It's Time to Treat Cybercriminals Like Enemies of the State

For decades, cyberattacks were dismissed as nuisances—an IT hassle, a corporate PR problem, a passing headline. But that era is long gone. Cybercrime is no longer a side issue. It’s war.

And we’ve allowed it to escalate without consequence for far too long.

Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, I was part of an international cybersecurity group bringing together government, police and corporate IT together. We had speakers from our government, security and corporate IT and security people. Canada and as far away as Australia sent police and corporate to attend. We saw Royal Canadian Mounted Police as well as updates and attendees from our own FBI, Secret Service, NSA and others.

We warned that corporations should allocate at least 10% of their IT budgets to cybersecurity. We were ignored. We urged aggressive action against state-sponsored and independent cybercriminals. Again, ignored.

We knew, even then, about Chinese black-hat hackers—military-affiliated operatives working with state support. We saw what was coming. And we warned that without consequences, it would only grow worse.

I’ve said for years: if cybercriminals believe they’re safe in Moscow, Tehran, or Beijing, that illusion must be shattered. But instead, we let them find shelter—shielded by hostile regimes like Russia, China, and North Korea. We did nothing meaningful. And the threat metastasized.

Would it have been legally or diplomatically clean to extract or eliminate these actors in their safe zones? Probably not. But the alternative—doing little or nothing—has brought us here: a world where hospitals, schools, and infrastructure are held hostage with impunity.

It would have been cheaper, safer, and more effective to deal with these threats at the source—through covert action, strategic disruption, or targeted renditions—before the damage reached critical mass.

We didn’t act then. We must act now.

💣 A War Without Consequences

Hospitals shut down mid-surgery. 911 dispatch centers paralyzed. Public schools held hostage. Water supplies hacked. Infrastructure destabilized. All of it done remotely, cheaply, and anonymously by actors who know full well the U.S. won’t retaliate in any meaningful way.

They operate from basements in Belarus, cafes in St. Petersburg, office parks in Tehran—often with the full knowledge, protection, or even sponsorship of hostile governments.

Let’s be clear: these are not “hackers.” They are cyberterrorists.

And we’ve allowed them to operate with near impunity.

🧯 We've Had the Tools—But Not the Will

America’s military and intelligence infrastructure is second to none. We have elite cyber operations under U.S. Cyber Command. We have the NSA, CIA, FBI, and elite special forces units that can locate and neutralize threats anywhere on Earth.

But when it comes to the digital battlefield, our response has been tepid.

Ask yourself this: If a foreign militant shut down 200 hospitals or knocked out power to a city for ransom, what would we do? Would we shrug? Issue a press release?

Or would we send in boots, drones, or a team to extract the bastard?

We know the answer. But when it happens online, we act as if the rules have changed.

🧨 State-Sponsored Safe Havens

Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea routinely harbor and even employ the very criminals holding our infrastructure hostage. They don’t fear us—they mock us. Because while they’ve treated cyberwar as war, we’ve treated it as white-collar mischief.

That mistake has cost us trillions of dollars and countless lives.

It's time that harboring cybercriminals becomes an act of war. It's time those who cross that line, and the states that protect them, understand the cost.

🛡️ What Should Be Done

• Declare cyberterrorism a national security threat equivalent to physical terrorism.

• Authorize covert and kinetic operations against key targets, where attribution is confirmed.

• Kidnap, extradite, or eliminate cybercrime ring leaders, just as we do with international drug lords and terrorists.

• Punish states that shelter or protect cyber attackers with economic, diplomatic, or surgical precision.

• Create a public Cyber Most Wanted list—and pursue those people relentlessly.

⚖️ This Isn’t About Revenge. It’s About Deterrence.

No one wants reckless escalation. But inaction has consequences, too—and we are living them. Every ransomware attack that goes unanswered, every school held hostage for Bitcoin, sends a message to the next attacker:

“No one will stop you. America won't fight back.”

That needs to change.

🔚 Final Word

If these people had launched a missile, we would have acted. But they launch code—so we hesitate. That mistake has cost us dearly. It's time the people doing this—and the nations enabling them—feel the fear of god, or at least the certainty of justice.

Not in press releases. Not with toothless sanctions.

But in real-world consequences that make them stop.

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Invisible Achievements: Creating in a World That Only Sees What Screams

I’ve served my country in the military. I’ve built a career I retired from in IT, at the highest levels. I’ve written well received published books and produced films that have earned over 150 international awards — and I’ve used my platform, literally, to support people, democracy and dissent from crime and poor choices. 

Yet, still pretty unknown. This is not just about me. It's about so many I've met who are in the same situation. Brilliant musicians, busking on the streets to make money. Excellent authors and artists who can't get noticed. It's just the world we live in, that is only getting more and more difficult with more and more complex issues messing things up.

For one, our priorities are skewed. And we're all awash in media, disinformation, misinformation, and just...information. But that's a given anymore.

Back in 2010, during the Arab Spring, I kept blogging relevant information for those in Egypt, when Middle Eastern activists had their social media shut down. My site saw a surge of traffic from the region — people seeking information, connection, and hope. I was proud to help.

And yet… with all this? I remain largely invisible.

After earning a BA in psychology with a minor in creative writing — focusing on fiction, screenwriting, and playwriting — I spent years building a successful tech career. I’ve always given everything I had to any task: whether that meant making a boss look brilliant, or crafting stories that make readers stop and think.

My work has consistently been high quality and praised for it.

My book "Death of Heaven" won the NYC Big Book Award for Horror.
My films have screened globally and won over 150 international film festival honors.
My scripts have placed and been praised in top competitions. I'm still flummoxed about "The Teenage Bodyguard" screenplay as it's a true story, untouched location and story, multiple award winning screenplay, almost produced three times now but just the wrong directors, and yet, what? 

And yet I still hear:

“This is really good… but we don’t know how to market it.”

My work is hard to pigeonhole. I’ve heard that all my life. First about me, personally. Then about my works, often confusing my managers. And yet they protected me to keep me from leaving. 

My high school English composition teacher said if I didn't stop using the British spelling of words, she'd have to mark me down and she didn't want to. I said fine, but the British spelling was more attractive. Yes, I was odd. 

But I was right. And so was she. But take the word, "color". IS that better than the British, "colour"? In short, "colour" is to language what calligraphy is to handwriting — not necessary for clarity, but undeniably more beautiful in its form. And so on...it's been my life, how I see it.

But in the arts?

“You’re crossing genres.”
“It’s hybrid.”
“It doesn’t fit neatly into a box.”
“Audiences won’t know what shelf it goes on.”

Funny, because I thought we were told to stand out.
To be original.
To not follow the formula.

And I did that — too well, apparently.

It’s a cruel twist: You excel, you differentiate, you innovate… and you’re punished for not being more like everyone else. Success becomes a liability when the industry can’t put a label on you.

My biggest issue, people thinking you have a huge ego, or you're "just too full of yourself", or something. I prefer being behind the lens of a film production, the unknown mystery of an author on the book circuit, or the guy who makes the boss look brilliant. I have just never needed the praise. I've always said about fame and fortune, "Give me the fortune, you can have the fame." I just don't care about it. 

Add to that my personality: I’ve really never been built for the spotlight.
It took a while after publishing my first books in 2012 to begin properly promoting my books. Then began to promote myself because someone said that readers want to know the author, to buy the author, not just their books. That was a bit of a shock to me at the time. But eventually I tried hard to go there, do that, be a face on a cover, or back cover, or back inside flap. Or not. 

Self-promotion doesn’t come naturally to many of us. It’s uncomfortable, even painful. I hated job interviews for the same reason — you’re expected to puff yourself up, even lie.

“Why do you want this job?” they’d ask. 

They wanted to hear: “I love this work. I’ll give you everything.”
What I too often wanted to say was, “I need to eat. I have a baby. I’m overqualified. I’ll give you everything anyway — because that’s who I am.”

But if you don’t market yourself? No one else will.
And the world rarely notices what doesn’t shout.

I’m not here to complain. I’m here to speak a truth that many of us live:
That this system — built on algorithms, trends, labels — is broken.

The internet made it easier to contact those you need to contact, but then quickly a field overwhelmed became ever more overwhelmed.

It's a system that fails to recognize genuine achievement if it can’t brand it.
It overlooks depth in favor of virality.
And it asks us to be unique — then punishes us for being unclassifiable.

Especially today, when we've traded depth for speed. We're surrounded by people who know a little about everything — just enough to sound informed, but not enough to understand it. And that illusion of knowledge is contagious, tricking us into thinking we know more than we actually do.

So, if you’re someone who’s walked this path — a veteran, an artist, a technologist, a lifelong overachiever quietly producing real work that goes unrecognized — I see you.

And if you’ve found something meaningful in my work — my books, my films, my blog — I ask just one thing: help me carry it further. Share it. Talk about it. Let people know it exists.

I’ll keep creating either way.
But damn, it would be nice if being different didn’t mean disappearing.

If you’d like to explore my work, you can find my books on Amazon and my films on the festival circuit and online. Here's LinkTree with most of my links on it.

And if any of this resonated with you, I’d be grateful if you shared this post.

In a world drowning in noise, it’s those small ripples that sometimes carry the most weight.

Cheers! Slainté! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Night Watch & Day Watch: The Urban Legends of Moscow

I came across the Russian film, Night Watch (2004) when it hit home screens years ago and loved it. So did my son at the time who was sixteen. Not to be confused with other similar named films. We later felt the same for Day Watch (2006) when he came out, though we preferred the original film. 

For years now I confused them with a couple of other films that were never, them. So today I finally looked it up to figure out what was going on, I had not realized I had seen other films by that director or what else he had been up to.

So who is this filmmaker?

Before Timur Bekmambetov became a Hollywood name, before he was reinventing storytelling through computer screens and vertical video, he shook the world awake with a cinematic thunderclap from Russia: Night Watch (2004) and its sequel Day Watch (2006). These weren’t just genre films—they were a revelation. Wild, stylish, and saturated with myth, the Watch films turned post-Soviet Moscow into a battleground between ancient forces of Light and Dark, casting modern urban life in the long shadows of destiny and magic.

Timur Bekmambetov 

⚔️ The Story Beneath the Surface

Based on the bestselling novels by Sergei Lukyanenko, the Watch series introduces us to a hidden world within our own, where supernatural beings called “Others” walk among us. Some align with the Light, some with the Dark. Their uneasy truce is maintained by two organizations—the Night Watch (who police the Dark Others) and the Day Watch (who police the Light).

The films center on Anton Gorodetsky, a reluctant operative in the Night Watch, caught between personal struggles and cosmic consequences. As he navigates moral gray areas, ancient prophecies, and high-stakes power struggles, the lines between good and evil blur. By the time Day Watch concludes, Anton's journey mirrors the city itself: conflicted, haunted, and teetering between apocalypse and redemption.

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🎬 Timur Bekmambetov: Mythmaker with a Mouse

Timur Bekmambetov was born in Kazakhstan and trained in Moscow, blending Eastern mysticism, Soviet realism, and MTV-style editing into a uniquely aggressive visual grammar. Night Watch was his breakout not just in Russia, but globally—it became the highest-grossing Russian film at the time and signaled that the post-Soviet cinema renaissance had teeth.

Where American fantasy leaned clean and digital, Bekmambetov made magic grimy, cluttered, and electric. He used practical effects, disorienting camera work, and richly textured locations to create a Moscow that felt like both ancient myth and modern nightmare. The Watch films earned comparisons to The Matrix, Blade, and Underworld, but they were unmistakably their own beast—brimming with Russian folklore and postmodern grit.

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💥 Style That Hit Like a Spell

Bekmambetov’s visual style is practically a character in these films. Streetlamps flicker with tension. Crows circle in warning. Blood flows like prophecy. From subway tunnels to cluttered Soviet apartments, every scene pulses with tension and decay.

He also pioneered the use of digital effects integrated with diegetic text—like subtitles that bleed, shatter, or burst into flames—turning even the reading of dialogue into part of the experience. It was loud. It was bold. And it worked.

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❌ The Trilogy That Wasn't

Fans still lament the Watch trilogy's missing third chapter: Twilight Watch. Though Lukyanenko's books continued, the film franchise stalled after Day Watch, largely due to rights complications between Russian studios and Fox, who had acquired distribution. Bekmambetov soon turned to Hollywood (Wanted, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), and the potential conclusion to Anton’s story—along with Bekmambetov’s most unique fantasy universe—was left in limbo.

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🏙️ Urban Legends for a Post-Soviet World

What made Night Watch and Day Watch special wasn't just the magic, the monsters, or the mind-bending visuals. It was the way they captured the spiritual disorientation of modern life—particularly in a country redefining itself. The Others are not gods or demons—they're neighbors, cops, bartenders, and loners. Magic exists, but it's bureaucratized. Fate is real, but it’s tangled in red tape.

In that sense, these films are urban legends not just in style, but in spirit. They whisper that ancient powers still hide in plain sight, that the apartment next door may hold a vampire or a seer, and that behind every neon ad in Moscow is a flicker of something eternal.

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🔮 Conclusion: Still Worth Watching

Even two decades later, the Watch films remain a breath of wild air in a fantasy landscape often too tidy. If you haven’t seen them, now’s the time. If you have, they’re worth revisiting—not just as films, but as artifacts of a moment when Russian cinema dared to be vast, weird, and unforgettable.

And if you still wonder what might have been in Twilight Watch... well, maybe that’s the most fitting legend of all—unfinished, elusive, and still casting shadows.

🎬 Timur's Hollywood Films:

3. Wanted (2008)

• Stars: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman

• Genre: Action/supernatural

• Notes: Known for its "curving bullets" and kinetic visual style.

4. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

• Producer: Tim Burton

• Genre: Alternate history / action horror

• Reception: Visually stylish, but critically mixed.

5. Ben-Hur (2016)

• A remake of the 1959 epic.

• Stars: Jack Huston, Toby Kebbell, Morgan Freeman

• Reception: Commercial and critical disappointment.

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🎬 Experimental / Unique Format:

6. Unfriended (2014) – Producer

• Horror movie told entirely through a computer screen (screenlife format).

• Popularized a new style of filmmaking.

7. Profile (2018)

• Director: Timur returns to directing with a screenlife thriller.

• A journalist catfishes an ISIS recruiter via social media.

• Based on a true story.

8. V2. Escape from Hell (2021)

• Russian WWII action film shot largely in vertical format for smartphones.

• One of the first big-budget movies in this format.

• Stars Pavel Priluchnyy.

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🔧 Other Roles:

• He’s also a producer on many films, including Hardcore Henry (2015) and the Unfriended series.

• Bekmambetov is a major force behind the Screenlife genre (films told entirely via digital screens).

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

The Real Reason the GOP Is Abandoning Democracy

Today, the GOP (Republican Party) can be defined less by a traditional set of policy principles and more by its consolidation around authoritarian tendencies, populist rhetoric, and minority rule strategies designed to maintain power in the face of demographic and cultural change. 

If we’re going to keep letting people like Trump and his MaGA Republicans run the country, we’ll need to provide massive, free mental health care—mostly for them.

Here’s a breakdown of what they are doing and where they seem to be headed:

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✅ What They Are Doing:

1. Consolidating Power Over Democratic Institutions

• State-Level Control: Redistricting and gerrymandering to secure disproportionate legislative power.

• Judicial Domination: Packing courts with ideologically extreme judges to ensure long-term influence regardless of electoral outcomes.

• Election Subversion: Undermining electoral systems and installing loyalists in positions overseeing elections.

2. Cultivating Authoritarian Culture

• Strongman Loyalty: The party has largely aligned itself behind Donald Trump, embracing his cult of personality, disregard for democratic norms, and disdain for dissent.

• Suppressing Dissent: Internal purges of moderates, institutional loyalty tests, and demonization of the press and opposition voices.

• Weaponized Governance: Targeting institutions like the DOJ, FBI, and education systems to punish perceived enemies or reshape public values.

3. Exploiting Division and Grievance

• Culture War Politics: Focusing on issues like trans rights, "wokeness," CRT, and immigration to rile up the base and distract from economic or policy failures.

• Racial and Religious Dog Whistles: Appeals to white Christian nationalism increasingly define the party’s messaging.

• Disinformation Ecosystem: Aligning with media outlets and online influencers that push falsehoods to shape reality for supporters.

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❗ Where They Are Headed:

1. A Post-Democracy Party

• The GOP is increasingly behaving like a party that sees democracy as an obstacle rather than a principle. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a future Republican presidency, explicitly outlines plans to centralize power in the executive branch and dismantle key democratic guardrails.

2. Permanent Minority Rule

• Rather than appealing to broader constituencies, they aim to entrench control via:

  • The Senate (which already favors smaller, more rural states)

  • The Electoral College

  • A compliant Supreme Court

  • Voter suppression and gerrymandering

3. Authoritarian-Adjacent Governance

• With echoes of Orbán’s Hungary or Erdoğan’s Turkey, the GOP is moving toward:

  • One-party rule by erosion of independent institutions

  • Increasing use of state power to punish dissent

  • Expansion of executive power under the guise of "restoring order"

4. Normalizing Violence and Extremism

• Increasing acceptance—or strategic silence—regarding political violence (e.g., Jan. 6), armed militias, and threats to officials, while portraying their own party as the true victim.

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📌 Bottom Line:

The modern GOP is no longer a conservative party in the traditional sense. It is transforming into a movement organized around authoritarian power, cultural resentment, and institutional control. It is not attempting to win national consensus—it is attempting to outmaneuver democracy itself.

This isn’t speculative; it’s observable in their actions, platforms, and public statements. Where this leads depends heavily on how the public, the courts, and the Democratic opposition respond—because the path they are on points toward democratic backsliding, not renewal.

The why behind the GOP’s shift toward authoritarianism can be boiled down to a survival instinct—not ideological commitment, but power preservation in the face of existential challenges. Here's a detailed breakdown:

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🔵 1. Demographic Fear:

The U.S. is becoming more racially, culturally, and religiously diverse—and younger generations lean progressive.
➡️ Problem for the GOP: Their core base—older, white, rural, evangelical voters—is shrinking.
➡️ Response: Instead of adapting their platform to appeal to a broader electorate, they’re entrenching systems of minority rule (gerrymandering, voter suppression, the Electoral College, etc.) to preserve power with fewer votes.

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🔵 2. Loss of Policy Appeal:

Since the Reagan era, the GOP has focused on:

• Deregulation

• Tax cuts for the wealthy

• Privatization

• Anti-labor policies

These policies have enriched elites but hollowed out the working and middle classes—even among their own voters.
➡️ Result: The party can't win on policy, so it has pivoted to culture wars, fear, and identity-based tribalism to maintain emotional loyalty.

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🔵 3. Authoritarian Leadership Works—In the Short Term

Donald Trump proved that:

• Breaking norms increases power.

• Open racism and nationalism energize a base.

• Media manipulation and disinformation work.

➡️ Trump wasn’t an aberration—he was a proof of concept. Now others (like DeSantis, Ramaswamy, or Project 2025 architects) are trying to refine and institutionalize it.

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🔵 4. Evangelical Christian Nationalism

A powerful minority believes America is divinely ordained to be a Christian nation.
➡️ The GOP has increasingly relied on this group to deliver votes and grassroots activism.
➡️ In return, the party champions religious supremacy, bans on abortion, attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, and rewriting history—core goals of a theocratic minority.

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🔵 5. Information Ecosystem Collapse

Right-wing media, talk radio, and social media algorithms have created an echo chamber that:

• Rewards outrage and lies

• Radicalizes users

• Destroys faith in democratic institutions

➡️ GOP leaders fear losing control of this base, so they feed the beast instead of correcting it. It becomes a cycle of escalation.

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🔵 6. They’ve Found It Works

January 6 didn’t destroy the GOP—it empowered it.
Election denial didn’t hurt Trump—it made him the frontrunner again.
Project 2025 isn’t being denounced—it’s being normalized.
➡️ There is no cost—only benefit—to embracing authoritarianism in the current environment. That encourages them to go further.

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✅ In short:

The GOP is shifting this way because:

• Democracy is no longer in their favor

• Their policies have failed average Americans

• Fear and identity are easier to sell than compromise

• They’ve seen that authoritarian tactics succeed without real consequence

Until they are decisively defeated at the ballot box or held legally accountable for anti-democratic actions, they have every incentive to continue down this path.

And by the way...

Pres. Trump's plan is working:

MOGTAA

Making Others Greater Than America Again.

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

"The Moment We Forget”: Why We Must Remember the Worst of Ourselves

In a haunting monologue from The Twilight Zone episode “Death’s-Head Revisited,” Rod Serling wrote:

"All the Dachaus must remain standing.

"The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes - all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard, into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its rememberance. Then we become the grave diggers." ~ Rod Serling, from "Death's Head Revisited" (1961)

That warning from 1961 still echoes today — maybe more urgently than ever.

We don’t hide the horrors of our history—because doing so risks repeating them. The generations who survived the worst—World War II, the Holocaust, slavery—came away with a solemn vow: never again. But that promise is only as strong as our memory is honest.

Yet in America today, we’re watching that memory be erased. We're seeing political efforts—often on the right—to whitewash slavery, to strip it from our curricula, to soften the brutal truth of what we did to human beings for hundreds of years. All so we can pretend it wasn’t so bad. That maybe we weren’t that cruel. That maybe it’s time to “move on.”

Trump is whitewashing US history and embracing ‘alternative facts’

Revealed: MaGA algorithms are pushing Gen-Z to pro-Trump content

But history doesn’t move on. It waits.

If we forget, if we sanitize the past to protect our feelings or preserve a myth of national innocence, we risk one day seeing the return of horrors we thought buried. Authoritarianism. Nazism. The machinery of death, gas chambers and all. Or worse—something we can’t yet imagine, just as generations once couldn’t imagine those gas chambers until it was too late.

Germany, unlike us, faced its demons head-on. They didn’t tear down the reminders of their national shame. They preserved them. Taught them. Embedded them into daily life—not to wallow, but to remember. To vaccinate future generations against complicity and denial. Memorials dot the cities. Schoolchildren learn about the Holocaust in depth. Confronting the past is part of being German. That’s what maturity looks like in a democracy.

In contrast, America is regressing. When we ban books that teach our children the truth, or rebrand slavery as “involuntary relocation,” we’re not just failing our history—we’re dooming our future.

We must not become the grave diggers Serling warned us about.

The Dachaus must remain standing.
And so must the truth.

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

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Stamped Out: How DeJoy and Trump Tried to Break the USPS—and What Comes Next

Trump in his first POTUS45 term, made bad decision for America to make Louis De Joy Postmaster General which I've long railed against. He's gone now. Resigned a few months ago, finally.

🚨 DOGE and White House Push Quiet USPS Overhaul 🚨

Internal documents reveal a series of behind-the-scenes meetings that could drastically reshape the U.S. Postal Service.

Since Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s resignation in March, the White House—through its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—has ramped up efforts to push major price hikes and structural changes at USPS. Treasury officials, White House attorneys, and Trump-aligned operatives are involved, raising red flags about attempts to treat the Postal Service like a for-profit business.

But USPS was never meant to be a business. It was created as a public service, grounded in the Constitution and championed by figures like Benjamin Franklin—to ensure universal, affordable communication for all Americans. Privatization risks abandoning rural communities, raising costs, and undermining a cornerstone of our democracy.

The original foundation for the U.S. Postal Service is found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution, which states:

"The Congress shall have Power… To establish Post Offices and post Roads;"

This clause gave Congress the authority to create and maintain a postal system as part of its role in uniting the states and promoting interstate communication and commerce. It was not framed as a profit-making venture, but as a core public function — vital infrastructure for a functioning republic.

To clarify...

The U.S. Postal Service is not a business. It is a constitutionally authorized public service, rooted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution:

“The Congress shall have Power to establish Post Offices and post Roads.”

That foundational mandate was later reaffirmed and expanded by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, which clearly states:

“The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people.”

And further:

“It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.”

Nowhere is there a requirement to turn a profit. USPS is expected to be financially self-sustaining, but its core mission is service—universal, affordable, and accessible to all. It exists not to enrich shareholders, but to connect and serve the American people.

The Founding Fathers saw a national postal service as essential for:

• Disseminating news and ideas

• Connecting citizens across vast distances

• Facilitating democratic participation (e.g., through mail-in voting, which was used as early as the Civil War)

Benjamin Franklin, the first Postmaster General under the Continental Congress (1775), helped shape the service with the explicit goal of making it accessible, reliable, and public-serving, not commercially profitable.

Over time, this vision was formalized. For example, the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 created the modern USPS as an independent agency, instructing it to be self-sustaining but still carry out its universal service obligation — again reaffirming that its purpose is service, not profit.

While DeJoy implemented some structural reforms, the damage to USPS operations and public trust far outweighed any gains. His ties to private logistics firms that benefited during his tenure only deepen the ethical concerns.

Bottom line: USPS exists to serve the public—not to enrich private interests.

• Personal wealth increased about $20M–$30M while serving as Postmaster General.
• His annual compensation more than doubled compared to his base pay, including generous bonuses—even during times USPS performance was widely criticized.
• When combined with ongoing investments and potential gains from logistics contractors, the financial surge suggests that his term benefited him personally in a way that merits scrutiny.

Louis DeJoy’s tenure at USPS reflects a broader pattern under Donald Trump: using government power to serve private interests and undermine public institutions. While DeJoy’s personal wealth grew by an estimated $20–30 million, the Postal Service—vital to American democracy—was hollowed out through service cuts, price hikes, and political manipulation. 

Like so many Trump-era appointees, DeJoy advanced an agenda that prioritized profit and loyalty over public good. Under Trump’s watch, even the mail became a battleground in the effort to weaken trust in government and tilt the system away from the people it was built to serve.

Pay attention—this is how democracies die: not with a sudden collapse, but through calculated provocations like DeJoy’s, where public trust is eroded, institutions are repurposed for private gain, and the machinery of government is quietly turned against the people it was meant to serve.

Pay attention—this is how democracies die: not in one blow, but one provocation at a time. DeJoy hollowed out the Postal Service. Betsy DeVos attacked public education. Scott Pruitt sabotaged environmental protections. Michael Flynn undermined national security. And now, with Trump poised as POTUS 47, the same corrupt playbook returns—only this time, the guardrails are weaker, and the intentions even clearer.

As of now, Doug Tulino is serving as Acting Postmaster General following DeJoy’s departure in March 2025.

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🛠️ Who’s in Charge & What’s Being Done

1. Acting Leadership

• Doug Tulino, a long-time USPS executive, stepped in right after DeJoy resigned. He’s focused on restoring normal operations while awaiting the permanent replacement .

2. Incoming PMG: David Steiner...more of the same?

• David Steiner, a FedEx board member and former Waste Management CEO, is set to become the 76th Postmaster General in July 2025. He'll resign from FedEx ahead of assuming the role 

• His appointment has drawn fire from postal unions, who worry that his corporate ties and Trump-era support signal a shift toward privatization and cost-cutting at the expense of public service 

3. Steps to Repair Damage

• Congressional oversight: A House hearing convened shortly before Steiner’s arrival to examine DeJoy’s policies and to push for restoring service reliability and public accountability 

• Strategic framing: The new leadership is emphasizing the USPS mission to serve all Americans. Steiner has publicly pledged to uphold USPS’s constitutional mandate and enhance financial sustainability — though details on operational reforms are still being solidified 

• Keeping an eye on privatization: Unions and lawmakers are monitoring Steiner’s every move, urging transparency and safeguarding against outsourcing, job cuts, or a shift toward corporate 

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🔎 In Summary:

• Short-term fix: Tulino has reinstated operational continuity.

• Long-term plan: Steiner's leadership is framed as a “business-savvy” turnaround, though critics fear it could deepen DeJoy-era harms under a new guise.

• Oversight matters more than ever: Congressional hearings and union pressure aim to shield USPS’s public mission amid concerns over privatization and undermining trust.

As DeJoy exits, USPS enters a precarious transition. Acting Postmaster General Doug Tulino has stabilized day-to-day operations, but all eyes are now on incoming Postmaster General David Steiner—a FedEx board member with deep corporate ties and Trump-era backing. While he pledges to preserve USPS’s public mission, his background raises alarm bells for unions and watchdogs who fear more privatization under the guise of reform. 

The fight to restore trust, protect universal service, and undo the damage is far from over—and with Steiner’s tenure beginning in July, the next chapter of the Postal Service will determine whether it serves the public good or corporate profit.

As DeJoy thankfully finally exits, USPS stands at a critical crossroads—one shaped by years of damage under Donald Trump’s influence. Acting Postmaster General Doug Tulino has provided temporary stability, but incoming Postmaster General David Steiner, a FedEx board member with corporate and Trump-aligned ties, signals continued risk. 

Since taking charge in March, Acting Postmaster General Doug Tulino has unfortunately continued several concerning trends from the DeJoy era—raising alarms that the same damaging playbook is being replayed.

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⚠️ What Tulino Has Done So Far:

1. Continuation of Rate Hike Strategy
   In April, Tulino participated in high-level meetings—including with DOGE team members Fiona Machado and Luke Grossman—to discuss an exigent price increase, a tool typically reserved for emergencies unseen since 2013 theweek.com+15govexec.com+15supplychaindive.com+15. That appears to signal a willingness to continue or even escalate DeJoy-era pricing practices.

2. Ongoing Collaboration with DOGE
   The very day he took office, Tulino met with DOGE to discuss ethics and begin rolling out their influence across USPS operations en.wikipedia.org+12govexec.com+12time.com+12. This sets the stage for continued cost-cutting and structural reforms—though often at the expense of public service reliability.

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✅ What We Haven’t Seen (Yet):

• No reversal of service slowdowns or mail-sorting cuts that characterized the DeJoy era.

• No halt to discussions on privatization or workforce downsizing.

• No strong union-backed measures to restore universal service reliability.

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🔎 Bottom Line:

Tulino has stabilized leadership but hasn’t yet stepped away from DeJoy's model of aggressively pursuing revenue and restructuring—often in collaboration with DOGE. The conversations around price increases and structural reforms echo the previous administration's priorities, meaning that real course correction is still pending.

Trump’s two terms have chipped away at public institutions like the Postal Service—undermining their trust, warping their purpose, and steering them toward privatization and profit-driven agendas. His vision isn’t about serving Americans—it’s about control, loyalty, and dismantling government protections from within. But with growing public awareness and pushback, there’s hope. 

It is hoped that we can not only undo the damage, but finally rid America of Trump’s autocratic nonsense and restore institutions like USPS to their rightful role: serving the people, not the powerful.

One final threat in another albeit similar direction...

How to Survive the Broligarchy - The Trump-Musk crackdown is coming. Here's 20 lessons in how to survive it. - Carole Cadwalladr

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Walking the Edge: From the Novella ANDREW to the Award-Winning Novel DEATH OF HEAVEN

In writing Death of Heaven (2024 NYC Big Book Award for Horror), I wasn’t seeking to simply tell a horror story — I was trying to illuminate something deeper, more universal. This novel walks a knife-edge between the deeply personal and the disturbingly cosmic, between lyrical introspection and the brutal realities of madness, violence, and transformation. It’s a story rooted in terror, yes — but also in beauty, memory, and the fragile thread that ties us to meaning.

Andrew - Cover for Audiobook

The prose itself mirrors this tension. Rather than relying solely on plot or shock, Death of Heaven invites the reader into an atmosphere — a psychological landscape where dread lingers like fog and revelation arrives not with clarity, but with a kind of haunted grace.

One passage captures this tone clearly: a character, wrapped in uncertainty and fear, quietly contemplates whether a particular place might be “a good place to die.” It’s not a melodramatic moment. It’s quiet. Still. And in that stillness, the richness of the world presses in — the textures of the scene made more vivid by the weight of the question. That’s where the novel lives: in the collision between the horror of the question and the beauty of the world that dares to exist anyway.

This juxtaposition — despair and transcendence — recurs throughout the novel. My characters don’t simply face danger; they engage with it on a soul-deep level. They wrestle with questions of identity, mortality, memory, and fate. The horror is never just external — it’s mirrored in the psyche, in the ghosts of trauma, in the invisible architecture of guilt and belief.

Consider the line: “A dark character rode my mind, I knew that. A dark rider who made no compromise and rode in ways both surreal and inexplicable.” That’s not just a metaphor — it’s a lived experience for the character, and a reflection of something we all understand: the internalized presence of something we can’t always name, but that shapes our actions, our fears, our dreams.

And yet, for all its weight, there’s also absurdity. Life, even in its most grotesque moments, has a strange and terrible irony. The randomness of survival. The strangeness of fate. The tragic comedy of being alive while others fall. These elements find their way into the prose — not as relief, but as perspective. A way to acknowledge that the world is both more beautiful and more indifferent than we’d like to believe.

Death of Heaven is not an easy story. It wasn’t meant to be. But in its pages, I hope readers will find something they recognize — not just in the characters, but in the spaces between the words. In the quiet dread. In the sharp beauty. In the feeling that something just out of reach is watching, whispering, waiting.

That’s the line this book walks. And maybe, in some way, that’s the line we all walk.

Andrew ebook cover

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Literary Echoes: Authors Who Walk Similar Lines

Authors who successfully navigate a nuanced balance between darkness and beauty, akin to what I aimed for in Death of Heaven, include both contemporary and classic figures known for exploring existential themes, surrealism, and macabre insight.

Jeff Lindsay, for example, creates in the Dexter series a compelling dance between violent urges and internal ethics. His character Dexter Morgan reflects deeply on the nature of good and evil — often with a voice both introspective and darkly amused. That moral tension, laced with unease and even humor, echoes the atmospheric duality I pursue: unsettling, yet strangely human.

Margaret Atwood, particularly in The Handmaid’s Tale, captures dystopia with a tone of ironic resilience. Her characters, even in the bleakest scenarios, find subtle acts of defiance and insight. I find resonance in how she frames oppression and madness without losing a thread of philosophical reflection — a quality I strive to capture in my own depictions of internal collapse and existential tension.

Haruki Murakami drapes his surreal narratives in existential mist. Novels like Kafka on the Shore blur the boundaries of reality and thought, offering philosophical weight under dreamlike logic. His ability to marry quiet beauty with grotesque imagery inspires a similar balance in my writing — one where the reader feels both untethered and introspective.

Neil Gaiman, in works like American Gods, layers myth onto modernity. His characters inhabit fantastical realities grounded in very human confusion — belief, purpose, and self-identity. In Death of Heaven, I also strive to explore the sacred and profane, often through surreal or seemingly mythic frameworks, filtered through very real emotions.

Flannery O’Connor’s Southern Gothic tales are studies in contradiction. Her dark humor undercuts the grotesque, and her characters’ suffering is interwoven with themes of grace, sin, and redemption. Her influence is felt in how I frame moments of horror not as ends in themselves, but as revelations — uncomfortable, absurd, yet meaningful.

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Lessons From the Literary Shadows

From these authors, I draw several inspirations and affirmations:

• Intricate Characterization: Like Lindsay and O'Connor, I seek to build characters who hold contradictions — haunted, hopeful, brutal, and tender — so that their struggles echo our own.

• Balance of Tones: Inspired by Murakami and Gaiman, I allow beauty and terror to coexist, letting dark situations reveal strange wonders, and gentle moments carry unsettling truths.

• Philosophical Depth: As with Atwood, I believe horror and reflection must walk hand in hand — not to deliver answers, but to provoke better questions.

Death of Heaven is my own contribution to this lineage of unsettling yet reflective storytelling — a place where the abyss stares back, but where the sky, too, can open with light.

From Andrew to Death of Heaven: The Evolution of a Cosmic Struggle

Before Death of Heaven, there was Andrew (audiobook) — a novella born from a simple but haunting premise: a child burdened by trauma, navigating a world that refuses to see the depth of his inner reality. Andrew explores the profound isolation of a boy whose emotional and intellectual complexity is invisible to those around him. The story’s heart lies in his yearning for recognition, identity, and meaning — not just from others, but from the universe itself.

The audiobook is read by AI. I chose AI narration for this audiobook as an experiment in emerging technology. I wanted to explore how far voice synthesis has come—and the result? Surprisingly immersive and emotionally resonant. While it’s not a substitute for a seasoned voice actor, it brings a clean, consistent performance that lets the story shine without distraction. I do prefer live actors and have used them for my various projects. This was an interesting test of the product itself—specifically to gauge how readers and listeners would respond to an AI-narrated audiobook in terms of quality, accessibility, and engagement. It's been interesting.

That intimate struggle for self-understanding becomes the foundation for the broader existential crisis in Death of Heaven. While Andrew grapples with confusion and emotional fragmentation on a personal level, Death of Heaven scales those questions to a cosmic plane. The same themes — identity, perception, transformation, and the tension between the visible and unseen — reappear, but now through characters confronting not only their own trauma, but the unraveling of reality itself.

In Death of Heaven, the central tenet expands: it becomes the struggle between existential forces and the search for meaning amid chaos. Characters tied to the enigmatic Tiny Colony and SoulHeart initiative face overwhelming darkness — from within and beyond. The looming force of The Shade symbolizes a cosmic erasure, threatening not just lives, but the very meaning of existence. And yet, much like Andrew, these characters persist in their need to be known, to reclaim identity, and to hold onto a sense of unity despite fragmentation.

Together, Andrew and Death of Heaven form a philosophical continuum. Andrew is the seed — raw, personal, and intimate. Death of Heaven is the full bloom — vast, mythic, and world-shaking. Yet both ask the same question in different voices: Who are we when the world no longer reflects us?

And both suggest the same answer — that recognition, understanding, and the stubborn flicker of hope are not luxuries of peace, but necessities for surviving the dark.

In the end, Death of Heaven isn’t just a descent into darkness — it’s a search for meaning within it. I’ve never been interested in tidy resolutions. What moves me — and what moves the characters in both stories — are the honest confrontations. What does it mean to survive? To remember? To carry beauty through ruin?

These are the questions my characters face, and perhaps the ones we all do. If you find yourself drawn to stories that don’t flinch from the void but still manage to find a flicker of light within it — then maybe you’ve already walked part of the path this book follows.

Welcome.

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT and MyReader AI