There are moments when modern capitalism looks at human suffering and says, “Could this be an app?” And because apparently no one in the boardroom owns a functioning conscience, the answer keeps coming back yes.

The latest holy innovation from the temple of number-go-up is wildfire prediction betting. Not wildfire forecasting in the serious, public-safety sense. Not climate modeling. Not resource planning. Not the painstaking work of firefighters, meteorologists, emergency managers, and people with actual boots on actual burning ground. I mean prediction markets where users can wager on wildfire outcomes: how far a fire spreads, when it gets contained, whether it reaches a city, how much destruction it causes.

Yes, beloveds. We have entered the “bet on your neighbor’s ashes” phase of civilization. Very advanced. Very disruptive. Very “the serpent has a Series B funding round.”

For anyone new to this, prediction markets are basically betting platforms where people buy and sell contracts tied to future events. A market might ask, “Will X happen by Friday?” Users buy “yes” or “no” positions, and the price moves as people bet. A 50-cent “yes” contract roughly means the betting crowd thinks the event has a 50 percent chance of happening. These markets already exist around elections, sports, oil prices, disease outbreaks, international incidents, and weather events. The argument from supporters is that when people put money behind their predictions, markets can reveal useful information faster than pundits or institutions. Sometimes that argument has merit. Sometimes the crowd sees something early. Sometimes the crowd is just a bunch of caffeine goblins trying to turn human misery into lunch money. Discernment, as the monks say, is useful. Also, maybe try having a soul.

Kylie Mohr’s reporting for High Country News, republished by Wired, looked at this exact problem after the devastating January 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires in Southern California. Those fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures and killed 31 people. While families were evacuating, grieving, and watching entire neighborhoods disappear, users on Polymarket were betting on how the fires would grow, how long they would last, and how much they would destroy. Polymarket reportedly listed almost 20 wildfire-related questions, and people spent about $1.2 million betting on those queries.

This is where the argument stops being abstract. We are not talking about a clean little thought experiment in an economics seminar where everyone has a blazer, a graph, and no emotional relationship to reality. We are talking about people losing homes, family histories, pets, medication, photos, heirlooms, neighborhoods, and sometimes lives. Then, while the smoke is still in the air, strangers are refreshing odds like they are checking fantasy football.

Capitalism has always had a talent for arriving at the scene of suffering with a folding table and a payment processor. Disaster capitalism is not new. People have made money off war, famine, debt, housing collapse, medical desperation, climate crisis, and every other wound humans can inflict or endure. But this is a special little goblin because it does not merely profit after the disaster. It creates a financial interest in the disaster’s outcome while it is still unfolding.

That matters.

Betting on rain is one thing. Betting on whether a hurricane forms is one thing. Still weird, perhaps, but you cannot walk outside with a lighter and personally encourage a hurricane. Wildfire is different. A fire can be started or worsened by one person in minutes. That is why wildfire survivors and ethicists are worried about arson incentives. A U.S. Forest Service spokesperson told High Country News that systems tying financial gain to wildfire outcomes risk misuse, including arson, and are not compatible with the agency’s mission.

And let’s sit with that for a moment, because the whole tech-bro defense of these markets is usually wrapped in incense labeled “public good.” The claim is that the crowd can help generate better forecasts. Very noble. Very Prometheus bringing fire to humanity, except this time Prometheus also has a crypto wallet and a Discord server called BurnAlpha.

A new wildfire-focused platform called Wyldfyre reportedly framed itself as a tool for collective intelligence and wildfire forecasting. Its tagline, according to the reporting, was: “You can’t predict wildfire. But you can trade on it.” At the time of the reporting, users could only simulate trades, but the site said real-money betting was “coming soon.”

That tagline deserves to be preserved in a museum of cursed human sentences. “You can’t predict wildfire. But you can trade on it.” Translation: “We may not be able to save your town, but have we considered monetizing the odds of its destruction?” Truly, the Buddha left the palace for less.

And here is the funniest part, by which I mean funniest in the “laugh so you don’t scream into a damp towel” sense: the actual agencies responsible for wildfire forecasting are not asking Chad from Polymarket to reveal the hidden wisdom of the flame. The Forest Service said it does not use prediction-market information for wildfire forecasting and does not rely on any system that treats wildfire as speculation. CAL FIRE said it does not use prediction-market-derived data either. CAL FIRE’s intelligence program described its modeling as science-based, using weather observations, forecast data, fuel and vegetation conditions, topography, location data, and available resources. In other words: physics, not vibes with a betting slip.

This is the moral distinction that matters. Forecasting is not the problem. Forecasting wildfires is sacred work. It saves lives. It helps communities prepare. It helps firefighters deploy resources. It helps people know when to leave before the road turns into a death trap. The problem is not prediction. The problem is turning another person’s peril into an asset class.

There is a difference between studying suffering to reduce it and studying suffering to profit from it. One is compassion with tools. The other is the ego wearing a data-science hoodie.

Some defenders will say, “But markets reveal information.” Fine. Sometimes they do. But markets also reveal desire. They reveal what a society is willing to normalize. They reveal what we are willing to reduce to price. And when the market says a family’s home, a neighborhood’s survival, or a person’s evacuation nightmare is just another contract, the market is not revealing wisdom. It is revealing spiritual rot with a user interface.

A society has to decide that some things should not be markets. A home is not liquidity. A burned neighborhood is not alpha. A fleeing family is not a contract. A firefighter’s tactical decision is not insider edge. Grief is not a derivative.

This is where the old spiritual traditions are inconvenient to the modern casino. They keep insisting that the human person is not an instrument. The neighbor is not a price signal. The world is not merely raw material for appetite. The soul is shaped by what it consents to enjoy. And if someone can watch a fire consume a town and think, “I wonder if I can make money if this gets worse,” then the problem is not only legal or regulatory. The problem is formation. The heart has been trained badly.

The Gospel of Mary says the soul is harassed by powers like desire, ignorance, and wrath. Modern people hear that and imagine ancient superstition. But honestly, look around. Desire says, “You belong to me.” Ignorance says, “This is just data.” Wrath says, “Who cares? Someone always profits.” Then the soul, if it remembers itself, says: No. I am not required to become smaller just because the market found a clever way to monetize cruelty.

That is the real spiritual practice here. Not escaping the world. Seeing it clearly. Seeing the moment when “innovation” becomes desecration. Seeing when “forecasting” becomes gambling on harm. Seeing when “collective intelligence” becomes a mob of hungry ghosts tapping yes or no while someone else is praying the wind changes.

And yes, there should be regulation. Some lawmakers have started proposing limits on prediction-market contracts tied to things like terrorism, assassination, war, illegal activity, gaming, and individual death, though wildfire was not explicitly included in those proposed restrictions as of the High Country News reporting. But regulation alone will not save a culture that has forgotten shame. Law can draw a boundary. It cannot, by itself, resurrect reverence.

So maybe the first boundary is this: we refuse to call everything “innovation” just because someone found a way to charge fees on it. We refuse to confuse gambling with wisdom. We refuse to let the suffering of the vulnerable become entertainment for the financially bored.

If someone wants to help predict wildfires, great. Fund science. Support public agencies. Build tools firefighters can actually use. Donate to survivors. Help your town prepare. Clear brush. Check on elderly neighbors. Learn evacuation routes. Do literally any useful thing.

But betting on whether someone’s town burns down?

No, beloved. That is not prophecy. That is not intelligence. That is not the future.

That is just the old demon of greed discovering push notifications.

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A funny thing happened after I posted my video about Ken Paxton’s investigation into a Dallas-based Islamic Tribunal.

Well, “funny” in the way a raccoon hissing inside a church air vent is funny.

The video started getting views. Then the comment section filled up with people raging about Islam, Sharia, Muslims, “foreign law,” and every other recycled panic phrase that gets pulled from the same old fear factory..

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And honestly?

That was the point they accidentally proved.

Because the video was not complicated. The question was simple:

Three months later, where is the evidence?

Back in April, Ken Paxton made a very public show out of investigating a Dallas-based Islamic Tribunal. The framing was obvious. Texas was supposedly under attack from some secret Sharia court. Muslims were apparently one community mediation room away from overthrowing the judiciary.

Scary music. Flashing lights. Captain Christian Nationalism rides again.

But three months later, the central question still stands:

Where is the proof that Texas law was replaced?

Where is the proof that a mosque was running the court system?

Where is the proof that Muslims were pretending to operate an official Texas court?

What we actually have, at least from what has been publicly shown, is a religious group saying its guidance is voluntary, spiritual, non-binding, and not a replacement for civil courts.

That matters.

Because religious communities handle internal guidance all the time.

Catholics have church tribunals. Jewish communities have Beth Din panels. Churches do pastoral counseling, marriage guidance, discipline processes, conflict resolution, and internal mediation. Some Christian communities even encourage believers to avoid suing one another and resolve disputes inside the church when possible.

Nobody screams “foreign law” when Christians do it.

Nobody demands a press conference when a pastor counsels a couple through a marriage dispute.

Nobody accuses Jewish communities of “replacing American law” because they have religious panels that help observant Jews navigate religious obligations.

But when Muslims do the same basic thing?

Suddenly people act like the Constitution has been dragged into a basement and waterboarded with halal soup.

That double standard is the story.

And the comment section under my video made it painfully obvious.

A lot of people were not asking for evidence. They were not asking, “Was there coercion?” They were not asking, “Did anyone pretend this was a state court?” They were not asking, “Was civil law actually violated?”

They were just mad that Muslims were doing Muslim things.

That is the part we need to stop pretending is sophisticated political concern.

This was never really about protecting Texas law. Texas law was not in danger because a group of Muslims offered voluntary religious guidance to other Muslims.

If Paxton has evidence of fraud, coercion, threats, or someone pretending to be an official court of the State of Texas, then he should produce it. That would be a real issue.

But if all he has is “Muslims gathered under their own religious tradition to help other Muslims navigate disputes,” then this is exactly the kind of government overreach the First Amendment is supposed to stop.

The state does not get to treat one religion as suspicious just because demonizing that religion plays well with the base.

And yes, I know what the comments will say.

“But Sharia!”

Right. And Catholics have canon law. Jews have halakha. Churches have doctrinal standards, internal discipline, marriage rules, counseling processes, and whole denominations with their own procedures for handling disputes.

The question is not whether a religious community has religious rules.

The question is whether those rules are being forced on people through state power or fraudulently presented as civil law.

That is the line.

Voluntary religious guidance is protected religious practice.

Coercion, fraud, or impersonating a court would be a legal problem.

Those are not the same thing.

But anti-Muslim politics depends on making them sound the same. It needs people to hear the word “Sharia” and immediately stop thinking. It needs panic to replace evidence. It needs the public to believe that Muslims are always one prayer rug away from conquest.

That is how authoritarian politics works.

First, you create a threat.

Then you inflate it.

Then you tell people only your strongman can protect them.

Then suddenly religious liberty only applies to the religions approved by the people in power.

That is not freedom. That is Christian nationalism with a badge and a press release.

And let’s be honest about the spiritual rot underneath this.

A lot of the people screaming about Islam are not protecting Christianity. They are protecting a political identity that uses Christianity as decoration.

Because if they actually cared about religious liberty, they would defend it when it is inconvenient.

If they actually cared about the Constitution, they would care when Muslims are targeted too.

If they actually cared about truth, they would ask for evidence before joining the mob.

But that is not what happened.

Instead, the comment section became a little public confessional booth where people admitted the real issue was not law, evidence, courts, or civil procedure.

The real issue was that Muslims were visible.

Muslims were organized.

Muslims were practicing their religion in public.

And for some people, that alone feels like an attack.

That is why this matters.

Not because every religious tribunal is automatically good. Not because religious communities should be above scrutiny. Not because anyone should be allowed to coerce vulnerable people behind religious language.

Scrutiny is fine.

Evidence is required.

But selective panic is something else.

When the government treats Muslim religious life as inherently suspicious while giving Christian and Jewish communities the benefit of the doubt, that is not neutral law enforcement.

That is political theater.

That is religious targeting.

That is state power being used to scare people about Muslims so MAGA voters can feel like they are fighting a holy war from their recliners.

And yes, that is authoritarian as hell.

So thank you to the angry commenters, I guess.

You helped prove the point.

You showed that this was never just about one Dallas Islamic Tribunal. It was about whether America’s promise of religious liberty means anything when the religion in question is unpopular with the loudest people in the room.

Because religious freedom is not tested when everyone likes the religion.

It is tested when people are afraid of it.

It is tested when politicians can score cheap points by demonizing it.

It is tested when the crowd is yelling, “Not them.”

That is when the Constitution either means something, or it becomes a bumper sticker for people who only want freedom for themselves.

Virgin Monk Boy is reader-supported. If this work helps you stay clear-headed while the algorithm rewards fear, panic, and cheap religious scapegoating, you can support it with a tip, a free subscription, or a paid subscription.

The comment section here is for paid supporters because I am not building another drive-by dumpster fire. Facebook can host the yelling. This space is for people who still believe truth deserves a room where it can breathe.

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So apparently Citizen Vigilante is the movie for people who watched Death Wish and thought, “This is good, but what if it had more immigration panic and less shame?”

It is not subtle. This thing looks like it was assembled in a lab by feeding Fox News comments, Great Replacement fever dreams, and a rejected Steven Seagal script into a malfunctioning fax machine. The result is a movie where the hero is not so much a character as he is a comments section with cheekbones.

And of course the fan club is acting like this is brave art. Brave? Please. This is not Dostoevsky staring into the abyss. This is a divorced uncle with wraparound sunglasses yelling “finally someone said it” because a movie told him his worst impulses are actually moral courage. There is nothing courageous about dressing up old xenophobia in action-movie lighting and calling it “what nobody is allowed to say.” Everybody is saying it. Constantly. Loudly. Usually with terrible spelling and a profile picture taken from inside a truck..

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The whole trick is painfully obvious: pretend the movie is “just about criminals,” then make sure the criminals are coded as migrants, Muslims, outsiders, foreigners, and “those people.” Then when anyone notices the pattern, clutch the pearls and scream “censorship.” It is the oldest routine in the bigot playbook: light the match, point at the smoke, then demand applause for being a firefighter.

And the supporters? They are not defending cinema. They are defending permission. They want a story where the system is broken, compassion is weakness, immigrants are danger, and the solution is one angry man with a weapon and a social media following. That is not art challenging power. That is power flattering paranoia.

The funniest part is watching people act like Uwe Boll has suddenly become the persecuted prophet of Western civilization. Uwe Boll. The man has spent decades making movies that critics treated like cinematic food poisoning, and now we are supposed to believe his anti-migrant revenge fantasy is the Sermon on the Mount with shell casings. Come on. Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers, not blessed are the guys who confuse vengeance with policy.

This is not a movie about justice. It is a fantasy for people who have mistaken fear for wisdom and punishment for virtue. It gives them the emotional dessert they crave: a world where mercy is naive, due process is betrayal, and violence becomes holy as long as the target has the right accent.

No, thank you.

Virgin Monk Boy does not need vigilante cosplay to understand evil. We already know evil. Evil is what happens when frightened people start calling cruelty “common sense” and revenge “truth.”

May we learn the difference before another terrible movie has to explain our own sickness back to us.

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There is a special kind of American political magic trick where politicians say “support the troops” with one hand while using the other hand to quietly take away the actual support.

Donald Trump has apparently found the prestige version.

According to NPR, the Trump administration’s push to institutionalize homeless people may also sweep in veterans. Yes, veterans. The people Republicans invoke every time they need a flag backdrop, a country song, or a reason to defund someone else’s food stamps.

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The public line is familiar: compassion, safety, care, treatment, order. The actual machinery looks a lot darker. Trump’s executive order on homelessness leans hard into civil commitment, long-term institutional settings, and cracking down on public homelessness like the problem is not poverty, housing costs, trauma, untreated illness, or lack of support — but visibility. The sin is not that people are suffering. The sin is that people with brunch reservations have to see it.

And now veterans may be caught in the same dragnet.

This is where the patriotic bumper sticker starts peeling off the truck.

The VA and Justice Department signed a memorandum that allows VA attorneys to participate in state guardianship or conservatorship proceedings for vulnerable veterans, including some veterans who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. The administration says this is about helping veterans who cannot make medical decisions and have no family or representative.

Fine. In rare cases, guardianship may be necessary.

But guardianship is not a wellness check. It is not a friendly ride to the clinic. It can strip a person of the right to make decisions about medical care, housing, finances, benefits, and daily life. That is not a “support our veterans” policy. That is a legal cage with softer lighting.

And the people who actually work with homeless veterans are waving red flags.

The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans warned that involuntary interventions remove major personal autonomy and must be used sparingly, with strong safeguards. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America said the agreement risks taking rights away from veterans who need housing, care, and support — not fewer rights. Disability advocates are saying the quiet part out loud: homelessness is a housing crisis, not a justification for court-ordered control.

But Trumpism has never met a human crisis it could not turn into a police problem.

Homelessness? Criminalize it.

Mental illness? Institutionalize it.

Addiction? Punish it.

Veterans sleeping in trucks? Put them in a legal process and call it compassion.

This is the same old authoritarian sales pitch in a new patriotic hat: “We are doing this for your own good.” History is full of governments saying that right before they start taking away someone’s freedom.

The sickest part is that we already know what has worked for veteran homelessness. It was not chest-thumping. It was not press conferences. It was not one more executive order with a name that sounds like it was focus-grouped by a cable news producer.

It was housing.

Actual housing.

Housing First. Rental support. VA case management. Outreach workers. Trust. Repeated contact. Food. Coffee. Someone showing up again and again until the person who has been failed by every institution finally believes this one might not be another trap.

NPR’s story tells us about Curtis Ervin, an 87-year-old Navy veteran sleeping in his truck. Outreach workers did not tackle him, threaten him, or drag him into “care” like a sack of laundry. They built trust. They brought food. They came back. They treated him like a man, not a public-order inconvenience. And he came in. He got housed.

That is the whole lesson.

But Trump looks at that and says, “What if instead of relationships, we used force?”

Of course he does. The man has the emotional intelligence of a casino carpet and the policy instincts of a mall cop with executive privilege.

This is the contradiction at the heart of the whole performance. Trump promised to house thousands of homeless veterans in Los Angeles. Big, shiny, camera-ready promise. Then the reporting says his budget put zero dollars toward that housing. Zero. Not “insufficient.” Not “delayed.” Zero.

That is the Trump veteran policy in miniature: promise a roof, budget a ghost, then call the cops when the person is still outside.

He does not want to solve homelessness. He wants to remove homeless people from the frame.

Because solving homelessness requires money, housing, staff, services, patience, and humility. Removing homeless people from public view requires force, paperwork, and a press release about restoring order.

One is governance.

The other is cosmetics for cruelty.

And let’s drop the fake confusion. Veterans are not props. They are not flag accessories. They are not campaign scenery. They are human beings who served, came home, and in far too many cases were handed a maze of trauma, bureaucracy, addiction, disability, poverty, and rent they could not afford.

If you want to honor veterans, house them.

If you want to help veterans, fund the programs that work.

If you want to treat veterans, build trust and give them voluntary care they can actually access.

But do not salute them on Monday, underfund them on Tuesday, and put them under guardianship on Wednesday because their suffering became inconvenient to the optics of your America.

That is not patriotism.

That is empire with a lapel pin.

Trump’s whole brand is pretending cruelty is strength. But there is nothing strong about threatening broken people with institutions because you failed to give them homes. There is nothing brave about forcing veterans into legal dependency while calling it freedom. There is nothing pro-military about treating an 87-year-old Navy veteran in a truck like a nuisance to be managed instead of a neighbor to be housed.

The real scandal is not that homeless veterans exist in public.

The scandal is that the richest country on earth keeps producing homeless veterans, then elects leaders who would rather disappear them than house them.

So no, Mr. “Support the Troops,” you do not get a parade for this.

You do not get to wrap forced institutionalization in red, white, and blue bunting and call it compassion.

You do not get to campaign on veterans, budget zero for housing promises, and then act shocked when advocates notice the handcuffs hiding under the flag.

The troops do not need another salute.

They need keys.

They need care.

They need housing.

And above all, they need a country that stops using them as political props the moment they become inconveniently human.

Receipts

This piece is based on NPR’s reporting on the Trump administration’s homelessness policy and its possible impact on veterans, the White House executive order on “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” the VA/DOJ memorandum on guardianship and conservatorship proceedings for vulnerable veterans, and public responses from veteran, housing, and disability advocacy groups.

The key point: veteran homelessness has gone down because of housing, outreach, VA support, and voluntary services — not because the government got better at disappearing people into institutions.

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When Reality Outworks Satire

There are moments when satire has to sit down, sip tea, and admit reality is doing all the work.

Larry Brock, the retired lieutenant colonel and convicted Jan. 6 rioter, showed up at Frisco City Hall to warn the council about the dangers of Islam. Yes, that Larry Brock. The same man photographed inside the Capitol on Jan. 6 in tactical gear, carrying zip-tie handcuffs, now wants to lecture a Texas city about dangerous ideologies entering government buildings.

Beloved, the projection is no longer unconscious. It has filed an LLC.

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Christian Nationalist Fear Theater

Brock introduced himself by listing his military service, his years in Saudi Arabia, and his claim that he has “fought Islam and jihad” his entire adult life. Then he compared Islam to the SS, suggested mosques function as recruiting centers and weapons depots, and warned council members that approving a mosque could somehow put them at legal risk for aiding terrorism.

This was not a zoning argument. It was not a traffic concern. It was not a normal city council complaint about drainage, parking, lighting, or whether someone’s minivan will have to pass a halal potluck on the way to soccer practice. This was Christian Nationalist fear theater dressed up as public comment.

And the costume was not subtle.

A mosque was not described as a house of worship. It was described as a threat. Muslim neighbors were not described as residents. They were described as invaders. A local land-use issue was not treated as a city matter. It was inflated into a civilizational war, because apparently nothing says “I trust American values” like panicking every time Muslims ask for the same First Amendment everyone else gets.

Religious Freedom, But Only for the Right Religion

This is the move. Christian Nationalists love religious freedom until someone else uses it. Then suddenly the Constitution needs a bouncer.

Churches? Freedom.

Mosques? Suspicious.

A Christian school? Heritage.

An Islamic center? Infiltration.

A pastor speaking at city hall? Civic engagement.

A Muslim leader supporting a candidate? Civilization is falling and somebody get the powdered wig militia on line one.

How the Panic Machine Works

The trick is always the same. Start by pretending the issue is safety. Then make the “safety” concern so broad that every Muslim institution becomes suspicious by default. A mosque becomes a recruiting center. A Muslim nonprofit becomes a terrorist pipeline. A Muslim civic leader becomes proof of foreign influence. A Muslim family buying land becomes the opening scene of a Fox News apocalypse documentary.

And once the fear is thick enough, the law becomes an inconvenience.

That is what made Brock’s remarks so revealing. He was not arguing that the mosque failed some ordinary city requirement. He was trying to place Islam itself outside the protection of ordinary American life. He wanted council members to treat a Muslim house of worship as if it were a military threat.

Which is a fascinating position from a man whose own résumé now includes entering the U.S. Capitol during an attack on the peaceful transfer of power.

The monk does not like to rush into judgment, but when the man with the Jan. 6 zip-tie aesthetic starts warning everyone about religious extremism, the irony bell rings so loudly even the angels ask for noise-canceling headphones.

The Old Poison in a New Costume

Brock also leaned into one of the ugliest branches of modern anti-Muslim propaganda: the idea that Muslim men are coming for “your wives and daughters.” He warned about burqas, grooming, and rape gangs, as if approving a mosque in Frisco would somehow turn Texas into a dystopian fantasy written by a man who spends too much time in comment sections.

This is not new. Bigots always claim to be defending women when they want to demonize minority men. They did it to Black men. They did it to Jewish men. They do it to immigrants. And now they do it to Muslims. The details change, but the old poison keeps wearing new costumes.

The claim is never just, “I disagree with your religion.” It becomes, “Your religion is a threat to our women, our children, our homes, our nation, our way of life.” That is how ordinary neighbors get turned into enemies. That is how prayer spaces get turned into imagined weapons depots. That is how civil rights get reframed as surrender.

The Actual Question

Because the issue in Frisco was not whether every person in the room had to like Islam. Nobody is asking Larry Brock to pick up a prayer rug and start learning Arabic between HOA meetings. The issue was whether Muslim residents get the same rights as everyone else. Can they gather? Can they worship? Can they build? Can they participate in public life without being treated like a foreign army?

The answer, under the Constitution everyone keeps pretending to love, is yes.

Religious freedom either belongs to everyone, or it is not freedom. It is a membership perk. And Christian Nationalism is very fond of turning rights into membership perks.

America Is Not a Theological Checkpoint

That is the deeper rot underneath this whole performance. Christian Nationalism does not want a secular government that protects everybody’s conscience. It wants a hierarchy. It wants Christianity at the top, tolerated religions beneath it, and Islam somewhere outside the gates being searched for contraband by men who think “Sharia” means “anything that makes me uncomfortable.”

But America is not supposed to work that way. A city council is not a theological checkpoint. A zoning meeting is not a crusade. And a mosque is not a weapons depot because a convicted Jan. 6 rioter says the word “jihad” into a microphone with veteran authority in his voice.

The law was not on the side of the anti-mosque panic. The facts were not on their side. Fear was. And fear is the preferred sacrament of Christian Nationalism.

Lighting Matches and Calling It Discernment

This is how the machine works: first, call Muslims dangerous. Then call their mosque a threat. Then call their civic participation infiltration. Then call their civil rights terrorism. And when someone points out the obvious bigotry, clutch the pearls and insist you are “just asking questions.”

No, beloved. You are not asking questions. You are lighting matches and calling it discernment.

Frisco did not need a lecture about Sharia from Larry Brock. Frisco needed to follow the law. And inconveniently for the crusader cosplay caucus, the law does not say Muslims only get religious freedom if Larry Brock feels emotionally prepared for it.

That is the thing about rights. They do not stop being rights when the wrong neighbor uses them. They do not vanish because someone says “Sharia” with enough bass in his voice. They do not belong only to Christians, conservatives, veterans, pastors, prophets, or people who think every mosque is a boss level in the culture war.

The Sacred Mystery of Projection

And here is where the whole spectacle becomes painfully clear: the people warning about religious extremism were the ones trying to deny religious freedom. The people claiming to defend America were the ones asking government to treat one religion as inherently suspect. The people shouting about law and order were cheering a man whose own public reputation is tied to one of the most lawless days in modern American history.

Behold, the sacred mystery of projection.

A Muslim community asks for a mosque, and suddenly the Christian Nationalist imagination sees invasion. A Muslim leader supports a candidate, and suddenly democracy has been infiltrated. A city follows the law, and suddenly America is falling.

Frisco did not fall.

A mosque is not an army.

Muslim neighbors are not invaders.

And blessed are those who can tell the difference between religious freedom and Christian privilege, for they shall be called adults.

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That distinction seems important, since some people reacted to Mark Hill’s mayoral runoff victory like Saladin had just ridden through city hall with a zoning permit and a falafel truck.

After Hill won, Larry Brock posted: “Jerusalem fell in 1187. Constantinople in 1453 and Frisco in 2026. Corruption and Jihad won tonight.” He called Hill “Ayatollah Mark” and shared an image congratulating him for taking “Frisco into the Caliphate.”

Very normal stuff. Very emotionally regulated. The kind of calm civic engagement you expect from a man who apparently thinks every local election is either his guy wins or Western civilization has to be airlifted from the HOA clubhouse.

But the post itself was only the opening hymn.

The comments made the sermon clear.

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When a Muslim commenter joked back, Brock replied, “We know who you are even if the rest of America is slow to catch on. We will eventually play Cowboys and Muslims, it just isn’t time yet. Ask yourself this, how many Comanche are still here?”

That is not a policy disagreement.

That is not a normal election-night meltdown.

That is a man responding to Muslims in Texas by invoking the violent disappearance of Native people and then imagining a future round of “Cowboys and Muslims.”

That is a man invoking the violent removal of Native people while talking to Muslims in Texas. The theology here is not Christianity. It is settler-colonial cosplay with a Facebook login.

This is the same Larry Rendall Brock Jr. from Grapevine, Texas, not just some random keyboard crusader yelling into the void. The Department of Justice says Larry Brock was convicted for his role in January 6 after entering the Capitol in tactical gear, picking up flex-cuffs, and making his way into the Senate chamber. NBC DFW/AP reported that he was later sentenced to two years in prison.

The monk has reviewed the sacred texts, beloved, and “blessed are the people who fantasize about sectarian violence after losing a runoff” did not make the final edit.

And because subtlety had apparently left the comment section to go sit quietly in a cave, Brock later added, “The hunting in Afghanistan was particularly good.”

Again, this was not about tax rates. It was not about road construction. It was not about whether Frisco needs better traffic planning or fewer luxury apartments named after fake Italian villages.

This was about Muslims.

The election became, in their imagination, a religious conquest. A Muslim-supporting candidate did not win. “Jihad” won. A city did not elect a mayor. It entered “the Caliphate.” A political loss was not processed as democracy. It was processed as invasion.

That is the entire machinery of anti-Muslim politics in miniature.

First, tell people Muslims are not neighbors. Tell them Muslims are a threat. Tell them inclusion is surrender. Tell them representation is conquest. Tell them every mosque is a beachhead and every Muslim civic leader is secretly part of some grand takeover plot.

Then act shocked when the comment section starts sounding like a holy war fan club with Wi-Fi.

And Brock was not alone.

Another commenter wrote that Frisco “needs a Belfast moment. And soon.”

A Belfast moment.

That phrase should stop everyone cold.

Because once people start talking about their neighbors in the language of sectarian conflict, the danger is not theoretical anymore. It is sitting right there in public, posting under its own name, laughing emojis included.

This is why Frisco’s election mattered. Not because one mayoral race will solve anti-Muslim bigotry. Not because one victory magically purifies a city. Let us not get carried away. The monk believes in enlightenment, not municipal fairy dust.

It mattered because voters had a chance to reward fear, and they did not.

They had a chance to accept the idea that Muslim residents are an invading force, and they rejected it.

They had a chance to let crusader cosplay dress itself up as civic concern, and enough people said no.

That deserves to be named.

Frisco did not fall.

The caliphate did not arrive.

No one took the city into jihad.

A candidate won an election, and the people who built their politics around Muslim panic showed everyone exactly who they are when they lose.

Blessed are the cities that remember democracy is not a crusade.

And blessed are the voters who can tell the difference between a neighbor and a boogeyman.

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Today’s dispatch from the Department of Sacred Bureaucratic Nonsense begins, naturally, at the Pentagon.

The Department of Defense has reduced its list of recognized religious affiliations from more than 200 choices to 31. The new list no longer includes atheists, Unitarian Universalists, pagans, or Wiccans. Service members can still select broader categories like “no religion,” “agnostic,” or “other religions,” which is very comforting if your deepest spiritual identity is apparently being filed under miscellaneous soul debris.

The Pentagon says this is not about judging the legitimacy of any faith. Officials say it is about helping chaplains understand the religious makeup of their units and structure resources for service members.

Ah yes. The ancient mystical practice of religious liberty by spreadsheet deletion.

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The Holy Spreadsheet Has Spoken

This is how the soft machinery of Christian nationalism often works. Not always with a torch and a chant. Sometimes it comes with a memo, a dropdown menu, and a man in a suit saying, “We’re just streamlining.”

The problem is not that every single religious micro-category must exist forever on every government form. The problem is the cultural direction of the thing. When religious minorities are erased from official recognition while public leaders increasingly talk about America as if it belongs spiritually to one team, people notice.

The Associated Press reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has brought his evangelical Christianity into Pentagon leadership, including hosting worship services for employees and speaking of the United States as a Christian nation. Critics like Rev. Paul Raushenbush of Interfaith Alliance warned that the government should not be creating a hierarchy of faiths.

And there it is.

A hierarchy of faiths.

Christian nationalism does not want religious liberty. It wants religious seating charts.

Christianity gets the head table. Islam gets monitored. Pagans get deleted. Atheists get filed under “please stop asking questions.” Unitarians get quietly escorted into the spiritual parking lot.

Very constitutional. Very humble. Very “Jesus definitely said blessed are the database administrators, for they shall inherit the sorted categories.”

Meanwhile, the Mosque Panic Continues

While the Pentagon was cleaning out the spiritual closet, a proposed mosque in Albuquerque’s North Valley drew exactly the kind of public panic you would expect from people who think zoning hearings are where civilization goes to die.

According to CAIR, the proposed mosque faced opposition during a public hearing where normal concerns about noise and traffic reportedly gave way to rhetoric about Sharia law and “polluting future generations.” When the proposal was deferred to July 1 over safety concerns, chants of “USA” reportedly erupted in the chamber.

Because nothing says “land of the free” like chanting the country’s name at Muslims who are trying to build a place to pray.

One suspects these people would have opposed the Sermon on the Mount for traffic impact.

This is the anti-Islam playbook in its purest suburban form. A mosque is never just a mosque. It is always a “compound.” A community center is never a community center. It is a “Sharia headquarters.” A Muslim family day is never a family day. It is a “takeover.” These folks have watched so many fear reels that they now think a minaret is a missile silo with better architecture.

And yet, they call this patriotism.

No, beloved. This is not patriotism. This is HOA fever with a Bible verse screensaver.

June Has Been Rebranded by the Sanctified Weirdos

And because the culture war is apparently a subscription service nobody can cancel, several Republican governors are also rebranding June with conservative alternatives to Pride Month.

Indiana and Tennessee have declared June “Nuclear Family Month.” Alabama has named it “Strong Families Month.” Utah and Arkansas have called it “Fidelity Month.” AP reports that both supporters and opponents view these moves as counterprogramming to Pride, even when officials avoid saying that part too loudly.

This is what they do. They insist they are not attacking anyone. They are merely “celebrating family.” They are merely “honoring tradition.” They are merely “reclaiming the culture.”

A conservative activist behind Tennessee’s measure reportedly said the goal was to counter Pride Month because Pride “goes against” what she believes is right.

There’s the incense smoke clearing.

This was never just about family. Lots of LGBTQ people have families. Lots of Muslims have families. Lots of atheists, pagans, Wiccans, Unitarians, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, and exhausted people in Target on a Tuesday have families.

But in the Christian nationalist imagination, “family” does not mean people bound together by love, sacrifice, care, and loyalty.

It means a political icon.

One husband. One wife. Properly branded children. Everyone smiling like they just survived a church directory photo shoot.

The Pattern Is the Sermon

Put these stories together and the pattern becomes painfully clear.

The state narrows recognition.
The crowd panics over mosques.
Politicians rebrand June to discipline queer visibility.
And all of it gets wrapped in words like faith, family, freedom, and tradition.

But somehow, mysteriously, the result is always the same: dominant Christianity gets centered, while everyone else is asked to shrink, explain themselves, or accept being filed under “other.”

That is not religious liberty.

That is empire with a modesty filter.

Actual religious freedom does not need Muslims to disappear. It does not need pagans erased from a list. It does not need LGBTQ people counterprogrammed out of public joy. It does not need public institutions quietly ranking whose faith feels American enough.

Real faith does not fear the neighbor’s prayer.

Real family does not require the state to insult someone else’s household.

Real patriotism does not chant “USA” at a mosque hearing like the Constitution is a team mascot.

May the Bigots Find a Hobby

May the holy accountants of empire discover the First Amendment before they alphabetize the soul.

May the mosque opponents be healed of their Sharia-themed subdivision hallucinations.

May every politician rebranding June as Straight People With a Mortgage Month be blessed with one full calendar year of minding their own business.

And may the rest of us remember this simple, dangerous truth:

If your faith needs the government to delete other people, delay other people, or diminish other people, then perhaps your faith is not being persecuted.

Perhaps it is just insecure.

And insecurity, dear pilgrims, is not a sacrament.

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The following reflection was inspired by three news reports that arrived like a cursed gift basket from the Church of We Told You So: Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith reportedly saying America needs “permission to hate again” while calling Islam a “demonic death cult,” Texas officials weighing a curriculum that gives Christianity the stained-glass treatment while Islam gets shoved into the terrorism drawer, and the San Diego Muslim community grieving after a deadly mosque shooting while still having to remind America, “We’re just your neighbors.”

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America’s latest spiritual revival is apparently not “love your neighbor,” “blessed are the peacemakers,” or “whatever you did to the least of these.”

No, beloved pilgrims of the comment section, the new gospel seems to be: we need permission to hate again.

When the Mask Files Paperwork

Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith reportedly said, “I hate Islam. It’s a demonic death cult,” then added that “we need to be okay with hating again.”

Which is a bold theological move. Somewhere, Jesus is flipping over tables again, but this time it’s because the money changers have been replaced by podcast patriots selling fear in bulk.

The funniest part, if by “funny” we mean “deeply horrifying with a patriot filter,” is that this always comes wrapped in the language of defending Christianity. They are not spreading hate, you see. They are “protecting Western civilization.” They are not demonizing Muslims. They are “telling the truth.” They are not trying to make one religion dominant in public life. They are simply “returning America to its roots,” preferably with a school board, a campaign donation link, and a history curriculum written by people who think footnotes are woke.

Bible Lessons With a Side of Panic

Meanwhile in Texas, the Republican-led State Board of Education is considering a social studies overhaul that would weave Christianity and Bible readings throughout public school instruction. The Houston Chronicle reports that the standards would require students to read more than a dozen Bible passages and connect Christianity to major historical events, beginning as early as kindergarten with the claim that Pilgrims came “to advance the Christian faith.”

Kindergarten!

Because nothing says “let children be children” like handing a five-year-old a crayon and saying, “Now color the providential destiny of Protestant settlement.”

And yes, religion should be taught in history. Of course it should. Christianity shaped the West. Islam shaped world civilization. Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Indigenous religions, African traditions, and countless other streams shaped human culture too. A serious education would teach religion with honesty, context, humility, and actual scholarship.

But that is not what this smells like.

This smells like Christian nationalism with laminated worksheets.

Christianity Gets the Halo. Islam Gets the Mugshot.

The Chronicle notes that the proposed curriculum gives far fewer requirements to other religions, while lessons on Islam largely emphasize conflict, including jihad, terrorism, the Crusades, and the Reconquista. One curriculum preview says students would explain “the teachings of jihad” and “the rise of radical Islam.”

There it is. Christianity gets civilization, banking, abolition, Pilgrims, Moses, Abraham, and moral foundations. Islam gets conquest, terrorism, and the suspicious background music from every airport scene in a bad action movie.

Subtle as a brick through a stained-glass window.

This is the trick. Christian nationalism does not simply ask for Christianity to be remembered. It asks for Christianity to be airbrushed, perfumed, and handed a crown. Then it asks for Islam to be shoved into the “dangerous foreign threat” drawer, right next to “Marxists,” “globalists,” “woke teachers,” and whatever else keeps the fundraising emails moist.

If We’re Teaching History, Let’s Teach History

One historian quoted by the Chronicle said the curriculum shows a “selective emphasis on stopping Muslim expansion while glossing over disturbing behavior by Christian powers.”

There is the whole sermon, right there.

Because if children are going to learn about jihad and conquest, wonderful. Let us also teach Charlemagne forcing Saxons into baptism at sword point. Let us teach the Crusaders slaughtering civilians in Jerusalem. Let us teach colonial missions, residential schools, slavery defended with Bible verses, Jewish communities terrorized after Passion plays, and every empire that learned to say “God wills it” while counting stolen land.

But no, the bigots never want history. They want a museum exhibit where their side gets a halo and everyone else gets a mugshot.

This is not faith. This is insecurity with a choir robe.

Your Neighbors Are Not Your Demons

And while all of this is happening, Muslim communities are dealing with actual violence. In San Diego, after the mass shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, The Guardian reported that three men were killed and that the attack is being investigated as a hate crime. Security guard Amin Abdullah helped keep two teenage gunmen from reaching about 140 children and 20 staff members at the mosque school.

Read that again before some patriot influencer starts screaming about “protecting the children.”

A Muslim security guard died protecting children.

Not in a meme. Not in a fever dream about Sharia. In real life.

And what did one community member say afterward? “We’re just your neighbors.”

That sentence should shame every professional panic merchant in the country.

“We’re just your neighbors.”

Not invaders. Not demons. Not a caliphate hiding behind a bake sale. Neighbors. People trying to pray, raise kids, build community, pay bills, bury their dead, and survive the latest wave of holy-branded paranoia from men who confuse bigotry with discernment because both make their faces look serious.

Love Is Not Conversion With Better Branding

The Christian nationalist imagination has become so spiritually constipated that it cannot recognize ordinary human beings unless they arrive pre-approved by Fox News, wrapped in a flag, and allergic to Arabic.

And now we have public figures talking about hating Islam while claiming to love Muslims because they make “great Christians” once converted.

That is not love. That is colonial customer service.

“I love you, provided you stop being you” is not compassion. It is conquest with a church smile.

If your love for Muslims depends on them becoming Christians, you do not love Muslims. You love the imaginary trophy version of them you can display after your ideology has eaten their identity.

Fear Is Not a Spiritual Gift

This is the sacred scam of Christian nationalism. It turns Christianity into a border wall around the ego. It calls domination “truth.” It calls fear “wisdom.” It calls cruelty “courage.” Then it has the nerve to act persecuted when decent people say, “Maybe stop calling an entire religion demonic while mosques are receiving threats.”

The old saints warned about passions. Hatred was not a virtue. It was a sickness of perception. A fog over the heart. A fire that burns the vessel carrying it.

But these boys have discovered a shortcut. Why purify the heart when you can monetize its disease?

Why repent when you can rebrand resentment as patriotism?

Why love your neighbor when you can accuse them of building a caliphate because they requested a zoning permit?

The Problem Was Never Islam

The truth is painfully simple. Christianity does not need the state to survive. It does not need public school curriculum committees to prop it up like a tired mascot. It does not need Muslims turned into monsters so Christians can feel brave.

If Christianity is true, it can survive honest history.

If Christianity is beautiful, it does not need propaganda.

If Christianity is rooted in Christ, it should produce mercy, courage, humility, and solidarity with the vulnerable.

But if your Christianity requires permission to hate, then maybe the problem is not Islam.

Maybe the problem is that your religion has become a mirror, and you do not like what is staring back.

May the fear merchants develop a sudden allergy to their own talking points. May the school boards discover historians before the worksheets go to print. May every mosque, church, synagogue, temple, and sacred weird little meditation room be protected from men who mistake paranoia for prophecy.

And may everyone demanding permission to hate be gently escorted back to the Sermon on the Mount, where the Wi-Fi is weak, the ego dies loudly, and Jesus keeps asking why his loudest defenders never seem to recognize him.Keep the Scrolls Unrolling

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Joel Tenney drove to Frisco, Texas to explain that mosques and Hindu temples are “incompatible” with being American.

This was not a zoning argument. It was not about traffic. It was not about drainage. It was theological gatekeeping dressed as civic concern

Before we go any further I want to point out that Joel made sure to let everyone know of his unique qualifications as he he comes from Texas Royalty! Grandson of Sam Houston non the less.

The irony is that Sam Houston was removed as governor of Texas in 1861 because he refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy. So watching someone invoke Houston’s name while trying to define Texas as a Christian-only project is historically ridiculous. Also, Tenney appears to have been born in the 1990s. Sam Houston’s documented great-grandson, Sam Houston IV, was born in 1931. So unless this family tree includes a time machine, “great-grandfather” is doing a lot of cosplay work here. But honestly, even if the ancestry claim were true, nobody cares. Your bloodline does not give you veto power over other people’s religious freedom.

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Frisco Was Never Just About Zoning

Tenney’s argument was not really about land use. It was about who gets to belong.

He said, “I don’t want to bring any mosque to Texas. Ever. We shouldn’t have one here. It’s incompatible with what it means to be an American.”

That is not civic concern. That is religious exclusion.

He also warned that building temples would change “the layout and the structure and the fabric” of Texas.

Translation: non-Christian worship makes him nervous when it has walls, parking lots, and legal permits.

Assimilation Apparently Means Conversion

Then he held up a Muslim woman converting to Catholicism as his example of “assimilation.”

That tells you everything.

To him, assimilation does not mean learning the language, obeying the law, paying taxes, raising a family, and participating in civic life.

It means stop being Muslim. Go to church. Become acceptable.

That is not assimilation.

That is religious replacement.

The Sam Houston Cosplay Gets Weird

And then, just to complete the historical costume drama, he claimed Sam Houston and Davy Crockett as “great-grandfathers.”

A man who appears to have been born in the 1990s claiming Sam Houston as his great-grandfather is not genealogy.

It is frontier cosplay with a family tree drawn in crayon.

The point is not just that the math is questionable. The point is that he is using Texas mythology as a permission slip for religious exclusion.

Sam Houston becomes a prop. Davy Crockett becomes a prop. “Texas roots” become a prop.

All so he can tell Muslims and Hindus that their houses of worship do not belong here.

Then Comes the Armenia Irony

And here is where it gets even stranger.

Tenney is apparently taking a break from making Armenia his personal evangelical mission field.

Which is quite a performance, because Armenia is not some spiritually vacant land waiting for an American preacher with a passport and a persecution complex.

Armenia is overwhelmingly Armenian Apostolic Christian. Ancient Christian. Pre-Protestant Christian. Pre-America Christian. Pre-Texas Christian.

So when an American evangelical says he is doing mission work in Armenia, the obvious question is:

Mission work to whom?

Christians?

Ancient Christians?

People whose church predates Texas, America, Protestantism, and the entire evangelical conference-industrial complex?

When Ancient Christians Are Not “Christian Enough”

This is the part people miss.

Twenty years ago, a lot of American evangelicals were treating Orthodox and Apostolic Christians like they were not really Christian enough.

Eastern Europe, Russia, Armenia, Egypt, the Balkans, all of it became “mission territory” because incense, icons, sacraments, and apostolic succession apparently did not count unless someone added a projector screen and a worship band.

Now that picking fights with Orthodox Christians is less useful, the panic machine has pivoted.

The new enemy is Islam.

And in Frisco, Muslims and Hindus became the latest props in the “defend Texas” cosplay.

Religious Liberty for Me, Suspicion for Thee

But the deeper issue is not his ancestry math.

The deeper issue is this:

He wants his version of Christianity welcomed in Armenia, but Muslims and Hindus restricted in Texas.

He wants evangelical freedom abroad and religious gatekeeping at home.

He wants religious liberty when it serves his tribe, and religious suspicion when it serves his politics.

That is not Christianity.

That is not patriotism.

That is Christian nationalism with a travel itinerary.

The Old Playbook Has a New Target

And honestly, if his plan is to take the old evangelical anti-Orthodox playbook and aim it at Islam, good luck.

The Orthodox may have been polite.

Muslims have 1,400 years of theology, law, poetry, philosophy, prayer, and memory behind them.

The fog machine revival crowd may discover this is not the soft target they thought it was.

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The Word That Makes the Empire Twitch

The word submission has become one of those words Christian Nationalists only understand when they are accusing someone else of it. Say the word near them and suddenly the room fills with panic about Islam, Sharia, foreign control, and the end of Western civilization as foretold by a man recording from his truck. But the reaction is revealing, because what they fear in Islam is often the very thing their own tradition has been quietly begging them to recover.

Submission is not kneeling. That is the cheap cartoon version. Submission is not groveling before a tyrant, obeying some cleric without conscience, or becoming less human so another man can become more powerful. Real spiritual submission is the surrender of the false self. It is the ego stepping down from a throne it never had the right to occupy. It is the soul admitting that God is not a brand, not a party mascot, not a national symbol, and not a projection screen for our fears.

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The Ego Does Not Want to Be Saved. It Wants a Flag.

That is the theological wound underneath all of this. Christian Nationalism cannot talk about submission because it has replaced surrender with dominance. It does not want the self to yield to God. It wants culture, law, schools, libraries, women, immigrants, Muslims, queer people, teachers, and apparently zoning boards to yield to its version of God. Very convenient, of course. The god of Christian Nationalism never asks the ego to die. He mostly asks everyone else to behave.

Islam becomes a useful contrast here, not because Muslims are magically free from hypocrisy or because Islamic societies have always lived up to their highest ideals. Humans can ruin anything. Give us revelation and within twenty minutes we will have formed a committee, invented a purity test, and started arguing about parking. The point is not perfection. The point is that Islam kept surrender right in the center of its religious imagination. The word itself carries the meaning of submission, surrender, and peace through yielding to God.

That does not make Islam an “ad.” It makes it an uncomfortable mirror.

The Discipline Christian Nationalism Forgot

The daily rhythm of Islamic prayer says something without needing a press conference. The day is interrupted. The body is washed. The appetite is disciplined. The ego is reminded that it is not the sun around which all things orbit. The point is not the physical act by itself. The point is the training of the whole person toward remembrance. The body, the schedule, the mind, and the heart are all told, again and again, “You are not ultimate.”

That is precisely the spiritual muscle Christian Nationalism has lost.

Christian Nationalism talks endlessly about God, but very little about surrendering to God. It talks about defending Christianity, protecting Christianity, restoring Christianity, saving Christianity, legislating Christianity, and making sure Christianity gets the good microphone at public meetings. But the actual inner work of Christianity, the part where the ego is crucified rather than politically empowered, tends to disappear like a Bible verse at a donor luncheon.

Jesus Did Not Teach Domination

Jesus did not teach domination. He did not tell his followers to seize the machinery of the state so they could make the out-group nervous. He did not build a movement around grievance, suspicion, cultural ownership, and the sacred right to be offended by everyone else’s existence. The Jesus of the Gospels teaches surrender so radically that modern Christian Nationalism has to practically look away from him to keep the brand alive.

In Gethsemane, Jesus does not say, “Not their will, but my movement be done.” He says, “Not my will, but yours.” That is not weakness. That is the spiritual center of the Christian path. The human will opens itself to the divine will. The false self stops clutching. The soul consents to God even when the ego is terrified. That is surrender. That is submission in the deepest sense.

Christian theology even has the language for this. Kenosis means self-emptying. Christ empties himself. He does not inflate himself into a mascot for empire. He does not confuse spiritual authority with social control. He does not teach his disciples that victory means making the world afraid of them. He reveals power through self-offering, through mercy, through love that does not need to dominate in order to be real.

The Mirror They Keep Calling a Threat

And this is where the contrast becomes almost painfully obvious. Islam kept the language of surrender. Jesus lived the posture of surrender. Christian Nationalism replaced surrender with control and then called the result faith.

That is why the panic over Islam often feels so performative. They are not simply reacting to another religion. They are reacting to a visible reminder of something their own tradition once knew. A Muslim stopping to pray is not just “religion in public.” It is a reminder that devotion can structure a life. It is a reminder that prayer can be embodied, disciplined, daily, and inconvenient. It is a reminder that God is not something you invoke only when you want political power. God is the One before whom the self is reordered.

Christian Nationalism cannot bear that kind of reminder because its own prayer life has often been reduced to territorial performance. Prayer becomes less about being changed and more about making a claim. Flags enter sanctuaries. Guns become icons. Public prayer becomes a dominance ritual. The cross, once a symbol of self-emptying love, gets turned into a campaign prop for people who seem personally offended by the Beatitudes.

When the Cross Becomes a Campaign Prop

The whole thing becomes absurd. A movement built around the crucified Christ now acts like the highest form of faith is never being asked to surrender anything. Not comfort. Not prejudice. Not privilege. Not the fantasy that America is the new Israel and suburban grievance is the voice of prophecy. The ego remains untouched, well-fed, well-armed, and absolutely convinced it is being persecuted because someone else got permission to exist nearby.

The saints did not live like this. The martyrs did not die for this. Mary did not say, “Let it be unto me, as long as my religious tribe controls the school board.” Jesus did not say, “Take up your cross, unless you can turn it into a voting bloc.” The early Christian path was not built around cultural domination. It was built around transformation. It asked people to surrender vengeance, surrender status, surrender the need to be first, surrender the illusion that holiness looks like power over others.

The Forbidden Word

That is the part Christian Nationalism cannot say out loud. If surrender is central to Jesus, then domination is not faithfulness. If self-emptying is central to Christ, then the politics of control are not Christian courage. If the ego must die, then maybe the whole project of Christian Nationalism is not defending Christianity at all. Maybe it is protecting the ego from the gospel.

And that is why submission is the forbidden word.

Not because it belongs only to Islam.

Not because Christians do not have their own language for it.

But because the moment you say it honestly, the whole performance begins to crack.

Jesus taught surrender. Islam preserved a visible discipline of surrender. Christian Nationalism replaced surrender with flags, firearms, suspicion, and control.

Then it looked at the world and called everyone else dangerous.

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Recommended Reading

(As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. These recommendations support the scrolls at no extra cost to you.)

• Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self A clear articulation of presence as lived remembrance, not abstraction. Essential for understanding how practice forms consciousness before belief catches up.

• The Knowing Heart Explores how the heart, not the ego, is trained through disciplined spiritual practice. Resonates deeply with embodied traditions.

• Purification of the Heart A classical Islamic manual on disciplining the ego, translated into accessible language without modern spectacle.

• The Vision of Islam A non-polemical presentation of Islam’s intellectual, ethical, and spiritual architecture. Especially useful for understanding why Islam resists fragmentation.

• The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jean-Yves Leloup - A Magdalene-centered vision of spiritual authority rooted in presence, fidelity, and interior transformation rather than hierarchy.

• The Meaning of Mary Magdalene by Cynthia Bourgeault - Frames Mary Magdalene as a witness of embodied wisdom rather than doctrinal control, aligning naturally with the WWMS lens.

Share the image below with your favorite Christian Nationalist and watch their head explode

A Muslim community in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma spent years raising money, bought land, and followed the process to build a mosque and a small retail center.

City staff reviewed it. Approved.
Planning commission reviewed it. Approved.

Then the public showed up like it was opening night for FearFest 2026.

Over 1,000 people packed a four-hour meeting. The result? Denied, 4–1.

Because nothing says “efficient local government” like ignoring your own experts after a crowd watches three Facebook videos and feels something.

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When Zoning Turned Into a Netflix Thriller

At first, we had the classics. Traffic. Water flow. Business access.

Then the plot twist hit.

Suddenly, the mosque was going to:

• Harbor terrorists

• Launch an “incursion of Islam”

• Violate noise ordinances with calls to prayer

• Lower property values

• And, my personal favorite, lead to beheadings

Ah yes. The slippery slope.

First it’s a parking lot… next thing you know, medieval execution scenes in suburban Oklahoma.

Totally linear progression. Happens all the time.

“Islam Doesn’t Play Well With Others”

One gentleman offered this gem:

“Islam doesn’t play well with others… I oppose a mosque anywhere in America.”

Strong take.

Even stronger considering he delivered it at a meeting where 1,000 people gathered specifically to prevent their neighbors from building a place to worship.

That’s like setting a house on fire and yelling, “These people have no respect for property!”

Monk voice, now with raised eyebrow:

Projection. It’s not just a psychological defense. It’s a community activity.

This Is Definitely Not Islamophobia

Officials reassured everyone:

“This decision is not based on racism or Islamophobia.”

Of course not.

It’s based on:

• Widespread fear of terrorism

• Claims of cultural takeover

• Social media panic

• An investigation launched right on cue during political season

But Islamophobia? No no. That would be rude.

Virgin Monk Boy adjusts his invisible glasses:

“Blessed are those who smell smoke and insist the fire is just ‘concern.’”

Meanwhile, Back in Reality

Muslim residents showed up too.

Doctors. Business owners. Families.

One man shared his ancestor fought in the Revolutionary War. Others talked about contributing to their community and simply needing space to pray.

Which, last time I checked, is still allowed under that little document everyone keeps quoting when it’s convenient.

You know the one.

The Part Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud

If this were a church, this meeting would’ve been over before someone finished saying “potluck.”

But change one word to “mosque,” and suddenly:

• Everyone becomes a counterterrorism expert

• Zoning becomes national defense

• And prayer becomes a suspicious activity

It’s amazing how fast freedom gets rebranded when it has an accent.

Final Word from the Monastery (Now With Studio Audience Applause)

Fear doesn’t walk in and say, “Hello, I’m fear.”

It walks in wearing a blazer and says, “I just have some concerns.”

And then it votes.

Virgin Monk Boy closes the scroll:

“Blessed are those who defend religious liberty… right up until it belongs to someone else.”

Keep the Scrolls Unrolling

The Virgin Monk Boy Scrolls is a free publication.
If these words steady you, challenge you, make you laugh, or help you breathe deeper, here are three simple ways to support the work.

Share the Scrolls

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Recommended Reading

(As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. These recommendations support the scrolls at no extra cost to you.)

• Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self A clear articulation of presence as lived remembrance, not abstraction. Essential for understanding how practice forms consciousness before belief catches up.

• The Knowing Heart Explores how the heart, not the ego, is trained through disciplined spiritual practice. Resonates deeply with embodied traditions.

• Purification of the Heart A classical Islamic manual on disciplining the ego, translated into accessible language without modern spectacle.

• The Vision of Islam A non-polemical presentation of Islam’s intellectual, ethical, and spiritual architecture. Especially useful for understanding why Islam resists fragmentation.

• The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jean-Yves Leloup - A Magdalene-centered vision of spiritual authority rooted in presence, fidelity, and interior transformation rather than hierarchy.

• The Meaning of Mary Magdalene by Cynthia Bourgeault - Frames Mary Magdalene as a witness of embodied wisdom rather than doctrinal control, aligning naturally with the WWMS lens.

Share the image below with your favorite Christian Nationalist and watch their head explode

⚠️ FOREIGN SYSTEM DETECTED: “SHARIA LAW” ⚠️
Early reports indicate this system may impose the following dangerous conditions:

• Regular daily prayer (unverified claims of people voluntarily stopping to remember God)

• Fasting periods (citizens temporarily refusing snacks… deeply unsettling)

• Mandatory charity (wealth redistribution via… compassion??)

• Restraint around excess (authorities concerned this may impact influencer culture)

Analysts warn prolonged exposure could result in increased self-discipline, reduced ego inflation, and awareness of divine accountability.

We repeat: awareness of divine accountability.

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🛡️ DOMESTIC PROTECTION PROTOCOLS NOW ACTIVE 🛡️
To safeguard freedom, the following measures are being implemented under approved “Christian values”:

• Expanded surveillance of personal decisions (holiness requires oversight)

• Loyalty verification systems (belief must now be documented and auditable)

• Curriculum purification (books removed for containing empathy, nuance, or history)

• Legal enforcement of morality (grace has been successfully replaced with penalties)

• Increased interest in controlling other people’s bodies (for spiritual reasons, obviously)

Officials assure the public this is not authoritarianism.
It is “faith with teeth.”

🧾 COMPARATIVE THREAT ANALYSIS

System A:
Pray. Fast. Give. Restrain yourself. Remember God.

System B:
Report. Enforce. Ban. Control others. Remember who’s in charge.

🧘‍♂️ FIELD NOTE FROM A SLIGHTLY CONCERNED MONK

Curious phenomenon observed:

The system requiring you to discipline your own soul is labeled “tyranny.”
The system requiring you to discipline everyone else is labeled “freedom.”

Further study required. Preferably in silence.

📿 FINAL WARNING

If your version of religion gets louder the less it asks of you personally…
and stronger the more it controls others…

you may not be witnessing a revival.

You may be watching authoritarian cosplay in a Sunday outfit.

Stay alert.
Stay reflective.
And if possible… try praying without needing to regulate your neighbor.

📡 DISCLAIMER 📡

This has been a test.
A satirical test of the National Spiritual Emergency Broadcast System.

If your pulse quickened, your outrage flared, or you briefly felt the urge to fact-check a joke… the system is working.

No actual emergency was detected.
Only reflections, projections, and a mild case of selective panic.

Normal programming will now resume.
You may return to judging others… or, for advanced users, quietly examining yourself.

Thank you for your participation.

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There are many ways to practice faith in America. You can pray quietly. You can serve your community. You can even, in a radical move, mind your own business.

Or… you can fly to Plano, Texas, find a group of Muslims praying, and decide the situation requires immediate narration.

Jake Lang has chosen the fourth option.

And I have to say, it’s a bold theological stance. Because traditionally, prayer is a moment where the individual steps back and God steps forward. Jake has flipped that model completely. In his version, God is apparently waiting for commentary. Preferably loud, preferably on camera, and ideally timed right as someone else is bowing.

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Let Me Understand This…

Now let’s walk through the logic, because I want to understand this correctly.

A group of people gathers to pray. No stage. No microphones. No attempt to recruit anyone walking by. They are, inconveniently, minding their own business.

So naturally, the appropriate response is to approach them and make sure the moment becomes about you.

Because nothing protects religious freedom quite like interrupting someone else’s religion.

I believe that’s in the Constitution somewhere, right after the part about life, liberty, and livestreaming.

Pattern or Coincidence?

What makes the Plano situation especially fascinating is that it keeps happening in the same rhythm. It’s not a one-off misunderstanding. It’s not a spontaneous moment of concern.

It’s a pattern.

Show up where Muslims are gathered. Insert yourself into the scene. Raise the volume. Frame it as a defense of America.

Repeat.

At some point, you have to ask, is he confronting a threat… or scheduling content?

Because there’s a difference.

Two Postures, Same God

And that’s where the contrast becomes almost unfair.

On one side, you have people bowing, aligned, focused, not engaging, not escalating.

On the other side, you have a man circling the moment like a commentator who just discovered a new sport called “Other People’s Prayer.”

Same country. Same freedoms. Completely different interpretations of what those freedoms are for.

One side uses them to practice their religion.

The other uses them to interrupt it.

Selective Reverence

Now, to be clear, Jake does understand reverence.

We’ve seen him in Jerusalem, kissing the Western Wall, participating in a moment that demands quiet respect. And in that setting, he knows exactly what to do. He lowers his voice. He slows down. He becomes part of something larger than himself.

So the issue is not that he doesn’t recognize sacred space.

The issue is that he only recognizes it when it looks familiar to him.

Because when the setting shifts from ancient stone to a parking lot in Plano, and the people praying don’t share his identity, the entire definition of “sacred” changes.

Suddenly it’s not something to respect.

It’s something to challenge.

The Microphone Theology

If prayer is sacred, then it’s sacred.

If reverence matters, then it matters.

But if it only applies when it’s your version, in your setting, with your people, then it’s not really reverence.

It’s branding.

And branding requires visibility.

Which brings us back to the microphone.

Because the microphone is not just a tool here. It’s a philosophy. It says, “This moment is not complete until I am the loudest part of it.”

When the Script Fails

And the tragedy, if we can call it that, is that the people he’s trying to provoke keep refusing to cooperate with the script.

They don’t engage.

They don’t escalate.

They don’t turn it into the dramatic showdown the video needs.

They just keep praying.

Which is incredibly rude, if you think about it.

Completely ignoring the main character.

Manufacturing the Threat

So the performance has to work harder.

Louder voice. Bigger claims. More urgency.

Because if the reaction doesn’t come naturally, you have to manufacture it.

And eventually, everything starts to look like a threat.

A prayer becomes a takeover.

A gathering becomes an invasion.

A quiet moment becomes a crisis.

The Real Sermon

This isn’t about religion anymore.

It’s about narrative control.

Who gets to define what’s happening in the frame.

The people praying… or the person filming them.

And right now, Jake Lang has decided the answer is obvious.

It’s the guy holding the microphone.

So yes, he is preaching.

But not about faith, and not about freedom.

He’s preaching a much simpler gospel.

If you want to be important, find a moment that isn’t about you… and make it about you.

Preferably loudly.

Especially in Plano.

Keep the Scrolls Unrolling

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Let’s just admit something that everyone can see but no one wants to say.

Christian Nationalists do not get nearly as rattled by atheists as they do by Muslims.

Atheists are easy. Atheists don’t believe in God. Great. You can argue with them. You can call them godless. You can make a documentary about how they ruined Christmas. Everybody goes home feeling righteous.

But Muslims?

Muslims believe in God.

Not casually.

Aggressively.

That’s where the sweating starts.

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Atheists Don’t Show Up to the Obedience Gym

An atheist does not wake up at dawn because God told them to.

An atheist does not wash their arms, face, and feet because God said, “Let’s talk.”

An atheist does not interrupt their workday five separate times to physically bow, kneel, and put their forehead on the ground.

There’s no comparison happening there. It’s like competing in a marathon against someone who stayed on the couch. You automatically win.

Christian Nationalists can point at atheists and say, “See? No God. That’s the problem.”

Simple. Clean. No spiritual performance anxiety.

Muslims Treat God Like He Has a Calendar Invite

Now enter Islam.

Five daily prayers. Not when convenient. Not when the worship band hits the bridge just right. Five fixed times.

Before sunrise. Midday. Afternoon. Sunset. Night.

Each one with ritual washing. Actual water. Not “Lord cleanse my heart.” Water on your face at 5:30 in the morning.

Then the movements. Standing. Bowing. Full prostration. Forehead to floor. In public. In rows. In sync.

You don’t have to convert to notice something slightly humiliating about this if your whole political brand is “We take God seriously.”

Because now the question becomes unavoidable:

If God is sovereign, why does He mostly show up on your bumper sticker?

Ramadan Is Not a “Social Media Fast”

Ramadan is thirty straight days of no food or drink from dawn to sunset.

Not “I’m fasting negativity.”

Not “I gave up TikTok for Lent.”

Actual hunger.

At work.

In traffic.

In Texas heat.

And then there’s zakat. Not “We passed the plate.” A percentage. Structured. Expected. Calculated.

Islam assumes that if God is real, He interrupts your appetite and your bank account.

Christian Nationalism often assumes that if God is real, He interrupts the Supreme Court.

Different emphasis.

The Embarrassing Part No One Wants to Admit

Christian Nationalism talks endlessly about submission to God. They say America must kneel before Christ.

But if you can’t get 700 people out of bed at 6:30am for prayer without offering pancakes, maybe the kneeling-for-the-nation speech needs a little editing.

That’s not theology.

That’s optics.

Because once obedience becomes measurable — daily, physical, inconvenient — the comparison gets uncomfortable fast.

Atheists don’t create that discomfort. They opted out.

Muslims create it just by existing.

They show that you can take God literally without controlling Congress. You can structure your life around divine command without owning the school board.

And that is destabilizing.

Because it quietly suggests that obedience might start with your body before it gets to your ballot.

The Real Sting

This isn’t about saying Islam is perfect. It isn’t.

It’s about noticing who triggers existential panic.

It’s not the people who deny God.

It’s the people who act like He might actually be in charge.

Christian Nationalism can handle disbelief.

What it struggles with is being out-obedienced.

Because nothing ruins a “We are the last serious believers” speech faster than someone else who actually set an alarm.

No mysticism required.

Just consistency.

And consistency is ruthless when your theology mostly lives on a yard sign.

The Part They Really Don’t Want to Talk About

And here’s where it gets truly awkward.

Muslims don’t just believe in one sovereign God.

They honor Jesus.

Not as a mascot.
Not as a campaign slogan.
Not as a culture-war prop.

As a prophet.

They revere him. They speak his name with peace upon him. They teach his miracles. They take his call to prayer, fasting, charity, and submission seriously. They don’t treat him as a logo for national identity. They treat him as someone who obeyed God completely.

Now imagine building a movement around “We are the true defenders of Jesus,” and discovering that the group you call a threat actually fasts more consistently, prays more frequently, gives more structurally, and speaks about surrender to God with less political ambition.

That’s not a theological debate.

That’s uncomfortable symmetry.

Because now the comparison isn’t just about God.

It’s about Jesus.

Christian Nationalism wraps Jesus in the flag.

Islam wraps Jesus in reverence.

Please share this where Christian Nationalists will find it :-)

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Something deeply embarrassing just happened in Denton.

A public university canceled an exhibit critical of ICE. No public explanation. No policy citation. Just a quiet termination of the agreement and brown paper taped over the gallery windows like someone was covering up a crime scene.

That image alone should disturb anyone who believes in academic freedom.

Because when you have to hide the art, the problem isn’t the art.

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Administrative Language Is the New Censorship

“The agreement was terminated.”

That’s not transparency. That’s anesthesia.

If the work violated policy, say how.
If it incited violence, demonstrate it.
If it was obscene under constitutional standards, prove it.

But if the real issue is that the art criticized federal immigration enforcement during a politically tense moment, then what we are witnessing is viewpoint suppression. And at a public university, that is not a small thing.

It’s unconstitutional.

Public institutions do not get to silence political speech simply because it makes donors uncomfortable or legislators twitchy. Their own policy says art cannot be removed merely because someone is offended. So unless this exhibit crossed into “imminent lawless action” territory, which nothing in the reporting suggests, this cancellation reeks of fear rather than principle.

And fear is contagious.

The Pattern Is the Story

This doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Last year, there was pressure over student work addressing Gaza. Now an ICE-critical exhibit disappears. Windows are covered. Silence follows.

Authoritarian drift does not arrive with tanks.

It arrives as administrators calculating risk.

When leaders start asking, “Will this upset Austin?” instead of “Is this protected speech?” freedom quietly erodes.

No one announces it. It just happens.

History Has Seen This Before

Governments that feel threatened by art tend to reveal themselves quickly.

In Nazi Germany, “degenerate art” was removed from museums because it challenged nationalist ideology. Artists were exiled or silenced. The regime understood something important: art shapes imagination, and imagination threatens authoritarian narratives.

In the Soviet Union, avant-garde artists were crushed under Socialist Realism mandates. Only state-approved aesthetics survived.

In Chile under Pinochet, musicians and visual artists were censored or disappeared because art can unify dissent faster than a manifesto.

No one is claiming Denton is Berlin in 1937. But the instinct is familiar. When power feels fragile, it suppresses critique.

And covering gallery windows in brown paper is not the behavior of a confident institution.

The ICE Irony

The exhibit included a piece reading “I.C.E. SCREAM.”

So the university iced the exhibit.

You cannot script satire better than that.

If a paleta cart criticizing immigration enforcement is enough to trigger institutional retreat, then the institution has already surrendered its backbone.

The irony is brutal. The exhibit explores identity trapped in political no-man’s land. The university responds by politically exiling the art itself.

That is not neutrality. That is submission to pressure.

This Is Bigger Than One Artist

This is about what happens next.

If artists learn that criticizing state power leads to quiet removal, they will self-censor.

If faculty learn that administrators will not defend policy when tested, they will retreat.

If students see brown paper over controversial work, they will absorb the lesson: some ideas are dangerous to display.

That is how intellectual climates change.

Not with dramatic proclamations. With quiet compliance.

Denton Deserves Better

UNT is not a private corporation. It is a public university funded by taxpayers and entrusted with the cultivation of thought, critique, and cultural expression.

If administrators believed this exhibit violated policy, they owe the public a detailed explanation.

If it did not violate policy and was removed anyway, that is not prudence. That is institutional cowardice.

When art critical of federal power disappears without explanation, the burden is on the university to prove it acted constitutionally.

Until then, the brown paper speaks for itself.

And it does not whisper.

Pull up a cushion. Light the incense. We need to talk about what happens when rebellion forgets to move its lips.

While the official Super Bowl halftime show unfolded with actual rhythm, breath, and global cultural gravity, an “alternate” halftime experience emerged from the ideological parking lot. It arrived waving a flag, clutching nostalgia, and promising authenticity at maximum volume.

Enter Kid Rock, patron saint of denim patriotism, headlining the Turning Point USA counter-spectacle. The vibe was defiant. The branding was loud. The audio, however, appeared to be doing its own thing entirely.

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And then the internet noticed.

Because here is the trouble with preaching “realness” for a living: eventually someone checks whether your mouth is actually connected to the sound coming out of the speakers.

Clips began circulating. The backing track boomed. The lyrics marched on with military precision. Meanwhile, Kid Rock’s lips drifted in and out of alignment like a soul unsure whether it wanted to reincarnate as karaoke. The performance had all the intensity of a man shadowboxing his own greatest hits.

Was it lip-syncing? According to the defense, absolutely not. It was “pre-recorded but performed live,” which is the kind of phrase you invent when the spiritual advisor quits and the PR team takes over. Apparently, the issue was “syncing,” not authenticity. A technical glitch. A camera problem. Reality, once again, refusing to cooperate.

Here’s the monk’s note from the back row: when your entire identity is built on being “unfiltered,” “raw,” and “not like those fake elites,” a pre-recorded rebellion hits a little different.

This wasn’t just a musical moment. It was performance art. Accidental, exquisite performance art.

Because nothing reveals the shape of a movement faster than watching it recreate the very thing it claims to despise. Carefully curated outrage. Manufactured spontaneity. Authenticity delivered via backing track.

Contrast sharpens the lesson. On one stage, culture breathed. On the other, culture was mimed.

And that’s the koan here: if freedom must be pre-recorded to sound right, what exactly is being protected?

No hatred required. No outrage necessary. Just observation.

The universe teaches softly sometimes. Other times it teaches through a man yelling about rebellion while forgetting to open his mouth at the right time.

May we all be spared the fate of shouting our truths so loudly that we forget to embody them.

Blessed are those who keep time with their own voice.

Keep the Scrolls Unrolling

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If these words steady you, challenge you, make you laugh, or help you breathe deeper, here are three simple ways to support the work.

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President Donald Trump called Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show “absolutely terrible,” “a slap in the face to our country,” and “disgusting,” whining that viewers couldn’t understand the lyrics and that the dancing was somehow inappropriate — especially for children.

Let’s unpack this with the precision of a stand-up comic who also might be crazy:

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1. Calling a Spanish-Language Performance “Disgusting”

First of all, calling a Spanish-language performance “disgusting” is like complaining that pizza isn’t as good as plain toast. It’s not just an opinion — it’s a worldview. Trump literally used the emotional weight of the American presidency to dunk on a globally acclaimed artist whose show was meant to celebrate music and unity.

Meanwhile, Bad Bunny’s halftime show was praised as a historic and unapologetic celebration of Puerto Rican culture, with big guest stars and a message of inclusion.

So if the performance works for millions around the world — but is “disgusting” to someone who thinks bilingual menus are foreign invaders — that says everything about whose values are actually being honored there.

2. “Nobody Understands a Word This Guy Is Saying”

This takes the cake. Trump complained that because Bad Bunny sang in Spanish, people “don’t understand a word.”

Which is wild, because:

Music transcends language, and Bad Bunny has billions of streams worldwide.

Half of pop music is just emotional gibberish anyway — consonants and hooks.

And yet somehow a cabbage-smuggling ringtone can play on his iPhone and still be “understood” better than Spanish lyrics.

This is like dismissing a foreign film because the subtitles are hard, then complaining the pizza tastes different in Italy.

3. The “Slap in the Face to Our Country” Narrative

Trump literally said the show was a “slap in the face” to America.

Except:

America is literally a diverse cultural mosaic where people speak dozens of languages and rock out to rhythms from around the globe.

But sure — if your idea of patriotism is monolingual karaoke from 1978, then yes, love and unity are apparently slaps.

4. The “Disgusting Dancing” Take

This is the bit that really shows the insecurity.

Imagine watching one of the most successful global artists on one of the biggest stages on Earth — backed by decades of songcraft, choreography, production, and cultural impact — and your takeaway is:

“The dancing is disgusting.”

That’s not a critique. That’s a therapist referral.

It’s like being handed a Michelin-starred meal and tweeting it’s too spicy because it doesn’t look like chicken nuggets.

5. Complaining About a Celebration of Unity

Bad Bunny ended his performance with a message about love — “the only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s response could be boiled down to:
“No, I want confusion and offense instead.”

That’s not criticism. That’s flat ignorance yelling “boo” in a cathedral.

The Real Roast: What This Actually Reveals

Here’s the real punchline nobody wants to admit:

The halftime show was historic, widely acclaimed, and embraced by millions.

The negative reaction isn’t about quality. It’s about fear of change.

Calling something “worthless” because you don’t understand it is … well, a very small-person move.

This isn’t a critique. It’s a tantrum packaged as commentary.

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Folks, America is under attack.

Not from bombs.
Not from foreign agents.
Not even from the people openly fantasizing about civil war on Facebook.

No, the real threat is paperwork.

According to the latest wave of Christian Nationalist panic, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization, is basically ISIS with a stapler. Their crime? Filing lawsuits. Publishing reports. Defending constitutional rights. You know, the gateway drugs to Sharia Law.

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Let’s be clear. CAIR does not overthrow governments. It does not train militias. It does not storm buildings chanting for hangings. It does something far more radical: it hires lawyers.

And in Christian Nationalist America, nothing is more suspicious than a minority who knows how the court system works.

Now, some critics say, “But CAIR documents discrimination!”
Exactly. Terrorism.

Because once discrimination is documented, it can be proven.
Once it’s proven, it can be litigated.
Once it’s litigated, someone might have to stop doing it.

And that, my friends, is the real violence.

Meanwhile, let’s take a quick look at the people calling CAIR a terrorist group. These are folks who:
Believe America was founded as a Christian nation, despite the Constitution loudly disagreeing.
Think the separation of church and state is a liberal psyop.
Call for executions on social media.
Threaten judges, journalists, and election officials.
Bring zip ties to democratic processes.
Describe January 6 as “a misunderstanding” or “a tour that got out of hand.”

But rest easy. None of that is terrorism.

That’s just passion. Patriotism. Religious liberty with a tactical vest.

Under this exciting new Christian Nationalist framework, the rules are simple.

If you file lawsuits, you’re a threat.
If you write reports, you’re radicalized.
If you defend Muslims’ constitutional rights, you’re undermining America.

But if you threaten violence in the name of Jesus?
That’s heritage.

If you try to overturn an election?
That’s civic engagement.

If you storm the Capitol?
That’s a field trip that got a little enthusiastic.

The beauty of this system is its consistency. Equality is tyranny. Accountability is oppression. And the Constitution is sacred, unless it applies to people they don’t like.

CAIR’s real offense isn’t Islam. It’s citizenship. They act as if Muslims are Americans with standing. With rights. With access to courts. With the audacity to expect equal protection under the law.

That’s intolerable to a movement that believes rights are inherited through theology, not citizenship.

So Texas and its ideological cousins are bravely asking the hard questions. What if the real extremists were the people who kept suing segregationists until the law changed? What if the real threat to order was anyone who insisted America live up to its own promises?

Which brings us to the unavoidable conclusion.

If filing lawsuits is terrorism…
If documenting discrimination is extremism…
If invoking constitutional rights is sedition…

Then Martin Luther King Jr. would have been on the no-fly list.

And given history, someone probably tried.

But don’t worry. America is safe.
The real dangers are being handled.
The paperwork is under control.

God bless this blessed mess.

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Satire Alert
This piece is written against Christian Nationalism and its escalating campaign of fear, misinformation, and public hostility toward Muslims.

After Texas Governor Greg Abbott labeled Muslim organizations as terrorist threats and anti-Muslim protests intensified across the state, it became impossible to ignore how openly Christian Nationalist rhetoric now targets Islam, the largest religious community currently being marginalized, demonized, and scapegoated in American political life.

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Exhibit A: Prayer Without Applause

Jesus did not treat prayer as optional, symbolic, or seasonal.

“When you pray,” he says. Not if.
And then he teaches an actual prayer.

Muslims pray five times a day.
On schedule.
Facing God.
With their bodies.

This is not metaphorical prayer. This is not “thoughts and prayers.” This is discipline.

Christian Nationalism, by contrast, treats prayer like a photo opportunity. Prayer rallies. Prayer breakfasts. Prayer before voting for policies Jesus explicitly warned against.

If Islam is dangerous, perhaps it is because it still assumes prayer is something you do, not something you reference while doing something else.

Exhibit B: Fasting That Isn’t a Brand Strategy

Jesus fasted.
He assumed his followers would fast.

“When you fast,” he says again. Not if.

Islam mandates fasting for an entire month every year. No food. No water. No performance. God sees it or it does not count.

Christian Nationalism fasts from social media occasionally and calls it spiritual maturity.

The threat here is obvious: a religion that still treats the body as something trained for God, not indulged for clicks.

Exhibit C: Charity as Obligation, Not Vibes

Jesus was relentlessly clear about wealth.
Uncomfortably clear.

Sell what you have.
Give to the poor.
Care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.

Islam did not sentimentalize this. It structured it.

Zakat is not a tax on survival. It is not taken from people living paycheck to paycheck. It applies only to surplus wealth. If you do not have enough to meet your basic needs, you owe nothing. If you are barely getting by, you are a recipient, not a payer.

In other words, Islam assumes no one should be punished for being poor.

Zakat is a duty imposed on excess, not labor. On hoarding, not breathing. Wealth is treated as a trust, not an absolute private possession, and only after personal needs are met.

Christian Nationalism calls this Marxism.
Which is strange, because Marx never asked anyone to pray, fast, or submit to God.

Jesus said essentially the same thing without spreadsheets or thresholds. He simply told the rich to give, warned that wealth hardens the heart, and made it clear that God has opinions about surplus.

Islam just did what Christian Nationalism refuses to do.
It took Jesus seriously enough to define terms.

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Exhibit D: Submission, the Word Christian Nationalism Won’t Say

Jesus’ defining posture is submission.

“Not my will, but yours.”

Islam builds an entire religious civilization around this posture. The word Muslim in Arabic simply means one who submits to God. That is not a theological claim. It is a linguistic definition.

The Aramaic world Jesus spoke from uses the same semantic field.

In Aramaic, Mšalmanā refers to one who yields, entrusts oneself, aligns into wholeness. Submission here is not humiliation. It is alignment. Yielding into what is real so that life becomes integrated rather than fractured.

This matters because Jesus spoke entirely inside this semantic world.

When Jesus speaks of surrendering to God’s will, trusting the Father, losing one’s life to find it, or becoming whole, he is not inventing a new idea. He is speaking from within this same submission–peace–wholeness framework shared across Semitic language and spirituality.

And while we are clearing up basic misunderstandings, Jesus did not speak English. He spoke Aramaic. When he prayed, the word he used for God was Alaha or Allaha, the same Semitic name for God still used today by Arabic-speaking Christians and Muslims.

So when Christian Nationalists insist Muslims worship a “different god,” they are not defending Christianity. They are contradicting Jesus in his own linguistic world.

Christian Nationalism replaced submission with control. God became a mascot. Obedience became optional. Dominance became holy.

This is where the panic lives.

Islam refuses to turn God into a prop.

Exhibit E: Women Who Speak

Now let us address the part Christian Nationalists pretend they care about.

Women.

The Qur’an records women speaking directly. Questioning. Arguing. Owning property. Inheriting. Testifying. The Prophet Muhammad is corrected by women in public. This is not fringe material. It is text.

Jesus spoke openly with women in public, something scandalous in his time. Women funded his ministry. Women stayed when the men ran. And in the canonical Gospels, women are the first witnesses to the resurrection.

In a culture where women’s testimony did not count, Jesus entrusts the central proclamation of Christianity to women.

Christian Nationalism noticed none of this.

Instead, it weaponizes “biblical womanhood” to silence women, control their bodies, and exclude their voices, all while claiming to defend Christianity from Islam.

Islam did not invent women who speak.
Jesus already endorsed them.

Christian Nationalism buried them.

So What Exactly Is the Threat?

Islam still teaches:
Prayer as discipline
Fasting as obedience
Charity as obligation
Submission as virtue
Women as moral agents

Jesus taught all of this.

Christian Nationalism teaches something else:
Power as proof
Dominance as faith
Control as righteousness

So when Christian Nationalists warn that Islam is incompatible with Christianity, they are accidentally telling the truth.

Islam is incompatible with Christian Nationalism.

Because Islam still recognizes the Jesus they abandoned.

Blessed are the unsettled, for mirrors do not lie.

Keep the Scrolls Unrolling

The Virgin Monk Boy Scrolls is a free publication.
If these words steady you, challenge you, make you laugh, or help you breathe deeper, here are three simple ways to support the work.

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Recommended Reading

(As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. These recommendations support the scrolls at no extra cost to you.)

• Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self A clear articulation of presence as lived remembrance, not abstraction. Essential for understanding how practice forms consciousness before belief catches up.

• The Knowing Heart Explores how the heart, not the ego, is trained through disciplined spiritual practice. Resonates deeply with embodied traditions.

• Purification of the Heart A classical Islamic manual on disciplining the ego, translated into accessible language without modern spectacle.

• The Vision of Islam A non-polemical presentation of Islam’s intellectual, ethical, and spiritual architecture. Especially useful for understanding why Islam resists fragmentation.

• The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jean-Yves Leloup - A Magdalene-centered vision of spiritual authority rooted in presence, fidelity, and interior transformation rather than hierarchy.

• The Meaning of Mary Magdalene by Cynthia Bourgeault - Frames Mary Magdalene as a witness of embodied wisdom rather than doctrinal control, aligning naturally with the WWMS lens.

Share the image below with your favorite Christian Nationalist and watch their head explode

Satire Alert: This is satire. It does not describe a real app but riffs on real events — including government recruitment ads for ICE that ran on major platforms and drew widespread backlash from users and artists.

Introducing “ICE: Deporter 2.0”

In an astonishing leap forward for both federal enforcement and emotional repression, the U.S. government today (in satire only) unveiled ICE: Deporter 2.0 — a mobile app that doesn’t just track people, it tracks your feelings about the people ICE is targeting.

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Forget ordinary surveillance: this app will deport your empathy, evict your compassion, and auto-ban any urge to think critically about federal power.

Features include:

• Mood Meter: Automatically deletes any emotion labeled “empathy” once you open the app

• Trigger Alerts: Sends you push notifications whenever you feel bad about an ICE raid

• Auto-Remorse Removal: Syncs with your Spotify account and only pulls the ads Spotify finally dumped after public backlash because users were canceling accounts in protest.

That’s right: now you don’t just round up populations; you round up your psyche.

All the Deportations, None of the Feelings

The official press release for Deporter 2.0 was short, cryptic, and astonishingly tone-deaf. It read, in part:

“We heard the people want accountability, so we built something that sidesteps accountability forever.”

That’s not a joke. That’s exactly the spirit of a product that promises:

• Emotional Buffer Zones: so you never again feel discomfort about federal tactical operations

• Cognitive Firewall: blocks all news stories that might make you think about families separated by enforcement

• Integrity Eraser: forbids journalists and academics from asking too many questions

This is the digital future that lawmakers promise when they talk about “efficiency,” and the app even comes with a premium version that costs your humanity.

Syncs With Spotify (But Only the Good Bits)

In a bizarre twist of corporate synergy, Deporter 2.0 offers selective Spotify integration.

The app won’t play your favorite playlist — instead, it scours your history for artists who’ve publicly criticized ICE ads running on streaming — you know, the ads that sparked protests among users and musicians alike.

Once the app identifies protests in your listening habits, it immediately replaces those tracks with a loop of government recruitment jingles promising cushy hiring bonuses and “making America safe.”

Because if you can’t feel shame, at least you can hear it on repeat.

Why This App Actually Makes Sense — in This Dystopia

This version of Deporter 2.0 doesn’t exist. But the logic behind it is already out there:

• The federal government dropped millions on recruitment ads for ICE — including on mainstream platforms — prompting boycotts and cultural backlash.

• Users and artists protested those ads, which eventually stopped running on at least one major platform.

• The gap between enforcement messaging and public sentiment has grown so wide that it almost feels like we’re living in a dystopian comedy of errors.

Deporter 2.0 simply amplifies that logic to its absurd conclusion: If you can’t actually change policy, why not just invent a tool that makes people numb to it?

The Punchline

Look, the real world is complicated, and no app can fix that. But satire doesn’t ask for solutions. It asks us to look at what we’re normalizing and say, out loud:

If we treat empathy like a feature to be disabled, we’ve already lost the plot.

Deporter 2.0 may be a joke — but it’s a joke because the alternatives feel so surreal that satire is the only language left that even comes close to the truth.

Keep the Scrolls Unrolling

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Your support keeps the lantern lit for everyone else.