A personal battle against domination and control. Confronting the deity image (framed as “Lord, King, Ruler”) that validates this ruinous pathology in human life and society, Wendell Krossa
“You can stand me up at the gates of hell and I won’t back down. I won’t be turned around. I will stand my ground”, wisdom sage Tom Petty.
What you will encounter here-
I am interested in human lives, stories, experiences and what is going on in all these- the meaning and purpose of it all, and setting our individual stories against the bigger overall story of us as the totality of humanity, where we have come from, where are we going, what is the point of it all, especially the suffering. I look to understand these things in the human insights from across history, from the facts of physical reality, and then try to weave it all together here.
Most dominantly, I am fascinated by the best of the human spirit and experience- experiences we describe in term of “love, forgiveness, inclusion, mercy, generosity, freedom, humor, sorrow, and so much more”. What we are learning as we leave our animal past (yet still with the inner inheritance of animal impulses) and struggle toward a more human future, both personally and as an entire family of conscious selves living unique stories.
Add– What is this dualism inside us of the animal and human? What is the point of this evil and good that are deeply embedded inside each one of us?
Also– How do the ideas and beliefs that we have created across history continue to influence our thinking, emotions, motivations and manifest in how we act and live? And after millennia of evidence on the destructive outcomes of our animal inheritance, why do we continue to validate and protect such drives? Are we confused (cognitive dissonance) by the religious tradition of cloaking evil as good?
I present this, not in the format of formal essay, but more in the form of what we call “blogging”- i.e. commentary, illustration, evidence, etc. all mixed together. Nothing to dogmatically prove but hopefully offering insights to help some readers.
Hence my mixing of empirical evidence (physical facts) with theology, wisdom insights, psychology, and all the rest. All essential to “new story alternative themes” critical to narrative reconstruction. My “death/rebirth, disintegration/reintegration” project.
Note- The previous comment on the gradual historical construction of liberal democracy principles, laws, and representative institutions- i.e. “The journey of humanity from barbarism to more humane existence in liberal democracy”- is in the section just below this new opening material.
Spoiler summary of new stuff below: I am urging people to look beyond the left/right divides in our societies to something that is far more critical to understand- i.e. what is really going on, what is the true nature of what we are observing, what is driving and validating such surface conflicts in our societies.
My interest is in probing the “root causes” of conflict and violence, notably the role played by our residual animal drives to tribalism, domination, and retaliatory destruction of differing others.
These have long been protected and validated under “the canopy of the sacred”. These base impulses have been framed in terms of religious ideals and then defended and protected in our great religious traditions. Worst of all, they have been validated by theologies of God as a dominating “tribal Lord, King who executes divine vengeance on enemy unbelievers.” That has long functioned as the ultimate archetype to validate the worst of impulses in people.
This site points to stunning new alternatives to these religiously-shaped validating archetypes, such as “the stunning new theology” presented by sages like Historical Jesus who rejected, for example, the impulse to domination in stating “there must be no lording over others”. He urged instead- “serve one another”. He was the proto-liberal democrat.
As Solzhenitsyn said, the real battle of good against evil is not between classes in our societies but is an inner battle of good against evil that runs down the center of every human heart. Don’t miss this real battle and become caught up in superficial-level societal battles that miss the real root causes that are actually driving the more superficial outcomes that we are told to focus on daily by news media. Yes, the societal struggles matter, but they don’t get to solutions that confront root causal factors (or correlating/contributing factors).
This is effort to understand the real nature of the ongoing assaults on liberal democracy that are coming at us from varied places today. Liberal democracy is the best that we have come up with to get us to a more humane future where all are respected and treated as fully included equals with the same rights and freedoms. Its never a perfect system, but the best that we have come up with to continue the grand exodus out of our animal past and toward a truly human future.
A fundamental undeniable fact is that we are all equal members of the one human family. As the founders of the American Constitution proclaimed- It is a “natural” or God-given right, not bestowed by government. And we therefore all deserve respect, love, and treatment as such, as all equally God-incarnated persons (See the new essay from Bob Brinsmead- link below- on the historical background of this).
My comments further below are not a protest against all hierarchical or organizational structures in our societies as those are just unavoidable facts of life, for efficiency, or whatever. It is more critical how we act within such structures, how we treat one another in such structured organizations. Some take the route of “bosses from hell”, almost sadistically enjoying opportunity to abuse those below them in hierarchical strata. Does that affirm Jordan Peterson’s point that psychopathic types are attracted to opportunities to hold power over others and thereby satisfy the impulse to sadism?
Another:
We are getting some serious probing (from varied sources) of the psychology of leftism today that has shifted toward far-left woke progressive. Many are trying to understand how and why the formerly “liberal” side of our societies has become so “highly illiberal” (e.g. 70% of the left in the US favoring censorship of opponents). Michael Shellenberger and others have done such probing, as has Jordan Peterson. Kristian Niemietz (“Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”) got help from social psychologist Johathan Haidt to understand that- “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.”
He was probing the issue of what fuels such irrational emotion-based choosing to repeatedly pick a failed and destructive belief system (i.e. 24 failed socialist experiments over the past century) that inevitably ruins societies as the “test of facts/outcomes” has incontrovertibly shown.
All part of looking “behind the scenes” to understand the true state of things beyond what we are propagandized with through the distorting public narratives fed to us by mainstream media.
Another preface insert:
I just listened to Joe Rogan interview Andrew Wilson, episode 2444 of JRE.
This relates to my points further below-
They illustrate my argument below to look behind the scenes to fully understand what is going on in our societies. They refer to the riots that are only occurring in Minnesota and how the two people recently killed there (a horrible response by law enforcement authorities) has blown up to a state of national outrage just as more was being exposed on the incredible corruption in Minnesota. The exposure of that corruption was moving toward incriminating state leaders, whether they were actively involved or just irresponsibly careless in not confronting or resolving that as billions were stolen from taxpayers.
As Rogan and guest point out, it is now being uncovered that the riots are not “organic” as claimed but are “coordinated to create chaos” and noise apparently just in time “to distract from the corruption in relation to the Somali daycares” problem. All very interesting background things now being uncovered to reveal what appears to be coordinated by outside agents to create chaos and regain control of the public narrative that we are facing “Nazis, stormtroopers, fascists” who are taking over democracy.
This narrative of assault by “Nazis, fascists, thugs” has been pushed now for years and used by leftist-types to validate what seems to be a crusade to cause chaos and disruption, with even calls for the use of violence, to overthrow liberal democracy. All framed as a “righteous war to save democracy from evil enemies/Nazis”. Groups like Antifa have been implicated as being behind the current chaos.
This illustrates again my point below that we need to look behind the scenes of these public protests to see the true nature of what is really going on, who is involved, what are their intentions, their goals and approaches, their methods, and what is the ultimate aim of creating such chaos. Government officials are looking into the communications of the rioters and finding this is not an “organic” protest but is coordinated to support a larger narrative and a larger project.
Discovery of such activism behind the scenes does not excuse the need for careful response that does not end with people killed. That is horrifically unfortunate.
The guy interviewed by Rogan (Andrew Wilson) has had experience training people for such situations and believes that these riots are designed according to what he terms “mathematical formula” that pushes these engagements against law enforcement where local police are told to stand down. The apparent goal of the activists is that if enough rioting events are planned and incited, then, according to their calculations, these dangerous incidents are statistically bound to happen where people will get hurt.
These unfortunate outcomes can be then used to re-affirm the narrative that law enforcement people are “Gestapo agents attacking harmless citizens” (even though it is legitimate law enforcement to remove criminal illegal migrants who are harming US citizens). The shootings of civilians can then be used to discredit the legitimate law enforcement that must be done to protect US citizens. Media mindlessly repeat the distorting narrative that the ICE people are arresting and disappearing US citizens, just like the Nazis did. That manifests their now common partisan bias as part of “the Resistance”. Insanity.
A bit more… Ah, you are picking on the “left” again.
I would prefer to present the comments below in a more nontribal manner as Chat, for instance, has reminded me that this is a problem on both sides, both on the left and the right. Yes, it is. In that it is a personal issue with each one of us as Solzhenitsyn said. But unfortunately, it has manifested in our liberal democracies as a predominantly left versus right thing, and also in the larger world with the world-scale crusade of leftist collectivism crusading to overthrow liberal democracy societies. Add to this the larger Islamic theocracy crusade against liberal democracy that has allied with the left for temporary advantage. Both seeking to undermine and overthrow liberal democracy as an article below notes. The alliance will appear to work till one succeeds and then exterminates the other, as happened in 1979 Iran.
Moving on to some of the best of theology today….
I offered these points below in a post to a friend, Bob Brinsmead, who writes on topics like “the stunning new theology” of a God who relates to humanity horizontally and not vertically (i.e. rejecting the mythical fallacy of deity as “Lord/King”, who exists in some exalted heavenly realm above us as a “sky God”). Bob is good on the point that “God is only known in humanity and no where else”.
I reminded Bob that Jordan Peterson in a video clip stated this:
“Karl Jung said, ‘Modern people don’t see God because they don’t look low enough’”. As Peterson says, that is worth pondering for the rest of your life.
Or the story of the priest who ascended a tower to look for God in the heavens somewhere. He prayed, “God where are you?” And God responded, “Down here among my people”.
These quotes affirm Bob’s points on vertical/horizontal and that God is only found/seen in humanity and nowhere else. So “look low enough”.
Bob’s new essay:
“The Image of God in Humankind is a momentous act of Special Revelation”
https://robertdbrinsmead.substack.com/p/the-image-of-god-in-humankind-is?utm_=
Bob’s latest essay, posted on Substack, offers some good historical background to the issue of elites seeking domination and control in our societies and the archetypes that they appeal to (i.e. often core religious themes/beliefs, notably deity as dominating Lord, King). Power-mongering elites have long used religious archetypes for validation to unleash their animal impulse to domination and control of others. Bob’s essay affirms my blogging points below on “behind the scenes” stuff.
It took till Historical Jesus to finally confront and reject the primitive theology of dominating deity, in his statement that true greatness (i.e. “God is great”) does not lord over others but serves others.
Domination and control of others is not love by any stretch of justification. Authentic love does not relate down to others but relates horizontally to all as equals. Or it is not love. As others state- Where there is no authentic freedom there is no authentic love. Love and freedom are inseparable realities. Authentic love respects and protects the freedom of others.
Now- Some scattered points in my weaving around this topic of keeping the background big picture in view, notably, the history-long “elite/commoner” struggle. It’s bigger than just the US and related liberal democracy situations, though they illustrate how the push of some (i.e. elites, bureaucrats) for domination harmfully impacts societies with incited tribalism, unleashed domination, and consequent destructive conflict in our societies.
Perhaps more than anything else wrong in our societies, elite power-mongering has repeatedly derailed the human journey from its progress out of animal existence and toward a more humane future. This problem reduces to an inherited animal impulse that has too often been cloaked as heroic righteousness to liberate oppressed people, notably in leftist collectivist narratives but also presented similarly on the right. Validating domination is a serious deformation of the “Hero’s Quest”. But such mental deformity in narrative framing validates elites as they satisfy the urge to virtue-signal as morally superior while abusing others with domination and control.
This is from posts sent to a discussion group… The comment below pulls insights from all over to enlighten what might be occurring behind the scenes.
Intro note: In this probing “behind the scenes”, as always, the biggest of big background narratives or contexts is that of our exodus out of animal existence to become human in the gradual progress of civilization. And critical to understand in this history-long adventure are the varied forces/elements that shape us both negatively (hindering, derailing progress) and positively (affirming, enhancing our progress). All critical to our journey toward a more human future.
Add here our fundamental responsibility to understand/learn the true difference between good and bad in this journey. We try to grasp the true nature of each due to the common habit of many to cloak evil as good, often protecting the worst ideas/practises under “the canopy of the sacred” (i.e. meaning theology, religion).
Another preface note: My use of the term “commoner” throughout this comment is lifted from Richard Landes’ referral to the “elite/commoner divide”. “Commoner” simply refers to us average/ordinary citizens.
Let’s begin: Wendell Krossa
Here is another look behind the scenes. We are propagandized to look at problems like conflict in our societies as related to specific persons/groups like Trump versus the Democrats and to view those actors as central to understanding and explaining the contemporary manifestation of this conflict problem. But it is helpful to also recognize that there are larger forces at work behind the scenes, and to realize that this conflict would exist even if someone other than a Trump-like character were in office battling with his contemporary opponents on the other side.
Insert: While we pass through this present conflict between left and right, as well illustrated in the US situation, we remember surveys showing that some 80% plus of Americans agree on the most important issues, and that if we focus on these common shared issues, this would help to unify citizens around common concerns.
“AI Overview
“Recent surveys and polls in 2024 and 2025 indicate that while Americans are deeply divided on political figures and the direction of the country, there is a high degree of consensus (often 80% or more) on certain core democratic principles, specific policy goals, and shared concerns regarding the economy and institutional trust.
Here are key areas where 80% or more of Americans show consensus, according to recent data:
“Core Democratic Principles
• Fundamental Rights: A 2024 AP-NORC poll found that roughly 9 in 10 U.S. adults agree that the right to vote, equal protection under the law, and the right to privacy are extremely or very important to the nation’s identity.
• Democratic Values: Surveys show over 80% agreement on essential democratic foundations, including the importance of free speech (82%), the peaceful transfer of power (80%), and conducting elections without fraud (92%).
• Rejection of Political Violence: A 2025 poll found that 83% of Americans agree that using violence to achieve political goals is never acceptable.
“Economic and Policy Consensus
• Inflation Concerns: A 2025 survey by the American Communities Project found that 81% of Americans nationwide agree that inflation or rising prices have been a major negative change in their lives.
• Government Influence: Roughly 80% of Americans agree that political institutions have been captured by the rich and powerful.
• Medicaid Support: A 2025 NAMI/Ipsos poll found 84% of Americans agree that Medicaid is crucial for providing health care to vulnerable populations.
• Gun Law Support: Research indicates that roughly 86% of Americans support requiring criminal background checks on all gun buyers.
“Core Values and Social Cohesion
• Shared Personal Values: When asked about personal values, more than 8 in 10 Americans (80%+) select respect, family, trustworthiness, and freedom as important to them.
• Empathy: A 2025 PRRI survey found that 80% of Americans agree that empathy is a moral value that acts as a foundation for a healthy society.
“The Paradox of Division
“While Americans agree on many core values and issues, a record-high 80% of U.S. adults believe the country is greatly divided on its most important values, according to a September 2024 Gallup poll. This indicates that the high agreement on what matters (e.g., freedom, safety, economic stability) is often overshadowed by disagreements on how to achieve those goals.
(End of Overview)
Also this:
“The Politics of Neither: Polls are increasingly clear: both Republicans and Democrats are rapidly losing the public’s confidence. Do more people want to end the culture war than win it?”, Matt Taibbi, Jan. 28, 2026
https://www.racket.news/p/the-politics-of-neither
Quotes from Taibbi’s article:
“Increasingly, all-consuming controversies like the Minnesota mayhem take place in parallel to a separate, bigger story about broad defection of the whole electorate away from both parties, especially among younger Americans. The future will belong to neither-aligned voters…
“Surveys suggest exhaustion with culture war and a desire to re-unify the country.
“Kucinich believes 2028 offers an opening on this front. ‘I’m going to guess, that in 2028, for the first time since Perot, there’s going to be an opening for a real independent who just tells both parties, “I’ll work with you, but I am running for the people, not for the party”,’ he said.”
(End of Taibbi article)
When tribalism dominates institutions/organizations/nations and they no longer clearly affirm human oneness, no longer promote our fundamental unity as one family, then they have lost sight of the true meaning and purpose of liberal democracy.
Note also here the practice of partisan media, invested in creating fear and propagandizing as their role in “the resistance” to their ideological opponents. Media, now presenting partisan narratives on current events, overshadow the basic agreements of majorities as revealed in surveys. Media now present a distorted view of things (i.e. differing others as evil enemies destroying democracy) to create further tribal animosity between differing sectors of populations.
Moving along…
Probing further the bigger background picture (the “behind the scenes” stuff), I then shift to, for example, the Chinese government’s past statements that they intend to overthrow Western liberal democracy and replace it with their totalitarian approach to governance. And I note that the WEF elites support the Chinese approach (see further “Insert” and “Notes” below). And I remember comments by Chinese authorities regarding their “long-game” project (i.e. the long march through Western institutions, to capture such institutions).
Bear with me on covering these intermediate stages. I am working historically and depth-wise backward (probing deeper into human psyche) to get to more critically important root causes.
Then I add in to this mix, statements by others on the overseas “bot farms” (i.e. Chinese, Russian, Iranian, etc.) where state-funded employees are tasked to stir rage among differing factions in the populations of enemy states by falsely posing as citizens of those states and through that deception to incite further divisive anger over domestic disagreements. Joe Rogan, among others, repeatedly points this out, that foreign bot programs are intended to create chaos in societies, inciting suspicion and hate between diverse factions. And some (e.g. his guest Mike Benz) have noted that the CIA has also done the same in the past in foreign countries as preparation to overthrow governments that the US did not like.
Now, some notes on the Chinese long-term approach (this is not to blanket condemn the Chinese population but to expose the goals, intentions, and programs of the elite leadership):
“China’s Threat to Global Democracy: The Chinese Communist Party is deadly serious about its authoritarian designs, and it is bent on promoting them. It is time for the world’s democracies to get serious, too”, Michael Beckley, Hal Brands, Dec. 2022
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/chinas-threat-to-global-democracy/
Also,
“China under Xi Jinping: This piece is part of a special ‘Student Focus’ section in the issue and appears in vol. 75, no. 1, ‘Insecurities: The 75th Anniversary Issue, 1947-2022’ (Fall/Winter 2022)”, Jenny Li
https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/content/china-under-xi-jinping
But to now get right to my point in this comment:
As one article said yesterday- The bigger story behind the conflicts between left and right factions in our liberal democracies is the story of the two superpowers (China, US) battling for domination/control of our world. And to push further into the background- The above bipolarism is about two opposing systems that are battling for dominance as to which should be the dominant approach to organizing human societies. Arthur Herman has detailed the long history of this struggle in Western civilization in his “The Cave and the Light: Plato versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization”.
One system- liberal democracy- is imperfect, like all human endeavors, but it works best to protect individual freedom and rights. The other system- leftist collectivism- continues the same old Marxist totalitarianism of last century where collectivist elites dominated commoners. Their collectivist ideology was shaped by ancient inputs like Plato’s “Philosopher Kings” theme. Plato advocated for special divinely blessed and endowed people (enlightened elites) to rule the rest of the ignorant and unqualified commoners.
And, just another insert point, one interesting feature from past Marxist crusades to dominate societies is the role of Western “useful idiots”. That would include the varied Western intellectuals who supported Stalin’s collectivism or Mao’s similar totalitarianism. This is detailed, for example, in Richard Landes “Heaven On Earth”.
And then, to step back even further in this look behind the scenes, we are living through just another episode, over the multiple-millennia of our history, where elites relentlessly seek domination and control of commoners. This is about the original and subsequently endless push of power-seeking totalitarians to establish the primitive “elite/commoner divide” in human societies.
And that takes us right to this inherited impulse where some in groups seek to dominate others of their group. Primitive animal “alpha-ism”. There. That nails the ultimate root of the issue. Our animal past and the residual inheritance from that past- i.e. the evil triad of impulses to tribalism, domination, and retaliatory destruction of differing/competing others. That is where the real battle of life takes place, the “Hero’s Quest” battle against this monster/enemy inside each one of us. Remember Solzhenitsyn again on this- i.e. the real battle of good against evil runs through every human heart. This is the ultimate “behind the scenes”.
This site then probes the ideas/beliefs (archetypes) that were constructed by our ancestors to validate these inherited residual impulses from our animal past and how we can counter them in order to liberate ourselves from residual barbarism in order to continue our progress toward a more human future.
Insert: As with Jeffrey Schwartz’s title of his book- “You are not your brain”. The real human self and spirit, the real us, is something essentially good, what NDE accounts affirm when they state that our real essence is love. This is important insight for a proper basis for self-imaging, for true identity.
Some further notes (Remember, this is blogging, not formal essay stuff, hence the scattershot presentation here full of “inserts and notes”. What Trump calls “weaving”.):
“AI Overview
“Useful idiots” (or “useful fools”) is a derogatory term for naive supporters who unwittingly advance a cause or leader they don’t fully understand, often manipulated by the actual power brokers, famously used during the Cold War for Western sympathizers of Communism, though its attribution to Lenin is debated, and the concept applies broadly to those who support harmful ideologies or regimes without seeing the negative consequences. It can refer to individuals, books, podcasts, or films.
“Core Meaning
• Manipulation: People who believe they are acting independently but are actually being used by powerful figures or systems.
• Unawareness: They fail to grasp the true, often negative, implications or goals of the cause they support, explains Wikipedia.
• Origin: Popularized during the Cold War for Westerners praising Soviet communism, though the phrase might predate Vladimir Lenin and its exact source is uncertain.
(End of AI Overview)
And another insert on WEF elites affirming the Chinese totalitarian approach:
“Klaus Schwab proclaims China a ‘Role Model’ for many nations”, Lloyd Billingsley, Dec. 2022
https://www.independent.org/article/2022/12/01/klaus-schwab-china/
Quotes from above link noting forces inside our liberal democracies validating outside forces trying to undermine them:
“China is a ‘role model’ for many countries, according to World Economic Forum (WEF) boss Klaus Schwab, in a recent interview with Chinese state media. ‘I think we should be very careful in imposing systems,’ Schwab added, ‘but the Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries.’
“The Chinese model is a one-party totalitarian dictatorship, imposing a socialist command economy. By recommending such a model for ‘a number of countries,’ the WEF founder, 84, removes himself from any serious economic or political debate. On the other hand, Schwab is hardly alone in his praise for the Communist People’s Republic of China.
Then: “’There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China,’ Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in 2013. ‘Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.’ Trudeau is right about the dictatorship, but wrong that it can turn around an economy ‘on a dime,’ especially in the direction of improvement. To say the least, dictatorships of any sort cannot boast of great economic success.
“Prime Minister Trudeau, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, seems unaware that dictatorships stay in power by repressing the people, not by expanding their economic freedom. In his admiration for China, Trudeau has company south of the border (i.e. Joe Biden’s proclamation the Chinese are ‘not bad folks’).”
Further posts to a discussion group (continuing the illustration of this domination element of the “evil triad” impulses):
“I’ve sent you all the National Post article on the Red/Green alliance thing that was used in the 1979 Iranian revolution under Ayatollah Khomeini. Islamic theocrats viewed such alliance as useful (i.e. allowing leftist socialists in Iran to join them in overthrowing the Shah’s regime). But once in power the theocrats then imprisoned and crushed the socialist participants in that revolution.
“The article’s author said (see below) the same is happening today as Islamists are marching in many demonstrations (US, Canada, elsewhere) with Western socialist activists. It is another temporary alliance with “useful idiots” who will be crushed once the Islamic radicals gain power, wherever and whenever they do. Red for the socialists, green for the Islamic theocracy people.
“As with all such alliances, once power is gained then factions turn on one another in the violent jostling for absolute totalitarian control. In the US situation it appears that the leftist socialist faction may be winning the supremacy struggle as a majority of US youth now support socialism as the preferred approach for organizing society (surveys show some 51%- https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/young-americans-support-abstract-and-unworkable-socialism ). That means the Chinese “long march through the institutions” of Western democracy appears to have been successful (see also historian Niall Ferguson on this).”
Note: “The weird watermelon thing” (more on Western “useful idiots”)-
“The Red-Green alliance and the lesson Iran is teaching the West again: Radical western leftists need reminding of the danger of aligning with or backing Islamist movements”, Sheryl Saperia, Jan. 22, 2026
Quotes from this presentation:
Saperia begins: “Iran has been roiling with protest. Across cities and provinces, Iranians have been risking their lives to challenge a clerical regime that has ruled through religious coercion, surveillance and fear for nearly half a century.”
She then notes that the western left has been silent on Iran’s current uprising and this exposes the ideological contradictions in the left, that it will not recognize a struggle that does not fit its narrative and beliefs. Saperia warns that today’s western left is repeating a pattern of allying with Islamist theocrats who will eliminate them when they take power.
She notes the current “Red/Green” alliance of radical left and Islamist theocrats is based on a common opposition to the West, to Israel, and to liberal democracy, hence the strange sight of western feminist activists marching with proponents of Sharia law at rallies.
Insert- Note this from AI Overview. The application of anti-female Sharia laws varies in different Muslim countries:
“Systemic discrimination against women.
• Male Guardianship: Systems in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran require women to have male guardian (father, husband, brother, or son) permission for significant life decisions, including marriage, divorce, travel, education, and employment.
• Mandatory Dress Codes: In Iran and under the Taliban in Afghanistan, strict dress codes, such as the mandatory hijab or face veil, are enforced by law, with penalties for non-compliance ranging from fines to imprisonment.
• Restrictions on Mobility and Public Life: In some regions, women are banned from certain jobs, obtaining education past a certain age, or moving about in public without a male chaperone.
• Legal Standing: Traditional legal interpretations in some contexts may value a woman’s inheritance at half that of a man’s, and her legal testimony may be weighted less in court, particularly in criminal cases like zina (consensual sexual intercourse outside of marriage).
“Human rights organizations and UN bodies have widely condemned these practices as violations of international human rights principles”.
(End of AI Overview)
Saperia then shifts to her point that this current alliance repeats what happened in the 1979 Iranian revolution where Marxists, secular liberals, and religious factions all joined forces to protest Western influence and power- i.e. western imperialism. They shared an intense hatred of Western liberal democracy, and their response was to mount another crusade where power-mongering elites struggle to dominate and control commoners.
The secular leftist groups expected that when the monarchy was overthrown, “a path would open to socialist or democratic transformation.”
She continues, noting that when the Shah’s regime collapsed, “Khomeini’s followers moved rapidly to consolidate power. Parallel institutions were constructed. Independent newspapers were shuttered. Rival parties were banned. Islamic Revolutionary courts were established. Groups that had marched alongside the Islamists were marginalized, then crushed. Communist organizations were dismantled. Liberal figures were sidelined. Thousands of former allies were imprisoned and executed.”
The leftists had misread the Islamic theocrats, falsely believing their “theocratic absolutism” was legitimate grievance and only temporarily fueled their protest. By the time the true totalitarian nature of the Islamist protest was revealed it was too late.
Western leftists are repeating this same mistake today, according to Saperia. Downplaying the theocrats real nature because, as other commentators have also noted, groups like the Muslim Brotherhood have refined their approach with the language of “social justice, decolonization, a struggle for dignity, anti-Islamophobia, anti-racism”, etc. Talk of theocracy is dismissed as “hysteria”.
“Western intelligentsia has learned nothing about the danger of aligning with or backing Islamist movements”, says Saperia. When Islamists gain power, they do not permit pluralism but extinguish entirely liberal democracy. She warns that the current alliance of Red/Green is “suicidal” just as it was in the 1979 Iranian revolution.
(End of article)
Coming back from that “weave” (continuing my notes to the discussion group):
“Look beyond the current Trump/Democrats battles to the more fundamental struggle going on between liberal democracy freedoms and rights, and collectivist totalitarianism. This never ends in our societies, what Richard Landes termed the long-term “elite/commoner” divide that has been pushed on our societies for millennia now.
“The recent WEF gathering in Davos, was the latest confab of Western elites who advocate for their own brand of worldwide collectivism (soft or “nice” socialism mixed with a sprinkling of democracy that validates elites as virtue-signaling as good). The Davos elites were confronted by disruptors representing commoner rights and freedoms, notably Libertarian Javier Milei of Argentina who is another heroic activist for commoner freedom and rights.
“The characters on the commoner side of this struggle may be unsavory and offensive in presentation at times but look beyond them to this greater battle going on in the background. It affects each one of us and the issue is the individual freedom approach struggling against collectivist totalitarianism, where elites dominate commoners, as ever before in history.”
Further blog notes on collectivist elites despising “useful idiots”:
Marx and Engels despised peasants and workers, as did Mao. Elites despising the weaker little people is the same old anti-humanism and lack of trust of commoners that has existed from the beginning when early elitist mythmakers blamed “fallen, sinful people” for ruining some imagined original paradise. Marx framed that mythology in terms of “ignorant, backward, and individualistic peasants” ruining primitive communalism societies, his vision of the original paradise. Nonetheless, those fallen, ignorant masses could be manipulated to serve elite agendas (i.e. their lives considered worthless and expendable in violent revolutions to overthrow existing societies). All to satisfy elite virtue-signaling as heroic warriors for justice engaging “righteous battles of good against evil”.
“AI Overview
“The interpretation that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Mao Zedong held profound contempt for the groups they claimed to represent is a central theme in… notably Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story (2005).
“While mainstream Marxist theory focuses on liberating the working class, critics argue that in practice, both the founders of Marxism and Mao Zedong displayed, at various times, disdain, distrust, or utter disregard for the lives of the peasants and workers.
“1. Marx and Engels on Peasants and Workers
• “Idiocy of Rural Life”: In ‘The Communist Manifesto’, Marx and Engels famously referred to the “idiocy of rural life” (or “barbarism” in some translations), reflecting a view that peasants were ignorant, isolated, and culturally backward.
• Reactionary Nature: Marx often viewed the peasantry as a “sack of potatoes”—individualistic, fragmented, and conservative— capable of hindering revolutionary progress by clinging to their small plots of land.
• “Workers”: While Marx and Engels built their theory around the liberation of the proletariat, they also criticized the lack of consciousness among workers, particularly in their early writings. Marx acknowledged to Engels in 1863 that their “childish enthusiasm” for a rapid revolution had “gone to hell,” partly due to the failure of the working class to rise up as expected.
“2. Mao Zedong on Peasants and Workers (Chang and Halliday)
“Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s biography Mao: The Unknown Story presents a damning portrait of Mao’s attitude toward his subjects:
• Ruthless Exploitation: Chang and Halliday argue that Mao was indifferent to the suffering of peasants and workers before 1927 and subsequently used them ruthlessly as tools for personal power.
• Indifference to Famine: The authors document that during the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), when tens of millions were starving, Mao prioritized state power and weapon production. In 1959, he was quoted as saying, “When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill”.
• Sacrificing Lives: According to the book, Mao declared in 1958 that “half of China may well have to die” to achieve his goals. He also allegedly told Soviet officials he was prepared to sacrifice 300 million Chinese people to win a nuclear war.
• “Slave-Labourers”: Chang and Halliday characterize the rural communes into which Mao forced peasants as “de facto camps for slave-labourers”.
(End of AI Overview)
More on Western leftists as “Useful idiots”:
Glen Greenwald and Michael Shellenberger, among others, have cautioned us that the left/right conflict in our western liberal democracies is more just a surface distraction from a bigger “behind the scenes” battle going on where contemporary elites are trying to dominate state agencies and institutions for their own benefit and wish to hide any exposure of their corruption of our democracies. Hence, using propaganda tools like media to frame public narratives, they set the commoners to hating and fighting one another. They incite the tribalism impulse among citizens to create chaos and orient citizen’s attention away from what they are doing behind the scenes to manipulate and control societies. Mike Benz, for one example, exposed the creation of a widespread “elite censorship infrastructure” to mask secretive agendas of elites, in his Joe Rogan interviews last year.
Note: Today’s elites have constructed public narratives to reframe and mask their projects to dominate societies as “noble cause, righteous salvation, even ‘liberation of the oppressed’”. These are further examples of cloaking evil as good. There is no good or love in the domination and control of others.
Insert: As I take readers through this probe of “behind the scenes”, keep in mind that to really understand the true nature of what is involved, we should note the primitive nature of domination as contrasted with the modernity and advanced nature of free and equal individualism. One is animal. The other is authentically human and is our future. One is indefensible (domination, control of others), even though cloaked as good, when projected onto and embedded in God as ultimate Archetype.
Continuing…
Elites favor varied collectivist approaches as the means to achieve control of property and resources that they believe they alone know how to properly use and distribute. In doing this, they are affirming Marx’s fallacy that the number one evil to free commoners from is the evil of private property that prevents people from experiencing their true liberation. Marx argued that only when freed from slavery to private property ownership can the intrinsic communal person emerge from that enslavement and through Marxist violent revolution restore the original paradise of communalism that has been ruined by the sinful selfishness of the free individual approach. Salvation through violent destruction.
Ridding human civilization of Marx’s number one evil of private property (through collectivism) is what Klaus Schwab summarily framed in the former WEF slogan- “You will own nothing, and you will be happy”. Because we dictate so. Add the subsequent push of WEF billionaires urging commoners to eat bugs while they descended from their private jets to dine on the finest imported Wagyu beef (Japanese). Such exposure of the hypocrisy of elites helps to rouse the populist spirit to question, challenge, and protest such pathology in our societies.
Despite the stink of hypocrisy and self-delusion of elites that is so evident to most commoners, elites have bubble-wrapped themselves in narrative features that affirm them in their virtue-signaling for status as messianic heroes righteously saving the world and compassionately delivering commoners to their better world. It’s more of the same old “cloaking of evil as good”. As noted above, Plato’s divinely anointed “Philosopher kings” is one influence here among other elements of his anti-democracy nonsense.
Collectivist approaches to organizing human society are preferred by elites wishing to vent their impulse to domination and control of others because collectivism, and its narratives, validate the concentration or centralization of power and control under the state elites and bureaucrats that run the collective (see Kristian Niemietz’s exposure of this, quoted just below on the inevitable outcomes of such centralization of power and control).
(Note: Jordan Peterson has said that concentrated power, i.e. elite and bureaucratic roles in governments, attracts psychopathic types who see opportunity to sadistically abuse others while virtue-signaling righteousness- i.e. masking evil as good. This is, of course, not true of all those serving in government or other hierarchical organizations.)
Add this next related feature to the mix of elements that elites embrace to construct narratives that portray themselves as crusading heroically for good- i.e. the claim of collectivist elites that their domination and control of a society’s resources and property is “on behalf of the people, for the people”.
Commoner populists who challenge and oppose elite programs to dominate and control societies are then framed as the evil enemies of “greater or common good” who must be defeated and supressed in order for salvation/liberation to be achieved, liberation into the elite utopia of restored communalism. Again, these validations are framed in deformed versions of the “Hero’s quest” narrative where elites portray themselves as the righteous warriors fighting evil monsters/enemies to achieve salvation for all. The impulse to virtue-signal for status as good is satisfied by these deformed narrative features.
This deformed framing our narratives can function to seriously self-deceive those who embrace such- i.e. the belief that you are controlling resources “for the people, on behalf of the people/workers, for their good”, even while you live in luxury, having coercively appropriated the private property of others that you then control the distribution of, whether through excessive taxation or more direct forms of confiscation, state or other (i.e. the coercive power of state regulations, laws, policies). We saw the outcomes of this, for example, in Soviet elites living in luxury villas while citizens waited in line at near-empty grocery stores for leftover scraps. New York is now heading in this direction under a revived collectivism.
Many strands of past elite propaganda contribute here- i.e. Plato’s urging for enlightened “Philosopher Kings” to rule commoners, because elites claimed that such special people were divinely blessed or even divine themselves in some manner due to their great accomplishments in war, sports, philosophy, poetry, music, art, etc. (Again, see the Brinsmead essay detailing the history behind this.)
Kristian Niemietz on the self-deceiving belief of elites (i.e. “bubble”) that they run collectives “for the people, on behalf of the people”, in “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies.”
“Socialism in the sense which self-identified democratic socialists define it… a democratized economic planned collectively by ‘the people’, has never been achieved anywhere and could not be achieved. Economic planning can only ever be done in a technocratic, elitist fashion, and it requires an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the state. It cannot ‘empower’ ordinary workers. It can only ever empower bureaucratic elites.”
Note, I would apply this curse of elite domination and control of resources to more than just the modern collectivist left, though it has manifested prominently there in our modern era.
Solzhenitsyn was right that the battle of good against evil is not primarily between the differing classes in our societies. It is about something more primal, something inside each one of us- i.e. our human spirit and self struggling against our animal inheritance. The recognition of this inner dualism battle gets us to the source of some of our worst problems in life- i.e. the problem of unleashing of our inherited animal impulses, notably the impulse to domination, to intervene in the lives of and control others. Dominating/controlling others is a denial of authentic love that respects the freedom and self-determination of all others as full equals. Protected individual freedom and control over one’s personal story is critical to human development and well-being. Unleashing the domination impulse causes personal harm and societal-scale destruction.
The full Solzhenitsyn quote:
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years.”
Unleashing the impulse to domination occurs all throughout our societies and world, and is not just a problem among the contemporary collectivist left.
Balancing note:
There are no truly purehearted innocents in terms of the “behind the scenes” elite meddling and domination/control of citizens. I remind readers of Mike Benz’s two Joe Rogan interviews last year where he exposed, for example, the US history of meddling behind the scenes of other countries to create chaos and overthrow even democratically-elected governments that the US did not like. That “deep state” element continues today in the censorship infrastructure that Benz has uncovered. That is mixed with the better impulses and elements of the American state to defend and promote liberal democracy. Despite that past history, the US still remains the best hope for defending freedom today in our world.
Joe Rogan Experience #2272 – Mike Benz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPc8OVNngg
Joe Rogan Experience #2237 – Mike Benz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJhQpvlkLA
Domination is a central feature among the ultimate ideals/archetypes that are defended and promoted by our great religious traditions. Paul’s “Lord Jesus” is the epitome archetype of the religious glorification of the pathology of domination.
Note also, for illustration of religious domination, how Catholic elites/priesthoods dominate towns and villages across the world, and like collectivist totalitarians elsewhere, religious elites own and control the best resources- e.g. the properties at the heart of population centers. The Vatican itself epitomizes this centralized domination and control in “its role as the seat of the Pope, the site of St. Peter’s martyrdom and burial, and its unparalleled accumulation of artistic and architectural treasures” (AI Overview). Catholic Christianity is the earthly physical manifestation of the domination of all by Lord Christ, whom the Pope represents.
As one comment on a “NoStupidQuestions” site stated, “The Vatican was built in the centre of the Roman power base. It wasn’t intended to be a holy site. It was intended to be a seat of power”. It is the Christian manifestation of their belief in their ultimate “lording over all”.
And yet these religious elites claim to represent the Historical Jesus who protested against such elitism in his statement- “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant”.
Now some examples from the Christian bible that validate elite domination. These illustrate the fact that the domination impulse is still validated at the heart of a great religious tradition that has influenced Western consciousness, narratives, and society more than anything else (James Tabor’s point in “Paul and Jesus”).
Consider Paul and other’s statements in the New Testament on the true nature of the Christ as ultimate Dominator. For example, Paul in his letter to the Philippians said that every knee in heaven and earth would ultimately bow to Lord Jesus Christ.
Similarly, John in Revelation 19 stated that all people will ultimately fall down to worship and fearfully serve the Lord Christ. Paul had also spoken of “knowing the terror of the Lord” (i.e. the divine threat of destruction and hellfire). Hence, he persuaded men to join his new religion of subservient obedience to Lord Christ, obligated to bring every thought into obedience to his Christ. As in- Do not dare even thinking about questioning, challenging, or rejecting any element of Paul’s Christ mythology.
To Peter and James who did challenge Paul’s new religion (just as all in the “Jesus Jewish movement” rejected Paul’s Christology as “heresy”), Paul warned in Galatians 1:8-9, that anyone who taught anything contrary to his Christ myth was “accursed”. Meaning they were condemned to judgment and destruction by God (AI Overview).
Christian theologian Michael Servetus discovered how deadly it was to disagree with orthodox Christian teaching on the Christ. Calvin had him burned to death.
John’s statements in Revelation 19 on the terrorizing Lord Christ:
“I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a rider on a white horse… who judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns… He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood… The armies of heaven were following him… Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter.’ He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.”
To any who would dissent from terrified kowtowing to that dominating Lord, there was the threat of being cast into the lake of fire to be tormented and tortured forever.
In Thessalonians, Paul promised his true believers that his God/Christ would take vengeance on their enemies, similar to his statement on this in Romans 12:17-20,
“This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish (inflict retaliatory vengeance on) those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”
And we wonder why so many, while perhaps willing to engage some peripheral reformism as tinkering around the edges of their tradition, will never embrace any serious challenge to the dominating God or Lord Christ that rules at the center of their tradition. Even though such theology contradicts entirely the teaching of Jesus.
Historical Jesus would have strongly rejected Paul reframing him two decades later by turning him into the terrorizing “Lord Jesus” of Paul’s new religion, something entirely opposite to who Jesus was and what he had taught. Paul thereby buried Jesus’ actual message that there was no such monster as Paul’s terrifying deity. To the contrary, as Jesus taught, God was unconditional love, a servant God who dwelt within all humanity (“look low enough, down here among his people”). A God of love that did not demand fearful cowering service.
Moving on…
It helps to strip away the façade of goodness cloaking this pathology of elite domination and control of resources that has been protected under the canopy of the sacred and expose its true nature. It does not represent anything remotely associated with Historical Jesus but is an entirely distorted portrayal of him as in Paul’s “Christ-ianity”.
Books like Hector Garcia’s “Alpha God: The psychology of religious violence and oppression” also help us to see through to the real animal nature of what is being promoted in religious lordship teaching. The primitive anti-human nature of such mythology.
Again, these threat theology religions with their dominating deities began in prehistory with some ancient tribe members manipulating for domination over others by claiming special secret knowledge that they then used to frighten and cow fellow tribe members. They constructed myths of angry spirits/gods threatening to punish human imperfections through nature (i.e. gods punishing through natural disaster, disease, accident, and the predation of others). The angry, threatening gods demanded sacrifices and offerings for appeasement and salvation. Further, the early deities even threatened apocalyptic destruction of the entire world.
That most violent and destructive idea in all history- apocalypse- functioned like no other to incite people’s survival impulse and render them susceptible to submitting to the irrational salvation schemes of the apocalyptic prophets. We ought to know this as we have been live-streaming this madness over the past three decades of the climate apocalypse crusade with its destructive salvation scheme of Net Zero decarbonization. Talk about “salvation through destruction” mythology ruining societies, eh.
How we counter the never-ending elite push for domination in our societies:
First, go after the main archetypes that have long been embedded in human narratives and human subconscious, many framed by primitive religious beliefs. Archetypes that embody and validate tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others (i.e. unbelievers). The “root contributing factors” thing. If we transform the archetypes with the Jesus “Wisdom” insights, we remove that which has long validated bad behavior. We leave elite activists without the validation divine archetypes.
Use the Jesus insights on unconditional deity where he opposes lording over others and urges, instead, serving one another. Jesus, who freely included all as equals, who did not threaten retaliatory destruction through apocalypse and hell for those who disagreed, etc. Use the new Jesus image of deity- i.e. God as nontribal, non-dominating, non-destructive- as the ultimate “Archetype” that affirms the liberal democracy approach to organizing human societies.
A complex of new ideas/beliefs/archetypes, and especially the stunning new theology of a servant God who will function as the cohering central archetype, such a complex will remind us of what is truly human, of where we should be headed in life, and it will judge us (that is the proper function of ideals) for failing to act as human. Not judge us with threat that beats us down as failures, but with the gentle persuasion from an unconditionally loving God to press on.
After getting the archetypes right, then move to exactly that- i.e. the practical application in the classic liberal approach to organizing societies as the best that we have come up with to enhance our progress toward a more humane future.
Liberal democracy (Classic Liberal) principles, laws, and representative institutions were created to counter and constrain the impulse of elites to domination and control of others and to ensure that all are treated as free equals. Liberal democracy is not intended to affirm coercive collectivist “equity” outcomes that deny individual character and motivation to create and improve life.
Classic Liberal or liberal democracy was designed to curb elite domination and orient elites and bureaucracies to serve populations, to protect the rights and freedoms of all equally, with private property rights, private contract protections, uncensored free speech, protection from unlawful seizure and arrest, and more. Add here the Magna Carta call for no taxation without citizen assent. Further add deregulation programs built into state bureaucracies to protect commoner freedom from excessive state intrusion and control (e.g. for any new regulation proposed, remove 10 existing regulations).
One more- I like to frame things like elite domination and control for what it really is, to expose the real nature of such things, even if Chat cautions me that the terms I use- i.e. “primitive”- may offend some. Elite domination and control of commoners is the same old tribal alpha-ism of our primitive animal past. It is animal and not human.
So, arm yourselves with the ideas, principles, laws, and representative institutions of liberal democracy to counter this pathology of elite domination in human societies. And most critical, to counter the mental archetypes that validate elite domination. Arm yourselves with the humane alternative archetypes informed by insights from sages like Historical Jesus that reorient human consciousness, emotions, motivations, and behavior toward entirely more humane outcomes- i.e. nontribal, non-dominating, non-retaliatory, non-violent treatment of differing others.
Reframe the advocacy for domination, whether religious or secular, in terms of where the domination impulse actually came from- i.e. that it originated in primitive animal existence, then re-emerged in those early shaman who took their fellow tribe members deep into caves to disorient and terrorize them with scary paintings that would back the shaman’s claims that the spirits were angry and threatening to punish and destroy them if people did not embrace the salvation schemes of the shaman trying to become the new elites of early human societies. They then demanded burdensome sacrifices and offerings to appease the angry spirits. That lust for domination later shifted to the construction of temples that dominated the centers of early city states on raised ziggurats that were the power centers of the priest/king rulers who demanded that all commoner produce had to pass through their control of redistribution, after they would first appropriate the best portions of things.
A bit of belief-shaming never hurt anyone (i.e. framing ideas/behaviors as “primitive or animal”). It is useful to knock sense into some people caught in mental deformities.
Little has changed over subsequent millennia as we see Catholic churches still dominating the centers of towns and cities. We see the elite push for domination in the priesthoods of the ideological crusades that are still jostling for control of modern state collectives (e.g. Marxist, climate, etc.). It is even manifest in scientists claiming special knowledge of the invisible secrets, just like the primitive shaman, to validate their domination and to enforce submission to their salvation schemes. This scientific brand of elitism was manifest in the “scientific” arguments to validate Covid lockdowns and is ongoing in the “climate science” arguments for the decarbonization salvation scam.
Wrap up:
To summarize this comment- the real “behind the scenes root causes” or contributing factors (however you wish to frame this), have to do with something inside each one of us (i.e. our inherited impulse to domination and control). Recognition of this personal involvement undercuts the tendency to tribally blame differing others as the problem.
Yes, we still engage struggles with one another to confront and expose bad ideas and bad policies among us (some ideas/policies are just more harmful than alternatives). But the differing others are not the real root causes of the problems that we must solve, like domination. The root issue is something inside each of us that we have to fight, conquer, and control- i.e. our own impulse to domination of others.
And thankfully we have liberal democracy principles, laws, and representative institution to help us do so. And more critical, we have the wisdom insights of sages like Historical Jesus to go even deeper and overturn and replace the bad ideas/beliefs that have long validated such evil in us.
There is no longer any excuse to irresponsibly continue to derail the overall progress of humanity out of the primitive animal and toward a more human future.
Now another taste of the best of Brinsmead:
Quotes from Bob’s latest essay (note that Hellenism significantly shaped Paul’s Christ myth):
“Hellenism was built on the religio- political philosophy that only the elite were divinely qualified to rule, and the common people had the duty to obey. This meant that Hellenism did not and could not create an egalitarian or horizontal human order in which all human beings were equal. The governments of the Greek and Roman Empires were oppressive regimes which granted few human rights to the common people. Human slavery was maintained as an important feature of the social order.
“We call this a vertical order of relating because it was a class system in which the whole population was pre-disposed to be relating up to people thought to be superior or down to others thought to be inferior. The true love of neighbour became almost impossible. Rather than fostering a human way of relating, this top-down vertical order created a way of relating which existed in the animal kingdom. Animals exist in herds, packs, or colonies which naturally arrange themselves in an order in which the stronger ones dominate the weaker ones.
“This forms a pecking order from the Alpha male at the top of the order to the weakest member of the group at the bottom. It makes no difference if there are only two or three horses, cows, chickens or dogs living on a farm. Having tested each other to settle which one is the boss horse, cow, dog or chicken, the animals arrange themselves in a pecking order as naturally as water runs downhill. This animal trait fosters the principle of natural selection that works well in a herd of animals because the animal with the strongest genes gets to be the Alpha Male which mates with all the females….
“There was this mythical aspect of Hellenism that corrupted its culture and philosophy of government. It failed to create an egalitarian or horizontal order in which all human beings are equal. In ruthlessly suppressing the human rights of common humanity, the Hellenistic Empires of Greece and Rome suppressed the progress of all humanity. What triumphed in the march of Hellenism was the divine rights of kings and rulers to distort history as if it was the story of their triumphs in the drama of domination, tribalism and xenophobia which exists in the animal kingdom.
“Yet the main critique of this paper is not so much directed at the civil governments which were corrupted by the mythology of Hellenism. It is directed at the Hellenist mythology which created governments and a culture which created the pecking order of the animal kingdom. This did not change when the Christian religion became the official religion of the Empire in 325 CE. By this time the Church had become an institution ruled exclusively by a hierarchy of Bishops who had used their myth of Christ to lock every common person out from having any voice in the governance of the Church. As it was in the civil government of Rome, the Church itself mirrored the pecking order of the animal kingdom rather than a truly human order in which every man and woman was created equal.
“Neither did religious intolerance and martyrdom did not end but dramatically increased after Pagan Rome became Christian Rome…
“Take for example, the threat theology that Christ was “coming in flaming fire to take vengeance on them who do not acknowledge God or obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ… they will suffer eternal punishment” (2 Thessalonians 1:6-9).
“That is only one of many New Testament passages which evangelize against this background of a terrifying threat theology. Voltaire is reputed to have quipped that if we start out saying that God will severely punish those who don’t believe what we believe, we will end up being willing to assassinate those who don’t believe what we believe…
“Religious intolerance and the denial of free speech kept rearing its ugly head until the fathers of the American nation joined Thomas Jefferson who “swore eternal hostility against every form of enslavement over the mind of man.” They joined Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence followed by the Constitution of the United States of America. This guaranteed freedom of speech and religion. Voltaire, John Stuart Mills, John Locke, Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Adam Smith were some of the leading thinkers among the pioneers in liberal democracy.
“There were no churchmen among these champions of human liberty. Even John Wesley clung nostalgically to the divine right of kings. Most Christian Americans today would not know that the so-called fathers of America did not believe that Jesus was divine yet had a high view of his teachings. Thomas Jefferson was quite vocal on these Biblical issues. In this sense the fathers of America were all Christian rebels whose views were more like the so-called Jewish Christians who never thought that Jesus was anything more than human. It seems that the same thing could generally be said about the above-named pioneers of liberal democracy.
“Did the fathers of America and liberal democracy sense there was some profound incompatibility between the Christian myth of Christ and human freedom?”
(End of Brinsmead quotes)
See full essay- “The Image of God in Humankind is a momentous act of ‘Special Revelation’”, Robert Brinsmead, Jan. 27, 2026, at…
https://robertdbrinsmead.substack.com/p/the-image-of-god-in-humankind-is?utm_=
Added note on “behind the scenes” as in the Joe Rogan interview of Andrew Wilson:
Listen to Rogan and Wilson from around the 50-minute to about 1 hour 20-minute mark as they detail what probably happened around the shooting of the nurse Alex Pretti. It is such a dense complex of factors that led to that mistake, not an intentional “assassination” as reported in the distorting media narrative.
To help us get past public narratives that partisanly frame such events as evidence of the evil of their opponents, look at the details coming out now on what probably happened.
Previous to these incidents, there have been the endless calls for violence from the leftist agitators who reveal publicly where the ICE officers live, threaten to harm their wives and rape their children, and urge violence against them. The ICE officers are under unbelievable stress as they try to do just what past presidents have urged, to remove illegal migrants to their proper and fair place behind the millions of others who are trying to migrate legally.
With such threat and pressure, these ICE officers are then assaulted in public through intentionally staged and coordinated chaotic events. Is it too much to ask for extending the compassion for shooting victims to also include the officers just trying to do their legal job and protect citizens?
Note Rogan and Wilson’s (both gun experts) detailed dissection of the Sig P320 handgun used by the officer who shot Pretti. That gun has a history of misfiring accidentally due to past design flaws, hence, even the Dallas police department had to discontinue use of that model.
Also, even before these two people were killed, the leftist agitators had been promoting the narrative that ICE were “jackbooted Nazi thugs destroying American democracy” and therefore it was necessary to engage violence to stop them. They then set up the conditions of “purposely coordinated/created chaos” so such horrific outcomes as the shootings are most likely to happen. That then provides the leftist agitators with validation to call for outlawing ICE and shutting down any deportation of illegals.
All previous administrations, including Democrats, had similarly called for and actually deported millions of illegals because it is unfair to the millions of others legally waiting in line. President Obama had argued against such unfairness and how it burdened citizens with excessive costs diverted from domestic programs intended for legal citizens.
So much more is going on, says Rogan. Who are these people and why are they doing this- i.e. creating conditions where people will be hurt and then using that to further justify retaliatory violence to stop the officers from fulfilling their majority-supported jobs (i.e. evidence from the last election reveals that some 80% supported the Trump policy on this).
The activists have propagandized many innocent American citizens (Lenin’s “useful idiots”) that they are good people righteously stopping actual irredeemably evil Nazis from taking over. Violence is now the obligatory response of these self-identified righteous heroes.
What is happening in Minnesota is the coordinated creation of chaos to serve a larger agenda that involves the purposeful corruption of democracy to overturn a legitimate election in order to advantage a party that has now shifted toward far-left totalitarianism. Musk has offered detail on this in varied interviews- i.e. the leftist program to turn the US into a “One party state” where one party only wins elections, by doing such things as flying illegal migrants in the dark of night directly to swing states where they are given money and housing, along with other benefits, that then obligates them to vote for just that one party.
The corruption of democracy also involves bringing illegal migrants into congressional districts, notably in California, where they are counted along with legal citizens to then shift congressional districts to favor one party (i.e. that party then gets the representatives for those districts). That blocks the opposition party from winning such districts, so one party dominates. This direct corruption of a democracy. Add that California has made it illegal to show ID to vote.
Rogan and Wilson illustrate where this is going with the UK situation, where the dominant party has now unleashed a form of totalitarianism in outlawing opposition speech and comments, even just online comments and comments made in private pub conversations. Snitches are encouraged to report such “crimes” to authorities under the validation of protecting offended people from “hate speech”, or wrong speech that challenges the immigration policies of the state. As Rogan says, what is happening in Britain is what you get when one party takes total control.
Criminal speech has been expanded (“concept creep” of hate speech) to include comments that make others upset, uncomfortable with dissent and differing speech. The new criminal speech even includes online comments or comments made in private bar conversations. Some 12,000 were arrested last year in the UK for such “crimes”.
More evidence of the behind-the-scenes agents:
“CCP-connected millionaire allegedly bankrolls Minneapolis agitator groups through dark money network: Who is Neville Roy Singham? Meet the China-based millionaire allegedly bankrolling Minnesota agitators”, Preston Mizell, Jan. 30, 2026
Mizell opens:
“As agitators and federal law enforcement continue to clash in Minneapolis, the funding behind the groups fueling the anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unrest is beginning to come to light.
“One of the alleged financial backers of these agitators is a Chinese Communist Party advocate traced to a multitude of dark money organizations known to fuel far-left, CCP-influenced extremism in the U.S. and across the globe.
“Earlier this week, a Fox News Digital investigation found several organizations are acting as lead voices in physically mobilizing agitators in Minneapolis, as well as communicating through multiple channels to encourage agitators to take to the streets in Minnesota and other cities. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and The People’s Forum are two of the core groups who allegedly have been behind facilitating and pushing agitators to organize on multiple occasions.”
Mizell adds that this rich man moved to China to shield himself from extradition back to the US.
“Singham, therefore, remains virtually untouchable as his dark money networks continue to wreak havoc on U.S. soil.” He is determined to continue financing extremists to promote his radical agitation for socialist overthrow of liberal democracy.
A Fox correspondent questioned protesters in Minnesota about funding. She discovered that “Individuals on the ground are typically tight-lipped about whether they are being paid by an outside organization to be in attendance, despite groups like The Party for Socialism and Liberation and The People’s Forum allegedly facilitating the actual events.”
One woman responded to her questioning with, “I’m getting paid right now”.