These same people, after all, were among the loudest voices in 2016 and again after January 6, 2021, declaring the end of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

Say what you will about Donald Trump (and I’ve said plenty), but “unconventional” is not too strong a word for him. Polarizing, divisive and galvanizing would be three more useful adjectives.

Trump won (and resurrected his political life) in no small part, by turning the accusations against him into momentum. He used the power of persecution to turn media scrutiny into resistance from coastal elites. His opponent’s insults fell flat not because they were untrue, but because they came from unlikeable and untrustworthy sources, many of whom were creatures of The Swamp. Audits of the would-be president’s finances became Deep State plots.

All of this activated voters who had long sat on the sidelines, believing their voice didn’t matter. They didn’t show up in the polling, but they showed up at the polls, pushing the bombastic billionaire over seemingly insurmountable hurdles.

Pocket Constitutions live under the shade of hat brims that read “Trump 2028” in some Orwellian doublespeak come to vivid and confounding life.

Enter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

To be fair, the Congresswoman from New York’s 14th congressional district is hardly a newcomer. At age 36, she has already served six years in Congress and recently defeated two Democratic challengers in the primary with nearly 85% of the vote. She is, to put it mildly, extremely popular in her district and a household name across most of the country, for better or for worse.

There are critiques of AOC’s commitment to progressive ideals, with recent attempts to distance herself from what some have dubbed “Woke 1.0,” but we’re not really here to defend her policies or consistency. After all, MAGA certainly didn’t rise to power and prominence on the backs of either policy or consistency. Heck, hypocrisy is practically a requirement to exist in that political hemisphere for any length of time these days.

No, Trump won because he activated voters who had given up on politics. He cultivated grievances, mined misogyny and tapped into the long-simmering undercurrent of racial tension that had been stoked by the country electing a black man to the presidency in 2008.

Through the help of Rupert Murdoch and Fox News most notably, Trump capitalized on the Right’s long-festering distrust of “mainstream” media.

Side note: Can we do away forever with the right of Fox News to refer to the “mainstream media” while excluding themselves? They’ve been the top-rated cable news channel for well over a decade by now.

As I have pointed out elsewhere, the superpower of Trump and MAGA is not in their ideas, but in their ideation. Their tightly-held belief in the mythology of the Persecuted Patriot has been made impregnable by the neat trick of pretending the mere whiff of opposition is all the proof they require of their rightness. It has been said by some that there are no crooks on the Right, only Persecuted Patriots.

And therein lies the key for AOC (or, really, any other iconoclastic lightning rod on the progressive left).

Democratic Socialists are taking heat from both the conservatives and the mainstream wing of the Democratic Party. They are increasingly using the same “persecution as proof” framing as a strategy… and it’s working.

It’s time for MAGA to meet their medicine

This isn’t really a post about AOC, though she might be the single greatest example of the point I’m making at the moment. The Right’s hatred of her is almost entirely irrational, based largely on soundbites and the framing of conservative media. I would wager pretty much anything that 90% of them have never watched her speak at any length, nor would they hear a word she said if they did.

But again, this isn’t about ideas. It’s about hatred… and making it increasingly plain that the Deep State is now under the thumb of one Donald J. Trump.

Where Republicans had a mythology of persecution, Democrats will have an actual track record of it by 2028.

Blue states getting denied emergency funding in a nakedly political backstab? Check.

Trump’s Justice Department throwing specious charges at his political opponents? Check.

Trump goons tossing Democratic officials to the ground while they’re trying to do their Constitutionally protected duty? Check.

All of the loose things Trump and his sycophants have cobbled together to form a picture of Democratic obstructionism and defiance have come fully to life in the form of Todd Blanche telling victims of Jeffrey Epstein to “get to the point,” or Kristi Noem calling a dead citizen a terrorist before we saw the videotape directly contradicting her claim.

That monster lives and breathes in the form of indictments against James Comey, the firings of DOJ lawyers who refused to soil their reputation with shoddy cases, the murder of civilians in the waters of the Caribbean and the cries of every immigrant child wasting away inside Dilley Detention Center and the dozens of other concentration camps being erected by the Turd Reich.

Stick a thumb in their eyes

All that’s needed is an activator. A candidate who low propensity (mostly young) voters on the left look at and say, “if those guys hate her, then she must be doing something right.”

It doesn’t have to be AOC, but it does have to be someone who can reach those disaffected voters. Someone who can look them in the eye and say, “they don’t care about you. They lie to you. They keep taking from you and expecting you to thank them for it.

“Now… here’s what I’m gonna do for you.”

Trump won because he tapped into imagined grievances. Democrats are losing because most of their message has been about what they’d stop if elected, rather than what they’d start.

No one wants to hear about normalcy anymore. That’s gone and never coming back.

No one wants to hear about civility. It can’t be performed only in one direction.

No one wants to hear about decency, especially from the party that sent an proud and unrepentant pussy grabber to Washington, DC as their representative.

Of the Religious Right, no less.

Don’t tell us those things. Show them to us. But then get to the point and let us know what you’ll do for us.

Imagine the conniption fit from MAGA when we send the first woman… and Latina… to the White House in 2029.

This sentence is found in John 15:20, and it is perhaps the most dangerous scripture in all of the New Testament.

It is pulled from a larger section, where Christ is telling his disciples what they can expect as they “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.

…

²³ Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. ²⁴ If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’

James 4:4 is often used as a supporting scripture to John 15 and reads:

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

These verses have given rise to a Christian culture in which mere friendliness with non-believers can be viewed as evidence of unrighteousness. Adherents to this view seem to think no day should go by without cornering some lost soul in order to impart to them the Good News.

Social media is replete with videos of self-professed Christians making a nuisance of themselves in stores, airports, hotel lobbies, gyms and nearly anywhere else the unwashed masses are known to congregate, sharing the “love of God” in the most impersonal way imaginable.

The Power of Persecution

Christianity (like most religions, frankly) struggles with an inherent superiority complex. Those inside the garden walls are “sanctified” or “redeemed,” while those still in defiance of God’s offer of redemption are “unwashed,” or “lost.”

This Us vs. Them mentality creates an endless struggle against the Forces of Darkness, with “Us” as the good guys and “Them” as some blend of poor blind fools and maleficent ideologues hellbent on snuffing out all light so they can live in a perpetual night of debauchery and devil worship.

For many Believers, the culprit isn’t the human, but rather Satan himself, or one of his agents, known as demons. These supernatural and destructive forces influence the thoughts of those outside of God’s protection, turning them towards evil and corruption.

(It may be hard to believe this is true if you didn’t grow up inside this culture, but I did and I assure you this is no exaggeration).

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the inherent danger in a belief system such as this. One can rationalize their way to doing an awful lot of inhumane things if you believe your opponent is not, in fact, fully human; that they may have been weaponized by malevolent forces hellbent (pun intended) on the destruction of God’s most beloved creation.

The root of all kinds of evil

Persecution, or even just the mere whiff of it, has been a powerful incentivizer to keep congregants faithful with their weekly church attendance… and those tithes and offerings. After all, without that money, the “Us” couldn’t possibly stand up against the well-financed, deeply embedded and eternally nebulous “Them.”

Right-wing media is replete with stories of Christians under fire, most often with some government official as the bad guy. From Bill O’Reilly’s War on Christmas to a global pandemic as a tool for religious oppression, Christians in America have long forecasted the coming end of religious tolerance and the arrival of secular totalitarianism.

Nevermind the fact that states are now approving laws requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms, or that the Supreme Court enshrined the right to religious assembly even amidst a raging pandemic as a result of legal action brought by aggrieved Christians.

Not to mention the current president reversing the previous administration’s draconian restrictions on the use of the term “Merry Christmas,” restoring our God-given right to continue colonizing the pagan festivals of the Winter Solstice.

When a group of people try to tell you they are persecuted and reviled, yet every attempt to make such a case shows that they have never been more powerful, one should ponder whether the case being made isn’t about Truth nearly so much as Fear.

But we have a larger question to ponder here.

What if Christians are looking at The World all wrong?

Who, or what, is “The World?”

If we are going to understand the specific danger of this common misunderstanding (or misinformation), we must first dive a bit deeper into the text so we can see what the writers were actually telling the early Christian church.

Don’t worry, we’ll keep the liturgical lecturing to a minimum.

Throughout the New Testament, the primary word for “world” is “κόσμος” or “kosmos,” meaning, quite literally, an “ordered system.” It is, after all, our root word for Cosmos, meaning the ordered system of celestial bodies in the heavens. The word does not mean “unsaved,” but rather points to larger structures aimed at repressing God’s Truth for ungodly purposes.

Most often: Greed.

We may blame the Romans for crucifying Christ, but it was the chief priests to whom Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver and the Pharisees and Sadducees who convinced the crowd to demand the release of the rebel Barabbas over Jesus after Pontius Pilate made the offer (Matthew 27:20). Death penalties had to be carried out by the Roman government, but this one was entirely at the behest of the Jewish religious order of the day.

Clearly, it was not the unsaved masses of Jerusalem and the surrounding regions that despised Jesus. Indeed, over and over again we see examples of them seeking him out wherever he went, even hailing him as a hero entering Jerusalem, just five days before his arrest and eventual execution.

It was the religious leaders, Matthew 27 makes clear, who sought Christ’s execution, “because they were jealous.”

Indeed, in the handful of times we see Christ truly angry, it is always directed at the corruption of the religious systems of his day. From labeling its leaders a “brood of vipers,” to tossing out the moneychangers they had allowed to set up inside the Temple, Christ’s harshest rhetoric was never aimed at the sinners and reprobates.

In fact, let’s go back to John 15 for a moment and try to figure out who, exactly, we are being warned about here. Specifically, let us look at verses 24 and 25:

If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’

Hold up a second.

Whose law?

Isn’t he talking about The World? As in, unbelievers? And yet, here he is referring to “their” law, moments after walking us through a bunch of words about the World and how it would hate the true followers of Jesus Christ. A clue is offered in the previous verse when Christ mentions that he did the works “no one else did.” Meaning, I think, that the jealousy of the religious “world” of Christ’s day stemmed from the fact he actually laid bare their ineffectuality through his use of miracles.

Christ was not ultimately crucified by hoards of angry unbelievers riled up by his righteousness and goodness. His life was taken by a system that saw him and his followers as a heretic and, most importantly, a threat to their power over the masses.

From the parable of the rich young ruler to the story of the rich man and Lazarus, at every turn Christ cast the wealthy elites as the very system he had come to dismantle.

Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are the poor.
Blessed are the humble.
Blessed are the hungry and thirsty.
Blessed are the mournful.

And yes, blessed are those who are persecuted… for righteousness’ sake.

For God so loved The World…

A reality in which every believer could rightly gauge their righteousness by a scorecard of how many unbelievers are currently angry with them would be comically unproductive, not to mention stressful.

It would also run counter to scripture, since Christians are instructed in places like Romans 12:20 to care for the earthly needs of their enemies, “for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon [their] head,” meaning, to shame them through your goodness in response to their abuse.

Romans 12:21 urges us to, “overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:21),” while Christ says in the gospel of Luke, chapter 6, that we ought to, “Treat others the same way you want them to treat you.”

In John 8, Christ diffuses a crowd about to stone a woman accused of adultery by challenging them to cast a stone only if they, too, were without sin. He then forgave her and sent her off with a message to “sin no more.”

In Luke 7, another woman of ill repute draws the ire of a wealthy homeowner when she stoops to wash Christ’s feet in an act of humility.

“Do you see this woman?,” Christ said to the man, a government official, who had invited him for dinner. “I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she, with her tears, has washed my feet and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she hasn’t stopped kissing my feet since I came in. You didn’t anoint my head with olive oil, but she has anointed my feet with perfume. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; that’s why she loved much. But the one who is forgiven little, loves little.”

So here we have several examples of Christians being urged to show kindness, mercy and grace even outside of the church, both because this is the will of God for His creation (see Isaiah 58, Hosea 6, Malachi 3, etc.), but also because doing so is the outward manifestation of an inward transformation.

James offers this, just two chapters before the oft-cited passage about enmity with the world:

¹⁵ If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food ¹⁶ and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? ¹⁷ In the same way faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself.

Translation: Christians are not at war with their fellow humans. After all, making sure everyone gets to the same place in the end is the entire mission.

At the end of the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, Christ asks the gathered crowd which of the three men had been a better neighbor to the man who was mugged and left to die. Begrudgingly, they had to admit that it was the man who had every reason to hate the person lying helpless on the side of the road.

Then Jesus said the key words, “Go and do the same.”

It is also worth noting here that scripture makes a point of mentioning that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross by necessity had to happen “while we were yet sinners.”

Indeed, the only conclusion one can reach from scripture is that God loved the World so much, He decided to sacrifice part of Himself to save it.

What a Christian is really called to do

Here is where I’m going to preach a bit at my fellow Christians, so if that’s not your cup of tea feel free to bounce, and thank you for reading. Please do leave a like and a comment on your way out the door and feel free to smash that “share” button if you really want to help others find the channel.

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Christians, let me ask you something.

Is Christ’s infinite grace to you “toxic?” Does the unlimited scope of his forgiveness — removing your sins “as far as the east is from the west” — create within you a culture of laziness and greed?

Are you a spiritual “taker?”

I ask this because I hear some so-called Christian “leaders” claiming that — AC-tually — empathy must be be meted out carefully so as not to incentivize selfishness and greed, or that forgiveness absent harsh punishment will simply lead to a monotonous repetition of the crime.

Yet the Creator Himself did not see fit to apply such restrictions to His own Grace.

“As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” - Proverbs 103:12

“Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” - Lamentations 3:22-23

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” - 1 John 1:9

“The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Psalm 145:8

It defies belief to argue that such infinite Empathy could transform the Believer into a model citizen, while the mere concept of a free meal is enough to turn the homeless man into an unrepentant beggar for life.

I have read my Bible from cover to cover several times. I’ve yet to find a single verse about the injustices of taxes on the wealthy or the perils of a living wage on stock earnings, but I can find you dozens warning against wage theft, dishonest scales and the oppression of the poor and needy.

I’ve searched high and low, but couldn’t find any scriptures supporting stadium seating or a seven-figure AV system in service of God Almighty, but there were literally SCADS of them warning about the dangers of pride, false idols and the slow mission creep when ministry turns professional.

Ultimately, Christians need to decide which war they’re fighting. Is it one against the next door neighbor who sometimes blares music with swear words, or is it against the insurance company charging that neighbor hundreds of dollars a month for a medication their child can’t survive without?

Is the cause of Christ served best by protesting a drag performance outside of the local library, or outside the office of a slumlord who forces his tenant to live in filth at top dollar?

Look, you’re well within your rights to like what you like and hate what you hate. But Christians weren’t called to battle against our fellow human beings.

We were actually called to fight for them against secular and religious worlds, or orders, designed to turn God’s creations against one another.

Isn’t this the fast I choose:
To break the chains of wickedness,
to untie the ropes of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free,
and to tear off every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
to bring the poor and homeless into your house,
to clothe the naked when you see him,
and not to ignore your own flesh and blood?
⁸ Then your light will appear like the dawn,
and your recovery will come quickly.
Your righteousness will go before you,
and the Lord’s glory will be your rear guard.

Isaiah 58:6-8

“What is your red line?”

It became a routine in every conversation.

“Name it,” I urged repeatedly. “Write it down, put it in an envelope and stash it somewhere you won’t lose it.”

If they wondered why I was so insistent, I would respond, “Because I can guarantee that, had you written down your red line five years ago and opened that envelope today, he would have already crossed it.”

Terrifyingly, to me at least, this is a question to which I have never received a clear answer. In their mind it seems, every escalation on the part of Trump is simply a response to some prior sin on the part of the Democrats. His corruption, now utterly brazen and in plain view, is waved away as, “no worse than the rest of them,” despite the maddening fact they elected Trump ostensibly to change all of that.

In an excellent post on Threads, Steven Havre laid out a fairly comprehensive list of promises Trump made during his campaign and has since broken. These include transparency over the Epstein affair, no new wars, affordability, the pardon of even the most violent J6 offenders and Trump’s profiteering off the presidency.

At time of this writing, Steven’s post has over 2,500 comments. Feel free to go skim through them if you like. Naturally, the vast majority are Trump haters commenting on why Trump supporters won’t respond, but a handful do make an honest attempt.

“I voted for him in 2024 because I genuinely felt he closer aligned with what I cared about,” wrote one. “I wouldn’t say I’m MAGA, just more exhausted with the left’s ‘holier than thou’ ideologues.”

That respondent, who openly admitted being disappointed in the results thus far, added this chilling bit, “I live in a very conservative area, Florida Panhandle, and the overall sentiment is ‘yeah Trump’s doing an awful job but at least he’s not Kamala.”

Another, who also identified as “not a MAGA person,” said they voted for Trump “because I thought he was a better candidate for the issues that were important to me and my family.” Those issues being the economy, no new wars and border control.

“Obviously, he’s failed me,” they added.

Another, who identified as a recent college graduate, equated their struggle with affordability to an overall failure of government and saw Trump as a disrupter who might deal with the issues. As for the obvious corruption, they had a familiar excuse:

“A lot of the stupid shenanigans Trump gets up to in the White House isn’t too dissimilar from stuff previous presidents have done,” they wrote, “and some of the them have roused an enthusiastic ‘hell yeah’ from me because everything else I see in the media is so bleak nowadays I’ll take whatever positive energy I can get, even if I am far removed from it.”

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One thing that should be obvious to even the most casual observer is that Donald Trump’s support now is significantly diminished from 2024. Nearly every poll puts his approval rating at or near the worst in his two terms and recent rallies and pro-Trump events have been underwhelming and bleak, to say the least.

One could argue, perhaps rationally, that Trump supporters simply don’t see the need to show up for him right now. Now in charge of the very political apparatus they blame for nearly every malaise, their patience for governmental intrusion has refreshed itself and redoubled.

If history is any indication, they’ll realize the peril of their own economic situation just in time to blame Democrats, who seem to have the consistent misfortune of reclaiming power just in time to be blamed for the aftermath of Republican mismanagement.

Back to that red line though…

On some level, a reluctance to name an act that would force you to recant your support of someone makes sense. But only if that person matters to you a great deal.

If I were to ask you to name a red line your significant other could cross to cause you to leave them, I think it would be reasonable to assume the answer might be difficult. When we love someone, or we’ve invested significant time and energy in supporting them, it can be nearly impossible to imagine they might betray us, or that such a betrayal would mean a dissolution of the relationship.

Naming a red line also feels like giving credence to a ridiculous hypothetical because, in their view, there is no way Trump would ever go there.

Except that he has. Repeatedly.

Those 2024 Trump supporters would tell me over and over again that they wouldn’t support the harassment of immigrants based just on the color of their skin.

“He’s going to have his hands full just going after the crooks and criminals,” they would tell me. “There’s no way he’s getting around to going after people who have been here for years and put down roots.”

Today?

“Well, that shouldn’t happen,” they say of the growing list of tragic deaths at the hands of border enforcement. “But when you’re trying to clean up the sort of mess Biden left us, bad things are bound to happen.”

They went from “worst of the worst” to “just go home first” real quick, didn’t they?

Nearly a dozen people have been killed at the hands of Federal immigration authorities, with dozens more dying in privately-run detention centers where people are being kept, often in conditions worse than those facing death row inmates. But, so long as they’re not being frog marched by the dozens or hundreds into gas chambers in a razor-wire encircled concentration camp full of mysterious red brick buildings and smoke stacks belching human remains onto the surrounding communities, it would seem Trump’s supporters have a strong stomach for human rights abuses.

Just so long as those humans potentially violated at least one law in their quest for freedom or security, I guess?

Trump’s own allegations of illegality are discarded as nothing more than a vain attempt to persecute an American hero and patriot. His profligate and oddly successful stock trading is hand-waved away with a mere mention of Nancy Pelosi’s name. Cryptocurrency windfalls become nothing more than just, “playing the game everyone else is playing.”

This magical victimhood also miraculously turns immigrants into both parasites draining our social safety nets and wage-sucking job stealers spiking home prices by buying up all the houses.

Rules prohibiting all mass gatherings during Covid become a plot to destroy Christian churches and eliminate the free exercise of religion. Nevermind the fact that the ultimate result of that dispute were three separate Supreme Court rulings that decided the right to religious gatherings in this country supersedes even the need to slow the spread of a deadly pandemic.

Catholic protestors arrested for violating the FACE Act by blocking access to abortion clinics are labeled victims of religious persecution. This story persists, despite the fact nearly every one of those cases was dropped. By the Biden Justice Department. Several have since won civil lawsuits against the government.

Muslims make up roughly 1.3% of the U.S. population. Just 0.7% of United States members of Congress identify as Muslim. And yet, we are being told Islam and Sharia Law are existential threats facing the country.

Transgender individuals make up barely 1% of the country. Even among the youth, where it is supposedly a “trend,” fewer than 3.5% identify as trans. Yet this is a primary motivating issue on the Right, in defiance of all logic.

Red lines are a red line

Whether it’s a refusal to accept that Trump has already crossed multiple red lines, or else a fear of painting themselves into a corner, most of MAGA simply refuses to contemplate a breaking point with their 80-year-old leader, even as he calls affordability a “democrat hoax” and yawns over a bipartisan bill to lower housing costs he himself had previously touted.

Trump’s supporters, outside of those deep in the cult — and there is a cult around Donald Trump, whether people want to admit it or not — will tell you they do have lines. They’ll swear up and down Trump isn’t above the law, or that he should be held accountable if he breaks the law.

Then, they’ll simply tell you they don’t believe he’s done any of that. That every accusation, every charge, every indictment is fraudulent, targeted, weaponized justice.

They will not examine the evidence. They will not contemplate a reality in which Trump actually did the things he’s being accused of.

They remain all red hat, no red lines.

Because, at the end of everything, it’s simply easier that way.

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(Skip to the bottom for that part if you don’t need all the preamble)

Having grown up conservative and then moving away from the Republican party after the rise of MAGA, it has long bothered me that there aren’t more resources out there for people with friends or family still in Trump’s thrall.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of useful pages offering fact-based analysis of various topics, largely free of hyperbole or harsh judgement, such as FactCheck.org, Snopes, PolitiFact and many more. I have no intention of attempting to replicate what those sites do, although their efforts will be essential to the mission of this page.

Defining the problem

Not to pick on our dear friends over at the MeidasTouch Network, but you wouldn’t exactly send these videos (below) to your Trump-supporting friends or family and expect them to take it seriously. Clickbait and hyperbole are nothing new, of course, nor is it exclusive to MTN. They’re playing the game they have to play to get in front of eyeballs, and it’s a strategy that has led them to becoming one of the biggest names in left-leaning journalism.

They do fine work, as do so many others like Sam Seder and The Majority Report, Adam Mockler (who is part of MTN), Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk, Brian Tyler Cohen, David Pakman, The Bulwark, Pod Save America, and more.

I mean to take nothing away from any of these brilliant minds. Every last one of them could likely run circles around yours truly when it comes to analyzing the news of the day. That’s why they have daily talk shows, highly successful podcasts, book deals, TV guest appearances and millions of readers/viewers/listeners.

But, to be completely frank with all of you, I’m pretty exhausted by the constant need to convince you this is the moment that’s going to change everything, or that Trump finally ended his political career with yet another ignorant or angry comment. Perhaps it’s a great strategy to grow a YouTube channel, podcast or Substack…

It just won’t be our strategy

This moment in our history is terrifying. It is dramatic. It is often quite traumatic.

It is getting worse and it is likely to get much worse still before things improve.

Nothing you’ll read on this page is meant to soft-pedal the rise of right-wing-populist-fueled fascism and oligarchy in this country. We will not be pulling punches or pretending everything is better than it actually is.

Instead, our goal will be to use my own background as a former conservative (and current Christian) to present resources that can be shared with your friends or family members who still support Donald Trump. Not by sanding off the sharp edges, but by avoiding rhetoric that “otherizes” or makes assumptions unnecessarily.

Conservatism was not always mired in the muck of culture war nonsense. It’s hard to remember, but once upon a time they actually had policy goals and a political platform. Things like reducing the federal deficit, free trade, the promotion of democracy internationally (through agencies like USAID), state’s rights and even immigration reform to make it easier for people to come here legally.

Perhaps many conservatives who continue to support Donald Trump no longer find those policies to hold merit. Perhaps they have simply rejected all of that in favor of an autocratic executive who can simply mow down their enemies without all the messy paperwork and negotiations. If so, this may prove a fool’s errand.

Still, if I can contribute something of value that frees even one person from the MAGA hive mind, it will have been worth it.

Here’s where you come in

Sorry, rude of me to keep you all waiting.

As many of you will know, I have given up my social media accounts in order to make better use of my limited time. As such, you can help best by simply sharing our content with your own social media feeds, friends, colleagues, etc. Sharing is caring, and that’s the absolute best way to support our work.

My intention is that all content will eventually live outside of the paywall. Good information shouldn’t cost money to access. However, paid memberships are available for $5/mo or a discounted annual rate of $50. That will gain you access to some longer, more resource-intensive articles a few days early, as well as the channel Discord server and Chats here on Substack.

If you choose to entrust me with your hard-earned money, I think it’s only fair that you have a voice in how I spend it. I’ll be re-investing much of it into various subscriptions to essential information sources and I would love some feedback in the comments as to which ones you all think are worthy of our coin.

Community is going to matter more than ever in the years ahead. I hope you’ll be more than just a passive reader of this blog, but that you’ll get engaged and help to build something larger than the sum of its individual parts. Accountability is essential if we want to create something both useful and engaging. I’ll need your bright minds, keen eyes and (constructive) criticism if this page is to become something that has a reason to exist beyond just hearing myself talk.

I’m grateful for every soul that has hit follow or subscribe. It is an honor to be in this battle along with you. I welcome your feedback, advice and criticisms as we grow.

And we will grow. Because hope is stronger than fear… even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.

Glad to have you here.

In November of 2020, I did not vote the presidential ticket.

In November of 2024, I voted for Kamala Harris.

There is a journey in those lines, but no one in my orbit who remains where I was in November of 2016 has ever asked me why I changed my mind.

As I’ve written elsewhere, incuriosity is somewhat of a hallmark of modern Conservatism. The number of questions you have to avoid answering in order to remain in support of Donald Trump at this point is so numerous as to boggle the mind.

Why did it take an act of Congress to force the president to release the Epstein Files if the contents were sure to exonerate him?

Why did Donald Trump rake in over $2 billion in money from his meme coin and other crypto ventures while thousands of investors lost nearly the same amount?

Why did DOGE fail so spectacularly in its quest to slash government spending (we set a new non-wartime record for federal deficit spending last year and are on pace to shatter that pace this year)?

Why would the party that currently holds a straight flush in federal power seem so desperate to change the election rules before the midterms?

All of these questions and many more must remain unasked and unanswered if one is to stay loyal to Trump and whatever remains of the MAGA movement. But another, more personal question always goes unasked.

What made you change your mind?

This is a question nearly every liberal who learns I once voted for Donald Trump asks. It is never asked of me by anyone who still supports the man.

They will tell you it is simply because they don’t believe your answer would change their mind, and perhaps they are right. But incuriosity is also a form of evidence.

If a friend who seemed to be happily married suddenly announced they were getting a divorce, odds are you’d want to know what changed to cause the relationship to fail.

If a buttoned-up colleague showed up to work one day with a nose ring, purple hair and a tattoo on their forehead, odds are you’re going to want to hear the story behind the sudden and radical change.

However, when it comes to understanding why someone left a political party or a religious faith, we tend to shy away from the conversation. Especially if we’re now potentially on opposite sides of that issue.

This is what I mean when I say incuriosity is its own sort of evidence, because curiosity is a very human thing. The lack of it evinces an unwillingness to endanger something core to the very essence of the person.

Humans erect these mental barriers to protect core elements of our personality, belief system or social structure. Remaining connected to our in group becomes more important than understanding why someone else left it. They are one person, the group is many. The group is security. The group is welcome. The group is belonging.

Sometimes, the in group is only two people. Usually a husband and wife. Fear of endangering those relationships can also make someone reluctant to ask questions that might shine a spotlight into places they don’t care to examine.

And so they stay and avoid the uncomfortable conversation, safe in the assumption their family member, friend or co-worker must have simply fallen in with the wrong crowd, given themselves over to false information, or else is seeking a release from the moral constraints of religion (and it’s secular analogue, Conservatism).

But just because they refuse to ask doesn’t mean we can’t answer them.

I grew up the second oldest of eight children, raised in a Capital-C Conservative Christian homeschool family in SW Washington in the late 80s and 90s. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck were a constant presence in our home. We didn’t have Fox News most of the time, since we rarely had broadcast or satellite television, but I’m sure it would have been the only source of information trusted in our family.

None of this seemed terribly weird to me growing up. I wrote essays on the importance of purity, the need for male-led households, the dangers of secularism and the perils of populism. Some of those ideals still hold merit in my mind, though altered somewhat in their form and severity.

In my 20s, I managed to worm my way into a local radio station, getting in good with the producer of a popular conservative talk show, who allowed me to screen calls and produce the simulcast on a local public access TV station. Afterwards, I would pop into the newsroom and ask if they needed me to cut up audio (pull clips) or write anything. Eventually, that landed me a gig pulling overnight shifts, helping to edit the morning or afternoon show and generally making myself indispensable.

In the end, there wasn’t a position at that station I hadn’t worked, from traffic reporter to morning/afternoon co-anchor and editor of the top-rated morning news show in the entire state of Oregon. I won major awards. I had a blast.

SIDE NOTE: You genuinely could not get into radio or any other form of non-independent media that way today. This was voluntary and unpaid, something they no longer allow. Today, you’d need to be in an accredited university program and able to secure a paid internship. Not saying it’s better or worse, but my journey legitimately could not happen today.

All of this is to say that a sheltered homeschool kid in his 20s suddenly found himself thrust into a position where he was forced to actually talk to people from across the political spectrum… and ask them questions. Lots of questions.

Asking questions is probably the most important skill I learned as a journalist. It led me to start reexamining some of the assumptions I’d carried from my youth into the world. I had been told liberals were hateful, angry and evil. Instead, I found that most of them were warm, curious and deeply moral - just sometimes in ways I hadn’t quite contemplated.

Conversely, it became obvious that many of the (mostly men) I heard constantly rattling on about the dangers of secularism and progressivism were, themselves, often quite repulsive.

I recalled the inebriated Republican lawmakers, drowning their sorrows during the 2008 election inside a smoke-filled room at a wood paneled hotel in downtown Portland, while across town the Democrats partied with joy and a strong sense of community inside a large event center.

Later, female colleagues would share stories about being hit on by married Republican lawmakers at some of these events. Slowly, the picture I had grown up with shifted and it became clear that rhetoric alone does not make the full measure of a man (or woman).

Suddenly, the clear delineation I had in my mind between how someone on the Right vs. the Left would and should act began to blur. Instead of finding only “good people” on the Right and “bad people” on the Left, I found good and bad people on both sides. Only, far more rotten apples on the Right than I had expected given my upbringing.

That seemed a datapoint worth holding onto, though my internal belief structures had not yet fully shifted.

As I mentioned previously, I voted for Trump in 2016, holding my nose and hoping against hope that his worst personality traits would be held in check by the apparatus of the presidency and the other co-equal branches of government. Then, I watched in growing horror as the Republican party co-signed many of Trump’s most destructive policies, including tax cuts that mostly benefited the wealthy while dumping loads of new debt onto the federal deficit.

A global pandemic emerged out of China and, far from leading with quiet grace and dignity, Trump inserted himself into the response with accusations, allegations and a clear desire to look away, rather than to do the hard work of saving lives. When Americans needed a united voice, they got a president who demonstrated a routine lack of messaging discipline, engaged in conspiracy thinking and an ad hoc approach to potential solutions. Ultimately, according to reports, the botched response led to somewhere around 400,000+ unnecessary deaths in the United States, which had by far the least successful response to the pandemic of any developed nation.

After losing his re-election bid in 2020 to an even older, more enfeebled octogenarian, Trump spiraled into unfounded accusations of a stolen election; a delusion he persists in to this day, despite dozens of court cases producing no actionable evidence of any fraud that would have altered the outcome of the election.

Then came January 6, 2021 and over three hours of silence from the outgoing American president as his supporters forced their way into the U.S. Capitol building in a vain attempt to disrupt the ceremonial counting of the electoral votes. When he did finally order the rioters to retreat, it was through gritted teeth and with a wink and a nod.

All of this to say that, in many ways, I am the same person I was in 2016.

True, I no longer believe Hillary Clinton would have been a terrible president, nor do I believe many progressive policies would actually destroy the country.

Why? Because I listened. Because I learned. Because I paid attention to the patterns and reached a conclusion:

The Conservative movement in America has been co-opted by a dangerous ideology that sees the consolidation of absolute power as essential to the governance of the populace. They are no longer a party of optimism and progress. They exist solely to benefit the wealthy and corporations, constantly reinforcing their power through straw man fallacies, half-truths and outright lies.

While they continue to claim their goal is the restoration of American greatness, apparently best seen in the fictionalized TV serials most boomers grew up on, the ultimate result is less freedom, fewer choices and a nation in which the rich get richer and the poor get accused of being fraudulent.

If we are to move forward as a nation, we need to start asking better questions… and we really need to be less afraid of challenging the core tenets of our belief systems and ideological constructs.

I’m here to tell you, from personal experience, that fighting through that cognitive dissonance is rough, but on the other side is a place of greater clarity, better opportunity, and a pathway to actual progress.

My great hope is that this blog can serve as a place where others who come from similar backgrounds to mine can find resources that allow them to reach their Trump-loving friends and family. I’d love it if you came along and kept me asking the right questions.

Heaven knows, I’m far from a finished product.

None of us are.

You see, my personal accounts, like most normal humans, are filled with friends, family and more than a few co-workers; people with whom I must live life, conduct business and, to the best of my ability, live with in peace. Sadly, there has always been an undeniable cost to being unfiltered and unapologetic in that communal space. It has cost me friendships and led to stress in other relationships.

You can certainly argue that anyone offended by the truth isn’t someone whose respect deserves to be maintained but, we live in a complex world and everyone is entitled to their opinion about your opinions. No one is required to work with you either, if they think you might be a liability.

Threads, being so new and largely untested, represented an opportunity to try this grand experiment. Could this unfiltered, unapologetic alter-ego build an audience? Would people even care what I thought about anything?

I should note here that, while Colt is not my given name, the opinions expressed are my authentic and genuinely held beliefs. Colt is my untethered essence, freed of the sorts of filters we often apply when we have a personal stake in the relationship. And, to be honest, he’s a bit of an arrogant ass.

Still, I’m going to miss him. Or at least, that version of him…

You see, 18 months in I would argue the experiment has reached its conclusion. At time of this writing, nearly 41,000 kind souls have clicked the “follow” button next to my name. Not, I am certain, because I offer anything uniquely valuable or better, but I hope because they found me rational, accessible and of kindred spirit.

But every experiment has a price.

Like many of you, I find myself too often stuck in the doom loop of scrolling, posting, commenting, reacting, reacting some more and then moving on to the next outrage. Time slips away and too much goes unconsidered and unsaid.

Family fades too, lost behind a never-ending cascade of, “just let me finish this post/comment/reply,” or “sorry, what did you say?”

Half the time these days, I pick up my phone to do something productive, spot a recent notification and find myself, 15 minutes later, entirely unclear as to why the device is in still in my hand, or what it was I was supposed to be doing in the first place.

It’s time for a better path. It’s time for me to take my own advice.

It’s time to read a few books. Maybe even write one.

So, I’m leaving Threads. Well, not just Threads. I’m leaving most of social media entirely, beyond what is necessary to maintain my personal business narrating audiobooks and doing voice work.

Not to worry, though.

I am not going silent…

While I’m leaving Threads and most of social media, I will not be going quiet. Instead, I’ll be posting exclusively here on Substack. If you’ve come to appreciate my voice, consider a free subscription so you can be in the loop when new articles and notes are posted.

Hyperbole Weekly will be a weekly (natch) feature taking a look at the big stories of the week; how they were covered and whether or not the clips being used contain sufficient context to support the claims being made.

Additional columns will leverage my decades of experience in journalism and communications to provide resources that I hope will make us more responsible consumers of news. As someone who grew up in a Capital-C Conservative Christian household (homeschooled, even) and has moved progressively (ha!) further left in my adult years, I hope to provide some perspective that will help people with family members in the cult (or adjacent to it).

So much of our political content is aimed at the side we know will be consuming it, which often makes it difficult for people with friends or family in (or near) MAGA to find information they can share without immediately triggering a reflexive response of, “you just have TDS!”

I’m not speaking of appeasement or deference to fascists, autocrats or oligarchs. Rather, it’s about creating resources and an ecosystem of information that reaches across the divide to anyone not already out of reach, inviting them back in with clear, concise facts, stripped of the strawman arguments and harsh rhetoric so prevalent across much of our media landscape.

None of this is about money. A paid tier will exist for those wishing to access longer, more resource-intensive articles or videos a bit early, but everything will eventually live outside of the paywall. My intention is to offer paid members access to a private Discord server where we can discuss current events and the future of the site. For the moment, comments on posts will be restricted to subscribers only to reduce trolling or abuse.

To facilitate more people being involved, I have reduced the paid tier from $8/mo or $80/year to $5/mo or $50/year. To my handful of current paid members, thank you for your patience and you should see the lower monthly cost reflected in your billing going forward. If not, please let me know and I’ll get it straightened out.

I do not want cost to be a barrier for anyone who genuinely wants to be involved with this, so please send me an email or direct message if you’d like a paid membership but can’t afford the fee. No one will be turned away, so long as I can verify you’re a real human being and not a bot or troll.

Any revenue will be used to subscribe to a handful of vital news sources and other various necessary expenses to host content and conversation. I am open to conversations about how to use any additional revenue to help out good causes that support progressive ideals and candidates, so if you are a paying member, please take advantage of the chance to interact on that subject and others.

So, who am I, exactly?

At this point, you may be wondering just who the heck I am and why you should care what I have to say.

It’s a fair question.

On one level, the answer is entirely up to you, dear reader. Skim through what is on the blog already and make your own determination about whether it’s of use to you.

I have a background as an award-winning journalist and communications professional of more than two decades. My hallmarks have been integrity, a commitment to excellence and a keen eye for detail.

Mainly, I can’t stand bullies and liars. I especially can’t stand bullies who lie.

So here I am, offering something for free and hoping you’ll take the opportunity to evaluate it and, if you find it worthwhile, support it.

A free subscription costs you nothing, but it means the world to me. I hope you’ll consider following me here and joining the goal of building something outside the rapid-fire read-and-react nature of social media. Some place where we can step back, look at the entirety of the landscape and paint a more complete picture.

A place for the full clip, full context and full story.

The next chapter of Christopher Colt begins Monday, July 13. I hope you’ll come along for the journey and help shape the destination.

These immortal words from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream come to me often these days.

Hermia’s lament comes near the climax of the story as all the twisted games our protagonists have played on one another come undone all around them to tragic results.

I thought of these words again this week as the nation’s top law enforcement officer sat before elected members of Congress. Attorney General Pam Bondi had been called there to address her Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein Transparency Act, a law passed both chambers with near-unanimity and was signed by the president.

Bondi herself mentioned this many times in her aggrieved defense of a man she called “the greatest president in this nation’s history” and “the most transparent president ever.” Bondi’s insistence failed to account for the reality that such a bill was only made necessary by Donald Trump’s refusal to order the full release as he had pledged to do during the campaign, or that the law only made it to the floor of the House after a dramatic discharge petition requiring four Republican defections in order to force Speaker Mike Johnson to hold a vote.

As survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s multinational sex trafficking ring stood behind her, Bondi studiously avoided acknowledging their presence, resorting instead to referencing unrelated allegations against her interlocutors, unconvincingly read from a three-ring binder she spent her time leafing through as questions were asked.

With gleeful indifference, Bondi deflected from her department’s role in the ongoing cover-up by pointing to the stock market in a bizarre moment that left some lawmakers laughing and Bondi furious.

That brought to mind another oft-quoted saying from a much older author:

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

This statement by Jesus Christ, quoted in eighth chapter of the book of Mark, comes after he has rebuked several of the disciples for denying that his destiny was the cross, rather than kingship or earthly dominion.

One chapter later, Mark recounts this quote which might also be pertinent to our Ms. Bondi:

“And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.”

As the nation’s highest legal authority sat with her back turned to women who suffered greatly at the hands of men her agency now actively works to protect, I couldn’t help seeing a crucified Christ looking at his own executioners and begging his Father to forgive them… because they didn’t know what they were doing.

But Pam Bondi knows.

She’s seen the files. She knows every secret. She knows what is being hidden from view and why.

Is there forgiveness for one who has seen what she has seen and yet sits in smug defiance as six women and one man stand behind her, telling the world that their pleas for justice have gone not only unanswered but actively ignored? What prayer can wash away the stain of releasing the names of victims who had never come forward, opening them to new forms of abuse, fresh torment and no apology from the only person capable of offering one?

In the face of such gleeful inhumanity, humane people can only stand, mouth agape in mute horror. I have no analogue for what it must be like to live with the knowledge inside Pam Bondi’s brain. There is no experience I can draw from that would help me understand why, knowing what she knows, this woman chooses to continue the abuse of other women, to victimize those she is sworn to protect.

There are liars. There are abusers. And there are lying abusers.

And then there’s whatever Pam Bondi is.

What can you call someone with the power to protect who chooses to neglect?

How can you address a person with the knowledge of such horrors and yet the horrific ability to push all of that beneath a smarmy smile and a brushed back bleached blonde hairdo?

I am amazed and know not what to say.

But come November, I will know what to do.

Four shots. One to the face.

We would later learn that it was nearly ten full minutes before Good’s heart stopped. During that time, agents on the scene prevented a doctor who had emerged from his nearby apartment from checking on her.

Barely two hours later, the Department of Homeland Security put out a statement, labeling Good a "violent" rioter who had "weaponized her vehicle," attempting to run over agents who were stuck in a snowbank in what DHS Secretary Kristi Noem would quickly label an “act of domestic terrorism.”

President Donald Trump piled on a few hours after that, posting to his social media account that Good had “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.”

Seventeen days later, Alex Jeffrey Pretti was shot and killed in an encounter with federal agents just a few miles from where Good died.

Not two hours later, DHS had branded Pretti another domestic terrorist who had “brandished a 9mm handgun” and "wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement."

These statements were made after video of Pretti’s shooting had come out, but before several other angles revealed the full truth; that Pretti had been attempting to help a woman who had been shoved down by an agent, had never reached for or even touched his weapon, and likely died as a result of a misfire after an agent pulled his concealed 9mm handgun out of Pretti’s waistband and was walking away from him.

Every law enforcement expert said the same thing. This was an unjustified killing on the part of poorly-trained federal agents acting rashly and unnecessarily escalating the situation.

It didn’t matter to Trump, Noem, or Vice President JD Vance who responded, “for what?” when asked this week if he would apologize for calling Pretti an "assassin" with "ill intent."

Two more double-taps by the Trump Regime.

Americans have long accepted that their politicians lie. There are times when it’s even part of the job. It is an oft-cited defense of Trump, exercised by his allies and supporters, usually as some sort of verbal “shrug” or dodge.

But this administration lies like we have no eyes.

Protestors are professional paid agitators, the president confidently asserts, offering no evidence other than that their signs look too good?

An individual shows up to a hospital, skull smashed, bleeding on the brain. ICE tells hospital staff he “ran into a wall.” Repeatedly. Doctors and nurses say the injuries are entirely inconsistent with the tall tale being sold to them.

An autistic U.S. citizen is pulled from her car after failing to act quickly enough to move out of the way of an ongoing operation. Aliyah Rahman was labeled an “agitator” who had been obstructing agents.

In Chicago, Marimar Martinez was shot seven times by ICE agent Charles Exum who later allegedly bragged via text message about his accuracy in the incident. An initial press release by DOH branded Martinez another “domestic terrorists” who had “ambushed” agents, including ramming into Exum’s vehicle. Charges against Martinez were later dropped at the request of federal prosecutors after the judge in the case said the government’s shifting narrative had made her question the integrity of their statements and evidence.

These are just a small handful of the copious and obvious lies that have emerged from this administration on a near-daily basis.

Grocery prices are down, poll numbers are up, trillions of dollars in (utterly invisible) investments are pouring in. Sometimes, the foreign investments are so large, they exceed the entire gross domestic product of the nation supposedly committing to them.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, it should concern even the president’s most ardent supporters that such brazen and open dishonesty is seemingly just how our government now functions. Especially as the president’s name appears all over the files released regarding convicted pedophile and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

He insists he’s innocent, but he also insists he won California in the 2020 election, despite Democrats making up 45% of voter registrations in the state against just 26% for Republicans.

When a government feels at liberty to commit war crimes by double-tapping helpless survivors in the Caribbean, it will inevitably resort to doing the same to its own citizens.

First, it takes their life.

Next, in the “fog of war,” they assassinate their reputation.

Then, the cycle repeats. Faster and faster.

Until the bodies finally outnumber the lies.

REMINDER: I still have a few of these amazing bumper stickers available for the next two paid subs! I’ll even cover the shipping!

That lawsuit alleged the government was preparing to deport Romero, along with 237 other men to a for-profit terror confinement center in El Salvador known as CECOT, mere hours after President Donald Trump had signed an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, under the pretense that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua represented an imminent threat to American national security.

Boasberg moved swiftly, granting a temporary injunction on the deportation of Romero and four other named plaintiffs, while scheduling a hearing for that afternoon on the larger question of whether the AEA could be applied prior to establishing the facts of the men’s association with the Venezuelan gang.

During that afternoon hearing, Boasberg repeatedly pressed the government’s lawyer over whether deportations under the Act were imminent.

“Your Honor, I don’t know the answer to that question,” was the reply. “I can certainly talk to them ASAP and see. You know, it is Saturday.”

So, Boasberg recessed the hearing at 5:22 p.m. so that the U.S. Attorney could check with the State Department to find out the answer to the judge’s question.

During that recess, at 5:26 p.m., the first flight bound for El Salvador took off. A second flight departed just 18 minutes later.

Returning to the courtroom 15 minutes after that, Judge Boasberg asked the lawyer what he had discovered.

“Your Honor, unfortunately I don't have many details to share,” replied the attorney. “I have talked to the clients who let me know the sort of operational details as to what is going on with raised potential national security issues.”

At 6:48 p.m., Judge Boasberg issues a verbal ruling, granting the ACLU’s request for an emergency injunction. Unsure at this point whether or not deportation flights are actually underway, Boasberg says, “…those people need to be returned to the United States. However that's accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you. But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”

By 7:30 p.m., Boasberg had issued a written order repeating these requirements.

Ten minutes later, a third deportation flight took off, this one carrying Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was already under a protective order and whose “mistaken” deportation would spark one of the first massive scandals of the new administration.

Boasberg has made it clear that he believes the obfuscations were intentional and has signaled his intent to move forward with contempt proceedings against the Justice Department.

Under cover of dullness

At every turn in this case, federal officials used the cloak of ignorance to muddy the waters, delay enforcement of judicial orders or simply flagrantly ignore those orders, usually by simply letting the message get “lost in the mail.”

Under Theodore Roosevelt, it was “the buck stops here.” Under Donald Trump it’s, “what buck? I don’t see any buck. I think so-and-so currently has the buck.”

This was clear recently when Trump was asked about his controversial pardons of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández. The former was convicted of knowingly using his cryptocurrency exchange to enable illegal activity, including drug and sex trafficking, even of minors. The latter had been sentenced to over 40 years for helping to smuggle over 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.

Pressed on those pardons by journalists, Trump pleaded ignorance.

Of Zhao, he told CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, “I don’t know who he is,” adding that “he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.”

Trump’s excuse for pardoning Hernández was much the same.

“Well, I don’t know him,” he told Politico’s Dasha Burns. “And I know very little about him other than people said it was like, uh, an Obama/Biden type setup, where he was set up.”

Interestingly, one of the lead prosecutors on the Hernández case was Emil Bove, Trump’s former personal attorney and interim Attorney General, now serving as a federal judge in New York. At the time of his sentencing, Bove called Hernández a leader in, “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”

Fog of Wuh?

To date, the United States military has reportedly bombed at least thirty vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing an estimated 105 people in what the administration calls a war on narco-terrorism. At least two of those 105 were killed on September 5 after their boat had been disabled in a first missile strike. Under U.S. Military Code, it is a war crime to kill combatants who are no longer “in the fight.”

The example given of such a crime?

Bombing enemy combatant sailors in distress on the ocean.

So, when news leaked that just such a thing had been done with the blessing of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, lawmakers were understandably outraged.

Predictably, Hegseth and the White House comms team launched into a series of denials and accusations of fake news:

For his part, Trump had initially told reporters, “No, I wouldn’t have wanted that — not a second strike,” before eventually pivoting to say, “I support the decision to knock out the boats, and whoever is piloting those boat – most of them are gone, but whoever are piloting those boats, they’re guilty of trying to kill people in our country.”

(That last part is not strictly true, given that experts on the global drug trade have pointed out that none of these vessels could have reached the U.S. mainland on their own, so it’s most likely any drugs were headed for other regions. In fact, one survivor was actually picked up and returned to his native Ecuador, where the government was forced to release him after U.S. authorities presented no actual evidence of his crimes, most of it being at the bottom of the ocean.)

Once it became clear that there was, in fact, video of the second strike, Hegseth and others in the administration settled on a tone of defiance, arguing the double-tap was justified, that the surviving sailors may have radioed for help and were waving their arms, potentially seeking assistance to “remain in the fight.”

Throughout this scandal, Trump once again has played the part of distant bystander, bumbling into a problematic promise regarding releasing the video of the second strike.

“I don’t know what they have,” Trump said, “but whatever they have we’d certainly release, no problem.”

Later, in his interview with Politico, Trump confessed that he had, in fact, watched the full video, calling it “rough stuff.”

"Well, it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat,” he noted, before ducking back behind cover. “But I don't get involved in that. That's up to them.”

It is hard to imagine any other president getting away with so consistently being oblivious of things happening within his administration, let alone someone like Trump, who carefully fosters the image of being deeply involved in everything from trade negotiations and peace treaties to Oval Office décor and renovations to the White House, Kennedy Center, downtown DC and more.

For his part, Hegseth ultimately landed on placing Navy SpecOps Commander Admiral Frank Bradley at the tip of the spear, supporting the decision while also bizarrely invoking the “fog of war,” when no one has ever argued that there was confusion about what was going on. I’m not sure why you would believe Hegseth is telling the truth but, if he is, he’s essentially admitting to dereliction of duty and an unwillingness to ensure the brass under his command comport themselves under the laws of military combat.

“Are they really this dumb?”

That is a question I find myself asking at least four times a week at this point.

If it’s not journalists being randomly inserted into ill-advised group chats discussing active military operations, it’s AG Pam Bondi handing right-wing influencers binders full of mostly recycled Epstein files. If it isn’t Donald Trump accusing the “Biden FBI” of planting agents in the crowds on January 6, 2021 (two weeks before Biden officially became president), it’s the Treasury Department bragging about rising bond market yields, despite such a thing being a sign of economic weakness, rather than strength.

One moment, Trump is claiming tariffs won’t lead to price increases, the next he’s lowering a bunch of them to (checks notes) bring down prices.

I could go on, but I’ve abused your attention spans enough already as it is. By now we should all be wondering whether this incompetence is a sign of rot, an intentional obfuscation meant to mask what is really going on, or a combination of the two.

My personal opinion would be the last option. This administration is chock-a-block with former TV personalities, celebrities and right-wing activists now LARPing as directors at Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Department of Defense, Department of Education, Transportation Department and many more. At every level, Trump has stuffed his Cabinet with individuals whose most important quality is allegiance to him, first and foremost. It would be utterly shocking to hand these complex roles over to such a group and not end up with a never-ending shitshow.

By this time in his first term, 35% of Donald Trump’s administration had either moved on or been replaced, more than double any previous president. By the time his first term ended, more than 9 in 10 of the people around Trump had been replaced, a rate 14% higher than the president with the next-highest turnover rate, Reagan.

This time around though, even as scandals plague the new Trump regime at a much more prodigious rate, few top officials have left. Nearly all have reportedly merited the president’s ire at some point in time, and yet this Trump seems to content to let a far-less-capable group of individuals have a much longer leash.

Don’t get me wrong. These are not “intentionally stupid” people in the sense of Sun Tzu’s strategy of inviting arrogance in your opponent by appearing to be foolish, or Zhuangzi and his Useless Tree. Their incompetence is authentic, deep, and a secret known to all but themselves.

But that doesn’t make it any less useful.

Especially when you suddenly need a president or one of his secretaries to conveniently not know many details about the latest scandal that just landed.

Ish.

I add “ish” because, like many “normie” Republicans you find out in the wild, this one will insist that they find the behavior of the man currently in office to be problematic at times, head-scratching at others and, now and then, downright laughable.

So I pressed, gently.

“Do those moments give you pause?”

They did pause a moment, eyes cast upwards, searching for an adequate response.

“I only ever vote conservative,” they responded at last, with almost a shrug. “No matter who’s on the ballot.”

No matter the behavior of the president or his employees, this individual believed the alternative was worse. That “alternative,” in this person’s mind, was a world in which women’s sports were overrun by biological males hoovering up all the prizes, gender reassignment surgeries were sold to minors in school and delivered in bulk and their right to speak freely whenever, wherever and however they like was diminished.

This narrow requirement for their valuable vote prompted a follow-up question.

“Do you think they know that?”

Sadly, we were interrupted shortly after and I never got a satisfactory response to my inquiry. I doubt I would have at any rate. At least none sufficient to soothe the itch that has resided at the back of my brain since shortly after Trump’s first surprise election in 2016.

Because, really, Trump isn’t a conservative. I’ve argued elsewhere that what he offers is populism, covered in the language of conservatism, but offering few of the things traditional conservatives claim to value:

• Someone who idealizes a limited form of federal government certainly wouldn’t lend their support to a militarized invasion of American cities on flimsy grounds.

• Advocates of fiscal responsibility should be aghast at the $3 trillion increase in the federal debt since Trump reclaimed office, in spite of a shock and awe campaign of slashing government agencies and programs.

• Free speech absolutists should reel in shock whenever Trump mentions canceling a television personality who is critical of him, or when he turns up his nose at death threats received by members of his own party who run afoul of him.

• Those angry about the abuses of young children at the hands of the rich and powerful should be marching on the Justice Department, pitchforks in hand, over the obvious and often sophomoric cover-up of the now-legally-mandated release of all files related to notorious pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

• The Law and Order crowd should be screaming their heads off over the disregarding of laws and lawful judicial rulings, the extrajudicial murders of alleged drug runners in the Caribbean and the trampling of Due Process rights for those in the country without proper papers, to say nothing of the apparent abuse of presidential pardon powers granted to those with money and influence.

• Our vaunted Religious Right and Moral Majority should be experiencing acute nausea from the scenes which emerge from the president’s own Florida club, the coarse language now often featured in his rally speeches, or the increasingly eccentric and colorful cast of characters who make up the president’s inner circle of religious advisors.

I could go on, but you get the idea. If we are to label Donald Trump a “conservative,” we either need to accept that the meaning of the word has changed significantly, or else a different label must be applied.

Beyond all of that, however, what stuck with me about the excuse even more was the way in which is so explains how the Republican party got here:

If I’ve heard this “I won’t vote for anyone other than a conservative” excuse more than a few times from bedraggled “normie” Trump voters looking for a rhetorical refuge from the rapid-fire scandals plaguing the current administration, I would assume political focus groups have heard it far more often, and taken note.

Their advice to the politicians who’ve hired them?

“You could shoot a man in cold blood on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn’t lose any supporters.”

Why?

Because we engage in politics in a fashion unlike nearly any other facet of our lives.

Would you sign any business agreement that said you had to hire the same company every time, regardless of how they did the work?

Of course not!

Would you get married if the oath only required you to love the other no matter what?

Don’t be silly.

Now, before you head to the comments, I am aware that we have a pretty crappy system in which, for the most part, we only have two “companies” to choose from and both have a pretty poor track record.

There are ways to fix this, and we should certainly talk about that, but one of the first ways would be to judge our politicians not by the banner under which they practice legislating, but by the policies they put forward, the truth of their words and the leadership qualities on display.

Because we are fast approaching a point at which we will unflinchingly say that fascism or autocracy are preferable to democracy under a liberal leader and… I don’t think most conservatives, if you managed to get them backed into a corner with enough spiked eggnog in them, would say that’s where they want really want to end up.

If you are one of them, may I encourage you to ask yourself whether your unflinching loyalty to a brand might be contributing to that group deciding they don’t really need to earn what you’ve told them you’ll give them, just so long as they aren’t “the other guys?”

Scrooge is a character whose descent into greed and isolation are only touched on briefly in Dickens’ work. From his childhood recollections we see a boy and young man with pleasant enough mentors around him that his spiral into miserly madness remains a bit of a mystery. It is clear, however, that there is good in Scrooge, even if just a flicker smaller than the spark in Bob Cratchit’s pitiful workplace fire.

Re-reading the tale this year for my children (and for all of you), I was reminded of the powerful imagery Dickens manages to evoke of mankind’s greed, excess and graft, set upon the shelf of goodwill for a small part of each year.

Cozy up with the family tonight, grab some hot beverage and plum pudding, and enjoy this timeless tale read by yours truly.

Be sure to say hello in the comments to let me know you listened and subscribe if you’d like to be notified of future audiobooks posted on the channel. Enjoy, and a Merry Christmas to you all.

Weiss then set the flaming bag of excrement on her own front porch, rang the doorbell, stomped all over it with her jackboots on and then proceeded to spread shit all over the house.

Now, the segment has leaked after Weiss neglected to realize the segment had been included on physical media of the show sent to affiliates in the Great White North of Canada. Copyright strikes are taking this video down left and right, but I have backups and I’ll happily keep posting them or sharing as requested.

This is an important story and well worth sharing. It was vetted assiduously by editorial staff at 60 Minutes, as well as the network’s own lawyers. Weiss herself was said to have signed off on a screening of the segment three days before it was set to air, then did a 180 after Trump vocally bashed the venerable news show for its treatment of him since his good buddy Larry Ellison took over Paramount and installed Weiss at the networks news operation.

Journalists gave the Trump administration several opportunities to be included in this reporting. They declined. But Weiss apparently decided there was too little propaganda and too much fact in the piece.

Anyway, it’s out there now. Good job stepping on your own flaming bag of dog poo, Bari.

I promise you that I’m still writing (working on a banger of a piece right now chronicling how conservatism got from William F. Buckley to Donald Trump), but I’ve also been putting my limited time into pursuing another passion: voice work.

I’ve already mentioned that I can now be hired through Fiverr for your voice work needs, but I’m also recording some public domain books for my kids, and maybe to post on YouTube for others to enjoy. Thought I’d share a sample from my reading of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. If you enjoy this, let me know and maybe I’ll post more in the future. Once the channel is up and running, I’ll send an update.

BTW, in case you are curious, Christopher Brown was my name on radio and television, which is why I use it here.

Enjoy, and I promise I’ll be back soon with more editorials!

Fortunately, that man - identified as an Eli Lilly patient who we know only as Gordon - is reportedly fine. As you saw in the video, several people rushed over to see if the man was OK and gave aid, including Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

As White House aides rushed to usher the press out of the room, a photographer for Getty Images captured the following photograph depicting President Donald Trump standing behind the Resolute Desk, staring off into the distance as the unconscious man is assisted by others.

It was a photograph that shot around the world, painting a picture of a man aloof, unmoved and seemingly more perturbed by the interruption of what was supposed to be a great moment for his administration. It quickly drew comparisons to this moment during which former president Barack Obama helped out a woman who nearly fainted during a speech he was giving outside the White House…

What struck me most about both moments was that one appeared to be a leader. The other was clearly lost and unsure of what to do.

Leadership takes many forms. It is not always vocal, public, or first to rush into danger. But in moments of crisis, those who are leaders will usually step up immediately, if only to ensure that someone of greater knowledge and expertise is available and capable of taking over. Then, good leaders will step back and let the expert take charge.

We don’t know what happened after the cameras turned off. For his part, Oz insists the president was quite concerned over the wellbeing of this man and spoke immediately to his wife on the phone moments after the press was ushered out of the room.

“He remembers the forgotten people,” Oz said in a video released by the White House after the incident.

We may never know what truly transpired when the cameras were off and reporters were out of the room. Perhaps Oz is telling the truth. All we as Americans saw was a man who appeared far less concerned with the man lying on the floor mere feet away, surrounded by concerned humans, than he did with the fact his press conference was interrupted and his moment to shine inadvertently usurped by a man who was inconsiderate enough to forget how to breath when on camera.

From where I sit, what we witnessed in that moment was the true nature of Donald Trump. A coward who hides his fears behind a mask of a strong man. But real strong men don’t make it a habit of blaming others EV-ER-EE time something goes wrong.

Trump infamously said he took no responsibility for nearly a million American deaths due to COVID. He got his dad to pressure a doctor into giving him a draft deferment due to bone spurs… then went on to be a multi-sport athlete in college. He has repeatedly blamed rising prices and the government shutdown on Democrats despite previously saying - when he was NOT the president - that it would be the president’s responsibility to ensure both sides come together to avert or end a government shutdown.

I could go on, but you get the point. At every opportunity, when there is a moment to show actual leadership or courage, Trump reacts by pitching a fit on Truth Social or in the Oval Office or on Airforce One, calling his opponents deranged, evil and anti-American, even as he shreds the Constitution in service of himself and his own power.

Leaders step up, not back. They lean in, not away. They take responsibility when things go wrong and deflect credit when things go well. They stand up for the less fortunate. They don’t stand glumly behind a desk as a man lies unconscious on the floor nearby.

Donald Trump can rightfully claim the title of President of the United States. But he will never be a leader. And that’s a damn shame.

Just wanted to take a moment to post a quick update so you know that:

1. I’m alive

2. I’m not going anywhere

My sincere apologies for the delay in posting. While it would be easy to just randomly post a few shorter takes here and there, that isn’t really how I function best. So, the posts I’m working on take a little longer because I need to study, find citations, add links and spend an insane amount of time re-reading and editing them.

This is all happening while I’m spending 50-60 hours a week working two other jobs, managing a household and trying to be an attentive father and husband. But you’ve invested in me and I promise I’m not going to vanish.

In the meantime, as some of you know, my background involves a lot of voice and audio work. At the encouragement of some other former radio friends, I’ve created a Fiverr page where you can book my talents if you so require. If you or anyone else you know is in need of quality, professional, affordable voice work, please let me know. My background is in editing and communications as well, so I can also help you edit and finalize your scripts or documents. Please enjoy the sizzle reel below with samples of my work:

Thanks again for all of your support this past year. It has meant the world to me. With things becoming increasingly bleak and dismal, I appreciate those of you who take the time to interact and share my thoughts. Every comment is read and appreciated.

My plan is to have a new post before the end of this week, with at least one more in November. I’m hoping to schedule a couple in December and take most of the month off of social media entirely. We’ll see how it works out.

Again, thanks for your patience and support. Please share my Fiverr profile! It helps out a TON.

Best,

Christopher

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Only a handful scowled, raised a middle finger or drove aggressively. One crash, apparently caused by a drunk driver aggressively accelerating past the protest, caused some minor injuries and one arrest.

From my perspective, the participants were almost universally pleasant, kind and almost joyful, reveling in a shared sense of injustice and indignity sparked by the current administration’s aggressively authoritarian approach to dissent. It was almost a shared sense of grief and outrage, let loose in a cathartic moment of group therapy.

Here is what I did NOT see…

Hatred of America? Not here. American flags were ubiquitous (more than a few upside down in the classic symbol of national distress). Even a handful of unedited Gadsden flags with its anti-tyrant message “don’t tread on me” were spotted. Liberals, it would seem, are eager not to reject patriotism, but rather to reclaim it.

Shrieking purple-haired feminists with nose rings and wiccan tattoos? Maybe a few. But this was a protest mostly made up of the elderly, soccer moms, young people and more than a handful of veterans wearing their Antifa uniforms from long ago.

No Kings Day should be most remembered for what it did not contain.

No riots. No storming of government buildings. No violence. No arrests. No anti-American vibe.

Heck, take away the signs labeling Donald Trump a traitor, fascist or Hitler wanna-be and this could have passed for nearly any Fourth of July gathering you’ve been to. Music, dancing, costumes and red, white and blue everything.

If this was a Hate America rally, they had a funny way of showing it.

It is estimated that the turnout for Saturday’s protests nationwide will amount to at least seven million people, not counting sympathy protests in numerous other countries including Canada, Britain, Australia and others. That would represent a 30% increase over June’s No Kings events and the largest nationwide protest in American history.

In response, Vice President JD Vance (who has become the administration’s Troll in Chief) posted an AI-generated video of a stern-looking Trump doffing a crown and royal garments, with the camera then panning over to reveal Democratic political leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on bended knee. Trump re-shared the post on his own social media channels, later adding another bizarre AI-generated video of himself as a fighter jet pilot dropping tons of shit on No Kings protestors in several cities. A perfectly normal response to civil unrest from an American president.

In response to media inquiries on the protests, a White House spokesperson reportedly responded with two words:

“Who cares?”

It’s as tone deaf a response as you would expect from an administration that has turned lying into a competitive sport, but it’s also an excellent question for all of us.

We made history.

We stood tall.

We made our voices heard.

Who cares?

Our next step is to prove why they should.

During a recent visit to witness the “war zone” of Portland, Oregon, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem gathered with her local ICE partners and said a prayer. She asked for wisdom. She asked God to protect the officers and their families. She sought His preservation of the freedoms “granted to us by You.”

This prayer of course, was recorded and spread across the global Internet, to the delight of some and the dismay of others.

Noem’s prayer, conducted at taxpayer expense, is just one of the latest examples of the ways in which this current administration has sought to foster an overt and aggressive brand of Christianity. Or, at the very least, something with the veneer of faith.

Numerous agencies within the government, including the Defense Department (currently in the midst of an attempted rebranding to the “Department of War”) and others have posted verses on their various channels. Trump has also signed an executive order ostensibly making it permissible for federal employees to openly proselytize their office mates in the workplace (in fairness, it does note that, “If the non-adherent requests such attempts to stop, the employee should honor the request,” though the word “should” there allows for much more ambiguity than a word like “must.”)

Perhaps they should have started a few verses earlier in Psalm 18:

“To the faithful you show yourself faithful, to the blameless you show yourself blameless, to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the devious you show yourself shrewd. You save the humble but bring low those whose eyes are haughty.”

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Christian Nationalism is all the rage on the Right. From Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Jerusalem cross tattoo to Karoline Leavitt’s cross necklaces and the aforementioned verses and prayers, this administration is chock-a-block with religious zealotry.

But it’s all wrong.

It’s religious, sure, but it’s not Christian.

On one side, a menacing growl of, “I am your retribution,” on the other, through teeth gritted in self-appointed agony, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

One grinning while saying, “when they hit you, you hit back ten times as hard,” the other a humble servant demanding of his followers, “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Many Americans claim, without irony, to support and follow both of these men. This simply cannot be true.

“Overcome evil with good,” cannot co-exist with “we must eliminate the enemy within.”

God’s abhorrence over “a lying tongue” cannot be paired with a man who calls a city blocks’ worth of protest in a major urban area “a war zone” that is “burning to the ground.”

It’s hard to imagine the same God who said, “The foreigner living among you must be treated as one of your own citizens,” enjoying the brazenly savage rounding up of undocumented immigrants, replete with high definition sizzle reels and a bangin’ soundtrack.

Oh, and nearly-naked children pulled from their beds and left on a city sidewalk to shiver… their wrists reportedly bound with zip ties.

Christians in America love to speak of their country’s rolling green hills, verdant valleys, shining seas and roaring rivers as evidence that the United States is uniquely blessed. Faith and patriotism are interwoven here like few places on earth. Lee Greenwood has made an entire career out of this, in fact, with his eponymous hit “God Bless the USA.”

If indeed our blessings come from above, if the Old Testament Yahweh has seen fit to bestow His favor upon the United States, then it would stand to reason the same rules apply to us as did the nation of Israel.

“If you love me, you will obey my commands,” Christ says to his disciples in the Gospel of John (chapter 14, verse 15). Luke recounts a similar thought in the 11th chapter of his gospel: “Blessed … are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”

In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah issues a stark warning to the people of Israel over their superficial practice of worship, accusing them of mistreating their workers and engaging in fights and quarreling on the day of fasting.

A similar warning is provided in the sixth chapter of the book of Micah:

Who and what, specifically, has the Creator so upset here?

“Your rich men are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.” (verse 12)

If you claim to follow holy scripture, there is no ambiguity here. God does not want ritual. He is not interested in a superficial self-focused faith. The Apostle Paul puts it this way in his first letter to the church in Corinth:

What do the Christian Nationalists REALLY want?

One could be forgiven I suppose, for assuming that Christian Nationalists envision a country in which the government functions as an extension of the Church, but this is not strictly what they mean. Rather, most envision a more secular government free from the regulations of scriptural adherence, but entirely sympathetic to their cause. Ostensibly, a government operated by and primarily for those who follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, but free from doctrinal constraints.

An enforcement wing of the Corporate Church.

Many professing Christians in America, it would appear, are trying to have it both ways; to believe that not only do they serve a God with… plenary authority and power, but also that resources are limited and running out. That all things are possible through Christ who strengthens us, but maybe not on a national level.

Faith is a difficult thing. It is something Christians are told requires practice.

In the book of Malachi, the Lord speaks through His prophet to deliver a stern word to the nation of Israel:

It was this very lack of faith God warned would be their downfall.

“God is not a man, that He should lie,” we are told in the book of Numbers. “Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?”

There is a deep and abiding incongruity in the mind which believes both that God “owns the cattle on a thousand hills,” but also that we simply can’t actually afford to do the very things He has required of us. Both obviously cannot be true and it is high time Christians in America decided which voice they trust the most.

One told his followers to go the extra mile, even if it costs you everything. The other has a long history of stiffing people who have worked for him.

One eschewed the trappings of power and wealth, choosing instead a voluntary path of pain and sacrifice. The other has used his position of power and influence to gain well over $3 billion in personal net worth since reclaiming the presidency and brags about his opulent gold additions to the historic Oval Office.

One is a humble servant who offered forgiveness even as he struggled to draw breath on the cross. The other spends his free time posting AI-generated videos of his political rivals as a form of ritual humiliation.

Perhaps you find all of this a bit… silly. That’s fine. This probably isn’t an article for or about you. This is for those who claim to be both followers of Jesus Christ and Donald Trump.

My argument is simply such an alliance is, quite simply, impossible.

A conversation over the border recently culminated in the other individual concluding that I was simply “too biased” to see things their way. The comment sparked a question in my mind:

Where does bias come from, and is it always bad?

You’ve likely seen comments on the social media accounts of various news sources accusing them of being “biased.” This is often said as a way of indicating that the story disagrees with the commenter’s opinion and, thus, must be the product of some nefarious plot to misinform the public.

Bias certainly afflicts and affects the news industry in America, but the simple fact that a story may refer to the stolen election claims as “false” is not indicative of blind bias. Instead, it is usually the result of having examined the allegations and found them lacking merit. A journalist is not obligated to platform conspiracy theories that are unsupported by evidence, nor should their apparent “bias” be taken as proof that they are compromised or out to destroy the credibility of your chosen political candidate.

Bias may often be the product of ignorance (or arrogance), but it can just as easily be the result of a careful examination of the issue. If someone who studies the complexities of the border and immigration says the bipartisan bill would improve the situation, I’m obviously going to give their opinion greater weight than that of an elected official with a campaign to run. One is a scholar who has spent the better part of their life examining the issues at play, while the other is a party loyalist who needs an issue to animate their voters. This isn’t to say I’m always going to side with the “expert” over the politician, but my opinion will be shaped by considering the history, expertise and potential motives of the people weighing in.

There are numerous legal experts opining on the criminal allegations faced by our former president. Many of them (though certainly not all) have a history of championing liberal causes.

Does this make their view of Trump’s legal peril worthless? Not at all.

Many of them have stellar reputations as litigators or deep backgrounds in state or federal law and the function of the courts. A discerning reader should be able to trust in that expertise as a means of educating themselves about the facts of the case and what may happen next, while disregarding comments that could be viewed as lacking objectivity. Remember, a prosecutor’s job is to convince a judge that there is sufficient evidence of a crime to merit the issuance of a charging document. From there, they also need to convince a jury of 12 men and women that their evidence should culminate in a conviction. Whether the prosecutor likes or dislikes the person they are trying is largely immaterial, so long as the case they present before the judge and jury proves them right.

Donald Trump is appealing to his base largely on the grounds that the charges against him are based in a concerted campaign of persecution and obstruction. Ultimately, the only people who will decide whether or not that is the case are a handful of judges and a jury of his peers. And they will be not be asked to decide whether the prosecutor is biased, but whether the evidence presented supports the allegations being made. Simple as that.

Perhaps it is time to start treating the information we consume more like a prudent juror, and less like a petulant child convinced that anyone who disagrees with us is simply blinded by bias.

Now imagine that the foreman of a riveting crew decides the welders are getting a little under his skin. He starts telling his men the leaders of the welders actually hate the building and want to destroy it. They’re planning to bring it down from the inside.

Despite the protestations of the welders that they are not in fact anti-skyscraper, the riveters will no longer speak to those they now call TIGS (Terribly Ignorant Garbage Solderers). Work grinds to a halt. Still in its skeletal form, the nascent skyscraper devolves into a mess of shouting, epithets and even some violence.

This is, of course, an allegory intended to make a simple point. No endeavor on earth, from the largest hydroelectric dam or atomic collider to the tiniest screw, could happen if we ran those businesses the way we are currently running our government.

Our latest government shutdown (the first since Trump was last in office) is the result of two sides that no longer speak to one another. They speak at each other from across the digital divide.

Every last citizen in this country is required to make allowances for others. We all work with and around individuals who believe many things with which we might disagree, sometimes vehemently. If you demanded to see your Amazon delivery driver’s voter registration before you let them on your property, odds are you wouldn’t get much delivered. If your doctor’s view on immigrant rights determined whether you let them diagnose your illness, you might die before you found someone you could agree with.

All of this makes it baffling that any rational person would believe government could operate efficiently with political parties who treat each other like lepers. Political feuds and disagreements are as old as discourse, but they have long acted as bouts of posturing aimed to sway the electorate and, through them, move policy. At the federal level, this historically took bipartisan approaches to many issues, especially the budget.

As the author of Proverbs 17 puts it: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

This is why there exists a 60-vote threshold for cloture in the Senate, before a bill can come to a final vote. The rule was intended, quite simply, to prevent the party with even a one-vote majority from running roughshod over the minority. They would either need a large enough majority, ostensibly through winning support from the populous, or else be required compromise in order to get legislation approved.

Without compromise, or a message popular enough to win 60 seats in the Senate, very little can get done.

You are here. ⬇

As for why we are here, many millions of words have been written and spoken on that subject. This author happens to blame wealth disparity and rising costs hollowing out the middle classes, leaving most Americans too busy and desperate to become educated in the ways of governance. Shortened attention spans, heightened media focus on the sensational and macabre, and social media’s proclivity for interaction over introspection all play a role.

As for where we go from here, that will be up to the American people who must come to terms with the dysfunction plaguing politics, from the president all the way down to your local sheriff.

Republicans have simply decided the best course of action is hegemony; boxing out their opponent in a zero sum game of political brinkmanship. Democratic administrations have played footsie with authoritarianism in our recent past too, they’ve just had the decency to do it in the shadows. This regime wears its corruption as a badge of honor. After all…

There are no sinners in the Republican party, only persecuted saints.

Monocultures are nearly always a bad idea. In agriculture, they leave crops susceptible to pests and disease. In technology and other fields of innovation, it leads to a lack of innovation, fewer choices, rising costs and monopolistic practices. Economic monocultures leave countries vulnerable to shifting trends or being undercut by competition from abroad. Cultural monocultures lead to blind spots, fear of outsiders and an inability or unwillingness to adapt to change.

Should Republicans get their way and manage to use their current position of power to achieve their dream of political domination it would, quite simply, mean the end of America’s Democratic Republic. Our representative form of government would give way to an autocracy, where decisions are made to benefit the leader’s friends and injure their enemies. This will happen, regardless of how principled or moral you believe your leaders to be.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Imagine a professional football league with only one team. What incentive would the players have to practice, to work out, to watch film, to improve? Without competition, we wither and fade. Anyone who wishes for a one-party government longs for the death of their country.

I don’t have an easy way out. Sadly, the reality is that most humans make decisions based on what is directly impacting them in the moment. As I’ve said before, you can lie to people about reality, but reality never lies. The people of Russia know they live in an oligarchy run by an autocratic dictator who arrests his political rivals (or worse). Most do not support this system, and yet they are largely powerless to stop it now.

We are not there.

Yet.

Whether we get there will depend on how quickly we realize that domination in government is always a bad idea, even if you think you’re on the winning side.