We talked about their most epic activism adventures, what it feels like to be punished by the legal system for your commitment to the animal cause, the many countries that have banned our guests and much much more.

Visit the Captain Paul Watson Foundation's website and support OPERATION KRILL WARS, a bold mission to safeguard the Antarctic ecosystem from the relentless industrial assault of fishing vessels. The Captain Paul Watson Foundation needs you, the whales need you. https://www.paulwatson...

Connect with Gary on social media. Since coming back from retirement, he has been very active fundraising for sanctuaries, spreading veganism with Anonymous for the Voiceless and supporting and inspiring fellow animal rights activists. Instagram: https://www.instagram....

And visit the Animal Liberation Press Office website and social media, where you will find the latest news on illegal direct action. Jerry and his colleagues do an admirable job at keeping the platform active. They also sell amazing merch on their virtual store. Go check it out. https://animalliberati...

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All courtesy: The Vegan Report

“All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

- H. L. Mencken

Executive Summary

The United States spends substantially more on military and defense-related activities than most developed democracies. In 2025, broad U.S. military and defense-related spending was approximately $1 trillion annually, representing roughly 3.3% of U.S. GDP. While many Americans view military spending primarily as national protection for citizens themselves, military power also serves another important economic function: protecting accumulated wealth, property, financial markets, businesses, infrastructure, and private assets.

This article proposes that a portion of U.S. military spending should be recognized as an “asset protection cost” and funded through a dedicated progressive military wealth tax paid primarily by high-wealth Americans.

Beyond questions of fairness, the proposal also carries potentially significant economic growth implications. Redirecting approximately $550 billion of annual military funding responsibility away from ordinary wage earners and toward concentrated wealth structures would leave thousands of dollars annually in the hands of tens of millions of middle- and working-class Americans.

Unlike ultra-wealthy households, which often reinvest excess capital into financial markets and long-term asset holdings, middle- and working-class households tend to spend additional disposable income directly into the real economy. This means additional consumer spending on:

•vehicles,

•travel,

•housing,

•home improvement,

•camping and recreational equipment,

•education,

•food and services,

•and local businesses.

That circulation of money through the broader economy would likely stimulate:

•job growth,

•business expansion,

•increased tax revenue,

•higher consumer demand,

•and broader GDP growth.

In effect, the proposal can also be viewed as a large-scale economic reinvestment strategy designed to shift part of the cost of maintaining America’s elevated military posture away from wage earners and toward concentrated wealth structures that benefit most directly from military and financial stability. The concept follows long-established tax principles already used throughout American society: people who use or benefit from a system more heavily often contribute more heavily to funding it.

Examples already embedded in American taxation include:

•Gasoline taxes helping fund road infrastructure used by drivers.

•Hotel occupancy taxes helping fund tourism and convention infrastructure used by visitors.

•Fishing and hunting licenses funding wildlife conservation systems used by participants.

•Toll roads and bridge fees paid by direct users.

The same logic can reasonably be extended to national defense. Citizens with substantial accumulated wealth benefit disproportionately from a stable military order that protects:

•private property,

•financial markets,

•corporate ownership,

•real estate,

•intellectual property,

•infrastructure,

•and long-term asset preservation.

This proposal does not argue that wealthy Americans should fund the entire military budget. All citizens benefit from physical security and national defense. However, the United States spends significantly above the estimated global average military burden relative to national wealth. The excess portion can reasonably be interpreted as the cost of protecting an unusually large concentration of accumulated private wealth and global economic interests.

Using the estimates developed in this article, approximately $550 billion of annual U.S. military spending appears to represent military spending above estimated global norms relative to wealth. When compared against approximately $165 trillion in U.S. household and private wealth, this implies an approximate military wealth surcharge of:

0.33% annually on wealth, or roughly:

•approximately $3,300 annually per $1 million of wealth,

•approximately $33,000 annually per $10 million of wealth,

•and substantially higher contributions for billionaires and ultra-high-net-worth households.

This framework is important because it avoids misleading interpretations that all millionaires would pay identical amounts. A household barely above $1 million in net worth would pay far less than a household possessing hundreds of millions or billions in assets.

Using conservative economic estimates developed below, approximately $550 billion of annual U.S. military spending appears to represent spending above estimated global averages relative to wealth and assets. That excess burden could form the basis for a progressive military wealth tax applied primarily to high-net-worth individuals.

The Economic Logic Behind a Military Wealth Tax

The United States possesses one of the largest concentrations of private wealth in human history. Estimates for 2025 suggest:

•U.S. GDP: approximately $30 trillion annually.

•U.S. household/private net wealth: approximately $165 trillion.

•Broader U.S. gross asset value including real estate, financial markets, infrastructure, and private enterprise: potentially several hundred trillion dollars.

At the same time, wealth ownership in the United States is highly concentrated.

Recent wealth studies estimate:

•Approximately 8.8% of U.S. adults are millionaires.

•Roughly 24 million American adults possess net worth exceeding $1 million.

•The top 10% of Americans own the large majority of private wealth.

•The top 1% alone control an enormous share of national financial assets.

These individuals and households possess substantial interests in:

•stock markets,

•bonds,

•commercial real estate,

•business ownership,

•investment properties,

•retirement portfolios,

•and private capital.

The existence of these large concentrations of wealth creates additional demand for military stability and global security.

Military power protects not only citizens themselves, but also:

•shipping lanes,

•financial systems,

•trade routes,

•global reserve currency systems,

•foreign investments,

•intellectual property rights,

•and domestic property ownership.

Unlike many smaller nations, the United States maintains:

•worldwide military bases,

•aircraft carrier groups,

•global force projection capability,

•extensive intelligence operations,

•and a massive nuclear deterrence structure.

These systems provide security not only for ordinary citizens, but also for one of the largest private wealth structures ever assembled.

Comparing the United States to the World

To understand the scale of U.S. military spending, it helps to compare it to global averages.

Estimated 2025 military spending:

•United States: approximately $1 trillion annually (broad military-related spending).

•Global military spending: approximately $2.7 trillion annually.

Estimated economic asset base:

•Broad global gross assets excluding human capital: approximately $1 quadrillion.

•U.S. private and gross asset base: dramatically concentrated relative to the rest of the world.

Using these estimates:

•Global military spending equals approximately 0.27% of total global assets.

•U.S. military spending equals approximately 0.6% of U.S. wealth/assets.

This suggests that the United States spends substantially above the estimated world average relative to accumulated wealth.

Importantly, this comparison already includes the United States within the world averages. If the United States were excluded from the global calculation, the non-U.S. world military burden relative to assets would likely be even lower.

This means the United States is not merely participating proportionally in global defense spending. It is operating at a materially elevated level.

Estimating the “Excess” Military Burden

If the United States spent at approximately the global average relative to assets, military-related spending would be materially lower.

Using the comparative framework above:

•U.S. military burden relative to wealth/assets: 0.60%

•Estimated global average burden relative to assets: 0.27%

•Difference: approximately 0.33%

That difference represents roughly 55% of the current U.S. military burden.

Applied against approximately $1 trillion in annual military-related spending:

•Approximately $550 billion annually represents spending above estimated global norms.

This excess spending can reasonably be interpreted as the cost of:

•global military dominance,

•protection of extensive international economic interests,

•protection of unusually concentrated private wealth,

•and maintenance of worldwide financial and trade stability.

That excess portion forms the conceptual basis for a military wealth tax.

Structuring a Progressive Military Wealth Tax

The purpose of a military wealth tax would not be to punish success or confiscate wealth. Instead, it would align military funding with the economic interests most heavily protected by military power.

Under such a system:

•ordinary citizens would continue contributing through traditional taxes,

•while high-net-worth individuals would contribute proportionally more toward the excess military burden associated with protecting concentrated wealth.

Importantly, the tax should not be structured as a flat fee per millionaire.

A retired couple with:

•a paid-off home,

•retirement savings,

•and modest investment assets

should not face the same burden as a billionaire with massive financial holdings.

Instead, the tax should scale progressively based on net worth.

For example:

•individuals with $1–2 million in wealth might pay a modest annual surcharge,

•while ultra-high-net-worth households and billionaires would bear much larger shares.

This mirrors existing progressive taxation principles already accepted in:

•income taxes,

•estate taxes,

•capital gains systems,

•and property taxation.

The underlying logic remains simple:

Those who possess the largest accumulated private assets benefit disproportionately from the military and geopolitical systems protecting those assets.

Therefore, it is economically reasonable that they contribute proportionally more toward maintaining those systems.

Economic Reinvestment and GDP Expansion

One of the most significant effects of a military wealth tax may not be the redistribution itself, but the economic stimulus created by shifting purchasing power toward ordinary Americans.

Under the framework proposed in this article, approximately 91.2% of American adults would avoid the military wealth surcharge and would effectively receive relief from part of the current military funding burden.

Estimated average relief:

•approximately $2,200 annually per non-millionaire adult.

For many middle- and working-class Americans, an additional $2,200 annually would not simply be stored in long-term financial assets. A substantial portion would likely be spent directly into the economy on:

•consumer goods,

•transportation,

•housing,

•recreation,

•tourism,

•education,

•healthcare,

•debt reduction,

•and local services.

Economists often note that middle- and lower-income households tend to spend a significantly larger share of additional income than ultra-wealthy households. This means that shifting part of the military burden away from ordinary taxpayers could create a broad multiplier effect throughout the economy.

The result could include:

•stronger GDP growth,

•increased consumer demand,

•small business expansion,

•higher employment,

•increased sales tax and income tax receipts,

•and a healthier domestic economic cycle.

Rather than functioning solely as a redistribution mechanism, a military wealth tax could therefore operate as a large-scale domestic reinvestment strategy that strengthens both economic growth and long-term financial stability.

Conclusion

The United States currently maintains a military and security structure far larger than most nations on Earth. While national defense benefits all Americans, a substantial portion of modern military spending also protects concentrated private wealth, global financial systems, and extensive economic assets.

American tax policy already contains many examples where those who benefit most directly from a system contribute more directly to funding it.

Drivers pay gas taxes.

Tourists pay hotel taxes.

Hunters and fishers pay licensing fees.

Bridge users pay tolls.

A military wealth tax applies the same principle to national defense.

The proposal outlined here does not suggest eliminating the military, nor shifting all defense costs onto wealthy Americans. Rather, it argues that the portion of military spending substantially above global norms should be recognized as an economic asset-protection cost associated with concentrated wealth and global financial dominance.

Using reasonable 2025 estimates, approximately $550 billion of annual U.S. military spending appears attributable to this elevated military posture.

Spread across the broader U.S. private wealth base, this equates to approximately a 0.33% annual military wealth surcharge, or roughly $3,300 annually per $1 million of wealth.

Under a progressive structure, ordinary millionaires would contribute relatively modest amounts, while ultra-high-net-worth households and billionaires — whose assets benefit most heavily from global military and financial stability — would bear substantially larger shares of the burden.

An additional effect of such a system is that the approximately 91.2% of American adults who are not millionaires would effectively receive relief from part of the current military funding burden. Using the estimates developed in this article:

•approximately $550 billion annually would be shifted away from the general tax base,

•while approximately 24 million millionaire adults would assume the military wealth surcharge.

Spread across the remaining non-millionaire adult population, this represents an effective average relief value of approximately:

•$2,200 per non-millionaire adult annually.

In practical terms, the proposal would shift part of the cost of maintaining an above-average global military posture away from ordinary wage earners and toward the concentrated wealth structures that benefit most directly from the protection of global military and financial dominance.

A progressive military wealth tax tied to net worth would therefore represent not only a revenue mechanism, but also a rational alignment between the beneficiaries of military asset protection and the costs of maintaining that protection.

The photograph was taken aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 during a transatlantic crossing from New York to Southampton in 1979 by the photographer Lisa Howe-Ebright. The man seated at the casino table, cigarette raised to his temple in a gesture somewhere between concentration and exhaustion, was named Joe. He was a friend of Lisa’s. Years later, he died of AIDS.

The original photograph was made on a Leica M using black and white film. Decades later, I digitally rephotographed a 35mm silver halide print of the image using a Leica Q3 43. What interests me is not simply the preservation of the photograph, but the strange temporal layering that occurs when an image is seen again through another camera separated from the original moment by nearly half a century.

In its original context, the photograph would likely have appeared unremarkable to those present. A man in a casino aboard an ocean liner. Cigarette smoke. Gambling chips. The dim glamour of late-1970s transatlantic travel. Yet time alters photographs in ways no photographer can entirely predict. Images survive their original purpose. They accumulate meanings never intended by either subject or photographer. What was once immediate becomes archaeological.

What arrests me most about the photograph is Joe’s isolation within the composition. Though surrounded by people, he appears psychologically detached from the room around him. The other figures drift toward obscurity, blur, or shadow, while he remains sharply anchored at the center of the frame. Even the casino itself recedes into darkness. The image behaves less like social documentary and more like an unintended elegy.

Knowledge changes photographs. Or perhaps more accurately, history changes photographs. Knowing Joe would later die during the AIDS epidemic transforms the image without reducing it to tragedy. The photograph does not announce catastrophe. Nothing within the frame signals what is coming. That is precisely what gives it force. It contains a future invisible to everyone present at the table.

The cigarette, the tailored jacket, the atmosphere of shipboard luxury, the casual physicality of the scene now belong to a vanished social world. Not merely because styles changed, but because an entire generation would soon encounter a historical rupture few could imagine in 1979. Looking at the image now, one becomes conscious of how often photography captures people standing unknowingly at the edge of events that will later redefine them.

What interests me equally is the physical journey of the image itself. The original negative became a silver halide print. The print aged. The print accumulated surface texture, tonal shifts, and the subtle evidence of material existence. I then rephotographed that object digitally. The resulting image is therefore not a reproduction in the conventional sense. It is a photograph of a photograph carrying the visible residue of time between both acts of seeing.

This matters because photography is often discussed as though it freezes time. In reality, photographs continue changing long after exposure. Their meanings shift as people die, cities disappear, technologies vanish, and history rewrites the emotional atmosphere surrounding the image. The photograph remains physically static while interpretation remains permanently unstable.

The slight softness at the periphery of the frame, the tonal blooming within the grain, and the optical imperfections introduced through age and rephotography all contribute to this instability. Rather than diminishing the image, these characteristics make it feel remembered rather than merely viewed. The photograph resists sterile archival clarity. It feels touched by time.

There is also something profoundly moving in the survival of ordinary moments. Joe was not posing for posterity. Neither he nor Lisa Howe-Ebright could have anticipated that decades later someone would again raise a camera to this image and look at him across nearly fifty years. Yet photography permits these improbable continuities. The dead return not as abstractions, but as visible presences suspended inside light, grain, chemistry, and paper.

What ultimately remains in this photograph is neither nostalgia nor mourning. Nostalgia simplifies the past into sentiment. This image refuses that simplification. Instead, it presents something far more unsettling and far more human: the realization that every photograph contains realities its subjects themselves cannot yet see.

- Will Hazlitt, New York

R9 Media Photo Collective

Original photograph:

Lisa Howe-Ebright

Rephotograph:

Will Hazlitt

Studio Assistant:

Michael Viktor Kilarjian

“Rededicate 250,” a free public event that took place at the National Mall in Washington, DC on Sunday, was billed as a day of “jubilee, prayer, and thanksgiving.” It was organized, according to its promotional literature, to serve as a “prayer & rededication of the United States as One Nation Under God.”

From its very announcement, the event seemed an indication of desperation. With the presidential administration’s polling numbers plummeting to record lows, the White House appears to be making a frantic appeal to retain the dogmatic loyalty of its evangelical base that has more-or-less blindly supported the administration in the past, though even this base seems to have been shaken by recent public presidential and cabinet level faux pas. The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, recently witlessly quoted “scripture” as it was misstated in the 1994 Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction; Trump following a public tirade against the Pope posted a deranged AI-generated image of a robed version of himself healing a man in what appeared to be a self-idolizing imitation of Christ (he later claimed he was merely portraying himself as a doctor); Vice President Vance, apparently attempting to support Trump in his dispute with Pope Leo had the bizarre audacity to admonish the Pontiff to “be careful” when he “talks about matters of theology”; and Trump unveiled a 22-foot gold statue of himself at the Trump National Doral Miami golf course that some appalled Christians saw as nothing short of blatant idolatry. And these all happened within the past couple of months.

If Rededicate 250 was conceived out of public relations desperation, the outcome of the event suggests that the desperation is warranted. The turn-out was indisputably low. Looking over the crowd at the peak of the event, I feel confident in calling bullshit on any claim that the gathering ever reached a full 20 thousand attendees. While there were MAGA hats and pro-Trump tshirts to be seen, there were, I think, a lot less than one might have expected, and nobody I spoke to offered any defense when I spoke of presidential actions that I found difficult to reconcile with my understanding of Christian practice and virtue.

The relatively low attendance for a national public event did not prevent there from being a long wait to enter the National Mall grounds, however. Now, in retrospect, the event was little different inside than it was immediately outside, with the exception that none of those there to actively protest the event went in. Whether one was waiting to get in, or already there, there was little else to do other than try to find shade from the 90 degree direct sun and chat with random superstition-mongers handing out their literature. There were, of course, speakers on the main stage, and musical acts between them, but the audio was terrible, and in most locations, the speeches were indecipherable.

As of now, I have still not yet even heard the speeches that were delivered, nor have I read their transcripts. Of 9 speakers on the itinerary, I did notice, however, that at least 3 of them were Catholic. While this may be the administration’s attempt at soothing Catholic anxiety after the administration’s papal feud, I wondered how this strong showing of Catholic representation might sit with the more apocalyptic protestants for whom the Vatican is believed to be the prophesied home of the coming Antichrist, and Catholicism itself the true Satanism. I asked this of a few people, some of whom merely shrugged it off and evaded a clear answer. However, one 7th Day Adventist from Tennessee was clear that he believed it scripturally indisputable that Catholicism was, or is, the Antichrist’s home.

Like most people I spoke to at the event, the 7th Day Adventist was not there to support the president, nor did he seem to feel that the event was “for him” so much as it was an opportunity to represent his view in a venue where it might be well received.

While in line, there were a lot of people handing out little Christian propaganda pamphlets, cards, books, etc. I thought to ask them what “religious freedom” means to them. They all claimed to believe in the virtue of religious freedom as a right to never be abridged by the government, allowing for the freedom to worship (and, when prodded by further questioning, freedom to not worship) as one sees fit. When I asked if they felt that this endorsement of pluralism was what the rededication event itself was about, they more or less seemed to indicate that they were not sure, or that they did not care.

In fact, maybe due to the heat, or maybe due to a growing sense of alienation from the presidential administration, a general feeling of not-giving-a-shitness seemed to permeate the entire event. Cheers rose up very infrequently, and even then only polite and half-hearted, mostly in response to the musical interludes ending. Even the construction of the event appeared to have been abandoned, uncompleted. Needless wooden facades with entryways that led to nothing but the scaffolding supporting them lined the enclosed space of the event. One segment of the facade indicated what the finished construct was supposed to look like, covered in a print that gave it the appearance of a pillared, white stone hall.

The man in front of me in line to enter the “rededication,” a traveller from one of the Carolinas who was with his wife and 2 small children, was somewhat chatty. Like most others I encountered, he had come for God and country, but he expressed disappointment in Trump. He felt betrayed by what he saw as the United States’ superfluous entry into war with Iran, which he saw as a betrayal of Trump’s promise of peace. He ruefully recounted Trump’s efforts to obtain a Nobel Peace Prize, and his prior pride in keeping the U.S. out of foreign wars, “and, then, suddenly…” He looked off, distracted. Turning back to me again, he asked, “do you know what they’re yelling about?” He was squinting to see the signs of protesters ahead. Somebody was standing across the street from the line yelling into a bullhorn. I stepped to the side to look. There were many signs clustered together. It was a buffet of leftist Culture War slogans and symbols trotted out with no apparent regard for a focused message. As we got closer, we could hear that the woman screaming into the bullhorn was saying something about the separation of Church and State before she suddenly veered into a tirade about Israel being an illegitimate state and, if I understood her correctly, a continuation of the Nazi agenda.

“She’s just throwing in everything,” the man ahead of me observed, apparently perplexed as to why the protester thought this was the appropriate venue for these grievances. Like many leftist “activist” protesters, this one gave no hint that she understood any specific reason for being where she was. There was, I think, a real potential for effective messaging that would have actually had an impact on the attendees. The question of whether or not the Trump administration is truly acting according Christian principles seems to currently weigh heavy on the minds of the audience that this event was meant to attract. Signs with images of Trump’s golden statue that said something like, “This Is Idolatry” would have probably stung for those looking to ignore the issue. Maybe “Do You Believe The Bible is True, Or Is It Pulp Fiction?” “JD Vance Is Not My Pope.” Messages that would force the crowd to think about whether or not they support the messaging being presented to them at the rededication, forcing them to see the dissonance between the values they claim to believe, and how those values are being represented by government officials using religion to secure political capital.

Unfortunately, nobody was doing that.

Inside the event, I hoped to encounter Sean Feucht. Feucht is a Christian Nationalist musician who first made headlines in 2020 by doing concerts in defiance of Covid lockdown mandates. Later, he went on to do his “Let Us Worship” tour where he toured the country playing at state capitol buildings, where he would hold religious revival-style concerts. In 2023, when The Satanic Temple held a conference in Boston, Feucht bullshitted his followers, publicly claiming that he had converted nearly 100 of our attendees to Christ. This is really when I looked into Feucht, and I found his Let Us Worship tour to be inspiring. At least, I was inspired to do something similar.

Seeing as to how Feucht had played in public spaces, it seemed those public spaces were available to religious concerts. It turns out, of course, that I am a religious leader with a band of my own. Youtube showed video footage of Feucht’s performance at the Indianapolis state capitol where they let him play indoors, in the capitol rotunda, plugged in. We reached out to the Indianapolis Capitol and told them we wanted to perform there. They replied that they do not host such things. We responded with a link to the Feucht Youtube video and let them know that we wanted whatever he got. They put us on the schedule. This was the first, and so far only, show of our “Let Us Burn” tour. We thanked Sean for opening that door.

This really seemed to bother Feucht. He had a lawyer pen a letter threatening a lawsuit over infringement related to the similarity of Let Us Burn to Let Us Worship. I publicly posted the letter, tagging Sean with a message that said “Hey Sean, go Feucht yourself.”

For a period of time, Sean Feucht seemed to obsess over me and The Satanic Temple. When he eventually publicly accused us of sending him death threats and casting curses on him, as he felt was evidenced by the fact that he was nearly hit with a golf ball traveling at a presumably deadly velocity as he jogged next to a golf course, I began to genuinely question his mental well-being.

It turned out I was not supposed to have been able to wander up in front of the stage at the rededication event like I did, but security was, surprisingly, no less half-assed than any of the rest of the event. That said, however, the security was definitely present, even if not terribly attentive. I caught up with Sean as he was walking from the backstage area back into the audience to get back to his front row seat. “Sean!” I said, walking over and giving him a big hug. “Good to see you, brother!” he said. I told him I regretted not bringing a golf ball for him to sign. I think he almost chuckled. I told him we needed to get our bands together to play. I punched his arm, playful and buddy-like.

This is when I think he started realizing what was happening.

“Bands?” he said.

I made sure to tell him who I am, so that there could be no mistake.

He began oscillating between automatic fan-meeting friendliness and intermittently looking increasingly nauseated. These turns were marked by friendly statements in which he would call me “brother,” followed by him occasionally just repeating what I had said in the form of a question. He politely apologized and said he needed to return to his seat. I wondered if he would later melt down publicly about it, but so far he has not.

I was accompanied by Rachel from our Executive Ministry team, and Eliphaz, the director of our Protect Children Project campaign. I was wearing a microphone, and Rachel was filming, but it remains to be seen how much of the audio is coherent. Either way, we will edit together a narrated video of the event for thesatanictemple.tv.

We spoke at length to a woman from Lifewise Academy, a Christian public school third party Christian program that we have countered by offering After School Satan Club programs in school districts where Lifewise operates. I was “interviewed” by some peckerhead who claimed to be with the Daily Caller, and who was attempting comedy, but the joke was on him when I did not take the bait, and he ended up sulking off. We did not conceal who we are from people. When they asked, we told them. They were probably shocked, but we approached politely, asked honest questions, and allowed them to answer. This, I think, was so far outside of what they expected that we never really got past the deer-in-the-headlights phase with any of them to see if they would progress into outrage once the confusion subsided. As it was, our encounters were mostly respectful.

Of course, I do not delude myself into thinking that the reactions I was receiving were not at least partially manufactured by how I was self-presenting. My questions about religious liberty were leading, but it was still somewhat encouraging to hear recognition of the value in pluralism, and acknowledgement that true religious conversion can not be imposed through the coercion of government.

I do not believe that the Christian Nationalist movement is populated by misunderstood pluralists who actually support true religious liberty. Rather, it appears to me that at the level of the general audience in the crowd, they are merely looking for a sense of identity with a Christian tribe, Christianity being a framework for their lives introduced from the beginning. They are willing to follow whoever it is who is acting as leader at that moment. As I stand before them, even as a Satanist, speaking coherently and rationally about the vital need for a separation of Church and State in which the government is not empowered to impose one religion upon other religions, or religion upon the non-religious, they find they have no sensible opposition, and they agree wholeheartedly. I am not asking them to abdicate their beliefs or practices, just that they not impose them on others.

10 minutes later, however, some Christian Nationalist clown may take the stage and gravely insist that “we” must enforce recognition of the notion that we are a Christian Nation lest we infuriate an angry god, and those same Christians who, moments earlier, accepted my arguments for pluralism, will likely agree wholeheartedly agree with theocracy.

If this sounds unrealistically simple-minded, one should be able to easily imagine “progressive” events where one speaker could receive unanimous applause for endorsing the epistemic primacy of science, only to be followed up by a speaker who claims that science is a colonialist “western construct” that is but one “way of knowing” among many other equally valid ways of knowing, while receiving equal unanimous applause from the same crowd. Most people do not want to argue. They are perhaps disturbingly flexible in their allegedly unshakable beliefs. They are listening to speeches from their thought leaders in the first place because they want to know where their “side” currently stands, just so they can be assured of their place in a community.

Currently, both sides stand hijacked by their most militant and shit-headed Culture Warriors. The sooner we all learn to ignore them, the sooner we allow for adults to begin directing the discussions again. At the rededication, I saw hopeful signs that American Christians are losing faith in the politicians who claim to represent them.

Originally published on May 19, 2026 at: patreon.com/c/LucienGreaves

Click here to subscribe to Lucien Greaves' Substack.

All courtesy: The Satanic Temple

Title: Closed System Experiment

Artist: Dragan Velimir Kostić

Red Sharpie marker ink on sketching paper.

Photographed by the R9 Media Collective with a Leica Q3 43.

Prints available on request.

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A refrigerator still holds what someone intended to return to. Containers are stacked without care, but not without purpose. Drinks remain half-considered. A fre…

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There is a tendency, when confronted with works such as these, to describe them as studies—as preparatory, provisio…

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What strikes me first is not the subject, but the distance—the quiet, almost reverential distance this image insists upon. The figures are small, nearly swallowed by the geometry of the observation d…

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Original photo courtesy the photographer:

Lisa Howe-Ebright

Taken on a Leica M on Ilford film in 1979 at the Musée du Louvre-Paris, France

In 1979, inside the august corridors of the Musée du Louvre, Lisa Howe-Ebright made a photograph on a Leica M using Ilford film. It is, at first glance, a modest image: a man in a fedora, turning slightly, his face illuminated by the soft interior light of the museum. The paintings behind him recede into blur. The Louvre, that immense theater of cultural validation, becomes backdrop rather than protagonist.

This inversion is not accidental.

The museum is constructed to direct our gaze toward sanctioned masterpieces — toward what history has already approved. Yet Howe-Ebright’s frame refuses that directive. The subject does not gaze at the art. Nor does the camera. Instead, the photograph attends to the living presence situated within the institutional space. The canon stands behind him; consciousness stands before it.

There is something quietly radical in that orientation.

The Ilford grain lends the image its particular tactility — a silver atmosphere that breathes rather than insists. The tonal compression of film produces a softness around the edges of the gallery walls, allowing the fedora’s clean line to assert itself against the architecture. The subject’s glance is neither staged nor defensive. It suggests awareness — of the photographer, of the moment, perhaps even of being observed within a space dedicated to observation.

Decades later, the image is rephotographed on a Leica Q3 43 and lightly edited — undertaken with the full permission of Lisa Howe-Ebright. This detail is essential. The act is not extraction; it is collaboration across time. Rephotography here does not erase authorship but extends it. It acknowledges origin while introducing mediation.

The digital sensor renders micro-contrast differently than silver halide. Blacks settle with a different authority. Edges clarify. The grain, once inherent to emulsion, becomes an artifact of history, now reframed. Yet what remains untouched is the psychological nucleus: the eyes. They carry forward with undiminished presence, bridging 1979 and the present moment.

Rephotograph of original 1979 photograph

Courtesy: R9 Media Photo Collective

Photographer: W. Hazlitt

Studio Assistant: A. Smessaert

Video courtesy: R9 Media Photo Collective

What emerges is a layered authorship — not competitive but sequential. The original image belongs to its era: a late-1970s museum, a young man caught between looking and being looked at. The rephotograph belongs to ours: a time preoccupied with archives, with memory, with recontextualization. In bringing the image forward, the contemporary gesture does not claim ownership; it claims conversation.

It is also worth noting that the Louvre itself functions as silent co-author. Museums are institutions of hierarchy. They determine which objects merit preservation, which narratives endure. Yet in this photograph, the institution is destabilized. The living subject eclipses the paintings. The canon fades into bokeh. The hierarchy dissolves.

To turn away from the art on the wall and toward the person in the room is not merely compositional. It is philosophical.

The image reminds us that history is not only what hangs in frames. It is also the unnoticed figure passing through the gallery, the fleeting glance, the human presence temporarily intersecting with monumental culture. Rephotography amplifies this realization. By reintroducing the image into contemporary circulation — with permission, with acknowledgment — it asserts that photographs themselves are living entities. They accrue meaning as they move through time.

This is not nostalgia. It is continuity.

In the end, the most striking element remains the subject’s orientation. His body is angled away from the masterpieces, yet his eyes meet the camera. He stands between centuries of art and the immediacy of the present gaze. He becomes, briefly, the axis upon which time rotates.

And perhaps this is the quiet thesis of the work: that the canon is stable only until someone turns away from it — and looks elsewhere.

- Élodie Vasseur

Paris, France 2026

R9 Media Photo Collective

https://vero.co/r9media

Michael Viktor Kilarjian

Associate Editor, The Intelligencer

Additional commentary from:

Tomás Arancibia Lozano

“What is being described here is not an accident of culture but the function of a system. Contemporary literature in the United States — and by extension much of the Anglophone world — is not merely written by the privileged; it is filtered, refined, and authenticated by an institutional machine that reproduces its own class composition.

The associate editor’s critique exposes an uncomfortable truth: the modern literary marketplace is governed less by organic discovery than by credentialed validation. Degrees, fellowships, residencies, awards — these are not incidental biographical details. They are the passport stamps that grant entry into visibility. A writer’s authority is now pre-certified before a reader ever encounters a sentence.

Historically, literary production has often been entangled with class — one need only consider figures such as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, or Emily Dickinson. But what distinguishes our era is bureaucratization. Privilege has been formalized into institutional process. It is no longer merely social positioning; it is a pipeline.

The invocation of Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is not a personal indictment of their talent. It is an illustration of the pattern. Elite universities. MFAs. Prestigious fellowships. Award circuits. These pathways interlock. They produce not only writers, but legitimacy. When such writers depict economic stagnation or existential drift, the cultural establishment receives the portrayal as authoritative — not because it emerges from lived precarity, but because it has passed through approved channels.

This is the literary machine: a self-reinforcing network of MFA programs, grant committees, critics, academic departments, and publishing houses that largely draw from the same socio-economic corridor. It decides what is staged, what is reviewed, what is assigned to students. It determines which narratives become canonical and which remain invisible.

The defense of this system is always meritocratic. The best work rises. But “the best” is defined within institutions that privilege certain forms of polish, certain aesthetic vocabularies, certain intellectual postures — all of which are more accessible to those already equipped with time, financial stability, and educational access. The retail worker writing at night, the warehouse employee with no MFA, the autodidact without institutional affiliation — these voices may exist, but they do not circulate. Visibility is curated.

From Bolivia, where literary production often unfolds outside formal patronage structures, the pattern is striking. When the gates are guarded by those trained within the same academies, diversity of experience narrows even as diversity of theme expands superficially. We are told that literature speaks for everyone, yet the arbiters of literary prestige are drawn from a remarkably small band of society.

The associate editor’s argument ultimately lands here: the contemporary literary world confuses accreditation with authority and pedigree with profundity. The cost is not merely aesthetic dissatisfaction. The cost is cultural omission. Entire strata of lived experience remain uncanonized because they lack institutional endorsement.

The question, then, is simple and destabilizing: Who decides what we read? The answer, at present, is not “the people.” It is the machine.”

- Tomás Arancibia Lozano

La Paz, Bolivia

Having rephotographed these forty-year-old 35mm prints on the Leica Q3 43, I found myself less interested in preservation than in re-encounter. Time had already completed its …

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The central gesture functions as a grotesquely overdetermined emblem of modern agency: an act performed compulsively, almost dutifully, stripped of flourish and therefore swollen with meaning. It is not expressive in the traditional sense; it is procedural. The subject does not appear to choose so much as comply, enacting a script whose origin lies elsewhere—bureaucratic, cultural, cosmic. The absurdity emerges not from exaggeration of movement, but from the grim sincerity with which the movement is repeated or sustained. This is how systems behave when internalized.

Stylistically, the austerity is doing the heavy lifting. The restraint of framing and pacing refuses catharsis. There is no release, no punchline, no visual escalation that would grant the viewer permission to laugh outright. Instead, the work cultivates a dead zone where meaning accumulates without resolution. The camera’s neutrality is its cruelty: by declining to editorialize, it implicates the viewer as a silent witness, perhaps even an accomplice.

Symbolically, the piece operates as a maximalist allegory masquerading as minimalism. What might initially register as a single, isolated act metastasizes into a portrait of institutional absurdity at scale. The gesture becomes labor, then ritual, then doctrine. It is impossible not to read it as a send-up of authority structures that demand participation without comprehension—political, religious, economic, even aesthetic. The body is present, but autonomy is theoretical. The will exists, but only as an afterimage.

There is also something faintly eschatological at work. The action feels less like progress than maintenance of a failing order, a kind of end-times busywork. The subject persists not because the act works, but because stopping would require acknowledging its futility. In this sense, the video stages absurdity not as comedy but as endurance. The joke, if there is one, is cosmic and unamused.

Taken as a whole, the piece reads as a mock-solemn monument to compliance, delivered with such seriousness that parody becomes indistinguishable from diagnosis. It does not ridicule its subject; it treats it with the grave respect reserved for inevitabilities. The absurdity is total precisely because it is never announced. One is left with the uneasy suspicion that this is not exaggeration at all, but reportage—an accurate record of how meaning behaves once it has been fully outsourced.”

- Dr. Alastair Penwyth-Hume

The brand new BMX zine for Asheville, NC has dropped. Grab your copy now!

Contact: @tspec912 INSTAGRAM

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"I return to this photograph with a complicated mix of gratitude and grief. It was made at Gay Pride in Chicago in 1982, a moment that—on the surface—reads as unguarded joy: two men pressed together,…

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