They Have Eyes and Will Not See

Section One: The Old Book and the New World Order

March entered this year with a loud bang. Snowstorms. Chaos. And then right on time, as if Heaven itself had set the calendar, America and Israel launched strikes on Iran. Right in time for Purim. Let that sit for a moment.

Now I want to say something before I go any further. It is something to behold, truly something to witness, watching mainstream media and your favorite podcasters tie themselves into knots trying to explain what is unfolding in the Middle East without once, not one single time, reaching for the Word that has already explained it. They will talk geopolitics. They will talk oil. They will talk alliances and power moves and the military industrial complex. They will even talk about religion and the religious aspects of this war in Iran. What they will not do is open that Book. Because that old Book, as far as they are concerned, couldn't possibly be real. The people who believe it are confused. Deluded. Duped by theology. Out of their minds.

Here we are. Watching.

Individuals like Tucker Carlson and podcast platforms like Breaking Points are attempting to align current events with religion. Breaking Points views these parallels as coincidences, for example claims that Israel's actions correspond to biblical prophecy. Tucker Carlson, by contrast, acknowledges the religious dimension of this war but rejects any connection to biblical fulfillment; he insists it does not align with Christianity.

Breaking Points is a far-left, liberal podcast platform hosted by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, two narrow-minded, left-leaning intellectuals who put more faith in their own knowledge than in any religion. Tucker Carlson is a far-right conservative who professes to be a Christian and is highly critical of Israel. He claims his viewpoint is not about Jews, yet portrays the nation of Israel as fundamentally in the wrong, while casting Muslim states like Iran differently.

Iran is now dealing with the death of Ayatollah Khamenei, the long-time Supreme Leader of a theocratic state who oppressed many for decades. Carlson recognizes the religious dimension at the center of this conflict, but he refuses to take the next step and connect these events to prophecy. He can see the religion; he cannot see the fulfillment. In the same breath he quoted Jesus, "having eyes, they do not see," without appearing to realize he was describing himself. Jesus spoke of people who stood in the presence of truth and still refused to receive it. Carlson quoted those words about us, not knowing that, as it were, Heaven was laughing.

There is something else worth saying. Tucker Carlson has gone on record questioning how any Christian could possibly align themselves with the belief that a Third Temple will be built in Jerusalem. His argument sounds reasonable on the surface and even sounds scriptural. We are the temple, he says. Through Jesus Christ we now have direct access to God. The veil was torn. We don't need a physical temple. He is not wrong. That is true.

It is a half truth. A half truth in the hands of a man who believes he is righteous is one of the most dangerous things in the world.

Because Tucker apparently has never sat with the book of Ezekiel. Chapters 40 through 48. A vision so detailed, so architectural, so specific, with measurements of gates and dimensions of chambers and the return of the glory of God to a physical house, that you cannot spiritualize it away without doing violence to the text. Ezekiel was not writing poetry. He was writing what he saw. And what he saw was a Temple. In the Last Days. In Jerusalem.

Tucker cannot get there. The reason Tucker cannot get there is the same reason he can stand in solidarity with an 86 year old man who worships a false god, defending him, platforming him, treating his cause as righteous, while simultaneously questioning the Biblical faith of Christians who believe what the prophets actually wrote. That is not discernment. That is a Pharisee. That is the spirit of a man who has decided that he is the one who rightly divides the Word, that he is the measure of what is reasonable, that he gets to determine which parts of your Bible count.

The Pharisees were not godless men. That is what made them dangerous. They knew the scripture. They were devoted. They were respected. And they stood in the presence of the fulfillment of everything they claimed to believe and called it a lie because it didn't look the way they expected and because it didn't fit the theology they had already built.

Tucker does not see himself as a Pharisee. He sees himself as the righteous one. The thinking Christian. The one brave enough to say what others won't. But a man who will defend a Muslim theocrat and mock the prophetic faith of Bible-believing Christians has told you everything you need to know about where his heart actually is, whether he has the eyes to see it or not.

Because here is the thing about Tucker Carlson and the scores of people just like him who call themselves Christians but cannot bring themselves to connect what is happening in Israel and Iran to prophecy. The reason isn't ignorance. The reason is that in their hearts they have already decided that the people in Israel are evil. That they are unrighteous. And so surely God cannot be doing anything through them. Surely this doesn't count. Surely the Book doesn't apply here.

Prophecy does not ask for your comfort. It does not wait for your approval. The Last Days are not a referendum. The signs are not interested in whether Tucker Carlson or CNN or Breaking Points or any podcaster with a ring light and a microphone is ready to call them what they are.

We are watching the world shift. In real time. And the ones called crazy are the ones who can see it.

Section Two: The Distraction

While America and Israel were raining fire down on Iran, dismantling the Islamic Shia regime that has terrorized a nation and threatened the world for nearly half a century, America found something else to look at. We always do.

We looked at a Senate race in Texas.

The race between Jasmine Crockett and James Telarico captured the attention of this country, specifically the attention of Black America, in a way that reveals exactly where our eyes are fixed and exactly what we are missing. Because while prophecy is unfolding on one side of the world, we are over here arguing about a primary. And not even the general election. A primary.

Now let me be clear about what actually happened here because Jasmine Crockett went on television and blamed Republicans for her loss. She cried foul. She talked about being cheated. What she did not say, what she could not bring herself to admit as loud, is that her own party sat her down. She was sidelined by her own party. The Democrats who have spent years screaming DEI looked at a Black woman with a law degree from Rhodes College, with federal experience, with alliances already built, with the kind of credibility that takes years to earn, and they handed the nomination to James Talarico. A white man. A soon-to-be so-called pastor. A Harvard graduate. A man who had the look and the disposition they believed could be a useful instrument.

Talarico represented everything Crockett was not in their eyes, which is to say he was palatable. Controllable. He would not go off script. He would not be a loud mouth. He would not be a distraction. Crockett was too real, too raw, too much, and in the Democratic Party, too much of a Black woman has always been exactly one thing: a liability.

What this race actually is, when you pull back the lens, is not just about race. This is about a party that is singular in its obsession and that obsession is Donald Trump. Unseating him. Impeaching him. Dismantling everything he represents. Talarico was selected not because he was the best candidate for Texas. He was selected because they believe he has the best shot at flipping a Texas Senate seat, and a flipped Texas Senate seat gets them one step closer to the votes they need to bring down the man who just ordered the strike that killed Khamenei.

Think about that. The man they are trying to impeach is the same man who just shook the entire prophetic landscape of the Middle East. And impeaching Donald Trump may do more than remove a president. It may impede Israel's attempts to build the Third Temple and bring the world one step further from what the prophets said would come.

This race, as significant as it may become come November when one of them faces either John Cornyn or Ken Paxton, only drew two million votes in the primary. Two million. In 2018 when Ted Cruz faced Beto O'Rourke, the primary drew six million combined votes between Democrats and Republicans. The general pulled eight million. The engagement was historic. People were fired up. Now, with the world on fire, with Israel and Iran at war, with the architecture of the Last Days being assembled in real time, two million people showed up and half of them were arguing about whether racism cost Jasmine Crockett a Senate seat.

Racism was real in this race. Let's not pretend it wasn't. It was not the only thing at work though. The Democratic Party's own hand was in it. They gave the DEI to the less qualified candidate because they believed he was the better weapon. They used the language of inclusion to exclude the one person who had actually earned it. They showed their hand. Again.

What grieves me most about all of this is the people consuming this story, the ones who spent this week outraged about Crockett and Talarico, posting and arguing and demanding accountability, most of them have no idea what is happening in Iran. Most of them could not tell you why Purim matters or who Esther was. Most of them have never opened Ezekiel or even understand anything about a Third Temple. They are consumed by the small theater of American race politics while the curtain is rising on something none of us have ever seen before.

They are the lost crowd. The ones who do not recognize the season. The ones who cannot feel that the ground is shifting underneath their feet, not because of an election or a Senate race in Texas, but because the King is coming. And when He comes, the color of your skin will not be a factor. Your party affiliation will not be a factor. Your podcast following will not be a factor. The only thing that will matter is what you believed and whether you had eyes to see it while there was still time.

Section Three: The Idol and the Idolatry

There is Candace Owens.

I cannot talk about distraction and blindness in this hour without addressing what is happening in the world of podcasting and more specifically what Candace Owens has become. Because there is a level of hate for Israel that rises in her commentary that is visceral. Raw. Personal. And it is being fed to millions of people who believe they are receiving truth.

Candace Owens is like a record with a scratch in it. Since last September she has been stuck. Repeating the same story. The same obsession. The same loop. And that loop has a name, Charlie Kirk. He has become her idol. He has become the saint she believes will deliver her from her sins if she can just solve the mystery of who took him. Finding the answer to that question has consumed her entirely and millions of her followers are walking right behind her into that idolatry without the first clue that is what it is.

Her series, The Bride of Charlie, is playing out on a podcast near you and me. And in it she has taken it upon herself to destroy Erika Kirk, Charlie's wife, because in Candace's mind Erika and her family are connected to the Jews. Connected to Israel. And Israel, in Candace Owens' world, is the root of all evil. She digs through the most wicked crevices she can find, searching for the thread that ties this grieving woman back to the people she has decided are the enemy. Every Jewish connection is evidence. Every association is suspicious. Every link to Israel is confirmation of what she already believes.

She will tell you she is not against Jews. She is against Israel. She will draw that line carefully and deliberately. But then watch how Jews become a central feature of her coverage. Watch how the word lands in her commentary. Watch how her audience receives it. The distinction she draws in her mouth disappears entirely by the time it reaches the ears of the people listening.

Israel is committing genocide, she says. They started in Gaza and now they are attempting it in Iran. Killing the Muslim leader was wicked and unjust. And there are people, far more than you would expect, who have received that message and made it their own. People who two years ago could not have told you the difference between Sunni and Shia, who now have strong theological opinions about why the God of Israel is the villain of this story.

That is not journalism. That is not investigation. That is not even good podcasting. That is Satan using every tool available to keep us blind, to cover our eyes with just enough truth mixed with just enough poison that we cannot tell the difference, to keep us digging in the dirt so that we come up dirty. So that when the real thing is happening, when the prophetic clock is moving and the nations are aligning and the signs are stacking up, we are too busy watching a podcast about a dead man's wife to lift our eyes and see what God is actually doing.

Candace Owens is not the disease. She is a symptom. A symptom of a people so desperate for someone to tell them the truth that they will follow anyone who sounds certain, even when that certainty is leading them directly away from the light.

Closing: Beyond the Pale

Candace Owens said something recently that I have not been able to shake. Not because it caught me off guard but because of what it revealed about the spirit behind everything she has been building.

She invoked the phrase Beyond the Pale.

And let me be clear. Candace Owens knows exactly what that phrase means. This was not a casual slip. This was not a woman who stumbled onto a historical reference without understanding its weight. She knows the Pale. She knows the Pale of Settlement. The defined boundary inside Imperial Russia beyond which Jewish people were not permitted to live. Contained. Controlled. Pushed to the outskirts of society and told they did not belong among civilized people. If you have ever watched Fiddler on the Roof, if you have ever seen that fictional village of Anatevka, those families clinging to their traditions and their dignity in the margins of a world that despised them, then you have seen the Pale. You know what it cost to live beyond it.

Candace knows this history. And she used it anyway. She reached for it deliberately to justify the treatment of Jews. To frame their suffering not as an injustice but as a consequence. As something earned. And then she went further, lifting up the execution of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena, dragged out on Christmas Day and shot, as some kind of reference point. A moment in history she wanted her audience sitting with while thinking about Israel and Jewish leadership.

That is not commentary. That is not provocation. That is a person who went digging in the darkest corners of history, found the most blood-soaked examples she could locate, and laid them at the feet of the Jewish people as justification for what she believes they deserve.

This is the same woman millions of people are following right now. The same voice they trust to tell them what the media won't. The same platform they call truth.

This is where all of it converges into one sobering reality. Iran spent 47 years building a regime around the annihilation of Israel. The Democratic Party is spending its political capital trying to bring down the president who just dismantled that regime. Candace Owens is spending her platform poisoning the minds of everyday Americans against the Jewish people, using the language of history as a weapon rather than a lesson. These are not three unrelated things. They are different instruments playing the same note. That note is as old as the book of Esther.

Because the Pale did not end with Russia. War after war and nation after nation, Spain, France, England, Poland, Germany, the Jewish people were expelled, persecuted, nearly exterminated. And after all of it, after every attempt to erase them from the earth, they found themselves back in Jerusalem. In 1948 a nation was born in a day. Isaiah 66 fulfilled before a watching world that immediately began debating whether it counted.

Candace knows this history too. She just draws different conclusions from it.

What she cannot account for, what no podcaster, no political strategist, no ancient Persian empire and no modern Islamic theocracy has ever been able to account for, is this. The God of Israel is not moved by human consensus. He does not check the ratings. He does not wait for Tucker Carlson to find it theologically reasonable or for Candace Owens to find it historically fair. He set a plan in motion before the foundations of the world and He has been walking it out in full view of anyone with eyes to see it, through every expulsion and every Pale and every pogrom and every gas chamber and every October 7th, and yes, every airstrike on Persian soil during the feast of Purim.

This is not coincidence. None of it is coincidence. Not a single step of that long journey from the outskirts of Russia back to the Promised Land happened outside the sovereign hand of God.

The ones who see it are not crazy and we are not confused or duped by theology. We are the ones who remember what the Book said and recognize the season we are living in. While America argues about Senate races and podcasters dig through the most wicked crevices of history to justify hatred dressed up as journalism, the stage is being set. The pieces are moving. The clock is running.

Beyond the Pale was once the place where the unwanted were sent to disappear. God turned it into a road that led them home.

The same God who brought a scattered people back to their land after two thousand years of exile is now setting the stage for what no eye has fully seen and no mind has fully comprehended.

Soon and very soon.

We are going to see the King.

The Drift: Demons, Nationalism, and the Erasure of a People

“Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass by them.” Amos 7:8

I've been reading Demons. 

If you've followed this blog, you know Dostoevsky is someone I return to often. But something about this reading is hitting differently. The deeper I get into the novel, the more I recognize the presence of something darker at work. Subtle influences that pull people, slowly and consistently, away from God. What's unsettling is not that it exists, but how easily it goes unnoticed.

I don't think many people see it for what it is. But the more I engage with people, especially on social media, the more aware I've become of how real this spiritual undertow is. And nothing made that more visible to me this week than two things: a YouTube short that turned my stomach, and the State of the Union address.

Let me start with the video.

Three white individuals were asked a question that should never need asking: how are American Blacks American citizens? Two of them argued that more white Americans have fought in wars throughout this country's history than Black Americans, as if citizenship is a ledger and contribution is measured in body counts. The third, to their credit, pointed out that Black people have fought in every war since this nation's founding.

Here's what was visceral to me. Not one of the three, not a single one, mentioned the fact that we were brought to this country in chains. That we built this nation with our hands bound behind our backs and our feet shackled to keep us from running. That the blood of our ancestors is in the very fabric of the soil of this land.

That silence was not accidental. It was the point.

Those three individuals were not an anomaly. They are part of a much larger and more organized movement. We see it in the rise of voices like Nick Fuentes, who openly champions white identity politics. We see it in Joel Webbon and the growing strain of Christian nationalism that wraps racial hierarchy in scripture. We hear echoes of it in commentators like Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who frame Western civilization and its preservation in terms that conveniently exclude the people who built it with their bare hands. This is not ignorance. This is not algorithmic rage-bait. This is ideology, and it has a name.

This is what white nationalism does. It doesn't just elevate one story. It erases another. It rewrites the American narrative as a story belonging solely to one people, and in doing so, it forgets that God made man in His image. All of us. Including those of us who survived the Middle Passage. Including those who built this nation with whips on their backs and chains on their feet. Including every generation since that has contributed, bled, fought, and died for a country that still debates whether we belong. And our contribution didn't end with slavery. We contribute with our taxes like most other Americans. We contribute with our work, with what we put in every single day to keep this engine called America running. We show up. We build. We sustain. And still, our place at the table is treated as something that needs to be earned rather than something that was paid for long ago in blood and labor and centuries of sacrifice.

That impulse to erase, to claim the whole of America as a white inheritance, is a sickness. And it's the same sickness Dostoevsky was writing about.

In Demons, the forces that tear a society apart don't announce themselves with horns and fire. They come dressed in ideology. They come with conviction. They come with the absolute certainty that their vision is the right one, and that anyone who stands in the way must be moved, silenced, or forgotten.

That's what I saw playing out during the State of the Union.

On one side, collectivist or system-driven ideas. On the other, nationalism. We reduce these to left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican, but that simplification hides something far deeper. What we witnessed at the State of the Union were two different sides of a very evil coin. And at the center of it all was a question that shouldn't require asking but demands an answer: who is American, and what does it mean to be American?

Now, many will make the point that what's happening in this country right now is about good vs. evil, not left or right. And there is truth in that. But there is also a kind of self-righteousness in that framing, because the very notion erases something essential. If there is only good and there is only evil, then there is no center. There is no standard by which we measure either one. And without that standard, both sides simply become mirrors of the other, each convinced they are righteous, each certain the other is the enemy.

There is a center. There is good. There is evil. And there is justice.

Jesus was justice. Jesus is Justice. He didn't come representing one side of a political argument. He came as the standard itself, the plumb line against which all things are measured. And when we lose sight of that, we lose more than the argument. We lose the ability to even recognize what justice looks like.


So we are left with the harder question: which ideology bends toward justice?

I don't believe every person is a white nationalist. I want to be clear about that. Scattered among those who cling to the pride of the color of their skin, there are those of us who understand that God created us in His image and in His likeness. There are people on every side of this divide who still carry that truth. But the question remains: which set of ideas, practices, and beliefs aligns more closely with how God has always dealt with His own?

Consider the idea that American citizens should be considered above all others. Many will recoil at that. But is it not justice? Let me be clear: I am not making an argument for ethnic supremacy. I am making an argument for ordered covenant responsibility, the same kind of responsibility God modeled with Israel. When God brought Israel out of Egypt, He didn't tell them to serve the nations around them. He set them on a path to destroy anything that threatened the theocracy. He led them as Commander-in-Chief of an army. He judged those who stood in the path of their progress. That was the line of the Messiah. God prioritized His people, not because He was exclusionary by nature, but because He was purposeful in His design. There was a covenant, and that covenant came with protection. A nation that does not prioritize its own people, that does not fulfill its responsibility to those within its covenant, is a nation that has abandoned the very model God established.

Now, we as Christians understand that God has opened the gate to allow in the Gentiles, those of us who believe that Jesus Christ came to save our souls. The covenant has expanded. The family has grown. But even in that expansion, there is order. There is structure. There is the expectation that we align ourselves with what God has established, not with what man has invented.


This is where the two sides reveal themselves for what they truly are.

On one side, there is a party that puts its faith in the system itself. It worships its own idea of what you are and condemns the Creator for His creation. But we are the clay, and He is the Potter. He shaped us. He formed us. And we don't get to ask questions about His design. Yet this side tells us it's acceptable to destroy life and call it something it is not, to rename what God has already named in order to justify an ideology. It tells us to look to man for healthcare, for food, for shelter, for clothing. It places the government where God should be: the provider, the protector, the source. And that is the very definition of worshipping the system as opposed to the Creator.

This is what kept Israel in bondage. The physical chains of Egypt, yes, but also the spiritual ones, the temptation to rely on systems rather than God. To trust in what you can see rather than in the One who sees all. That's what one side asks of us. Come to the system. Trust the system. Let the system define you, care for you, save you.

On the other side, there are those who attempt to keep God to themselves, as if He doesn't have the power to raise all that are dead to His glory. They wrap faith in the flag and confuse patriotism with piety. They build walls not just at the border but around the throne of God, as if His grace has limits, as if His image is only reflected in certain faces. They forget that the same God who led Israel also made covenant with Rahab the Canaanite, with Ruth the Moabite, with every outsider who turned toward Him and of course Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman.

It's between these two sides that we find ourselves, fighting for justice, fighting for truth, in a world where self-righteousness reigns supreme.


What always gets overlooked is who bears the cost. The ideologues at the center of the debate never pay it. The ordinary people caught in between do, the ones forced to live with the consequences of conflicts they didn't create. People like us. People like me. American Blacks whose citizenship is still questioned, whose history is still erased, whose blood is in the soil of a country that still can't decide if we belong.

The danger is in losing the center entirely. And the center I'm talking about is not political. It is spiritual.

When we replace God at the center, whether with nationalism or systems, with ideology or identity, we don't eliminate the struggle between good and evil. We simply redefine it in our own image. We become the authors of our own morality, and history has shown us, over and over again, how that ends.

Dostoevsky understood this. He wrote Demons as a warning about what happens to the human soul when it cuts itself off from the divine. When people stop seeing each other as made in the image of God, they stop seeing each other at all.

That's what I saw in that YouTube video. Three people standing in a country built on the backs of enslaved Africans, debating whether those people's descendants are truly American. If that's not a demon at work, quietly whispering that some of God's children are less than, I don't know what is.


I'll be honest with you.

There are some nights when I am alone, completely alone, and I cry out to God in tears. Real tears. Because it feels as though He isn't hearing my prayers. It feels as though the wicked and the evil have the strongest voice, as though their megaphone reaches further than my whisper ever could. Those are the nights when the weight of everything, the erasure, the arrogance, the lies dressed up as patriotism, presses down so hard that I can barely breathe.

In those moments, God scoops in. He reminds me that He is truth. He is justice. He tells me to focus on His Word and not on any man, because they are liars. Every one of them. He reminds me that even though an entire nation set out to keep a race of people in bondage, that their so-called superior thinking cast an entire people as inferior, He is far more superior than anything imaginable. He has guided us through some of the most inconceivable storms in human history, and He will guide us again. He always does.

That's the thing about God. He doesn't operate on our timeline or our volume level. The wicked may shout, but God moves. And when He moves, no system, no ideology, no nation built on lies can stand.


But let me show you what the other side of that coin looks like, what happens when God is removed from the equation entirely. Because everything I've described so far, the nationalism, the system worship, the drift from center, all of it creates a world where power answers to nothing. And if you want to see what that world produces when it reaches its highest levels, look no further than what is revealed in the Epstein letters.

In those letters, there is a reference to something called Bottle Girls. If you don't know what Bottle Girls are, let me paint the picture. These are young women whose job is to attract rich, powerful men into clubs and bars, luring them in with the promise of excess. They encourage them to order the most expensive drinks, to spend lavishly, to draw in the crowd. And in return, they are elevated. Taken up to the highest parts of the club, the VIP sections, the balconies, where they can look down over the people crowded below, swimming in drink and lust and greed.

From up there, they pick them out like fruit from a tree. They have their way. They sell their souls. They sacrifice their very beings.

Nobody sees it for what it is. Or maybe they do, and they just don't care.

That is the architecture of evil. It doesn't drag you down into the pit screaming. It lifts you up and gives you a view. It makes you feel chosen. And by the time you realize what you've traded for that elevation, it is already too late.

This is not a metaphor. This is what is happening in plain sight, at the highest levels of wealth and power and influence in this country. The same country that debates whether Black people are citizens. The same country that watches two political parties posture at the State of the Union while the rot beneath them grows deeper by the day.

Dostoevsky saw it. He wrote about it. The demons don't come for the people at the bottom. They come for the ones who think they are at the top.

We are drifting. Left and right, the pull is real. But the answer is in returning to the center, to the standard that no system, no ideology, and no nation can replace.

God makes man in His image. Every one of us. And any vision of America, or of justice, that forgets that is not just incomplete. It is dangerous.

It is exactly what Dostoevsky warns us about.

Yet, on those nights when I cry out and feel like no one is listening, He answers. Not always with thunder. Sometimes with a whisper. Sometimes just with the reminder that I am still here. That we are still here. That the people who survived the Middle Passage, who built this nation in chains, who endured every attempt at erasure, are still here.

That, in itself, is the evidence of God.

“Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

Jacqueline Session is the founder and CEO of DAHTRUTH, LLC, a poet, and an urban fiction author. She writes on faith, culture, and identity at [DahTruth.com](https://dahtruth.com).
 

The Hijacking of Black History Month

“If there is no God, then I am God.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

I'm tired. And I don't mean the kind of tired that sleep fixes. I mean the kind of tired that comes from opening your phone every morning and being assaulted by a new cycle of chaos, contradiction, and political theater dressed up as progress. This has been one of those weeks where social media feels less like a tool for connection and more like a weapon of mass distraction — and I say that as somebody who uses it daily to speak truth.

February is supposed to be American Black History Month. A time when this nation — however performatively — pauses to acknowledge the contributions, the suffering, the resilience, and the brilliance of American Descendants of Slavery. But this February? Black History Month got pushed to the back of the bus. Again.

If I must be honest I could take Black History Month or leave it.  But this year I am more focused because I can't help but wonder how stories of Black History is being overshowed by The Epstein files.  Our Leaders are more concerned about these files then they are about focusing on our past, current and future standing in this country.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers…”

— Ephesians 6:12 (KJV)

The Epstein Circus and the Trump Smokescreen

I am not certain how much the Epstein files matter. I don't think sex trafficking is the greatest story told in these files. I think justice for those victims matters; however, the victims are not those women standing at the congressional hearings wearing T-shirts. Reading through some of the depositions from the young girls, I believe they were manipulated by Epstein and not necessarily forced. They wanted money and were willing to sacrifice themselves without understanding the long-term consequences. Epstein and Maxwell were the monsters who were consuming young people for personal pleasure. It's sick and disgusting, but true.

One of the depositions discussed the ways young girls were manipulated—how they came and went and how they collected cash with each 30-minute massage. How they lied to their parents and skipped school to give 30-minute massages, how they referred friends, and how Epstein referred them to friends. Old men with a great deal of cash who wanted massages. It was all a vicious cycle of young girls being manipulated by monsters in the name of cash.

Unfortunately, what has been revealed has targeted no individual. Those men getting massages are like ghosts or phantoms who appear in motel and hotel rooms and exit without sight or sound. Sex is being played out in the media this month, and there is no pursuit of justice for victims of sexual predators. These terms are being used as a political weapon, wielded with surgical precision simply to gaslight the American people.

They want us to focus on the sexual allegations, although they lack evidence. Creating a witch hunt against individuals who have been implicated simply because their name happened to appear in the file. There are no new convictions because they lack substantial evidence, and yet they continue to holler about pedophiles and sex trafficking.

The Department of Justice has acknowledged that the files contain what it described as unfounded and false allegations submitted to the FBI before the 2020 election. They steer us to the sexual allegations and keep the narrative machine spinning: Trump is guilty by association. Trump is a predator. Trump is the real story.

While we are focused on stories without any evidence, we ignore other stories that are told in that file. And Black History Month is drowned out. Our history, once again, was not the priority. Our stories got scrolled past while pundits debated whether a birthday card with Trump's name on it constitutes evidence of sexual misconduct. The exhaustion is real.

The Barking Dog, the Bone, and the Buried Truth

There's a narrative at work here. Think of it this way: they've got a barking dog in your ear and a hand over your eyes. The Epstein files are the barking dog the left has been using for months now to keep the noise going, to keep you distracted. For a little while, ICE was the bone that shut the dog up — the immigration raids, the deportation stories, the outrage machine had something else to chew on. But that bone got snatched away, and now the dog is barking again. Louder than ever.

Last week, Les Wexner — the 88-year-old billionaire founder of L Brands, the man behind Victoria's Secret — was deposed by members of the House Oversight Committee at his mansion in New Albany, Ohio. He sat there for nearly five hours under oath. And to his credit, he played the right card. He said he didn't know what Epstein was up to. He called himself naive, foolish, and gullible. He said he was duped by a world-class con man. He said he cut ties with Epstein nearly twenty years ago. He said no one from the FBI or any other law enforcement agency ever contacted him about allegations of sexual assault. He said he barely knew the man — and of course, we can figure out that's probably not the whole truth when you've given someone your power of attorney and billions of dollars in assets, including a million-dollar townhouse in Manhattan.

But here's the thing: even if Wexner's relationship with Epstein was deeper than he admits — and it almost certainly was — there is no evidence of pedophilia. That's a different question entirely. No indictment. No DNA. No victims naming him in criminal complaints. No charges. Nothing. What there is, is hearsay, speculation, and a congressional fishing expedition led entirely by Democrats.

And let me emphasize that point. Not a single Republican member of the House Oversight Committee showed up for the Wexner deposition. Not one. Chairman James Comer cited a medical procedure. But the optics tell the story: this was a Democratic witch trial from start to finish. Five Democrats flew to Ohio to grill an 88-year-old man in his home about his sex life, about Epstein's sex life, and — here's where it gets truly maddening — about Donald Trump's sex life.

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Texas sat across from this man and asked him point blank: "Did Epstein ever share any information with you about Donald Trump's sexual activities?" Wexner said no. She asked if he ever saw or became aware of Trump having a sexual relationship with someone introduced to him by Epstein or Maxwell. Wexner said no. She pressed on whether Epstein had ever discussed Trump with him. No. Whether Trump had ever discussed Epstein. No. There was nothing there. Wexner said Trump used to show up at Victoria's Secret fashion shows and introduce himself, and that he found it odd because Trump had nothing to do with fashion. That's it. That's all they got. An implication not an allegation that provided a road to an investigation.

Yet Crockett told reporters afterward: "We're gonna be on his a--." Talking about the President of the United States. Based on what? Based on a man saying he doesn't remember and clearly not credible.  If this is what passes for investigation in America then our judicial system is in trouble.

To think that any person can be hauled before Congress, sat down under oath, and asked these kinds of intimate, degrading questions based solely on hearsay, without a single shred of physical evidence, goes against every democratic right you can imagine. Every citizen has the right to remain silent. Every citizen has the right to face their accusers. And those who want to prosecute have the burden of presenting a case. But there is no case here. No indictment. No allegations supported by facts — no DNA, no forensic evidence, nothing. Even in the case of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, she had proof. She had the blue dress. She had Clinton's DNA. That was a real case built on real evidence. Here we have Congress asking an 88-year-old man about another man's sexual proclivities and then pivoting to ask about the President's — all for the cameras, all for the narrative.

It was all a circus.  Big tents telling us to look over here at the clowns.

The Questions Nobody's Asking

February. Black History month spectacle. Here's what really got to me this week. While Democrats were busy trying to connect Trump to Epstein through an old man's fading memory, nobody was asking the questions that actually matter. The real questions. The ones that, if answered, would shake the foundations of power in this country.

Like: Why wasn't any of this investigated in 1996? That's when the FBI first heard allegations about Epstein. A woman named Maria Farmer reported to the FBI that Epstein had stolen naked photos of her underage siblings. No investigation was conducted. For years. How does that happen unless someone wanted to bury the story.

Like: Where did Epstein get his money? This was a man who lived like a billionaire, owned islands and planes and mansions, and yet no one has fully accounted for the precise structure of his wealth. Leslie Wexner gave him enormous financial authority, yes, but even that does not explain the full scope of what Epstein controlled. He owned aircraft. He moved in circles of power. His lifestyle exceeded what many traditional financial managers accumulate.

In the 1980s, covert operations and drug trafficking scandals devastated Black communities. The Iran-Contra era revealed that powerful institutions were capable of moral compromise on a global scale. So when a figure like Epstein rises with unexplained wealth and extraordinary protection, the public has reason to ask hard questions. The issue is not proving a direct connection. The issue is transparency. In a country where entire neighborhoods were flooded with drugs and later blamed for their own collapse, secrecy at the highest levels does not inspire trust.

If the FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ are filled with the intellectuals they purport to be, then why, in thirty years, has there not been a single thorough investigation into how Epstein built his empire? I think it is because nobody wanted those graves dug up. Those graves do not just hold Epstein's secrets. They hold the secrets of the institutions that looked the other way. The same institutions that gave us the Covid crisis and forced it upon the world. The same institutions that have pushed transgenderism as settled science when the conversation is far from settled. The same institutions that talk about human trafficking in the abstract while wealthy men continue to bring women from around the world to increase their own sexual power and nothing is done. All of it gets buried under allegations that cannot be substantiated. Under congressional theater that leads nowhere. Under headlines designed to generate clicks and outrage but never justice.

Let's Be Honest About What We're Looking At

Another thing that struck me about the Epstein files was the bottle girls. The VIP clubs. The way sex is used as currency in certain circles. Young women selling themselves for cash and high-priced bottles, for access to powerful men, for the promise of a modeling career or a seat at the table. The files are full of this. And the media acts shocked. As if strip clubs are not real things. As if prostitution is not a real lifestyle that some women choose and some are forced into. As if there are not levels to this, from the street corner to the high-priced escort who does the same things in a penthouse instead of a motel. The only difference is the price tag and the zip code.

That is not a defense of Epstein. It is a reality check. The culture of sexual transaction that Epstein exploited did not start with him and it will not end with him. It exists because powerful men create the demand and vulnerable women, and sometimes girls, are positioned to meet it. And instead of dealing with that systemic reality, Congress wants to know if an eighty-eight-year-old man remembers whether Trump was at a fashion show twenty years ago.

The whole thing is maddening. And if it were not documented and on video, you would not believe it was true.

What's Actually in the Files That Nobody Wants to Talk About

Here is where I need everybody to pay close attention. Because while Congress is busy chasing Trump's name through these files, the truly dangerous revelations are being glossed over. The things that should terrify every Black person, every poor person, every person of faith in this country are the very things nobody on Capitol Hill wants to discuss.

The Epstein files reveal that this man was not just a sex trafficker. He was a eugenicist. A fake race scientist. A man who believed he could engineer a superior human race. And he had the money, the connections, and the intellectual infrastructure to try.

Epstein maintained a list of nearly thirty top scientists. He funded research at Harvard, MIT, the Santa Fe Institute, and other elite institutions to the tune of millions of dollars. He gave 6.5 million dollars to Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. He donated 800,000 dollars to MIT's Media Lab. He gave 120,000 dollars to the Worldwide Transhumanist Association, now called Humanity Plus, an organization dedicated to using genetic engineering and artificial intelligence to enhance the human race. He organized lavish science conferences, flew researchers to his private island, held dinners with Nobel laureates and Silicon Valley billionaires, and embedded himself so deeply in the scientific establishment that researchers were sharing pre-publication manuscripts with him and consulting him on their career crises.

Brilliant minds discussing funding over those expensive dinners with whores in the house.

Race science. The files contain email exchanges where Epstein and his scientific associates openly discussed the supposed cognitive inferiority of Black people. One AI researcher wrote to Epstein in 2016 that Black children have slower cognitive development. Another exchange entertained the idea that mass deaths of the elderly might be beneficial to humanity. Epstein himself told Steve Bannon on camera that if he were in the forest competing against an African, he would be the one getting eaten, because Black people have the physical intelligence to deal with their environment, implying they lack the higher intelligence he attributed to himself.

This is what was being discussed in the rooms that Epstein's money built. Not at Klan rallies. Not in anonymous chat rooms. At Harvard. At MIT. At private dinners with the men building the AI systems that will shape our future, influence healthcare decisions, guide genetic research, determine insurance algorithms, and structure the technologies that increasingly govern how we live and who receives care.

Let me connect another dot that the media conveniently ignores. Epstein was included in email conversations about pandemic preparedness and global health financing years before Covid-19 ever appeared. A 2017 email from Boris Nikolic — a science advisor with direct ties to Bill Gates — was addressed to both Epstein and Gates, discussing donor-advised fund strategies for key areas including pandemic response. Epstein was in the room where global health priorities were being financially structured. He had relationships with virologists. Stanford virologist Nathan Wolfe visited Epstein's homes in New York and Florida, pitching him on funding virus research. The files show Epstein positioned himself at the intersection of global health philanthropy, financial engineering, and pandemic risk modeling.

Now I'm not saying Epstein created Covid. But I am saying this: the same networks that looked the other way while he trafficked girls are the same networks that shaped the global pandemic response. The same institutions — the intelligence agencies, the scientific establishment, the philanthropic class — that protected Epstein for decades are the same ones that told us to shut up, stay home, take the shot, and don't ask questions. Now we're just supposed to believe that they're really pursuing justice.

And then there's the transhumanism pipeline into the gender ideology that has swept through our schools, our medical institutions, and our culture. Epstein funded organizations and thinkers who believe the human body is something to be transcended, modified, and redesigned. That biology is a limitation to be engineered away. That nature is a rough draft and technology is the editor. This is the same philosophical root that feeds the idea that a child can be born in the wrong body. That hormones and surgery can correct what God designed. Transhumanism and transgenderism share the same intellectual DNA — the belief that the human being as created is insufficient and must be improved upon by human hands.

Epstein's money flowed into the very academic and nonprofit networks that now promote these ideologies as settled science. The same circles that entertained his eugenics fantasies over cocktails and coffee klatches are the ones publishing the research, writing the policies, and training the doctors who are reshaping our children. And we're told to celebrate it. We're told it's progress. We're told that questioning it makes us bigots.

And let me say something that might make people uncomfortable, but it's the truth and somebody needs to say it. We call Epstein and Maxwell monsters — and they were — for manipulating young people, exploiting their vulnerability, consuming their innocence for personal gain. The whole country is united in outrage over that. But what do we call the organizations that tell a woman it's empowering to kill her unborn child? What do we call the doctors who put a confused twelve-year-old boy on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and sentence him to a lifetime of medication to chase a biological impossibility? What do we call the system that celebrates all of this as healthcare and progress?

Epstein and Maxwell were individual monsters. But what we're looking at now is a monstrous system — institutional, funded, protected by law, and cheered on by the very same progressive establishment that sat at Epstein's dinner table. We cry outrage with one hand and applaud with the other. We weep for the girls Epstein manipulated and then hand our own children over to ideologies that are no less destructive — just better branded.

And here's what nobody wants to acknowledge: sex, prostitution, even the exploitation that Epstein trafficked in — those evils are as old as civilization itself. Since the scattering of mankind, since Babel, men have bought and sold flesh. It is wicked, but it is ancient. Abortion on demand as a political right? Gender transition as mainstream medicine for children? Those are new. Those are modern inventions — ideas that didn't exist in any serious mainstream form until the last hundred years. They are not the natural order of anything. They are manufactured ideologies, packaged as liberation, and sold to the very communities least equipped to survive their consequences.

Meanwhile, the communities most affected by these ideologies are our communities, Black communities, poor communities. The ones that are least equipped to push back. We don't have the lobbying power. We don't have the media platforms. We don't have the institutional backing. What we have is our faith, our common sense, and the willingness to say out loud what everybody else is whispering: something is deeply wrong, and the people responsible for it are the same people who are now pointing fingers at everyone else.

At the root of it all is something that goes deeper than policy or politics. The left's ideology moves away from God. It has to. Because you cannot pursue the kind of project Epstein and his intellectual circle were funding — redesigning human beings, engineering a master race, deciding which lives are worth living and which aren't — unless you first remove God from the equation. You have to dethrone the Creator before you can sit in His seat.

That's what transhumanism is. That's what eugenics is. That's what the gender ideology is. It's man saying: I know better than God. I can improve on what He made. I can fix what He designed. And the people making that claim aren't preachers or prophets — they're scientists and billionaires and politicians who have appointed themselves the saviors of humanity. Bill Gates will save you from the pandemic. Harvard will save you from your own biology. The government will save you from your ignorance. Just trust them. Just comply. Just hand over your children and your faith and your common sense, and they will build a better world.

That is the zeitgeist of the age. It is the spirit that runs through every single institution that protected Jeffrey Epstein, that funded his eugenics fantasies, that entertained his race science over expensive dinners, and that is now telling you to look at Trump instead of looking at them.

Meanwhile, Blue States Are Bleeding Their Own

Now let me turn the lens where it really needs to go. To the Democratic-led states and cities that promised the working class and the poor a better life. Because while the left paints Trump as a white nationalist whose only concern is his base, their own policies are gutting the very communities they claim to champion. The receipts are right here.

Virginia: Taxing You for Walking the Dog

Governor Abigail Spanberger came into office in January on a platform of “affordability”. The ink wasn't dry on her inauguration speech before Virginia Democrats introduced over fifty new tax proposals. I wish I was making this up but her proposals include taxes on dog walking, gym memberships, dry cleaning, home repairs, food delivery, package deliveries, and electric leaf blowers.

Dog walking. They want to tax you for walking your dog.

This is a state that Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin left with a $572 million budget surplus and four consecutive years of surpluses totaling $10 billion. He cut taxes and attracted business. And the very first thing Democrats did was reach into every pocket they could find. Some proposals would push Virginia's top income tax rate to 13.8% — higher than California's — giving the Commonwealth the dubious distinction of being the most heavily taxed state in the nation. Virginians didn't vote for that. They voted for affordability. What they got was a tax on picking up their dry cleaning.

New York: The Double-Edged Sword of Mamdani's Math

New York City's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is a self-described democratic socialist who rode into office on promises of rent freezes, free bus rides, city-owned grocery stores, and universal childcare. Beautiful promises. Campaign poetry. But now the prose of governing has arrived, and the numbers don't add up.

Mamdani inherited a $5.4 billion budget gap — a mess he blames on former Mayor Eric Adams and years of fiscal mismanagement. His preferred solution? Tax the wealthy. Raise income taxes by two percentage points on millionaires and hike corporate taxes. But Governor Kathy Hochul has flatly refused to support it. She has said repeatedly she will not raise taxes on the wealthy this year. So Mamdani responded with a threat: if Albany won't tax the rich, he'll raise property taxes on homeowners by 9.5%.

Let that sink in.  He is going to hold hostage the middle class and poor communities if he doesn't get funding for a socialist’s budget. 

The man who promised to freeze rents for four years on rent-stabilized apartments is now threatening to raise taxes on the property owners who provide those very apartments. How does that math work? If you freeze the income a landlord can collect from rent but increase the taxes they owe on the building, where does that money come from? It comes from deferred maintenance. It comes from buildings falling apart. It comes from landlords abandoning properties altogether. Who will be there standing in line to scoop up and save the abandoned properties, will it be the government.  Is this a government takeover. Socialism working at its best.  The New York Apartment Association warned that this combination would guarantee the physical destruction of tens of thousands of housing units. The Working-class, middle-class New Yorkers workers disproportionately Black families, lives in those units.

How about the free grocery stores? A Polymarket-funded pop-up in the West Village drew lines around the block — with shoppers being paired with staff who rushed them through the aisles. One woman on disability said she couldn't even get everything she needed before items ran out. Economists have called the city-owned grocery store plan a doomed experiment. Kansas City tried it. It failed. The grocery business runs on razor-thin margins, and government has never been known for efficiency. But Mamdani is charging ahead because the campaign slogan sounded good.

Your taxes will be used to fund the free grocery stores that will tell you what you will eat and what to put in your bag.

Chicago: Taxed to Death and Losing Its Team

Chicago. Another blue city. Another promise of progress. Another tax disaster.

Chicago homeowners were hit with record property tax increases.  These spikes are happening in the poorest neighborhoods, predominantly Black communities — because commercial property values in downtown areas have plummeted. Businesses have left. Now office towers sit empty and the tax burden shifted to the people who can least afford it.

Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas put it plainly: the high-rises downtown are unrented because businesses have left the city, and somebody has to pick up the tab. So the residences are picking it up. The homeowners. The working people. The very voters who were told that Democratic leadership would protect them.

Chicago's 2026 budget imposed $473 million in new taxes — on shopping bags, Uber rides, alcohol, online gaming, and even a first-in-the-nation social media tax. Mayor Brandon Johnson proposed a per-employee head tax on large firms that the City Council rejected, with aldermen warning it would drive even more businesses out.

Now the Chicago Bears — one of the NFL's founding franchises, over a century of football in Chicago — are on the verge of leaving the state entirely. Indiana lawmakers unanimously passed a bill this week to lure the team to Hammond, just across the state line. The Bears called it the most meaningful step forward in their stadium efforts to date. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker admitted that the team is unlikely to build within Chicago's city limits. Sources close to the situation called the move to Indiana an inevitability.

A hundred years of football history, walking out the door. Because Chicago's leadership couldn't get out of its own way. Because the taxes were too high. The bureaucracy was too thick. Indiana said: we're open for business — and Illinois said: we're open for new taxes.

The Narrative Machine Never Sleeps

Now let me be clear about something, because this is the thread that ties everything together. All of it, the Epstein circus, the tariff headlines, the culture wars, is being run through a narrative machine operated by the left. And the machine has one function: point everything at Donald Trump, MAGA, or racism and hope nobody looks behind the curtain.

They have a practice. They pick a direction, they drive the narrative relentlessly, and they count on us getting so caught up in the emotion, the outrage, the victimhood, the moral panic, that we lose sight of the fact that the left and left-leaning individuals are more implicated in the Epstein files than the right. The Clintons, the academic establishment, the philanthropic class, the media gatekeepers, these are overwhelmingly liberal institutions. And yet, the story we are being told is that no side is innocent, as if the guilt is evenly distributed. It is not. But that framing gives them cover to pivot from the files straight to Trump's name appearing in a contact list, as if proximity is the same as culpability. Meanwhile, the scientists who were discussing Black cognitive inferiority over Epstein-funded dinners at Harvard? Those are their people. The transhumanist organizations that got Epstein's checks? Those run in progressive intellectual circles. But somehow the camera always swings back to the same target.

They do this with everything. They put all white people in a racist box as if only white Republicans are capable of racism. As if a white progressive who funds eugenics research at MIT is somehow less dangerous than a MAGA voter in a red hat. The left has perfected the art of the redirect, and this past week gave us two textbook examples.

The Tariff Ruling: What They Told You vs. What Actually Happened

On Friday, February 20th, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that President Trump could not use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion, joined by Gorsuch, Barrett, and the three liberal justices. The decision struck down the IEEPA tariffs, which had raised over 160 billion dollars, on the grounds that the 1977 law does not mention tariffs and no president had ever used it that way before.

Now here is what the media told you: Supreme Court strikes down Trump's tariffs in major blow to the president. That is the headline. That is what they want you to walk away with. Trump lost. The Court checked his power. Democracy wins.

Here is what actually happened. Within hours of the ruling, Trump signed a proclamation imposing a 10 percent tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a completely different legal authority. By the next morning, he had raised it to 15 percent, the maximum allowed under that statute. Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, autos, and other goods remain untouched. Section 301 tariffs remain in place. The IEEPA avenue was closed, but the man still has multiple legal tools to impose tariffs, and he used them the same day.

But that is not the story, is it? The story is Trump lost. The story is the Court reined him in. They do not want you to see that tariff authority still exists through multiple congressional statutes. They do not want you to understand that the Constitution gives Congress the power to tax imports, and Congress has already delegated significant portions of that power to the president through other laws. They want you to feel good about a headline and move on. Because if you actually read the ruling and the response, the picture is far more complicated than they want you to see.

The Texas Senate Split: Crockett, Talarico, and the Media's Invisible Hand

We can’t leave out the quieter story that are just as revealing. Down in Texas, the Democratic Senate primary between Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico has turned into a case study in narrative manipulation.

Talarico sat for an interview with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. But on Monday night, Colbert announced on air that CBS lawyers had pulled the interview, citing potential FCC violations related to equal time rules for political candidates. Both Colbert and Talarico framed it as CBS bowing to pressure from the Trump administration. The media ran with that angle. Poor Talarico, silenced by Trump's regulatory intimidation.

But hold on. Think about what actually happened. Talarico — the candidate the Democratic establishment clearly prefers — got the Colbert interview in the first place. Not Crockett. Crockett, a sitting U.S. Congresswoman who had previously been on Colbert's show, was not invited this time. And when the interview was pulled, Talarico's campaign raised $2.5 million in 24 hours off the controversy. Crockett herself acknowledged it gave him the boost he was looking for. That is not what you is called suppression. This was a fundraising strategy wrapped in a censorship narrative.

By the end of the week, Talarico’s team doubled down on this strategy. Where did Talarico show up? On Bill Maher’s show, Friday, February 20th. Right there on the panel on HBO with Lauren Boebert, debating faith and politics before a national audience. No Jasmine Crockett. Talarico. Again.

The Democrats clearly do not want Crockett on that ticket. They are pouring their support behind Talarico because they believe he has the better shot at winning a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. Talarico is the one getting the national media platforms, the viral moments, the fundraising boosts. Crockett is being treated like an afterthought.  The party establishment is working behind the scenes to lift one candidate and let the other dangle in the wind. But they'll never say that out loud. Instead, they blame Trump for the Colbert interview being pulled and pretend both candidates have equal footing.

As I write this I am biting my tongue until it bleeds. Because stranger things have happened in politics and Crockett just might pull it off. But on the Republican side, the candidate I believe is the overall best person for that seat — Wesley Hunt — is in a tough spot, running third behind Paxton at 38% and Cornyn at 31% in the latest Hobby School poll. Hunt is polling at 17%, with the lowest unfavorable rating of any candidate in the race and the highest net favorability after Talarico. He's 44 years old, a West Point graduate, a combat veteran, and an America First conservative who entered Congress under the Trump movement. He is the future of the Republican Party in Texas.

But Cornyn has $60 million in ad support. Paxton has the MAGA base. And Hunt is stuck between the establishment and the populists. If Democrats in Texas were truly strategic — if they actually cared about governance over party loyalty — they would look at Wesley Hunt and recognize that he is the best overall candidate in either primary. Not Crockett. Not Talarico. Hunt. He's the one who could win a general election, govern competently, and represent the full spectrum of Texans. But partisan blinders will keep everyone in their lane, and Texas will be worse for it.

The Pattern Is the Point

Virginia. New York. Chicago. The Epstein files. The tariff headlines. The Texas primary games. It is all one big, ugly manipulation tactic, strategically implemented through social media narratives and pandered by those with the biggest pocketbooks.

They promised tax relief and delivered tax hikes. They promised to protect the poor and shifted the burden onto them. They promised economic vitality and watched businesses pack their bags. They promised to be the antidote to Trump and his supposed white nationalism, and yet the communities being devastated by their policies are overwhelmingly Black and working-class communities. And this is February, Black History Month. For real?

This is not the Republican Party doing this. These are Democrats. These are progressives. These are the people who hold up Black History Month banners in February and then spend the other eleven months crafting policies that hollow out Black communities from the inside. These are the people whose intellectual darlings were discussing eugenics and race science at Epstein-funded dinners while simultaneously lecturing us about systemic racism.

And while they do all of this, they point at Trump. Look over there. Epstein files, but only the pages with Trump's name. Tariff ruling, but only the headline that says he lost. Texas Senate race, but only the story about censorship, not the story about which candidate the party machine is actually backing. Whatever the distraction of the week is, it serves the same purpose. If you are watching Trump, you are not watching your property tax bill double. You are not watching your city lose its football team. You are not watching your governor propose a tax on walking your dog. You are not reading what the scientists at Harvard were actually saying about your Black children.

I am scrolled out. I am taxed out. And I am tired of being sold out by the very people who claim to be on our side.

This February, Black History Month did not get overshadowed by accident. It got overshadowed by design. Because the last thing certain people want is for Black Americans to stop and think about our history. They do not want us to look around at our present circumstances and start asking who is really working for us.

Here is the deepest truth I can offer you. Every ideology that is destroying our communities, the eugenics repackaged as science, the transgenderism sold as compassion, the socialism dressed up as justice, the taxes marketed as progress, all of it flows from the same poisoned well. It all begins with the rejection of God and the elevation of man. When you remove the Creator from the conversation, you do not get freedom. You get a new set of gods, smaller, weaker, more corrupt gods who happen to have Harvard degrees and billion-dollar foundations. Gods who funded a pedophile's race science. Gods who told you to lock down your church but keep the liquor stores open. Gods who will redesign your child's body and call it healthcare.

The left does not just lean away from God. It runs. Because everything they want to build requires that He not be in the room. You cannot play God if God is already there.

He is there. And we know it. That is why they cannot silence us, no matter how loud the barking dog gets. That is why Black Americans who hold to their faith, their families, and their common sense are the most dangerous people in this political equation. Because we see through it. We have always seen through it. We survived slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, crack, and mass incarceration, not because the government saved us, but because God carried us. And no amount of Epstein-funded science or Democrat-promised socialism is going to replace that.

The answer, more and more, is becoming painfully clear.

We are working for ourselves. And we are working with God. Because nobody else is.

---

© 2026 Jacqueline Session Ausby. All rights reserved. This work is the original and express intellectual property of Jacqueline Session Ausby and DAHTRUTH, LLC. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

Outside The Frame

“Test everything; hold fast to what is good.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:21

On the Epstein Letters, ICE, and Who Really Pays the Price

It’s February—the month we set aside to celebrate love. But this week, love didn’t show up the way the greeting cards promised. Instead, love revealed something far less romantic: the consequences of men unchecked and women willing to sacrifice everything for money, for survival, for proximity to power. What we witnessed this week was not a love story. It was a power story—dressed in the language of desire, wrapped in the politics of control, and played out across every screen in America. If love is supposed to teach us something in February, then this week it taught us what happens when power replaces intimacy, when exploitation masquerades as opportunity, and when the people who are supposed to protect us are too busy protecting themselves.

This week pulled back the curtain on something we already knew but keep pretending we don’t: power in America does not answer to the same rules as survival. What played out across our screens—from Capitol Hill testimony to cable news chyrons—was a collision of worlds that are usually kept carefully separated. The world of elite exploitation and the world of political theatre dressed up as moral conviction. The Epstein letters. ICE agents in Minneapolis. Pam Bondi before the House. These stories don’t just share a news cycle. They share a root system.

And the rest of us—the ones who are neither elite nor protected, the ones whose communities bear the real cost of broken borders and unchecked power—we sit outside the frame, watching both sides play chess with our reality.

— • —

I. The Epstein Letters: Power Without Consequence

Let’s call it what it is. The Epstein case was never just about one man. It was about a network—an architecture of access that allowed the wealthy and powerful to exploit young women while the institutions designed to protect them looked the other way. The “letters” that resurfaced this week are not merely correspondence. They are receipts. They are evidence of a world where influence shields harm and where transactional intimacy is not a scandal but a currency.

What we see in the Epstein saga is exploitation operating as a system, not an accident. Wealth doesn’t just insulate these men from consequence; it rewrites the moral framework entirely. When a billionaire’s name appears on a flight log, it’s a “connection.” When a teenage girl appears in the same record, she’s a “consenting participant.” The language of power always finds a way to sanitize itself.

And there is a gendered dimension here that we cannot ignore. Some of these young women recognized what their bodies could buy them in rooms where power was the only real currency. That is not empowerment. That is survival economics in a system that was rigged before they ever walked through the door. Meanwhile, the men at the center of these networks used sexual dominance as a means of reinforcing their authority—leveraging access to bodies as proof of status, as a perk of position, as the price others had to pay to be near power.

The public is fascinated by these revelations. We devour every headline. But fascination is not justice. Outrage without structural reform is just entertainment. And that is exactly what those at the top are counting on—that our attention span is shorter than their legal team’s retainer.

— • —

II. ICE, Minnesota, and the Rule of Law

For weeks before the Epstein story resurfaced, the national conversation was consumed by a different spectacle: ICE agents in Minneapolis, federal enforcement in the streets, and a media frenzy designed to make you feel something other than what the law actually says. And what the law says is clear: if you entered this country illegally, you are subject to deportation. Period. Whether or not you have committed a separate crime is beside the point. The act of illegal entry is itself a violation. That is the law. And the law must be enforced.

I say this not with malice but with clarity. There is a legal process for immigration. There are pathways to citizenship, to asylum, to lawful entry. Those who bypassed that process—regardless of their circumstances—made a choice that placed them outside the protection of the law they chose not to follow. Compassion does not require us to abandon the rule of law. In fact, abandoning the rule of law is itself the most uncompassionate thing we can do—because it is the communities where illegal immigrants settle, often our communities, that bear the burden. Overcrowded schools. Strained resources. Neighborhoods that change overnight without a single vote being cast.

And let us talk about Temporary Protected Status. TPS was designed for a specific purpose: to provide temporary refuge to people from countries experiencing war, natural disasters, or extraordinary conditions. The key word is temporary. When those conditions no longer exist—when the war has ended, when the disaster has passed, when the country has stabilized—then the status must be revoked and those individuals must return home. That is our law. That is the agreement. To extend TPS indefinitely is to turn a temporary measure into a permanent backdoor to residency, and that is not what the American people signed up for.

Minneapolis became a media battleground, but when the Trump administration began to wind things down—withdrawing ICE and Border Patrol from the streets—the cameras pivoted. Almost overnight, the Epstein letters re-entered the news cycle. Immigration coverage faded. Elite corruption returned. The choreography was seamless. In American media, stories don’t just appear and disappear organically. They are managed. They are timed. And when one story becomes inconvenient for those in power, another one is waiting in the wings.

— • —

III. Capitol Hill: Two Positions, No Innocence

Last week on Capitol Hill, these two worlds collided in a way that made the political theatre almost unbearable to watch. In one hearing room, ICE agents testified before Congress about the necessity of enforcement operations. In another, Pam Bondi appeared before the House of Representatives. And threading through all of it were the renewed questions about the Epstein files and what they reveal about the people who govern us.

Let me be direct: neither side is innocent, but one side makes more sense than the other.

On one side of the aisle, we heard the predictable cries. The cry of illegal immigrants being treated unjustly. The supposed destruction of voting rights because of the SAVE Act—a piece of legislation designed to ensure that only American citizens vote in American elections, which should not be controversial in a functioning democracy. And then there were the cries about exploited women—women connected to the Epstein case who have changed their names, whose identities are being weaponized for political points rather than pursued for justice. The left is not interested in protecting these women. They are interested in using them.

On the other side is a fight for American values—the sovereignty of our borders, the integrity of our elections, and the accountability of our leaders. But that fight has been misinterpreted and misaligned by those who are more concerned with power than with the principles they claim to defend. Officials maneuvering. Politicians posturing. Networks of influence where some only want to protect their own. The right has the better argument, but they are stumbling over their own execution, and that is a problem we need to talk about.

Congressional hearings have become performance art. Both sides know it. The questions are written for the clip, not for the record. Senators and representatives grandstand for their base, craft their fifteen-second moments for social media, and leave the hearing having advanced nothing but their own brand. The substance—the actual policy, the actual human impact—drowns beneath the theatre.

— • —

IV. Media Warfare: The Left Lights the Match, the Right Fans the Flames

This is where it gets personal for me. Because I have watched—for years now—how the media on both sides uses these stories not to inform us, but to arm themselves. Every headline is ammunition. Every revelation is a weapon aimed at the other side. And the people who are actually impacted by these events? We are collateral damage in a war that was never about us.

Let me start with the left, because right now, the left is the one lighting matches. It is the left that is using the immigration crisis to call out protesters to the streets. In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill is actively rallying her district to protest immigration enforcement. Over the last few days, we have seen demonstrations pop up across the state, and there are reports of children running from ICE agents at bus stops—stories designed to pull at heartstrings and override common sense. The left wants bodies in the street. They want chaos on camera. They want footage that makes enforcement look like oppression.

But here is the reality on the ground that the cameras don’t show you: far too many people aren’t truly that sympathetic. Not because they lack compassion, but because they live in the communities that have been impacted. They see the neighborhoods that have changed. They see the resources that have been stretched thin. They know what unchecked illegal immigration looks like up close, not from a cable news desk. And it is my sincere hope that the crowds that flooded Minneapolis—many of them paid protesters, bused in to manufacture outrage—do not descend on our streets here in New Jersey. Because the reality is that there are neighborhoods where illegal immigrants have clearly overwhelmed communities, and we need to let ICE do their job and remove those who are here illegally.

Now let me turn to the right, because they are not blameless in this either. The right is poorly managing this immigration crisis. They are walking directly into the hands of the paid protesters, unable to manage crowds, unable to de-escalate. And the consequences have been deadly. We have seen agents who, rather than withdrawing from a volatile situation and coming back another day, choose to force the issue. They lie. They escalate. And American citizens—aggressive or not—end up shot and killed. That is unacceptable. When the enforcement of immigration law results in the death of an American citizen, something has gone catastrophically wrong. You leave the scene. You come back another day. You do not turn a deportation operation into a battlefield. Every death is a failure of leadership, and the right needs to own that.

Both sides control the language, and both sides use it as a weapon. On the right, it’s “illegal immigrants.” On the left, it’s “undocumented workers.” On the right, Epstein’s victims were “runaway girls.” On the left, they are “sex trafficking survivors”—but only when the accused is a Republican. Language is not neutral. Language is moral framing, and both sides wield it like a blade.

And underneath all of it is the economy of outrage. Outrage drives clicks. Clicks drive revenue. Revenue drives editorial priorities. The stories that survive the news cycle are not the ones that matter most—they are the ones that generate the most engagement. Our anger is being monetized. Our grief is content. Our trauma is a commodity.

— • —

V. The Ones Outside the Frame

So where does that leave us? The ones who are not running cable news networks or sitting on congressional committees or flying on private jets?

Let me be clear about something: I love this country. America is the land of the free. There is opportunity here for anyone willing to pursue it through the proper channels. That has always been the promise, and it is a promise worth protecting. But the focus of this nation must be on its citizens first. Not because we lack compassion, but because a country that cannot care for its own people has no business extending itself to those who are here outside the law—people who, let’s be honest, are often wanted not for their well-being but for their votes and their ability to justify the expansion of government resources and political power.

The media wants you to wonder about the immigrant mother. I wonder about the American mother. The one whose child’s classroom has doubled in size because her local school district was never funded to absorb the influx. The one whose wait at the emergency room has tripled. The one who watched her son get passed over for a job because someone will do it for half the wage under the table. The one who buried a child killed by someone who should never have been in this country in the first place. These are not hypotheticals. These are American families whose reality has been reshaped by a system that prioritizes political optics over their daily lives.

And then there are our veterans. Men and women who served this nation, who came home broken and were told there was nothing left for them. They sleep on our streets. They die in the cold. In New York City this winter, eighteen homeless people froze to death—American citizens, exposed to the elements—while the city spends billions housing illegal immigrants in hotels. In Chicago, homeless Americans ride trains through the night to stay warm while the city provides shelter, food stamps, and healthcare to people who have no legal right to be here. A nation that houses those who broke its laws while its own veterans die on the sidewalk has lost its moral compass. That is not compassion. That is a set of misplaced priorities that should trouble every citizen regardless of party.

American workers, too, are feeling the weight. Industries like construction, landscaping, and food service have been undercut by the availability of cheap, illegal labor. Employers exploit it because they can. And the American worker—the one who needs a living wage, benefits, and safe conditions—cannot compete. The American family’s standard of living erodes quietly while politicians on both sides look the other way because cheap labor is profitable for their donors.

And we cannot forget the Americans who have lost their lives at the hands of individuals who were in this country illegally. Every one of those deaths was preventable. If the law had been enforced—if the border had been secured, if sanctuary cities had cooperated with ICE, if deportation orders had been carried out—those Americans would still be here. Their names deserve more than a news cycle.

It leaves us exactly where power wants us: outside the frame.

The psychological toll is real. The story shifts week to week, but the weight on American communities remains constant. The cynicism deepens. The trust in institutions erodes. And ordinary citizens whose lives have been quietly disrupted by illegal immigration are told to be patient, to be compassionate—while their own country treats them as an afterthought.

Here is the truth that neither the left nor the right wants to say out loud: the powerful do not absorb the consequences of their own decisions. The left-wing politicians who advocate for open borders don’t live in the neighborhoods that absorb the impact. Their children don’t attend the overcrowded schools. They don’t wait in the overwhelmed emergency rooms. And the right-wing officials who militarize enforcement don’t suffer when their agents kill an American citizen. The consequences always flow downhill. It is the ordinary people—the ones whose lives become headlines without ever becoming priorities—who carry the weight.

I believe in the rule of law. I believe that illegal entry demands legal consequence. I believe that TPS must be enforced as written—temporary means temporary. I believe that ICE should be allowed to do its job. I believe our veterans deserve shelter before anyone who broke the law to be here. I believe American workers deserve protection in their own labor market. I believe the families who have lost loved ones to preventable violence deserve more than a moment of silence. And I believe that enforcement must be conducted with discipline, with strategy, and without the loss of American life. These positions are not contradictory. They are not extreme. They are the common sense of a citizen who loves her country enough to expect it to put its own people first.

— • —

The Reckoning That Never Comes

I write this not as a journalist and not as a pundit. I write this as a Black woman in America who has watched these cycles repeat for decades. I write this as someone who has seen her community’s pain become a talking point and then a footnote and then nothing at all. I write this because the truth—dah truth—is that none of this will change until we stop accepting the narrative we’re given and start demanding the one we deserve.

The Epstein letters will generate outrage for a few more weeks. The immigration debate will surge again when it’s politically useful. Capitol Hill will hold more hearings that produce more sound bites and less justice. And the media—left and right—will continue to feed us the version of reality that keeps their lights on.

But we don’t have to consume it uncritically. We don’t have to let them tell us which story matters and when. We can hold all of it at once—the exploitation, the enforcement, the theatre, the manipulation—and refuse to let any of it slide.

Because the ones outside the frame? We’re the only ones keeping score.

A House Divided in Winter

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every house divided against itself shall not stand.” Matthew 12:25

False Unity, Moral Substitution, and the Illusion of Agreement

This week was brutal.

A deep, frigid cold settled over much of the northern United States, followed by a snowstorm that buried streets, sidewalks, and cars. Many of us woke up to frozen mornings, shoveling ourselves out just to begin the day. Wind burned our faces. Roads narrowed. Progress slowed. February arrived not gently, but harshly.

Groundhog Day came and went, and as tradition would have it, there was no promise of early relief. Only more winter. More cold. More endurance.

There was something revealing about those mornings. Neighborhoods were divided by snowbanks. Streets were reduced to narrow, passable lanes. People stood alone on street corners and at bus stops, bracing themselves against the wind. Order required effort, coordination, and shared rules. Without them, nothing moved.

It felt like living inside one of those bleak winter stories where the cold is more than weather. It is atmosphere. A kind of moral frost that exposes what is fragile, what is fractured, and what cannot hold together under pressure.

And as we shoveled our driveways and listened to the news, something became painfully clear: the cold was not only outside.

A House Divided

Jesus takes that question further and issues a warning: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation,

and every house divided against itself shall not stand.” — Matthew 12:25

What we are witnessing today is not healthy disagreement. It is something more dangerous: the illusion of unity. People stand side by side, speaking the same language of outrage, while remaining fundamentally divided on truth, authority, and allegiance.

A divided house can stand for a time, just as a roof heavy with snow can hold for a season, but eventually the weight becomes too much.

False Unity on Display

Recently, I listened to a conversation between Candace Owens and Bassem Youssef. On the surface, it appeared to be a thoughtful exchange between two people from very different backgrounds. One claims Catholic Christianity. The other is openly Muslim. But beneath the politeness was something more revealing.

At one point, Candace referenced “God,” and Bassem asked plainly, “Which God?” It was a moment that should have stopped the conversation cold. From a Christian perspective, a God not named as Jesus Christ is not the same God. That difference is not semantic. It is foundational.

Yet the moment passed quickly, unexamined.

Why? Because agreement had already been found elsewhere. That agreement was not rooted in shared theology, shared moral vision, or shared allegiance. It was rooted in shared hostility, particularly toward Israel, and in Candace’s case, toward Jews more broadly. Profound differences were glossed over because a common resentment provided the glue.

This is not walking together in truth. This is walking together in grievance.

Conflation and Convenience

There is a critical distinction between criticizing a government and condemning a people. Governments deserve scrutiny. Peoples do not deserve collective guilt.

When claims are made that Jews were responsible for the American slave trade, despite Israel not existing as a modern state during that period, and those claims are later defended as merely “criticism of the Israeli government,” the logic collapses. Language becomes a shield rather than a clarification.

If Israel did not exist as a nation between 1619, when the first enslaved Africans arrived on American soil, and 1865, when the Civil War ended slavery, then the accusation cannot be about Israeli policy. It is about Jewish people. That is not government critique. That is antisemitism dressed in political language.

Selective phrasing allows animosity to hide behind critique. Hatred conceals itself best when it borrows respectable vocabulary.

And when resentment becomes the common ground, people who are otherwise deeply divided can appear united, at least temporarily.

A Fractured Right

This tension reflects a broader fracture within the Republican Party itself, and the fault line runs deeper than policy disagreements. It is a moral and theological divide that the party has not yet been willing to confront openly.

On one side are figures like Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and for a time Charlie Kirk, who have affirmed Israel’s right to exist as a nation. They distinguish between the actions of a government and the identity of a people. They may not support every decision the Israeli government makes, but they hold that Jewish people have a right to nationhood, that Israel is an ally of the United States, and that the destruction of Israel is not a legitimate political position. Their argument is grounded in what they see as a Judeo-Christian moral inheritance that recognizes Israel’s place in both Scripture and Western civilization.

On the other side are voices like Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and increasingly Candace Owens, who have moved beyond policy criticism into something more corrosive. Fuentes has been open in his hostility toward Jewish people, barely disguising it behind irony and provocation. Carlson has platformed figures and narratives that blur the line between legitimate skepticism and conspiratorial thinking. Owens has publicly claimed Jewish involvement in the American slave trade and has framed her opposition to Israel in terms that repeatedly slide from government critique into ethnic resentment.

What unites this second group is not a shared theology or a shared political philosophy. It is a shared antagonism. They may disagree on nearly everything else, but their disdain for Israel, and in many cases for Jewish people themselves, functions as a binding agent. They use the distinction between “Zionism” and “Judaism” as rhetorical cover, but the pattern of their language tells a different story.

These two factions occupy the same party, appear on the same media platforms, and appeal to overlapping audiences. But they are not agreed. They are not walking together. They are marching under the same banner while heading in opposite moral directions. And Jesus already told us what happens to a house in that condition.

A Dostoyevskian America

As I recently began reading Dostoyevsky’s Demons, the parallels became impossible to ignore.

The narrator introduces Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, a celebrated intellectual who produces no substantial work, carries no moral responsibility, and fails even within his own household. He is a negligent father, more invested in his social reputation than in the formation of his own son. His influence is social, not substantive. His authority is assumed, not earned.

And it is his son, Pyotr Verkhovensky, who becomes the more dangerous figure. Pyotr returns to the town not as a thinker but as an organizer. He gathers a small circle of radicals, each holding different grievances and different ideologies, and binds them together not through shared conviction but through shared destruction. They do not agree on what to build. They agree on what to tear down. Pyotr manipulates their differences, glosses over their contradictions, and directs their collective energy toward chaos. The group believes it is unified. In truth, it is merely useful to one manipulator’s agenda.

This is the pattern Dostoyevsky warns about: people who are fundamentally divided being organized around destruction rather than truth. Their unity is not real. It is manufactured. And it serves not the group but the agenda of whoever holds the strings.

Dostoyevsky is not attacking education or progress. He is exposing intellectualism without moral grounding. Ideas divorced from consequence. Influence without accountability. A generation inheriting language but not the values that gave that language meaning.

That is what increasingly defines our public life. We invoke God without theology, justice without law, compassion without consequence, and America without allegiance. Like the characters in Demons, we repeat moral language while hollowing out its meaning. We borrow fragments of belief systems while rejecting the discipline and structure that give those beliefs coherence.

From Fiction to Evidence

Demons was a fictional account of what Dostoyevsky saw happening in his own society: a culture drifting away from its foundations, seduced by ideas that sounded liberating but carried no moral weight. He wrote it as a warning. We do not need novels to see that warning fulfilled. We have current history.

Consider Iran. For decades, an Islamic theocracy imposed its values on a population through force, surveillance, and fear. Women were beaten for showing their hair. Dissent was met with imprisonment or death. The moral framework of the state was not chosen by the people; it was enforced upon them. And now we are witnessing a cultural uprising. Iranian citizens, particularly women and young people, are pushing back against the very values that have oppressed them for a generation. In this case, the divide is righteous. A people are rejecting a system that suffocated them.

But what is happening in response to Gaza is the opposite. We are watching individuals in the West voluntarily align themselves with the same ideological framework that has oppressed Iran.

Christian Smalls, the labor organizer and activist who co-founded the Amazon Labor Union and led the first successful unionization of an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, has extended his activism into vocal solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Sabrina Salvati, the journalist and political commentator known as Sabby Sabs, has used her Boston-based podcast to frame the conflict in ways that go well beyond humanitarian concern and into ideological alignment. College students occupy campus buildings. Professors sign open letters. Activists chant slogans rooted in a worldview they have never lived under and do not fully understand.

This is the profound contradiction. In Iran, people are dying to escape the consequences of a belief system. In America, people are marching to embrace it, without recognizing the historical evidence of what that system produces when it governs. The oppression of women, the persecution of religious minorities, the suppression of free expression: none of this is hidden. It is documented, visible, and ongoing.

And yet the alignment continues. Youth and academics adopt the language of liberation while defending structures that have historically denied it. This is not solidarity. It is incoherence. And it is precisely the kind of moral confusion Dostoyevsky depicted in fiction, now playing out in real time. Pyotr’s circle believed they were revolutionaries. They were, in fact, instruments of someone else’s chaos. The same pattern repeats when Americans adopt causes whose full consequences they have never been asked to live with.

This too creates division. Not the productive kind that comes from honest disagreement, but the corrosive kind that comes from abandoning one’s own foundational values in favor of borrowed grievances. It is, in every sense, hypocritical. And hypocrisy, left unchecked, fractures a house from within.

Moral Substitution and Immigration Rhetoric

This pattern of borrowed moral authority surfaced again this week when New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani addressed a crowd and framed illegal immigration through the story of Muhammad’s migration to Medina, urging Americans to model their response after it.

What was striking was not the religious reference itself, but the assumption beneath it: that Islamic historical narrative should serve as moral authority over American law.

The United States is not built on Islamic theology. Its legal and moral framework emerged from Christian assumptions about human dignity, ordered liberty, and national sovereignty. To invoke a religious narrative foreign to that framework, while condemning American institutions like ICE for enforcing American law, is not moral persuasion. It is moral substitution.

The migration of Muhammad was not a neutral act of refuge. It marked the beginning of a political and religious order enforced through power. To present it as a simple parable of compassion, stripped of its historical and theological context, is the very kind of selective storytelling that hollowed-out ideologies rely on.

This is not an argument about the worth of individual immigrants. It is a question of authority and allegiance. A nation cannot be governed by moral frameworks it did not consent to, nor can it survive if its own foundations are treated as illegitimate.

America and Allegiance

At its core, America is not merely land. It is a constitutional order. Citizenship is not just presence; it is allegiance.

Yet we are increasingly divided over what America even is. Some still affirm it as a flawed but legitimate republic grounded in law, liberty, and responsibility. Others describe it as inherently illegitimate, stolen land, oppressive by design, unworthy of loyalty, while simultaneously demanding the benefits of belonging. Still others imagine America as an ethnic possession, a nation that was and should remain exclusively white.

What all three of these visions share, despite their differences, is a troubling tendency to erase American Blacks (ADOS) from the story.

American Blacks (ADOS) have been present on this soil since 1619, when the first enslaved Africans were brought to the Virginia colony. That is before the Mayflower. Before the Constitution. Before the Republic itself had a name. For nearly two and a half centuries, Black labor built the infrastructure, agriculture, and economy that made this nation possible. Black soldiers fought in every American war. Black thinkers shaped its moral conscience. Black families endured what no other group in this nation’s history has been asked to endure, and they did so not as guests or outsiders, but as Americans in the fullest and most costly sense of the word.

And yet, in conversation after conversation, commentary after commentary, American Blacks (ADOS) are written out. The progressive vision speaks of “immigrant contributions” as though the nation was built by those who chose to come, ignoring those who were brought here in chains and whose labor preceded nearly every wave of voluntary immigration. The white nationalist vision claims America as its own creation, as though the fields plowed themselves and the railroads laid their own tracks. Even mainstream conservative voices, like Michael Knowles, have spoken of American identity in terms that center whiteness so thoroughly that the American Black experience becomes invisible.

The Irish arrived in the 1850s. Germans, Italians, and Eastern Europeans followed in successive waves. Each group contributed to the American story. But none of them arrived to find an empty land. They arrived to find a nation already built in significant part by the hands of people who had been here for over two hundred years and had never been given the liberty to leave.

To exclude American Blacks (ADOS) from the founding narrative of this country is not merely an oversight. It is a distortion. And a nation that cannot tell its own story honestly cannot walk together in truth.

Agreement Matters

Amos was right. Jesus was right. Dostoyevsky saw it coming.

A society can temporarily unite around shared outrage. But outrage is not a foundation. Hatred is not agreement. And unity built on resentment cannot bear weight forever.

If we are no longer walking together, the question is not simply who disagrees with us, but what we have agreed to replace truth with.

Somewhere a podcast host glosses over the name of Jesus to keep a conversation comfortable. Somewhere a politician invokes a prophet foreign to this nation’s moral framework to shame its laws. Somewhere a student chants for liberation under a banner whose history would deny her the right to speak at all. And somewhere a woman in Tehran removes her hijab knowing it may cost her everything.

A house divided may endure a winter. But it will not survive the thaw.

This Is Not Selma

“The disfranchisement of the Negro is unjust to him, harmful to the white man, and a danger to the State. No man can be permanently wronged without the wrong reacting in some way upon himself.” — Booker T. Washington, circa 1900

The Exploitation of Black American History for a Different Fight

I am sick and tired of the lies being spread by many Democrats today, including American Blacks who claim to speak for our community but refuse to tell the honest truth. Lately, I have been reading Before the Mayflower, and the difference between that small book, which captures American Black history succinctly, and The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones is immediately noticeable. Once you understand our history, the distortion becomes clear.

The distortion is nuanced. It is embedded in how the story is told. The 1619 Project presents history from a perspective that implies the racists of the Jim Crow South are somehow the same lineage or moral legacy as the Republicans of today. That implication is false. The historical record is clear: the violent suppression of Black Americans during Reconstruction and Jim Crow was carried out under a one-party Democratic system that controlled law enforcement, courts, and local government throughout the South. Hannah-Jones conflates history and omits this critical political context, and this approach is now used across modern media to twist the past into a narrative that does not align with the documented record.

The Minnesota Situation

This is why I decided to write this week's blog, prompted in part by the Don Lemon and Georgia Fort situation, which was quickly framed as a civil rights controversy. To me, it felt less like a genuine civil rights issue and more like a carefully constructed distraction from what is actually happening on the ground in Minnesota.

The protests themselves are not organic, and the viral clips circulating online are designed to be short, fast, and emotionally charged—just enough to rile people up around a distorted or incomplete story. This is exploitation in its purest form. The goal is not understanding, truth, or resolution, but agitation. Manufactured outrage keeps people distracted from the real issues affecting our communities.

Within a single week, the public was asked to absorb several emotionally charged events. Don Lemon was arrested after entering a church with protesters. Georgia Fort, an independent Minnesota journalist, was arrested in connection with the same incident. Around the same time, Representative Ilhan Omar claimed she was sprayed with apple cider vinegar during a public encounter. I watched the footage and reviewed her remarks without relying on outside commentary. Given the pattern of emotionally charged incidents emerging from Minnesota in rapid succession—each one perfectly calibrated to generate outrage against Republicans and immigration enforcement—skepticism is warranted. I am not claiming proof. I am noting a pattern that demands scrutiny rather than reflexive acceptance.

At the same time, a Native Land Podcast town hall was held in Minnesota, where speakers framed current immigration enforcement as morally comparable to the Civil Rights era.

That comparison is what I find most disturbing.

The Justice You Won't Hear About

We are programmed to hear stories of injustice in our communities. That is what drives engagement. That is what generates outrage. But last week, something else happened that received almost no attention: Sean Grayson, the former Illinois sheriff's deputy who shot and killed Sonya Massey in her home, was sentenced to 20 years in prison—the maximum sentence allowed under Illinois law.

When Sonya Massey was killed in July 2024, the story stoked the flames of racism and police brutality. She was a 36-year-old Black woman who called 911 to report a prowler. A white deputy shot her in the face in her own kitchen. The body camera footage was harrowing. Protests erupted. The case became national news.

And then? The system worked.

Grayson was fired, arrested, and charged. A jury convicted him of second-degree murder. A judge gave him the maximum sentence. The sheriff who hired him was forced to retire. Sangamon County agreed to implement more de-escalation training. Illinois changed its law to require fuller background checks on law enforcement candidates. And Sonya Massey's family—including her two teenage children—received a $10 million settlement, negotiated by civil rights attorney Ben Crump.

Justice was served.

But you don't hear much about that, do you? Because justice doesn't fit the narrative. The media wants to focus on injustice—on the outrage, the wound, the grievance. When the system actually holds a killer accountable, that story fades. It doesn't generate clicks. It doesn't keep people angry.

This is the difference between 1964 and today. In 1964, the men who murdered James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner walked free for years. The state of Mississippi refused to prosecute. The system protected the killers. That was Jim Crow.

Today, a white deputy who killed a Black woman in her own home received the maximum sentence. Her children will receive restitution. Her name changed Illinois law. That is not Jim Crow. That is accountability. And pretending otherwise insults the people who actually lived—and died—under a system that offered no justice at all.

The False Equivalence

Black American history, particularly the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras, is being used to make modern immigration enforcement feel morally equivalent to the violent suppression of Black Americans. The implication is that what happened to us is now happening to them. That comparison is emotionally powerful, but it is historically false.

The most glaring example is the repeated invocation of the 1964 murders in Mississippi, when James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were killed for helping Black American citizens register to vote. Those men were targeted because they were assisting citizens who were being denied a constitutional right by a one-party Democratic system.

What is happening in Minnesota does not align with that history. The killing of Alex Pretti, while tragic and rightly under investigation, occurred during a federal immigration enforcement operation. It was not a voter registration drive. Pretti was not targeted for advancing the civil rights of American citizens. These are fundamentally different legal and historical contexts, and collapsing them into a single narrative distorts both.

Civil rights were fought to secure citizenship and constitutional protection for Black Americans who were denied both by law. Using that history to guilt Americans into accepting disorder, selective enforcement narratives, or the erosion of the distinction between citizens and non-citizens does not advance justice. It distorts it.

The Church Incident and Due Process

Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were charged with conspiracy against rights of religious freedom and attempting to injure while exercising religious freedom. These are not charges against journalism. These are charges alleging that the civil rights of American citizens—the worshippers at Cities Church—were violated.

The protesters entered Cities Church in St. Paul to confront a man believed to be employed by ICE. That man is an American citizen, legally employed by the federal government, and legally entitled to worship without being confronted or harassed during a religious service. Whatever one thinks of ICE as an institution, entering a church to confront a private citizen during worship raises serious questions about the rights of worshippers and the limits of protest.

Yes, two judges initially rejected charges against Lemon, citing insufficient evidence of criminal behavior. But that does not establish innocence—it means the threshold was not met at that preliminary stage. What concerns me is what the footage shows: Lemon's presence with protesters before they entered the church, his coordination with them, the role he played in the lead-up to the disruption. Intent matters. The question is not whether Lemon held a camera, but whether he was a journalist documenting an event or a participant who used the journalist label as cover.

That is a question for the courts to decide. Lemon deserves due process, and he should have his day in court so that the facts can be examined and judged accordingly. But the rush to frame this as an attack on Black journalism—as though he was charged simply for being Black—obscures the actual legal question at issue.

Many Black journalists do not engage in this behavior. Black reporters across mainstream and independent media outlets manage to cover immigration and protest movements without entering churches or following protesters into worship services. Lemon and Fort's choices were their own, and they do not represent journalism as a whole or Black journalism specifically.

There is also an uncomfortable irony here. Historically, Black churches were surveilled, disrupted, and attacked by white mobs—often under Democratic control—seeking to prevent Black Americans from worshiping freely. In this case, protesters entered a predominantly white church to confront a worshipper over his employment. While the scale and violence are not comparable, the underlying logic is troubling: political intimidation was brought into a religious space, and the racial framing was later reversed to obscure that reality.

The Historical Lie

Left-leaning commentators increasingly frame these events as a struggle between Democrats and Republicans, or between whites and Blacks. That framing does not hold up under historical scrutiny. There are white Democrats and Black Americans who oppose current immigration policies. To maintain the narrative, the language expands to "Black and brown," folding immigrants into the Black American story despite vastly different histories, legal statuses, and relationships to the state.

This is not fundamentally about race. It is not fundamentally about party. It is about law.

Either we are a nation governed by laws, including borders, or we are not. To make federal enforcement appear inherently immoral, a familiar image must be resurrected. The violent white oppressor of Jim Crow memory carries emotional weight in Black communities, and that is precisely why it is invoked. Yet the historical oppressors people are being asked to imagine were not Republicans. They were Democrats operating within a one-party Southern system. By reviving that image and attaching it to modern immigration enforcement, commentators create a villain that does not exist in this context.

Civil Rights Funding vs. Modern Protest Funding

Some will point out that the Civil Rights Movement also had significant organizational funding and coordination. That is true. The NAACP received substantial donations. The Urban League was well-funded. CORE operated with donor support. Corporations like IBM, Coca-Cola, Ford, and General Motors contributed. Government funding supported the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.

But the existence of funding is not what distinguishes legitimate movements from manufactured ones. What matters is what the money was used for, who it served, and the legal context in which it operated.

Civil Rights–era funding supported the enforcement of existing constitutional rights. Money paid for court cases, attorneys, bail for unjust arrests, voter registration infrastructure, and protection against unconstitutional laws. The goal was access to the law, not pressure against it. These organizations supported American citizens who were denied the vote, denied equal protection, and denied access to public institutions. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were responses to documented constitutional violations by state governments. That is why federal funding was justified—the federal government was enforcing its own Constitution against rogue states.

Most importantly, the Civil Rights Movement made specific, finite demands: end segregation, secure the vote, enforce equal protection. Once achieved, protests subsided because the legal objective was met. There was no demand to erase borders, suspend law enforcement, or collapse the distinction between citizen and non-citizen.

Modern protest funding operates under a fundamentally different logic. It often sustains continuous protest cycles, media amplification, legal defense for civil disobedience, and disruption as a permanent strategy. There is frequently no clear endpoint, because outrage itself becomes the product. Unlike the Civil Rights era, modern protest movements often treat law enforcement itself as illegitimate, blur the distinction between enforcement and abuse, and frame citizenship boundaries as immoral. This is a reversal of the Civil Rights framework, which demanded that the law finally apply to Black Americans.

Civil Rights funding fought for Black Americans inside the polity. Modern protest funding often advances causes involving non-citizens, transnational political goals, and ideological commitments unrelated to constitutional rights. That is not an extension of Civil Rights. It is a different project entirely.

Those perfectly crafted signs do not appear out of basements, bedrooms, or garages of the oppressed. They are printed, laminated, and carefully mounted on wooden sticks. That level of preparation suggests coordination. But coordination alone is not the issue—the Civil Rights Movement was coordinated too. The issue is what the coordination serves: finite goals for American citizens, or sustained agitation with no clear endpoint that conflates citizen and non-citizen interests.

This Is Not Selma

American Black media is feeding our community a lie: that illegal immigration enforcement is the same as Jim Crow oppression, that the Republicans of today are the Democrats of 1964, and that journalists who coordinate with protesters to disrupt church services are victims rather than participants who deserve their day in court.

The 1619 Project began this work of historical distortion by conflating timelines and omitting political context. Now that same approach is being used to exploit the Black American struggle for a completely different fight—one involving non-citizens whose relationship to the American legal system is fundamentally different from that of Black Americans who were born here, whose ancestors built this country, and who were denied rights they were owed under the Constitution.

Civil Rights–era funding enforced constitutional rights for American citizens who were denied them by law. Modern protest funding often supports sustained political agitation that challenges the legitimacy of law itself and blurs the distinction between citizens and non-citizens. Treating these two as morally or historically equivalent is not just inaccurate. It is an insult to the men and women who bled for our freedom.

When Sean Grayson received the maximum sentence for killing Sonya Massey, the silence from the same media that stoked outrage over her death was deafening. Because justice doesn't fit the narrative. Grievance does.

That is why this moment deserves scrutiny rather than slogans.

© 2026 Jacqueline Session Ausby. All rights reserved. This post and all original content published under DahTruth are the intellectual property of Jacqueline Session Ausby. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

The Baby We Keep Being Asked to Surrender

“Citizenship is not conferred by birth alone, but by fidelity to the principles of freedom and justice.” Frederick Douglass

There is a story in the Bible about Solomon, the son of David, who became king of Israel after David’s death. He was the son of Bathsheba. Two women once brought a baby before Solomon, each claiming to be the mother. One woman said the other had rolled over her child during the night, killed it, and secretly took the living baby. Solomon could not know the truth, so he proposed a test. “Let’s cut the baby in half.”

The true mother immediately cried out, “No. Give her the baby. Let her have it.”

Solomon knew then who the real mother was, because she was willing to sacrifice her own love in order to save the child.

I reference this story because it mirrors something Frederick Douglass experienced. After the Dred Scott decision, when the Supreme Court ruled that African Americans, descendants of enslaved Africans, could never be citizens, Douglass became disheartened. Black Americans had built the nation, fought in its wars, and sacrificed for it, yet were told they did not belong. He even considered leaving the United States, exploring places like Haiti as a potential homeland. In a sense, he was willing to give up the baby, to give up America, so that the people might survive.

Then came the firing on Fort Sumter and the beginning of the Civil War. At that moment, Douglass changed course. African Americans would fight for the nation they had built. They would defend it. They would claim it. They would not abandon the land their ancestors had watered with sweat, blood, and tears.

“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.”

— Proverbs 29:2 KJV

That choice, to stay, to fight, to build, defines our history.

When we think about the history of African Americans, the sacrifices are undeniable. We have given this nation blood, sweat, and tears. We have been enslaved, raped, lynched, murdered, incarcerated, discriminated against, and systematically excluded, yet we still love this land. We claim it as our own even when others insist we do not belong. Our roots are here. We have nowhere else to go.

And yet today, some try to tell us our story is the same as the immigrant story. It is not.

Frederick Douglass was willing to give up the baby rather than destroy what belonged to others. Today, what we see is different. Illegal immigrants, and in some cases legal immigrants, arrive with a philosophy that openly despises the West, refuses to assimilate, and disparages America’s institutions. They do not love this nation, yet we are constantly told to center their plight as if it mirrors ours.

Illegal immigrants step over those waiting in line for legal citizenship, enter communities already struggling, and draw heavily from housing, education, and healthcare, resources built through generations of Black labor and sacrifice. Some members of Congress even claim that immigrants built this nation, effectively erasing the foundational role of African American slaves.

The same pattern appears in the workforce. Immigrants are favored for certain jobs while Black men are incarcerated, overlooked, or displaced. In exchange for political power and votes, Black Americans are pushed aside, all while politicians demand the Black vote and act as if they are doing us a favor.

What is being presented as solidarity is, in reality, the erasure of Black Americans from their own history and struggle.

Now today, I am in Minnesota again. Another man, a white man, lost his life during a confrontation with ICE agents. From the videos available, it does not appear that he was reaching for a weapon. His hands were raised, as if to signal that he was not interested in violence. However, it appears he may have pushed one of the officers during the confrontation. That action escalated the situation, and tragically, he lost his life.

I feel genuine sorrow for this man. This did not have to happen.

I do not believe Border Patrol or ICE agents are without fault, and I am not convinced their response was appropriate. At the very least, these officers should be reprimanded. But I place much of the blame on those who continually stoke these flames, those who encourage confrontation without responsibility.

Protesters are increasingly putting themselves in volatile situations where they jeopardize their own lives. The state bears responsibility here as well. There should have been clear boundaries to ensure protesters did not impede officers or approach them in ways that invite escalation. Instead, disorder was allowed to grow unchecked.

Then there are the scams.

A Black family claimed they were returning from a basketball game with their children when ICE agents allegedly deployed gas beneath their car, causing the vehicle to fill with gas and nearly killing their infant child. The mother appeared on CNN and other platforms, describing how she promised her child that she would breathe for him to save his life. The family received nearly two hundred thousand dollars through GoFundMe.

It later emerged that this story was not true.

The parents were not coming from a basketball game. They were protesters who had taken their children to a protest rally. When things escalated and federal agents deployed gas, their vehicle happened to be in the path of that deployment. Videos later surfaced showing both parents actively participating in the protest. They had lied about their circumstances and used the situation to gain media attention and financial support.

Why would parents bring their children into a volatile protest environment? Why would they use their own children to draw sympathy and attention? It is sickening how people exploit situations for notoriety and money, even at the expense of their own children’s safety.

Another difference between today’s protesters and those of the civil rights era is that many of today’s protesters are paid. During the civil rights movement, protesters were not paid, and the causes were fundamentally different. We were defending the rights of American citizens who were being mistreated, oppressed, marginalized, and dehumanized.

Many African Americans were trying to escape the United States, fleeing slavery, violence, and Jim Crow, going to places like Canada. Immigrants today are coming here voluntarily. They want to be here. They want access to the system.

By the 1950s, under Jim Crow, Black Americans were trying to survive in a country filled with people angry about losing the Civil War and resentful of Black progress. On every side, we defended ourselves against violence and attacks. Many of those attacks came from white Democrats. Every major law passed in favor of African Americans was backed by Republicans, not Democrats.

Today, protesters aligned with Democrat policies attack ICE agents and federal officers while believing they are above the law. This is largely white on white protest activity. Black participation is minimal, with few exceptions. The contrast is stark. Black protesters face swift consequences, while some white protesters openly act out with little accountability, even inside churches, spreading hateful messages.

Another actor in all of this is the media. They sit back waiting for chaos, hungry for spectacle. Networks benefit from unrest because it produces content. Without chaos, what would they cover? Without the visceral hatred of Donald Trump, what would dominate their headlines? Disorder keeps the cameras rolling.

This week, I took my grandchildren to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. I wanted them to see where we started, from slavery to the Civil War, from secret churches to the Civil Rights Movement, from surviving drugs and violence meant to destroy our communities. I wanted them to understand that we are a strong, proud people who do not live off anyone. We work. We build. We survive. We thrive. We are Americans.

I wanted them to see how much we have given this nation and how our story is now being hidden, overtaken, and misused by people who do not love this country, do not know our history, and cannot speak for us. Resources flow to immigrant communities while our own struggle. Politicians posture while African American owned businesses receive little support. We see protests for illegal immigrants, even for people who have committed serious crimes, while the act of crossing the border illegally is reframed as not being criminal at all.

This framing distorts the truth and obscures history. American Blacks built this nation through sacrifice that cannot be equated or reassigned, and it is our responsibility to remember that legacy, preserve it, and teach it to the next generation.

© 2026 Jacqueline Session Ausby. All rights reserved. This post and all original content published under DahTruth are the intellectual property of Jacqueline Session Ausby. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

1984 in Real Time

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” 1984. George Orwell

A Week of Distortions

“In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”

— Judges 21:25 (KJV)

This is about a week of distortions.

I was glancing back at The 1619 Project and rereading the editor’s note at the very beginning of the book in which it discussed the use of the term enslaved as opposed to slave. It argued that the term slave strips individuals of humanity and enslaved does not. So they preferred to reference individuals as “enslaved persons.” It felt to me like they were taking a word and redefining its meaning to fit a cultural narrative.

They went further and stated they did not use terms like plantation or master because those terms are often used euphemistically when conveying certain conditions of slavery. It was distortion, a small twisting of words to fit narratives in ways that convict some and ease the pain of others according to their own ideas and beliefs.

It reminded me of 1984, the way Winston was instructed to make small changes to language to support new narratives so people could forget. In 1984, the changing of words, language, and meaning were mechanical tools used to keep culture in check and align thought with the masses. It was distortion.

Last week, a case went before the Supreme Court of the United States, Little v. Hecox, a case that three teenage girls brought forward after arguing in lower courts that their Title IX rights were violated when the state allowed a boy to participate on the women’s track and field team. This case had gone before lower courts, had been dismissed, and was now before the Supreme Court.

I was initially surprised that the Supreme Court was taking on this case, as I believed the idea that a boy can become a woman or a woman can become a man, or this idea of “trans,” is a lie. But then I understood that this was about the use of a term. The term being gender identity, as if this word trumps biological sex. As if a person could decide they are no longer male or female and consider themselves the opposite sex based on their own gender identity and then argue they are being discriminated against under a law that never considered identity.

What also fascinated me was how the entire court fed into this language and referred to the individual as “she” instead of “he.” That is giving credibility to a lie. This is what Satan did in the garden with Adam and Eve by introducing doubt into the mind. The lie does not begin as force. It begins as suggestion. It begins with language.

This is exactly what 1984 warned about. Language is changed first. Meaning follows. Memory erodes.

Another distortion did not happen last week but was in the news nonetheless. That was the case of Renee Good, the woman who was shot and killed by an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

This is where the law has to play out not totally on facts but on motive.

Renee Good was in her car protesting, blocking traffic, and impeding ICE agents from doing their job. This was a situation that did not have to go to the extreme of Renee Good being shot. Clearly from the video, Renee Good and her wife were impeding ICE’s progress and taunting the officer.

When the officer who was recording the event walked by Renee Good, she said, “I am not mad at you.” Others argue she was being respectful. But showing respect and being respectful are not the same. Her wife, who was also recording, was calling the ICE agent names and antagonizing him, while the officer had not said a single word.

Then two other ICE agents approached Renee’s car, which was parked perpendicular in the road blocking traffic, and they told her to get the “fuck” out of the car. At that point, Renee’s wife attempted to open the door. The officer who was still recording had made his way around to the front of the vehicle.

As the wife grabbed the door attempting to get into the car, Renee backed up. The wife then screamed, “Drive.” At that point, Renee moved forward and struck the officer. We then hear gunshots and a crash as Renee Good’s car hit another vehicle head on.

This was one of the most horrific situations I have ever witnessed.

I do not believe for one second that Renee Good intended to hit the officer. But it does not change the fact that she intended to flee the scene and in that moment rushed and followed her wife’s command. She drove forward and struck the officer. In those seconds, he responded with gunfire. I do not believe he intended to kill her. He believed he was about to be hit by a vehicle and responded accordingly.

This is where distortion enters.

Many Democrats want to believe the officer was violent, aggressive, irrational, and angry and that he shot Renee Good in cold blood. But the video shows a different sequence of events. The aggressive behavior, sarcasm, taunting, and escalation came from Renee Good and her wife. Motive was rewritten after the fact to fit an approved story.

This is where 1984 becomes relevant again.

In 1984, Orwell describes the Two Minutes Hate, a daily ritual where citizens are allowed and expected to act in the most emotional, irrational, and vicious ways. People scream, curse, threaten violence, and lose control. Their hatred is directed toward a designated enemy, Emmanuel Goldstein. The rage is not spontaneous. It is sanctioned. It is encouraged. Afterward, that rage becomes evidence that the Party’s narrative is true.

This is what we see in these protests. ICE agents become the Emmanuel Goldstein figure. Protestors are allowed to act aggressively, viciously, and irrationally toward them. The hatred is projected onto ICE as the embodiment of cruelty and injustice. Then when something tragic happens, the interpretation of events is reshaped to align with the approved narrative. The agent becomes the irrational one. The agent becomes the aggressor. The agent becomes the villain.

Facts come second. Alignment comes first.

This distortion spilled into another narrative about rewriting history, attempted by Pramila Jayapal. Last week she claimed America was built by immigrants and listed India, Mexico, Venezuela, and Africa, while leaving out Descendants of Slaves and Europeans.

Descendants of Slaves were not immigrants. We did not come here by choice. We were brought here as slaves through force and ownership. Our labor built this country. We are not what she is and we do not share the same history.

At the same time, Matt Walsh responded by claiming America was built by Europeans. He also introduced a series titled American History, where he is going to make the case that Americans have been lied to. Part of his argument is to remind people that slavery was not first practiced in America, as if we do not already know and understand that slavery has existed in nearly every society nearly since the beginning of time. And that the institution was eliminated in Europe first and later followed by America.

He is also going to make sure we understand that Europeans were not going to the Ivory Coast kidnapping Africans, but that Africans were sold by their own brothers and sisters. We have acknowledged that fact. We know that history. We also know that Arab slavery was far worse than American slavery, where Black men were emasculated and castrated, particularly those who did not convert to Islam. None of this history is new to us, nor does it absolve what was done in America.

More important Walsh wants to make it clear that European whites weren’t the only enslavers. As if not a single Black person has ever read Edward P. Jones. We know there were Black slave owners, but the reality is they were few and far between. Many Black slave owners purchased family members so they would not be sold into slavery. Large Black plantation owners were anomalies, not the norm, and most lost everything after the Civil War.

It does not deny that the system itself was built and maintained by Europeans. Nor does it erase the 100 years of Jim Crow. The laws, the economy, and the ownership of land and bodies were European controlled.

What Jayapal is doing is lying. What Walsh is doing is whitewashing history to remove a stain of guilt that hovers over white America. In doing so, he wants to argue that our plight was not that bad. Or could have been much worse.

Distort the truth. Rewrite history. That is another warning in 1984. If you can erase memory, tell another story, and repeat it long enough, people will forget what actually happened.

By the end of last week, I was worried. Convinced that America is traveling down paths that are leading to its destruction. In 1984, Orwell warned that the greatest danger to a society is not an external enemy but the slow corruption of truth from within. People blame global events for all our troubles without recognizing the danger that comes from inside our own institutions, our language, and our willingness to accept distortion. We lie about life, sex, love, history, justice, and truth, then pretend we are the arbiters of reality. In truth, many of us are more like the citizens Orwell described, programmed to repeat approved narratives from the left or the right.

Yet there are still some who can see. Those who recognize distortion for what it is and refuse to surrender memory. We are the watchers in the room. We understand both perspectives, but we are not captive to either. We stand on history, memory, and the Word of God, and we name the lie when we see it. That is how alignment remains balanced. That is how truth survives.

That is justice, not distortion.

Crossing the Red Sea: Why Black America Must Leave the Democratic Party (Copy)

“And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward: But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea.” Exodus 14:15–16 (KJV)

This was a disturbing week of the year—and I don’t suppose that’s saying much, considering this is only the second week of the year. Still, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the killing in Minnesota of a woman who, after being ordered to get out of her car, drove forward into an officer and was then shot and killed by that officer.

It is a tragic situation that a woman lost her life, but just as troubling is the fact that there are people who send others out to protest while offering no real protection, responsibility, or accountability when those situations turn deadly.

For weeks now, we have been witnessing rising protests against ICE agents in several Democratic-led states. In many of these protests, demonstrators have openly antagonized federal officers who are tasked with enforcing federal law. Somehow, illegal aliens appear to receive more sympathy and protection than the federal officers themselves.

“You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution. You can kill a freedom fighter, but you can’t kill freedom.”

— Fred Hampton

The officers have become the villains, while illegal aliens—regardless of their history or manner of entry—are defended by left-leaning Democrats. Civil-rights language is repeatedly used to suggest that what is happening today mirrors the civil-rights movement of the past. But this is not a civil-rights issue.

The reality is that these are individuals who crossed the border illegally, who did not build this country, who have no historical stake in this nation, and who have not contributed to it—yet they are making demands. Democrats argue as if these individuals are entitled to rights that belong to American citizens.

Even more troubling is the misuse of the ADOS story as justification. Our history is not the same. Our struggles are not interchangeable. They are not interconnected or entwined. The protests of today are nothing like the protests of the 1960s, which were largely peaceful. American Blacks did not spit on officers, hurl insults, impede their progress, disrupt communities, or place officers in situations where they were forced to defend themselves.

In fact, it was white mobs—often led or protected by Southern Democrats—who reacted violently to American Blacks for simply riding a bus, sitting at a lunch counter, walking down the street, or drinking from a water fountain. It is those who held that same ideology—who treated American Blacks as less than human and sought to keep them enslaved—who now claim moral authority while fighting to keep illegal aliens in this country to labor, serve tables, and fill roles they do not want for themselves.

More disturbingly, they now want American Blacks to join them in this effort.

That is one of the core issues: we are being asked to fight a cause for a group of individuals whose primary impact has been taking from our communities in the name of their own salvation. We are expected to move over and make room—for housing, healthcare, education, and jobs—while white employers hire them, pay them lower wages, and then force them to rely on social systems to sustain their lifestyles.

Meanwhile, Black men remain imprisoned, and Black women are still living in projects and Section 8 housing.

Individuals like Summer Lee, Jasmine Crockett, Ayanna Pressley, Roland Martin, Don Lemon, Abby Phillip, and Whoopi Goldberg guilt American Blacks into believing we are advancing a righteous cause—one that ultimately steps over our own community. Many within the Democratic Party listen to this rhetoric and calmly repeat the lie.

If there is one group whose best interests are not at heart in this movement, it is American Blacks.

We are also asked to follow Democratic leadership while individuals like Tim Walz and Jacob Frey send out dog whistles suggesting that what happened in Minnesota with this woman’s death is equivalent to what happened to George Floyd—and that we should respond in the same way. We are encouraged to riot, to burn, and to react, rather than to think critically.

At the same time, we are expected to forget about the fraud that has occurred in Minnesota—fraud involving resources intended for children, the elderly, and the disabled. While not every individual is responsible, the fraud happened, and it was exposed. It revealed another situation in which immigrants—some legal, others not—have come into this country and extracted resources from lower-class communities already struggling to survive.

We are asked to believe in the policies of an unknown leader—one who operates in the shadows and creates chaos from behind a curtain.

Meanwhile, those of us who support Donald Trump are ridiculed, labeled, and publicly shamed for that support. More importantly, we are expected to view everything Trump does as inherently wrong, without honest discussion or evaluation of outcomes.

I must address what Trump did regarding Maduro in Venezuela. We are expected to see these actions as un-American or as violations of international law, even though pressure on Venezuela was already in motion under the Biden administration. We are told to ignore the reality of what Venezuelan socialism has produced—and how it has driven millions from that nation into the United States.

There is little doubt that meaningful pressure on Venezuela could slow the flow of migrants from that region and disrupt drug-trafficking routes that use that country as a bridge into the United States. Yet we are instructed to believe that such actions somehow harm us.

Any policy—no matter how small—that could benefit our communities is rejected outright if it is associated with Trump. Results no longer matter. Outcomes no longer matter. If Trump is connected to the action, it is opposed on principle alone.

So the real question becomes: what is next, and what should be done?

I believe the answer is clear. There must be a mass exodus of Black Americans from the Democratic Party. We must remove ourselves from systems that hold us down, keep us dependent, or maintain us in a state of political bondage.

It is time to cross the Red Sea and never look back, lest we be lost to the rising waters of blue-state policies and special interests that threaten to drown our communities.

An Awakening of Allegiance: Fraud, Culture, and the Question of Who America Is

“One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you.” Exodus 12:49 (KJV)

We went to the moon. I believe we went to the moon. Fraud is fraud is fraud. And as we enter 2026, fraud (real, alleged, denied, and obscured) has become one of the defining issues dominating the national conversation.

Since just before Christmas, American media feeds have been saturated with allegations of widespread fraud tied to publicly funded programs. Much of this attention has been driven by Nick Shirley, a YouTube podcaster who traveled to Minnesota and publicly documented what he claims is systemic abuse of taxpayer-funded services within certain Somali American–run organizations.

Many Somali refugees arrived in the U.S. after the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, when a failed U.S. mission and subsequent withdrawal left Somalia in prolonged instability, prompting large-scale displacement. They were afforded opportunity here, as they should have been. However, for years, allegations have persisted regarding fraud in sectors such as childcare services, transportation programs, and non-emergency healthcare, particularly programs intended to serve the elderly, the disabled, and autistic children. Past investigations have uncovered misconduct in some cases, yet critics argue that oversight failures remain unresolved.

What troubles many Americans is not simply the existence of allegations, but the perception that accountability has been uneven. Questions have been raised about political leadership in Minnesota and whether elected officials have sufficiently addressed these concerns. That unease intensified during the last presidential election cycle, when Minnesota's governor rose to national prominence as a vice-presidential running mate. The idea that unresolved questions surrounding the use of public funds could coexist with national political ambition unsettled many people.

Additional scrutiny has also been directed toward other prominent Minnesota political figures. The perception of corruption alone has deepened public distrust.

This forces a broader question: what has been the real impact of immigration policy in America, not in theory, but in practice? What does it mean for citizens who are expected to follow the rules while watching enforcement appear selective?

For me, this isn't abstract. It's personal. It's about what this country owes its people, particularly ADOS, and whether justice, accountability, and fairness still matter.

I hear what many Americans are feeling right now: fear, confusion, and a growing sense that national identity and civic norms are being challenged while ordinary citizens are told they are not allowed to question it. That is a legitimate civic concern, even when it is dismissed as something darker.

The Flag in Boston

What's happening right now is unsettling.

In Boston, one of the birthplaces of the American Revolution, there were reports of a Somali flag being raised in a public space where the American flag had traditionally flown. Whether symbolic or temporary, the image itself is jarring. Nations are built on shared symbols, and flags matter. They represent sovereignty, unity, and allegiance.

America understands the language of liberation. We fought a revolution to free ourselves from colonial rule. We recognize the right of peoples to self-determination. But that struggle happened here, on this land, under this Constitution. When a foreign national flag is elevated in an American city, it raises an unavoidable question: what exactly is being claimed?

Is it cultural pride? Political protest? Or something closer to territorial symbolism?

That uncertainty is what alarms people.

Criticism of these moments is often shut down immediately, labeled racist or xenophobic, rather than debated on civic grounds. Yet asking whether public institutions and public spaces should prioritize American national identity is not racism. It is a basic question of citizenship and allegiance.

The same dynamic appears in Minnesota. When outsiders raise questions about accountability, they are often dismissed rather than engaged on the merits of evidence. That response has only deepened mistrust.

What makes this moment volatile is the perception that standards are not applied equally. Americans are told that emphasizing national identity is dangerous, while expressions of foreign nationalism inside U.S. borders are defended as cultural expression. That contradiction fuels division.

This is not about denying anyone dignity or opportunity. Refugees came here fleeing instability, and America opened its doors. But citizenship is not only about what a country gives. It is also about loyalty, responsibility, and shared civic norms.

At what point does tolerance become the erosion of national cohesion?

And why are citizens made to feel un-American for defending American symbols, laws, and accountability?

The ADOS Perspective

This concern intersects with something deeper for me as an ADOS American.

I recently began reading about the Iran-Contra scandal and its downstream effects on Black communities, particularly in California. What struck me was not just the policy failure itself, but how deeply it shaped our lives without our understanding it at the time.

Growing up during the crack cocaine era, we were living inside a crisis engineered far beyond our neighborhoods. Looking back, I can't help but wonder how different our communities might be today if those drugs had not been allowed to flood them so deliberately.

Culture played a role in normalizing the damage. The music and movies many of us grew up on, particularly the rise of gangsta rap, did not merely reflect reality; they reinforced it. Decades later, the same themes persist. Violence, drug dealing, and criminality are still glorified, and young Black boys continue to absorb these messages as identity rather than warning. The YSL trial in Atlanta is a modern example of how culture, drugs, and real-world consequences collide, often devastatingly.

At the same time, other immigrant groups entered this country and, in many cases, leveraged Black American struggle, imagery, and history to advance socially and politically while foundational Black Americans remained marginalized. Our story is often used. Our needs are often ignored.

As 2026 begins, allegations of fraud involving publicly funded programs in immigrant-dense communities across multiple states have dominated headlines. These stories reinforce a perception among many ADOS Americans: accountability appears flexible when political power and voting blocs are involved.

There is a growing sense that Black Americans are treated as a guaranteed constituency, assumed loyalty with no obligation to deliver results, while newer communities are actively courted, protected, and symbolically elevated. That imbalance breeds resentment not because of race, but because of unequal political valuation.

For ADOS communities, this feels familiar. We endured generations of surveillance, over-policing, under-investment, and cultural degradation. Our institutions were dismantled. Our neighborhoods were flooded with drugs. Our families were destabilized, with little urgency for repair.

Against that backdrop, symbolic gestures like raising foreign flags in historic American cities feel less like inclusion and more like erasure. Not because immigrants should not express pride, but because foundational Black Americans rarely receive equal public recognition for our sacrifices.

Boston does not owe its existence to any single modern immigrant group. To suggest otherwise feeds the sense that ADOS contributions are being overwritten while we are told to remain silent.

The Awakening America Needs

America is not just an idea. It is a nation built through struggle, labor, conflict, and time. There are Americans, Black and White, whose lineage stretches back centuries on this soil. For ADOS Americans, that lineage begins in 1619 and runs through enslavement, segregation, and survival. For long-established White Americans, it runs through settlement, revolution, and nation-building. Different histories. Same land. Same inheritance.

History is tragic and final. Native Americans were displaced. Borders were drawn through power, as they have been everywhere on earth. No one alive today bears personal guilt for centuries-old events, but everyone alive today bears responsibility for the present.

Foundational Americans, ADOS and long-established White Americans, have more in common than they are encouraged to admit. They are divided while power quietly shifts away from both.

This awakening is not about hatred. It is about civic allegiance. American civic identity must come before foreign nationalism. Public institutions should reflect loyalty to America first.

But unity requires honesty.

White Americans must abandon racism, not symbolically, but genuinely. Racism corrodes trust and weakens the nation.

Black Americans must confront internal destruction. We cannot destroy our own communities, glorify dysfunction, and still expect power. Rights without responsibility produce dependence, not sovereignty.

Power comes from cohesion, ownership, discipline, and self-respect.

A nation that refuses to define itself will be defined by others.

A people that refuses to awaken will lose its future, not through invasion, but through neglect.

It is time to open our eyes.

It is time to wake up.

Following the Piper: The Fall of the People’s Party

The Story That Stayed With Me

I remember the first time I heard the story of the Pied Piper. I was in the third grade, sitting in Mrs. Ford’s class after being bused from my school in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to a brick school in the white suburbs. We didn’t get stories like that back in my neighborhood schools.

I was terrified, not only by the Piper himself but by how easily the children followed him. Their parents were too distracted with their own affairs to notice until it was too late. The children were gone, and the town went on, oblivious.

That is what America feels like now.

The Party Becomes the Piper

When I think about the Pied Piper, I can’t help but think about the Democratic Party and the divide within it. On one side are the centrists, still focused on politics, policy, and the mechanics of governing. On the other side are the idealists and activists who see America itself as the cause of hostilities around the world.

Their song of socialism and populism keeps followers marching in rhythm even as the tune leads them toward the edge. With every verse, American values bend a little more. A party that was once merely fractured is now deeply divided.

Protests on every front—from Palestine to immigration enforcement—turn confrontational. The guarantees of due process and equal protection are dismissed as relics of a flawed system. The movement that once called for unity now uses disorder as a political tool. And through it all, Donald Trump remains the convenient scapegoat, blamed for the very division this movement continues to deepen.

Out of that confusion rises a new kind of leader. Figures such as Zohran Mamdani have learned how to turn unrest into opportunity, preaching fairness while exploiting frustration. His alignment with the Democratic Socialists of America tells the rest of the story. The DSA has circulated demands for New York’s incoming administration: city-funded boycotts of companies that do business with Israel, municipal divestment from so-called “imperialist” industries, and vast expansions of taxpayer-subsidized programs. These are not practical solutions; they are ideological tests.

It seems as if chaos itself has become the strategy. The louder the crisis, the easier it is to sell control as compassion. While citizens argue over headlines, those playing the tune quietly gather more power.

Even the story of 9/11 is being reframed—less a day of shared American loss and more a lesson filtered through global politics. The focus shifts from unity to identity, from remembrance to revision. America is being rewritten, not through laws but through persuasion.

Meanwhile, the Republicans—like the parents in that old story—are busy keeping the machinery of daily life turning. They argue over budgets and procedure, certain they are protecting normalcy, unaware that a generation is already following another melody toward a drowning river.

The Rift in the Democratic Party

The Democratic Party of yesterday once stood for working families, faith, and opportunity. That party no longer exists. It has been overtaken by a populist movement dressed in progressive slogans.

But still, the dividing line in the party is not about politics or economics. It is Israel. The far-left flank has made its stance on Israel the new purity test. Those who support Israel’s right to exist, or who simply refuse to demonize it, are being pushed aside. Leaders such as Hakeem Jeffries and Jeffrey Torres are being challenged not for corruption but for conscience.

Loyalty to ideology now outweighs loyalty to truth. The hostility toward Israel reveals something deeper: a willingness to rewrite moral order in favor of political fashion. The Democratic Socialists of America’s calls for divestment from Israel-linked businesses and for citywide boycotts are not local policies; they are ideological weapons disguised as compassion.

And now it is young, college-educated women who are leading this charge under the guise of being “smart.” I never imagined that a college education could become such a tainted privilege. What was once a mark of discipline and achievement has turned into a badge of indoctrination. To hold an advanced degree today often means being shaped by elite professors who preach righteousness while teaching that evil can be educated away.

The irony is that this new intellectual class believes it is liberating others, when in truth it is binding them to ideas that promise freedom but demand conformity.

The Manufactured Blue Wave

After November 7, Democrats feigning unity described the election as a Blue Wave. Yet it was not a wave of renewal; it was a flood of confusion. The illusion of unity hides behind a machinery of manipulation.

Victories in places like Virginia, California, New York, and Detroit were celebrated as moral triumphs, but they were driven by redistricting, media influence, and emotional engineering. Younger voters were guided by slogans, while older and more pragmatic communities—especially Black Americans—were left feeling ignored or replaced.

In New York, that manipulation has been perfected. Zohran Mamdani’s campaign targeted youth, immigrants, and progressives with language that sounded inclusive but quietly worked to erase a shared American identity. His rise mirrors a larger trend: populists using the language of equity to advance division.

Media voices amplify the same tune. Podcasters such as Sabby Sabs, Native Land Podcast, Roland Martin, and Don Lemon repackage socialism in moral and racial tones designed to resonate with Black listeners. They frame dependency as justice and cultural erasure as progress. They spotlight groups that specifically target Black communities—organizations such as the Working Families Party, which use ADOS narratives to push multiculturalism that dilutes our own history and aligns our struggle with that of the Palestinians.

It is not liberation. It is deception. And many are following the song.

The Shutdown of Trust

The Democratic Party that once stood for the people is now playing mind games with them. Emotional manipulation has replaced honest leadership. Instead of admitting their failure to negotiate affordable premiums under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), they use distraction and outrage to justify their inaction.

The recent government shutdown is another symptom of the same disease. It was not caused by Republican obstruction but by Democratic division. Moderate Democrats are being drowned out by activists who prefer chaos to compromise. The party that once called itself the voice of the people has become a movement obsessed with purity and control. The far left no longer seeks to govern; it seeks to disrupt.

The result is fear—fear of losing everything: food stamps, jobs, Medicaid, and order. Fear has become the Democrats’ most powerful tool, an emotional currency traded for loyalty. Beneath that fear lies another motive. It is not fear of injustice but fear of losing control, of losing identity and influence. Rising in its place is a socialist ideology wrapped in moral language and a growing tolerance for antisemitism disguised as freedom.

The Shift in Values

This week I listened to Marc Lamont Hill and Briahna Joy Gray, two left-leaning African-American podcasters, discuss the future of the Democratic Party, and it became clear that values are shifting. America’s old rejection of communism is being replaced by a fascination with socialism, fueled by resentment toward capitalism.

To be clear, neither of these commentators aligns fully with the Democratic Party. Their politics lean closer to the Green Party or independent socialism, yet they hold significant influence within segments of the Black community. They present themselves as intellectual leaders, voices for the unheard, guiding younger listeners who trust their opinions more than they trust institutions.

Their ideology is not compassion; it is control. Where Zohran Mamdani’s agenda may be more deceptive, Hill and Gray’s belief is sincere but equally dangerous. They champion promises of universal healthcare, free housing, government-owned property, free grocery stores and buses, and open borders for anyone who enters, regardless of loyalty or belief. The message is simple: citizenship no longer matters. Anyone can claim the same privileges as those who have sacrificed to sustain this nation. That is not justice; it is erasure.

Even more troubling is their alignment with the Palestinian struggle, which they elevate as a moral mirror for Black America. In doing so, they blur the lines between empathy and ideology, turning global politics into another test of loyalty inside our own communities.

The Weight of It All

When I heard the smooth acceptance speech of Zohran Mamdani, proclaiming that “immigrants built New York,” I felt the weight of it. Not because of his faith—it is his right—but because of how easily the message was packaged and sold. It was another performance in a season of performances.

Each time the media repeats its chorus that the poor will lose food stamps or the elderly will lose healthcare, the exhaustion deepens. Democrats have built a narrative of endless crisis while Republicans try to reopen the government and restore stability. Yet every headline still finds a way to blame them.

If “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is real, it has consumed the Democratic Party. There is frantic scrambling now, a desperate grasp for control, as figures like Bernie Sanders attempt another climb to the top and Mamdani boasts about his rise to power, already raising money for his mayoral transition. It is the same hypocrisy as before: condemning wealth while collecting it.

The wolf is no longer at the door. He is in the house, dressed as hope, asking for trust and for votes.

A Final Word

After the chaos of last week, I realized the importance of not losing sight of the Pied Piper, of not falling victim to that song. Fear is a liar. While America dances to the Piper’s tune, someone must name the melody for what it is: a song meant to seduce, not to save.

The Democratic Party of today is no longer the party of working families or shared faith. It is a movement torn between empathy and extremism. If we are not careful, that song could lead us all straight to the river—but some of us refuse to follow along and take the plunge.

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” — 2 Timothy 1:7

Candace Owens Isn’t Telling the Truth

Candace Owens: Hypocrisy in Faith, Journalism, and Politics

I don’t usually write about Candace Owens, because to me she isn’t that relevant. But when she started mocking Protestant Christianity, calling us “Judeo-Christians” in a way that was meant as an insult, I couldn’t stay quiet.

Judeo-Christian doesn’t mean “less than” or “stupid.” It means the uniting of the Old Testament and the New Testament — the foundation of our faith. Protestants hold to that. Catholics hold to that. The difference is that Catholicism strays when it adds practices that aren’t in the Bible. Scripture is clear: if anyone preaches another gospel — whether it’s praying to Mary, running rosary beads, or confessing sins to a priest — let that man be accursed. For Candace to use “Judeo-Christian” as a slur against Protestants not only misrepresents us, it undercuts Catholicism too.

Her “Conversion” and Religious Hypocrisy

Candace used to claim she was a Protestant. Then she married her Catholic husband, who goes to Mass every day, and suddenly she was Catholic too. I grew up watching women switch religions depending on who they were dating — most of the time, it didn’t stick. With Candace, there’s no sign of a real conversion. No repentance. No encounter with Jesus Christ. No transformation of the heart. Just ritual, tradition, and aesthetics.

If you truly know Jesus Christ, you don’t one day stop praying to Him so you can confess your sins to another sinner. That’s not the gospel. That’s empty religion. Candace may call Protestants “brainwashed,” but my experience proves otherwise. I wasn’t raised in a Christian household — my mother didn’t go to church. Yet I came to faith in Christ. Nobody “brainwashed” me. To claim otherwise is dishonest.

Her Pattern of Fake Investigations

This same inconsistency shows up in her so-called “journalism.” Candace presents herself as an investigator, but every major topic she’s taken on has followed the same cycle: pick a hot-button issue, recycle what’s already known, add sensational commentary, and call it groundbreaking.

• Trayvon Martin. She sided against him and built her early following.

• George Floyd. She exposed his criminal past, as if people didn’t already know.

• Kamala Harris. She tried to prove Harris wasn’t Black, even though her father had already confirmed their family’s Irish ancestry.

• Brigitte Macron. She spent months pushing the rumor that Macron’s wife is a man — without evidence.

• Charlie Kirk. She now exploits his death with wild claims she cannot prove.

The pattern is always the same: hype, outrage, conspiracy, and no real investigation. She doesn’t gather facts — she waits for the public to send her rumors and then repeats them. That’s not journalism. That’s theater.

Her Obsession With Israel

Nowhere is her hypocrisy more dangerous than in her attacks on Israel. Candace blames Israel for everything. Gaza? Israel’s fault. Middle East conflicts? Israel’s fault. She even suggested Israel was behind Charlie Kirk’s death — as if Benjamin Netanyahu, fighting wars on multiple fronts, would stop everything to target Charlie Kirk.

She ignores Hamas. She ignores Gaza’s leaders living in luxury in Qatar. She ignores the fact that Israel is a tiny nation surrounded by enemies who openly vow to wipe it off the map. Instead, she paints Palestinians as innocent victims while vilifying Israel at every turn.

And she never confronts Catholicism’s own sins: the crusades, the priests who molested boys, the idolatry of saints and statues. She spares Catholicism but hammers Israel relentlessly.

Her rhetoric even slips into antisemitism. She has said things like, “They made us hate Hitler.” Nobody “made” me hate Hitler. I studied history. I watched documentaries. I read about his life. I concluded for myself that Hitler was an evil man who slaughtered millions of innocent people. For Candace to suggest otherwise is dangerous and disgraceful. She blames Jews for everything, echoing the same hatred that fueled the Holocaust.

But the Bible is clear: God has promised to protect Israel. Not because of who they are, but because of who He is. He said He will always preserve a remnant of His people until the return of Christ. God is not a man that He should lie. So while Muslim nations rise up and conspire against Israel, while Hamas and Hezbollah and others wage war, Israel will not be destroyed. Not until Christ returns. That’s the Word of God.

When Candace sides with Israel’s enemies, when she excuses Gaza and blames the Jews, she isn’t just contradicting conservatives or Protestants — she’s standing against the Bible itself.

Conclusion

Candace Owens wraps herself in the language of faith, but what she promotes is hypocrisy. She adopted Catholicism out of convenience, not conviction. She calls recycled gossip “investigations.” And she obsesses over Israel as the villain of every story while ignoring Hamas, Catholic corruption, and her own contradictions.

Candace Owens does not represent truth. She represents hypocrisy — in religion, in journalism, and in politics.

False Prophets on the Mountain

Church in the 1970s and 80s was a staple in the Black community. My grandmother lived on Comstock Street in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and nearly every house on that block was a two-parent home. Almost every family went to church. My grandmother attended First Baptist Church in Somerset, and that was her foundation.

““Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.””

— Job 38:4

But my mother’s generation was different. They did not go. They seemed to develop a disdain for church, perhaps because of the control they associated with Christianity. Anything that forces you to sacrifice something can feel like control, whether it is belief in God, the lure of getting high and partying, or the illusion of being grown and independent. Their parents forced them into church, and they rebelled.

By the 1970s, church itself had changed. It began to look more like business. Success was measured by who could preach the most stirring sermon, who could pray the loudest prayer, or who could raise the most money. Black churches began to mirror white churches, and tithes and collections became central. As our community grew more educated and more prosperous, pastors learned to exploit our emotions.

This idea that Black people were finally free created a kind of rebellion. Many in my mother’s generation chose sex, drugs, and a false sense of freedom over church. I remember one particular birthday party at my grandmother’s house. My grandmother’s home was always the family gathering place for holidays, weekends, and every summer day. But on that night, things ended in chaos. A lemon meringue cake went flying across the room during a fight. It was my aunt’s sixteenth birthday. I can still see her, standing near the radiator, blowing out candles while holding a can of Budweiser, a gift for turning sixteen. That moment said everything about where my family was headed.

My aunt went on to live a hard life of drugs, alcohol, prostitution, and brokenness. And she was not alone. Nearly all of her siblings struggled with addiction, abuse, and poverty. Many of them died from drugs. That whole generation had turned away from church, and devastation followed. Drugs infiltrated our communities, creating what the world later called crack addicts, alcoholics, and junkies.

My father’s side was not much different. His mother had thirteen children, one of whom was among the first AIDS cases in New Brunswick. My father himself was an addict, though I do not know if he would ever admit it. He had a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol. Though he eventually recovered, he was never really present in our lives. For years, he lived under a bridge. Even after getting clean, he disappeared and never looked back for his daughters. I never held it against him, because I always understood his struggle was not just personal. It was tied to systems that oppressed so many Black communities.

The single common denominator with most of my family was this: none of them were saved. Church was not a consistent part of their lives. My mother did send us to church on Easter, though. She would buy us new outfits every year and send us off, even if she stayed home.

Not all families were like mine. For many, church remained central to Black life, even in the midst of drugs, addiction, and public housing. But when the crack epidemic came, it devastated communities, taking lives and filling prisons with young Black men. For many, church became an afterthought.

When I turned sixteen or seventeen, something in me wanted to go to church. Faith became my anchor. I did not always stay the course, but somehow God kept pulling me back. I remember one turning point clearly. I was a single parent, broke and struggling, working a temporary job when a friend invited me to a prayer service. As people prayed, I began to weep. An older woman came up to me and said, “God told me to tell you, He’s sick of you.” Those words shook me, because that was my own private language. Whenever I sinned, I would think to myself, God is going to get sick of me. She could not have known that. But God did. And in that moment, I knew He was speaking directly to me. It changed my life forever.

Glancing Back at the 70s

When I look back at the 70s and 80s, I see how the church was already losing its hold on people my mother’s age. They turned away, but part of what fueled that turning was the way books and television were shaping new narratives. Art and media told us that the church was not the answer but the problem.

James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain was one of those works. It captured the hypocrisy of Christians, especially through the figure of Gabriel, and showed the church as a place of judgment and oppression. Baldwin’s brilliance was in telling the truth about how painful church life could be, but the danger was that his story aligned with the idea that Christianity itself was corrupt. Faith was portrayed as a mask for human weakness, not the cure for it.

Compare that with Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky also wrote about greed, corruption, and hypocrisy in the church. But he never abandoned God. He showed that all men are flawed and in need of redemption, but his answer was not to walk away from faith. His answer was that belief in God is the only solution to mankind’s flaws.

I love Baldwin’s books, but there is always something judgmental in the way he writes about God. It is as if his own struggle with sexual identity bled onto the page, and often his words disparaged the church. That struggle was not his alone. It reflected the spirit of the time, the zeitgeist of the Black community. The struggles of this world were so overwhelming that many turned away from the church. They saw churches that wanted their talents, their service, their compliance. So they turned to the world instead, without realizing the world demanded something greater in return: their soul. Many gave it away freely.

Even Baldwin’s John embodies this tension. His confusion, questions, and ambiguous “conversion” mirror the author’s own wrestling with God, faith, and identity.

The Church Today

Today, many American Blacks have returned to the four walls of the church. We have overcome in many ways, and though we still struggle, church is always there. Unfortunately, what we find now is a different problem. Too many pastors teach lies. The prayer warriors that once stood at the altar are missing.

We have a large population of successful African Americans in this country, yet we are also among the most exploited. Too many pastors promise blessings if we give, prosperity if we tithe, breakthrough if we believe hard enough. It reminds me of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor and how easily people can be manipulated if you dangle the hope of salvation before them. It also reminds me of Job, when he lost everything and his friends assumed he must be the problem. Is that not what society teaches us now? Either you are prospering, or you are the problem.

There is still a remnant. I believe that to be true. But too many pastors with large congregations are like feigns.

False Prophets

I listened recently to a sermon by T.D. Jakes. His message has always been about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps while reminding people of their responsibility to give to the church. Today, his preaching feels weaker, almost like a snake slithering slowly. After preaching about the ram in the bush, not as a foreshadowing of Christ but as a personal promise that God has a “ram” for each of us, he asked for $220, tied to Genesis 20. He justified it by saying most people spend more than that on fake hair. It was a sad moment.

This is not about T.D. Jakes. I pray for him. I pray he wakes up to repentance. This is about Jamal Bryant.

After listening to Jamal Bryant, I had a visceral reaction, almost a sick feeling. That Sunday he preached from Exodus, the story of God delivering the Israelites out of Egypt. That passage reveals God’s majesty. It is about His power to free His people from slavery, to open the Red Sea, and to lead them safely across on dry ground. It points to salvation, to baptism, to God’s faithfulness through history.

But Jamal Bryant did not speak about any of that. As he stood on his large stage, the backdrop behind him was a giant dollar bill. Instead of focusing on God’s deliverance, he twisted the story into a message about money. His words were: “God had to divide the debt so Israel could come across.” He was not talking about the sea at all. He turned it into a metaphor about financial debt.

To take one of the most powerful demonstrations of God’s hand in history and reduce it to a shallow prosperity metaphor was not only empty. It was idolatrous. The dollar bill looming behind him said it all.

After that sermon, I turned to Philip Anthony Mitchell of 2819 Church. That Sunday he preached from Matthew 28 about Jesus Christ, His return, the coming war when He establishes His kingdom on earth, and the hope of the church to be resurrected. He spoke about Jesus. And that alone made all the difference.

I have also been listening to podcasts like Trackstarz, where one episode discussed 2819 Church. They shared how a false prophet once walked in accusing the congregation of idolatry. And yes, idolatry can happen anywhere, even in a church where sound doctrine is preached. People can idolize a pastor, and that is a danger. But what struck me is that Philip Anthony Mitchell is clearly preaching Christ. Christ crucified. Christ resurrected. Christ returning. His message is consistent: evangelism, discipleship, Jesus at the center.

And it made me ask: what is the alternative? In Atlanta, you can put Jamal Bryant next to Philip Anthony Mitchell. One preaches heresy. The other preaches the Word. The difference is undeniable.

This tension reminded me again of The Brothers Karamazov and the “Grand Inquisitor” parable. Written in 1879, it describes how the church can become an institution that robs people of true faith, offering false hope while exploiting their trust. And here we are in 2025, watching the same thing play out. Jamal Bryant uses God’s Word as a hook, but he feeds people empty promises.

If you do not own a home, how thrilling it must sound when he declares that if you tithe faithfully, God will give you a house. People’s hearts leap. Their ears tingle. But what they are being fed is a lie. And this is not an isolated slip. It is a pattern:

• He cheated on his wife, fathered a child during the affair, and still leads from the pulpit.

• He has publicly supported abortion, even calling it “good for Black women,” while holding a baby dedication on the same day.

• He once claimed Jesus Christ was “out of order” 85% of the time, reducing our Lord to nothing more than a flawed man.

• He openly affirms LGBTQ lifestyles, twisting Scripture to justify it, while dismissing biblical convictions as merely “self-righteous.”

This is hypocrisy. And it is dangerous. Because when a pastor preaches lies from the pulpit, he does not just corrupt the message. He corrupts the faith of those who follow him.

This is what I mean by a pastor turning himself into the god and money into the redeemer. The stage becomes a brand. The sermon becomes a slogan. The people become customers. And the backdrop tells you what you are really supposed to worship: a dollar bill. Not the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Not the Lord who parts seas and brings His people out of bondage. A dollar.

Place that beside Philip Anthony Mitchell preaching Christ from Matthew 28, calling people to repentance, evangelism, and the hope of the resurrection. One points you to Jesus. The other points you to your wallet. The first feeds faith. The second feeds appetite.

This is how churches keep the machine running. Tithes from the hopeful. Programs funded by the state. Groceries in a bag to keep bodies in seats. Then another Sunday sermon about breakthrough if you give, overflow if you sow, and increase if you believe hard enough. None of that is the Gospel. The Gospel is Christ crucified, buried, and raised. The Gospel is deliverance from sin, not a down payment on a house.

Final Word

The Black church was once the bedrock of our families, the place our grandparents turned for strength and stability. But somewhere along the way, we let wolves climb into the pulpit. They preach money, politics, and empty promises while souls go hungry for the Word of God.

We cannot keep pretending that these men are shepherds when they are nothing but hirelings. Jamal Bryant is not the exception. He is the example. He is what happens when we trade holiness for hype, truth for applause, Christ for cash.

If we continue to follow false prophets, then we will have no one to blame but ourselves when the next generation grows up rootless and lost. The time for compromise is over. The time for discernment is now.

But there is still hope. There is still a remnant. There are still pastors lifting up Christ, still churches teaching the Word, still saints on their knees praying for revival. And there is still the Gospel. It has never changed.

Jesus Christ is not a marketing plan. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is our deliverer, our redeemer, our only hope. My prayer is that we stop chasing personalities and turn back to Him.

Black Women, It’s Time to Move Differently

Empowering Black Women: From Corporate Survival to Entrepreneurial Freedom

As a Black woman who’s navigated the workforce for decades, I’ve seen firsthand the unique challenges we face. From entry-level jobs in bank basements to corporate offices, our stories are woven with resilience, fear, and unyielding determination. But lately, amid economic shifts, political changes, and personal reflections, I’ve come to believe it’s time for us to redefine our paths. This post is a call to action. It draws from my experiences and conversations with other Black women. It is a call to break free from dependency on systems that weren’t built for us and step into our power through faith, risk-taking, and entrepreneurship.

My Journey in the Workforce: Lessons from the Basement to the Boardroom

I’ve been working since I was 18 years old. My first job was at First Fidelity Bank, later bought out by PNC Bank. I remember it vividly. Most of the employees were women, and the majority were Black women. We worked in the basement, manually processing checks. My manager was a petite Black woman. She was militant, sharp, and sometimes rude, but she ensured the job got done. I appreciated her because she always gave me accolades for how quickly I could count and organize those piles of checks. Back then, everything was done by hand. We sorted incoming checks, placed them into slips, and filed them into folders. Fresh out of high school, I realized that this is what work means.

From that experience, I learned the importance of diligence in every task. I have carried that lesson through every job since, always striving to do my best while maintaining ethical and moral balance.

As I advanced in my career, I began to notice patterns in corporate America. I worked everywhere from small engineering firms to one of the largest consulting companies in the world. One consistent observation stood out. There were usually very few Black people, and even fewer Black men. At my last job, it became clear that Black men often face significant challenges in corporate environments. Many choose entrepreneurship instead, and I don’t see anything wrong with that. It is a powerful path.

For Black women, it is different. We often pursue corporate roles, even if it means starting or staying as administrative assistants. That is what I have done with pride for the last 20 to 30 years. It has allowed me to own my home, buy cars, and earn both a college and a master’s degree. I did all of that while holding down the same type of job. But lately, with everything happening in the United States, including Trump back in office and massive layoffs, I have been reflecting deeply on our role in the workforce.

Three hundred thousand black women have lost their jobs since the beginning of the year is frightening, especially when you consider the disproportionate impact this will have on Black communities. Most of those positions were federal government roles. For decades, these roles have been anchor jobs for many of us. Now, they have been stripped away. I don’t blame Donald Trump for making cuts, and I don’t see this as simply an unfortunate circumstance for Black women. If you’re younger, the world is full of opportunities waiting to be seized. If you’re older, this moment is a chance to hone in on your own skills and reshape your trajectory based on your capabilities. For many of us, the plan was to hold steady until retirement and collect a pension. Now, it seems we have the freedom to move differently. I know this might sound naïve. Even as I write this, it feels almost like a dream—something that could only happen if the stars align. But I believe—even in the impossible.

The Deep-Rooted Fears: Job Security and the Legacy of Struggle

Lately, I’ve been talking to a lot of Black women about job security, our circumstances in America, and the constant challenges of making ends meet. A deep-seated fear runs through so many of us. That fear is that we will not be able to provide for our families. This fear is instilled early. Growing up, we witnessed the struggles of our parents, especially in single-parent homes. My mother was a single parent. While she had a partner, he was often out of work and contributed little financially, even if he was there emotionally. She was always juggling employment, childcare, and her own mental health.

I remember the constant worry. How are we going to pay the rent? How will we keep food on the table? We relied on social programs, including Section 8 housing, food stamps, welfare, and Medicaid. As a child, I thought, I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to rely on the system. But those experiences planted a seed of fear. They taught us to hustle. Get a job, keep working, and never stop, because survival depended on it. Once we entered the workforce, the wages weren’t enough, so we worked twice as hard just to get by, especially after having children of our own. Life became a relentless struggle around one question. How do we keep a roof over our heads and food on the table without becoming part of the system.

Talking to others, it is the same story. We do not have a real safety net beyond those programs. Even now, there is that anxiety. If we lose our jobs, we could lose everything, including our homes, our medical care, and our security. For many of us, myself included, we are determined not to depend solely on the system. But as we get older, we also recognize what we have already survived. That survival includes single parenting, raising children, maintaining homes and cars, and supporting grandchildren while still helping our adult kids.

We are in a different place now, but the fear lingers. One job loss could bring it all crashing down. Yet I want to think differently, and I hear the same from the women I talk to. We do not want to feel trapped in low-paying jobs, stuck in discriminatory spaces, or in roles beneath our capabilities. We are recognizing our resilience. We have survived the hardest parts. It is time to shift from fear to empowerment and build paths that honor our strength.

Breaking Free: Faith, Risks, and the Power of Our Own Spaces

I have come to realize that if you want to thrive, grow, and break out of the world’s boxes, you have to take risks. For Black women, that means escaping the stereotypes that paint us as uneducated or as token beneficiaries of DEI programs. These programs rarely serve us in meaningful ways. To wipe away those false narratives, we must step boldly into new territory.

AI is one of those new territories. It can feel intimidating, but it also offers incredible opportunities. To use it wisely, we first need faith in God, trusting that He opens new paths. With discernment, we can treat AI as a tool to expand the skills we have built through years of hard work.

For women like me, who may be older and without large savings but still have something to build on, AI can level the playing field. It can help us create businesses, manage tasks, and reach customers in ways that once felt impossible.

My prayer is that Black women will seize these opportunities. That could mean starting a cleaning service, launching a catering business, providing childcare, or even creating new educational spaces. By relying on our own talents, and using technology to support them, we free ourselves from waiting for a seat at someone else’s table.

Reflecting on history, I believe integration has, in some ways, shifted our mindset from building our own institutions to trying to “make it” in theirs. But if we think differently, trust God to guide us, and use the tools at our fingertips, we can change things. Yes, it is overwhelming at times. Trademarks, LLC filings, the countless fees, and all the little details can feel heavy. But I have learned that if you take the first step, God will lead you through the rest.

Leadership, Representation, and Truth

When I think about women like Karen Bass or Jasmine Crockett, who often offer little more than rhetoric, I feel disappointed. These are women considered the “best and the brightest” within our communities, yet they too often lack real knowledge and intellect. Then there are stories like Fani Willis, who showed no shame in taking from a Black rapper’s hard-earned money. Or Letitia James, who reportedly claimed her father as her spouse to collect benefits. Or Lisa Cook, whose credentials have been questioned and who may not have been qualified for the roles she was given. These examples are disheartening.

Even when I consider Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Supreme Court justice, I feel the same disappointment. When asked to define what a woman is, she refused, even though she has lived as one her entire life. Instead of standing on truth, she chose to appease a small group of individuals. If the Constitution is settled law, then the framers’ understanding of the word “woman,” especially in the 19th Amendment, was grounded in biological reality. The question of what is a man and what is a woman has been settled since the beginning of time. It should not be redefined simply because a man puts on a dress and decides to pretend to be something he will never be. The same goes the other way. When a woman straps on a prosthetic and claims she is now a man, we all know the truth. At best, this is science used as an illusion. At worst, it is junk science that denies reality.

But we should not allow individuals like this to define us or discourage us. Their shortcomings should not hold us back from leaping forward. We cannot measure our own possibilities by the failures of others.

Moving Forward in Faith

I hope others reading this will ask themselves: How can I get out? The first step is trusting God. He will open every door. There are opportunities out there, and I wrote this post to encourage people. Do not let fear paralyze you. Even in uncertain political times, when harassment, instability, or sudden changes feel threatening, we can still move forward. I do not know what the future holds. But I do know faith and action will guide us through.

In sharing these reflections, my goal is to inspire Black women everywhere to embrace our resilience and chart new courses. We have survived the storms. Now let’s build our own empires. If you are ready to take that leap, start with faith, a small step, and the tools already in your hands. The box is breaking. Our freedom awaits.

THE REBUKE

Choosing When to Cry

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I know as a Black woman, sometimes we cry, shed tears, and grieve as we witness the ways we are marginalized and oppressed. But the older I get, the more I’ve come to realize—you have to pick and choose when you let your tears fall and when it’s time to stop and walk away. It’s like a bad relationship. Most of us have had them, unfortunately. You know when you’ve invested one date too many, or when you gave in too quickly and found yourself chasing like a dog in heat. Eventually, most of us snap out of it, though some get caught up for decades.

The Problem with Native Land PODCAST

I am a firm believer that it’s okay to be vulnerable and shed a few tears when we are hurt. But here I’m talking about tears shed for causes that don’t truly impact your daily life. Specifically, the Native Land podcast hosted by Angela Rye, Tiffany Cross, and Andrew Gillum. This trio presents themselves as the intellectual voices of the Black community. Tiffany Cross had her own show on MSNBC but was terminated because of her rhetoric; Angela Rye at one point worked for the Congressional Black Caucus and was a CNN correspondent until she was silenced after a spar with Chris Cuomo; and Andrew Gillum was once a rising star akin to Barack Obama, but was caught up in a drug and homosexual scandal that cost him everything.

I say “Black” broadly, because they don’t really stand with ADOS, though they sprinkle in talk of reparations under a Pan-Africanist banner. They present themselves as representing all Blackness while pretending to align with the ADOS struggle, yet they embrace practices that cripple our community and shed tears for causes that have nothing to do with our struggles.

The truth is, these three have been an embarrassment to the Black community, both in their private lives and public personas.

Recently, on their podcast, they were discussing Trump and Union Station. They called out Trump and his so-called “Gestapo-style takeover” of an American city—namely D.C.—and his threat to send the National Guard to Chicago. They pretend there is no crime. Meanwhile, residents in D.C. and Chicago—both Black and white—are literally begging for the National Guard to come into their communities because of unchecked violence. This wouldn’t even be on the table if politicians were doing their jobs and addressing the crime devastating urban neighborhoods. And yet, instead of uplifting accountability, they invoke Jamal Bryant—the pastor who still leads a large congregation despite his affairs while married, his out-of-wedlock son whom he does not support—if not financially, then certainly not emotionally or spiritually—and his recent alignment with the LGBTQ agenda that blatantly contradicts Biblical principles.

Democrats have done nothing to solve this crisis. No legislation for education. No solutions for housing. No answers for drug addiction or gang violence. No protection from illegal immigration overwhelming our communities. And yet instead of addressing these realities the three host get on air and cry foul.

False Narratives and Distractions

When Tiffany Cross had her own show on MSNBC (The Cross Connection), she was let go after controversial commentary—such as saying the handling of Tua Tagovailoa’s concussion showed how “white NFL coaches do not protect Black bodies”—even though the Dolphins' coach, Mike McDaniel, is biracial. Those remarks didn’t align with reality, and she was put on the hot seat for presenting only one side of the story. The truth is, there are serious issues with how the NFL treats players’ bodies in general, but all of that gets overshadowed by race when commentary comes from individuals like Tiffany Cross.

More recently, an activist known as Afeni was arrested in D.C. for fare evasion. She was caught using a student pass she didn’t qualify for and resisted arrest. Police—not the National Guard—detained her. Yet the podcast framed this as though her arrest were tied to military presence in D.C. That’s false. And it ignores the real fear in our communities: gun violence, carjackings, robberies, and murder. When someone like Afeni miscasts fare evasion as a political stand for Black rights, it doesn’t elevate our struggle—it cheapens it.

And this is exactly the kind of distraction that keeps us from focusing on the real work of protecting our people—work that leaders like Mayor Bowser are actually trying to do in D.C. under difficult circumstances.

And let’s talk about Miriam Bowser, the mayor of D.C., and her struggle as a Black woman leading a city in crisis. Since she has been in office, she has faced the reality of rising crime and she knows the truth: D.C. doesn’t have enough police officers or resources to handle it all. So when the National Guard was sent in, she welcomed the help. And guess what? The results showed reductions. Carjackings went down. Shootings went down. Arrests were made. Is it sustainable? Probably not. But Mayor Bowser understands that every day someone else lives is a victory. She’s doing the best she can with what she has.

Yet when I hear Angela Rye and Tiffany Cross condemn this Black woman for trying to find light in a bad situation, I say to myself—you two are the problem. They even went so far as to call her a fascist. And I have to ask: why? Why is a Black woman working to protect her city suddenly a fascist? She’s running a city. They’re running a podcast. That is not the same thing.

And Andrew Gillum, who was once Mayor in Tallahassee, and who the opportunity to be a governor threw it all away, now sits there lecturing a woman who has not thrown away her opportunities. A women who is still working, still diligent, still trying to protect the ADOS community. For him to throw stones at her is sickening. It’s scandalous. It’s shameful.

But instead of shining a light on the hard work of someone like Bowser, these hosts choose to mock, condemn, and distort the reality of what’s happening. It’s the same pattern they fall into again and again—choosing emotional anecdotes and shallow outrage over truth and solutions.

Tiffany Cross and the Immigrant Anecdote

Bring in the tears and you go from soup to nuts in five seconds. Tiffany Cross goes even further, recounting a story about a young immigrant girl—or maybe several girls—walking down the street, supposedly being followed by four individuals she assumed were ICE agents. She admitted nothing happened, yet she was in tears retelling the story. Crying over a scenario with no evidence beyond her own perspective.

This is the problem with our so-called media outlets today. Instead of providing real news, they package bias and opinion as if it were fact. They use emotional anecdotes to stir sympathy but never address the actual issues plaguing the Black community. They spend endless time spinning stories about illegal immigrants—ignoring the pressing realities in our neighborhoods.

Illegal immigration doesn’t help our communities. It drains resources, undercuts wages, and shifts political focus away from the issues that matter most to Black Americans. Our ancestors did not build this nation for it to be handed over to those who come here illegally. As Tiffany told this story she cried, Angela cried and Andrew coddled them both. We need legislation that strengthens our communities, not policies that ignore us in favor of others.

Venezuela, Cuba, and Misplaced Blame

And then there’s this other false narrative—this idea that because America has intervened or competed with nations like Venezuela or Cuba, we are somehow responsible for their decline and therefore owe them open borders. That’s simply not true. Take Venezuela: for years, America bought oil and fueled their economy. Instead of using that revenue to diversify and invest in their people, Venezuela’s leaders gave in to greed and corruption. When America began sourcing oil elsewhere, their economy collapsed—not because of America, but because they built their entire foundation on a single export and never invested in their future.

The same can be said about Africa during the slave trade. Many nations enriched themselves by selling human beings, investing everything into slavery while ignoring long-term development. When slavery ended, those economies collapsed because they had put all their resources into a corrupt system. It’s no different from nations today relying on drugs, oil, or human trafficking for economic survival. When you put everything into exploitation instead of building sustainable systems, collapse is inevitable.

That’s not America’s fault. That’s not Black America’s responsibility. And it’s certainly not a reason to excuse or defend mass illegal immigration into this country and into our communities.

Native Land doesn’t address these facts. Instead, they give us anecdote after anecdote.

Shattering the Image

When I listen to people like Tiffany Cross, Angela Rye, Joy Reid, and even Roland Martin, I realize they’re trying to hold on to an image of America that was created by a party whose main goal was always to keep African Americans—ADOS—oppressed. We were used as pawns in their game to maintain power, and they’re still tripping over that same old image. But here’s the truth: ADOS is started to shatter these images and turn our backs on their false narratives. However, so-called black leaders, who have descended from the elite continue to hold the line and are not ashame to get on their podcast and cry over made up stories.

They understand that the Democratic Party as it stands today is diluted. It’s not strong. It has no real power. It’s weak. Yet they continue trying to gaslight us by saying we’re the ones being gaslighted. But we’re not. We understand what’s happening with immigration. We understand what happened in Venezuela. We understand what happened in Cuba. We understand what’s happening in Mexico. We’re not dumb.

They play this card as if they are the “intellectuals,” as if everyone else is just too simple to get it. They want us to believe they’re the smartest ones in the room. But in reality, they are not. Because if they were, they would understand that we already see the game for what it is—and we’re done playing it.

We are thinking about how to actually save our communities. We’re looking for ways to rise out of our circumstances without having to bend and beg before white corporate America. We’re ready to depend on our own capabilities, our own talents, our own intellectual skills, and our own creativity. That’s the vision we’re chasing—not the distraction of “saving” illegal immigrants who chose to leave Venezuela, Cuba, or wherever else to come here.

And one more thing: they love to talk about “Black and Brown” people. But let’s be real. When they say that, they’re talking about Venezuelans, Mexicans, and other so-called immigrants whose skin is not Black or Brown at all, but closer to the complexion of white America. Meanwhile, they’re not talking about Haiti. They’re not talking about the Congo. They’re not talking about Sudan. They’re not talking about the places where true Black struggle is happening in the world—and nobody’s paying attention to it.

What I Have to Say to Tiffany Cross, Angela Rye, and Andrew Gillum

What I have to say to people like Tiffany Cross, Angela Rye, and Andrew Gillum—who all carry stained pasts—is this: it’s not the stain that bothers me. We all have stains. We all have chapters in our past that we regret or wish we could change. Some of us wear those stains openly, even as scarlet letters. That’s human.

But when you stand on your platform with tears in your eyes for illegal immigrants I think of you as buffoons, when you parade Jamal Bryant around as though he speaks for the people of God, that’s when it becomes a problem. Because Jamal Bryant does not speak for our communities.

Nothing I have was handed to me. Everything I own, I worked for—with my own sweat, tears, prayers, and walk. I raised a son as a single Black mother. Then, after marriage and divorce, I raised two sons as a single mother. I still own my own home. I was never hindered by redlining, because I never chased the dream of living in a “white” neighborhood. I always wanted to live in a diverse community, and I have.

I’ve lived in some poor communities where drugs and guns were weaved into the fabric of our neighborhoods. Yes, my car was broken into. My house was broken into. But it wasn’t white people doing it—it was Black people in my neighborhood. I understood there were issuess with drugs and guns and our children. We need to be using our platforms to discuss legislation and polices that will help uplift our communities. Trump is a man with only a few more years of power. While Democrats have nothing to offer to check that power except tears and ridicule.

And still, I did not abandon my community. Even today, I live among both Black and white neighbors, side by side, peacefully. I can leave my car window down overnight and know it won’t be touched. Does crime exist here? Of course. Crime exists everywhere. But I am rooted where I am, because I care about my community and what it means to be ADOS.

And when I look at the platforms handed to people like Tiffany Cross, Angela Rye, and Andrew Gillum, I see wasted opportunities. They were given stages and microphones, and what did they do? They made themselves look like fools. Now they want us to forget all of that, to pretend it never happened, and to listen simply because they call themselves smart. But if you were truly smart, you would have made better choices with the opportunities you were given.

I didn’t have a stage handed to me. I didn’t have a microphone passed to me. I built what I have through hard work. Yes, I’ve encountered racism. I’ve lost jobs because of it. But I’ve also moved forward, because for every racist in one space, there are people in another who are not.

That’s why I can say this without hesitation: I have more respect for southern Republicans than I do for northern white Democrats. At least the Republicans are straightforward. They let you know who they are. You can see the snake in front of you, and decide whether to go around it or walk right through it. But the northern Democrats are the eels—you never see them coming. They say, “We want to help you build wealth.” And yet their version of “help” is Section 8 housing, paying rent forever, building their equity while you never own land, never gain equity, never build wealth of your own.

That’s not help. That’s control. And that’s why their game no longer works on us.

The Greatest Lie They Want You to Believe: Slavery Was Not That Bad

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass

When I was growing up, my mother often told us stories about her scars. She had many. One was a deep, straight line across the middle of her foot. I cannot remember if it was the left or the right, but I remember the dark mark that sank into her calloused skin. She grew up in Mississippi, the daughter of sharecroppers, and one morning while working on the farm, her foot was nearly cut in half by the fence at the chicken coop. There was no doctor to call, no hospital to visit. Her family filled the wound with cobwebs and alcohol, and somehow, miraculously, it healed. She carried that scar for the rest of her life.

I think about her hands too, fingers swollen and tipped blue-black. She explained that picking cotton did that to you. The sharp burrs cut her skin until it bled, hardened, and callused over. Her hands were living proof of survival.

When I think about the story of American descendants of slaves, I think about my mother’s hands and feet. Wounds that should have broken her body but did not. Scars that told the truth about survival. That was her generation. That was their fight.

But we are no longer the same people we were in the 1940s, 50s, or 60s. Now that we are standing up for ourselves, proclaiming loudly and proudly that ADOS built this nation, white America is scrambling to figure out how to silence us to rebrand themselves.

A New Power

One of the biggest differences between then and now is power. We have more power now than our grandparents did, and a large part of that comes from social media. Our voices are amplified in ways unimaginable fifty years ago. We can speak truth to power on a scale that cannot be silenced.

That is why we hear so much more unapologetic Black pride today, especially among American descendants of slavery. Our voices have grown strong enough to drown out the old lie that “white is right.”

A Turning Point in Alabama

We saw that power in Montgomery, Alabama, when white men tried to attack a Black dock worker and the community stood up in his defense. That moment was more than a brawl. It was a declaration. It said, “We belong here. This is our America too.”

Black people are no longer willing to sit quietly while being told we do not belong. That power has been simmering for decades, but now it is boiling over into action.

The Irony of Disdain

What is so ironic and frankly sickening is the disdain people still carry toward Black Americans. A few days ago, I watched a protest in Trenton, New Jersey. ICE and Homeland Security had come to arrest an undocumented immigrant. It was not clear whether the man had committed a crime or was simply here illegally, but protesters immediately gathered. Most were white and Hispanic. They shouted at the officers, demanding IDs and warrants, livestreaming the encounter, trying to block the arrest.

At one point, a woman turned to a Black officer and hurled the insult I have heard too many times: “Your ancestors would be rolling over in their graves.”

So when I hear someone say that, I know exactly what it really is. It is not honor, it is insult. It is outsiders weaponizing our history to shame us, while ignoring the fact that our ancestors did not fight and bleed so we could live chained to guilt. They fought so we could stand free, to live, to work, to choose. My ancestors are not rolling over. My ancestors are proud I am still here, still standing, and still building on the soil they watered with their blood.

And that is the point: we are not the same. We are not the broken people they imagine us to be. We are the living proof of survival and transformation, the very answer to every grave they thought would hold us down.

And I am tired of it. On the far left, Black Americans are expected to sacrifice our individuality and stand for every cause, as if our own struggles are not enough. On the far right, we are painted as criminals, using “per capita” statistics to distort reality while ignoring that white Americans are arrested in numbers three times higher than Black Americans. Both sides reduce us to stereotypes. Neither sees us as full citizens of this country we built.

We should not have to fear deportation. We should not have to fear mobs. We should not have to defend our place here again and again.

Yet even in spite of all this, we still survive. We still show up. We still build. We walk through doors that are closed to us and refuse to give up. And that is what unsettles people the most, that after everything, we still rise.

The Divide in America

Meanwhile, white America itself is splitting. Conservatives are marching openly in hate rallies. Liberals are fractured and uncertain of their own identity. In that divide, Black voters remain the deciding factor. Time and again, we are the ones who tip the balance in national elections.

Some talk about a third party, but history shows those efforts collapse under division. The reality is this: Republicans cannot win without our votes, and Democrats cannot govern without them. That is the leverage we carry.

The Jillian Michaels Race Card

When Jillian Michaels sparred with Abby Phillips on CNN, she tried to play a race card of her own. By turning the conversation toward racism, she leaned on something unspoken: the fact that she has an adopted Haitian daughter. That was her shield, her belief, “I cannot be challenged on this because I have a Black child.”

But let us be clear. Proximity to Blackness is not the same as living it. And there is a difference between Jillian and Abby that matters. Jillian adopted a child. Abby birthed one. Abby’s daughter is her blood, her legacy, a Black child born of a Black mother. That is not the same as adopting a Haitian daughter and quietly using her existence as a prop in an argument about slavery.

Now let us talk about Haiti. Haiti was the first nation to successfully rise against slavery, paying for that victory with both blood and gold. After independence, France demanded reparations that bled the island dry, and foreign powers continued to exploit Haiti until it was left in poverty, corruption, and gang violence. What happened in Haiti was proof enough of “white people bad.” That history matters.

When Jillian tried to silently weaponize her adoption against Abby, she revealed something deeper about how white America thinks about race: that having a Black child, even a Haitian one, is enough to speak over us, enough to dismiss our experience. But it is not. Abby Phillips, as a Black woman and the mother of a Black daughter, can speak to the ADOS experience in ways Jillian Michaels never can.

I pray her daughter is treated well. But having a Haitian child in your home does not absolve you of blindness, arrogance, or privilege. And it certainly does not give you the right to throw Blackness in someone else’s face.

Erasing History and the Politics of Collapse

It is through lived experience that certain things come into focus. As a child in the 1970s, I was too young to understand all the politics shaping the world, but I do remember the gas shortage. I remember America having to ration fuel, and my aunt would say she could only buy gas on certain days depending on the last digit of her license plate. My mother did not have a car, but I remember taxi prices going up. We would take cabs from our apartment building in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to the laundromat and the grocery store, and my mother would complain about the rising fares. A jump from $3.50 to $5.50 was a big deal in the ’70s.

Back then, the crisis was tied to the Middle East, and I saw it only through the eyes of a child. But looking back now, I can see the larger picture: America has always had to navigate global energy politics.

I agree with Jillian when she says America did not directly cause the collapse of nations like Venezuela or Cuba. That is true, but only to a certain extent. It was capitalism itself that fueled their collapse. When you tie your entire national economy to one system—in this case, oil—you have to be prepared for the risks that come with it, especially in a global market.

It reminds me of slavery. Enslaved labor became the biggest economic driver taken out of Africa, and when that system was disrupted, Africa suffered devastating losses. In the same way, Venezuela’s dependence on oil left them vulnerable. When prices crashed, their economy collapsed. That was Venezuela’s own fault, just as Africa’s leadership failed to adapt when the slave trade ended.

Cuba was just the same for me. I can remember the chatter of Cuba and the Bay of Pigs. Whenever I think of Cuba, I think of JFK. My mother often said she was walking down the hall in high school when his death was announced. It always struck me that my mother, who could barely spell though she could read, carried such strong thoughts about a politician.

When I was in my early twenties, I was being radicalized by the news and even by some school teachers. I can remember Cuba being portrayed as America’s enemy, but at the same time many from my community celebrated Cuba for sheltering Assata Shakur. I remember feeling torn.

It was only much later, after hearing about the socialism that destroyed a nation, that I began to see the fuller story. When I learned about Cuba seizing American-owned land after the revolution, I understood that nations rise and fall not only because of foreign pressure but because of their own economic decisions and the alliances they choose to make.

Still, I do not believe history should ever be erased. The story should be told. We should look honestly at Venezuela’s and Cuba’s history and tell the truth about their demise, so Americans do not fall into the trap of believing that Venezuelan or Cuban migrants entering the U.S. illegally are here only because “America caused it.” That narrative is false. The deeper reality is that both nations collapsed under the weight of their own failed systems.

And that is where Jillian Michaels, once again, misses the point. Yes, she is right that America did not cause these nations to collapse. But when she tries to equate capitalism with slavery, she erases a truth that cannot be ignored. Slavery was not just an economic system — it was the forced labor of Black people whose blood, sweat, and genius built this nation. That story belongs to American Descendants of Slavery, and it must never be buried under attempts to rebrand white America as innocent.

Greed and Reparations

White America has been greedy since 1619. Every system they built, every law they wrote, and the “perfect union” they dreamed of was designed to benefit white Americans, even if it meant enslaving Black Americans.

And that brings me to reparations. Black Americans were promised reparations. That promise was broken. Not because the debt disappeared, but because racist political systems stripped it away. America knew it owed us, and then it flipped the script.

ADOS have been lied to. During Reconstruction, 40 acres of land along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts was set aside for freed Blacks. Some had already begun to settle there under Special Field Order No. 15. This was America admitting her guilt — repaying former slaves not just for themselves, but for the generations of enslaved people who had already died in bondage.

But then Lincoln was assassinated. His successor, Andrew Johnson, rescinded the order, took the land back, and returned it to white Confederate owners. What was promised as repair was stolen back in betrayal.

When people argue that reparations are “welfare,” I reject that outright. Reparations are not welfare. They are payment on a debt, a debt for 246 years of slavery, followed by generations of terror, exclusion, and exploitation under the guise of Jim Crow.

And let us be clear. We are not talking about taking dollars out of individual people’s pockets. Reparations are not about “Johnny giving up one of his two dollars.” Reparations come from America itself — the same America that finds money to support immigrants who have no loyalty to this nation, the same America that funds other nations and even international agreements like the UN’s Global Compact for Migration, which uses climate change and other crises to justify endless flows of aid and resources—fueling the illegal migrant crisis. Everyone profits while ADOS continues to struggle to survive in the very land we built.

Far right pundits will say, “Well, you were not a slave, and I was not a slave owner.” That is the same as saying to the families of 9/11 victims, “Well, you did not die in the towers.” Nobody said that to them. Their families were compensated, because the loss was real. The same was true for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, or Japanese Americans interned during World War II. Nobody told them their claims were invalid because their descendants carried the wound instead of them personally.

Some people look at me and say, “You own your own home, you drive a fancy car, and worked for major corporations. That proves racism no longer exists.” But no, it proves the opposite. It proves the tenacity and ingenuity of a people who have survived the most dispiriting and oppressive systems and still found ways to build, to create, and to endure. My success is not evidence that racism is gone. It is evidence that we refused to be crushed by it.

And because of that, I feel even more responsible to speak up for the ones who are still enslaved in different ways today. Mass incarceration, predatory drug systems, and cycles of poverty continue to trap millions of Black men and women. These are modern forms of bondage, no less destructive than the chains our ancestors carried.

This is why reparations matter. They are not about punishing America for the past, they are about acknowledging the debt that still lingers in the present. And in any case brought forward by descendants, the principle is clear: families act on behalf of those who were not able to seek justice for themselves. This is not new. Courts and governments have long recognized that when victims are denied justice in their lifetimes, their descendants have the right to stand in their place.

So when people say, “You were not a slave,” I answer: No, but I am standing for the ones who were, because they were never given their day of justice. And I will not allow their debt to be erased by time.

We Are Still Here

So yes, slavery was bad and fueled by racism that still exists. But ADOS is not the same people we were sixty years ago. We have learned. We have built. We have found new ways to use our voices and our power.

So when I hear Jillian Michaels twist history, it makes my blood boil. The attempt to not only whitewash American history but to paint America as a saint in a system that oppressed others is a blatant lie, and it must always be called out. Her switch to Cuba and LGBTQ issues is nothing more than sleight of hand, a distraction meant to redirect the conversation. But the story she really wants to erase is the story of ADOS. And the truth is, you cannot erase it. You cannot tell one story without the other, because the history of America is inseparable from the history of ADOS.

Fields of the Forgotten: Why Rereading Uncle Tom’s Cabin Still Matters

Artist’s Statement
Fields of the Forgotten | Why We Must Never Forget is a visual remembrance of the men, women, and children whose labor built this nation yet whose names were erased from its history. The cotton fields in this piece are more than a backdrop; they are silent witnesses to centuries of stolen promise, broken bodies, and unyielding spirit.

The figures represent both the visible and the unseen — those who survived and those who never made it into the history books. The overseer’s presence reminds us that oppression was not accidental; it was enforced, calculated, and sustained.

“You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution.” – Fred Hampton, Deputy Chairman, Illinois Chapter, Black Panther Party

The older I get, the more I realize that whenever there is something America wants us to bury, it is usually because the truth inside it would empower and awaken the Black man.

So they, meaning white supremacists with the faces of boogeymen, do everything in their power to deter us from discovering the truth. Recently, I reread Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book I had not thought about in years, and it hit me that literature—especially the kind that speaks to the true history of chattel slavery in America—is something this country would rather we forget.

This post is not just about one novel. It is about how our resistance has been portrayed, distorted, and erased over time. It is about reclaiming the complexity of our stories, refusing to let others define our heroes, and recognizing that the erasure of truth has political consequences today, including the refusal to pay the debt owed to ADOS.

Sambo, Quimbo, and the System’s Design

I reread Uncle Tom’s Cabin after someone called me “Sambo” for saying slavery and illegal immigration are not the same. The insult sent me back to the characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel: Uncle Tom, Aunt Chloe, George, Eliza, Sambo, and Quimbo, alongside the slave masters—Mr. Shelby, Augustine St. Clare, and Simon Legree—and their families. It also brought me to James Baldwin’s sharp critique of the book and eventually to modern works like Twelve Years a Slave and The Underground Railroad.

I vaguely remembered Sambo as a negative figure, meant to demean. Being called that name was clearly intended as an insult, yet I could not quite recall why it carried such weight.

As I reread the novel, I realized that, knowing myself, I am not a Sambo. Unfortunately, oftentimes to my own detriment, I defend the truly oppressed. My curiosity shifted from the insult to the novel itself. Each Black character played a central role. They were typecast without being caricatures. Sambo was the enslaved man who had become exactly what the system wanted him to be—a cruel enforcer against his own people. Yet in the end, he and Quimbo repented and tore off the wretched masks that had imprisoned them.

I was drawn to Tom. He was not selfish. He sacrificed for others, even allowing himself to be sold to protect them. He refused to betray those who escaped, refused to beat another enslaved person, and died rather than harm his people. His resistance was not loud or violent, but steady and absolute. His silence was not cowardice. It was defiance.

Sambo and Quimbo, in contrast, believed survival meant becoming what the master wanted—aligning with oppressors and enforcing the system’s cruelty with precision. That is the image white America prefers: the compliant Black who polices his own. But even they awoke in the end.

What struck me most was not just the actions of the enslaved characters but the mindset of the masters. Shelby, St. Clare, and Legree all believed their way of life was natural, justified, even moral. St. Clare’s long speeches about wealth and capitalism mirrored the mindset of many white plantation owners who knew slavery was wrong but justified it to appease their hollow souls. Against that backdrop, Stowe showed the many ways Black people responded to slavery, revealing how deeply oblivious white people often were to the truth.

Tom’s steadfast faith and Aunt Chloe’s quiet strength showed resistance through dignity, endurance, and humanity. Sambo and Quimbo showed what happens when people adopt the spirit of the system. George represented those who escaped altogether. The women—Cassy, Emmeline, Aunt Chloe—endured rape, beatings, and hardship, yet fought for their own freedom.

At its core, the novel is a story of resistance, survival, and the moral cost of oppression on everyone involved.

James Baldwin’s Inaccurate Critique

James Baldwin’s “Everybody’s Protest Novel” dismisses Uncle Tom’s Cabin as sentimental and symbolic rather than substantive. He argued that Stowe reduced her characters to tools—saints and symbols—denying them full humanity. He criticized her virtue model, where the good were those who endured silently, died with grace, and never fought back.

Baldwin wanted portrayals of Black people as fully human: angry, flawed, joyful, complex. He missed, however, that for enslaved people, survival often meant pretending or resisting quietly. Each of Stowe’s characters represents a truth about how people survived under an inhumane system.

He also overlooked the parallels between Tom’s “turn the other cheek” endurance and the Civil Rights Movement’s nonviolent resistance, championed by leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. That same endurance helped dismantle segregation.

While Baldwin was right to point out Stowe’s blind spots, he missed that sometimes fiction says what reality cannot. Stowe was not a radical. She was a white woman in 1852 writing for Northern Christians, planting seeds in the only way her position allowed. Where Baldwin saw sentimentality, I see spiritual clarity. Tom did not fight with fists, but with an unshakable “no.” That is resistance too.

Baldwin’s dismissal was a mistake. Rejecting Uncle Tom’s Cabin erases a valuable record of how varied Black resistance could be—and how white narratives have long shaped our understanding of it.

Modern Narratives and the Erasure of Black Men

The same tension between suffering and agency appears in modern works. In Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup’s real-life story is framed on screen with relentless brutality but little space for the inner lives, strategy, or quiet resistance that kept people alive. It risks flattening the enslaved into victims rather than fully realized human beings.

The Underground Railroad takes a different approach, centering on Cora, a young woman who survives horrors across every state she passes through. But every strong Black man in her orbit is destroyed, corrupted, or erased—Caesar, Royal, Mingo. The survival of the woman becomes the focus, while male counterparts vanish.

The pattern appears again in The Woman King, which elevates a female hero while sanitizing the Dahomey kingdom’s role in the slave trade. The result is an incomplete truth.

Black women did not survive slavery, Jim Crow, or generational hardship alone. We endured alongside men who worked, fought, and protected their families in whatever ways they could. Without those men, there is no us.

Runaway Slave: Then and Now

In old slave narratives, the runaway risked everything for freedom. Today, “runaway” too often means men leaving their families, sometimes pushed out by systems designed to break them. The dignity and purpose of running toward liberation has been replaced, in many cases, by running from responsibility—though the root causes still trace back to systemic oppression.

Today’s Culture and the Echo of the Plantation

We still have Sambos today—just in new uniforms. They may be media personalities, politicians, or influencers, but their role is the same: align with systems that harm us, condemn those who resist, and be rewarded for it.

The plantation tactic of dividing the compliant from the defiant still works. Compliance has never guaranteed safety. Silence has never guaranteed dignity.

Black Youth Rebellion and Topsy’s Legacy

Some of the rebellion we see in Black youth today is survival in disguise. The system floods our communities with weapons of destruction, then punishes us for using them.

This erasure of the Black man leads me back to the Black child—like Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin—shaped by absence. Then, the family was destroyed by whips and auction blocks. Today, it is destroyed by mass incarceration, economic deprivation, underfunded schools, and housing traps. Both eras strip away stability. Both leave children to grow up without the security of mother and father.

Topsy’s “confession” in the novel—admitting guilt because it was expected—mirrors how society predetermines our youth as guilty before they have a chance to prove otherwise. Until the systems that create these cycles are dismantled, much of what we call “crime” will simply be resistance in the only form a broken environment allows.

The Debt That Remains

The erasure and distortion of our stories is not just cultural—it feeds the political denial of what is owed. America owes a debt to ADOS, and it is time to repay it. Forty acres and a mule were promised and then taken away. Generation after generation, the fight for justice was deferred in the name of survival.

Now the call is louder. This country extends help to others while keeping its foot on our necks, all while presenting itself as a global good Samaritan.

We fill stadiums. We drive culture. We work in industries where doors swing wide for white applicants but remain shut for those who look like us. We knock, again and again, accepting crumbs while the feast is kept from us.

Reparations is not about guilt. It is about settling a debt that has been unpaid for far too long.

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© 2025 Jacqueline Session Ausby. All rights reserved. This post and all original content published under DahTruth are the intellectual property of Jacqueline Session Ausby. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

A Rising Undercurrent of Fear

“They call me Mister Tibbs!”

The conversation about race in America is often reduced to slogans, soundbites, and selective outrage. In the months since the last election, the tone has shifted sharply, with media outlets and political influencers on both the left and the right casting Black Americans into roles that serve their own agendas. Some call us “savages,” others use us as props to appear inclusive, but few are willing to confront the full truth. This post digs into the myths, the numbers, and the double standards that shape how we are seen, treated, and judged. It also sets the stage for my next piece, where I will revisit Uncle Tom’s Cabin to show how old narratives never truly die.

Over the past several months, an undertone of fear has been rising in this country. There is a growing sense that Black Americans have had enough of being mistreated and disrespected, and we are starting to fight back. The disturbing trend is that, at times, it has become violent. That is uncalled for and harmful.

The best way forward is not through acts of violence, but by using our power to vote. We saw what happened in the last election as more Black Americans shifted to the right, aligning themselves with Republicans for two reasons: first, because we love this country; and second, because we love our community.

A Shift in Political Assumptions

I believe Republicans have falsely assumed they had ADOS in the palm of their hands. Now they are witnessing something unexpected: Black Americans standing up and forcing the national conversation to finally focus on our community.

Yet instead of seeing us as fellow Americans, some still treat us with disrespect. They use language like “savages” and show half-naked young women across our screens, suggesting that “White equals good,” and then pretend that was not the message.

The Podcaster Divide

White men, emboldened by the last election, have taken to podcasts to draw lines. Some Black men, the ones who do not push back against their violent verbal assaults, are labeled “good.” Those like Officer Tatum and the Cartier Brothers are perfect examples.

They argue in percentages, condemning their own communities as if they are not Black men themselves, as if the world sees them as the “good guy.” The rest, they imply, are dangerous. It is the same old tale dressed in new language: that Black people need to be “whipped and chained,” locked in prisons for violence they are accused of committing, while every White savage, monster, rapist, and child predator slips by without the same scrutiny.

Media Framing and Manipulation

When a man of Hawaiian descent walked into a New York City building and opened fire over the NFL’s handling of player concussions, right-wing media was outraged that CNN called him a White man. They quickly flipped the story, calling him Black, though he was neither.

This was the White media’s attempt to frame the image of the Black man as violent and savage.

What the FBI Numbers Show

The FBI’s numbers tell a different story. In raw counts, White offenders commit more drug sales, more drug possession, more domestic violence, more property crimes, and more sexual assaults than any other group. Even for rape and pedophilia, Whites lead in total arrests.

Robbery is one of the few major crime categories where Black offenders outnumber Whites, yet Blacks are the ones overrepresented in statistics.

The Family Values Myth

Right-wing media pretends to be the protector of marriage, women, and family, when in reality, White Americans lead in the number of divorces. In 2022, Census data shows over 1 million divorces in the U.S., with the majority involving White couples, far more than any other group. Divorce is not a crime, but this idea that evangelical Christians are more wholesome and family-oriented than Blacks is a straight fallacy. The fact remains: more White couples divorce than any other group.

Percentages vs. Raw Numbers

People like Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh, and others will argue statistics and percentages. Whenever a larger population outnumbers a smaller one and you want to reject the truth, you frame your argument that way.

Statistically, they will say Black people are more violent or commit more crimes because they do not want to face the raw numbers.

FBI 2022 Arrest Data:

• 6,875 arrests for rape (66% of known offenders) vs. 3,150 Black offenders (30%)

• Over 600,000 property crime arrests vs. 270,000 for Black offenders

• More than 500,000 drug possession arrests vs. 220,000 for Black offenders

And let us be clear, these so-called “Black” crime numbers include every person who identifies as Black, not just ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery). The number of ADOS individuals committing crimes is overinflated because the statistics combine all Black people, including African and Caribbean immigrants and their descendants.

A Double Standard in Justice

The truth is simple: all men are capable of violence. Some are not savages or monsters, while others are innocent victims, regardless of race.

A perfect example is the situation in Cincinnati. Republicans are outraged that a group of Black men fought back against a White man who continuously verbally and physically attacked them, calling them the n-word and slapping one of the men.

The White man picked a fight, and when he got beat up, he cried, “We’re the victims.” The far right told the story as if it were unprovoked, framing it entirely from a single perspective caught on video. Now they are going to use every Black person involved as an example, while the individual who instigated the altercation still walks free.

Mainstream media outlets, podcasters, and even the Vice President showed and addressed only one side of the footage. They used words like “brawl” and “attack” to suggest that Black people randomly targeted a group of innocent White people.

The Historical Pattern Continues

This narrative reflects a long-standing expectation in America: if a White man strikes a Black man, the Black man is expected to turn the other cheek. But if he dares to fight back with rage and vengeance, suddenly he is the threat, the one who must be jailed. Law enforcement often aligns with this narrative, functioning like modern-day plantation overseers.

If any other group commits violence against Blacks, we are told we must have started it, provoked it, or deserved it. People feel entitled to spit on us, call us names, and still expect our silence. They will pull us over for not having headlights on during the rain, even when the rain has stopped. If we do not comply, we will be punched in the face, handcuffed, and taken to jail.

The unspoken rule is clear: we should be used to violence by now. And God forbid we ever respond to it.

A Creeping Sentiment

Whites have long viewed Blacks as a quiet threat. Since the days of slavery, they have done all they could to keep Black people oppressed.

A creeping sentiment suggests that, because we are seen as violent, we need to be “checked.” Whites act on this by taking measures such as sending the National Guard into D.C. after a White person known as “Big Baller” was allegedly carjacked by a group of teens. The implication is, of course, that they were Black teens. It is fine to send in troops to address crime in D.C., but what will you do about the crime in suburbs across America?

Of course there is a problem, but it does not begin or end inside the Black community. It began with Black families being pushed to the margins, where drugs and other destabilizing forces are intentionally allowed to take root, just as they were during the War on Drugs, when federal policies flooded our neighborhoods with narcotics under the guise of law and order. And long before that, during COINTELPRO, when federal agents infiltrated, surveilled, and disrupted Black leaders and movements to prevent unified political power. These forces weaken our communities while fueling wealthier, whiter enclaves like Georgetown.

The hypocrisy is staggering. Those who benefit from this dynamic turn around and point to our youth as the threat. And beneath it all is a dangerous suggestion: with the right mix of federal law enforcement, redistricting, shifting party lines, and consolidating power in Congress, Black people could be pushed neatly back into bondage.

This is happening in Georgetown because newcomers with lavish lifestyles see “Black youth crime” as a threat. They call for troops to keep those youth, and by extension, the parents they say are not minding them, out. Even Green Party voices on podcasts like Breaking Points sound like conservatives, aligning with Trump’s ideology because it makes them comfortable. The same people who champion abortion rights, free healthcare, food stamps, and speak out against starvation in Gaza are now the ones saying, “Seize them and put them in jail until we get to the root of the problem.” Well, if that is the standard for Black kids who commit crime, then let us see you demand the same for White kids. But we know you will not, because mercy takes a back seat the moment it threatens your comfort and your control.

Our Message to Both Sides

The pressure comes from both the left and the right, each with its own methods of keeping us in our place. But like Mr. Tibbs, we can proudly stand our ground and strike back, not with fists, but with our minds, our actions, and our votes. I get it, Black people commit crimes; this is true. But we have worked hard in this country to improve our lives, and these narratives will no longer work to condemn us. Our fight is through the strategic use of our voting bloc power to command justice.

To White liberals, we say: we are not pawns to ease your conscience while you pretend to be the Good Samaritan, knowing you are the greedy master.

To White conservatives, we say: your feigned superiority must be checked, and we welcome this fight. We will no longer be the victims in your den of hate, fear, and unearned superiority.

DAHTRUTH

If I have to keep this real, then I must state that addressing violent crime means addressing crime in all neighborhoods. That means confronting the root causes wherever they exist — whether in Black communities, White communities, or anywhere else — without selective outrage or political favoritism. Until we apply the same urgency and resources across the board, we will keep treating symptoms instead of curing the disease.

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The narratives that define us are not accidental. They are crafted, repeated, and reinforced until they feel like truth. But history tells us they can be challenged, reshaped, and dismantled. In my next post, I will turn to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, not as a sentimental relic of the abolitionist era, but as a blueprint for how stories have been used to control the image of Black Americans. Understanding those patterns is key, because until we name and confront the lies of the past, we will keep living under their shadow in the present.

The lies that bound the slaves in Uncle Tom’s Cabin still bind us. They have just been dressed in modern language.

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© 2025 Jacqueline Session Ausby. All rights reserved. This post and all original content published under DahTruth are the intellectual property of Jacqueline Session Ausby. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

From Denim to Disgrace: How Fantasy, Sex, and Power Keep America Looking Away

“The bluest eye in the world. And it belongs to a little Black girl.”

— Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Pecola Breedlove never got blue eyes. She got madness instead. What Morrison offered us wasn’t a fantasy. It was a warning.

In America, sex is a currency, and fantasy sets the exchange rate. We pretend to be shocked by what we see, yet we created the market, packaged the product, and wrote the script.

After hearing about the new American Eagle Outfitters Fall 2025 denim campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney, I was struck by the amount of outrage. Every other swipe brought up this woman wearing jeans. The implications were hidden in the actress’s words. Titled “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” the campaign showcases Sweeney, the 27-year-old star. Sweeney claims she has “good jeans,” and we’re meant to understand this not only through her blue eyes but also through her revealing top, her thin alluring figure, and the overt sexuality of the presentation.

The outrage surrounding the commercial centered on what many perceived as a veiled eugenics message: that goodness equates to being white, blue-eyed, and blonde. I didn’t share the same reaction as many in my community. Instead, I was more troubled by the suggestion that life becomes easier if you simply buy the right pair of jeans from American Eagle Outfitters. The double entendre of blue eyes plus blue jeans equals good genes was clear. However, what concerned me even more was the persistent framing of beauty around a specific body thin type. And we all know that’s cap.

Morrison warned us what happens when a society teaches a little Black girl that blue eyes equal love. Sydney Sweeney’s campaign is not just about jeans. It is about the fantasy America keeps selling. One where beauty, goodness, and power all come wrapped in thin white frames and light eyes. Pecola wanted the bluest eyes in the world. Now we’ve packaged them, filtered them, and are selling them back to the masses—for $69.95 a pair.

In many African nations, fuller figures have long symbolized beauty, wealth, comfort, and status. A full-figured woman was seen as well-fed and well-kept. The United States is now embracing this trend, packaging beauty in fuller figures and selling it to the highest bidder. These are the new genes sold by plastic surgeons in surgery centers.

The American Eagle Outfitters campaign is trying to dig up old images of yesterday and cast them into algorithms, all for profit. It is the old adage: sex sells in blue jeans. This narrative is not new. It is an old one, repackaged as a modern ideal. It contradicts today’s cultural norms.

What I find interesting, and perhaps a brilliant marketing strategy, is that even bad press becomes good press if it keeps you relevant. American Eagle Outfitters launched their campaign in just the right climate to get their name circulating in the culture, even if they are quietly pushing a lie. I will say it clearly: it is a brilliant marketing strategy. People are clicking and commenting. Heck, I’m writing a blog about it. But there is a reason. I have a purpose.

It is no coincidence that American Eagle is entering this conversation at a time when discussions about sex are becoming more open, particularly when people are asking who might be on Epstein’s so-called list.

While mainstream media remains hyper-focused on Epstein, Trump decided to release the MLK files. I was initially upset until I heard what was in the documents. The files revealed nothing new about Dr. King’s infidelity, a fact already widely known. The release caused no real damage and served only as entertainment while more important issues remained hidden.

If an Epstein list exists, it would likely expose many powerful individuals—those high-level executives hiding the dirty little secrets of what’s been done to individuals with blue eyes in blue jeans… and others with different genes. That might explain why Biden didn’t release the list either. After all, he’s been called a pedophile himself.

Maybe Epstein was killed because he wasn’t getting a pardon—and the people in power feared what he might say.

They say he hanged himself.

If the media says so, then it must be true… right?

As much as I hate to admit it, I don’t care much about who is on the Epstein list or whether it even exists. It is no secret that many people, in both public and private spaces, have engaged in sexual exploitation. Some use sex to climb social or professional ladders. Others pursue relationships for money, power, or access. Many individuals sell more than love. The real story is not the list. It is our refusal to acknowledge how deeply sex and power are entangled. That dynamic shows up everywhere—from the halls of Congress to a 30-second denim commercial.

Calling this entire conversation a distraction is not an exaggeration. It perfectly reflects the petty, polarized back-and-forth that keeps America stuck. While the left continues to cry about Epstein, the right sells sex and “sexy” by turning Sydney Sweeney into a campaign charm.

The Democrats are struggling to hold things together. They are losing funding and facing internal division within both Congress and the DNC. The recent fallout between the DNC Chair and the Vice Chair, who resigned after threatening to primary sitting members of Congress, makes that division clear.

Congress now faces a triple divide: socialists, centrists, and so-called moderate progressives. Instead of working together, they are battling for control over a fractured cultural identity. What they are discovering about the party is a complete lack of ideas, experience, and cohesion. The party has no clear vision, so it leans on recycled headlines like the Epstein story to distract from Trump’s growing momentum.

Just like that, a campaign ad slips in with the old “Make America Great Again” undertone, and the conversation about accountability is drowned out by a white woman in jeans. It’s subtle. It’s slick.

I understand what’s happening.

The real concern is this: in America, sex is used to get ahead or to control others. We sell it in every form and then pretend we are upholding moral values. We perform outrage when women report sexual assault, but at the same time, we build entire industries around exploitation. Strip clubs on the outskirts of cities are treated as harmless, yet they power much of the business world’s after-hours economy.

The world was shocked when a CEO was caught on camera at a Coldplay concert with a woman from his company. They both looked at ease, smiling, as if it were just another night. For some women, that’s how it works. They go along with the game until the deal goes bad. After one, two, or three failed encounters, the story flips and they become the victim. This is mainstream now. And it has spread across cultures.

Sydney Sweeney in the American Eagle commercial is following a familiar script. She offers sex through the idea of “good genes.” She represents a type that many men believe sells more than intelligence or capability. Buyers of the past only wished they could. Today’s buyers count their coins. And as for the jeans, plenty are lining up to buy them. It doesn’t even matter what color the jeans are anymore. Black or blue, it’s about the fantasy stitched into every seam.

There is no illusion here—power can absolutely be purchased if you look the part. And good genes come in all colors. America continues to place desire above dignity. We celebrate the illusion of control while losing our grip on everything that truly matters.

What’s truly sad to me is watching the video itself—the way the camera scans across the young woman’s body, the way she arches her back and buttons the jeans. It brings to mind the same kind of exploitation tied to Epstein’s list. The public gets the names of the powerful men. But the names of those who sold their souls are never mentioned. Nameless, faceless individuals. Women like Sydney Sweeney.

I had never walked into an American Eagle Outfitters store. I never had much interest in the brand. Aesthetically, it’s not for me. But after some research what surprised me, was Jennifer Foyle, the Executive Creative Director, a self-proclaimed champion of women’s causes, would approve such a campaign. All proceeds from the Sweeney collection are reportedly going to a women’s crisis center, and yet no one seems to see the irony. They’re selling the very imagery that drives women to crisis centers in the first place.

And this is the American way. We condemn Epstein after the fact—after the documentaries, after the suicides, after the cover-ups. But before that, we indulged the culture that made him possible. We celebrate the fantasy, package the innocence, and profit off the performance. Then we act shocked when the fantasy gets out of hand.

We consume the performance, condemn the predator, and forget the pattern. Epstein wasn’t the glitch. He was the blueprint.

I don’t believe the marketing manager at American Eagle Outfitters cared about the message. They were selling an image to young girls and boys—profit over principle. Propaganda at its finest.

My final thought? I believe Sydney Sweeney comes from good jeans—just like I believe onyx, hazel, and every other eye color come from good genes and wear blue jeans. I just hope that letting herself be used as the face of “good jeans” doesn’t land her on one of those new lists.

If I were her mother, I’d protect her—and tell her to put on a shirt, and a bra, and sit down somewhere.

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© 2025 Jacqueline Session Ausby. All rights reserved. This post and all original content published under DahTruth are the intellectual property of Jacqueline Session Ausby. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

Who is thy neighbor

“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”

—Luke 21:28

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It’s so phony. Some ADOS look in the mirror each day and still decide that America is our problem. Without considering, our ancestors, once enslaved, didn’t dream of going back to the land that sold them. Instead, they fought to make a place for us here. They survived. Now we live as proof of a legacy that couldn’t be kept down. Yet I keep seeing posts condemning America, even as people survive off the very idea of it.

Our ancestors used the Constitution and war to overturn a lie. They fought to make the promise real. They didn’t sit around waiting for handouts, living in fancy hotels, or being given Food Stamps. So when I hear people comparing the lives of ADOS to those of illegal immigrants, I find it both disgusting and offensive—especially when it’s coming from a fellow sister or brother. Illegal immigrants have the freedom to go home. Slaves did not.

I hear people talk about “love thy neighbor” without ever mentioning that sometimes your so-called neighbor can be a thief or a backstabber. They sneak in and take your resources—undercutting wages and having babies to qualify for free food and shelter. I understand the argument: undocumented immigrants (or “undocs,” as Gavin Newsom calls them) take on roles that no other American wants, so why not let them stay and do the work? But many of these illegal immigrants turn around, work for minimum wage, and call Black people lazy for demanding fair pay.

I know the Bible says, “If your brother offends you, turn the other cheek.” That implies your neighbor is someone who shares your faith and your values—someone who believes in the same God and lives under the same law. That’s your neighbor. Illegal immigrants not only break the law by entering the country without permission, they often falsify documents to remain here and marry in hopes of staying.

From around the world, nations glorify the ADOS struggle. They admire our tenacity. Only to arrive in America, they turn around and condemn us for continuing to be strong and for fighting for our rights. They do this while using every resource and opportunity to grab what they can. They step on the backs of the so-called, “poor, lazy, lowly” Black Americans with a snobbish pride.

Still, we rise.

We rise without shame. We continue to build, grow, and even control the very electricity that scorches us for daring to hold power.

From Mexicans to Haitians to Africans—many from lands destroyed by their own people—they can’t fathom how American Blacks, with our “lazy, broken, crooked” selves, still hold so much influence around the world. More than anything, they want to be just like us—just not the fringe ADOS.

They really believe it’s free.

So they tell the lie when they come to this country: “We are not the same as ADOS.” They say they will farm your land, nurse your cows, clean your house, cook your food, walk your dogs, and deliver your mattresses and couches. They do all this for $8 an hour, all in pursuit of the American dream. Yet they step on Black labor and drain resources in the name of “loving thy neighbor.”

People love to quote the Good Samaritan, but they miss the power of the parable. The Samaritan didn’t ask the wounded man how he ended up on the side of the road. This is true. The Samaritan didn’t judge his past or question who was responsible. No lie.

In other words, ADOS shows that same spirit toward illegal immigrants—voting Democrat and supporting policies like the DREAM Act. Meanwhile, illegal immigrants often look down on ADOS, even as they rely on the very same systems we’re accused of abusing. From DEI initiatives to low-wage labor, they benefit even more than we do. They come here, have babies, and tap into resources for housing, food, and healthcare—without ever having contributed to the system they’re draining.

It doesn’t matter how hard you work. Taking without ever having helped build is not the same as contributing. Yet they elbow Black Americans aside, claiming equal rights without documentation. If anyone dares to question it, they claim the right to resist.

This isn’t the Good Samaritan story. The Samaritan helped a man who posed no threat to him. The wounded man didn’t attack the Samaritan. He didn’t threaten him, mock him, or ridicule his position. He simply needed help. That’s what made the Samaritan’s compassion so powerful—it was a response to genuine need.

That is humanity. It is offering mercy where there is no malice. What makes the parable powerful was mercy shown to the humble, not empowerment handed to the illegal entitled.

Notice this: the priest and the Levite walked to the other side of the road. They acted as if they hadn’t seen him, as if helping him would defile them. They were too concerned with preserving themselves, their image, and their comfort. That’s what I think about when people argue that illegal immigrants are needed for farming or meatpacking, or to clean your houses or babysit your kids. They act as if that justifies ignoring everything else—as if shielding their conscience from defilement is more important than the truth.

But I digress. This passage isn’t about policy. It’s about individual humanity.

Maybe that’s what this moment is asking of us again—to open our eyes and consider who truly qualifies as a neighbor. Is it the one who humbles themselves before a stranger? The one who votes to fling the gates wide open, without wisdom or discernment? Or is it the one who slips through the fence—not to seek refuge, but to take?

Oh, the rise of the little foxes. “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards…” They sneak in quietly, feeding off the fruit we labored for and spoiling the vine before it can ripen.

Where are the shepherds of the ADOS community? Where are those who were charged to guard the gate—to protect our people and our resources?

“Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves. Should not shepherds take care of the flock?” (Ezekiel 34:2)

The shepherds are silent. The watchmen are blind. The vineyard is under siege. The flock is under attack.

Right now, the world feels like it’s on fire. Wars rage in Haiti, Sudan, Syria—and on the streets of our own cities. Famine spreads. Ideals collapse. And AI threatens to redefine what it even means to be human. We’ve seen this before, countless wars throughout our lifetime—from Vietnam to Congo to Gaza—but this feels different now. It’s as if God is turning up the flame of fire.

Little by little, He is breaking strongholds, shaking kingdoms, and exposing lies. In that shaking, something is being revealed: the heart of man and the hand of God.

This isn’t just politics. This is prophecy.

The mountains are shaking. The seas are quaking. God is allowing the shaking, knowing all this will lead to world peace, as it is written.

So, as the world tears itself apart, I’m reminded that Jesus didn’t tell us to blindly let in the thief at the border. He told us to be the neighbor—the one who sees, the one who acts, the one who protects its flock with godly discernment.

ADOS not every man is our neighbor. Not every cause is holy. We need to open our eyes. We need to see the difference.

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AUTHORS NOTES:

Now, I know what I’m saying—the words I’m speaking—may sound hyperbolic, as if I’m just spewing one-sided talking points. But this year, I had a few renovations done on my home. Each time, a white man came out to give me the estimate. White men talked to me about the job, but every time, foreigners came to do the actual work.

To suggest that a Black man won’t take a job installing HVAC systems, putting in a fence, or even delivering furniture is the biggest hoax they’re telling people.

I’ll give you an example. My bed was delivered without the mattress support piece, which was missing from the order. The Hispanic delivery person told me the salesperson hadn’t included the part—even though it was necessary to assemble the bed. Then he tried to sell me the part for $250. He barely spoke English, but he managed to get that message across.

I called the furniture store, and they informed me that the part was included in the price. The delivery driver had no right to try and charge me anything extra.

I had him pick up that entire bed and take it back.

The store lost a customer.

And the delivery driver—who was not very neighborly and tried to rip me off—had to do all that work for nothing.

Not even a tip.

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