From The Desk of Holy Heresy

​I understand the impulse. I really do. And as someone who believes deeply in the progress of our communities, that is a hard thing to admit. ​When you look at the grinding fatigue of the modern economy, why shouldn’t this generation crave an Eisenhower-esque lifestyle? Who wouldn't want the version of America we see on old television reruns? The dream of a single income easily supporting an entire household. The predictable annual vacation. The neighborhood where everyone knows your name, where crime doesn't cross the property line, and where you don't spend every waking hour worrying about your kids. ​It sounds beautiful. The problem is that it is complete and utter bullshit. ​The idea that the 1950s was a flawless, conflict-free paradise of domestic bliss is a historical hallucination. Every single problem we are wrestling with today existed then. The reason older Boomers, including the President, who constantly heralds a return to a "Golden Age", honestly beli...

  Good evening, America. For three months, we have been forced to watch the most expensive, most predictable, and most profoundly absurd theater production in modern history: a war built on nothing but executive ego, managed by a spreadsheet, and fought with your children’s lives. But this afternoon on Capitol Hill, the unthinkable happened. The lawmakers in the House finally remembered that they don't work for the King; they work for the Constitution. In a historic 215-208 vote, a bipartisan majority of the House passed a War Powers Resolution to force Donald Trump to end his unauthorized, unilateral war in Iran. After months of feckless floor speeches and procedural cowardice, four Republicans finally grew a spine, broke ranks, and joined the Democrats to put a padlock on the Commander-in-Chief’s playground. Make no mistake: this is the single most significant constitutional rebuke an American President has faced since the Vietnam War. The sycophants in leadership will tell you t...

It’s a heavy thing to carry, the feeling that the ground beneath your feet is shifting. Since the world changed a few years ago, many people are looking around their neighborhoods and realizing the "neighbor" part feels a bit different than it used to. Being a "live and let live" soul is a virtue; it’s the quiet grace of a chaplain. But even a chaplain knows when a sanctuary is no longer providing peace. Pragmatism tells us that life is too short to be unhappy, and optimism tells us that a better life is actually possible. If you’re wondering whether to pack the boxes or stay put, let’s look at these questions with a clear head and a kind heart. Do I feel like I'm in danger because of the current political climate in my community? Our homes should be the place where we feel the safest to be exactly who we are. Mr. Rogers used to say, "Deep down, we know that what matters most is who we are." If the atmosphere in your town has turned from a "beauti...

Good evening, America. If you turn on cable news right now, you'll see a lot of well-paid people in expensive suits looking down their noses at the "No Kings" protestors. They call them hysterical. They call them alarmist. They tell us that the republic has survived 250 years, so everyone just needs to take a deep breath, go to Applebee's, and let the occupant of the Oval Office do whatever the hell he wants under the guise of "absolute immunity." It’s gaslighting on an industrial scale. The people marching in the streets aren't overreacting. They are just the only ones left in this country who seem to remember the actual job description of the American Presidency. They remember that the guy sitting behind the Resolute Desk is supposed to be a public servant, not a sovereign immune from the criminal code. If you don't believe the protestors, maybe you’ll believe the men who actually held the job, back when the people in that office understood the ter...

If you want to understand the true nature of the "Rules-Based International Order," skip the sanitized State Department briefings about human rights and democracy. Just look 90 miles south of Key West, where 11 million human beings are currently sitting in absolute, terrifying darkness. This week, the Cuban electrical grid collapsed completely. Millions are without power. Surgeries have been canceled. Water pumps are dead, and whatever little food people had managed to scrape together is rotting in warm refrigerators. The administration’s victory lap on cable news will tell you this is just the inevitable collapse of a decrepit communist relic. But let’s do something radical: let’s look at the actual geopolitical chessboard. What we are witnessing in Havana isn't just a failure of Marxist economics. It is the culmination of a deliberate, multi-continent, mafia-style strangulation designed by Washington. We have engineered a medieval siege, and we are pretending it’s a nat...

I never thought I’d be saying this. I really didn’t. If you had told me five years ago that I would be using this platform to publicly agree with the Senator from Kentucky, I would have checked your coffee for hallucinogens. But here we are. The sky is falling, the Middle East is burning, and Rand Paul is right. This war in Iran is illegal. It is a staggering, unconstitutional overreach by an executive branch that has completely gone rogue. And even if we could somehow torture the text of the Constitution into making it legal, which we can’t, it is entirely too expensive. We simply cannot afford it. Let’s start with the law, because apparently, that’s a quaint historical artifact in Washington these days. According to Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, Congress, not the President, not the Secretary of Defense, and certainly not a chatbot in the Pentagon, has the sole power to declare war. It is not ambiguous. The Founders specifically stripped the war-making power ...