The “obsession” of this site with the central unconditional theme of Historical Jesus (a “non-religious” theological insight) is because it tells us that, ultimately, we are all safe in an inexpressibly transcendent love. All of us, including our “enemies”.
The project of H. Jesus was to go directly to the root incitement to fear that had long been embodied in religious narratives of “threat theology”- i.e. angry deities that threatened punishment for human imperfection, punishment through the natural world, through apocalypses, and ultimately punishing destruction in religious hells.
H. Jesus rejected that image of deity outright, and then replaced it with his stunning new theology of unconditional Love. That was his transformation of the central idea behind primal human fears that elites had incited across history to manipulate and dominate/control people, propagating narratives of apocalypse and hell to terrorize populations into submission to “salvation through destruction” crusades that continue today, including in secular/ideological variants like Marxism and environmental alarmism.
See Grok’s summary below of “Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism”.
H. Jesus’ central insight/message changes everything and affirms the project here to tell readers- “Don’t be afraid, it’s going to be alright in the end”. Jesus’ stunning new theology (James Robinson’s term) is the critical element to transform personal and public belief systems that protect us from manipulation and control by fear-based narratives.
See the main site articles at the bottom detailing this liberating insight (titles and links).
And this on “driven more by fear than scientific evidence”. There are endless similar examples of this…
“A Greenpeace co-founder walked away from the movement… his reason sparked a global debate
“Patrick Moore, a co-founder and former president of Greenpeace, challenges some of the most widely accepted claims about climate change, carbon dioxide, nuclear energy, environmental activism, and modern environmental politics. Throughout the conversation, he explains why he believes many public narratives are driven more by fear than scientific evidence, discusses his departure from Greenpeace, defends nuclear power as the most practical alternative to fossil fuels, and argues that critical thinking—not consensus—should guide scientific debate. Whether viewers agree with his conclusions or not, the discussion offers an in-depth look at one of the most controversial voices in the environmental movement.”
Gutfeld and panel discuss how the Fauci cult was promoted and protected by the tribal zealotry of mainstream media (and that protection continues). More on how we are lied to, propagandized, manipulated, and controlled…
Greg Gutfeld Show FULL END SHOW 30/7/26
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXAhI614kko
See below- “Real Solutions to Wildfires” from the scientists at co2coalition.org
Also below– “It’s an interesting project to sort through the psychological complexity in the people holding the ideas that energize and validate their impulses to tribalism, defeat, domination, and destruction of enemies”. And more on why the dualism of this realm (i.e. speculation on good versus evil).
Then…
Joe hits another home run, Wendell Krossa
Tim Robbins speaks to the “orchestrated chaos” that is going on in our societies today, people inciting fear, suspicion, and hatred of differing others that appears to have the goal of revolution, dividing people and sowing chaos with a goal of revolutionary overthrow.
I believe he is pointing to something that others have also spoken about that behind-the-scenes actors are using fear to incite the tribal impulse in populations, to divide and conquer, to get people hating one another, neglecting their common shared values and policies, seeing differing others as existential threats that have to be silenced, banned, purged from the society.
We saw this under Covid, also during the climate crisis hysteria. As Robbins says, we see this again and again where people are stirring panic and chaos with some ultimate goal of societal revolution in mind.
Others have noted that there are outside forces at play in this, notably the Chinese, Russians, and Iranians.
Robbins adds that this has been the practise of elites from time immemorial, where elites divide populations, they get people fighting one another, what was once called “divide and conquer”, as a way of maintaining their power. There have been situations, where following the eruption of chaos in a society, leadership will then declare something like Marshall Law to save a country from collapse and use that excuse to install totalitarian control. This has been the pattern of Marxist “salvation through destruction revolutions”. If the chaos is not naturally occurring then incite it as Antifa tries to do.
Rogan and Robbins then touch on the “bot farms” where state agents falsely present themselves in online forums as citizens of a country who are enraged at some issue or policy promoted by their opponents. Their goal is to stir division, rage, and chaos in societies that they want to overthrow.
That smells just like the similar Marxist approach over the past century to hurrying along the “inevitable collapse of capitalism” as preparation for collectivist totalitarianism. And yes, both sides have engaged this intervention to destabilize other countries- i.e. sow chaos and hope the society collapses so you can overthrow the system that exists and then install a new system more favorable to your side.
As these two acknowledge, this “sow chaos” approach has been effectively used across history by powerholding elites to stir fear of differing others who are presented as existential threats (i.e. threats to democracy, to the environment, etc.). Stirring fear then renders people susceptible to the salvation plan of the panic-mongers.
Robbins says that elites promote a narrative that permits their followers to feel virtuous in joining their crusade, to signal that virtue to their group. He states to Rogan that he has learned not to trust those who present as virtuous experts. That claim arouses suspicion with him. Robbins says that he has learned to not trust any experts. Rogan adds the illustration of Dr. Fauci claiming, “I am the science”, so heed and obey all that I tell you. He then shut down all questioning and dissent.
It has always been dangerous to submit to authority, to elites/bureaucrats/experts. Others decry that people “have lost faith or trust in state institutions”. Yes, of course, we should not trust state institutions run by elites and bureaucrats who claim to know better than the rest of the population of “commoners”. That “trust state experts” stinks of Plato’s fallacy of “Philosopher Kings”- i.e. specially endowed people more qualified to dominate and control all the rest of the population. How else can elites maintain the “elite/commoner” divide of societies? (That is sarcasm.)
Healthy democracies stay healthy by average citizens always maintaining healthy skepticism and doubt about anything experts and state leaders tell them. Questioning and challenge are critical to getting at the truth of anything. The ongoing expose of how consistently we have been lied to over the past ought to be enough to stir some sense of disgust and outrage in most normal heads. Climate crisis is gonna kill us all (“end is nigh”). Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Russiagate. Biden is “sharp as a tack”. And on and on…
My point applies to both the left and the right sides of our societies. On the left side- We ought to refuse to submit blindly to state elites running collectives (i.e. expanded government) for “the greater or common good”. On the right side- We ought to refuse to submit to theocratic claims that religious leaders speak for God, that they present to us “God’s word/will/law”. And that we should bow to the authority of religion as the unquestionable “sacred” (i.e. don’t indulge the “sin of unbelief”).
All of us should maintain the healthy openness to doubting, questioning, and challenging even most fundamental of ideas or beliefs. And if you have read anything here, you know I am pointing directly at theology, as in my repeated quote/posting of “It’s the God, stupid.”
The evidence from our history ought to be a warning to us all of how often we are lied to by state elites/experts. How we are manipulated and controlled to disastrous outcomes.
Just across the past century or so: The mass-murder by Nazis who deluded a country with apocalyptic millennial madness, the mass-murder by Marxist totalitarians and consequent ruin of societies, the mass-ruin of entire countries by Net Zero alarmists, notably of Germany and Britain, also Canada’s “lost decade” under Trudeau (some $20 trillion wasted worldwide), etc.
Insert re $20 trillion wasted:
“Reality bites on ‘energy transition’ in Canada and beyond: Fossil fuels are here to stay”, Kenneth Green, Jul 29, 2026
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/green-reality-bites-on-energy-transition-in-canada-and-beyond
Quote: “As U.S. energy scholar Mark Mills observes, despite the United States and Europe pouring vast amounts of money — nearly $20 trillion over two decades — to encourage, subsidize and mandate an energy transition, global oil use (on a per-person basis) is essentially the same today as two decades ago.”
(End of Green article)
Continuing…
Liberal democracy advocate Frederick Hayek said it well in stating that the most effective protection against totalitarianism is the critical dispersal of power out away from state centers to citizens, ensuring that free, competing individuals are the empowered sovereigns in society (i.e. laws and institutions that constrain the power of state elites/bureaucrats). Most critical in this regard is the lowering of taxes and decrease of regulations. Returning control of personal property back to citizens (less taxation) along with personal control over decisions affecting them (less regulation).
Later, Robbins continues, noting the Covid lockdown was “a sophisticated propaganda machine”. He and Rogan go on to discuss how critical freedom of speech is to the US Constitution and society, to a free society. They then question how free is US society when those who questioned the Covid narrative and lies, and challenged the mandated lockdowns, had their jobs threatened. Many actually lost their jobs and businesses. Add the damage done to locked down young people that Robbins recounts from his personal experience working with young actors.
They note that the assault on freedom of speech still continues in regard to lots of other things. Britain is a notable example of assault on citizen’s free speech where any who challenge the government policies on immigration and open borders have been arrested in the thousands annually, fined and worse, just for online comments of disagreement.
State elites have been trying to do the same in the US and Canada with proposed laws to criminalize online speech, classifying it as “disinformation, misinformation, hate speech, etc.” And with “concept creep” that permits state powerholders to extend the criminalization out to the opinions and speech of their political opponents.
Robbins notes this dangerous attitude today in the population where we shut down disagreement and any challenge to our opinions and seek only affirmation. He is working to promote approaches, i.e. through his acting projects, that encourage people on both sides to find common ground and feel common emotions.
In one interesting account he noted that when his troupe of actors presented a play on lockdowns in Romania, the citizens there responded that the US lockdowns and cancel culture reminded them of their lives under totalitarian Soviet collectivism.
Robbins further notes that when they cancelled him for protesting the Iraq war and Covid lockdowns, they made up absolute lies to smear him. He was stunned by that direct lying.
Joe Rogan Experience #2532 – Tim Robbins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur_-7JONZlY&t=222s
Refusing to confront and name the main contributing factor- theology
Note below some probing of “true believer” psychology– i.e. placing identity in beliefs, notably in the ultimate belief of theology, and the consequent felt sense of threatened survival when such beliefs are questioned or challenged as contributing factors to bad behavior.
Then…
Articles, like this below from Douglas Murray, continue to re-enforce the point made here that you have to understand and “defeat the idea” that drives the madness and barbarity of the violence that is still rampantly erupting across our societies. These Islamic assaults are just one variant on violence that is driven by the themes of “salvation through destruction” belief systems. The Marxist crusades are driven by these same themes just as the destruction from Net zero decarbonization is also driven by the same complex of ideas/beliefs.
The central idea in the salvation through destruction complex reduces to- “It’s the theology, stupid.” That paraphrases what Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy framed as the “dung” that was the general apocalyptic millennialism of Paul, referring specifically to his Christology that had buried the “diamond” message of Historical Jesus. Ouch, such blunt language, eh. But sometimes offensive language/terms help to break through the mental fog that obscures understanding and enable us to focus with more clarity on what exactly is the nature of what needs to be confronted and challenged/changed.
This below illustrates a repeated argument on this site that if you do not understand and confront the actual factors that drive violence, the deepest of root contributing factors, then you are not serious about solving violence and war.
Admittedly, this may be a long-game project that requires a long-term commitment to going to a root causal factor that may take a generation to fully resolve. But at some time we have to start facing the fundamental things that incite, energize, and validate such violence if we are serious about the “never again” cries that we hear following such events.
First, here is a response to the Islamic attack in Germany from Free Press:
“Europe Spins Another Islamist Attack: The suspect in Berlin’s recent rampage was known to authorities. He slipped through the cracks because leaders minimize the threat of radical Islam”, Douglas Murray, 07/27/26
https://www.thefp.com/s/the-big-read?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Murray begins noting the Islamist terrorist who drove a van into a Berlin Pride parade killing one person and injuring many more. He then asks, “How was this reported?”
Media and politicians refused to clearly name the Islamic element in this attack, instead focusing attention on the vehicle he used and shifting blame, among other things, toward “anti-LGBTQ rhetoric… the anti-immigration Reform Party in the UK and also GB News, a right-leaning broadcaster”.
Murray says that it should have been easy to identify the real source of the problem as necessary to dealing properly with the “much greater problem that is ensnaring Britain, Europe, and to a lesser extent, the U.S.”
He states the greater problem as: “By opening Western borders to Third World immigration for decades, generations of politicians allowed in people who had completely different standards and values from the societies into which they had moved.”
Western societies assumed the migrants from Muslim countries would settle and become European but that did not happen. By then, says Murray, “Europe was faced with a problem it had no answer for: How do you integrate a community that doesn’t want to integrate? How do you stop people from hating the society that has welcomed them?”
Balancing insert: Murray would probably agree that the above- i.e. “hating the society that has welcomed them”- is not true of all Muslim immigrants.
He continues, noting that European societies tried “deradicalization programs” but that he concludes was putting a scientific veneer on a very unscientific problem and the problem continued.
He says that too many politicians along with media refuse to even acknowledge the nature of the problem that is facing them- i.e. the Islamic element. They continue to blame “right-wing forces”, holding the delusion that Western tolerant societies can just “get along” with Islamic religious zealots who hate western liberal democracies.
I would add that in Britain varied Islamic leaders have stated publicly that they intend to overthrow liberal democracies by varied approaches such as out-birthing native westerners and thereby shifting the demographic base toward Islam. They state their long-term project is to eventually overthrow liberal democracies and coercively install theocratic totalitarianism in an Islamic Caliphate, eventually spreading that worldwide.
My argument here-
While others will point to varied contributing factors (drivers) related to such violence, the ultimate driving causal factor behind these violent assaults on western citizens is the deity at the core of these religions. Why “ultimate”? Because deity is the ultimate authority and ideal, the ultimate belief/idea in human narratives that incites, energizes, and validates such violence.
Solving this problem will probably involve a generational, perhaps multi-generational, project.
Along with dealing with varied other elements in the mix of factors driving violence, solving this problem will require going to the core element of a dominant idea/belief that shapes human thinking, feeling, motivation, and out to human response and behavior.
That idea/belief has been summarized most clearly as- “It’s the God, stupid”. And more pointedly, it is a certain image of God- i.e. God as tribal, dominating (demanding unquestioning submission and obedience), demanding zealous purging of evil unbelievers as essential to salvation into a promised utopia.
General Nagata was right that we have to defeat “the idea” that drives such violence. Add to Nagata the comment of Richard Landes that until you recognize how apocalyptic millennial ideas can carry societies into mass-death outcomes (Nazism, Marxism) then you will only repeat such outcomes. Landes fleshed out with historical evidence just what was the “dung” element that Jefferson and Tolstoy referred to in the New Testament. It was Paul’s apocalyptic millennialism, what this site refers to as salvation through destruction.
I would add that it is not just the more purely “theological/religious” versions of such ideas that drive so much violence and war but also the “secularized ideological” versions that are just as potently dangerous in driving mass destruction. “Driving” as in inciting, energizing, and validating bad behavior.
Example: Note the accumulating ruin of societies from the environmental variant. Notably, Germany and Britain, among other places. Sources- Global Warming Policy Foundation newsletters, Wattsupwiththat.com, and others.
Again, to emphasize- The core idea, a fundamental contributing factor driving violence is the theology at the center of narratives. That is the ultimate embodiment of ideals that shape thinking, emotions, energize motivations, and then activate behavior, validating even violence.
Salvation through destruction or apocalyptic millennialism was formalized in Zoroastrian cosmic dualism systems of belief before it descended to shape Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This system of beliefs grants true believers the emotional satisfaction of being on the side of some fictional/mythical true God, doing God’s righteous will, gaining God’s favor and promised salvation as they slaughter God’s enemies- i.e. the impure unbelievers who defile life by their very presence. These beliefs even inspire some to the “heroism” of dying in the noble cause of these death cults. Martyrdom is believed to be the highest possible form of virtue-signaling for status with your group of fellow zealots.
Summary of the line of historical descent: This salvation through destruction complex has shaped Judaism, Christianity (the most influential belief system shaping western consciousness and narratives, both religious and secular/ideological), then Islam, and subsequently the offspring of Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism.
The core contributing factor that Murray is pointing toward is much more than just “Islamist”. It is the God at the center of that religion, the God that Islam inherited from Jewish Christianity, that in turn inherited their deity from earlier religious traditions, and on further back in history through an unbroken line of inheritance from primitive mythologies that first formulated the original bad ideas that shaped the earliest conscious mythmaking of ancient humans. Their original theological ideas/beliefs have long been embedded and solidified as archetypes of the human subconscious and that is the ultimate element (contributing factors to human behavior) that has to be confronted and transformed with the more humane features that we know of today.
We can begin the process of necessary transformation by doing what Historical Jesus did- i.e. embrace the radically new theology of an unconditionally loving God. Start with this makeover at the most foundational level of theology- the ultimate reality, ideal, authority. Start right at the base or center of it all. Transform that by framing with the most humane ideals that we know. And disseminate that into the public free market of ideas.
Then let it gradually spread like yeast through bread or the seed that Jesus spoke of (i.e. his description of how the “kingdom or message of God” spreads, see Google AI summaries below).
This is proper and thorough problem-solving for the long-term future. This is the way to “defeat the idea” that General Nagata stated had to be defeated if we are to solve the endless eruptions of violence and war.
Note on “generational change”:
I would relate this to Simon Singh’s point in “Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe” that an older generation of scientists who refused to accept the new evidence for the Big Bang would have to die off and be replaced by, hopefully, a new generation of more open-minded younger scientists. But that may not hold true with zealous true believers in a religious tradition as different things are at work in their psyches- i.e. survival things related to identity impulses.
This relates to those archetypal elements in the collective human subconscious that have been shaped by early mythologies and are still affirmed in the present by the major religions and affirmed also by the secularized ideological offspring of the religions. If major narratives keep affirming those fundamental archetypes, then do not expect the true believers in these traditions to change over subsequent generations.
Insert- In pointing out what is wrong (i.e. the bad ideas lists posted here) I hope to clear off what stands in the way of seeing clearly what is right. For example, what Jesus got right about ultimate reality- i.e. the unconditional nature of it. Understanding that requires removing from the “diamond” all that is the “dung” burying it, to frame it in terms of the Jefferson/Tolstoy project.
Further note:
It’s an interesting project to sort through the psychological complexity in the people holding the ideas that energize and validate their impulses to tribalism, defeat, domination, and destruction of enemies.
Why do so many defensively refuse to even consider there may be something wrong with the theology at the core of their belief systems? Worse yet, many react with enraged fury, even violence, toward those confronting the heart of their belief systems- i.e. the theology- as the major contributing factor to bad behavior. Remember again the reaction of Jesus’ first audience in the Luke 4 account where he rejected their theology of a vengeful God.
The “psychology” operating in that reaction?
Too many people have invested their very identity in their ideas/beliefs, especially locating identity in theology as the ultimate idea or belief. Theology- i.e. ideas/images of God- have long functioned as the primary ideas/beliefs that satisfy our dominant impulse to meaning and purpose.
These ideas/beliefs that people embrace to structure their personal narratives are then fundamental to their sense of being human. Hence, any doubt, questioning, or challenge to beliefs, especially challenge to theology, is viewed by true believers as a survival issue. Challenge is felt as a threat to the very existence of those holding the beliefs. Challengers are viewed as threats to people’s very identity and existence.
Hence, the defensive rage of true believers, accompanied with counter threats that vilify challengers for “heresy, the evil of unbelief, blasphemy”, along with threats of punishment, even destruction, whether here or in an afterlife hell.
There is a whole area of psychology here to probe and understand. How people invest their identity in their narratives and that grants them opportunity to find emotional satisfaction in varied impulses such as the impulse for status as morally good persons, even as heroic with a chosen ingroup, family, or tribe. People will consequently protect such things zealously because of the opportunity they provide for gaining the highly valued status with a group. They will fight “unbelieving challengers” whom they frame as threatening evil enemies (i.e. enemies posing “existential” threats to the believer’s very existence).
Jordan Peterson, for one, has pointed to this fundamental human need for status in a group, the need to virtue-signal for status as morally good in one’s tribe or group.
Add the satisfaction that people find in the entire complex of ideas/beliefs that have shaped most human narratives- ideas such as the opportunity to be on the side of a great Good God (Zoroastrian cosmic dualism), on the side of “true justice” heroically fighting a righteous battle against evil satanic enemies who threaten all good in the world. Most people want to feel the satisfaction in belonging to the side of “truth, right, good” and fighting against evil.
And of course, add the critical stakes involved with such narratives- i.e. the divine promise of salvation, both temporal and eternal. There may be nothing greater (i.e. no greater “satisfaction”) than the desire to live on forever that is promised to true believers who embrace and engage Zoroastrian cosmic battles of good against evil, being on the side of what they are told is the sole Good God in the cosmos.
There are many elements operating here in regard to people’s fundamental beliefs and the satisfactions that such beliefs provide them. Probing all this helps to understand why many people don’t want to go beyond peripheral tinkering with their belief systems to the necessary core reform and transformation of core beliefs. They fear threats of exclusion/banning from a chosen tribe or group, with vilification as “unbelievers, heretics, blasphemers, evil”, and consequent loss of reputation as a good person within a group or society.
Note, for example, how effectively British leaders have used smears of “Islamophobia, racist, etc.” to cow dissenters to the leader’s narratives and policies (i.e. the British police and politicians manipulating their populations with fear of disapproval, punishment, etc.).
Here is a further note on how messages like the Jesus theme on unconditional deity spread through societies/populations. Point? These parables point to something similar to the liberal democratic gradualism versus coercive promotion of progress (i.e. the “instantaneous purification” demanded by collectivism) that was noted by, for example, Arthur Mendel in “Vision and Violence”:
AI Overview
Jesus used the Parable of the Yeast and the Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13 to teach how God’s kingdom and good and evil grow over time.
The Parable of the Yeast (The Leaven)
• The Story: A woman mixes a tiny bit of yeast into a large amount of flour (about 60 pounds or three measures) until it spreads through all the dough.
• The Meaning: The kingdom of heaven starts very small, but its quiet and powerful influence eventually transforms everything.
The Parable of the Weeds (The Tares)
• The Story: An enemy sows weeds in a farmer’s field of good wheat while everyone sleeps. The servants want to pull the weeds up right away, but the master tells them to let both grow together until the harvest.
• The Meaning: Good and evil grow side by side in the world. A final sorting and judgment will happen later at the end of the age by the reapers (angels).
Would you like to explore the deeper spiritual meanings of these parables or look at other farming stories Jesus told?
He also spoke of a weed-like tree that grows to cover and shade widely
Jesus was referring to the Parable of the Mustard Seed, found in Matthew 13:31–32, Mark 4:30–32.
In the ancient Near East, the black mustard plant (Brassica nigra) was often viewed as a fast-spreading, invasive weed that farmers avoided planting in their managed gardens because it could easily take over the soil.
Key Elements of the Parable
• The Tiny Seed: Jesus noted that the mustard seed is “the smallest of all seeds” planted in the field, representing the tiny, seemingly insignificant beginnings of His ministry.
• The Explosive Growth: Once planted, it grows rapidly into a massive, shrub-like “tree” reaching heights of 8 to 12 feet.
• The Wide Shade: It becomes so large that “the birds of the air come and nest in its branches,” providing wide shade and shelter.
Cultural and Spiritual Meaning
• The Subversive Kingdom: By comparing God’s kingdom to an invasive garden weed rather than a majestic, noble tree like the Cedar of Lebanon, Jesus shocked His listeners. He showed that the Kingdom spreads relentlessly, breaking through human boundaries.
• Inclusion and Shelter: The wide shade and nesting birds symbolize the inclusion of all nations and peoples— including Gentiles— finding refuge and protection in God’s kingdom.
Would you like to examine the historical debate over why Jesus called it the “smallest of all seeds,” or should we look at how this parable connects to Old Testament prophecies?
Another:
OK, do the connections to Old Testament prophecies
When Jesus spoke of a tiny seed growing into a tree where “the birds of the air come and nest in its branches,” His listeners would immediately recognize imagery from the Old Testament. Prophets used the image of a massive tree sheltering birds to symbolize great empires and divine kingdoms.
Jesus specifically drew from three key Old Testament prophecies:
1. Ezekiel 17:22–24 (The Tender Cedar Twig)
• The Prophecy: God promises to take a tiny, tender sprig from the top of a cedar tree and plant it on a high mountain. It grows into a magnificent cedar that bears fruit and produces branches.
• The Connection: Ezekiel writes that “Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches.”
• The Meaning: God was predicting the restoration of David’s royal line (the Messiah). Jesus used the exact same imagery to show that His kingdom fulfilled this promise of a universal refuge.
2. Daniel 4:10–12 (The Tree of Babylon)
• The Prophecy: King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream of an enormous tree at the center of the earth that grows visible to the ends of the world. It has beautiful leaves and abundant fruit.
• The Connection: Daniel describes how “the beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.”
• The Meaning: In the Old Testament, this represented a massive, worldly empire providing political protection to many conquered nations. Jesus adopted this image to show that God’s kingdom would outgrow and outlast all human empires.
3. Ezekiel 31:3–6 (The Assyrian Cedar)
• The Prophecy: Ezekiel describes the empire of Assyria as a towering cedar in Lebanon with beautiful branches providing thick shade.
• The Connection: The text states, “All the birds of the sky nested in its boughs.”
• The Meaning: Like the Daniel passage, this uses a giant tree to represent a global superpower sheltering diverse groups of people.
The Brilliant Twist Jesus Made
While the Old Testament prophets used majestic cedars— noble, towering trees representing elite military power— Jesus deliberately changed the tree to a mustard plant.
By swapping a royal cedar for a common, fast-spreading garden shrub, Jesus prophesied that God’s future kingdom would not look like a violent, crushing political empire. Instead, it would grow from humble, ordinary beginnings into a massive refuge that quietly takes over the world.
(End of AI Overviews)
This latest newsletter on the best of climate science from the people at “co2coalition.org”:
“Beyond the Blame Game: Real Solutions to Wildfires”
CO2 Coalition newsletter- co2coalition.org@shared1.ccsend.com
Sent: July 30, 2026 1:46 PM
Dr. Bob Zybach on Wildfires:
“History, Management Failures, and Real Solutions
“In a recent CO2 Coalition Climate Debrief podcast, environmental scientist and historian Dr. Bob Zybach (Ph.D., Oregon State University) shared insights from decades of research on Western Oregon forests, Indian burning practices, and wildfire patterns. His work underscores a critical reality: Today’s catastrophic wildfires stem from policy-driven fuel buildup and passive management – not human-caused climate change.
“Dr. Zybach’s 500-year historical study shows that Indigenous peoples maintained vast cleared areas largely free of fuel through deliberate burning, creating savannas of grasslands and scattered trees, lowland meadows of lilies and other vegetation, and other openings in the landscape, all intended to limit the spread of fire.
“However, modern policies reversed this. Afforestation, limitations on access into forests, and restrictions and litigation under the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act halted active management, producing unprecedented fuel loads and fires far larger than historical norms.
He documented predictions from the 1990s that warned of catastrophic wildfires resulting from ill-considered federal policies. Those fires arrived, including the 2002 B&B Complex Fire in Oregon, which was fed by unmanaged fuel created by beetle-kill and the collapse of timber harvests that resulted from spotted-owl litigation.
“The fires had “nothing to do with climate,” said Dr. Zybach in the podcast interview. “The climate’s been about the same in western Oregon for 500 years.”
“Rather, the explosion in large fires tracks with policy changes and litigation, not CO₂.
He adds this on “Practical fixes exist and have worked for generations, including:
· Keep roads and trails open for forest management.
· Control undergrowth and weeds.
· Plant diverse species with fuel-break openings.
· Maintain seedlings.
· Manage fuel loads through thinning.
He concludes: “Wildfires of the extreme variety are largely preventable. With leadership and a return to commonsense practices, the policy-induced damage of recent decades can be reversed quickly.”
More on how we are lied to, propagandized, manipulated, and controlled.
https://www.racket.news/p/anthony-fauci-was-americas-warmup
“Anthony Fauci Was America’s Warmup Dictator: He institutionalized the purposeful lie, suppressed critics, mastered emergency politics, even sold himself as a sex symbol. Anthony Fauci gave the next monster a playbook”, Matt Taibbi, Sep 30, 2026
Taibbi starts:
“Exposés in Public and Racket this week showed Anthony Fauci engaged in the bureaucratic version of witness tampering, using a dubious “Proximal Origin” paper he helped engineer to divert attention from the possibility that Covid-19, too, was a viral Frankenstein’s monster. Apart from a few conservative outlets, no one picked up the story…”
Taibbi continues recounting how Fauci “lied to the public for its own good.
“Fauci leaned into a cult-of-personality movement when Americans were exquisitely vulnerable to such manipulations. When a Covid-level disaster hits, terrified people will surrender to any hack with a poker face claiming to have answers. Fauci only just finished playing that hand more aggressively than perhaps any American public figure ever.”
Taibbi notes that the full weight of state bureaucracy affirmed Fauci’s edicts and promoted him as an unquestionable authority.
Taibbi says, “Fauci made no secret of his vision of pandemic messaging as a fundamentally political project, validating ancient authoritarian ideas in which power flows from the intellectuals who devise society’s organizing myths.”
Fauci corrupted and discredited science with his lies as well as corrupted journalism.
And he shamelessly let his narcissism carry him into the arms of fawning fanboy/fangirl elites in news media, politics, and most embarrassingly for us now reading his diaries, into the arms of Hollywood.
Where the “Warmup Dictator” element emerged is seen in how actual scientists and freedom of speech were assaulted as “Critics of Fauci’s policies found themselves stripped of jobs, removed from the Internet, and isolated socially, financially, and professionally…”
Despite good evidence from scientists like Bhattacharya and Kulldorff “We were propagandized to reject natural immunity, ignore obvious massive age-specific risk discrepancies, and believe the health of the collective depended on mass acceptance of a vaccine that people like Fauci knew early on did not stop transmission or infection.
“The public was told anyway that the unvaccinated were killing grandma and predictable rage and calls for brutal counter-measures, including jail, ensued. This was true factory-produced out-group hatred of the type found in every modern authoritarian movement, and journalists blew off the obvious warning signs and even participated themselves because Tony Fauci knew how to pull an aw, shucks face in split-screen with Alisyn Camerota.
“Anthony Fauci showed proof-of-concept for the whole authoritarian package. He convinced the monied classes to embrace the idea of lying to the ignorant public for its own good”.
AI Overview
Matt Taibbi’s sharp critique of Dr. Anthony Fauci frames him as an administrative autocrat who weaponized public anxiety, managed the news cycle, and normalized top-down emergency rule during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Core Arguments by Matt Taibbi
• Institutionalized Deception: Accusations that official guidance (such as changing statements on masks and herd immunity thresholds) was adjusted based on perceived public compliance rather than transparent scientific fact-sharing.
• Suppression of Dissent: Claims that dissenting scientific perspectives and alternative hypotheses regarding pandemic management or virus origins were actively marginalized or labeled misinformation.
• Emergency Bureaucracy: The expansion of unelected technocratic power, setting a permanent template for how future public health emergencies can override democratic norms and open debate.
• Celebrity and Persona: The transition of a career health official into a pop-culture media figure, blending institutional authority with personal brand management.
(End of AI Overview)
Here below the authors detail the history of how the Covid scientific “experts” denied, lied, and propagated a false narrative on Covid origins that led to other scientists being de-amplified, removed from media platforms, harassed, defunded, even fired. This shows how news media once again set aside any pretense of doing “journalism” to reveal their real function as “the resistance” was to be propagandists to promote the lies of Fauci and others who were champions fighting “Trumpworld”.
“So Friggin’ Likely”: New Covid Documents Reveal Unparalleled Media Deception: Newly released chats and emails between the authors of a crucial scientific paper leave no doubt: an unprecedented official disinformation campaign accompanied the arrival of Covid-19”, Matt Taibbi, Leighton Woodhouse, Alex Gutentag, Michael Shellenberger, Jul 18, 2026
https://www.racket.news/p/so-friggin-likely-new-covid-documents?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Quotes:
“Public and Racket last week obtained a full complement of the “Proximal Origins” communications examined by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, revealing a story far worse than previously believed. While today’s Public story details the unprecedented scientific cover-up, the letters and chats examined here at Racket show how health officials and scientists constructed perhaps the most impactful media deception of modern times, exceeding even the WMD fiasco both in scale and brazen intentionality.”
The above authors note that the Wuhan lab “was conducting very dangerous experiments as Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3), while the higher BSL-4 would normally be considered necessary. ‘I’m all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important,’ Andersen writes. ‘However performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts!… It later came out that WIV was performing some of its experiments at an even lower level. ‘Keep in mind that WIV actually performed a lot of their coronavirus work at BSL2…”
They then include detail on the core issue in the Gain of Function research of the “furin cleavage site, a distinctive feature of the Covid-19 genetic sequence” and that epidemiologists were trying to introduce “’human-specific cleavage sites’ into bat coronaviruses”. This was extremely dangerous research with the possibility that one mistake could result in escape to the outside world and a major pandemic.
The authors then move on to detail the “unprecedented scientific cover-up… (and) how health officials and scientists constructed perhaps the most impactful media deception of modern times”.
They state:
“It’s with the publication of The Proximal Origin of SARS CoV-2 on March 17th that the unprecedented campaign of media deception really begins. The primary authorities on the question of whether or not the virus was the result of ‘laboratory manipulation’ now turtled, saying little, while other media figures and politicians on a near-constant basis referred to the paper as the authority on the matter, suppressing questions about the pandemic’s origin.
“The ‘lab leak theory’ became infamous in mainstream circles among other things because Donald Trump seemed to blame China for the mess, using terms like ‘Kung Flu,’ and secondarily because it appeared to implicate a neoliberal hero, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who stepped into the shoes of Robert Mueller as the favored leading man of the mainstream press… this framing had everything to do with the fact that the two figures most on television during the early days of the pandemic were Trump and Fauci, setting up a fierce culture-war rooting interest in the origin question where it didn’t belong…”
They state that authorities joined forces to push the natural origin theory and “engineered a relentless and incredibly effective propaganda campaign to dismiss and even censor these very logical inquiries, with the Nature article at the center.
“’I read Proximal Origin first, and immediately the reaction was that it felt like propaganda,’ says researcher. ‘The arguments structured were just so far out of the norm of the standards of evidence… Typically when we’re like, ‘Oh, Where does the virus come from?’ the answer is, ‘I don’t know.’ But here they knew.’”
And news media joined the “most impactful media deception of modern times”.
They continue:
“With a few notable exceptions, nearly everyone in the mainstream press community steered clear of any investigation of the possibility of lab origin for Covid-19, for several reasons. One key one was that such theories were coded early on as ‘right-wing’ or even racist… Prominent figures on channels like MSNBC hammered the idea that ‘lab leak’ was right-wing lunacy, with Nicolle Wallace calling it ‘one of Trumpworld’s most favorite conspiracy theories,’ while Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post announced, ‘The far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory.’”
They conclude:
“What the documents do show, however, is that both scientists and journalists abandoned their traditional mission to keep their minds open and consider all reasonable evidence without fear of political considerations, in favor of a new discipline that openly admitted political factors and sought a ‘single message’ over free-ranging inquiry.”
More on the migrant crisis. It involves so much more than the simple-minded reduction of the issue to racism versus anti-racism, or compassion versus cruelty.
Leftist open border policies and refusal to prosecute immigrant criminal behavior gave Britain the horrors of the grooming gangs (Pakistani Muslim) and estimated rape of some 250,000 British girls, many underage.
Most of us understand and support legal migration with the requirement that new migrants to liberal democracies commit to embracing and living by the principles, laws, and institutions of liberal democracy. This requirement has not been enforced over the past years of uncontrolled open borders across many western countries, notably in Europe.
Is this due to misunderstanding “multi-culturalism”? That seems to be one element in the mix. We have today many migrants to countries like Britain stating publicly that they hate liberal democracy and intend to overthrow it in time (i.e. initially through Muslim women out-birthing the native population, the election of Muslim politicians who will push for rule by Sharia law, and eventually through straightforward coercion, among other things).
On the fundamental requirement for immigrants to embrace and live by liberal democracy principles: There is no authentic love without the freedoms of liberal democracy and that is how we can conclude that there is no real empathy or compassion in the outcomes of collectivist approaches that deprive citizens of basic freedoms and rights.
I would state that despite all the virtue signaling of commitment to righteous justice in such traditions. Loss of personal freedoms and rights is exceedingly harmful to individuals. I’ve posted articles on that such as the Israeli studies on hierarchical organizations.
Add here Bob Brinsmead’s comment on the inseparable relationship of love and freedom. There is no love without genuine freedom.
Hence, liberal democracy laws and institutions constitute a red line worth for fighting for.
Now this from Shellenberger…
“Viewing Borders As Immoral, Spanish Leader Followed Biden Footsteps In Creating Migration Crisis: Pedro Sánchez’s open border policies have increased costs, driven down wages, and worsened health care and education”, Michael Shellenberger, July 31, 2026
https://www.public.news/p/viewing-borders-as-immoral-spanish
Spain’s socialist government that takes pride in not building walls and granting amnesty to illegal immigrants. Its leader bases his open border approach on the argument that it is “moral… our duty to become the welcoming and tolerant”.
Shellenberger then looks at the outcomes of Spain’s liberalized immigration policies:
He states that “the mass migration of unskilled workers to Spain has driven down wages, increased government spending, raised housing costs, and worsened health care.”
Data shows that immigrant levels of productivity are lower than Spanish citizens and that dampens contribution to GDP growth. The lower wages of migrants push down working-class wages and reduce tax revenue.
Migrants have also pushed Spain’s healthcare system to near collapse and driven up housing costs which is the number one concern of Spanish citizens.
Shellenberger’s conclusion is that Spanish leader “Sanchez’s mass migration policies are thus neither economically sound nor compassionate.”
He says that it appears Sanchez and fellow leftists, while no doubt compassionate people, are “more motivated by a need to feel like good people.” They are more ideologically motivated than responding to evidence on outcomes.
Shellenberger says that, “Since World War II, a growing number of European leaders have framed border enforcement as oppressive, and the people demanding it as fascist.”
He adds, “The most dogmatic advocates of such an agenda were left-wing and socialist parties like Sánchez’s, which have opposed nation-states in general and Western civilization in particular. The left spent decades misdescribing nationalism as equivalent to fascism.”
He concludes that Spanish leftists subscribe to an ideology that is reacting to what they frame as “the rise of right-wing anti-mass migration populism. Where Christianity once provided a guide for how to be a good person, these elites turned for moral instruction to the vision of liberal globalism.
“The idea eventually overturned both ancient and classical liberal ideas of citizenship, whereby members of a nation are expected to value their fellow citizens over foreigners. By the early 21st Century, leaders like Sánchez radicalized into valuing foreigners over citizens.”
I do not affirm Shellenberger’s repeated claim that an undifferentiated Christianity “once provided a guide for how to be a good person”, but do appreciate some of his points on the need for more controlled migration.
Metaphysical Speculations- Bad stirring revulsion, stimulating longing for the opposite good
Placing the nasty stuff in the bigger background context to what goes on in our societies, Wendell Krossa
Campbell and others have speculated on this realm of dualism and why the dualism exists and will most likely continue through history in an ongoing diverse array of real-world battles of good against evil.
The point?
We get these great surges of destructive movements/crusades in our societies that are driven by bad ideas, notably the current resurgence of socialism/collectivism along with the theocratic crusade of the Iranian death-cult leaders. I place these crusades in the larger context of the dualism of this material realm and the insights that suggest/speculate that this realm was created as a learning arena for humanity, i.e. that we come here to learn something. Mainly, as the NDE insights reveal, to learn what love is and how to love, love as the defining feature of being human.
That leads me to speculate that all the darker, destructive things in this world, that emerge and surge to prominence at times in our societies, exist and play out to provide a contrast that enable us to understand more clearly what the good is that we are trying to learn and experience. It’s as if we need such contrast with the bad that then, for one thing, creates revulsion in many as they witness and experience the destructive outcomes from such crusades as socialism/collectivism.
This was Stephen Pinker’s point that when modern-era Christians recognized the horrors of the violence that their tradition had generated across past history, they felt revulsion at that history of violence and thus entered the contemporary period oriented to moderating their religion. They have been largely successful. Hopefully, the same revulsion will spread across Islam.
The actual experience of something bad incites in most people an awakening. It stirs something in people, a longing for the good (often some opposite of a bad) as the author of “The Return of the God That Failed” noted in regard to Richard Wright, who stated that while he and others had initially given up their personal identity to Communism which offered them a sense of belonging, of family. But then the Communist elites demanded the subjection of these author’s personal selves to the collective. Wright, in particular, retreated to his writing that kept him from fully succumbing to the impulse to belong. As he stated it in the quotes below, “I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo; and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words… to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human”.
His experience on the inhuman stirred in him the longing for the human. He had to experience the inhumanity of collectivism to appreciate the truly humane, the individual freedom to be his authentic human self.
I have previously pointed to other philosophical types who also speculate that we can’t know good, really experience good, aside from the contrast with evil. They argue that authentic good can only be realized out of genuinely free choice against evil, and that is what a Creator values- i.e. the authentically free choice for love, for good.
From varied comments in books/articles/video interviews you get the widespread sense of how essential freedom is to human well-being. A friend recently sent me a post, something about how freedom super-cedes even love as critical to being human. Another friend, Bob Brinsmead, says that freedom and love are welded inseparably together as one. Which explains Bob’s point on why evil exists in this world. He argues that a Creator who is love grants freedom to humanity, because if “God is love” then God cannot intervene and overrule human freedom of choice. That would violate love and God would not then be love.
There is more on why freedom is critical to being human…
Respect for, and the protection of, the freedom of all is critical in organization settings. Decades ago in the narrow, dimly-light aisles of the old UBC library building, I discovered, in particular, Israeli studies that noted the fact that people who had positions in the upper levels of organizational hierarches had higher levels of well-being because they had more control over the decisions that affected them.
And the people in lower positions in organizational hierarches had poorer levels of well-being because they did not have control over the decisions that impacted them. Hence, the people researching this argued for including the impacted people in the decision-making that affected them, so they could “buy into” those decisions and consequently support them instead of resenting, resisting, and undermining such decisions. The foot-dragging and bitter undermining was more intense if the decisions came with threats of punishment for noncompliance.
Insert: The Germans had long ago done similar studies on human error in organization, noting that punishing inevitable error resulted in employees hiding the error and thereby no one learned from it. Punitive approaches also resulted in employees engaging the dangerous practice of “signing off” that tasks had been done but were not completed. That resulted in one incident of “convergence” (i.e. a number of normally harmless errors converging) where varied such mistakes resulted in 100 dying in a Florida plane crash.
It is critical to human wellbeing to have control over one’s life and what impacts us, meaning that freedom is critical to human development, growth, maturing, and overall well-being. And it is devastating to suffer the loss of freedom and control over one’s life, the loss of self-determination and freedom of choice.
This is something that collectivists do not seem to be aware of, or don’t care (i.e. perhaps a psychopathic element in the mix?). The harm that is done to others when they are subjected to states collectives run by elites and bureaucrats. Socialists/collectivists do not seem to get or care how their approach of centralized power, control, and planning, devastates societies because they eliminate personal freedoms when they subject individuals to their “greater or common good”, meaning totalitarian control by them with no toleration of questioning, challenge, or dissent. As the article on “The God That Failed” noted- that is why those intellectuals, initially succumbing to “useful idiot” status, eventually became disillusioned at the loss of personal freedom, then came to their senses and left.
Collectivism, by its essential nature, always and inevitably becomes totalitarian. As “Triggernometry” host Konstantin Kisin said, if you take personal property from people, you can only do so with force as that state expropriation of personal property violates something fundamental in people. I would add that personal/private property is essential to freedom because it is about personal control over people’s resources as essential to their freedom, what property enables people to do in life.
And once again, Kristian Niemietz’s summary:
“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.”
More coming…