The nation’s top law enforcement officer is supposed to be the people’s lawyer. Instead, we got a corporate lobbyist who spent six years at Ballard Partners repping Qatar, Amazon, GM, private prisons, and Pfizer — then waltzed into the DOJ without disclosing any of it as a potential conflict. She listed exactly two conflicts on her committee paperwork: a policy institute gig and her brother’s law practice. That’s it. Thirty-plus clients and the government of a foreign nation, and Pam Bondi basically said “nothing to see here.”
Since her confirmation, Ballard Partners has become the highest-paid lobbying shop in D.C. and taken on ten new clients with business directly before Bondi’s DOJ — more than they had in the first Trump and Biden administrations combined. One of those clients, American Express Global Business Travel, paid Ballard $200K to lobby Bondi’s DOJ — after which the department conveniently dropped its challenge to a $540 million merger that would have let Amex GBT devour its biggest rival.
Then there’s Qatar. Bondi lobbied for the Qatari government. Then as AG she personally signed a DOJ memo blessing Qatar’s $400 million luxury jet gift to Trump. When the Freedom of the Press Foundation sued for that memo? Her DOJ stonewalled. Meanwhile, Trump announced a shiny new golf resort deal with a Qatari government-owned company. Totally unrelated, surely.
Oh, and remember the Trump University $25K donation her Florida AG office received right around the time fraud complaints landed on her desk — after which she declined to investigate? The IRS literally penalized Trump’s foundation for that one, and yet here she sits.
This isn’t a conflict of interest. It’s a business model.
The shooting in Minneapolis last week of Renee Good, a 37-year-old wife and mom to 3 kids, hit me really hard. It’s not just that she was in a lesbian couple like me, with kids from previous husbands — and that I would be the one in the passenger’s seat. It’s because of the brazenness — pride, even — of the officer who ended her life cavalierly and without remorse.
The smear campaign about this woman nauseates me deeply — it began mere milliseconds after her death when the officer who shot her at point-blank range yelled “fuckin’ bitch!” after her vehicle and escalated extremely quickly to the sitting President, Vice President, and Homeland Security Secretary calling her a “domestic terrorist” despite the physical impossibility of being able to confirm that kind of information so quickly.
It is clear that agent Jonathan Ross escalated the situation himself. He broke DHS policy by putting himself in the path of a moving vehicle. And he should not have had his cellphone out, occupying his other hand, when he drew his weapon — you need the hands to be unobstructed to maximize your ability to handle any situation that may emerge.
He claimed he was afraid for his life — when? Show me on tape at which moment(s) in time this agent appears to behave an a fearful manner, because I do not see it. There are the moments when he’s calmly walking around the entire vehicle recording on his cellphone, moments when he has calmly drawn his gun and is pointing it at Renee Good, and moments where he is shouting and shooting bullets into her head. Where is the fear? He doesn’t run or dive; he doesn’t scream; he doesn’t call for help; he doesn’t show any surprise. He doesn’t seem fearful — he seems in control of the situation at all times, including when he pulls the trigger 3 times to take someone’s life as punishment for being cheeky.
They do not care about you — you are expendable to them. They do not GAF. Especially now with AI — they are gonna replace you anyway brah! At best they are biding time putting you on a drip feed of murder porn and revenge fan fic until the moment they are completely certain they’ve hijacked the electoral system at which time you too, buddy, will be shown the airlock into a deep space void no one will ever hear you from because they have all the powers of the earth to override whatever puny narrative you may have had for yourself.
You will be crushed like a bug 1000x tinier than Kafka’s roach — millions at a time under the heels of casually sadistic billionaires many of whom were Democrats up until 5 minutes ago when someone offered them a deal to cut their tax bill in exchange for a measley few million dollars. It’s “irrational” to not take the deal. You have to take the deal. Your competitors have taken the deal. You’d be the only chump not taking the deal. It’s the Art of the Deal, right?
Deals are all that matter. Transactionality is all there is — including reducing the beautiful, awe-inspiring teachings of Jesus to a mere materialistic creed, draped in a flag, shouted from a bullhorn, fired into an already capsized boat, and shot into the heads of innocent bystanders if they don’t comply with conflicting directives.
Five years ago today, a violent mob stormed the United States Capitol in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election. The man who incited them has since been re-elected president, which scuppered the investigation into him by Special Counsel Jack Smith. If that whiplash isn’t enough to give you vertigo, consider this: we now have sworn testimony, under oath, from the prosecutor who investigated Trump laying out exactly why his office believed they could convict—and why they were stopped.
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s December testimony before the House Judiciary Committee is the closest thing we’ll get to the trial that should have happened. In it, Smith methodically dismantles every defense Trump and his allies have offered, explains how the case was built on testimony from Republicans willing to put country over party, and makes clear that the evidence of Trump’s guilt wasn’t circumstantial—it was direct.
In this post, I’m breaking down the key takeaways from Smith’s testimony, sharing one of my AI#MiniHistory videos marking the anniversary, and giving you a way to interrogate the evidence yourself through an interactive NotebookLM bot. Because if there’s one thing the incoming administration is counting on, it’s that you won’t have time to read 255 pages of testimony. Let’s make sure they’re wrong.
January 6 in 40 seconds
But first, a J6 refresher course — again, for busy folks.
I’ve been into making these little AI #MiniHistory videos with Glif agents, trying to tease out important signposts along our road to dictatorship and other interesting moments in history to highlight. Here’s the one I did for today and the 5th anniversary of January 6, 2021:
Trump has still never been held accountable for his actions that day — the election of 2024 put a boot in the face of any hope for justice prevailing against the Chief Insurrectionist. Nevertheless, Jack Smith replanted a tendril of hope in his mid-December testimony to Congress with a scathingly clear broken record message that Trump was guilty and they had all the receipts they needed to prove it and then some. It lays down new tracks in the Congressional record that will be impossible to expunge, regardless of whatever trash MAGA fairy tale of J6 the right-wing goons decide to slather on the White House website.
Jack Smith testifies to Trump’s guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt”
In eight hours of testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on December 17, 2025, former Special Counsel Jack Smith laid out why his office was prepared to convict Donald Trump on federal charges. Speaking under oath in a closed-door deposition — the Republicans who now hold the gavel had denied his request to testify publicly (after crying decades of crocodile tears over ‘transparency’?? truly?) —Smith called Trump “the most culpable and most responsible person” in the criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.
There’s something conspicuously absent from American political discourse: actual discussion of values and the morals, ethical choices, and beliefs that go into the creation of good government policy.
Think about the last major political debate you watched, or the last campaign ad that stuck with you. How much of it was about what government should do versus who you should hate? How much was articulating a vision for society versus performing dominance over the out-group?
This isn’t an accident. It’s a strategy.
When your policy positions are wildly unpopular — when majorities oppose you on healthcare, taxation, abortion, climate change, guns, and wages — you don’t engage on the substance. You change the subject. You make politics about identity, grievance, and tribal belonging. You turn every election into a referendum on vibes rather than vision.
The American right has become extraordinarily sophisticated at this evasion. They’ve built an entire media ecosystem designed not to argue for right-wing values, but to ensure those values never have to be argued for at all. And the Trump administration is chock full of people from that media ecosystem.
The Polling Problem
Here’s the uncomfortable reality the modern right has to navigate, and we need to trumpet: their actual policy preferences are not popular.
Exposed to the individual provisions of the Affordable Care Act, majorities supported them — even among Republicans. Majorities support raising taxes on the wealthy, protecting Social Security and Medicare, acting on climate change, keeping abortion legal in most cases, and implementing universal background checks for gun purchases. On issue after issue, when you strip away the partisan framing and ask people what they actually want government to do, the “conservative” position loses.
This creates a strategic problem. You can’t win elections by articulating positions most people reject. So you articulate… something else.
The Retreat from Argument
Meanwhile, the right-wing has indefensible values, which is why they no longer even bother to try to articulate them. Instead, they express them obliquely through “memes” and mores that evince cruelty, bigotry, narcissism, domination, supremacy, greed, selfishness, and contempt for vulnerability — all while maintaining plausible deniability through irony, “just asking questions,” and the ever-ready accusation that anyone who names the pattern is being hysterical or unfair.
This is the function of the perpetual rhetorical shell game: you can’t pin down a position that’s never stated plainly. The cruelty gets expressed through policy and aesthetic, but when challenged, retreats behind procedural objections or “economic anxiety.” The bigotry shows up in who gets mocked and who gets protected, but is never admitted as such — it’s always reframed as “common sense” or “tradition.”
A network of exceedingly wealthy individuals and organizations have channeled their vast fortunes into influencing American politics, policy, and public opinion — they’ve formed a wealth cult. And they’ve leveraged that cult and its considerable fortune to influence and in many ways dramatically transform American politics.
The most succinct way I have come up with to explain American politics is that the wealthy are dividing us over race and religion. Today far more openly than in the past, where much oligarch shadow influence was delivered via dark money kept intentionally untraceable back to its origins.
The term “dark money” refers to political spending meant to influence the decision-making and critical thinking of the public and lawmakers where the source of the money is not disclosed. This lack of transparency makes it challenging to trace the influence back to its origins, hence the term “dark.”
The wealth cult has funded disinformation campaigns, the spread of conspiracy theories, created fake social movements through astroturfing, enabled violent extremists to attack their country’s capitol, aided and abetted a convicted felon, cruelly deprived vulnerable people (especially immigrants, poor people, and women) of the kind of state aid granted generously throughout the developed world, bribed regulators, rigged elections, crashed economies, and on and on in service of their extremist free market ideology beliefs (which, by the way, have resulted in catastrophic market crashes every single time).
They believe in “makers and takers,” or Mudsill Theory, as it was once called by pedophile and racist Senator and slavery enthusiast James Henry Hammond. Some people were born to serve others, they say. Hierarchies are natural, they claim. Wealthy men should make all the decisions — because that’s what’s best for everyone, they say in paternalistic tones.
But you don’t have to take our word for it — just ask the Vice President of the Confederacy what his reasons were in the infamous Cornerstone Speech of 1861, just a few weeks before the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter:
“The new [Confederate] constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution . . . The prevailing ideas entertained by . . . most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. . . Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of . . . the equality of races. This was an error . . .
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner–stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.”
— Alexander H. Stephens, March 21, 1861, reported in the Savannah Republican, emphasis in the original
The “States’ Rights” Contradiction
One of the clearest ways to prove the war was about slavery—and not abstract “states’ rights”—is to look at how the Confederacy treated the rights of Northern states.
The Fugitive Slave Act Paradox: Southern leaders explicitly opposed “states’ rights” when Northern states attempted to exercise them. When Northern states passed “Personal Liberty Laws” (exercising their sovereign right to not enforce federal slave-catching laws), Southern states demanded the Federal Government override these state laws.
South Carolina’s Declaration: In its “Declaration of Causes,” South Carolina specifically lists the failure of Northern states to enforce the federal Fugitive Slave Act as a primary grievance. They were not fighting for the right of states to choose their own laws; they were fighting for the federal government to enforce slavery across all states
The Rejection of the “Forever” Amendment (Corwin Amendment)
Perhaps the most damning evidence is the South’s rejection of the Corwin Amendment.
The Offer: In a last-ditch effort to prevent war, the Northern-controlled Congress actually passed a Constitutional Amendment (the original 13th Amendment) in early 1861. It would have protected slavery forever in the states where it already existed, guaranteeing the federal government could never abolish it.
The Rejection: If the South were seceding simply to “protect their property” or “defend against Northern aggression,” they would have accepted this victory. Instead, they rejected it. Why? Because the amendment only protected slavery where it was, but did not guarantee its expansion into new western territories. The South seceded not just to keep slavery, but to ensure it could grow into a continental empire
You’ll hear a common retort on the extreme right that now holds sway in the mainstream Republican Party, in response to protests about the dismantling of democracy in this country — that we’re “a republic, not a democracy.” Right off the bat, a republic is a form of democracy — so they are claiming something akin to having a Toyota and not a car. It’s a rhetorical trick, in which people who fully know better are hacking the simple ignorance of civics and basic political philosophy of the right-wing political base.
John Birch Society loonies laud “a republic, not a democracy”
The “republic, not a democracy” meme would go on to be featured in the John Birch Society Blue Book — an organization so toxically extremist that even conservative darling William F. Buckley distanced himself from them. They feared the idea that increasing democratization would be a shifting balance of power away from white conservative men, and they spun numerous conspiracy theories to explain this as the result of nefarious undercover plot to overthrow Western Civilization.
In reality, the trend towards greater democracy is something the Founders themselves envisioned — though they likely could not have imagined how it would turn out. They believed fiercely in self-governance, and a clear separation from the tyranny of kings.
The Golden Rule is a moral maxim that transcends religious, cultural, and philosophical boundaries. At its core, this essential mental model for the world states: “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” This deceptively simple principle serves as a moral compass that has guided human interactions across millennia and continents.
The Critical Distinction: Golden vs. Silver
Not all versions of this rule are created equal. The key difference lies in whether the rule commands action or restraint:
The Golden Rule (Positive Form):
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
Demands proactive kindness and active good
Found in Christianity and Islam’s teachings
Requires you to get up and act
The Silver Rule (Negative Form):
“Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you”
Advocates restraint from harmful actions
Found in Confucianism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism
Can be followed through non-action
This distinction is crucial: you can follow the Silver Rule perfectly by sitting on your couch and doing nothing. The Golden Rule demands that you actively engage with the world.
A Universal Code: The Rule Across Cultures
What makes the ethic of reciprocity so remarkable is its near-universal appearance across human civilization:
Judaism: Hillel the Elder declared this the entire Torah in a nutshell—the negative version focused on avoiding harm.
Christianity: Jesus framed it as the Greatest Commandment, the positive version demanding active love.
Peter Thiel FAQ: The Contradictions of Silicon Valley’s Dark Philosopher
Peter Thiel occupies a rarefied place in the modern pantheon of tech billionaires — less the tinkerer or engineer than the theorist-king of the movement. A venture capitalist, PayPal co-founder, Facebook’s first major outside investor, and the billionaire backer of numerous reactionary causes, Thiel has built a career at the intersection of money, ideology, and myth. He is the financier of futuristic dreams — and dystopian nightmares.
Born in Frankfurt and raised in California, Thiel studied philosophy at Stanford, where he was captivated by the writings of Leo Strauss and René Girard. These thinkers — one obsessed with the hidden logic of political elites, the other with the contagious nature of human desire — shaped Thiel’s enduring worldview: that civilization is locked in cycles of envy and collapse, and only an enlightened few can see beyond the herd. In this sense, Thiel has always seen himself less as a businessman and more as a philosopher of power.
His ventures, from PayPal to Palantir, form a kind of metaphysical architecture of control. PayPal, the proto-financial infrastructure of the internet, made Thiel his fortune. Palantir, as explored deeper in What Is Palantir?, has monetized the surveillance state. In between, Thiel cultivated a cadre of disciples — the so-called PayPal Mafia — that went on to dominate Silicon Valley. His investments in companies like Facebook gave him not only wealth but leverage: a front-row seat in the grand experiment of data-driven social engineering.
What is fascism, and what are the signs of fascism? The fascist form of government is a complex and multi-faceted ideology that can manifest in various ways, making it challenging to pin down with a single definition.
Fascism resists simple definition precisely because it’s a syncretic ideology—adaptable to different contexts while maintaining core structural features. Rather than a fixed doctrine, it operates as a political methodology characterized by specific power dynamics, rhetorical strategies, and institutional patterns.
Structural characteristics of fascism
These are the ideological foundations and belief systems that define fascist movements—not merely policy positions but the fundamental orientations toward power, identity, and social organization that shape how fascism understands the world and its place in it.
Authoritarian Consolidation: Fascism centralizes power through the dismantling of horizontal accountability structures, typically concentrating authority in a charismatic executive who positions themselves above institutional constraints.
Ultranationalism as Identity Politics: Goes beyond patriotism to assert inherent civilizational superiority or racial supremacy, often manifesting as collective narcissism where national mythmaking replaces historical accuracy.
Anti-Intellectualism and Epistemic Closure: Systematic devaluation of expertise, academic inquiry, and empirical reasoning in favor of intuition, emotion, and revealed truth. The “coastal elite” or “ivory tower” becomes a rhetorical enemy.
Ethno-Nationalism and Boundary Enforcement: Xenophobia operating through strict in-group/out-group categorization, often targeting immigrants, religious minorities, or racialized “others.”
Reactionary Temporal Orientation: Deployment of a mythologized past as political program—the promise to restore a golden age that never existed, weaponizing nostalgia against pluralism.
Anti-Leftist Mobilization: Positioning communism, socialism, and progressive movements as existential threats, often conflating disparate left ideologies to create a unified enemy.
The Us vs. Them Architecture: In-group/Out-group dynamics as core infrastructure
Fascism doesn’t just exploit social divisions—it requires their constant production and intensification as its primary source of political energy. While most political movements contain some degree of group identity, fascism is structurally dependent on a stark binary between insiders and outsiders, making this dynamic its foundational operating system rather than an incidental feature. The movement coheres not around shared policy goals or governance philosophy, but around the ongoing project of boundary maintenance: defining, defending, and purifying the “us” against an ever-present “them.”
Peter Thiel has a plan to save the world, and it looks like a nightmare. He’s casting around for scapegoats, but perhaps Peter Thiel and the Antichrist are one and the same.
The PayPal co-founder, Facebook‘s first outside investor, and Silicon Valley‘s most influential political operator has spent years developing a political philosophy so strange that most people assume it can’t be serious. Democracy and freedom are incompatible, he says. Global cooperation is the Antichrist. The only hope for civilization is absolute monarchy modeled on tech startups. And he’s not just theorizing—he’s building it.
Thiel has poured millions into political campaigns, funded think tanks, mentored a generation of “New Right” intellectuals and alt-Right screeders, and cultivated politicians who share his vision. He’s amplified fringe thinkers like Curtis Yarvin (the blogger behind “Neoreaction” who openly advocates abolishing democracy), but Thiel’s worldview is uniquely his own—a bizarre synthesis of Christian eschatology, corporate governance theory, and techno-authoritarianism that’s far more sophisticated and disturbing than anything coming from the intellectual dark web.
This isn’t just eccentric billionaire philosophy. Thiel’s protégés include a sitting Vice President (J.D. Vance) and multiple Republican senators. His ideas circulate through conservative think tanks and Trump‘s inner circle. What sounds like science fiction is increasingly becoming Republican policy doctrine.
The media often portrays Thiel as an enigmatic libertarian or contrarian thinker. But that framing misses what’s actually happening. This is a systematic rejection of 250 years of democratic governance, wrapped in theological language and corporate efficiency rhetoric. And it’s weirder and more methodical than most people realize.
Peter Thiel and the Antichrist in 8 minutes (video)
This NotebookLM video does a great job explaining the background and impact of Thiel’s dangerously apocalyptic rhetoric inspired by Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt — and below it you can find a deeper explanation of all major points:
Here are the five interlocking beliefs that form Thiel’s vision—and why each one should terrify you.
1. Democracy Is the Bug, Not the Feature—Replace It With a Tech Startup Dictatorship
Thiel doesn’t just critique democracy—he’s concluded it’s fundamentally incompatible with freedom. In a 2009 essay, he wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Not ideal partners; not in tension — but incompatible.
His alternative is coldly corporate: run countries like founders run startups. One CEO. One vision. Absolute authority. No consensus. No debate. No democracy.
The Founders knew acutely the pains of centuries of religious warfare in modern Europe and resoundingly did not want that for their new nation. Many of them moreover knew religious persecution intimately — some whose families fled the Church of England for fear of being imprisoned, burned at the stake, or worse. Is America a Christian nation? Although many Christians certainly have come here, in a legal and political sense the nation’s founders wanted precisely the opposite of the “Christian nation” they were breaking with by pursuing independence from the British.
Contrary to the disinformation spread by Christian nationalists today, the people who founded the United States explicitly saw religious zealotry as one of the primary dangers to a democratic republic. They feared demagoguery and the abuse of power that tilts public apparatus towards corrupt private interest. The Founders knew that religion could be a source of strife for the fledgling nation as easily as it could be a strength, and they took great pains to carefully balance the needs of religious expression and secular interests in architecting the country.
The main impetus for a large percentage of the early colonists who came to the Americas was the quest for a home where they could enjoy the free exercise of religion. The Protestant Reformation had begun in Europe about a century before the first American colonies were founded, and a number of new religious sects were straining at the bonds of the Catholic Church’s continued hegemony. Puritans, Mennonites, Quakers, Jesuits, Huguenots, Dunkers, Jews, Amish, Lutherans, Moravians, Schwenkfeldians, and more escaped the sometimes deadly persecutions of the churches of Europe to seek a place to worship God in their own chosen ways.
By the late 18th century when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, many religious flowers were blooming within the 13 colonies. He had seen for himself the pitfalls of the experiments in which a unitary control of religion by one church or sect led to conflict, injustice, and violence. Jefferson and the nation’s other founders were staunchly against the idea of establishing a theocracy in America:
The founding fathers made a conscious break from the European tradition of a national state church.
The words Bible, Christianity, Jesus, and God do not appear in our founding documents.
The handful of states who who supported “established churches” abandoned the practice by the mid-19th century.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that his Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom was written on behalf of “the Jew and the gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindu and the infidel of every denomination.” In the text he responds negatively to VA’s harassment of Baptist preachers — one of many occasions on which he spoke out sharply against the encroachment of religion upon political power.
The Constitution explicitly forbids a religious test for holding foreign office.
The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights guarantees that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
There is a right-wing conspiracy theory aiming to discredit the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” by claiming that those exact words aren’t found in the Constitution.
The phrase comes from Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, wherein he is describing the thinking of the Founders about the meaning of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which Jefferson contemplates “with sovereign reverence.”
The phrase is echoed by James Madison in an 1803 letter opposing the building of churches on government land: “The purpose of separation of Church and State is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.”
The 1796 Treaty of Tripoli states in Article 11: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” — President George Washington first ordered the negotiation of a treaty in 1795, and President John Adams sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification in 1797, with this article widely interpreted to mean a reiteration of the purpose of the Establishment Clause to create a secular state, i.e. one that would not ever be going to holy war with Tripoli.
Critical Dates for Religious Freedom in America
From the very beginning the Founders made clear they did not want to repeat the mistakes of Old Europe. They established a secular government that offered religious freedom to many who had felt persecuted in their homelands — for generations to come.
Get a quick overview of some of the most important moments in American history and its founding documents with our interactive timeline below.
The Founders were deists
Moreover, the majority of the prominent Founders were deists — they recognized the long tradition of Judeo-Christian order in society, but consciously broke from it in their creation of the legal entity of the United States, via the Establishment Clause and numerous other devices. The founders were creatures of The Enlightenment, and were very much influenced by the latest developments of their day including statistics, empiricism, numerous scientific advancements, and the pursuit of knowledge and logical decision-making.
What Deism Actually Meant: Deism in the 18th century was a rationalist religious philosophy that accepted the existence of a creator God based on reason and observation of the natural world, but rejected supernatural revelation, miracles, and divine intervention in human affairs. Think of it as “God as clockmaker” — God designed the universe with rational laws, set it in motion, and then stepped back. This was a radical departure from traditional Christianity.
Empiricism over revelation — knowledge comes from observation and reason, not scripture
Natural rights derived from human nature and reason, not divine command
Social contract theory — government legitimacy comes from consent of the governed, not God’s anointing
Scientific method — Newton’s physics showed that the universe operated by discoverable natural laws
This was a revolutionary shift. They were designing a government based on Enlightenment principles in an era when most of the world still operated under divine-right monarchy.
The European Church-State Problem They Rejected:
The Founders had vivid historical examples of why mixing religion and state power was dangerous:
The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) killed roughly 8 million Europeans in religious conflict
The Spanish Inquisition showed what happens when church and state merge
Various European states still had official churches that persecuted religious minorities — prompting many of them to consider a new line in the American colonies
They saw how “established” (government-sponsored) religions inevitably led to:
Paine went even further than most Founders. In “The Age of Reason” (1794), he argued:
All national churches are “human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind”
Revelation is meaningless — “it is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other”
True religion is simply “to do justice, love mercy, and endeavor to make our fellow-creatures happy”
He predicted that as education and reason spread, traditional organized religion would wither
This was considered extremely radical — even scandalous — at the time. Yet Paine was celebrated as a hero of the Revolution and widely read. He once lamented that “Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.”
The Structural Safeguards They Built:
This wasn’t just philosophy — they built specific mechanisms:
No religious test for office (Article VI)
Establishment Clause — no official national religion
Free Exercise Clause — no prohibition of religious practice
Disestablishment at state level — states gradually abandoned their established churches (Massachusetts was last in 1833)
The framers of our Constitution who established this nation distrusted the concept of divine right of kings that existed in Europe under its historical monarchies. We fought a revolution to leave all that behind for good reason. They were adamantly against the idea of a national church, and were clear and insistent about the necessity of keeping the realms of religion and politics independent of each other.
It is the Christian nationalists who have it backwards — America was never a Christian nation that lost its way. Rather, the United States was founded as a secular nation and has become truer to fulfilling that mission over the centuries. It is the Project 2025 folks who are engaging in revisionist history, inventing a mythical past for the country that simply didn’t exist.
Black and white thinking is the tendency to see things in extremes, viewing the world through a very polarized lens. Even complex moral issues are seen as clearcut, with simple right and wrong answers and no gray areas in between.
Also referred to as all-or-nothing thinking or dichotomous thinking, black and white thinking is a very rigid and binary way of looking at the world. Black and white thinkers tend to categorize things, events, people, and experiences as either completely good or completely bad, without acknowledging any nuance or shades of gray. This can manifest in various aspects of their lives including relationships, decision-making, and self-evaluation. Black and white thinking can be a defense mechanism, as it provides a sense of certainty and control in situations that are complex, uncertain, or anxiety-provoking.
For example, a person who engages in black and white thinking may view their work performance as either completely successful or a complete failure, without considering any middle ground. They may view themselves as either a “good” or “bad” person, based on a single action or mistake. This type of extreme thinking can lead to feelings of extreme anxiety, depression, and self-doubt, as well as difficulties in personal and professional relationships.
Black and white thinking in political psychology
Black and white thinking can also be seen in political or social contexts, where individuals categorize people or groups as either completely good or completely bad, without acknowledging any nuances or complexities. This type of thinking can lead to polarizing beliefs, rigid ideologies, and an unwillingness to engage in constructive dialogue or compromise.
The origins of black and white thinking are complex and multifaceted, but it can stem from a variety of factors, including childhood experiences, cultural and societal influences, and psychological disorders including personality disorder. For example, individuals who have experienced trauma or abuse may engage in black and white thinking as a way to cope with the complexity and ambiguity of their experiences. Similarly, cultural or societal influences that promote a strict adherence to binary categories can also contribute to black and white thinking.
Psychological disorders such as borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and eating disorders are also associated with black and white thinking. For example, individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) may see themselves or others as either completely good or completely bad, without any middle ground. This type of thinking can lead to unstable relationships, impulsive behavior, and emotional dysregulation.
Narcissists too, especially malignant narcissists, tend to exhibit black and white thinking, with the frequent framing of any narrative as being primarily about themselves (good/The Hero) and everyone else (bad/The Other).
Black and White Thinking: Understanding binary cognition in the modern era
The Digital Amplification of Binary Thinking
The modern information ecosystem has created unprecedented conditions for black and white thinking to flourish. Social media algorithms, designed to maximize engagement, systematically promote content that evokes strong emotional responses—often content that presents complex issues in oversimplified, polarizing terms.
Algorithmic Reinforcement Mechanisms
Contemporary digital platforms operate on engagement metrics that inadvertently reward binary thinking:
Filter Bubble Formation: Recommendation algorithms create echo chambers where users primarily encounter information that confirms their existing beliefs
Engagement Optimization: Content that provokes outrage or strong agreement receives higher distribution (and ultimately, revenue), marginalizing nuanced perspectives
Attention Economy Dynamics: The competition for limited attention spans incentivizes simplified, emotionally charged messaging over complex analysis — going straight for the jugular of common mental heuristics works
Information Processing Under Cognitive Load
Research in cognitive psychology demonstrates that when individuals experience high cognitive load—a common state in our information-saturated environment—they default to simplified decision-making heuristics. This neurological tendency combines with digital information delivery systems to create systematic biases toward binary categorization.
Contemporary Political Manifestations
Black and white thinking has become increasingly prominent in political discourse, with profound implications for democratic institutions and social cohesion.
Legislative Dynamics: Congressional voting patterns show dramatic increases in party-line voting, with bipartisan legislation becoming increasingly rare. This reflects not just strategic positioning but fundamental shifts in how political actors conceptualize policy problems and solutions.
Media Ecosystem Fragmentation: The proliferation of ideologically aligned media sources enables individuals to construct information diets that reinforce binary worldviews. Traditional journalistic ethics of objectivity and balance in a fundamentally evidentiary role have been challenged by partisan media models that explicitly advocate for particular political perspectives.
Electoral Coalition Building: Political campaigns increasingly rely on mobilizing base supporters through appeals to fundamental differences with opponents, rather than building broad coalitions through compromise and incremental policy development.
Identity-Based Political Cognition
Modern political psychology research reveals how black and white thinking intersects with identity formation:
Social Identity Theory: Individuals derive significant psychological satisfaction from in-group membership and out-group differentiation
Motivated Reasoning: People process political information in ways that protect their group identities and existing belief systems
Moral Foundations: Different political coalitions emphasize different moral frameworks, creating seemingly irreconcilable worldview differences
Systemic Analysis: Institutional Impacts
Black and white thinking creates cascade effects across multiple institutional systems:
Democratic Governance Challenges
Compromise Mechanisms: Effective democratic governance requires negotiation and compromise between competing interests. Binary thinking undermines these processes by framing compromise as betrayal of fundamental principles.
Policy Implementation: Complex policy challenges—from healthcare to climate change to economic inequality—require nuanced, multifaceted solutions. Binary thinking promotes oversimplified policy approaches that often fail to address underlying systemic issues.
Constitutional Design: Democratic institutions assume citizens capable of evaluating competing claims and making informed choices. Black and white thinking can undermine these foundational assumptions necessary to making democracy work.
Economic System Implications
Market Dynamics: Binary thinking in economic contexts can create boom-bust cycles, as investors and consumers oscillate between extreme optimism and pessimism without recognizing gradual trends and mixed signals.
Innovation Ecosystems: Complex technological and business model innovation requires tolerance for ambiguity and iterative development. Binary thinking can stifle innovation by demanding immediate, clear success metrics. It turns out that diversity is good to the bottom line, actually.
Labor Relations: Effective workplace dynamics require ongoing negotiation between competing interests. Binary thinking can transform routine workplace disagreements into fundamental conflicts.
Mental Model Frameworks for Analysis
Understanding black and white thinking requires sophisticated analytical frameworks:
The Cognitive Bias Cascade Model
Black and white thinking rarely operates in isolation but typically forms part of broader cognitive bias patterns:
Confirmation Bias: Seeking information that confirms existing beliefs
Group Attribution Error: Assuming individual group members represent entire groups
Systems Thinking Applications
Effective analysis of black and white thinking requires systems-level perspective:
Feedback Loops: How binary thinking creates self-reinforcing cycles that become increasingly difficult to break
Emergence Properties: How individual cognitive patterns create collective social and political dynamics
Leverage Points: Identifying where interventions might most effectively disrupt binary thinking patterns
Historical Pattern Recognition
Historical analysis reveals recurring patterns in how societies navigate between binary and nuanced thinking:
Crisis Periods: Times of social stress typically increase binary thinking as individuals seek certainty and clear action frameworks
Institutional Adaptation: How democratic institutions evolve mechanisms to manage polarization and maintain governance capacity
Cultural Evolution: How societies develop norms and practices that promote or discourage binary thinking
Contemporary Case Studies
Social Media Discourse Patterns
Analysis of millions of social media posts reveals systematic patterns in how binary thinking spreads:
Viral Content Characteristics: Posts that go viral disproportionately feature binary framing of complex issues
Engagement Metrics: Binary content generates higher levels of shares, comments, and emotional reactions
Network Effects: Binary thinking spreads through social networks more rapidly than nuanced analysis
Political Movement Dynamics
Examination of contemporary political movements reveals how binary thinking shapes organizational development:
Movement Mobilization: Binary framing helps movements build initial coalition support by clarifying friend-enemy distinctions
Strategic Communication: Binary messaging dominates political advertising and fundraising appeals
Coalition Maintenance: Binary thinking can help maintain group cohesion but may limit strategic flexibility
Crisis Response Patterns
Analysis of responses to major crises—from pandemics to economic disruptions to international conflicts—demonstrates how binary thinking affects collective decision-making:
Policy Development: Crisis conditions often promote binary policy choices that may not address underlying complexity
Public Communication: Crisis communication frequently relies on binary framing to motivate public compliance with policy measures
International Relations: Crisis situations can push diplomatic relations toward binary alliance structures
Neurological and Psychological Foundations
Understanding black and white thinking requires examining its neurological and psychological foundations:
Cognitive Processing Systems
System 1 vs System 2 Thinking: Daniel Kahneman’s research demonstrates how automatic, intuitive thinking (System 1) tends toward binary categorization, while deliberative thinking (System 2) enables more nuanced analysis.
Threat Detection Mechanisms: Evolutionary psychology suggests that binary thinking may have adaptive advantages in environments requiring quick threat assessment, but becomes maladaptive in complex modern contexts.
Cognitive Load Theory: When individuals experience high cognitive load, they default to simplified decision-making processes that favor binary categorization.
Identity Formation: Erik Erikson’s work on identity development demonstrates how binary thinking can serve important functions during identity formation periods but may become problematic if it persists into adulthood.
Attachment Theory: Insecure attachment patterns can promote binary thinking about relationships and social situations as defensive mechanisms.
Organizational and Institutional Responses
Educational System Adaptations
Educational institutions increasingly recognize the need to develop students’ capacity for nuanced thinking:
Critical Thinking Curricula: Programs specifically designed to help students recognize and resist binary thinking patterns
Media Literacy: Training students to recognize how information systems promote simplified thinking
Interdisciplinary Approaches: Educational approaches that demonstrate how complex problems require multiple perspectives and methodological approaches
Democratic Institution Reforms
Various proposals aim to reduce the institutional incentives for binary thinking:
Electoral System Design: Ranked-choice voting and other electoral innovations that reward coalition-building over polarization
Deliberative Democracy: Institutional mechanisms that bring citizens together for structured discussion of complex policy issues
Legislative Process Reform: Procedural changes that incentivize negotiation and compromise over partisan positioning
Technology Platform Governance
Growing recognition of how digital platforms shape thinking patterns has led to various reform proposals:
Algorithm Transparency: Requiring platforms to disclose how their algorithms prioritize content
Digital Literacy: Public education initiatives to help users recognize and resist algorithmic manipulation
Constructive Frameworks for Addressing Binary Thinking
Individual-Level Interventions
Mindfulness Practices: Regular mindfulness meditation has been shown to increase tolerance for ambiguity and reduce automatic binary categorization.
Cognitive Behavioral Techniques: Specific therapeutic approaches for identifying and challenging binary thought patterns.
Exposure to Complexity: Deliberately seeking out information sources and experiences that present complex, nuanced perspectives on important issues.
Perspective-Taking Exercises: Structured practices for understanding how situations appear from multiple viewpoints.
Community-Level Initiatives
Dialogue and Deliberation Programs: Community-based initiatives that bring together people with different perspectives for structured conversation about local issues.
Collaborative Problem-Solving: Community projects that require cooperation across different groups and perspectives.
Civic Education: Educational programs that help citizens understand how democratic institutions work and why compromise is essential for effective governance.
Cross-Cutting Social Connections: Initiatives that help people form relationships across traditional dividing lines.
Institutional Design Principles
Procedural Safeguards: Institutional mechanisms that slow down decision-making processes to allow for more deliberative consideration of complex issues.
Stakeholder Inclusion: Decision-making processes that systematically include multiple perspectives and interests.
Transparency and Accountability: Mechanisms that make decision-making processes visible and subject to public scrutiny.
Adaptive Management: Institutional frameworks that allow for policy adjustment based on evidence and changing circumstances.
Implications for Democratic Resilience
The prevalence of black and white thinking poses significant challenges for democratic governance:
Representation and Legitimacy
Electoral Representation: Binary thinking can undermine representative democracy by making it difficult for elected officials to represent diverse constituencies with complex, sometimes conflicting interests.
Institutional Legitimacy: When citizens view political institutions through binary lenses, it becomes difficult to maintain the shared commitment to democratic norms necessary for effective governance.
Minority Rights: Binary thinking can threaten minority rights by reducing complex questions of individual liberty and collective welfare to simple majority-minority power dynamics.
Policy Development and Implementation
Evidence-Based Policy: Effective policy development requires careful consideration of evidence, trade-offs, and unintended consequences—all of which are undermined by binary thinking.
Policy Adaptation: Democratic institutions must be able to adapt policies based on new evidence and changing circumstances, which requires tolerance for complexity and ambiguity.
Cross-Sector Coordination: Modern policy challenges often require coordination across different levels of government and between public and private sectors, which is complicated by binary thinking.
Future Research Directions
Understanding and addressing black and white thinking requires ongoing research across multiple disciplines:
Technology and Cognition
AI and Decision-Making: How artificial intelligence systems might be designed to promote nuanced rather than binary thinking.
Digital Environment Design: Research on how different digital interface designs affect cognitive processing and decision-making.
Virtual Reality and Perspective-Taking: How immersive technologies might be used to help individuals understand complex situations from multiple perspectives.
Political Psychology and Behavior
Motivation and Binary Thinking: Research on what motivates individuals to adopt or resist binary thinking patterns in political contexts.
Group Dynamics: How binary thinking spreads through social networks and political organizations.
Leadership and Framing: How political leaders can effectively communicate about complex issues without resorting to binary framing.
Institutional Design and Reform
Comparative Democratic Systems: Analysis of how different democratic institutions manage polarization and promote constructive political discourse.
Experimental Governance: Small-scale experiments with different institutional designs that might reduce incentives for binary thinking.
Technology Governance: Research on how to regulate digital platforms in ways that promote constructive rather than polarizing discourse.
Toward cognitive complexity
Black and white thinking represents a fundamental challenge to effective individual decision-making, social cooperation, and democratic governance. While binary thinking may have served adaptive functions in simpler environments, the complexity of modern challenges requires more sophisticated cognitive frameworks.
Addressing this challenge requires coordinated efforts across multiple levels—from individual practices that promote cognitive flexibility to institutional reforms that reduce incentives for polarization. The stakes are particularly high for democratic societies, which depend on citizens’ capacity to engage constructively with complexity and difference.
The path forward requires neither naive optimism nor cynical resignation, but rather sustained commitment to developing our collective capacity for nuanced thinking about complex problems. This involves both protecting democratic institutions from the corrosive effects of extreme polarization and actively building new capabilities for constructive engagement across difference — knowing that some will disagree and continuously fight us on reforms.
Understanding black and white thinking is not merely an academic exercise but an urgent practical necessity for navigating the challenges of the 21st century. By developing more sophisticated analytical frameworks and practical interventions, we can work toward societies that are both more thoughtful and more effective at solving complex collective problems.
Related concepts and further reading
Cognitive Bias Research: Systematic exploration of how human thinking systematically deviates from logical reasoning
Political Psychology: Interdisciplinary field examining how psychological processes affect political behavior
Systems Thinking: Analytical approaches that focus on relationships and patterns rather than isolated events
Democratic Theory: Normative and empirical research on how democratic institutions work and how they might be improved
Media Ecology: Study of how communication technologies shape human consciousness and social organization
Conflict Resolution: Practical approaches for managing disagreement and building cooperation across difference
The “lizard people” conspiracy theory is one of the more fantastical narratives that have found a niche within modern conspiracy culture. This theory suggests that shape-shifting reptilian aliens have infiltrated human society to gain power and control. They are often depicted as occupying high positions in government, finance, and industry, manipulating global events to serve their sinister agenda.
Origins and evolution
The roots of the reptilian conspiracy theory can be traced back to a mix of earlier science fiction, mythological tales, and conspiracy theories. However, it was British author David Icke who, in the 1990s, catapulted the idea into the mainstream of conspiracy culture. Icke’s theory combines elements of New Age philosophy, Vedic texts, and a wide array of conspiracy theories, proposing that these reptilian beings are part of a secret brotherhood that has controlled humanity for millennia — a variation on the global cabal conspiracy theory framework that shows up in a lot of places.
Icke’s initial ideas were presented in his book “The Biggest Secret” (1999), where he posits that these entities are from the Alpha Draconis star system, now hiding in underground bases and are capable of morphing their appearance to mimic human form. His theories incorporate a broad range of historical, religious, and cultural references, reinterpreting them to fit the narrative of reptilian manipulation.
Persistence and appeal
The persistence of the lizard people conspiracy can be attributed to several factors. First, it offers a simplistic explanation for the complexities and injustices of the world. By attributing the world’s evils to a single identifiable source, it provides a narrative that is emotionally satisfying for some, despite its utter lack of evidence.
Second, the theory thrives on the human tendency to distrust authority and the status quo. In times of social and economic upheaval, conspiracy theories offer a form of counter-narrative that challenges perceived power structures.
Third, the advent of the internet and social media has provided a fertile ground for the spread of such ideas. Online platforms allow for the rapid dissemination of conspiracy theories, connecting individuals across the globe who share these beliefs, thus reinforcing their validity within these communities.
Understanding the Ecosystem: How lizard people theories function in online conspiracy culture
While the origins and cultural impact of David Icke’s reptilian conspiracy theory reveal much about modern conspiracy thinking, a deeper examination of how these ideas actually function within online communities exposes far more complex dynamics than simple belief and propagation. The video below explores the surprising reality of conspiracy forum culture, where the lizard people theory serves not just as a belief system, but as a weapon used by conspiracy theorists themselves to police the boundaries of their own community. Rather than existing in echo chambers of uniform agreement, these spaces operate more like battlegrounds where believers, skeptics, and those who engage purely for intellectual play constantly clash over what constitutes “legitimate” conspiracy thinking.
The 7-minute video below also delves into the science behind combating such misinformation and disinformation, examining cutting-edge research on “inoculation theory” and other evidence-based strategies for building cognitive resistance to false narratives. From David Icke’s dramatic fall from BBC respectability to the sophisticated psychological techniques now being deployed to counter conspiracy thinking, this analysis reveals how the seemingly absurd world of shape-shifting reptilians has become a crucial case study for understanding the broader challenges of truth, belief, and information warfare in the digital age.
Lizard people in modern culture and society
In modern culture, the lizard people conspiracy theory occupies a peculiar niche. On one hand, it is often the subject of satire and parody, seen as an example of the most outlandish fringe beliefs. Shows, memes, and popular media references sometimes use the imagery of reptilian overlords as a humorous nod to the world of conspiracy theories.
On the other hand, the theory has been absorbed into the larger tapestry of global conspiracy culture, intersecting with other narratives about global elites, alien intervention, and secret societies. This blending of theories creates a complex and ever-evolving mythology that can be adapted to fit various personal and political agendas.
Despite its presence in the digital and cultural landscape, the reptilian conspiracy is widely discredited and rejected by mainstream society and experts. It’s critiqued for its lack of credible evidence, its reliance on anti-Semitic tropes (echoing age-old myths about blood libel and other global Jewish conspiracies), and its potential to fuel mistrust and paranoia.
Current status and impact
Today, the reptilian conspiracy theory exists on the fringes of conspiracy communities. While it has been somewhat overshadowed by newer and more politically charged conspiracies, it remains a staple within the conspiracy theory ecosystem. Its endurance can be seen as a testament to the human penchant for storytelling and the need to find meaning in an often chaotic world.
The impact of such theories is a double-edged sword. While they can foster a sense of community among believers, they can also lead to social alienation and the erosion of trust in institutions. The spread of such unfounded theories poses challenges for societies, emphasizing the need for critical thinking and media literacy in navigating the complex landscape of modern information.
The lizard people conspiracy theory is a fascinating study in the power of narrative, belief, and the human desire to make sense of the unseen forces shaping our world. While it holds little sway in academic or scientific circles, its evolution and persistence in popular culture underscore the enduring allure of the mysterious and the unexplained.
Recent pop culture and media references
The lizard people conspiracy theory continues to captivate the public imagination, finding its way into various forms of media and popular culture. Recent years have seen a surge in references to this outlandish theory, demonstrating its persistent influence on contemporary discourse.
Television and streaming
Netflix’s animated series “Inside Job” (2021) prominently features lizard people as part of its satirical take on conspiracy theories. The show depicts various celebrities and political figures, including Taylor Swift, Judge Judy, and even Queen Elizabeth II, revealing their “true” reptilian forms. This humorous approach both mocks and acknowledges the pervasiveness of the lizard people myth in popular consciousness.
Numerous other shows, from People of Earth (2016-17) and Secret Invasion (2023) to parodies and satire in The Simpsons, Rick & Morty, and Gravity Falls have echoed and amplified the conspiracy in media.
Even before Icke’s book, the original NBC miniseries “V” in 1983 portrayed carnivorous reptilians masquerading as human-looking “Visitors,” seeking to dominate the planet. The show was a Cold War allegory that some modern-day conspiracy theorists misquote as “proof.”
Social media trends
TikTok has become a hotbed for conspiracy theory content, including discussions about lizard people. A study analyzing 1.5 million TikTok videos shared in the US over three years found that approximately 0.1% of all videos contained content related to conspiracy theories. While this percentage may seem small, it represents a significant number of videos given TikTok’s massive user base.
Podcasts and online content
The enduring fascination with the lizard people conspiracy is evident in the existence of dedicated podcasts like “Lizard People,” which explores various conspiracy theories, including the reptilian elite. Such content creators often blend humor with pseudo-investigation, further embedding the concept in internet culture.
Video games and interactive media
While not necessarily directly referencing lizard people, a number of video games have incorporated reptilian humanoids or shape-shifting aliens as antagonists, potentially drawing inspiration from or alluding to the conspiracy theory. Some of the more notable examples include Deus Ex (2000), which includes references to various real-world conspiracy theories, with one of its factions, Majestic 12, connecting to theories about reptilian control.
The Mass Effect series includes the Salarians, a reptilian race highly influential in galactic politics. And in 2013’s Saints Row IV, there’s a direct satirical nod to the lizard people conspiracy theory in one of its mission plot lines that involves fighting against shape-shifting aliens infiltrating the government.
Public figure mentions
Although direct endorsements of the lizard people theory by mainstream public figures are rare, occasional references or jokes about the concept by celebrities or politicians can reignite public interest and discussion. However, it’s crucial to approach such mentions critically and verify their context and intent.
The persistence of the lizard people conspiracy in various media forms underscores its role as a cultural touchstone. Whether treated as satire, serious speculation, or a subject of mockery, the theory continues to evolve and adapt to new platforms and audiences — reflecting broader societal anxieties and the enduring human fascination with and craving for the unknown and the extraordinary.
