Fox News Host Jessie Watters: “Everybody’s accountable and we’re watching what they’re saying on television and who’s saying what,” Watters said, naming “the politicians, the media, and all these rats out there.”
In 1942, Fritz Hippler made the film “The Eternal Jew” as Nazi propaganda. The film compares Jews to rats that carry contagion, flood the continent, and devour precious resources.
Luke 6:27-29: “27 ‘But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…’”
Charlie Kirk, August 21st, 2025: “President Trump is going out on patrol tonight in <Washington> DC. Shock and awe. Force. We are taking our country back from these cockroaches. <It is> Just the start.”
In 1927, the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer ran a cover article with an image of Jewish rats being gassed under a tree. The quote under the picture read, “When the vermin are dead, the German oak will flourish once more…”
Luke 6:45: “45 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”
The case reviewed whether the Tennessee Law (SB1), “Prohibition on Medical Procedures Performed on Minors Related to Sexual Identity,” which bans certain medical <treatments> for transgender minors, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
By a six-to-three majority, along party lines, the Supreme Court voted that it did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, while Sonia Sotomayor wrote the primary dissenting opinion.
The Tennessee law describes gender identity mismatch as a condition that can cause “discomfort and distress,” but this is not sufficient to allow medical experts to provide what Tennessee legislators describe as “experimental” and “risky” treatments to minors for the resolution of their issues. Tennessee says that such treatments are being performed with “rapidly increasing frequency” despite potentially harmful and irreversible effects, which they believe many children will regret having received later in life.
Tennessee notes that countries such as Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and the United Kingdom have all severely restricted transgender care for minors based on the concerning findings of multiple studies. Tennessee asserts that the US should follow suit and limit the use of these medical treatments, like these other countries have.
Tennessee says that this ban applies only to minor children who are seeking treatment due to issues related to their feeling that their gender mismatches the one they were assigned at birth. If a patient is not a minor, then they can receive treatment related to transgender concerns. If the person is a minor, they can receive treatment for non-transgender concerns, such as disabilities or precocious puberty.
“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, and absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. […]
“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought repeatedly, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs one’s life, and it is grace because it gives one the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
If you know anything about Bonhoeffer, it is probably how the story ends. He was a prominent Lutheran preacher who joined the Abhwer (German Secret Service and Espionage) to avoid direct military service, as was required in Germany during World War II for men his age. Because his job in the Lutheran church required him to move about Germany and also in and out of neutral countries, he was able to convince Nazi leadership that his travel could be valuable to them. As a prominent pastor, he would not be hassled by various authorities and so Nazi messages could get through if they were on him.
First Principle: Gain Consensus on What are the Facts
Second Principle: Provide Solutions, Not Complaints
Third Principle: Center Our People in Every Decision We Make
Fourth Principle: Be Honest and Transparent About Who We Are
I have been a customer-facing people manager since I was 18 years old. I have spent 20 years in operations and contact center management roles. Managing people and goals in a “live customer” environment is not for everyone, but it has been my most fun work.
These four principles are something I put together as a touchstone for me to refer back to whenever things start to get too chaotic. In real-time customer service, you can get wrapped up in the immediate problem and lose sight of the longer-term goals and the things you need to do to make your business better in the long run.
I have used these as a reality check for a long time and thought other people might find them helpful. I have also posted an episode of my Podcast about these four principles. If you want to hear me talk about these in more depth, please check it out by searching for “More Important Things” wherever you get Podcasts.
The Athletics will play their final home game in Oakland on September 26th, 2024. They have called Oakland home since 1968. They are leaving Oakland after a prolonged financial battle between owner John Fisher and the city of Oakland over the cost of a new ballpark.
John Fisher is a multi-billionaire whose parents founded The Gap. He ran a failed construction company and then took over his family’s wealth management company but has no personal successes as a businessman to his credit. His dad helped him finance partial ownership of the San Francisco Giants baseball team to keep them from relocating. Eventually, Fisher sold those interests, and his parents helped him buy the Oakland Athletics in 2005.
Fisher’s teams have finished as one of the worst in baseball in about half of the seasons since Fisher took over the team. Most fans and pundits regard him as one of the worst owners in all of American professional sports:
From the Sports Business Journal: “There is “precedent in baseball” for “removing a disgraceful owner.” The problem in Fisher’s case is that “his incompetence doesn’t affect the other owners.” If he “embraces crazy politics, embraces relocation or fields an inexcusably terrible product, he’s hardly the first.” But Fisher’s “crime is a savage blow to humanity.” He “intentionally let the Oakland Coliseum rot into a wasteland and cleared his roster of stardom for the specific purpose of driving away fans.” In his “twisted mind, a near-empty stadium would allow him to say, ‘See? This is why we can’t play here.’”https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2023/06/05/Franchises/mlb-waives-oakland-athletics-relocation-fee-las-vegas.aspx
Since taking over the A’s, Fisher has been battling with the city for a new stadium. His threat was that if the taxpayers didn’t pay for all of it, then he would take his team and move to a new city. Though he is a multi-billionaire, he has made it clear that he does not feel he should have to pay for anything, even though a critical part of his demands is that he gets all profits and benefits from the stadium once it is built. His lease with the stadium in Oakland expires at the end of 2024, which allows him to leave before the 2025 season. Oakland voters rejected his demands, so Fisher plans to move the A’s to Las Vegas.
QUOTE: “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through <human resources departments>, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.” —J. D. Vance, Vice Presidential Candidate for Donald Trump.
In case you aren’t familiar with Jack Posobiec’s new book, Unhumans, Posobiec himself described it at an event in July, 2024: QUOTE: “We don’t negotiate with globalist neo-Marxists. We don’t negotiate with the political version of an auto-immune disease. In a word, ladies and gentlemen—taken from the title of my book—we don’t negotiate with un-humans. Because that’s the stakes of this battle: humanity versus un-humanity. Populist nationalists versus atheist Marxist globalists. Strength, beauty, and genius versus weakness, ugliness, and stupidity. Civilization versus barbarism. Crime and chaos versus law and order…” Jack Posobiec, July, 2024
Posobiec’s speech reminded me of a quote from Journalist Molly Ivins back in 1992 when she said of another speech: “It probably sounded better in the original German.”
But we don’t have to imagine how it would have sounded in the original German. The Nazi’s wrote at length about stuff like this. In fairness they called their enemies “Subhuman” instead of “Unhuman.” It’s such a minor change that I imagine Posobiec probably wrote his new book as “subhumans” and then did a Ctrl-F Replace on the document to change subhumans to unhumans. To illustrate the similarities, here are quotes from some actual Nazi’s:
QUOTE: “We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevik revolution of subhumans be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without.” – Heinrich Himmler, 1936
QUOTE: “subhumans exist in every people as a leavening agent. “Bolshevism is the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself.” Josef Goebbels, 1936
QUOTE: “..The most important objective of this campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevik system is the complete destruction of its sources of power and the extermination of the Asiatic influence in European civilization… the soldier is not only a man fighting in accordance with the rules of the art of war, but also the ruthless standard bearer of a national conception. … For this reason the soldier must learn fully to appreciate the necessity for the severe but just retribution that must be meted out to the subhuman species of Jewry.” … From the 1930’s Nazi pamphlet titled “Subhumans”
Just because Posobiec changed Subhuman to Unhuman and because today people don’t say “Jewish-Bolsheviks” they say “Globalist neo-Marxists” the messaging sounds very similar, whether in English or the original German.
In Dan Carlin’s series “The Wrath of the Khans” he spends quite a bit of time on an idea he describes as “historical arsonists.” What Carlin is describing is this idea among historians that some people who become world-dominant leaders do so by laying waste to the societies all around them, and often to their own society as well.
For example, the Mongol conquests (1206 to 1368 CE) killed about 60 million people, or about 10% of the world’s population. That is a particularly gruesome body count when you realize that all of those people were killed basically one at a time. The Mongols didn’t have bombs or other weapons of mass-death. They had to shoot people with arrows, slice them to death with a sword, or blockade a city and starve people to death. 60 million people were either killed slowly by siege or personally in up close ways.
But the Mongol scourge didn’t end there. The Black Plague of Europe (1346 – 1352) seems to have started in Mongolia, spread to the rest of Asia, and then made its way to Europe. In Europe the plague killed about 33% of the population. The Mongolian death count is probably north of one-hundred million when you consider everything that happened as a result of their conquests.
Today some historians speak about Genghis Khan, the man who kicked off this era of massive death and
destruction, as a necessary and good thing for the progress of humanity. The theory is that you periodically need someone to burn down society. It’s like a forest needs periodic forest fires to thrive. The forest is better for the fire but the trees incinerated in the fire weren’t too thrilled about being turned to ash.
Historians typically can’t make the argument about the good of these historical arsonists if they are in too close of proximity to the destruction that the arsonist caused. If you do you will get scores of angry people coming for you. No, historians who want to remain credible and make this argument often have to wait until everyone who survived the trauma is dead. And it is probably a good idea to wait until the children of the generation who survived the trauma are gone as well. Once you are a generation or two removed from the arsonists events then you can say “look at all the good that came from this leader’s activities!”
Carlin goes on to point out that someday people will write books about all the good that came from Hitler’s time in power. They will point to advancements in flight, plastics, energy. They may even give him credit for humans getting to the moon. But credible historians don’t do this yet because there are people alive who survived the concentration camps or who stormed the beaches of Normandy. You can’t talk about all the good of Hitler when there are people around who will shame you for trying to have that take.
I was thinking about Carlin’s ‘historical arsonist’ take and his comment about these future ‘good things of Hitler’ historians after I saw the Toronto Blue Jays celebrated Canada Day by having Canadian World War 2 veterans on the field for the pre-game festivities. During this pre-game one of the announcers noted that there are only a handful of people in Canada left that actually fought in the second world war.
“We return from the slavery of uniform which the world’s madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civil garb. We stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.… We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting.” Civil Rights Leader, W.E.B. DuBois, 1919
“the American Negro returning from abroad would be our greatest medium in conveying <Communism> to America.” – President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, 1919
About one million black people left the southern American states for northern industrialized states between 1914 and 1919. World War I was raging across Europe and America was mass producing a range of things that countries like France, England and Russia desperately needed for their fight against Germany. A black man could earn up to 3 times more in the north by working in a factory than he could doing agricultural work in the South.
For most of this period of migration things were peaceful. There was plenty of work thanks to demands from Europe for American goods. Northern cities actively recruited blacks from the South out of a desperation for labor to meet the demands they were facing.
But the seeds of 1919’s violence were being sown from 1915 – 1919 as well. The Ku Klux Klan, which had officially disbanded over 40 years early made its triumphant return in 1915 in response to the migration of blacks to the North. And Southern leaders expressed their concerns for the future of America if blacks experienced positivity and started getting ‘ideas’ about having a new place in American society.
QUOTE: “Impress the negro with the fact that he is defending the flag, inflate his untutored soul with military airs, teach him that it is his duty to keep the emblem of the Nation flying triumphantly in the air… and it is but a short step to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected.” END QUOTE Mississippi Senator James Vardaman, 1917
When the United States formally entered World War I black men were allowed to go to Europe as soldiers representing the US Army. What these black men found was that in Europe they were treated like full citizens of the world by the French and British. When World War I ended in 1919 these black men returned to America with hope of acceptance. What they found instead was that they were not received as heroes but rather as a threat to society that needed to be put down violently. This created a new tension for America. Black men began to push back against the Jim Crow laws and the status quo.
Hello and welcome to More Important Things. This weeks’ more important thing is Democracy. A fun topic that will include a bunch of stuff about recently convicted felon, Donald Trump. In fact, we start with four quotes about Former President Trump’s quest to find those illegal votes:
“The Wisconsin recount is not about finding mistakes in the count, it is about finding people who have voted illegally, and that case will be brought after the recount is over, on Monday or Tuesday,” Trump tweeted on Saturday. “We have found many illegal votes. Stay tuned!”
Donald Trump, November 2020
President Donald Trump asserted in a private meeting with congressional leaders Monday night that he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 election if 3 million to 5 million immigrants living in the country illegally hadn’t voted.
Donald Trump2017
“Tens of thousands of votes were illegally received after 8 P.M. on Tuesday, Election Day,” the President tweeted, further claiming these votes are “totally and easily changing the results in Pennsylvania and certain other razor thin states.”
Donald Trump, November, 2020
“That’s why they are allowing these people to come in — people that don’t speak our language — they are signing them up to vote. And I believe that’s why you are having millions of people pour into our country and it could very well affect the next election. That’s why they are doing it.”
Donald Trump, February, 2024
Chapter 1: We Hope the Hicks Don’t Vote
If you simplify the story of Trump’s claim and ask who is ‘legal’ and who is ‘illegal’ then a Pew Research study from 2021 can be clarifying. It shows that white men voted for Trump in 2020 by a margin of 57% to 40%. In other words, if there hadn’t been all these quote unquote illegal votes, where illegal votes are the votes of women and non-whites then Trump would have won the 2020 election in a landslide.
The idea for this episode started while my wife and I were walking our dogs. My wife often asks questions about how something works based on something she saw online. By the time she is asking me about it; it may have been days or weeks since she saw the video and so the question she is asking me may not be what the video was originally about. Often she combines a couple ideas in to one thing. In this case her question was why Elon Musk was saying that soon the only way to buy a house was going to be with Bitcoin. I can’t find anywhere where he said that. But I did find recent quotes where he was whining about the National Debt and how the American dollar was going to collapse soon. So I’m going to assume that plus a video about people buying a house with Bitcoin combined in to her question.
My goal is to pull apart her question in to what I think were the three original things she saw and try to address them. The three questions in this episode are:
“Is America’s national debt about to ruin the country?”
