None Dare Call it Conspiracy — By Gary Allen

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First published in 1972, this, to my understanding, was the call to arms of the John Birch Society. Powerful, wealthy, and well-connected international figures (Insiders, in Allen’s terms) were marching the world to a one-world government under the banner of socialism and/or communism. This effort was a long, elaborate, slow-drip campaign to bring freedom loving people under the harness of total government.

These are my “thoughts to self” I typed up in response to my mom sending me the book to read. I heartily appreciate her effort and the desire to find some common ground in this wacky world we inhabit, but this will probably make less sense to those who don’t have a copy of the book on hand to refer to. Still, for those of you who have read the book, I hope this all makes some sense.

Hi, Mom.

Good to see you a couple weeks ago! Sorry things got cut short AND you had to have the extra headache of hiccups with your car.

Apologies for the typed-up response here. I started with a hand-written letter but quickly reached the point where my handwriting devolved into something that not even I could read. Also, reading is a slow process for me and writing is even slower. Given that, it’s nice to have the ability to go back and insert some thoughts as they occur.

First off, I want to lay out my hopes for this letter. As we’ve sent short messages back and forth, I like the idea of finding common ground and points of agreement. So, the effort here isn’t necessarily to change your mind about anything but more to just try to explain my thinking and views on the world, and perhaps find points where we overlap.

I [finally] got through with Gary Allen’s None Dare Call it Conspiracy and have some thoughts to share. I tried to put the thoughts together into some coherent sequence but then threw in the towel and just figured that it would be easier to go page by page and shout out any reactions.

First off, Allen’s foundational argument is that in the arena of global politics, we have to choose between believing things happen entirely by plan OR things happen entirely by accident. I think this sets his whole argument up under a false structure and a false choice. The reality is that yes, some things do happen because they are planned but also, some things just happen by accident. And sometimes (often?) planned actions have unintended outcomes. So I think we can safely dispense with trying to explain the world by looking through the lens of everything being completely planned OR everything being completely left to chance. It’s likely a combination of the two.

That said, I don’t think it is at all controversial or conspiratorial to argue there is a small group of ultra-wealthy and ultra-powerful people who are trying to bend the world to their desires. And yes, ultra-wealthy and ultra-powerful families tend to hang out together and their kids tend to marry each other. That shouldn’t be shocking. I guess the question is who exactly are these people, and what do they want? Call it one world government, call it corporatocracy, call it plutocracy, call it oligarchy, I think the outcome tends to be the same: rule by the rich and powerful, not by the citizens. I think we’re in complete agreement on this front.

If we’re talking about rule of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, guys like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, etc., seem to be the front runners, at least in terms of their massive accumulation of wealth and their desire for political power. As a group, they tend to be ardently pro big business, anti-worker, and anti-regulation of any sort. This also lands them in the anti-socialist camp. And in their political contributions (which the Supreme Court just ruled can now be unlimited), they overwhelmingly support Republicans. If there is a conspiracy of wealth and power, and “Insiders” wielding undue influence, I think these guys and others of their ilk are it.

On page 29, Allen claims that “total government” can come in the form of “communism, fascism, socialism, Caesarism, or, Pharaohism.” I’d also add authoritarianism to that list. But if the goal of the Insiders is total government and they don’t really care how they get us there, shouldn’t we be equally concerned with fascism or authoritarianism as we are with socialism? Allen makes this statement but then spends the rest of the book ignoring his own advice to be on the lookout for all forms of total government.  

Throughout the book, every place where socialism is portrayed as the end result of decades of clever planning and patient gradualism, I can’t help but notice how easy it is to swap out socialism with fascism. If the Insiders are indeed so clever and diabolical in their planning, it seems conceivable to me that they would claim to have socialism as their goal, when in fact it’s authoritarianism or fascism that they are striving for.

On that front, you mentioned in a letter not too long ago, as did the most recent issue of The New American, that the official Nazi party was called the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. This is stated as if to prove the Nazis were socialists. My reading of history is that this claim isn’t true. Hitler used the promise and banner of socialism to appeal to the working class, but what happened after the Nazis came to power? Actual socialists did not fare well. They ended up in concentration camps, not in power. 

If the goal of socialism (page 31) is to wipe out private property, what is the goal of fascism, where corporate and government power are merged? I think one goal would be a massive concentration of wealth. Would Elon Musk be the world’s first trillionaire if he hadn’t backed Trump in the 2024 election? Maybe, but I have my doubts. Just to clarify my views on the ultra-rich, I don’t really care how much someone wants to make. If Musk has the desire and drive to be worth trillions of dollars, fine by me. Go for it. At the same time, I don’t think it’s outlandish to have a floor we don’t allow people to sink below. Sometimes people get unlucky in life and I think having a social safety net isn’t enslavement, rather it gives people a chance to rebuild their lives and get back on a path towards self-sufficiency. Or, if they just can’t do that, is it so bad to offer both sympathy and charity?   

The Founding Fathers believed (page 33) that “each branch of government… would be jealous of its powers and would never surrender them to centralized control.” Looking at our current Supreme Court, Congress, and Executive Branch, I think our Founding Fathers made a dangerous assumption here. When the Legislative and Judicial branches capitulate, not to an Executive Branch with socialist tendencies, but to an authoritarian with fascist tendencies, I think all the hand-wringing over the dangers of socialism is blinding us to the current day situation where we find Trump’s White House starting multiple wars, taking over control of Venezuela (and their oil reserves), removing the power of the purse from Congress, leaning on a very permissive Supreme Court (where two of the majority’s six seats were filled in a legally questionable manner by Trump), threatening the integrity of our elections, and overall, operating with a shocking lack of checks and balances. When a member of Congress is virtually guaranteed re-election via a combination of gerrymandering (unlike what we’ve ever seen before), and unlimited campaign funds from the likes of Musk and such, why would anyone rock that boat? And for a Supreme Court Justice who is seated for life? There’s absolutely no accountability there. I do give a tip of the hat to Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene for giving it a try, but that didn’t work out so well for them…

And yes, I 100% agree with Allen that once you have a single branch of government holding the reins of power, dictatorship is nearly inevitable. And my fear is that is where we are right now. And socialism isn’t the threat. It’s authoritarianism.

The whole of Chapter 3 and the discussion of centralized banking and national debt burden as a way to control the government is a lot to take in. Still, a few questions pop to mind:

  • What executive administration has racked up the most debt? It’s sitting at $40 trillion today.
  • What executive administration, since the advent of the Federal Reserve, has been most active in terms of replacing board members with his own appointees?

If you answered with Trump for both those questions, you’re correct. I think we’re in agreement as to that being untenable.

Page 60. “Businessmen welcoming… Federal government into their affairs” isn’t something to be surprised by. It’s explained by the businessmen (aka, corporations) being able to write the very legislation governing their industries. Big business complains about the complexities of our tax code, yet it was their lobbyists who wrote it in the first place. And the cynical view is that the tax code is deliberately written to be so convoluted and so complex that only those with access to high-priced attorneys can navigate it. By design.

In the subsequent pages, I had some other notes to self where my left eyebrow shot up, but my overriding thought was this: How well does Allen’s argument hold up 55 years after the publication of his book? Is communism still on the march? Is one country after falling to communism? Not exactly. And how well does Allen’s argument against socialism hold up? According to Julia Angwin and Ami Fields-Meyer, authors of On Courage: How to be a Dissident in an Age of Fear, nearly 3 out of 4 people on the planet live under some form of autocracy. Not socialism.

When it comes to creating an enemy, the Insiders seem to have run out of steam with the USSR. It’s interesting to note that barely a decade elapsed between the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Twin Towers. Whether 9/11 was orchestrated or not, the resulting enemy of “terrorism” is a way better candidate for a never-ending war than any particular country. It’s hard to claim victory over an ideology.

My point here is that the Insiders don’t really care who the enemy is, as long as one exists. The cries of “Communism!”, “Socialism!”, “Terrorism!” all strike the same tone in my ear, with the message being one of “For your safety, acquiesce to the federal government, and in particular, the executive branch.” 

Page 106. This is a bit of an aside, but the whole “buying patents” section doesn’t make any sense to me. Patents are public and to qualify as a patent they have to describe a process or method in sufficient detail so that anyone else who has expertise in that field could recreate the item described in the patent. There’s no need for some clandestine “buying” of patents for the USSR to get access to US patented technology. It’s publicly available. From there, if a US company wanted to have patent protection for their invention in other countries, they would have to file, country by country, to get that protection. This whole section strikes me as fear mongering.

Page 116. “Most Americans fear big government…” Okay, but shouldn’t there be some definition of “big government”? In my view, our choice isn’t necessarily between big vs. small government. Some portions of government, like the military, need to be big to accomplish their mission. Some portions of government, like local public libraries, can be pretty darn small to accomplish their mission. I think “competent” vs. “inneffective” or “transparent” vs. “corrupt” or “self-serving” vs. “Serving the public good” would be better metrics for establishing the value of government.

This leads us to the question of what is the actual purpose of government. One view I subscribe to is the government’s purpose is to prevent an accumulation of power in the hands of a few. By that measure, we’re failing. Miserably. Another definition, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, is the proper role of government is to do what individuals cannot do as well on their own. In a sentence, that’s my role is at the Spokane Public Library. We provide access to tools and resources that fall beyond the reach of individual businesses in the Spokane region, but by pooling resources (tax dollars) we are able to support all of the region’s businesses with resources that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. And I do this work in a small-scale, socialistic way, with the support of small-scale, local capitalism.

In terms of economic systems, big-scale, winner-take-all monopolistic capitalism isn’t what I want. But small scale, locally based capitalism where local consumers know their local producers? Yeah, I’m a fan of that. I have similar views on the scale of socialism. At the local, small scale version, socialism is basically just neighbors helping each other with some shared responsibilities. But do I want some remote, faceless bureaucrat dictating how life must be lived? No. I don’t. 

Page 132. “14 signposts to slavery”:

  • #3: Detention of individuals without judicial process.
    • This is happening daily under Trump’s authority. And with ICE effectively acting as a Federal Police force, with a budget roughly 80% the size of the entire US Marine Corps. That’s frightening.
  • #8: An official declaration that anti-Communist organizations are subversive and subsequent legal action taken to suppress them.
    • Trump is taking this exact tactic, but with liberal organizations being the focus of the Federal government. Trump officials have taken a governmentwide approach to scrutinizing citizens and organizations opposed to Trump’s policies. Tax agents have examined nonprofit groups. Investigators have looked into the books of labor unions. Prosecutors have brought charges against anti-ICE protesters, asserting that a leftist conspiracy is provoking political violence on the streets, opponents have been branded as “terrorists,” etc. Case in point: just today (10/12/26), Representative Ilhan Omar’s home residence was raided by Homeland Security. Seems pretty fishy to me.
  • #14: Any attempt to make a new major law by executive decree.
    • Where do we start? Voting rights seem like a good place. Trump’s obsession with doing away with mail in voting and using electronic voting machines (and thus eliminating a paper trail), is particularly ominous.

My read on all of this is that authoritarianism and fascism is the biggest threat to American freedom. Consider the following signs of an emerging authoritarian ruler:

  • Rejects, in words or actions, the constitutional rules of the game.
  • Denies the legitimacy of opponents.
  • Tolerates or encourages violence.
  • Indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media.

I would add to that first bullet point the fact that Trump is on record in 2020, on a phone call with Georgia’s Secretary of State, pressuring him to “find 11,780 votes” in order to switch Georgia’s electoral votes from Biden to himself. The fact that this didn’t land Trump in prison for the rest of his life, to say nothing of allowing him to be in a position to sway, influence and corrupt upcoming elections… it just boggles my mind how the American public could excuse or ignore that. As citizens, our vote is sacrosanct and deserves to be treated as such. At the RNC convention on 9/11/26 (of all days), Trump led the RNC in a pledge to “cheat like hell” in the November elections. What version of a failure of leadership is that? And that’s not even bringing into play a 200-page diatribe about Trump’s role in the entire Epstein debacle and ocean of shame. The man is an utter failure and one of the sorriest excuses for a human being I’ve encountered in my life. 

So to sum up my thoughts: some capitalism can be good. Some socialism can be good. It’s all a matter of scale and the ability to diffuse power to the citizenry. Regarding my views of Trump, not only is he a self-serving, petulant, egotistical rapist, he’s also a prominent danger to our country. I just don’t understand how a significant percentage of our country refuses to see that. 

When it comes to refusing to confront evidence, here’s a book I found interesting: Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know, by Mark Lilla. While Lilla doesn’t have some profound breakthrough or solution for the blinders we all tend to put on ourselves, I thought he did a good job of wandering the wilderness of trying to figure out how we come to know what we know and what we believe to know. I hope you enjoy it!

And with that, I think I’ll wrap this up. Not because it’s finished and completely polished, but rather that it has taken me so long to get to this point that I figure I should punt this back over to you.

Even with all her flaws and shortcomings, here’s to America and another 250 years of trying to get it right.

Love,

Mark 

The Beautiful Struggle — By Ta-Nehisi Coates

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A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through Reddit, killing some time before doing whatever it was I should have been doing, when I came across some candid, first-person video of black Americans involved in a brawl in a Walmart. There was much pulling of hair, breasts popping out of tank tops, sucker punches, etc. It went on and on. These types of videos abound online, generally with some line of thought in the comments section that goes something like “What are these people doing? And why? What is wrong with these people?” My suggestion to the Reddit group thread was to go read this book for some answers.

As described multiple times and in multiple ways in Coate’s childhood memoir, when your very survival depends on your ability to pull together your crew, have each others’ backs, not back down, and not turn the other cheek, this is (one of the ways) that scenes like the Walmart brawl can come to be. If you’ve ever wondered how the conditions came to be that would foster such an environment, go read this book.

And if you aren’t keen on reading the book (or even if you are), I’d also recommend watching HBO’s The Wire. With the book set during Ta-Nehisi’s childhood in the mid to late 80’s Baltimore, just as the crack epidemic blossomed in black neighborhoods, The Wire follows black Baltimore through the early 2000’s. Just as Baltimore was clawing its way out of the crack fiasco, the heroin epidemic landed in town. Between Coates and the HBO series, the how and why of Walmart brawl videos comes into focus.

Is any of this uplifting? Yeah, in a testimony to human grit and determination sort of way, I guess. But also… yeah.

This is For Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web — By Tim Berners-Lee

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When it comes to any discussion of the Web, a good place to start would be with Tim Berners-Lee. Working at CERN during the 1980’s, Tim was part of a team working on writing computer code for the operation/management of the large hadron collider. It turned out there was a lot of data to keep track of. The problem was that data from different teams were siloed within each team and within each team, some data may have been stored on magnetic tape, some data printed out on reams of paper, some data might be saved on an 8-inch IBM floppy disk. And so on. To make matters even worse, CERN hosted scientists from more than twenty countries, with everyone pursuing a common scientific goal but without a common language. Data management-wise, it was a mess.

Tim’s flash of inspiration was to develop a set of protocols and standards (HTTP, HTML and URL, primarily) that allowed computers (and their users) to talk to each other, regardless of document type, document language, format, etc. And in a nutshell, there you have the World Wide Web.

In a stroke generosity, Tim put the ownership of the new web standards under the control of a non-profit and shared the foundational blocks of the web with the entire world, for free. Ever since then, he has been in a running battle with the Facebooks, Microsofts, Xs, Amazons, and SnapChats of the world to keep the web open and free.

To that end, Tim’s current efforts focus on the data sovereignty of individuals. When someone likes, comments, or posts on Facebook, that activity and data should belong to the individual, not Facebook. Facebook should not be allowed to gather and package user data and auction it off to the highest bidder. Also, why am I not able to see my Facebook activity in the same space as my LinkedIn activity? And why do I currently have four different airline apps on my phone, where I had to enter the exact same security information into each one individually? Why can’t I have a centralized data repository, like a wallet, whereby I grant access to third parties so that all of my data is both under my control and in one place? This is what Tim is aiming for with his Social Linked Data (Solid) set of protocols. Untenable? Maybe. There is a massive headwind blowing in a different direction. And yet, the entire population of Flanders (the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium) has been set up with a data pod/wallet, sponsored by their government. Shocking! Especially if you are a good American who believes that the government (and not Facebook and X and Microsoft) is the ultimate enemy.

To that end, I’ve been plinkalating around with setting up by own Solid pod, but with limited success so far. I still need to do more exploring, but do feel free to bop around on Inrupt (Berners-Lee’s jab at everything “innovate” and “disrupt” based): https://www.inrupt.com/wallets/data-wallets

Even though it looks like an uphill trudge, I am firmly in the camp that we, as citizens and consumers, should stop paying some of the world’s largest companies to steal our information. Radical, I know, but there it is.

Demon Copperhead — By Barbara Kingsolver.

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I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of this title. Given my listening habits, it took me the better part of a year to make it through the 21 hours. Normally, if I take such long breaks from a book, that means I’m not going to finish it. Not the case with this one. Demon, the protagonist, had a way of fading away for a few weeks at a time but then he would bubble to the surface of m’brain and I’d feel the urge to check back in on his story.

Part of the reason it took me so long to get through this one was that I felt the middle 1/3 of the book slipped into a repetitive and depressing cycle of Demon — an Appalachian middle-schooler thrust into the foster system when his single mom OD’ed — having some horribly tragic event befall him, only for him to somehow cobble a life together and a path forward… until the next tragedy or piece of crappy luck struck. I remember thinking “Dang. How much bad luck can one kid endure?” but I guess resilience is a requirement of both the reader and the character.

Set largely in the heyday of Purdue Pharma’s and the Sackler family’s ravaging of Appalachian culture via bottles of hydrocodone, Demon Copperhead is the deep dive, 21 hour version of The Matt Mitchell Music Company’s song, Bootstrap Nation. Side note: while we’re on the topic, if anyone wants to subject themselves to a sickening and sobering peek behind the source of America’s opioid epidemic, check out Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain.

I’ll steer clear of spoilers here but I will say this about the way Kingsolver wrapped up the novel: it was worth the effort. Go grab yourself a copy and settle in for a swirling eddy of neglect, abuse, bad luck, and bad choices splashing against the occasional rocks of kindness, compassion, and connection.

A Response to a Response.

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This lands in the “If you know, you know” category, but my brother recently sent a response to my “Open Letter to Family” post from back in August. I appreciate the dialog. I sincerely do. Any sort of political exchange these days that doesn’t devolve into a shouting match (or strained silence) should be celebrated. So, hurray us! With that, let’s dive in.

First up: religious faith, politics and the governance of a country. My wanderings through the world have led me to the conclusion that belief in (a) god doesn’t necessarily equate to wisdom and being a caring, compassionate human being. Some of the cruelest, most self-serving, and childish adults I have met profess to be strong Christians. At the same time, some of the cruelest, most self-serving, and childish adults I have met are avid atheists. And… some of the most generous, empathetic, and giving humans I have met have a deep religious faith. And… it’s also true that some of the most generous, empathetic, and giving humans I have met have either no faith, or a faith other than Christianity.

I think that while faith can be a good source of guidance on how to lead a good, moral life, the evidence would seem to indicate that it isn’t the only way. There’s also some evidence to indicate that many people use their loudly professed faith as a cover for actions that are in complete opposition to the very tenets of that faith. So as long as I’m not telling you what you have to believe and you’re not telling me what I have to believe and — especially — our government isn’t telling both of us what we have to believe, I think we can set aside using any particular faith as a litmus test on how to proceed.

One last side note: this may be neither here nor there, but it’s probably pretty clear that I don’t subscribe to any particular faith. I’m solidly in the agnostic camp. It seems like my options are to either believe that everything in the universe somehow came from nothing or everything in the universe came from something that always was. Either way, we have to engage in some magical thinking to explain how we walking bags of sentient ocean water came to be. Given that, I’m perfectly comfortable operating in the unknown and honestly saying “I don’t know.” Any time I encounter someone who gets rigid and dogmatic and claims some proprietary insight into the ultimate unknowable aspects of our existence, that causes my left eyebrow to shoot up.

Actually, one more side note on this subject. My guess is that if somehow there were some collective human amnesia that swept over the world tomorrow and erased all signs and memories of the thousands of forms and versions of belief in the supernatural, in short order we humans would come up with some new stories to explain our corner of the universe. And those new origin stories would probably be different than the multiple beliefs that exist today. Humans are good at concocting stories — it’s our superpower. Conversely, if we wiped away all scientific discovery to date, we’d eventually get back to exactly where we are with our understanding of the universe. The testable, replicable approach to observing and explaining the physical world should yield the exact same results.

New topic: Immigration. I’m 100% in agreement that countries need to have laws that provide for the control of their borders. Agreed. Also agreed is that it is the executive branch whose job it is to carry out and enforce those laws.

I think where we have some difference is how those laws are being enforced. If the law isn’t being enforced in the same way for everyone, or if the enforcement is being conducted in an unlawful manner, then the law and the power of the government become a tool of intimidation and coercion.

Some examples? These are the three that I find most concerning, although there are more:

  • Arresting and detaining U.S. citizens: While ICE policy explicitly states it cannot use its civil enforcement authority to arrest a U.S. citizen, there have been documented cases of citizens being erroneously arrested and even deported. 
  • A shocking lack of due process for those who have been arrested: See above. The fact that I can be swept off the street by Federal agents into an unmarked vehicle by unidentified, armed dudes in face masks is pretty unsettling. And if it’s not a straight-up kidnapping scenario, then I’m lucky that the courts get to take their leisurely time to figure out if I’m guilty or not. In the meantime, I can lose my job. I can lose my housing. My wife and kids can go hungry. This is not a fictitious scenario.
  • Targeting individuals based on protected characteristics: I guess the good news here is that the Supreme Court ruled last month that ICE can use race, language, ethnicity, profession, etc., as grounds for suspicion. That’s tongue-in-cheek about the “good news” part. As I mentioned before though, I don’t know who would trust the federal government with such broad legal rational for arresting and detaining someone. If ICE can willy-nilly arrest brown-looking construction workers, they can just as easily use that same logic to arrest white-looking loggers. We seem to have moved away from “innocent until proven guilty” to “guilty because Trump thinks you look guilty.” That should be alarming.

Here in my backyard, consider Cesar and Joswar, legally here in Spokane with Ben Stuckart as their legal guardian (Ben is a former City Council president here in Spokane and an acquaintance of ours). Cesar and Joswar were here to pursue permanent US residence. Joswar and Cesar checked every single box to be here legally, they had jobs, they were following every law laid out for them. They were checking in as requested for their asylum hearing where they were unlawfully arrested by ICE and then held in federal prison in Tacoma for months. Rather than languish in prison for an undetermined period of time, both have chosen to self-deport. That’s not justice.

(Edit as of 2/4/26: I thought that both men had chosen to self-deport. I was wrong. Only Cesar self-deported but a Federal judge released Joswar after more than seven months of imprisonment because the U.S. government denied him his right to due process. Source: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/feb/03/spokane-immigrants-detainment-was-illegal-judge-ru/)

Cesar and Joswar were detained on June 11th of this year. That afternoon, Ben rallied several hundred protesters to peacefully protest the arrests, with the hope of obtaining the release of Cesar and Joswar. The next day, the U.S. Justice Department sent out a mass email to all 93 U.S. attorneys ordering federal prosecutors to prioritize cases against protesters who defy federal immigration enforcement and to publicize those types of cases. In a move that can reasonably be seen an intimidation and silencing tactic, Ben and nine other US citizens are now up on federal charges for conspiracy to “impede or assault law enforcement officers”, which can carry a sentence of six years in prison and fines of up to $250,000.

Local fun fact: Rich Barker, the former US District Attorney here in Spokane, is the husband of one of my coworkers. Rich refused to bring federal charges against Ben and other protestors because he felt the charges were politically motivated and lacking in substance. Within a month, he was forced to resign. And just so you know, the Barkers are good, solid Mormon stock. Rich isn’t some radical left-wing type.

Within just the past few months, I’ve seen federal governmental abuses of power, lawlessness and political coercion/intimidation within a (couple) stone throws of my front door. I think the most dangerous threat to the rule of law and the Constitution is those who use loopholes in the law to weaken and tear down the rule of law. Turning the power of law away from the basis of civil society and into a tool to enforce conformity and silence is frightening.

As a good summation of the state of affairs with the militarization of America’s police and law enforcement (and more importantly, the “police-ification” of America’s military), pour yourself your favorite drink and give this a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcTZ_en5FTM Ezra Klein, the host of the podcast, definitely has his viewpoint but he asks some fair questions about where all of this is headed.

All right. New topic, of sorts. Am I being hypocritical in now wanting be an immigrant myself? I don’t think so. Especially given that I will be following the laws of the country we’re looking to move to. What would be hypocritical is if I expect special treatment solely because I’m a middle-class white guy. Whiiiich… is exactly what I have here in the good ol’ US of A. And I don’t like it. My rights and freedoms are only as solid as the rights and freedoms of those who are the most profiled, targeted and oppressed. And as of today, that feels pretty damn tenuous.

So here’s where I land, at least for now: I’m not looking to leave because I hate this country or because I’ve given up on its ideals. I’m leaving because I’ve seen too clearly how those ideals can be weaponized against the very people they’re supposed to protect. I’ve watched neighbors be indefinitely detained, prosecutors fired for refusing to play politics, and citizens threatened with prison for peaceful protest—all within walking distance of my home. At its best, the America I believe in doesn’t play favorites based on skin color or political loyalty. It doesn’t confuse enforcement with intimidation or mistake conformity for order. Maybe I’m naive to think I’ll find something better elsewhere, but I do know this: I can’t stand here and watch the rapid erosion of due process and equal protection under the law while pretending my comfort and safety somehow exist separate from everyone else’s.

Update…

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First of all, the drop cap option within WordPress seems to have disappeared. So much for style consistency.

But on to more serious matters. The latest issue of The New American just arrived last week and there are two things of note: 1) there was zero mention of our newly minted federal police force in the form of ICE and 2) there was a piece on Putin that was a reprint… from nearly 20 years ago. Huh. Seems like there might be some more recent/breaking news on that topic.

Oh, and also: The Supreme Court handed down a decision last week that ICE can make arrests “based only on race, language, location and occupation.” Let that sink in for a bit. This is not rule of law. This is rule of power, based on the whims of whomever is in power. Using the exact same legal logic and justification (or lack thereof), ICE could be directed to arrest white, English-speaking folks wearing cowboy hats. Who in their right mind would trust the Feds with that power?



An Open Letter to Family, Seven Months In.

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Hello, family.

I wanted to update you on where Maggie and I stand regarding the current state of our country. While our daily life in Spokane continues to grind along, we’re deeply troubled by what’s happening nationally.

Our Primary Concerns

Three issues are particularly worrying to us:

Federal overreach and Constitutional violations: ICE now operates with a budget 80% the size of the entire United States Marine Corps, essentially functioning as a federal police force. Armed, masked, unidentified federal agents are pulling people off streets and shoving them into unmarked vehicles—not just in distant cities, but here in Spokane, on our streets.

Military deployment against citizens: We’re witnessing the normalization of using federal forces against American citizens on American soil. Just as of yesterday (8/24/25), Trump announced he is (illegally) activating the National Guard in 19 states. This is after deploying United States Marines in Los Angles. Armed National Guard troops are now deployed now in D.C.? How is that okay? With anyone?

What the hell? This is in no way what America’s Founders envisioned. The silence from traditional “small government” and “Constitutional” advocates like the John Birch Society on these issues has been deafening.

Update as of today (8/25/25): Trump signed an executive order to activate the National Guard in all 50 states. That’s pretty bleak, folks, if you’re at all concerned about rule of law versus rule of power.

Messing with our electoral process: Texas has redistricted their House of Representatives districts, not on the regular schedule, but at the request of Trump?

Trump meets with Putin in Alaska for a 3-hour private limo ride and then announces that since Vladimir doesn’t like mail-in ballots, Trump is issuing an executive order to do away with mail-in ballots? We should all be asking… why does Putin care about our voting mechanisms?

Why This Feels Different

Trump’s character issues (34 felony convictions for election fraud, stemming from a cover-up of an affair with a porn star? The glaringly obvious Epstein connections? The E. Jean Carroll rape conviction?) combined with his actions in office have moved me beyond distrust of my government to active fear of my government.

We are witnessing:

  • Stripping people of due process. The federal government cannot legally deport people without giving them their day in court. And yet… here we are.
  • An executive branch that admits wrongly deporting people, then ignores court orders demanding correction
  • The pursuit of rule of power over rule of law
  • This is more tangential, but what’s with the odd coziness between Trump and Putin? It would be the irony of ironies if the true conspiracy here is that Russia infiltrated the John Birch Society and turned it into a mouthpiece for Russian interests… It seems plausible. Two days ago, Russia conducted a missle attack on an American electronics factory in Ukraine. Not a peep from Trump. See also: messing with the electoral process, as already mentioned.

Historical Parallels

I compiled an incomplete list of political actions from 1930’s Germany and 2025 America. See if you can identify which political leader took which actions:

  • Used populist appeals claiming to represent “the people” against elites
  • Scapegoated minority groups and outsiders
  • Attacked press freedom, labeling unfavorable media as “enemies” or “fake”
  • Attacked academics and intellectuals
  • Claimed only they could “fix” the nation’s problems
  • Used propaganda and legal tools to target minorities and “enemies”
  • Refused to accept electoral losses, claimed fraud, threatened democratic institutions
  • Deployed force to intimidate, detain, or suppress opposition
  • Showed antagonism toward an independent press and transparency
  • Expressed hostility toward institutional norms when they constrained power
  • Worked to circumvent checks and balances
  • Associated with political violence by supporters

The comparison? Every single action applies to both Trump and Hitler. The eventual scale of Germany’s horrors differ dramatically from where we are right now, but the foundational patterns? They’re remarkably aligned. Frighteningly so.

Our Decision

Given our country’s headlong lurch toward authoritarianism, Maggie and I are exploring moving out of the country. We plan to visit Panama in January (perhaps in October, if the stars align) then spend a month or so exploring living/working options. If current American trends continue, we aim to establish permanent residency there.

This decision hasn’t come lightly. We’re giving up:

  • Proximity to our children and family (this is obviously the one that has brought on the most tears and literal physical illness)
  • Careers that we enjoy
  • Retirement savings
  • A wonderful social network
  • Decades of the life we’ve built here

What outweighs all of this is the prospect of living in an increasingly oppressive police state. If we can get out now and provide our children a path out too, the writing on the wall says we should act sooner rather than later.

What I’m Asking

I’m not requesting any specific action from you, except this: if you share concerns about America’s rapid slide into an authoritarian police state (just because they aren’t currently targeting you doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist), Constitutional erosion, the stripping of rights from people legally here on American soil, the deployment of a MASSIVE and heavy-handed federal police, and an executive branch lacking a moral compass, it’s time to start talking.

  • Discuss your concerns within your social circles
  • Call your elected representatives and demand accountability
  • Make sure your passport is current and consider having an exit plan

The time for silent worry may be passing.

With love and concern, Mark

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales — by Oliver Sacks.

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I find the human brain to be endlessly fascinating. At least until the recent advent of AI’s hallucinations, it was our only known source of flights of fancy, musings, dreaming up gods and religions, and generally trying to make sense of this spinning world.

I usually take the combo of my brain and my body as being “me.” That unique combo has, with one notable exception in the early 2000’s, always more or less marched in lockstep and functioned as a singular unit. But what is the “self,” if and when the mind and body go their separate ways?

The bulk of Sacks’ work here is an exploration of cases where the mind/body fusion is broken or otherwise confused. A few sample cases: A man who doesn’t recognize his own left leg (and is disgusted by it’s presence), a woman who lost all proprioception (the ability to tell where your body parts are in time/space without needing to get visual confirmation to make that determination). A man whose brain could not process images from the left side of his field of view. A man whose very being ceased to exist at a certain point in his life, leaving him to live in a state of suspended animation from his midlife onward. A man who lost the ability to recognize faces; not just the ability to recall who was who, but literally not being able to tell the difference between a fire hydrant and a human child.

All fascinating stuff.

Coming back to my personal episode, in 2001, I was walking up our basement stairs in our little shack of a house in North Seattle when I realized that my right calf muscle wasn’t working as it should. I couldn’t do a heel lift on my right leg. There was some disconnections between my right calf muscle and brain… the message just didn’t get through. I went through a few rounds of neurological testing, got checked for Parkinson’s (not as much fun as it sounds) and, after a few weeks of doctors shrugging and giving me the “let’s wait and see” advice, the muscle slowly started to respond to signals from my brain. It was a small enough issue that I could go hours at a time without even remember the problem existed, but it was a disconcerting period in my life. What if the symptoms extended up and/or down my leg? What if it moved over to my left leg?

Aside from that weird little blip, I think the closest lack of proprioception experience I can come up happened when I went into the dentist just a few weeks ago for my routine cleaning. It was time to have a set of x-rays taken and as the dental hygienist was wedging various wheelbarrow-sized equipment into my mouth to take the pictures, I lost all sense of control and placement of my tongue. Was my tongue in the way? Was it out of the way? Was it doing something weird/slightly obscene? I don’t know, because my tongue proprioceptors seemed to check out for a few minutes. While not an exact match, that’s pretty damn close to what I felt with my calf. A part of my body just seemed to be hanging around but lacking a connection to my brain. Super weird. And the thought of having that experience extended to my entire body is simply terrifying.

If anyone has any interest in such oddities of the human experience, Sacks is a fluid, entertaining writer who is able to translate his professional neurologist expertise and package it up in a way to make it accessible to the laity.

The House of Hemp and Butter: A History of Old Riga — by Kevin O’Connor

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Indigenous pagans from times before history. Russians. Germans. Swedes. Poles. Lithuanians. The Russian Orthodox Church. Crusaders. Mercenaries. The Catholic Church. Seafaring merchants. From the early 1200’s through the early 1700’s (the timespan within the focus of this book), the control of Riga sloshed around between these competing — and occasionally allied — forces like beer in a nearly empty keg on a boat in heavy seas. A clunky sentence? Yes, but it also captures the frothiness and chaos of Riga.

Not being any sort of a northern European history buff, I went into this book with some trepidation, fearing it would be overly academic and inaccessible to newbs such as myself. I’m happy to report that with the judicious use of skipping forward a page or two here and there, I came out the other side with an appreciation for the unique and overlooked role that Riga has played in European history.

Fun fact: I never knew that there was a northern front to the Crusades. With 100% of the imagery of the Crusades in my mind being focused on the Holy Land abutting the Mediterranean, there was also a long-running effort by the Roman Catholic Church to convert pagans in the Baltic regions of northern Europe to Christianity. Through a combination of the cross, commerce, coercion and the crossbow, the pagan tribes eventually succumbed and/or formed alliances with the arriving forces. For those who refused to acquiesce and acknowledge the radiant beauty of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ… those people were erased from the landscape. As gawd would have wanted.

Fun fact #2: For Christians who joined the Crusades in the fight to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims (mission accomplished!), fighters could be granted up to a lifetime’s worth of indulgences by the church. Righteous, dude. For those willing to take up arms and head off to Riga and Europe’s northern climes, one year’s worth of indulgences would be granted. One year?! Pray tell, dear Pope, how the hell does that even work? Do I get to pick the year? Is it randomly selected? If so, by whom? Is it selected before or after my term of service? Can it be a year in the future or does it have to be for deeds that have already been completed? Does it have to be a single calendar year or can it be a fiscal year? Can I (or the indulgence grantor) pick and choose specific minutes/hours/days/weeks/months that would add up to a year? So. Many. Questions.

At any rate, within the span of this book’s focus (after the early 1700’s, Riga slipped into two centuries of Russian tsarist rule), Riga saw half a millennium of constantly morphing ruling interests. But in the end… after breaking away from the German empire in the aftermath of WWI only to be forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, only to be invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany and only to be re-occupied by the Soviets at the end of WWII and finally becoming an independent parliamentary republic following the collapse of the USSR, the most unexpected of all outcomes is that since 1991, Riga has stood as the capital city of its own sovereign territory. History whiplash.

Will Riga’s indepence be a permanent and lasting thing? History seems to indicate that we should check back here in a few years. In the meantime, go track down a copy of this work for yourself: https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1090904513

And if you want to kick some of this history around with Dr. O’Connor, go hang out at your local disc golf course or join a game of Risk. Listen for the muffled swearing and you will probably have found your guy.

Proper role of government

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According to Abraham Lincoln, ‘The legitimate object of government, is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.”

Let’s discuss. Feel free to add comments below. Since we’re now off of Facebook’s algorithm, feel free to throw bombs. Go ahead, be inflammatory. But here’s the single ground rule: attack ideas, not the individual. Here we go.