When Obedience Starts Asking for a Blindfold: The Kelly Affair and America’s Favorite Execution Fantasies
A Country That Confuses Justice With a Mood Swing Every now and then, this country tests whether the roof beams of the republic can handle one more weight they were never designed to carry. November 2025 delivered exactly that kind of structural stress test. Senator Mark Kelly — astronaut, veteran, man who has seen the […]
We Ain’t Buying It — And You Shouldn’t Either
Late-stage capitalism is eating people alive and calling it “convenience.”The air is poisoned, the rents are carnivorous, and billionaires are out here licking bone marrow off the working class like it’s a tasting menu. You already know this. Your nervous system knows this.You feel it every time you open your banking app or stare at […]
GOOD NEWS: AMERICA HAS ITS PRIORITIES STRAIGHT
Good news, everyone. Apparently, the American economy is doing great — because Elon Musk is about to receive a one trillion dollar compensation package. A trillion. With a “t.”The sort of number you usually only see in science fiction, galactic empires, or budget estimates for the Death Star’s emotionally unavailable cousin. And, as always, our […]
Are We Surprised?
Parsing Power and Predation in the Epstein Files Content note: This piece discusses sexual abuse, trafficking, and institutional failure. Of all the horrors and details in the new Epstein document dump, the line that broke containment online was not about a survivor. It was about a joke. In a 2018 email, Mark Epstein tells his […]
It Was Just One Battle in the War
Look, I get it. You wanted fireworks, a cinematic triumph, the orchestra swelling as democracy rose from the ashes in a blaze of bipartisanship.Instead, you got a continuing resolution, a reopened cafeteria, and a collective sigh from 330 million exhausted people. And yet—They got the House open again. That’s not nothing.They got SNAP funding secured […]
The First Oath
I raised my right hand. The words came easy. You practice them. You hear them in movies. They’re meant to sound bigger than you—that’s the point. “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” That’s the first promise, and the most […]
Thank You (for Your Service… and Your Patience)
A Cult of Brighter Days reflection for Veteran’s Day (and government shutdowns everywhere) Every November, the calendar hands us a peculiar juxtaposition: a day to honor service and sacrifice — and, some years, a government so temporarily “paused” that even the coffee filters are furloughed. Here at the Cult of Brighter Days, we like to think […]
The Wind Has Opinions:
Indigenous Environmentalism in Wyoming My wife always says, as the Wyoming wind whistles through the misaligned insulation that keeps our window from sealing, “One day we’ll wake up and the house will be in Siberia!” Or sometimes Serbia—depends on the pitch of the whistling. Out on the high plains, the wind never shuts up. It […]
They Took It All — And Some Are Clapping
What Trump Has Stripped in 2025 (And Why Some Don’t Even Notice) The Ground Shift You Felt Feeling off lately? Dizzy, disoriented, like the floor beneath the country just rearranged while you blinked? It’s not your imagination. That’s your body registering systemic collapse. Civil structures—legal protections, social contracts, institutions—aren’t quietly evolving. They’re being ripped out. […]
When the Safety Net Splits:
SNAP, Shutdowns, and the Fight for Dignity I’ve relied on food stamps more times than I can count. As a kid, they kept our pantry from turning into a haunted echo chamber of expired ketchup packets.In college, they were the difference between eating lunch or gnawing on existential dread.And now? My father—living on SSI—relies on […]