21st Century Progressivism

Category: Politics

Freemasonry is at the core of Western politics. As progressives become more clear about the shortcomings of this system, they are shocked to see Freemasons ending the democratic experiment. This is at least partly the result of Freemasonry’s dependence on Plato’s anti-democratic notions. We see this dependence in US politics when Kyrsten Sinema demands unity and civility at all costs. We also see it when a presidential candidate, Hilary Clinton, tells a rival faction to respect authority. Here we discuss the role of politics in our season of creation.

  • The Kinship Baseline vs. The Imperial Machine

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    Independent tribal societies had a profoundly distinct understanding of the beginning of the universe. Two of these societies were the ancient Hebrews and the traditional Scottish Highland clans. Both cultures originally understood the ultimate reality not as a detached cosmic bureaucrat, but as a personal leader walking at the head of a living family. This understanding is not generally understood today. Perhaps because the kinship baseline is a direct challenge to the imperial machine.

    Evidence for the kinship foundation of ancient Hebrews and the Scottish Highland clans is embedded in the very first phrase of the first verse of Genesis: “In the beginning.” By tracing how this phrase is translated, we can see exactly how a personal baseline of kinship was systematically buried under the weight of an imperial machine.

    The Hebrew Bereshit

    In the Hebrew text, the phrase is Bereshit (בְּרֵאשִׁית), which is derived from Rosh (Head, Chieftain, or First Principle).

    The Scottish ‘S an Toiseach

    In the Scottish Gaelic Bible, as documented in the historic Grammatical and Etymological Analysis of Genesis I. 1–8 published in The Scottish Celtic Review, the translation of the first sentence reads:

    “’S an toiseach chruthaich Dia na nèamhan agus an talamh.”

    Etymologically, the phrase ’S an toiseach functions as a direct contraction of anns an toiseach (meaning “in the vanguard”). The underlying root is Tosach—a word that traditionally signified the vanguard point, the front line, or the personal chief walking vulnerably at the head of a deployment.

    These translations reveal that in the beginning, people understood creation to flow directly from a personal, relatable leader. This is the kinship principle. In this view, a clan or a tribe is not a collection of transactional subjects, but a family unified under a supreme chief who walks with them.

    The Purpose of This Article

    This article is not intended to be a rigid political blueprint for modern life. Instead, it serves to remind us that humans are deeply wired for kinship, personhood, and local allegiance. It also demonstrates that empires have an intense, historic interest in the words we use. Words possess the structural power to define reality; they can either trap us or free us.

    When the scholar Ignaz Goldziher wrote about ancient nomadic life, he did not romanticize it as a perfect political blueprint for every society. Instead, he highlighted the vital principles forged within that lifestyle: hospitality, mutual responsibility, and absolute loyalty to one another, especially to those in need. In this article, I will show how we have lost our way through no fault of our own. The vivid landscape of the walking village chieftain has been swallowed by the cold language of empire.

    The Prophet Samuel and the First Shift

    The kinship principle was challenged very early in Israel’s history. During the 11th century BCE, Israel faced a severe military threat from her neighbors. Terrified, the elders of Israel approached the Prophet Samuel and demanded a king “like all the nations.”

    The problem with this demand was the covenant Israel had entered with God. This original covenant organized the people’s defenses according to the kinship principle—a decentralized, relational network of tribes bound by mutual trust. By demanding a king, Israel betrayed this fundamental relationship. Samuel warned them of the heavy taxation, militarization, and subjugation a king would inflict upon them, but their minds were made up. Tragically, everything Samuel predicted came to pass.

    Centuries later, after Israel and Judah were defeated and carried away as captives, the prophets altered the nature of God to save their culture from oblivion. By the political and religious logic of the ancient Near East, a military defeat implied that the tribal leader who walked at the head of the family was dead. To avoid cultural erasure, the prophets strategically repositioned Yahweh into a universal monarch. The theological cost of this defense mechanism, however, was immense.

    • Before the Exile: Local Tribal Chieftain | Relational, Earthy, Dynamic | Bound to a Specific Kinship Group
    • During & After the Exile: Universal Sovereign of All Nations | Abstract, Placeless Ruler of History | The Cosmic Architect of All Empires

    The Ministry of Jesus

    By the time Jesus began to teach in Palestine, the people had been thoroughly hollowed out, taxed, and militarized by a succession of brutal empires. They desperately needed revival. The fact that Jesus traveled on foot directly among the people reveals how he saw his role: he operated like a traditional Rosh or Tosach—a village vanguard leader. He ate with outcasts, healed the sick, and spoke in parables. Even his stories avoided abstract cosmic principles, focusing instead on seeds, sheep, and vineyards.

    When Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God, his followers understood him perfectly. They knew he was not describing an untouchable, distant heavenly throne. They recognized that a kingdom centered on personal kinship challenged the Roman Empire directly.

    Ironically, the imperial world eventually captured Jesus’ legacy and turned him into a cosmic architect of the state. It accomplished this transformation largely through the manipulation of words. Empires, it seems, always have the last word.

    The Gospel of John: Taming the Rosh

    Hebrew kinship theology and Greek metaphysics collided in the Gospel of John. The opening phrase, “In the beginning was the Word,” became the structural fulcrum for this shift. Early theologians used Hellenistic philosophy to equate Jesus with the absolute creator, swapping the dynamic Hebrew concept of Dabar (דָּבָר) for the abstract Stoic and Platonic concept of the Logos (λόγος).

    This move effectively demoted Jesus from a relatable leader into a cosmic principle. There were heavy objections to this transformation at the time. The Gospel of John faced resistance and did not gain widespread acceptance among the four gospels until around 180 AD, and the complete New Testament canon was not officially ratified by the Christian Roman Empire until 397 AD.

    While Dabar and Logos are often treated as synonyms today, their structural, cultural, and behavioral meanings are completely opposed:

    Hebrew Dabar: An Action and a Deed

    In Hebraic thought, Dabar is fundamentally an action, not an abstract noun. It simultaneously means “word,” “matter,” and “action.” When the relational God of the Hebrews speaks, the word carries its own physical execution (“God said let there be light, and it was“). Dabar is the purposeful acting of a personal leader who names things to give them a functional purpose within a shared life-world. It is dynamic, relational, and grounded in concrete reality.

    Greek Logos: An Abstract Principle of Universal Law

    In Hellenistic philosophy, Logos was an entirely different machine. It represented the cosmic, unchanging mind of the universe—the inner principle of rationality and logic that keeps the cosmos running mechanically. Under the rule of the Logos, salvation subtly shifted into an intellectual pursuit. It became about having the “right creed,” “right thought,” and correct abstract knowledge (gnosis). Believers were saved by submitting to a structured cosmic hierarchy, rather than pledging allegiance to a walking village chieftain.

    The Structural Transformation

    • Grammar: Dabar is a dynamic action or event | Logos is a cold, static noun or principle.
    • Nature: Dabar is a Chieftain speaking and acting within his family clan | Logos is the overarching mathematical law of the universe.
    • Demands: Dabar requires allegiance and kinship lived out on the ground | Logos demands orthodoxy, hierarchy, and aligning the mind with the supreme cosmic structure.

    By forcing Jesus into the box of the Greek Logos, the early Church took a flesh-and-blood, counter-cultural Galilean leader and turned him into an untouchable, eternal principle of cosmic administration. It tidied up the relational, messy human history of a liberated family and replaced it with a universal imperial architecture.

    The Corporate Crown vs. The Clan

    This theological abstraction found its ultimate political weaponization centuries later during the seventeenth-century Stuart monarchy. When King James VI of Scotland ascended the English throne as James I, he explicitly embraced the absolute doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. To James, the monarch was no longer a Tosach walking vulnerably at the head of a family clan, but a “little God” answerable exclusively to an untouchable, mechanical cosmic hierarchy.

    The Stuart Partnership with Lowland Merchant Bankers

    To enforce this centralized state machine, the Stuart Crown partnered with the rising Lowland merchant-bankers, urban lawyers, and feudal landlords. The Lowlands operated on a commercial model driven by paper contracts, state currency, and resource extraction. Conversely, the Highlands operated on a pastoral baseline anchored in dùthchas—the sacred, unwritten right of the clan to collectively steward ancestral lands through mutual loyalty and kin-belonging.

    Rather than relying purely on the sword, the Imperial Machine deployed the written word to wage a war of legal enclosure:

    • The Weaponization of Title Deeds: The state decreed that traditional occupancy (*dùthchas*) was legally invalid without a written feudal charter. Clan lands were suddenly declared vacant and legally transferred to corporate Lowland syndicates.
    • The Statutes of Iona (1609): The Crown forced Highland chiefs to sign a series of legal measures that re-engineered the chief into a commercial landlord and downgraded his clansmen to rent-paying tenants.
    • The Linguistic Extraction: The Statutes compelled clan leaders to send their eldest sons to be educated in English-speaking Lowland schools, systematically severing the linguistic and cultural link between the next generation of vanguard leaders and their families.

    The Lament for the “Men of Paper”

    The transformation of the Tosach into a landlord was experienced by the people as a profound betrayal of the cosmic order. The Gaelic bards—the traditional keepers of cultural memory—became the primary witnesses to this spiritual collapse.

    In the mid-seventeenth century, poets like Màiri Nighean Alasdair Ruaidh (Mary MacLeod) openly wept in their verse for a world turned upside down. They watched their chiefs abandon the vulnerability of walking among their kin, choosing instead to isolate themselves in distant cities. The bards explicitly lamented that their leaders had been transformed into “men of paper.” They noted with bitter grief that the ancient, unwritten trust of dùthchas had been traded for the cold, dead authority of royal charters and rent rolls. The language of mutual honor was systematically replaced by the language of economic extraction.

    The Quaker Rebellion and the Last Stand for Kinship

    While the Gaelic bards recorded the grief of this transition in the north, the common people of England recognized what was happening to the language of kinship in the mid-1600s. The Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends) saw the state’s plan to delete the intimate second-person singular pronoun from daily life as a direct assault on the baseline of human relationship. In their view, all human beings stood on a level basis of spiritual equality before God.

    Previously, Old English had used thou, thee, and thy to address family, children, and close friends. It reserved the formal, collective you for social superiors and transactional distance. But between the 1500s and 1700s, the emerging mercantile state strategically began dropping these intimate pronouns. A vocabulary suited for a marketplace of contract-bound individuals was slated to replace them.

    The Linguistic Strike

    To demonstrate their fierce opposition to this emerging imperial hierarchy, the Quakers went on a linguistic strike. The entire Quaker community flatly refused to address anyone as you. They addressed everyone universally as thou and thee—including wealthy landowners, powerful judges, and the King himself. By using the pronoun of deep family intimacy for authority figures, they stripped the elite of their artificial distance. This strategy brought to light a truth that terrified the ruling class: we are all kin, and no human is an absolute monarch over another.

    This open denial of the merchant state’s hierarchy immediately caught the attention of the ruling elites. They recognized it as a fundamental rebellion against the Imperial Machine and responded with targeted brutality. The Quakers endured beating, imprisoning, and heavy fines to force them into linguistic submission.

    Unfortunately, the state won the fight. By the 1700s, English became one of the only major languages on earth to completely delete its intimate second-person singular pronouns from everyday speech. The syntax of the marketplace had triumphed over the syntax of the home.

    The Mercantile State and God

    It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that contemporary Western religion treats God as a distant superior. This theological alienation was the inevitable destination of the Imperial Machine. When you alter the architecture of language, you alter the human capacity for intimacy.

    For instance, an American child might learn at Sunday School that she shouldn’t pray without bathing first and putting on nice clothes. As a result, she does not perceive God as a relatable Rosh or a village chieftain walking beside her. She sees him as an aloof, bureaucratic executive. She may still address Him as Thou in her prayers, but only because the word no longer has the same meaning. Thou is no longer the radical baseline of deep, familial intimacy it once was. It is now a neutralized, formal, archaic title reserved for a distant, untouchable monarch.

     

    Sources and Recommended Reading
    • Cameron, Dr. Alexander (Ed.). “Grammatical and Etymological Analysis of Genesis I. 1–8.” The Scottish Celtic Review, Nos. 1–4, Glasgow (1881–1885). (This pioneering philological study establishes the direct linguistic link between the dative Gaelic form ‘toiseach’ and its foundational root meaning of the vanguard or frontline leader). 
    • Goldziher, Ignaz. Nomadic Life and the Kinship Principle. (Essential reading for understanding the non-romanticized, covenantal frameworks of early tribal societies, highlighting hospitality and shared mutual responsibility as core survival structures).
    • James VI and I, King. The True Law of Free Monarchies and Basilikon Doron. (The primary historical source texts detailing the seventeenth-century Stuart introduction of the absolute Divine Right of Kings into the British political landscape).
    • Fox, George. A Declaration to the King and Both Houses of Parliament. (The core historical text documenting the mid-seventeenth century Quaker linguistic strike, detailing the theological defense of the intimate pronoun ‘thou’ against the state’s hierarchy).
  • The American Paradox

    The American Paradox

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    There is a distinct spiritual vertigo that comes when a society realizes its foundations are fracturing. As we look out at a landscape shifting under multi-directional threats—hyper-polarization, macroeconomic instability, and geopolitical chaos—the world suddenly feels like a barren, trackless wilderness.

    On paper, America rejected the idealism of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau believed a state could force its citizens to conform to a singular, collective “General Will.” Instead, the American Founders built a mechanical fortress designed to prevent tyranny. They fractured power into three competing branches, built a maze of checks and balances, and anchored the entire experiment in John Locke’s vision of “negative liberty”—a system where the government’s primary duty is to protect individual rights and stay out of private lives.

    Yet, very early in our history, the ink on the Constitution was met with a brutal reality check. When confronted with the raw pressures of expansion, economic ambition, and a literal territorial wilderness, the republic proved it could talk like Madison but act like an autocrat.

    Table of Contents

    The Weaponization of the “General Will”

    By the 1820s, the sovereign Creek (Muscogee) Nation sat on highly coveted, fertile land in Georgia. The Creek National Council had enacted a strict law: anyone who signed away tribal lands to the United States without the collective consent of the nation would face the death penalty.

    • The Compromised Leader: Chief William McIntosh, a wealthy leader and slaveholder, chose the “Mountain Kingdoms” trap of personal survival.
    • The Illegal Treaty: In 1825, McIntosh and a small, unauthorized faction signed the Treaty of Indian Springs, illegally ceding millions of acres of Creek land.
    • The Systemic Betrayal: The U.S. government knew McIntosh did not speak for the Creek Nation. Yet, the American executive branch eagerly accepted his single signature as the voice of the entire tribe.

    This was Rousseau’s dangerous philosophy weaponized in real time. The American state bypassed actual law and institutional contracts by manufacturing a hand-picked proxy to represent a false “General Will” of the people. McIntosh was executed by his own people for this betrayal, but the legal wedge had already been driven into the stone wall.

    When the Courts Fail to Hold the Line

    The true systemic collapse occurred a few years later under President Andrew Jackson. When the state of Georgia attempted to strip neighboring Cherokee and Creek sovereignty, the issue went to the United States Supreme Court.

    In the landmark case Worcester v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled clearly and unequivocally in favor of indigenous sovereignty. The American paper architecture had worked exactly as designed: the judicial branch checked the unconstitutional tyranny of the majority.

    But a system of checks and balances only works if those in power respect the boundaries. President Jackson famously ignored the ruling, allegedly stating:

    “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

    When the executive branch refused to enforce the law of the land, the American republic officially pivoted to authoritarianism. The forced, state-sponsored migrations that followed—the Trail of Tears—were not caused by a lack of laws. They occurred because a populace and a government chose to smash their own institutional checks to get immediate results.

    A Warning for Our Modern Digital Wilderness

    Let us be entirely clear: our modern wilderness cannot be conquered on a physical battlefield. Today, our systemic challenges exist in the digital cloud, in global tax havens, and in impersonal macroeconomic shifts. Taking up physical arms in an era of bureaucratic decay would be a civic disaster, not a victory.

    If we look to history, the ultimate warning is found in the quiet, structural decay of reality rather than romantic battlefield charges:

    • The Lesson of Constantinople: In 1453, the last Byzantine emperor fought with breathtaking physical courage on the breaches. But his bravery came too late.
    • The Internal Rot: The civilization had spent decades hollowing itself out through internal polarization, institutional neglect, and an arrogant belief that its ancient walls made it inherently immune to history.
    • Our Modern Temptation: When we face modern multi-directional crises, the slow, grinding mechanisms of American gridlock become exhausting. We are tempted by Rousseau’s ghost to crave a political savior who will smash through boundaries and ignore the courts to restore our comfort.

    If we allow our internal institutions, our local courts, and our constitutional boundaries to rot because we are frustrated by the slow grind of the system, no amount of late-stage, frantic courage can save us. The battle for the republic is won or lost in how we maintain the integrity of the law today, long before the walls are fully breached.

    Standing at the Breach

    During the chaos of Culloden, the government forces managed to breach a crucial stone wall on the Southern flank of the battlefield. This allowed the government cavalry to charge through the gap and threaten to completely roll up and annihilate the retreating Jacobite lines. Major Gillies “Mor” Macbean was the senior major in Lady Anne’s Clan Chattan regiment. Seeing this catastrophic breach, he stationed himself directly inside the breach of that stone wall.

    He did not stand there because he possessed a mathematical strategy to reverse the global rise of the British fiscal state. Gillies Macbean stood there because it was his post. He held the gap single-handedly against an entire advancing column, buying time for his retreating comrades with his life.

    The American Paradox
    Touch not the cat bot a glove (Credit: Tom McPherson)

    The lesson of the wilderness is that when the great structures fail, your macro-influence ends, but your local duty begins.

    The Test of Our Character

    When the wilderness presses in, the test of our character is not how fiercely we can demand a king to break the rules for us. The test is whether we have the courage to stand shoulder-to-shoulder defending the slow, painful integrity of the law—even when it doesn’t give us the immediate victory we want.

    The honorable reputation outlives the world. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder at the stone wall.

    Sources & Further Reading

    • Political Philosophy: Federalist No. 51 (James Madison) & The Social Contract (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762).
    • The Treaty of Indian Springs: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation: A History by Michael D. Green.
    • Constitutional Crisis: Worcester v. Georgia (1832) & Andrew Jackson and his Indian Wars by Robert V. Remini.
    • Culloden History: Major Gillies Macbean’s stand is in the archive of the National Trust for Scotland and commemorated at McBain of McBain.

  • Who Are These Americans?

    Reading Time: 7 minutes

    America is supposed to be a melting pot. However, a certain cultural-religious group of people claimed ownership from the beginning. Not just ownership of industry and government, but ownership of Americanism. This should be obvious when people outside of the United States refer to Americans as Anglo-Saxons. However it doesn’t seem to register with ordinary Americans. Does anyone wonder about the nature of these people? Who are these Americans?

    Angles, Saxons and Jutes Meet in Britain

    The Angles, Saxons and Jutes originated in modern-day Denmark and Germany. They migrated to England after the withdrawal of Rome from 410 to 450 AD, and eventually merged to became the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons ruled England until the Norman Conquest in 1066. However, in their day they adopted Christianity and established kingdoms that spoke Old English. The Anglo-Saxons shaped English culture, language, and law.

    For Britons on the other hand, the Anglo-Saxon takeover was an unwanted incursion. Often it was deadly. Perhaps that explains why the US government makes immigration so difficult; they haven’t forgotten that they were once immigrants to Britain.

    The English Civil War

    In the seventeenth century, Anglo-Saxonism was a major ideological construct used to justify the English Civil War (1642-1651). The so-called Norman Yoke was another ideological construct and was used in a similar way. Adherents to these constructs could pose as people who were reclaiming ancient liberties that the Norman conquerors stole from them. These liberties included free parliaments and common law. In this way, English parliamentarians and radicals were able to invoke a romanticized, pre-1066 Anglo-Saxon past as marching orders for the politics of their time. Specifically, the Norman Yoke construct provided the rationale for challenging the divine right of Kings.

    Many of these concepts sound universal. But it’s important to note that these constructs belonged to a unique culture and religion at a specific time. The doctrine of the absolute authority of kings was no more universal than the doctrines of Anlo-Saxonism and the Norman Yoke. It arose after the religious wars spread chaos, instability and destruction all over Europe.

    In addition, it can be argued that the position of the parliamentarians and radicals in the seventeenth century was politically convenient. Divine kingship may have been a problem in itself, but the problem only became pressing when the radicals disagreed with Charles I. And subsequent historical events demonstrate that some of them wanted to take upon themselves the powers of kingship. Anglo-Saxonism and the Norman Yoke constructs were useful tools.

    The English Civil War ended with the execution of Charles I and the takeover by Oliver Cromwell, who proceeded to act like a dictator from 1653 to 1658.

    Factions in the Church of England

    It is also true that Charles acted recklessly. It was as though he was unaware of the fragility of the political and religious consensus that he enjoyed. The Church of England had been dealing with competing factions under Queen Elizabeth and James I, but everyone remained united by a Calvinist theology of grace. This consensus broke under Charles I.

    The king’s policies tended toward Anti-Puritanism in matters of liturgy and organization. The theological equivalent was Anti-Calvinism. Charles’s authoritarianism would prove his undoing at the hands of the Puritan faction. However, neither his behavior nor the parliament’s displeasure dictated his execution. Many of the agitators merely hoped to force his cooperation.

    The Puritans

    People in the United Kingdom and the United States often hear about how King Charles I overreached his powers as a king. But his execution was not a foregone conclusion. Many of those who opposed him were shocked when he was killed by the radicals and parliamentarians. But as argued above, this faction was acting according to its own peculiar beliefs.

    The Puritans were ethnically English, predominantly of Anglo-Saxon descent, and identified with this ancestry. As 16th and 17th-century English Protestants, they viewed themselves as a “remnant” continuing a divine, Anglo-Saxon tradition of piety and liberty. They were not genetically distinct from other English people, but were primarily a cultural/religious group from East Anglia. 

     Antonia Malchik

    Traditional Freemasonry

    Anglo-American style Freemasonry has played a part in the cultures of the United States and Great Britain. (This branch of Freemasonry is distinguished from Liberal Freemasonry.) It is the traditional, conservative branch of Freemasonry requiring belief in a Supreme Being and avoiding political/religious debate within the lodge. Anglo-American Freemasonry may not have played a part in the English Civil War because it only appeared in England as a formal organized fraternity in 1717. However, the first recorded initiation of an English gentleman, was of Elias Ashmole in 1646.

    But regardless of its past influences, I would argue that the most problematic influence of Freemasonry in our time stems from its adoption of Tubal Cain as its founding ancestor. This goes at least as far back as Albert Mackey.

    Freemasons believe there are two strains of people in the world. One comes from the line of Cain, and the other comes from Seth. The term, Sons of Cain, is derived from the Freemasonic tradition of referring to Tubal Cain as their ‘Masonic ancestor’.

    The Temple Legend

    Albert Mackey wrote about Tubal Cain in the Legend of the Craft. Mackey also wrote about him in the Lexicon of Freemasonry : Tubal Cain…

    …introduced many arts into society which tended towards its improvement and civilization. Tubal Cain is the Vulcan of the Pagans, and is thought to have been closely connected with ancient Freemasonry. Faber says that “all the most remarkable ancient buildings of Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor, were ascribed to Cabirean or Cyclopean Masons,” the descendants of Vulcan, Dhu Balcan, the god Balcan, or Tubal Cain. Oliver says, “In after times Tubal Cain, under the name of Vulcan and his Cyclops, figured as workers in metals and inventors of the mysteries; and hence it is probable that he was the hierophant of a similar institution in his day, copied from the previous system of Seth, and applied to the improvement of schemes more adapted to the physical pursuits of the race to which he belonged.”

    (As cited by Freemason.com)

    The mention of ‘the previous system of Seth’, is interesting, to say the least. The Book of Genesis, says the entire human race is descended from Seth. It doesn’t say anything about a system that follows it. In verse 4:25 Eve says that God granted her Seth in place of Abel. Then, Genesis chapter 5 presents Seth as the ancestor of Noah. The descendants of Seth survived the flood through Noah. The descendants of Cain did not. More to the point, if Seth was the ancestor of Noah he was also the ancestor of Christ. This claim is never made for Cain.

    The claim that there are two strains of people in the world is especially troubling when one considers Rudolf Steiner’s embellishments on the Temple Legend1. Steiner interpreted the Temple Legend symbolically, and argued that it represents humanity’s evolution.

    The New Temple Legend

    In The New Cain, we are told the Temple Legend was originally introduced into Europe by Christin Rosenkreutz. Later it became the core of diverse types of masonic rituals. However, Steiner did not adopt the Temple Legend from masonic sources. He reconstructed it from his independent spiritual research.2 He also incorporated his version into masonic rituals. The New Temple Legend is an occult-imaginative means to school and develop the soul’s spiritual capacities.

    From the very outset, the Temple legend points to humanity’s dual origins in the children of Cain and of Abel. The former emerged from asexual procreation, the latter from dual-gender procreation. The origin of the sons of Cain reaches back to the pre-Lemurian period, that of the sons of Abel – or of Seth, who was given to his parents as a substitute after Abel was killed – to Lemurian times. The first became tillers of the soil, scientists and technologists, who had to elaborate everything for themselves, while the latter became shepherds, priests and artists who were given inspiration from above. In a soul-spiritual sense, we can also speak here of a masculine and feminine spirit.

    We have before us here, therefore, a primal opposition in humanity’s evolution. To reconcile this was the aim of the theosophical, and now and in future of the anthroposophic world impulse, as well as of a freemasonry renewed through anthroposophy.

    (p. 10)

    One could argue that Steiner’s interpretation is more extreme than the original Temple Legend, implying that the original Legend is more benign. But the original version had already traced Freemasonry’s ‘masonic ancestor’ to Tubal Cain, in spite of the fact that his descendants did not survive the flood. Steiner merely expands on the occult implications of this mythology. In Steiner’s version, Freemasonry is the worship of Cain in the condition he had been in before his sin.

    It’s important to add that we are not presented here with the story of an ongoing rivalry. Cain’s vision is presented as the final victor over the vision of the sons of Abel-Seth. (p. 11)

    Paradise Lost

    It has been said that Milton’s Paradise Lost is the Protestant epic equivalent to Dante’s Inferno and its Catholic view of sin. The two poems clearly demonstrate corresponding differences in theology and focus. Although neither one of them is scriptural, they both exert some influence in the thought of religious believers.

    For the purposes of this article, it’s important to mention that Milton was influenced by Anglo-Saxon culture and history. In addition, he was very much a part of the English Civil War. There is a YouTube Video on the Chris Hedges channel that elaborates on the important points in Milton’s work. The interview covers important points and issues that resonate with American culture. Once you start to look for similarities you will find them everywhere.

    Misjudging Milton?

    In the Hedges interview, Orlando Reade argues that the finest moments of Paradise Lost are true to the New Testament. I am aware that I haven’t studied this poem as much as it probably deserves, but I still think it’s fitting to discuss Paradise Lost in an article that also deals with the rehabilitation of Cain. I worry about the modern ability to deal with such material on a poetic or literary level because the religious concepts these poems deal with are not fictions.

    In this work by Milton, the devil is a somewhat sympathetic character who was treated unfairly by God. Milton seems to identify his own plight with the devil, and he’s not the only one to do so. But of course, the devil was a sympathetic character because Milton created him that way. Other oppressed peoples have identified with Milton’s characterization of the devil in the same way. But if you take biblical concepts seriously, there is a difference between oppressed people and the devil.

    For one thing, Milton rebelled against the king while the devil rebelled against God. At best, you could argue that this is a powerful object lesson against divine kingship. For Milton, rebelling against the king was almost the same thing as rebelling against God. But, killing a king is another matter. Surely the comparison breaks down there?

    Donald Trump and the Idolatry of Kingship

    Today, history seems to be reorganizing itself with Donald Trump acting as an absolutist king who presides over a willing Anglo-Saxon government. In a rational world this would end Anglo-Saxonism as a meaningful construct.

    Who are these Americans? They are all of these things.

    1. Rudolf Steiner, The New Cain: The Temple Legend as a spiritual and moral impulse for evolution and its completion. ed. T. H. Meyer. Temple Lodge Publishing, 2017 ↩︎
    2. Ibid. p. 9 ↩︎

  • The Shocking Fate of Superman

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    The ruffians have us on the run. All the signs are here. Whether the signs signal the ‘fall of the empire’, a worldwide annihilation, or the end of days remains to be seen. But if we take a philosophical stance for a moment, we will understand that something fundamental stands revealed: We see before us the shocking fate of Superman.

    I’m not talking about the trustworthy fictional Superman of the movies. Nor am I suggesting that the Superman I refer to is going to get his clock cleaned while we watch. Our Superman has been waiting in the wings since the end of World War II and he has already met his fate. He just doesn’t know it yet.

    The Conservatives have had their way at least since the assassination of JFK. Since then they have been busily corrupting the key structures of a free society. They may have thought they could slowly ease on to the throne without being noticed, but in 2015 the progressives called their bluff. Their response was to call out their heavy artillery. I admit it is intimidating, but there is something vaguely ridiculous about it. Superman is a cartoon.

    Superman is a Cartoon

    Our superman, or supermen, have been stewing in their juices since World War II, and dreaming of a final victory. But that isn’t what caused the present ridiculousness. They have always been ridiculous. It’s just that we see them now against the background of climate change and mass migration so their solutions appear as absurd as they are. The situation calls for a farsighted, compassionate manager but instead we are offered solutions from a superhero cartoon. The bright ideas of these characters float in space surrounded by microchips, high finance, gears, and jet fuel. And they themselves have long since ceased belonging to the earth. In fact, they despise the earth.

    So now that it’s finally time for their big reveal, they are completely unsuited to lead. But how is it possible that their cartoonish plans continue to be so honored in this day and age? We have all been blind together.

    They Never Accepted Their Defeat in World War II

    They were defeated in World War II because their ideas were just as stupid then as they are now. That should have been the end of it. However, they were allowed to keep their stolen loot and their societies rebuilt themselves exactly as they had been before the War. The thinking that led to the carnage stayed exactly the same, wrapped in a thick veil of denial. The lessons that they should have taken from their defeat have been biding their time–until now.

    Maybe This Is Justice

    It’s possible that what we see now is justice. If it makes you feel better, you could say it’s the fault of the World-War leaders and their societies, not to mention those who have supported cruel actions of their governments since that time. In any case, the outcome is no longer in our hands. Behold the shocking fate of Superman.

  • ‘They’ Told Us Who Killed Charlie Kirk

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    I think ‘they’ told us who killed Charlie Kirk. They may as well have signed their names to it. My suspicions in this regard only increased when the FBI announced the arrest of six defendants and charged them with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. In these two incidents together, there may be clues to the powers that control the current administration.

    Gambling

    Assassinations and gambling are the specialities of organized crime. However, it’s not confined to organized crime. Or rather, organized crime is not roped off from the government. They are intertwined. The book, Double Cross,1 written by Sam and Chuck Giancana is helpful in this analysis. (Chuck Giancana is the brother of Sam Mooney Giancana. Sam is Chuck’s son and the godson of Mooney.)

    At the end of his life, Mooney Giancana’s empire was based on a numbers racket–gambling was his forte. He learned about this racket when he was sent to Leavenworth for running a still in Illinois. There he met Eddie Jones, who was incarcerated for running a policy racket, also known as ‘numbers’. Black men invented the policy racket and back then, black men owned it.

    Giancana had never heard of this racket, but after learning the ropes from Eddie Jones he determined to take it for himself. He probably had fewer scruples than usual, due to his extreme racism. After he secured Jone’s racket, he expanded it into Texas with the help of Jack Ruby.

    This could be a coincidence or it could be a red flag, but five of the six suspects in the FBI’s recent gambling case are black.

    Mooney Branches Out

    Mooney spent the years from 1966-74 in Mexico setting up the most lucrative gambling enterprise in history. Chuck believed his murder was largely the consequence of his actions there, in combination with rogue elements of the CIA. It all came to an end for Mooney Giancana when the FBI pressured the Mexican government to deport him. He had received a subpoena to testify before a Grand Jury and he knew way too much. He was shot to death in his basement kitchen.

    But before Giancana was deported, he had been operating from Mexico to the Caribbean and Central and South America, setting up operations on cruise ships and ports of call. He bought protection from dictators and presidents, including Noriega. And to top it off, he and his associates ingratiated themselves with Columbia’s Medellin Cartel. Naturally, they sent the Chicago Outfit a cut of everything. The relevant question today is what happened to this network after Mooney died?

    In this light, the FBI’s apparent glee at taking down this gambling racket brings up more questions than it answers. The numbers rackets never ended. They would know that better than anyone. Illegal gambling continues today. Maybe this case was particularly egregious. But even so, it seems to me there would be an additional red flag: the crime families involved.

    The Three Crime Families

    The crime families involved in the FBI’s current case are the Gambinos, Bonnanos, and Genoveses. They all operate in New York. New York was sometimes allied with Chicago, but the two organizations were separate and had different bosses.

    At Meyer Lansky’s suggestion all of the different branches had given their organization a name. The new names were:

    • The National Alliance became the Combination or Commission
    • The New York organization became the Mob
    • Chicago became the Outfit
    • New Orleans became the Combine or the Mafia

    Before His Death, Mooney Giancana’s Organization Controlled Everything But New York

    At the time the McClellan Hearings were being held in 1958, Mooney Giancana controlled everything but New York. His partners were Marcello for gambling in Texas, Alabama and Georgia and Trafficante Jr. in Florida. Trafficante was feeding casino money to Chicago from Cuba and drugs from Central America, the Caribbean and Asia. The term Chuck used for Mooney’s relationship with Carlo Gambino in New York is ‘aligned’. Mooney worked with him to deal with European rackets and drug trade. 

    The Most Important Question: Who Ended Up With Sam Mooney Giancana’s Empire?

    It’s fair to assume that the empire that Mooney Giancana left behind was taken over by his associates. His brother, Chuck Giancana was concerned about this. He was concerned that its nefarious influence is still operating under the radar. And he would know better than anyone that this was a strong possibility. He states several times in his book that there are few lines of demarcation between the Outfit and the CIA. “There are no Black Hats and White Hats.” So he considered the following questions to be important. Have U.S. organized crime, the CIA and internal criminals shaped our world since his brother’s death? How many wars have been funded by this wealth? Which governments were compromised? How many world leaders were corrupted, imprisoned, and assassinated? Which U.S. presidents have benefitted from covert CIA operations and drug money?

    These questions should be in the back of our minds when we read about the arrests of black athletes and New York crime families for gambling.

    The Assassinations: JFK

    I’ve argued previously that the signature on Kirk’s assassination was similar to the signature on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The first similarity is that they both crossed the wrong people.

    JFK’s death warrant was sealed by his father’s behavior, his own behavior, and by the expectations of aggrieved parties, including organized crime, the CIA and officials in the U.S. government. He was aware of these factors, but he was probably in deeper trouble than he knew. Joe Kennedy had received favors from the Chicago Syndicate before JFK was in the public eye. When he asked Mooney Giancana for his assistance in getting JFK elected president his indebtedness reached a new level. This favor had far-reaching consequences for his family and the USA.

    Joe Kennedy made certain promises to Mooney Giancana, which he had no intention of fulfilling. Instead, all three Kennedys, Joe, JFK and Bobby, betrayed Giancana by turning against the mafia that had helped them. This was a double cross. All things considered, the false sense of security was breathtaking. Joe in particular had to have known what Giancana was capable of.

    Anton Cermak and Huey Long

    As Chuck Giancana tells it, two previous assassination cases had similarities to the Kennedy assassination: the public murders of Anton Cermak and Huey Long. All the signs were there for anyone knowledgeable about mafia tactics. The first sign, according to Chuck, is making a hit look like a looney did it. It’s an old Sicilian tactic.

    In the case of Huey Long, the looney was a sharpshooter and in debt. Huey Long was a Louisiana senator on the take. He had worked for years with the Syndicate on everything from slot machines to casinos. His partners included Carlos Marcello in New Orleans; Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky in New York; Santo Trafficante in Florida; and Paul Ricca in Chicago. Unfortunately for him, he got greedy. By 1935 he demanded over $3 million a year in payoffs. Long’s friends in New York had him hit with the help of the New Orleans boss.

    Anton Cermak was the Mayor of Chicago who went to war against Al Capone on behalf of a rival, Teddy Newberry. When Cermak fled to Florida in December of 1932, Paul Ricca enlisted Joe Zangara to kill him. Zangara had been a sharpshooter in the Italian Army. Diamond Joe Esposito had sponsored him five years earlier to come to the U.S. from Sicily. Since then he had been working sugar runs from Cuba. However, he got into debt and was in trouble with the Chicago bosses.

    Zangara shot Cermak while he was riding in an open car with president-elect Roosevelt in Miami. When he was arrested he spouted anti-capitalist nonsense. The main problem with that tactic was that he was really a Republican. Or it would have been a problem if anyone had cared. He also claimed he had been trying to kill FDR and got Cermak by mistake. The press did not mention the fact that Zangara was connected to the Chicago Syndicate, and cops were paid off. 

    The Fall Guy

    And then there are the cases where the accused shooter, although seeming to fit the description of a looney, appears to be a patsy. This is suspected in the assassinations of JFK and Charlie Kirk. Related factors include the claim that an ancient bolt-action rifle fired the fatal shot. Basically, the general details given to the public don’t match what people actually saw or what they know about the particular weapon. And there is the question in both cases as to the direction of the fatal shot. Finally, there is the nonchalant way the authorities address the inconsistencies–or refuse to address them.

    Lee Harvey Oswald and His Connections

    We are familiar with the FBI’s case against Tyler Robinson, but maybe not so much with Lee Harvey Oswald. We know Jack Ruby, Chicago’s man in Dallas and Oswald’s assassin, had ties to both the CIA and the Outfit. So did Oswald.Oswald was also connected to the New Orleans mob from birth. His uncle was Carlos Marcello’s lieutenant and he had a big influence on the boy.

    U.S. Intelligence Community

    Oswald was allied with the U.S. Intelligence community. He was in the Civil Air Patrol as a young man, where he worked with a homosexual CIA operative and Outfit smuggling pilot, David Ferrie. Mooney and Marcello used Ferrie to fly drugs and guns out of Central America.

    Last but not least, Oswald was not a Castro supporter. He was a CIA agent and a right-wing supporter of the “Kill Castro’ Bay of pigs camp. When he was in the Marines in the late 50s he attended intelligence training sessions run out of the office of Naval Intelligence in a top secret Japanese Spy base.

    Nor was he a communist. He went to the USSR as a spy for the U.S. government.

    The Setup

    After Oswald returned to the US he worked for a company that was doing top security projects for the US government. The CIA directed him to former Chicago FBI agent Guy Banister as soon as he and his Russian wife were back in New Orleans. Banister’s Camp Street detective offices were a front for CIA covert domestic operations, similar to the Miami-based detective agency of Richard Cain. Bob Maheu’s Washington-Vegas agency was similar. They were all fronts to cloak illegal CIA-Outfit activities and draw agents for the CIA. During this time, Oswald trained Cuban exiles. 

    Oswald’s intel superiors sent him to Dallas. There he met with Jack Ruby at the Carousel Club and re-established his relationship with David Farrie. He also established a relationship with another Mooney associate, Russian exile and CIA operative geologist George De Mohrenschildt. De Mohrenschildt had contacts with Texas oilmen. Texas oilmen contributed cash to the assassination project.

    Oswald’s Patriotism and Malleability Were His Downfall

    They decided on Oswald as the fall guy in early spring. They had already laid the groundwork to make him look like a commie by sending him to Russia and associating him with the pro-Castro stuff. He had been a bright kid according to Chuck Giancana. His downfall was his patriotism and his malleability.

    The Professional Killers

    Later, Chuck learned through the grapevine that Mooney had solicited professional killers from several quarters. They included two of Marcello’s men and two of Trafficante’s Cuban exile friends. One of them was a former Havana vice cop who became a mobster. The other was a radical-turned-corrupt US customs official. 

    From Chicago Mooney brought in Richard Cain, Chuckie Nicoletti and Milwaukee Phil. They had all worked previously on the Bay of Pigs. Cain and Nicoletti were the actual gunmen for the hit. They were at opposite ends of Dallas Book Depository. It was Cain who fired from the 6th story window. 

    The CIA added several of their own “soldiers” using one of the anti-Castro men and Roscoe White as actual gunmen, along with J. D. Tippet and Oswald. The CIA planned for White and Tippet to eliminate Oswald, but Tippet wavered and allowed him to escape. So, White had to kill Tippet.

    It Was a Coup, Obviously

    J. Edgar Hoover was fine with this plan. And if somebody knew too much the CIA took care of it. Mooney specifically told Chuck it was a coup. He said they had done the same in other countries.


    “On November 22, 1963 the US had a coup; it’s that simple. The government of this country was overthrown by a handful of guys who did their job so damned well…not one American even knew what happened. But I know. I know I’ve guaranteed the Outfit’s future…once and for all. We’re set here in the United States. So, it’s time to move on to greener pastures. Spreadn’ the Outfit’s power and makn’ a fortune in deals overseas are two of the best reasons I can think of to leave the country.” (Sam ‘Mooney’ Giancana, as quoted by Chuck Giancana)

    1. Little Brown Paperbacks (a&C), Jan. 1, 1998. ↩︎

  • Charlie Kirk and Tyler Robinson

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Charlie Kirk and Tyler Robinson are two young men who were sucked in to someone else’s nightmare. Charlie’s nightmare is over; Tyler’s nightmare is still very much in charge of his world. As I write, the same nightmare lords it over the the rest of us. We are all helpless spectators. But my hope is that we are not entirely helpless. This is important because Kirk’s death has been weaponized against the Left.

    Problems With the Official Story

    Many convincing videos have called into question the weapon that killed Charlie Kirk. I’ve linked two of the videos below and I hope you will watch them. However, I don’t want to focus on the videos. (I deleted one of the videos. I appreciated the work he did on the ballistics, but his other content is unpredictable. I’m sure we can all handle these ideas when necessary, but if I can’t guarantee his content I can’t leave his link on my website. If you want to learn about the Tyler Robinson saga there will be plenty of updates on your favorite platform. Who knows, maybe this guy will mellow out with time.)

    I want to focus on a few parallels with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The first parallel is the overall messiness of the scenario as presented to the public. No one has bothered to clear up the official story.

    Bolt-Action Rifles

    The police found Tyler Robinson’s rifle in the woods wrapped in a towel. Sheriff Eugene Boone found Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle in an upper room of the Texas School Book Depository. They were both older model bolt-action rifles.

    In Robinson’s case, they say he disassembled the rifle in order to climb off the roof, and then he reassembled it before leaving it in the woods. But the videos that show him climbing off the building don’t indicate that he had the rifle at that time.

    Oswald told reporters he was a patsy.

    Ballistics

    People who know about guns say that the report of this shot did not sound like the rifle that Tyler Robinson supposedly used. And that’s not the only problem. Judging by the sound of it, the gun that killed Charlie Kirk was not far from the camera that recorded his death. If the shot had come from the building on the other side of the grounds, as law enforcement personnel claim, it would have had a different sound. And then there is the wound in the front of Charlie’s neck. It appears to be an exit wound, based on the size of it and the amount of blood. Therefore, it seems likely that the shot came from behind him and to his right. That would make more sense. He fell to his left.

    The direction of the shots that rained down on the Kennedys were not consistent with the story the authorities provided. They said JFK was hit in the back of the head. That’s the only thing that would have been consistent with their story that Oswald was firing out of a window above and behind the Kennedys’ car. But the bullet that killed JFK actually exited from the back of his head. Those who saw his body afterward said he had an exit wound there. Strangely, it was no longer there when his body arrived back in Washington D.C.

    Please Don’t Repeat the Assassination of the Accused Killer

    The parallel I am most worried about has not happened yet. It’s the main reason I’m writing this article. Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald at close range before Oswald could be tried. This took place in the basement of a police station. Oswald’s guilt is now a permanent part of the official story.

    I hope this article will dissuade anyone who might be thinking of doing the same to Tyler Robinson.

    See the following video:

    Israeli News Live: Sound Signature Pinpoints Charlie Kirk’s Shooter’s Location

  • Right-Wing Violence

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I was going to summarize an article on the history of right-wing violence. I actually spent quite a lot of time on it, but I decided that I don’t want to include all of the information. As bad as things are now, they have been worse in the recent past. I believe the right will find new ways in it to torture people.

    All I really wanted to do was show the Left how closely the administration is following the right-wing playbook on taking power. People on the Left suffer when the Right accuses us of assassinations, or of celebrating when someone on the right dies. But there’s no need to take it personally. They don’t really think we are responsible. They just want to get people riled up. They may be responsible for the deaths themselves.

    How Do We Know if Violence is From the Right?

    Movements can be identified as right wing when they accept human inequalities and when they act as if violence is a legitimate way to defend hierarchies. Right-wing violence is violence that supports right-wing goals.

    Right-wing violence generally has two targets: the primary target is an ‘inferior community’; the secondary target is the government.

    Why Does Right-wing Violence Happen?

    Right-wing violence goes hand-in-hand with democratic mass politics. The problem from the Right’s point of view is that public opinion becomes more important when the public can vote. And mass communication influences public opinion with information about the government and the candidates. So, wherever there are mass publics there will be radical movements around the edges trying to drag public opinion in their direction.

    The United States

    In the American north, industrialists have always been able to hire private bodies to keep workers in line. Organizations like the Pinkertons and the National Guard have acted like their private militia. The system in the Deep South has been even more brutal. After the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan terrorized the black population until they had built a new caste system. This system lasted for another hundred years.

    World War I

    After World War I there were waves of violence across Europe. Elites used both high and low roads to take power. The violence was either elitist or mass-action. High roads involved coups, assassination, and strategies of tension. A strategy of tension is an attempt to ride chaos to power.

    The low route to power is the conquest of the streets or mass mobilization. Bombing (or shooting) attacks might continue under this strategy.

    Conclusion

    There’s more. Much more. And believe it or not, it only gets worse from here. The main point is that we are in the world of rightist tactics. Lies and accusations of the Left are not meant to be true or accurate. They are meant to stir people up.

    Wilson, Tim. Rightist Violence: An Historical Perspective. International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 2020. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep23578. Accessed 15 Sept. 2025.

  • The Coup is Complete

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    Our YouTube pundits still think the great question of our time is, Does Donald Trump know Putin is using him? But I think it’s clear that Donald Trump is a willing errand boy for the entities who purchased his presidency and continue to enrich him. In other words, the worst has already happened. The coup is complete.

    Yet we continue to hope. Therefore, it’s important to think in detail about what this means. The evidence suggests that the United States has been sold to the highest bidder. Trump’s bowing and scraping to Putin is evidence of this. When Trump whinnies to his MAGA followers about how they’re not going to have a country any more unless… he’s telling lies on two levels. Trump was never concerned about saving the country for MAGA. He wants it for the new rulers of the universe.

    If the Coup is Compete, Can We Get the Country Back?

    What we should be asking is whether we can get the country back from its new owners: Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and various others.

    To answer this, we need to consider how the coup happened in the first place. It took time and planning. The entire enabling structure was already in place before the 2024 election, including the Supreme Court and corrupt members of Congress. However, it is now much worse than we realize thanks to collusion by the legacy press. They make it hard to see the whole picture.

    Trump is the Immediate Danger

    Trump didn’t orchestrate this. He is merely the final piece of the puzzle. However, his presence in the White House is the immediate danger. His very presence in that office is our undoing. Each moment he remains in power we sink deeper into the abyss.

    Why? It’s a Question of Who Trump Serves

    Why do I say this? Let’s look at who Trump serves. He does not serve the people. We know Elon Musk literally bought the presidency for Donald Trump, but we fail to think beyond that point. No one mentions for example that Musk has had regular meetings with Vladimir Putin since 2022, and probably earlier.

    Musk demonstrated what he’s capable of doing and for who when he shut down Starlink during a pivotal push by Ukraine to retake territory from Russia in late September 2022. This cut coverage in areas including Kherson, a strategic region north of the Black Sea that Ukraine was trying to reclaim. The Ukrainian army’s operation failed as a result, although it eventually reclaimed some of the territory. This is the first known instance of Musk shutting off Starlink coverage over a battlefield during a conflict, and it potentially allowed him to control the outcome of a war.

    Elon Musk’s Russia-Centered Geopolitics

    Also in 2022, Musk proposed a peace plan that echoed Moscow’s positions. Crimea should be formally recognized as part of Russia and votes should be held in Russian-occupied regions under UN supervision. More recently, Musk criticized the provision of US aid to Kyiv and suggested that Ukraine can’t win the war.

    Elon Musk’s Technological and Financial Barricade

    Of course Ukrainian leaders strenuously object to this, but the US isn’t listening. There have been calls for investigations into Musk’s contacts with Russian officials, but according to the BBC, Musk has too much value as a contractor and too much control over critical technologies.

    And it continues. Since the August 2025 summit between Trump and Putin, Trump has been plastering the airwaves with messages about Putin’s dislike of mail-in ballots. This is obviously in line with Trump’s efforts to manipulate U.S. elections.

    Elon Musk, Israel, and Gaza

    The Israeli entity is another influence that contributed to Trump’s success in the 2024 election. Naturally, Musk has been meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu at least since September of 2023. Although Netanyahu is a war criminal and Musk openly performs Nazi salutes, they have discussed antisemitism on X, among other topics.

    Musk met Netanyahu again in November of 2023 and visited a kibbutz that was raided by Hamas fighters on October 7. After this trip Musk backed Israel’s war on Gaza.

    While it may be relevant to mention that Musk’s trip to Israel was self-serving, the selfish motives of an oligarch don’t improve the odds that democracy will survive. Musk went to Israel because of a post on X that triggered withdrawals of advertisements by corporate giants like Apple and IBM. Musk was also allowing advertisements from major corporations to appear next to Neo-Nazi and white nationalist content. Finally, the European Union was probing X because of disinformation and violent content about Israel’s war on Gaza.

    But regardless of Musk’s reasons for this visit, it had real consequences for Israel and Gaza. Musk reached an agreement with Israel ‘in principle’ that internet access to Gaza may only be provided to Gaza with units operated by Israel and with the approval of the Israeli Ministry of communications.

    We The People have Additional Enemies

    The Kochs are another part of the coalition that has brought the United States to its knees. The Kochs and the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have had a long relationship. When Mormon apostle Ezra Taft Benson was thinking about running for president in 1968, he had the backing of the 1976 Committee, of which 14 of its officers and members were on the National Council of the John Birch Society. This committee included Fred C. Koch.

    More recently, Mike Lee, Congressman from Utah, raged over Trump’s loss in 2020. Then, when a man impersonating a police officer killed Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Lee chortled on X that this is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way. The assassin was not a Marxist. He was not even a Democrat.

    The Federalist Society

    Mormon leadership was instrumental in establishing the Federalist Society. This is the organization that has filled the Supreme Court with right-wing justices who indulge Trump. They have aided his destruction of American immigration law, election law, education, and medicine. Yet the Church continues to enjoy tax-free status.

    To the Oligarchs and Their Minions

    This article is not a condemnation. It is a reckoning. I have no doubt that those of you who are tearing down our institutions and terrorizing our citizens are on the wrong track. For one thing, you are unrealistic about the nature of leadership and authority. The ideal leader, whether king or president, rules with the consent of the people under his rule. Barking orders and causing physical harm are the actions of brutes, not leaders. Your behavior is not admirable and it won’t inspire the loyalty of those you rule.

    You seem to be trying to emulate dictators of times gone by, but all you communicate, other than your own fury, is fear and loathing. What is your ideal world? We see no light at the end of the tunnel. Do you? You seem to have no vision other than your own supremacy. Meanwhile, in your determination to be supreme, you violate the creeds you claim to live by and encourage your loved ones to follow you in this behavior. There is no justification in law or religion for your actions.

    Do you have in mind a common, mean, cruel, stingy, sordid, ugly existence that will require your constant vigilance to stay in control? If so, this vision has no redeeming qualities. Even if you carve out a privileged haven for yourself in the midst of this strange creation, the harm you have done will hover over it like a dark cloud.

    Stop this now. Work to undo the harm you have caused and ask the people to forgive you. You can still reverse your course and earn the trust and gratitude of your fellow citizens. Work to foster the new world that is being born. Don’t bring it all crashing down. Give it a chance to bloom.

  • I Wish This Was Just Paranoia

    Reading Time: 2 minutes
    I Wish This Was Paranoia

    I wish this was just paranoia, but it’s real. It seems to me the current political environment is calculated to stomp all over everything we stand for. It is eery how well-aimed certain activities appear to be in this regard. But the most disorienting thing about it is that Trump has no legal authority and yet, like a bad penny, he remains at the head of our country.

    The Problem With Donald Trump and His Crowd

    Trump’s so-called authority is based on acting like he has a right to it. We all know this is wrong, but strangely we don’t quite know how to process it. I propose that we begin by reminding ourselves every day that Donald Trump is a felon and he rules at the whim of wealthy idiots, who also have no authority.

    Trump’s election in 2024 was not legal. He was only allowed to appear on the ballot thanks to ‘conservative’ manipulation of the Supreme Court. Therefore, his presence in the White House is nothing more than insubstantial hocus pocus. We betray the Constitution every time we talk about him as though he belongs there.

    However, there is a more horrifying part of this–the shadowy cabal in the background with plans to duplicate Trump when he’s gone. The cabal is helped along by the silence of our news media, which is supposed to be helping us. Meanwhile, the media’s pundits harangue us for not doing anything to stop the bad guys. What exactly are they suggesting I wonder? I assume they mean we should protest even though protests are ongoing.

    Counting Our Blessings?

    If this was the wild west we would form a posse and hang the bastards–anything less would be futile. But I don’t think that’s what the pundits have in mind. If they dared to suggest such a thing, they wouldn’t remain in their cushy jobs for long.

    Then there’s the famous progressive tactic of fighting the bastards through the electoral system. Sadly, the only positive effect I can see from our participation the 2016 and 2020 elections is that we forced them to show their hand before they were ready. They have actually been here for decades betraying us in small increments in hopes that we wouldn’t notice what they were doing. Now we see them.

  • A Problem With the Progressive Conversation

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    There is a problem with the progressive conversation. Progressives have apparently forgotten everything that has happened since the 2016 election. Maybe that’s why they keep trying to help the Democratic Party. They started doing this while the Biden administration was still in control and they continued through the Harris campaign. Now they’re scratching their heads over what they see as Democratic incompetence in dealing with Trump. This is very frustrating.

    Progressives are ignoring certain facts, which I list below. Those with knowledge of American politics will have to decide if the following facts are helpful. It’s important to mention that improving the conversation may not improve the political situation. But if the alternative media channels insist on talking about politics they should consider all the facts. Otherwise they will just add to the chaos.

    The 2016 Election

    1. Progressives’ ability to remember certain important facts would improve the conversation.
      • The Democratic Party demonstrated its ability to keep a candidate out of the White House. Yet Trump is the President.
      • Some Democrats openly admitted during Bernie’s campaign that they preferred Trump to someone like Bernie.
      • The DNC’s frantic and obvious effort to destroy Bernie’s candidacy–twice– was suspicious. In my opinion the Democrats chose suspicious behavior over decorum, even though the best competitors they could offer clung to an establishment worldview rejected by progressives.
      • In the 2016 campaign, the DNC styled Hilary Clinton as the Democratic version of an emperor. Think white pantsuit, golden lighting, arms raised like a prizefighter. Maybe that’s why she couldn’t communicate to the voters why she wanted to be president.
      • Donald Trump announced his candidacy after a meeting with Bill Clinton.
      • Hilary received enough cash after her loss to Donald Trump to purchase the estate next to her New York residence.

    The 2024 Election

    1. Since Trump’s second inauguration, the Democratic Establishment has continued to act as though they are watching a play. It took Elon Musk’s outrageous behavior to jolt Congressional Democrats out of their stupor.
      • During Bernie’s campaign, Members of Congress didn’t need an unelected billionaire to wake them up. They were united in their contempt for Bernie. This attitude filtered down to state Democratic parties. I believe the Maricopa County Democratic Party is a good example of the DNC’s thorough organizing effort.
      • We shouldn’t forget that the DNC did not stand behind Joe Biden in 2024. In addition, they failed to inform the electorate of the Biden/Harris administration’s strengths.
      • Why did it take so long for Congress to become ‘aroused’, as Chuck Schumer put it? Were they waiting for their cue from the DNC?
      • At least one Democratic Representative may have received a cue. This is Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Leader of the US House of Representatives. He claims the Republicans are in control and the Democrats can’t do anything about it. Jeffries almost sounds like he’s calling for someone else to step in. But maybe it only seems that way to me because of my own background.

    The Enemy From Within

    1. Donald Trump has told us that the problem in America is ‘the enemy from within’.
      • The Mormon Church has been warning its membership about the enemy from within for decades. There will come a time, the Church claims, when the Constitution will be hanging by a thread. At that time Mormon leaders will be called upon to step in and rescue us.
      • The Church also predicts that it will be put in charge of ‘poor relief’. This is the exact term used for the Catholic Church when it was still a European institution. At its height, the Catholic Church owned a third of the land of Europe. We don’t know how much land the Mormon Church now owns worldwide because it is often bought furtively. But we know it’s a lot.
      • The Church in Utah uses the US welfare program to pressure recipients to be active in the Church. This aspect of the current crisis makes me believe these actors are no joke. There is a takeover in progress and its exact characteristics, while not known to us, have already been worked out.
      • Jonathan Rauch has been making the rounds of certain alternative media channels to promote the Mormon Church as an authority on civic religion.

    See also: The Foundation of American Civil Religion