Oct 25, 2026 – In 2022 I dated someone who thought herself a queen, and when we parted ways I dodged a bullet.  The truth is I loved her, but she was about as real as a $3 bill, the world surrounding her just as fake.  A culture embracing the celebrity.

I cannot respect this culture, even as I dwell in the City of Angels.  It is something like a high school social club (which is a slight insult to high school students), the world of monarchs and oligarchs – insecurities bound in identities.

As a child I remember learning to control my dreams, to experiment with reality.  To see things that I was told were not there.  As I witnessed Science become the great dictator of “truth” in the world, even as the most incredible things I had experienced could not be touched by it, even as the most ridiculous happenings occurred in spite of it, I saw the absurdity of Man.

I have been called Beast, King, Fool, Liar, Pervert, Idiot and more labels under the sun than I can recall.  This also speaks to the absurdity of Man.  It recognizes that even under any school of thought, the world is still just children playing with sandcastles.  It is a world in which labels need not mean anything, they are simply given weight through belief and story – and how that has been used against people!  And to the misandrist playing the feminist, and the misogynist playing the masculinist, make your God claims somewhere else.  I’ve heard too many women stake claims that God is a woman, and too many men stake claims that God is a man – and they thought themselves clever or perhaps unique in suffering!

So, when you witness a spoiled child in this social club influencing lives with the maturity of a toddler, recognize that you are seeing a story that has already unfolded many times before – history reveals as much.  I never did believe that the United States was following the vector of a democratic society, and the ease at which a child has dismantled it brick by brick demonstrates that those who came before him had already laid the groundwork for its demise.  They made deals behind closed doors, spied and lied, hacked and monitored, censored and silenced, manipulated markets and perspectives, profited from sickness and death.  They enriched and empowered themselves, all the while the foundation sunk.  Yes there are clubs and societies, brotherhoods and sisterhoods, but I’m speaking of them as the generations of inbounds and outbounds simply “playing the game”, alongside those who would not leave.  It should be no surprise that an immature child could come in and tear the house apart, normalizing some of the worst qualities of humanity – factors indeed already at play in a house of politics – in his wake.

The United States has to prioritize community, sustainability, education, institutional reform and most importantly, a peaceful discord through engaged diplomacy with the World.  When retired leaders have financial stake in the perpetuation of warfare, when political leaders have financial stake in markets, there is a glaring conflict of interest if peace and prosperity for all is indeed the objective (which it certainly is not for some – you do not become the world’s financial elite through selfless endeavors, and yet this is often a sub-group idealized).  The U.S. is full of these conflicts of interest across industries – it needs to unveil its deceptions, its hypocrisies, its selfish implementations.  It needs to stop saturating itself with entertainment.  It needs to have a public skepticism of extreme wealth and the uses of power.  It needs to get rid of a sense of entitlement where a lawsuit over every slight becomes the norm (in a world gone to hell, check how many lawyers are in the room – it’s not about the lawyers themselves, it’s about the supply and demand generating their vocation).  It needs to implement innovation and infrastructure, not just talk about it behind years and layers of red tape from an oversaturated bureaucracy.  It needs to take risks and be creative.  It is a community – it doesn’t need megalomaniacs just because it’s exposed to their celebrity via the very media channels they own and influence.  Heroes can be found in most places – celebrities needn’t be found anywhere.  When the U.S. as a celebrity markets itself as a hero, the growing cracks appear immediately.

If the U.S. wants to survive it has to be the leader it has never truly been.  I call the nation out because it does in grand fashion market itself as a leader.  Then be one.  I’m sitting on the sidelines, and while I’m not currently cheering you on, I will never root or play against you.  You as a whole are greater than those who have provided a poor service to the world under your banner.  The advice I’ve shared here from my seat is the most you can expect from me – my life’s work is beyond the nation, itself a label and identity which is clung to like so many others.  WWII may have put the nation on the map, but the country’s course over the following decades in the wake of its success is the true measure of its skills as a leader.  The constant re-romanticization of “peak” U.S. from ~80 years ago in military video games is a hidden reminder of this when weighed against just how many military conflicts the U.S. has been in since then.  I call out the U.S. because it’s the land I come from, and like a child of a parent, I want it to do well, be well, and behave.  It is capable, just as I am, with my own deceptions, hypocrisies and selfish implementations, of growth and maturity.

Cults form when people start collectively believing in something that goes against the comforts of a narrative that a larger culture is afraid of breaking.  Religions form when cults become popular enough.  I would argue that Science is itself a religion of Scientism that started with a cult of outliers, not because of its methodology or even application, but because it has become its own projected belief system with a mixed bag of notation, theory and debate.  Jesus was a guy who traveled and brought his insights from a foreign culture to a world that wasn’t ready for it, and he was turned into a deity.  When you put people on a pedestal, it’s all too easy to become blind to what is being taught, instead focusing solely on the teacher.  The celebrity.  When you see that even Science does this, you may see the absurdity of Man.

I say all of this to say that I don’t care who or what I am to you.  In spite of all of the mistakes that I’ve made in life and death, I choose to walk along the razor’s edge.  I have slipped and fallen, cut myself, broken, mended, and I have chosen to get back on.  All the fire in the world is in your eyes.