Blog: Shake Off The Snow

We’ve had a hard winter. There’s no denying that. Outside of my own personal rampant anxiety & seasonal depression, the geopolitical landscape is a cluster, The US is in the process of a full on hostile government takeover that nobody with the power to do so seems to want to stop, & I know a lot of us also went through dramatic moments around family, friends, & love. It was a long, cold couple of months but it seems to sun is finally peeking through.

Despite what the clairvoyant groundhog may have decided, it seems spring is gradually creeping in. I feel typically we have a little more ‘hard stop’ to winter, but this year it seems we’re just easing into spring. Honestly though, that makes sense to me. The sun is slowly hanging around longer, I think for the majority of The US we gained about 45 minutes more sunlight during the month of February, but it probably isn’t something that the majority of us noticed. I however have noticed the gradual return of my mental health, overall desire to live, & the steady dissipation of my ‘dark night of the soul.’

The world seems, quite literally, a little brighter, even though the news continues to grow more & more grave as each day passes. I think the reason for that is also a sense of the shifting energies. We as a society are upset, we’re anxious, we’re in distress but I think we’re also getting to a point where what was presenting as rage is now shifting to spite, to motion. You see rage is a very mobile emotion, it causes us to want to take action, to kick the door down, to scream & writhe & bear our teeth, & when aimed correctly, tuned, & distilled, rage can be an excellent tool & an excellent motivator. You see, I think a lot of us over the last couple of weeks have been riding the rage train out of the pits of despair into something more productive & proactive. We are beginning to see that the actions of those involved are not sustainable, nor are they backed by the populous & that shift in energy & the light screaming through the cracks feels like a weird shifting tide of hope.

I didn’t want to get overly political while writing this, I definitely have my share of blogs that veer heavily into that space, but I wanted to mention the above paragraph because it does play into this shift out of the cold into the warmth. Out of the darkness into the light. We are feeling the resurrection of the sun & the fires are starting to burn away the shadows that have drug us down & encased our hearts in fear & woe. I think that with the shift in the seasons, so too will we see a massive shift in the world & society around us.

So what are we to do? We’ve felt the call to emerge from our caves, to return to the world anew & grow once again towards the light, to unfurl our branches & put out new leaves & return from the ground where we’ve buried our necessities back to a place of expansion & vibrance. We embrace that. With every fiber of our beings we embrace it because that is where hope & change & progress are found. Not in the pitfalls of winter, but in the promise of brighter days to come. We crawl from our dins, shake off the snow, & give it permission to return to melt back into the earth so that it can be used to burst shining new fruits into existence. We continue the work, we adapt, & we continue chasing the sun because that is where our hope lies, in the promise of good conquering evil, of the many over the few, of life over decay. So hear the calling, shake off the snow, & answer with luminous hope radiating from your heart.

Much love to you all,

-C

Blog: They Have Already Damned You.

He folks, welcome back! As with last week, my initial plan for THIS week was to write a travel blog about New York. Also like last week I had another topic swirling & twirling around my brain that I felt pressing to write this week. Once more, also like last week, this blog will be a serious one, if the title alone hadn’t tipped you off to that fact already. Trigger warning I suppose to those of you who are dealing with religious trauma, post election fallout, murder/killing, religious themes, & on the flip side of that coin, may be upset by the contents of this blog. Today we will be talking vertical vs. horizontal morality.

I have had, over the last week, across numerous social media platforms & conversations, the notion or idea of vertical vs horizontal morality pop up & it actually, I think, helps to explain how certain groups can vote or feel the way that they do based on belief & history. I know, for myself, I have struggled with the idea of those who claim to live under the banner of “love thy neighbor as thyself” going to the voting booth & doing the exact opposite often condemning their ‘neighbor’ to harder lives, deportation, lack of access to healthcare, higher tax rates, or downright voting to strip their rights away. Taking that “what you do unto the ‘least’ of these, you do unto me” & really just punting it through the proverbial field goal. One creator, Rachel Klinger Cain, put it simply by saying the following:

“They are never going to care about our suffering, because they are okay with our damnation.”

— Rachel Klinger Cain

This immediately struck me & got the wheels of my brain turning. She goes on to explain further stating:

“So many of us right now are sitting in the space of desperately trying to explain it to them in a way that induces the empathy. Like if we can just find the right words, if we can say it the right way, provide the right evidence, remind them that we’re human, then we can get through to them. That they’ll see what they’ve done. That they’ll see what’s coming. That they’ll be willing to stand with us when we need it, but none of that is going to work with people who have already accepted that we are going to Hell. They believe that we are going to Hell, a place of eternal conscious torment, & they don’t stand with us. They take the side of the God who would do it. They claim that they love us, but they’re fine with our eternal conscious torment & they’re fine with our tormentor.”

— Rachel Klinger Cain

Now. I know that’s a lot to digest. I’m sure for some of you reading it stirred up a lot of emotions or feelings one way or the other. I challenge you to sit in those & understand what about that paragraph makes you feel that way & why you feel that way.

I will say, to my personal extent, that paragraph feels a bit atheistic & I can’t begrudge Rachel for feeling that way. Though it doesn’t necessarily align with my personal beliefs, it does align with my personal feelings & experiences around the majority of those within the evangelical base. I know the retort to that is going to be the “a few bad apples ruin the batch” argument, but I think with most things around that sentiment, Maren Morris was correct in saying “The rot at the roots is the root of the problem” (I know she’s talking specifically about the country music industry here but I’m borrowing the analogy). The bushel isn’t being contaminated by a few bad apples, I think, for the most part, the ‘good' apples are the exception from a tree that has taught us how easy it is to condemn another human being for living a life that is different than our own.

I can just hear the people clicking out of my website from this one already. I again, challenge you to bear with me going forward & really dissect the way this is making you feel. If something challenges the narrative you believe if is often a good idea to figure out why & then figure out whether or not what is stated is factual or not & reevaluate from there.

I’d like to get into the meat of this & really discuss the “why” of all of this? Why do people who spend almost every weekend being taught a book of love statistically go out & vote for candidates who perpetuate hate, division, scapegoating, gluttony, greed, & selfishness? Because of vertical morality.

I’m going to go back to Rachel here in a second because I think the discourse happening on her page outlines the differences in the two types of morality perfectly specifically using the example of murder/killing. With vertical morality you have a system of morals not build on empathy or common understanding, but instead built on authority. This idea makes the beliefs of those who post things along the lines of “well, how will children learn morals if they aren’t taught The Bible?” make so much more sense.

You see, within the discussion on her page, she is met with a man who confronts this idea by saying “Really how can something that created everything kill & slaughter if he can just ‘uncreate’ everything.” It’s this idea of ownership, that if Almighty God decided to undo creating that He has the authority to do so simply because He created it.

Using this specific example she lays out the following:

“Under a vertical moral system murder is not wrong because it harms somebody, it is wrong because you don’t have the authority to do it, but that also means that IF you have the authority to do it, you can to it. This is the problem with a vertical moral system. This is why they become violent so quickly, because all they have to do to convince themselves it’s okay to kill someone, is to convince themself that they’ve been given the authority to do it by God. ”

— Rachel Klinger Cain

She goes on to give examples throughout history of this, of times in which Christianity or Christian Nationalism have sparked violent movements that led to countless deaths or allowed them to watch from the sidelines unbothered because of the authority of God or those whom he has ‘ordained’ as having the authority (i.e. kings, queens, presidents, popes, etc.). This also goes outside of Christianity to other theologies that implant vertical morality & even include the deification & idolization of leaders. Some examples that include, but are not limited to; the Holocaust, the Crusades, slavery, colonialism, manifest destiny, the AIDs crisis, the Manson Murders, Gaza.

On the other side of that morality system lies the horizontal. This way of belief says that murder is wrong, not because you don’t have the authority, but because it causes harm to another human being.

“It’s not about authority, it’s about harm. When you have a horizontal moral system then you are criticizing a god who would kill people, because it doesn’t matter if that god is bigger or stronger. Might does not make right. It doesn’t matter if He claims to have the authority, He’s still causing harm. But under that vertical moral system, might makes right. It’s authoritarianism. & when their religion is authoritarian then that means their moral system is authoritarian. & when their moral system is authoritarian it will trickle down into all kinds of other beliefs including their politics, including who they vote for. & if they believe that God as ordained it, if they believe that the ultimate authority figure says it’s okay, then it doesn’t matter who it harms. Appeals to empathy will not work, because they don’t get their morals from empathy, they get it from authority. They’re authoritarians.”

— Rachel Klinger Cain

Again, a bit more atheistic than I’d probably put it myself, but I think the point still stands.

Another creator, Theologian Ciarra Jones, piggybacks off of Rachel’s points to discuss a lecture that she gives every years at UC Berkley around Race, Religion, & Public Policy.

“I always tell students when working with Christian communities that the stakes are different. We’re not talking about systemic inequality & its impacts, we’re talking about heaven & Hell. Salvation & damnation. This focus on sin & punishment, salvation & damnation, actually cuts off most fundamentalist Christians from normative processes of empathy. Fundamentalist Christian communities have constructed God in a way that cosigns & corroborates the existence of systemic inequality.”

— Professor Ciarra Jones

She then lays out an excellent example around LGBTQ rights using the following:

“If I go to a fundamentalist pastor & I say “you voting on anti-LGBTQ policies harms LGBTQ people’s safety,” they would say “well queerness itself is a sin & if a queer person wasn’t living in this way, then they would experience systemic inequality.””

— Professor Ciarra Jones

I would interject here but I think the way she continues on is so eloquently stated that I’m just going to continue to quote her here!

“We have constructed God as a God that insulates power, that insulates systemic inequality & that is one the side of those who are enacting harm on marginalized communities. This makes fundamentalist Christians impervious to critiques about how their theology is related to our policy landscape.

One of the most common Bible verse I heard growing up in fundamentalist, pentecostal churches “we are called to be in the world & not of it,” means that Christians start to bifurcate themselves from non-christians. They almost cut off their humanity & empathy towards non-christian communities or towards those they believe are living in a type of sin.

This means for Christians, for example, voting on ‘pro-life’ policy, even when ‘pro-life’ policy harms particularly women of color. There isn’t any empathy towards these communities because the idea is ‘I am voting on the side of righteousness’ & in fact my ability to separate myself from humanity & vote on policies in the way that God is asking me to do is a sign of my own unique Christian divinity. It’s a sign of my commitment to God. So separating themselves from their empathy actually ends up being a sign of their commitment to God.”

— Professor Ciarra Jones

I know this week was a heavy one, I know this blog also may seem like I’m over here doing the most to shit on Christians when in reality I consider myself among them as so many of us who are begging for your empathy do. We read the book. We were taught the lessons. We took them to heart & somewhere along the line that was lost amongst what I would say, & what statistics would say, are the vast majority.

Additionally, I have seen so many postings this last week & a half around the idea of “I don’t know how to convince you to care about other people” so I wanted to weigh in with the things that I learned from these two amazing female creators. They helped me to understand why the last eight years of begging friends & family not to vote the way that they do despite the damage it does not only to me, someone they claim to love, but also other communities at large have clearly gone exorbitantly unheard. Appeals using examples & proof go unheeded & unnoticed because we lack the ultimate authority of what they have decided is moral or is not.

They are not going to stand up for a right or a community that they think or have convinced themselves is sinful, no matter the amount of harm it does to the lives of their fellow human beings because the belief is that they do not have the authority to make that call, God does, & what God says (translation mishaps & political alterations included) is the ultimate scale of law & justice to which they weigh their vote, not your lives & the ways in which it may harm you.

I hope you have a fantastic week,

Much love as always,

-C

“It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong & powerful & against the weak & the oppressed. This despite the gospel.”

— Jesus & The Disinherited by Howard Therman as presented by Professor Ciarra Jones

Blog: It Must Be Nice

Every two to four years the US likes to turn up the gas on the conversations that happen over family gatherings & across social media platforms. I’ll be the first to admit I kind of enjoy the biannual purge that cleans out my social media followers & friends. It can actually be refreshing from time to time to know where people actually stand. And look, I know a lot of you read that last bit of sentences & had the lovely sentiment of “just because we disagree in the voting booth, doesn’t mean we can’t still be friend” & unfortunately I think we’re way past that societally, morally, & “loving.” I’m sure, once again, me saying that has lost a few of you & some of you have already checked out or clicked out of this blog because you “won’t be a part of divisive politics” which in this day & age is, let’s face it, oxymoronic. If you’re still here & you have a little bit of time I’d love to fill you in on what I mean by all of this & show you why I, & so many who find ourselves living in marginalized groups, feel this way.

Let’s start at what prompted this blog with a little bit of back story. I was on the phone a few weeks ago with someone, whom I shan’t name here because they trusted me enough to speak about their political beliefs openly with me & inadvertently trigger the contents of this blog from the conversation that they & I had. In said conversation we were talking about the upcoming election in which I voiced my support for the Harris/Walz ticket & the general feeling of hope that came with it. We talked policy & things of that nature & the rebuttal of the person I was talking to was very economically driven, as most people are to do when they vote red. They are a well off individual & were upset over the amount of taxes they’d had to pay this year from the sales of an entity that they had worked their lifetime for & which had allow them to retire. I informed them that we hadn’t had a new tax bill since 2019, but their concern was that the incoming potential of a Democratic win would further reduce their earned pile & that which they had prepared to leave for their children once they passed. My response was, what a luxury, that must be nice.

You see while they’re dealing internally with issues like tax policy & inflation (which is mostly a global issue by the way, majority of the rest can be chalked up to corporate greed) I’ve just spent the last several months investigating the deep possibility & probability that had Biden not dropped out, Evan & I would most likely need to expat to another country.

I don’t think that’s over exaggerating either. In fact a lot of people that I know who are members of the LGBTQ+ community, individuals of color, or women, had been doing exactly the same thing to varying degrees. Evan & I had gotten to the point where we were narrowing down countries, looking into visa applications & price, & planning to start the processes for all of these things. Tax policy was honestly the farthest thing from our minds & that’s exactly what I mean when I say “it must be nice.”

It must be nice not to worry about your fundamental rights every election cycle. It must be nice not to fear that the only way that you & your significant other to be together would be by fleeing the country. It must be nice when the things on the ballot for you are not life altering, but instead whether or not you have access to a military grade machine gun. It must be nice not to be worried about whether or not you’re going to be able to afford or attain healthcare. It must be nice to know that certain aspects of who you are as human will not diminish you in society to any degree no matter the outcome. It must be nice not to worry about housing or food or whether or not we will even have a livable planet in 20-30 years. It must be nice to balance the fate of so many, whom you are supposed to love unconditionally as a so called christian, on a vote in favor of your wallet when the alternative could potentially ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. It must be nice.

So no, I don’t mince words, because we are past the point of where an election is simply deciding where & when we spend our tax dollars. We are voting on whether or not those who are different than you; who look different, worship in a different way, love different, have a different tax bracket, have different core beliefs, are worthy of basic human liberties or not. And if you are not someone who can agree with that from a moral stand point, I have little to no interest in anything you say. Because at the end of the day if we can’t agree that all people, no matter their race, gender, background, sexuality, religion, etc. are worthy of life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness equally, without barriers or restrictions that keep them from living a life with no consequence of your own, then you have lost my respect & any integrity that I thought you might have.

This is not about tax policy. This is not about budgets. This is about the livelihood of millions of Americans who don’t fall under the christian, cis-gender, heterosexual, white blanket & I fear that should this election go the way it looked like it was headed just a month or so ago, then we will have lost any & all hope of regaining & rebuilding America as any form of a United States.

-C

Bloglet: It's Okay...

It’s been a very heavy news week. There’s been a lot of news & feelings circulating & I know a lot of people are also under a lot of pressure to say certain things or to take certain sides & I want to encourage you that it is a genuinely okay response to bow your head out of any argument simply because you feel that you are improperly informed, overly conflicted, or because you seek to avoid perpetuating hate, hurt, & conflict. I firmly believe that there is nothing in this wide world that requires every single person’s input, especially if an educated input requires diving deep into unbiased news, history, politics, & other people’s lives.

That is not to say that you shouldn’t decry hate in all of its forms, but where global & political events are concerned, I’m sure the vast majority of us would rather not filter through naive, misinformed, or simply uninformed posts just for the sake of claiming a side or giving in to the pressure of feeling that you need to & I am also certain that the vast majority of those takes you are filtering through are minimally informed, previously cemented opinions that have little, to no desire, to intake new information & seek truth outside of what they were taught or think they already know.

It is okay to say “I don’t understand enough about the issue at hand but will do my best to continue properly educating myself on the topic” & allow those who do have a contextual understanding of an unfolding to share what they know & help those who don’t understand.

I definitely think that is one of the major pitfalls of social media at large, we all feel we need to weigh in on everything that happens & people like to virtue signal to those who don’t feel comfortable doing so & convince them that they are bad people for not aligning with their own understanding of a situation, be it an actually educated unbiased take, or not.

I’m sure I’m going to get kickback on this post simply for telling you that it’s okay to not be unabashed & brazen in your opinions on the internet but it’s something that I think needs to be said more often. You can still stand for humanity & what is right from a base level & still not flood the feed with the first information you come across without fact checking it or looking into its origin. It is okay to say “I see the issue, I stand with the innocent parties involved, & I pray for a peaceful, swift, & just resolution.”

It is okay to say “ I don’t know enough on the topic” & leave it at that.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Target Misses The Mark

Well it’s almost June & you know what that means, it’s time for the grungy shine of rainbow capitalism to once again rear its head & pretend to give two licks about members of the LGBTQIA+ community. As per the annual occurrence, Target has launched their often wildly hit or miss pride collection to its usual mixed reviews, only this time there’s an awful lot more ‘booing’ than usual coming from the ignorant side of the shopping aisle.

If you’ve been to a Target ever in your life you’ll know that they always feature the monthly collections at the entrance to the store, whether it’s black history month, asian pacific islanders heritage month, woman’s history month, etc, there is always a display that caters to those wishing to express their pride in their often marginalized, persecuted, & subjugated communities. (Read that again please CIS/Het white folks, marginalized, persecuted, & subjugated communities, you needs not apply.) Pride month is no different & with the massive wave of anti-LGBTQ legislature & sentiment on the rise, this year, more than others, that seems to be causing quite the controversy.

Those who view themselves on the hearsay moral authority of the right have decided that this blatant display of pride in what makes someone’s life more difficult statistically in past & modern American life is an attempt at, one of their new favorite terms, grooming. That the displays in the front of the store are promoting (dare I say) acceptance & tolerance & teaching kids (god forbid) that it’s okay to not be on the ‘straight’ & narrow & that their thoughts & feelings might just be normal. They took major issue with Target’s offering of clothing items for kids & infants that might simply exist just as a way for children to show support for their LGBTQ+ parents, relatives, etc. Naturally, if you are new here, you can see where I fall on this side of the argument. These people have called for a boycott of Target store & unfortunately, it seems to have worked.

Target stores, over the course of the week long boycott, experienced around a nine billion dollar loss in market value. Not a number to bat an eye at. Surprisingly, however, the momentary monetary loss was not the issue. The issue was that these hateful, loathsome humans took it upon themselves to start rattling off death threats to target employees, who are simply there trying to earn a minimum wage. These threats were so forceful & so numerous that not only has Target unfortunately complied, moving the collection to the back of a lot of stores, but these acts are literally beginning to be labeled as forms of domestic terrorism because at the end of the day what is terrorism if not an attempt to scare someone into doing what you want?

This sets a precedent, it signals to those who disagree with anything even remotely outside of their limited world view that they can throw a fit, threaten people, & their voice & demands will be heard. What Target has caved to here will allow this type of action to be taken against other businesses, corporations, etc without the fear of any repercussions. Target has not only racked up a major loss for the visibility of those in marginalized groups but also for anyone else who has the balls to stand up against these closed minded individuals & declare “no, this is what’s right” in the face of hate.

I hope you all have a lovely week or weekend, whenever you may be reading this!

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Cold Fury

Here lies another blog that I really didn’t want to write but that emotionally I feel myself drawn to. My initial plan was to start this blog last night in the heat of the moment, but I decided to wait until today when I felt I might be a little more level headed. If you haven’t guessed by now this blog is about the rising tide of blatant fascism coming off the heels of the Tennessee GOP supermajority driven House’s ruling to expel two Democrat representatives from the chamber after three members of the house joined protestors in demanding an end to the gun violence that plagues US schools. A decision that left me, many other Tennesseans, Americans, & people around the world in a cold fury.

To put this into personal perspective, the rulings from the TN House started rolling out yesterday around the time that I entered the gym. The more happened, the more news that came out, the more I found myself infuriated. I found myself with my AirPods in, noise canceling activated, listening to absolutely nothing, & this was my modus operandi for the entire hour long duration of my work out. A friend of mine texted asking if I wanted to go out to trivia to which I declined, telling him in all honesty that I was not someone he wanted to be around yesterday evening.

To say I saw pissed is putting it lightly. I was texting friends of mine in blue states & other countries asking if they knew of any job openings. I was googling possible legal action that can be taken against those involved that would allow the reinstating of the representatives. I was even going so far as to try & think of possible ways in which Tennessee could redo its terribly gerrymandered election to overthrow this BS supermajority. Naturally I went through the five stages of grief.

I want to be forthright about something. This blog is not about outlining the events of history that unfolding last night & in the days leading up to it, there are plenty of those out there if you want an accurate account of what transpired. What I’m here to do today is to show you a glimpse of how people like me feel. How it feels to live in a bright blue city in a deep red state because it’s exhausting.

So many of us here in the south are fighting tooth & nail to have our voices heard, to feel like our opinions & lives matter, but it is becoming more & more apparent with every passing day & every passing bill that our GOP overlords would rather scapegoat & sit idly while they collect their lobbying checks. Over 10,000 students gathered at the Tennessee Capitol building last weekend & their answer to the outrage of these people was to expel the two black men who represent the vast majority of their districts for standing with them. Essentially last night’s decision has left two of the largest populous centers in the state, mostly inhabited by people of color, temporarily without a voice in the house that is meant to represent them all because the Tennessee GOP didn’t like two black men & a woman protesting their inaction.

Now, Nashville Metro has already set a date Monday to convene & vote on a new temporary representative but this still sets a precedent. It puts out the call for all of the other supermajority held houses in neighboring states that they can simply oust those who disagree with them simply for voicing those disagreements & siding with the people that they were elected to represent. People who, by the way, make up the majority of the population of the state.

This isn’t the only direct attack from intrenched Republicans around the country. In Kentucky last week thousands of protestors showed up to protest Kentucky’s ban on Gender Reaffirming care in an attempt to block the vetoed bill from being forcibly pushed through my the state congress. The masses voices went unrecognized. In Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantos has begun arresting leaders of Democrat organizations & whistleblowers simply for going against him in protest. The state of these United States are frightening to say the least, especially for those who fall in the scapegoated target demographics such as Trans individuals, other members of the LGBTQ community, women, & any other non-white, non-christian minorities. The number of antisemitic, transphobic, homophobic, anti-muslim attacks are on the rise & the voices of the masses are being drowned out in favor of divisive, oppressive, flagrant policies.

I wrote a blog a few weeks ago about how it’s becoming very difficult to stay a Tennessean, it’s becoming very difficult to not pack everything up & move, not just out of this state, but out of this country. The checks & balances that are meant to be in place to keep the citizens of this country safe & prosperous are failing left, right, & center, & I fear that, without the rising up of the generations to my younger, that this will continue to worsen & worsen. I’ve written many pleas in the past to conservative voters begging them to understand the kind of people they put in office & the kind of long lasting damage it is doing to this country & the people who live here. I understand that the money goes to both sides of the aisle, but there is one group actively seeking to destroy the lives of our most vulnerable & those who, at least for appearances sake, are fighting them each step of the way.

If this nation is to succeed then we must remove money from our politics & we must create an America that holds space for all people, not just those in power or those who are white & christian. I ask you all the following questions that were rattling around my brain all night simply because I do not know & I am trying to find a way forward out of this cold, numb fury that I have been encapsulated in.

What do you do when a government want to be for the people is only for themselves?

What do you do when the system stops working (or works exactly how it was designed to), where politicians would rather scapegoat than actually make meaningful, positive change?

What do you do when the system takes far too long to accomplish anything?

What do you do when the voices of the ignorant, the hateful, the uneducated, outweigh the voices of the knowledgable, the empathetic, & the intellectual?

I ask all of these things to you all simply because I lack the answer & want so badly not to lose faith that this too shall pass & that good will win on the other side.

I hope whenever this blog finds you that you are well & you are blessed & that you week/weekend/whatever has & will be an exceptional one.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Time Is Once Again Ticking For Tik Tok

If you’re not a frequent user of the clock app, also known as Tik Tok, you may have missed the news that the federal government is once again attempting to ban Tik Tok in The US. If you were already aware of this news then you’ve probably also heard that the reason behind the potential ban apparently relates to “national security” but that reasoning is demonstrably false & we’re going to go over why.

I’m not sure at what point I became a political pundit blog but it seems to be the field of writing I’ve found myself most frequently in of late. Maybe it’s because I, myself am often invested in the world of politics & am a very active advocate against a lot of the BS laws that have been coming out over the last few months. I feel like I’m in the middle of the Trump years again, sharing all the horrible things that I don’t feel are receiving enough attention from the general public, but that’s not why we’re here today. We’re here to talk about the threat that has once again presented against Tik Tok.

As I mentioned above, Tik Tok is on the line in a new bipartisan bill that would force the Chinese based company to sell the United States portion of the app to a US company or face shut down. Sound familiar? Well, it should, because the same thing happened back in 2019. As also aforementioned, the federal government’s reasoning falls under the mustachioed guise of “data mining.” The humorous part about that being that Tik Tok doesn’t collect any more or different data than groups like Meta or Twitter have done for years. We’ll get back to Meta in a minute. The real problem that the feds have with Tik Tok falls into two categories, neither of which should be reasons for the outright ban of the app.

The first of these problems arises from Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s monstrous baby, rigging public opinion one Russian funded post at a time. Zuckerberg is upset that Tik Tok is out performing his two platforms; Instagram & Facebook, the latter of which has seen a fairly consistent decline in users, especially amongst those who embrace Tik Tok, Get Z & Millennials. In an attempt to compete Meta added “Reels” to their platforms which are essentially just Tik Tok rip offs, most times, quite literally. Zuckerberg, in the spirit of free market capitalism, hired GOP targeted PR firm, Targeted Victory, to run a smear campaign against the clock app amongst primarily conservative voters, a base to which has struggled to find a foothold on unfiltered, unregulated Tik Tok. Zuckerberg’s tactics clearly worked as here we are again, looking down the barrel of the same legal gun that we did when Trump found he couldn’t regulate the content of the Tok.

The second part of this is what brings in the bipartisan support for the ban. You see Tik Tok has around one hundred million users. These users, on average, spend about 90 minutes a day using the app. The networks don’t like this. In their minds 90 minutes spent on Tik Tok is 90 minutes you spent not watching CNN, HBO, Fox News, MSNBC, you name a network, I’ll give you a corresponding corporate donor. Additionally these networks are no longer in control of the message being delivered directly to the people, they no longer get to filter or modify their stories to fit the narrative that they want to push. Two recent prime examples of this are the TN’s anti-LGBTQ policies, whose law makers were exposed using Tik Tok for their hypocritical ways (Gov Bill Lee dressed in drag & LT Gov Randy McNally commenting on suggestive photos of twinks) & the train derailment that happened in East Palestine, OH which was barely, if at all covered, by new sites & networks. Tik Tok has repeatedly drawn attention to problems being swept under the rug or misdealing of politicians & the people in charge have grown tired of the wool being removed from the general publics’ eyes.

I know some of you just read those two paragraphs & are immediately discounting what I’ve just told you as conspiracy but I’m reporting exactly what has been said & what is being done. Don’t believe me? Here’s an article about the meta things & here’s a clip of the quiet parts being said out loud at a press briefing regarding the bill (skip to 5:55).

This should be frightening. It should be frightening to all of us because the logic isn’t logicing. The reasons we’re being given for the ban don’t add up. The truth of the matter is that the powers that be don’t like that we can speak to each other unfiltered, they don’t like that we can see each other’s lives, have dialogues, share news that isn’t being covered openly without passing it through the muzzle of the already foreign owned media. I don’t see people, especially younger people, standing by & taking this. I know to a lot of you Tik Tok is just an app but in reality Tik Tok has become the new ultimate exchange of ideas & information. It is digging up parts of the narrative that others would rather have silenced & they don’t like that & the fact that they’re moving so quickly to silence this platform should be alarming to all of you.

As always I hope you all have a great weekend, much love to you all!

-C

Story: Let's Go Back, Back To The Beginning

Earlier this week I grabbed coffee, or rather tea because I’m trying to cut my caffeine intake, with a new friend. At one point in the conversation he brought up my blogs. You know, this thing you’re currently feasting your eyes upon. The first thing he asked me was “how & why did you get started doing blogs” & it occurs to me now that I’ve never formally had that conversation with you all who return week after week, drift in & out, or have randomly stumbled upon this here post. It was an interesting thing to talk about & kind of piece together along the way as I told him the story but the idea of recounting it here hadn’t occurred to me until today when I sat down to write, at which time I was met with a random passing “how did you get started, how far have you come?” question while pilfering through the internet.

My blog page started as a recommendation blog. I had a former manager who commented on the fact that I always have food & drink recommendations for people when they go anywhere & that I should compile a list so that people can access that information at any time without having to text or DM me. The first one, naturally, was Nashville. I compiled a list of restaurants on one blog post & bars on another & published it to actually fairly moderate success. In fact the blog still remains actively edited to this day when I remember to make edits & feel like adding in new restaurants/bars or when some of the ones on the list have closed. From there my recommendation blogs continued. I did an LA food one next, followed by LA drink, then came Kansas City, which I’m pretty sure is a combination blog, & Portland, which I know for a fact is.

Now around this time the mailing list craze was really kicking off & I went to a seminar about marketing for artists such as myself. Someone on one of the panels brought up that one artist they knew did a weekly blog where she detailed & documented her week & then sent it out as a newsletter before the weekend. This sparked the idea of these now weekly blogs.

I knew I didn’t think my day to day life was interesting or varied enough to entice readers to come back week after week so instead I opted for a different approach. My blogs would be varied. Sometimes they would be recommendation blogs, sometimes recipes since I cook quite often, sometimes they would actually be about an event I experienced if I found that event to be interesting enough for a retelling.

Around the time I started to write blogs happened to coincide with the events & civil rights travesties of the Trump Administration. As someone who found himself incredibly politically literate & in possession of a platform, I started writing blogs highlighting the damage that was being done to The USA at large. Additionally, within that same vein, I started to write think pieces directed towards those reading who I knew might fall on the conservative spectrum about more liberal policies & why they are beneficial. I tried to frame them from the perspective of someone who would be against them to mixed success. I continued on this track, using my blog to post my opinions as well as resources when natural or political disasters struck. It wasn’t until May of 2021 that I started doing travel blogs.

Evan & I ended up in Maui right around the time that the tourism industry reopened in Hawaii. I had gone to finish the open water side of my dive certification & had just invested in a GoPro to grab footage of our time there. I did it partially for content & also so the people I knew that cared to know about my adventures had a place to turn to & get the inside scoop of all the goings on of my travels. Additionally it allowed me to combine a lot of the elements of what I was doing; storytelling, recommendations, etc., into one single post in one single place. The thing I ended up underestimating was the time in which each of these travel blogs take.

So the travel blogs ate up a lot of time, most of them ended up being around a two to three week series that took me around the totality of the week to complete for each. I had to write the stories, link the places, go through edit & add the photos, place the photos aesthetically, etc. etc. etc. but I quickly found that these were my most popular submissions. That’s until I wrote a blog called “No Hate Like Christian Love.”

NHLCL was really a think piece for me, a plea for the evangelicals of the world to look at how they were asked to behave in the book they claim to cling to & compare that to the way they are actually perceived by the world & also understand why “the church” is dying. It remains my most popular blog to this day, out performing each of my weekly submissions during the week they’re posted. NHLCL still garners easily around one hundred individual views a week just from people either searching for something of the like or having stumbled upon it some other way. It has, aside from each of my travel blogs, been the biggest source of outreach & foot traffic to this, my website.

So where are we today? Well, this piece, I suppose, could be filed under “story.” The shape that my blog has taken over the years is very reflective of who I am as an individual, all encompassing. I think, if I were to choose a direction for it to go, it would mostly remain in the story telling world, specifically as a recounting of my travels & the highs & lows of my life. I like to think that my blog has a positive influence on the world, as small or large as that is, but I suppose that’s for you all to decide, not me. The hard part about getting travel content for you all is getting to travel, having the funds & time to scour the globe for my next adventure to bring back & share with you all. If that weren’t as much of an issue, I think this blog would definitely take that shape more often than not. I’m always down for feedback though! I’d love to know what you’ve liked & disliked about my blog over the years. I’d love to know what you’d like to see more of or less of. I’m always intrigued to know who is reading my posts, why, & what they got out of it.

As always,

Much love to you all & thank you for supporting this crazy weekly thing that I do!

-C

Blog: The New American Dream

Earlier this week, after the horrific events in Texas & the egregious mishandling & lack of policy change that went along with it, a friend of mine posted a prompt on their story. They were asking any one of their followers to give any insight that they had on how to legally bow out of the United States. I can already feel some of you turning off after reading that but this is a genuine sentiment shared by much of those the Millennial & Gen Z age range. We feel this country is sliding further & further away from the ideals & policies we’d like to see in place & is being continuously run by outdated, out of touch politicians. Whether you agree with that statement or not is beside the point, it’s fact.

We live in a country where Millennials are still being forced to rent well into their thirties because the housing market is outlandishly high & wages are outlandishly low. We live in a country where people use seeking medical help is a very last resort & even then people would often rather suffer than go into outrageous medical debt. We are one of the only “first world” countries without Universal Healthcare, Paid Medical Leave, Paid Vacation Time, Proper Work/Life Balance, Comprehensive Gun Laws, Prioritized Free Education Systems, Etc. And those, especially in the older generations, who are happy with the state of things because it does them no harm, don’t understand how we can look at countries like The UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, those in Scandinavia & majority of The EU, etc., & want for that.

So often the narrative in this country is that we are free, so so free, but free to what? The truth of the matter is that most Americans have no idea what true freedom is. True freedom is not the ability to do something, it is the ability to not have to worry about something. To not have to worry about choosing your health, their job, or going into debt, to not have to worry about getting shot in your school, place of worship, grocery store, etc., to not have to worry about being able to afford education that will propel you into jobs that aren’t soul sucking, to not worry if the next day some lobbied politician will strip your rights away, to not have to worry if your work will allow you time to still see your friends, family, maintain a social life, etc. True freedom is bliss, not ignorant bliss, but having systems in place that allow for their citizens to live, not just be cogs in the capitalist machine.

The new American dream has become that of Exodus. We want so badly to get out because we see that the storm is only getting worse along the horizon. We see how people live, truly live, in other countries & we envy that. I don’t profess to have the answers to the current American problems because they are innumerable from what I can see, I’m just here to inform, to recognize a common thread that I see becoming more & more apparent.

I, myself, have had this idea at the forefront of my brain. The impending & current doom of the states has me looking furiously for exits, seeing where I can be grandfathered into citizenship, who offers college programs, etc. Do I want to leave America? No, if I had a choice to stay & fix everything or leave I’d gladly pick the former but it’s becoming more & more apparent that we may have slipped far beyond repair.

You want to save this country? Stop electing self righteous, hateful nut jobs who are so out of touch with the people they represent & start electing people that care for the future of America, not its present.

I don’t want to have to leave this country but I fear that is where we are rapidly heading. I know a lot of you my age who are reading this feel the same & I wish I had an easy answer for you all, but I don’t. I think this November will be the deciding line for a lot of people with the threats against America’s established laws via privacy (Roe V. Wade, Oberfell V. Hodges, etc.), the fight to finally have some form of gun control, & the continued marginalization happening, I fear if this election season goes poorly the mass exodus will be in full swing.

I hope you have a great weekend & don’t weigh too heavily on all this, there is always a way out & always hope, keep pressing on.

-C

Blog: Persevere

Hi lovelies, how has your day been?!

I hope you’re having yourself a wonderful August in spite of the garbage can fire that seems to be the world at the moment. There’s a lot of pain & heavy feelings going around & I know that so many of you are feeling them so deeply with every fiber of who you are. In all honesty I started this blog with a completely different intent in mind, I was going to write about something that has nothing to do with any of this but as I’m sat down to write, this is what has come to the surface.

I don’t want to get into the specifics of what is happening locally, nationally, globally, etc., not because I’m afraid to steer into the politics on it (you should know me better than that by now) but because I feel this blog needs more general appeal. It needs to be able to be stumbled upon years from now & spark something in the reader outside of the timeframe of its current intent. I’m not ascribing to this some grand purpose or importance because I know it won’t be that, this is just the thoughts of a late twenty-something with a heavy heart trying to inject the smallest amount of light back into the darkness in the hopes that it ignites something brighter in you that you can pass along.

The world is a dark place but there’s so much beauty to be had in it. I know at times that can be hard to see, we’re blinded by the headlines & the disasters we’re faced with, but I’ve found that humanity thrives best not in the moments of grand retribution & triumph but in the small moments that remind us what it is to be alive. It’s in the moments of soft realization where you are reminded of the things you love & why you love them. It’s in the daily mountains we climb, each looking far different from those of our peers but still often requiring immense effort to best. Humanity is found in the perseverance of life because how else do we define life if not the will to keep going even when everything is screaming at you to give up?

I know I don’t have all the answers, I don’t claim to & there is immeasurable beauty in that, in the mystery. We are amazing, luminous beings who often do such dark things to one another with little to no regard. We pick fights, we subjugate those we deem less than, we rage war, & rip apart our planet but I believe, in the end, the light will prevail. I know it’s hard. I know it is. I know there are days when it feels hopeless, where you feel lost in all the noise, or shoved aside, placed in the background. I know that feeling sucks. I’m not here to say the night is always darkest before the dawn, I’m here to urge you to look for those incredible moments of beauty. I’m also fully aware that this may come across as “fluff” or the drippings of my bleeding heart. I mean it, I do & I believe it myself.

I know things look bleak. I know that brighter tomorrow looks a million miles away & feels like it may never come at all, persevere. Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither will the world or your world change over night, but brighter tomorrows are worth fighting for.

I’d be lying if I said that all of this had a clear end in mind. I just wrote what came up as it happened. These may end up just being the ramblings of the heavy hearted but I hope it ends up being more than that. I hope you get some substance out of it even if it’s the smallest of amounts. I don’t really know what to say to you other than I understand the pain that you feel, I understand the hopelessness, I understand the hurt & the abandonment you feel, I do but these are not the end all, be all. Keep pushing on & finding those moments of life that get peppered into the every day. Treat people with kindness & love unconditionally.

I love you immensely.

Happy Friday.

-C