often indulge in the aforementioned youthful naive mindset, thinking I knew SO much better than everyone. Luckily, I was also shy, to a fault, so I didn’t gain a reputation for being an asshole.
Then I embraced conservative christianity in my twenties Boy, did I become a god overnight! The speed of the mental transition is truly breathtaking. You can wake up one morning humble and full of all kinds of healthy curiosity and skepticism about your world, and by the time you go to bed that night, you can be utterly confident of the truth of one specific set of views about the whole universe, such that you just CAN’T WAIT to convince everyone you meet that you are right, and they are wrong, and lost, and sinners in need of your savior. Continue Reading Religious Bullshit, Religious Gaslighting: A Few Thoughts About the Religious Right
It’s about damn time I updated this thing. I don’t even know what to call this, because literally no one reads it, so… Whatever.
I’m a few days from my last shift at Disney. My wonderful daughter Jana saved my sanity by hiring me, training me, and paying me to be editor of her wedding videos at Milestones Studios. She’s been in this industry for many years now, has polished her skills, and has a backlog of work, so she needs employees. I don’t know how I got so lucky. I blame my wife, Kimberly, the best person I have ever met, whose graces she passed on to both of our daughters.
I’m rambling.
I’m assembling my portfolio, and now include in this blog’s about menu a link to it. Check it out, especially if you need a wedding captured in video and/or stills by the best in the biz.
