letters from a weirdo

Please check out the corresponding pod (up top). I always record a podcast first and then promise myself I’ll only write a tiny podcast description. Do I keep that promise? Nah. I end up writing an entire damn essay. It’s an affliction. (Anyhow, the podcast helps flesh out this essay— and vice versa.)

We begin at the beginning. White Christian nationalists are religious extremists who are known sexual abusers, financial fraudsters, and funders of domestic terrorism. Because this country is allergic to holding white men accountable, so long as they play victim, no one outside of our national intelligence seemed to give a good goddamn about the clear and present danger Christian nationalists have always posed to our democracy.

This collective homicidal negligence has allowed a treasonous, criminal organization—with a bottomless resume of domestic terrorism, financial fraud, and the wanton sexual abuse of children—to infiltrate one of the main political parties in our country. Now, known traitors to our country, who regularly engage in domestic terrorism, have access to every lever of power that was meant to protect us from the violence of religious extremism.

Sidebar: Y’all do recall that that’s what democracy in the United States was supposed to solve, right? People in Europe were unaliving each other left and right over disagreements within practicing Christianity— they killed each other over that s**t all the time, and in the most horrific ways. Us regular people of non-religious or non-Christian backgrounds weren’t even allowed to exist in that framework. The freedom from religion that was instituted in THIS country, from its inception, was meant to stop religious extremists from killing and otherwise persecuting people who didn’t think or live like them. The Heritage Foundation wants to axe our democracy and usher in a new reign of yeehaw peepaw religious extremism.

These people intend to wreck our democracy. They keep telling you this. And yet somehow, we are all still focused on the dishonesty of a party of Christian nationalist grifters, as if that’s the real outrage. People, these are fascists. They are always gonna project their filth onto others, just like they’ll always piss on you and tell you it’s raining.

For the love of democracy, people, Kevin Roberts— extremist in chief at the Heritage Foundation— plainly said there were parts of Project 2025 plan they refused to share publicly because they didn’t want to give the opposition the heads up to plan a response. This is also the dude who said he was waging a revolution which would be “bloodless” if the left allows it to be.

People. This isn’t a potato po-tah-toe situation. He’s saying they plan to shred our constitution, subject us to religious extremism, and kill you if you get in the way. Once more with feeling, Christian nationalists have always been terrorists.

This country keeps on shrugging off the seriousness of Christian nationalism, in the cultish political circle-jerk of “boys will be boys,” and it has led us to this exact s**t-show moment.

I need you to grasp this, stop focusing on their duplicity, believe when they say extremist s**t, and recognize that damn near every constitutional and legal means we once had to resist them is rendered moot because they’ve waged a coup. Democrats can fight hard all they want, but they’re literally dealing with domestic terrorists in suits and the last vestiges of Republicans they blackmailed with kompromat and threats of violence to keep complicit. That’s the program here. So we need to stop acting like politicians are heroes.

No one goes into politics to lead— these people are bred from the time of prep school to be followers. That’s who they are. If you’re looking for leadership, realize that you are the leader we need. Realize that the only way we save our country and protect our neighbors from religious extremists is by engaging in local community defense and nonviolent civil resistance. In short: snap out of it, babes, or we’re all gonna get killed.

These people are weaponizing your need for truth and fair play to gaslight you into docility. Stop being outraged that lying liars would lie about wanting to murder our democracy and subject us to the terroristic decrees of white Christian nationalists.

Of course they’re going to lie. I’m not sure many axe-murderers are out there like: “Okay, I’m gonna invite you on a hike and then do you a murder.”

I want to be generous and assume some folks are trapped in cognitive dissonance, so I want to emphasize: they need you disoriented; fascists cannot rule if you’re not disoriented. The constant gaslighting is intentional psychological abuse that keeps you terrified and focused on them (glued to your phone) instead of getting out into your communities and developing local civil resistance pods to organize, train in nonviolent civil disobedience, and protect your neighbors from domestic terrorists— because THAT’S who these people are, and that’s who they have always been.

Snap out of the fog.

Step away from the outrage merry-go-round, meant to keep you glued to your screen, and get active in your local communities.

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This administration has a need for there to be violence— or something they can misconstrue as violence— on the streets. In particular, it seems that misinformation and disinformation campaigns are used to target BIPOC and LGBTQ veterans. They create an outrage inducing story and tell people “No one is reporting on this story. Share it widely.” Because the story is an emotional one, people just share without verifying.

This is why it is important to google before you share. Let me give you an example of what this regime is trying to do.

Recently, a person I follow here shared this story:

This story isn’t accurate. It recycles a story from 2017, which was also recycled in 2020. It was also on a Q Anon forum. As with all misinformation and disinformation stories, bad faith actors exaggerate a horrible actual truth in outrage-inducing slant rhyme. Understand this isn’t me dismissing the endemic violence directed at BIPOC women, girls, and femmes. We have a serious human trafficking and white supremacy rot at the core of our country, but I believe bad faith actors are trying to stir malcontent so that people start getting restless to fight.

We must remember that we are getting played and surveilled online. We must remember that an anti-Black supremacist in chief is intentionally trying to provoke outrage. But it is clear someone is manipulating behind the scenes because they want our BIPOC neighbors in the streets and angry— because white supremacy wants to put on a violent show of force with Black and Brown bodies being brutalized.

What really alarms me is a pattern in this misinformation phenomenon, because it’s targeted: Every single misinformation video I’ve seen has been circulated by a BIPOC or PGBTQ ex-ICE agent or a retired veteran. I’m not sure if these trolls are targeting marginalized vets or what.

I f*****g hate these fascist f***s for manipulating people like this.

Don’t get played. Get offline and into your communities.

Our neighbors in Los Angeles are being terrorized by ICE. This regime is trying to make an example of California for what it represents: the American dream of diverse people getting along and thriving.

Christian extremists and white nationalists, the most dangerous terrorist groups in our country, have seized the levers of power because a racist conman and serial rapist let them take a hatchet to our country, because he need crazy allies to avoid jail time.

Eventually, there won’t be a Congress anymore. Right now, we actually still have a government in place, but Christian extremists will make sure that no one can make their voices heard, because what they are doing is shameful, cowardly, depraved, immoral, and wildly unpopular. Their ideas about life cannot survive outside of coercion.

Your governor isn’t going to save you, nor is your mayor. It is down to you.

The essential thing is that you cannot let them pull you into anything that could be misconstrued as a “violent” response. You have to steal the optics from them.

If you block the streets with your cars, the kidnapping apparatus can’t get to you and no one gets shot, teargassed, or kidnapped. There aren’t enough tow trucks in the city to stop an LA gridlock. Park your cars in the streets and walk away. Go on a work strike. White people, you need to make sure your BIPOC immigrant neighbors and your transgender neighbors are safe. Use the domestic partner violence networks, who are skilled in getting people to safe houses mentor you in this. Help them disappear from Palantir. Strike. Wait them out. Feed your sheltered neighbors. Focus on helping them, not showing up in the streets to square off with ICE. That is what they want. It’s a waste of energy that could be spent by blocking the regime’s kidnapping machine. Instead, turn your attention to demonstrating relentless solidarity with the regime’s targets. Keep them safe.

Don’t think these people will eventually settle down into some kind of miserable homeostasis. Fascists always escalate unless someone stops them. You have the agency and the resources to stop them. It’s time to fight like Ukraine.

To recap, when ICE invades your communities this is the strategy:

* block the streets with your cars

* take the keys and walk away

* remove house and apartment numbers

* remove or obscure street names and highway exit signs

* disappear the regime’s targets to safe secondary locations using DV networks

* engage in a general strike, which will be easy to do because: roads blocked

* refuse to give this regime the kind of engagement they are demanding from you, and rely on disciplined civil resistance

* refuse to give the regime the negative attention it wants and, instead, turn all of your attention to your targeted neighbors, which will be easy to do when on strike

* remember that this is a coup and these individuals have suspended constitutional law and are making s**t up as they go— you have a constitutional right to engage in civil disobedience when a tyrant is trying to terrorize us and steal our right to self-govern

* if you are an artist or musician in the city, now is the time for you to host free concerts outside and give your neighbors courage— these pro-democracy performances are also an excellent place to recruit your neighbors and mobilize them into mutual aid and community defense, because this is a war.

Neighbor, this is a spicy pod. Weirdo done brought the hot sauce today. Chalk it up to democracy boot camp.

I need you to be able to see where we’re at, stop pretending, and move beyond merely chopping wood and carrying water. You need to recognize that an extremist group—which our own intelligence agencies identified as the most dangerous terrorist threat posed to our democracy—has now seizes the legislature and the power of the purse. You need to recognize that a cadre of apartheid-loving white venture capitalists not only hacked our election but broke into our nation’s most sensitive computers, gave our nation’s secrets to Russia (and god knows who else), and then gave our personal data to another cadre of apartheid-loving white venture capitalists who then used it to create a police state database— so that when the Christian extremists have dragged the country into brutality and lawlessness, they can swoop in as “the cure” and claim democracy is “too outdated for this new era.”

I am trying to get you to come alive to the fact that while midterms may come, they will not be fair.

I don’t think you realize how bad this is going to get—and I’m kinda pissed about being called an alarmist, because it’s all going to happen because some of y’all have always been the C- student in the group project of our democracy. Y’all are still willing to coast because you’re only “concerned” but still comfortable, still so sure the white Christian nationalists— again, the biggest domestic terrorist threat to our country— won’t come for you.

So you’re what… maybe calling your representatives?

Maybe going to a protest in good weather?

Maybe just scrolling and reposting but absolutely sticking to your routine like it’s some lucky sock and you’re in the playoffs.

Your routine is over. Immediately. You cannot keep coasting. You need to work with your neighbors. This podcast gives you a checklist of things that need doing, immediately, in your neighborhood.

Y’all, I know some people say I’m bossy. But I’m not. I am an unbossed who already outlived twenty years of tyranny, and I refuse to get dragged back into hell. And I’m trying to pull you out of the flames and shove a bucket in your hand, because a lot of us are going to die unless you actually do your part.

Yes, I’m a little judgy. Suffer me that one kindness. Because dammit— I’m a middle-aged weirdo who’s a direct target of this regime, and I have been hauling ass on some very lonely streets because “good people” just wanted to stay polite and comfortable.

It’s time to ask yourself what you stand for. Hint: what you stand for isn’t what you profess on social media— it shows up in what you are willing to risk in the name of solidarity with the world around you.

You need to understand that the world these men seek to create in our ashes will not be avoidable simply by hopping in a plane to Canada, Thailand, or the EU. If we don’t contain this in the US, and if our allies don’t help us from other democracies, it’ll spread. Why? Because fascists, if unchecked, never stop.

And it’s not just Trump. These rich-ass men behind him, partnered with domestic terrorists to take us out so that they can steal what we’ve built and, after they’re done letting Christian extremists torture us, litter our ashes on their private beaches. They think that little of us. Of you. Because trust: all of us plebs are disposable to these guys.

Peter Theil doesn’t think regular people have a right to self-govern. Elon thinks you’re a non-player character (NPC). F*****g prove them wrong.

Get in this f*****g fight. We need you.

I need you.

My literal life depends on you giving a s**t.

Your neighbors’ lives depend on you giving a s**t.

Your kids’ lives depend on you giving a s**t.

Your life is in the balance, too, babe. Pitch in.

Neighbor, I’m not just a weirdo. I’m a weirdo who loves to read, and I’m a weirdo who has spent the last twenty years mobilizing communities to create change and studying the elements that make pro-democracy organizing successful. Right now, I am spending every bit of my time pouring over insights about how our neighbors across the world have toppled tyrants and reclaimed the right to self govern. This blog and its corresponding podcast summarize the broad strokes of what needs to be done.

If you want our movement to win, we need to outlast, outsmart, and outmaneuver the fascists.

The task before us— the practical stuff you and I can do to move the dial— isn’t very difficult but will require us to be very disciplined. There are four concrete things each of us must do at the local level if we want to win this.

If you’re interested, I invite you to read on. Also, the podcast that corresponds to this blog isn’t bad either. It may be rough, but it’s descriptive, and I think it adds another layer to accompany what I’ve written below:

* Commit to a broad rallying message. This isn’t about Republicans and Democrats, this is about preserving the People’s right to self-govern and fair representation. Signage and public-facing community art needs to focus on pro-democracy messaging. Democracy isn’t just a beautiful experiment on coexisting and collaborating with each other to get our collective needs met, it is also a steadfast commitment to a belief that We the People have the right to self-govern and live with dignity. That’s what fascist elites are trying to take away from us. They won’t win.

* Commit to peaceful protests that leave no footprint. Neighbor, I can understand wanting to smash things and throw punches. A war is being waged on us. To be clear, however, what I’m seeing at protests, by and large, like 99.8% of the time, is just regular people protesting and marching and then getting shot at and teargassed and trampled by law enforcement officers (LEOs). That’s forked up. It’s not okay. I think because of the aggressive response to peaceful protestors by LEOs, and the way this administration is intentionally trying to provoke outrage with their wanton cruelty, 0.02% of protestors are starting to throw tear gas canisters back, or they’ll throw a water bottle at an ICE vehicle, or they’ll burn a self-driving taxi car. So let me clarify right out of the gate: I understand the need to express rage, which is why I am asking elders, healers, and community leaders to public varied opportunities that allow people to channel that anger through contained destruction, fierce creativity, and collective movement. Host a community rage room or axe throwing gathering— set up community punching bags and host free self-defense classes. Create first-amendment zones to create resistance art. We need to create spaces for that 0.2% energy to be channeled, and we need to honor it. But we also need to understand that this regime is looking for any footage to doctor with AI in order to justify violent crackdowns. Fascist elites lie to remain in power, and we cannot give them any ammo. We need to be smarter than them. Anticipate their moves. So I am inviting you to enrage the fascists by refusing to give them the footage they need and, instead, expressing creative civil disobedience in our public protests. The other reason this is important is because tyrants know that if a part of the movement fractures and becomes violent, the success of the movement drops from 70% likely success to only 30% likelihood of success. This is why fascists always provoke; they are seeking any element that can be misconstrued to justify a violent response. We must move in ways that make their provocations not only useless but also irrelevant. This isn’t about our collective and historical rage not being valid; how you feel is not only valid, it is holy— it is pure spirit reminding you to protect what you love. You need to feel and express that, but we also need to be strategic. This is why I am calling for communities to create ceremonial spaces to express rage and while also committing to practicing a disciplined front at mass protests. I recommend creating pop-up training several times a week to train people of all ages, especially young people, in tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience— not as a matter of tone-policing or respectability politics but an intentional ceremony of passing on generational wisdom to the next. All of our communities have elders practiced in these methods. It is time to humbly invite these elders to lead us in workshops to that we know what to do when an bad-faith interloper attempts to escalate.

* Recruit law enforcement to stand down. My white neighbors, particularly white clergy and white women who have children, need to begin campaigning your local law enforcement officers to get them to commit to non-escalation. Explain that we want what they want: a right to self-govern— a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is especially important that these law enforcement officers (and mayors’ offices) hear from small children and their families. Because these little kids, when they cannot join us on the street, are protesting on video games— they know their future is on the line here. They see that their future is being stolen from them. Give them an outlet to make a difference. Mobilize kids’ letter writing campaigns. Deliver cookies with handwritten letters to asking officers to stand down and not obey orders to hurt their neighbors who simply want the right to self-govern, and asking them to refuse to let unidentified adults in masks hurt and kidnap their friends. White women, it is time for you to use your tears— which is a kind of political capital only you have. (Some of us aren’t allowed to be sad and, when we are, we are told our tears and our sadness and outrage are threatening. You will be listened to, especially if you go in groups.) Clergy, I am asking you to meet with police captains and all law enforcement officers as people of faith— explain to them the moral moment and what Spirit asks from each of us at this time. If you are ignored, hold services outside police precincts. Bring children to sing peace-loving songs outside the precinct. Why am I saying this? It’s strategy. Barring an oddball scenario where all the fascists behind Trump say, “Actually, we are done being fascists. You can take back your country and self-govern. Our bad,” every single anti-fascist movement that has succeeded (in returning to democracy, not just regime change) has required security forces to stand down. So “security forces” means, practically speaking, who the tyrant orders to beat you down. By and large, the people they’re getting to do that are our local law enforcement. So we need to start converting law enforcement officers to defect from the fascist regime— evident in their commitment to stand down if a tyrant asks them to violently shut down protests. This is a huge project, but it is ESSENTIAL that you do it, because if the fascists try to pull something like stealing the midterm elections, removing Democratic governors, or pulling a Constitutional Convention that wipes all the amendments from the constitution, then we’re going to need to shut down the country— and to do that, we need local law enforcement to stand down. To clarify, we are not asking law enforcement to change political affiliations or anything else, only that they refuse to protect power when power is trying to rob us all of our liberties and our right to self-govern.

* Recruit your neighbors to join the movement and make a joyful sound. It’s time for door to door canvassing to recruit members to the pro-democracy movement. It’s time for community potlucks and pro-democracy picnics. It’s time for community meetings in high school gyms and public libraries. It’s not enough to show up at protests. We need to make sure our vulnerable community members have resources. We need to make sure our vulnerable community members don’t get disappeared. We need to find ways to care for one another as the fascist elites abandon us while absconding with our money. We need to build not just a coalition, but spaces of encouragement and neighborliness. Now is the time for pro-democracy BBQs, dance parties for democracy at a local park, free concerts for the people, and voter registration campaigns. Now is the time to identify unbought and unbossed leaders you want to nominate to run at every level of office, so that we can replace our town, city, state, and federal government representatives with people who work for us. Make sure everyone is getting fed and has access to the meds and resources they need, even if it means we have to share in unconventional ways. Make sure you’re hiding the people this regime is trying to disappear. It won’t always be like this, but we have to outlast the regime, and part of that means refusing to be divided from here on out. As neighbors, we must commit to not letting these rich weasels try to win elections by getting us to hate our neighbors. No more. Now, in this time of brutality, we fight back by building beloved community from the ground up.

What happens next is up to you. No one is coming to save you but you. The good news is that we have a lot going in our favor, even if the legal skullduggery and the theater of cruel lawlessness tries to convince us otherwise.

This game is ours to lose. We can win this, but we need you in this. We need you to find your better angels, roll up your sleeves, and commit to weekly (if not daily) local action to build our united states against fascism.

Now you can’t say you don’t know what to do. Now you have an idea. I am one person who practices community organizing, who has trained thousands of volunteers, taught thousands of students, and has spent an embarrassing amount of my free-time reading books to further educate myself about successful civic movements. This isn’t Weirdo Knows Best— it’s this weirdo has an general idea. Now run with it.

Neighbor, I’ve been brought low today. Can’t say what brought it on, specifically, besieged as we are by moral injury upon moral injury. But I fell into the well— almost as if I were moving through the world like a phantasm: there to witness the horrors and unable to stop it with the not unsubstantial force of my middle-aged body.

This era of move fast and break s**t is a very clever way to mask an uncivil war upon one’s neighbors— refusing both decency and the a basic acknowledgement that all human beings are deserving of dignity and a commitment to do no harm.

These men move fast not because they are confident but because they are scared.

They want you and I to feel as if power rushes past us, and we are never fast enough to latch on and slow it all down. They want you overwhelmed so you think their race into wreckage is a form of power when, in truth, they run fast to flee their obvious illegitimacy.

If you listen to their version of the story, the damage is already done. They have all the power. They are unstoppable and untoppable.

I beg to f*****g differ.

Know this: these men are telling us a specific story of power, and their reign depends on us believing in that story. As a powerful ally reminded me today: power needs collective belief to remain powerful. And thus the brutality comes in to inspire fear— which says “pay attention.” Indeed, I recall the weak man once say to a reporter that he wanted “his people” to snap to attention just like Kim Jung Un’s people. But that’s the funny thing about emotion— a weak man cannot harness it. We do.

Our fear may indeed tell us to pay attention, but it doesn’t tell us what to notice— it doesn’t force what we make of our observations. And what we notice, if we actually pay attention, is that this man is not powerful.

Power doesn’t require force, because it is backed up with a collective belief in power.

This is a weak man who has stepped way the hell out of his lane, and he’s trying to scare us and con us into remaining in power. These are a band of criminals, weak and weasely men, who have forgotten themselves.

Do remember that every lie is a confession: the weak man requires your belief to become a strong man— and we do not believe in him, and neither do many of the individuals who claim to have voted for him.

They need us to believe that their story of power is the only story that exists. They need you to forget yourselves, to forget your power.

I have been asked to remind you who you are— and who we are, together.

So if you’ve been brought low, may our elders’ story find you and take root.

Be a good neighbor and pass the message on.

Neighbor, I keep promising myself I won’t write novels for the podcast description, and I’m going to try to keep this short to encourage you to listen. Here’s my best shortest summary:

This situation is traumatizing. It’s important you understand what being traumatized means so that you can understand what needs to happen. Trauma isn’t just about being wounded— it’s about being wounded in isolation, without the healing balm of an actual community. This is why every Veterans Against Fascism group keeps telling you to commit to weekly and daily communal acts of resistance.

The other thing you need to understand is that trauma comes with our individual responses to danger. Those responses are: fawn, freeze, flight, and fight. In the podcast, I help you identify your relative risk, not in terms of your personal comfort, but based on whether or not you are in a social group the regime has explicitly identified as a target.

I also explain why, on a collective level, people who are not being targeted by the regime need to move into fight mode. But this fight is a particular kind of fight mode that is strategic, communal, coordinated, principled, and nonviolent. This podcast will help you understand what a healthy, successful, collective fight mode might look like for your community.

I am not sharing this to tell you weirdo knows best. I’m writing this to the part of yourself that keeps saying: “I don’t know what to do. I feel so powerless in this moment.”

Neighbor, you are not. You are actually the most powerful group in this battle to save our democracy—from people who have very explicitly told you they don’t want a democracy anymore. Fighting back in a principled, strategic, and nonviolent way is— as history has proven over and over again— the best way to bring down a tyrant and preserve your democracy.

Neighbor, there are more of us than there are of them, and there really is a reason why people chant: “The people united will never be defeated.” It’s to remind you of a truth our ancestors have passed down, generation to generation. It’s ancestral wisdom.

The key part of that chant is “unity.”

This moment calls on you to be in local community.

This moment calls on you to love the stranger and the outcast, to see your neighbors as compatriots, and to coordinate locally to develop a “fight back” strategy.

Every community is a potential battlefield. You have seen the fascists invade other neighborhoods, and he will continue, because fascists never stop unless they’re stopped. By us.

The first thing is to recognize you’re being attacked in the first place. The second thing is to challenge yourselves to collectively develop a strategy to fight back against fascism where you’re at right now. To win this, you are going to need to relearn what it means to be in community.

This podcast gives you an actual plan for civil disobedience as a community. Moving forward, I will do my best in this space to share with you ways to fight back in a way that is strategic and nonviolent.

It’s about working smart, not working hard.

It’s about working together, not being a hero.

Every battle that has ever been won has been fought collectively.

We got this.

Special note: I have been trying to keep these podcasts to twenty minutes, but I ended up at thirty minutes this time. You have my enthusiastic encouragement to just speed up my voice.

You are not without agency. I need you to find it. Immediately.

Donald Trump has weaponized your need for normalcy, and he’s using it to get you to incrementally accept more and more horrors.

You look at the politicians in Congress as if they can stop this. They keep telling you to rise up because they know they can’t do this alone. We have always been the most powerful part of this country, but we are lazy and docile. That ends now.

Curtis Yarvin, the fascist turdstain who is mentoring all the fascist s***s—from Theil, Musk, and Vance and all the PayPal gang—has said on loop that “the left” (by which he means normal people with a conscience) are too suspicious of conspiracies to even be able to see the one heading right for them. They are weaponizing your rational mind against you. These are deeply fucked up people, and if you’d read the s**t they say right out in the open, you would know this.

Friends, they mean to kill a whole bunch of people— with policy and with guns.

There’s a reason Amazon Prime is streaming some new show called Warfare. They’re trying to normalize the brutality we are descending into, because you are not doing enough to stop it.

Worry about f*****g midterms later.

They’re not coming. Chris Murphy has been trying to tell you this. You refuse to listen.

The solution to all of this— every bit of it— is so simple:

Stop working. Stop buying s**t. Stop going online. Block the goddamn streets with every vehicle you can find (take the keys and walk away) so the fascists don’t have any roads to get to you. Take down the directional signage— from the street signs, the highway exits, and the house numbers. Turn off your phones. Take off your smart watches. Stay at home and share with your neighbors, because this is war.

Literal military and masked militia are in our streets. We have been denied habeus corpus. Trump has said the homegrowns are next. Your neighbors are being kidnapped off the streets. You are having teargas and rubber bullets fired at peaceful protestors, while rightwing media and Palantir are making false AI footage to claim LA is a war zone. It’s not. But neighbors are terrified, and they’re kidnapping migrant kids out of f*****g foster homes.

We are under siege, and you and I are the only ones who can stop this.

Face the facts that our institutions, all the way down to the military, are being gutted from within. Why? Because these men are not trying to preserve a country with institutions. They want techno-feudalism, where the world is ruled by well armed CEO kings. All white. All men. All nationalist.

You will not have any shred of your life left if you don’t fight back now.

I don’t know how to get you to listen to me but, this one time, the weirdo isn’t wrong. If you’ve even moderately read the news, I know you feel the dread. That’s a message something evil is afoot. Listen to your bodies. That’s information you’re ignoring.

You know your neighbors aren’t coming back once they’re taken. Jesus Christ, there are still kids MISSING from the first time Stephen Miller was whispering his weasely racist b******t into Trump’s ears. We will die if you keep on pretending this is normal.

If you aren’t willing to sacrifice something now, to experience discomfort now, hell will await us. But if you find the f*****g courage to participate in a country-wide strike and block the streets and take down directional signage and get offline (where Palantir does its spying) we will be able to save this country.

Our neighbors in other democracies will join our strike. They keep telling you this. But we have to lead.

The only way this will work is if you wake up to the actual reality in front of you. Snap out of your denial. Take a risk. Engage in some civil disobedience, and save people’s lives. This podcast will help you imagine how to do that, and why it’s so important that you do.

You cannot keep pretending someone else will save you, nor can you trust an aging dark triad personality won’t eventually pew pew us in the streets. You can’t pretend he won’t enable a violent false flag on the Capitol (AGAIN) and unalive our neighbors serving us in Congress. This is a man who literally wanted to kill them the first time. His followers built a f*****g gallows outside the Capitol building. He never sent in the Guard because he wanted them to die. National intelligence and a handful of Capitol police stopped him. But now Trump and his goons have fired all the intelligence meant to keep us safe. He has fired all the JAGs who could step to him. And he put a literal landscaper and bagboy in charge of our anti-terrorism unit.

There is only one reason why you’d lower all of your nation’s defenses. He doesn’t want anyone to stop them this time, and I imagine he needs his Big Beautiful bill passed first. You know, “in about two weeks.”

Remember that Hitler unalived all of his political enablers, too, during the Night of the Long Knives. Why the f**k else do you think he freed those J6ers? This man wants to wreck this nation and kill all of us because he’s furious that, once more, he lost bigly. We didn’t vote for him. And like all dark triad types, the discard is Old Testament retribution. Think Pharaoh energy. Think of every power hungry mad king since time immemorial. No one will be spared but loyalists. And the rest of us will become fodder for reality television shows of torturing the libs on live television. Welcome to the Colosseum.

I’m not trying to scare you. I am trying to wake you the f**k up.

He is not going to go away if you look the other way.

Fascists.

Always.

Escalate.

Until.

They.

Are.

Stopped.

I am asking you to do more than share this emergency broadcast. Plagiarize it! Make it yours. Share it on your blog. Text it to your friends. Share it in your church bulletin. Email it to friends. Share these words on your own podcast. Make these words your own. Make it our collective declaration of independence.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

— Declaration of Independence July 4, 1774

Get up off your asses.

Grab your keys. Block the streets with your vehicles.

Remove all directional signage.

Go home. Love your neighbor.

Share with them. You will find a way.

Stop buying s**t. Stop working.

Get offline.

And hold the goddamn line.

Over and out.

– ♥️ Your Weirdo Friend

i don’t need a master’s degree in geopolitical history in the middle east to know that war is wrong. i don’t need to know about the history of iran to be able to call up my elected officials and demand that my tax dollars don’t go to bombing our neighbors.

countries aren’t teams we root for or against. this isn’t friday night football. human beings’ lives are on the line.

i need you to care about your neighbors in iran (and elsewhere) a bit more than how war with bombs might finally affect you.

countries are filled with human beings, and millions of people don’t deserve to die because our leaders don’t like their leaders—or because they don’t look like us or believe in the same things we do. i certainly don’t want someone to bomb us because of trump’s dumb fascist ass, so why do so many of us shrug at trump’s threats to bomb our neighbors in iran?

moreover, these are war crimes. neither israel nor the united states were provoked. this isn’t self-defense. it’s an attack without provocation. they’re feeding you the same b******t about nukes we’ve been fed for decades. our country has nukes and nuclear power. do you think someone should bomb us? do you realize the united states was the only country to ever drop a nuclear bomb?

related, every gd time fascist elites want to go to war (in order to steal our neighbors’ resources and hoard more power), they find no trouble at all in running false flag operations. neighbor, i think you’d be furious to know how often fascist elites have funded attacks on their own country as pretext for an unjust war. these are not people defending an invasion or combatting a fascist political coup: they’re often orchestrating one.

so no, we shouldn’t be dragged into a war by two corrupt unhinged b******s with no impulse control and zero ability to govern— both of them clinging to power to avoid jail. stop letting these fascist f***s gaslight you. this isn’t about hating israel or hating the united states: it’s about hating the manipulative mother-fluffers who hoard power and resources and claim they’re doing it in the name of “national interests.”

no one in this country “hates” the united states either. countries are made up of neighbors, and people tend to love their neighbors, which is to say they love their countries. we love each other and the land and planet we live on— or we should.

no, what people hate are greedy b******s, who rig the game, squeeze all the juice out of us, steal our tax dollars for their own self-enrichment, and then have the audacity to tell us it’s our fault that we can’t get ahead.

why do you think donald j. trump keeps on appealing to the new golden age? spoiler: the last golden age was for the fascist elite and the great depression for everyone else. eerily familiar eh?

it is the fascist elite who claim poor people “asking for handouts,” and not the people stealing our tax monies, are drains on society. it is the fascist elite, who access debt-free higher education at ivy league schools and then have the audacity to claim young people, who can’t afford a one-bedroom apartment on a full-time salary, are “fiscally irresponsible” and simply need to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” these people know damn well that they’re robbing young people their futures. they don’t care.

sometimes, i think the country we really hate is the united states of audacity.

and, just as we’ve become furious by the fascist elite exploiting us here, our neighbors all around the world are pissed off at the very same thing:

it’s not working people who are wrecking our ecosystem, destabilizing other countries, and bleeding people dry. it’s the ultra rich. why do you think every fascist elite spreads propaganda to fed-up workers about how it’s the chronically-exploited underclass who’s the real “drain on society”?

for pity’s sake! these are the same b******s who refer to poor people as the “surplus population”— or in elon musk’s techno-fascist parlance “the parasitic class.”

and when we dare to complain about their resource hoarding, the fascist elite wage disinformation and censorship campaigns to magically transform regular fed-up people into dangerous extremists who “hate our culture.” i beg to f*****g differ.

the narcissist’s conceit is that they confuse themselves with “our culture,” “our country.”

what’s really going on is that the fascist elite hate regular people so much that they make it impossible to live, and when we start to rise up, they spread hate to keep us divided.

these people aren’t gods or titans of industry: they’re government grifters who steal from you while trying to get you to hate the very democracy that, in theory, is supposed to take care of us all and protect all of us from tyranny. who tf do you think “the deep state” is, neighbor? it sure ain’t jesus behind the wheel. it’s them.

so if you’re wondering why some people overseas may “hate the united states,” consider that they may actually hate the fascist elites who destabilize their countries’ resources to extract wealth for themselves— while also grinding us into dust at home.

you and i and almost everyone we know aren’t really free; we’re chronically controlled, surveilled, and manipulated by the ultra-rich. our lives are leased back to us as a subscription service, and that’s the “best” case scenario. some of us are just disposable.

i share all of this to say, in this timeline, as the fascist chickens have come home to roost, we must endeavor to pay attention to the world outside our borders and really start to question power— because donald trump isn’t the disease: he’s a symptom of intentional systemic rot.

as we are fending off fascism at home, let us finally practice solidarity— let us learn about what dr. king referred to as the “web of mutuality” that binds us. let us stand up to war profiteers and christian extremists, who lie to our faces so they can send our neighbors here to kill our neighbors over there— not in the name of “national security” but in the name of their personal income security, while the rest of us live in precarity.

this country has been lulled to sleep with jingoism since before i was alive, and i’m no spring chicken. we just take whatever b******t we are fed. we have been encouraged to be profoundly incurious about the people killed with our tax dollars.

and look, if the fascist elites have a problem with fascist elites elsewhere, maybe it is time for them return to “traditional values” of the aristocratic duel, and rid the world of the “extractive population”— a reverse scrooge situation, where we turn to the actual parasitic class and say:

well, we’re ALL going to die sometime… so how about you do your own killing, settle your own beefs, and pay your goddamn tab, while you’re at it.

let us also recognize the war these malignant extractive s***s are waging on us at home right now, because every bit of this is connected. the spread of global fascism is coming from the same gd source abroad as it is at home. let me scooby-doo this one for you, neighbors: the call is coming from inside the house.

solidarity with ALL of our neighbors is the only way we get free.

whenever fascist elites promise you liberty at the expense of your neighbor’s, recognize it for the f*****g con it is.

they’re stripping poor people of healthcare, robbing us of social security, traumatizing lgbtq kids, and referring to your Black and transgender neighbors as “violent terrorists.” i’m sorry: who is it wearing baklavas and disappearing our neighbors off the street, again? it’s them.

these people always have a false flag or a reichstag’s fire in their back pocket— bespoke b******t to get you to hate your neighbors instead of the b******s robbing you blind. and it’s important you get this, because we’ve blown past the time for the “first they came for” poem.

they’re stealing our tax dollars to abduct our immigrant neighbors off the street.

it’s not about whether they came here “the right way.” give me a goddamn break. fascist elites stole this land, murdered first nations living here, then kidnapped, trafficked, enslaved, and tortured our Black and Brown neighbors to enrich themselves. does that sound like the “right way” to you?

does it echo with the way fascist elites are currently stealing our tax monies to enrich themselves by kidnapping, trafficking, and caging our immigrant neighbors? who do you think owns those private prisons?

does it resonate with the way fascist elites have also designed a “justice" system that only works for them and incarcerates our Black, Brown, trans, and poor neighbors. do you know that our incarcerated neighbors are force to work for an average daily wage of 86 cents— which, incredibly, is down from the 2001 average of 93 cents a day. who hires this upcycled slave labor? the fascist elites who own mega-corporations, of course.

while we’re on the topic of exploitation, it’s high time to tell a more nuanced story of migration: while it may be true that migrants “come here for a better life,” have you ever considered that fascist elites have pilfered taxpayer funds to destabilize their countries in the name of their self-enrichment? google the school of americas.

we’re too old for bedtime stories, neighbor. if you’re old enough to read this blog, then you’re old enough for adult truths:

our country doesn’t make a habit of waging war to spread “freedom” or “liberate” women and lgbt people.

look around, babes. you feeling free? feeling liberated lately?

so here’s the cliff’s notes of what a “regime change” actually means: fascist elites drive our “foreign policy.” they spend a pittance of their ill-gotten gains to engage in propaganda campaigns meant to induce “a fog of war” and convince us that their business interests are our national interests. these a******s steal our money and lure regular people to fight, murder, and die in their wars, all so they can get even richer while the regular people in our country are experiencing simultaneous housing, food, healthcare, and climate crises.

we also have the least-funded public education in the modern world, precisely because fascist elites don’t want you to get above your raising and learn more effective ways to call them out on their b******t. they don’t like accountability.

i mean, why’d you think jd vance sees higher education as “the enemy of the people”? kind of a rich statement coming from a dude with multiple degrees.

neighbor, jd vance and his christian nationalist techno-fascists aren’t upset with higher ed because it makes young people “hate america.” jesus h. christ! look at what they’re doing to our america right now! does this feel like “love” to you? no.

here’s what’s really up: fascist elites don’t like when people of other races, classes, cultures, and genders start being able to access even a fraction of the resources they have always had access to. these are pathetic, perpetual children who never learned to share, only take. they are all id and no super ego.

these men are so fragile they wrap themselves in “free speech” to engage in (and normalize) hate speech, when what they really want is for no one to be able to express an opinion but them. fascist elites hate it when people of other races, classes, cultures, and genders begin to access higher education and become educators, researchers, doctors, and political leaders who affect positive change in their communities.

fascist elites don’t want to share power because it gets in the way of their whole resource hoarding thing.

they also don’t like it when young people in this country learn history from a multicultural perspective. why? because human beings with empathy tend to very much disagree with the cruel b******t that frequently happens in our name and is regularly sold back to us as “freedom.”

empathy and education are a dangerous combination for the fascist elite—which is precisely why apartheid-loving grifters like elon musk and his buddy peter thiel claim empathy is a human flaw.

for the love of flapjacks, neighbor! it’s the men like elon musk, peter thiel, and donald trump who are the broken ones— not people with empathy. these people hail from families made obscenely rich through the dual grifts of imperialism and apartheid, who then socialized their kids to see the people around them as furniture. that, dear neighbor, is the real human flaw.

related, higher education can refine the one’s ability to communicate how fucked up their covert campaign of class warfare is. our feudal overlord’s entire scheme requires you to uncritically believe their s**t don’t stink, that they’re all somehow gods— above the law and immune to accountability.

it is no accident that fascist elites in this country have groomed you into viewing the ultra-rich as “natural leaders,” for no other reason than the fact that they’re rich. that’s what the apprentice and keeping up with the kardashians are all about— along with the new york times write-ups that sane-wash people like donald trump, peter thiel, and elon musk.

these aren’t “legacy presses.” by and large, they’ve been their vanity presses.

fascist elites make a point to buy up our newspapers and our radio and television stations to pump out propaganda and encourage you to idolize rich people for no other goddamn reason than because they’re rich.

they tell us to view them as a “success,” but when you live in a gold-plated high-rise while your workers need go-fund-me campaigns to pay for their cancer treatment, that’s not f*****g success: it’s exploitation. they need you to not get above your raising, because they need you in your place: under their loafers.

they have spent literal billions on a global campaign to turn the word the word “woke” into a slur. why? because people have awoken to the fact that every gd businessman we’ve had in office has gaslit us into believing they’re gonna make our country “successful”— while prices have ballooned and our wages have remained flat since the seventies. the fascist elite loot our tax dollars to enrich themselves and their friends— while they rig the system to dine and dash.

and just as we have begun to organize in earnest, these people fund a fascist f*****g coup here, precisely because we are becoming too educated, too organized, and too cooperative for them to maintain their grift. they hate “woke,” because they need us asleep to grift.

neighbor, it’s not just time to rise and shine. it’s time to rise up. together.

it’s time to dig deep and demonstrate solidarity for ALL of our neighbors, this time. none of us are free until all of us are free— because they’re using fear, lies, and a theater of cruelty to divide us so that we don’t turn on them.

let’s go. allons-y!

Neighbor, I usually write lengthy descriptions of my podcast episodes, but this time I think I’ll keep it simple and encourage you to listen (or read the transcript) instead.

The position I offer up here is that, in addition to developing local networks of support for ourselves and our vulnerable neighbors, we have some important evangelizing to do. I’m not talking about a religious message but a human one.

When we share the truth of our experience, we not only reclaim narrative ground but we also can light the way back to our shared humanity.

I understand if you think this is maybe too “woo woo,” but I’m not wrong here. If stories weren’t so powerful then fascist elites wouldn’t have bought up all the television stations and newspapers— nor would they flood online spaces with bots, trolls, and rigged algorithms that incite helplessness, isolation, and outrage. For decades, fascist elites have flooded the zone with s**t to knock us out of alignment with each other. They do that so they can stay in power and, to do that, they need to control the narrative— and not even just the official story: they want to control what we think and what we say, because they are terrified of our stories.

Why?

Because authentic stories that lead people back to their shared humanity and values reclaim the power from fascist elites. Their stories cannot compare to ours. Our light is bright— all of us.

Fascist elites also have spend billions telling you that your voice doesn’t matter, that no one cares how you feel or about what’s on your mind. Fascist elites need you to believe that there are two intractable teams, and once someone is on the other team they’re unreachable. Neighbor, that’s fascist elite propaganda, because they know your stories will pierce the veil so they don’t even want you to try.

That’s why they go after writers, teachers, artists, musicians, journalists, and many other neighbors who light the path back to right relationship. And right relationship is quite literally the antidote to fascism. There’s a reason why people say campaigns (and wars) are won through hearts and minds. Neighbor, we are at war— one that is not only political and physical but also spiritual in its violence.

It is time to start recognizing that story, art, emotion, authenticity, hope— all these things have been so thoroughly shamed out of us precisely so that people in power can stay in power. The very things those in power have attempted to mock, marginalize, and discount as “weak,” “trivial,” and “unimportant” are exactly the opposite. They don’t want you to access your power so they have spent centuries convincing you and your story don’t matter.

They don’t just matter: they’re the source of our power.

If you wanna find a way back to your story, check out the podcast. I think it might be one of my better ones. (Maybe.)