Feel with Neil

How ‘America First’ Ends

From

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/america-first-trump-doge/682164/

Interesting from a left mag:
Engagement is preferred to isolationism.

From the right, some speculate current policy shifts aim at

(A) getting other nations to strengthen their military deterrent strength because the US cannot alone keep China in check, especially if they are warm with Russia;

(B) getting other nations to strengthen their economies because the US cannot alone keep China in check, especially if they are warm on bilateral trade with Russia;

(C) reducing every American interest that isn’t aimed squarely – SQUARELY without distraction or dilution – at checking China both militarily and financially.

There’s a single location on the globe that dictates the world’s future for decades (or centuries), and it ain’t Ukraine or Gaza, for crying out loud. It is…

The Taiwan Strait

I’m no more immune to desensitization by statistics than anyone else. The Ukraine horror, for example, is honestly reduced to that word “horror” because it doesn’t touch me directly. And if it doesn’t touch you directly, I’m not interested in your pretentious moralizing or virtue signaling. But I’ll concede without hesitation that neither you nor I have iron-cold hearts. It shatters mine as it likely does yours.

I think that’s OK. It’s hard not to sound trite, but I think it’s “fine” and “good” for you and me to be heartbroken over Ukraine, Gaza, and everywhere else a single human being suffers. Both you and I are human beings. And so is each individual in the CCP; but, yes, I’ll risk the blanket statement that they are lesser human beings. Or, from a different and more salient perspective, they are *greater* human beings in terms of using the power to which the rest of us human beings are vulnerable. Nietzschean Uberman-style.

So if you work for a corporation that is DEI-inclined, go ahead and apologize for the ill-acquired land on which your office is built. Put some signal icon on all your social media that Black Lives Matter. Advocate for the new 54% of teenage girls who now “identify” as trans after a single generation. And blame climate deniers for normal planetary dynamics. Protest or support strapping some cloth over the bottom half of your face from ear to ear, or whether the 75th needle should be injected into your newborn. You are brilliant; you’ve been educated by the technology that has connected the world.

Except in China.
And in Russia.
Where they have leaders giggling about my angst that their minions can easily have my credit card and Social Security numbers 10 seconds from now.

They aren’t giggling about how easy it is. They are giggling that I give a shit about that.

As long as I’m worried about that, I will make my leaders worry about it too. And as long as my leaders are worried about that, they don’t know what the hell is happening that actually matters…

Wait,…

Pardon me, it MATTERS to you and your current children. For a minute. Or a year, or maybe even half a decade. You are pissed off that you read this lame article for this long, because it took you five minutes to get this far….

They’re a little longer-viewed than you are.

Yes, super powers care about the impact of a 15 second TikTok. But only because they can do simple math. Simple. Math. 15 seconds times 2 billion people is a pretty goddamn big impact.

So go hold your protest on Wall Street or some Ivy League campus. Our ACTUAL enemies never dreamed how easy it would be. It almost makes me wish I was one of them.

Wanna vote for Trump? Excellent.

Wanna hate and oppose him and half of the US electorate?

Not just excellent…

Beyond what evil can *imagine*!!!

“I love Trump.”
“I hate Trump.”

“Holy shit,” says the CCP: “This is easier than dynamiting fish in a barrel.”

“‘Divide and conquer’ was supposed to be hard. But all we needed was a couple of teenage hackers to tip the world upside down. Because Western adults are juveniles.”

Guilty.

And now the CCP must be thinking that this was quite obviously “destiny,” because we “morally upright” people in the west seem now to want to destroy ourselves.

The dividends of peace are annihilation.

Separating the church and state were not originally American ideas. Nor democratic ideas. And I don’t know whether they predated Christianity or not, but we elite moralists and virtue-signalers ought to think hard on the synoptic gospel passages about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. What in hell could Jesus have possibly meant? (Emphasis on “in hell.”)

In the Old Testament, why “in hell” did The Lord require the annihilation of certain peoples? (Whether The Lord did or did not, that is how the storytellers told it.)

If you read much around the “render unto Caesar” passage, you know that the context was excoriation of hypocrisy. As adults, we all should know that the engine of hypocrisy is guilt. And “majority guilt” sounds like it excludes minorities. Isn’t that what “white guilt” means, exactly? I’d like to unpack and expand that a little bit…

I’m a white Caucasian Christian heterosexual male. By popular understanding, I am the best of the best oppressors! Yay me! And Trump is, according to the oppressed, my hero! And if you do not share my precise identity, you are oppressed. Accordingly, if your “identity” shares my demographics, you are guilty of the most ism’s in any western cultures. Shame on us, and power to our resistors!

Support DEI!
Stand for freedom of choice!
Pro Palestine!
Hate Trump!
Support Ukraine!
Down with tariffs!
God is dead!

Love Trump!
Pro Life!
Marriage amendment!
Peace through strength!
Jesus saves!

Whatever you advocate, just don’t watch the US dollar be undermined by non-dollar investment in Africa, Canada, Panama, Mexico, Russia…
After all, reproductive rights have been overturned by SCOTUS!
*Most* teen girls might be suicidal without gender-affirming care.
Elon is a Nazi.
Biden was a puppet.

Just don’t pay any attention to…

The Roman Empire was toppled by… WTF? Christianity? Persians? Jews? Mongols? Britons? Germanic barbarians?

Roman psychosis.

Roman denial.

Hypocrisy? Oh, hell no.

…

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

Unless it’s engagement with Putin.

…

The Taiwan Strait

It’s the epicenter of today’s *actual* Cold War, and I myself have pretty much zero tolerance for disputes about that.

Whether it’s already too late to inhibit Sinohegemony ain’t anything I can opine. But the CCP has made their plans clear for decades, and so I’m more than pissed that leaders of the so-called world powers like the US and Europe have betrayed all of us by astounding neglect.

In my ignorant opinion, there’s better than a coin-flip’s chance that our great grandchildren’s lives will be controlled by the CCP – if not *directly* governed by it, and if not our grandchildren.

…

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

While hippies got high, feminists took the pill, Bob wrote protest songs, and American boys killed in rain forests on the other side of a desktop globe, “I am not a crook” engaged China.

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

As long as the orange-haired antichrist doesn’t engage Putin.

…

Neil D. 2025-03-26

How enormous I, and you, are

What occurs to me more and more often is how enormous I am. How much power I have in my own little world. How much potential I have that I myself do not even recognize and I am not aware of. More and more, it is astounds me how enormous my power is.

My youngest sister shares fond memories of me for my birthday. I cry. I always have when she has done that. More and more, now, though, I sob more deeply and widely. You see, most of the events that she shares about me, I do not remember. This is true when anyone shares a distant memory involving me. I remember so very little compared to the storyteller. And that is what makes me sob more and more. I am not profoundly saddened because I have a shitty memory per se, but because I remember so little of the profound pain and suffering I *must* have caused. To so many. So deeply.

…

I was, am, and will be so much more enormous than even I can ever grasp. I have done enormously good things. And I have done enormously bad things.

I have been, am, and will be enormous. Outside time, I am good and bad. Inside time lies the now, and the future. My memory likely won’t improve:)! More and more, I hope my enormousness tips toward good.

Neil D. 2025-02-28

Trump-hater Challenge (1)

I reject the label of Trump supporter or Republican. I have a dare for you: BEFORE you *read* anything about the unscripted Macron meeting in the Oval Office, watch the FULL video coverage:

DON’T search for the video either, because you’ll see headlines and excerpts if you do.

These unscripted gaggles are remarkable to me.

The point here is to see no media biases before you watch it for yourself. After that, then do searches and compare what you saw versus the headlines about it, with critical thinking. If you’re anti-Trump, don’t worry – you’ll easily find headlines that smack of bias, because that’s how algorithms work: They’ll feed you what you always see – hatred and violent speech that darkens any hope or optimism, which is the intentional structure of the old-order relationship between the press and the body politic. Negativity sells because we each have an evolutionarily hard-wired bias toward the negative. You (nor I) are an exception – it’s not voluntary. It’s scientifically factual.

It’s hard to be politically optimistic if you do not spend your politics time viewing the raw source of information from this administration. I appreciate that watching a 40+ minute video takes more time than reading a biased written article. But I encourage you to do it anyway, instead of spending your time being mindlessly fed algorithm-selected memes and headlines and liking them and forwarding them to fortify your status within your tribe. You do recognize that is pure egocentrism, right?

We are quick to blame the tribal polarization that has divided previously tight-knit American families on Trump and his supporters. The sister at the Thanksgiving table wants her brother to be fed the same algorithm-selected propaganda. The Dunning Kruger effect tells us that we tend to think we are above average. Which of course means no one is average!

Today, the average person has their ego satisfied by mindless advocacy shaped by propaganda and media-feed algorithms. Let’s call lazy what lazy is, and take some honest time in an effort to see the world from the opposite bias. Try it. You might think it’s hard if you haven’t tried it, but it isn’t. It doesn’t take more than 24 hours for your feed algorithms to serve up the opposite bias propaganda. What a wonderful tool to appreciate how average we are. But it hurts, because we can’t avoid also realizing how stupid we were to argue with a beloved relative at a feast.

But take heart in being average, because the people you may have alienated are likely average also. Once you gain some dominion over your own hyper-emotional reactionism to biased propaganda, reconciliation becomes not only possible, but likely. “Be the change you want to see.” It works for the average and the elite alike!

…

Neil D. 2025-02-25

Neil’s Emmanuel Prayer for Neil

My Sweet and All-Merciful Lover,

By Your freely-given grace that has seen me through all things, and always will, I will pour out what You have filled my heart with, in the staggering certainty of faith.

When the anxious, fearful, and ashamed Neil rises up in me today, as he surely will, fill me with grace to smile within, open my arms to him, and welcome him, because I adore him, as You do. What a magnificent child he is, as Yeshua has shown me by grace. I and You will make him ok, as I and You make everything not only ok, but good and wonderful.

Throughout this day, show to my unworthy eyes the face of the Sacred Heart on everyone and everything I meet – including, and especially, when I greet the enemies of the perpetually-forgiven and always-beloved Neil.

My heart overflowing in certainty of Your Love knows it will be so, because You walk with me, Emmanuel. Amen.
.
Neil D. 2024-12-13

Suffering demands a fix. We lie to ourselves

We all suffer. You are suffering. Many currents in our culture see suffering as a problem that needs solutions and fixes. I do not agree. As logical as that might seem to some people, I suggest that logic is very, very ill. And it makes us more ill – mentally, literally – and spawns more suffering. It is not at all logical to think that suffering requires any solutions. Nor that all suffering even *has* solutions.

One great thinker (and actor) suggested that to suffer willing is a supreme act of love. When we undergo suffering but want to fix it or escape it, we are not undergoing it willingly. Unwilling suffering is equal to our collective notion of what hell means.

Another supposedly great thinker called lovingly suffering the “opiate of the masses.” I don’t think he was a very great thinker at all. I rather think he was an emissary from hell. And today’s postmodern neo-Marxists are deputies of Satan who would have us believe that we suffer because it is our victimizers who are evil. Isn’t that a nifty trick? The great deceiver can never deceive greatly unless the deception can be easily mistaken as truth.

What logic *actually* shows us is that every attempt at fixing suffering causes more. Logic shows us how effortlessly easy it is to cause more suffering – infinitely easier to cause more suffering than it is to endure the suffering that is given us to endure.

“What we fail to transform, we transmit.”

Every time and way you willingly take on the suffering that has been specifically dealt to you is an act of profound and supreme love.

That is why suffering is so excruciating!

Yours is yours alone. Therefore cannot actually be shared. You yourself must “take up your cross”; no one can substitute for you. You’re an essential stitch in the fabric of reality. If you abdicate your responsibility for your own cross, you transmit that suffering onto others. Supreme and profound love is merely acting out all you can be.

If you are convinced that suffering is a condition that you should fix, or escape, go ahead and try, and tell me if it doesn’t deepen.

We are not made to fix or escape all suffering. It is not our nature.

To live in harmony with others – it is plainly logical to see – requires and demands suffering in some forms.

Is this not entirely clear to you? Think on it honestly until it is. Every act of authentic love that you have ever performed is necessarily an act of sacrifice. And what is sacrifice, except undertaking suffering willingly?

No sacrificing in the world, no suffering in the world, no love in the world.

Every act you have performed to alleviate suffering in the world amounts to sacrificing something of yourself. You may not consider such sacrifice to be the same as suffering. That’s your perspective or delusion, but it doesn’t mean that not every sacrifice involves suffering.

The greater the willing sacrifice, the greater the willing suffering, the greater the willing love.

So, I don’t wanna hear any more about God wanting us to be happy. God didn’t make us to be happy. That is not our nature. God made us to love and to be loved. That is our nature. And until you can equate happiness with suffering, love will be something you try to find, how? By fixing and escaping? You think that a path toward love? Is that really your experience of love? Does that seem logical, rational, reasonable?

To find the deepest goodness, fix and escape badness? No wonder depression and anxiety are rampant. We seek an out from the human condition because that condition involves suffering. How does that make more sense than the truth that our human nature is to love and therefore involves suffering?

To say that the truth has been revealed implies that it was so completely hidden that it could never be found lest it be magically revealed. I don’t know why those ideas are linked. It is not at all logical. We cannot come to know something that we are incapable of knowing. If we can know it, it is because we are capable of knowing it.

The revelation that profound love involves profound suffering wasn’t something we didn’t know. Deep down we knew it and know it. It was just something we didn’t *want* to know – something we didn’t want to be true, something we wished weren’t true. In that sense, what was revealed is how deeply we didn’t want to know it. How deeply we wished love could be free of suffering.

I’m not sure there is possibly a deeper revelation than awakening to our lies to ourselves. The fantasy of loving without suffering is one all of us hold. Just as all of us carry shame, self hatred, and many other delusions opposing truth. We easily buy the story that we are trash and therefore require a savior who can distract his father so his father doesn’t notice how wretched we are. What a horrible, horrible distortion of the greatest love story ever. Because we persistently wish for love without suffering, our thick skulls required divinity itself to show us they are the way. Love and suffering are bedfellows. A truth inescapable even by the divine.

Wish away. That’s not the truth.

Pick up your cross and love shall be yours. You already knew that.

Neil D. 2024-10-21

The power of change. Nietzsche, Jung, Rohr. “Authentic power is the ability to act from the fullness of who I am,… and the freedom to give myself away.”

A response to religious bribery (corruption). “As success is built on failure, love is built on suffering.”

Compassionate Reactions. “God loves us not collectively, but each tender and suffering soul at a time. That’s what the Christ shows us.”

Donate to a stranger with breast cancer

https://gofund.me/f25039ac

My beloved has a friend with breast cancer in need. My beloved appeals:

“Dear Friends and Family,

This is one of my oldest, dearest friends. I have known Amber since first grade. She is battling the toughest fight of her life. I am reaching out because she is in desperate need of help. Life is kicking her ass right now. I am asking for prayers and donations. About a year before her diagnosis, she separated from her husband. She moved into an apartment with a roommate who left shortly after her breast cancer diagnosis. She has been living in an apartment with only the essentials. No furniture to speak of. She took a job in a textile factory working the night shift on an assembly line. It’s a good job but there are times that she is too sick from the side effects from her chemo treatments to work. She recently tried to move to a smaller apartment. She cannot move in until their pest problem is under control, so she is in between homes right now. This summer, she was in a car accident. She was hit from behind and her car was totaled. Amber’s mother is ill, but is doing her best to help take care of her when she can. Her father was a Penn Hills police officer who died of cancer 20 years ago. Amber has a son, Zachary, who recently became a father himself to a sweet baby boy named Knox. She also has a daughter, Zoe, who holds her hand when she is sick. Amber is tough and proud, and I have never known her to ask for help. So I’m asking for her and with her. All prayers and any donation will help. I am sending this to everyone I know and ask that you do the same. Please, please, please pass this on. Much thanks and gratitude.”

https://gofund.me/f25039ac