The Institutionalization of Misogyny

The Subjugation of the Female Sex

In social structure, Moses engineered the abandonment of the traditional matriarchal order. He replaced it with a patriarchal reorganization. A warrior tribe was necessary to survive the chaos. So, “Every man of the children of Israel shall pitch by his own standard, with the ensign of their father’s house” (Numbers 2:2).

He undertook a census to organize the draft. “From twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go to war in Israel, thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies… take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their father… every male by their polls” (Numbers 1:3, 2).

The machinery for settling internal disputes was also reorganized along masculine lines. “Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people: rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And they judged the people at all seasons…” (Exodus 18:25–26). The hard cases were brought to Moses. Smaller matters were handled by these appointed men.

Matriarchal inheritance laws were replaced with patriarchal ones. As the Israelites prepared to take Canaan, Yahweh instructed Moses: “According to lot shall the possessions thereof be divided… according to the names of the tribes of their fathers they shall inherit” (Numbers 26:56–55).

As metronymic descent and matrilocal marriage were pushed aside, a patriarchal order took hold. The sexual freedom and openness of the earlier system were replaced by repression. This shift served a clear purpose. A man needed certainty that his son was his own.

The abolition of sexual permissiveness went hand in hand with the subordination of women. Yahweh-Moses declared, “I will put an end to your lewdness and harlotry brought from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:27).

Nudity, even within the family, was forbidden. “None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness… I am the Lord” (Leviticus 18:6).

Under the law of jealousy, a husband who suspected infidelity could subject his wife to a priestly ordeal. She would swear an oath. If she had lied, the curse would follow: “her belly shall swell and her thighs shall rot” (Numbers 5:27).

Men were taught to pray accordingly: “Oh God, let not my offspring be a girl, for wretched is the life of women… Blessed be thou, O Lord our God, for not making me a woman.”^[1] The man became the master—the baal—of his wife. Genealogy was reckoned through beth, the “house of the father.” So complete was this shift that, in early periods, a husband held power of death over his wife.^[2]

Beyond the Ten Commandments, Moses legislated an enormous body of laws to secure the new order. Nearly half of the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch and attributed to Moses, is devoted to these regulations. They governed behavior down to the smallest detail.

There were laws for every situation. For male servants and female servants. For murder and manslaughter. For theft, damage, trespass, borrowing, fornication, witchcraft, bestiality, idolatry, slander, and false witness. Whatever the offense, the punishment was often the same: death.

At the top of the list of suspect persons were women. They were treated as natural enemies of the new order. Women were stripped of social rank and reduced to the status of male “property.”

Anyone tied to the fertility rites of the old order was marked for death. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live… whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death… he that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed” (Exodus 22:18–20).

This extended even to one’s closest relations. “If thy brother… or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend… entice thee… saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods’… thou shalt surely kill him. Thine hand shall be the first upon him… and afterwards the hand of all the people” (Deuteronomy 13:6, 9).

The next Post , #11of 12, will describe the catastrophic origins of Mosaic monotheism.

^[1] Amaury deRiencourt, “Sex and Power in History,” David McKay Co., p. 16.

^[2] R. de Vaux, “Ancient Israel,” McGraw-Hill, v. 1, p. 20

Monotheism and the “Chosen People” Syndrome

The Religion of Male Superiority as the Religion of Ethnic Superiority

The biblical teaching in Genesis is that God created man in His image. For that reason, He gave man dominion and authority over the earth and all its species. According to monotheism, humans were the “chosen species.” As such, they share in the supreme power of God over everything inanimate and animate, including plants, animals and humans.^[1]

Moses expanded this “chosen species” claim. He told the Jewish people that, among all the peoples of the world, they were God’s “chosen people.” This status made them superior to all others. Their mission, as framed, was to make war on unbelievers and take dominion over the entire earth. In other words, as a people, they had cosmic justification for wars of conquest against those who stood in their way.

The idea that the Israelites were “the chosen people” provided the theological justification for Mosaic wars of annihilation. These campaigns were directed against Semitic tribes that remained matriarchal. Moses commanded: “…the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them. Neither shalt thou make marriages with them…” (Deuteronomy 7:2–4).

For the same reason, Moses, as God’s prophet ordered the Israelites to destroy the religious foundations of those they displaced: “You must completely destroy all the places where the nations you dispossess have served their gods… tear down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their sacred poles, set fire to the carved images of their gods, and wipe out their name from that place” (Deuteronomy 12:2–3).

Moses’ concern over outside contamination was extreme. After the slaughter of the Midianite armies, he was furious that women and children had been spared. He ordered further killing: “Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him. But all the woman children… keep alive for yourselves” (Numbers 31:17–18).

The concept of being among the “chosen people” asserts inherent superiority. By definition, it casts those outside that group as inferior. In practice, claims to “chosen people” status, then and subsequently, are often intertwined with racial hierarchy, making parallel claims about the superiority and inferiority of human groups.

The Mosaic “chosen people” doctrine gave the Israelites—and later Christians and Muslims—a grand conception of God. Belief in such a God allowed adherents to feel elevated, as participants in divine greatness.^[2] To symbolize and seal this relationship, Moses introduced circumcision among the Israelites.^[3]

As principles for maintaining internal social order, the Ten Commandments have been widely praised. They are seen as a foundational legacy for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. What is often overlooked, however, is the political dimension that accompanies them.

In practical terms, Mosaic doctrine can be read as a template for imposing and maintaining absolute authority. It presents a decision-making structure in which actions are justified as divine command: God ordered it, and therefore it must be done. This logic can be extended to acts of aggression at any scale.

Such a framework can attract individuals or systems inclined toward domination. It provides a built-in justification for violence, hierarchy, and exclusion. Some version of the “chosen people” doctrine functions as the ultimate permission structure for aggression, framed as divine will.

The next Post, #10 of 12, will discuss the Mosaic institutionalization of misogyny.

^[1] Of course, now we know the converse to be true: Moses, the Man, created a God full of rage, ruthless, and vengeful, by projecting his own image and nature on the environmental violence he was witnessing.

^[2] Ibid, p. 143

^[3] Ibid, p. 29

In the times of chaos that followed the massive volcanic eruption of Thera in the middle of the second millennium BCE, female-centric religions proved inadequate to resolve crises or appease the gods. They were supplanted by angry, male-centric religious pantheons, or by singular male deities.

In the crisis, the male neuro-hormonal axis—testosterone and adrenaline—became functionally dominant. It powered the overthrow of matriarchy and the female-centric religious and social organization that had defined much of humanity in the Mediterranean basin.

In Greece and elsewhere, female-centric culture and polytheism were replaced by male-centric polytheism. In Egypt and among the Hebrews, female-centric polytheism gave way to male-centric monotheism. Thus, male-centric social structures and religions became dominant across the post-catastrophic cultures and civilizations that emerged in the Mediterranean.

This new male dominance expressed itself through the principle that “might makes right.” It fueled aggressive expansion and war. This behavior was sanctioned by religious belief in being the “chosen people,” preordained to survive, conquer, and rule.

What was true for Greece became even more pronounced in the Roman case.

The Roman Republic began in the sixth century BCE. After early victories over the Etruscans and other Italian city-state leagues, Rome rose quickly. Within less than a century, it achieved unchallenged supremacy over the Italian peninsula.

From there, expansion followed. Rome moved outward and conquered the fragmented, warring Greek city-states. By 146 BC, Greece was under Roman control. In the process, Rome copied and appropriated Greek male-centric religion and mythology, making them its own.

The next post, #9 of 12, will describe how in the religion of the Hebrew tribes the concept of being the “chosen people” became a religion of race superiority.

The disintegration of the Roman Empire had many intertwined causes. Chief among them were growing moral bankruptcy, the decline of native religions, the demoralization of the armies, and a disastrous drop in agricultural productivity. The rise of an idle urban proletariat added to the discontent and anger of oppressed and exploited peoples across the Mediterranean.

At the center of the Empire, as well as along its peripheries, female-centric tendencies began to reassert themselves. This spread throughout the Mediterranean as the pagan, male-centric religious and social system began to disintegrate, even while imperial strength still projected a façade of stability.

In Rome, this shift began among the upper classes. Women increasingly insisted on living their own lives. Archaic Roman marriage laws were gradually replaced by new forms. In these, men and women bound themselves to each other through voluntary and mutual vows.

In Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, women led revivals of the ancient religions of the Mother Goddess, especially Isis. Women across these regions took up education, entered the arts, and moved into the professions. In Egypt, the original center of female-centric civilization, women achieved a relatively advanced level of emancipation—socially, politically, and legally.

Romans and Jews

Among the Hebrew tribes, Christ, his disciples, and their followers were part of this same resurgence of the Feminine against established authority. The poor and uneducated Jewish masses were oppressed on two fronts. They faced their own male-centric monotheistic hierarchy, and they lived under the Roman imperial cult.

As Erich Fromm wrote, “the people hated intensely the authorities that confronted them with fatherly power: the priests, scholars, aristocrats—in short, all those who excluded them from the enjoyment of life.”^[1]

Nowhere was this anger more visible than in the volatile relationship between the Jews and their Roman conquerors at the time of Christ. This conflict culminated in his crucifixion. It continued in the deaths of some 30,000 Jews roughly a decade later. It ended, for that era, with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

Christ’s actions in the Temple—driving out the money changers—and his open chastising of the hypocritical priestly class mark him as an anti-corruption figure. He stood against the fusion of religious authority and economic exploitation. He also signaled a clear break between spiritual life and state power.

In the Gospel of John (2:15), the episode is described directly: “So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.”

When Jewish religious leaders tried to trap him with a political question about paying taxes to Rome, Jesus sidestepped them. He answered in a way that separated worldly power from spiritual obligation: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17).

In other words, within your own community, practice the power of love. But in dealing with those who hold and worship power, do what you must to survive.

The next post, # 8 of 12, will examine the consolidation of the male-centric paradigm (referenced above) that preceded Christ. The growing resistance to the authorities of the time fueled Christ’s reformist message and his appeal.

^[1] E. Fromm, “The Dogma of Christ,” Anchor Books, p.48

Christ The Anti-Moses

It is critical to understand Christ as the antithesis of Moses. As the Anti-Moses, Christ led a revolution that sought to upend and reverse the Mosaic definition of the Divine.

Where the teachings of the Father, as defined by Moses, preached absolute power as the basis for social and religious order, the teachings of the Son, Jesus Christ, offered something else. They offered the transcendence of power through love.

By preaching equality and love, and by rejecting aggression and harshness, Christ and early Gnostic Christianity gave voice to a deeper longing. It was a longing for a return to the comparative harmony of female-centric, pre-Mosaic times.

As the living symbol and embodiment of Roman civilization’s discontents, Christ preached the power of love. He presented it as the antidote to the poisonous love of power.

Gnostic Christianity

Early Gnostic Christians lived in stark opposition to the hierarchical structure of Judaic orthodoxy. Their communities were based on the inherent equality of the sexes. They also sought to deinstitutionalize authority wherever possible.

The Gnostics valued the democratic nature of the lottery. They saw in it a manifestation of divine justice and cosmic order. They used lot to decide who would lead services, read scriptures, offer sacraments, and give spiritual instruction.

Roles such as priest, bishop, and prophet were rotated. Men and women alike participated equally. This prevented the formation of permanent hierarchies within the community.^[1]

In this respect, Christ’s message went beyond simple rebellion against authority. He taught that gnosis—knowledge or enlightenment—was the path to reintegration, fulfillment, and ecstasy. This path was open to all, including, and especially, women.

Female Centricity of Gnostic Christianity

By accepting women as equals, Christ and his followers rejected male-centric authority. They advanced a concept of the divine that emphasized balance and reciprocity. As Elaine Pagels described it, this was a “harmonious, dynamic relationship of opposites.” It resembles the eastern idea of yin and yang. It remains alien to orthodox Judaism and monotheistic Christianity.^[2]

This female-centric vision held that “in Christ there is neither male nor female.” Women acted as prophets, teachers, preachers, and evangelists. The divine was understood as a polarity of female and male forces.

They prayed: “From Thee, Father, and through Thee, Mother, the two immortal names, parents of the Divine being.”^[3] They also taught: “…when you make the female and the male one and the same, then you will enter the kingdom.”^[4]

Drawing on traditions of Nut, Isis, and other forms of the Great Goddess, early Gnostic Christianity emphasized the generative power of the feminine in the Divine:

• I am the first and the last
• I am the honored one and the sacred one
• I am the whore and the holy one
• I am the wife and the virgin
• I am the barren one and many are her sons
• I am the silence that is incomprehensible
• I am the utterance of my name^[5]

The superiority of the feminine, and hostility toward the male God venerated as the Father, also appeared in early Christian texts. In some portrayals, God was depicted as ignorant of his own origin. He was described as the son of the Great Mother, rebuked for his arrogance: “He was even ignorant of his own mother, and it was because he was foolish and ignorant of his own mother that he said, ‘I am God, there is none beside me.’”^[6]

Above all, these early Christians attributed wisdom to the Divine Mother. This parallels the Greek reverence for Sophia, meaning “wisdom.” As the first universal creator, the Divine Mother was seen as the source of thought, intelligence, and foresight. Her silence was the womb of all gnosis, knowledge, and enlightenment.

The next Post, #7 of 12, will discuss the resurgence of the female-centric paradigm as the Roman Empire was collapsing.

^[1] E. Pagels, “The Gnostic Gospels,” Random House, 1979.

^[2] Pagels, op. cit. p. 51

^[3] Pagels, op. cit. p. 49

^[4] J.M. Robinson, ed., “The Nag Hammadi Library,” Harper and Row, p.121

^[5] Ibid, p.xvii

^[6] Ibid, pp. 57-s

Whereas Mosaic Judaism claimed that God had designated the Israelites as the “Chosen People,” earliest Christianity—today typically referred to as Gnostic Christianity—was inclusive from the start, and its appeal was universal to people across all races.

Unlike Jewish and later Christian orthodoxy, Gnostic Christianity held that the root of human suffering was not sin, but ignorance. Accordingly, it taught that the key to ending human suffering was not salvation through a savior, but the ecstasy of self-knowledge.

The Gnostics adhered to Christ’s teaching that, “If you bring forth that which is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”^[1] For the Gnostics, whoever achieved Gnosis (Knowledge) through meditative techniques and other spiritual disciplines entered the path to immortality.

Freedom from any authority other than the Self, in the quest for gnosis, allowed the Gnostics wide latitude in practice. They could attend pagan festivals. They could sacrifice to idols. They could refuse Mosaic rules of sexual abstinence and monogamy. Economically, they often pooled resources into collective ownership and management.

Thus, in early Christianity, there appeared an approximation of an ancient female-centric culture and way of life. In their rebellion against what they saw as corrupt, authoritarian, male-centric Mosaic religion and Roman political culture, the Gnostics preached and practiced male-female equality. They also promoted racial and ethnic equality, socialistic sharing of resources, and sortition-based democracy.

The Defeat of the Gnostics

In the end, however, female-centric and democratic Gnostic Christianity lost the battle for the soul of Christianity. It was overtaken, corrupted, and destroyed by male-centric, autocratic, hierarchical orthodox Christianity.

With that victory, Mosaic doctrine was revitalized. It provided a cosmic justification for conquest and empire-building and became embedded as official theology. The Church supplied religious and cosmic justification for the authoritarian impulses that drove Western Europe’s pursuit of economic wealth, as well as political and religious power.

The historical record of the three Mosaic monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—shows a recurring pattern. Each has invoked the concept of the “Chosen People” in ways that justified expansion and conquest. Each has, at times, framed violence as aligned with divine will and as serving both God’s glory and state authority.

When examining the parallels between the decline of Roman civilization and the decline of Western civilization, a pattern emerges. The same dynamic that powers a civilization’s growth also drives its unravelling once limits are reached.

This dynamic is framed here as the unchecked functioning of the male neural-hormonal axis, specifically testosterone and adrenaline. It fuels a drive for power and that drive has been a central force behind the rise of hierarchical civilization.

The next Post, #6 of 12, will discuss the meaning of Christ and Gnostic Christianity.

^[1] Ibid, p.126

Read more

Rome, two millennia ago, was a Republic. People voted and participated in political life. It later became an empire ruled by a strictly hierarchical, authoritarian, top-down power structure in which people had no voice.

The U.S.A. today is also a republic. It appears hell-bent on repeating the Roman experience. The ancient events that marked the authoritarian regression from Roman Republic to Roman Empire are eerily similar to what is happening to U.S. democracy today.

Then, as now, elections were marked by tension between patricians and plebeians. The patrician class was the ruling class, equivalent to todays “one percenters,” while 90+% of the populace constituted the lower plebeian class. Elections were dominated by an oligarchic elite made up of businessmen and politicians, roughly five to ten percent of the population.

Then, as now, many candidates resorted to bribery to secure votes. Pay-to-play, Roman-style bribery was treated as a normal part of politics. Those already in power often pre-selected candidates for office. Combined with the Roman system of patronage, this effectively tied the votes of the lower classes to elite interests.

Then, as now, many voters came to see elections as irrelevant to their lives. Corruption in the democratic process eroded public trust. In the first century BCE, civil war broke out between Julius Caesar and Pompey. Later, conflict erupted between Octavian and Mark Antony. Octavian won and then rose to power, promising to unify Rome and “make Rome great again.” He accelerated the decline of democratic elections. Eventually, he eliminated them and had himself crowned Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor. By that time, even as Rome’s frontiers expanded, its internal integrity was weakening. The transformation from Republic to Empire masked a deeper process of decline and disintegration.

Trump’s recent rise in the U.S. was based on the promise to unify and make “America Great Again.” He has worked to bend elections to his will, or to undermine them altogether. Trump, too, would prefer to replace the Republic with something more personal and absolute. The spectacle masks the unravelling of democratic civilization.

Then, as now, at the level of collective humanity, a pattern emerges. As the apostle John intuited, any civilization built on the pursuit of infinite power and expansion is headed toward implosion. It collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions.

The Limits of Growth

A half century ago, the 1972 MIT study The Limits to Growth predicted that modern society would collapse sometime in the 21st century. Using system dynamics modeling, researchers examined the risks of civilizational collapse. They identified “limits to growth” driven by the over-exploitation of planetary resources.

At the time, the study sparked intense controversy. It was widely criticized and misrepresented by many experts. For the most part, it was dismissed and ignored by those committed to high-growth, high-consumption systems.

Recently, however, the study has received renewed attention. Its core conclusions have been revisited and, in many respects, supported.

Gaya Herrington, a Dutch “Sustainability and Dynamic System” analyst and advisor to the Club of Rome^[1], published a follow-up analysis.^[2] Her work confirmed key aspects of the original study’s projections. She reanalyzed data across ten variables: population, fertility rates, mortality rates, industrial output, food production, services, non-renewable resources, persistent pollution, human welfare, and ecological footprint.

Her findings indicate that current global trends remain aligned with the original collapse scenarios. On a business-as-usual trajectory, global civilization is heading toward severe economic and political breakdown, potentially by around 2040.^[3]

Each of the ten variables she examined functions as part of an interconnected whole. Stress is building across all of them simultaneously, accelerating the overall crisis. Failure in any one increases the likelihood of failure in others. Each breakdown can trigger cascading effects. Together, they act like pressure inside a sealed container. As these pressures continue to rise, both globally and nationally, the system moves closer to a breaking point.

The next Post, #5 of 12, will peal back a big layer of the onion of history. Post #5 will focus on the appeal and fate of Christianity as a social movement during the unravelling of the Roman Empire.

^[1] The Club of Rome is an international think tank and advocacy organization founded in 1968. Consisting of over 150 scientists, economists, and business leaders, it is headquartered in Switzerland and dedicated to resolving interconnected global crises through systems thinking and sustainable development agendas.

^[2] VICE, 07/14/21, BY NAFEEZ AHMED, HTTPS://WWW.VICE.COM/EN/ARTICLE/NEW-RESEARCH-VINDICATES-1972-MIT-PREDICTION-THAT-SOCIETY-WILL-COLLAPSE-SOON/

^[3] Ibid.

As the American continent was taken over by white men of primarily European origin in the 18th and 19th centuries, the capitalist system of profiteering and exploitation flourished unchecked. In the 19th and 20th centuries, business interests went on a tear, acting as the stewards and exploiters of the everyday needs of mainstream Christian society. Pursuing unbridled expansion and wealth acquisition, business became “big business.” It profited from an exploding consumer society, neo-colonialist ventures, and wars.

By the 20th-century, organized crime also grew exponentially in America. It arose as that branch of capitalism that exploited the markets for the “sins of Christianity”: booze, prostitution, protection, gambling, drugs, guns, bribery, blackmail, and so on. Organized crime was born outside the law and lived in opposition to the legal system of mainstream American society. Its realm was the “underworld.” Its profits came from what was seen as the domain of evil, the realm of the devil. Violence, or the threat of violence, was always its ultimate weapon for extracting compliance.

To gangsters and mobsters, the law and the state were “the enemy” that sought to prosecute and jail them and to stop their illegal profiteering. At the same time, they sought out politicians and lawyers who could be bribed and/or threatened to help them evade the law.

As the 20th century progressed, the distinction between organized crime and big business began to fade. Organized crime adopted the business model that big business used. Big business, in turn, adopted the [im]moral code of organized crime. And as organized crime sent its people to college, they became specialized accountants and lawyers, helping its enterprises to evade laws, hide transactions, and remain untaxable and unaccountable.

Meanwhile, big business saw the merits of organized crime’s methods, including money laundering schemes and the use of violence, or the threat of it. Such tactics were used in situations like union busting and efforts to counter labor organizing.

By the time the 21st century arrived, it became difficult to discern where one ended and the other began. Organized crime had become big business. Big business had become organized crime. The history of three generations of the Trump family in America illustrates this trend. In the third generation, Donald Trump becomes the personification and symbol of this symbiosis.

The Trump Family

History often repeats itself, replaying similar dynamics across generations. In this way, Donald Trump has lived out his family tradition. His grandfather, Friedrich, set the precedent. He was a draft dodger who emigrated to the United States in 1885 at age 16 to avoid mandatory military service. Donald followed this example. He avoided the draft by claiming phony bone spurs as a disqualifying medical condition. This shared straddling of legality and illegality extended beyond the draft. It shaped their broader conception of life and what was worth pursuing.

During the late 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, Friedrich sought economic opportunity in the hospitality business. He operated restaurants and hotels in boomtowns in Canada and the United States. His businesses catered to miners and travelers, offering food and shelter, and reportedly other “hospitality” services such as prostitution and gambling.

Later in life, Friedrich settled in New York City. There, he began investing in real estate and continued until his death during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Both his son, Fred (1905–1999) and his grandson, Donald, followed his example. They structured their lives around the pursuit of wealth and power, by legal means if possible and illegal means when necessary.

Fred became a major real estate developer and formally established what became the Trump Organization. During and after the Great Depression, he focused on residential construction and development. After World War II, Fred became one of the most successful developers in Brooklyn and Queens, benefitting from government-backed financing programs that supported large-scale housing projects. Fred constructed thousands of apartment units for middle-income families and veterans. However, in the 1970s his company faced federal investigations involving allegations of housing discrimination, including refusing to rent to Black tenants.

Young Donald

Donald Trump’s character was shaped by maternal neglect and paternal indulgence. As a baby, he experienced a deep lack of maternal nurturance. After that, he was spoiled rotten by his father. Fred not only tolerated but rewarded Donald’s continuous aggression. This dysfunctional childhood undermined the possibility of forming basic, equal human relationships. As a child, having been denied the powerful experience of love, Donald, as an adult, pursued its opposite: the love of power.

Donald’s niece, Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, has amplified this view. She states that “Donald was never ever held to account for anything; he was enabled at every turn and eventually that created a monster.” She contends that Fred Trump created and sustained the myth that Donald was a genius and a self-made man. By placing him “on a pedestal” despite evidence to the contrary, in her view Fred was largely responsible for creating “this particular monster.”

A spoiled nepo-kid brat, Donald became so obnoxious and unmanageable that Fred had to send him to military school for discipline. In a rare moment of candor, Donald later said, “That’s why I’m so screwed up, because I had a father that pushed me pretty hard.”^[1]

Despite his father’s efforts, Donald turned out to be neither very intelligent nor very knowledgeable, although he claims and presents himself as both. He did, however, develop a skill. He learned how to dominate people to skirt the law. He completely lacks empathy but has a keen ability to sense fear in others and exploit it without hesitation.

Adult Donald

Donald Trump’s relationship to law and government has always been adversarial. Like the mobsters he admires, he has long viewed the law and its agents as enemies that constrain him. He has studied rules and regulations closely. Not to follow them, but to negate, bend, and circumvent them.

When asked about the family’s religion, Mary said: “Starting with my grandfather, the only thing that mattered, the only thing they believed in, was money. God did not enter into the equation, and never once did I see any sincere professions of faith in God.” Donald himself agreed: “I was never a religious man.” He added, “I don’t believe in reincarnation, Heaven or Hell.”

Mary has summarized it this way: “The problem is not that Donald doesn’t believe in God; it’s that he’s a hypocrite and he is a user. He believes in one higher power only and, in his head, that’s him.”^[2] The only “religion” that resonated with Donald was Norman Vincent Peale’s advice to “worship himself.”^[3]

Donald became the symbolic personification of the blurring between big business and organized crime. He ran his business—and now runs the business of the United States—like an old-fashioned mob-family operation. His obsession with “loyalty” to the Boss comes straight from the mafia playbook.

Even in international political circles, Trump’s gangster mentality is widely recognized. As a British assessment put it: “He is a dangerous and corrupt gangster, and that is how we must treat him.”^[4]

The next post, #4 of 12, will describe the historical setting of the Trump phenomenon within the larger context of the unravelling of the Western civilization as well as its much earlier predecessor, the Roman Empire.

^[1] Ibid.

^[2] HTTPS://APPLE.NEWS/ADZYU-NJ9Q6U09CQX8PYA0A

^[3] GWENDA BLAIR, “HOW NORMAN VINCENT PEALE TAUGHT DONALD TRUMP TO WORSHIP HIMSELF,” POLITICO, OCTOBER 6, 2015, HTTPS://WWW.POLITICO.COM/MAGAZINE/STORY/2015/10/DONALD-TRUMP-2016-NORMAN-VINCENT-PEALE-213220/.

^[4] https://apple.news/A7HT7B2yYRzagNoSEovQA6Q

To understand how Trump and MAGA came to define American politics in the first quarter of the 21st century, we must first understand the split that occurred in modern Christianity. A half century ago, in the second half of the 20th century, Evangelical Christianity split away from the mainstream of established institutional Christianity.

This split occurred because established Christianity failed to address the spiritual, political, and social unease that was eroding the faith of its constituents. As a result, church membership plummeted. People lost interest in traditional religious structures and went their own way, questing for new solutions to persistent problems.

Some left the church altogether and turned left, toward the counterculture that had exploded into full force in the 1960s and 1970s. Seeking spiritual teachings and enlightenment, they turned to non-Western, non-Christian sources. These included pre-Christian, female-centric pagan religions, as well as Eastern traditions such as Buddhism and Taoism.

Others turned to the right, seeking a redefinition and renewal of the Christian experience in Evangelical Christianity. This movement also developed in response to the progressive orientation of institutional liberal theology. As a renewal movement within Protestantism, Evangelical Christianity did not begin as a single denomination. It evolved as a global, trans-denominational identity across Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and others.

From the late 20th century onward, Evangelical Christianity saw explosive growth. This growth occurred not only in the continental United States, but globally, with a strong presence in Latin America and Africa.

The process by which individuals and/or groups define their identity and behavior in contrast to others is called schismogenesis. The word is derived from Greek and means “generation by division.” In this new yin-yang polarity within Christianity, Evangelical Christianity defined itself as the conservative yang pole. It did so in opposition to, and mirroring, institutional Christianity as the liberal yin pole.

Thus, institutional Christianity favors the New Testament over the Old, because it emphasizes the power of love as preached and practiced by the Son. For the same reason, institutional Christianity is essentially more Christ and less Moses. It pursues equality between the races and the sexes. It emphasizes empathy and compassion. It is more democratic and center-left in its politics.

Evangelical Christianity, by contrast, favors the Old Testament over the New, because it emphasizes the love of power as practiced by the Father. It is less Christ and more Moses. It promotes inequality between the races and the sexes. It is often proud of its cruelty and heartlessness. It is more authoritarian and right-wing in its politics.

Evangelical Christianity and Trump

It was this Evangelical Christianity that entered into a coalition with Donald Trump. That coalition would forever change the world of politics, turning the American Dream into a global nightmare. Politically, it was a perfect fit. There was a deep commonality between Trump, many evangelical preachers and leaders, and their growing base of believers. All three shared a fundamental allegiance to the authoritarianism of misogyny and racism and, accordingly, their politics were inherently anti-democratic.

The mutual embrace of Trump and Evangelical Christianity made eminent sense to the parties themselves from the very beginning. The deal was simple and wholly transactional. Evangelical preachers would deliver the votes of their believers to Trump. In return, Trump would appoint evangelicals to important positions in government.

To Trump, the Evangelical Christian movement presented a perfect opportunity. They had votes, and they had money. Trump wanted both. Their conservative-to-radical right-wing politics also meshed closely with his own political proclivities and priorities.

Due to the explosive growth in the number of evangelical Christians, a small army of full-time Bible-thumping hucksters, proselytizers, and manipulators came to dominate the field of evangelical ministry. However, before Donald Trump’s entry into their world, their inability to subsume their egos and unite behind a single, strong leader prevented them from gaining the political clout needed to implement their programs nationally. That changed with Trump, who convinced them he would be the one to unite them in political victory.

Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress offered a frank assessment of why Evangelical leaders accepted an agnostic or atheist like Trump as their political leader: “He may not be as good with the Bible as some of them. He may not have read the Bible as much as some of them. In fact, he may not have ever read the Bible. But he will be a much stronger messenger for us, and he will get things done that no other man has the ability to get done.” Jeffress also spoke approvingly of Trump’s practice of hitting back twice as hard when challenged. He even chuckled when noting that Trump’s “favorite verse in the Bible, he says, is, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’”^[1]

Trump and his Base

Trump’s base, the MAGA crowd, is a testament to the long-running right-wing war against higher education, which began in the 1970s under Ronald Reagan and William Bennett. Lack of education, and the ignorance it produces, became a backbone of Trump’s public support.

Feeling left behind by women and minorities who pursued higher education, many white men, primarily those from the lower to middle socio-economic classes, turned toward blue-collar work. Their deteriorating economic and psychological conditions aggravated deep-seated, white male–centric biases, including misogyny and racism. They identified strongly with Trump’s message.

What the base likes in Trump, and what they get from him, is clear. They identify with his anger and his bravado. They cheer his “fuck you” attitude toward established authority. They embrace his middle-finger defiance of government. They admire his combativeness and his readiness to engage in conflict, even physical confrontation, with opponents.

The feeling is hardly mutual. It has long been an open secret that Trump, on a personal level, despises his base. As radio personality Howard Stern observed: “The oddity in all of this is the people Trump despises most love him the most… He wouldn’t even let them in a fucking hotel. He’d be disgusted by them.” Stern challenged supporters to see this for themselves: “Go to Mar-a-Lago. See if there’s any people who look like you.”^[2]

To Trump, his supporters are useful losers. As he put it: “You got a lot of losers, mostly losers, fortunately. It’s a good thing to have a lot of losers. I always like to hang around with losers, actually, because it makes me feel better,”^[3] --especially when they are sending him money and voting for him.

The split between Evangelical Christians and mainstream Christian progressives burst into public view one day after Trump’s second inauguration, at a National Prayer Service in Washington, D.C. In front of government officials and GOP figures, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde directly appealed to the president.

She asked him to show mercy and compassion toward LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and other marginalized groups facing restrictive policies. “I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now… There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”^[4]

She continued: “The people who pick our crops, clean our office buildings, labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, wash dishes in restaurants, and work night shifts in hospitals… They may not be citizens or have proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

Reactions from Evangelical leaders were immediate and vitriolic. Figures such as pastor Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham condemned her remarks, claiming she had insulted the president. Trump himself responded publicly. He posted on Truth Social that Budde was a “Radical Left hardline Trump hater” and demanded an apology.

Budde stood her ground. She described Trump’s policies as “antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our church stands for.” She emphasized that “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, because we were all once strangers in this land.” She also reproached Trump for failing to make any real “attempt to heal or bring calm to our troubled land…”

The next Post, #3 of 12, will describe the interlinking of big business, organized crime and the Trump family.

^[1] New York Magazine, 8/18/2019, Ed Kilgore.

^[2] IBID.

^{[3] [3]} HTTPS://PEOPLE.COM/TRUMP-SAYS-HE-LIKES-TO-HANG-AROUND-WITH-LOSERS-BECAUSE-IT-MAKES-ME-FEEL- BETTER-11936625#:~:TEXT=LATER%20IN%20HIS,ME%20FEEL%20BETTER.”

^[4] Excerpt From “Hero of 2025: Bishop Mariann Budde” by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, Mother Jones,

https://apple.news/A-nItIU5AT-iSwvB83b5FjQ

The Anti-Christ

When I was a kid growing up, the subject of the apocalypse and the end of the world came up all the time. It followed church sermons or after-dinner Bible readings at home. We were told that the end would come through apocalypse and the Second Coming of Christ. But first, the devil would gain total control over the world.

We were also told that, in the “end times,” an Anti-Christ would arise. He would pretend to be a Christian, a man of faith. In reality, he would be an agent of the devil, or the devil himself. His role would be to lead believers astray and pull them away from the true teachings of Christ.

As Christ’s disciple John watched the unraveling of Roman civilization, he waited anxiously. Jesus had been crucified for preaching hope, love, and equality. He had promised to return. He would come back from beyond the grave, rescue his followers, and take them to heaven. But in Revelation, John is told that before that return, humanity would be tested. It would suffer deeply. The source of that suffering would be the greed and lust for power of ruling elites and their false prophets.

In the earliest usage, these false prophets were called Anti-Christs. The term referred broadly to anyone opposing Christ and his teachings. Over time, it evolved. It became a singular, dramatic end-times figure: THE Anti-Christ, a false messiah who claims divine authority while deceiving people both spiritually and politically. He promises heaven after death but delivers hell on earth. Only when things reach their worst does Christ return. He confronts the Anti-Christ, defeats him, and leads the faithful to heaven.

History has seen many Anti-Christs. More will come. They all use the same strategy of pulling people away from Christ’s teachings through false narratives.

Look around now. The explosion of evangelical, fundamentalist Christian Nationalist preachers makes the point. Anti-Christs are alive and thriving and profiting from mass suffering. There are as many Anti-Christs as there are evangelicals preaching their so-called “war on empathy” in the name of a “jealous” Old Testament God. They stand ready to unleash destruction on unbelievers.

In concrete terms, the Anti-Christ shows up today in the nexus of Trump, MAGA, Evangelical Christianity, and Christian Nationalism. You have an atheist or agnostic leading a religious movement whose preachers have openly perverted and co-opted Christ’s teachings of universal love for all human beings.

Trump, the preachers, and their followers share the same foundation: misogyny and racism. These are the twin mudsills of the authoritarian paradigm. Together, they form the Anti-Christ. They reject and defile Christ’s teaching of the “power of love” by replacing it with the “love of power.”

The Second Coming

From this perspective, Christ’s promise of a Second Coming can be more clearly understood. It is not a literal event descending from the sky but a socio-political and religious transformation. It is the rise of progressive feminist humanism, both secular and religious.

The Second Coming is a metaphor for an unparalleled paradigm shift. It describes the process by which society moves from an authoritarian, male-centric order based on the love of power to a democratic, female-centric order based on the power of love.

Politically, this amounts to the realization of the progressive American Dream. It means dismantling all authoritarian, racist, and misogynistic systems and restoring balance by replacing them with institutions based on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

This transformation requires an alliance in which secular humanists and Christian humanists must work together. The goal is to defeat the Anti-Christ and bring about the Second Coming. That means building “heaven on earth” through the power of love, both individually and collectively.

On the individual level, restoring balance requires internal work. Each person must find their own equilibrium. This means balancing the male and female neural-hormonal axes. It means navigating the tension between the “power of love” and the “love of power.”

On the collective level, restoring balance requires structural change. It means flipping the current value system. Under capitalism, competition and power dominate; cooperation and empathy are secondary. That must reverse. Cooperation and love must become primary, so that competition and power remain secondary and exist only to serve the greater good.

Peeling the Onion of History

Today we face the global rise of authoritarianism. In order to defeat authoritarianism, we must understand the love of power that fuels it.

In the posts that follow, we will work backwards in time, and in some cases, touch upon matters I’ve written about previously. Each post will peel back another layer of the onion of history to shine the light of new perspective on old verities.

Ultimately, we will go back as far as the middle of the 2^nd millennium BC, to the end of the Bronze Age, and examine the core historical events that marked the beginning of our power obsessed civilization. The unimaginably hellish conflagration of geological and atmospheric cataclysms that upended the Mediterranean world during that “Age of Catastrophe” also upended the social order dominant at that time. Ancient, female-centric systems based on fundamental equality were replaced by institutional misogyny and racism.

Ever since, the human love of power has tried to dominate the power of human love. And ever since, the power of human love has tried to reclaim its rightful place of supremacy in the human heart and mind.

The next post, #2 of 12, our journey back in time will discuss the late 20^th century split that occurred in Christianity and its significance to Trump’s rise to power.

Whenever I feel the need to take a break in real life, I head for the outdoors with my dog and camera to recharge my batteries in and through Mother Nature. Trying to catch the extravagant and subtle beauties of nature landscapes with my camera never fails to lift my spirits.

Accordingly, as a respite, I would like to start sharing with you, on an occasional basis, some of my photographic efforts. Today’s offering is timelapse photography of the flowering of an Agave plant residing in our front yard that I made a few years ago.

Enjoy and stay tuned for further writing and video efforts!

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From its beginnings, the United States has been shaped by a deep tension between Christian nationalism and secular humanism. This tension has been especially pronounced within the collective psychology of white male power. On one side lay aspirations toward universal rights and democratic equality; on the other, a determination to restrict those rights by class, race and gender. This internal contradiction became embedded in the nation’s political life.

As a result, two opposing historical currents have unfolded side by side from the start. One is a male‑centric drive to preserve hierarchy, inequality, and authoritarian control. The other is a more inclusive, egalitarian movement—led over time by humanists, women, and racial minorities—pushing toward democracy and equal rights. These competing forces have repeatedly collided, producing what can be understood as two simultaneous and opposing histories of the United States.

Education as the Battleground

The counterculture of the 1960s deeply unsettled political and economic elites. For the first time, they faced a broadly educated population capable of critical thinking and collective action. This development posed a serious threat to entrenched power. In response, the elites devised a long‑term, two‑part strategy aimed at weakening the social conditions that had made the counterculture possible.

First, education was reframed as narrowly utilitarian. Critical thinking, philosophy, and the humanities were portrayed as impractical luxuries that did not lead directly to jobs. Students were steered instead toward business and technical training. Second, higher education was gradually transformed from a public good into a costly private investment, increasingly inaccessible to large segments of the population.

A key figure in this shift was William J. Bennett, a conservative intellectual and Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan. In his book Is College Worth It?, Bennett argued that higher education was unnecessary for most people and financially unjustifiable. While trade skills may suffice for specific occupations, this argument overlooked the broader civic role of education: preparing citizens to evaluate evidence, resist manipulation, and participate meaningfully in a democracy.

The Long‑Term Effects of Educational Retrenchment

The Reagan administration’s education policies succeeded in dismantling the postwar liberal arts model and replacing it with a costly, market‑driven system focused on producing workers rather than citizens. Over time, this approach yielded generations of highly specialized laborers with limited exposure to critical inquiry, history, or civic reasoning.

The result was not merely economic stratification, but intellectual and political vulnerability. An electorate less equipped to assess complex social and political claims became more susceptible to misinformation, conspiracy thinking, and authoritarian narratives. In this sense, the educational system failed to sustain the cognitive foundations necessary for democratic self‑government.

This outcome was not accidental. The strategy followed the broader conservative blueprint articulated by Lewis Powell and implemented during the Reagan years, including under Bennett’s leadership. The goal was to cultivate a reliable, conservative populist base—less educated, more deferential to authority, and easier to mobilize through cultural and religious appeals.

Half a century later, the consequences of this strategy were on public display. At the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, activist Jack Posobiec openly celebrated the “end of democracy,” receiving enthusiastic applause. Figures such as Steve Bannon echoed this sentiment, underscoring how openly anti‑democratic ideas had moved from the margins into the mainstream of right‑wing politics.

A Widening Educational and Cultural Divide

Over time, these policies helped drive a sharp divergence in life paths. Women and racial minorities, recognizing education as a pathway to autonomy and opportunity, continued to pursue higher learning despite rising costs. Education expanded their horizons—intellectually, spiritually, and politically—and fostered openness to global cultural influences beyond narrow religious frameworks. Many gravitated toward progressive politics grounded in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

By contrast, many white working‑class men accepted the message that college was unnecessary or wasteful. While technical training initially offered stable wages, long‑term economic shifts—automation, globalization, and the rise of digital industries—rendered many of these jobs obsolete. Lacking broader educational foundations, many found themselves unable to adapt to a changing economy or to understand the structural forces shaping their decline.

The data reflect this divide. Since the mid‑20th century, women have steadily outpaced men in educational attainment. Today, nearly 60 percent of college students in the United States are women. Meanwhile, large numbers of white men have experienced declining economic prospects, rising unemployment, and increasing social isolation.

Grievance, Rage, and Political Radicalization

Economic insecurity and social dislocation often generate anxiety, resentment, and a search for blame. For many white men left behind by these transformations, anger increasingly focused on those perceived as having advanced—women and racial minorities. This dynamic fueled a resurgence of misogyny and racism, expressed through far‑right politics and authoritarian religious movements.

Religiously, many gravitated away from inclusive, compassion‑centered interpretations of Christianity toward more rigid, power‑oriented theologies that reinforce hierarchy and exclusion. The rise of Trump and the MAGA movement illustrates how these currents coalesced into a potent political force, one now actively rolling back gains made in civil rights, gender equality, and LGBTQ inclusion over the past half century.

Where the Two Histories Lead

The damage inflicted by this reactionary movement is real and ongoing. Yet there are reasons to believe its dominance will not endure. As Christian nationalist policies are implemented, their underlying cruelty and contradictions become more visible. Over time, authoritarian movements also tend to betray their own supporters in pursuit of power and wealth for a narrow elite.

In this sense, the intensification of male‑centric authoritarianism may be accelerating a broader reckoning. Globally, awareness is growing of the social and psychological costs of domination‑based systems. A countervailing momentum is emerging—one that seeks to reorient institutions toward care, inclusion, and democratic participation.

The vanguard of this transformation is likely to be those who have borne the greatest costs of hierarchy: women, racial minorities, and others historically excluded from power. In confronting the legacy of domination, they are helping to chart a path toward a more balanced and humane social order—one rooted not in the love of power and domination, but in the power of love, shared dignity and mutual responsibility.

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Note: In last month’s post, we described the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s as a foreshadowing of the progressive democratic movements of the 21st century.

This month’s post examines how influential business, political, and religious leaders on the far right responded in the 1970s by developing a long‑term, anti‑democratic strategy to defeat the left and capture the nation’s political and cultural institutions. While the membership of this movement evolved over time, its core values remained consistent and eventually helped elevate Donald Trump as the figurehead of a contemporary Christian‑nationalist authoritarian movement.

Big Business Mobilizes

In the 1970s, a second challenge to the prevailing culture—and to the left‑leaning counterculture—emerged from the highest levels of the political and economic right. This movement consisted of committed advocates of unfettered capitalism and included influential figures such as Milton Friedman, Lewis Powell, Ronald Reagan, and William Bennett.

These actors never accepted the reforms of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal or its emphasis on economic security and political rights. From their perspective, government regulation and taxation unfairly constrained corporate profits and private wealth.

Their central goal was the expansion of corporate power and profitability. Determined to dismantle the New Deal and roll back what they pejoratively termed the liberal welfare state, they pursued what can accurately be described as a regressive economic and political agenda. That agenda extended into social and religious life as well, where traditional hierarchies—male over female, white over non‑white—were defended and justified through conservative theological frameworks.

Friedman and the Reassertion of Profit

The opening salvo of this counteroffensive was fired in 1970 by University of Chicago economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. In a widely circulated New York Times essay, Friedman restated the core argument of his earlier work Capitalism and Freedom, insisting that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”

Friedman sharply criticized business leaders who believed corporations had obligations beyond profit‑making. He urged executives and shareholders to abandon what he viewed as misplaced moral concerns and to recommit fully to profit maximization. His intervention provided the ideological foundation for a renewed corporate assault on government regulation and social responsibility.

Lewis Powell and Strategic Mobilization

If Friedman supplied the theory, Lewis Powell supplied the strategy. A corporate lawyer, former president of the American Bar Association, and future Supreme Court justice, Powell was deeply hostile to both government regulation and the cultural upheavals of the 1960s.

In 1970, Powell delivered a speech titled “The Attack on American Institutions” to a gathering of Southern business leaders. He warned that American capitalism faced an existential threat from radical movements and urged business leaders to respond with coordinated, long‑term action. Encouraged by his audience, Powell expanded the speech into a confidential memorandum outlining a national strategy for countering progressive influence.

Surreptitiously distributed in 1972 to members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the “Powell Memorandum” marked a turning point. For the first time, corporate America possessed a detailed plan for sustained political warfare against government regulation, labor movements, and progressive cultural forces. Implementing the strategy required patience, discipline, and vast financial resources.

The Four Fronts of the Counteroffensive

Powell proposed waging this campaign on four fronts: academia, media, politics, and the courts. Conservative scholars and intellectuals would shape public opinion; political power would be pursued aggressively; and the judiciary would be transformed into a central engine of social and economic change through what Powell called a form of “reverse judicial activism.”

He urged conservatives to emulate the organizational strategies of labor unions, civil rights groups, and public‑interest law firms by building parallel institutions dedicated to free‑market ideology. The memo’s closing line captured its urgency: “Business and the enterprise system are in trouble, and the hour is late.”

Money, Institutions, and Influence

The financial backing soon followed. Wealthy donors such as the Koch brothers, Joseph Coors, Richard Mellon Scaife, and John Olin poured enormous sums into conservative infrastructure. Existing institutions like the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution expanded dramatically, while dozens of new think tanks and advocacy groups were launched.

By the end of the 1970s, conservative organizations rivaled—and in some cases surpassed—their liberal counterparts in funding, staffing, and influence. This dense institutional network became the backbone of the modern conservative movement.

Lobbying, Campaign Finance, and the Revolving Door

At the same time, corporate lobbying exploded. The number of companies with full‑time lobbyists in Washington grew from fewer than 200 in the early 1970s to more than 2,500 by the early 1980s. The “revolving door” between government and business became normalized, embedding corporate interests deep within the state.

Campaign finance reforms passed after Watergate were quickly adapted to corporate advantage through the creation of Political Action Committees. As limits were loosened, business‑funded PACs multiplied, channeling vast sums into elections and policy campaigns aligned with the far right.

Building the Personnel Pipeline

This era also trained a generation of political operatives—figures such as Lee Atwater, Roy Cohn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort—who honed techniques of manipulation, disinformation, and power brokerage. Decades later, these actors and methods would reappear in the service of Trump‑era politics.

Theocratic ambitions now visible in projects such as the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” trace their lineage to this same period and to the strategic blueprint laid out by Powell more than half a century ago.

Restricting Democracy

One consistent feature of this movement has been opposition to expanded democratic participation. Conservative strategist Paul Weyrich stated plainly in 1980 that lower voter turnout benefited the right. From this perspective, efforts to weaken public education or restrict voting rights are not anomalies, but the culmination of a long‑standing strategy to limit democratic engagement.

****

In next month’s post, we will examine how this coalition targeted public education—seeking not to cultivate a broadly educated citizenry, but to produce a more compliant and less critically engaged workforce. That strategy, developed in the wake of the countercultural revolutions of the 1960s and 70s, would help create the social and political conditions that later sustained Trump’s MAGA movement.

Next month’s post will retell the story of how the extreme right hatched an elaborate and aggressive master plan in the 1970s and 1980s to take power. This plan called for restoring and strengthening existing inequalities of class, race, and gender. Its execution created the socio‑political climate that would later give rise to the MAGA base and Trump’s authoritarian movement in the 21st century.

Taken together, these two posts set the stage for a deeper understanding of the stakes involved in the 21st‑century civil conflict between the regressive authoritarian Trumpian‑MAGA movement and the progressive democratic movement.

***

The immediate post–World War II period was an optimistic time. People were joyful and euphoric. They had just vanquished a ruthless enemy of freedom and were beginning to taste the fruits of the affluence promised by consumer capitalism. Feeling grateful and confident about the future, Americans joined churches of liberal, humanistic Christianity in large numbers, fueling a religious revival of sorts.

Christian faith and values, in their major and minor forms and manifestations, ruled supreme. At mid‑century, Americans streamed back to church in unprecedented numbers. The baby boom (those born between 1946 and 1965) had begun, and the parents of the first baby boomers moved into the suburbs and filled the pews, establishing church and family as the twin pillars of security and respectability. Religious membership, church funding, church building, and traditional faith and practice all increased throughout the 1950s.

Even two decades after the war, in the early 1960s, more than nine in ten U.S. adults—both among the public and their elected representatives—still identified as Christian. Things looked very good for Christian America. Yet beneath this surface, internal contradictions were at work. These tensions would soon rupture the near unanimity of religious and social norms and profoundly challenge society’s traditional male‑centric, racist, and misogynistic moral and religious value system.

The Beat Generation was the first clear expression that all was not well in postwar American culture. Primarily a literary movement, it began with a group of writers and intellectuals whose major trailblazers included Allen Ginsberg (Howl, 1956), Jack Kerouac (On the Road, 1957), and William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch, 1959). Their work explored and reshaped American culture and politics in the postwar era.

Beat culture championed a wholesale rejection of economic materialism and consumer society. Its literary output chronicled spiritual quests that included Eastern religions, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation. The Beats decried what they saw as the shallowness of their contemporaries, whom they believed were trapped and emotionally numbed by consumer culture. Their critique found a more receptive audience among the next generation—the baby‑boom children of the generation that had fought the war.

The postwar baby boom was unique in that, for the first time in history, an entire middle‑class generation grew up free from want, in relative abundance. This sharply contrasted with their parents, for whom hunger and deprivation had been constant companions and who therefore tended to respond to events with caution, fear, and silence.

The baby boomers were different. Confident to the point of arrogance, and lacking the historical memory of deprivation, they reacted to events they disapproved of with immediacy, righteous anger, and a determination to set things right. This helps explain why the generation erupted spontaneously and collectively. The counterculture emerged as a rejection of the value system underlying the consumer culture produced by postwar capitalism.

The movement began with mostly white college students in the mid‑ to late‑1960s, who organized teach‑ins, seminars, and demonstrations on and off campus against the Establishment’s war in Vietnam. They recognized that the war had begun on the basis of a lie and was sustained by a continuing series of lies and false promises.

These antiwar protests were also part of a broader rebellion against their parents’ generation, which more often than not supported the government’s war effort. The young were protesting not their parents themselves, but the unhappiness they sensed beneath their parents’ surface cheerfulness. They knew they did not want that fate for themselves. This generational gulf led to a wholesale rejection of inherited values and to the creation of a new paradigm of happiness to replace them.

Gradually, the antiwar youth movement joined forces with the civil rights movement, forming a broader coalition united around opposition to war and racism. Then women mobilized again. Second‑wave feminism emerged in the 1960s, picking up where the first wave had left off earlier in the century.

This wave achieved at least one major legislative milestone. The Equal Rights Amendment won approval in the House of Representatives in October 1971 and in the Senate in March 1972, clearing the way for submission to the states for ratification. Second‑wave feminism also helped catalyze new forms of community activism and a growing focus on LGBT issues. It made common cause with the antiwar and civil rights movements in critiquing patriarchal, male‑dominated institutions and cultural practices throughout society.

At its core, the strength of the 1960s counterculture lay in the convergence of antiwar, anti‑violence, music‑ and peace‑loving youth culture with the struggles of racial minorities and the reawakened women’s liberation movement. Together, these forces challenged the racism and misogyny embedded in the authoritarian paradigm of white male dominance. The counterculture of the 1960s was thus a preview of the struggle between Progressives and “Regressives” for the soul of the nation that would reemerge in the 21st century.

Taken negatively, the counterculture amounted to a rejection of the deepest sources of Western (white male) historical power: misogyny and racism, along with their cosmic justification in Judeo‑Christian monotheism. Taken positively, the counterculture represented a resurgence of a female‑centric paradigm associated with pre‑Christian and non‑Christian polytheistic traditions.

Accordingly, counterculture politics were unapologetically left‑wing: progressive, anti‑right‑wing, anti‑Republican, anti‑corruption, anti–big business, and anti‑establishment.

The counterculture also developed its own views of culture and religion. Rejecting the institutional churches of Judeo‑Christian monotheism did not mean rejecting spirituality itself. Rather, the rejection stemmed from what was perceived as a lack of genuine spirituality in establishment religion. With its openness to diverse forms of spiritual experience, the counterculture announced the arrival of a new spiritual age.

Many participants “went East,” embracing Buddhism, Sufism, Hinduism, or Taoism. Others turned to Europe’s pre‑Christian pagan traditions—Celtic, Anglo‑Saxon, Germanic—with their strong female‑centric elements, marking the symbolic return of witches and their craft. Still others traveled widely, studying the religious practices of Indigenous societies, often guided by shamans and psychedelic rituals. Divination and synchronicity increasingly replaced obedience to a male godhead and its earthly representatives.

Psychedelic drugs were central to this spiritual quest, whose goal was the expansion of consciousness beyond the limits imposed by establishment culture. Like all cultures, the counterculture had its own music—rock and roll—which served as its emotional glue and expressive core.

Another defining feature of the counterculture was the rejection of traditional sexual taboos and the exploration of sexuality in its many forms. Alongside this came a rejection of the nuclear family as the ideal social unit, leading to widespread experimentation with collectives and cooperatives throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

In religious and spiritual terms, the countercultural revolution of the late 1960s and 70s offered a glimpse of pre‑Christian, female‑centric paganism reemerging as a potential post‑Christian religious paradigm for America. The movement blended anti‑authoritarian spiritual practices that emphasized intuition, distrust of orthodoxy, and the spiritual power of the “forgotten”—especially women.

It was these forgotten women who, within the New Age counterculture, helped give rise to a neo‑paganism rooted largely in the experiences of white women and framed as proudly intersectional: an umbrella community for those marginalized by dominant white, straight, male, Christian culture.

To the alarm of male‑centric Christianity, much of the energy driving this neo‑pagan movement came from feminism. In 1992, Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson warned that feminism would lead women to “leave their husbands… practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.” Many contemporary witches would agree. Robertson’s warning expressed both personal and collective misogynistic fears of losing male authority to a female‑centric society grounded not in domination, but in love, horizontal integration, and democratic networks.

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I owe you an apology because I failed to deliver on my posts this month as promised. For those who were worried, thanks for your inquiries, but I’m still kicking, well and good, but Holidays, home projects and personal needs required some of my undivided attention the past month.

But rest assured I aim to make up for my shortcomings shortly. First, for my paying subscribers, I will soon produce another Guided Internal Arts Meditation, this time on the subject of meditative walking. After that I will return to my political and philosophical explorations for all subscribers.

In the meantime, I did manage to go on one wonderful hike in Pinnacles National Park to view the mighty condors, and was blown away by the majesty and beauty of both the mountains and the birds. Imagine a wing span of 9-10 ft.. Incredible! Here are a few images of that trip for your enjoyment.

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