See below- “True believers helping their God send their enemies to hell” on “Iran’s Killing machine”
Also- How the “formerly oppressed often become the new oppressors” (Trump engaging payback of critics)
And this from a Rogan podcast noted below- “Polarity, dualism, victim/perpetrator– Is duality in life just a mirage for “actors on God’s stage to play their roles”?
But first this…
Many commentators have noted that young people today are disillusioned with the failures of capitalism as the approach that would enable them to achieve basic goals like affordable housing. They, in increasing numbers, now believe that they can’t get ahead and are turning to socialism that promises free stuff. This site advocates for a basic understanding of the two options for organizing human societies and the historical evidence of outcomes from these two- i.e. liberal democracy protecting individual rights and freedoms, equally, through free markets and basic property rights, and contrasted with collectivist systems that eliminate individual property rights and other individual freedoms, coercively subjecting citizens to collectives run by state elites/bureaucrats with centralized control of societal resources (i.e. central planning).
We’ve had 24 of the socialist experiments over the past century or so and have an abundance of evidence on inevitable outcomes, to compare with the liberal democracy approach over the past few centuries. See Grok summary below of my “Insert”. See also Kristian Niemietz’s “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”.
Varied commentators have pointed to the contributing factors to the weakened ability of new generations to achieve the same level of economic well-being as their parents. Notably, on the housing issue, excessive levels of immigration have put pressure on housing stock and hence pushed housing prices upward. Add that too many regulations, mainly municipal, hinder the building more housing, further pushing house prices higher.
Then further add the comments of Conrad Black on Frank Stronach’s urging businesses to share more profits with employees to counter the drift toward socialism.
See Black article posted in sections below.
“How to fix our broken tax system: We need to incentivize our most successful capitalists to participate in job creation and the fight against poverty”, Conrad Black, July 11, 2026
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-how-to-fix-our-broken-tax-system
This on the Free Press article on the DSA that is pushing to dominate the US Democratic Party: Wendell Krossa
The article below illustrates what Marxist collectivist insanity looks like. The protection of private property is the fundamental plank of civilization and peace and order (see, for example, William Bernstein’s “The Birth of Plenty”). When England began to legally and politically protect private property rights and freedoms over two centuries ago that sparked the modern exponential-like rise in human creativity and wealth creation (beginning around 1820) as the human motivation to improve family and life exploded and spread publicly and eventually over following centuries has lifted billions more out of poverty, with endless creation of new businesses, jobs, and wealth that has enabled humanity to improve the human situation immensely and also care for nature as never before, solving all sorts of problems.
Private property was Marx’s number one evil to rid society of and had to be accomplished through state violence (i.e. “seize the means of production”- meaning expropriate business and all private property). Only when private property was eliminated, Marx believed, could you liberate humans from their “enslavement” to private property that kept their natural state as “communalist humans” from emerging and flowering. Marx’s approach was based on the “noble savage” fallacy that still dominates academia today (Stephen LeBlanc in “Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage”).
Critical policies to counter the collectivist push to increase state domination and control of society- i.e. lessen the size of government, lower taxes (i.e. return to citizens the freedom of choice to over their own money), and lessen government regulations- i.e. grant citizens more self-determination, more control over their lives as that is critical to human well-being. Decentralize control and power away from state elites and bureaucrats.
“I Was in the DSA. Here’s What They Really Believe: The socialist candidates being swept into power want to dismantle American life. It’s all right there in their new platform”, Jake Altman, Free Press
https://www.thefp.com/p/i-was-in-the-dsa-heres-what-they?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Altman begins:
“Candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) keep racking up primary victories, and skeptics and fans alike are struggling to determine what the organization actually believes.”
He continues,
“I was a member of the DSA from the 2010s until 2022. During that time, I witnessed a rise in extremism, ranging from an eagerness to collaborate with Leninist groups to a growing animosity toward the U.S. and the West.”
He explains the beliefs of the DSA that is taking over the Democratic Party. Their new platform includes ending the presidency and Supreme Court, abolishing prisons, universal free housing, eliminating all debt, closing US military bases overseas, removing sanctions from Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, the elimination of capitalism, abolishing the police, open borders, free everything, guaranteed jobs, less effort from individuals.
He says this is utopian magic that denies the realities of human life and will have to be implemented by state force.
As he says, “Many DSA activists are committed true believers armed with the arrogance of youth and plenty of free time to organize around their vision. Many really do believe a revolution will liberate the world from capitalism, all while enjoying chic coffee shops.”
And, as true with all these utopian socialists (i.e. note Bernie Sanders, for example), they never explain how they will pay for their utopian society, only offering, “Expropriate the expropriators.”
My insert:
Marxists never present any rational approach to creating the wealth needed to fund all the free stuff that they propose to give away.
They display a profound ignorance of how wealth is created. Wealth creation begins with protecting individual private property. That single principle, made law some two centuries ago, then incentivized citizens to invest (time, resources, effort), to innovate, to create products and services, to start businesses small, medium, and large, thereby creating jobs and producing wealth through, notably, productivity gains.
Productivity gains:
As business owners make money they invest in better, more efficient technology/machinery and that feeds into an upward ratchetting trend of improvement, including “dematerialization” (i.e. using less material inputs per capita as businesses and overall societies become more efficient). The outcome is that all of a society is lifted and life improved across the board. But business owner’s ability to invest in productivity gains requires lowered taxation levels and decreased regulatory burdens.
The above process of wealth creation and societal improvement all begins with the foundation of protected private property rights and freedoms, and that honors the human motivation to work hard to create things, citizens knowing their effort will be rewarded with improved life. That is not essentially about greed and selfishness as Marxists devalue and demonize it, even though that erupts everywhere in life.
Capitalist free markets are more basically driven by the basic human motivation to improve one’s self, one’s family, and that radiates out to the overall improvement of communities and societies. Selfishness and greed are a more prominent outcome in collectivist systems where no dissent against is permitted as elites use their control of state police and military to silence and punish any criticism or dissent against collectivist elite control of societies. That has been the inevitable totalitarian outcome in collectivist/socialist approaches to organizing societies.
I did not include Google’s AI Overview here as its response to my comments above reflected its noted leftist bias that favors socialism. Grok replied with a more balanced perspective:
Grok said:
Your summary captures a core empirical reality about wealth creation. Protected private property rights, combined with rule of law and relatively free exchange, have been the dominant driver of sustained material progress over the past ~250 years. This isn’t ideology; it’s observable in cross-country data, historical timelines, and basic incentives.
Property Rights and Growth
Economies with stronger formal property rights and economic freedom consistently outperform those without. The Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World index, World Bank Doing Business metrics (pre-2021), and Heritage Index show strong correlations between property security, low-to-moderate taxation/regulatory burdens, and outcomes like GDP per capita growth, life expectancy, and poverty reduction. Post-1800 acceleration in Britain and then the US aligned with legal institutionalization of secure property, patents, and contract enforcement.
This incentivized long-term investment: people plant orchards or build factories when they expect to keep most of the upside. Without it, time horizons shorten to extraction or subsistence. China’s post-1978 reforms (de-collectivizing agriculture, allowing private enterprise, Special Economic Zones) produced the largest poverty reduction in history precisely by moving away from Mao-era collective ownership. Pre-reform China and the Soviet Union showed stagnation or collapse under centralized control of production.
Productivity, Reinvestment, and Dematerialization
Your point on productivity ratcheting is accurate. Real output per worker has risen dramatically in market-oriented economies through capital deepening (better tools/machines) and technological progress. US agricultural productivity, for instance, exploded via mechanization, fertilizers, and breeding after property-secure commercialization.
“Dematerialization” is documented: Julian Simon, Bjørn Lomborg, and others tracked how market prices and innovation reduced material intensity per unit of GDP or per capita service (e.g., lighter cars/phones, more efficient energy use, substitution).
Resource prices have trended down in real terms over decades despite population growth, contra Malthusian fixed-pie predictions.
Business reinvestment requires retained earnings. High marginal taxes and heavy regulation raise the hurdle rate for risky innovation. Empirical studies (e.g., from OECD or Acemoglu/Robinson’s Why Nations Fail) link extractive institutions (weak property, elite capture) to lower total factor productivity growth. Inclusive institutions do the opposite.
Human Motivation and Outcomes
Self-interest (improving one’s circumstances and family) is a robust, cross-cultural driver. Adam Smith noted it channels into mutual benefit via exchange: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher…” Markets discipline selfishness through competition and consumer choice far better than central plans, which concentrate power and blunt feedback. Collectivist experiments repeatedly demonstrated the “calculation problem” (Mises/Hayek): without market prices, planners lack dispersed knowledge to allocate resources efficiently. Results included famines (Holodomor, Great Leap Forward), shortages, and eventual liberalization or collapse.
Historical track record:
• Capitalist/liberalizing episodes: Massive gains in living standards, literacy, health (global extreme poverty fell from ~40% in 1980 to under 10% recently, per World Bank, heavily driven by East/South Asia market shifts).
• Marxist/strong collectivist implementations: USSR (initial industrialization via forced savings, then stagnation), Maoist China (tens of millions dead in famine), Cambodia, Venezuela, Cuba— systemic shortages, emigration, authoritarian controls to suppress exit/voice. Greed didn’t vanish; it shifted to political elites controlling the state apparatus.
No pure “capitalism” or “socialism” exists, but the pattern holds. Nordic successes are high-trust, market economies with welfare layers funded after wealth creation— not replacements for it. They score high on economic freedom indices too. Attempts at “wealth redistribution without creation” (price controls, nationalization without incentives) predictably shrink the pie.
Caveats and Nuance
Markets aren’t flawless. Externalities (pollution, public goods, basic safety nets) can justify targeted interventions. Monopolies, cronyism, and regulatory capture erode the system when government and business collude. Inequality rises with rapid growth (China, tech booms), but absolute mobility and consumption access have improved broadly. “Free stuff” funded by printing money or punitive taxation risks inflation, disincentives, and capital flight— see post-independence cases or recent Argentina/Venezuela episodes.
Marxist analysis often starts from distribution and class conflict while underplaying dynamic creation and institutional incentives. It treated property as zero-sum rather than a framework enabling positive-sum growth. Evidence favors the latter as the foundation. The “upward ratchet” you describe is why global living standards diverged so sharply after the institutional shifts of the 18th-19th centuries. Sustaining it requires vigilance against erosion of those property and incentive foundations.
(End of Insert)
Altman continues…
“By targeting the most productive parts of the American economy and undermining small businesses, the DSA would gut the engines of America’s success…. At a certain point, there is nothing left to expropriate; when economic reality finally hits, immiseration ensues.”
Altman goes on to note the DSA’s overturning of core American institutions will eliminate basic rights and checks on power. Its program will “remove any potential brake on their consolidation of state power.”
He concludes that the new platform of the DSA is a demand for outright communism. As he quotes, “It demonstrates our commitment to the long-term struggle for a fully liberated, classless society— in a word, communism.”
(End of Altman article)
Humanprogress.org offers this on why productivity increase has been slowed over past decades.
“How to Escape the Productivity Slump: Removing policy barriers can unleash a new era of productivity and abundance”, Jeremy Horpdahl, Human Progress July 22
https://humanprogress.org/escaping-the-productivity-slump/
The author begins, stating that “artificial scarcity is often a policy choice. We have placed arbitrary limits—mostly through local governments—on our ability to build homes, driving up costs and restricting opportunity.
“But this pattern of self-imposed constraint does not stop at the edges of our neighborhoods. It extends into the institutions and policies that shape economic growth. It is one of the primary reasons why, despite living in an age of extraordinary digital innovation, we remain stuck in a decades-long productivity slump…
“Since the early 1970s, however, productivity growth has slowed dramatically to less than 1 percent in most years.”
He states that environmental regulations are a significant hindrance getting new products and services through the journey to wide consumer use in marketplaces.
“Over time, policymakers have added layer upon layer of regulatory complexity to that journey… building almost anything of significance in the modern West often requires navigating years of environmental reviews, public-comment periods, and multi-agency approvals.
“Laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and state-level counterparts such as the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) were originally intended to prevent environmental harm. Over time, however, they have increasingly become tools for the delay of progress.”
He says state laws have created a “vetocracy” which is a system in which many actors can block decisions but few can make them.” The result is getting new products and services to actual production is “bottlenecked by years of permitting and environmental reviews.”
I would insert here that the blocking of economic development and progress has been weaponized by environmental alarmists to slow and even stop progress. I took leading Canadian environmental alarmist and activist Bill Rees’s courses where he actually stated in classes that he was not just trying to slow or stop economic progress but was trying to reverse it as the great evil threat to the environment and life. Rees was openly socialist.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has also noted that Russia has financed European Greens to block development and use of fracking to access Europe’s natural gas resources, among other blocking projects.
The author continues, noting that removing regulatory barriers at local levels is critical to accelerating the diffusion of new ideas, products, and services throughout economies.
He says that “Human ingenuity remains as powerful as ever. We have more scientists, more capital, and better tools than any previous generation. The challenge is not generating ideas; it is allowing those ideas to spread…”
He concludes:
“An additional one or two percentage points of annual productivity growth may sound insignificant. Yet when compounded over decades, the effects are transformative. Higher productivity means higher incomes, better health outcomes, more abundant energy, and greater opportunities for future generations. The ideas already exist. The question is whether we will allow them to flourish.”
(End of Humanprogress article)
Greg Gutfeld quotes/paraphrases Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” in early 70s…
The Gutfeld panel comment on the left’s reliance on personal attacks (i.e. smearing opponents as “Nazis, racists, fascists, threats to democracy, etc.”) rather than debating ideas/policies:
They note that the approach of the Leftist/Democratics over the past decades has been to refuse to debate ideas/policies. That approach, according to Gutfeld, comes from Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”. Alinsky told radicals to personalize attacks over abstract ideas. He stated, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” That way you avoid ideas entirely because if you debate ideas you will lose. Gutfeld adds that they know they will lose because Marxist ideas are historically indefensible.
Hence, the left has transformed culture by removing ideas where they could be proven wrong and replaced that with persons who can be framed as evil. Hence, there is no need to prove ideas. Smearing opponents as evil can be done by anyone. This fits with the general approach of leftist radicals to destroy what currently exists.
Listen, beginning around the 5-minute mark…
“Greg Gutfeld: This is their idea of a debate…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD37Bv26d18
True believers helping their God send their enemies to hell: Wendell Krossa
The article below (i.e. “Iran’s Killing Machine…”) illustrates why this site advocates persistently for problem-solving at the most fundamental level of human ideas/beliefs even going after the archetypes/templates of collective human subconscious, the things that subconsciously influence us to keep choosing the same bad ideas/themes for our narratives, themes that give us emotional satisfaction even if the outcomes harm others and are irrationally destructive of life and society.
We are driven by the tribal impulse to virtue signal for status with our group. Giving way to that impulse blinds us to rational evidence of the harmful consequence of the narratives we choose to guide and energize our behavior and lives. We want to believe that we are the righteous heroes on the side of our true God and set in war against the existential evil that we have demonized our enemies as being. Hence, divine justice requires they be purged in order to save some world that our apocalyptic beliefs tell us is almost about to end.
Bad ideas/beliefs have long shaped humanity’s thinking, emotions, motivations, and behavior to the worst of outcomes in societies (i.e. tribal fear and hatred of differing others that vents in violence, destruction of the others, war, etc.).
This site advocates for problem-solving that tackles the transformation of core bad ideas/beliefs, just as Historical Jesus went directly to the core of human narratives, to deal with the central bad idea/belief that had long energized and validated tribalism and violence toward differing others. He wasted no time on peripheral issues but went directly to the mother of all inciting/validating bad ideas because he got the point that “It’s the God, stupid”.
He presented what James Robinson, for one example, termed his stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God, what I would further flesh out to theology of an unconditionally loving God. And he presented this new theology in the coupling of “behavior based on belief”. This is how people have always validated their behavior and lives, by basing it on their belief systems, and most particularly on how they view the nature of deity or some ultimate reality, some ultimate ideal and authority.
My paraphrase of how he presented his central theme of unconditional God- here is the central summary of his message:
“There must be no more eye for eye retaliation against offenders/enemies. Instead, love your enemies because God does. How so? God generously and inclusively sends sun and rain (the basic elements for survival in agrarian society) to all alike, to both good and bad people/enemies. God loves the unloving also, despite no love returned. So be unconditionally merciful just as God is unconditionally merciful” (a merging of Matthew 5: 38-48 with Luke 6: 27-36).
And what is the evidence on the outcomes across history from the old deity ideas that Jesus rejected?
The outcomes over previous millennia had been endless tribal fear, suspicion, and hatred of differing others, followed with battling others viewed as evil enemies to be defeated, dominated, and destroyed. Across that previous history you see the evidence of inherited animal impulses validated by primitive religious beliefs, by complexes of ideas that can be summarized as “salvation through destruction” narratives, centered around gods that were (1) tribal (i.e. favoring/including believers, excluding/damning unbelievers), gods as (2) dominating kings/lords who then modeled similar relationships of domination/submission among people, and gods who (3) meted out divine justice as punitive vengeance and destruction of differing others, thereby validating similar destructive justice in followers.
Jesus overturned that entirely with his new theology of an unconditional God.
Insert: James Tabor (“Paul and Jesus”) says that Paul has been the most influential person in western civilization and history, and then he adds, also most influential “worldwide”. He’s right if we consider that the apocalyptic millennial complex of Zoroaster shaped Judaism, was then embraced by Paul to construct his Christ-ianity, and then also shaped Islam (via “Jewish Christian” Ebionism). That’s half of humanity right there (4 billionish). Then, as historians like Arthur Herman and Richard Landes have shown, the same complex of themes also shaped the secular/ideological narratives of Marxism and environmental alarmism that infected societies worldwide. So that affirms Tabor’s statement on Paul’s influence, his Christology, that it has indeed been “worldwide”.
The “crime against humanity” in this is that Paul chose to reject the stunning new theology of Jesus that could have liberated human minds, spirits, and overall life as never before. He chose instead to re-establish the old tribal, dominating, destroying God of all previous history in his Christ myth. Following that we have suffered two millennia of his Christology themes functioning as significant contributing factors to too much violence and war, influencing billions to embrace similar narrative themes that incite, energize, and validate the worst of human impulses to tribalism, domination, and vengeful destruction as “justice”.
The tribal opposition, battles to defeat and dominate others, even destroy differing others was long fueled by Christianity and now manifests in Islam as the offspring of that same narrative template, also now manifests through secular/ideological variants like Marxism and environmental alarmism. Paul derailed the potential greatest liberation movement in all history- liberation at the depths of human psychology from bad idea archetypes of the human subconscious that had long darkened and enslaved people to their animal inheritance, validating the worst of inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and violent destruction of differing others.
Note the message and liberating outcomes of what Jesus tried to communicate, what he illustrated from Isaiah 61, that he was advocating for liberation from enslavement of the worst kind– i.e. mental, emotional, psychological enslavement to bad religious ideas/beliefs, none worse than bad ideas of God. I take that as his intended meaning in his quoting statements like- “release from darkness for the prisoners”.
Here is the full text of what he read to his first public audience in a Jewish synagogue (Luke 4):
“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor…”
And of course, the critically important point he made in that speech was to leave off the affirmation of the old Jewish theology of a retaliatory, destroying God. He refused to read the next statement in that passage, “the day of vengeance of our God” and the audience members then tried to kill him for denying them the emotional satisfaction of tribal retaliatory vengeance against their oppressing enemies.
Continuing with the point I am making here:
The article below illustrates the hell that religion creates when true believers believe that they are on the side of God, doing the will of God, following the law or word of God. As Bob Brinsmead says, “Men never do greater evil than when they do it in the name of their God”. Or, “We all become just like the God that we believe in”.
As Bob says- If your God is sending your unbelieving enemies to hell anyway, then you might as well conclude, lets help God with that and send them on their way to hell.
A quote from the article below: “Moharebeh- ‘enmity against God’ or ‘waging war on God’, is the charge most commonly used against protesters”.
That again illustrates how central theology is to some of the worst of human behavior, an image of God that energizes and validates the worst of brutality toward others- i.e. “man’s inhumanity to man”.
AI Overview
“Man’s inhumanity to man” is a famous idiom lamenting human cruelty and the conscious ability of people to inflict suffering on others. It originated from the poem Man Was Made to Mourn: A Dirge (1784) by the Scottish poet Robert Burns.
(End of AI Overview)
This points to a main contributing factor still driving much of the violence/war of our modern era. It is the central element of the “idea” that General Nagata said we had to defeat if we are to end the endless eruptions of such violence as that in Syria in 2014. I would tell and stress to people like General Nagata, “It’s the God, stupid”. The central belief in human narratives, the highest ideal and authority human minds orient toward when wrestling with their primary impulse to meaning and purpose.
Its not mainly “ideology”, or some “extremist distortion of the religion” that is driving these people to commit atrocities toward differing others. It is the central theology, the God at the very core of the religion, just as it is the very same God at the core of Christianity, Judaism, and other traditions.
Don’t beat around the bush, soft-pedalling what has to be tackled if we are ever to properly solve the problem that Nagata pointed to, refusing to name this main contributing factor for fear of upsetting others or being smeared as “religiophobic”, etc. Do what Historical Jesus did, go right to root of the problem of violence that is driven by the impulse to tribalism and is energized and validated by “salvation as destruction of enemies” narratives, and do a death/rebirth, disintegration/reintegration transformation of the main ideas/beliefs in these mental pathologies.
Again, when we do this in relation to Islam, always, in the interests of balance, consider where Islam got its theology from, i.e. the long historical line of descent of bad ideas, bad theology, that has been traced as descending from primitive origins, formalized in traditions like Zoroastrianism that then influenced Judaism, Christianity which then was mainly responsible for shaping the following history of Western narratives, both religious and secular, and was then embraced by Islam, just as it moved down further into secular/ideological offspring like Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism.
These two young men in the article below were murdered, hung, for showing compassion and mercy to strangers, for simply opening their doors to people who running from “Iran’s killing machine”, the police and soldiers who were shooting thousands of people just demonstrating for freedom.
My point in referencing this is that it illustrates a main contributing factor in the deity (i.e. “Moharebeh”) that shapes the minds of the Iranian theocrats. Not primarily ideology or some extremist distortion of the religion, but the central idea/belief of the religion, inherited via Christianity, Judaism, and back to Zoroastrianism and further back to the most primitive ideas of deity, coming down through an unbroken line of descent across subsequent history, all the way from primitive barbarity to contemporary religions and even their secular offspring.
“Iran’s Killing Machine Is Operating in Plain Sight: Two Iranian teenagers were just executed for opening their doors to fleeing protesters. They are only the latest victims of a regime that uses the world’s distractions to carry out mass killing”, Masih Alinejad, Free Press 07.20.26
https://www.thefp.com/p/irans-killing-machine-is-operating?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Quotes from article:
“Yesterday, I woke up to a message that broke my heart. Erfan Esfandiari had been hanged. He was 18 years old, and his parents’ only child. His crime, according to reports circulated by Iranian journalists and human rights activists, was opening a door. Specifically, he opened his door to let terrified protesters in as they ran from security forces during the January 2026 uprising against the Iranian regime.
“That act of compassion was enough to send him to the gallows.
“On that same Sunday morning, the regime hanged Gol-Mohammad Mohammadi, a 23-year-old Afghan refugee who had fled to Iran seeking safety. His crime, according to those same reports, was identical: He opened his door for protesters fleeing bullets. He was arrested, thrown into a show trial, and forced to endure three hearings, each lasting one hour. There was no independent lawyer….
“The two of them, alongside 10 others, were sentenced to death. Last week, all 12 were moved to quarantine. That is the signal: For the 10 still alive, execution is likely imminent…
“To understand Iran’s execution machine, you have to understand its language. The regime does not call these killings what they are. It gives them names.
“Moharebeh, ‘enmity against God’ or ‘waging war on God,’ is the charge most commonly used against protesters.”
Alinejad adds,
“Even when missiles were striking Iranian territory, the regime found time to organize show trials. Even in the middle of war, they found time to build gallows. They are devoted to their ideology of death, and that ideology requires a steady supply of young bodies to prove that resistance is not worth it.”
He then concludes (after detailing the torture and murder of varied other protesters):
“The silence of comfortable progressives in free countries, while Iranians face execution, is not neutrality. It is complicity. Every day of diplomatic engagement that does not include a firm, named demand to stop these killings is a day the regime reads as permission.”
The tiresomeness of tribal hatred and vengeance keeping the downward spiral of eye for eye going on for ever and ever more. Illustrated with examples big and small…
Payback time, Wendell Krossa
How the “formerly oppressed often become the new oppressors” (when they gain power), the back and forth “eye for eye” of tribalism cycles of vengeance. So tiring, eh.
This about the man who states that “eye for eye” is the guiding ethic of his life but that he hits 10 times as hard when taking his turn in payback toward opponents/critics, as apparently stated in one of his books- i.e. “Art of the Deal”?
“The Trump Administration’s Latest Attack on Free Speech: By issuing subpoenas to Times reporters and their families, this administration has once again shown it never really cared about the First Amendment”, Eli Lake, Free Press
https://www.thefp.com/p/trump-administration-free-speech-attack?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
“DEFENDING FREE SPEECH IS EASY WHEN YOUR ADVERSARY IS VIOLATING IT,” WRITES ELI LAKE. “TRUMP IS USING THE STATE TO STIFLE THE SPEECH OF THOSE WHO OFFEND HIM.” 07.22.26
Lake notes that on his first day in office Trump signed an order to restore freedom of speech and end federal censorship. This was in response to the Biden administration colluding with social media companies to shadowban and deplatform opponents it accused of posting “misinformation”, meaning comments/opinions that Democrats disagreed with.
But now a year and a half later it appears that “Trump is using the state to stifle the speech of those who offend him.”
Lake concludes:
“Back on the administration’s first day, his executive order on free speech said, “It is the policy of the United States to secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech.” Whether the president likes it or not, reporting on the security failures of a Qatari presidential jet is “constitutionally protected speech.” So are dumb jokes about Charlie Kirk and the programming decisions of television news networks.
“A few years ago, the MAGA movement was keenly aware of the dangers of partisan law enforcement when the weapon was turned against them. Now it dismisses Trump’s war on dissent as much-needed payback. The Constitution applies to all of us. Even The New York Times.”
Polarity, dualism, victim/perpetrator– All a mirage for “actors on God’s stage to play their roles”? Wendell Krossa
Joe Rogan Experience #2529 – Zach Bush
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq2aJpDHIio
Guest Zach Bush tells Rogan, “2800 podcasts and this will be most disruptive ever”.
Rogan asks, “OK, what will be most disruptive?”
The doctor answers, “Everything is perfect”.
Rogan then asks- What does that mean? The doctor responds that everything happening is the perfect maturation of the species right now. We don’t have multiple crises going on but “a hospice moment”. He then talks of the joy that he had as a hospice doctor, battling death and failing every day. But, he says, you change your perceptive when sitting with a dying person and the victory is no longer staying alive but its integrating everything that has happened in your life.
And he saw this again and again in people’s last few minutes of life when they looked back and saw that everything was perfect.
He thinks humanity is reaching this stage where we move past all the polarization we have, where we keep flipping the victim/victimizer thing back and forth, keeping a mirage going. But in the hospice moment, he says, you (the dying person) put that down and realize all was perfect. All the estrangement, all the disappointment, all the insecurity, that we did all that for the experience and felt everything a human can feel.
And people, who moments before dying felt their life was a failure, had problems with kids, never became successful in their jobs, and they realize in their final minutes that it all had nothing to do with any of those metrics that we evaluate our lives by. It all had to do with feeling everything a human is capable of experiencing.
And this is what we are as people- limited in our perceptions and because of that we get to feel everything that we do feel and are blessed for that.
He thinks that we are reaching this as a species after hundreds of thousands of years of polarity and fighting and all that we have experienced.
So when we put down the victim/perpetrator polarization- i.e. “he is right, she is wrong”- when we put that down then we have our hospice moment when everything makes sense and we understand why we did the journey together (i.e. victim and perpetrator) and we realize that those we thought were our enemies, who were the biggest problems in our lives, that we were holding polarity to our perspective and in death bed moments we realize that was all just our perspective but actually it was all perfect.
(Yes, his manner of speaking and the terms he uses are a bit obfuscating and not initially easy to grasp but with further listening he begins to make sense.)
Bush refers to what the NDE people also see– i.e. the oneness of us all and that everything ultimately makes sense, that everything in our lives was as it was supposed to happen. No mistakes were made.
Joseph Campbell talks about before we come into this world of dualism to all be actors on God’s stage, that we choose our roles, some to play good guys, some to play bad guys, all for the purpose of giving each other experiences of dualism/polarity, opposition, etc. Just as one NDE, a lady who was sexually abused by some older man, when she met him in the next life, they had this amazing oneness interaction of intense mutual unconditional love that overwhelmed her. She realized that they both (victim/perpetrator) had agreed to give each other that experience before coming here.
But realizing such things does not lessen the reality of evil of it in this life, and the horror of such reality, and the need and responsibility to fight it.
Rogan has a problem with what Bush is saying and so pushes back. I stopped listening to the podcast at this point.
Natalie Sudman said something in her book “Applications of Impossible Things”, that we agree to the experiences that we will endure of varied kinds of suffering in our lives, before we come here. But she cautions that realizing such things does not lessen the need to fight wrong when we are here in life. She is cautious about even talking about such things that she realized while having her NDE as it may appear to be downplaying the need to fight wrong in life.
Added note on above podcast:
The guest, Zach Bush, is interesting on the delusion that we live under of polarity, the good/evil dualism, and the tribalism that stems from that where we assign good and evil to one another, promoting polarity among ourselves. And again, yes, there is actual bad versus good going on among people. But more generally the polarity that we hold in our perspective blinds many of us to the underlying oneness of all and most critically the fundamental oneness of humanity. We all came from the same African mother, but more critical, we all come from the same original Source of ultimate Oneness that is the unconditional love of our Creator.
So yes, in this realm of dualism, of good against evil, we do evaluate and make conclusions about people, behaviors, and situations that are bad and we are responsible to oppose that. For example, we are responsible to restrain/incarcerate repeatedly violent people in order to protect innocent others. That is all common sense. But then we are also obligated to treat those offenders/enemies humanely, as family. And to recognize that the only real enemy in life is inside each one of us- i.e. our inheritance of animal impulses.
The above speculations of people like Bush simply offer a different perspective on the bigger background picture of what this reality is all about and such information may help us to get over the polarity and tribal enmity that flows from such dualism.