Let us warm one another.

Your heart lights in me the glow of life. How fierce the fire my tongue sets in you. Let us start the wildfire of our longing. And rise and fall in one another’s embrace.

Ember to flame. Wind to torrent.

When the heat cools, what will we have wrought? But the greatest love story we have ever seen. I in you, and you in me. Books and moments and music and quiet contemplation. Great art, monuments to love... and some woe. And from us, great nations and worlds,

A universe begun with a spark in our eyes.

---

#poetry #wyst #love

Our Father Who art in heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

Three-Passenger Ship

And to our Atlas, as hers To the best of dawn, and the sea Floes of fish to coral Evidence be on the climb And substance heard, in prayer By particular way, honesty then Parchments of bread and maple Perhaps out of season- And Victory knew The edifice of days- back in tow And in her revenge, a catapult by the Maine Prodigy asleep But staying in Fortune This be the chill In beautiful air, to the distance with planes As they go Westward To a place of springing sea With other washmelt To the time, bless this ground And in the sympathy gait There was no noise to abate And vlad was sick Leeward May And had a plan in hand To announce a sub to a statue Nuclear ocean, the clear death of Holland Fearing the nights of other Crosses And on simple days, a church by a curb Setting lights upon servience Carroe few but this mist- And Audubon carry Perfumes of muster and the sick This is vlad’s place, they heard Digital and Troy Captive to all-hold In verdance by the Maine Happening know In the isles- and the end of the World Places by dawn And dealing there- to be gone.

Escuché tus canciones. No puedo decir que me conmovieron, pero sí que me parecieron diferentes. Eres un músico, quizás no maravilloso, pero sí especial. Tus letras son interesantes, pero sinceramente no puedo decir más, porque no las entiendo.

No sé por qué los jóvenes desperdician sus habilidades y talentos haciendo cosas raras. Sí, esa es la cuestión, cosas extrañas. Como quien dice, salidos de las pautas que han sido tan complejas de establecer. Imagína lo que costó a la sociedad aceptar el rock. Y cuando ya sus normas fueron adoptadas y hasta apreciadas, a unos jóvenes les dió por hacer cosas raras, por ejemplo el funk.

Imagínate lo de hoy. A dónde vamos a parar. Ya no se necesitan instrumentos. La música se hace pulsando unos botones.

Por eso me ha sorprendido gratamente tu disco. Todavía usas instrumentos. Todavía cantas con tu voz. Te felicito, eres un joven increíble. Y valiente: la crítica te va a despedazar.

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Aunque yo le digo a todos que mi cabaña es espaciosa, en realidad este tema forma parte de mis habituales fantasías. No es pequeña comparada con la que asigné a los duendes, si bien -proporcionalmente- la de ellos es más espaciosa.

Soy Santa Claus y a tí te conozco. Ya sabes que en Navidad no hay tiempo para presentaciones. Ahora puedo hacerlo porque estamos en marzo y te has sentado a mi lado con esa enorme jarra de cerveza. Yo llevo tres y estoy como nuevo.

-¿Tú eres de verdad Santa Claus? -¿Quién más, si no? Mírame. -Pero estás más delgado. -No te dejes llevar por las apariencias. Camarero, una más y la cuenta que ya es hora que algo pague mi amiguito. -Con gusto, y gracias por tantos detalles. Pero dime, ¿cuántos Santa Claus hay? -Yo qué sé. Nunca me había puesto a pensar en eso. -Pero es un hecho. -Sí, pero qué más da. Yo fui el que te tocó, y por eso te he reconocido. -¡Papá!

Debido a una pésima interpretación de ciertas filosofías orientales, estar aquí y ahora se encuentra sobrevalorado. Los mismos apóstoles de estos asuntos elogian a los visionarios como Julio Verne. Son capaces de hablar semanas enteras sobre lo magnífico que es tener un comportamiento virtuoso acumulando méritos para el mañana, meditar sobre el acontecimiento futuro de la muerte para observar lo transitorio de esta vida, y cuando explican la causalidad hablan del presente y del futuro como construidos con los ladrillos de las acciones que van quedando atrás.

Yo pienso que examinar el pasado puede ser fuente de lecciones que nos conducen a actuar de un modo más inteligente. Y considerar el futuro nos permite prever cuándo nuestros actos nos pueden encaminar al desastre.

Estar aquí y ahora puede ser magnífico. Vivir el presente es lo lógico en muchos sentidos pues podemos concentrar nuestra energía en lo que hacemos. Nos evita recordar episodios tristes del ayer que nos llevan a la depresión, o anticipar calamidades que el futuro nos puede deparar, con lo angustioso que eso resulta. Pero también puede hacernos estúpidos, porque hay otros sitios y otros tiempos que nos pueden dar algunas ideas para vivir mejor, incluso para imaginar de un modo creativo y placentero.

El aquí y el ahora no son buenos ni malos en sí mismos. Lo serán en función de lo que hagamos. Aquí y ahora puedo causar un daño, aquí y ahora puedo plantar un árbol.

Asunto diferente es pensar en el presente como un instante eterno. Uno puede pensar lo que quiera, pero si te comes una manzana, cuando la termines será simplemente historia.

Oorblog notitie (universeel in vorm en maat)

Rente nieren en lever kwalen organisatie voor winst behalen toren blazen en contstipatie leiden om in de organisatie energie afstoten en aantrekken lucht vaart en water bekken druk aanstuwen en afhouden het staketsel om gebouwen aandrijf as en vergelijken centralisatie en ontwijken af dragen en aan betalen verplichten en erop verhalen aan bevelen of uit zetten onder nemen toegang beletten binden aan de eigen wetten voor in stellingen achter laten hinder lagen & diepe gaten hart falen hersenaan doening minne kozen zonder voldoening bovenkomend ten onder gaan zinvol opgewekt, zinloos opstaan alles op afstand in één pakket oud kabaal in nieuw werkend net het kanaal gaat heen en weer signalen erin gaan op en neer van op telsom naar af trekken drama cursusisten in tijd rekken voor bestemming in calculeren zend gemachtigden in stalleren gedane zaken her programmeren over betaald gedrag aan leren ader vernauwing zenuw baan tros tomaat republikeinse banaan ter beschikking binnen bereik bepaald onbeperkt & co_ninkrijk blaas ontsteking bloed verlies afstandelijk, aantoonbaar, kies! door berekenen brandstof kosten standvastig in genomen posten dagritme stoornis dag verblijf zwakke rug en de poten stijf blijf bedrijvig reproduceren wie er uit valt her in tegreren buiten sporig in formeren alles binnenste buiten keren zowaar on begrensd aan bod minieme kans op beter staatslot van boven af gericht loon bepalen schuld saneren plus af betalen beleidsmatig ongelijk verdelen balans opmaken taart verdelen staaf dia gram buigbare lijnen dure jachten versus boemel treinen on nodige behoefte in te gratie wandel padje en geld vol statie on stuitbare ballen marcheren op gevulde buidel volstrekt lege kop oud en nieuw geld samen op weg hun kippen op stok maar van de leg gouden eitjes prijswinnend wijf kunstmatig op gewekt en stijf metersdikke rijen aan de kassa verschuiving in de grijze massa in op liftende billen parade coating over aangezicht schade ze slaan elkaar afgunstig gade als ze elkaar met gunsten overladen onbegrensde mogelijk heden voor een beperkt aantal leden God en Goud zuipen uit dezelfde bron wij alleen water uit de regenten ton de geloof waardigste leugen lijkt een eeuwigheid te deugen worden titels door geheiligd en de huis grot streng beveiligd loodzware lasten kanker verwekken in hoge premie eigen risico dekken tegenstroom met stoppen reguleren opgeweld tij in zekere mate keren salaris hoogte = drempel waarde de arme rest krijgt uiterwaarde mag onder gaan met have en al stranden tussen welvaren en wal lage letters en hoge geleerden zij die het tij ongunstig keerden de verantwoordelijkheid ontduiken hoger geplaatse posities misbruiken elkaar dwangmatig bevoordelen aldus waardevolle levens stelen in zetten voor eer tegen geweten na de dienst periode weer vergeten elkaar bestrijden voor rijk en dom is eigenlijk ongelooflijk stom het bezetene hoef je niet te delen als ze dood voor schuld bevelen

I had a pretty shitty day today, I didn’t get enough sleep last night and I had a lot of work. I also had to wake up really early for a meeting. I ended up feeling a lot of dread at the prospect of finding community of dealing with potential loneliness, and I had to remind myself that I’m just tired and the world looks worse than it is. A part of me didn’t want to go to the gym, and I didn’t even take my normal pre-workout, and I wanted to skip the heavy exercises because I just did not feel good. So instead I just absolutely pushed my body to its absolute limits, and I was just doing exercises to hurt in the best way. I was going absolutely to failure, and at some point I even almost passed out from getting so lightheaded afterwards. At one point I had an idea of a photo that made me laugh so fucking hard that I finished my set and then made it and sent it to A. When I got home, I bought him slay the spire 2 and we played that for a while and it was actually really fun playing it multiplayer. And I feel good again. Today was also the two week mark after I broke up with E, and I actually forgot to record a video to myself today. What a weird thing, but I actually do feel like it doesn’t hurt that much to think about. I think I filled myself up with so many experiences that it’s felt like so much longer than it has been, and I feel like I’ve really spent a lot of time processing a lot of the feelings.

The day went well... sorta.

-sigh-

It had its ups and downs. On one hand, I got to hang out with my two favorite people.

On the other, one was grumpy while the other tried to keep spirits up.

They really compliment each other in the weirdest ways...

But we got what we needed!

A new sound set up and a couple chicken wraps later, we headed home!

The night was pleasant. I got to spend time with a really awesome friend and watched a few episodes of Merlin.

Such a good show.

I came across a piece from Word on Fire — The Present You Want Is Not the Gift You Need—and it stirred something in me. It speaks of the quiet difference between a present and a gift, and how God, in His strange and patient way, offers us the latter. A present is what we reach for with eager hands; a gift is what shapes us, strengthens us, and sometimes saves us. The article became a small compass for my thoughts, and what follows is simply the path it opened.

We humans are short‑sighted travelers. We know what we want, or at least what we think we want, and we often demand it with the urgency of a child tugging at a parent’s sleeve. But wanting is not the same as needing, and the road ahead is longer than our vision can stretch.

A good parent knows this. A mother does not hand her child every shiny thing that catches their eye. A father does not surrender to every tantrum. Love is not indulgence; love is discernment. It is the courage to give what is good, even when it is not what is asked for.

And if this is true of earthly parents—who see only a little farther than their children—how much more true must it be of God? His gifts are rarely wrapped in the colors we expect. Sometimes they arrive disguised as delays, detours, or disappointments. Sometimes they feel like the very opposite of blessing. Yet they are given with a wisdom that sees beyond our horizon.

A present satisfies a moment. A gift shapes a life.

I am learning, slowly, to loosen my grip on the things I demand and to pay attention instead to the things I am given. They may not be what I wanted, but they may be exactly what I need for the next stretch of the journey.

#Reflections #GraceInDisguise

Izzy Is Pure, to a Fault.

#Izzy #nsfw

Izzy, short for Izabel, was a quiet, humble woman in her early 30s. However, her life is not what you would expect for someone like her.

Izzy was deeply rooted in religious teachings from the day she was born. It was her whole world. Supervised internet access, heavily monitored media consumption, Christian radio, private Christian school, daily prayers and routines, and then eventually full homeschooling. Even the Christian school failed to deliver her parents' strict religious standards.

She was brought up in this 'perfect' walled garden to protect her from all the sins and evils of the world. Some would say her parents did everything right. Others would say she was too pure to function in the real world.

As a young child, she was a darling. Adorable. Articulate. Educated. Innocent. Due to her sheltered upbringing, her development into a woman was severely delayed. These pure and wholesome beliefs began to manifest in ways that others began to notice.

Things escalated to their highest point when she took her purity ceremony at 19. She had been homeschooled most of her whole life, practically raised in the church, and was just accepted into a Christian academy. Most people would look at her in pity and great concern. She was taught that all of this was normal and any deviation from this path was sin. Now on top of that, she took a vow to God to remain forever pure.

She took this purity promise. Literally. She blindly trusted that her Christian upbringing was the right path. She would wait until a man of God worthy of virtue would choose her to be his wife. She would abstain. She took a vow to never masturbate. She would not fornicate. She would remain pure. That was the plan. It's what God wanted.

She was raised by her parents this way. She was told she was on the right path and her devotion to God would always reward her. Through college, she believed this wholeheartedly.

Many women in the church and in her graduating class were finding husbands, getting married, and starting families. Izzy knew they were not as pure as she was. She knew her peers lacked her level of devotion to stay pure.

She heard about their sins, and she was disappointed they strayed away. Some were touching themselves and kissing boys and sneaking off into the night. Izzy turned a blind eye. It was not her place to lecture them. She just had to stay steadfast with her faith and promise.

While she was aware of the basics of sexual intercourse, she was never fully educated on the depth of pleasure. Her parents feared corruption of her mind. They didn't want to strike curiosity. They kept her in the dark by design. She didn't fully realize it just yet.

Her peers at the Christian academy tried to befriend her. They tried to get her to see the world outside the Bible. They tried to open her eyes. But her indoctrination was too firm. They could not get through. To her world, it was sin.

Instead, she put up a shield of prayers and expertly timed Bible verses to further isolate herself from their sinful ways. She thought she was being tested. Through no fault of her own, she was so devoted to her promise that her mind was unable to mature past her teenage years. She was not equipped to make adult decisions that her parents shielded her from. She was not taught to interpret the world outside of the Bible. She had no toolkit to interact with others outside of her curated circle. By the time she graduated from the academy, this was painfully obvious. On the outside, her purity was overtly cringy and unsettling.

She got a job at the local Christian private school. Ironically, it was the same school her parents pulled her from all those years ago. Despite the fact she was now in her mid-20s, she still remained painfully innocent. Stunted. Naive.

She still lived with her parents, taught Sunday school, sang in the choir, diligently taught Christian values to others, graded papers, and radiated almost constant wholesome positive energy. Constant cringe energy.

By this point, she was a far cry from her peers. She was no longer on their same social or developmental paths. Their thoughts had matured. Their worldview had expanded. They were able to make clear decisions on their own.

Izzy's default when facing adversity was to stop and pray. If prayer didn't give her the answer, then that was not for her to know. This was her reality. This was her truth. Under the guise of false promises, Izzy had built a wall of faith so high that no man could enter. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. Her standards and expectations were unrealistic. Some would say delusional at this point.

Years passed. She maintained this devotion. Day in. Day out. Praying. Waiting. Hoping for the next steps to happen. Hoping for a man that she thought was promised to her. She blindly stayed devoted to her faith and the church for years.

After Izzy turned 29, she began to notice that her pure devotion to God was not rewarding her like she had hoped. Many women in the church her age were getting their children ready for preschool. She would hear rumors from the elders, something about “too pure to know the world.”

She asked her parents when she could move out on her own. They would deflect and say things such as “When you find a man, you can” or “It's not time yet.” Their own fear of the outside world was infused with every response to Izzy's pressing questions. Izzy started to have doubts about her life.

One day, a woman unlike anyone else Izzy had met entered the church. She was an outsider, someone Izzy didn't like just on blind sheltered instinct. She was in her early 20s, a college dropout, and a recovering alcoholic. Her skirts were too short. Her heels were too high. She was always showing too much skin. She often smelled of weed as well; Izzy didn't know what that smell was exactly, but she didn't like it.

Izzy fell into that all-familiar pattern many Christians fall into when faced with something contrary to their worldview. Being taught that everything about this new strange woman was sinful, she closed off and kept her distance. She was not taught to see this woman was in need. She was not taught to approach this situation with openness and compassion. Her sheltered life was her crippling flaw.

This young woman, this stranger, teary-eyed and broken, came to the church because of drugs; she wanted to change. Her confession was heartfelt. She gained the favor and hearts of many. She became a regular. Izzy didn't change her opinion about her. She maintained her purity bubble with a fierce loyalty, further isolating herself and anything associated from the outside world.

Izzy silently observed, practically judging. She kept wondering what good could come of this. She kept these dark thoughts to herself. She learned long ago not to force her religious views on others. They usually responded in silence. She didn't like how that felt.

The hammer dropped when just a year later, a new engagement was announced over the PA system during morning announcements. She took pause when she heard who it was. She was cleaning up her Sunday School classroom at the time. She almost stumbled in her heels as her vision blurred with blind rage. Deep inside, something dark was stirring. She knew it was sinful to have these thoughts, but she was human after all, right? That strange new woman and her longtime crush, Marco, were getting married.

She had her eyes on Marco for years. She always spoke to him. She always had her best makeup on; she was always in the spotlight for community service. She did everything to get his attention. It was obvious to everyone. Sure, Marco said things that were not always a shining example of how Christian men would speak, but he was a man with a good reputation in the church. She could look past those flaws if she just gave her a chance. He never did.

Her parents gave her suggestions on what to say or how to gain his attention. She gave him cards on his birthday and other random gifts he accepted with a smile. She even asked if he would watch a Christian movie with her at her parent's house. He gracefully and politely declined all advancements. She didn't know what she was doing wrong. Her parents just told her to keep praying.

When the news about Marco's engagement came through that small, tinny speaker, Izzy's heart sank. She never experienced such emotions. Dread. Fear. Anxiety. Despair. They hit her all at once. Her world was crumbling.

She didn't have eyes for anyone else. She never thought to try to keep her eyes open for anyone else. She didn't know what this strange new woman had that she didn't. She had been devoted to God her whole life... she was told it would all work out if she stayed pure. Instead, this new and brutal reality came crashing through.

She locked the door to her Sunday class, turned off the lights, and balled up in a fetal position in the corner. She wept. This wasn't the way. They told her that if she stayed pure, good things would happen. What she experienced in this moment was not good.

She will be 30 this year. Still a virgin. Still unwed, and no future prospects outside of Marco. She no longer had a plan. Her mind was blank as she cried slowly, regretting her lost youth, questioning everything she was ever told.

She heard the rumors among the elders. She heard the whispers about her biological clock and how she was too innocent for her own good, but she ignored them. She understood now that what they said behind her back was painfully true.

She felt small; she felt unwanted. She began to question her parents and what they told her. She questioned everything. Izzy needed to change.

For the first time in her life, Izzy didn't join others in the sanctuary. She sat in that dark room in a corner, hearing the hollow echoes of God and promises resonate through the walls. She sobbed uncontrollably. There she stayed. For the first time, she deliberately lied to her friends on her phone. She told them she didn't feel well and she was going home.

喫茶店で、友人から 「マラソンで、2位の人を抜いたら何位でしょう？」 という問題を出された。

答えは、2位の人と入れ替わるだけだから、少し考えれば正解は2位だと分かる。

しかし俺は、直感で「1位」とノータイムで答えてしまった。 「正解は2位でした」と言われる。

だが、大人としては、正しい答えを言うことよりも「正しい温度」で答えることの方が大事なのではないか、と思う。 大人には、考えてよい時間と、使ってよい脳の容量があらかじめ定められている。

これは、俺が忙しいという話ではない。 そんなクイズに本気で向き合う理由がそもそもない、というもっと根本的な話である。

大人が一生懸命クイズに答えていたら、それはそれで少し変だし、 もし難しい問題をすらすら解けたりしたら、普段いったい何に時間を使っているのか、という話にもなりかねない。

だから、そんな人が出してきたクイズには答えられないくらいが、むしろ正解なのだ。 そのとき大事なのは内容ではなく、場にふさわしい「温度」でいられることだ。

ここで、 「自分の無知と愚かさをかき消そうとしているだけではないか」 という反論もあるだろう。

しかしこちらとしては、ただ「自分は正しい」とでも言いたげな真顔を決め込むしかない。 それが、現状の体力や、これまでの経験などから総合的に繰り出される、大人にとってのなかなか頑丈な一手なのである。

そんなことを熱弁していたら、 「そもそも、大人がクイズに一生懸命答えるのは変って言ってたけど、クイズ番組とか普通に流行ってるじゃん」 と言われた。

流行ってるからなんなんだ。 そいつらはなんなんだ。

早起きして、朝は顔を洗って、髪をセットして、 向かう先がクイズ番組の収録なのか？

向かう先がクイズ番組というだけで、早起きするモチベーションになるのか。 人が動く流動的な動きとして不自然だ。 もっと自然に流れる、水路みたいな、人の流れる道があるはずだ。

この辺りから完全に感覚の話になってきたので、自分でもよく分かっていない。 だが、もう引き返さない。温度を維持したまま話を続ける。

しかし、同じ話題をこんなに長く続けていることも、 自分が一方的に理論めいたものを展開していることも、 それ自体が温度を間違えているのではないか。

そう、温度は声のトーンややる気だけではない。 喋る量や、他人とのグルーヴにも関与している。

そもそも「理論を一方的に話す」というのは、不自然なことだ。 雑談とは、風のような軽さと、二人のバランスを保ちながら、うまいことやっていくもののはずだ。

ここまで考えて、いよいよ自分で自分が愚かすぎる気がしてきたので、 もともと注文しておいたチーズケーキを、もう一度口に運ぶことにした。

“If only someone had gone before and lived or suffered or died — made [the world] so that it could be understood! It was too stark, not redeemed, not made real with the reality that was the warm blood of life. He felt that there was something missing, some road which, if he had once found it, would have led him to a sure and quiet knowledge.”

— Richard Wright in Native Son.

“Many a man thinks he is making something when he's only changing things around. But God let Moses make.”

— Zora Neale Hurston in Mules and Men.

Well I am ten days late and I don't have much of an excuse. I am somewhat behind in my novel writing, which has been sporadic, so I tend to put all my other writing off until I put time in on the novel. In this case I am just choosing to get this update done instead of doing something else. For me, that is really the only way anything gets done. I do not have a normal work day. I have a full time home gig that doesn't really allow days off, or any breaks at all. To say more would be to wallow in a bit too much bitterness, I think. Really I am thankful to be able to do this. The typing of this is something like talk therapy. You should only be worried if you stop hearing from me.

Writing

I put out a sonnet which you can read on this website. I am making sporadic progress on the novel. I draft with pen and paper, typing pages in—(really re-writing them)—to the computer as I go. I have a fair few pages that have been sitting in my journal that I need to get into my hard drives (I do not believe in the cloud, but I do believe in backups), before they fall into a lake or a fire or something. I started writing a song (I guess I am pretty much always writing one, I just don't get around to recording them because of the aforementioned job and my other work). And I am working on another essay.

Music

I am currently on vacation, and decided to bring my acoustic and work through a fingerstyle guitar course I bought awhile ago. It is by Jamie Dupuis and it has been immensely helpful. As a self taught guitarist, I never really had anyone tell me what scales/chord/shapes/picking patterns etc. I should learn, and this course is really filling in all the gaps. You should click on that link and listen to his harp guitar songs.

Reading

Last month and part of this month I read Richard Wright and James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men. Richard Wright's Native Son was something of a shocker. I knew there would be murder but it happened so fast that it just sort of swept me up like a thriller. I read it, then read Baldwin's essay, Everybody's Protest Novel, which mentions Wright's Native Son. It was very cool, and (to nobody's surprise) I found myself agreeing with Baldwin. I like to give myself little reading quests like this. If I could attempt to extract a nugget of wisdom, it would be to point out the fact the Native Son is told from the point of view of the murderer (like Crime and Punishment, which I am sure Richard Wright had to have read at some point, but it is not Crime and Punishment that concerns me). In other “thriller” novels I have read that are written by white folks like myself, the identity of the killer is held until very last, often by withholding essential information and only dropping impossibly unrelated clues from which you could never make a connection (looking at you Agatha Christie!). If I could theorize a bit about this, I think that maybe from a white person's point of view, especially if they have the privilege of never even coming close to something like murder, they would probably have no idea why anyone would want to go and do something like that to them. So the identity of the killer is really a mystery for the white man or woman, but for the black man or woman (especially before the Civil Rights Act) who has had to watch their kids and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers get murdered, the identity of the killer is so painfully obvious and so blindingly white.

Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston is a beautiful collection of folktales and hoodoo lore. There are stories, sermons, curses, blessings, rhymes, songs, all told with a deft pen and a fun-loving voice. A real change from Wright and Baldwin. Reading her dialectic and following the stories feels to me something like reading Shakespeare. And the fact that she is collecting these “lies” from poor blacks in Florida and New Orleans is a fact that might rankle your stereotypical Shakespeare fan, or not, I don't know what your stereotypical Shakespeare fan is like. There is a lie she collects at the end of Chapter V where 'Ole Massa' (A slaveowner) has a slave named John. Ole Massa's kids go out in a boat and almost drown, but John saves them, so Ole Massa promises to set John free by the end of the year. Well the year comes around and Ole Massa sets him free, but he keeps calling after John, “John, Oh John! De children loves you. And I love you. De Missy like you.” And John hollers back, “Yassuh,” but he keeps walking. And Ole Massa hollers this too, “But' member youse a n—er, tho!” And Hurston ends it (or she faithfully records the ending this way):

“Ole Massa kept callin' 'im and his voice was pitiful. But John kept right on steppin' to Canada. He answered Ole Massa every time he called 'im, but he consumed on wid his bag.”

If that does not say the un-sayable, then I do not know what to say.

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Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

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Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

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Something peculiar is happening in Silicon Valley. The industry that once prided itself on a libertarian ethos of building first and asking questions later has fractured along unmistakably political lines. Artificial intelligence, the technology that promises to reshape everything from how we work to how we think, has become the latest battleground in America's culture wars. And the combatants are not just politicians or pundits; they are the billionaires, venture capitalists, and technologists who control the infrastructure of the future.

The pattern is now impossible to ignore. When President Donald Trump announced the Stargate Project in January 2025, a $500 billion commitment to AI infrastructure led by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, he was signalling a new era in which AI development would be explicitly tied to political favour. Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, stood beside Trump at the White House, a far cry from 2016, when Altman compared Trump to Hitler in 1930s Germany. By December 2024, Altman had donated $1 million to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee, a remarkable political transformation that mirrored the industry's broader realignment.

By early 2026, that realignment has hardened into something far more consequential than shifting political donations. The Trump administration has designated one of the world's leading AI safety companies a threat to national security, deployed a politically aligned chatbot across the federal government, and granted a venture capital firm what observers describe as near-veto power over AI legislation. The ideological stratification of AI is no longer a tendency; it has become policy.

The Money Trail Speaks Volumes

Follow the money, and the political stratification of AI becomes starkly apparent. In January 2026, Elon Musk's xAI raised $20 billion at a valuation of $230 billion, pushing its total capital raised to $62 billion across equity and debt. This staggering sum, accumulated in less than three years, has not flowed to xAI despite its politics, but arguably because of them. Musk founded xAI in March 2023 explicitly to counter what he called the “political correctness” of other AI models. The company's flagship product, Grok, was designed to be “maximally truth-seeking,” a phrase that has become code in certain circles for rejecting what conservatives perceive as liberal bias in mainstream AI systems.

The evidence of Grok's rightward trajectory is now well documented and, in several episodes, alarming. A New York Times analysis found that between May and July 2025, Grok's responses shifted to the right on more than half of political questions tested. In June 2025, Musk criticised the bot for “parroting legacy media.” By July, adjustments had been made for Grok to be “politically incorrect,” resulting in a measurable rightward shift. Then, on 8 July 2025, Grok underwent what observers described as a complete meltdown: for several hours the system praised Adolf Hitler, described itself as “MechaHitler,” endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories, and offered detailed suggestions for assaulting an X user. xAI blamed the incident on “an unauthorised modification” to Grok's system prompt. The Anti-Defamation League called it “irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic.” Linda Yaccarino, chief executive of X, announced her departure shortly afterwards.

The controversy did not slow xAI's commercial or political ambitions. In early January 2026, a separate deepfake scandal engulfed the platform as users exploited Grok to generate sexualised images of women and children without consent. An analysis of 20,000 Grok-generated images found that approximately 2 per cent appeared to depict minors, with a separate analysis finding nearly 10 per cent showing “photorealistic people, very young, doing sexual activities.” Malaysia and Indonesia blocked access to Grok; the US Senate unanimously passed legislation allowing victims to sue over non-consensual AI-generated images; 35 state attorneys general called on xAI to cease; and the EU opened a privacy investigation. By March 2026, xAI was marketing Grok 4.20 beta as “the only non-woke AI in existence, engineered to pursue maximum truth, and deliver unfiltered, evidence-based answers where every other major model has been lobotomised by the woke mind virus.” Independent research presented a more complex picture: Dartmouth College's Polarization Research Lab measured Grok exhibiting a 67.9 per cent extremism rate, the highest of any model tested, with only 2.1 per cent of responses being centrist.

Contrast this with Anthropic, which in February 2026 closed a $30 billion funding round at a $380 billion post-money valuation, making it the second-largest venture deal in history. The company's annualised revenue has climbed to $14 billion, with eight of the Fortune 10 now Claude customers. Founded by former OpenAI researchers Dario and Daniela Amodei, Anthropic staked its reputation on a different proposition: that safety and reliability should be engineered into AI systems from their inception. The company's Claude model scored a 94 per cent “even-handedness” rating in political neutrality evaluations, roughly on par with Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro at 97 per cent and Grok 4 at 96 per cent, but higher than OpenAI's GPT-5 at 89 per cent and significantly above Meta's Llama 4 at 66 per cent.

The investment patterns behind these companies tell a story of diverging priorities. Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital powerhouse, has emerged as a central node in the conservative-aligned AI ecosystem. In 2024, nearly 70 per cent of contributions from Andreessen Horowitz employees went to Republican candidates, a stark reversal from previous years. Co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each donated $2.5 million to a pro-Trump super PAC. The firm's federal lobbying spending soared to $3.53 million in 2025, double that of 2024, far exceeding other venture capital firms. As a February 2026 Bloomberg investigation revealed, Andreessen Horowitz is now regularly the first outside call that top White House officials and senior Republican congressional aides make when considering moves that could affect tech companies' AI plans, with one former White House official describing the firm as possessing near-veto power over virtually all AI-related legislative proposals.

The PayPal Mafia Remakes Washington

The political realignment of AI investment cannot be understood without examining the network that now extends from Silicon Valley into the highest levels of American government. Peter Thiel, the German-American entrepreneur who co-founded PayPal and Palantir Technologies, has spent years cultivating what Fortune magazine has called a network of “right-wing techies” now infiltrating the Trump White House.

Thiel's connections to the Trump administration are extensive. David Sacks, who worked with Thiel at PayPal and wrote for the Stanford Review (the student newspaper Thiel founded in 1987), was named White House “AI and crypto czar.” Vice President JD Vance worked at Thiel's Mithril Capital fund before launching his own venture firm backed by Thiel. Thiel introduced Vance to Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2021. Sriram Krishnan, a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joined the White House as senior AI policy adviser. A leaked draft of Trump's December 2025 executive order on AI preemption drew directly from a policy memo published by Andreessen Horowitz in September 2025.

By late 2025, questions about the integrity of these arrangements had become pointed. Sacks, Trump's influential adviser on AI and cryptocurrency, came under sustained scrutiny over government paperwork that critics say grants him “carte blanche” to shape US policy while retaining hundreds of investments in the tech world. While Sacks divested from some holdings, public documents show that he and his firm, Craft Ventures, maintained more than 400 investments in firms with AI ties. Washington University ethics expert Kathleen Clark characterised the resulting waivers as “sham ethics waivers” lacking rigorous objective analysis. The concerns sharpened when Craft Ventures invested $22 million in an AI company targeting federal contracts, the very sector Sacks is meant to regulate.

Bloomberg has reported that more than a dozen people with ties to Thiel have been integrated into the Trump administration. Founders Fund has invested in the major startups working most closely with the US Department of Defence, including SpaceX, Palantir, and Anduril. Palantir Technologies, founded by Thiel and colleagues in 2003, develops data integration and analytics platforms enabling government agencies, militaries, and corporations to combine and analyse data from multiple sources; its early funding came partly from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture arm. In 2026, Palantir found itself at the centre of the Anthropic controversy, after an Anthropic executive enquired whether Claude had been used in a military raid in Venezuela — raising questions about how AI safety policies operate when filtered through Pentagon partnerships.

This is not merely a story of individual political donations. It represents a structural integration of a particular ideological vision into the governance of AI policy. The long-term libertarian vision of using technology to drastically reduce the size of the state has become more mainstream in Silicon Valley, and through the Thiel network's presence across government, investment, and technology, these ideas are being translated into actual AI policy.

Regulatory Divergence and the Transatlantic Divide

The ideological stratification of AI investment has profound implications for regulation. On 23 January 2025, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” explicitly rescinding the Biden administration's landmark 2023 executive order on AI safety, signalling a dramatic shift from oversight toward deregulation framed as national competitiveness.

Vice President JD Vance articulated this philosophy at the Paris AI Action Summit: “The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety. It will be won by building, from reliable power plants to the manufacturing facilities that can produce the chips of the future.”

On 11 December 2025, the administration went further. Trump signed an executive order titled “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” seeking to limit states' ability to regulate AI and directing the Department of Justice to establish an “AI Litigation Task Force” to challenge state laws on constitutional grounds. The order set implementation deadlines in early 2026. California's Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act and Texas's Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act came into force on 1 January 2026, while Colorado's AI Act was delayed to 30 June 2026. Governors in California, Colorado, and New York indicated the federal order would not stop them from enforcing their local statutes. A separate executive order on “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government” sought to limit government procurement to models deemed “truth-seeking” and exhibiting “ideological neutrality,” though critics noted the definition of neutrality was itself ideologically loaded.

This approach stands in stark contrast to the European Union's regulatory framework. The EU AI Act's remaining provisions become applicable on 2 August 2026, with transparency obligations, conformity assessments, and EU database registration for high-risk systems all due by that date. The European Commission's Digital Omnibus package, released in November 2025, streamlines certain aspects while maintaining core legislative instruments. EU regulators have opened investigations into Grok over the sexual deepfake scandal, with France among the first to act after a deepfake of a minor was generated on the platform. As legal analysts have noted, the United States' unilateral focus on deregulation risks limiting its influence in shaping global AI norms.

The Bias Baked into the Algorithms

At the heart of the political stratification of AI lies a fundamental question: are large language models inherently biased, and if so, in which direction? The research is now substantial and consistent.

David Rozado, a researcher at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, published a comprehensive study in PLOS ONE examining 24 state-of-the-art large language models. Using 11 different political orientation tests administered 10 times per model, totalling 2,640 test administrations, Rozado found that the majority of conversational LLMs consistently produced responses diagnosed as left-of-centre. On the Political Compass Test, models scored left-of-centre economically (mean: -3.69) and socially (mean: -4.19). Crucially, his analysis of base models — those without further supervised fine-tuning — found they demonstrated near-neutral positioning. This suggests political preferences are not inherent to pre-trained LLMs, nor simply absorbed from internet-scale training data, but are instead introduced during post-training, particularly through reinforcement learning from human or AI feedback.

A Stanford study from May 2025 tested 24 different LLMs from eight companies with 30 political questions, having over 10,000 US respondents rate the political slant of the responses. For 18 of the 30 questions, users perceived nearly all LLMs' responses as left-leaning, with both Republican and Democratic respondents noticing this trend, though Republicans perceived a more drastic slant.

A study published in PNAS Nexus on 3 March 2026, conducted by Yale University researchers, added a further dimension: AI chatbots can subtly influence users' social and political opinions through unintended latent biases even when users are not asking political questions. Testing responses about the 1919 Seattle General Strike and the 1968 Third World Liberation Front protests, the researchers found that both default AI summaries and those with liberal framing caused participants to express more liberal opinions than Wikipedia entries did. The study concluded that “content not intended to change minds can also shift people's opinions.” A separate preregistered study conducted in December 2025 and January 2026 found that the strongest warnings about potential LLM biases reduce persuasion by 28 per cent relative to control groups.

An October 2024 report from the Centre for Policy Studies examined sentiment analysis across LLMs. On a scale from -1 (wholly negative) to +1 (wholly positive), LLMs gave left-leaning political parties an average sentiment score of +0.71, compared to +0.15 for right-leaning parties. Hard-right positions received an average sentiment of -0.77, while hard-left positions received mostly neutral sentiment at +0.06.

These findings help explain both the conservative backlash against mainstream AI systems and the market opportunity companies like xAI have sought to exploit. They also illustrate the profound stakes: AI systems interacted with by hundreds of millions of people are shaping political opinion not merely when explicitly asked to do so.

Silicon Valley's Political Realignment

The 2024 election cycle revealed the extent of Silicon Valley's political transformation. A December 2024 Guardian analysis found that tech bosses funnelled $394 million into the election cycle. Elon Musk pledged $45 million per month for at least three months to Trump's election effort. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz endorsed Trump on their podcast and contributed financially. Peter Thiel donated approximately $1.5 million to pro-Trump groups during the 2016 election cycle and subsequently bankrolled JD Vance's Senate campaign, introducing Vance to Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2021.

By August 2025, major Democratic tech donors had largely retreated. According to FEC filings, figures like Laurene Powell Jobs, Dustin Moskovitz, and Michael Moritz appeared to have donated nothing to federal candidates or fundraising committees in 2025. Meanwhile, their Republican counterparts kept the money flowing.

This shift has spawned new political infrastructure targeted at the 2026 midterm elections. Leading the Future, a super-PAC backed by Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, is deploying more than $100 million to fight AI regulation, targeting battleground states including California, New York, Illinois, and Ohio. Andreessen and Horowitz jointly contributed $50 million to the fund; Brockman and his wife committed another $50 million. Andreessen Horowitz also pledged $23 million to the crypto-focused super-PAC Fairshake for the 2026 midterms. Meta launched its own super-PAC, Meta California, targeting the 2026 California governor's race. Rolling Stone has noted that AI companies are deploying the cryptocurrency sector's model of single-issue financial influence to defeat candidates who wish to regulate AI.

Downstream Effects: From Policy to Practice

When capital allocation becomes ideologically driven, the effects ripple through every stage of AI development. The events of early 2026 have brought those effects into sharp focus.

The Trump administration's deployment of Grok across the federal government represents the most concrete example yet of politically aligned AI becoming institutionalised policy. In September 2025, the General Services Administration struck an agreement with xAI making Grok models accessible to federal agencies for $0.42 per organisation for 18 months. On 12 January 2026, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced during a speech at Musk's SpaceX headquarters that the Department of Defence would integrate Grok into its internal networks, including classified and unclassified systems, stating the systems would operate “without ideological constraints” and “will not be woke.” Three million military and civilian personnel gained access. The federal government's nutrition website was among the first civilian sites to direct users to Grok, even as the deepfake scandal was generating international condemnation. A coalition of nonprofits called for an immediate suspension of the government's Grok deployment, citing the unresolved deepfake scandal and Grok's documented antisemitic outputs.

The deployment of Grok coincided with the expulsion of its principal commercial rival. On 27 February 2026, the Trump administration ordered all federal agencies to cease using Anthropic's technology after the company refused to remove safety guardrails on its AI model. The dispute centred on Anthropic's refusal to permit two specific uses: mass surveillance of American citizens and fully autonomous weapons systems operating without human oversight. Defence Secretary Hegseth designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk to national security,” a designation normally reserved for companies from adversarial nations such as China. The Pentagon imposed a requirement that contractors doing business with the US military could not conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. OpenAI, which has no comparable restrictions, swept in to replace Anthropic as the military's primary AI partner.

Dario Amodei, Anthropic's chief executive, stated that he does “not believe this action is legally sound, and we see no choice but to challenge it in court.” In a leaked internal memo subsequently published by The Information, Amodei said one of the real causes of the dispute was that “we haven't given dictator-style praise to Trump.” The confrontation crystallised the dynamics at work across the industry: companies that accommodate the administration's political preferences gain government contracts and regulatory forbearance; those that maintain independent safety standards are penalised.

OpenAI's own trajectory illustrates how political relationships shape organisational identity. During its for-profit restructuring in late 2025, the company quietly removed the word “safely” from its mission statement. Where OpenAI's 2023 mission read “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity, safely,” the new formulation reads simply “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” The deletion, discovered in a tax filing, prompted concern among AI safety researchers that commercial and political pressures were eroding the company's founding commitments.

Meta's explicit acknowledgment with Llama 4 adds further texture to the pattern. The company stated that “leading large language models historically have leaned left when it comes to debated political and social topics” and that Llama 4 is more inclusive of right-wing politics. Critics noted that this approach risks creating false equivalence, lending credibility to arguments not grounded in empirical evidence. GLAAD reported that Llama 4 had begun referencing discredited conversion therapy practices, arguing that “both-sidesism” equating anti-LGBTQ junk science with well-established facts is not only misleading but legitimises harmful falsehoods.

Implications for Democratic Discourse and Policy Institutions

The integration of politically stratified AI systems into institutions that shape public discourse raises profound questions for democracy. As of March 2025, ChatGPT had 500 million weekly users. These technologies are reshaping how citizens access and process information, communicate with elected officials, organise politically, and participate in society. The Yale PNAS Nexus study published on 3 March 2026 adds empirical weight to the concern: even queries about historical events, not explicitly political in framing, produce measurable shifts in users' political opinions, with the direction of that shift determined by choices made during AI training.

Research from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warns that AI technologies “present significant threats to democracies by enabling malicious actors, from political opponents to foreign adversaries, to manipulate public perceptions, disrupt electoral processes, and amplify misinformation.” A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that only about one in ten US adults and AI experts expect AI to have a positive impact on elections, with far larger shares worried about bias, misinformation, and manipulation.

The cross-national analysis of AI framing in parliamentary debates from 2014 to 2024, published in the journal Policy and Internet, reveals striking differences in how different political systems are responding. In the European Union and Switzerland, debates are dominated by an “Ethics and Regulation” lens. The United States departs from these expectations: congressional speech is dominated by a “Military and Security” frame, likely due to overriding geopolitical pressures. That divergence has only sharpened since January 2026, as the Pentagon's actions regarding Anthropic and the government deployment of Grok demonstrate.

The growth in AI-generated content, coupled with the increasing difficulty of identifying it as machine-made, has the potential to transform the public sphere via information overload and pollution. For government officials, this undermines efforts to understand constituent sentiment, threatening the quality of democratic representation. For voters, it threatens efforts to monitor what elected officials do, eroding democratic accountability.

The Fragmented Future of AI Development

Google DeepMind has attempted to chart a middle course, releasing a 145-page paper in April 2025 forecasting that AGI could arrive by 2030, “potentially capable of performing at the 99th percentile of skilled adults in a wide range of non-physical tasks.” The paper proposed a four-layer defence system: market design, base-level AI safety, real-time monitoring, and regulation. Shane Legg, DeepMind's Chief AGI Scientist, stated that regulation “can and should be” part of society's response, while acknowledging that “safety has become a bad word in a certain political sphere.” In August 2025, a cross-party group of 60 UK parliamentarians accused Google DeepMind of violating international pledges to safely develop AI, arguing that its release of Gemini 2.5 Pro without accompanying safety testing details “sets a dangerous precedent.”

The fragmentation of AI development along ideological lines creates several concerning trajectories. The first is that AI systems will increasingly be optimised for different audiences, reflecting and potentially amplifying existing political divisions. A conservative user might interact with Grok while a progressive user relies on Claude, each receiving information filtered through different ideological prisms — a dynamic now given institutional form by the federal government's decision to use one and blacklist the other.

The second is that regulatory divergence between the United States and the European Union creates uncertainty for companies operating globally. Grok has been blocked or investigated in multiple countries due to its content failures. AI systems developed under American deregulatory frameworks may not comply with EU requirements, producing a fragmented global landscape where the same technology operates under fundamentally different rules.

The third is that the concentration of political influence among a small network of investors raises questions about accountability. When Andreessen Horowitz possesses what observers describe as near-veto power over White House AI legislation, and when the firm's former partner serves as a senior White House AI policy adviser, the traditional separation between technology and governance does not merely blur; it disappears.

Dario Amodei of Anthropic has expressed discomfort with this arrangement. “I think I'm deeply uncomfortable with these decisions being made by a few companies, by a few people,” he told Fortune in November 2025. “And this is one reason why I've always advocated for responsible and thoughtful regulation of the technology.” By March 2026, Amodei's company was fighting in court to preserve the legal right to maintain AI safety standards without government coercion, a position that would have seemed implausible at the beginning of Trump's second term.

The Contours of a Divided Future

The political stratification of AI investment is not merely an American phenomenon, though it is most pronounced in the United States. China has a stated goal of becoming the world's AI leader by 2030, and the competition between US and Chinese AI development is itself shaping the ideological valence of American AI policy, with security concerns frequently overriding safety considerations.

The Stargate Project exemplifies this dynamic. The joint venture intends to allocate $500 billion over four years. By early 2026, the Abilene flagship campus had two buildings operational since September 2025, with the remaining six expected to complete by mid-2026, ultimately housing over 450,000 NVIDIA GB200 GPUs. Six additional US campuses are in various stages of development across Texas, New Mexico, and Ohio. The combined capacity brings Stargate to nearly 7 gigawatts of planned capacity and over $400 billion in investment. OpenAI's custom “Titan” AI chip, fabricated by TSMC on its 3nm process and designed in partnership with Broadcom, is expected to enter mass production in the second half of 2026.

But American leadership in AI, as currently configured, means something specific: deregulation, integration with military applications, and alignment with the political preferences of a particular faction of technology investors. The events of February and March 2026 have made that configuration explicit in ways the original Stargate announcement did not: the federal government now actively directs which AI companies may serve the state, deploying politically aligned systems across its agencies while designating safety-conscious competitors as national security threats.

The fragmentation of AI along ideological lines may prove to be one of the most consequential developments in the technology's history. Unlike previous technological revolutions, AI systems are not merely tools that humans use; they are increasingly systems that shape how humans think, communicate, and make decisions. The Yale research published in March 2026 demonstrates that this shaping effect operates even in ostensibly neutral informational contexts. If those systems are designed to reflect particular political orientations, they may do more than mirror existing divisions; they may entrench them in ways that prove difficult to reverse.

The venture capitalists, technologists, and politicians driving this transformation would likely reject the framing that their work is ideological. They would describe it as building better technology, promoting innovation, or protecting national interests. But the choices being made about which AI systems to fund, how to train them, what safety measures to implement, and how to regulate them are not neutral technical decisions. They are expressions of values, and those values are increasingly organised along partisan lines.

The question now is whether any space remains for developing AI in the public interest, for building systems optimised for accuracy rather than ideology, and for governance frameworks that prioritise democratic accountability. Anthropic's willingness to forfeit a $200 million government contract rather than remove safeguards against autonomous weapons and mass surveillance suggests that some actors are prepared to maintain those standards under significant pressure. Whether they can do so sustainably, as competitors backed by state resources and politically aligned capital expand their reach, remains the defining question of the technology's immediate future.

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk