We live in a twilight world......
::: Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth:::
Source: Chris Hedges Report
The most profound realities of human existence are often the ones that can never be measured or quantified. Wisdom. Beauty. Truth. Compassion. Courage. Love. Loneliness. Grief. The struggle to face our own mortality. A life of meaning.
But perhaps the greatest conundrum is the concept of a soul. Do we have a soul? Do societies have souls? And, most basically, what is a soul?
Philosophers and theologians, including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Arthur Schopenhauer, have all grappled with the concept of a soul, with Schopenhauer preferring to define the mystical force within us as will. Sigmund Freud used the Greek word psyche. But most have accepted, whatever the definition, some version of a soul’s existence.
While the concept of the soul is opaque, soullessness is not. Soullessness means something inside of us is dead. Basic human feelings and connections are shut down. Those without souls lack empathy. I saw the soulless in war. Those so calcified inside they kill without any demonstrable feeling or remorse.
The soulless exist in a state of insatiable self-worship. The idol they have erected to themselves must be constantly fed. It demands a never-ending stream of victims. It demands abject obedience and subservience, publicly on display at Trump cabinet meetings.
Psychologists, I expect, would define the soulless as psychopathic.
I write this not to get into an esoteric debate about the soul, but to warn what happens when those without souls seize power. I want to write about what is lost and the consequences of that loss. I want to caution you that death, our death — as individuals and as a collective — mean nothing to those without souls.
This makes the soulless very, very dangerous.
Those who lack souls have no concept of their own limitations. They feed off a bottomless and self-delusional optimism, giving to their cruelest deeds and bitterest defeats, the patina of goodness, success and morality.
Those without souls — as Paul Woodruff writes in his small masterpiece “Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue” — do not have the capacity for reverence, awe, respect and shame. They believe they are gods.
The soulless cannot respond rationally to reality. They live in self-constructed echo chambers. They hear only their own voice. Civic, familial, legal and religious rituals and ceremonies that transport those with souls into the realm of the sacred, into a space where we acknowledge our shared humanity, forcing us, at least for a moment, to humble ourselves, are meaningless to those without souls. Those without souls cannot see because they cannot feel.
The soulless, enslaved by narcissism, greed, a lust for power and hedonism, cannot make moral choices. Moral choices for them do not exist. Truth and falsehoods are identical. Life is transactional. Is it good for me? Does it make me feel omnipotent? Does it give me pleasure? This stunted existence banishes them from the moral universe.
Human beings, including children, are commodities to the soulless, objects to exploit for pleasure or profit or both. We saw this soullessness displayed in the Epstein Files. And it was not only Epstein. Huge sections of our ruling class including billionaires, Wall Street financiers, university presidents, philanthropists, celebrities, Republicans, Democrats and media personalities, consider us worthless.
Thucydides understood. Reverence is not a religious virtue but a moral virtue. Woodruff went so far as to define it as a political virtue. Reverence for shared ideals, Woodruff writes, is the only thing that can bind us together. It is the only attribute that ensures mutual trust. Reverence allows us to remember what it means to be human. It reminds us that there are forces we cannot control, forces that we will never understand, forces of life that we did not create and must honor and protect — including the natural world — and forces that allow us moments of transcendence, or what in religious terms, we call grace.
“If you desire peace in the world, do not pray that everyone share your beliefs,” Woodruff writes. “Pray instead that all may be reverent.”
Trump’s celebration of himself is made manifest in his stunted vocabulary of superlatives and his rebranding of national monuments. He tears down the East Wing to construct his gaudy and oversized $400 million ballroom. He proposes a 250-foot-tall memorial arch, adorned with gilded statues and eagles, in honor of himself, an arch that will be bigger than the Arch of Triumph erected by North Korean dictator Kim II Sung in Pyongyang. He is planning a “National Garden of American Heroes” that will include life-size statues of celebrities, sports figures, political and artistic figures deemed by Trump to be politically correct, along with, of course, himself. His face adorns the sides of federal buildings on huge, well-lit banners. He changed the name of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts to the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. He added his name to the headquarters of the U.S. Institute of Peace. He has announced a new fleet of U.S. naval vessels called Trump-class battleships.
These are monuments not only to Trump, but to a perverted ethic, to the insatiable self-worship that defines the inner void of the soulless. Monuments, houses of worship and national shrines dedicated to justice, self-sacrifice and equality, which demand from us humility and introspection, which require the capacity for reverence, mystify the soulless.
The soulless have no sense of aesthetics. They have no sense of balance, symmetry and proportion. The bigger, the gaudier, the more encrusted in gold leaf, the better. They seek to shut out everything and everyone else, to herd us with offerings to the feet of Moloch.
When the soulless wage war it is part of this perverted drive to build a monument to themselves. When war goes badly, as it is going in Iran, the soulless, unable to read reality, demand greater levels of violence and destruction. The more they fail, the more they are convinced everyone has betrayed them, the more they descend into a tyrannical rage.
Trump, potentially facing a humiliating debacle in Iran, will lash out like a wounded beast. It does not matter how many suffer and die. It does not matter what weapons, including nuclear weapons, must be employed. He must triumph, or at least appear to triumph.
“Fathers and teachers, I ponder, ‘What is hell?’” Father Zossima asks in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” “I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
This is the plight of the soulless. They seek, in their misery, to make their hell our own.
Tyrant Trump’s favorite snarl is “You’re Fired!” That was his bellow on “The Apprentice” television program. Subsequently, he told hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants and contractors, “You’re Fired!” Shame on the pitiful Democratic Party that allowed him to regain the presidency last year.
It is long overdue for the Democrats in Congress to lay the groundwork for impeaching President Donald Trump and removing him from office. Trump provides them with the impeachable evidence openly and brazenly every day. No president in history has ever declared that “then I have Article II, where I have the right to do anything I want as president.” No president has ever dared to say, as did Trump in an interview with Reuters on January 15, 2026, that “…when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election” and meant it.
Based on their detailed declaration against King George III in the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the congressional safeguards in the Constitution drafted in 1787, our Founders, were they members of Congress today, would unanimously vote articles of impeachment against Trump for rampant constitutional lawlessness.
Here are 17 articles of Impeachment against dictator Trump that many constitutional law scholars would endorse, drafted by constitutional law specialist and practitioner, Bruce Fein. (For the full text of the articles of Impeachment, here.)
ARTICLE 1—WAR POWER-MURDER-PIRACY
ARTICLE 2—MILITARIZATION OF DOMESTIC LAW ENFORCEMENT
ARTICLE 3—SERIAL UNCONSTITUTIONAL DETENTIONS AND DEPORTATIONS
ARTICLE 4—BRIBERY
ARTICLE 5—RETALIATION AGAINST CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED SPEECH OR ASSOCIATION
ARTICLE 6—ABUSE OF THE PARDON POWER—SABOTAGING THE RULE OF LAW
ARTICLE 7—ILLEGALLY CRIPPLING OR DEFUNDING PROGRAMS TO PROTECT CONSUMERS, THE NEEDY, WORKERS, AND THE ENVIRONMENT
ARTICLE 8—USURPATION OF THE CONGRESSIONAL POWER OF THE PURSE
ARTICLE 9—CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS—SECRET GOVERNMENT
ARTICLE 10—PERVERTING LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PERSECUTE POLITICAL OPPONENTS AND BENEFIT FRIENDS
ARTICLE 11—SUSPENDING OR DISPENSING WITH LAWS
ARTICLE 12—FLOUTING SECTION 1 OF THE 14TH AMENDMENT
ARTICLE 13—SPECIOUS NATIONAL EMERGENCY—FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION DECLARATIONS
ARTICLE 14—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN EMOLUMENTS CLAUSES
ARTICLE 15—CHRONIC DECEIT AIMING AT DICTATORSHIP
ARTICLE 16—TREASON
ARTICLE 17—MEGALOMANIA-HUBRIS
Already, a growing majority of the American people want Trump Impeached. They are feeling the impact where they live, work, and raise their families of Trump’s dictatorial, corporatist regime, which is endangering, weakening, and wrecking America! The criminal, illegal, unconstitutional war against Iran and the continuing full backing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide against the Palestinians and the Israeli bombing of Lebanon’s civilian population and occupying southern Lebanon will only increase the hardships on the American people. US soldiers are also being ordered to illegally obey illegal orders. Six Members of Congress who served in the military issued a video statement that said, “You must refuse illegal orders.” Representatives said in the video, “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”
Send these articles of Impeachment with your own thoughts and demands to your two senators and your representative by letter, email, or voicemail. (The Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121). You can also call local congressional offices to voice your concerns to your member of Congress. Ask them when will they exercise their constitutional duties. What further criminal outrage, program, and police state power will move them to catch up with the demands of the people back home?
Ask these lawmakers if they are waiting for Trump to use the Insurrection Act to order the military to seize the state voting machinery and repress the vote in the contested states or districts? He has already noted this limitless power in his first term and more recently.
There are only 535 members of Congress. Flood them with your demands to literally save our Republic and the Constitution for which it stands. Otherwise, WITH TRUMP AND HIS DANGEROUSLY UNSTABLE PERSONALITY, IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE, MUCH WORSE, HERE AND ABROAD.
Take charge, people, one by one, citizen group by citizen group! Use your sovereign power under the Constitution.
FIND YOUR STATE REP HERE & EMAIL THE 17 ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT - FIGHTING FOR & DEFENDING OUR DEMOCRACY IS A CRITICAL NATIONAL EMERGENCY!!
If we look for the source of the social pathologies increasingly evident in our culture, we find they have a common origin in the dominator relations of Empire that have survived largely intact in spite of the democratic reforms of the past two centuries. The sexism, racism, economic injustice, violence, and environmental destruction that have plagued human societies for 5,000 years, and have now brought us to the brink of a potential terminal crisis, all flow from this common source. Freeing ourselves from these pathologies depends on a common solution — replacing the underlying dominator cultures and institutions of Empire with the partnership cultures and institutions of Earth Community. Unfortunately, we cannot look to imperial power-holders to lead the way.
—David Korten

Breathing in, I see myself as still water.
Breathing out, I reflect things as they are.
Near the mountain, there is a lake with clear, still water reflecting the mountain and the sky with pristine clarity. You can do the same. If you are calm and still enough, you can reflect the mountain, the blue sky, and the moon exactly as they are. You reflect whatever you see exactly as it is, without distorting anything.
Have you ever seen yourself in a mirror that distorts the image? Your face is long, your eyes are huge, and your legs are really short. Don’t be like that mirror. It is better to be like the still water on the mountain lake.
We often do not reflect things clearly, and we suffer because of our wrong perceptions. Suppose you are walking in the twilight and see a snake. You scream and run into the house to get your friends, and all of you run outside with a flashlight. But when you shine your light on the snake, you discover that it isn’t a snake at all, just a piece of rope. This is a distorted perception.
When we see things or listen to other people, we often don’t see clearly or really listen. We see and hear our projections and our prejudices. We are not clear enough, and we have a wrong perception. Even if our friend is giving us a compliment, we may argue with him because we distort what he says.
If we are not calm, if we only listen to our hopes or our anger, we will not be able to receive the truth that is trying to reflect itself on our lake. We need to make our water still if we want to receive reality as it is. If you feel agitated, don’t do or say anything. Just breathe in and out until you are calm enough. Then ask your friend to repeat what he has said. This will avoid a lot of damage. Stillness is the foundation of understanding and insight. Stillness is strength.
The climate crisis is not a neutral storm. It is not an unfortunate accident of weather or a tragic twist of fate. It is the latest battlefield of empire — a slow, suffocating siege in which the Global South pays for the pollution of the Global North. Rising seas, burning forests, collapsing harvests, and vanishing species are not the random convulsions of nature. They are the predictable consequences of centuries of extraction, industrial greed, and colonial arrogance.
The atmosphere has become the new frontier of conquest. Climate colonialism is the silent siege of our age — a war without declarations, a violence without bullets, a domination masked as diplomacy.
The story is old, though the terrain has changed.
Once, colonial powers plundered Africa’s gold, Asia’s spices, and the Americas’ silver. They carved continents, enslaved peoples, and extracted wealth with ruthless precision. Today, they plunder the atmosphere with the same entitlement. The industrial revolution — fueled by coal, oil, and the bodies of enslaved labor — enriched Europe and North America while laying the foundations of planetary collapse.
The nations that built empires on slavery, resource extraction, and racial hierarchy now dominate climate negotiations. They dictate the terms of survival while refusing the burden of accountability. Bretton Woods institutions once imposed debt; now climate summits impose delay. The language has changed, but the logic remains: the powerful decide, the powerless endure.
Green rhetoric has become the new imperial dialect — polished, diplomatic, and pr5ofoundly dishonest.6
The climate crisis is global, but its burdens are violently unequal.
Pakistan’s floods displaced millions, though the nation contributes less than 1% of global emissions.7
The Sahel’s droughts devastate farmers who never profited from fossil fuels.8
Pacific island nations face rising seas that threaten their very existence, though they did not ignite the carbon fire.9
Mozambique, Dominica, and the Philippines rebuild again and again after storms intensified by warming oceans.10
Meanwhile, the Global North continues to burn oil, expand pipelines, and subsidize fossil corporations. Promises of “climate finance” remain unfulfilled or repackaged as loans — deepening the very debt that strangles the South.11
The South is told to adapt with crumbs while the North feasts on the profits of destruction.
Behind every statistic is a life, a family, a nation struggling to breathe.
Children in Bangladesh wade through floodwaters that swallow their schools. Mothers in Kenya watch crops wither under relentless drought. Fishermen in the Caribbean return to empty nets as coral reefs bleach and die. Families in the Andes watch glaciers — their ancestral water towers — melt into memory.13
The poor do not emit the carbon that drives catastrophe, yet they inhale its consequences. Climate colonialism ensures that those least responsible suffer the most.
This is not misfortune. It is injustice.
Empire adapts. Its tools evolve, but its intentions remain unchanged.
Carbon markets commodify the atmosphere, turning the sky into a trading floor.Greenwashing disguises destruction as sustainability, allowing corporations to pollute while posing as saviors.
Climate debt forces nations to borrow for disasters they did not cause, deepening dependency.
Geoengineering schemes threaten to weaponize the sky, allowing powerful nations to manipulate weather under the guise of “innovation.”
Land grabs for “green energy” displace Indigenous communities, repeating the oldest colonial script.
The cycle repeats with chilling precision: extraction → pollution → catastrophe → debt → control.
Climate colonialism is not about saving the planet. It is about preserving empire’s privilege.
May the climate crisis be named not as fate but as injustice. May the polluters be held accountable, and the victims restored. May the atmosphere be freed from commodification, and the earth from extraction. May every human breathe clean air, drink pure water, and eat from fertile soil. May the world awaken to the truth that climate justice is not charity — it is reparations, restoration, and the rebirth of global dignity.
Let justice roll down like waters and let the whole earth breathe again.
Source: Mother Jones
During the 2024 presidential campaign, a conservative playbook emerged. Created by the Heritage Foundation, this 900-plus-page document was a roadmap written for a future conservative president. And while some Republicans tried to distance themselves from Project 2025, the authors and the concepts they wrote about have been embraced by President Donald Trump.
Journalist David A. Graham did a deep dive analyzing the pages for his book, The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America. “I think at the heart of all of this is they want this Christian, conservative vision of society, and the way that they wanna achieve that is by dismantling many of the institutions of government as we know them,” he says.