The rise of Christian nationalism terrifies me.

I was born into a Christian fundamentalist cult. And of course Christian fundamentalism and Christian nationalism aren't the same things, but there is a lot of overlap there.

Intense Christianity is a lot like extremist Islam. Hierarchical, patriarchal, racist, brutal. An ideology of obedience and punishment.

Thankfully we left that cult when I was 7. If we had stayed I would have been married off as a teenager and had lots of kids very young. I would have grown up and been miserable but unable to leave as no way could I abandon my children.

I would have hung myself off a tree branch in the back yard, as a number of my peers in that community did.

I don't want that life for anyone. It is a tragedy.

You can’t make someone care about you.
You can’t make someone care about you.
You can’t make someone care about you.
You can’t make someone care about you.
You can’t make someone care about you.
You can’t make someone care about you.
You can’t make someone care about you.
You can’t make someone care about you.
You can’t make someone care about you.
You can’t make someone care about you.

...Let them go.

The US is great in many, many ways because it has “Inclusive institutions”. And yes, there are so, so many examples of systematic exclusion happening in the States, but, unfortunately, nearly everywhere else has even less inclusive institutions, and so by comparison we are kicking ass!

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It walks through, in painstaking detail, and with a flood of data points why some nation prosper, and why some fail. Spoiler, a nation with extractive institutions will fail to prosper.

The US was founded on some great principals including balance of power, and because of that the citizens of the US have often been involved and included both politically and economically and that is why we have done as well as we have.

It’s the 4th of July 🎇 and our 250th birthday 🥳 and so people keep asking me if I’m feeling patriotic… and no, no I’m not.

Now before you accuse me of hating my country… I kinda do! But also kinda don’t. You see just having been born in the US gave me access to more money, and more opportunity than nearly 99% of the rest of humanity. I was born in the global elite. I am wildly lucky to be an American!

But here is the thing, I’m mad at how much I’ve been misled.

I was taught all about the founding fathers, and they certainly got the spirit of the thing right! “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.” 👏👏 Fuck ya! They nailed the vibe. ...but then interpreted “all men” to mean rich white European males. Ugh.

Do you remember manifest destiny? I sure do. This was the idea that white Americans stealing land from and often killing Native Americans was totally fine, cuz that land was divinely ordained to belong to the white Americans. "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."

The story was taught to me with glory. We set out and conquered the wilderness and banished the savages! ...also known as theft and murder, which I later learned about as the “Trail of Tears”.

I was taught that yes slavery is wrong, but you know it wasn’t that bad, and we ended it ages ago, so all is well and forgiven now. I had this idea in my head that the slaves were generally just farm hands that couldn’t leave. They were given houses, and they raised families and had happy little lives. Later I learned about a number of diaries from slave owners or those on their plantations that contain detailed documentation of their systematic mistreatment of slaves, including notes on just how much abuse slave populations would withstand before potentially revolting. I won’t repeat some of the stories from them here, they are as you might imagine just about as cruel and horrific as it is possible to be.

And no doubt conditions were very different on different plantations, but with how many of these diaries we have, it’s very clear that how horrific this phase of history was has been intentionally hidden.

In my own lifetime we’ve gone to all kinds of wars under the guise of “liberating” others, or because it was totally necessary to protect ourselves from imminent danger, etc. And when you look closer and closer, it becomes abundantly clear that it was never about anything besides power.

I have been consistently lied to about what this country has been and is.

We were founded on some great principals. And that whole balance of power thing has really done wonders for us and taken us a long, long way. With those principles and with the political inclusion that we have had, we’ve made a lot of progress! However, psychopaths gunna psycho and we seem to be good at enabling them.

We are the evil empire. To this day the abusive elite are out here holding the positions of power in our country and directing thefts and murders of all sorts of varieties and they do it all with my tax dollars and in my name. And I feel pretty fucking gross about that.

2026 has been rough for my faith in humanity. But these two pictures are holding me together 💖