The images of Los Angeles were all captured by me in the travels of my daily life. LA is a destination to millions, but it is my lifeblood and home. I cannot imagine not living here because I’ve lived elsewhere.

Today is Memorial Day - May 25, 2026. Across America, we pause in solemn remembrance of the brave souls who gave their last full measure of devotion to the cause of liberty. We honor the generations of men and women who answered the call of duty, from the frozen fields of Valley Forge to the blood-soaked beaches of Normandy, from the dense jungles of Southeast Asia to the unforgiving terrain of the Middle East.

This year, our hearts are especially heavy as we mourn the 13 American service members who made the ultimate sacrifice during Operation Epic Fury. These warriors - soldiers, airmen, and specialists - gave their lives in a high-stakes mission to confront one of the world’s most dangerous threats. Whether they fell in combat, in aviation tragedies supporting the operation, or from wounds sustained in enemy attacks, their courage reminds us of the profound cost of defending freedom. They left behind families, dreams, and futures, all for a cause greater than themselves. Their names and stories deserve to be remembered not as statistics, but as individual acts of heroism that echo through time.

From the battlefields of the American Revolution to the modern conflicts that continue to test our resolve, these fallen heroes did not die for perfect institutions or flawless leaders. They sacrificed for an idea: that free people, bound by courage and conscience, could govern themselves with justice and humanity. Their graves, marked by flags and flowers today, stand as silent witnesses to the highest form of public service - one that demands everything and expects nothing in return.

In this sacred spirit of remembrance, we are called to reflect not only on their ultimate sacrifice, but on what true commitment to the public good really means in our own time. How do we honor their legacy in the daily governance of our cities and nation? Are we, as citizens and leaders, willing to give even a fraction of the devotion they offered so freely?

The Founders’ Example

In the summer of 1776, fifty-six men gathered in Philadelphia to sign a document that would change human history. They were not career politicians schooled in the arts of bureaucracy, lobbying, or perpetual reelection. They were, by and large, ordinary men thrust into extraordinary circumstances: farmers like John Hancock, lawyers like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, printers and inventors like Benjamin Franklin, planters and soldiers like George Washington.

Most had little formal “political experience” in the modern bureaucratic sense. What they carried instead was something far rarer - a depth of character, a willingness to risk their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor for ideas larger than themselves. They pledged their own last full measure not because they had mastered the machinery of government, but because they understood first principles: liberty, consent of the governed, accountability to the people, and a healthy distrust of concentrated power.

As Thomas Jefferson would later reflect, they believed that virtuous citizens, bound by moral conviction, could overcome the frailties of human nature.

They designed a republic with checks and balances, separation of powers, and frequent elections precisely because they knew power tends to corrupt. They had studied history - the rise and fall of empires, the tyranny of kings, the failures of unchecked authority - and sought to create something different. A government of, by, and for the people.

These founders were amateurs in professional politics but professionals in courage and moral clarity. Washington left his beloved Mount Vernon. Jefferson retreated from his books and gardens at Monticello. Franklin set aside his experiments and inventions. They understood that true leadership often requires sacrifice, not the accumulation of titles and tenure.

Fast Forward to Los Angeles, 2026

This Memorial Day, as we honor those who gave everything for freedom - including the 13 lost in Operation Epic Fury - Los Angeles finds itself in the midst of a mayoral campaign that tests these very ideals in the arena of local governance.

Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, with decades of experience in the California State Assembly (including as Speaker), the U.S. Congress, and now City Hall, recently faced challenger Spencer Pratt - a political outsider and reality television personality. Her response was familiar and dismissive: he has “no political experience.”

This is the same leader who, in 2022, presented her long government résumé as the very reason she was best equipped to guide America’s second-largest city through its toughest crises. Her deep insider credentials, she argued, made her uniquely qualified to tackle homelessness, housing affordability, public safety, and economic recovery.

Yet four years later, with street homelessness still a glaring and visible crisis despite billions of dollars spent, she offered this explanation when pressed on her earlier pledge to effectively end it:

“I didn’t anticipate some of the bureaucratic barriers that I would experience…”

The same bureaucracy she had navigated, helped shape, and operated within for over twenty years supposedly caught her by surprise? To many Angelenos walking past tent-lined sidewalks, urine-soaked freeway underpasses, lawless downtown encampments, and piles of needles and human shit, this sounds like a bold-faced evasion at best.

A Personal Reflection

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Mission San Gabriel - long before it became a tourist mecca or the modern parish it is today - was at the center of the collision and blending of Native and European culture and religion. Historian Steven Hackel notes that it was here, one might argue, where California actually began, “in the interactions of people foreign to one another, in their struggles to understand one another, to live and pray alongside one another, to learn from one another, and to create something new together.”

I was born about 200 years after Los Angeles was born, just a third of a mile from Mission San Gabriel Arcangel. Six of my ancestors are buried there. The Mission had been relocated there in 1775 from nearby Whittier because of floods. Legend holds that on September 4, 1781, the original 44 Pobladores departed from this very Mission - known as the “Godmother of the Pueblo of Los Angeles” - to establish the city. That proximity embedded in me a lifelong and unbreakable bond with the City of Angels.

My career has taken me inside of more than 15,000 homes across Los Angeles. Thousands of miles on freeways, side streets, alleys, canyon roads, and boulevards gives me the intimate understanding of this city and its people to write about it. I’ve witnessed firsthand the deep pride and loyalty Angelenos carry for their home. The fulcrum moment is here. My wish is that I lived in LA again to vote.

My other career passion, as it turns out, was to cook and serve thousands more Angelenos at multiple stops across the vast food landscape called LA. From West LA to East LA, from old towns to uptowns, the hills and canyons, the flats and towers, I made meals for A-listers and no-listers alike. I cooked it all. I served it all. I ate it all. We are all the same. Exactly the same. Just different colors.

My food service to the people of Los Angeles has taken me from Frogtown to Downtown. From sweltering to swanky. From perspective to pretentiousness. As my dearly-departed Grandpa Smitty would declare “From the outhouse to the penthouse!”

I’ve climbed the hills. I fallen down the valleys. I’ve risen with the sunrise and regretted the sunset. I’ve helped the zombies and I’ve stepped over them. The reaction is dependent on the situation. Do I, as a citizen, have to choose to interact with this individual? I wish the choice was not on me. But it is. Daily.

But it does not have to be. As the Founders produced, we have freedom of choice.

This inside view of how Angelenos live, eat, and build their lives has always left me inspired, motivated, and capable of continuing to fight for the life that those living here have earned.

Watching and smelling its demise is beyond heartbreaking. It feels like being trapped in a live-action movie clip, unable to detach from the destruction. There is no suspension of disbelief here. The reality may need a reality-star to fix it.

Yet even in decline, the soul of Los Angeles persists in small, stubborn ways - in the laughter of families gathered around backyard grills in San Gabriel, in the beat of lowriders cruising Whittier Boulevard on warm evenings, and in the quiet resilience of longtime residents who still believe this city can be better. These everyday moments remind me why the bond runs so deep.

Living in this city - raising family here, tasting its vibrant food scenes, hearing its eclectic music pulse through the neighborhoods, feeling its creative energy and its persistent struggles - this disconnect lands with particular weight. As a resident who has watched Los Angeles evolve through cycles of boom and bust, promise and disappointment, I walk streets rich with cultural diversity and opportunity yet scarred by visible failure and human suffering.

I think often of my own children and the Los Angeles we are handing down to them. What stories will they tell about this era? Will they remember a city that confronted its challenges with courage and innovation, or one that offered excuses wrapped in governmental complexity? When leaders who campaigned as seasoned insiders blame the very system they were elected to master, it feels like more than a simple policy shortfall. It feels like a fracture in the public trust that Memorial Day calls us to examine.

The numbers tell part of the story. Hundreds of millions of dollars - over $300 million for programs like Inside Safe alone - have produced modest reductions in unsheltered homelessness counts (around 17-18% in recent years). Yet returns to the streets remain stubbornly high (reportedly near 40% in some tracking data).

Billions more have flowed into housing initiatives, mental health services, and outreach, yet visible encampments persist in many neighborhoods. The machinery of government, with its layers of regulations, unions, nonprofits, and oversight bodies, did not suddenly materialize the day Mayor Bass took office. It was the system she claimed deep mastery over.

This is not to diminish the genuine difficulties of governing a massive, complex metropolis like Los Angeles. Issues like homelessness involve intertwined challenges of addiction, mental illness, criminal behaviour, and relaxed drug and incarceration laws. The claims that most middle-class families are a lost paycheck away from homelessness are complete bulldshit. Most middle-class families are not drug-addled psychopaths battling their demons in public for all to experience.

The claims that housing costs and economic inequality are the major causes of homelessness are lies, pure and simple. The truth is that policy failures at multiple levels of government have resulted in the situation we live with today. But that complexity makes accountability even more essential, especially on a day when we remember those who faced far simpler - yet infinitely more dangerous - choices between duty and self-preservation.

The Deeper Questions

This moment in Los Angeles transcends one election or one mayor. On this Memorial Day, as we reflect on the 13 souls of Operation Epic Fury and all who came before them, it invites us to wrestle with timeless tensions about leadership, sacrifice, and human nature:

• Does personal sacrifice for the public good truly deliver measurable results, or does it too often become political theater that ultimately protects insiders and perpetuates the status quo?

• Can commitment to goals beyond the self generate genuine universal change, or does it frequently dissolve when it collides with institutional inertia, self-preservation, and the gravitational pull of bureaucratic systems?

• Does human nature ultimately overrule human nurture? No matter how much experience, education, good intentions, or policy expertise one brings into office, do self-interest, risk-aversion, bureaucratic capture, and the comforts of incumbency tend to prevail?

The Founding Fathers and the fallen heroes we honor today bet on the power of character and moral courage over professional pedigree. They understood that systems are only as good as the people who inhabit them - and that vigilance, renewal, and accountability are required to keep those systems from serving themselves rather than the public.

Today, we are often told that complex modern problems require lifelong insiders with decades of accumulated experience. Career politicians, we hear, are the only ones equipped to handle the nuances of budgeting, regulation, stakeholder management, and intergovernmental coordination. But what if that long “experience” has itself become part of the problem? What if prolonged immersion in government breeds fluency in excuses, navigating red tape, and preserving power structures rather than the bold disruption needed for real change?

Los Angeles - a city of dreamers, immigrants, creators, artists, entrepreneurs, and everyday strivers - deserves leaders who view public service as a temporary, sacrificial duty rather than a lifelong career path. Leaders willing to give their own last full measure - to risk political comfort, entrenched interests, and conventional wisdom - instead of offering another cycle of incrementalism wrapped in jargon and press releases.

Lessons from History and Today

History offers cautionary tales. The Roman Republic declined not because it lacked experienced senators, but because its institutions became captured by elites more interested in preserving privilege than serving the common good. The founders studied these lessons and sought to prevent the same fate.

In our own era, we see similar patterns. Well-intentioned programs expand bureaucracies that develop their own incentives for survival. Nonprofits and contractors become dependent on the continuation of problems rather than their solution. Politicians master the art of claiming credit for small wins while deflecting blame for systemic failures.

The contrast with true sacrifice could not be starker. The 13 service members lost in Operation Epic Fury did not have the luxury of bureaucratic excuses. They operated in environments of extreme uncertainty, where hesitation could mean death, and where mission success mattered more than personal career trajectory. Their example - and that of every fallen hero memorialized today - challenges us to demand more from those who seek positions of public trust.

Spencer Pratt, whatever one thinks of his background in reality television, represents a different model: the outsider willing to question the conventional wisdom of the permanent political class. His challenge forces a necessary conversation, even if his specific proposals require deeper scrutiny. The real test for Los Angeles voters is not whether a candidate has spent decades inside government, but whether they possess the character, vision, and courage to drive meaningful change.

A Call to Honor the Fallen

As we remember the graves this Memorial Day - including those freshly marked by the losses in Operation Epic Fury - let us also remember the standard set by those who came before. We do not need more polished experts fluent in the language of bureaucracy. We need citizens courageous enough to challenge it, disrupt it where necessary, and refocus it on serving people rather than perpetuating process.

The American experiment in self-governance continues. It has survived wars, depressions, scandals, and divisions because enough people, at critical moments, chose principle over convenience and service over self.

On this day of solemn remembrance, may we choose leaders - at every level - who honor the last full measure not merely with words and campaign rhetoric, but with tangible results, personal accountability, and a willingness to sacrifice comfort for the public good.

Los Angeles stands at a crossroads. The choices we make in this election and beyond will determine whether we learn from the sacrifices of the past or continue repeating the patterns that dishonor them.

Let us strive to be worthy of the 13 souls of Operation Epic Fury, and of all who gave their last full measure. The republic they defended deserves nothing less.

Live with purpose my friends,

Ric

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As politics and culture twist themselves into ever more grotesque shapes — dead set on birthing a litter of mutant “Now-Normal” existential identities — the rest of us watch with growing skepticism and anger. The witches and wizards stirring the pot keep serving up a toxic grog that infects the population with something worse than the Black Plague: manufactured division.

In my own family, those divisions run deep and jagged along mixed-race fault lines. My very first post on this Substack was about how America really is a boiling pot of people with different skin colors. The reality played out at our kitchen table every day.

The oldest kid is the whitest and speaks fluent Spanish. The youngest is darker-complected and doesn’t speak it at all. Conversations about “white-passing,” privilege, and who gets accused of cultural appropriation have been regular family discussion fodder for years.

When the white side of the family throws a Cinco de Mayo party, it reliably triggers a fresh round of discourse. When a significant other’s parent’s voting habits flare up, it fractures whatever fragile peace we’ve managed to rebuild over the last half-decade. This isn’t abstract theory. It’s personal.

Every May, the broader cultural ritual kicks in right on schedule. Social media erupts with thinkpieces scolding that Cinco de Mayo is “not your holiday” if you’re not Mexican. Sombreros become microaggressions. Margaritas turn into moral hazards. Yet the same voices rarely blink when non-Irish people flood St. Patrick’s Day parades, dye rivers green, and drink Guinness by the gallon.

The question is simple and radioactive: Who exactly is allowed to celebrate what?

The Selective Outrage Machine

Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico’s Independence Day (that’s September 16). It marks the Battle of Puebla in 1862, where Mexican forces beat back the French. In Mexico it’s a relatively minor regional observance. In the United States it evolved into a celebration (Hallmark Holiday for Alcoholics) of Mexican-American pride, food, music, and yes — tacos and beer. Corporations didn’t create the vibe; they commercialized an existing one.

Meanwhile, Irish-Americans (and everyone else) have turned St. Patrick’s Day into an international bacchanal (Another Alky Holiday) with zero DNA tests required at the door. Italians celebrate Columbus Day (or Indigenous Peoples’ Day). Black Americans observe Kwanzaa. Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas while lighting Hanukkah candles. Human beings have been borrowing, mixing, adapting, and remixing culture since we left Africa.

Navajo Tacos, Tex-Mex, Chili Spaghetti and a million more culinary delights have come from an intermarriage of cultural love. The quest for global power was secured by the love of international food. How many civilizations have been conquered by gastronomic wars? So why the sudden pearl-clutching about “appropriation”? Especially concerning the basic human need to eat.

What “Cultural Appropriation” Actually Means in Practice

The academic version claims dominant groups steal from marginalized ones without respect or permission, often profiting while the origin culture suffers. There are legitimate gripes here: sacred items turned into cheap fashion, or living artists ripped off by corporations. Those are questions of manners, consent, and sometimes intellectual property.

But the modern weaponized version has ballooned far beyond that. It now polices:

• White people doing yoga

• Non-Japanese eating sushi

• Anyone wearing braids, bindis, or hoop earrings who lacks the “correct” ancestry

• Cooking food outside your bloodline

This logic disintegrates on contact with reality. Every culture is a patchwork of borrowings. Mexican food fuses indigenous, Spanish, African, and Middle Eastern influences. English is a Germanic language drenched in French, Latin, Norse, and Celtic. Rock & roll, jazz, blues, hip-hop — all products of collision and cross-pollination. If mixing equals theft, then human history is one long crime spree.

The Real Dividing Line: Appreciation vs. Mockery

Normal people already get the practical difference:

• Appreciation: Enjoying the food, music, clothes, or traditions because you like them or respect their origins. Making real pho after watching a Vietnamese grandma’s video. Wearing a kimono because Japanese hosts invited you. Throwing a backyard taco night with mariachi on Spotify.

• Mockery: Cartoonish stereotypes meant to ridicule — “lazy Mexican” costumes, blackface, redface, or turning “drunken Irish” into the punchline. That’s not appropriation. That’s just being a jerk. We used to call it bad taste.

The line isn’t racial blood quantum. It’s intent and context. A white family in SoCal celebrating Cinco de Mayo isn’t colonizing Mexico. A Mexican-American marching in a Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade isn’t stealing Ireland. They’re doing American culture: showing up, joining in, mixing it up.

The Real Motivation Behind the Scolds

Much of this discourse isn’t about protecting cultures — it’s about preserving grievance hierarchies. If every tradition must stay locked inside its racial silo, identity gatekeepers keep their power. Shared joy and messy hybridity threaten the zero-sum worldview. Meanwhile, the same voices cheer when non-Western societies adopt blue jeans, iPhones, democracy talk, or English. The moral outrage flows in only one direction.

Bottom Line

You don’t need a permission slip from the ethnicity commissars to enjoy a margarita, wear green, eat General Tso’s, or throw a themed party. Cultures aren’t copyrighted by DNA. They’re living, breathing traditions that spread through love, curiosity, trade, migration, and yes — sometimes conquest. Purity is a fantasy. Hybridity is human.

So celebrate. Eat. Drink. Dance. Learn the stories if you want depth, or just enjoy the vibes. Mockery is rude. Enjoyment is not violence.

The real cultural crime is turning every shared pleasure into another battlefield of resentment.

Dana Perino wrote a fiction novel about this very topic. You should check it out. The playlist her assistant Kate DePetro put together is really good. Maybe, just maybe, this summer we can all get along?

Ric

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The phrase “shots fired” lands heavier every time it echoes through the news cycle

Another weekend, another report of gunfire aimed at the most visible seat of American power. The phrase “shots fired” lands heavier every time it echoes through the news cycle. It is not hyperbole; it is history repeating with grim familiarity.

Here is a clear-eyed layout of every U.S. presidential assassination and credible attempt since 1835 — successful killings, woundings, and the near-misses that still chill the blood. The record includes only documented incidents where a weapon was drawn or fired. Four presidents died. Three more were wounded but survived. Dozens of others came within a trigger-pull of the same fate.

The Four Who Fell

Abraham Lincoln, April 14, 1865

John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer and actor, shot Lincoln in the head at Ford’s Theatre during the play Our American Cousin. The president lingered overnight and died the next morning. Booth’s act was part of a larger conspiracy to destabilize the Union at the end of the Civil War.

James A. Garfield, July 2, 1881

Charles Guiteau, a delusional office-seeker, shot Garfield twice in the back at a Washington, D.C. train station. Garfield survived for 79 agonizing days before dying of infection. His death led directly to civil-service reform.

William McKinley, September 6, 1901

Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, fired two shots into McKinley’s abdomen at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. McKinley appeared to recover at first but died eight days later from gangrene. The assassination ushered in Theodore Roosevelt’s energetic presidency and the modern Secret Service’s expanded protective role.

John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963

Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, striking Kennedy in the neck and head. The president was pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital less than an hour later. The event remains the most scrutinized and culturally shattering moment in modern presidential history.

The Listicle: Notable Attempts That Didn’t Succeed

Andrew Jackson – January 30, 1835

Richard Lawrence’s two pistols misfired at point-blank range outside the Capitol. Jackson beat the attacker with his cane.

Theodore Roosevelt (former president) – October 14, 1912

John Schrank shot Roosevelt in the chest while he campaigned in Milwaukee; the 50-page speech and steel glasses case in his pocket slowed the bullet. Roosevelt finished his 90-minute speech before seeking care.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (president-elect) – February 15, 1933

Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots in Miami; he missed FDR but killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak.

Harry S. Truman – November 1, 1950

Puerto Rican nationalists Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola stormed Blair House; Torresola and a guard were killed. Truman watched from an upstairs window.

Gerald Ford – September 5, 1975

Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a Charles Manson follower, pointed a Colt M1911 .45-caliber pistol at Ford in Sacramento’s Capitol Park. The gun had a loaded magazine but no round chambered, so it didn’t fire when she pulled the trigger. A Secret Service agent grabbed the weapon and wrestled her down before she could chamber a round.

Gerald Ford – September 22, 1975

Sara Jane Moore fired a shot that missed by feet in San Francisco; a bystander grabbed her arm. (Two attempts in 17 days.)

Ronald Reagan – March 30, 1981

John Hinckley Jr. fired six shots outside the Washington Hilton; one ricocheted and struck Reagan in the lung. He survived and quipped to surgeons, “I hope you’re all Republicans.”

Donald Trump – July 13, 2024

Thomas Matthew Crooks fired an AR-15-style rifle at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally; a bullet grazed Trump’s right ear, killed one spectator, and critically injured two others. Crooks was killed by Secret Service.

Donald Trump – September 15, 2024

Ryan Wesley Routh was arrested with a rifle near Trump’s Florida golf club; no shots reached the former president.

Donald Trump – April 25, 2026

Foiled attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner; details still emerging, but the pattern holds.

(There are more foiled plots—dozens, really—but these are the ones where someone got close enough for the history books.)

The Percentage Breakdown

Out of the roughly 20–25 well-documented serious assassination attempts or direct assaults on U.S. presidents, presidents-elect, and former presidents since 1835, Donald Trump has been the target of at least three in the last two years alone. That is roughly 12–15% of the entire historical total concentrated on one man in a compressed window. No other president has faced multiple confirmed attempts in such rapid succession during the modern Secret Service era.

Where Does the Job Rank on Occupational-Hazard Lists?

Statistically, the presidency is one of the deadliest elected offices in history. Roughly 9% of all U.S. presidents have been assassinated (4 out of 46). When serious attempts are added, the risk profile spikes higher than most law-enforcement or high-hazard civilian jobs on modern lists. The in-office mortality rate from all causes historically outpaces professions like logging, commercial fishing, or roofing. The job is not just stressful — it carries a non-trivial chance of violent death.

Yet here the republic stands, still holding elections, still expecting the winner to stand tall on stages and balconies. The American experiment has endured every bullet and every plot.

Meanwhile: Manufactured Hate and the SPLC Indictment

Last Tuesday, the Justice Department dropped an 11-count federal indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Alabama-based civil-rights nonprofit — long known for tracking and publicizing “hate groups” — stands accused of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors allege the organization secretly funneled more than $3 million in donor money (2014–2023) to paid informants who were themselves leaders or members of the very extremist outfits they claimed to monitor.

This fits the same cultural pattern as the Jussie Smollett hoax and the NASCAR “noose” incident — explosive claims of racist violence that dominated headlines, shaped national conversations, then quietly collapsed when the facts emerged.

Each case followed the same script: immediate media explosion painting America as seething with hatred, followed by later revelations that the incidents were staged, misinterpreted, or financially entangled with the very darkness they claimed to expose. The result is the same corrosive pattern — real trust erodes while cynicism and tribal defensiveness grow.

From Bullets to Bitter Words: Choosing the Better Battlefield

Two threads run through this Sunday’s reflection. One is literal violence — actual bullets fired at the men chosen to lead. The other is manufactured outrage — engineered stories of hate designed to divide before the facts can catch up.

Both are dangerous. One threatens the body of the republic; the other poisons its soul.

The through-line is clear: when anger, grievance, and the hunger for power override truth and restraint, the impulse turns toward weapons instead of arguments. Sometimes those weapons are rifles. Sometimes they are carefully crafted narratives. Both shortcut the hard, slow, essential work of persuasion.

This is the deeper calling of Compass Star Wordsmith — to push back against the easy slide into bullets and bitterness. The American experiment was built for debate in town squares and legislative halls, not for violence in theaters, on rally stages, or in the court of public opinion.

The republic has survived assassins and charlatans alike. It will continue to endure if enough voices insist on politics over pistols, and on honest disagreement over manufactured division.

The question remains: can this cycle still be broken, or has the outrage machine become too profitable to stop? Thoughts are welcome below.

Until next Sunday — stay curious, stay kind, and keep your eyes on the compass.

— Ric

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Last week I generated this image with AI. It stopped me cold.

A white rabbit in a torn pink onesie hangs crucified on a rough wooden cross atop a barren hill. Blood stains its fur and clothing. Below, a crowd of ragged anthropomorphic rabbits gathers in the dirt. Some clutch their chests in grief, others cover their eyes in denial, one raises a fist in quiet rage. Shattered Easter eggs — symbols of innocence, fertility, and childhood myth — lie scattered like broken promises. A torn pink ear rests among the fragments. The sky burns blood-red at the horizon while heavy storm clouds loom above. It is grotesque, blasphemous, and disturbingly accurate.

This is not just dark art. It is a mirror held up to something primal in all of us.

At its core, the scene captures an immutable fact I have come to accept about human nature: the evolutionary drive for survival rules the day. Everything else — dignity, principles, red lines, self-image — becomes negotiable when staying alive is on the line. Most people who believe they are above certain compromises are simply one serious mishap away from discovering how flexible their morality can become.

I learned this lesson the hard way.

Before prison, I had one bright red line I swore I would never cross: I would never shit in public. It wasn’t some grand moral stance. It was simpler than that — a quiet, stubborn declaration of basic human dignity. “No matter what happens,” I told myself, “I will not lose that.” It felt like a small but important piece of who I was.

Prison has a way of stripping illusions. The first time the situation left me with no choice, the red line vanished. Not because I suddenly wanted to cross it, but because survival demanded it. The concrete floors, the constant eyes, the lack of privacy, the raw need to relieve myself without waiting for a guard’s permission — all of it rewrote the rulebook in real time.

In that moment, sitting there exposed, I felt something inside me shift. It wasn’t just embarrassment. It was the quiet collapse of an ideal I had carried about myself. I had believed I was the kind of man who would never do that. Turns out, under the right pressure, I was exactly the kind of man who would.

Life deals these situations with ruthless efficiency. A job loss. A medical emergency. A bad relationship that turns dangerous. A financial collapse. A moment where the options narrow to “do this or cease to function.” Suddenly the noble principles you preached in easier times feel like luxuries you can no longer afford.

Does the idealism of youth make each piece of soul cheaper to sell?

When you’re young, the future stretches out like an endless highway. Consequences feel theoretical. Failure seems temporary. You operate with a kind of reckless abundance — there will always be more time, more opportunities, more chances to rebuild. That mindset lowers the asking price dramatically.

You sell pieces of yourself more willingly. You take the degrading job because “it’s just temporary.” You stay in the toxic relationship because “I can handle it.” You compromise your values in small ways because the big dream still feels possible. The drive to “just get on with it” — that raw, unlimited ambition of youth — acts like a discount. You trade dignity for momentum. You trade principles for progress. You tell yourself you’ll make it right later, when you’re stronger, when you have more resources, when the pressure eases.

But every transaction leaves less of you on the table.

The buyer always seems to know the true value of what they’re getting. Whether it’s an employer, a system, a relationship, or society itself, they understand exactly what they’re purchasing when someone sells a piece of their soul at a bargain rate. They see the desperation, the ambition, the fear of falling behind. They know the seller is undervaluing the cost.

The seller, blinded by youth or immediate need, often does not.

I’ve watched this play out far beyond prison walls. Young people entering the workforce accept exploitative conditions because they believe hard work and loyalty will eventually be rewarded. They trade weekends, health, and personal boundaries for a foot in the door. Later, many realize the door led to a cage.

Others sell pieces of their integrity in relationships, staying silent about mistreatment because leaving feels scarier than enduring. Still others compromise their beliefs in social or political circles, mouthing words they don’t fully believe just to belong.

Each time, the price seems low in the moment. Each time, the ledger quietly records the loss.

As years accumulate, something changes. The future no longer feels infinite. You start to see the pattern of what you’ve given away. The body aches more. The mind carries heavier scars. The supply of “future you” who will fix everything starts to run low. Suddenly the price per piece rises — not because the market changed, but because you finally understand the scarcity of what remains.

This is where the language of freedom gets twisted.

When personal freedom becomes nothing more than a casual avoidance of personal responsibilities — dodging the natural consequences of one’s actions — it cheapens the price of your soul even further. It turns liberty into license. “I’m free to do what I want” morphs into “I’m free from having to deal with what I’ve done.”

Similarly, when individual liberty is redefined as escaping the reality of your decisions by defaulting to external forces as the motivating initiative — blaming the economy, the system, your upbringing, society, or “circumstances” for the results of your existence — the price drops lower still.

Both moves allow the seller to pretend the transaction never really cost anything. The soul piece was taken from them, not willingly sold. The compromise wasn’t a choice; it was forced by powers beyond control. This narrative preserves the illusion of innocence while the ledger continues to bleed.

But survival doesn’t care about narratives. Evolution wired us to adapt, to bend, to do what is necessary when the alternative is extinction — literal or figurative. The drive is ancient, deeper than culture, deeper than ideology. It doesn’t ask permission. It simply demands continuation.

That is the uncomfortable truth the Easter Bunny crucifixion forces us to confront. The innocent symbol — pure, fluffy, associated with renewal and childhood joy — is publicly broken and displayed. The crowd below doesn’t celebrate. They grieve, they rage, they look away. They recognize something of themselves in the broken figure on the cross.

We are all capable of becoming that rabbit under the right (or wrong) conditions.

Looking back through my own life, I can trace the transactions. Some were small and seemed harmless at the time. Others were larger and left visible scars. Each one taught me something about the cost. The youthful sales were made with optimism and ignorance. The later ones came with clearer eyes and heavier regret.

This isn’t a call to despair. It’s a call to awareness.

If human nature is ruled by the survival drive, then wisdom lies in understanding that drive rather than denying it. It means setting red lines with humility instead of arrogance. It means recognizing that circumstances can erode even the strongest principles, so we build safeguards and communities that reduce the moments when survival forces ugly choices.

It also means refusing to let “freedom” become a get-out-of-accountability card. Real liberty includes the responsibility to own the consequences of our actions. When we externalize blame too easily, we devalue not only our own soul but the very concept of agency that makes life meaningful.

In the end, culture — that confluence I often return to: Life divided by (Food + Music + Art + Craft + History) — is shaped by these transactions. The art we make, the stories we tell, the holidays we celebrate, the symbols we elevate or destroy — all of them reflect how cheaply or expensively we price the human spirit.

The crucified Easter Bunny is one such reflection. It takes something sacred and innocent and subjects it to violence. Yet in doing so, it reveals the violence we sometimes do to ourselves when survival is at stake.

I don’t claim to have stopped selling pieces. The price has gone up, yes, but the marketplace never fully closes. What has changed is my awareness of the cost. I negotiate harder now. I look further down the road. I try to preserve what remains.

Perhaps that is the best any of us can do.

Most people walking around today believe their red lines are ironclad. They say “I would never…” with full conviction. I used to say it too.

Then life happened.

If this piece resonates, I invite you to look honestly at your own ledger. Where have you sold pieces cheaply? When did survival rewrite your rules? And what price are you willing to pay from here forward?

The evolutionary drive will keep ruling the day. The only question is whether we will face it with clearer eyes — and a little more of our soul still intact.

Ric

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Life / Food + Music + Art + Craft + History = Culture

But sometimes the equation fractures on something far simpler and more brutal: a car, a driver who shouldn’t be behind the wheel, and the lives erased in a single careless instant.

This spring the headlines feel familiar. Britney Spears arrested for DUI in Ventura County. Tiger Woods taken into custody after a rollover in Florida - his second high-profile impaired-driving incident. Justin Timberlake’s old bodycam footage resurfacing. Countless others cycling through lights, sirens, mugshots, and quiet comebacks. Repeat offenders. Same old script in 2026.

It feels like we’ve been here before. When I grew up, drinking and driving was as common as coffee. As Gen-X kids, our parents drove drunk, smoked cigarettes while pregnant, and did all kinds of crazy shit. Part of Dad’s driving lessons included how to shift and steer with a beer between my legs. I got a shotgun for my 10th birthday. The 70s and 80s culture was permissive, almost hands-off on drunk driving - it was normalized, even shrugged off as no big deal. The bad old days never quite left.

Seventeen years ago - April 9, 2009 - I wrote a raw piece after Los Angeles Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart was killed. Nick had just thrown six scoreless innings in his season debut. Hours later, at the intersection of Orangethorpe and Lemon in Fullerton, a minivan blew through a red light and T-boned the car carrying Nick, Courtney Stewart, and Henry Pearson. Three young lives ended. One survivor carries the scars. I met Courtney’s Mom at a MADD Luncheon.

The pain is unimaginable unless one has experienced it. My prayers at night include all that have been killed, hurt, and impacted forever. I understand.

The driver that killed and injured Nick and his friends, Andrew Gallo, had a blood-alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit. He was already on probation for a prior DUI and driving on a suspended license. He fled the scene on foot. He eventually received 51 years to life.

I wasn’t writing as a detached observer. But by the grace of God I had walked a similar edge and lived to tell about it. In that 2009 article I admitted as much: the story hit too close to the bone. I knew the cocktail of bad decisions, ego, and denial that leads a person to get behind the wheel when they absolutely shouldn’t. I knew how easy it is to convince yourself “I’m fine.” Until you’re not.

That same vulnerability - the willingness to admit the patterns, the “Ric-ci-dents,” the compulsive edges I’ve danced alone - became the thread I pulled in my later piece, Be Vulnerable. There I unpacked the prison box from my own 247 days behind bars after a non-fatal DUI crash that touched nine other lives almost two decades ago.

I wrote about rediscovering old letters and Bible studies during lockdown, about the fence we build in our hearts out of self-doubt and false pride, and about how friction (the mortal enemy of movement) dissolves when we stop pretending we’re bulletproof. Vulnerability didn’t erase my past, but it opened the door to mentorship, to grace that turned punishment into a kind of sanctuary, and to the quiet work of dismantling the barriers that keep us repeating old mistakes.

Reading the news this month pulled me right back to that Fullerton intersection and my own high-speed crash, and to the deeper reckoning that vulnerability demands. Back to the quiet rage and sorrow that comes when talent, youth, and promise are extinguished not by fate, but by a choice someone else made after one drink too many.

Where is the outrage we used to hear so loudly?

Mothers Against Drunk Driving still exists, still pushes for stricter laws and victim support. They’re advocating hard for full implementation of the HALT Drunk Driving Act (passed in 2021), which aims to put passive anti-drunk driving technology in every new vehicle. They run walks, vigils, and education campaigns. But the cultural megaphone they once wielded feels quieter now. Maybe we’ve grown numb. Maybe the constant scroll of celebrity mishaps and quick apologies has desensitized us. Or maybe we’ve convinced ourselves that technology and rideshares have solved the problem.

They haven’t.

Over the past two decades we have tightened the laws. The .08 BAC limit became the national standard. High-BAC enhancements were added in many states. Ignition interlock requirements expanded dramatically - moving from repeat offenders only to mandatory for all DUI convictions in dozens of states. Studies show these devices cut repeat offenses significantly while installed and have measurably reduced alcohol-impaired drivers in fatal crashes. Progress is real.

Yet the body count keeps climbing, and enforcement is anything but uniform.

Here the politics get messy and the outcomes feel disparate. Illegal immigrants convicted of DUI face a double penalty American citizens never will: the state criminal case plus potential deportation. That extra federal consequence is supposed to act as a strong deterrent. In practice, in sanctuary cities and states (California included), local policy has frequently shielded DUI suspects from ICE detainers.

Known repeat offenders have sometimes been released back onto the streets without removal proceedings, only to reoffend. Meanwhile, American citizens arrested for identical offenses receive the full weight of state prosecution with no immigration shield. ICE data continues to show drunk-driving offenses among criminal aliens as a recurring category in enforcement actions.

Critics argue this creates unequal justice and endangers public safety on the very roads we all share. Defenders emphasize community trust. Either way, preventable crashes keep happening when policy allows known impaired drivers to slip through the cracks.

Every year impaired driving still claims thousands of lives. The vast majority involve ordinary people on ordinary roads - families coming home from dinner, kids in the back seat, someone who simply didn’t plan ahead. Celebrity cases make the papers; the quiet tragedies do not.

So the question lingers: Is it time for alcohol-interrupters (passive alcohol detection systems) in all new vehicles?

The technology exists. The HALT Act points the way, even if implementation has faced delays and pushback. Europe and parts of the U.S. have moved in this direction. Privacy concerns, cost, and the “Big Brother” argument push back hard. Civil libertarians worry about government-mandated surveillance in every car. Automakers drag their feet on timelines.

I get the tension. Freedom matters. Trust in personal responsibility matters. But so do the three empty seats at the table that Nick Adenhart, Courtney Stewart, and Henry Pearson left behind. And so do the preventable crashes that keep happening when denial, policy gaps, or unequal enforcement let repeat offenders stay on the road.

Seventeen years later - and years after unpacking my own prison box - I still don’t have easy answers. I only know this: grace is real, but it’s not a license to keep rolling the dice with other people’s lives. Vulnerability means facing the patterns head-on instead of building new fences around them. Some mistakes don’t offer second chances - not for the victims, and not always for the driver.

This Sunday, if you’re heading out for brunch, a game, or a night with friends, do the simple thing that still feels revolutionary: plan your ride home before the first drink. Call a friend. Use the app. Stay over. Whatever it takes.

Because the intersection is always closer than we think.

And some red lights, once run, can never be un-run.

Ric

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We’re not in Kansas anymore. Or maybe we never really were. Hell, looking back, I’ve spent chunks of my life realizing that the yellow brick road was just a painted-over cell block. The world in early 2026? It feels less like the polite dinner party we all got sold on and more like a prison yard at rec time.

Eyes darting everywhere: alliances forming in hushed tones, vulnerabilities spotted from 50 yards out, the whole scene humming with unwritten rules that laugh at “please” and “thank you.” In that yard, the etiquette of polite society—grinning through bullshit, talking your way out of trouble, pretending everyone’s playing fair—doesn’t just fall flat. It can straight-up end you.

Or worse, leave you broken, exposed, watching everything you care about get stripped away while the real operators move in.

I know this vibe intimately. It’s not some abstract metaphor for me; it’s scar tissue. Back in the day, I wrapped my car around a pole. First wreck was a blur of bad choices: too much speed, too little humility, thinking I could outrun the consequences like they were just another red light.

Metal twisted, glass shattered, and I walked away with cuts and a wake-up call I ignored. Last wreck? Even stupider. High-speed stupidity on a Saturday afternoon, flipping a employee-laden van because I figured “close enough” was good enough.

Polite society would say, “Hey, accidents happen—learn and move on.” But in the yard of real life, accidents are setups you didn’t see coming. Hesitation at the wheel, assuming the road’s forgiving? That’s how you boom—right into the guardrail, with sirens and regrets piling up after.

Then there was prison. Yeah, I did time. Not proud of it, but it etched lessons deeper than any book. The yard there wasn’t metaphorical; it was concrete underfoot, razor wire overhead, and every interaction a chess move where losing meant blood.

You learn quick: Trust? Hand it out like it’s your last cigarette. Politeness? That’s chum in the water if it’s not laced with steel. I saw guys get jumped for smiling too wide, for assuming a nod meant peace.

Me? I kept my head on a swivel, built alliances with the quiet ones who had your back, not the loudmouths promising the world. One slip—misreading a stare, lingering too long in the wrong corner—and you’re right of boom: patching wounds, nursing grudges, wondering how you didn’t see it.

Worst part? The ripple effects on my kids. Dragging them through my chaos—absent dad phases, financial craters from my screw-ups, the emotional wreckage of lying about their old man being in prison. Polite society says, “Apologize, make amends, try harder next time.”

But in the yard I created for them, “trying” was a half-assed promise that left them exposed. I put them through bad things: instability, fear, the kind of scars that don’t fade with a sorry. It took hitting bottom—multiple bottoms—to flip the script.

No more tentative steps; it was do or do not. There is no try, as Yoda nailed it. Power and results over excuses. Shuffle the deck, re-deal if needed, but always think three steps ahead. That’s how I clawed back: boundaries like barbed wire, decisions like strikes—left of boom, every time.

Resources in any yard are scarce: time, trust, second chances. Someone thrives only if someone else slips. Politeness without power? It signals you’re soft. Hesitation? An invite to get rolled. The real gold is vigilance: clocking the play before it unfolds, repositioning, disrupting before detonation.

We’re all in this global yard now, living too often right of boom—cleaning up after explosions we could’ve sidestepped. Survival means shifting left: foresee the fractures, enforce lines, intel up, kill bad vibes in the cradle.

This ain’t about turning cold. It’s about eyes-open truth. The yard spares the alert, not the amiable.

Outside those personal bars, what’s it mean?

• Ditch the civility illusion. Some chats aren’t dialogues; they’re reconnaissance.

• Hoard your bandwidth like it’s yard contraband. “No” stands alone.

• Scan every space like your sanity’s at stake—’cause slivers of it are.

• Assemble real squads: backs covered, not just notifications.

Polite society’s code was for fat times and common ground. When that crumbles, holding on ain’t noble; it’s naive.

And in this sprawling yard called the world, enter the ultimate shotcaller: Donald Trump, round two in the Oval, wielding “America First” like a shank forged from raw dominance. Early 2026, he’s not just reacting—he’s three steps ahead, shuffling cards mid-hand, re-dealing when the table turns sour.

It’s all power and results: do or do not, no try in sight. Forget flowery summits or endless negotiations; his plays are yard-hard: decapitate threats, sever lifelines, reshape the pecking order before rivals regroup.

Flash to January 3, 2026: Operation Absolute Resolve. U.S. teams storm Caracas, snag Nicolás Maduro and his inner circle, whisk them to face U.S. justice on narcoterrorism raps. No messy invasion, just a precision trim—lop off the head, let the body flail. Maduro wasn’t picked at random; he was a pivot point in the web bolstering Russia and China.

Venezuela’s oil reserves? Planet’s biggest, pumping out heavy crude that’s mostly (75-80% in 2025) funneled to China—600,000+ barrels daily at bargain-basement prices, dodged via ghost ships and fake labels. This stuff powered Beijing’s indie refiners, kept energy tabs low, propped growth. It synced with Russia in OPEC+ for price control and gave Moscow a Latin foothold for sanction dodges.

Maduro out, U.S. grip tightens. Flows to China tank as risks balloon—higher costs, fewer middlemen. Beijing loses a cheap vein (4-5% of imports, but margin-gold). Russia forfeits a hemispheric buddy and evasion backchannel.

Cut to February 28, 2026: U.S.-Israeli blitz—Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wiped in Tehran, top IRGC brass with him, nukes/missiles/proxies gutted. Decapitation redux: leadership vacuum, chaos sown.

Iran churned ~4 million bpd, shipping 1.3-1.7 million (80-90% to China, shadow-style). Like Venezuela’s, it came cheap, fueling Xi’s machine amid headwinds. Strikes slash output, Hormuz strait turns no-go (premiums skyrocket), crude hits $100+. China’s double-punched: no discounted duo, pivot to costlier Russian Urals or alternates. Refiners pinch; growth dips.

For Russia, the drone drought stings hardest. Iran fed Shahed-136s (Russia’s Geran-2 knockoffs) since ‘22, then handed tech. Alabuga factory spewed thousands yearly. Ukraine tallies: 54,538 Shahed launches in 2025 (~32,200 hits), swarming defenses cheap ($25k-40k vs. interceptor millions). Overload tactics battered cities, drained Kyiv.

That ~60,000-drone tally hinged on Iranian blueprints, parts, tweaks. Leadership felled, plants razed, chains snapped—no upgrades flow. Russia’s output (404/day, eyeing 1,000) falters sans input. Swarms thin; attrition grinds slower.

Putin’s Ukraine grind—volume over finesse—wobbles. Scarce drones = less overwhelm, more Ukrainian leeway for intercepts/counters. War drags into year five, but tilt favors Zelenskyy—maybe pushing Moscow to Trump’s deal table.

These weapons flopped epic: Iranian UAVs wrecked Ukraine but couldn’t guard Tehran from scalpel strikes. Venezuelan oil greased Russia (OPEC+ ties) and China (direct pipes), now boomerangs: Russia nabs some Chinese buys but drops drone edge. Power raw-displayed: U.S./Israel preempt, behead, choke—left of boom, global edition.

Trump’s the yard mastermind: long-game visionary, anticipates pivots, reshuffles ruthlessly. “We hit you anywhere; align or suffer.” No polite multilateral dance—force-carved spheres. CRINK axis (China-Russia-Iran-North Korea) boxed. Putin bows to might; Xi, culling brass with Taiwan dreams, weighs risks amplified. Swing states-India, Turkey, Saudis-squeeze into binaries: hedge light, commit heavy in this chilled war redux.

But yards breed backlash. Decaps spawn mess: Venezuela’s Chavistas splinter, gangs like Tren de Aragua swell, borders bleed migrants Trump swears to wall. Iran’s IRGC hydra regrows; infighting rages, revenge simmers (Mojtaba Khamenei ascends?). Oil turmoil courts downturn—Hormuz jammed slugs Europe/Asia. China greens faster, floats yuan low.

My wrecks, my time inside, my family fallout—they schooled me: half-tries explode. Trump channels that: power trumps politeness, results over rhetoric. Do or do not—shuffle, strike, stay ahead.

This yard’s unforgiving: Trump keeps U.S. left of boom, but plants seeds of dread, nuke itches, resentment. Old board’s toast; jungle reigns.

Stay vigilant, or vanish.

What polite rule ditched you lately in this yard? Spill below—no shade, pure truth.

Ric

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Welcome to Philosophy Sunday! Compass Star Wordsmith is nothing if not a vehicle for expression - all forms of it. I’ve been labeled many things and called many names. I leave it to others to define their experiences with me, but if most people are honest, I’ll come out ok in the end.

Trigger Warning: Thoughtful Discussion Ahead

This Sunday, CSW falls down a Fabbit Hole (fabulous rabbit hole) due to a Notes thread with a thoughtful ‘Stacker about Trans issues. Samantha Paige is more thoughtful and engaging than the typical Trans Warrior. Not saying that much, I get it. At the very least, she hasn’t labeled me or called me names, so there’s that.

In all seriousness, Samantha brings up some highly interesting and debatable points in our thread. I’ve taken the liberty (with consent) to use our thread as a basis for this weeks post. The engagement is worthy of debate. And here it is.

As always, Compass Star Wordsmith is forever looking for pirates with a cause and something to say. Bring it aboard and let’s get to sailin the seas of chaos together. Click blue to chip in some bounty. Like to validate. Share to share.

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https://substack.com/@samantha705901

NOTES CAUSES THOUGHTFUL DIALOGUE

I know, hard to believe right? But the proof is in the the thread, and CSW is thankful for Samantha’s intelligent and thoughtful discourse.

Notes might work after all. Who knew?

Samantha Paige’s pivot in that recent thread was sharp: drag gender debates out of slogan territory and into ethics via the mind-body problem. If strict bio-essentialism rules—if chromosomes or bodies predetermine everything—then free will evaporates. No real choices, no genuine responsibility, no ethics worth the name. Why punish crime (or judge identity) if biology scripted it? The “I” that thinks, decides, grows—even from hard places like incarceration—demands agency beyond deterministic meat.

Samantha nods to Descartes implicitly: the cogito as starting point, the thinking self separate from body, capable of free yes/no. But the full thrust lands in Sartre territory, where existence precedes essence—no pre-given nature, just thrownness into the world and the burden of forging ourselves through radical freedom.

Let’s replay the exchange in blocks, then counter/reflect. This thread started innocently enough—a feminist affirmation of inclusive femininity—but it spiraled into a biology-vs-identity clash. Samantha elevated it further, weaving in epistemology, ethics, free will, and the mind-body problem. My replies held the line on biological facticity while granting personal happiness. What follows is a point-counterpoint breakdown: Samantha’s points (and the original poster’s) block-quoted for clarity, followed by my counters and reflections. It’s not about winning arguments; it’s about mapping the cultural terrain where these ideas collide.

The Opening Salvo: Inclusive Femininity Without Restraint

Kim Beckett: As a true feminist I embrace ALL expressions of femininity. I will not be restrained by gender norms or restrain others in their expression. All are welcome and valid. I reject any attempts to constrain any person based on their sex, identity or expression.

Samantha Paige: Thank you for posting this.

ric leczel: really? no other concerns? just a single cause and effect argument? or are there much deeper issues at play? remember the “Roid Rage” back in the day when men - some WWE stars - killed bc of the drugs they were taking? maybe we need to consider all of the concerns, not just from a “phobia” street corner

Point (inclusion side): Full embrace—no constraints based on sex/identity. Femininity is expression, not biology. This is the heart of modern inclusive feminism: tear down the gates, let everyone in. It’s a reaction to rigid norms that have historically boxed people in, especially women, but now extended to all genders and expressions. Why gatekeep something as fluid as femininity? If someone feels it, lives it, embodies it—welcome aboard. Constraining based on birth sex feels like a relic of patriarchy, a way to police bodies and identities under the guise of tradition.

Counter and Reflection: Concerns aren’t just “phobia.” Biology has downstream effects (hormones, aggression parallels, etc.). Ignoring them isn’t progressive; it’s selective blindness. Look, I’m all for personal expression—wear what you want, love who you want, call yourself what feels right. But when we talk about “all expressions” in shared spaces, biology sneaks back in. The “Roid Rage” reference wasn’t random: exogenous hormones can alter behavior, strength, mood. We’ve seen it in sports, prisons, even domestic violence stats. If a biologically male person transitions and enters women’s spaces (sports, shelters, dating pools), those effects don’t vanish with a new identity. It’s not about hating trans people; it’s about acknowledging material realities that impact safety, fairness, and consent.

This sets the stage for the deeper clash: is femininity a costume anyone can don, or does it intersect with bodily facticity? Kim’s post radiates good vibes, but it glosses over friction points. Samantha’s endorsement signals agreement, but my pushback questions the blind spots. Culture wars thrive here because one side sees liberation in boundless inclusion, while the other sees chaos in ignoring boundaries. As a Gen-X contrarian, I lean toward mapping both—freedom is great, but unmoored from reality, it risks harm.

The Identity Analogy: Apples, Oranges, and Fluid Categories

Samantha Paige: I am no more a man than a straight one is gay or a gay one is straight. Apples and oranges.

ric leczel: i’m not questioning your manhood at all. biology is biology. Chromosomes make the man, not your choice. but you do you and i hope you are happy. imposing paradoxical meanings on words is textbook 1984, so you call yourself whatever you would like to. it is interesting however, that the LGBs are splitting the rainbow alphabet in two. i mean, lots of biological female lesbians are not comfortable with biologically male lesbians something about a penis, I think

Point: Identity isn’t reducible to biology; analogies show categories are fluid/subjective. Samantha’s apples-and-oranges line is clever—it decouples gender from sex, much like sexual orientation isn’t a binary flip. A straight man isn’t “more straight” than a gay one; they’re just different fruits. This echoes queer theory: identities are performative, socially constructed, not etched in DNA. Why essentialize gender when we don’t for other traits? It’s a plea for subjectivity—let people define their own categories without bio-gatekeeping.

Counter and Reflection: Biology isn’t choice-denying destiny, but it sets parameters. Redefining terms risks Orwellian slippage. And material realities (bodies in intimate spaces) create friction—not hate, but coherence in orientation. Here’s where the rubber meets the road: sure, call yourself what you want—that’s your freedom. But when that redefinition spills into shared language and spaces, it affects others. “Lesbian” historically means female same-sex attraction; expanding it to include male-bodied people muddies the waters. It’s not abstract; it’s about bodies in bedrooms, locker rooms, prisons. The LGB split (e.g., groups like LGB Alliance) isn’t random bigotry—it’s lesbians saying, “Our orientation is tied to sex, not just gender identity.” Penises in lesbian spaces? That’s a hard no for many, rooted in facticity, not phobia.

This exchange highlights a key tension in contemporary gender discourse: subjective experience vs. objective biology. Samantha’s analogy prioritizes the former, which feels empowering individually but disruptive collectively. I’m not denying her identity; I’m saying biology provides the map we all navigate. Ignoring it for ideological purity feels like 1984’s Newspeak—redefining words to control thought. Culture’s alphabet soup is fracturing because these paradoxes aren’t sustainable. As someone who’s seen life’s hard edges (incarceration included), I value authenticity, but it has to square with reality.

The Philosophical Deep Dive: Mind-Body, Free Will, and Bio-Essentialism

Samantha Paige: My degrees, for what they’re worth, are in epistemology and in ethics. The study of how we know what we know and the study of what’s good for us. If put simply, moral superiority. Let’s switch gears for a second, and look at the mind body problem “ethically.”

For ethics to exist, we need free will. God gave it to us any way, right? [Monotheism itself is set up on a binary, but I digress]. If one does not have free will, well, it’s “unethical” to punish someone for doing something they couldn’t do otherwise. That “bite of the apple,” in other words. Bio essentialism, at full slope, essentially, erodes free will. We (the I’s that think from within our meat suits) make choices, right? Decisions? Subjectively experienced “yeses and noes?” Don’t we? You were incarcerated. Why? I don’t mean the facts, I mean the choice. The one you were punished for, I assume. And grew from? Or, were you biologically predisposed? Binaries…, 🤷🏻‍♀️

Point (Samantha’s core): Bio-essentialism = determinism = no free will = ethics collapses. The thinking “I” transcends the meat suit. Choices define us ethically; biology can’t override that without undermining responsibility (crime, growth, identity).

This is pure existentialist fuel. Descartes gives the mind priority (cogito first, thinking substance), but Sartre radicalizes it: no God, no fixed essence. We exist first—blank slate of freedom—then define ourselves. “Man is condemned to be free.” Facticity (body, biology, past) is real, but consciousness (for-itself) is nothingness: always projecting beyond, choosing projects. Gender transition? An authentic existential project—transcending assigned facticity to forge essence through choice.

Sartrean applications to gender abound in modern thought: one isn’t born a woman (Beauvoir’s line, rooted in Sartre); one becomes one through projects. Trans subjectivity often framed as rejecting essentialism—existence (lived body/experience) precedes any fixed gendered essence. Bio-essentialism becomes the bad-faith move: hiding behind “nature” to deny freedom.

Samantha’s invocation of my incarceration is poignant—it personalizes the stakes. If biology predetermines actions, why punish? Why grow? It’s a direct hit on determinism: ethics requires agency. The “meat suit” metaphor captures the dualism—body as vessel, mind as captain. Monotheism’s binaries (good/evil, male/female) get a side-eye, implying they’re constructed too. Overall, it’s a sophisticated pivot: from surface-level inclusion to profound questions of what makes us human.

Counter and Reflection: Yet Sartre isn’t license to ignore facticity. He warns against bad faith in both directions: denying freedom (essentialist determinism) and denying facticity (pretending constraints don’t exist). Freedom is always situated—thrown into a world with bodies, others, limits. We choose in relation to facticity, not by erasing it.

So, let’s unpack this Sartrean lens more deeply, because Samantha channels it beautifully, but there’s room for nuance.

• Radical Freedom Doesn’t Erase Biology: Chromosomes, hormones, reproductive systems are brute givens—the hardware of the meat suit. We pilot it with choices, yes—transcend, affirm, modify—but can’t will it into non-existence. Sartre’s waiter in bad faith plays the role too rigidly; the trans existentialist who insists “biology is irrelevant” risks a similar over-identification with transcendence, ignoring how facticity shapes shared reality. Medical transitions alter the body, but they don’t rewrite gametes or skeletal structure. That’s not denial of freedom; it’s acknowledgment of the terrain. Sartre would call ignoring it a flight from anguish—bad faith via fantasy.

• Lesbian Discomfort and Situated Freedom: Not phobia—facticity-bound attraction. A female-attracted woman’s project includes bodily coherence. Forcing inclusion (e.g., redefining “lesbian” to encompass penises) imposes one freedom on another’s, creating bad faith for all: the included denies others’ situated choices; the excluders might deny broader freedom. Sartre emphasizes the “look” of the Other—we’re always in relation. Gender debates often pit individual projects against collective ones (e.g., women’s sports). Whose freedom wins? Ethics demands balancing, not one-sided transcendence.

• Ethics, Responsibility, and Ripples: Samantha’s right—free will underpins punishment/growth. But Sartre’s freedom is absolute and anguishing: total responsibility for choices, including consequences in a shared world. If we invent meanings (gender as fully chosen), we own the ripple effects—sports fairness, prison safety, dating boundaries. Dismissing those as “phobia” dodges responsibility. My incarceration? Choices, yes—bad ones, owned and grown from. But biology played a role (testosterone-fueled impulsivity? Maybe). It’s not either/or; facticity and freedom intertwine. Punish because choices matter, but understand biology as the context.

• Binaries and the Human Condition: Monotheism/binary digression aside, biology presents sexual dimorphism as a deep facticity for most humans. Not destiny, but a constraint freedom navigates. Sartre didn’t apply his philosophy to gender fluidity (he lived pre-trans visibility boom), but his framework doesn’t demand suspending material distinctions—it demands authentic projects within them. Beauvoir adapted it to feminism, arguing women are “made” by society, but she didn’t erase sex; she critiqued its oppression. Today’s discourse sometimes flips that—erasing sex to liberate gender. Is that progress or overreach?

In short: Samantha channels Sartre beautifully—existence precedes essence means we forge gender through freedom, not chromosomes. But Sartrean authenticity requires facing facticity squarely, not wishing it away. Celebrate self-creation; name biological realities as the terrain we traverse. When spaces/sports/intimacy hinge on sexed bodies, “apples and oranges” feels like evasion.

Expanding on this, consider the broader cultural swim. We’re in an era where mind-body dualism is resurgent via tech (VR selves, AI consciousness) and identity politics. Descartes’ cogito promised certainty in thought alone, but Sartre stripped the illusions: no God, no essence, just freedom’s burden. Trans narratives often embody this—rejecting the “assigned” body as inauthentic, forging a new essence. It’s inspiring, but when it collides with others’ facticities (e.g., female athletes losing to transitioned males), ethics gets messy. Harm isn’t intended, but it’s real. Sartre would say: own it, choose differently, or accept the anguish.

My own lens? Gen-X skepticism: I’ve seen ideologies promise utopia while ignoring human hardware. Biology isn’t a prison; it’s the canvas. Free will paints on it, but can’t swap it for a blank one without consequences. Incarceration taught me that—choices echo in bodies and communities.

Wrapping the Threads: Holding Tension Without Resolution

I’m not gatekeeping happiness or expression. Do you, authentically. But culture swims in tension: radical freedom meets unyielding bodies. Can we hold both—Sartrean project and biological parameters—without contradiction? Or must we pick lanes? Samantha’s thread forces the question: is the mind-body problem solvable, or just navigable?

Sartre or Descartes fork: secure foundations (mind/soul first) vs. no-net building. Samantha leans existentialist. The thread shows why it matters—not just for gender, but for how we ethicize everything from crime to climate (biology vs. choice again?).

Thoughts? Fire away—no phobes, no saints. Just mapping the swim. Scroll down to click on blue to support the cause. Scroll further down to find musical treasure.

Ric

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Our fractured political reality is on purpose,and today is a brief look at how we got here. Consider subscribing to Compass Star Wordsmith for more on culture, politics, and the forces shaping our world. Free subscribers get new posts; paid supporters help sustain independent analysis.

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In an era where political discourse feels like a perpetual battlefield, the notion of a unified American identity seems like a relic of the past. We’ve entered a post-centrist order, where the middle ground isn’t just shrinking—it’s being systematically eroded.

This isn’t an accident; it’s the culmination of decades of shifts in party dynamics, cultural fragmentation, and economic policies that prioritized global integration over domestic stability.

Starting with the Tea Party’s assault on the Republican establishment, we’ve witnessed a similar unraveling on the Democratic side, amplified by progressive insurgencies like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

These forces, born from academia and liberal arts, have trickled down into everyday life—manifesting in dismal education outcomes, waning attention spans, and a culture devoid of shared touchstones.

To understand how we got here, we must trace the backstory: how the bipartisan “uniparty” in Washington sold out the middle class through globalization, paving the way for populist revolts on both sides.

This is the story of how centrism is being killed until dead, leaving a polarized nation governed in extremes.

The Tea Party’s Torch: Burning Down the GOP Old Guard

The seeds of today’s post-centrist landscape were sown in the late 2000s with the rise of the Tea Party movement. Emerging amid the 2008 financial crisis, it channeled fiscal conservatism and anti-establishment rage within the Republican Party.

It wasn’t just a protest against big government; it was a direct assault on the GOP’s entrenched elite—figures like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, and Mitt Romney, who embodied the party’s pro-business, interventionist wing.

The impact was swift. In the 2010 midterms, Tea Party-backed candidates helped Republicans gain 63 House seats, flipping control. This “wave election” marked the beginning of the end for the old guard.

It was obvious, though, that the candidate quality was disastrous in general election outcomes. By 2016, the revolt culminated in Donald Trump’s nomination, sidelining dynastic hopefuls like Bush (please clap) and reshaping the party into a populist powerhouse.

The destruction of The Establishmentarians wasn’t incidental—it was intentional, purging the party of perceived globalists and setting the stage for today’s extremes.

The Democratic Unraveling: DSA Devours the Center

The Democrats are undergoing a parallel transformation—slower, but accelerating.

Old guards Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer face retirement demands and internal challenges. In recent years, Pelosi announced her exit amid primary threats from progressives, while Hoyer followed suit after health issues and opposition.

Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer aren’t immune; they’re under fire from the left, with DSA-backed insurgents labeling them out-of-touch.

The DSA, once fringe, has grown massively—nearing 100,000 members—pulling the party leftward with demands for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, trans rights, and more.

This mirrors the Tea Party playbook: primaries against incumbents, ideological warfare framing centrists as corporate sellouts. Worries abound with the talking-heads about far-left primary winners flaming out with the general election voter.

Age is a flashpoint. With generational shifts and acuity concerns, younger Democrats view octogenarians as barriers to progress. Retirements signal not just turnover, but the death of the center.

From Classrooms to Culture Wars: The Erosion of Unity

This political bifurcation didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Its roots trace to academia and liberal arts, where progressive ideologies dominate and spill into society.

U.S. student proficiency is grim: Recent NAEP results show only about 33% of fourth-graders proficient in reading, with similar declines in math—barely 20-30% meeting benchmarks overall.

National report cards consistently reveal about 70% of graduating high-school seniors are functionally illiterate and innumerate.

The demise of book reading compounds it. Daily pleasure reading has dropped sharply over two decades, and classical literature fades as students favor excerpts amid TikTok’s influence.

Short attention spans, fueled by an outrage economy, reduce discourse to soundbites. Platforms reward divisiveness over depth.

Unifying cultural touchstones are vanishing. The latest Super Bowl halftime show sparked polarized reactions—conservatives called it un-American, progressives hailed inclusion.

Dating polls reflect the rift: A majority of progressive women say they’d never date a Trump voter, mirroring sentiments across lines. Politics now invades personal life.

The Establishment’s Betrayal: Globalization’s Toll

Behind the division lies the uniparty’s economic malpractice. For decades, bipartisan elites championed globalization, offshoring jobs and eroding the middle class.

China now dominates critical supply chains: 70-80% of pharmaceutical APIs, 80% of drones, 90% of rare earth processing. Export curbs threaten U.S. chains.

The uniparty—Reagan-era fusionists and Clinton Democrats—sold this as progress. But it hollowed communities, stagnated wages, and fueled inequality.

Manufacturing jobs plummeted as elites prioritized corporations over workers. This betrayal birthed populist fury.

Populist Evolution: From Margins to Mainstream

Populism’s rise is a direct response.

Republicans evolved from Tea Party fiscal hawks to Trumpian nationalists—emphasizing borders, trade wars, and anti-elite rhetoric.

Democrats, influenced by Sanders and DSA, push economic justice, though internal tensions grow.

Historical parallels exist: 1890s Populists fused with Democrats much like today’s progressives challenge the center.

Economic insecurity breeds “us vs. them” politics. Trump and Sanders embodied anti-elite anger from opposite flanks.

Governing in Extremes: The Path Forward

The center’s demise means governance by extremes—gridlock, radical swings, or perpetual conflict.

Yet truth demands nuance: Populism addresses real grievances, but risks authoritarian drift.

Rebuilding requires bridging divides, reinvesting in education, rethinking globalization to prioritize the middle class.

Without action, division will kill unity until dead.

Let’s keep fighting,

Ric

What do you think—is the center truly dead, or can it be revived? Drop a comment below

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We’ve all faced moments that stripped us bare — the near misses, the heart-stopping seconds where time slows and you wonder if this is it. Maybe it was a car wreck, a diagnosis, a heartbreak, or a bad decision that turned good sense into shrapnel. But if you’ve ever stared down the edge and lived to tell it… you carry the Cowboy Soul, too.

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And that right there — that’s the Cowboy Soul.

How many near-death experiences, out-of-body visions, or final destinations does it take to seriously question one’s existence?

A dozen? A couple? Just one?

For me, it was the first one.
And then the next one.
Then a whole lot more after that.

Mine were many — vivid, violent, unforgettable. My grip on life has always been shaky.

At three, I dismantled my crib.
At five, I deconstructed my sister’s new bike.
By ten, I was tagging my dad’s beer fridge — early signs of a restless spirit refusing containment and rejecting authority.

Chaos breeds discontent. Especially in kids.
The seeds were sown; the harvest inevitable.

My escapades moved from farm to city — each bruise and broken rule its own declaration of defiance.

Death never really comes up when we talk about doing stupid things.
We joke — call it a “blaze of glory,” act like bravado makes us bulletproof. But it’s armor for the asinine.
No amount of swagger dulls the crunch of metal, or the flicker of headlights before impact.

I’ve wrecked more cars than I can count on two hands — and split more than a few telephone poles in half.

The first vehicle I drove was a big green John Deere, narrow-wheeled and loud. I was twelve.
Later that same summer, I ditched my grandparents’ ’72 LTD in front of Bobby Jackson’s house.
Their tractor pulled it out.
Maybe that’s where the legend began.

Not content to wreck only my own cars, the list got long:
Parents’ cars.
Friends’ cars.
Rental cars.
Spouse’s car.
Company cars.

I need a self-driving car — or maybe a tank.

At nineteen, I wrapped my uncle’s classic Z around a pole.
Ironically, my next car was a ‘72 LTD, and I didn’t wreck it.

Nice cars, junkers, pickups, vans, even a motorcycle.
No vehicle was safe.

I’ve even been the Ped in an Auto-Ped Accident — three days in ICU after a truck clipped me on a snow-covered road at Mountain High.

Didn’t break the skin… but I feel it now when the cold sweeps in.

The last wreck sent me to prison for Felony DUI. That was a damn nice blue Dodge Ram. Thank God I never killed anyone.

Every near-miss was a mirror.
Every crash, a question.

Was I running from death... or chasing life?

Cowboys always live.
Not because they’re invincible,
but because they refuse to stay down.

We mythologize them — the tilted hat, the dust of yesterday clinging to their boots —
but the truth? A cowboy’s endurance isn’t romantic.

It’s raw.
It’s stubborn.
It’s the art of getting back on the horse even when you know damn well it might buck you again.

Living on the edge isn’t chasing death —
it’s learning to coexist with it.

When you’ve skimmed that edge enough times, you stop fearing the fall.
You start hearing the wind that howls in the space between what ends and what begins.

And that right there —
that’s the Cowboy Soul.

It’s the spirit some mock as “rugged individualism,”
the same one written off by those who think dependence is progress.

But that spirit — that stubborn, stand-your-ground soul —
built this country.

It turned fields into farms.
Forges into factory lines.
Dreamers into doers.

It’s alive today in the quiet majority —
men and women who don’t yell; they build.
Who speak less and do more.
Who shoulder the weight and keep the lights on.

They’re not pre-Trump or post-Trump —
they’re beyond politics altogether.

Their allegiance isn’t to a man.
It’s to a principle: freedom.

Hard work.
Responsibility.
The untamed right to live by your own code.

In a world that sneers at independence,
the cowboy soul still believes liberty is love —
love of self, of neighbor, of country.

And as this nation readies to mark 250 years of triumph and turmoil,
that’s what we’re really celebrating.

Not a flag or a politician —
but that Cowboy Soul that refuses to die,
the one that keeps standing, rebuilding, believing.

Even as loners, we recognize each other.
We nod across the firelight, share a silence, and that’s enough.

Because what binds us isn’t the land we ride —
it’s the liberty we carry inside.

Cowboys don’t live because they’re lucky.
They live because they’ve made peace with losing.

Because every scar,
every dented fender,
every brush with death
carves something sacred into the soul.

So maybe that’s the truth after all:

We survive not to prove our strength,
but to understand it.

And in that quiet, rugged understanding —
cowboys always live.

Cowboy on,

Ric

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One of the best playlists to crank up the headphones and ride off into the sunset.

America once kept an unspoken promise to those who crossed our borders in search of a better life: work hard, adapt, contribute, and the door to the American Dream stays open. That contract—between old-school migrants who hustled to assimilate and a nation that rewarded grit—is now shattered. Today’s new wave arrives amid lax borders, demands for instant accommodation without integration, hidden frauds, native-worker displacement, and policy traps like $20–$30 minimum wages that slam shut the very entry-level jobs once used to climb the ladder. The result? Dependency instead of independence, resentment instead of renewal, and fiery rhetoric that’s tearing us apart. Before we lose what made this country great, it’s time to ask: Are we ready to renew the contract—or watch the melting pot boil over? Read on, and decide for yourself.

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In the shadowed annals of America’s immigration story, there once existed an unspoken contract—a tacit agreement between the nation and those who crossed its borders without invitation. This wasn’t a formal treaty etched in law books, but a mutual understanding rooted in necessity and mutual benefit. In decades past, particularly from the mid-20th century through the 1980s and early 1990s, “old-school” illegal migrants—overwhelmingly from Mexico and other parts of Latin America—slipped across the border seeking opportunity, not conquest or permanent upheaval of the host society.

These migrants often treated the U.S. as a workplace rather than a new homeland. They flipped burgers in fast-food joints, picked crops in California’s valleys, harvested fruits in Florida groves, and built homes in booming suburbs. Many lived double lives characterized by circular migration: crossing into the U.S. seasonally for harvest booms or construction surges, earning wages to send remittances home, then returning to Mexico or Central America for months at a time. This pattern was common before the tightening of border enforcement in the 1990s—Operation Gatekeeper and similar initiatives—made repeated crossings riskier and more expensive, pushing many to settle permanently rather than commute.

Anecdotes from that era paint vivid pictures of resilience mixed with hardship. Fathers maintained two families: one in Mexico with their original kin, supported by hard-earned dollars wired back monthly, and another in the U.S. formed amid long separations, perhaps with a new partner and children born on American soil. These men and women learned rudimentary English out of necessity—to navigate job sites, stores, and schools for their kids.

They waved small American flags at Fourth of July parades in barrio neighborhoods, cheered for local sports teams, and hustled toward legality when opportunities arose, such as the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which granted amnesty to nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants, many of whom had built lives here over years.

This wasn’t flawless assimilation—no immigration wave ever is—but it represented assimilation in action: a bootstrap climb that largely honored the host nation’s ethos of hard work, self-reliance, and eventual integration while fueling economic growth. These workers filled labor shortages in agriculture, construction, and service industries, contributing to America’s postwar prosperity without demanding wholesale cultural overhaul.

Yet even this earlier era carried fractures in the contract, hidden costs that eroded trust over time. Long-time illegals frequently became entangled in illicit ID mills—underground networks churning out fake Social Security cards, green cards, and driver’s licenses. Undocumented workers routinely used stolen or fabricated SSNs to secure jobs, paychecks, and even tax refunds.

The fallout wasn’t victimless: American citizens, often unsuspecting and unrelated, faced ruined credit, unexpected tax bills from the IRS for wages never earned, or denied benefits because their identities had been hijacked. ICE operations over the years uncovered sprawling networks where hundreds—or thousands—of identities were exploited for employment, benefits fraud, and even access to driver’s licenses in some states.

Moreover, the influx profoundly disrupted certain native-born workforces in specific trades. In South Los Angeles, for instance, the drywall and construction industries saw dramatic displacement of African American workers. Black drywallers, who had once dominated the trade in the region through union networks and family apprenticeships, found themselves undercut by waves of undocumented labor willing to work for lower wages, longer hours, and fewer protections.

Wages stagnated or fell, job opportunities vanished, and entire crews were replaced almost overnight. This wasn’t abstract economic theory; it was lived reality for working-class communities already grappling with deindustrialization and urban decay. These hidden fractures—fraud, displacement, wage suppression—planted seeds of resentment, even as the broader economy benefited from cheap labor.

Fast-forward to the “new wave” of illegal migration, surging since the 2010s and accelerating through the 2020s from Central America (the Northern Triangle), Venezuela, Haiti, Asia, Africa, and beyond. The contract lies in tatters. No longer do we see the same pragmatic drive to blend in and contribute quietly. Instead, large enclaves form where foreign flags fly higher than the Stars and Stripes, native languages dominate public spaces without pressure to learn English, and demands for accommodation—interpreters in schools, multilingual ballots, cultural exemptions—eclipse expressions of gratitude or adaptation.

Proponents of expansive immigration policies tout diversity as an unalloyed strength, pointing to vibrant cultural contributions and economic dynamism. But data paints a starker, more fragmented picture. Recent unauthorized immigrants exhibit slower civic and cultural integration compared to earlier cohorts. Pew Research Center estimates from 2023–2025 show the unauthorized population reaching record highs around 14 million before policy shifts slowed inflows, with lower rates of naturalization, English proficiency, and economic upward mobility for many new arrivals relative to past Mexican-dominant waves. A 2015 Harvard study (still cited in recent analyses) noted that while overall immigrant assimilation holds steady or improves over generations, specific groups—particularly from high-conflict or culturally distant regions—lag significantly in economic uptake and cultural adoption, often clustering in insular communities that resist mainstream norms.

Studies from the Manhattan Institute highlight how Mexican-origin immigrants from earlier waves assimilated economically (though more slowly civically), but today’s diverse influx—visa overstays from Asia now outpacing some border crossings—exacerbates fragmentation, forming parallel societies with limited interaction. Post-1965 immigration policy changes expanded inflows, but the real rupture came with decades of lax enforcement, sanctuary policies, and multiculturalist ideologies that actively discourage assimilation by framing it as cultural erasure rather than necessary adaptation.

Where once migrants adapted to America to survive and thrive, now America is expected to adapt to them—subsidizing non-contributors through expanded welfare access, while automation and offshoring erode the very low-skill jobs that once served as entry points.

This erosion is compounded by another modern policy push: aggressive campaigns to hike minimum wages for entry-level jobs to $20 or even $30 per hour, framing these roles as pathways to middle-class security rather than temporary stepping stones. Proponents sell these increases as lifelines for the working poor, arguing they lift families out of poverty and boost morale.

But the reality is far different: mandating high wages for low-productivity, entry-level positions doesn’t magically transform burger-flipping or shelf-stocking into sustainable middle-class careers. Instead, it prices many low-skilled workers—teens, immigrants, those without diplomas—out of the market entirely.

Employers don’t simply absorb the costs; they adapt ruthlessly. They automate (self-checkout kiosks, ordering apps, robotic kitchens), cut hours, reduce hiring, or shift to higher-skilled labor. Recent data underscores this: California’s $20 fast-food minimum wage, effective April 2024, led to significant job losses in the sector. NBER research (2025) estimated a 3.2% relative decline, translating to about 18,000 jobs lost compared to counterfactual trends in other states. Other analyses peg the figure between 9,600 and 23,100 jobs in limited-service restaurants within the first year or so, with reduced hours offsetting much of the wage gains for remaining workers.

Broader studies on substantial hikes show similar patterns: automation accelerates in low-skill sectors, disproportionately harming the unskilled and young. A meta-analysis and recent work (e.g., Neumark et al.) indicate negative employment effects are more pronounced for teens, young adults, and less-educated workers, with many studies finding job reductions when hikes are large.

Even the Congressional Budget Office’s analyses of federal proposals (e.g., to $17 by 2029 under Raise the Wage Act variants) acknowledge trade-offs: while some wages rise and poverty dips for certain families, overall employment falls, with low-wage workers bearing the brunt through joblessness or reduced hours. The result?

Entry-level jobs—once humble starting blocks for skill-building, experience, and upward mobility—vanish or become scarcer. What was meant as a “living wage” trap becomes a barrier: low-skilled newcomers, including new-wave migrants, find fewer doors open for that first foothold. Instead of climbing the ladder, many are sidelined into dependency—welfare, informal work, or worse—perpetuating the very inequality the hikes aim to fix.

This isn’t benevolence; it’s a perpetuation of dependency, echoing welfare traps observed in parts of Europe. Counterarguments persist: some data shows modern Latino immigrants achieving faster gains in education and homeownership than predecessors. Overall public attitudes toward immigration have softened since the 1990s in some surveys. Fair points—many do thrive, building businesses and integrating over time. But zoom in on the unauthorized subset: Pew data indicates declines in Mexican illegals offset by spikes from elsewhere, with integration stalling amid cultural and linguistic silos.

The crime debate amplifies this disconnect. Studies repeatedly tout low crime rates among immigrants, including unauthorized ones, as evidence of positive impact—Stanford research spanning 140 years, Cato Institute Texas analyses, and recent 2024 NIJ-funded Texas DPS studies showing undocumented immigrants arrested at less than half the rate of natives for violent/drug crimes and a quarter for property offenses. Recidivism patterns follow suit: no evidence of elevated repeat offending, including for traffic violations like DUI.

Yet this statistic has been critiqued for years as misleading, masking complexity through systemic flaws. Underreporting plagues immigrant enclaves—victims (especially fellow unauthorized immigrants) avoid police due to deportation fears, language barriers, or deep distrust from origin-country experiences. A Crime & Delinquency study links noncitizen population growth to lower reporting rates, with communities self-policing or enduring crimes silently. Intra-immigrant offenses—assaults, thefts, domestic violence—often go undocumented, inflating official “safety” perceptions.

Lack of police interest compounds it: sanctuary cities deprioritize minor offenses or immigration checks, leading to incomplete data. FBI Uniform Crime Reports rarely capture immigration status, relying on inconsistent local reporting. Critics highlight data manipulation—classifying Hispanic offenders as “white” in records (per Pew), diluting trends—or adjusted SCAAP data suggesting higher rates when biases are corrected. John Lott’s Arizona analysis found undocumented immigrants 146% more likely convicted for serious offenses in some contexts.

DUI cases exemplify the undercounting: unlicensed undocumented drivers evade full tracking, hit-and-runs in enclaves go unreported. Even Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), historically aggressive against all impaired drivers, faces criticism for perceived silence on immigrant-specific DUIs—refusing to tie enforcement to deportation, amnesty eligibility for DUI offenders, or sanctuary shielding. MADD insists punishment applies “regardless of status” but avoids immigration angles, citing neutrality; critics see political pressures from partnerships with Hispanic advocacy groups.

Here’s the perception-vs.-reality wrinkle: Rigorous data (Texas DPS, NBER longitudinal studies through 2024) show undocumented DUI and recidivism rates lower than native-born—often a fraction—attributed to deportation fears or behavioral selection. Yet ICE enforcement data tells another story: thousands of DUI convictions among criminal noncitizens annually (over 43,000 logged 2018–2023 in aggregates; DUI remains a top prior offense in ERO arrests per FY2024 reports).

High-profile repeat offenders in fatal crashes fuel outrage, especially when sanctuary policies or deferred deportations appear to deliver lighter consequences than natives face—license suspensions, interlocks, jail. This sense of “illegals getting a break”—amplified in viral news, election ads, and social media—drives anti-illegal sentiment far more than dry stats, portraying a rigged system where citizens bear stricter accountability.

Perceptions of chaos endure, stoked by visible non-assimilation: Dearborn’s Sharia-influenced norms, Minneapolis Somali community involved in large-scale fraud of welfare programs, isolated communities demanding separate accommodations. The official low-rates vs. anecdotal disorder gap polarizes discourse.

This broken pact has ignited the fiery rhetoric of late: Trump’s repeated “invasion” warnings, Biden-era border surges labeled crises, even Democrats pivoting to tougher stances. Republicans harden into restrictionism; X threads lament the shift—”Modern multiculturalist Left discourages assimilation,” one user notes, while another demands, “Assimilate or leave.” The core fracture—non-assimilation, perceived unequal justice, eroded entry-level opportunities—pushes voters toward walls, not welcomes.

What if we renewed the contract? Secure borders to restore order, prioritize skilled and assimilable entrants who embrace American values, revive merit-based pathways including apprenticeships tied to legal status. Reward those who learn the language, contribute without fraud, and build rather than burden. That’s not xenophobia—it’s preserving the melting pot that forged America’s greatness, ensuring immigration strengthens rather than strains the nation. Break the contract further, and watch the rhetoric harden into something far more revolutionary.

Let’s keep talking about it,

Ric

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This is my 295th post—five years of showing up here, most Sundays without fail, since the first one dropped on December 30, 2020. Five years of words, reflections, and yes—playlists. Every post since 10/30/21 has had one: songs that felt like the right companion for whatever I was trying to say. Not because I’m a DJ, but because music does what words sometimes can’t—it slips past defenses, finds the quiet spots, and reminds us we’re all just trying to make sense of the same messy world.

I’ve always seen these playlists as little bridges: a way to say, “Hey, even if we see things differently, maybe we can sit with the same song for a few minutes and feel something human together.” That’s the quiet hope behind every dispatch—the sincere attempt to chip away at the ideological walls we’ve built, one shared melody at a time. Not to convert anyone, just to remember that beneath the noise, we’re still capable of listening.

If these Sunday missives—words, music, and the stubborn belief that conversation can still matter—have become part of your weekend, I’d be grateful if you’d join the crew properly. Compass Star Wordsmith is reader-supported. A free subscription keeps every post (and playlist) landing in your inbox; a paid one buys the coffee that keeps them coming (and unlocks my enduring gratitude).

Whatever fits your life right now, hit the button below and come aboard. The table’s big enough, and the conversation’s always better with you here.

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But when every opinion gets wrapped in therapeutic armor, the armor becomes a shield against scrutiny. “This is my truth” slides effortlessly into “this is the truth,” and anyone who questions it is cast as not just mistaken but cruel.

I wrote “Can We Argue?” a few years ago, mostly as a love letter to the lost art of the clean, detached disagreement—the kind that sharpens both sides without drawing blood. I leaned on Monty Python’s Argument Clinic for laughs, nodded at Burr and Hamilton for gravitas, and ended with a quiet hope that we might still talk to each other like adults.

The piece still circulates now and then. Every so often a new comment pops up, or someone forwards it with “this feels more true every year.” Lately, the notes that land in my inbox have a different temperature. They’re not just nostalgic for better arguments; they’re exhausted by the absence of argument altogether.

One reader wrote: “We don’t argue anymore. We declare, we denounce, we block. The middle ground has been bulldozed.” Another sent a screenshot of a holiday dinner gone sideways the moment politics brushed the table—plates cleared early, doors slammed, relationships left smoldering until next Thanksgiving. A third simply said, “I miss being wrong in public without it feeling like exile.”

Those messages sat with me through December. I watched the usual seasonal rituals: the forced cheer, the careful avoidance of land-mine topics, the performative unity on social media that lasts exactly as long as it takes to scroll past. And I kept coming back to a phrase that’s everywhere now: “my lived truth.”

At first it sounded harmless—almost generous. Who am I to question someone’s experience? But the more I heard it weaponized, the clearer it became that something had shifted under our feet. Opinions stopped being provisional sketches of reality. They hardened into autobiographies. And once an opinion is reclassified as “lived truth,” it becomes sacred, untouchable, beyond the reach of mere evidence.

Facts, meanwhile, got demoted. They went from being the common playing field where ideas could slug it out to being optional props—useful when they confirm, dangerous when they contradict. Disagree with someone’s lived truth and you’re no longer wrong; you’re oppressive. You’re denying their essence.

This isn’t just semantic drift. It’s a tectonic change in how we relate to reality itself.

Let me take a step back and trace how we got here, because the path is instructive—and, most likely, not accidental.

Start with the basic anatomy of an opinion. An opinion is supposed to be a working hypothesis: “Based on what I know, this seems likely.” It invites testing. It expects revision. It leaves the door cracked for better information. That’s why we used to say things like “I could be wrong” or “convince me” without it feeling like weakness.

Facts, by contrast, were the stubborn furniture of the world—things that remained true whether we liked them or not. Gravity doesn’t care about your feelings. Two plus two is four even if it offends your identity. The beauty of the arrangement was that opinions could dance around facts without pretending to be them. You could hold strong views loosely.

That balance held for a long time, more or less. It survived wars, scandals, cultural upheavals. But sometime in the last fifteen or twenty years the ground began to shift.

Social media rewarded certainty over curiosity. Platforms discovered that outrage travels faster than nuance, that identity markers trigger deeper engagement than shared facts. Algorithms learned to feed us content that confirmed rather than challenged. The more certain we sounded, the more we were amplified.

At the same time, a therapeutic vocabulary seeped into public discourse. Language that began in counseling offices—“that’s valid,” “speak your truth,” “honor your feelings”—migrated into politics, media, even corporate life. Those phrases are powerful and necessary in the right context. Trauma is real. Marginalized voices have been silenced for centuries. Listening matters.

But when every opinion gets wrapped in therapeutic armor, the armor becomes a shield against scrutiny. “This is my truth” slides effortlessly into “this is the truth,” and anyone who questions it is cast as not just mistaken but cruel.

Add to that the collapse of trusted institutions. When newspapers, universities, government agencies, and scientific bodies all take credibility hits—some deserved, some exaggerated—people naturally retreat to tribal sources. In the vacuum, personal experience rushes in to fill the role once played by shared evidence.

The result? We now live in a culture where opinions are experienced as identity, identity is experienced as truth, and truth is experienced as personal property.

I’ve watched this play out in small, painful ways.

A friend—smart, kind, genuinely curious—posted a statistic that complicated a popular narrative on social media. Within minutes the replies weren’t engaging the data; they were diagnosing his motives, his privilege, his moral failure. The statistic itself was barely mentioned. The conversation wasn’t about whether the number was accurate; it was about whether he was allowed to say it.

Another acquaintance told me she no longer discusses books with her oldest friends because they’ve each retreated into ideological silos. One reads only authors who confirm her politics; the other dismisses anything outside his. What used to be lively debates about character and theme are now landmines. The books themselves have become secondary to what believing in them signals.

Even in families it’s brutal. I heard from a reader whose adult child declared that differing political views amounted to “harm.” Holiday invitations now come with pre-conditions: no discussion of certain topics, or the relationship itself is at risk. Love, apparently, has terms, boundaries, limits—and an ejection clause to leave.

This is the point where someone usually jumps in with “both sides do it.” And sure—tribalism is human. Left, right, religious, secular, every group has its orthodoxies. But the mechanism I’m describing isn’t symmetrical in its novelty. The elevation of “lived truth” over shared facts is a relatively recent cultural technology, and it’s been adopted with particular fervor in progressive spaces before spreading everywhere else like a meme.

That said, the right has its own versions: conspiracy thinking that treats suspicion as insight, grievance narratives that harden into identity, leaders who demand loyalty over evidence. The forms differ; the flight from testable reality is the common thread.

So what’s lost when opinions become lived truth?

First, the humility that makes learning possible. If being wrong threatens your biography, you’ll avoid it at all costs—even when it means clinging to demonstrable error.

Second, the possibility of genuine persuasion. You can’t change someone’s mind if changing it requires them to rewrite their life story.

Third, the shared world itself. When we each inhabit private realities stitched together from personal experience and algorithmic affirmation, we lose the common ground that makes citizenship, friendship, even family possible.

And fourth—maybe most painfully—the joy of the argument itself. The clean, detached kind. The kind where you walk away respecting the other person more, even if you still disagree. That pleasure is almost extinct in public now.

It’s still worth preserving. So much so, I wrote an open letter addressing it.

There’s a scene I love in the film The Big Kahuna in which Phil speaks to Bob about character, honesty, and regret. The line about putting hands on a conversation to steer it is golden advice that I endeavor to follow.

I think about that when I see yet another online pile-on. We’re all wasting so much time, steering conversations with no idea of character, honesty, or regret.

I’m saying you’ve already done plenty of things to regret. You just don’t know what they are. It’s when you discover them, when you see the folly in something you’ve done and you wish that you had it to do over, but you know you can’t because it’s too late.

None of this is to say personal experience doesn’t matter. Of course it does. Pain is real. Injustice is real. But experience is raw material, not finished architecture. It needs to be interpreted, contextualized, sometimes corrected by wider evidence. The slave narratives were lived truth—and they were also fact-checked, corroborated, and used to change laws. That combination is what gave them power.

Today we’ve inverted the process: experience is granted immediate authority, and wider evidence is treated as suspect if it complicates the story.

I suspect this inversion isn’t entirely organic.

Division is profitable. Outrage is engagement. A population that treats every disagreement as an existential threat is easy to manipulate—by advertisers, by activists, by governments, by algorithms. When facts become optional and opinions become sacred, critical thinking atrophies. And a society that can’t think critically is a society that can be steered.

That’s the cynical read. The optimistic read is simpler: we’re exhausted. Life has been hard. Pandemics, economic anxiety, cultural whiplash. In uncertain times people cling to certainty wherever they can find it—even if that certainty is just the feeling of being right.

Either way, the cost is the same.

So where do we go from here?

I don’t have a grand solution. I’m not going to pretend a Substackistan essay will heal the republic. But I have a few small stubborn habits I’m keeping.

I still say “I could be wrong” out loud. It feels risky every time, like handing someone a loaded gun. But it’s also the only way I know to keep the door open.

I still read and watch things that annoy me, on purpose. Not to dunk on them—dunking is easy—but to see if there’s a shard of insight I’ve missed.

I still argue with friends, the old-fashioned way: over beer, in person, with the understanding that we’ll both probably be a little less certain when we’re done.

And I still write these little dispatches, partly as a record that someone, somewhere, is trying to hold the line between strong opinions and open minds.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. Really. Writing into the void is easy; writing to people who actually read and think is a gift.

If you have a real difference of opinion—the kind worth exploring, not the kind that ends in flames—drop it below. Or send it privately. I’ll read it. I’ll think about it. I might even change my mind.

And if I don’t, I hope we can still share a table.

Ric

PS - dont forget the playlist below

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Knowledge forever propels a confident man, yet lack thereof never stops a confidence man.

Current Communication Connotations

If “Such and Such” hit you right between the eyes—or anywhere else that matters—don’t just sit there nodding in silent agreement.

Hit that subscribe button below to get every new post from Compass Star Wordsmith delivered straight to your inbox. Free works if you’re testing the waters; paid keeps the rebellion fueled and earns my eternal gratitude.

Share it with someone who needs a dose of unfiltered truth, drop a comment with your take, or restack it to spread the word.

Let’s keep navigating this cultural chaos together. Your move.

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When students—and humans—stop reading books to gather knowledge, to develop context, to decipher truth, to cultivate discernment, to determine wisdom... the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot.

Living in 6x9 bathrooms with grown men in a penal society exposes the base truth of human nature. Knowledge forever propels a confident man, yet lack thereof never stops a confidence man. Out of the grasp of grammar and structure lie the fertile fields of inflections, dialects, accents, and asides. My killing field.

Impactful actions arise from precise direction and passionate directives. The ability of connection comes from control of capability. The goal of discipline is self-discipline. The goal of grammar is clarity. The purpose of persuasion is not.

This late-December missive brings less clarity and more confusion to the matter. Living and dying with platitudes, clichés, old saws, and old wives’ tales is the last audibly memorable shared cultural experience left to us.

He was once the life of the party. Birds of a feather flocked together around him—old friends, easy laughter, late nights that flew by. Blood is thicker than water, they said, and for years it felt true. They kept in touch, lent a hand, went the extra mile. Familiarity bred contentment, not contempt.

Then life got busy. He climbed the ladder, burned the midnight oil, kept his nose to the grindstone. Rome wasn’t built in a day, he told himself, and no pain, no gain. A penny saved is a penny earned, so he cut corners on time with people. Better things awaited—bigger titles, fatter accounts. He jumped on the bandwagon of ambition and let old ties slip through his fingers.

At first it was small. He’d take a rain check on drinks. Miss the boat on birthdays. Turn a blind eye to messages piling up. Out of sight, out of mind. He beat around the bush when asked how he was—always “fine,” always “swamped.” Easy come, easy go, he thought of friendships. Plenty of fish in the sea.

Years passed like water under the bridge. One day he reached out to an old mate—straight from the horse’s mouth, no middleman—and heard silence. The friend had moved on. Another had hit the sack for the last time. A third gave him the cold shoulder. Too many cooks had spoiled the broth of their circle, and he’d been absent from the kitchen.

He sat alone, under the weather in spirit if not body. The penny dropped. He’d cried over spilled milk too late. You reap what you sow. Absence makes the heart grow fonder only when the heart still has someone to grow fonder of. He’d let sleeping dogs lie until they wandered off entirely.

Pride goes before a fall, and his had been steep. He’d thought money doesn’t grow on trees, but neither do relationships. He’d taken the bull by the horns in business yet walked on eggshells around vulnerability. Every cloud has a silver lining, people say, but some storms leave the sky gray forever.

One Sunday morning, coffee strong and bitter, he picked up the phone. Actions speak louder than words. He called the few who remained. Apologized without beating around the bush. Ate humble pie. Asked to break the ice again, even if it cost an arm and a leg in pride.

Some doors stayed closed—old habits die hard, and a leopard can’t change its spots overnight. But a couple opened. Better late than never. They met. Spoke plainly. Let bygones be bygones. A stitch in time saves nine, and starting now was the only stitch left.

Slowly, he learned to make time, not excuses. Keep your chin up, but also keep your calendar open. Laughter is the best medicine, shared with others. Variety is the spice of life, but loyalty is its salt. Charity begins at home, and friendship begins with showing up.

He still burns the midnight oil sometimes—old dogs, new tricks—but now he saves daylight for people. Calls just because. Lends a hand without being asked. Goes the extra mile to stay close.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but the road back starts with one honest step. He took it. One conversation at a time, one apology, one shared coffee, he rebuilt what he could. Not everything lost was found—some bridges burned stay burned—but enough remained to remind him: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

On quiet Sundays now, he listens to his own words. Hears the old bromides and smiles. Once they’d been shields, casual ways to avoid deeper connection. Now they’re gentle reminders. Time heals all wounds, but only if you give it company. United we stand. No man is an island.

He’s learned the hardest lessons the hard way: don’t count your chickens before they hatch, but don’t neglect the hens either. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket—spread them across the people who matter.

And when someone asks how he is, he no longer says “fine.” He tells the truth. Because honesty is the best policy, and connection—real, messy, present connection—is the only wealth that truly compounds.

A watched pot never boils, but an unanswered message never warms the heart. So he answers. He calls. He shows up.

Better safe than sorry, he once thought, hiding behind easy phrases. Now he knows: better present than perfect.

The early bird catches the worm, but the steady friend catches the years.

And on this Sunday, like every Sunday now, he counts his blessings—one conversation, one shared laugh, one restored tie at a time.

Make the call, bury the hatchet, find the time, complete the circle.

It may be cliched, but it’s from the heart,

Ric

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(L/5e=C) Life / Food + Music + Art + Craft + History = Culture

Ahoy, crew—welcome aboard.

Whether you’re a paid pirate keeping the sails full and the rum stocked, a free reader riding the wake, or a new face spotting the mast on the horizon and climbing the rigging for the first time: I’m damn glad you’re here. Five years ago I stole this ship and set sail on December 30, 2020, with no map but stubborn curiosity. Today, with 292 posts behind us (this one makes 293) and over 500 of you in the crew, it feels less like a solo escape and more like a shared voyage. Your comments, shares, claps, and quiet nods have been the wind in these canvas—thank you for making this feel like home.

We’ve trimmed the sails together along the way.

The early blasts were full-throated, running hard before the storm—raw takes on a fractured world. Over time we’ve reefed in, found smoother lines: sharper history, deeper craft, less shout and more signal. That’s growth, pirate style—not a dramatic refit, just steady hands on the wheel, adjusting to keep the boat fast and true. And the best part? You’ve been right there in the rigging with me, calling out gusts I missed, suggesting new headings.

So come below decks, grab a mug, settle in.

This Christmas week, with AI blowing strong across the bow, we’re charting the difference between Star Trek’s chore-less existence and Terminator’s scorched earth dystopia—and asking for a little universal patience as we navigate the fastest tech revolution yet. If you’re new: stick around, drop a comment, consider subscribing. If you’re old salt: thank you again for sailing with me. The voyage is richer with you here. Let’s trim once more and see where these winds take us.

Today—December 21, 2025—marks almost exactly five years since I hoisted the sails on Compass Star Wordsmith. It was December 30, 2020, when the first post went live, a raw dispatch from a Gen X soul trying to make sense of a world that felt like it had tilted off its axis. Back then, I was just a freed prisoner captaining a stolen pirate ship, as I like to say—charting culture through that stubborn formula I’ve clung to:

(L/5e=C) Life / Food + Music + Art + Craft + History = Culture

Compass Star Wordsmith

I write about the confluence of the elements of life that create culture. I express that confluence with this formula - (L/5e=C) Life / Food + Music + Art + Craft + History = Culture

By ric leczel

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Make Haste when the Wind Blows Make Hay when the Sun Shines

Five years. 293 posts now. Over 500 subscribers—real people, kindred spirits, pirates who’ve climbed aboard for the ride. Hundreds of free readers dipping in when the winds blow them here, and a solid crew of paid supporters keeping the lights on and the rum flowing. It’s not empire-building numbers, but damn if it doesn’t feel like a quiet victory. In a sea of noise—endless scrolls, hot takes, algorithmic outrage—this little Substack has been my logbook, my rebellion, my way of processing the fractures: the cultural wars, the lingering echo of a pandemic that rewrote our rhythms, the relentless march of tech that promises utopia one day and apocalypse the next.

And here we are, at Christmas time, reflecting amid the glow of holiday lights and the hush of winter. It’s a season for patience, isn’t it? For pausing amid the frenzy, gathering with whatever family (blood or chosen) we’ve got, and wishing for a bit more grace in a world that moves too damn fast. So that’s my holiday gift to you all this year: a plea for universal patience as we barrel into this age of rapid AI development. Because if there’s one thing these five years of writing have taught me—navigating everything from drone wars to cloning ethics to the simple joy of a well-built pallet—it’s that revolutions don’t unfold overnight. They grind, they disrupt, they demand we adapt... slowly, thoughtfully, humanly.

Is the Future Star Trek or Terminator?

Let’s talk AI fears, because they’ve been bubbling up lately. People are scared—and rightfully so in flashes—that AI is Skynet in disguise, plotting to terminate us all.

The Terminator franchise painted it vivid: one flip of the switch, defense network goes sentient, decides humans are the threat, boom—Judgment Day. Machines rise, Arnold’s T-800 stalks through fire and ruin to kill the T-1000, humanity scrambles in the ashes. It’s visceral, primal fear: creation turns on creator, tools become tyrants. We’ve got experts warning we could end up in a “Terminator” timeline if we don’t align AI right—robots everywhere, but hostile, efficient, unstoppable.

Then there’s the flip side: Star Trek.

Not the grim reboots, but the classic vision—Kirk, Picard, the Enterprise crew exploring strange new worlds with a ship’s computer that’s godlike in capability yet utterly subservient. Replicators whip up Earl Grey hot on command, no galleys or laundry drudgery because tech handles the mundane. Data, the android, doesn’t scheme for dominance; he yearns to be more human, serves on the bridge, earns rights in court (”The Measure of a Man”). The Federation’s post-scarcity paradise runs on advanced AI that’s aligned, ethical, augmenting humanity rather than replacing it. It’s optimism baked in: tech frees us for philosophy, art, exploration. No money, no want—just bold going where no one has gone before.

These two visions clash like matter and antimatter, and right now, with AI exploding—ChatGPT to Grok to image generators that paint dreams in seconds—the Terminator camp feels louder. Job loss headlines scream displacement: truckers, artists, coders, writers (hell, even wordsmiths like me wonder if the blank page will stay mine). Deepfakes erode trust, algorithms amplify division, and whispers of superintelligence loom like a rogue Borg cube. It’s easy to see dystopia: machines optimizing us out of existence, a cold efficiency where humanity’s messy warmth gets deemed “inefficient.”

But hold up, crew. Let’s zoom out with some history, because this AI frenzy echoes another revolution that terrified folks in its day: the Industrial one.

Steam engines, factories, mechanized looms—starting in Britain around 1760, spreading like wildfire. Luddites smashed machines, fearing (accurately at first) that artisans would starve. Jobs vanished overnight: hand-weavers outpaced by power looms churning yarn faster than any human could dream. Cities swelled with displaced rural folk crammed into grim factories, child labor, pollution, inequality exploding. Marx wrote about alienation; Dickens painted the soot and suffering.

Yet... patience prevailed. Adaptation kicked in over decades. New jobs emerged—engineers, railroad workers, managers of massive scale. Productivity soared, goods cheapened, living standards climbed (eventually, broadly). Unions fought for rights, governments regulated (slowly), education expanded. The Industrial Revolution didn’t end humanity; it catapulted us into modernity—electricity, cars, computers. It was messy, painful, unequal in rollout, but net transformative for the better. We didn’t get the apocalyptic factory overlords; we got abundance, leisure (for many), and the foundation for today’s world.

Imagine men pulling fire wagons and complaining when they were replaced by horses, which were faster and more powerful and ready upon demand. Only later did the overwhelming amount of horseshit make another change obvious.

We are there now - low-skilled cashiers striking for $20/hour jobs tablets do better with no attitudes or call offs. Artists, musicians, creatives of all sorts worrying when a tablet replaces them. The most vulnerable are the middle managers. Just the name should be a warning. Are they replaceable?

Middle child. Middle manager. No love. Compass Star noticed and wrote about it.

AI’s on a similar trajectory, but accelerated—compressing centuries into years. Like industrialization mechanized muscle, AI’s automating mind: pattern recognition, generation, optimization. Early disruption hits hard—creative fields feel it now, white-collar next. But history whispers: this too shall evolve. New roles bloom (AI ethicists, prompt engineers, human-AI collaborators). Productivity leaps could mean shorter workweeks, universal basics, more time for... well, culture. Food innovation, music creation, art unbound, craft revived, history reimagined.

A poem composed in prison dreams about freedom. Is past prologue? Let’s see.

The key difference? Choice. In Terminator, AI goes rogue because it’s misaligned, unchecked. In Star Trek, it’s designed with safeguards, ethics, human values baked in. We’re not passive victims; we’re the captains. Labs pour billions into alignment research—making AI truthful, helpful, bounded. Regulations stir (slowly, frustratingly). And tools like Grok? Built to explore truth, not dominate.

This Christmas, as we mark patience in the story of a long wait for light in darkness, let’s extend that to our tech moment. Universal patience: for developers iterating safeguards, for workers pivoting skills, for societies debating rules, for all of us unlearning fears while embracing possibilities. Rush in unchecked, we risk friction—protests, bans, backlash. Guide it thoughtfully, we steer toward Trek: AI as chauffeur, replicator, companion—freeing us from drudgery for the stars.

Five years in, Compass Star Wordsmith feels like my own little Enterprise—small crew, big questions, navigating uncertainty with curiosity and authenticity. Thanks for sailing with me, pirates. Here’s to five more: more posts, more debates, more culture decoded. May your holidays be warm, your patience deep, and our shared future brighter than any holodeck simulation.

What say you, crew? Trek or Terminator—or something we’re writing anew? Drop your thoughts below. And if you’re not subscribed yet... come aboard. The voyage continues.

Fair winds,

ric leczel

Captain, Compass Star Wordsmith

this nine minutes is well worth your time. it should bring a tear to your eye

We gathered in gratitude. We expressed love to one another. We said grace, broke bread, ate cheese and pickle-cups, scarfed down deviled eggs, and made too much food. The Focus on Food and Potluck Preparation rebuilt lost trust and invited inclusion. Everyone participated and chipped in for the cause. The family won.

Consuming all of it was completely out for the question. But we did run out of turkey and had beef left over? Curious to me. Next year I’m getting a John Madden Turkey because I got no leg! Seventeen family members all in on one mission and making it happen. Hope for the future is easy in those moments.

Making Thanksgiving Dinner the best since it stopped being so good some time ago was my goal. Lots of things in life are easy to point to that create division among us, but bridging those divides requires so much work that blowing them up is way easier. Why not change course? To share time and exchange gratitude.

Compass Star Wordsmith is where I keep writing about the small, stubborn acts (food, fire, family, showing up) that refuse to let the story end in fracture.

Join me. Once or twice a month, quiet words about ordinary hope, delivered warm.

Subscribe. The table always has room for one more chair.

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We’re not blood in the old sense: three generations of moms and dads, sons and daughters, cousins by marriage, plus-ones, step-siblings, chosen family and friends. Traditions are thin on the ground. So on Thanksgiving Day itself we solved it the way the first one was solved: potluck.

Everything scratch-made at home, everyone brings something, everyone eats something they didn’t cook. The menu is the treaty. The divides are still there; we just agreed, for one afternoon, to step over them with plates in our hands. Simple. Undramatic. Effective.

Seventeen of us walked through the door Thursday morning carrying foil-covered dishes and the same quiet caution we’ve carried since about 2015. Some hadn’t shared a room in years. Some stay in touch only when someone dies. We didn’t pretend the cracks had closed. We just set the food down and started uncovering pans.

The table filled itself. Charcuterie, deviled eggs, baked Brie, pickle cups, brisket, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green-bean casserole, cranberry sauce, sweet-potato casserole, pies. Nothing came from a store tray. Everything carried someone’s fingerprints and someone else’s childhood in its steam.

We said a short grace (nobody grandstanding) and started passing.

That was it.

The usual sounds: a serving spoon against glass, a plate sliding hand to hand, the small “thank you” that still comes naturally when someone notices your dry potatoes and passes the gravy. There were silences, but they weren’t sharp. They were the kind you can chew in. Someone laughed too loud and nobody hushed them. A question that could have landed wrong was answered soft. A cousin who normally bolts early stayed to wipe down the table.

Nothing got solved. Nothing needed solving that day.

The disagreements are still there: the votes, the posts, the years we spent practicing distance. They’ll be waiting tomorrow. But on this Thursday we proved something smaller and more usable: we can still share one table without the roof caving in. We can still feed each other without keeping score. We can look across a dish someone spent all morning making and see a person, not a platform.

That’s the hope I’m taking forward.

Not that we’ll all agree someday.
Not that the cracks will disappear.
Just that we did this once, on purpose, and it worked. Seventeen people with plenty of reasons to stay home chose to show up, cook from scratch, eat together, wash dishes together, and leave with leftovers and lighter hearts.

If we can do it once, we can do it again.

Next year there will be new faces, maybe a couple of empty chairs, the usual flare-ups in the group chat come spring. But in November we’ll send the same text: “You’re on a side this year. Bring enough for twenty.” And people will reply with a thumbs-up because bringing something you made with your own hands is still easier than fixing each other, and easier is enough.

That’s the quiet hope: not a dramatic healing, just a repeatable afternoon.

A table that stays open.
A menu that still works as a truce.
A day when being family is something we keep doing instead of something we argue about.

We don’t have to fix the world. We just have to keep passing the plates.

If seventeen semi-strange, quasi-separated, always-connected family-members in one house on an ordinary Thursday can pull that off, the future has room to breathe.

See you next November.

Ric

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On Thanksgiving Day 2016, Trump was the President-Elect and the country was on fire, set by peaceful protestors. But that was merely the calm before the storm. Regardless if you loved him or hated him, it was he that had captured the collective chimera and set us on the path to here and now. Where are we now?

The families that have been bifurcated due to this cultural-political hurricane include my own even to this day. I wonder if in the 1850s families divided were like this? The gulf has not shrunk an inch and seems wider than ever before. Can Thanksgiving Dinner bridge the gap to bring us together like we’ve never known?

A decade later, could anyone imagine exactly where we’d end up? Compass Star Wordsmith did and has been charting the uncharted waters in the wake of this cultural-political tsunami to lay down some navigational beacons. The fracture runs deeper than policy or personality; it’s a moral contagion. Click a button below to jump on board.

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Trump Voter versus Trump Supporter

Not every hand that pulled the lever for Trump in 2016, 2020, or 2024 belongs to a red-hatted zealot. The moral contagion that exiles “anyone in the orbit” rarely asks the question that would save a friendship, a job, or a family dinner: Are you a voter, or a supporter? The difference is not academic; it is the gap between a vote in private in person or a Trump flag flown proudly and defiantly. Both voted for him.

The voter is transactional. He is the welder in Erie who voted Obama twice, then Trump twice, because the mill reopened and the gas bill stopped bleeding. She is the nurse in Macomb County who backed Romney, then Clinton, then Trump—each time betting on the candidate who promised the hospital would stay open. These are not converts; they are diagnosticians.

They see a country in triage and choose the treatment that looks least like placebo. They own zero MAGA gear. They have never stood in a rally line. Their bumper sticker, if it exists, is a faded “I Voted” from 2020. When Trump wins, they exhale and check the price of eggs. When he loses, they mutter “next time” and flip to the weather.

The supporter is fervent. She owns the hat, the flag, the signed copy of Crippled America. He has flown to three rallies, tailgated with strangers, and live-tweeted every indictment hearing. The supporter does not wait for better policy; he waits for vindication. Trump is not a means—he is the message. The voter wants the plant reopened; the supporter wants the plant reopened and the foreman to say “thank you, sir” on national television. The voter will abandon ship if the captain starts drilling holes. The supporter bails water with a teaspoon and calls it loyalty.

This spectrum is real, measurable, and ignored at the shunning table. Exit polls from 2024 show 28 percent of Trump voters had backed Biden in 2020—classic switchers, not lifers. In Pennsylvania, 41 percent of Trump voters said they would not support him in a future primary against a different Republican. They are not ride-or-die; they are ride-until-the-wheels-fall-off-and-then-walk. Yet the roommate, the HR memo, the TikTok tribunal treats every orbit-dweller the same: radioactive.

The cruelty is in the conflation. The voter becomes collateral damage in a war against the supporter. The boyfriend—whose parents merely attended the Phoenix vigil is not waving a Trump flag—he is a 25-year-old American that voted based on his particular circumstances. But the boundary is drawn anyway, because nuance is exhausting and purity is effortless.

Compass Star Wordsmith offers a new beacon: Ask the question. Before the block, before the unfollow, before the empty chair at Thanksgiving, ask: Did you vote to fix something, or to follow someone? The answer will not reconcile the country, but it might save the roommate.

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Hate Trump personally and you’re compelled to hate anyone in his orbit—guilty by association, no appeal. Jimmy Kimmel’s wife bans Trump-voting relatives from the holiday table. Psychologists publish open letters urging patients to sever ties with parents who cast the “wrong” ballot. My own daughter’s sixth-grade best friend refuses to meet her boyfriend whose parents attended a Turning Point USA vigil for Charlie Kirk after his assassination and who admits he voted Trump; the friend even asked that The Daughter’s location sharing be disabled so she doesn’t have to watch her visits in real time. These are 25 year old people.

The beacon here is stark: contempt for one man has metastasized into a litmus test that exiles half the country—and half the family—from the circle of the acceptable. If public praise of Trump is disallowed, is criticizing him equally forbidden? If not, why? Is the next answer then to shun nearly 80 million voters?

The Mirror Fracture: When the Divide Eats Its Own

The antibodies are not aimed at ideas; they are aimed at people. And the people are not abstractions—they are the cousin who posts a MAGA hat selfie, the neighbor whose pickup sports a faded “Trump 2020: No More Bullshit” sticker now peeling at the edges. Each is a vector. Each must be quarantined.

But in 2025, the same contagion is eating the Democratic Party alive. The outside—Trump’s Congress, a 42-day shutdown, and electoral humiliation—has turned inward. Schumer and Fetterman now face the same exile once reserved for red hats. The fact they voted opposite of each other and are now equally hated by the new base. They both disagree with Trump, but both are now targeted.

Eight Senate Democrats, including Fetterman, broke ranks in October 2025 to end the longest government shutdown in history. The deal gave no ACA subsidies and punted the fight to January. Schumer voted no, but the left erupted. Rep. Ro Khanna tweeted: “Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced.” #FireSchumer trended. Progressives called it betrayal of furloughed workers and SNAP families. A September Pew poll showed Schumer’s approval underwater—even among Democrats.

Fetterman, once a progressive hero, became the villain. He had called the shutdown “wrong” on Fox and X, prioritizing military pay and federal workers. His reward: 62% disapproval from Democrats in a November Quinnipiac poll, while Republicans approved 54%. Rep. Brendan Boyle labeled him “Trump’s favorite Democrat.” Protesters hit his Pittsburgh office over Gaza and border votes. When he fell down last weekend, MAGA sent well-wishes; Democrats sent death-wishes.

This rupture proves the rule: the outside wins when the inside implodes. Compass Star Wordsmith’s beacon is simple—recognize the mirror. If Democrats exile their own over a vote, they’re no different from the roommate silencing a friendship over a parent’s vigil. Mercy, not quarantine, is the only way forward

Consider the Kimmel household, 2022. Molly McNearney, Kimmel’s wife and co-producer, told the world on Instagram that Trump supporters were no longer welcome at Thanksgiving. “I don’t want to break bread with people who think it’s okay to separate children from their parents at the border,” she wrote, as if every red-hat owner personally welded the cages.

The comments erupted in applause—thousands of blue-check affirmations that family is conditional, love is revocable, and pumpkin pie is a privilege, not a right. Kimmel himself doubled down on air: “If you voted for him, you’re not invited. Simple as that.” The studio audience roared. The message was clear: politics is not a difference of opinion; it is a difference of species.

The therapists had ploughed the ground and planted the seeds. In the summer of 2017, Psychology Today published “How Do We Parent in the Trump Era?”—a piece that hit like a quiet earthquake. The author urged parents to model ethics in real time, warning that kids absorb the president’s crass, crude, and demeaning style the way they absorb everything else. The takeaway wasn’t spelled out in bold, but it was there between the lines: if a leader’s behavior is toxic, shielding your child might mean shielding them from the people who cheer it.

The comments lit up with confessions. One parent wrote: “Explaining this to my 10-year-old feels like betraying half my family.” Another admitted to muting group chats after a MAGA selfie. The piece didn’t say cut them off—but it didn’t have to. The seed was planted: political difference isn’t just disagreement; it’s moral injury. Protect the nervous system. Draw the line.

Years later, that line became a wall. The article didn’t start the fire—but it handed out the matches.

Dating apps became minefields. Hinge rolled out a “political views” filter in 2022; by 2024 it was the default sort. Swipe left on “moderate,” “conservative,” or “other.” Bumble added a badge: “No Trumpers.” The badge doubled as a rose—you could send it to signal virtue, and the algorithm boosted your profile to similarly badged users. A 2025 study from Pew found that 63 percent of urban women under 35 would not date across the Trump line, up from 41 percent in 2016. The men adjusted: profiles bloomed with disclaimers—“Voted Biden twice, still think Trump is a threat to democracy”—like Soviet-era loyalty oaths. One man in Brooklyn listed his height as “5’11\” but 6’2\” in ambition to dismantle the patriarchy.”

Friendships atrophied. In 2023, the New York Times Weddings section ran a vow-renewal announcement with a twist: the couple credited their marriage surviving “the Trump years” because they had “pruned” three college friends who “revealed themselves” in 2016. The pruned friends were not named, but the couple included a photo of their new dinner table—seating for six, down from ten. The caption: “Smaller circle, bigger love.”

Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, while speaking to a crowd of approximately 3,000 at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, during Turning Point USA’s “American Comeback Tour.” He was 31 years old, shot once in the neck by a sniper positioned on a rooftop. He died at Timpanogos Regional Hospital shortly after. Vigils followed nationwide, including one at Turning Point USA headquarters in Phoenix where supporters left flowers, candles, and American flags.

President Trump announced he would attend Kirk’s funeral in Arizona and award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously. Within hours, the hashtag #KirkCult trended on TikTok, with one video—stitching footage of mourners singing “How Great Thou Art”—captioned “This is what fascism looks like when it prays,” garnering 11 million views.

At UVU, protesters attempted to replace a student-led memorial for Kirk with a “unity” display, citing his past statements on abortion, guns, and election integrity as “hate speech.” Corporate HR departments in the Southwest quietly updated social-media policies: employees photographed at any Kirk vigil would be flagged for “values alignment review.”

My daughter’s roommate—25, same as her—learned of the connection during an honest conversation one evening in their shared apartment. The boyfriend had never been in the apartment or spoken directly to the roommate. His parents had attended the Phoenix vigil for Charlie Kirk, and he had simply confirmed it when my daughter asked him about it. He does not wear red hats or speak loudly about politics.

The roommate listened quietly, then said she needed to set a boundary: the link, however indirect, made her too uncomfortable to meet him. She asked, with respect, if my daughter would disable location sharing so she wouldn’t see the visits in real time. My daughter understood the depth of her friend’s feelings and quietly turned it off. Their friendship, once effortless, now moves in careful, unspoken steps around the apartment.

This is the new etiquette: silence as shunning, read receipts as excommunication. The tools are mundane—block, mute, restrict, unfollow—but the effect is medieval. Brands joined the ritual.

The irony is thick: the side that chants “love trumps hate” has built the most sophisticated hate machine in modern memory. It does not need camps or gulags; it has algorithms, HR departments, and the soft totalitarianism of social consequence. The punishment is not prison—it is loneliness. The crime is not violence—it is voting.

Compass Star Wordsmith has watched this unfold since 2016, logging the incremental surrenders: the friend who stopped inviting the Trump-voting couple to game night, the cousin unfollowed after a single retweet, the coworker who now eats lunch alone because she liked a JD Vance post. Each surrender seemed small, rational, even moral in the moment. Aggregated, they form a map of exile.

The beacons are simple:

1. Contempt is contagious; quarantine it before it quarantines you.

2. People are not their vote; relationships are not referenda.

3. Silence is complicity only when the cost of speech is death; in America 2025, the cost is brunch.

4. The Overton Window has bars; do not volunteer to be the warden.

We are not post-partisan; we are pre-civil. The fire next time will not be lit by Molotovs but by muted group chats, canceled invitations, and children taught to fear their grandparents’ politics. The republic can survive policy disagreement. It cannot survive half its families treating the other half as moral lepers.

Thanksgiving 2025 approaches. Some tables will have empty chairs and carefully worded toasts. Others will have full bellies and fuller hearts, having decided that cranberry sauce is not a loyalty oath. The choice is ours, one plate at a time.

Compass Star Wordsmith signs off with a final coordinate: love is not the absence of standards; it is the presence of mercy. Plot your course accordingly.

Love one another,

Ric

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Some years ago I wrote a post titled “Can We Argue?” in which I posited the radical position that argument is ok. In fact, it’s healthier than not arguing. But what passes as modern argument is nothing more than rhetorical remissness.

Argument is a substitute for war some people say. Or as Sun Tzu argued “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”, and he stated that a nation never benefits from prolonged warfare. I say argument is not as much a substitute as a prophylactic for violence. Which is basically agreeing with Tzu.

A female cop once told me on a bad night “arguments don’t always end in violence, but violence always starts with an argument.” Which makes sense if you think about it from her street corner: the arguments she responds to are better described as verbal confrontations, personal insults, or disrespectful behavior. I’ve never seen a cop referee an Oxford Debate, calling out illegal allegories.

So what is it about an argument that catalyzes passion, creates tension, or causes violence? One could argue (so intended!) the current national education report card provides massive clues as to why the rhetorical arts are all but extinct. Our kids are stupid and ignorant. Not all, but many. Not an insult, just observation.

Visual Social Media allows for ever greater numbers of innumerate and illiterate individuals to succeed in pop culture on a grander scale than ever before. Which is perfectly ok from a capitalistic point of view. I begrudge nobody a paycheck earned, no matter the profession. But absent a platform, where is their value?

Mind you, coders, lawyers, and analysts just got the Amazon AI Axe, so maybe ignorant and apathetic is a viable job option these days. It’s hard to live on code when you’re the of the grid. But again, no grid, no influence. What happens after?

My quarrel (again!), rather, comes from a different place. If we argue more with good faith, we fight less with bad. But the current atmosphere does not lend itself to nuance and discernment.

Culture’s shotgun wedding to politics a decade ago rippled out to now and beyond. The gold, the glitter, the gumption; a Love Child was birthed—half-influencer, half-ideologue, diapered in hashtags, raised on outrage, and now old enough to cancel nuance while torching every bridge it crosses.

Living in chaos sharpens several skills. Some of which are admirable traits: adaptability, industriousness, and resilience. Characteristics worthy of praise and useful in a civilized society to coexist with other like-minded individuals.

But what of manipulation, deceit, and subterfuge? The survival skills that chaotic childhoods demand rather than teach are sticks of dynamite waiting to be lit. Those very skills were instrumental when I lived in a 6x9 bathroom with another convict for 247 days, providing validation and proof of their worth in a fractured society. They were less useful in relationships, marriages, and careers I’ve lost.

Set loose on society, Gen-X ran amok with oversized expectations and undersized abilities in grown-up social settings. Seldom-supervised, never-minded, always-scolded, and forever-forgotten worked out well for awhile.

Mostly in our 20s and 30s in the 80s and 90s, when clubs, cocaine, and corporatism captured our delusions, we spent our youth strung out on hope and banking on change that never happened. When we sobered up, reality sucked.

The decades piled up and the temperment wore down. The cognitive dissonance Gen-Xrs subconsciously navigated became a pirates cove of comfort, calm, and control. No longer battling each other, our demons settled on external targets, easing the internal conflict and expanding the war to new and familiar territory.

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I found an interesting read here in all places the NYT, not because the dude knows what he’s talking about, but because the prescription he writes for the Dem party swirling the bowl is an exact copy the object of his scorn filled a decade ago when he cashed out the Bushes, Cheneys, and Romneys to enlarge the GOP.

The solution is simple he reasons: recapture - magically somehow - the millions of disgusted, disaffected, and disabused voters the Dem party shed in the era of The Bad Orange. Here’s the monumental problem they face

That echoes what I have heard from the kinds of voters Democrats lament losing. I feel as if I have the same conversation over and over again: Sometimes people tell me about issues where the Democratic Party departed from them. But they first describe a more fundamental feeling of alienation: The Democratic Party, they came to believe, does not like them.

Many of these people voted for Democrats until a few years ago. They didn’t feel their fundamental beliefs had changed. But they began to feel like “deplorables.” They began to feel unwanted.

His easy-as-pie recipe is precisely the fix Trump carried down the golden escalator a million years ago it seems now. Gen-Xrs like me cast their first vote for a president for Reagan, and for me personally, I remained a registered R until Perot pointed out the sucking sound coming from The Establishmentarians.

Switching from R to I became a badge of honor for many disillusioned Alex P. Keaton wannabees. The party, the system, the apparatus were all rigged, in the mind of Gen-X. Ross Perot, a billionaire outsider from Texas utilized the most potent social media at the time: Infomercials.

Perot produced the first political infomercials as a direct line of communication to the masses. This formula was emulated and perfected by guess who?

That chart above is illustrating the eye-popping national debt in 1992 - $4 Trillion. Small potatoes now, right? Perot was so right and so disdained. He led a mass exodus from the GOP by 20 and 30 somethings the party never recovered from until now. Ironically, a billionaire won the popular vote as a Republican.

The youth now in the MAGA world are existential threats to the Dem Party and can explain much of the current hysteria on their side. The Student Body is Red.

According to the NYT “opinion expert”, the Dem party experienced a similar mass defection from their ranks over the last dozen years. From the piece

But it went wrong. Democrats became more uncompromising on immigration and lost support among Hispanic voters. They moved left on guns and student loans and climate, and lost ground with young voters. They moved left on race and lost ground with Black voters. They moved left on education and lost ground with Asian American voters. They moved left on economics and lost ground with working-class voters. The only major group in which Democrats saw improvement across that whole 12-year period was college-educated white voters.

The party of people of color and marginalized groups grew only one demo in their ranks: college-educated white voters. Let that sink in. So basically, all the Dems need to gain power back and finally beat The Bad Orange is to increase their popularity with every single voter demographic, except for white college grads.

No problem, I guess. But when “fight back” is the argument, the oratorical skills of hope and change have hit the cliffs. How ‘bout ‘argue back?” Starting at fight leaves little room for the long-sought “conversation” so many Dems yearn to start.

The World After starts in about three years. What happens after that? When does the fight end and the argument begin? Enough is Enough.

The playlist for this post is specially fun. Check out the last song - Leo Sayers “One Man Band”. I had never heard it before but I had long been adverse to the disco kings craft. I stand before you a changed man. Sayer wrote songs for Roger Daltrey, including “Giving It All Away”. Both are in the playlist. Worth a listen.

Give it your best. That’s all we can ask.

Ric

Friction stalls; action liberates. Compass Star Wordsmith is a reader-supported publication, guiding you past resistance to self-reliant momentum. Subscribe free or paid to get new posts and fuel this journey. Let’s slip the grind together.

Friction is the mortal enemy of movement

In the grand theater of existence, where every soul is both actor and audience, there is a villain so insidious, so unassuming, that it slips beneath the spotlight unnoticed. It doesn’t roar like thunder or strike like lightning. It doesn’t demand allegiance or wield a scepter of power. No, this antagonist whispers, it grinds, it clings. It is friction—the mortal enemy of movement.

This simple declaration, “Friction is the mortal enemy of movement,” has haunted my thoughts like a half-remembered dream, pulling me from the edges of sleep into the cold clarity of dawn. As the quill-driver behind Compass Star Wordsmith, where I navigate the constellations of language to chart paths for wandering minds, I’ve long pondered the forces that propel us forward—or hold us captive in stasis.

Friction isn’t just a physicist’s footnote; it’s the existential drag on our ambitions, the quiet erosion of our momentum. Today, let’s dissect this foe, trace its tendrils through the landscapes of physics, psychology, and philosophy, and arm ourselves with strategies to outmaneuver it. For in understanding friction, we reclaim the fluid grace of movement that defines a life well-lived.

The Physics of Resistance: Where It All Begins

To conquer an enemy, one must first know its face. In the realm of the tangible, friction emerges from the pages of Newton’s laws as the force that opposes relative motion between two surfaces in contact. Picture a sled gliding across fresh snow: without friction, it would sail eternally, a perpetual arrow into the void. But introduce the grit of reality—the microscopic hills and valleys of atomic landscapes interlocking like reluctant lovers—and suddenly, energy dissipates. Heat builds, speed wanes, and what was poetry in motion becomes a laborious crawl.

Sir Isaac Newton himself, in his Principia Mathematica (1687), laid the groundwork, though he didn’t name friction outright. It was later formalized by Guillaume Amontons in 1699, who posited that frictional force is proportional to the normal force pressing surfaces together, independent of contact area. This is the stuff of everyday miracles thwarted: the bicycle chain that sticks in the rain, the door hinge that squeals in protest, the rocket exhaust fighting atmospheric drag on its ascent to the stars.

But why “mortal enemy”? The term evokes death, finality—a foe not merely annoying, but lethal to the very essence of progress. In physics, friction isn’t neutral; it’s dissipative. It converts kinetic energy into thermal waste, ensuring that no machine achieves 100% efficiency.

The Carnot cycle in thermodynamics whispers this truth: entropy always wins, and friction is its faithful herald. Consider the Mars rovers, those intrepid explorers of the red planet. Their wheels, designed with low-friction treads, still succumb to regolith’s abrasive kiss, grinding to a halt after years of defiant traversal. NASA’s Perseverance rover, as of 2023, has logged over 28 kilometers, but each meter is a battle won against the planet’s unyielding soil. Friction here isn’t abstract; it’s the difference between discovery and dust.

Yet, in this enmity lies a paradox. Friction enables grip—without it, we’d slip through life like ghosts on ice, unable to walk, drive, or even hold a pen to paper. Tires would spin futilely on rain-slicked roads; climbers would tumble from sheer cliffs. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, refining Amontons’ work in 1785, quantified static versus kinetic friction, revealing how the former prevents motion altogether, while the latter merely hinders it. Static friction is the gatekeeper, the immobilizer; kinetic, the pursuer that nips at your heels. To move is to declare war on both.

As we transition from the laboratory to the labyrinth of the human spirit, remember: the principles that govern sliding blocks and spinning gears also script the stories of our stalled dreams. Friction’s grip extends far beyond the material world.

The Psychological Drag: When Mind Meets Matter

If physics provides the blueprint, psychology paints the battlefield. Here, friction manifests not as a force vector but as the invisible weights we carry—doubts, habits, fears—that resist the impulse to act. “Friction is the mortal enemy of movement” resonates deepest in this arena, where movement isn’t mere locomotion but the bold leap from intention to incarnation.

Behavioral economists like Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), describe this as “ego depletion,” the mental fatigue that builds like rust on unused gears. Each decision, each micro-choice, generates frictional heat, draining willpower until paralysis sets in.

Procrastination? That’s friction in its purest form: the static cling of “not now” holding you to the couch while your ambitions skid into oblivion. Studies from the American Psychological Association (2022) show that decision fatigue contributes to 40% of daily regrets, a statistic that underscores how this enemy doesn’t just slow us—it kills opportunities in their cradle.

Consider the entrepreneur at the kitchen table, cursor blinking over a blank business plan. The friction here is multifaceted: the fear of failure (what if it flops?), the inertia of comfort (why risk the steady paycheck?), the societal static of naysayers (”Stick to your day job”).

It’s the same force that kept J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter manuscript rejected by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury took a chance in 1997. Each “no” was a frictional encounter, grinding her resolve, yet she pushed through, transforming literary movement into a global phenomenon.

In creativity, friction often masquerades as the blank page syndrome. As a wordsmith, I’ve stared down countless drafts where the first sentence flows like silk, only for the second to snag on doubt’s barbed wire. Julia Cameron, in The Artist’s Way (1992), calls this “the inner censor,” a frictional voice that whispers sabotage.

Her antidote? Morning pages—daily stream-of-consciousness writing to lubricate the gears of expression. It’s a reminder that psychological friction thrives in isolation; community, feedback, and ritual are the oils that ease the slide.

But let’s delve deeper into the neuroscience. fMRI studies from Stanford (2019) reveal that the brain’s basal ganglia, the movement command center, lights up not just for physical action but for initiating change. Dopamine, the neurotransmitter of motivation, surges to overcome frictional thresholds, but chronic stress floods the system with cortisol, thickening the resistance. In essence, our minds are engines prone to overheating, where friction isn’t external but a self-imposed tax on velocity.

This psychological lens reveals friction’s mortality: it doesn’t just oppose movement; it starves the soul of vitality. Unchecked, it leads to what psychologists term “learned helplessness,” a state where repeated frictional defeats convince us motion is futile.

Martin Seligman’s experiments in the 1960s with shocked dogs demonstrated this heartbreakingly—subjects stopped trying to escape electrified floors after futile attempts. Translate that to human terms: the dieter who abandons the gym after one slip, the writer who shelves the novel after a harsh critique. Friction kills not with a blade, but by attrition, eroding the will to move until we fossilize in place.

Yet, herein lies empowerment. Recognizing friction as enemy allows us to engineer countermeasures. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques, for instance, reduce decisional drag by reframing obstacles as surmountable inclines rather than impassable walls.

Apps like Habitica gamify progress, turning frictional hurdles into quests with rewards. The key? Momentum begets momentum. Newton’s first law applies to the psyche: an object (you) in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by a frictional force. Start small—a single step, a solitary sentence—and watch the enemy retreat.

Philosophical Undercurrents: The Eternal Dance of Being and Becoming

Philosophy elevates friction from foe to fulcrum, a necessary tension in the dialectic of existence. Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic sage, proclaimed in fragments circa 500 BCE, “No man ever steps in the same river twice,” celebrating flux as the essence of reality. Movement is life; stasis, death. Friction, then, is the antagonist in this cosmic drama, the force that Heraclitus might liken to strife—the “father of all things” that births progress through opposition.

Fast-forward to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), where the Übermensch overcomes the “spirit of gravity,” a metaphorical friction weighing down the soul’s ascent. “One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star,” he writes. Here, friction is the chaos, the raw abrasion that polishes the dancer from the dreamer. Without it, movement lacks texture, purpose. Yet Nietzsche warns: too much, and it crushes; too little, and we float aimlessly, untethered.

In Eastern thought, the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (6th century BCE) offers a subtler view. The Tao flows like water, frictionless around obstacles, yet it carves canyons through persistence. “The softest thing in the world overcomes the hardest,” Chapter 43 muses. Friction, then, is not to be battled head-on but navigated—wu wei, effortless action, minimizes drag by aligning with the current. This resonates with modern stoicism: Epictetus advised focusing on what’s in our control, treating external frictions as indifferent.

Contemporary philosophers like Byung-Chul Han, in The Burnout Society (2010), diagnose friction’s modern mutation: “achievement society” where self-exploitation generates infinite internal drag. We friction ourselves into exhaustion, scrolling endlessly, multitasking into paralysis. Han’s prescription? Contemplative pauses, sacred idleness—to restore smooth passage.

Building on “Friction is the mortal enemy of movement,” philosophy reframes the sentence: friction is mortal because it threatens our becoming. Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) distinguishes Dasein—being-toward-death—from mere being-there. Movement toward authenticity combats the frictional “they-self,” the conformist drag of the crowd. In this light, the sentence isn’t lament but call to arms: slay the enemy, or die unmoved.

Strategies for Victory: Lubricating the Path to Fluidity

Theory without practice is friction’s ally. So, how do we vanquish this enemy in daily life? Let’s forge a toolkit, drawing from science, soul, and strategy.

1. Minimize Contact Points: In physics, reduce surface area to lessen friction. Psychologically, simplify. Ruthlessly audit your life: unsubscribe from draining newsletters, delegate soul-sucking tasks, curate a friction-free environment. Marie Kondo’s tidying extends to the mind—does this thought, this commitment, spark joy or snag?

2. Apply Lubricants of Ritual: WD-40 for the spirit. Establish micro-habits: the 2-minute rule (if it takes less than two minutes, do it now) from David Allen’s Getting Things Done (2001). For creators, timed writing sprints lubricate the flow state, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes in Flow (1990).

3. Harness Momentum Catalysts: External forces propel. Accountability partners, like a writing group, provide the push. Apps such as Focus@Will use neuroscience-backed soundscapes to lower cognitive friction. In business, agile methodologies—short sprints, iterative feedback—keep teams sliding forward.

4. Embrace Controlled Friction: Not all resistance is evil. Weight training builds muscle through micro-tears; similarly, deliberate challenges forge resilience. Cal Newport’s Deep Work (2016) advocates scheduling “frictionful” deep dives amid smooth routines.

5. Philosophical Reframing: View friction as teacher. When stalled, ask: What grip is this providing? Is it protecting me from rash leaps? Journaling, as in Cameron’s method, transmutes drag into direction.

Case study: Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Early Falcon 1 failures were frictional infernos—explosions, delays, near-bankruptcy. Yet each setback lubricated the path: reusable rockets now slash costs by 90%, turning orbital movement into routine. Musk’s mantra? “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” Friction, endured, evolves from enemy to engineer.

The Broader Implications: Society’s Stagnant Gears

Zoom out, and friction scales to civilizations—and in the Trump era of 2025, it’s the bureaucratic red tape and global entanglements choking America’s self-reliance. Trump’s first 200 days have ignited a movement toward economic sovereignty: slashing regulations at a 10-to-1 ratio, deporting record numbers to secure borders, and issuing executive orders to onshore critical supply chains. This isn’t just policy; it’s a cultural uprising against the frictional drag of overregulation and foreign dependency that offshored jobs and eroded autonomy.

Consider the CHIPS Act’s evolution under Trump: a $1 billion push into critical minerals via the Defense Production Act, decoupling U.S. semiconductors from China and fueling domestic innovation. Or the national conservative blueprint of Project 2025, clashing with tech elites to revive a manufacturing-based economy where self-reliance trumps shareholder excess. These efforts echo Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” (1942)—frictional upheavals where old dependencies yield to resilient, homegrown systems. Yet excessive friction, like monopolistic tech gatekeepers or endless trade deficits, still stifles the flow.

Culturally, this movement manifests in homesteaders ditching urban grids for off-grid setups, entrepreneurs bootstrapping AI tools amid tariff wars, and communities forming mutual aid networks against policy whiplash. Social media amplifies it, with #SelfReliance2025 trending as algorithms shift from echo chambers to empowerment hubs. To propel society forward, we need more bridges to independence—initiatives like Trump’s April 2025 national emergency declaration on supply chains, fortifying U.S. edges against foreign vulnerabilities. Friction here isn’t just personal; it’s the enemy of a nation’s momentum toward unapologetic self-sufficiency.

Conclusion: Reclaiming the Dance

As the curtain falls on this exploration, let “Friction is the mortal enemy of movement” echo not as dirge, but as declaration of war won. We’ve mapped its terrains—from atomic skirmishes to societal sieges— and forged weapons of wisdom. Friction will always lurk, the shadow to light’s advance, but armed with awareness, we can slip its grasp.

In the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet (1903): “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Movement, then, is our rebellion—a fluid, defiant waltz through the grit. So rise, reader. Shed the drag. Step into the river anew. The current awaits, and friction be damned, we shall flow.

Ric

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This morning, as I scrolled through the digital ether—a vast, uncharted sea of algorithms and alerts—a drone article buzzed into my feed like a persistent mosquito. No surprise there; my algotree’s been humming with drone content for weeks, mirroring my sharpening obsession. Drones aren’t just gadgets anymore; they’re the new compass points in our skies, rewriting navigation for commerce, conflict, and perhaps even survival.

This fascination has steered me straight into drone pilot classes, where I’m charting a path toward an FAA Part 107 UAS Remote Pilot Certificate. Rolled out in 2006 amid a boom in drone manufacturing, this cert transforms backyard flyers into certified navigators of the National Airspace System. The coursework? It’s a grind—air law, meteorology, sectional charts—but it’s exhilarating, like plotting a star course in a storm.

Yet, as I dive deeper, a shadow looms over the horizon. Michael Knights’ recent UnHerd piece paints a stark picture: drones are upending warfare, turning battlefields into video-game arenas where cheap swarms outmaneuver multimillion-dollar hardware.

If the apocalypse hits tomorrow, nations like Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, and China could dominate the skies with militarized fleets, leaving America scrambling in the dust. This gap, widening over the past four years, has surfaced in public discourse, yet it’s met with a collective yawn. Why the apathy? Perhaps because drones feel distant, like stars in a night sky—until they blot out the sun.

Let’s rewind the compass needle to understand how we got here. The history of drones stretches back over two centuries, a tale of innovation born from war’s grim necessities. It begins in 1782 with the Montgolfier brothers in France, who launched unmanned hot-air balloons for aerial observation, primitive scouts floating on thermal winds. By 1806, kites joined the fray, used by British forces for reconnaissance.

But the real pivot came in 1849 during the Venetian revolt against Austria: Austrian forces deployed bomb-laden balloons against rebels, marking the first military use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These weren’t sleek quadcopters; they were crude, wind-dependent harbingers of airborne destruction.

A target drone incidentally launched Marilyn Monroe’s career when she worked in its factory

Fast-forward to the late 19th century. In 1898, Nikola Tesla demonstrated the first radio-controlled craft—a boat, but the principle ignited imaginations for aerial applications. World War I accelerated the evolution: In 1917, the U.S. Navy tested the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane, a torpedo-like “flying bomb” guided by gyroscopes.

The interwar years birthed the term “drone,” inspired by the de Havilland DH.82B Queen Bee, a radio-controlled target aircraft buzzing like its namesake. World War II saw mass production: The German V-1 “buzz bomb” terrorized London, while the U.S. fielded the Radioplane OQ-2, a target drone that incidentally launched Marilyn Monroe’s career when she worked in its factory.

The Cold War era refined drones into reconnaissance tools. During Vietnam, the Ryan Firebee conducted over 3,400 missions, snapping photos over hostile territory without risking pilots. The 1980s brought GPS integration, enabling precise strikes, as seen in Israel’s use of decoy drones during the 1982 Lebanon War. The modern era exploded in the 1990s with the Predator drone, armed with Hellfire missiles post-9/11, becoming synonymous with targeted assassinations in the War on Terror.

By the 2010s, commercial drones like DJI’s Phantom series democratized the tech, turning hobbyists into aerial filmmakers and surveyors. Today, we’re in the swarm age, where AI orchestrates fleets in synchronized dances of data and destruction.

The U.S. is still flying 1991-era strategies while adversaries iterate in real-time wars

Now, where does America stand in this aerial odyssey as of October 2025? The view from the cockpit isn’t reassuring. Despite being the birthplace of many drone innovations, the U.S. military is grappling with a profound lag. Over 400 drone incursions over U.S. bases have been reported in the past year, an 82% spike, exposing vulnerabilities in counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS).

The Pentagon’s reliance on high-end platforms like the MQ-9 Reaper—costing millions per unit—clashes with the cheap, disposable FPV drones dominating Ukraine’s frontlines, where they account for 70% of kills. Feedback from Ukrainian forces led the U.S. to halt Switchblade deliveries; they simply weren’t cutting it against evolving threats.

Policy shifts are underway, though. In June 2025, an executive order aimed to “unleash American drone dominance,” accelerating commercialization and integration into airspace. By July, the Pentagon announced plans to ramp up low-cost drone production, drawing on innovative tech to close the gap. August brought more EOs restricting foreign drones (read: China’s DJI) and bolstering domestic manufacturing.

September saw reinterpretations of arms control pacts, easing exports of U.S. military drones by treating them like fighter jets rather than missiles. Marines are experimenting with emerging tech in exercises, aligning with DoW’s July drone modernization guidance. Yet, critics argue it’s reactive: The U.S. is still flying 1991-era strategies while adversaries iterate in real-time wars. Commercially, events like the 2025 UAV Expo highlight AI and autonomy, but regulations lag, stifling growth.

Key Takeaways from Commercial UAV Expo 2025

Peering into the future, the commercial drone landscape portends a revolution in efficiency and accessibility. By 2030, the global market could hit $57.8 billion, growing at a compound annual rate from $40.6 billion in 2025, driven by services like delivery and inspection. AI-powered autonomy will dominate: Drones navigating urban canyons for Amazon packages or surveying farms with precision agriculture sensors.

Beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations will unlock drone delivery at scale, with heavy-lift models hauling cargo to remote areas. Public safety will surge—drones aiding first responders in disasters, equipped with thermal imaging for search-and-rescue. Easing U.S. regs could swarm skies with autonomous fleets, but privacy concerns and airspace congestion loom as black holes.

Delivery drones alone might balloon from $1.8 billion in 2023 to $12.3 billion by 2028. Innovations like extended battery life, swarm coordination, and AI navigation will make drones indispensable, turning everyday logistics into a ballet of buzzing bots.

Militarily, the horizon darkens with promise and peril. By 2035, the military drone market could reach $60.66 billion from $19.65 billion in 2024. Trends point to AI autonomy, where drones make split-second decisions without human input. Swarm tactics will prevail: Fleets of mini-drones overwhelming defenses, as previewed in Ukraine. Stealth ops and loitering munitions will evolve, with miniaturization enabling insect-sized spies.

By 2026 and beyond, expect integrated payloads for electronic warfare, jamming enemy comms mid-flight. The U.S. draws lessons from Ukraine, pushing replicator programs for mass-produced, disposable UAVs. But adversaries like China lead in production scale, exporting to proxies and reshaping alliances. Ethical quandaries arise: Autonomous kills blurring lines between soldier and machine.

The 21st century as the “Drone Age”?

And then, the apocalypse—where drones become the warlords’ scepter. In a collapsed world, drones democratize destruction, empowering ragtag militias with off-the-shelf tech modified for mayhem. Picture swarms scouring ruins, enforcing territories for post-societal overlords. Ukraine’s “drone hellscape” foreshadows this: Cheap FPVs turning battlefields into no-man’s-lands. Warlords could 3D-print fleets, using solar-charged bases to patrol supply lines or assassinate rivals. Non-state actors, like terrorists, already wield them for strikes on infrastructure. In doomsday scenarios, nuclear fallout zones become drone domains, scavenging or defending scarce resources. The 21st century as the “Drone Age”? Swarms could render traditional armies obsolete, with AI networks self-replicating in abandoned factories. Armor extinct, skies ruled by buzzing hordes— a gritty reset where survival hinges on hacking the heavens. Even U.S. infrastructure faces siege from weaponized hobby drones.

As I wrap this celestial navigation through drone realms, the compass spins toward action. America must throttle up—invest in innovation, train pilots like me, and awaken from the yawn. The skies await, fraught with opportunity and omen. If this post has you scanning the horizon, subscribe to Compass Star Wordsmith for more raw reckonings. Share your drone tales in the comments—let’s chart the next course together.

Ric

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Our new identities are defined by our politics.

And our new politics are created by our culture.

Our new political parties are tribal now, not racial.

The difference is that now, to be in the tribe, one must be pure.

so what’s left to dissect, discuss, or determine? where we go from here? where we came from to get here? how we got here? is this all really worth saving? is this the end?

Compass Star Wordsmith is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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At 12:23:55 p.m. Kirk was carried by six men to an SUV, which took him to Timpanogos Regional Hospital in Orem, where he was pronounced dead. His death was announced by Donald Trump at 2:40 p.m. on Truth Social.

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

John 12:24

Picture it: a single grain, buried in the dirt, cracking open in the dark. No fanfare, no witnesses—just the quiet rot that births a field. After hearing the connection between the time Kirk was shot and the Bible verse, it’s been rattling in my skull lately, John 12:24, like a prophecy for these fractured times.

We’ve been watching kernels drop left and right: old identities, stale parties, cultural icons we once worshipped. They hit the ground, die, and what sprouts? Not the same lonely seed, but a harvest of something wilder, more tangled. That’s the essence of this era—a shotgun wedding between politics and culture, where the vows are written in blood and the honeymoon is a battlefield.

Last weekend, Compass Star Wordsmith traveled to Phoenix thinking getting in wouldn’t be a big deal. As one of the 277,000 device holders geotagged in the area, access was denied for all but the hardcore lined up at midnight.

The aftermath of that crowd was its own world, and the cleanup was underway outside while the tears were flowing inside. I found this an apt analogy: yeah, life sucks. but we gotta get started cleaning this shit up. let’s get to work. God loves work.

I shot a couple of videos of the protest area. They seemed petered out. The law enforcement presence was quite impressive. No riots, no burning cars, no anger.

But let’s not jump ahead. I’ve been hearing pundits everywhere: “political assassination.” The news cycles chew it up, spit it out—Charlie Kirk’s murder on September 10, that brutal hit in broad daylight, labeled as another notch in America’s long ledger of political violence.

They call it political, but peel back the layers, and it’s cultural assassination, pure and raw. Kirk wasn’t just a podcaster or a conservative firebrand; he was a cultural lightning rod, amplifying the rifts in how we see family, faith, freedom. His death? It wasn’t about policy papers or votes. It was a strike at the heart of the cultural war machine, an extension of the cancel cultures and demonizations that have been brewing since Trump descended that golden escalator. We’re not killing leaders anymore; we’re assassinating ideas, tribes, ways of being.

Think about it like a wildfire—uncontainable, leaping from spark to inferno. That’s the core of Watchhouse’s 2016 track “Wildfire” from their album Blindfaller—a folk lament that weaves history’s threads into a burning tapestry. Formerly known as Mandolin Orange, the duo (Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz) crafts a narrative where brave men fall with battle cries, tears in the eyes of loved ones, and it all spreads “like wildfire.”

Joseph Warren, the Revolutionary War hero, could have been spared by his rank, but a nascent nation demanded bravery, and the flames took hold. From ashes, liberty grows like pine seeds cracking open in the blaze, only to burn again. It’s a cycle: wars that should have ended slavery but didn’t, because money rolled in, and the cry for war ignited anew. Civil War comes, pride swells in the South, hatred passed down like an heirloom, and here we are, still caught in the wildfire.

This song isn’t just melody; it’s a mirror to our moment. The ideologies—racism, division—spread uncontrollably, like flames through dry tinder. In the lyrics: “It should have been different / It could have been easy / But too much money rolled in to ever end slavery / The cry for war spread like wildfire.” And later: “I was born a southern son / In a small southern town where the rebels run / They beat their chest and swear we’re gonna rise again.”

It’s the persistence of old fires, the way cultural embers smolder and reignite political infernos. That’s this cultural blaze: it started small, maybe with a tweet or a protest, but now it’s roaring through institutions, parties, identities. The flames don’t discriminate—they consume the old growth to make way for the new. And in the ash? Seeds crack open, echoing John’s verse.

Yet, in the heat of it all, there’s another tune echoing: “Lean on the Lord” by Housefires, featuring Ryan Ellis and Cecily. Released in 2022 as part of their album How to Start a Housefire, it’s a worship anthem that cuts through the chaos with raw faith. “I lean on the Lord, lean on the Lord / Some things don’t make sense / But one thing’s for sure / When I lean on You, Lord / Lean on You, Lord / Somehow Your love gives me the strength to go on.”

It’s the cry of surrender, turning tragedy into symphony: “If I’m still breathing / There’s a reason that I’m still around / Turn a tragedy into a symphony / And only You can show me how / I lean on the Lord.” Amid the wildfire’s rage, this song calls us to lean not on human tribes alone, but on divine strength—the ultimate anchor when cultures clash and politics burn. It’s the spiritual lean, where faith transforms the fall into fertile ground.

Since I launched Compass Star Wordsmith back in 2020, I’ve been hammering this nail: identity as defined by skin color is over. Done. Buried like that wheat kernel. The old racial lines? They’re blurring, dissolving in the acid bath of cultural realignment. Our new identities? Forged in the furnace of politics. But wait—it’s a loop. Our politics are birthed from culture, and culture feeds back into the beast.

Religion hides in culture’s folds, whispering scriptures like John 12:24, while identity struts through politics like a peacock in a storm. “Lean on the Lord” amplifies this: in uncertainty, when “some things don’t make sense,” faith becomes the new tribal bond, transcending old divides.

In the past, “polite society” demanded silence on these fronts. Keep your faith private, your politics cordial. But JFK’s Camelot shattered that illusion. Kennedy, the golden boy, Catholic charm meets Hollywood glamour—he married politics to culture in a way that felt aspirational, mythic. Then Vietnam hit, a quagmire of body bags and burning draft cards, colliding the two worlds into a wreck we couldn’t ignore and are still discovering hidden wounds and raw scabs.

Fast-forward to today, September 28, 2025, and the wreckage is everywhere. The Democratic Party? It’s splintering like dry wood in a wildfire. Their traditional base? Eroded. Black and white older women holding the line, but the men, Hispanics, young voters? They’ve bolted to MAGA country.

James Carville, that old strategist warhorse, called it: the progressive wing—Bernie, AOC, Zohran, the “working-man socialist” crowd—needs to split off, or the whole thing burns. To join, you must be pure. No race traitors, no fence-sitters. Dissent? You’re out, canceled, assassinated in the court of public opinion—or worse, as Kirk’s fate reminds us.

The progressives are digging in, echoing scholars like Mahmood Mamdani on decolonization and identity, but it’s clashing with the moderates who see DEI and trans rights as electoral poison. Pessimism reigns—polls show Democrats down on their own future, fractured over everything from Gaza to gender. It’s internecine warfare, the last gasps of a dying entity.

And the GOP? The Romney-Ryan-Jeb! brigade is a ghost town. Trump killed that version stone dead, replacing it with a tribal force that’s raw, unapologetic. No more “compassionate conservatism”—it’s cultural warfare, plain and simple. The parties aren’t racial anymore; they’re tribal.

So, what’s left to dissect? Where we came from, how we got here, where we’re headed. First, is this “bad times”? History’s full of folks who thought so in the moment. The American Revolution: chaos, brother against brother, economic ruin—like Joseph Warren’s fall in “Wildfire,” a spark that spread. The Civil War: rivers of blood, families torn, pride fueling the flames. Those living through it cursed the days. Yet history judges the outcomes good—freedom birthed, union preserved.

We do the same in our lives: that job loss, that heartbreak, those “bad” seasons we survive, only to look back and see the growth. The kernel died, but the harvest fed us. As Watchhouse sings: “From the ashes grew sweet liberty / Like the seeds of the pines when the forest burns / They open up to grow and burn again.” And Housefires echoes: “Turn a tragedy into a symphony”—the divine twist on human strife.

Labeling it all? Judging intent by outcome, input by output—it’s tricky. When Trump rode that golden escalator in 2015, it was symbolism on steroids. Here was the king of celebrity, America’s gaudy aristocrat, descending from cultural heights into political muck. Pre-politics, he was adored as an avatar of avarice—The Apprentice idol, tabloid titan. But crossing that Rubicon? It dragged us all across. Suddenly, his celebrity wasn’t admired; it was demonized with a speed that defines the age. Alacrity, like the whirlwind in historical winds, sweeping away the old politeness.

This intertwining isn’t new. Revolutionary balls in 1776 mixed politics with powdered wigs and dances—culture as camouflage for rebellion. Antebellum plantations? Politics baked into the social fabric, slavery’s horrors wrapped in Southern hospitality, echoes of the “southern son” in “Wildfire” swearing to rise again.

But in Trump’s era, it’s accelerated, digitized, weaponized. Social media turns every opinion into a battlefield, every like a loyalty oath. Cultural assassination thrives here: not bullets always, but boycotts, doxxing, deplatforming. Kirk’s physical death? Just the extreme end of a spectrum that’s been erasing voices for years.

Let’s zoom out. History’s littered with these shifts, assassinations that weren’t just kills but cultural resets. Julius Caesar, stabbed in the Senate—political, sure, but it ended the Republic, birthing empire from the blood. Lincoln’s murder: end of Reconstruction’s promise, a cultural gut-punch to emancipation’s dream.

The 1960s? A decade of daggers: JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X—each a cultural assassination, striking at hope, civil rights, the American myth. They died, but the seeds multiplied: civil rights acts, anti-war movements, a cultural rebirth amid the pain, much like the liberty sprouting from Watchhouse’s ashes or the symphony from Housefires’ tragedy.

Today? It’s subtler, faster. Cancel culture as assassination by a thousand cuts. A comedian’s joke lands wrong—bam, career torched. A politician strays from tribal purity—exiled. But physical ones persist: Kirk’s hit echoes those ‘60s killings, a reminder that when culture and politics wed, the offspring can be violent.

And the parties? Democrats hollowed out, as critics say, by NGO dependencies and dealignment from working-class roots. GOP? Renewed in Trump’s image, but at what cost? National pride’s dipping, split by party lines—only 36% of Democrats extremely proud to be American.

Where do we go? Lean on the Lord, but wisely. The wildfire clears the underbrush; what grows next is ours to plant. Identity’s evolving—politics as culture means tribes based on values, not visuals. MAGA’s pulled in the disaffected; progressives might birth their own party, a Mamdani-inspired decolonial force. Moderates? They could renew the center, as think tanks urge. But purity tests? They’ll kill more kernels than they sow, spreading like Watchhouse’s unrelenting flames. Housefires reminds: “Somehow Your love gives me the strength to go on”—perhaps the key to transcending tribal wars.

In my own life, I’ve felt this. That car accident a couple decades back, the DUI that upended everything—it was my personal assassination, cultural and political. Lost the old identity, buried it, and what sprouted? This wordsmith gig, navigating the confluence of life elements: food, music, art, craft, history. (L/5e=C, remember?)

It’s the same for us collectively. The crash is here; the response defines us. Watchhouse’s “Wildfire” plays in my head: “The day that old Warren died hate should have gone with it / But here we are caught in the wildfire.” We’re caught, yes—but Housefires urges: lean on the Lord. The flames rage, but tomorrow’s harvest awaits, turned from tragedy to symphony.

So, is this bad or good? Both, neither. It’s the fall, the die-off. But Housefires croons: lean on the Lord. Watchhouse’s haunting melody calls from the embers. And John’s verse promises: from death, multiplicity. We’re in the dirt now, cracking. What harvest awaits? That’s the question for tomorrow.

keep thinking

Ric

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I have never worn any political apparel (even while working at a Presidential Library) - buttons, t-shirts, pins, hats, anything with a politicians name on it - except a sticker I get when I vote. Oddly, it doesn’t say who or what I voted for, it merely expresses my commitment to the American Experiment. All that changed last Wednesday.

I received the first official Press Pass for Compass Star Wordsmith to cover the memorial for Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Phoenix Az on September 21.

Compass Star Wordsmith will be active on Notes starting Saturday for the five-hour drive from SoCal. I’m staying at one of the last hotels that were not sold out at 630 am this morning. It’s a Hilton, whew. It’s within a 6-minute walking radius and I anticipate less than what I will experience. I don’t know what I don’t know. This will be Cultural History.

This will not be the first memorial I’ve attended, but it will be the first “political’ event as the culture now assigns new labels to old activities. Even though I am always labeled a Trumper, the fact is, had votes for president been public knowledge when I was in prison, I would have got killed by my own race, the whites. One of three races inside - black and brown being the other two. The yellows and reds are usually lumped in with the blacks.

You see, I am a Reverse Negro - a white guy that voted for Obama twice before I served time in state prison. Had the man living in my prison cell called Snickers, the one with the swastika tattooed between his eyebrows, known that, I would have been shanked. Add to that the fact I was married to a Latina. Double Shank. Do you see how this works?

Today’s post is a a memorial. A monument. To a man. To a moment. To a movement.

Compass Star Wordsmith is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Your support today would be eternally appreciated. The Memorial Prayer post below was written a few years ago, but seem apropos for today. Consider donating to your favorite cause in Charlie’s name.

Is the First Amendment alive and well? The Second Amendment is, well, “alive and well” seems to be not quite the appropriate phrase, as it’s abused to cancel the out the one above it. Where on the map are we? Is All Lost? Or Now Found?

My Five Elements of Life are well known round these parts. If you are not in the know take a look below. We have to understand other tribes and cultures. To survive this Now-Normal, the Five Elements are inescapable for civilization to survive. When one element is ignored or inhibited, culture at large suffers.

Compass Star Wordsmith

I write about the confluence of the elements of life that create culture. I express that confluence with this formula - (L/5e=C) Life / Food + Music + Art + Craft + History = Culture

By ric leczel

Sure, if this (civilization, that is) fails, localized warring tribes will consume the earth as they did throughout history. War is our nature, as power is our nurture. If we are out of power, we seek to regain it. Once in power, we strive to maintain it.

It is no surprise that the Art of Argument is lost, when power is both judge and sword. History is strewn with the souls of savants sacrificed on the altar of Free Speech. What is it about us? What will be the final straw? When do we break?

When a man gets shot from 200 yards in an open debate forum, what does that say about a society? When a man gets shot from 20 paces in an honor duel, what does that say about society? Both have happened - 250-some years ago and last week. Is one murder better than another? One murderer better than another murderer?

Cain, Adam and Eve’s oldest son, killed his younger brother Abel. It was the first human murder in History. There were only four people on Earth. Killing people is not going away. What, as Human Beings, are we to do with the dark knowledge of determinable death? Can talking openly open some doors so many think in their minds are closed? Each inmate imprisoned in their mind owns the key to freedom.