David August

Mandate Safety Interlocks With Penalties for DHS Equipment

David August — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:50:14 GMT

I just wrote this to my Senators (and spoke with my Representative's staff).

Dear Senator and Staff,
I am David August, voter in [zip code].

Short summary:
DHS must enforce constitutional protections in all ways, including via tech interlocks: disabling or failing to enable safety systems on vehicles and equipment should be a federal felony (with years of prison as penalty) to prevent abuse and fatalities.

Longer statement:
DHS must have iron clad, risking-prison-if-they-fail, administrative and engineering systems set up with all their equipment and procedures to stop them from excessive force, civil rights violations and murder. Constitutional Protections must be enforced by both the personnel of DHS and the objects they use. Engineering safety interlocks already exist for many of their systems, pieces of equipment and weapons, and Congress must demand they be used at all times.

For example: DHS components (like ICE and CBP) have purchased, for instance, many Chevy Tahoes. Chevy Tahoes have have built-in pedestrian breaking systems for both the front and rear. These systems help prevent the vehicle from running pedestrians over. Chevy Tahoes also come with build-in top speed limit systems that (using the built in camera and navigation systems) can limit the top speed they’ll go. Taxpayers have already paid for these installed systems, and these systems must have the force of law require their deployment 24/7/365.

The US Congress should pass law that makes it a federal felony (perhaps 5 years in prison) for any one, including all federal personnel and contractors, to disable or fail to use the pedestrian breaking systems on any vehicles they use. We will never want them to be deliberately hitting pedestrians. It should also be a federal felony, with similar consequence, to disable or fail to use the top speed limiters on any vehicles they use. We never want them doing dangerous high speed chases as they have before, to fatal impact.

In the 21st Century, technologies exist to limit how machines may be misused by law enforcement. Before DHS gets another penny, they must be forced, under penalty of prison, to have their devices and gear limit their ability to hurt and kill the public.

[You can write or call your Senators and Representative too.]

David August is an award-winning actor, acting coach, writer, director, and producer. He plays a role in the movie Dependent’s Day, and after its theatrical run, it’s now out on Amazon (affiliate link). He has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC, on the TV show Ghost Town, and many others. His artwork has been used and featured by multiple writers, filmmakers, theatre practitioners, and others to express visually. Off-screen, he has worked at ad agencies, start-ups, production companies, and major studios, helping them tell stories their customers and clients adore. He has guest lectured at USC’s Marshall School of Business about the Internet.

Professional Roles (stage)

David August — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 19:03:19 GMT

The Old Professional Roles Email Forward (with no insult meant, good intentions and tongue in cheek):

Producer:
• Leaps Tall Buildings In A Single Bound
• Is More Powerful Than A Locomotive
• Is Faster Than A Speeding Bullet
• Walks On Water
• Gives Policy To God

Director:
• Leaps Short Buildings In A Single Bound
• Is More Powerful Than A Switch Engine
• Is Just As Fast As A Speeding Bullet
• Walks On Water If The Sea Is Calm
• Talks With God

Playwright:
• Leaps Short Buildings With A Running Start
• Is Almost As Powerful As A Switch Engine
• Is Faster Than A Speeding BB
• Swims Well
• Is Occasionally Addressed By God

Actor:
• Makes High Marks On The Wall When Trying To Leap Buildings
• Is Run Over By Locomotives
• Can Sometimes Handle A Gun Without Inflicting Self-Injury
• Dog Paddles
• Talks To Animals

Technicians:
• Runs Into Buildings
• Recognizes Locomotives Two Out Of Three Times
• Is Not Issued Ammunition
• Can Stay Afloat With A Life Preserver
• Talks To Walls

Chorus member:
• Falls Over Doorsteps When Trying To Enter Buildings
• Says, "Look At The Choo-Choo!"
• Wets Self With A Water Pistol
• Plays In Mud Puddles
• Mumbles To Self

Stage Manager:
• Lifts Buildings And Walks Under Them
• Kicks Locomotives Off The Track
• Catches Speeding Bullets In Teeth And Eats Them
• Freezes Water With A Single Glance
• Is GOD

The Vote That Stole Breath

David August — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:48:26 GMT

A Two-Month-Old’s Agony in ICE Custody

Trigger warning: rage, baby torture, futile pleading to deaf ears

Ice detained a 2 month old baby boy. They have left that baby in respiratory distress for half its life (the entire month in ice custody). If you voted for this, did this baby scare you personally such that you want them struggling for air?

This baby was reportedly choking on his own vomit on Sunday. Do you rejoice that you voted for this two month old, not yet alive when you voted, to have to fight drowning on his own sick now?

If you voted for this, and also go to church, do you imagine God smiles on you for choosing for this baby to choke and struggle, to wheeze and hurt because ice predictably provided no doctors in the medical area where they held this newborn? Do you really think this precious little one, born innocent, is the worst of the worst and do you want them to be tortured in your name? Killed in your name?

Is this the greatness you have wished our country be lowered to? Do this infant’s lungs flooding with fluid make you feel good? Feel safe? Feel powerful and respected? Honorable or righteous? Do you thank God for giving you the power to hurt this child with your vote? With your indifference? Do you smile knowing whatever else you have done in life, you have cast your vote for his pain to grow, for his little lungs to burn and scar, for his tiny body to roil with terror and fear? Nothing else in your life will ever undo that vote (unless you start right now changing your ways, today, this very instant)?

Or do you think you owe this baby, and other babies, and yourself and the world, and God for having made the choice you made that lead directly to this and will lead to worse? Do you have any decency left within you, any glimmer of good, any spark of the divine, that could now fed your rage and regret to behold the wages of your choice, your actions, and could you now fight to make your past wrongs hurt the world less? Or do you revel in the suffering of that little boy who just wants to breathe? Do you wish you could suffocate him yourself?

It is not too late to start working feverishly to undo the harm your vote inflicted and keeps inflicting. Not too late to fight for redemption, to fight for that little boy, and your soul. You wrought this, and you can and should dedicate yourself to unmaking these horrors.

Start now. Or please, I invite you to go choke on your guilt for rest of your miserable life.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/choking-infant-juan-nicol-ices-201649159.html

RMS Carpathia's Courageous Rescue Efforts

David August — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 02:32:58 GMT

“You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it" - Fathers Ethics (2:21)

I was struck by this story. It is not quite about the Titanic, but the ship and people that fought to rescue her: The Carpathia.

"Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

-

If I can just add one personal note. I need to emphasize something I only touched on in the original post.

I need to emphasize that Carpathia failed.

A lot of the tags and comments have a tinge of...despair, or guilt, or wistfulness about things like this happening so rarely. Or inadequacy, or just being overwhelmed or unhappy about not being in a position to step up in a comparable way. And I want to gently bring up the fact that this is still the sinking of the Titanic.

They did not get there in time. They did not save the ship. It can be argued that they may not even have saved a single life; we have no way of knowing. This was still a horrific maritime disaster mired in arrogance and incompetence and a lack of care.

If the response to this story shows anything, it shows this: It matters that they tried.

Even though they got there too late, even though the ship still sank. It matters that they tried. The difference between making the best reasonable speed after confirming the seriousness of the situation, and the miracle they pulled off - it matters. It makes all the difference. Even if it made no difference at all. Not one of you read this and concluded that I was stupid for caring so much when the Titanic still sank and all those people still died.

You don’t have to fix the world. You’ll likely be cold and sick and miserable and testy and scared, and unprepared, and in over your head, and entirely too small to be of any real use. It feels stupid, passing out blankets and coffee in the middle of an ice field knowing what just happened. It’s hard to feel anything but useless when all you can do is tap a wireless transmitter and promise help that you know will come too late.

It matters that they fought for those people. It matters that they cared, and it matters that they tried. It matters that they didn’t stop. If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have read this far."

Source: mylordshesacactus

Bovino Petitions to Fight Wild Boar Naked for Sentence Commutation

David August — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 22:36:34 GMT

Naysayers Say Nay

July 12, 2034: Fremont County, Colorado - Gregory Bovino, serving several life sentences at both the federal and state levels in multiple states, has petitioned the courts asking that he be granted permission to wrestle a wild boar naked, and, if he survives, have the rest of his sentences commuted. He reportedly suggested the unclothed confrontation between him and a wild boar be televised as a pay-per-view event, no word if he'd dedicate the proceeds go to his victims and their surviving family members to help defray on-going medical expenses.

The disgraced former U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent has repeatedly attempted to circumvent the results of trials in six states and a Federal Court in what many stipulate are bids both to escape accountability and to regain the limelight he ardently enjoyed back in 2025 and 2026 while he was Border Patrol Commander at Large and commanded a campaign of mayhem that sickened the nation and world, and began a period that included some of the most grotesque atrocities of the 21st Century so far.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Serious Human Rights Violations in the United States, Accountability, Reconciliation, and the Clarification of the Fate and Whereabouts of Missing Persons dismissed Bovino’s latest petition as frivolous, saying “this effort is further proof he lacks any contrition, and this is him making a mockery of the serious crimes committed by him and at his command.”

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Thousands of former agents who worked for Customs and Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a half dozen other federal agencies remain incarcerated. The handful not yet captured or killed are still pursued by authorities after being indicted in absentia for various crimes committed during the final years of the now disbanded Department of Homeland Security.

Experts from the Feral Swine Foundation say any wild boar is unlikely to be harmed, beyond mild stomach upset, during a confrontation with a 64 year old naked human. They point out there are several ways the boar would be expected to maul or kill a human in such a context. Public opinion is relatively unified, according to recent polling, that those federal agents, executives and political appointees imprisoned for these crimes remain behind bars and serve out their sentences.

Premeditated State Violence Must End

David August — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 21:04:13 GMT

Planning to kill is bad.

In 2013, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) knew that their agents would sometimes “…intentionally put themselves into the exit path of the vehicle, thereby exposing themselves to additional risk and creating justification for the use of deadly force” (PDF from CBP web server).

US Customs and Border Protection - Use Of Force Review: Cases And Policies February 2013 page 8 CBP policies on shooting at vehicles and suspects

Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who (with seeming malice aforethought) shot and killed Renee Good last week, worked for CBP as border patrol from 2007 to 2015.

Since 2015, he has been ICE, and he told a court he has been “…a firearms instructor, an active shooter instructor…a field intelligence officer and…a member of the SWAT team, the St. Paul Special Response Team firearms instructors” for ICE (USA Today). He is the most professional ICE has to offer.

He possibly learned and has taught the method of premeditated murder he appears (in multiple camera angles) to have engaged in last week from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), specifically from and for CBP and ICE.

Seems ICE is trained to escalate things, and to kill civilians. Citizens and civilians are at risk of death and maiming as long as ICE is at large and behaving outside of laws. Civilians cannot be left to face ICE, suffer and die, alone. Local policing forces must enforce the law and be deployed to engage, detain and arrest ICE and CBP. SWAT and/or National Guard seem best trained and equipped to thwart ICE crimes, but someone authroized must take action. Vigilantism will not go well, but so far little beyond vigilantism has been put forward as a solution.

ICE and CBP are designed, and trained, to use deadly force without reasonable cause nor justification. ICE and CBP are now routinely focused on citizens and others alike, outside of their Congressionally created immigration jurisdiction. Since federal authorities have not even attempted to stop ICE and CBP lawlessness, more local authorities must enforce the law. Today.

Ice Didn’t Do What They Did and Do

David August — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 00:05:39 GMT

A statement from the US Department of Homeland Security:

"Guys, guys, except for all the times we have targeted, arrested, unlawfully detained, been violent with, and hurt American Citizens, ICE doesn't do those things to American citizens.

We should be grateful that ICE is doing the vital work of culling people from the pool of American citizens who don't deserve American citizenship by virtue of ending up at the mercy of masked and unmarked agents in unmarked cars. Real American citizens would never encounter such an un-American experience, and rest assured if you do get taken, maimed or killed by ICE, or ICE-like forces, you weren't really an American to start with, were you?

There is a not a single instance of us over stepping our Congressional mandate if you simply ignore all the times we have. Just don't notice them and they are basically not there.

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Let's just set aside the instances of ICE going at US citizens for a moment, and admit that if your wrists get in the way of ICE zip ties, if your lungs dare to breathe in our chemical weapons without written permission in advance, or if your body and face get in the way of ICE munitions, that was illegal of you. So if you're really honest with yourself, you deserved it and have no one to blame but yourself. People who follow laws don't get targeted by ICE, as being a target is a clear indication of criminality on the part of the target.

Our agents only attack people when they feel like it, and they would never go after natural born Americans unless they wanted to. Bringing down the worst of the worst is a joy, not a chore. ICE would never harm an American citizen unless they really really wanted to.

We all need to embrace that anyone ICE takes, hurts or kills is, by virtue of that taking, hurting and killing clearly an enemy of the United States, and should de facto have their US citizenship face an in-the-field arbitrary revocation. No American citizen's citizenship endures an encounter with ICE actions anymore than their safety does. That's just common sense law enforcement."

To Sea

David August — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 19:54:32 GMT

He woke up, looking forward to finally fishing. He’s retired, even though he feels like he could keep doing the work, and now, finally, he has the chance to go out on his boat, with a beer and his rod to catch something. Maybe if he catches enough he can fill the whole freezer set up in the basement. Fresh frozen fish for months.

The ocean was calm, oddly almost like glass, once he was out a bit from the coast. Caribbean breeze and the movement of the motorboat, a fast mover, running wind through his hair. In a few minutes he’d cut the engines and he could finally start to fish.

The calm water, the gentle breeze and…that sound.

It wasn’t the sort of low whirl and squidgy bass of a Black Hawk. It was more of a whoosh over a high-speed putt putt: a turboprop. A Reaper came for him, again. 66 foot wide wings, and its multi-spectral sensor was looking at him, staring at him, through him. It saw him. Really saw him.

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Too late to run. Even in a go fast boat, the killer machine could go more than 200 miles per hour faster. Its hellfire faster than the speed of sound.

And he can’t outlast it: it’s ready to stay above him, watching, taunting, judging, for more than a day.

Then the burst of static sound. Hellfire missile launched, coming his way. The arc of flames coming out of its back, as he watched it slide through the air at its quarry, him.

The beer in his hand stung his skin. The breeze seemed like it was whipping grit at his cheeks now. He’d done it, again.

Arriving before its sound, hellfire struck the bow of the boat transforming it to wreck in an instant.

The ocean is like an endless warm bath now. The Caribbean is force-feeding him salt water. He’ll never see land again. How many more minutes would it be now.

The Reaper was certainly circling, looking through the smoke and flames that dance on what used to be the boat and sees him: a man shaped warmth suspended in the water just a bit cooler than his body temperature. That’s what the Reaper almost gleefully transmits to a screen more than 2,000 miles to the north in a room he used to think of like a special game room in the basement of what’s left of a white house.

Now he’s the NPC, the non-player character, for some past him to toy with. For forty-one minutes the ocean laps and licks at him, not laughing, not mocking, just waiting for the next hellfire’s rage and stinging his eyes. Will it burn his skin, he wonders now, or will it shatter his body before his nerves can tell his brain he’s in pain? Will his mind realize he’s gone before its neurons are incinerated?

He just wanted to fish.

He knows it is coming, they hadn’t. He knows 100 thousand dollars of anti-tank high-explosive is going to wipe him from the world. His namesake will never let him escape this hellfire.

He’s alone, at least they weren’t. He thought that must be nicer somehow, to be adrift like that: waiting for hoped rescue, together, not knowing between the two of you what was really coming. He was alone, facing no rescue, no reprieve, never. Alone.

He felt it coming in his gut more than hearing it. It felt right. Forty-one minutes must have passed, he was almost done.

This one he tried to breathe in on impact. His dread vanished in a flash.

He woke up, looking forward to finally fishing. Again, like he had every time before, and would every time again.

History’s Bloody Rhymes

David August — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 20:27:32 GMT

It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.

- Theodor Reik, “The Unreachables” 1965

Rhyme Number One:

German naval commander Heinz-Wilhelm Eck was commander of U-852 and was tried, convicted, and executed (along with 2 others deemed responsible) after the war because on March 13, 1944 he ordered his crew to shoot at survivors who were clinging to rafts and wreckage of the Greek merchant ship SS Peleus after sinking it with 2 torpedoes. Eck was trying to conceal the position of his submarine, and so ordered his men to fire into the wreckage and rafts to sink them.

He’d violated international law regarding the rescue of shipwrecked sailors.

On Sunday, November 30, Eck and the others’ executions will have been carried out exactly 80 years ago.

American Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has not yet been tried, convicted nor executed for on September 2, 2025 ordering his Special Operations commanders to kill survivors, in this case clinging to their burning, sinking ship, after crippling it with a missile strike. Adm. Mitch Bradley, who ordered the second strike to comply with Hegseth’s orders to leave no survivors, has also not yet been tried, convicted nor executed. Hegseth, in control of the most powerful ocean going navy on earth with massive rescue capacities, was trying to stop survivors and the boat’s cargo from being rescued by others.

He, and those who followed his illegal orders, violated international and US law regarding the rescue of shipwrecked sailors and the violent destruction of civilian boats and non-combatant civilians not posing an immediate threat, but lethally engaged nonetheless.

The September 2, 2025 killings were among the first of a so far 3 month sequence of US strikes suspected to have already killed 80 people at Hegseth’s order. No publicly provided evidence nor legal justification for these deaths has been presented by any element or official in the US government.

(sources: https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Heinz-Wilhelm_Eck
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hegseth-declines-comment-report-boat-survivors-killed-result/story?id=127951385
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/pete-hegseth-drug-boat-survivors-order-b2874580.html )

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Rhyme Number Two:

No one from either party threatened to deport the Hmong who the CIA trained and equipped for 20 years to help the US fight the Vietnam War, and as far as I can tell, those Hmong friends we brought to Wisconsin to keep them safe when we left Vietnam are doing well.

Potus threatens to deport and has failed to renew work permits for thousands of Afghans who the CIA trained and equipped for 20 years to help the US fight the war in Afghanistan, and as far as I can tell, one of those Afghan friends we brought to the US to keep them safe when we left Afghanistan just shot two National Guardsman in DC.

Treat your friends like friends = thrive.
Treat your friend like potus does = make new enemies.

President Gives Masterclass in Writing… Assaultive, Murderous Writing

David August — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 18:47:52 GMT

he is picking up the slack from our school's curricula

Source links: https://trumpstruth.org/statuses/33937 https://trumpstruth.org/statuses/33935

The President has begun offering a masterclass in expository writing. What with the Department of Education being dissolved before our eyes, President Trump is doing us a favor, really.

Here's a transcript from an elementary school teacher supporting this presidential initiative with their students:

"Ok kids, when the President says, 'seditious behavior from traitors' what is the antecedent of 'traitors,' or who exactly is that collective noun referring to? That's right, Members of Congress. And what is the seditious behavior he is referring to? Yes, that's right too: encouraging soldiers not to follow illegal orders (like firing on civilians because he tells them too) that is the behavior he says is seditious, good work!

Now in the follow up post, 'seditious behavior, punishable by death!' he has concisely expressed what concept? That's close when you say he wants to go on a murder spree. You're almost there. But more precisely: he has in 5 words expressed that anyone who encourages the military to follow the law, even if it means disobeying him, should be killed. Really impressive concision. Such brevity. See kids, you've gotta speak (or write) clearly when it's a matter of life or death, and he's modeling that here for us very well."

Such clear writing being done at the highest levels of government sets a really good example for our school kids. Young minds absorb such instruction even better than adults' minds will. The President is clarifying how disputes can be handled with lethal force in an effective way. It's an invaluable lesson for young Americans.

Just as Members of Congress can better seek shelter from those the President sends to kill them when he speaks clearly about it beforehand, so too can school children across the country have a better chance to "run, hide, fight" when federal agents are sent to their school by the President to violently remove their teachers, classmates or even the student themselves.

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This isn't just about preparation for academic success, this is preparation for life, and simple survival. It is truly inspired leadership for the President to present such an exemplary example of violent political speech to the world. He has given us all, not just schoolchildren, a great chance to learn, and do things like expand our vocabularies so that we might use bloodthirsty words like "assassinative," "manslaughterous" and "regicidal" in our daily lives.

Under Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.'s guidance at the Department of Health and Human Services, studies are being considered on whether it is more or less traumatic for children to have the violence they and their families are about to face articulated in advance. Some maintain it is healthier if violence comes as a total surprise, since it gives victim less time to react and which may make the aggressor less afraid. But experts already agree that it is far more polite to have a very clear statement of homicidal purpose made before the killing begins.

In unrelated foreign policy news, no word yet on whether the President plans to bomb Stockholm to encourage the Nobel Committee to reconsider their decision not to award him a Nobel Peace Prize.

Local Law Enforcement's Challenge: Uphold the Law, Even Against the Feds

David August — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 21:27:34 GMT

in the absence of action, civilians will fill the void

I do want to write something not so serious, maybe even funny, here soon. But today, I think the police have to do a very hard and necessary thing: defend Americans against their federal government.

If any other group arrived into a neighborhood carrying long guns, deploying chemical weapons, violently engaging and then taking people away with no warrants nor apparent legal reason, we would dispatch SWAT, as SWAT has the training to defuse and deescalate such situations.

Failing to do so now only defers and amplifies the consequences. Citizens left to take things into their own hands would be bad, and that is inevitable eventually unless other action is taken first to stop the lawlessness and violence of federal forces. ice/cbp/dhs continue to escalate and will continue to escalate unless and until they are stopped.

If federal forces get in a shootout, better with SWAT in a contained scenario that SWAT has identified as tactically possible for SWAT to prevail in, then some random, large scale, purely vigilante conflict random civilians select or the under-trained federal forces select.

And those are apparently the choices: law enforcement enforcing the law on federal forces breaking the law, or, eventually, ad hoc vigilantism.

The former is not awesome, it is a bit chaotic and a Constitutional crisis. The later will devolve into pure horror and harm. I have written before about how deferring a Constitutional crisis only amplifies it; President Jackson did it and helped fuel the Civil War. We need to solve for whether the rule-of-law will thrive, and we need to do it right now. If we don’t, harm without benefit is all that will remain.

If the president does get his wish of deploying standard military and national guard to use American cities as the military’s training ground, you will have apartment buildings being shelled, and suburban neighborhoods being drone struck or carpet bombed. In short, massive loss of life, and probably loss of order.

“We had to destroy the village to save it” is not a new American rationalization, and the imperial boomerang can and will, if we don’t stop it, bring it to bear on the American populace.

Can the US Army, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard, Space Force and Air Force pacify the entirety of the United States? No. And certainly not in any lasting way. Can they with all of the Reserves and National Guards as well? Also no. There are about 2 million military people in the US armed forces. The military itself knows you usually need roughly a 1 to 50 ratio to occupy an area, 1 soldier per 50 civilians. And if the area has an insurgence or hostile military presence, then it is likely closer to 1 to 40 or even more soldiers that are needed. 5 years ago people were getting violent after being told not to go to Applebees during the pandemic. The American people almost have a national case of oppositional defiant disorder, and can be apocalyptically violent if they get to that point.

And 2,000,000 simply cannot control 330,000,000 Americans who have more than one gun per person. 1 soldier for every 165 civilians is not a recipe for an occupation's success. And the 2 million members of the US armed forces are not all combat troops to begin with (and not all of them would likely follow an illegal order to engage Americans just because potus and miller want them to).

Can civilians stop the US Marines from taking a public park? No. And, permit me a tangent here: to the lasting humiliation and permanent dishonor of the US Marines and National Guard, we know there are Marines and Guardsmen who will try to take a public park from kids playing at camp because they did just that earlier this year. Their orders were illegal, and the Marines and Guard did it anyway. They should never hold their heads high again for they attacked what they swore to defend: the American People and the American Constitution. They now individually, severally and personally owe a dear debt to both.

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But back on the topic of that public park: the Marines can take it, but civilians can make it really painful to hold it. The US military recently learned, the hard way, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, that occupying countries isn’t fun and without enough occupiers: it isn’t really feasible.

But a lot of people can be hurt, and a lot of destruction can happen, anyway. Massive damage is possible, and likely, if the administration's destructive goals encounter no obstacles. miller, musk and potus cannot actually make their technate fantasies come true, but they're trying to nonetheless, and hurting people and things in the process. That is why they threaten to invade Panama, Mexico and Canada and to them those threats make sense.

If the threats and plans coming from the White House didn't confirm it, I would sound like a mad conspiracy theorist. But federal recklessness, violence and chaos reigns. It seems in the absence meaningful professional protective action from the feds, locals are what remains.

Would state, county and local governments want to test the loyalty of their own police and see if their police would follow their civilian leaders, or will those police fold into supporting ice lawlessness instead? Lots of governments probably don't wanna find out; it's not a fun time to see what reality on that will be. I get their reluctance. I understand that pushing one's police force to take such risky action is scary. It is an issue that may have impact on local elections. I have brought it up to candidates. It is not ideal to task one's police force to arrest federal forces breaking laws and discover their loyalties.

Eventually that loyalty is probably gonna be clarified anyway, and it might be better to do it on terms one chooses as opposed to the happenstance that simply comes about.

And finding that a core element of a local force is loyal to the local government, and to the law, and is willing to take the risk of enforcing law on lawless feds (and it is a big risk) may be possible. Failing to find out may be inviting federal forces to commit further and further crimes as they escalate unchecked.

Will maga threaten the lives of any police that enforce the law on law breaking feds? Probably, unfortunately.

insight from Lana

When some of their most devoted are seen to stray from the maga party line, threats of violence can follow. It will take real risk taking, real bravery, to enforce the law on criminal feds. But if enforcing the law on law breakers is not something you are interested in, being a police officer is...odd. But yes, we can't pretend my suggestion is without danger. And we can't really pretend our law enforcement is actually law enforcement if they selectively avoid enforcing certain laws on certain people.

It is not easy to face down armed feds and enforce the law. I wish it were and I wish there were a better way than asking the most highly trained and equipped police I know of, SWAT, to do it. It is dangerous. But if SWAT doesn't, average civilians will eventually have no choice but to do it, poorly, themselves. I pointed out before: John Locke seems to agree with me that if there is no earthly authority to appeal to for redress, you are in a de facto state of war.

And local police have a real opportunity here. Local police can show who they serve and who they protect. They can do more for community relations with a few bold acts on this than years of outreach ever can. I have seen groups watching for ice, in an effort to protect their neighbors, go ahead and vocally disavow any efforts local police are making because police are not fully trusted by the people. What an opportunity for local forces to solidify their loyalty to the local populace they serve, and the law, by stopping the violence federal forces inflict.

Or do we want a future of local distrust? Do we want more dangerous streets and the people always seeing the police in their neighborhoods as a malevolent presence? Do we want the American people to believe that given a chance, cops will only hurt and kill? Do we tell Americans to never assist police? Every police chief, every sergeant and watch commander, every detective and beat cop must chose the answer they want for the future, the country's future and their personal future.

The police will always be outnumbered by the people they patrol. Police are more likely to make it home safely at the end of the shift if almost all the people believe those police are a force for good and those people want to help those police do their jobs well.

And no, “but you don’t understand, the people are way past ever working with us, some are lawless too much and they are animals,” doesn't cut it. With that argument you’re a prison guard, not a police officer, you're an occupying martial force, not a police force. And a bad one too: if you are already dehumanizing people, remember there are too many studies to cite (PDF) just one that confirms dehumanization is a step needed to allow the worst atrocities of the world.

Is policing in a free society difficult? Yes. Stunningly difficult. It is worth doing anyway? Yes, because otherwise you basically need to centralize the crime and rights violations within the law enforcement, secret police and federal forces in an effort to avoid those difficulties. You need to make the society un-free in order to avoid the challenges of policing a free society.

And then you won’t have successfully policed that society, you will have simply ignored the premise of the question. Abandonment of Justice would mean you no longer have to solve the persistent and evolving problem of how to administer Justice fairly. You, the police force, would become injustice, and therefore you'd avoid the thorny and tough work of bringing Justice into the world and helping that Justice thrive.

We arrive at the question protestors often pose: who and what do you serve? I implore the police forces, the prosecutors, the mayors, county commissioners, councilmen and other local leaders to strike the bargain of pursuing Justice with haste now, no matter how painful and dangerous it is to do so. This can avoid forcing our future selves to make far worse bargains. Those future bargains will bring far more destruction and loss of life later.

And on that cheery note, I’m off to find some small way in my own life to try to make things better for those I care about today. I suppose that kind of is what this whole piece has been about all along.

Collective Punishment Backfires

David August — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:05:08 GMT

when school teachers tried it we acted out even more

ice is doing many things, including collectively punishing the people of Chicago, and by extension the American People. This has me writing instead of sleeping.

Gassing neighborhoods, often near children, schools and hospitals is collective punishment. Discharging their weapons recklessly at vehicles, putting people in hospitals and morgues is form of collective punishment. Apparently random abductions of working people, even while having a seizure holding a toddler, with no due process or recourse is collective punishment (and astoundingly callous and cruel). Brute force may suppress dissent in the short term (though it hasn’t much), but it unifies and unites opposition in the long term. My exhibits for this point are the elections this week.

(Collective punishment is prohibited by treaty in non-international armed conflicts [and also international ones], specifically by Common Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 4 of the Additional Protocol II.)

History shows that state violence begets mass mobilization. The more brutal the tactics, the more people feel, everyday people, compelled to resist even if they were previously neutral. History also shows that repressive regimes either collapse or become full-blown dictatorships. Limping along might be an option for a while I suppose, perhaps some sort of American version of the Italian years of lead type existence. There is no stable middle ground mid or long term. When states lose legitimacy and resort to brute force, societal collapse or revolution often follows. The U.S. is not immune to this dynamic.

The U.S. was founded on armed rebellion against perceived tyranny. This narrative is deeply embedded in our culture, making resistance to oppressive government actions more likely in some ways than in many other countries. No stable middle ground exists where the current brutality (or escalating brutality) of federal forces can persist with nothing else changing. Once a government crosses the threshold into widespread, arbitrary violence, the populace’s reaction is almost always resistance, not submission.

The only way to be sure whether or not the U.S. federal government has passed that threshold is to observe and see how the American People react. And the American People are reacting.

The American People are blowing whistles at armed and armored forces deployed on their streets, peacefully alerting their neighbors that danger is close. The American People are photographing and videoing the un-uniformed, unidentified, masked, violent, reckless (ice guy drops gun and loses magazine, without apparently noticing while aiming at civilians) for future prosecution. The State of Illinois has even already created an entity tasked with such reconciliation later. Every ice agent should welcome their day in court. It is the most gentle form of accountability available to them.

If the federal government is ends up appearing to have succeeded at doing what it has expressed as its desire to do, degrading elections, then a main peaceful path to revolution, free and fair elections, will no longer seem to exist. That would seem to leave the American People fewer non-violent options for change. And things that seem can collapse into action horrifyingly quickly. The American people tend to be collectively slow to violence. Then they are apocalyptic.

However, as Texas is doing potus’ bidding by gerrymandering itself to secure more gop seats in Congress just because they want them, California put to its voters the chance to counter such manipulation (at least in part). And the voters in California decided to counter-gerrymander their state to try to bring balance back to the House. Democracy in peculiar action. No violent changes to government made.

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If such electoral outlets like that were to stop existing, potus would actually become less secure in his position, not more. We could ask the various monarchs and dictators of history who did not allow their people the option of peacefully changing things through elections how that panned out, but they’re all basically unavailable.

In a case of ironic self-sabotage, potus and his supporters are working to nullify the peaceful mechanisms of dissent: voting, free speech/expression, court cases and more. Potus seems to forget that the American systems of non-violent conflict resolution (like the courts and elections) are among the precious few things that keep us from the law of the jungle, or what I have referred to before as John Locke’s aptly described: state of war.

Potus is 79. He has chronic venous insufficiency. He does not seem well suited to prevail under the law of the jungle in a post-Constitutional state of war.

But there is no switch that flips and shifts things from grumbly discontent to full civil war. In hindsight, historians might see some event, future or past, as the 21st Century’s version of the shelling of Fort Sumter, but I doubt it. It also seems unlikely half the country’s states will write up why they’re seceding like they basically did in the 1860s. As we face the uncertainties of this moment, it is unclear what single thing could demarcate such a change now. I doubt it can be violence between Americans that right now shifts us from one era to the next.

I also doubt we’ll have a shot heard round the world either (as the telling of the American Revolution so often includes). And I do not doubt it because there is no potential for real, deep change. There is. We are facing the chance to make real changes.

No, I doubt it because we have had dozens of little civil wars and revolutions in the last almost 250 years. We typically call them elections. Now before you stop reading and discard this as utopic fantasy, or that I’ve ignored the rougher realities of American politics, hear me out. I am writing this at 4am so please bear with me.

The demarcation of violence as the start of a civil war or revolution in the United States today might be useless. There have been about 423 mass shootings in the US this year, so far, and we’ve had only 311 days.

So which fraction of which day would we choose as a decider between before and after the NEXT BIG VIOLENT CONFLICT? Even if a culturally resonant or exceedingly violent one happens, how would we know that it the one that’s pivoting history? (I hope such a shooting doesn’t occur, though hope seems less effective than sensible gun laws with this type of thing: when the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was in place we had fewer shootings, and both Republic and Second Amendment did not wither and die as a result).

Don’t worry, if we can’t make up our minds on whether or not the most recent mass casualty event is the historically vital one, we'll just wait an average of less than 18 hours and we’ll have another one to consider.

This is not a screed about gun violence. If anything, this is a blurb about the hopelessness and counter-productivity of all violence. Violence is never a good answer.

Violence is not a good answer, but it is an answer. Clearly violence is an answer people choose too often. Every life lost to violence reveals why it is too often. Everyone mangled, physically and emotionally, by violence is a monument to how violence happens too much.

Is it idealistic to want there to be no violence? Yes. Isn’t violence natural and part of nature like lions hunting prey? Yes, but neither the lion nor the prey can read or write this sentence, and along with opposing thumbs, a voice box capable of human speech and a prefrontal cortex unequaled in the known natural world, I’d like to think we are different enough from the lions and the prey that we can do better than they could in our shoes. (Insert joke about a lion running in heels.)

And we do. We do do better. If you squint in a poorly lit room, you might even view all of human civilization as a sophisticated attempt to avoid raw, wall-to-wall violence. We have courts, we have dispute resolution policies at work, we have words we can use to talk, discuss and insult instead of punch, kick and eye gouge. We have built cities and houses and playgrounds without every project devolving into a five-year-old's-slap-fighting style mess. Angry email chains are better than Thunderdome style “two people enter one person leaves” death matches.

We learned to cultivate the land to grow food. And we raised armies to take land that wasn’t ours. We landed on the moon. And we proved we had the technology to land bombs in our adversary’s cities. We split the atom which now powers and warms cities full of millions of people, and also threatens to turn those same cities, and people, into glass.

There is a tension in technology, and life, and governance. When we reduce violence we probably reduce harm.

The people of this country, in order to make us a more perfect group, articulated a country working to make things just, tranquil and protected, to make things generally better, and codify some freedoms and rights for us and our kids. I just paraphrased the opening of our constituting document, and we, the people, can find ways to make potus and ice bend to it without us needing to be the violent ones in this struggle. We are not animals (even if doing what an animal would do sounds very appealing). We are Americans. And like the elections this week have done, we can remind potus and ice of just what it means to be an American and strive for ideals. We can remind them, again and again, until it’s not needed anymore. Thanks for reading and do something fun this weekend; despots hate when you do something fun 😝.

Securing Faith, Sacrificing Safety

David August — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 23:30:44 GMT

Digital Risks of Faith-Based Content Filters

Centralized filtering systems often collect user data to function, raising real privacy and security issues as they are often not properly secured or anonymized. It is a one-stop shop to comprise the security and safety of an entire religious community, and each member of the community's digital lives. This includes their real-time locations, banking data, health information, relationships and more.

For example, Rimon Internet Provider, which provides Internet filtering services for the religious and Haredi sectors, was breached by an Iranian cyberattack group in August 2025. The report of this single breach highlights some of the unmitigated and unmitigable risks of such filtering.

"Rimon Internet filters content by routing all traffic through its servers, acting as an Internet provider with full oversight. Using a legitimate MITM (Man-in-the-Middle) method, it decrypts HTTPS traffic, scans it by user rules, blocks unwanted content, and then restores browsing.

This gives the company access to sensitive data: site addresses, page content, and even login details. A breach could expose not only credentials but also personal information such as preferences, filtered content, and correspondence."

Faith-based content filters are, at their core and foundation, centralizing people's individual digital lives, and the digital activity of entire communities, and then leaving them under-protected or unprotected by modern cybersecurity standards.

Digital Vulnerabilities

As these these filtering systems are often partly or all volunteer-run, and they use unavoidably under-resourced systems (when compared to major tech companies), they often lack comprehensive professional cybersecurity oversight. This increases the risk of vulnerabilities of all types, and especially for groups that may be targeted. Limited IT expertise in smaller religious institutions can lead to misconfiguration or unpatched security flaws as well.

Having one's internet activity compromised can lead to financial loss, identity theft, privacy loss (CyberGlossary Eavesdropping Definition) and, according to the FBI, internet connected devices when compromised "if accessed, could result in physical safety threats."

Physical Vulnerabilities

The dozens of offices the faith-based content filtering organizations often run, in multiple countries, are often woefully lax in physical security as well. From physically unsecured digital hardware to access points like doors that lack adequate protection, the possibility for penetration of their systems is real. This allows anyone with bad intentions to compromise the digital systems every user of that faith-based content filter worldwide. Those users relying on the faith-based content filter to keep their communications, health data, banking, financial and all other data secure (including data and contacts of their friends, families, colleagues and companies as well) are left exposed.

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Fundamental Security Risks in Ad Hoc (Not Built-In) Content Filtering

Many of the companies and organizations offering faith-based content filter solutions are "Data Rich, Defense Poor: Like any other organization, religious institutions [and faith-based content filters] store [and transmit] the personal data of their members [and users] – names, addresses, contact details, donation records...financial information. However, many of these institutions may not have the robust cybersecurity measures corporate entities do, making them soft targets" (Cybercrime and Religious Institutions: A Wake-Up Call for the Faithful).

Data breaches, like the August 2025 Rimon breach, are damaging to people and their communities. A December 2024 breach of Young Life, a Colorado-based religious organization, disclosed names, Social Security numbers, financial account details, and payment card information which "underscores the high stakes of cyberattacks on faith-based institutions." The people hurt in that instance face the consequences of identity theft and financial fraud. An August 2024 breach of a Turkish religious studies app meant "exposed data [which] included geolocation details [where physically you are and when you are there], SIM serial numbers, network identifiers, MAC addresses, and IP addresses. Such information, if exploited, poses severe risks of identity theft, cyber fraud, and unauthorized surveillance" (Faith Under Cyber Fire: How Cyberattacks Exploit Religious Communities).

Global Risk vs. Reward Assessment

The risks of placing one's entire digital footprint through an under-provisioned, digitally and physically vulnerable system like a faith-based content filter are grave. And these risks simply cannot be mitigated by the non-profit and often volunteer organizations supporting such filters. Motivated, skilled, well-resourced and motivated cyber attackers target religious organizations as either easy soft financial targets or out of ideological and geopolitical motives.

According to the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (PDF) from March 2025 and prepared by the Director of National Intelligence, "Financially motivated cyber criminals continue to prey on inadequately defended U.S. targets..." and "Iran’s growing expertise and willingness to conduct aggressive cyber operations also make it a major threat to the security of U.S. and allied and partner networks and data...also [Iran] will continue to directly threaten U.S. persons globally and remains committed to its decade-long effort to develop surrogate networks inside the United States."

Israel's National Institute for Security Studies concurs. Iran "...has developed the institutions and infrastructure to ensure its proxy war could disrupt, sabotage and even destroy civil and commercial targets, critical national infrastructure and military capabilities" (Iranian hacking group steps up global cyber war).

Therefore, no faith-based content filters can be recommended as safe to use at this time. The built-in parental controls available as built-in filtering systems on phones, tablets and computers can likely accomplish what is wanted to enforce restrictions and filter out religiously unwanted material, and can do so without comprising personally identifiable information (PII) or opening new major security vulnerabilities. Google, Apple and others have guidance on how to use their built-in solutions.

If the built-in parental and content control systems seem to interfere with other desired device features, that can be managed through individual troubleshooting of issues that may reveal how to solve such conflicts. Many times individual sites and/or apps can be exempted to one degree or another from the restrictions of built-in parental controls, allowing those to function as they would without any filter in place.

DNS Level Blocking Options and Caveats

All websites (and most apps) lookup what machine a given domain like www.example.com is currently on by using a DNS server. Sort of like a phone-book allows one to look up the phone number for a person or a business, DNS servers allow your devices to look up what machine or machines they need to access for a given site or app to work. A DNS server translates domain names into IP addresses.

While not a full-featured filter, using a purpose built DNS lookup can allow one to block access to most objectionable content. Examples are as follows (I have not used or evaluated these two; buyer beware):

Public Faith-Based DNS Filtering Services:

CleanBrowsing - offers a "Family Filter" that blocks adult content, mixed content, and malicious sites. It aligns with "conservative family values" and is widely used by religious communities. DNS Addresses:
Family Filter: 185.228.168.168 and 185.228.169.168
Adult Filter: 185.228.168.10 and 185.228.169.11
OpenDNS FamilyShield - while not faith-specific, OpenDNS FamilyShield blocks adult content and is often used by families and religious groups seeking a safer browsing environment. DNS Addresses: 208.67.222.123 and 208.67.220.123

Users can manually set their device’s DNS settings to use the provided DNS server addresses (on iOS, on Android or on MacOS, on Windows). This can be done on routers (to protect all devices on a network) or on individual devices (computers, smartphones, tablets). These services typically block offending sites by returning a "blocked" page or redirecting to a safe page, rather than allowing the connection to proceed.

No filter is perfect; some legitimate sites may be blocked, and some inappropriate sites may slip through. This is true of all filters. Using third-party DNS services means trusting the provider with your browsing data (at least as far as DNS lookups). Always review the privacy policy of the DNS provider and be aware they may retain whatever data they collect on your internet use.

Tyrants Fall

David August — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:24:44 GMT

it is their defining characteristic

How many enemies dreamed of destroying the White House. How many soldiers wished they could flatten it. How many generals fantasized about razing the American People’s house.

This one man beat them all. Same man brought the confederate flag into the Capitol, same man presides over the largest tax hike in history (tariffs are import taxes), signed off on the ending of nutrition for the hungry and ending of healthcare since it will now be unaffordable for millions.

This. One. Man.

But he is only one man. Sure he has supporters around him and appointed to positions to actualize his whims, and he can, has and plans to ruin more.

But there is no version of the American People that let his behavior continue unchecked. The pendulum of American politics will swing back. The only question is the timeline, and the extent of the destruction that happens between now and then, and if the next phase is destructive or constructive. To imagine the American people will not react is to grossly miscalculate America.

Let me meander through some history and thought as I sort of survey where we seem to be and where we might go.

The reaction of the American People to what this President is doing may not be quick, may not be unified and may or may not be productive. Non-violent change tends to be more effective with fewer downsides than violence.

Erica Chenoweth, co-author with Maria J. Stephan of the book Why Civil Resistance Works - The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, says to the Harvard Gazette that key parts of a successful nonviolent campaign include "four different things...

[1] ...a large and diverse participation that’s sustained.

[2] ...[the movement] needs to elicit loyalty shifts among security forces in particular, but also other elites.

[3] ...need to be able to have more than just protests...

[4] ...when...repressed — which is basically inevitable for those calling for major changes — they don’t either descend into chaos or opt for using violence themselves..."

So if the American People can continue to work to defend themselves and each other from federal abuses, and include those four pieces, we will in time stop potus from what he is doing and wants to do. Seems like a framework we can work with.

Number 1 seems to have partly been realized by the No Kings protests, though growing the size and diversity (in all respects) of the people involved needs to happen even more going forward.

Number 2 seems to have partly been seen in the reversal by Disney and others around the suppression of Kimmel and elsewhere. How much those reversals are maturing into a more full bodied recognition that defiance is the smarter and more lucrative path than compliance remains to be seen.

Number 3 may well need to include things like boycotts. Boycotts have already been impacting companies like Target and may be about to impact Spotify (which has been running recruiting ads for ice). Please cancel your Spotify (and shift your playlists elsewhere, perhaps to Qobuz using Soundiz, which is an option I randomly came across).

Number 4 could get...unpredictable. As ice violence continues, it seems likely the American People need courts to contain ice's law breaking and brutality.

“…for where there is an authority, a power on earth, from which relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war is excluded, and the controversy is decided by that power.” - 2nd Treatise on Government by John Locke chapter 3, section 21

If courts fail to contain ice, it seems violence is what remains, according to Locke. Locke is saying that if a people cannot appeal to an earthly authority for relief, the people are in a state of war. Put another way, if only God is sorting it out, Locke says armed conflict is the path God leaves us when we (humanity collectively) fail to give ourselves any other options. Dancing inflatable frogs are an option.

The Founders of the United States were influenced by Locke's thinking, not just on this. But this thinking did help them see war as a viable choice for themselves to solve the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence. For them it by and large worked out. Except, less than 100 years later the country tore itself apart. And then a hundred years after that, it still hadn't solved some of the issues baked into our society, and so again tried to find solutions with the civil rights movement. But by and large, over the centuries, the imperfect union has slowly worked to become more perfect.

Now, the President’s advisors like to say we are in a second American Revolution. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” said Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation (architects of Project 2025) on potus' sometimes strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast.

But Roberts fails to realize at least two things. Whomever he deems to be "the left" won't curl up into a ball and simply go away while he gets his way at their expense. Also: violent Civil War is not avoided, nor is it incited, by only one side in the United States. It was never so naively simple before, and it wouldn't be now.

Additionally, violent conflict has uncertain outcomes. One can choose to start a war, but one cannot quite choose how it will end. And those behind Project 2025 are not of one mind when it comes violence. And so far, no side within the administration has created the cohesion needed to enter an armed conflict with any agreement among themselves on what victory even looks like.

The potential for damaging things and people is real, but the potential for us to end up with any one of the mutually exclusive end-states the various groups supporting the admin want is... unclear at best. Their opposition is still working to find its footing, though things like No Kings 2 show progress.

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You may have heard or read how some want blue states to withhold tax payments from the federal government, which is likely neither feasible nor legal.

The US Federal Government routinely runs on debt, so they don't need tax payments right now to function (assuming sovereign loans are still possible going forward). So withholding tax payments is not a very effective cudgel. Also, some are saying such a scheme is a "soft secession" but the Constitution really doesn't have a mechanism for secession, soft or any other kind. The EU has a clause in their constituting document that lets countries choose to leave, as the UK has: Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. The US Constitution has nothing like Article 50. And throwing the US Constitution out is the opposite of saving any of our Constitutional Republic. If that operation were a success, the patient would still die.

Plus, even if taxes could be somehow withheld, it won't solve the underlying tensions of federal overreach when such overreach defies the Constitution as boldly as this presidency's does. We’ve kinda been here before.

In 1828, a tariff (import tax) signed by President John Quincy Adams was so unpopular in the south that South Carolina started talking about simply declaring it nullified, and refusing to pay it.

By 1832, South Carolina was making military preparations to resist federal enforcement of the tariff (import tax), and President Andrew Jackson was in a pickle: South Carolina would be the only one of two constitutional crises on his plate. Georgia was trying to enforce its laws against and on Cherokee lands, and the Supreme Court said the state of Georgia could not do that because only the feds had legal standing and relations with the Cherokee (Worcester v Georgia). Jackson, not wanting another constitutional crisis with Georgia on top of the one he already had with South Carolina, decided not to enforce Cherokee rights against Georgia. This is where the idea he said, "[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" comes from.

So instead of enforcing Cherokee rights on Georgia, Jackson favored and chose Cherokee “relocation,” basically violent deportation/ethnic cleansing, instead of triggering war between feds and the state of Georgia.

In 1833, at the other end of the pickle, Congress came up with a compromise tariff, and a threat of federal troops enforcing the tariff bundled with it, which combined to make South Carolina happy-ish enough to avoid armed conflict with the feds.

Jackson did not avoid war between Georgia and the feds by hurting the Cherokee and ignoring the federal court, and also did not avoid war between South Carolina and the feds through changing import taxes (tariffs) and making a threat: he deferred and amplified it. The Civil War still turned states to ash, and killed hundreds of thousands of Andrew Jackson’s generation’s kids and grand-kids. Bad compromises are bad because they don’t meaningfully or persistently solve anything.

Cut to 2025. Federal forces are violently deporting people, the president is trying to ignore courts, his shifting tariffs (import taxes) are ravaging the economy, and people call for states to withhold/nullify tax payments.

But we are not in the 1830s. This time,

the taxes people are mainly referring to withholding are income taxes, not import taxes (tariffs),
deportations are being done to assert and consolidate federal power while ethnic cleansing, not to allow states to impose their will on native land while ethnic cleansing, and
the current president seems to lack the nuanced awareness Jackson (hardly known for nuance) had of the tensions between states and the federal government.

The current President wants to enforce his will everywhere, without being questioned, using military force, and shows no concern for any state’s, or his own people’s, wishes whatsoever. History does not repeat, but it can rhyme.

The President’s advisors like to say we are in a second American Revolution. One problem with that thinking is, those who start revolutions rarely are the ones who get to end them. Robespierre is just one example of someone who ardently pushed for change, only to have that change eventually modify him from living to dead. Another problem with the President's advisors' thinking is: all despots fall. As I said before "...history prepares to do what it always does eventually with despots: it deposes them." Dictators never last forever; they're doomed.

bannon, vought, miller and potus believe they can re-make the civilization of the United States in their vision. They can’t. They can hurt a lot of people and break a lot of stuff. And in their attempts they already are doing both. But their endgame is the pure fantasy of an all-white Christian ethno-state (or technate) that somehow, without having been articulated, leaves them personally and financially relatively intact. Robespierre could suggest how they're probably wrong.

Over multiple time-zones, and with over 330 million people, there is no possibility of transforming of the US into what they want in any near term, and their attempt is unlikely to leave them personally unscathed. bannon has already been to prison once. The collection of reversals of some of their core aims, like attempting to reduce the federal workforce to almost nothing, is already massive.

They're still working to actualize Project 2025, and they have made progress. It is not all good news for anyone. But there is real-time push-back against their efforts too. They're over-extended and their fantasies of a glorious Second Revolution or Civil War is flawed. Creating chaos, ruining the economy and flooding the internet with images of federal aggression doesn't help the administration in the near or long term.

Even if Locke is right and violence does become more appealing to the populace as other paths to resolution seem unsatisfactory, Locke never promised it would happen fast. This administration needs to consolidate its power quickly before it loses momentum and, so far, the American People have not given them the violence they crave to justify their consolidation efforts. We have not taken their bait.

The tactical frivolity of dancing inflatable frogs doesn't fuel authoritarian crackdown. The peaceful assembly of 7 million people for No Kings 2 simply doesn't propel the autocracy into high gear. You do not win over the American People by destroying a wing of the White House. They chose the wrong country to try to play absolute monarch. The American People still have choices about where this goes.

Our task, as much as we each individually and collectively can, is to stop them and reduce the harms they invite. Finding joy and building hope is part of that effort. And so, now that I have enjoyed finishing writing this, I am off to do something else enjoyable, like eat lunch. I hope you'll find joy today too.

No Surrender

David August — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 17:49:24 GMT

No Soldiers in the Streets, No Kings in This Land

For all the military violence there has been in the world during my life, my tactic for surviving it has taken me next to no effort: not being there at the time. By largely luck, I have not yet been very close to violent military action.

Now, for the first time, me and my fellow Americans face the specter of being in our homes, work or anywhere else in the towns we live, and being at the receiving end of the most lethal, well trained and well resourced fighting force on earth: the United States Armed Forces.

The president said he wants to use American cities as training grounds for the country’s soldiers, sailors and flyers. This country is taught as having started when a group of men, mainly farmers with their personal rifles, stood in fields in Lexington and Concord and faced one of the mightiest empire’s soldiers.

Two and half centuries of tradition, tactics and training later, and the powerful empire is now us, or at least our government.

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The U.S. Marines have deployed against unarmed U.S. citizens at home in Los Angeles. Texas Guardsmen (state militia) have for the first time since the Civil War entered a state without its permission (Illinois) and National Guard from various states have entered the capital city, which no one has hostilely entered since the British burned parts of it down in the War of 1812.

Tomorrow, about two-thousand six-hundred (~2,600) protests plan to peacefully show the world, the administration and themselves that the United States remains a nation predicated on having No Kings.

Can the president come down hard on these protests with the military? He already tried to schedule a parade missile launch on the West Coast during the No Kings protests and it only got modified, away from a U.S. Navy ship firing toward shore to instead be Howitzers firing, after the hassle of closing the major freeway Interstate 5, which the ship fired ordnance would fly over, proved to be too annoying and politically untenable.

Theoretically, potus could shell protests. He could order aerial bombardment on the protests, but even with two of the world’s largest air forces at his command (the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Navy including Marine Corps aviation), hitting 2,600 targets in multiple times zones would spread them very thin. He could roll tanks or Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) filled with infantry into the streets.

He can dispatch his secret police, the unmarked masked ice that already have been snatching people from the streets and trafficking them to typically unknown locations, and they’ve already been firing chemical and conventional weapons on the American People as well.

He can do as he has been doing: hurt and destroy.

And can accomplish nothing productive for himself in the process. Nor for anyone else.

Killing, maiming or hurting someone dancing in an inflatable frog costume doesn’t make you powerful. Firing a pepper ball into the head of a pastor doesn’t make you strong. Hiding in a fortified White House while your people chant and sing by the millions how they don’t like you, what you’re doing and why, doesn’t make you beloved.

It shows how weak, frightened and insecure you are. Like an almost octogenarian child breaking things because he doesn’t know how to do anything else.

Surrounded by greedy sycophants and fools, this president fantasizes un-creatively (The Triumphal Arch was designed for h*tler's plan to remake Berlin into Germania) about legacy while history prepares to do what it always does eventually with despots: it deposes them. One way, or another.

It is inevitable that his reign will end. Even the actuarial tables (PDF of NY Department of Health Life Expectancy Table) say his time is short (< 8 years) and his swollen ankles and discolored hand suggest it’s even shorter.

His vapid, cruel, hedonistic quest will end. His successors will not strike quite the right balance of pathologies he has and so they won’t really be able to have the kind of cult-like support he has had.

The pendulum of American mood and policies will swing back, and much that has been done will be undone.

There is only the question of timing: how long will it be and in the process exactly which of us will be cut down, mangled and traumatized into nothingness before his era ends. How much will he ruin before he goes.

Joy and endurance are resistance. Survival is victory. If you can protest, please protest in person or however you can.

I will finish here by waxing poetic-ish as my insomnia concludes and I start my day: Let’s let our pain and anger fuel something good. Let’s let our hopes and dreams flourish no matter what forces seek our demise. Let’s hasten a restoration and reformation of democracy, human rights, and let's do what Americans do: have no kings, not now, not ever.

David August

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