Charles Carreon, The Arizona Kid

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To Advance the Cause of Racial Justice Through Dharma, Abandon the Profit Motive
by Charles Carreon
6/14/20

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Origins and Expectations of the Religious Life

I was raised in a family of Mexican-American, Franciscan Catholic, New Deal Democrats. So priests, according to my Dad, were not supposed to be money-grubbers. Priests who behaved humbly and demonstrated material simplicity were the objects of my mother’s warm praise. A kind priest was a light in the community, urging us all to show kindness in daily life.

The idea of anyone going into religion expecting a paycheck was antithetical to the nature of the job. The Jesuits who taught at my high school were motivated by their sense of mission, not by their pay, which must’ve been negligible, if their lifestyle was any reflection of it. They certainly weren’t spending on clothes – four or five black slacks and shirts, a few pairs of black socks, a pair of Oxfords and a Roman collar were all they needed to suit up for the day. The best of these men were icons of self-discipline, focused achievers seeking inner compensation, something personal to each one. If you knew what it was, you’d know the mystery of their individual “vocation,” I suppose.

For example, my junior year English Literature teacher Mr. Fitzpatrick started out teaching spoiled suburban Catholic boys. He was a handsome man, passionate about human rights and equality in a time when Jesuit clerics were predominantly conservative. He was serious about bridging the gap between himself and his students. So during spring break 1970, he took a half-dozen of my friends down to Havasu Canyon, an arduous hike in and out, to reach the beautiful turquoise green falls that cascade hundreds of feet from sculpted red rocks into pools that look like translucent, green agates.

Well of course in that environment, with those kids, in those days, you were going to have some drug episodes. The late Bart Ferrante, then a sexually precocious Hawaiian hunk with martial arts chops, ran amok in the middle of the night, delusional from Jimson Weed intoxication, knocking over tents, hiding out in the shallow lake water, being chased by rangers with huge flashlights, and as he told me a few days later, “uprooting trees with my bare hands.”

The next day, Fitz and the boys had to hike out ASAP, but of course Brian, the ethereal Moody Blues fan, had to drop a full hit of windowpane before starting the hike out of the Grand Canyon, and found himself not really up to the physical exertion required. He needed a lot of help to get out. I think Bart, still flying on belladonna and scopolamine, carried his backpack part of the way, since he had stimulated their sudden decampment. Mr. Fitz was just about destroyed with anxiety, and forever after sort of viewed our little crew of psychonauts as feral creatures best kept at a reasonable distance. Quite wisely, he thereafter devoted his life to ministering to Native Americans on the reservation in Pendleton, Oregon, where he’s been for over forty years.

Dharma Re-Education

I daresay a lot of boomer-age Buddhists had similar religious exemplars. Folks raised in Catholic or Jewish families made up the bulk of our sangha for many years, and I know we all shared the normative view of religion as something that you give away. Our Buddhist cohort also had an egalitarian ethic that was established in hippie society. So we liked teachers who sat on the floor, who didn’t ask for money or make it clear that they wanted it, like a waiter, waiting for a tip. But we had re-educators in our sangha, people who told us that “the right way” to deal with Tibetan Lamas was to give them a high throne, offer them little red envelopes stuffed with cash piled up right in front of them as they sit on the throne, give them special food, special beds, and new linens. Ultimately they break it to you that what you need to give the Lamas is all the stuff you’ve never been able to afford for yourself and your family.

The Ram Dass Initiation

To be fair, we were prepared by the Ram Dass initiation. Ram Dass, using the old Theosophical playbook, took us directly from the self-obliterating power of high-dose LSD tripping to the feet of the guru and the art of devotion. Yogananda had offered an “airplane of spiritual realization,” but Ram Dass appeared to have boarded a rocket ship that had put him permanently in orbit. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that? With the Ram Dass initiation we received a whole new catechism that had an interesting, meritocratic flavor. Yoga had a strong flavor of self-reliance.

We are all One. God is us. We don’t know it. Gurus do. If you get a guru, they’ll teach you mantras, meditation, or maybe they’ll just touch you, and your kundalini will rise, open your chakras, and turn you into the equal of the Guru – a self-realized human being. For this, obviously, you have to pay. Even Jesus called the goal of his quest “a pearl of great price,” and said it would be worth selling everything you had to acquire it. The guru’s got the moksha. Do you got the moolah?

Introduction to the Merit Economy

Once Ram Dass had fitted us for the yoke, the Tibetans were ready to do some plowing. The Tibetans elevated material accumulation to a spiritual plane, however. The Tibetans thus revived a practice that the medieval Catholic Church had practiced for hundreds of years until Martin Luther made it the focus of his attacks on Church corruption -– the sale of divine blessings by priests and bishops, who routinely turned cash into heavenly merit, like a banker changing dollars for pounds. By concretizing merit in the form of offerings, Tibetans are able to justify the most excessive wealth accumulations as acts of worship, generosity, and dispassion.

By making physical offerings and labor donations the evidence of devotion, Tibetan lamas encouraged the belief that anything can be fixed with money. This belief is very popular with traditional Chinese Buddhists, who see giving money to Buddhist causes as the right way to cultivate “the two accumulations of merit and wisdom.” As a result, a strong affinity developed between Tibetan lamas and American Chinese Buddhist communities, once they found each other, usually because hippies were flying them around the country. Eventually, bidding for teachers began, and the sangha that I had been part of for over twenty years was ultimately outbid by another sangha. One thing led to another, and eventually, the temple that Rinpoche had built in Southern Oregon was fated to become an empty shell of what all had hoped it would become, when he abruptly transferred his attentions to the Bay Area, where a Chinese Dharma group had actually managed to put the money down to buy a proper building for an urban temple that could fill up with Chinese people who actually understood how Dharma is supposed to work. You pay, you get.

Money is the New Devotion

The trend to cater to moneyed Dharma students was strong from the beginning, but when real rich people started to bring their friends to the temple, it spelled the end for a lot of old relationships. Those who had money were whisked upstairs to lounge in silken luxury, drink from dragon teacups, and enjoy the god realm atmosphere. Family folks struggling to make ends meet, wanting blessings for their kids, asking questions about their pathetic little practices – those folks became a nuisance, and soon Rinpoche’s minders were routinely giving them the brush-off. Mass meetings for plebes. Face-time for those with checkbooks.

We Came by Our Poverty Honorably

Well you know, people can’t help it if they’re poor, and the first generation of American Buddhists got poor trying to be Buddhists. Like Suzuki Roshi said, our style was to try and blend lay and monastic roles. We liked to lay in bed with our spouses, grow organic gardens, home-school our kids, and meditate like monks, which of course leaves little time for playing the stock market. As a result, even people who got professional degrees and jobs did so after a lot of time spent travelling to India, or living in the woods, reading Thoreau, writing for underground papers and presses, teaching community college, or working for social justice for a few years in legal or medical clinics. We got a real late start on capital accumulation, but we thought that was the Buddhist way, at least until the Tibetans came along, recommending that we wear suits, start businesses, work hard, and fund some Dharma projects.

First In, First Out

Realities collided at the Southern Oregon temple, when a group of rich students decided to hijack Rinpoche’s birthday, invite phony tulkus Steven Seagal and Catherine Burroughs to appear as guests of honor, and in lieu of letting the sangha cooks make free food as we always did, hire a catering outfit to charge us for lunch at our own temple. Then it turned out so many dignitaries had gotten reserved seating that the old students who were left out of the planning were evicted from the temple altogether. Sitting out on the verandah with my wife and two other old students, the sense that we had become nobodies was overpowering. I had a bottle of wine that I was going to offer for tsok, but instead I twisted off the cap and passed it to my friend Michael, who was so shook up he practically drained it in a couple of gargantuan chug-a-lugs. I can still see the bubbles rising in the inverted bottle of pink liquid as he guzzled it. He was bound for oblivion. It hurt that bad.

The ethic had shifted, and the message was clear – “Hippies with handmade offerings are no longer needed or wanted.” The outrage was palpable. We helped pay for the land the temple was built on. We gave years of time and devotion, cooking and feeding retreatants, doing free labor on the land, and it was all rendered irrelevant by a few big checks and a B-moviestar’s appearance at the temple, wrapped in about five yards of yellow silk, still looking like he was ready to smash somebody’s face into a parking lot pillar and toss him out into the street to be run over by a bus.

Sincere poverty was out, useless, undesirable, outré. Indeed, poor disciples were becoming an overt embarrassment, to be hidden from sight. Wealth displays of Tibetan rupas, thangkas and jewelry were the order of the day. After all, you buy them from Tibetans, which is an inherently virtuous act. Hollywood had discovered the Little Buddha fashion god realm, and they were all over it like Rodeo Drive. No one could afford to be seen without a bodhi-seed mala hung with heavy silver counters, and women really needed to get some chubas, because nothing makes a lama happier than seeing that little fold in the back, so neat and discreet, that guards feminine dignity. Until of course, it’s time for secret offerings.

Subservience -- the Most Needful Offering

Many Dharma pioneers are pushed aside by the second wave of students, who feel superior to those who haven’t taken the necessary steps to push the teacher into prominence and power and their sangha into the fast lane. The most important thing, after getting a crew of wealthy donors to sponsor the regular expenses, is to get a phalanx of willing, attractive slaves into harness to pull the vajra vehicle, loaded with gurus and dignitaries, as the sweat pours off their bodies. When lamas and their honored guests need attention, poor Dharma students can provide the kind of subservience that really makes a god realm godly.

And it’s not just Tibetan Buddhists doing this. Enslaving poor zennists was the real crime that should have gotten Baker Roshi canned by Zen Center San Francisco. Of course, the book about his misdeeds is entitled “Shoes Outside the Door,” and refers to the former abbot’s predilection for boffing the wives of his students, but Baker’s use of unpaid Buddhists to run the Zen Bakery and several restaurants, and his deployment of more unpaid Buddhists to serve at his table, was injurious to the spiritual and material well being of many, many people who came wanting to practice Zen, and ended up bussing tables for no pay.

It's All for Sale

At our temple in Southern Oregon, the venality was more crass, and less effective, than Baker’s forced labor scheme. Going to the temple became like going to the Seven-11 in a bad part of town – you were constantly hit up for money. The acquisition and operation of a big sangha property, like a temple/retreat center, generates financial stress, and dues-paying members are the first to feel the pressure. Ideas for fund-raising proliferate. Sometimes, really bad ideas. Like the day the glad-handing Hawaiian real estate salesman, who’d morphed from New Age healer to Vajrayana dealer, sat in the temple and tried to show us how to raise money. Like a deejay trying to get through a community radio telethon, or an auctioneer driving up the price on some piece of fungible crap, he harangued people to pay for the temple’s new roof, or windows, or doors, or … you name it. He took the temple apart a piece at a time, and tried to sell it back to us in a new, improved form. I don’t know how I escaped, but it was not without bitter resentment for the desecration of what I’d thought was a sacred space.

After this and other extortionistic events, my wife Tara tried to communicate how wrong this was to the temple managers, using the favored communication medium of the day – a fax machine. Tara explained very cogently that by making offerings compulsory, they were destroying people’s opportunity to demonstrate generosity. Willing gifts, she was saying, were the only spiritually valuable offerings. But the comprehension up at the temple had shifted. They didn’t care if it was willing. They just wanted the green. A couple of complaints about pushy fundraising later, and Tara was banned from sending “negative faxes.”

Trapped on the Ladder to Enlightenment

Shambhala has gone much farther than this type of simple venalization of Dharma symbols, however. It has recast the entire Buddhist lifestyle in the profit-making mold by promoting the belief that human beings grow best when guided by a curriculum of spiritual development provided by experts, requiring a lifetime investment of time, money and dedication. This presentation bears more similarities to the Scientology model than most Shambhalians are comfortable admitting. Both place aspirants on an extended ladder of development. Each stage of training has financial and educational prerequisities, and yet, this education will not get you any credits in another educational institution, nor will it qualify you to do anything except teach in Shambhala. And if you have a falling out with Shambhala, you cannot call yourself a Shambhala teacher. So Shambhala teachers, who think they are training into a livelihood as a meditation teacher, find themselves trapped in what former Shambhala meditation instructor Shante Smalls described as a “Ponzi scheme” in her goodbye letter to Shambhala. Like Scientologists, Shambhalians acquire a narrow skill set that qualifies them only to be better cult members.

So what we have in Shambhala is a group of people who would like to be teachers, but are now stuck in a shrinking pool of prospective students. Soon, there will be so many teachers and so few students that they will have to take turns pretending to learn from each other. When they try and push off into the big wide world of independent meditation teaching, they discover there is no such market, and yoga studios are oversupplied with lissome beauties of both sexes able to instruct in asanas for very modest compensation. They must turn to the occupation of last resort – life coach.

What are aspiring Shambhala “teachers” looking for? How do they find themselves enmeshed in the aspirations and jargon of an enlightened society? Well, everyone in the United States needs a livelihood, and when you get into Buddhism, you start getting interested in Right Livelihood. If you were indoctrinated like a Dharma brat, like Ethan Nichtern, for example, whose dad has been in the meditation business since Ethan’s earliest days, then you were conditioned to believe that teaching meditation is the best, highest work a person can do. It is the rightest of livelihoods.

But I think most people want a job that makes them feel important. So, without really giving it too much critical thought, they conclude that if they can pay for meditation classes, other people can, too. So, eventually someone will pay them to teach meditation classes. This passes for career planning for many an American, because researching possible undesirable outcomes of our plans is not a popular approach. Optimism suits us better. Hence, the nation’s vast student loan debt.

Meet the Poor -- a Very Diverse Group!

Let's return to the theme of our essay: how can getting the money out of Dharma bring Buddhism into harmony with the ideals of racial justice? It’s easy to conjure the image of something that is far from our present reality – Buddhist meditation centers filled with people of all skin colors and ethnicities, sitting peacefully in an egalitarian setting where all are respected, and the atmosphere is spiritually nourishing for all. I ask you, what would not be present in such a happy scene? There would be no high throne where someone could raise themselves above others, and abuse their power. There would be no photographs of men in silk robes, emanating superior status, constantly propitiated like gods. There would be no kasungs, sitting pompously in their uniforms, thinking they're spiritual cops. There would be no grim-faced secretary at a folding table, collecting fees before allowing participation.

If you jettisoned all the wealth displays, all the patriarchal worship, all the teacher-worshipping, money-grubbing, and fulsome, phony piety, you would be more than halfway to creating a diverse sangha. The barriers to approaching the Dharma would come down, and people of all types would come pouring in, eager to be in a place of no threat, no sales pitch, no sleaze, no lies, no oppression. What would be lost in such an environment? All existing credentials. Exalted roles and privileged positions. Relationships based on power and subordination. And this would return us to a situation similar to that of the Buddha’s original sangha.

The poor are a diverse group. If you don’t know that, head on down to Walmart in an urban area. Or head out to the farming country where Latinos are displacing Anglo labor and marrying into the Anglo gene pool. Peep into a call center where hundreds of Americans provide customer support for minimum wage. There’s all kinds of colors and faces in there.

There is no better way to step out of the lily-white world than by stepping into the world of poverty. Over twenty percent of Black Americans, and eighteen percent of Hispanic Americans, live in poverty. This compares with around eight percent of white Americans. So when you open yourself to the poor, you open yourself to the minority population. When you orient yourself to the needs of the poor, you will connect with Black and Hispanic Americans, and not just those of some elevated social class, which is a big problem with a lot of programs intended to bring minorities in, but mostly attract people of color from affluent backgrounds who know how to blend in to white society. This improves appearances, but doesn’t really open the door to people who lack access to Dharma practice and teaching.

People act like they can't connect with people of color, or the poor, but that's because they don't really try. Many mainstream churches do it with practiced ease. They run free stores, food banks, clinics, homeless and domestic violence shelters, soup kitchens, etcetera, and now they get government funding for it. And you're doing much more than helping a few poor people. You are finding the people in the community who have the heart for the same type of work you are doing. They just need a bit of ground under them, and they will blossom. Such people are everywhere in poor communities. If Dharma groups can open their hearts to the community, we will grow the Dharma in the way Buddha did -- with the power of love.

It's easy to extend your love to the poor, through straightforward material generosity. The poor have the same common human needs that we have. Just imagine -- a crazy Mahayana wish -- a Dharma center that offers real material support to homeless practitioners -- a clothing exchange, a maildrop, a kitchen, lockers and showers, a free clinic once a month. Homeless meditation hour, counseling, scholarships for retreats. The Buddha would have approved of this sort of Dharma center, of course, given his lifestyle.

Buddha Was a Beggar

Dharma center offerings for poor communities that provide concrete resources will attract a diverse group, some of whom will be practitioners in the making. If you eliminate monetary barriers, you can find those people. And it is much more important to find practitioners and share the Dharma with them than it is to find them and charge them a fee. There are lots of barriers for the poor that you may not think about. People who don’t have nice clothing, whose shoes may be worn, aren’t always comfortable going into places that look like they were furnished at Crate & Barrel, where it looks like everybody bought their clothes at Nordstroms. Of course, even caring about what poor people think challenges the guru-centered Tibetan Buddhist way of thinking.

People who are running centers might do well to turn around, away from the shrine, and look out the door at the people in the world who might come in and ask, “What is this all about? Can I just come and sit here in the quiet? I notice you folks are very quiet. I like the quiet.” If that person is homeless, or has worn shoes and shabby clothing, all the better. Buddha, after all, was a beggar.[/size]

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From the Desk of General Counsel
by Charles Carreon
July 17, 2022

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

The Situation of Twenty-First Century Humans

Every day we wake up and live our lives. We carry on with our affairs, making the best of the situation in which we find ourselves. We adapt to a pace of change and uncertainty, keeping up with a machine we don’t program or control. We adapt, assembling our lives, caring for those who depend on us, fulfilling complex responsibilities in the process. We wonder – how did we end up in a world like this one? We sense the potential for human fulfillment in a wholesome culture, buried beneath the thick veneer of modern technological artifice. The doomsday clock keeps ticking down, politicians temporize, war taints everything, the Amazon burns, and an aging elite class sells humanity’s future for absolutely nothing. And we ask ourselves – what can we do?

A Path with Heart

From Don Juan Matus, the Yaqui sorcerer whose words and deeds were chronicled by Carlos Castaneda, we learned that in this world of endless contention, the warrior sets out to follow a path with heart. So I feel fortunate that, as General Counsel of NAAVC, I can help to reverse the deluge of bad decisions that have initiated a mass extinction event threatening the future of earthly life. Because NAAVC exists to make Visionary Religion a safe and legal practice, which leads to better thinking and fewer bad decisions by human beings. All of the bad decisions that have led us to planetary collapse have been made by humans. To make better decisions, we need to change the human mind, we need to unwire millennia of programming that were apparently functional when resources were unlimited, transportation was local, and humanity’s population was not in the billions.

Building the Case for Visionary Religion

As General Counsel, I’ve collected evidence about how the experience of Visionary Religion changes human minds. In my opinion, it often changes them for the better, fundamentally making them more honest, less confused, and more capable of making decisions on ethical grounds. But that’s not a scientific statement, it’s an opinion based on life experience and anecdotal evidence. The sort of thing that tends not to hold up in court. So back in 2018, after Scott Stanley pulled me into his orbit and I started learning about Visionary Religion from an insider, we wrote up a survey and emailed it to 1,600 people who attended an AYA ceremony. We got back 268 completed surveys, a statistically-valid sampling, and after I reviewed the results online, I called Scott and told him that he had no need to worry that he might be wasting his life. With satisfaction rates in the high ninety-percentiles, and people reporting positive life changes of various types as a result of ceremony, I was confident he was doing good work.

Relieving Suffering and Satisfying the Need for Beauty

I summarized the results in an Executive Summary that you can download from this link. The statistical summaries tell us that the AYA congregation is a mature group of people who enter the ceremony with spiritual intentions to obtain healing, energy, insight, vision, motivation, and inspiration. That’s how they feel before they drink the medicine. After they drink, their expressions are almost uniformly very positive, like in these quotes that I selected almost at random from the seventy I included at the end of the Executive Summary:

• “Ayahuasca has improved every dimension of my life. But mostly I'm no longer consumed with anxiety and so I function better at everything.”
• “Two years ago I wanted to die every day. I daydreamed about ways to do it 4-5 times a day. I am so grateful not to feel like that anymore. I never dreamed that life could be so amazing. The only thing that really changed was my perspective. I truly believe I would be dead without ayahuasca and AYA. I did all the work but they helped save my life. Literally.”
• “There were parts of myself I was afraid of before the ceremony, particularly I was afraid God hated me for this. I learned through the ceremony that I could grow and improve but that God loves me as I am.”
• “It was a beautiful, safe and structured experience. They did not stand between me and my experience; they created a safe environment for it.”
• “The experiences have exceeded any possible expectation I may have had before attending a ceremony.”

Clearly, important work is being accomplished in ceremony. In the legal context, I refer to ceremony as “Visionary Communion,” because it involves communication with the Divine source of ourselves and our world, and because it is facilitated by a sacrament that is not a placebo. The survey results proved to me that effects of Visionary Communion are often profound. The first three quotes describe, respectively, relief from anxiety, from suicidal fantasies, and from attachment to a frightening notion of God. These types of psychological shifts are quite nearly miraculous, and the fact that they can be so swiftly achieved in Visionary Communion is very encouraging. The last two quotes express another aspect of Visionary Communion – that it can satisfy a yearning for a moment of sanctuary, a breath of air from another dimension, an insight into a world of beauty and harmony that perhaps has not entirely slipped from our grasp.

The Power of Scientific Allies

After we did our survey of the AYA congregation, Scott and I started looking for more evidence of the benefits of Visionary Religion, and we found a strong ally in Paulo Barbosa, PhD. Dr. Barbosa teaches at the State University of Santa Cruz ( UESC ) in Ilhéus, Brazil, and is a noted expert on the interaction between human beings and sacred plants in the ceremonial context. He has collaborated with Dr. Rick Strassman and other researchers to perform original studies, and at my request, back in August 2020, undertook a complete review of virtually all peer reviewed studies that have been performed to determine the physical, psychological, and social effects of ceremonial Ayahuasca use, i.e., Visionary Communion practice. Dr. Barbosa (who was at pains to acknowledge the work of his research partner Eduardo Ary Villela Marinho) prepared an expert declaration that AYA submitted in support of its position in pending litigation with the DEA, expressing as a legal conclusion:

Ayahuasca consumed in a religious context is not being used as a drug of abuse, nor does the religious use of ayahuasca lead to the abuse of other drugs; instead, religious ayahuasca users generally abandon abuse of alcohol after they become members of an ayahuasca church. These data are backed up by pre-clinical evidence indicating that ayahuasca blocks many abuse-related behavioral effects of drugs of abuse. Ayahuasca does not adversely affect mental health. Many religious ayahuasca users start out with greater psychological morbidity than the control groups, and show a marked improvement with years of ayahuasca use, reporting greater mental health after participating in religious ayahuasca use compared to control groups.

There, in sober scholarly language, is what this lawyer wants to hear about Visionary Religion. I have to dispel the casual belief that Visionary Communion is mere drug-taking under a cloak of virtue, and Dr. Barbosa’s painstaking analysis helps me do that.

You might wonder what good all of this evidence-gathering will do us. Well, the best thing you can do in litigation is to sell your adversary on your case, because then they have an incentive to settle. Until they get the idea that you might be able to win, they generally have no incentive to compromise – they just plan to win. When you’re litigating with the DEA, represented by the Department of Justice, you figure it will take a while for them to decide that you might be able to win.

A Yurt is Raised, and The DEA Decides to Negotiate

AYA has been litigating with the DEA since May of 2020, so it’s been a little over two years, and they just decided to start negotiating. There was one piece of evidence, though, that I think tipped the scales, and it wasn’t a document or a sworn statement. It was a building – a yurt, to be precise – the beautiful maloka that Scott and the AYA congregation raised in the desert east of Tucson this summer. When I was able to tell the District Judge and the U.S. Attorneys in our Fifth Amended Complaint that AYA has a church in the District of Arizona where the congregation meets every two weeks to practice Visionary Communion, it was like announcing the first heartbeat of a new being. On June 13, 2022, Judge Silver approved a stipulation between AYA and the DOJ to stay the litigation while we enter into negotiations to explore the possibilities of settlement.

A Dangerous Proposition

What does negotiating with the DEA mean? What could come of it? Poorly-handled, it can lead to disaster, as Soul Quest discovered when their lawsuit against the DEA was dismissed in March of 2022, after they went through an “exemption process,” in which the DEA cross-examined their people, dismembered their faith, and denied the Soul Quest exemption request on the grounds that they weren’t a sincere religion. For some us, watching from the sidelines, the result was not too surprising. Soul Quest’s lawyers were always several steps behind the DOJ lawyers, who exploited their ignorance in predictable ways, achieving another DEA win against the Visionary Religion community.

So right now, we are in the early stages of negotiation, what people often call “arguing over the shape of the table,” but you can bet the first thing AYA made clear was that they were not making the same mistakes as Soul Quest had. AYA is not going to concede that the DEA has authority to examine our “religious sincerity.” As a matter of principle and law, AYA’s position has always been that only U.S. District Court Judge can adjudicate the issue or whether a church or its minister is “sincere” in their practice of Visionary Religion.

Seeking the “Least Restrictive Means”

In the legal calculus that underlies the process of getting a religious exemption from the Controlled Substances Act under RFRA, there are two phases in the process. In a lawsuit, the Court first determines whether the plaintiff is “sincere” in their need to obtain an exemption from the drug laws, and then “the burden shifts to the Government” to establish that the prohibition on importing and distribution of Ayahuasca is the “least restrictive means” of advancing the Government’s interest in preventing the plaintiff from importing drugs illegally. Because AYA contends that the DEA has no business determining whether it is “religiously sincere,” AYA’s goal will be to focus the DEA on AYA’s ability to lawfully import Ayahuasca under a contractual agreement with the DEA to operate as a registered importer with a DEA number, using all the required DEA forms, and operating their importation, storage and distribution facilities with DEA inspection and approvals. Going into this process, we are using the knowledge we have gained from talking with our allies at the UDV and the Santo Daime about how they have gotten along with the DEA under the regulatory regime that they negotiated with the DOJ. What others have done, we too can do.

The Road Ahead

Society has taught us to lie to get what we want, in small and large ways. As Li Po said, “If you are straight like an arrow, you will die in a ditch, but if you are crooked like a hook, you will be made minister.” Because we are all children of society, we all have been conditioned to deceive in a thousand ways, and these deceptions seep into our personality at every level.

Visionary Communion is an appointment with radical self-honesty. In Visionary Communion, we find out how much we have lost to our lying, the tiny world we have left to inhabit when we fail to stake out the space to live in truth. We realize that honesty is worth the sacrifices it demands. As self-deception dissolves, self-censorship and posturing are revealed as unnecessary and self-defeating. Self-trust and trust of others go hand in hand, so our ability to select and recruit good companions is strengthened. We are better able to collaborate to accomplish our work, and our work is made easier through cooperative effort.

We then feel the impulse to define ourselves and design our lives consciously. When we set out to design our lives consciously, we start to behave with foresight. We learn that the business of today is to take account of the future. Because the future is waiting for us, individually, and as a member of the species that dominates this planet. Right now, the species appears to be lost, guided primarily by confusion, and that is a dangerous situation that will only get worse, unless human beings start being honest with themselves and each other. Visionary Religion might be the thing that could bring us to that change, that could get human consciousness to that critical mass necessary to convert from the dominator model of planetary exploitation to the collaborative model of living peacefully and sustainably on Spaceship Earth.

Charles Carreon
July 17, 2022

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The Criminals Took Over and Are Prosecuting the Cops
by Charles Carreon
February 19, 2025

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Insanity has invaded the highest offices in the land. The criminals have taken over the government and are prosecuting the cops. And Hakeem Jeffries can’t even find the bat-signal to summon Batman to save Gotham. I am reading words off the page, comprehending their significance, but a part of me says that what they are telling me just can’t be, unless I went to bed in one dimension and woke up in another, where instead of being a continuous institution with consistent policies, the federal government has decided to turn and rend itself to fulfill the revenge fantasies of a crazy old man whose rantings now rock the foundations of the world. An Anti-Atlas, this new American political Frankenstein, shocked into life by the torments of his prosecutors, is now up and about, seeking to visit the retribution he promised his followers, unconcerned with how it works out, or if it works out. As he staggers toward his personal apocalypse, in his mind, the destruction of the entire earth would be collateral damage, a pyre of empire fitting and suitable for an ape man who never rose above the law of tooth and claw.

Oh, you think I hyperbolize! It cannot be that the FBI agents who worked to convict J6 rioters are suing to prevent the President from doxxing them for the J6’ers, crazier, more empowered by impunity than ever before, and likely to cause somebody grievous bodily harm from a patriotic motive, inclinations that got them locked up once before, until their gangster President pulled the biggest jailbreak since the Bastille fell. But no, this is what the FBI agents’ lawyers wrote in a motion for temporary restraining order to prevent them from having to fill out a form with twelve questions that would identify them as targets for the same purge that already claimed the jobs of hundreds of J6 prosecutors:

Not only do Plaintiffs assert that they are likely to be terminated in the very near future (i.e., the week of February 2-9), but also that their identities and personal information could easily be leaked or published to make them targets for the convicted felons who were recently pardoned, or any number of other bad actors seeking revenge. Indeed, some personal information about FBI agents has already appeared on the dark web, and Plaintiffs have reason to fear for their own safety and that of their families.

Federal employees have been the people least worried about job instability, yet here they are, with the passing of the Biden Administration, they see the passing of their own federal careers, as if a king had been deposed and his courtiers ousted. This has never been the way of Washington. Before my father went to Washington to claim his job in the Johnson Administration, after twelve years as a loyal New Deal Democratic legislator in Arizona, he talked about “getting a GS-13,” and I thought it was the type of airplane he was going to fly to DC on, but it turned out to be the employment ranking system. He went in as a GS-11 in the Department of Labor in the mid-sixties, and I was in military school in Virginia, so during vacations, we’d walk around DC. I also remember him standing on Constitutional Avenue, as we looked at the two rows of government buildings flanking the great thoroughfare where so much history had been transacted, and said, “Son, the Government is the engine of the economy,” and as he did, it was as if all the buildings were giant motors powering this great machine called the nation, keeping it humming, keeping the tractors running in the fields, the trains on their rails, the airplanes tracing their contrails through the sky. It was all mysterious, vast, powerful, and it was the work of caring for humanity that was done in those buildings. Inside, where my dad worked, everyone was intelligent, polite, respectful, even though I understood from my dad that some people were not easy to work with, but nevertheless, work with them he did.

When Dad came back to Arizona, having served enough time to get a posting back to his home state, he had an office upstairs in the Post Office on Central Avenue. I’d go up there to see him in the afternoons after I got off school, and he’d introduce me to his fellow workers at the Department of Labor. Not quite as smart and sophisticated as the folks in DC, but still real nice guys who seemed to do their jobs. My Dad, though, he really did his job. He was a contract supervisor, and he made sure that people who were getting paid to run job training programs for the Government actually trained some people to get jobs. He made programs spend the money they were allocated, didn’t hire too many of their relatives, and actually tried to perform the terms of their training contracts. And he did it live, and in person. Sometimes he’d show up right when I got off school, pick me up and take me on a drive a few hundred miles to go see some folks in an office in a tiny town. I’d wait in offices, reading a book, while he did business. One day he came back out to the car and showed me a check for about $8,000 – money he said he’d found stashed away in a little account, unspent program money that as he observed, “was just waiting to be stolen.” Because he was on the lookout for fraud, waste, and abuse, and he didn’t let it happen on his watch.

Dad considered himself a public servant, an attitude he would push onto his fellow public servants, the police. Whenever he got pulled over, he’d make a comment about the officer being a public servant, which coming from anyone with less confidence than my Dad, could of course lead to undesirable consequences, since most cops believe the public’s there to serve them. But it was his way of putting the relationship on the right footing. He knew he wasn’t supposed to speed, but he also knew that the cops are supposed to play fair, and have to prove their case in court if you fight it. Because they are public servants, and they have to play by the rules of being a public servant.

Treating Government officials from the President on down to the street sweeper like public servants is really the only right way to treat them. The idea that we need to elect “strong leaders” is obviously extremely dangerous. Following that notion, the fools who dominate the red state electorate have nicely hung a rotting albatross ‘round the nation’s neck for the next four years, and if we don’t die of infection from pestilent moral decay, we will certainly end Trump’s tenure with America’s reputation at a previously inconceivable low, with our economy devastated by self-inflicted injuries such as the deportation of much of the low wage labor that feeds us, the rewarding of criminality among high and low, and the theft of intangible assets by the horde of techno Nazis swarming over the government under the moniker of DOGE, a nonexistent entity that isn’t headed by Elon Musk, at least according to the latest lie filed by the DOJ today, that will be rolled into the new lie tomorrow.

A good government official is a trustee, because they care for the resources of the many with the same care they would apply to taking care of their own property. The Forest Service acting like a trustee would be a good thing for the forests, whereas a Forest Service that was managed to profit the head of the Forest Service, or the timber and mineral industries, would not be a good trustee. Because the rules of trusteeship are simple – manage the property as if it were your own and never use it to gain a secret profit for yourself, because that profit belongs to the “fiduciaries,” the persons for whom the trust was established, and not to the trustee. The trustee gets a fee for good management, and what is good management? It’s management of the asset that puts it to the best, highest use. When it comes to parkland that also has oil under it and trees on top of it, or a lake populated with endangered fish that is also a favored spot for boating, it takes government workers some effort to balance these needs. And it’s true that the federal government has done a poor job of being a trustee of public resources, failing to collect oil royalties, funding unprofitable logging, prioritizing mining interests over recreational and farming interests, etcetera. The answer is not to fire all the bureaucrats, but rather, I would argue, to instill a spirit of public service and trusteeship into the government workforce.

Oh, well this is a lovely time to talk about that, when FBI agents are being marched into cattlecars and sent off to administrative Gitmo, when CFPB employees have to sue to keep their agency from being shut down overnight by Russell Vought, when the entire federal workforce is being purged just for the hell of it. Well actually, when the building’s been knocked down, it may not be a bad time to talk about how it should be built. Admittedly, it’s a scary subject. When hell’s empty, and all the devils are here, as Shakespeare put it, it seems a strange time to talk about how we could do things if we weren’t getting destroyed. Like, when will we ever get back there, to someplace sane, where reality is restored to its former condition?


Saturn eating his son, by Francisco Goya, 1820

Perhaps sooner than we expect. Without minimizing the danger to the nation, which is extreme, this is a nation of laws, not men, and I believe that after the novelty of being governed by an old man’s pique and caprice wears off, there will be a return to sanity. And at that time, we will be rebuilding a government that is now in the process of destroying itself. We will still be staggering from the shock of seeing Trump devouring the federal bureaucracy like Saturn cannibalizing his children, when vital functions of the economy, greased by the gutted bureaucracy, start to stutter and seize up, and the fools who cheered on the destruction cry out in dismay, at last realizing that it wasn’t their bravado that was keeping the world running. It was just hard work by a lot of people the President and his Pet Bigot Billionaire despised because they were actually useful. Too late, the idiot flock will realize, we need government to keep us safe, fed, educated, and employed. Of course, we’ll never get there unless some gods of the Empyrean bless us with the sense to unplug from social media and release ourselves from the digital yoke that the Zuckerberg – Musk axis of evil has hung ‘round our collective neck. Because until we free ourselves from the control of these media manipulators, and assume the power to govern ourselves, we will continue to be governed by those beloved of the oligarch class – criminals and fascists.

[admin]

Our Failed Nation
by Charles Carreon
March 16, 2025

Legacy of the Torturer General

Failed states and unlawful combatants. Two concepts that Torturer General Alberto Gonzales used to justify sending people to Gitmo who had the temerity to take up arms against U.S. soldiers who invaded their state, failing though it might have been. Gonzales thought this was a loophole in the Geneva Convention that allowed people to be tortured, and he hired John Woo and now-Ninth Circuit judge Jay Bybee, to write justifications for torturing these stateless individuals, most of whom just thought they were members of some hill tribe in the mountains of what we now call Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the greatest Buddhist civilization of all time existed, Gandhara. Gonzales also hired psychologists to monitor and advise torturers, and write the typical jargon-laced bullshit that psychs learn to sling to generate a paycheck. Even though Gonzales’ bad legal theories are no longer taken seriously, many of the men he ensnared in his net of cruel lies are still imprisoned, stateless, unable to leave Gitmo because no country will take them. As for Gonzales himself, the man who lead the CIA and FBI and DOD into the vile sin of institutionalized torture as official US policy, he has suffered no consequences.

Momentum--Just the Type of Thing You Want to Avoid

Now that our nation is being gutted by the most foolish type of people -- spoiled men filled with groundless self-importance, worshipping each other's worst qualities in an orgy of submission to power -- we may get the opportunity to see our own state fail. Because it requires no insight to conclude that the Chief Executive does not formulate a strategy and execute it consistently. Rather, he judges what he should do by how others react to his actions, so he is a bit like a blind man hooting in a cavern, navigating by echoes. The best way to keep him from attacking your shit is to never talk about it, because he targets his victims almost randomly, based on their vulnerability. By crushing one vulnerable victim after another, he establishes a track record of victory, also called momentum. And momentum, as Sun Tzu put it, is the power of a raging torrents that tosses trees like matchsticks and boulders like marbles. When momentum is with them, even cowards will fight, and when it is against them, even brave soldiers run. In a world where "winning" is indeed thought to be "everything," this display is converting. The converted, having been won over by one brutal display after another, venerate idealized images of the man, with a powerful physique that while not realistic, exemplifies the Rambo body, the true body of an "American hero," whom all red blooded Americans were taught to venerate from our earliest days through the agency of Hollywood and DOD, working happily to produce mass indoctrination material since they started shooting talkies.

Hapless Power Junkies

Regular folks get addicted to meth and fentanyl, but Republicans are addicted to media that feeds them an endless stream of power fantasies. No other explanation is available for the reported declaration of a Republican in Congress that international aggression is the nation's natural posture, because "we are apex predators." Statements like these are like tribute thrown at the feet of the conqueror. By aping his abusive tirades and vain expostulations, they assure the Chief that they are having no original thoughts, and like Clear Channel radio stations, they are just streaming what is channeled from the reliable repeaters of MAGA Truths on Social and X. Frantically trying to get noticed by El Bosso in the midst of the endless noise reverberating the MAGA nuthouse is the sole concern of MAGA politicians, 24/7. Far from powerful, these freaks are hapless dupes, marinating in self-delusion, flexing imaginary muscles to an imaginary crowd of adoring fools, whose faces strangely mirror their own.

Rising to Olympian Heights on Clouds of Illusion

That's how El Bosso was gradually elevated to the Olympian heights, as courtiers realized that he was actually not just El Bosso, but as others are exclaiming, he is El Maximo Grande Bosso Magnifico, and he can never be wrong-o. No ho ho, he cannot be. Never, never never. Not today, not tomorrow, and he was definitely not wrong yesterday. The world changes, as you know, and so the Truth changes, and you just have to keep up with it. Failure is not something El Bosso does, so anyone who suggests that the shit being smelled might come from the vicinity of El Bosso Maximo's maxi size Attends would obviously a be traitor, a Marxist, a racist, or a DEI hire, and most likely all three.

What One Sees, All See, and Nothing More

What is the fate of the infallible? What is the destiny of those who enjoy a lifetime of impunity? What happens to people who are ringed about by a chorus of sycophants reading from approved scripts that rigorously recite only the Truth du jour, as decreed by the Ministry of Information? Well, they live in an atmosphere of total paranoia, because all unapproved messages are threats to the integrity of the story that entombs the MAGA community in an illusory space like the mechanical bubble of false reality depicted in the Truman Show, where stars are overhead lights, where going very far is never possible, and the entire world moves in concert to reproduce the illusion of reality every single day. But in MAGA world, this effort is collaborative. Everyone has to participate. Emotion, passion, giving a shit what the Boss is doing, and joining in whatever hate wave is required today, like the Party members in Orwell's "1984," who are required to get completely lathered up each day, during the ritual "Two Minutes of Hate," focused on the imaginary figure of Emmanuel Goldstein, the committed, invented enemy of Big Brother. Why is hate so useful to MAGA? Because when they hate, they avoid analyzing the stories they tell each other for truth content. Why figure anything out anyway? The only thing that is important is knowing what the Boss thinks today, so avoid mental confusion and just repeat what you're told!

The Blonde Leading the Blonde

It is extremely dangerous to be guided by people who are guided only by their own projections. The Titanic Captain was one of those. The information that his ship had hit an iceberg wasn’t of interest to him, because he knew it was “unsinkable.” The Chief seems to believe that the US economy is unsinkable, and that having a stable genius at the wheel can only goose the naturally awesome results that come when you “unleash” … well, we are not quite certain what the DOGE crew is unleashing except the mere chaos upon the world that Yeats was so squeamish about – but that is the word of the day, and you shall repeat it as the only safe mantra for a proper MAGA minion.

"Don't Just Burn the Furniture -- Rip Out the Structural Timber"

El Bosso and the mental defective who heads the DOGE wrecking crew are mounting a dedicated attack on the foundations of what has been called the postwar miracle, that has lasted essentially uninterrupted for three-quarters of a century, suffering nothing more financially disturbing than occasional market meltdowns that have now been turned into meltups for the wealthy through the socialization of private profit, aka “bailouts” of financial “institutions” that are “too big to fail.” Having turned the market for money into the largest gambling establishment ever known, billionaires now spend their time thinking how to become trillionaires, live forever, and -- uh -- make more money! Like running the four-minute mile or summitting Everest, reaching billionaire status is just one more achievable male trick. And men on such a lofty mission as turning a lifespan of under 100 years into something that all humans must envy, by accumulating more lucre than anyone else, see only their stated goals. So the money masters, like all hegemonic wealth manipulators dating back to Sumeria, were beside themselves with delight when Bossus Maximus won the gladiatorial contest against his illegitimate adversary, the woke, racist DEI hire the Marxists put up to fight him. And they money poobahs were conned just like the stupidest gas-huffing MAGA fools, who told each other El Bosso was just lying to win votes with haters, and would never do anything really bad for business or the stock market, and boy did they fuck up.

The Money Will Get Funny

Because this business of keeping the dollar as the world’s “reserve currency” is key to keeping our whole lifestyle together. The dollar is the most widely used currency for global trade, finance, and central bank reserves. Many countries hold large amounts of U.S. dollars as part of their foreign exchange reserves, and a significant portion of international transactions (such as oil sales, international loans, and trade agreements) are conducted in dollars. As taxpayers, our productivity stands behind the strength of the dollar, and when it falls in value, we get less in the world market for our goods. Having the dollar as the world’s reserve currency lets Uncle Sam borrow at very low rates, and because everybody likes to sell to those spending dollars, we don’t even worry about changes in foreign exchange rates between the dollar and other types of money. It gives us foreign policy influence, because if the USA sanctions a country by closing off access to markets trading in dollars, it can destroy their economy if it is a small country like Cuba, or cramp their style, if it’s a big one, like Russia. Finally, when shit hits the fan in financial markets around the world, people buy Treasury bonds, lending money to the USA, that has been a totally reliable source of repayment for one hell of a long time. Now, you can consider all that irrelevant to your lifestyle, but then you would be ignorant.

Which is Not at All Funny

If the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, the demand for US T-Bills will drop, and the interest we pay on our enormous national debt would swell like a mortgage with an Adjustable Interest rate when the teaser intro rate expires, or some triggering economic event occurs. In this case, the triggering economic event is the blow-by-blow self-reporting from the Chief on the progress of his delusions. As this magic carpet ride of misfortune unfurls, we find ourselves born along in a flow of utter unhingedness, enmeshed in a protracted and unpredictable process that is rapidly bearing us towards an apogee of insanity, from which position, we will see what the dummy in Elon Musk’s orbiting Tesla would see if it had eyes in its head -- that the world is flat, and the U.S. government has been complicit in hiding this fact, that will be exposed by the investigative genius of Jim Jordan. And many other wonders shall we see, as the Mad King and His Court take up the Red Queen’s wise practice of believing at least three impossible things before breakfast, with those who fail to oblige being relieved of their heads -- obviously of no value to them since they fail to use them as they should.

God's Hand on the Tiller

As the acolytes of the world according to MAGA burn cheeseburger incense and call down curses on the heads of racist, radical leftist lunatics, anti-Semitic DEI hires who hate America, the wheelhouse of the ship of state is empty. The Chief does not believe in piloting the ship. It’s guided by Adam Smith’s invisible hand, or maybe God's hand, and is there a difference? In the stateroom, the yes men and women are competing to yes faster and more often, and the one thing they can all agree on is that no one has ever had it so good, as of course they could not, because the Chief wasn’t here to make it the beautiful way it is.

Bad News Does Not Exist

Because it would be heretical to hear the sounds of metal straining and tearing, the horrible rush of the waves pouring in, no one reports it to the Chief. “Smooth sailing. Beautiful night. The moon gleams upon the waves. Unsinkable.” We’re shipping water fast, and as the interest rates go up, the water expands in the hold, so soon, we’re sinking faster. As the waterline begins to rise, the whole world can see the ship is sinking. Our governments, federal and state, pay more to borrow, and so more of what we borrow goes to interest payments. This part works just like your vicious little circle of credit card debt. It starts to devour your economy. Dollars will become unexceptional – nothing special compared with other money – and we will no longer be able to fund our military force projection, with all the worldwide spending, construction, and colonization of foreign lands that this involves.

Too Bad I Live Here

Is all of this greatly to be regretted? Is the failure of a nation that has abused its privilege through unending arrogance and studied aggression, the only nation to ever crush a foe with nuclear weapons, really a sad thing? Certainly Che Guevara would jump out of his grave with glee, and raise the two handless arms the CIA’s murderers buried him with. The failure of our nation will cause failures in our individual lives. The DOGE crew has dumped sugar in the gas tank of our Hemi, shoved a potato up the exhaust pipe, and poured sand into the gearbox, so we will not be cruising anywhere in the style to which we have become accustomed. The human suffering within our national borders will rise, due to countless factors, all economic, never considered by any of the energetic fools so eager to destroy what they had not the wit to build. Which of course will be Biden’s fault.

[admin]

This is War
by Charles Carreon
March 19, 2025

If You Would Have Peace

If you've read very much of my stuff, especially The Sex.Com Chronicles, you know I'm a big fan of the view that life "is a ground of endless contention." And while my litigation philosophy has shifted in the last twenty years, I remain partial to the belief that si vis pacem parabellum, "if you seek peace, prepare for war." Behind this advice lies a frank assessment of the potentially villainous nature of a jealous neighbor. If you have a good enough situation that you wish to preserve in peace -- farms, fields, peasants, their yearly produce -- somebody is going to take it from you, so you had better plan on how to thwart their attempt, or your peace will become theirs.

A Failure of the Imagination

The Tao Teh Ching sagely observes, "Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it." For a quick pitch for my protection skills at a business lunch, I rephrased this as, "Nothing goes wrong until something goes right," which is to say, no one will bother to steal your stuff if it's worthless, but once it acquires value, you need to get it insured. Which leads to the next aphorism -- "It's too late when the blood is in the water." In other words, if you weren't prepared for war, you're going to get rolled when it breaks out "unexpectedly." Case for my services, made.

Applying this philosophy to the conflict of the day, the "defenders of democracy" underestimated the danger of a fascist takeover of the nation, and find themselves quite without weapons. They acquired no weapons, and the blood is in the water. They are chum, Trump is a shark, and the law of the aquatic jungle will prevail. They were taken by surprise in an unexpected war. Consider Trump, by contrast. He told us he'd choose electrocution over being eaten by a shark. He does not go down because he failed to anticipate danger. In his fantastic realm, he makes strategic choices, including about how to die! But Democrats thought they were immortal. The Party could never disappear. Its weak, cringing role in U.S. governance would never be totally eliminated. They never realized that the Republicans could assume that role, and Democrats could just disappear. Maybe they'll all end up on the Gaza Riviera. Or someplace in Bukele's prison empire.

Now as heads spin and coats turn (I'm talking to you, Chuck Schumer), people are wondering how this could have happened. I think in the CIA, they call it "a failure of imagination." What's that mean? According to information retrieval, "In the context of CIA-speak and statecraft, a 'failure of imagination' refers to an intelligence or policy failure resulting from an inability to anticipate or conceive of unconventional threats, scenarios, or adversary tactics. It's often used to explain why government agencies fail to predict major geopolitical events, terrorist attacks, or strategic surprises."

Defenders Who Suffer No Casualties May Find their Loyalty Questioned

Ah, yes, that would be it -- "a failure to anticipate unconventional threats, scenarios or adversary tactics." Who'd a thunk it? Trump was an unconventional threat, so his purported adversaries should have war-gamed some unconventional scenarios and adversary tactics. I say "purported adversaries," because whenever a defender caves to threat, you have to suspect them of being traitors from the outset, in sympathy with the adversaries, mere straw defenders unworthy of the name of warrior. You know -- "If you fought, why didn't they kill you?"

Gyatrul Rinpoche once told me a story. He said, "In Tibet, there were three monasteries known for having perfect Vajrakilaya practice. When the Chinese came, they didn't even try to get them to surrender. They just smash!" For emphasis, he smashed he fist into his palm with a vicious smile that turned to a chuckle of sincere amusement. He said no more. Just planted it in my brain that on this path, sincere devotion could be a ticket to martyrdom -- and why would you want anything less? If you hadn't already died to all hope of worldly life, why were you in the monastery, anyway? Now, I realize it was probably his way of asking me, "Charles, are you ready to die for your practice?" It's often taken me twenty years to comprehend the meaning of his words.

Are 2000 Year-Old Strategies Actually "Unconventional"?

Back to strategic considerations. What "unconventional scenario or adversary tactic" did Trump use? One I read about when I was seventeen, in Thomas Merton's translation of The Way of Chuang Tzu, on page 68 of which appears the following story:





Gee, Trump's method of government takeover -- having been discussed in a 2000 year-old Chinese text -- seems not so unconventional, after all. Take note, Tien Khang Tzu was the Attorney General, aka top lawman, and what an Attorney General can do, a man who controls the Attorney General can do. And there's no question that, after Roberts' immunity decision, Trump enjoys a vast but nebulous area of action free from criminal sanction, which immunized his collusion with Asst. US Attorney Jeffrey Clark to steal votes and the Presidency by exerting unlawful, fraudulent influence over state authorities in the 2020 elections. That ruling alone has legitimized the castration of the Department of Justice as an independent entity, the defenestration of hundreds of AUSAs for no sin worse than putting criminals who attacked the Capitol in jail, and the sudden creation of a cadre of DOJ lawyers who fear lying to federal judges less than they fear saying "no" to Donald Trump.

The Blitzkrieg Philosophy

Now, an excellent historical example of an authoritarian takeover by an unconventional force was the Nazi takeover of France, and the installation of the Vichy collaborationist government in Southern France. This vital, strategic move gave Germany, a land-locked state, warm water ports for their U-boats to slide out into the English Channel under cover of the waves, and sink troop and supply convoys. Focused on the strategic aim, guided by a new vision of mechanized warfare, the Nazis wasted no time on pillaging, looting or destroying useful infrastructure. They did not seek out and destroy the enemy, prolonging the engagement in search of total domination; rather, they avoided major artillery emplacements, using lightly armored but heavily armed, fast moving armed troop transports, cruising past the French heavy artillery -- the vaunted Maginot Line -- straight into the heart of Southern France. The advance columns would secure radio stations, newspapers, telegraph operations, and government offices as a matter of priority, installing their own technology and communications people (Musk & DOGE) and recruiting local traitors, establishing collaborationist governments in each province, and moving on to the next. Panzer Leader Heinz Guderian later explained in his biography that Germany knew it was behind in manpower and technology, so it had to excel in speed and organization.

Gen. Guderian, who, a few years later would see his men dying in the snows of Stalingrad, led the Panzer tank divisions, whose tanks he helped design, and whose crews he personally trained. The Panzers, with their specially designed cannon -- the famed .88 millimeter -- and powerful engines, tore through the Ardennes forest, crushing opposition, and swiftly reached the goal of the English Channel. The unvarying tactics applied -- speed and intensity -- gave this method of war its name -- Blitzkrieg / Lightning War.

Using Blitzkrieg tactics, Germans minimized casualties and established the Vichy government lead by George Pétain, thus preserving the excellent French administrative state and civil servants, while making them loyal to Germany. Vichy / Nazi propaganda portrayed the defeat of the French government as the fault of democracy and communism, while glorifying Pétain as a national savior. There is no need to kill willing servants, and willing Pétain and his lackeys were, collaborating with the transport of over 40,000 children said to be "Jewish," who were shipped to concentration camps, and giving the Germans full control of Southern France until near the end of the war. When abduction, torture and murder were required, the Gestapo could be deployed, aided by the "Milice," the Vichy Secret Police. If the Allies hadn't invaded Europe and defeated the Nazis, their descendants would be sunning swastika tattoos in Provence.

It's a Wrap

So there you have it. The analogies to Trump's lightning takeover of government are apparent. He is wasting no time engaging with authorities who can be ignored because they are too slow to respond, and will be entirely neutered when he takes effective, read -- financial -- control. His technological forces seized the true centralized controls in the US government -- the mainframes that comprise the "ropes, locks and bolts" to which Chuang Tzu refers -- that actually, not in political theory, control the primary issue: Who writes the checks around here? A little chat with the Gestapo, and by the end of the day -- DOGE writes the checks.

Trump's too stupid to run a computer, but that stupidity is the intelligence that lets him know he needs a safe cracker to bust a lock and get the loot. Mice-men like Musk who were pissed on by their powerful fathers are always going to be easily manipulated by a little flattery from a dominant male. And Wall Street shills like Chuck Schumer are always ready to play Petain, saving the nation by giving it away. Reading history might not help us avoid it, but it does help us see that villainy repeats itself, and perhaps we, the virtuous, should get a fucking clue and yes, prepare for war before the blood is in the water.

[admin]

Liberation Day: Curtains Rise on the New World Disorder
by Charles Carreon
April 12, 2025



Cast in Irony

When Bush the First spoke the words, “New World Order,” he birthed a thousand conspiracy theories that nourish a vast, expanding fan base of believers. Trump coined “Liberation Day,” and given its extraordinary popularity as meme fodder, it may well show similar permanence in modern speech. This typically Trumpian, which is to say Orwellian, expression, is cast in irony that will gleam brightly through the ages, impervious to the rust of familiarity. Because the consequences will last forever.

The US Has Liberated Itself from the Burden of World Economic Leadership

What did Trump liberate us from? He freed us from world economic leadership, and pitched us over a cliff into a spiral of increasing national debt, coupled with decreasing resources with which to pay it. The ill-advised maneuver has happened, and cannot be retracted. And to think -- it was primarily a matter of presentation. For my entire life, I have seen how US Presidents represented us on the world stage. Dressed in a tuxedo, unflappable, in control, holding all the cards and administering the game. The United States runs this game by issuing stable, reliable debt of unquestioned reliability, payable in dollars that keep their value with respect to other world currencies.

King Dollar

Dollars have been the hardest of all money in two senses -- unbreakable in their value, and difficult to acquire. Most other countries can only borrow money from international bankers if they promise to repay it in dollars. Why? Because then it doesn’t matter if the debtor country devalues their own currency – the debt is payable in dollars. This makes the United States the King of Debtors. Until Trump’s second term, everyone in the game wanted to lend us money. In a couple of moves, that all changed. Trump ditched the formal presentation and abandoned the cool projection of calm control and mastery that the United States has always relied upon to maintain its financial authority, swapping it for an insecure, unstable, anxious, urgent demand for big changes in the game that Trump had discovered was somehow “unfair” to the dealer, the USA, the issuer and lender of the world’s most important money. Suddenly, the emperor had no clothes. Indeed, he might as well have been posting dick pics on TruthSocial – the world’s reaction could not have been more negative. And you know, you don’t need to do anything really stupid more than once. From then on, everyone will remember you for it.

The Suicide King

So for whom was it really Liberation Day? For the rest of the world. On April 9th and 10th, the world was liberated from the illusion that the United States was sure to act rationally. Insane import tariffs went into effect, far more punitive than expected, and the word was out. Trump had channeled his ineptitude in financial matters into a frenzy of self-destructive acts. Assuming the invulnerability of the nation’s finances, he did the Titanic’s captain one better – he piloted the ship of state directly for the largest iceberg he could find, shouting, “I’m gonna move you, baby!” As the horrendous sounds of a mountain of ice tearing holes in metal bulkheads terrified all aboard, Trump was pumping his fist, and shouting like Slim Pickens in the closing scene of Dr. Strangelove, gleefully riding the nuclear missile down to ground zero, and kickstarting Armageddon.

I'm gonna get them doors open if it harelips everybody on Bear Creek!









-- Dr. Strangelove, directed by Stanley Kubrick, © Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.

Crazy Pays a Premium

The world saw this insane spectacle and took shelter. From what? From the impending collapse of our finances. Kind of like yanking our credit cards, bond traders world wide started dumping US Debt Obligations, aka “Treasury Bonds” or “T-Bills.” They dumped them so fast that sellers of T-Bills had to take big losses to sell. So bonds got cheaper, so what? The interest rate goes up. And who pays the interest on T-Bills? You and me. We are the hamsters cranking that interest payment debt wheel, and except for a few aberrant moves, every administration that has ever breathed the air of Washington D.C. has lived by the principle that keeping the government’s borrowing rate low is good financial policy, and good politics. The government’s credit card got jacked from 3.9% to 4.5% in one day, increasing the total amount of interest payments by around 12.5%. Since our interest payments are already eating up 16% of the budget, we need this like a hole in the head.

Goodbye Dollar Stores

And what about consumer prices? Having not connected cheap consumer goods with “China,” Trumpers have been celebrating Trump’s tariff war as if they really wanted to pay $45 for a $12 t-shirt at WalMart, $100 for a $40 tool at Harbor Freight, or $3 instead of $1 for a pack of plastic face-shavers. It seems quite likely that, with a trade war with China in full swing, we’ll see Dollar Stores going belly up nationwide. That’ll make a lot of rednecks unhappy, but will they connect their unhappiness with their favorite President? I wouldn’t touch that bet.

Blood Bath in the Oil Patch

One bright spot -- oil prices have gone down! That’s good, isn’t it? Actually, it sounds a most discordant note for those reciting the “drill baby drill” mantra. US oil drillers have high production costs that only make sense when oil prices are high. Thanks to Trump’s trade war, world economic activity is expected to slow down, and future oil usage will decline accordingly. Thus, crude oil prices have already gone down so much that many oil drillers have suspended operations in the Permian Basin and other fracking zones. Just ask a shale oil man.

Shale boss Bryan Sheffield told Bloomberg that the situation right now is a “blood bath”. “The industry needs to cut immediately and hunker down to let the tariff war play out,” Sheffield was quoted as saying. OilPrice.com

The Fate of the Nation in the Hands of a Madman

How unfortunate that, when a great fool like Trump falls, so many are crushed under the wreckage. No one can destroy a man like himself, and the same holds for nations. A great many fools pulled their ballot levers to elect this fool, and the "wealthiest men in the world," if you can call people devoid of humanity "wealthy," threw their fortunes at his feet to gain his favor by helping him take power. Billions in the bank obviously do not make a person more able to distinguish the shit from the Shinola.

For light to accompany the heat, read the New Statesman article quoted and linked below.

Can the US truly boast that it does not discriminate between assets held by residents and assets held by foreigners, the kind of openness often presented as a condition for a currency to become an international reserve currency? Chinese companies would disagree – and many around the world now wonder if they might be the next target of America’s economic warfare. It is not possible to both create the rules of the game and act like one of the players.

Every time the rule of law is replaced by a system of political favour, investors take note. Their assets might be safer outside of the US, and good alternatives seem to be emerging in Europe and Japan, particularly as new debt will be necessary to fund their announced rearmament.

Finally, as the painful costs of issuing a global reserve currency continue to grow, Donald Trump will find it impossible to resist the need to address these costs. His voters demand action and now dream of a new industrial golden age. Trump may well believe that he can bring it about without sacrificing dollar dominance, but the last few days prove that every action has a reaction. After the recent fracas, he will surely try other ways to implement his agenda, and perhaps with renewed ferocity. King dollar will struggle to survive. The downfall of King Dollar

[admin]

The Island of Dr. Elon
by Charles Carreon
May 12, 2025

Back in the day, the press had covered Dr. Elon’s lifestyle choices as a billionaire’s idiosyncrasies, unworthy of deep reflection on his real motivation. Given his gossip-worthy penchant for having children through IVF and surrogate mothers, journalistic curiosity about his family lives had been surprisingly shallow. Of course powerful men have maintained harems since the origin of the species, and the press has always ogled these exploits greedily, so the faceless herd can vicariously experience the dream of sexual abundance. Dr. Elon’s serial engagements with surrogate moms, however, lacked the glamorous element of courtship and sensuality, being apparently mere business arrangements. So at the time, no one hazarded a serious explanation for why the world’s most serious man was managing a hive of faceless women to generate offspring.

My paper had clinched an exclusive interview with the great man aboard his orbital space yacht now hanging in geosynchronous orbit over the lush paradise of Muskovia, formerly Greenland, purchased from the Truth Empire in 2055. In the X-bucks coffee parlor of the orbital elevator port, I marveled at the flavor of the coffee. “Real Arabica, grown here in Muskovia,” says the Inuit woman who served me the cup.

The Truth Empire’s forced acquisition of Greenland – prompted by Dr. Elon’s suggestion to the Big Cheese Himself – had been very well-timed. As the developed world lost its coastal cities to the sea, obliterating their civilization, and its agricultural belts turned into neglected wastelands, the vast, icy island thawed. Dr. Elon sold off the ice, using solar powered tugboats to tow icebergs to the sweltering, thirsty southern lands. All things had worked together for the benefit of Dr. Elon, and now I was getting into the world’s only privately owned orbital elevator -- essentially a railgun for shooting a capsule full of people into orbit. Once out of the earth’s gravity pull, with the help of small compressed air rockets, we would dock with Dr. Elon’s enormous space yacht, Extreme Measures.

Inside the warmly upholstered capsule, there were only four others, and a few empty seats. A robot took my overnight bag and guided me to my acceleration couch. When I sat down, an opaque mask came down over my face, the acceleration couch tilted back and strapped me in. Through the intercom, the elevator AI nattered on about the wonders of Muskovia until the scent of a dissociative anaesthetic teased my olfactory sense and the marketing monologue ended. I felt pleasantly separated from my anxiety and relieved of the weight of my physical body. As the long chain of electromagnets steadily accelerated us up into the sky, and G forces mounted steadily to generate escape velocity, I blissfully felt them not at all.

The docking maneuver went smoothly, and we disembarked into the hold of the Extreme Measures, where a wheeled AI assistant met me, took charge of my bag, and lead me to my room. The AI stowed my bag, and paused by the door before leaving to say, “I will return with dinner. You will see Dr. Elon in twelve hours. Be ready.” The door closed.

How could anyone be ready for Dr. Elon? Born in apartheid South Africa in 1971, now, in the year 2130, he was almost 160 years old, and during that time he had advantaged himself in every way possible. No one had photographed him in decades, and I wouldn’t be allowed to do so now. But they said I would see him, making me one of the most privileged people in the world. No pressure.

The AI assistant brought me a passable meal after a couple of hours, and I slept well in orbit, thankful for the artificial gravity generated by the centrifugal rotation of the passenger section of the space yacht.

But the interview took place in a large spherical space where the reality of weightlessness surrounded me. Huge viewscreens mounted on the curving walls replicates the vast expanse of the surrounding universe. Weightless AI's manuevered about, emitting hisses of compressed air, drifting from location to location, busy with tasks only they understood. There below us, hung the Earth, the moon peeping ‘round the blue horizon, and on the other side of the ship, a massive collection of machinery was visible, being assembled by a pair of huge metal hands. Dr. Elon floated in a webwork of instruments and controls. He looked down at me and called out, “Climb the rigging!” I saw the way up to where he was, and clambered up the ropes to reach the deck where he was moored, belted into a captain’s chair with 360 degree rotation, his hands in a pair of haptic gloves, his head in a helmet with a heads up display covering his eyes.

As I reached the platform, he pointed to another chair, and said, “Belt in.” I did as suggested. So this was the man. More machine than man, at this point, and not physically impressive. Then I put two and two together. The haptic gloves on his hands were controlling the two enormous metal hands out in space. With the heads-up display, he was able to see the enormous orbital construction, and with the mechanical hands, he could assemble huge structures with delicacy. Dr. Elon had literally increased his grasp to exceed that of any other human. What else had he done?

He turned towards me, pulled off the gloves, and helmet, and smiled. The smile looked sincere, but not because I thought he was happy to see me. He was happy that I was seeing him, and that I was aware of the privilege involved. But he could not be happy about the subject I had been invited to discuss – the human rights lawsuit filed by his surrogate children. “Shall we begin?” asked Dr. Elon.

I pulled out my slate and stylus and nodded, “Yes, certainly,” tapping the screen to call up my notes. I hit voice record, and the transcript follows.

FT: “Dr. Elon, thank you for inviting the Financial Times of London to interview you about this matter. The accusations made against you are extensive, detailing a course of conduct that at this point stretches over a century. Your unearthly longevity has sparked many questions, and few answers. The lawsuit by your offspring suggests an explanation – that you owe your longevity to them.”

Dr. Elon: “Yes,” answered Dr. Elon, “I understand their claims, and I’m ready to answer them. My lawyers are not at all in agreement with my course of action, but I hire them to listen to me, not the reverse. So ask your question a little more directly.”

FT: “The complaint here alleges that you have been milking your biological offspring of their blood, extracting plasma and other life-giving fluids, and injecting them into yourself. Is that true?”

Dr. Elon: “Well, I don’t do the actual injection myself, but yes, my children have been supplying me with transfusion material, but it has all been done with informed consent, and they get paid. How many pay their children a lifetime salary? All of my child donors receive that.”

FT: “But now they are complaining.”

Dr. Elon: “About what? About what are they complaining? That the checks are not big enough, right? That’s when the lawyers go away, when they get money, right? So that’s what this is all about!”

FT: “They claim it is about human rights. They say you tricked their mothers into signing away their own rights to their own bodies.”

Dr. Elon: “I don’t know what was so tricky about it. They all had their own lawyers. I hired separate counsel for all of them, and they all signed those agreements with full understanding.”

FT: “But those agreements have now been set aside by the courts on the grounds that parents cannot determine the biological destiny of their children.”

Dr. Elon: “At the time, all of the attorneys we consulted with on bio-ethics said there was no law against it.”

FT: “But did you, personally, think it was moral to force these women to sign contracts that allowed gene editing of their embryonic children?”

Dr. Elon: “I’m a scientist. I want to learn. We learn through experiment.”

FT: “Experimenting on your own children?”

Dr. Elon: “Well, I sure wasn’t going to experiment on anyone else’s.”

FT: “And why is that?”

Dr. Elon: “Legal issues.”

FT: “Like what?”

Dr. Elon: “A child is always a lawful donor for a parent. Can you imagine a court telling a child they
can’t donate a kidney to save the life of their father?”

FT: “No.”

Dr. Elon: “Neither could my lawyers.”

FT: “So let’s get onto organ donation. Have any of your children donated organs to you?”

Dr. Elon: “Yes, many of them.”

FT: “But for those donations, would you still be alive today?”

Dr. Elon: “Not likely. And I most definitely would not see. These flawless eyes were the product of one
of my favorite children. Passed on, unfortunately.”

FT: “What do you mean, passed on?”

Dr. Elon: “That child died of a disease that was incurable at the age of eighteen. Willed me her eyes, the dear.”

FT: “But why did you not save her? Why didn’t you edit her genes so that she wouldn’t die of that disease? You would have done it for yourself!”

Dr. Elon: “Ah, but she was not myself. She lived well, she lived with loving care. Her death was foredestined, and her giving me flawless eyesight, likewise. Into each life some rain must fall. One man gathers what another spills.”

FT: “And what of this allegation, one I hope you will deny – that some children were raised to be organ producers. This child who grows kidneys that can be harvested successively. Tell me that’s not true.”

Dr. Elon: “I’m please to tell you, it is not. One of my over-enthusiastic experimenters did start the editing process, but I put my foot down. Waste of resources.”

FT: “What do you mean, waste of resources?”

Dr. Elon: “Well, nowadays, we have the technology to clone organs straight from the tank. Why opt for the Mengelian solution?”

FT: “Well doctor, you used the word. Some people have called you a Mengele.”

Dr. Elon: “I’m no Mengele. He didn’t have a plan, and his so-called experiments produced little knowledge of use. I am on a quest to transcend the limitations of physical existence, and the only laboratories of any use to me are the human bodies that live and die and hold the answer, if answer there might be, in how to live forever. So far, I’ve staved off death for twice the normal span, and our knowledge of organ transplantation has become ever more refined. I anticipate that, someday, I will be able to transplant the brain currently in this body into a younger body grown in precisely the way necessary to receive this brain.”

FT: “But sir, this is arrogant madness. You are saying you would carve your child’s brain out of its cranium, and replace it with your own?”

Dr. Elon: “Oh, surely not. The younger body would be grown with the most vestigial brain possible, just enough to manage the construction and operation of the body – in practice simply the brain stem – no cerebellum, no consciousness.”

FT: “Doctor, you clearly prize your own life highly. How can you regard the lives of others with so little concern.”

Dr. Elon: “Growing up in Praetoria.”

[admin]

Trump’s Golden Age — Fulfillment of Billionaire Dreams Under the Guise of a Populist Revival
by Charles Carreon
May 23, 2025

Donald Trump is often said to be a populist. True as far as it goes. He was certainly lifted to power by an underclass. He moves the masses, like the famed Argentine populist dictator Perón, but for a different purpose. Perón genuinely sought to uplift the poor, his "descasmisados," the bare-chested people, the ones who didn't wear shirts. Trump's latest crypto-bribery Oval Office stunt made it clearer than ever that, even as he charms the ignorant poor, he serves only the wealthy and himself—an elite masquerading as a savior of the common man while enacting policies that entrench oligarchic power.

Where Juan Perón used debt and state resources to uplift the Argentine working class, Trump deploys the same tools to enrich the already-rich, gut public institutions, and leave America’s lower classes more vulnerable than ever. This is Trump’s Golden Age—a descent into deprivation and imposed austerity for ordinary Americans, while billionaires live their wildest fantasies under the protective cover of nationalist theater.

The Paradox of Modern Populism

The Trump movement sells itself as a crusade for the forgotten American worker, yet its material effects consistently advantage corporations, hedge fund managers, and dynastic wealth. His 2017 tax overhaul slashed corporate tax rates and overwhelmingly favored high-income households. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 1% reaped nearly 20% of the total benefits. These tax cuts were recently expanded further by the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” passed by the House in May 2025, extending deductions for capital gains and passthrough income while slashing revenue streams needed to support basic public services. Unlike Perón, who redistributed national wealth toward the working class through wage hikes and nationalizations, Trump redistributes it upward. Medicaid and SNAP are being gutted to pay for tax shelters. This isn’t a safety net; it’s a springboard for wealth extraction.

Protectionism as Propaganda

Perón embraced protectionism to cultivate domestic industries and working-class employment. Trump’s tariffs mimic the form but not the function. Rather than shielding U.S. manufacturing, they serve as symbolic weapons in a culture war. A Yale Budget Lab analysis shows that the average effective U.S. tariff rate in 2025 has surged to levels not seen since 1909. The burden of these tariffs falls on American households—not on the elites. It’s not economic sovereignty; it’s cost inflation wrapped in a flag.

Fiscal Irresponsibility as Strategy

In Argentina, Perón’s debt-fueled populism eventually drove inflation and economic collapse—but at least the working class saw short-term gains. Trump’s fiscal policy is more cynical: national debt explodes to subsidize shareholder dividends and real estate depreciation. Rather than investing in infrastructure, housing, or education, Trump’s policies deepen inequality and widen the fiscal gap. This is not populism. It’s wealth extraction under populist cover.

The Cult of Personality Without Substance

Trump, like Perón, commands a cult-like loyalty. But unlike Perón, he delivers little material improvement to his base. His rallies are performance politics—furious, nostalgic, and hollow. Real power lies not with his voters, but with the private equity billionaires and dynastic donors who fund his campaigns and shape his agenda. The American worker is a stage prop; the corporate class writes the script.

From Perón to Plutocracy

The original Peronization meant redistributing national wealth to the poor, often unsustainably. Under Trump, the term now signals the reverse: an economy weaponized for the rich, defended by a culture war that distracts and divides. This is not about national renewal—it’s about elite preservation. A gilded age masquerading as a revolution.

America, the Betrayed

Trump has delivered not a populist revival but a golden age for the plutocracy. His administration is a crowning achievement in elite deception: convincing millions that their impoverishment is patriotism. This is not the populism of bread and dignity. It is the theater of false promises and golden parachutes. If the United States is ruined economically, it will not be because it tried to help the many—but because it served the few, under the cynical flag of the common man.

Further Reading:

• MarketWatch: What’s in the GOP tax bill?
• The Guardian: Republican cuts to food and health benefits
• Yale Budget Lab: US Tariffs Report
• Wikipedia: Economic history of Argentina
• Washington Post: Trump tax and immigration bill

[admin]

Comparing the Trump Outrages to Those of George III
by Charles Carreon
June 13, 2025

To my fellow citizens:

Please find below, in parentheses, commentary that compares the Trump Outrages of the last four months with the litany of misdeeds of which the Founding Fathers accused King George as justifying their decision to rebel absolutely and completely against his unjust rule.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
  (Pardoning J-6 convicts and other MAGA trash, destroying government agencies through DOGE, disbanding the DOJ Civil Rights division, ending criminal prosecution and civil enforcement of laws for the public benefit.)
  
• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance...
  (Pressuring big city mayors and state governors to end migrant protections, DEI policies, and withdrawing funding for universities and nonprofits that support Palestinian rights, defunding AID, SNAP, Medicaid, and a host of other social services.)
  
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people...
  (Cutting off funding for states, counties, and cities deemed political enemies of the Trump regime.)
  
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable...
  
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly...
  (He has gutted administrative agencies, firing long-time civil servants because they refused to kowtow to MAGA priorities.)
  
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected...
  (Trump has defunded public health and welfare, infrastructure maintenance, land management, and socially beneficial nonprofit activity.)
  
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States...
  (Obstructing immigration policies, especially harming industries reliant on migrant labor.)
  
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice...
  (Refusing to enforce laws that constrain his misconduct, threatening judges, and inciting violence.)
  
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone...
  (See above.)
  
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices...
  (Deploying ICE officers en masse to intimidate communities of color.)
  
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies...
  (Remember Gavin Newsom suing over military deployment?)
  
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
  (As per the DOJ under Pam Bondi—yes, seriously.)
  
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution...
  (Aligning with authoritarian regimes like Bukele’s El Salvador.)
  
• For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
  
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment...
  
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
  (Tariffs have returned—with a vengeance. Like the ones that triggered the Boston Tea Party.)
  
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
  (Trump tariffs cost average Americans $1,700/year—basically a MAGA tax.)
  
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
  (Mass deportations with no conviction, no trial.)
  
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
  (Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to a foreign prison, wrongly accused.)
  
• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province...
  (Red states implementing harsh, theocratic laws to set precedent for national imposition.)
  
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws...
  (Dismantling DEI, defunding police oversight, shredding due process.)
  
• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power...
  (The MAGA Congress does Trump’s will. Democrats offer no real opposition.)

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

****

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Anyone unable to see the correspondence between these words of the Declaration of Independence, the actions of the Trump Junta, and the legitimacy of a revolutionary response to those actions, should clean their glasses. Clearly, Sam Adams would be brewing more than beer, were he alive today.

[admin]

Tyrants -- They Never Hear the One That Hits Them
by Charles Carreon
June 17, 2025

All Successful Rebellions Are Stealthy

History rarely records the first whispers of revolution. Before barricades go up, before flags are raised, before tyrants are toppled, rebellion begins in silence, in secret, and in shadow. Every successful rebellion starts not with a trumpet, but with a whisper. From Europe to Latin America to Africa, this is the common root of insurrection.

Consider Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution in 1989. There were no riots, no mass graves. The regime collapsed under the weight of its own lie when candlelight vigils, banned poetry, and students shaking their keys in the Prague air made the continued fiction of authoritarian legitimacy impossible to maintain. Vaclav Havel, playwright-turned-president, proved that imagination and moral persistence could dethrone a state.

Shift to Cuba, 1950s: a revolution conceived not in radio broadcasts or grand pronouncements but in prisons and mountain hideouts. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, along with Vilma Espín and Haydée Santamaría, plotted each step through whispers, persuasion, and coded messages. Soldiers were persuaded to defect before they were defeated in combat. Sierra Maestra was the womb of a rebellion born in strategic stealth.

Cross the Atlantic to Mozambique, where the FRELIMO movement fanned the flames of independence against the Portuguese. Josina Machel, a young fighter and educator, inspired a generation with the quiet defiance of her service to refugees and wounded soldiers. Eduardo Mondlane built the foundations of victory not on open battlefields, but through years of slow, careful organizing and moral argument.

In all three, as in so many others, the pattern holds: stealth, not spectacle, births lasting revolution.

Deploying Media Weapons to Counter Oppressive Propaganda

Authoritarian regimes rely on control of the story. They produce histories that are half-erased, futures that are hollow, and presents too overwhelming to analyze. Yet wherever oppression reigns, the counter-narrative lives.

In the USSR, it was samizdat — the illegal underground self-publishing network that hand-copied banned books, essays, and news accounts. Writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Natalya Gorbanevskaya gave voice to a silenced reality. Every carbon copy was an act of treason against the state’s monopoly on truth.

In Chile under Pinochet, the guitar of Victor Jara and the words of Gladys Marín became more powerful than any rifle. Jara’s voice was mutilated by his torturers, but his songs remain.

In apartheid South Africa, artists like Miriam Makeba and playwrights like Athol Fugard crafted truths no newspaper dared print. In Vietnam, songs like "Bài Ca Giã Tường" served as signals and salves. In the West, The Clash’s "Clampdown" made British youth question empire in their own tongue.

The rebels wrote poems. They performed plays. They edited leaflets. They painted walls. They turned each act of communication into an insurgent weapon. And they did it not always with rage, but with irony, beauty, double meanings, and charm. Soft language, hard resistance

Developing Disgust for Empire

Before people resist, they must stop admiring their oppressors. Rebellion ripens when the emperor becomes ridiculous, the state becomes boring, the tyrant becomes tacky.

The fashion, art, and music of rebellion have always played this role. In the UK, punk rock made monarchy and imperial nostalgia seem absurd. Songs like The Clash’s Clampdown and Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen reframed obedience as a kind of death.

In the U.S. civil rights movement, the dignified defiance of Black marchers contrasted violently with the snarling faces of Southern sheriffs. In Argentina, Rodolfo Walsh’s writing made the junta’s lies look desperate and cruel.

In Tibet and among Uyghur artists, the Chinese state’s sterilized slogans are undercut by whispered prayers and coded poems. In Tiananmen Square, the Goddess of Democracy—papier-mâché and defiant—faced Mao's granite gaze and made the old tyrant look like a cartoon.

When young people reject the aesthetics of tyranny—the uniforms, the television programs, the slogans—the moral authority of the oppressor begins to rot.

Make them look stupid. Make them look small. Make them look scared. That’s where power begins to slip.

Building Support for Open Rebellion

Open rebellion doesn’t happen spontaneously. It is cultivated. It is nurtured. It is built over years of quiet planning, failed actions, whispered rumors, clandestine alliances, and moral preparation.

In the Sierra Maestra, Fidel and Che didn’t just shoot guns; they educated, negotiated, recruited, and persuaded. Many Batista soldiers surrendered not out of fear, but respect.

In South Africa, the ANC began underground organizing as early as the 1940s. Decades of exile, sabotage, and clandestine action set the stage for the explosion of resistance in the 1980s.

In Poland, Anna Walentynowicz’s firing triggered the Gdansk shipyard strike that birthed Solidarity—but it was only possible because thousands had been preparing underground for years. Catholic youth groups, independent press, labor circles: they all laid the invisible groundwork.

In Chile, the fall of Pinochet was preceded by years of slow moral attrition. When Judge Garzón issued the arrest warrant in 1998, the world was ready to receive it as justice, not vengeance.

Open rebellion is the fruit. Stealth is the root.

Keepin' What You’ve Earned

The tragedy of revolution is not only its bloodshed, but its loss through complacency. Many of the Eastern Bloc nations that broke free from communism in 1989 are now seeing democratic backsliding: Hungary under Orbán, Poland under PiS, and even the Czech Republic flirting with autocracy.

The United States, long seen as a beacon of liberal democracy, now finds itself on dying ground, as Sun Tzu would put it. Trumpism has built a junta not only of politicians, but of judges, sheriffs, media moguls, and militia commanders. They are preparing for a permanent coup by legal means.

But America still has weapons: institutional inertia, professional ethics, public employee resistance, and the stealth rebellion of ordinary decency. Nurses, postal workers, IRS agents, city council members, state judges, and school librarians are quietly refusing.

What we need now is mass stealth moral rebellion: workplace conversations, memes, songs, quiet refusals, ritual shaming, brave humor, and stealth organizing. If we make it socially shameful to support tyranny—if we activate decency in the human heart through stories, art, speech, and example—the junta will find the machine failing.

We do not need everyone to fight. We need some to resist, some to resign, and many to remember. The true battle is in the sympathies and loyalties of the uncommitted majority.

All revolutions begin in secret. So does every redemption.

Start now. Speak quietly. Fight well.

Produced with AI research and drafting. To see the full research session, click here.