The recent fatal shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, by U.S. Border Patrol agents has left many Americans—including many who identify as conservative—grappling with deep unease. On January 24, 2026, amid escalating protests against Federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis, Pretti was executed while trying to protect a woman from Federal agents who had just knocked her down. Multiple eyewitness videos, verified by major outlets like The New York Times and NBC News, show Pretti holding a phone—not a gun—while attempting to assist a woman who had been shoved to the ground. Federal officials initially claimed self-defense, alleging he approached with a weapon, but sworn witness testimonies and footage contradict this, describing him as non-resistant and focused on helping others.
Pretti was a dedicated healthcare worker who cared for veterans, an avid outdoorsman, and a U.S. citizen with no criminal record beyond minor traffic issues. He had a valid firearms permit, was legally carrying at the time of the confrontation, but evidence indicates no firearm was brandished. His family has condemned the official narrative as “sickening lies,” and protests erupted almost immediately, with Minnesota officials like Gov. Tim Walz calling the incident “sickening” and demanding an end to what they describe as a federal “occupation.” It marks the second fatal shooting of a US citizen by Federal agents in Minneapolis this month, following Renee Good’s death on January 7.
What disturbs me most is the reaction from the MAGA right-wing. Pretti has been quickly labeled as a “Communist” or “domestic terrorist” online, often solely based on his presence at the protests against immigration raids or the unverified social media claims. Yet reliable reports portray him as apolitical in daily life—as kind, service-oriented, and uninterested in partisan drama. His friends and colleagues emphasize his true commitment to saving lives, not disrupting them. Celebrating or dismissing his death, dehumanizing him with labels, because he fits a convenient ideological enemy is profoundly wrong. Rights violations don’t depend on politics. No, due process and presumption of innocence apply to everyone, even (or especially) those we disagree with.
This selective outrage highlights a deeper issue not being addressed: this is political retribution disguised as enforcement. Minnesota has a very small illegal immigrant population compared to other states, around 95,000–130,000 (per recent Pew Research and state analyses), nothing like Texas (2.1 million) or Florida (1.6 million)—red states with far larger numbers. And yet Federal resources, including thousands of ICE, Border Patrol, and DHS agents deployed since late 2025, have disproportionately targeted blue Minnesota with sanctuary-like policies. Freezing billions in Federal funds to the state and overriding local law enforcement appears to be punitive, aimed at breaking political resistance rather than uniform honest immigration control.
This echoes historical patterns of a central power crushing regional autonomy, and most starkly in Joseph Stalin’s use of starvation against Ukraine during the Holodomor of 1932–1933. Stalin had deliberately engineered a man-made famine to suppress Ukrainian nationalism and resistance to Soviet collectivization, killing millions through grain seizures, border blockades, and denial of aid—this framed as necessary for national unity and ideological purity, but was clearly intended to crush a semi-autonomous region’s defiance. Here, the heavy-handed federal deployment in Minnesota—targeting a state resisting central directives—clearly mirrors that authoritarian tactic: punish non-compliance under the guise of security, erode local sovereignty, and break any “resistance” to the regime’s aims.
The US Constitution originally designed states as semi-sovereign entities—much like small nations —with the Federal government focused on their defense and on interstate affairs. Expansions of Federal authority—starting as an unfortunate byproduct of Lincoln’s Civil War centralization of power and those Reconstruction-era impositions, shifted the balance. Today’s actions—militarized deployments without state consent, the killings during protests, and limited (or non-existent) cooperation in investigations—violate the 10th Amendment’s spirit. A Federal judge has already issued a restraining order on DHS crowd-control tactics, and multiple states have since joined legal challenges calling them “militarized and illegal.”
George Orwell diagnosed this in 1984: regimes manufacture perpetual enemies to justify control—using propaganda to invert reality. Fear of “outsiders” or “internal threats” (protesters, or sanctuary cities) is stoked to excuse force, while media—dominated by a few billionaire-aligned outlets—amplifies narratives that dumb down discourse. Some cheer Federal agents after these killings, seeing them as heroes against an illegal “invasion,” yet ignore contradictions like inaction in red states with bigger populations. People who just a couple years ago decried Covid mandates and the slaying of Ashli Babbitt now seem to see FAFO as a moral argument. It’s always the same playbook: dehumanize, divide, and centralize the decision making power.
The above is brazen disinformation with an agency logo. They’re distorting and misleading people.
The right-wing is just as collectivist and dumb as those who they derided as being leftist, Socialist or Communist. They couldn’t articulate a logical consistent argument in defense of their irrational smorgasbord approach to ethics and morality, it is just whatever is expedient in the moment and on the whim of their Big Brother stand in (DJT) as the billionaires technocrats decide how they will manage us unruly human cattle.
Partisans keep flip flopping. The truly principled do not change and stand for “liberty and justice for all” as they pledged.
Orwell didn’t foresee AI and mass surveillance tools like Palantir, but the parallels are eerie. During COVID, many on the right had decried overreach in the name of liberty; now, similar authoritarian capabilities are embraced when aimed at perceived enemies. They fail to see the machine they’re building will also be turned on them. They reveal themselves as tools rather than moral thinkers. This hypocrisy reveals how various systems of control operate identically—whether they’re labeled Socialist, authoritarian, woke or otherwise—they erode rights selectively until they target anyone dissenting.
Pretti’s death isn’t about immigration politics alone; it’s about the erosion of constitutional norms, the weaponization of federal power against states, and the willingness to overlook violations when the victim is painted as “the other.” True conservatism should defend limited government, state sovereignty, and individual rights always—not cheer when Federal agents kill citizens in the street (then clap in celebration) over disputed enforcement actions. If we accept this for “Communists” today, tomorrow it could be anyone labeled an enemy. When a regime is given permission to abuse Nazis then everyone is a Nazi if they stand up to the regime. That’s how this works and smart people aren’t a party to it.
Yes, the agents clapped and said “boo hoo” learning of the ICU nurse’s death. Very similar to the attitude of Jonathan Ross who exclaimed “fucking bitch” after he shot a woman in the face.
We need accountability, especially at the top, in a time when our President’s wealth has doubled as he continues to protect pedophile predator elites, we need to ask why release of the Epstein files is being and unlawfully slow walked. We need to have independent investigations of these killings, transparency on bodycam footage, and an end to punitive Federal overreach. Lives like that of Alex Pretti’s—of ordinary Americans trying to help in chaotic moments imposed by officials who only double down rather than deescalate—deserve better than propaganda-fueled dismissal. We do not want to wait until two becomes two million—we either stand together now against a budding authoritarian regime or we fall separately.
In the annals of history, empires often have become cornered by their ambitions and are forced into desperate acts that hasten their downfall. Imperial Japan in the lead-up to World War II provides a stark example: backed into an economic stranglehold by US oil embargoes, it launched a very daring attack on Pearl Harbor in a bid for survival. And, today, the United States faces a eerily similar predicament—not as the embargoes’ enforcer, but as a nation grappling with big resource dependencies, massive mounting debts, and quickly eroding global influence. This parallel becomes extremely vivid when examining U.S. policies toward Venezuela—where the act of desperate aggression of Imperial Japan echos Trump’s bold moves on Greenland and the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro. Drawing on historical precedents and the current events, we see superpower teetering on the edge—actions driven more by vulnerability than strength.
To fully understand this analogy, recall the circumstances that propelled Japan toward Pearl Harbor. In the 1930s and early 1940s, Japan’s imperial expansion in Asia relied heavily on imported oil, much of it from the United States. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt imposed an oil embargo in 1941—as a response to Japan’s actions in China and Indochina—this act was a declaration of an economic war. And it also set a countdown timer on Japan’s military machine. Without fuel, their economy and war efforts would grind to a halt and within months. Faced with this dire situation—down seven points with a minute left on the clock, as one might say—Japan opted for a Hail Mary: a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The hope was to cripple U.S. naval power long enough to negotiate a favorable peace deal and secure resource access. Tactically brilliant, the audacious strike was an amazing success, devastated battleships and caused enormous damage. However, not wanting to risk detection, the Japanese decided against a third wave and left fuel depots and repair facilities ready to use. Crucially, the U.S. aircraft carriers, that would prove decisive in the coming battles, were absent from moorings.
Perfectly planned and executed.
The Japanese leaders underestimated America’s resolve and their unmatched industrial capacity—which soon out-produced and overwhelmed them. What began as a bid for survival ended in their total humiliating defeat.
Fast-forward to the present, and the United States occupies the opposite seat at the table—or rather, a mirrored one. Once the architect of oil embargoes, America now imports much of its oil, and has refineries optimized for heavy crude from sources like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela. Our economy ticks like a time bomb, burdened by dependencies on foreign production (notably China for manufacturing) and a military that, while formidable, also shows cracks of vulnerability. Recent simulations highlight this: in combined naval exercises, a relatively cheap ($100 million) diesel air-independent propulsion (AIP) submarine has “sunk” a powerful $6 billion nuclear U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, underscoring how newly arrived asymmetric threats could shatter the illusion of invincibility. This mirrors Japan’s overconfidence in its naval prowess, only to face industrial and logistical realities.
Nowhere is this desperation more apparent than in the US . dealings with Venezuela, a nation long in the shadow of the American empire.
Nobody comes close to the US in military capabilities.
South America’s history is riddled with bullying US interventions prioritizing corporate interests over national sovereignty—from the violence of CIA-orchestrated coups to those direct military incursions—a history that has birthed the term “Banana Republic.” For over a century, as long as resources flowed northward, Washington turned a blind eye to the most brutal regimes and their human rights abuses. The US military has often served solely as an enforcement arm of a handful billionaire oligarchs, who in turn fund politicians in DC in a corrupt cycle of public risk for private gain masquerading as Capitalism.
U.S.-Backed Kidnappings, Assassinations and Coups in Latin America Since 1950
1954 — Guatemala — President Jacobo Árbenz — Overthrown in CIA Operation PBSUCCESS
1960s, 70s, 80s — Cuba — Prime Minister Fidel Castro — The US tried to assassinate him about 634 times and invaded the country during the Bay of Pigs
1961 — Dominican Republic — Rafael Trujillo — US-backed coup and assassination
1964 — Brazil — President João Goulart — US-supported coup
1965 — Dominican Republic — President Juan Bosch — US-supported coup
1970 — Chile — General René Schneider — US-supported kidnapping and assassination
1971 — Bolivia — President Juan José Torres — US-supported coup
1973 — Chile — President Salvador Allende — US-backed coup and “suicide” of Allende
1976 — Argentina — President Isabel Perón — US-backed coup
1976 — Bolivia (in exile in Argentina) — former President Juan José Torres — US-supported assassination
1981 — Panama — General Omar Torrijos — Death in suspicious plane crash with likely US support
1981 — Ecuador — President Jaime Roldós — Death in suspicious plane crash with likely US support
1983 — Grenada — Prime Minister Maurice Bishop — US invasion and removal of Bishop in Operation Urgent Fury
1980s — Nicaragua — Sandinista government — Sustained covert regime-change war
1989 — Panama — Gen. Manuel Noriega — Invasion, kidnapping and transfer to US custody in Operation Just Cause
2002 — Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez — Kidnapped by US-backed military forces for less than 48 hours before being restored to power
2004 — Haiti — President Jean-Bertrand Aristide — Kidnapped and flown to Africa on a US military plane
2009 — Honduras — President Manuel Zelaya — US-backed kidnapping and coup
Venezuela’s “crime” was simple: asserting control over its vast oil reserves. When the government nationalized assets for sake of their people, the U.S. corporations and their political allies responded with their crippling sanctions—akin to thugs blocking shoppers from a well-stocked store. These measures aren’t about justice; they’re punishment for defying the empire. Claims that Venezuela “stole” oil infrastructure built by U.S. firms ignore offers to compensate, which were rebuffed. Why accept a fair payment when gross exploitation of resources is far more profitable? Recent actions under President Trump, including the controversial removal of the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to face a US judge, smack of desperation: a bid to seize assets and bolster a faltering balance sheet. It’s framed as liberating a people from Socialism, but the real reason is resource control.
US propaganda blames Venezuelan suffering on internal policies—like universal healthcare—ignoring how our sanctions starve their economy. Socialism is not a problem in Israel—why only here?
Meanwhile, alternative oil sources like Saudi Arabia or Russia remain volatile and keeping access is an increasingly risky proposition.
And, while I firmly believe mutual respect could yield great prosperity for the US and Venezuela—would both allow the migrants fleeing poverty to stay home and secure stable energy for the US without war—that is a peaceful solution that is far less profitable for US-based oil billionaires. Maduro had also taken a strong stance against the killing in Gaza. The country of Venezuela—under Hugo Chávez—banned usery and enforced a regime of conservative morals (US pornography banned and on gay marriage) all of which defies US banking and business interests.
This imperial overreach extends to the broader economic woes in the US, painting a picture of a nation painting itself into a corner. The US national debt, which first hit $1 trillion in 1981, now ballooned to $38 trillion and now they add a nearly trillion dollars every other month in an unsustainable parabolic ascent. The US currency debasement, endless printing of money, punishes global holders, and is fueling the rise of BRICS as the safer alternative to the dollar’s long abused “exorbitant privilege.” Worse, all this government spending, regardless of the party, simply funnels wealth to oligarchs via their political connections—a trickle-down economics by another name. So called “tax cuts for the rich” are derided, and yet inflation achieves this exact same redistribution upward. The weaponization of the dollar, more importantly, erodes faith in its reserve currency status, undermining the very foundations of the post-World War II systems on which US strength rests—like Bretton Woods and the Petrodollar.
Compounding this loss of US reputation is a propaganda machine straight out of George Orwell’s 1984. No, show trials and kangaroo courts aren’t relics of Soviet excess; they’re very much alive in US actions against the figures like Maduro, tried in a rigged system far from impartiality. Maduro’s criticism of Gaza violence preceded his ouster, timed suspiciously after meetings between Trump and Israeli leaders. Media manipulates the narratives—vanishing massive supporting rallies or amplifying astroturf campaigns—much like the staged toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Iraq, later regretted by participants who longed for pre-invasion stability. Skepticism abounds: those who saw through Russian collusion hoaxes or Trump’s prosecutions as lawfare suddenly swallow anti-Venezuela propaganda whole, revealing partisan blindness over principle. Lady Justice’s blindfold is absent at the top, swayed by partisan politics and payments. We endure psyops, cancel culture, thought policing, and memory holes, us screaming “2+2=5” at our cult leaders’ behest.
In historic parallel, the US supported Gaza genocide also evokes a direct comparison to Japan’s Nanjing Massacre, the unverified casualties now dwarfing historical horrors. America’s “Zionist” alignment only isolates us further on a world stage, very similar to Japan’s Axis ties. Trump’s tactical “success” in Venezuela may prove a strategic blunder, like Pearl Harbor: a short-term victory that awakens global resistance. And forcing the Danes to relinquish Greenland only drives a wedge deeper. Other nations witnessing another blatant disrespect of sovereignty—applying US laws extraterritorially, flouting the “rules based order” precedents—will only serve accelerate de-dollarization or even lead to alliances against us.
Stephen Miller: “only power and the willingness to use it matters.”
In conclusion, expansion oriented Zionist America, much like the Soviet Union of old, now perpetrates atrocities and abuses—from the bloodshed in Gaza to the brazen seizure of foreign leaders and threats—that erode our moral foundation and alienate the world. This path of treating partner nations like a pimp does a prostitute—the extracting resources through coercion and sanctions—is unsustainable. There are far better ways to achieve our goals beyond application of brute force—unlike the recent assertion by Zionist Trump adviser Stephen Miller saying “only power and the willingness to use it matters.” Embracing mutual respect, fair negotiations, and genuine diplomacy could foster true alliances, allowing us to secure resources without conflict, and also restore America’s standing. History warns that all empires built on military domination crumble; it’s time to choose a different course before our own Hail Mary seals our fate.
The events unfolding in Minnesota this month highlight a stark contrast in how individuals engage with controversy and authority. On one side stands Jake Lang, the January 6 pardoned agitator who assaulted police officers with a baseball bat and shield during the Capitol riot. On the other is Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, poet, and community member who was fatally shot by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026, amid the dramatically heightened Federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis.
While I ultimately disagree with Renee Good’s methods along with life choices—confronting Federal agents in a way that escalated a tense situation—I see her as a misguided local mom standing up in her own community against what appeared to be an overreach by armed Federal officers. Reports describe her stopping her vehicle near an ICE operation after dropping her child at school, possibly to observe or support neighbors in a residential area. Federal accounts claim she attempted to use her car as a weapon, but the bystander videos, witness statements, and local and state officials have disputed this, calling the shooting unjustified and questioning whether the agent followed proper training and protocols. Good was killed during the encounter, sparking nationwide outrage, protests, vigils, and calls for accountability—though the DOJ has declined to investigate the agent.
Good’s death feels like a tragic escalation born from genuine concern over Federal actions in her neighborhood, even if her approach risked danger. She wasn’t traveling cross-country to provoke; she was in her own backyard, acting on what she saw as violations of rights—potentially the 4th and 5th Amendments amid warrantless stops and aggressive tactics. And while I may not agree with her politics or lifestyle, she’s a citizen of the United States.
Expediency isn’t an excuse. A violation of one principle or person is a threat to all.
Contrast that with Jake Lang, who I believe actively harms conservative causes and civil discourse alike. Lang, pardoned for his role in January 6 violence, has a pattern of inserting himself into flashpoints to inflame divisions. He recently organized a very small “March Against Minnesota Fraud” rally near Minneapolis City Hall on January 17, 2026—framed around anti-immigration and anti-Somali messaging, including plans to burn a Quran. The event drew massive counter-protesters who outnumbered his group, chased him away, doused him with liquids in freezing weather, and left him bruised and claiming injury (including a reported stab wound). Photos show a Black protester lifting his plate carrier (foolishly worn without plates) amid the scuffle; rumors of him losing control in the moment circulated widely.
Lang’s stunts—Nazi salutes outside AIPAC, provocative bacon displays in Dearborn, and now this anti-Islam rally—seem calculated to exacerbate tensions. He poses as an Evangelical Christian white nationalist and “America First” voice, yet his actions ring as performative and divisive. Traveling thousands of miles simply to instigate, he turns peaceful concerns of citizens into opportunities for opponents to paint the entire right as extremist. This fascist agitation discredits legitimate criticism of policies (like immigration enforcement or foreign influence) by manufacturing associations with hate.
I’m really hoping that my conservative friends can distinguish between: a guy who helped turn a peaceful protest of alleged election fraud into an opportunity for Democrats to brand the entire Jan. 6 crowd as insurrectionists—who literally assaulted a police officer with a baseball bat, who should not have been pardoned, and who at least acts like a Nazi with his Sieg Heil salutes and who travels thousands of miles just to cause trouble; and a misguided mom being active in her own community, standing up to what looks like an invasion of federal agents, and truly exposing what look like violations of the 4th and 5th Amendments.
Does this truly represent American conservatives?
Lang’s agitation fits a broader destabilization playbook: pitting factions against each other to deplete energy on all sides, fueling fear of Islam (if love for Israel can’t be won, hate for Muslims will do), and manufacturing “Nazi” strawmen to smear America First views. It distracts from real scandals—like Epstein-related corruption or DOJ transparency failures—while provoking chaos that benefits neither side.
Renee Good’s story, tragic as it is, stems from local concern gone wrong. Jake Lang’s thrives on manufactured conflict that poisons discourse. Conservatives should reject the latter and focus on principled, community-rooted engagement—not imported provocation. Let’s see through the agitators and reclaim civil, substantive debate before more divisions tear us apart.
The Bigger Deception
Good, agree with her or not, was probably what she appeared to be: A lesbian leftist who did not agree with Trump’s unprecedented immigration enforcement regime which is clearly violating the rights of US citizens by officers demanding they prove their legal status. Civil disobedience has been a feature of American politics since at least the time of the Boston Tea Party. She’s akin to the colonial Minutemen warning “the British are coming” to those who wanted to protect their illegal stash of military arms. The legendary Revolutionary “shot heard ’round the world” was fired against those impeding a policing operation who had refused to disperse, like the many Minneapolis residents—including Good.
Jacob, by contrast, may shout “Christ is King” and say he is part of the America First movement, yet he probably represents a foreign regime. Does a real Christian put a funny hat on their head and kiss a wall in Israel?
If he’s not a Psyop, then he sure acts the part.
Why is he kissing the wall?
What I mean by that is that intelligence agencies—like the CIA and Mossad—will run operations to sow seeds of discord. In places like Ukraine (or Iran) they will stir protests, orchestrate terrorism and shoot police and protesters alike just to try to cause tensions to boil over. There’s an excellent article in Foreign Policy magazine, “False Flag,” describing this underreported scheme to stoke hostilities between the US and Iran. If you keep your enemies fighting each other rather than to finally notice who is actually driving the conflict—you gain by their loss.
If you don’t understand, here’s a personal story from my son’s elementary school days which illustrates how agitators operate:
One day, out of nowhere, my son got punched on the school bus. After he defended himself and punched back, the dust settled, and the truth emerged: a third kid had orchestrated the whole thing. This instigator had quietly lied to the attacker, claiming my son had said something insulting about him, deliberately provoking the fight while staying in the background as things unfolded. Thankfully, the adults investigated quickly, saw through the manipulation, and punished the true originator—the actual bully who started it all—far more severely (three times as harshly, in fact) than the two boys who were drawn into the conflict not realizing they were being played against each other.
Things aren’t always as they appear. I’ve run into those who think Lang is some kind of hero for his attention-seeking provocation. They are typically Evangeli-con types too absorbed in the tit-for-tat of the culture war—or too obtuse to ever ask why Jerry Falwell Sr, a leader of the “Moral Majority,” was gifted a Lear jet by an Israeli Prime Minister in 1980. The reality is that powerful players are manufacturing consent with characters like Lang or dozens of others taking the $7000 deal. We’re being played. Merchants of hate do not represent Christ or the American ideal conservatives claim to cherish. Do not be a pawn in a game that you do not understand. Instead consider this:
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
(Leviticus 19:33-34 NIV)
I keep running into those who argue expediency is necessary to save the country from an invasion of foreigners. In that they’re completely fine with suspension of even the rights of US citizens so ICE can drag people off the streets for not producing proof of their legal status. This is unlawful. This is an infringement on the rights that were fought for during the American Revolution. If the 4th or 5th Amendments can be ignored simply because someone looks foreign then they can be ignored if an officer claims you look guilty—and the right has been erased in a way not even George Orwell could have imagined.
If the Trump administration cared about pedophiles on the loose they would prosecute those named in the Epstein files. Instead they continue to refuse to obey the law ordering the full and unredacted (other than victims) files. Who or what is being protected by this ongoing cover-up?I’ve been seeing a lot of tu quoque fallacy using indifference about one to justify their indifference about the other. That’s not Christian love or compassion, that’s partisan hate.
Fixing the problem of illegal immigration isn’t the real aim. At best it is a distraction. At worse it is just another excuse (like Covid) to subvert law by using a manufactured crisis. If the aim was truly to slow or stop illegal immigration they would go after those employing them. What is happening is protection of our rights is being dismantled by those who—borrowing from George Bush—hate our freedom and democracy. And, no, this is not those who the right-wing will typically identify as a threat, it is not Iran or a Muslim—it is an Israeli billionaire Shlomo Kramer saying that we need to limit the 1st Amendment to ‘protect’ it.
Those telling you it is “necessary to destroy the town to save it” have either lost their minds, lost the plot, or never cared about the ‘town’ to begin with and are deceiving you. Those urging us to hate the foreigner, to set aside our Constitution, who side with authoritarians, are they really our friends? Does an agent who exclaims “f*cking b*tch” right after shooting a woman an example of Christian spiritual fruit? Is a man who attacks police with a baseball bat, who seeks to inflame tensions (literally has burned books and invaded mosques trying to provoke a Muslim response) adhering to the Romans 12:18 principle of living as peaceably with all men as is possible?
We need to police our own. Not the other side. We’re called to be examples, not self-exempted policemen.
We need to overcome evil with good. We need to take on the lawless by being examples of careful application of the law. Partisanship blinds us. It is a tool used to keep us wasting all our ammo on each other, trapped in our cycles of violence and escalation. We have many foreign agents among us—some with US citizenship—who claim they’re protecting us as they tear at the Christian fabric of this nation and its laws. We need to stop being so exploitable and stand for something or we will just fall for everything. Lang is not one of us. He acts less Christian than the Muslims who recently saved him during one of his provocative stunts—we need to disown this fraud for the sake of the country if not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Every so often, I finally figure something out and can make a real observation. Recently, I saw a social media post from Trump—likely one of his bold declarations about Venezuela—and what he was doing became crystal clear.
He doesn’t have an actual inked or signed deal with the Venezuelan side yet. But that doesn’t matter. Trump is targeting people at a primal level rather than appealing to the intellect—because that’s where our decisions are truly made. We’re emotional creatures, not purely rational ones.
This is a sales pitch ^^^
Trump is manifesting. He declares it, brings it into the realm of reality, then does everything in his power to bully everyone into accepting it. And it does make me wonder: Is this truly how the world works? It’s easier when you’re already a billionaire and the President, of course, but he names it and claims it. Or, using his colloquial description, it’s the “grab ’em by the p*ssy” style of persuasion: “She wants it. I’m rich and can get anything she wants. She’ll come around to seeing things my way.” It’s hyper-confidence—the insane confidence of a man who truly believes he can get away with anything. He’s the salesman who has fully bought into his own pitch and, through brutal persuasion, forces the sale: “I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse!”
I’m not like that.
I always try to respect boundaries, persuade with logic and arguments. Trump just declares it, and if you don’t go along with his plan, you’re [insert insult here].
Let me explain with a personal example: Years ago, I wrote a 14-page letter to a woman I was interested in, laying out a long theological and philosophical argument to make my case. Of course, I never sent it. Yeah, I might be half autistic, but I’m not completely dumb. I know men don’t win a woman’s heart through her head. If I’d handed her that lengthy dissertation, she wouldn’t have cheered—she’d probably have cried, gotten confused, or walked away. Certainly not agreed to a date. In romance, we’re primal, not intellectual. The same applies to our political alignments.
If I actually knew how to do that primal type of persuasion in real time, I’d probably get my way more often. It’s the easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission mindset—and it wouldn’t exist if it didn’t actually work.
Entitled, narcissistic, and manipulative can also be described as media-savvy, self-assured, and effective—depending on how you frame it. Trump grinds my gears because he doesn’t follow the rules that exist in my worldview. He reframes the entire discussion with his violations of rules—like kidnapping a head of state—and yet it’s all part of a larger plan.
The real goal appears to be renewing the flow of oil from Venezuela to the US. Trump doesn’t care who is in charge or what economic system they have (though he knows you do). He’s focused on moving the conversation to where he needs it: a secure source of energy and minerals next door, not on the other side of the world.
Legal? Only if you stretch the law to its breaking point. Effective? Well, who wants to be next?
We all agree Maduro—like most politicians—probably belongs in jail, and maybe we should do this more often (at home rather than abroad). Making this bold military move is psychological: it’s intimidating and forces cooperation. If the new government makes a deal, the US lifts sanctions, oil flows again—and suddenly Venezuela’s universal healthcare isn’t an issue anymore. The real holdup was the pile of nonsense, grudges, and gridlock on both sides. Trump broke the rules of the conflict, and now he can negotiate a new deal for the benefit of everyone who cooperates.
Ultimately, like most people, I govern myself by external rules: Do this, don’t do that! We treat them as absolute, written in stone. I’ll die on this hill of my principles! But this can become a hindrance—a functional fixedness or quagmire of competing ideals that mostly boil down to semantics and different words for the same things. I know Trump is wrong because I’m right! He gets what he wants by breaking my rules of engagement, so he must be evil!
However, Friedrich Nietzsche called this “slave morality” and saw it as an obstacle to humanity’s full potential. His ideas of self-overcoming, being our own lawgiver, embracing the wholeness of life (without assigning moral weight to every experience), and rejecting herd mentality or conformity to the status quo all go against being compliant for sake of compliance.
Trump gets far more done with his impolite bluster than most do in a lifetime of “honest” effort. He appeals to our carnal, visceral side—and while all politicians do this to some degree, he does it nakedly, without the usual polish.
We confuse the rational (religious, scientific, or otherwise) with the reality of our base desires—for control, status, recognition. Trump disrupts, shakes the basket, and builds a new path through the chaos that suits his agenda.
Facing the ‘wrong’ way in an elevator makes people uncomfortable. But it’s not illegal. And people will actually conform to the group if they turn the opposite direction.
The world is governed by unwritten rules and unspoken agreements. Some of us want to nail it all down, demanding predictability and compliance with standards we were told would make the world better. We’re often jammed up in conflicts over false dichotomies and invented moral frameworks. I know this from my religious upbringing: the constant looking over our shoulders, meeting expectations rather than pursuing what we enjoy, and the resentment simmering underneath.
One of my Mennonite friends had the speed and size to be a D1 athlete, but he never pursued it because his conservative parents wouldn’t approve. He “kept the peace”—like many of us—at the expense of his potential.
He has expressed regrets.
From a Christian perspective, the self-actualizing person is unrepentant and rejects God. Trump’s habit of making up his own facts—like claiming an ICE agent was run over when video clearly shows otherwise—is strikingly similar to the “my own truth” of the woke left. The risk is complete detachment from our useful tradition (what has worked) and science (what will work), eventually steering civilization into the weeds.
But the proof is in the pudding. If Trump leaves office without causing WW3, with the economy largely intact, can we really feel bad that some rules were broken?
Then again, maybe we could achieve the same things through conventional means. What if we threw a few billionaires in jail instead of a foreign head of state, or sided with the world court on Netanyahu rather than Maduro? Either way—optimal or suboptimal—we’ll remember Trump’s name. Like the popular feminist quote, “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” a timid man is likewise not widely respected or impactful. Is it possible we all need liberation from the clutter of our minds and reasons?
Still, I think there’s a better synthesis between Trump and the pointy-headed intellectuals too high in their ivory towers to be of practical value.
Trump wins because he identified the struggles of real people, rather than deny them. Maybe some academics with a racial theory can write a thesis about ‘privilege’ and yet have they ever solved any problems in the real world?
I like my own conscientiousness—orientation toward respect for established standards and individual rights over political expediency.
And yet, by the time I carefully deliberate all the angles of legality and practicality and examine potential failure points the opportunity is often gone. A guy who reacts to opportunity, seizes the moment, dictates the outcome in advance (while staying flexible enough to read the room and adapt), reaches the goal—even if he has done the ‘wrong’ way by conventional wisdom.
If morality is all a social construct, all part of a complex negotiation, then maybe following pure instincts and base intuition is better than obeying a list of rules?
Who says the other side must sign a paper—or even agree in advance—to have a deal?
If it’s a win-win at the end, despite the pain of the process, fewer casualties, is it good?
What do you think? Does primal persuasion win out, or do we need more rules to keep things civilized? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
I’ve heard stories of Mennonite old timers who would walk into a dealership, ask them to give their best price and then refuse to engage in any haggling beyond that. To them this concrete style of communication is commanded by Jesus and something I can respect. Their word was their bond. They did not play all the games. Business that is honest and done with a handshake.
What a pleasant and simple world it would be if everyone operated this way. No need for lawyers to read the fine print if everyone were an honest broker like this. But we do not live in that world. And there are those who love to exploit the trust of those born into Anabaptist religious cloisters. Every few years there’s another fraudster who sweeps through Amish and Mennonite country, selling the next big ‘investment’ and wiping out the hard earned savings of the unsuspecting—which is not to even mention those small scale “natural healing” swindles or grift seminars.
This is why healthy skepticism is necessary and discernment of character is a skill that must be learned. Born into one of these communities, I’m still far too trusting—most especially if someone starts to speak my language. “Oh, he stands up for the working class! They’re the defenders of freedom and democracy!” We fall for those who exploit us, who manufacture consent by various means, who claim to be like us and yet lack our Christian conscience. We are most susceptible to those who mimic our values as part of their deception.
Being a good or moral person can lead to being extra vulnerable. Some just lack the imagination for evil, which is wonderful innocence, but this is not optimal. Wisdom requires that we are able to read through a sales pitch and understand how propaganda works. A skilled liar plays on what you want to hear, they exploit the prejudices and preconceived ideas of any audience. We need to be a step ahead of their schemes—which requires a little pattern recognition or small consideration of what may be hidden behind their words.
Letting Your Yea Be Yes, Nay Be Nay
Growing up, going to a public school, there was always that “I swear on my grandma’s grave” kid. Cued by your incredulous face, he would attempt to fortify his most questionable claims with this invocation of something else trustworthy. And the whole reason for this is that their own word wasn’t good enough. And this swearing act itself would arouse my suspicions. If I can’t trust you in a small inconsequential claim—how could I ever trust your oath?
Obviously this was theatrics in Secondary school, but a manner of speech that Jesus targeted for rebuke:
Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
(Matthew 5:33-37 NIV)
This is repeated in James 5:12 a bit more succinctly:
Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned.
Credibility is something built over time and lost in an instant. Swearing an oath won’t fix a loss of trust. But it does basically admit that your own word is not sufficient and this suggests a deeper problem. An oath is useful in a courtroom, where it is used as a dividing line between speech that is free and misleading words you can be prosecuted for—yet what Jesus says is part of a broader push in the direction of plain and honest speech. As St Paul instructs:
Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
(Ephesians 4:25 NIV)
Practice truthfulness.
Humanity is one team, one body, so deception is a sin against all members.
The Bible is also full of examples of the opposite of this:
Those who flatter their neighbors are spreading nets for their feet.
(Proverbs 29:5 NIV)
Everyone lies to their neighbor; they flatter with their lips but harbor deception in their hearts. May the Lord silence all flattering lips and every boastful tongue.
(Psalm 12:2-3 NIV)
Not a word from their mouth can be trusted; their heart is filled with malice. Their throat is an open grave; with their tongues they tell lies [or flatter].
(Psalm 5:9 NIV)
My companion attacks his friends; he violates his covenant. His talk is smooth as butter, yet war is in his heart; his words are more soothing than oil, yet they are drawn swords.
(Psalms 55:20-21 NIV)
In all of these cases you have those who appear to be our friends and use flowery and agreeable speech to ensnare. We naturally suspect those who aren’t like us, who say the stuff we don’t like, but we trust those who speak our native tongue and seem to share our cultural values. That’s our blind side and vulnerability. A guy shows up in a nice suit, well-groomed, and we’ll just take him as credible. We’re susceptible to those who dress up their deception in the familiar—or who feed our prejudices.
Those Who Dress To Deceive
The Bible mentions flattery, a Trojan horse and the way some use to lower our guard, but the Gospel warns about this:
Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
(Matthew 7:15 NIV)
Looks can be deceiving.
For there are many rebellious people, full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain. One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” This saying is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the merely human commands of those who reject the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.
(Titus 1:10-16 NIV)
If it were easy to cut through the crap then there would be very little chance of anyone ever being deceived. But the worst enemies of Christ weren’t those who had openly hunted and tried to kill his followers. You knew to avoid them. It’s those who entered the church to subvert and undermine.
St Paul calls out those of the “circumcised group” and who have actions that deny the relationship they claim to have with God. Today we deal with something insidious, now embedded into several generations through propaganda and established prejudice. We can’t see it because it hides within us, carries a familiar last name or claims to have devotion to the same values.
Many now believe it is okay to kill babies for an ethno-state. They go to church on Sunday never realizing that they have departed from Christ:
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
(Matthew 7:21-23 NIV)
Those who have yoked together with those who Jesus said are “of their father the devil” (John 8:44) are as doomed to hell as an unbeliever. The Covenant with Abraham was tied to sharing his faith and righteousness. Likewise, you are not of Christ unless you obey his will no matter how “born again” you feel or how flowery you pray in front of the crowd. Enabling evil is just evil. Jesus called out the fakes who hid behind their mask of devotion and his earliest followers did the same. Stephen “cut them to the heart” challenging the Jewish leaders with a flurry of accusations—they killed him for telling the truth:
You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore I will send you into exile’ beyond Babylon. (Acts 7:43 NIV)
Harmless as Doves, Yet…
The simple and honest are especially vulnerable to the cunning and crafty. And it’s not always a matter of intelligence. It is about trust. It is about being a part of the same civilizational project.
Some places you can leave front doors unlocked and not worry about being robbed. Everyone is bought into the same moral code or same social contract, and thus respects the property and the rights of others who are partners in the overall work. And the doors of our civilization are wide open—not turning people away is a wonderful Christian value and good.
However, this value also means many let their guard down around imposters who pretend to be like us and yet work to subvert, supplant, enslave or destroy what we’ve built. They are a “snake in the grass” slithering, waiting for the moment of weakness to strike. They’re the wolves who will accuse the sheepdog of being a bigger threat to the sheep while they plot to devour the flock.
Yes, an impulse towards being charitable is great, but also we need to be wary of those who do not share the same civilizational bond or social contract—this is what Jesus said:
I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.
(Matthew 10:16 NIV)
There was this horrible story about a young man opening the door to two men who were dressed like UPS delivery drivers and ended up paying with his life. The fake employees pushed into the residence, with two others who had hidden around the corner, and they murdered the young man and two women in the home—all of this happening in front of two children under the age of five.
We trust based on appearance. If the men in the story above had been dressed like a couple hoodlums nobody would open that door. There’s little chance of a very foreign looking religion or culture slipping into our communities unnoticed. But when we see something familiar or someone speaking in a way to convince us they’re on our side we do not take precautions. We let them in without considering that they could have values completely different despite their surface level disguise.
Whether the Trojan horse gift or that bright beautiful serpent in the garden—it is the job of the discerning person to sound the alarm and protect their own community or home from evil schemes. You need to be able to think like the schemers do to anticipate the deception. The first thing the wolves do is attack and try to silence the voices of those who identify them as being a threat. They will always come after the watch dog first before devouring the sheep.
Fool Me Once Shame On You
Zionism had slipped into my former Mennonite church through Evangelicalism. The church was founded near the same time a state called Israel was founded with a brutal and cruel expulsion of indigenous people. But we celebrated plucky little Israel, as if they came about by a miracle rather than being a result of a campaign of terrorism or military means. For whatever reason Palestinians didn’t matter, as just another group of backwards Arabs, and I’m guessing this is *still* the majority opinion as far as fundamentalist part of the sect I was born in. It’s just part of a disconnect between the love they profess on Sunday and the politics they accept the rest of the week.
Even if the state of Israel is a part of God’s plan does not mean we should be the cheerleaders for genocide or the justifiers of abuse of others. The “I didn’t vote for Trump to be a pastor” crowd seems to be too happy with the totally merciless treatment of the native population—including their innocent children. Apparently God’s chosen are just to be exempted from Christian ethics and can just kill as they please.
It defies every message on grace and mercy ever shared from a church pulpits. We let a wolf into the church and it has devoured our humanity in the name of a worldly kingdom.
Unfortunately Zionist ideology, their sensational end times fantasy, has caused many to abandon the cause of Christ. The old serpent has slipped through the church doors decades ago and is now preaching from many pulpits. He infiltrates the ranks, pretends to share our values as he subtly undermines them, and soon what is up is down is up—with the ‘faithful’ defending a Sodomizing pedo protecting baby killing cult of elites and calling good old fashioned conservative American values.
Hasbura will tell you Goliath was a victim and David a villain.
The worst part is when even to question the official narrative, put out by those who lied wmv will lie again, is twisted into being an ‘evil’ worse than any other. They don’t seem to get that good institutions can be hijacked or that Jesus most certainly did insult those who held positions of authority and he did it by calling them out to their faces. This idea that we must shrink away from challenging the mask of righteousness worn to fool the masses is just flat out wrong. We must call out what the New Testament writers call the synagogue of Satan:
I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.
(Revelation 2:9 NIV)
In the end, we either are what we say we are or we’re not. That’s what yay be yay is truly about. James warns against being double-minded, about showing favoritism, and the New Testament is full of statements which emphasize no difference between Jew and Gentile in Christ. Israel isn’t a blessing nor is it protected by the hand of God. No, they are simply willing to do the treacherous and nasty things that are completely antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ. We need to be wiser understanding that some will lie to gain our money or support.
Is the ground you stand on sacred simply because you’re standing on it?
We all have this idea that the way we do things is just normal and right. And yet a future generation is likely to look back at us as being primitive or weird. One example? Courtship gets a bit wild a few centuries ago. Some things that were acceptable even a century ago today would likely land someone in jail.
Where I started down this rabbit hole? I was contemplating the age of my great-grandma was married. She was fifteen, as I recall, and tied the knot with great-grandpa when he was in his twenties. And yet, what fed my curiosity is my wife’s grandparents—Igorots on the opposite of the world from my German Mennonite heritage—were also of similar ages and age gap. Later that day I stumbled upon a story of the founder of Hagerstown Maryland and the account of his marriage is very similar as well.
My great grandparents, with my grandma pictured, as a happy family in the 1940s.
By a modern American standard the men in these three cases would certainly be guilty of statutory rape. I mean, technically, back then it was legal if you were married. But, as of May 2020, there’s a minimum age of 18 years old to obtain a marriage license in Pennsylvania. Sure, most other states are more lenient, in this regard, with lower age of consent and less restrictive laws as far as “child marriage” (or anyone who is still under eighteen) and yet it would still be considered very taboo.
This shift in standard is likely economic in origin. Marriage was a much higher priority in the past. A young woman remaining in her parents home, from an agrarian cultural perspective was more of a liability than an asset. Back then a man was expected to be established—to have his land or home—whereas his wife would simply have to be of reproductive age and need to be able to do her domestic duties. Neither of them were going to college or on trips around the world. It was all about being practical and propagation.
But, moving beyond age related weirdness, the historical courtship practices get even more bizarre…
Bundling and Bontoc Igorot Courtship
Before the two words “platonic cuddling” would ever come together there was this practice called bundling. I had known this was a practice of ultra-traditional Amish, to letting a courting couple share a bed before marriage. But apparently, at one time not too long ago, it was not just the Amish and had been common in colonial America.
Officially this was just so a courting couple could share a little warmth in the bitter cold and talk innocently with the protection of a board in the bed between them. However, reality of a 30-40% pregnancy rate for brides in New England tell a slightly different story—this wasn’t all about chaste conversation or a mere exchange of some body heat from appearances.
So did parents just not know any better or was there an intentionality just not spoken about?
Anyhow, I had thought of bundling only after discovering something even wilder that was a feature of my wife’s Igorot culture a century ago prior to the arrival of American missionaries. And that’s this: 1) Around the age of puberty their young people would leave the home of their parents to go live in youth dormitories. 2) Suitors would go visit the girls at night and pair up. If two became fond of each other (or the young woman became pregnant) then they would 3) enter a “trial marriage” prior to a more binding or permanent arrangement.
A less cluttered world.
Given this would be less acceptable than head hunting in a purity culture perspective (my default) where young women so much as talking to their male peers is considered flirtation and a risk of being defiled, I had to collect my jaw from the floor. Allowing, let alone encouraging, a group of teenagers to experiment sexually in a communal hut is simply appalling at all levels of conservative community in the modern United States and also in liberal society generally where teen pregnancy is anathema.
Although, that said, it sounds sort of like an American university experience—at a much younger age.
Let’s Get Biblical, Shall We?
Protestant fundamentalists, the biggest of the pearl clutching prudes, love to claim the Bible as their basis. And, at least up until their cult leader was doing the cover-up of the Epstein scandal, these people were all about “saving the children” from pedophile elites. Muhammad’s child bride is the perfect excuse to bomb Muslim babies.
However, if Biblical pattern and precept is our guide, the world of romance would look quite different from our own. You had the whole thing of a virgin there to be the heater for a declining king David, a bold move Ruth made on Boaz snuggling at this older man’s feet to get his attention, there is the historically estimated age of Mary (the mother of Jesus) when impregnated and, finally, Rebecca according to the math that is below and Jewish tradition:
“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
The Talmudic tradition puts Rebecca’s age at 3 to 4 years old when she was married off to Issac. Other contemporary scholars, citing her ability to draw water for camels as evidence and cultural norms, suggest she would be closer to 14. Either way, this age and age gap (Issac being 40) is a far cry from a Western standard and is certainly not something I could endorse even as a free thinker. But apparently it was just the way things were in this Biblical culture.
The Pot Calling the Kettle Black
The big question is what we do with all this information. Do we relax standards? Do we double down on restrictions?
Honestly, I don’t want my son going through my own experience (a virgin until 40) which was not very pleasant for someone seeking intimacy. But I also don’t want him to father a child before he’s ready for a responsibility like that or in a committed relationship.
It is also very easy to critique foreign and ancient cultures without seeing the faults or failures of our own.
Overlooked with no way to gain status, there are growing ranks of incels
But the increasing amount of incels (young men who are involuntarily celibate) and the birthrates collapsing all over the developed world, we may need to consider what we’re doing wrong as well. Abortion and birth control rather than children—pornography addiction and a hookup culture that gives fewer men a privileged position at the exclusion of others—all adds to this toxic brew of modern courtship or the lack thereof. There will be a corrective whether it is naturally occurring (extinction) or intentional intervention.
In the end, our own sacred ground of a “normal” courtship is little more than shifting sands, ideal shaped by economics, culture, and survival needs across eras. From the Biblical brides to colonial bundling mishaps and the Igorot trial marriages, what once passed for romance now would raise eyebrows—or may even warrant handcuffs. Yet, as we pearl-clutch over the past, our own era’s cocktail of delayed intimacy, digital isolation, and plummeting birthrates hints that perhaps future historians may view us as the true oddballs: a society that engineered its own procreative drought in the name of progress.
Perhaps the key isn’t to rewind the clock or tighten the reins further, but to acknowledge that no culture or era has a monopoly on wisdom? Let’s aim for a discerning path—one fostering connections that are consensual, responsible, and timely—promoting human connection without unrealistic expectations before the incel armies and empty cradles force a hard reset. After all, if history can teach us anything, it’s that romance, in all its weird forms, will evolve.
The Bondi beach shooting was terrible and most especially that an 11-year-old girl was among those killed. The images from this violent incident drew global condemnation with the victims being Jewish people who were celebrating Hanukkah. Immediately Zionist propagandists blamed the protests against genocide in Gaza and Muslims for this act of evil. This was the consequence of dissent against Israel, they claimed.
But many of us have been predicting terrorist attacks for months now and for a completely different reason. In August, in Sydney, there was a massive protest for the people being massacred in Gaza that had gained international attention. Then in September Australia officially recognized a State of Palestine. And that Israeli government representatives so quickly tried to link terrorism to these two peaceful acts (in opposition to their indiscriminate Gaza campaign) was very cynical and almost too opportunistic.
But the biggest tell was how Bibi Netanyahu lied straight into the camera about the hero who got shot twice as he risked everything to tackle the gunman. In Hebrew the Israeli said he saw “a video of a Jew who pounces on one of the murderers, takes his weapon, and saves who knows how many lives.” But it is very clear that Ahmed al Ahmed is not a Jew and is, in fact, a Syrian Muslim. So why would Netanyahu say this knowing full well that the identity of the hero was revealed?
The simple reason for this brazenness is he has done this many times before. You can present this kind of false counter narrative and get away with it in many cases. When something happens in Israel he can totally get away with it, or turn it into a he said she said, but in Bondi it was very clear that this guy named Ahmed was no Jew and actual video arrived of his heroism before any of the typical Zionist damage control could be done. It’s a window into what happens all of time after the IDF bombs are church or a hospital full of innocent people.
This scramble to distribute blame to parties completely uninvolved and claim the hero is just a sign of how dishonest Netanyahu will be to promote Zionist tropes.
But there’s something more sinister here we need to discuss and that’s a pattern that will quickly emerge for anyone who has studied the history of Zionism.
In Iraq, in a period between 1950-1951, the Arab Jewish population in the city of Baghdad came under attack. There was a series of bombings that killed or injured dozens and eventually led to some arrests. But it wasn’t Islamic extremists who were caught. No it was Mossad or Zionist agents. Why would they attack their own people? Well, the new Israeli state needed manpower and scaring Arab Jews out of their communities to the ‘safety’ of Israel solved this crisis.
In 1954, in Egypt, a terror plot was foiled. This false flag attempt, called the “Lavon affair,” was orchestrated by Egyptian Jews at the direction of Israeli intelligence and the targets were Egyptian, American and British civilian locations. And, apparently the Muslim brotherhood was going to be set up to take the blame.
June 8th, 1967, the brutal attack on the USS Liberty, an intelligence ship that was sailing in international waters, is another example. This was during the six-day war when the IDF launched a sustained and multi-wave assault on the lightly armed ship killing 34 Americans and injuring 171. The Israelis claim it was an accident. But this ship was clearly flying a US flag and easily identified as a US Navy vessel. And the only reason what had happened is because of a radio operator who broke through the Israeli jamming of their distress calls. A US carrier group was alerted and the Israelis forced to break off the treacherous act without ever finishing the job.
Can you imagine Iran or anyone else doing this without the American public screaming for retribution?
I’ve recently learned about the 1994 London Israeli embassy bombing where one device targeted the embassy and another service exploded outside a Jewish interest in the city. Two Palestinian engineers were found guilty However a former MI5 officer, Annie Machon, later claimed that an internal MI5 assessment saw the finger prints of Israeli intelligence in the bombings. The Israelis had been lobbying for the British to provide more intelligence information to Israel and this terror accomplished that objective. It killed two birds with one stone, in fact, the Palestinian solidarity movement was just starting to gain traction and was certainly dampened by this.
One of many pager attack victims.
But the most recent and obvious attempt at a false flag happened in Pakistan. In a covert operation during 2007–2008, Israeli Mossad agents impersonated CIA officers—using forged U.S. passports, American currency, and CIA credentials—attempted to recruit members of the Pakistan-based Sunni militant group Jundallah for attacks inside Iran, including bombings and assassinations targeting Iranian officials and civilians, as part of the broader effort by the Zionists to destabilize Tehran’s regime amid nuclear tensions. The deception, conducted openly in places like London, aimed to frame the United States as the sponsor of the terrorism, exploiting Jundallah’s sectarian separatist motives while also providing plausible deniability for Israel; U.S. officials uncovered the ruse through internal investigations debunking earlier media reports of CIA involvement, leading to outrage in the Bush White House (with US President Bush reportedly “going ballistic”), strained intelligence cooperation under Obama, and lef eventually to the U.S. terrorist designation of Jundallah in 2010—although no public repercussions were imposed on Israel.
This is ideological. An approach used over and over by those who laid the foundation of the modern Israeli state.
So there are multiple examples of Mossad planning attacks and setting up others as their fall guys. This could very well be the case with Tyler Robinson, who is currently charged in the assassination of Charlie Kirk where—like the London bombings—circumstantial case seems strong and does make me wonder where the young man stood on Israel’s genocide? Maybe he was too vocal with the wrong people online and became the perfect patsy? It’s really not all that difficult to plant evidence or get someone to a location. Perhaps Tyler dropped out of college because he thought he was working on a CIA operation?
It just so happens that Utah State University has a Center for Anticipatory Intelligence—a recruiting node for the CIA. So is it possible that Robinson was approached by someone who claimed to be working for the CIA and set him up to be the fall guy?
The question of who benefits must always be asked. I know we’re supposed to believe that Arabs and Palestinians are just dumb beasts who don’t understand how bad that their actions look. But, bigotry aside, there is very little reason why someone would kill people at Bondi beach in support of Gaza, it is even less likely that Palestinians in West Bank would want to burn down a Christmas tree when they understand the optics side of the information warfare.
It’s just strange that those who scream out a “Pallywood” slur every time a journalist lines up a bunch of hungry children for a shot cannot imagine a country with a huge budget and the world’s most sophisticated propaganda machine doing this.
Every week the Hasbura story changes. One week there’s no starvation. The next week there is starvation but it’s Hamas. And then the narrative shifts back to no famine again.
Netanyahu has sent hundreds of Israeli young people to die while his son lives in Florida. And expresses no sorrow as he slaughters Gaza’s children. Do you believe that this man has too much conscience to order a deadly false flag because some of his own Jewish people would be killed? It may be unimaginable to you, as someone with a Christian worldview, but there’s no similar respect for individuals with those of a fascist or tribal mindset. Netanyahu isn’t like you. He’s a psychopath. He justifies what he does as necessary to protect the whole of Israel—when it’s truly about him escaping justice for his corruption.
From pager bombs blowing up in homes and markets, to the bombings and assassinations that Israel was founded on, disguising themselves as Palestinians, to the recent unrest in Iran, there’s not one period of Zionist history where the secret plots ended. It is a pattern. Sure, the attacks have become much more sophisticated (practice makes perfect) and yet no more concern is shown for the innocent. It is up to us if we’ll let them continue to blackmail the world into compliance or not. But at the very least we must be aware of the deception.
Relating to a coworker about how hard it is for me to transmit certain values absent a cultural context, with how deeply ingrained they are as part of my religious upbringing, in pondering this reality it becomes easy to understand why so many people—myself included, at times—assume their own moral framework is universal, something everyone else must naturally share.
This moment of realization tied to a broader observation about value systems and how wildly different various religious traditions really are despite sharing some of the same foundational texts—they are fundamentally and irrevocably different. And yet because the texts overlap, some people mistakenly treat those systems as essentially similar—or even interchangeable—overlooking the profound divergences in interpretation, emphasis, or lived practice that centuries of distinct cultural evolution in these systems of thought have produced.
I plan to make three stops: one in the frame of contemporary Western thought, the next from the time of Jesus, and lastly with the patriarch Abraham. And with each of these stops explore how shared origin can mask strikingly divergent ethical worlds, and why recognizing those differences matters more than ever in our interconnected age.
Innocent Until Proven Guilty and the Blackstone Ratio
Wrongful convictions happen. We often assume, since someone was charged, that they must be guilty of something. I mean, why else would they be wearing that orange jumpsuit? But this impulse goes contrary to reality where cops plant evidence, people lie, and prejudice plays a role in judgment.
This was the case with Brian Banks—who had been accused of rape by a classmate who later, after his years in prison, confessed to fabricating the whole account. What a horrible predicament: your whole future blown up, a jury that only sees your guilt.
A jurist, Sir William Blackstone, understanding the imperfection of the justice system and that the ultimate goal of justice is to protect the innocent, proposed:
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer
This, the Blackstone ratio, is foundational to how things are at least supposed to work in the United States. Founding father Ben Franklin actually took the concept further by stating, “it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.” John Adams, while he defended the British soldiers charged with murder for their role in the Boston Massacre, argued the following:
We find, in the rules laid down by the greatest English Judges, who have been the brightest of mankind; We are to look upon it as more beneficial, that many guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should suffer. The reason is, because it’s of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished; and many times they happen in such a manner, that it is not of much consequence to the public, whether they are punished or not. But when innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, it is immaterial to me, whether I behave well or ill; for virtue itself is no security. And if such a sentiment as this should take place in the mind of the subject, there would be an end to all security whatsoever.
This commitment to the innocent reflects a strong emphasis on individual rights. It also seems rooted in the story most defining of Western religion, and that is the story of Jesus—falsely accused and put to death for the sake of political expediency. This has become the defining narrative and a reason to reflect on our judgment rather than react. It is why many principled conservatives are always uncomfortable with those trials in the court of public opinion where the state parades a prosecuted person and people assume this is proof of an airtight case.
You look guilty just for being in a courtroom defending from an accusation.
Tyler Robinson currently stands accused of murdering Charlie Kirk. Some have decided his guilt to the extent of forgiving him prior to his even standing trial or being given the chance to defend himself—as if there’s just no way that anyone other than him could be involved. That’s not justice; that’s denying him a presumption of innocence and might be enabling others to escape accountability for their involvement. It is better that he go free than chance a wrongful conviction—that is just Christian.
Caiaphas’s Expediency Math: Killing One to Save All
At the completely opposite end of the spectrum from the Christian West is the example of the high priest who claimed the murder of an innocent man was necessary to save Israel from destruction:
Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”
(John 11:49-50 NIV)
This may very well be the origin point of trolley problem moral reasoning, where a hypothetical situation is proposed in which an intervention will cost fewer lives. If we just switch the track, this fictional trolley only kills one rather than multiple people. And it seems very reasonable. Isn’t it better when more people survive?
Caiaphas reasoned it was better to kill one Jesus to save Israel. But it didn’t work out that way. The entire nation—along with their temple and sacrificial system—was forever destroyed in 70 AD. The high priest’s moral reasoning was compromised and wrong. It did not save Israel to kill one man and may well have been part of what eventually led to the destruction of Jerusalem. Those who did not accept the way of Jesus continued, after his ministry ended, to kill his followers and resist their civil authorities. Had they taken one moment to reflect and reconsider their plan to kill their way to peace, they may have survived intact rather than be spread to the corners of the empire.
The problem with killing one—without a just cause, to secure the future—is that it usually doesn’t end there. Kill one and you’ll kill ten; if you kill ten, you’ll kill 100, until soon it is millions upon millions. We see this in the campaign against Gaza. Tens of thousands of children are slaughtered and this is being justified as a war against terror. The reality is that it may very well create the backlash that will make the Zionist project untenable as people see this notion of blood guilt and collective punishment as repulsive. This is not compatible with the Christian values of the West and will lead to our destruction if the escalation of war is not rejected.
The world is better when we don’t play God and use the expediency math. If you’re okay killing one innocent person, you’re now an enemy of all humanity. And if you are willing to kill one, then the second and third come much easier. Innocent life should always be protected—whether it is the life of Jesus, be it the “enemies'” children, or the unborn. Pro-life means no excuses for the IDF that don’t equally apply to Hamas. If it is okay for the Zionist regime to kill scores of civilians as “collateral damage” for every militant killed—where even the Israelis admit the victims of their onslaught are 83% civilians—why mourn when it is just a handful in Bondi?
Schlanger, brandishing a rifle, was 100% affiliated with those killing civilians in Gaza. By the IDF standard, he is equally guilty because of his proximity and sympathies.
The best protection of innocent people, like your own, is to oppose all killing of innocent people no matter the color of their skin or the clothes they wear. If the IDF can kill a journalist claiming they are “Hamas with a camera” or “Hamas-affiliated,” then why is it wrong for Eli Schlanger, who has materially aided a genocide, to be targeted along with his associates? We need to reject this math of expediency no matter who is using it, or we can’t be upset when what goes around finally comes around.
Abraham’s Plea for Mercy: Sparing the Many for the Few Righteous
Now we can go way back, to the book of Genesis, where the world’s most powerful monotheistic religions find their foundation, and this man of faith named Abraham. We join him prior to the destruction of Sodom and have this interesting exchange:
Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.” The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?
(Genesis 18:17-23 NIV)
Abraham’s opening question, in the passage above, tells you a whole lot about his moral reasoning. But before that you basically have the old covenant explained in brief: The blessing that was being bestowed on Abraham had to do with “doing what is right and just” or not simply being a blood relative of him, which is something that Jesus and the Apostles explained over and over to those who saw their genetic tie to the patriarch as a sort of entitlement and did not act justly or mercifully as he did.
Continuing in the text, take time to contrast the expediency math of Caiaphas with the following:
What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?” “If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.” Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?” He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.” Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?” He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?” He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?” He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.
(Genesis 18:24-33 NIV)
Abraham, after expressing his concern for the innocent, offers an opening bid at fifty righteous. Will God spare the entire wicked city for just fifty? And the first thing that is obvious is his humility, pleading with “I am nothing but dust and ashes” and showing his attitude before God. Second is that his orientation is toward the sparing of innocent life even if it means the evil people of the city of Sodom escape deserved judgment. This is in line with Blackstone’s ratio and in total opposition to Caiaphas, who argued to sacrifice rather than to protect the righteous one. Eventually Abraham concedes, and it makes more sense just to evacuate those righteous—nevertheless the righteous are not destroyed with the wicked.
So why is this account in Genesis?
Why is God engaged in a negotiation with a mere man?
The answer is that this anecdote is here for a reason, and that is to be instructive. The author of Genesis isn’t just telling us that Abraham was righteous—they’re giving us instruction on how to be righteous. To have the same disposition as Abraham, that’s the way to be a child of Abraham, and the path of righteousness that leads to the blessings through God’s promise. Chosen means you believe and obey the Lord. You can’t claim to be children of God, or of Abraham, if you truly share nothing in common with them in terms of your behavior or spirit. Genesis is telling us what that looks like in practice.
Christian Orientation Towards Mercy and Humanity is Truly Abrahamic.
In traversing these three moments—from courtrooms shaped by Christian reflection on an innocent’s crucifixion, to the high priest’s fateful expediency that failed to save his nation, and back to Abraham’s humble plea for mercy amid judgment—we uncover a profound reality: The orientation of the Christian perspective, underpinning American rights, is directly the opposite of the ideological lineage of Caiaphas.
The commitment, in faith, to protecting that one innocent life in a crowd of evil is to be a son or daughter of Abraham. Those who do the opposite, who are willing to sacrifice the innocent for sake of expediency, carry none of the character of Abraham and cannot be the heirs of anything promised to him. They must first repent of their sin—then they can be blessed, with all nations, through the one singular seed of Abraham (Gal 3:16) which is Christ Jesus.
Going back to the start and those ethics ingrained in us through a religiously derived culture and our assumptions, those who have rejected Christ and are completely willing to kill innocent people to accomplish ends are also going to manifest the other evil traits of Proverbs 6:16-19:
There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.
Those of us raised in an Anabaptist church got a strong dose of the Gospel according to Matthew and were taught that speech should be simple and truthful. Let your yea be yes, and nay be nay is about truly honest conversation and credibility without relying on oaths. We were told to have a peaceable spirit and merciful approach with all people—to be humble.
This is an orientation that many of Christian faith may believe is universal. Except it is not. Ethno-supremacist pride is okay with those of certain ideologies, deception for sake of gaining an upper hand is looked at like a virtue, they look at their ability to trick you as proof they are superior, and sow the seeds of division covertly not to be caught—like this example:
In a covert operation during 2007–2008, Israeli Mossad agents impersonated CIA officers—using forged U.S. passports, American currency, and CIA credentials—to recruit members of the Pakistan-based Sunni militant group Jundallah for attacks inside Iran, including bombings and assassinations targeting Iranian officials and civilians, as part of a broader effort to destabilize Tehran’s regime amid nuclear tensions. The deception, conducted openly in places like London, aimed to frame the United States as the sponsor, exploiting Jundallah’s sectarian and separatist motives while providing plausible deniability for Israel; U.S. officials uncovered the ruse through internal investigations debunking earlier media reports of CIA involvement, leading to outrage in the Bush White House (with President Bush reportedly “going ballistic”), strained intelligence cooperation under Obama, and the eventual U.S. terrorist designation of Jundallah in 2010, though no public repercussions were imposed on Israel.
Imagine having a friend who deliberately set you up for a fight against another person by telling them that you said something about them. My son had a bully do this to him on the bus and this is exactly what so-called ‘greatest ally’ tried to do to the US. For the Zionist regime, and Mossad, conducting the terror operation via a Pakistani proxy simply was not enough. They wanted Iran to think the attacks originated with the US in order to provoke a reaction. And this is how the world becomes a cesspool, all because the Iranians won’t stand idle while Palestinians are deprived of land and human rights.
Deviousness is not exclusive to the children of Caiaphas. But there’s no stops for those willing to kill innocent people for the sake of expediency. And a partnership with them is only going to undermine the foundation of our civilization. The US and ‘Christian’ West have already lost their moral reputation for this unholy alliance. We need to repent and return to holding evil men accountable and protecting the innocent or all will be lost—we can’t exempt some from a standard of normal decency without also damaging all of Christendom.
A: Tell them they’re not the most important person in the world.
There’s this mess of entitlement, of eternal victimhood, self-admiration and severe lack of empathy we call narcissism. And it does seem to be everywhere, most especially in a situation where someone is able to escape normal pushback for their overinflated self-image and sense of importance. But this is not something new or merely a product of modern life—it is as old as the Bible.
What Jesus confronted most severely in the religious elites of his day was a narcissistic attitude. Indeed, he was not killed as threat to Rome. The Roman authority, despite the facilitation of the mob, did not buy into their reasoning and declared him to be innocent. The real issue is that Jesus offended an ideological cult of ethno-supremacists, those who believed a book (or rather their own errant and self-serving interpretation of the text) made them a cut above all other people.
They believed that they were God’s favorites and yet Jesus said even the rocks could accomplish the mission. He did not need their permission to speak and insulted them at every turn. How did he insult? Well, mostly by reminding them that God loved all people and not just their own tribe. In defiance of their narcissistic self-belief, he held up the good examples of Samaritans, Canaanites, Syrians and Romans—presenting the foreigner as a righteous contrast to them. And they could not argue with him, he knew their Scripture better than they did, so they killed him.
Here’s six examples of where Jesus took on the ethno-nationalist pride and narcissism of religious peers:
1. The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)
In response to a lawyer asking about who is our neighbor, Jesus tells a parable where a Samaritan (despised as ethnic outsiders by Jews) acts heroically with mercy, while a Jewish priest and Levite ignore a wounded man. This framing of an answer intentionally swerves off the beaten path to offend his ethno-supremacist audience by portraying their loathed ‘enemy’ favorably and implying that true neighborliness is something that transcends ethnic boundaries:
In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. […] “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Imagine that, this smug religious expert, who thought he was self-justified, getting shown up rhetorically by the outsider.
2. The Faith of the Roman Centurion (Matthew 8:5-13)
A Roman centurion (a Gentile military occupier) approaches Jesus to heal his servant. Jesus not only heals but praises the centurion’s faith as surpassing anything being found “in Israel,” and implicitly rebuking the Pharisees’ assumption of Jewish spiritual superiority. This favorable portrayal of this Gentile outsider was extremely offensive to these ethno-supremacists:
When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.” […] When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
He’s stomping on their entitlement at the end, literally saying that they’ll be thrown out and then replaced by Gentiles in God’s kingdom!
3. The Faith of the Canaanite Woman (Matthew 15:21-28)
Jesus initially tests a Canaanite woman (a Gentile outsider) seeking healing for her daughter but he ultimately commends her persistent faith and grants the request. This interaction challenges Pharisaic purity laws and ethnocentrism by showing a non-Jew’s faith as exemplary, even using the language which highlights ethnic barriers only to overcome them:
A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
This passage illustrates the ethnic-supremacist attitudes of even the disciples of Jesus. Whereas today, in the West, you can barely say people are different in ability without it being controversial, nobody cared that this woman was referred to as a dog in this audience. But his actions of love and compassion spoke louder than his words and this woman’s lack of narcissism was a stark contrast to the prideful racist disciples Her prayer was answered because she was humble.
4. The Healing of the Ten Lepers (Luke 17:11-19)
Jesus heals ten lepers, but only one—a Samaritan (an ethnic outsider)—returns to thank him. Jesus highlights this Samaritan’s faith, questioning where the other nine (presumably Jews) are, thus favoring the outsider and critiquing ingratitude among insiders:
As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” […] One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
The entitled can’t show gratitude. Perhaps, as the self-declared chosen, the others who never came back felt they deserved this healing—that it was their birth right? But Jesus was unimpressed by them and highlighted the foreigner who was thankful instead.
5. The Samaritan Woman at the Well (John 4:1-42)
Below Jesus initiates a conversation with a lowly Samaritan woman (an outcast on multiple fronts: Samaritan and female), he reveals himself as the Messiah, and leads to many Samaritans believing in him. This breaches ethnic and social barriers, totally offending Pharisaic norms of separation, as the Jews typically avoided Samaritans:
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” […] The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) […] Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.
This was Jesus deliberately breaking down a barrier. The Jews of this time weren’t just racist, but sexist as well, and would see this entire encounter as an egregious violation. Here Jesus was humanizing the Samaritan enemy and—even more scandalously—he was talking directly to a woman! While rebuking his own ethnic and religious tribe he hung out with the impure!
He’s practically as evil as Tucker Carlson…
6. Jesus’ Sermon in Nazareth (Luke 4:16-30)
In his hometown synagogue, Jesus reads from Isaiah and then references the Old Testament prophets helping Gentiles (a widow in Sidon and Naaman the Syrian) instead of Israelites during times of need. This enrages the crowd, who try to kill him right there and then, as it directly challenges their ethno-supremacist expectations that God’s favor is exclusive to Jews:
“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
The passages all illustrate Jesus’ pattern of associating with and elevating of outsiders, which offended the Pharisees’ ethnocentric pride and their self-righteous “we’re chosen people” claims by his stubborn inclusion of sinners, tax collectors, and Gentiles.
Had it not been for a miracle Jesus may be remembered as being thrown off a cliff for praising the foreigners in front of a Jewish audience. He was hitting them directly in their Hindenburg sized egos. They had the most severe case our own [excrement] don’t stink that’s possible.
Ms. Rachel is an ‘anti-Semite’ for loving all children?
A Zionist organization, StopAntisemitism, has named Rachel Griffin Accurso, a very popular children’s content creator, a finalist for their “Antisemite of the Year” and for a very specific offense: Ms. Rachel dared to treat the suffering of Palestinian children as equal to that of Jewish people! How dare she humanize the child of an enemy! Those in this Zionist cult love themselves only and make a strict dichotomy between their own and the dogs. The spirit that Jesus rebuked is maintained in this perverse tradition.
I didn’t know much about Ms. Rachel prior to the birth of my daughter, but she’s not a Hamas apologist or sympathizer and has expressed similar sentiments about Israeli and African children. Only the arrogant Zio-bots used her concern as a cause for their vicious accusations and vile labels. They can be the only victims and treating Gaza’s children with the same love as their own is a terrible offense in their supremacist eyes—only their suffering can matter.
He didn’t say Hamas. He said Palestinians.
Ms Rachel committed their most grievous sin of believing children are not terrorists because of where they are born and now—as another enemy—she must be destroyed.
That is the narcissistic attitude of Zionism. You must choose between them and others, they cannot share your concern with those who are inferior beings. It’s an insult, as if they have been made equal to a dog, which is what they think of us Gentiles. Listen to what they say, they believe that they should be treated like gods—in the words of Jewish supremacist and the former chief Rabbi of Israel, Ovadia-Yosef:
“Goyim (gentiles, non-Jews) were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,” he said, according to the Jerusalem Post. “Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created.”
Treated as our lords. That is the nature of Zionism. It is about their narcissistic view that they deserve to be our masters and to do with us as they please—as they may an ox that plows their fields. Which is what is so disturbing about an Israel-Firster, Ben Shapiro, proclaiming that retirement is stupid and that Americans should work until they drop. Says a guy who sits around and talks as an occupation. This, of course, does not represent all Jews or Israeli citizens, but it is written in the Talmud and lines up with the Likud party leadership of Israel.
Zionism does not represent all Jews.
Zionists don’t just want to rule over the current territory of Israel or the Holy Lands. No, they want Jerusalem to be the hub of their Greater Israel and later one world government where their own version of a Messiah cleanses the world of all who defy them. They rule because you’re too stupid to live free.
Judas wanted an Israel like this. A worldly kingdom where he would be served. Jesus, by sharp contrast, taught a kingdom not of this world—where the greatest would serve rather than be served. He corrected heresy that made the blessing of Abraham only about a genetic inheritance rather than a matter of sharing the patriarch’s sincere and simple faith. It was the very opposite of what they believed they were owed as the self-declared special people. Jesus offended by telling them they weren’t special and calling the children of the Devil rather than of Abraham. Ethnic supremacy and self-righteous pride is the basis of Zionism, Christianity heralds repentance as the foundation of true faith in God, as John the Baptist declared:
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
(Matthew 3:7-10 NIV)
Water is wet. The sky is blue. You can’t be a Christian and a Zionist too. We must pick one or the other. There is no union between light and darkness, no yoking of believer to unbeliever, we either believe what we’re told in the Gospel about a “synagogue of Satan” (Rev 3:9) and who Jesus himself declared to be children of their father the Devil (John 8:44) or we deny that Christ is King. It’s just astounding to see so many who either never read the New Testament or had eyes glazed over in those sections where Jesus rebuked those who thought their Jewish supremacy and genetic ties to Abraham would save them.
The unrepentant narcissist will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Pride was the sin of Satan who thought he could rival God and it is also the sin of those who rejected Jesus for his acceptance of all and not caring about their ethnic pedigree. They hated him for exposing them as religious frauds. And the campaign they waged against him was very similar to that being used currently to try to silence critics of Israel. The role of a good Goy is to simply believe whatever they say and allow them to be the gods they believe they are—to kill or rape as they please.
But it is also part of a general strategy of using Jewish people, as a whole, as a human shield for a supremacist ideology that many Jews entirely reject. And, furthermore, this conflating Jewish identity with the Zionist state is contributing to a rise in actual anti-Jewish sentiment around the world. It is very disturbing to see a vile ideology trying to avoid the rebuke that it most certainly deserves by wearing Jewish identity as a mask for what it truly is.
Zionism is just blood and soil nationalism using ancient history as a cover story no different than those who called themselves the third Rome.
Zionism is not the same thing as Judiasm and thus taking an anti-Zionist position is not hatred of Jews. Just like we can both be opposed to a political party and still not be unAmerican, we can oppose a Zionist state of Israel in favor of a country where all people of all faiths have the same rights—where indigenous people are not harassed or killed so settlers can steal their land. It is okay to hate a regime of rape, theft, murder and collective punishment. It is also okay to hold those accountable who perpetrate war crimes calling it defense.
What this conflating is is the Motte-and-bailey fallacy (also a strategy) where you pair a position that is defensible with one that is not. In other words, you say something like “Israel has a right to defend itself,” which everyone will generally agree with, and then use this statement to defend the IDF knowingly bombing children in Gaza. The two things are not the same. Defense and killing babies are two vastly different things. If a neighbor, from an apartment complex near me, assaulted me, and then I go burn down his whole building in response, nobody will accept that this is a defensive action—it is just murder.
This strategy of hiding Zionism behind the Jewish ethnicity and faith comes 100% at the expense of innocent Jews who have no connection to the modern state of Israel. Merging Jewish identity with Zionism and Zionist atrocities only serves to feed anti-Jewish sentiment. Decoupling the two words is separating a hostage from a hijacker and focuses our critique on the bad actors who falsely claim to speak for all Jews. The best way to protect from riding anti-Jewish sentiment is to hold Zionists to account rather than allow them to hide behind Jewish suffering.
Four Ways To Fight Anti-Semitism:
1) Apply opposition to anti-semitism to all Semitic people. The word Semite is derived from the language people use. Specifically Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. The rights of all people, indigenous Muslim or Christian, as well as Jews, should be protected. It is anti-semitic to argue Palestinian lives and the lives of Arab neighbors, are worth less than that of European settlers. The Zionists have not only hijacked Judiasm and the land, but the word Semitic as well—we need the term to be returned to original use.
2) Make the Holy Lands a safe refuge for all good people again. All Abrahamic religions have significant ties to the territory where a modern state of Israel is formed. Christian and Muslim communities which existed for centuries are under threat by the invading settlers. The first Christians were Semites—Jewish coverts—so why are we privileging only one religious group on a land home to Christians and other Semitic people?
3) Stop protecting the bad people simply on the basis of religious identity. This applies just as much to any religion, but especially to a country that regularly shields evil people on the basis of their Jewish-ness and loyalty to the apartheid regime.
Jonathan Pollard, a US Citizen, who stole nuclear secrets and gave them to Israel (who, in turn, sold them to the Soviet Union), was a traitor to the degree that would be hanged for treason in times past. But he got life in prison and was released after thirty years due to the lobbying pressure of the Israeli government. He arrived in Israel, on the private jet of Sheldon Adelson (the late husband of the Trump mega-donor Miriam Adelson) to a hero’s welcome under “right to return.” In fact, Pollard was greeted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after kissing tarmac in Tel Aviv.
There are also similar stories of corrupt men fleeing to Israel from Ukraine. Pedophiles and rapists, of Jewish identity, are granted this same escape from justice by “right to return” and an Israeli policy of protecting all Jews regardless of if they are good or evil. This undermines the trust in Jewish people worldwide. It contributes to the othering of Jews and breeds resentment and contempt. Sure, two separate standards may be okay for a racial supremacist, but it is totally unacceptable for those who reject all identity politics and tribalism.
I would stand shoulder to shoulder with a good person who happens to be a Jew, Muslim or any other religion over a person who claims to be a Christian and yet does not love their neighbors. To me, those who confuse genetics with goodness or their own tribal identity with innocence are the problem. A truly good person cares about genuinely good character—and not skin color or religious costume.
Jews are safer when Zionists abusers are made accountable. The world is a better place when nobody puts tribe over a commitment to justice for all people. We don’t need the Holy Lands to be a haven for the world’s traitors, pedophiles and identity thieves.
4) Treat AIPAC as a foreign lobby and trim back the Zionist control over our political institutions. If Congress were taking the same amount of money from supporters of any other country in the world that they did from AIPAC they would be in jail. How is it not collusion? However, you’re not going to hear about this scandal on CBS News, after it was bought by Zionist billionaires, with a new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. Nor will the truth be told on TikTok after it was scooped up by the same people—now moderated by a former IDF soldier searching for ‘antisemitic’ content which could be anything that tells the truth about Israel.
Frankly, the US desperately needs a policy of de-Zionization after years of our Middle-East mayhem. When we have US ambassadors to Israel, like Mike Huckabee, meeting with a man convicted of treason, and Presidents unable to act independently from a foreign regime—even when that foreign regime kills more children than it foes true combatants—drastic measures need to be taken. We can’t simply vote this out. When then the candidates for mayor of NYC show fealty to a foreign nation this goes beyond normal corruption. There truly needs to be more prosecutions for actual treason.
A Better Jewish Defense Strategy
The current Zionist strategy—the fusing Jewish identity with an apartheid regime, shielding war criminals and traitors behind the label “Jew,” and branding every critic an anti-Semite—has sadly produced the most dangerous environment for Jews in decades: surging street-level hatred, synagogue shootings, and a global resurgence of real anti-Jewish bigotry fueled by rage at Israel’s actions. The four steps above break that fuse.
When Judaism is decisively decoupled from Zionism, when “Semitic” again and protects Palestinians and Lebanese as fiercely as Israelis, when the Holy Land is a shared home rather than an ethnic fortress, and when Jewish criminals no longer enjoy impunity under “right of return” or AIPAC protection, the primary pretext for hating Jews evaporates. Jews become what most already are: Just ordinary citizens judged by their character, and not scapegoats for a supremacist project most never voted for.
Paradoxically, the safest future for Jewish people is not more tanks, walls, or lobbying billions—it is the dismantling of an ideological human shield that places them directly in the line of fire.
Irregular Ideation 