The Place Beyond the Tightest Hold

Christmas Eve 2025

On this quiet evening before Christmas Day (save the issue of weather warning of up to 60MPH winds here in the PNW today), may the pause between the year gone by and the year to come be filled with peace, clarity, and genuine reflection. We need that. We've earned that. We demand that.

Whether you celebrate this season as a time of spiritual meaning, human connection, or simple gratitude, here’s wishing you warmth, insight, and moments that renew the spirit. 

Merry Christmas Eve and may the coming day bring light into every corner of your life. 

On to the matter at hand...

I was recently considering why the concept of God appears so consistently throughout human history. I do not personally believe in a deity. The universe, as far as we can tell, appears to operate through cause and effect. The most common theistic arguments, the Big Bang, origins of the universe or humankind, and the idea of “something from nothing,” therefore demands the answer of requiring a "God", feel disingenuous to me. Too easy. It reminds me of our evolving from pre-history into explanations of our existence and experiences, especially unexplained experiences, as somehow, divinely evoked. 

Not knowing how something began does not logically require a supernatural explanation. That impulse, we cannot explain this therefore religion, is arguably how humanity ended up confused in the first place.

From an evolutionary standpoint, religion appears less as revealed truth and more as an early framework for managing the unknown, a provisional system that filled explanatory gaps until better tools emerged. When any institution positions itself as the exclusive authority on the nature of existence, that authority tends to consolidate. Over time, explanation becomes dogma, knowledge concentrates in the hands of a few, and power follows. Where power accumulates, the potential for abuse inevitably arises.

But recently, I saw something different.

Is what we call “God” primarily an attachment anchor, an explanation engine, or something else entirely? And if it is the function that matters rather than the entity itself, does the role traditionally filled by God persist even when belief in a deity is no longer necessary?

Art by Marvin Hayes

As scientific understanding expanded, religion became less necessary as an explanatory framework. Psychology also evolved out of philosophy, and science (I've explored this in depth, elsewhere). By the nineteenth century, this shift was already being articulated in cultural and philosophical terms, most famously in the claim that “God is dead,” not as a declaration of disbelief, but as an acknowledgment that traditional religious authority was losing its central role in explaining the world.

My shift, my small epiphany, came while watching Part II of Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World. Eric Clapton recounts wanting to date Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd. What struck him was Harrison’s reaction...or lack of one. 

George was deeply immersed in meditation and in actively reducing his dependence on the material world. According to Clapton, Harrison appeared almost cavalier about the situation, far less emotionally disturbed than expected.

Why? One could argue he just didn't love her, or wasn't really "attached" to her. But I think that misses the point here, entirely.

That moment reframed the entire question for me.

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God as a place to put attachment

Perhaps the core function of belief in God is not explanation at all, or "individual" (entity, "God"), but attachment management.

Instead of God being the ultimate answer to cosmic questions, God may function as a stable external anchor for emotional investment. A place to direct one’s primary attachment so that material things...possessions, status, even romantic partners...do not become the sole foundation of meaning.

If your spouse leaves you.
If your loved one dies.
If your world collapses.

Then the loss, while still painful, is not total. Your existence does not implode, because your emotional hierarchy does not rest entirely on fragile, impermanent things.

Seen this way, agape love of God is not about obedience or submission. It is about distributing emotional dependency upward, away from objects that inevitably fail us.

George Harrison was not indifferent. He was practicing non-attachment as psychological insulation.

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Religion as an early emotional technology

Decades ago, psychological research explored something similar. In some experiments, belief in God was replaced with belief in an arbitrary object...a rock, a symbol, a ritual. The results were consistent: belief in an external agency improved resilience, persistence, and stress tolerance, regardless of whether the agent was real.

This suggests something important.

It is not God, per se, that produces these effects.
It is attention directed toward an external stabilizing reference point.

Religion, historically, bundled this function into a shared cultural system:

• a permanent presence

• a benevolent or coherent narrative

• communal reinforcement

• ritualized reminders

Science (while also, though not enough, psychology) eventually replaced religion as an explanatory framework for the physical world. But it did not replace religion’s role as an emotional regulator.

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Attachment theory, scaled up

From the perspective of attachment theory, humans require a primary attachment figure to regulate fear, loss, and uncertainty. When that figure is another human, the bond is powerful but dangerously unstable.

Religion offers a workaround.

By relocating primary attachment to something imagined as eternal, benevolent, and always present, emotional volatility decreases. The system becomes less brittle.

This does not require belief in the supernatural. It only requires perceived continuity and meaning beyond the self.

That may explain why:

• belief persists even when explanations fail

• rituals matter even when doctrines are doubted

• people replace religion with ideology, nationalism, art, or identity when faith disappears

The nervous system does not care what the anchor is.

It only cares that one exists.

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Is it God, or is it function?

This reframing does not suddenly make religion true in a metaphysical sense. But it does make it understandable, even inevitable.

Religion did not arise because humans were stupid.
It arose because unbuffered consciousness is psychologically brutal.

• Mortality awareness.
• Loss.
• Chaos.
• Lack of control.

Belief systems evolved as tools to soften those edges.

The danger, historically, has not been belief itself, but when the attachment object becomes coercive, absolute, or weaponized.

---

A different way of seeing belief

This is not an argument for God, nor a retreat from skepticism.

It is an acknowledgment that religion may have survived not because it explains the universe, but because it helps humans survive it.

And perhaps the real question is not whether God exists, but whether humans can function long-term without some form of stable external reference point...religious or otherwise.

Seen this way, belief is less about truth claims and more about where we place our deepest emotional weight.

That insight alone changes how I understand religion, even without believing in it.

When the majority of our attachment is invested in material things, status, or even other people, loss and threat can distort behavior. Fear of losing what we cling to most has always been capable of driving humans toward cruelty, violence, and self-destruction. 

By contrast, systems that redirect primary attachment away from the material world reduce the pressure to defend, possess, or control at all costs.

If that stabilizing function can be achieved without supernatural belief, then we are not bound to religious frameworks themselves, only to the human need they once served. Alternatives exist that involve less social coercion, fewer complications, and a clearer relationship to reality.

Had such an orientation been more widely adopted long ago, it might have spared humanity an incalculable amount of suffering, cruelty, and unnecessary harm. Things we are still experiencing today.

That possibility alone is worth considering.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

“I Agree With Some of His Stuff” Is NO Longer a Serious Argument

One of the most common defenses I hear from Trump supporters—especially those who do not identify as hardcore MAGA—is this:

“I don’t like everything about him, but I agree with some of his stuff.”

At one time, that argument might have carried weight. It does not anymore.

Trump is old, exhausted, and increasingly irrelevant. His ideology was tired and anachronistic before he even began. What remains is not leadership, but the attempt to dance around an obvious reality: his toxicity, and his supporters’ insistence on retaining him at any cost, so long as that cost is borne by others.

That bargain was always unsustainable. Power built on grievance and loyalty eventually turns inward. As we are now seeing, many of those who believed they were exempt are discovering they are not. They, too, are being harmed by the system they defended.

This outcome was predictable. It was inevitable.

That is how autocracy works.

In ordinary democratic politics, partial agreement is often sufficient. Voters regularly support candidates whose policies they only partially endorse. That is the nature of compromise in a pluralistic system.

But that logic collapses when the central issue is no longer policy, but the survival of democratic norms themselves.

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Policy Disagreements vs. Systemic Threats

Disagreements over taxes, regulation, immigration levels, or foreign policy priorities are normal and healthy in a democracy. They presume a shared commitment to the system in which those disagreements are resolved.

Trump is no longer controversial primarily because of policy positions. He is controversial because he has repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of elections, attacked the independence of courts and the press, demanded personal loyalty over institutional loyalty, and normalized the idea that power should not be constrained by law when it conflicts with his interests.

When those are the defining characteristics of a political figure, “agreeing with some of his stuff” becomes irrelevant.

We do not excuse a structural threat by citing selective alignment. No one would seriously argue that Watergate was acceptable because they liked some of Nixon’s policies. Some actions disqualify the framework itself.

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Vagueness Is Not Neutrality

“I agree with some of his stuff” is also a deliberately vague phrase.

It avoids specificity. It avoids accountability. It avoids weighing benefits against costs. When pressed, it often dissolves into grievances, cultural resentment, or a desire to punish perceived enemies rather than articulate concrete policy goals.

That is not a policy argument. It is an emotional alignment.

Vagueness in this context is not moderation. It is evasion.

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In a Democracy, Means Matter as Much as Ends

A constitutional democracy is defined not only by outcomes, but by how power is exercised.

When someone says they like the results but are willing to overlook the methods, they are implicitly rejecting the constraints that protect everyone, including themselves. Rule of law, independent institutions, and peaceful transfers of power are not inconveniences to be bypassed when they become frustrating. They are the system.

Tolerating anti-democratic means in exchange for preferred outcomes is not pragmatism. It is instrumental authoritarianism.

Democracies do not survive that bargain.

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This Argument Had an Expiration Date

There was a brief period early on when one could plausibly claim policy agreement while assuming democratic guardrails would hold.

That window closed when election outcomes were rejected, courts were attacked as illegitimate, political violence was rhetorically normalized, and loyalty to one individual was elevated above loyalty to the Constitution.

After that point, continued support ceased to be ambiguous.

Repeating “I agree with some of his stuff” now is not a sign of nuance. It is a refusal to grapple with what has become unmistakably clear.

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Responsibility Follows Foreseeability

Supporters are not responsible for everything a leader does. They are responsible for what they knowingly enable.

Once a pattern of behavior is established, continued support implies acceptance of foreseeable consequences. That is a basic ethical principle, not a partisan one.

At this stage, no one can reasonably claim ignorance of what Trump represents or how he governs.

---

“I agree with some of his stuff” is not a serious argument when the question is whether democratic norms, constitutional limits, and the rule of law are optional.

At this point, the statement does not function as justification. It functions as avoidance.

The American experiment depends on the idea that no leader is above the system, and no grievance justifies dismantling it. If that commitment is negotiable, then democracy itself is already being traded away.

And then there's his Chief of Staff's comments about him... 

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles may have given up the game

Donald Trump is not a good guy. So what does that say about those who support and love him?

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Bailouts Aren’t Socialism: Keynes, Schumacher, and the Confusion We Live In

Just because this came up today...about so many things being called out incorrectly as socialism, or communism by people who have lost the thread, and farmer bailouts are due to Trump’s misguided tariff issues mostly because 1) he's stuck in the past, a defective past, and 2) he doesn't usually know what he's talking about or 3) understand much of anything beyond his one trick pony act.

So much confusion where it’s just…not what is claimed. So I posted about it...

A friend pointed out: “From a purely economics perspective, government bailouts are most closely aligned with Keynesian economics. Specifically, the Keynesian Multiplier principle.”

I responded: “Agreed. An important distinction. Keynesian interventions like bailouts are tools meant to stabilize markets. The problem isn’t the economic theory behind them; it’s when they’re used as ad-hoc political fixes or to paper over bad leadership decisions, where this ‘mess’ really comes from.”

He replied back: “Agreed. Even Keynes argued that when the full effect of the multiplier had been achieved, the government intervention (spending, bailout, etc.) should cease. That concept was lost long ago.”

And that, led me to all this...

Here are a few concise, high-interest facts about John Maynard Keynes that work well in a conversation or comment thread:

1. He wasn’t anti-capitalist...he was trying to save capitalism.

Keynes believed unmanaged recessions could destabilize democracies and lead to extremism. His ideas were meant to preserve free markets by preventing economic collapse.

2. He made (and lost) a fortune as an investor.

Unlike many economists, Keynes actively traded the stock market. After early losses, he adopted a long-term, value-driven strategy and achieved impressive returns for King’s College, Cambridge.

3. He shaped the post-WWII global financial order.

Keynes was a central architect of the Bretton Woods system, helping design the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

4. He warned against permanent government intervention.

As your conversation noted, Keynes insisted stimulus should stop once recovery begins. He opposed ongoing deficits during economic expansion.

5. He revolutionized macroeconomics at age 36.

His landmark work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), reshaped modern economics and remains one of the most influential social science books ever written.

Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1978 photo from the balcony I spent some time reading this book on.

The iconic pink hotel on Waikiki , The Royal Hawaiian, is not only a landmark in itself but was also a favorite stay of writer Joan Didion during her Hawaii sojourns. Most famously associated with Ernest Hemingway who stayed there in the 1940s, and wrote while overlooking Waikiki, where the hotel still serves a “Hemingway Daiquiri” in his honor.

My favorite book on economics is still Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, E.F. Schumacher (1973), a book I read in 1978 in Hawaii. I picked it up at the airport in Seattle and was fascinated by it. I still have the book today.

Schumacher thought Keynes was brilliant, but incomplete. He worked directly under Keynes.

Schumacher respected Keynes deeply, but he believed Keynesian economics didn’t go far enough in questioning:

• resource depletion

• environmental limits

• the assumption of infinite economic growth

Schumacher’s later work, especially after he converted to Catholicism and embraced Buddhist economic ideas, pushed into moral and philosophical territory beyond where Keynes ventured.

In the 1950s, E. F. Schumacher became the Chief Economic Advisor to the British National Coal Board, but he was also invited by the Government of India as an economic consultant during the Nehru period.

Schumacher nailed the big point:

• you can’t run a global economy as if nature has no limits,

• people are cogs, and

• bigger is always better.

He saw the environmental crisis, the alienation crisis, and the fragility of giant systems long before they arrived.

As for us, we need to better understand our reality and just, do better. Together. OK?

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Is Trump Playing 3D Chess, Chess, or Checkers on the World Stage?

Chess demands foresight, coherence, and an understanding of positional dynamics. Trump’s actions on the world stage indicate a persistent unfamiliarity with all three. Effective strategy begins with recognizing the structure of the board itself. Trump’s record suggests that he rarely perceives the board, let alone the strategic relationships that define it.

So, is everything Trump does wrong? No. Paradoxically, his hostility toward NATO helped galvanize and strengthen it, an outcome achieved despite his own dissatisfaction with the alliance and the outcome of his very own actions.

However...

Supporters often claim that Donald Trump is playing “3D chess” on the global stage. The idea is that while critics see chaos, Trump is supposedly executing a deeper, unseen strategy. That claim sounds clever, but when examined through the actual standards of modern statecraft, it does not hold up.

Real geopolitics is not improvisational theater. It is a discipline built on continuity, credibility, coalition management, and long-term consequence modeling. When those fundamentals collapse, what remains is not hidden genius. It is institutional damage.

This is why many analysts, diplomats, and allied governments increasingly interpret Trump’s behavior not as multidimensional strategy, but as something far closer to political checkers.

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What Genuine Strategic Statecraft Requires

High-level strategy in foreign policy depends on several core pillars:

• Alliance stability and treaty reliability

• Predictable signaling to both allies and adversaries

• Second- and third-order consequence planning

• Coordination between military, economic, diplomatic, and intelligence institutions

• Multi-year or multi-decade planning horizons

Strategy is slow, layered, and disciplined. It is rarely flashy. It is built on consistency, not spectacle.

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What Trump Actually Practices Instead

Trump’s approach to foreign policy consistently displays a different pattern:

• Transactional bilateral deals instead of alliance-centered diplomacy

• Public attacks on long-time allies

• Open admiration for authoritarian leaders

• Foreign policy conducted through social media theatrics

• Policy reversals that undermine long-term deterrence

• No stable doctrine beyond immediate leverage and attention dominance

This is not multidimensional strategy. It is personal branding fused to impulsive power projection.

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Why the “3D Chess” Narrative Persists

The myth survives for three main reasons:

First, it acts as failure insulation. Any outcome, even damaging ones, can be reframed as misunderstood brilliance.

Second, it reinforces Trump’s cultivated identity as an unbeatable negotiator. The narrative protects the brand regardless of the results.

Third, it functions as propaganda. It turns visible disorder into supposed hidden mastery without needing evidence.

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How Europe and U.S. Allies See It

From the perspective of NATO and European governments, Trump’s behavior does not project strength. It injects instability into deterrence systems that depend on clarity and reliability.

When alliance commitments become uncertain, adversaries test boundaries. That is not strategic dominance. That is degraded deterrence.

Instead of strengthening collective security, Trump’s conduct forces allies to prepare for U.S. unpredictability itself.

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Why “Checkers” Is a More Accurate Metaphor

Checkers is a game of immediate captures. Chess is a game of long-term positional control. Trump’s behavior consistently reflects the former.

• Moves prioritize instant optics over future vulnerability

• Threats are made without defensive coverage

• Short-term attention beats long-term positioning

• Consequences are externalized to institutions and allies

This is not how durable international strategy is built. It is how leverage is burned down for short-term effect.

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Conclusion

Trump claims strategic depth. What his behavior demonstrates is tactical impulsivity.

The “3D chess” framing functions as marketing, not analysis. It excuses disorder by labeling it genius after the fact. Meanwhile, the real costs show up in weakened alliances, degraded deterrence, and rising global instability.

On the world stage, statecraft remains a multi-layered discipline of patience and structure. What Trump practices instead looks far more like checkers, fast moves, loud captures, and little protection for what comes next.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Psychological Gender Dysmorphia and the Politics of Who Gets Counted

We’ve entered a strange era in American public health where cancer, of all things, is being dragged into the culture war. According to recent reporting, policy changes tied to the Trump administration will require federally funded cancer registries to track patients only as “male,” “female,” or “unknown,” effectively erasing gender-diverse classifications from future cancer data.

Supporters frame this as a return to “biological clarity.” Critics see it as an act of political erasure that will obscure who actually gets sick, how they respond to treatment, and where disparities exist. And both sides, in their own way, are missing something essential:

This isn’t just about biology or identity anymore. It’s about ideology overriding medical reality at the institutional level.

That phenomenon is what I call Psychological Gender Dysmorphia.

Not as a psychiatric diagnosis. Not as a personal attack. But as a descriptive label for a state-level belief error where government systems reshape reality to fit politics, even when public health pays the price.

Important Clarification

The term “Psychological Gender Dysmorphia” is not a diagnosis in the DSM-5 and is not intended to be one. It is a rhetorical and analytic label for an institutional behavior pattern, not a psychiatric condition in individuals. The concept describes how government agencies and political systems distort medical reality under ideological pressure, not how any group of people experiences identity.

This distinction matters. The critique here is of policy-driven distortion, not of patients, minorities, or personal identity.

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What Cancer Registries Are Actually For

Cancer registries exist for one reason: to track reality accurately.

They tell us:

• Who is getting sick

• At what rates

• With what outcomes

• Under what conditions

• In which populations

This data drives:

• Screening guidelines

• Research funding

• Drug development

• Public health interventions

• Insurance policy

• Hospital planning

When you alter how people are classified, you don’t just change language. You change what reality looks like on paper. And in medicine, paper reality is what determines who gets seen and who gets ignored.

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How Ideology Breaks Medical Data

Under the new framework reported, if a person’s biology, medical history, or lived identity doesn’t fit neatly into the approved binary categories, they risk being classified as “unknown.” In epidemiology, “unknown” doesn’t mean mysterious. It means statistically disposable.

You can’t:

• Track trends

• Measure disparities

• Identify risk factors

• Or justify targeted interventions

for a population that technically does not exist in the data.

That’s not science. That’s narrative control through administrative simplification.

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What I Mean by “Psychological Gender Dysmorphia”

Psychological Gender Dysmorphia, as I use the term, refers to:

The institutional compulsion to distort medical classification in order to satisfy political narratives about gender, even when that distortion damages scientific accuracy and patient outcomes.

It’s not about transgender people.
It’s not about personal identity.
It’s about bureaucracies losing their grip on empirical reality under ideological pressure.

In past years, critics argued that some agencies were privileging gender identity over biological sex in medical contexts where sex clearly matters. Now the pendulum is swinging hard the other way: identity itself is being erased when it becomes inconvenient.

Both directions represent the same underlying failure:
Medicine being subordinated to politics.

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Trump’s Role in the Pattern

This policy shift fits a broader Trump-era pattern that extends far beyond health care:

• Redefining agencies by loyalty rather than expertise

• Treating data as a political enemy

• Framing complexity as corruption

• Calling scientific nuance “woke”

• Replacing institutional neutrality with narrative enforcement

The result isn’t conservative governance or progressive reform. It’s state-mandated simplification of reality.

That’s how Psychological Gender Dysmorphia becomes systemic rather than rhetorical.

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Why This Is Dangerous Regardless of Where You Stand

You don’t have to agree on gender politics to see the danger here.

If you support transgender rights:

• This policy erases visibility, making disparities harder to prove and easier to deny.

If you prioritize biological classification:

• This policy corrupts data integrity, because medical reality is always more complex than two boxes.

If you care about public health at all:

• This policy introduces blind spots into cancer science, and blind spots kill.

This is not inclusion versus exclusion. This is accuracy versus ideology.

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Cancer Does Not Care About Politics

Cancer does not:

• Vote

• Watch cable news

• Attend rallies

• Or recognize executive orders

It follows biology, exposure, genetics, hormones, environment, stress, access to care, and treatment timing. When political systems try to compress that reality into neat ideological categories, cancer doesn’t comply. People just get miscounted, misclassified, or missed.

---

The Real Question

The real question is not:
“Is this inclusive enough?”
or
“Is this biologically pure enough?”

The real question is:

Who benefits when medical reality is rewritten to make politics feel simpler?

Because patients don’t benefit.
Doctors don’t benefit.
Researchers don’t benefit.
Public health doesn’t benefit.

Only narratives do.

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Final Word

Psychological Gender Dysmorphia isn’t about individuals being confused. It’s about institutions becoming ideologically dysmorphic. When governments decide which kinds of people are allowed to exist statistically, science stops being discovery and becomes compliance.

And history is very clear about where that path leads.

Cancer doesn’t care what we call it.
But patients will.

---

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Why the Tax Debate Feels So Confusing (and Why It Really Isn’t)

We often hear this argument:

“I may not pay the same percentage as a working person, but I pay more in total dollars than most people will ever earn.”

Technically, that can be true.
But it completely misses the point.

Because taxes aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet.
They are felt in real life — in rent, groceries, medical bills, car repairs, and whether a single emergency tips a household into crisis.

The confusion around taxes exists because two very different measures of “fair” are being used at the same time.

Look. To be clear about this...taxes, are a privilege to pay. We should stop seeing them as a nightmare. They are part of being a citizen, of being supportive of your country.

However, they should also be fair and equal. And here is where things get very partisan and confused. They should be used appropriately. But also, the question here is, "equal" in what way(s)?

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Two Ways People Measure Tax “Fairness”

1. Total Dollars Paid

This is the measure wealthy people usually use.

If someone earns $20 million and pays $4 million in taxes, they can honestly say, “I paid more in taxes than most families will ever make.”

That sounds massive. And in raw numbers, it is.

But after taxes, they still have $16 million.

Their lifestyle, security, healthcare, housing, education, and future are not at risk.

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2. Percentage and Survival Pressure

This is how working people experience taxes.

If someone earns $30,000 and pays $6,000 in taxes, that 20% might mean:

• No emergency savings

• Delayed medical care

• No financial buffer at all

• Chronic stress that never shuts off

That same percentage doesn’t just “reduce income.”
It changes what kind of life is possible.

This is why equal percentages do not create equal reality.

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Why Equal Percentages Still Aren’t Equal

Let’s say everyone paid 20%:

• A person making $30,000 pays $6,000 and struggles to survive.

• A person making $3 million pays $600,000 and still lives in total security.

• A person making $300 million pays $60 million and remains untouched by hardship.

The math is equal.
The pain is not.

This is the part that gets ignored most often.

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The Part Everyone Avoids Saying Out Loud

The real issue is not:

“Do wealthy people pay a lot?”

The real issue is:

Do they pay enough to feel the same pressure regular people live under every day?

When taxes do not change your life in any meaningful way, they are not a shared burden.
They are a minor administrative inconvenience.

When taxes determine whether you can afford food, rent, medicine, or transportation, they are a form of ongoing vulnerability.

That is not shared sacrifice. That is unequal exposure to risk.

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Why the System Feels So Confusing on Purpose

Three things keep this discussion muddled:

1. Politics Follows Money
   Those with the most wealth have the most influence over tax rules.

2. Wealth Is Romanticized in America
   People are taught to identify with future billionaires instead of present reality. Many defend extreme wealth as if they will personally benefit from it someday.

3. The Tax Code Is Extremely Complex
   Complex systems protect inequality. If few people truly understand the rules, it becomes harder to challenge the results.

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What Fairness Would Actually Mean

Fairness does not require that everyone pays the same number of dollars.

Fairness means:

• The burden feels similar

• The pressure is shared

• No group is crushed while another barely notices

Societies do not fall apart because the wealthy are taxed too much.
They fall apart when the bottom breaks while the top grows ever lighter.

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The Bottom Line

This debate only feels confusing because one side talks about how much they pay, while the other side lives how much it hurts.

Those are not the same thing.

Until pain and responsibility are shared, the system will never feel fair — because mathematically equal rules do not produce human equality in the real world.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

When the Government Starts Naming AI Projects After the Book of Genesis

We desperately need to pay attention to this administration under Donald Trump. So much is not what it seems...so much, just is.

Words matter in government. Names especially. They tell you what an administration wants people to feel, fear, celebrate, or obey. So when the federal government rolls out something called the Genesis Mission, attached to nuclear security and artificial intelligence, the first reaction for many Americans was not awe. It was: Why does that sound like a Bible study with warheads?

Because it does. And that is the point.

For more: Americans and AI: Nuclear Agency Follows Through on Trump’s ‘Genesis Mission’

From @thebibleofficial

We are living in a moment when Christian-nationalist language is slipping quietly into the branding of government programs, nonprofit initiatives, education policies, and even corporate campaigns. The goal is never said out loud. It never has to be. The symbolism does the heavy lifting. The audience it is meant for recognizes the signal instantly. The rest of us are asked to pretend it is just a poetic flourish.

But nothing about this context is poetic. It is political. And it is strategic.

Why “Genesis” is not a neutral name

The Trump administration’s new AI initiative comes packaged with biblical framing right from the title. “Genesis” is not a random mythological reference. It carries a collection of meanings deeply tied to creation, divine authority, and the idea of a God-given mission. In Christian nationalist circles, these themes are used constantly to justify dominance, hierarchy, and power.

So when a program focused on nuclear security and AI acceleration gets branded “Genesis,” it is hard not to see the ideological fingerprints. It does not take a conspiracy theorist to see the direction of the wind. It only takes someone who has been paying attention to the steady march of Christian-nationalist messaging into what used to be ideologically neutral institutions.

Whether DOE staff chose the name for poetic flair or were told to use it from above almost does not matter. The effect is the same. It blends state power with religious symbolism. That has always been the quiet goal of Christian nationalism. Make it normal. Make it invisible. Make it patriotic.

Using biblical language to describe nuclear and AI initiatives is something new. It is also something deeply unsettling.

The Manhattan Project did not pretend to be holy

The administration has tried framing the Genesis Mission as a Manhattan Project for the age of AI. But the original Manhattan Project, for all its secrecy and moral controversy, did something modern politics rarely does. It kept religion out of the room.

No one tried to wrap it in divine language. No one suggested God’s hand was guiding the weapon. No one suggested the nation had a holy obligation to build it.

The stakes were terrifying enough without telling the public the bomb was ordained.

With the Genesis Mission, the branding does exactly that kind of work. It suggests righteous purpose. It suggests destiny. It suggests that hesitation itself is a form of doubt or disloyalty.

If you want people to stop questioning the wisdom of your choices, this is how you do it.

A pattern across industries

The use of “Genesis” is not an isolated coincidence. We are seeing biblical and quasi-biblical branding everywhere lately.

Publishing companies. Nonprofits. Consulting firms. PACs. Education initiatives. All leaning into names that evoke scripture, purity, chosenness, divine purpose. The names often look secular enough. They function like a handshake under the table.

The more this language spreads, the more it normalizes the idea that government and industry should speak with a religious voice. And not just any religious voice. A Christian-nationalist one.

A name is a foot in the door. A story about who deserves power is the rest of the body.

The quiet part becomes structural

When this administration talks about banning “woke AI,” mandating Christian teaching in public education, or championing a version of America as a divinely chosen nation, the Genesis Mission fits neatly into the pattern. It is all part of a narrative where God is invoked to sanctify political power and shield it from criticism.

Tie your biggest technological and military projects to religious branding and suddenly ordinary skepticism becomes blasphemy. It is an old authoritarian trick dressed in new tech.

This is not about whether AI development is good or bad. This is about the creeping normalization of a worldview that sees national policy as an extension of one religious identity, one ideology, and one leader.

When the state sounds like a pulpit

A government that speaks in religious metaphors starts encouraging its citizens to think in them. That is the danger. Not the name itself. The direction it points. A democracy cannot function if political authority starts claiming spiritual legitimacy.

“Genesis” is not just branding. It is a signal. And we should not ignore the habit forming around these signals. Because habits become norms. Norms become rules. Rules become systems.

And once a system believes it is acting under divine mandate, there is no room left for dissent, debate, or doubt.

The real question

Why does a modern nuclear-AI initiative need a biblical name at all? Why does any government program?

The answer, unfortunately, is that it does not.
But the movement behind it does.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT