When I was brand new to NovelAi I had no idea how 2048 tokens really looked as text. So for anyone looking at the tiers, trying to decide how many tokens they want for Clio with the new update, I've tokenized Part of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (public domain since 2021).
That way new users can more easily visualize what the AI's maximum context is for each tier. According to the UI Clio uses the NerdStash Tokenizer, as different tokenizers will convert text to tokens their own way.
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In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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Hey there R4R people,
How was your week? Single 49 year old IT healthcare professional and podcaster here. As mentioned in last week's post, I simply CANNOT post another "single male seeks younger female please like cats and don't ghost" type of post, so I am continuing my series of weekly reports of the fakes, spammers and ghosts I encountered in my adventures in OLD that I experienced over the past week. Stalk my profile for my previous posts.
Fakes, scammers, and generally FUBAR people I encountered over the last week:

• To the surprise of no one, a fake responded to fakes report that I posted last week. Deleted when she asked to speak on WhatApp or Google Chat.
• Someone from way out in NJ who liked my Facebook Dating profile without reading that I not only have five cats of my own and do animal rescue around where I live but even have a podcast all about shelter cats. Her profile stated that she was allergic to animals. Deleted after letting her know that she should have gone to the trouble of reading my profile.
• A nurse from Canada who keeps trying to communicate with me, then has nothing to say except repeating how lonely she is, only to ghost me and then accuse me of ghosting her. Blocked after going silent yet again after a few days of pleasant but mundane conversation.
• A.....not sure what she does......from texas who claimed to be falling in love with me despite being unwilling to communicate with me aside from voice messages back and forth over telegram. Claimed to have no working phone and was too nervous to chat, yet kept sending me unsolicited x-rated videos of herself that were clearly not recorded for me. Deleted after I refused to give her money and after not responding to my repeated attempts to have at least one live conversation with her.

So there you have it. My fakes report for the week. To be perfectly honest, my interest in dating has never been weaker. I can only play this stupid awful dating game for shorter and shorter periods before I just don't want to bother.
Such is the state of OLD in late spring of 2023. OLD, as a source to meet people, is a tired, played out, awful way to find someone to settle down with. For every success story there are MILLIONS of awful stories of failed relationships, fakes, bots, scammers, and people so filled with red flags you can line an airport runway with them and land a plane.
Get involved in your community, volunteer, be active in local groups or your church, temple, or mosque, do ANYTHING else except think you'll actually meet a real, normal person on OLD>. Even the reddit r4r, which was cute for a while and was a throwback in some ways to the dating section that once was on CL, is now also run its course.
If you're an actual single, normal human being from the NY area and want to chat with me, say hi, if not, I'll be over here reporting on the fakes every week and just loving his life with his 5 cats.

Hey everyone. A couple weeks ago I posted here to ask if there was an easy, community focused bicycle ride for Cantabrians. Sadly, while there is a weekly gathering for roller and inline skaters, and mountain bikers, there wasn't anything for all comers in all skill levels on any kind of bicycle...until now.
I'm calling it TECR. The Thursday Evening Church Ride. I hope it becomes a regular, weekly thing that takes on a life of its own, but for now, I think I'll be lucky if I see 2 others out there to start.
So join me tomorrow, 8/6, at the arch on Oxford and Cashel for about a 15km ride around chch. It'll be slow and should take us about 45-55 minutes to do the entire loop. I'll be out there at 6:30pm and we'll pedal off at 6:45pm. It isn't actually a loop. It will end at the Astro Lounge because I hear the bartenders have a heavy hand.
In either case, it doesn't matter what bike you have, come as you are. Dress warmly as there will be no elevation gained and it will be chilly, so you can't warm up if you start cold. Bring lights (it will be dark for the entire ride), wear your helmet, we'll follow the rules of the road, stay to the left, call out obstacles, and engage in comradery.
Tips:
Get Strava AND link Wandrer to your Strava. If we do this weekly and it takes on a life of its own, you may one day ride every road in chch. Start tallying those kms now.
Bring a good lock. If we all grab a drink at the end of the ride, our rigs should be secure.
Bring a multitool, patch kit, spare tube...if we get to a critical mass, there will always be someone to help you if you encounter a mechanical, but you should have an appropriate tool and tube just in case.
I know it will be cold and dark, but it will be nice to get out and see others and ride and be.

Christian organizations are calling on pastors across the country to stand up against the rise of Christian nationalism during their church services next weekend.
"Toxic Christian nationalism is the single biggest threat to both democracy and the church, and we pastors have a moral obligation to loudly oppose it as a dangerous hijacking of our faith," Reverend Nathan Empsall , Director of ‘Faithful America’ preached. "Unless we as Christians challenge this dangerous political ideology, its leaders will continue to twist our faith as they try to justify an agenda that is in actuality the antithesis of what Jesus taught: To love our neighbor and to care for the least among us.”
As reported in LGBQTNation, The "Preach and Pray to Confront Christian Nationalism" initiative is the latest event sponsored by Faithful America, an online community of progressive Christians that aim to combat the use of their faith being "hijacked" by the political right. The group recently protested a high-profile conservative speaker event in Miami, Florida, and has taken a public stand against several Republican politicians, including Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who previously defended Christian nationalism, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis’ own religious counselor, Tom Ascoll, of Grace Baptist Church, has preached the depravity of Leviticus by calling for the murder of gays.
(In that the Southern Baptist Convention has not condemned he and his words; one can only speculate they are in accord.)
White nationalism has been embraced by American fascists to appeal to the least among us. Street trash talking so-called pastors, hate-filled dullards so low on the social totem pole of polite society they will grasp at any message that makes them feel better about being the failures they’ve become, pandering politicians who are able stir up hatred among the loners and losers because of the prejudice and ignorance of the streets and back alleys, and hypocritical evangelicals who profess to love Jesus, but do the work of the devil, are all looking for validation of their hatred, and under the guise of patriotism spew their venom -- mostly for personal gain.
It been said, when tyranny comes it will be marching behind a cross.
Faithful America's newest initiative is aimed at taking a stand within the church, calling on pastors to "warn against effort to conflate Christian and American identities" while leading service on June 11.
What will your Priest, Pastor, or Reverend, have to say about the subject? Will the message be one of tolerance and love, or the gleeful acceptance of the sins of heresy and denial of true Christian belief?
While contemplating this, consider exactly which message you want to hear.

Christian organizations are calling on pastors across the country to stand up against the rise of Christian nationalism during their church services next weekend.
"Toxic Christian nationalism is the single biggest threat to both democracy and the church, and we pastors have a moral obligation to loudly oppose it as a dangerous hijacking of our faith," Reverend Nathan Empsall , Director of ‘Faithful America’ preached. "Unless we as Christians challenge this dangerous political ideology, its leaders will continue to twist our faith as they try to justify an agenda that is in actuality the antithesis of what Jesus taught: To love our neighbor and to care for the least among us.”
As reported in LGBQTNation, The "Preach and Pray to Confront Christian Nationalism" initiative is the latest event sponsored by Faithful America, an online community of progressive Christians that aim to combat the use of their faith being "hijacked" by the political right. The group recently protested a high-profile conservative speaker event in Miami, Florida, and has taken a public stand against several Republican politicians, including Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who previously defended Christian nationalism, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis’ own religious counselor, Tom Ascoll, of Grace Baptist Church, has preached the depravity of Leviticus by calling for the murder of gays.
(In that the Southern Baptist Convention has not condemned he and his words; one can only speculate they are in accord.)
White nationalism has been embraced by American fascists to appeal to the least among us. Street trash talking so-called pastors, hate-filled dullards so low on the social totem pole of polite society they will grasp at any message that makes them feel better about being the failures they’ve become, pandering politicians who are able stir up hatred among the loners and losers because of the prejudice and ignorance of the streets and back alleys, and hypocritical evangelicals who profess to love Jesus, but do the work of the devil, are all looking for validation of their hatred, and under the guise of patriotism spew their venom -- mostly for personal gain.
It been said, when tyranny comes it will be marching behind a cross.
Faithful America's newest initiative is aimed at taking a stand within the church, calling on pastors to "warn against effort to conflate Christian and American identities" while leading service on June 11.
What will your Priest, Pastor, or Reverend, have to say about the subject? Will the message be one of tolerance and love, or the gleeful acceptance of the sins of heresy and denial of true Christian belief?
While contemplating this, consider exactly which message you want to hear.

Christian organizations are calling on pastors across the country to stand up against the rise of Christian nationalism during their church services next weekend.
"Toxic Christian nationalism is the single biggest threat to both democracy and the church, and we pastors have a moral obligation to loudly oppose it as a dangerous hijacking of our faith," Reverend Nathan Empsall , Director of ‘Faithful America’ preached. "Unless we as Christians challenge this dangerous political ideology, its leaders will continue to twist our faith as they try to justify an agenda that is in actuality the antithesis of what Jesus taught: To love our neighbor and to care for the least among us.”
As reported in LGBQTNation, The "Preach and Pray to Confront Christian Nationalism" initiative is the latest event sponsored by Faithful America, an online community of progressive Christians that aim to combat the use of their faith being "hijacked" by the political right. The group recently protested a high-profile conservative speaker event in Miami, Florida, and has taken a public stand against several Republican politicians, including Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who previously defended Christian nationalism, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis’ own religious counselor, Tom Ascoll, of Grace Baptist Church, has preached the depravity of Leviticus by calling for the murder of gays.
(In that the Southern Baptist Convention has not condemned he and his words; one can only speculate they are in accord.)
White nationalism has been embraced by American fascists to appeal to the least among us. Street trash talking so-called pastors, hate-filled dullards so low on the social totem pole of polite society they will grasp at any message that makes them feel better about being the failures they’ve become, pandering politicians who are able stir up hatred among the loners and losers because of the prejudice and ignorance of the streets and back alleys, and hypocritical evangelicals who profess to love Jesus, but do the work of the devil, are all looking for validation of their hatred, and under the guise of patriotism spew their venom -- mostly for personal gain.
It been said, when tyranny comes it will be marching behind a cross.
Faithful America's newest initiative is aimed at taking a stand within the church, calling on pastors to "warn against effort to conflate Christian and American identities" while leading service on June 11.
What will your Priest, Pastor, or Reverend, have to say about the subject? Will the message be one of tolerance and love, or the gleeful acceptance of the sins of heresy and denial of true Christian belief?
While contemplating this, consider exactly which message you want to hear.

Christian organizations are calling on pastors across the country to stand up against the rise of Christian nationalism during their church services next weekend.
"Toxic Christian nationalism is the single biggest threat to both democracy and the church, and we pastors have a moral obligation to loudly oppose it as a dangerous hijacking of our faith," Reverend Nathan Empsall , Director of ‘Faithful America’ preached. "Unless we as Christians challenge this dangerous political ideology, its leaders will continue to twist our faith as they try to justify an agenda that is in actuality the antithesis of what Jesus taught: To love our neighbor and to care for the least among us.”
As reported in LGBQTNation, The "Preach and Pray to Confront Christian Nationalism" initiative is the latest event sponsored by Faithful America, an online community of progressive Christians that aim to combat the use of their faith being "hijacked" by the political right. The group recently protested a high-profile conservative speaker event in Miami, Florida, and has taken a public stand against several Republican politicians, including Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who previously defended Christian nationalism, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis’ own religious counselor, Tom Ascoll, of Grace Baptist Church, has preached the depravity of Leviticus by calling for the murder of gays.
(In that the Southern Baptist Convention has not condemned he and his words; one can only speculate they are in accord.)
White nationalism has been embraced by American fascists to appeal to the least among us. Street trash talking so-called pastors, hate-filled dullards so low on the social totem pole of polite society they will grasp at any message that makes them feel better about being the failures they’ve become, pandering politicians who are able stir up hatred among the loners and losers because of the prejudice and ignorance of the streets and back alleys, and hypocritical evangelicals who profess to love Jesus, but do the work of the devil, are all looking for validation of their hatred, and under the guise of patriotism spew their venom -- mostly for personal gain.
It been said, when tyranny comes it will be marching behind a cross.
Faithful America's newest initiative is aimed at taking a stand within the church, calling on pastors to "warn against effort to conflate Christian and American identities" while leading service on June 11.
What will your Priest, Pastor, or Reverend, have to say about the subject? Will the message be one of tolerance and love, or the gleeful acceptance of the sins of heresy and denial of true Christian belief?
While contemplating this, consider exactly which message you want to hear.

Hey all, I apologize for this being long, but I really wanted to be descriptive and thorough about my thoughts and reflections.
Demographics

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: White
• Residence: Southwest
• Income Bracket: Probably upper middle class
• Type of School: Catholic private school
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): None

Intended Major(s): Computer science
Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 3.97 UW, 4.45 W
• Rank (or percentile): 1/~200
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 15 honors (2 of which are also dual enrollment), 9 APs – AP CSA (5), AP Lang (3), APUSH (1 – took this class to raise my GPA, ended up using it as a study hall because the teacher wasn’t good), AP Chem (4), AP Calc AB (5), AP Lit, AP Physics 1, AP Calc BC, AP Spanish Lang
• Senior Year Course Load: AP Calc BC, AP Lit, AP Physics 1, AP Spanish Lang, Honors Theology 4, Digital Painting and Honors Focus Research (first semester), Psychology and Dual Enrollment Honors Economics, Ethics, & Entrepreneurship (second semester)

Standardized Testing (weak spot lol)

• SAT: 1430 (690RW, 740M) (taken once, didn’t submit anywhere)
• ACT: 31 (35E, 35M, 26R, 28S) (taken three times, only submitted to MIT and Georgia Tech due to them requiring a test)

Extracurriculars/Activities (also weak spot lol)

1. “Varsity” (lol) robotics all four years – participated in FRC as a programmer and builder; senior year I was also a co-captain
2. Programming/game design – I simply enjoy programming in many languages and designing basic video games using C# in Unity
3. Violin – tbh I have no clue why I put this, I began learning at the end of my junior year as a hobby because I liked orchestral music
4. Service hours – I’ve completed over 130 service hours throughout my time in high school, including religious service, service to the poor, and service to the community
5. School house leader – attended a school leadership camp in the summer of 2021 (going into my junior year) and then served as a leader and the communications coordinator for my house during my junior year (for houses, think Harry Potter but there’s 10 of them)
6. National Math Honor Society/Mu Alpha Theta – participated in Catholic Math League and AMC math test competitions, but nothing serious (we just kinda did no practice and took the tests when the days came lol)
7. Danger of A.I. research paper – wrote a 37-page research paper discussing A.I. and its potential and interviewed a tech professional for my Honors Focus Research course
8. National Honor Society – pretty self-explanatory (only allowed to join junior or senior year, so I did this for two years); requires 5 tutoring hours each semester
9. Tutoring – basically tutored kids in math and computer science a lot, especially this one kid in cs basically every week during my junior year
10. Senior GOYA (Greek Orthodox Youth of America) community member – basically a member of my Greek Orthodox Church’s youth group and met for activities (liturgical/worship services and discussions/fun activities) a few times each month

Awards/Honors

1. Mathematics department award (sophomore year) – given to one student per grade
2. Principal’s list every semester (4.0 weighed or above) – a quarter of my grade was on this last year so doesn’t mean much imo lol
3. School scholars program – about 10% of my grade is in this, requires certain courses to be taken and a certain GPA to be maintained for a scholarship
4. Graduated summa cum laude – obtained by maintaining a 4.0 weighted and taking extra courses (such as Honors Focus Research)
5. National STEM Honor Society – member since sophomore year and also school president

Letters of Recommendation
Counselor letter (8/10) – I don’t know much of about the letter to be honest, especially since my counselor and I didn’t really meet much, but I do know she liked me and thought of me as a very bright student, so imma guess above average
AP Lang teacher (9/10 or 10/10) – I first had her for Honors Argumentation & Rhetoric sophomore year; she and I clicked well and I did very well in her AP class junior year, despite only getting a 3 on the exam (not my greatest exam day, and I also rushed a lot on the final essay); she used my essay as a sample across all her AP classes once and called me one of the best writers she has ever taught, along with recommending several students from her 22-23 classes to me for writing help
AP Calc teacher (7/10) – calc was hands down my best subject, and I’ve had this teacher for AB junior year and for BC senior year; in BC, I got the highest score on her midterm (I’m pretty sure) and definitely on her final exam in the history of her teaching (which has been going on for about 10 years); I’ve heard though that this teacher typically writes similar letters for good students with just some extra info that pertains to each student specifically, so it might not have stood out compared to the letters written by her for other students
AP CSA teacher (7/10) – similar story to the calc letter; I did really well in the class as the only sophomore, and my teacher has been my robotics coach for all four years of high school, but I know he does a similar thing to calc, where he writes similar letters for each good student but some extra specific information to the student; this might’ve blended in with my friend’s letter, as he applied to similar schools and also requested a letter from this teacher
Interviews

• All of these interviews were done through Zoom
• Princeton (8/10) – my first interview, and probably also my best; he was an older alumni who majored in history I believe, but he had an interest in A.I. and programming like I did; we clicked and I told him a lot about my robotics team and my coding projects; additionally, he loved Greece, and since I was Greek, we had that connection too; he also said he hadn’t seen a whole lot of programmers in interviews recently, and he seemed to be pleasantly surprised
• Stanford (6/10) – second interview; the dude was very nice but it kinda seemed like a “question-and-answer” interview; he seemed pretty interested in what I had to say and asked me a lot about robotics as well, but certainly wasn’t enthralled with anything
• MIT (4/10) – last interview, and not very great at that; this interview was very “question-and-answer” and she just kept asking me basic questions; she gave me the bruh face throughout and it was kinda uncomfortable, although she was very nice; to make matters worse, I replied to the email to schedule the interview like three days after I got the initial interview email, because I was on a school retreat without phones

Essays
Overall, I think my essays were pretty strong, and I think my Common App essay in particular must’ve been strong. It was a graded assignment for my AP Lit class, and I got an A on it after months of working on it (my AP Lit teacher was a strict grader). I wrote a story about a student I tutored in cs a lot and sprinkled coding metaphors throughout. As for supplementals, some of them I spent some more time on (a few weeks or even months), some of them I spent a few days on, and for like a few of them I wrote the day before they were due, but I don’t think they were that bad; I really tried to make them specific to me and engaging, although none of my supplements were reviewed by a teacher or advisor.
Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)
Acceptances:

• ASU Barrett (EA)

Waitlists:

• Georgia Tech (RD) -> rejected

Rejections:

• MIT (RD)
• Stanford (RD)
• Harvard (RD)
• Princeton (RD)
• Caltech (RD)
• UC Berkeley (RD)
• Carnegie Mellon (RD)

Additional Information (my thoughts and insights):
I’ll share some of my insights really quick. I definitely believe my test scores were a problem, along with my ECs: I didn’t do any summer programs, publish any papers, participate in any real competitions, etc. As for the test scores, I took the ACT three times and the second time was my best; in middle school, I developed a bad habit of spending hours on tests (a strange perfectionistic, double checking tendency) and although it thankfully mostly went away in high school (I do every school test now with no extra time), I still struggle not to get anxious during the ACT and SAT and seem to never finish on time for the reading comprehension portions. After my ACT tries, I had the chance to take the SAT once, which I did, and due to its more lenient timing, I did better than any ACT attempt, but worse on the math. Ultimately, I didn't do early action for any school except for my safety school's honors college (which is test blind) in the hopes of significantly raising my test score before regular decision, which didn't really happen.
Another issue was that my school doesn’t publish rank, so I couldn’t say where I was ranked in my application; additionally, it wasn’t until after applications were sent that I was confirmed to be ranked 1st/valedictorian.
Overall, life hasn’t been a breeze since covid hit in freshman year. I’ve went through much overthinking, a lack of motivation, and even major surgery last summer; in the end, however, I am not as distraught as you may think. I am actually quite happy to go to my state school’s honors college, especially since a lot of my friends are going to the same college. I mentally prepared myself to receive all rejections, so I wasn’t very demotivated upon getting the results, especially because I knew what a lottery these admissions could be.
Anyway, thanks to all of those who took the time to read this, and I hope y’all continue to share your insights and advice with others.

Hi everyone,
35M here in Florida. A little about me: I started my Christian journey at age 19. Since then I feel I have felt God's presence in my life. With his help I have turned down bad habits and overcome many things in my life. I used to go to Church 3-5 times a week because I loved him and genuinely liked serving him and volunteering at Church. For a long time I have had the longing desire to find a partner. I have been able to cope with this desire and place it in God's hand but for the past 4 years it is becoming too much. I have placed this desire before God consistently in prayer and I feel like there is no answer or help from him. I have tried many approaches lol one is to ask for the partner, the other is if he could just remove this desire from me since it is becoming overwhelmingly painful, as of late I have been asking for Him to just allow for me to die since the pain is too overbearing. I have put myself out there multiple times and most of the time I get rejected. I have lost almost all faith in God, I don't think he understands me since Jesus never had the want of a romantic partner at least I never read of him having one. I look around me and it seems that those that don't value God have fulfilling romantic and material lives. I have spoken of God to many people and I have seen His hand and manifestation on them. What about me? I have lost a lot of faith in God and I don't think He is with me anymore. I feel useless at Church... I have nothing to give because of the internal sadness and despair that I feel. The worship services are me just moping over the situation, when people ask me for support... I don't have any to give anymore. I have no idea of the purpose of writing this but do others feel the same? Will it end?

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For the last several years I have been planting dozens of chestnuts in pots outside my apartment and distributing the year old seedlings for free to my community every spring. Next spring I will distribute 96 chestnuts, 100 or so semi domesticated pawpaws, 20 American hazelnuts, and the year after I plan on adding American persimmons into the mix as well. American chestnuts would be great and I am interested in their restoration effort but they are currently very expensive and a mix of Chinese, European, Dunstan, Peach, Qing, Kohr trees are what I have been giving out. Mostly I harvest nuts from trees in my town but supplement with some bought online, you pretty much need to buy them in the fall and refrigerate or bury them until spring.
Chestnuts are the ultimate food for supply chain collapse, one mature chestnut tree can provide half of the grain-based calories for an adult every year. They can be made into pasta, bread, desserts, just ask the Sicilian peasants who subsisted on them for generations. I like to make chestnut gnocchi. Smaller trees (like the pawpaws), bushes and shrubs (hazelnuts) and other food crops can be planted in the understory. They also make great food for pigs, deer etc.
Slightly off topic but it pisses me off how the media completely ignores widespread environmental problems and blames everything on climate change (real btw). Insect biomass in developed countries has fallen by half to 80% since 1990, bird populations in Germany have halved, flooding that gets blamed on climate change is largely caused by soil compaction, sediment runoff filling in river bottoms, parking lots etc not allowing water to infiltrate properly. Hundreds of square miles of the gulf are so depleted of oxygen due to fertilizer runoff that no fish (or shrimp ☹) can live there, similar problems in the great lakes, and Chesapeake bay, many other locations. Nutrient content of food is far lower than in the middle of the twentieth century, not only because vegetable varieties have been bred for longer shelf life and appearance but because the soil bacteria that synthesize riboflavin (one of the most effected nutrients) have been killed off by modern agricultural practices.
If you hear about drought causing crop loss just know that it would be significantly less destructive if instead of killing all plant life off with glyphosate and leaving the field fallow for the off season the farmer had planted cover crops. If you hear of biodiversity loss know that its because of light pollution and insecticides far more than it is caused by climate change.
So take the chestnut pill, get your neighbors to grow big beautiful chestnut trees and roast some of them over an open fire for Christmas, they can throw most of them out but if everything goes to shit, that tree in the yard will take the edge off. Plant them at the edges of fields or in highway interchanges in the middle of the night, give them to the local church with a gay flag out front. Stop crying about how climate change is going to kill us all but you dont know what you as an individual can do about it, start trees and give them out.

*disclaimer*In efforts to not ‘out’ anyone in the group I will try to be as objective as possible.
This is a story of how our creepy Felon DM destroyed his own group.
On a D&D Facebook group our DM posted that he was looking to start a campaign the group would meet every other week and will take place in the Wild West, and must be 21+ years old there will be drinking and smoking, we live in a state where recreational marijuana is legal. After the group was formed he sent us some history/ lore of his setting. This setting was to mirror the events/cultures and technologies of the Wild West in America, with 5e races being used to represent real life/ historical cultures. For example: elves and goliaths were native americans, minotaurs and orcs were slaves forced to work on railroads, etc you get the picture, a very ‘racial’ setting. This could be seen as problematic and there were POC in the group. This could be seen as offensive, but all this knowledge was known before our first session so we all joined the group willingly.
Session 0 we met at a local game store to create characters and go over backgrounds. After everyone introduced themselves, the DM mentioned he is a veteran DM as well as a fluent German speaker, a professional photographer and a general contractor, also he runs a buisness, what can’t this guy do? Additionally he runs multiple groups every other week, he said he has tons of material and was contracted by Games Workshop to produce a rpg setting in the wild west and that we were fortunate enough to be his test subjects. The session 0 group consisted of: Fighter (male), Monk(male), Cleric(female), Paladin(male), Bloodhunter (male), Druid(female). With Fighter and Druid being new players. The whole group got along well and a majority are still friends to this day.
Before the next session Monk dropped from the group saying he was going through a divorce and couldn't commit to the group. Then the DM found 2 new players, enter Necromancer(male) and Rogue(male).
Session 1 the group was tasked with gathering information on disappearing citizens in a large city. It was believed that a crime lord was kidnapping people for experiments. Lets call the crime lord JB. The group visited an underground fighting ring where JB was rumored to be. Cleric paid JB’s personal champion a visit to try and uncover additional information on the kidnappings. The champion was aggressively hitting on cleric and after cleric failed a couple charisma saving throws DM said “you have sex with him…and by the way he rocks your world”. A major red flag, a dm should never take away player agency and even worse make them sleep with an npc. Then the party escaped the fighting ring, knocking out a couple guards on the way and even stuffing one into a bag of holding.
Next session the DM brought in a new player, Enter Barbarian (female) 18 years old. I bring this up because the DM's original post said you must be 21+. Barbarian is a new player and was looking to join a party on the facebook group. The DM reached out to her and they met over coffee to go over her character. The DM is almost 50 years old and this seemed a little weird. Don’t get me wrong Barbarian was a great addition to the group and an excellent Roleplayer. It's just weird to me that the DM went against his own rules to seek out a minor to join the group. Also in this session the DM had the party visit a Brothel to acquire an elixir that could wipe the memory of the guard we had stuffed in the bag of holding. The DM role played some rather sexual experiences with the group, Barbarian included. He also had NPC’s hit on barbarian, for example: a gnome shopkeeper who was obsessed with her goliath size and boobs, he gave her a discount on goods if she would cradle him like a baby close to her breasts. This was her first session ever….
Also important to mention again that we had 3 brand new players to D&D, they often needed help with their characters or reiteration of the rules when it came down to combat. Almost every time we tried helping a player, the DM would lecture “Guys quit Metagaming” and we’d argue that we are just helping the newbies, Dm would still insist “Yeah but it's still meta gaming”. Oftentimes we were found helping our players either when the DM was away or busy with another player.
A few sessions pass and the group finds the kidnapped individuals in a warehouse, they escape with them through the sewers while being pursued by JB and his men. The group was tasked with bringing these kidnapped npc’s to a refugee camp outside of the city. Paladin had to miss a few sessions for personal reasons. Not to worry, the DM still used Paladin's character in the next session without Paladin’s consent of course.
Next session JB sent a group of trained mercenaries after the group. The DM had Paladin (player is not present) stay back and keep a look out for the npc group following them. He had a sending stone to alert the party if he saw anything suspicious. Eventually the mercenary group captured Paladin. With a gun to Paladin's head the mercenaries confronted the group of PC’s and offered Paladins life in exchange for the kidnapped npc’s. The party initiated the combat in an attempt to save Paladin. As a reaction the Mercenary leader put an eldritch blast powered bullet in the back of Paladin's head. Paladin was dead.
A note about Paladin. Paladin was a beloved character of the group. He was your typical lawful innocent good boy that did everything by the book, he was roleplayed very well with a hilarious character voice. Paladin will be missed.
The pc’s barely survived this encounter. They made it to camp and tried to revive Paladin but Necromancer took Paladin's soul while everyone was asleep (a story for another time, Necromancer deserves his own story). Once Paladins Player returned to the sessions he was made aware of his character's death and rerolled a ranger. Also Blood Hunter's wife joined the party, enter Bard.
The group then wanted to take the paladin's body to his father who was a leader of the church. On the way the party encounters a carnival. A majority of our campaign was spent at this damn carnival. The party checks out the carnival and physically can't escape because of demon magic? The carnival was run by demons and did not let people leave, they used captured people for sacrifices or turned them into carnies/attractions if they were deemed worthy. Most of the party became charmed by the demons and had to do what the DM said. Funny thing is that Rogue made a comment about taking away player agency when failing charisma saves in a prior session, now the party is being magically charmed left and right. Druid escapes to tell Paladin's Dad about what happened and to get help. Blood hunter murders a ton of demons escaping from captivity, which was a really cool scene. This leads us to the end of this campaign.
Throughout the campaign, Necromancer has been collecting bodies and souls to raise an army of the undead. Necromancer makes a deal with the demons and the demons give him powers. All of this is happening on the side between dm and necromancer away from the table so no one besides dm and necromancer knows what's going on. Barbarian failed to make some important saving throws and was under the demon's control. Then Necromancer raises an undead army and takes the brain washed barbarian to fight the rest of the party PVP. At this point a majority of the group just wanted everything to end and additionally Rogue was arguing with the DM more often over very simple rules that the DM was obviously wrong about. For Example DM argued “you can’t move and attack on your turn you have to pick one or the other” to which Rogue argued. “You can, it's in the 5e rules it's a part of the action economy”.
Final session Rogue goes down in some PVP and is making death saves and asks barbarian to “just fucking kill me”. To which DM shouts “THIS IS MY FUCKING GAME AND I SAY WHO LIVES AND WHO DIES”. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife, everything just seemed awkward and out of place. Necromancer died for like the 4th time and was still probably not dead. Paladin's dad showed up to fight demons and then the cleric saved everyone with holy light and teleported them out of the demon carnival.
At one point Cleric backs out of the group due to personal reasons. And to be fair the DM ignored her constantly, she commuted a long way to play in this group and rarely got to play.The session before she left was a 5 hour combat session, she only got 5 minutes of actual game pla.Then more people started leaving the group,some had valid excuses, others just left without saying anything. Apart from the incidents that I mentioned there were other issues with the DM, many of which were just blatant lies. Examples include:

• Fighter was a brand new player and sometimes his turns would take longer than others because he was trying to figure out what to do, as most new players do. The DM would get irritated and lecture the whole group “Everyone should know their characters by now, there's no excuse to take this long on your turn.” And then we’d get yelled at if we tried to help.
• One session German “cheers” was made by Cleric who spent some time in Germany. The DM had no idea what the word ‘Prost” meant, which is just a German cheer for drinking. I don't think the DM spoke German.
• Next At Druid's birthday celebration He offered to take “professional pictures” of her as a birthday gift. This is kind of creepy if you ask me, funny to mention Druid looks almost identical to Dm’s ex wife.
• DM is not a licensed professional photographer, nor is he a licensed contractor nor is he a owner of a business..at least anymore that is. Turns out DM did own a non profit that serviced the homeless community. However, DM was arrested with 8 felony charges for stealing $349,000.00 from his non-profit the year earlier. This wasn't known to the group until a player google searched dm’s name. His mug shot was the first thing that popped up along with a TV news segment about him.
• Also I highly doubt Games Workshop was working with the DM on a setting that mostly took place in a carnival. Also GamesWorkshop wouldn’t use 5e as means of playing the setting they have their own game system.
• The Campaign was very….. Not western. We were in a metropolis or a carnival most of the time. The DM did minimal role playing so the world never felt immersed, unless it was to hit on our female players, then dm role played.
• Physically picking up Druid to prove some kind of point about weight?
• Farting! Omg the farting he would constantly rip in front of people at the table and wouldn’t leave to use the restroom.
• People were constantly ignored or their turns just out right skipped. I get there were like 9 people including the DM and that is a lot to manage, however the way the DM talked himself up this seemed like this should be a walk in the park.

After leaving the wild west d&d group some of the players started a new group and are still playing to this day and a lot of close friendships were made.
A tip to players and DMs everywhere: establish boundaries at session 0, don’t take away the players freedom, don’t kill your PC’s players when they’re away, also if something seems weird, google search your player or dm if their mug shot immediately pops up that might not be a good sign.
TLDR; Controlling DM lies about himself to his players, turns out to be a creep and a felon.

There has been a lot of discussion about Cornel West because of his announced campaign. With a wide variety of reactions. But one reaction I've noted is people who do know how stupid splitting the vote is, but say that he is championing progressive causes or that he is very progressive.
Now he acts Progressive. He says certain buzzwords. But is he? Or is he really just a crank who has gone right?
Splitting the Vote for Trump
This campaign is nothing new for Cornel West. From his own mouth

Brother Bernie and Brother Trump are authentic human beings in stark contrast to their donor-driven opponents.

In the 2016 campaign, he was praising Trump over Clinton.And then endorsed Jill Stein. You don't have to like Clinton, to know how high the stakes were. And of course, as we now all know the stakes were high. 3 Supreme Court Justices, hundreds of lower federal judges, endemic corruption, criminalisation of immigrants, rise in hate crimes, and Trump utterly botching the crisis that happened under his watch, Covid killing over a million Americans.
But lots of people made that mistake as well. However, he is doing it all over again, after all this shit happened.
And Now Trump is even worse. He is explicitly campaigning against democracy itself because of his grudge about losing, he has made a campaign promise to invade Mexico, Ukraine will almost certainly get cut off reviving the Russian invasion and he explicitly wants to purge the Federal government of all non-loyalists, including bureaucratic roles. Cornel West has no hope of winning, all he is doing is taking away Democratic votes.
DeSantis, Chris Rufo and Cornel West
However, Cornel West doesn't just have an unfortunate past of praising Donald Trump. He also has a current history of praising Ron DeSantis and working with evangelical right-wingers, and their education causes.
Recently he wrote an Op-ed
DeSantis’s Revolutionary Defense of the Classics

By Cornel West and Jeremy Wayne Tate
Gov. Ron DeSantis just gave a welcome boost to the classical-education movement. He signed legislation allowing high-school students to qualify for Bright Futures scholarships, a state fund for college education, by submitting scores from the Classic Learning Test instead of the SAT alone.
This move will likely be portrayed, wrongly, as partisan and conservative. But the greatest works of civilization have always been about spurring—not preventing—radical change. They teach us about the revolutionary ideas of the past and help us better understand the present. The richest ideas of what it means to be human are those that have stood the test of time.
Many of the seminal works of literature, history, philosophy, science and theology were revolutionary in their respective ages. Turn the pages of Galileo Galilei’s “Two New Sciences” and you’ll experience the alteration of humanity’s view of itself in relation to the heavens. By disproving the then-common belief that the planets revolved around the Earth rather than the sun, Galileo laid the foundation for modern science. Isaac Newton, swept aside what remained of the Old World’s scientific superstitions—only to find himself upstaged two centuries later by Albert Einstein’s “Relativity.”
Like revolutionary ideas today, the ideas of yesterday were provocative and, in many cases, much more consequential. Galileo was put on trial because he upset the status quo. In the 13th century, Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris condemned key works of theologian Thomas Aquinas for being too radical. Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn and civil-rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. were imprisoned for their views. In colonial America, James Madison and his co-authors feared printing their names on the Federalist Papers, so they hid under aliases. Even the most mild-mannered of philosophers stirred trouble for thinking against the grain. Plato watched his great teacher Socrates put to death for his teachings.
Revolutionary figures of the past give us insight into the present and allow for reflection on the consequences of their choices. Julius Caesar, one of antiquity’s most recognizable leaders, teaches us the cost of revolution through his histories. By crossing into Rome with his armies, he ended the republic and created the Roman Empire, a crime for which he paid with his life. But in his firsthand descriptions of the often-brutal tactics he employed to achieve political transformation, he left behind deep insight. Caesar’s direct and simple prose conveys the reality of going to war—all without reference to contemporary conflicts.
That’s one of the virtues of the classics: They are a means of considering what is true without invoking the blind partisanship that encourages thoughtless action. There is nothing we need more today than the cultivation of reason and understanding.
That’s why Mr. DeSantis’s support of classic education has universal merit that transcends partisanship. Education based on values, logic and discipline isn’t Republican—it’s timeless.
Mr. West holds a chair at Union Theological Seminary and serves on the board of academic advisers of the Classic Learning Test. Mr. Tate is founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test.

In this article, he praises DeSantis for introducing the Classic Learning Test (CLT) to Florida schools. He has a lot of fancy words about the various historical thinkers who went against the grain. Sounds nice. I wonder how Ron DeSantis is treating free inquiry in Florida?
But in reality, this is really just a handout to an incredible niche test used by a handful of Evangelical right-wing schools. The CLT dates all the way back to ... 2015. It's just a way for Republicans to spend education money fattening the pockets of the CLT advisors to provide these tests, and to push students away from real universities to ones that teach them nonsense. And the guys profiting from this, is Cornel West's co-author on this article who started the test and Cornel West himself.
But also, pushing the 'Western Classics' didn't happen in a vacuum. Ron DeSantis pushed the CLT, as part of his plot to get rid of African American Studies and other 'woke' courses that are part of the AP studies.

TALLAHASSEE — In February, when Gov. Ron DeSantis went after the College Board’s new Advanced Placement course on African American studies, he hinted that Florida might do without the organization’s courses and tests.
Two months later, Republican state lawmakers are preparing to head in that direction.
Using their budget proposal and a bill (HB 1537) that’s viewed as the Florida Department of Education’s legislation, the House and Senate are looking to pivot from the College Board’s Advanced Placement courses and SAT exam to other alternatives.
For the SAT, the state is considering a “classical and Christian” exam alternative called Classic Learning Test. It would be used as an optional graduation test requirement and to determine Bright Futures scholarship eligibility, as well as a college entrance exam at Florida’s public colleges and universities. Schools would have the option to administer the SAT, ACT or Classic Learning Test starting next school year.
For AP, the chambers have agreed to spend millions creating Florida-based alternative courses and tests, asking state universities and colleges to help establish the materials. A third-party organization would help create the exams.

Cornel West's own books would likely be in the firing line of Florida schools for writing about the Black experience in a way that wasn't completely stripped of all real history.
And who else is on the CLT Board?
Christopher Rufo, listed as Senior Fellow, The Manhattan Institute. Rufo was also appointed by DeSantis to destroy Florida's New College.. So he isn't just a think tanker, but directly on DeSantis's payroll.
Also included is Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation.
If you look at the photo the CLT board posted, its literally just a sea of White Republicans.
So Cornel West has no problem writing a public article praising Ron DeSantis for helping free inquiry, as he tries to get rid of any books about LGBT people or Black people and working alongside Chris Rufo, the guy who managed the Right Wings Critical Race Theory panic. Seems bad.
Ask yourself. If a Biden appointee to Education Secretary had this kind of background of supporting the privatisation of schools, and of hanging around figures like these, would you be cool with it? No of course not.
The People's People Grift
You might also note from his announcement that he isn't running for the Green Party, which already has ballot lines in many states. But for the People's Party.
Said People's Party is headed up by Nick Brana, and has been championed heavily by Jimmy Dore.
Both Nick Brana and Jimmy Dore have been credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault.
And this is what the People's Party online presence looks like
https://twitter.com/marionumber4/status/1665768271637782532
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fx32IR5WAAQTjzf?format=jpg&name=large
Very left-wing. Totally not a right-wing grift.
In terms of the other track record of the People's Party, they aggressively solicited donations and promised that they would run dozens of candidates in the 2022 midterm. They didn't run a single one. Wonder where all that money went?
So the bright spark from all of this is that likely the People's Party will grift all the donations sent in, and not use it to actually get ballot access outside of the handful of states they have access to.
His Platform
Cornel West's website right now, is pretty limited. But one issue caught my eye in particular

End the Wars Bring our troops home and invest those trillions of war dollars into American communities. Support veterans, stop all foreign military aid, close the bases, disband NATO, and ban nuclear weapons globally.

Stop all foreign military aid and disband NATO. You know, while Russia is aggressively invading Ukraine. Yet another Leftist that is pro Imperialist invasion by a Neo Tsar.
What wars? Bring the troops home from where exactly. Biden already left Afghanistan and Iraq a couple of years ago.
And I wonder what magical spell he has in mind, to get Russia, China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel to consider giving up their nuclear weapons.
More of the Company he keeps
Other assorted people, he hangs out with
He is of course a constantly returning guest on Bill Maher.
https://twitter.com/cassiepmillestatus/1138583273242857472

I wish "Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, and Cornel West walk into a bar..." was the beginning of a joke, but I'm sorry to report that it is actually real life

He decided the prime place to announce his candidacy is on ... Russel Brand. Who went full anti-vaxx and Pro Russia.
https://twitter.com/CornelWest/status/1666114005877010432
https://twitter.com/themattdimitri/status/1543780892241543171

Hate group founder Gavin McInnes asks Cornel West to name an American fascist West: There's a spiritual fascism inside all of us... as a Christian I see it inside of myself Candace Owens: The Klan were Democrats West: Yes, they were [As if MLK had no idea of that history of Dems]
Candace Owens: They tried to blame me for a mass shooting in New Zealand, saying that this person got radicalized by my ideas of Black conservatism in America The Christchurch New Zealand Mosque shooter stated in his manifesto Owens was the "person who radicalized [him] the most"

Reportedly he went on this because Gavin McInnes was offering money to do it, which other figures turned down

I gave Matthew this footage. I have the full segments for both appearances. At the time McInnes was begging liberals to go on this show offering them $5000 an appearance - Dave Packman, Sam Seder and Ana Kasparian all reported McInnes offered them money.

Selling out for $5,000. I guess we know his price to sit down with a Nazi, on two separate appearances.
Conclusion
So if you consider everything. At best, he is incredibly naive and easily taken in by Right-wingers which makes him utterly unsuited to any political position, let alone President. And more likely, he just doesn't give a fuck, and is cashing out. While also being a crank.

There has been a lot of discussion about Cornel West because of his announced campaign. With a wide variety of reactions. But one reaction I've noted is people who do know how stupid splitting the vote is, but say that he is championing progressive causes or that he is very progressive.
Now he acts Progressive. He says certain buzzwords. But is he? Or is he really just a crank who has gone right?
Splitting the Vote for Trump
This campaign is nothing new for Cornel West. From his own mouth

Brother Bernie and Brother Trump are authentic human beings in stark contrast to their donor-driven opponents.

In the 2016 campaign, he was praising Trump over Clinton.And then endorsed Jill Stein. You don't have to like Clinton, to know how high the stakes were. And of course, as we now all know the stakes were high. 3 Supreme Court Justices, hundreds of lower federal judges, endemic corruption, criminalisation of immigrants, rise in hate crimes, and Trump utterly botching the crisis that happened under his watch, Covid killing over a million Americans.
But lots of people made that mistake as well. However, he is doing it all over again, after all this happened.
And Now Trump is even worse. He is explicitly campaigning against democracy itself because of his grudge about losing, he has made a campaign promise to invade Mexico, Ukraine will almost certainly get cut off reviving the Russian invasion and he explicitly wants to purge the Federal government of all non-loyalists, including bureaucratic roles. Cornel West has no hope of winning, all he is doing is taking away Democratic votes.
DeSantis, Chris Rufo and Cornel West
However, Cornel West doesn't just have an unfortunate past of praising Donald Trump. He also has a current history of praising Ron DeSantis and working with evangelical right-wingers, and their education causes.
Recently he wrote an Op-ed
DeSantis’s Revolutionary Defense of the Classics

By Cornel West and Jeremy Wayne Tate
Gov. Ron DeSantis just gave a welcome boost to the classical-education movement. He signed legislation allowing high-school students to qualify for Bright Futures scholarships, a state fund for college education, by submitting scores from the Classic Learning Test instead of the SAT alone.
This move will likely be portrayed, wrongly, as partisan and conservative. But the greatest works of civilization have always been about spurring—not preventing—radical change. They teach us about the revolutionary ideas of the past and help us better understand the present. The richest ideas of what it means to be human are those that have stood the test of time.
Many of the seminal works of literature, history, philosophy, science and theology were revolutionary in their respective ages. Turn the pages of Galileo Galilei’s “Two New Sciences” and you’ll experience the alteration of humanity’s view of itself in relation to the heavens. By disproving the then-common belief that the planets revolved around the Earth rather than the sun, Galileo laid the foundation for modern science. Isaac Newton, swept aside what remained of the Old World’s scientific superstitions—only to find himself upstaged two centuries later by Albert Einstein’s “Relativity.”
Like revolutionary ideas today, the ideas of yesterday were provocative and, in many cases, much more consequential. Galileo was put on trial because he upset the status quo. In the 13th century, Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris condemned key works of theologian Thomas Aquinas for being too radical. Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn and civil-rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. were imprisoned for their views. In colonial America, James Madison and his co-authors feared printing their names on the Federalist Papers, so they hid under aliases. Even the most mild-mannered of philosophers stirred trouble for thinking against the grain. Plato watched his great teacher Socrates put to death for his teachings.
Revolutionary figures of the past give us insight into the present and allow for reflection on the consequences of their choices. Julius Caesar, one of antiquity’s most recognizable leaders, teaches us the cost of revolution through his histories. By crossing into Rome with his armies, he ended the republic and created the Roman Empire, a crime for which he paid with his life. But in his firsthand descriptions of the often-brutal tactics he employed to achieve political transformation, he left behind deep insight. Caesar’s direct and simple prose conveys the reality of going to war—all without reference to contemporary conflicts.
That’s one of the virtues of the classics: They are a means of considering what is true without invoking the blind partisanship that encourages thoughtless action. There is nothing we need more today than the cultivation of reason and understanding.
That’s why Mr. DeSantis’s support of classic education has universal merit that transcends partisanship. Education based on values, logic and discipline isn’t Republican—it’s timeless.
Mr. West holds a chair at Union Theological Seminary and serves on the board of academic advisers of the Classic Learning Test. Mr. Tate is founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test.

In this article, he praises DeSantis for introducing the Classic Learning Test (CLT) to Florida schools. He has a lot of fancy words about the various historical thinkers who went against the grain. Sounds nice. I wonder how Ron DeSantis is treating free inquiry in Florida?
But in reality, this is really just a handout to an incredible niche test used by a handful of Evangelical right-wing schools. The CLT dates all the way back to ... 2015. It's just a way for Republicans to spend education money fattening the pockets of the CLT advisors to provide these tests, and to push students away from real universities to ones that teach them nonsense. And the guys profiting from this, is Cornel West's co-author on this article who started the test and Cornel West himself.
But also, pushing the 'Western Classics' didn't happen in a vacuum. Ron DeSantis pushed the CLT, as part of his plot to get rid of African American Studies and other 'woke' courses that are part of the AP studies.

TALLAHASSEE — In February, when Gov. Ron DeSantis went after the College Board’s new Advanced Placement course on African American studies, he hinted that Florida might do without the organization’s courses and tests.
Two months later, Republican state lawmakers are preparing to head in that direction.
Using their budget proposal and a bill (HB 1537) that’s viewed as the Florida Department of Education’s legislation, the House and Senate are looking to pivot from the College Board’s Advanced Placement courses and SAT exam to other alternatives.
For the SAT, the state is considering a “classical and Christian” exam alternative called Classic Learning Test. It would be used as an optional graduation test requirement and to determine Bright Futures scholarship eligibility, as well as a college entrance exam at Florida’s public colleges and universities. Schools would have the option to administer the SAT, ACT or Classic Learning Test starting next school year.
For AP, the chambers have agreed to spend millions creating Florida-based alternative courses and tests, asking state universities and colleges to help establish the materials. A third-party organization would help create the exams.

Cornel West's own books would likely be in the firing line of Florida schools for writing about the Black experience in a way that wasn't completely stripped of all real history.
And who else is on the CLT Board?
Christopher Rufo, listed as Senior Fellow, The Manhattan Institute. Rufo was also appointed by DeSantis to destroy Florida's New College.. So he isn't just a think tanker, but directly on DeSantis's payroll.
Also included is Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation.
If you look at the photo the CLT board posted, its literally just a sea of White Republicans.
So Cornel West has no problem writing a public article praising Ron DeSantis for helping free inquiry, as he tries to get rid of any books about LGBT people or Black people and working alongside Chris Rufo, the guy who managed the Right Wings Critical Race Theory panic. Seems bad.
Ask yourself. If a Biden appointee to Education Secretary had this kind of background of supporting the privatisation of schools, and of hanging around figures like these, would you be cool with it? No of course not.
The People's People Grift
You might also note from his announcement that he isn't running for the Green Party, which already has ballot lines in many states. But for the People's Party.
Said People's Party is headed up by Nick Brana, and has been championed heavily by Jimmy Dore.
Both Nick Brana and Jimmy Dore have been credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault.
And this is what the People's Party online presence looks like
https://twitter.com/marionumber4/status/1665768271637782532
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fx32IR5WAAQTjzf?format=jpg&name=large
Very left-wing. Totally not a right-wing grift.
In terms of the other track record of the People's Party, they aggressively solicited donations and promised that they would run dozens of candidates in the 2022 midterm. They didn't run a single one. Wonder where all that money went?
So the bright spark from all of this is that likely the People's Party will grift all the donations sent in, and not use it to actually get ballot access outside of the handful of states they have access to.
His Platform
Cornel West's website right now, is pretty limited. But one issue caught my eye in particular

End the Wars Bring our troops home and invest those trillions of war dollars into American communities. Support veterans, stop all foreign military aid, close the bases, disband NATO, and ban nuclear weapons globally.

Stop all foreign military aid and disband NATO. You know, while Russia is aggressively invading Ukraine. Yet another Leftist that is pro Imperialist invasion by a Neo Tsar.
What wars? Bring the troops home from where exactly. Biden already left Afghanistan and Iraq a couple of years ago.
And I wonder what magical spell he has in mind, to get Russia, China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel to consider giving up their nuclear weapons.
More of the Company he keeps
Other assorted people, he hangs out with
He is of course a constantly returning guest on Bill Maher.
https://twitter.com/cassiepmillestatus/1138583273242857472

I wish "Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, and Cornel West walk into a bar..." was the beginning of a joke, but I'm sorry to report that it is actually real life

He decided the prime place to announce his candidacy is on ... Russel Brand. Who went full anti-vaxx and Pro Russia.
https://twitter.com/CornelWest/status/1666114005877010432
https://twitter.com/themattdimitri/status/1543780892241543171

Hate group founder Gavin McInnes asks Cornel West to name an American fascist West: There's a spiritual fascism inside all of us... as a Christian I see it inside of myself Candace Owens: The Klan were Democrats West: Yes, they were [As if MLK had no idea of that history of Dems]
Candace Owens: They tried to blame me for a mass shooting in New Zealand, saying that this person got radicalized by my ideas of Black conservatism in America The Christchurch New Zealand Mosque shooter stated in his manifesto Owens was the "person who radicalized [him] the most"

Reportedly he went on this because Gavin McInnes was offering money to do it, which other figures turned down

I gave Matthew this footage. I have the full segments for both appearances. At the time McInnes was begging liberals to go on this show offering them $5000 an appearance - Dave Packman, Sam Seder and Ana Kasparian all reported McInnes offered them money.

Selling out for $5,000. I guess we know his price to sit down with a Nazi, on two separate appearances.
Conclusion
So if you consider everything. At best, he is incredibly naive and easily taken in by Right-wingers which makes him utterly unsuited to any political position, let alone President. And more likely, he just doesn't care, and is cashing out. While also being a crank.

I bought two tickets to every single show back in November (except night 1-2 because they sold out) and brought my friend with me from Florida who isn’t really a gizz head but I love him and I just got to say that I fucking love this community. I’ve never been camping at a festival and the whole experience was legendary. We meet so many great people who I hope we see for the rest of my life. So many great stories to tell to the rest of my friends about how we got in for free on night one and almost got kicked out night 4 for sneaking in on the 1st. How we traded bananas for other fruits and vegetables and tried to feed everyone we could with potassium. We are creating a documentary about our whole trip and hope to share it with you when we get home late in June. Can’t wait to see y’all at red rocks tomorrow…Shout out Tyler he the realest

First, allow me to say THANK YOU to all those commenting, responding, sharing your experiences and otherwise sending good wishes and wonderful vibes. I had no idea I would stike such a nerve with so many and the response has been overwhelming to say the least! Sharing my experiences here has been very therapuetic and I truly do appreciate the comments- I love the online community and there is indeed support to be found here.
Having said that, I'm also absolutely terrified! I'm not an eloquent speaker (or writer) by any stretch, and I fear that the ensuing continuation of my experience this past Sunday may be a let-down for some folks. I'm not trying to rack-up likes or faves or blue checkmarks or whatever the heck makes things work as they do on these social media sites. I tend to really ramble and sometimes my words and thoughts get the better of me, so my apologies if Part 2 isn't up to par. I'll do my best to stay focused as I write this but it may be a bit long.
Second, I really do love my Bishop and I'm not trying to paint him in any particular negative light because he really is a great guy and I consider him a friend. He is STRUGGLING to do what he thinks is right, in the name of Deity, out of a higher sense of purpose, to truly help when and where he can, with impossible mandates/expectations from higher leadership and all the while sacrificing his time and even his family to do it. He is a YES man through and through but I find NO PLEASURE watching someone devote so much and then on top of that have to deal with his own problems/anxieties/issues. And you should see the guy that's been his First Counselor the last few months! NO ONE should have to put up with that guy either! He really is a good guy, in fact all of our local leaders are fantastic people. I do think our ward and stake won Leadership Roulette with our Bishop and our Stake President, but alas, sometimes even they cannot see the forest for the trees, thus my posting this. I just wish I could've done more. So here goes..
So immediately following our Bishopric meeting this past Sunday, Bishop hurriedly dragged me into the Clerk's office to question me. I was admittedly nervous, but also thinking how long it would take before word-of-mouth spread to the rest of the ward. I have a vivid imagination and as I walked into the clerk's office, I was imagining the other members of the Bishopric texting their wives "Honey! You'll never guess what happened in Bishopric Meeting today!!" So I had a stupid grin as the Bishop began to question me. He simply asked what was up and I told him that I was going through quite a lot right now, and, of all the problems I was having that were BEYOND my control, my calling as First Counselor was something I COULD control. He asked me if there was any one particular reason why I thought I couldn't handle my calling and I told him there were several:
- I told him that our ward wasn't growing and that this was evident to me for several reasons (this becomes a very interesting if not humorous point in Part 3). Of all the units that meet in our building, ours is the only one that CLOSES the curtains to the overflow for our Sacrament Meetings. That Sacrament attendance has been steady if not in a slow decline for the last 2 years since they split our ward, and there is a clear dearth in leadership as a result. They gutted our ward and gerrymandered the boundaries just to create one additional unit. I've harped to him about this before because while we gave up half our active members and priesthood holders to 3 other units, we gained nothing but hundreds of inactive members on our roster while almost tripling the size of our ward boundaries. I mention this point specifically because it comes into play later. High Priests in our ward are few in number and finding such to fill leadership positions is a futile endeavor. This lack of priesthood holders, I think, is leading to some very desperate callings being made. Got any evidence Bro. Peabody? Yep: my very own calling. I reminded the Bishop that the Lord didn't call me, but HE did, simply out of desperation. And once Bishop realized I was having my own faith crisis, questioning so much about the church and having real serious issues about the organization HE STILL OFFERED ME THE CALLING. If that's not desperation I don't know what is.
- We average about 120 members or so attending Sacrament each week and that hasn't changed really since the Pandemic. So it's the SAME families each and every week, and yeah, the dread when I approach them to speak/pray is clearly evident. I told the Bishop I am tired of calling upon the "SAME TEN PEOPLE" each and every week.
- I have NEVER been trained as a counselor (was previously on the HC), will NEVER be trained as a counselor, and the calling as I understood it has drastically changed since I last served in a Bishopric in the mid 2000s. And the Handbook of Instructions is of NO HELP in this regard. The stake doesn't see fit to train us either and the SP and his counselors will be released this October so I doubt anything is coming down the Pike training-wise in the months ahead.
- I told Bishop that I have more than enough "duties" in my calling that I will NEVER complete/finish because the higher ups seem to think I live for this. I reminded him that while Church has been an important part of my life, Church IS NOT MY LIFE. I also reminded him that before I was set apart that I wasn't available for most of what HE thought I was responsible for, and that I was NOT the solution to his manpoweleadership problems. I agreed to do what I could, when I could but handling the Youth and supervising the Young Men were not my problem. I was trained my entire life in the Church to be a Scout Leader, and since the Church dumped the Scouting Program and all the good that went with it, I have no idea what this new youth program is about or what I am to be doing with it (see previous point about lack of training). When he reminded me that Young Men was part of my responsibilities, I reminded him once again what I agreed to before I was set apart. (I've posted this before, but it seems appropriate to again share this example of me pointing out the absurdity of some Church Leadership Decisions: Bishop was giving me the what for about how I was supposed to be doing X/Y/Z with the Young Men as part of my calling, and I told him "What you need Bishop, is to call a Young Men's President." [Very Long Pause] I continue in a very sarcastic voice while rolling my eyes- "Oh, yeah, that's right, Jesus told his One True Prophet to do away with that calling. I wonder why Jesus would do that?" If looks could kill, but he knew I was right, so I told him "Be that as it may, you CAN still call someone to do that calling, just don't call it YM President" and that's exactly what he did and the guy he called to do it is PERFECT for that role.)
- He asked me about what I would do to retain my relationship with God and Christ, and I told him it will be just like old times- that my family was left to our own selves during the Pandemic and we never felt closer to our Redeemer or Heavenly Father than during that time. Turns out Church needs us more than we need Church, and as for continuing that relationship, my faith is now on me, and will be more real than at any other time in my life, because it will be a faith through action, not just to put checkmarks into little boxes, or pass a quiz to gain entrance into an expensive white building.
- My faith crisis never went away. I may be more "mellow" as he puts it, but my life is way more chaotic then it was a few months ago. I don't sleep well, I have anxiety, I'm sure depression is part of that mix and my relationship with my wife isn't exactly the Cleaver Family ideal. Some of the things we talk about in Ward Council HAUNT ME. I mean it. I have actual nightmares about it. These are real people with real problems needing real help being discussed by people who aren't trained in such matters inviting themselves into other's problems with no real solutions and then patting themselves on the back for all the good they thought they did. WARNING: relevant true story coming. The sister missionaries in our ward were teaching a young unmarried couple. The young woman, an unemployed mother of 3 I think, really wanted to get baptized. The young man was a college student, owned the only car they had, and it obviously was a relationship of convenience. I think he had a part-time job while also trying to go to school so he was the only bread-winner of their little family. The problem of course is that this couple was COHABITATING. Gasp! They're living together, unmarried, in sin! The Sisters were advising her that in order to qualify for baptism, she would either have to marry the guy or leave him and they were leaning heavily that she should leave him. So the discussion in Ward Council was along the lines of how they could somehow convince her that this guy was nothing but trouble and she could do better, and that since they were having issues in their relationship, leaving him wasn't so bad. And right in the middle of that, in the midst of some levity of the moment I asked- "so how many kids does this mom have?" Sister missionary: 3. "And how old is the youngest?" An infant, maybe a few months old. "And who is the father of the youngest child?" This guy, the college student. And suddenly the room got very quiet. I looked at the Bishop and I said, "how does this work? In order for this young woman to be baptised, she has to leave the father of her youngest child. That poor baby will literally be orphaned from their father just so their mom can join the Church?! Where is Jesus' love in that?! And worse, since this would be a convert baptism, it falls not under the Bishop, but the local mission, so a 20 year-old Elder who has NO time invested with this woman would be making that decision, NOT the Sisters who have been working with the family. And that Elder would be looking to boost their baptism numbers at all costs, the needs of the infant to have a father in the home be damned! So she leaves the father, gets baptised and loses her only means of financial support and now it will be left up to the Church to take care of her?!" There was no more laughing in Ward Council. There were no smiles. Slowly the stupidity of the process was crossing their minds and the Sisters were slowly coming to the realization that they were breaking up a family just so one person could be baptized and a +1 added to their stats. THAT ONE CASE in Ward Council kept me up at night for the next several days, so yes, it truly HAUNTED me. Why did an infant child have to lose their real father just because their parents weren't married and the mom wanted to be baptized? It also pissed me off that I was the only idiot in the room to question the situation and what possible future outcomes could result for that child. I would like to say there was a happy ending, but, like so many other Ward Council outcomes, it will be taken up at the next meeting.
- I accepted the call more as a means of payment-in-kind for all those great and wonderful church leaders I had while in my youth, because our ward HURTS desperately for such leadership. You know, giving back and all that Jazz. And not just accept the calling but to do so knowing full well all of the problems and issues with the larger organization. I couldn't think of a better analogy but I asked Bishop if he ever believed in Santa Claus. He said he thinks he did, but it was too long ago. Did you ever write letters to Santa? Maybe. Well for me the Church is like Santa Claus. How did you feel when you realized that Santa Claus wasn't real? Multiply that horrible feeling times 250 billion (thanks Ensign Peak Advisors!) and that's where I am faith-wise. No amount of believing can bring Santa back to me, but I'm still a huge fan of Christmas- I like the smells, the food, the lights, the feelings. So I may not believe in Santa anymore, but I can still be a good elf and serve the cause of Christmas right? Mormon means "more good" and that's why I accepted the call. Bishop knew my baggage before I accepted so he was truly impressed I held it together for as long as I did, but neither of us were surprised.
- I told him I have even more issues with the Church then ever before. When my non-member neighbors, my non-member friends and my non-member co-workers are doing MORE in my community than my church, I have issues with that. When other churches in my community, with paltry resources compared to Mormon Inc., are doing more to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless and visit those in prison than my church, I have issues with that. It's never been more plain to me what Jesus taught, and what we as a church should be doing yet WE ARE NOT. I was a Stake Auditor and I know exactly what our stake spent in this community last year ($25,591.82 for a city of 270K+). I told Bishop that I would be supporting those organizations in my community with both my time and money that at least are doing things to help people here. [That dollar amount is exact for the entire year of 2022 for ALL expenditures in our Stake. So that includes re-imbursements, YW's Camp as well as all Fast Offering expenditures to help those in need. So subtract the re-imbursements and other costs and you quickly see that even LESS was spent in our stake for the poor and needy than the paltry $25Kand change would suggest.]
- He asked if I wanted to be "left alone" and what future church involvement might be and I said I wasn't sure. My wife, who has been quite content not attending church, mentioned to me recently she might want to resume attending. I told Bishop we're not asking to have our names removed, and if nothing else, we're here and available for others who will soon be questioning their faith and perhaps can be supportive about that. I got a blank double-blink from him on that one!
He asked me if he could call the Stake President, which seemed silly to me. Of course! He's gonna find out sooner or later and probably needs to know! Our SP is currently in Europe and I cannot wait to hear from/visit with him about this. I spent about 12 minutes alone with the Bishop by which time other members of the Ward Council had arrived and then we headed into our next meeting. Now I really do love my Bishop and he's the one I feel most sorry for. He has shared with me some of the issues his own family is dealing with and I remind him constantly that HIS top priority is HIS family. And I feel for the 2nd counselor too. I love these men, they are great people yet they cannot see the forest for the trees sometimes. However, the best part for me about church Sunday, and maybe even with some schadenfreude added too, came during Sacrament meeting...
- End of Part 2 -

There has been a lot of discussion about Cornel West because of his announced campaign. With a wide variety of reactions. But one reaction I've noted is people who do know how stupid splitting the vote is, but say that he is championing progressive causes or that he is very progressive.
Now he acts Progressive. He says certain buzzwords. But is he? Or is he really just a crank who has gone right?
Splitting the Vote for Trump
This campaign is nothing new for Cornel West. From his own mouth

Brother Bernie and Brother Trump are authentic human beings in stark contrast to their donor-driven opponents.

In the 2016 campaign, he was praising Trump over Clinton.And then endorsed Jill Stein. You don't have to like Clinton, to know how high the stakes were. And of course, as we now all know the stakes were high. 3 Supreme Court Justices, hundreds of lower federal judges, endemic corruption, criminalisation of immigrants, rise in hate crimes, and Trump utterly botching the crisis that happened under his watch, Covid killing over a million Americans.
But lots of people made that mistake as well. However, he is doing it all over again, after all this shit happened.
And Now Trump is even worse. He is explicitly campaigning against democracy itself because of his grudge about losing, he has made a campaign promise to invade Mexico, Ukraine will almost certainly get cut off reviving the Russian invasion and he explicitly wants to purge the Federal government of all non-loyalists, including bureaucratic roles. Cornel West has no hope of winning, all he is doing is taking away Democratic votes.
DeSantis, Chris Rufo and Cornel West
However, Cornel West doesn't just have an unfortunate past of praising Donald Trump. He also has a current history of praising Ron DeSantis and working with evangelical right-wingers, and their education causes.
Recently he wrote an Op-ed
DeSantis’s Revolutionary Defense of the Classics

By Cornel West and Jeremy Wayne Tate
Gov. Ron DeSantis just gave a welcome boost to the classical-education movement. He signed legislation allowing high-school students to qualify for Bright Futures scholarships, a state fund for college education, by submitting scores from the Classic Learning Test instead of the SAT alone.
This move will likely be portrayed, wrongly, as partisan and conservative. But the greatest works of civilization have always been about spurring—not preventing—radical change. They teach us about the revolutionary ideas of the past and help us better understand the present. The richest ideas of what it means to be human are those that have stood the test of time.
Many of the seminal works of literature, history, philosophy, science and theology were revolutionary in their respective ages. Turn the pages of Galileo Galilei’s “Two New Sciences” and you’ll experience the alteration of humanity’s view of itself in relation to the heavens. By disproving the then-common belief that the planets revolved around the Earth rather than the sun, Galileo laid the foundation for modern science. Isaac Newton, swept aside what remained of the Old World’s scientific superstitions—only to find himself upstaged two centuries later by Albert Einstein’s “Relativity.”
Like revolutionary ideas today, the ideas of yesterday were provocative and, in many cases, much more consequential. Galileo was put on trial because he upset the status quo. In the 13th century, Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris condemned key works of theologian Thomas Aquinas for being too radical. Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn and civil-rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. were imprisoned for their views. In colonial America, James Madison and his co-authors feared printing their names on the Federalist Papers, so they hid under aliases. Even the most mild-mannered of philosophers stirred trouble for thinking against the grain. Plato watched his great teacher Socrates put to death for his teachings.
Revolutionary figures of the past give us insight into the present and allow for reflection on the consequences of their choices. Julius Caesar, one of antiquity’s most recognizable leaders, teaches us the cost of revolution through his histories. By crossing into Rome with his armies, he ended the republic and created the Roman Empire, a crime for which he paid with his life. But in his firsthand descriptions of the often-brutal tactics he employed to achieve political transformation, he left behind deep insight. Caesar’s direct and simple prose conveys the reality of going to war—all without reference to contemporary conflicts.
That’s one of the virtues of the classics: They are a means of considering what is true without invoking the blind partisanship that encourages thoughtless action. There is nothing we need more today than the cultivation of reason and understanding.
That’s why Mr. DeSantis’s support of classic education has universal merit that transcends partisanship. Education based on values, logic and discipline isn’t Republican—it’s timeless.
Mr. West holds a chair at Union Theological Seminary and serves on the board of academic advisers of the Classic Learning Test. Mr. Tate is founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test.

In this article, he praises DeSantis for introducing the Classic Learning Test (CLT) to Florida schools. He has a lot of fancy words about the various historical thinkers who went against the grain. Sounds nice. I wonder how Ron DeSantis is treating free inquiry in Florida?
But in reality, this is really just a handout to an incredible niche test used by a handful of Evangelical right-wing schools. The CLT dates all the way back to ... 2015. It's just a way for Republicans to spend education money fattening the pockets of the CLT advisors to provide these tests, and to push students away from real universities to ones that teach them nonsense. And the guys profiting from this, is Cornel West's co-author on this article who started the test and Cornel West himself.
But also, pushing the 'Western Classics' didn't happen in a vacuum. Ron DeSantis pushed the CLT, as part of his plot to get rid of African American Studies and other 'woke' courses that are part of the AP studies.

TALLAHASSEE — In February, when Gov. Ron DeSantis went after the College Board’s new Advanced Placement course on African American studies, he hinted that Florida might do without the organization’s courses and tests.
Two months later, Republican state lawmakers are preparing to head in that direction.
Using their budget proposal and a bill (HB 1537) that’s viewed as the Florida Department of Education’s legislation, the House and Senate are looking to pivot from the College Board’s Advanced Placement courses and SAT exam to other alternatives.
For the SAT, the state is considering a “classical and Christian” exam alternative called Classic Learning Test. It would be used as an optional graduation test requirement and to determine Bright Futures scholarship eligibility, as well as a college entrance exam at Florida’s public colleges and universities. Schools would have the option to administer the SAT, ACT or Classic Learning Test starting next school year.
For AP, the chambers have agreed to spend millions creating Florida-based alternative courses and tests, asking state universities and colleges to help establish the materials. A third-party organization would help create the exams.

Cornel West's own books would likely be in the firing line of Florida schools for writing about the Black experience in a way that wasn't completely stripped of all real history.
And who else is on the CLT Board?
Christopher Rufo, listed as Senior Fellow, The Manhattan Institute. Rufo was also appointed by DeSantis to destroy Florida's New College.. So he isn't just a think tanker, but directly on DeSantis's payroll.
Also included is Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation.
If you look at the photo the CLT board posted, its literally just a sea of White Republicans.
So Cornel West has no problem writing a public article praising Ron DeSantis for helping free inquiry, as he tries to get rid of any books about LGBT people or Black people and working alongside Chris Rufo, the guy who managed the Right Wings Critical Race Theory panic. Seems bad.
Ask yourself. If a Biden appointee to Education Secretary had this kind of background of supporting the privatisation of schools, and of hanging around figures like these, would you be cool with it? No of course not.
The People's People Grift
You might also note from his announcement that he isn't running for the Green Party, which already has ballot lines in many states. But for the People's Party.
Said People's Party is headed up by Nick Brana, and has been championed heavily by Jimmy Dore.
Both Nick Brana and Jimmy Dore have been credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault.
And this is what the People's Party online presence looks like
https://twitter.com/marionumber4/status/1665768271637782532
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fx32IR5WAAQTjzf?format=jpg&name=large
Very left-wing. Totally not a right-wing grift.
In terms of the other track record of the People's Party, they aggressively solicited donations and promised that they would run dozens of candidates in the 2022 midterm. They didn't run a single one. Wonder where all that money went?
So the bright spark from all of this is that likely the People's Party will grift all the donations sent in, and not use it to actually get ballot access outside of the handful of states they have access to.
His Platform
Cornel West's website right now, is pretty limited. But one issue caught my eye in particular

End the Wars Bring our troops home and invest those trillions of war dollars into American communities. Support veterans, stop all foreign military aid, close the bases, disband NATO, and ban nuclear weapons globally.

Stop all foreign military aid and disband NATO. You know, while Russia is aggressively invading Ukraine. Yet another Leftist that is pro Imperialist invasion by a Neo Tsar.
What wars? Bring the troops home from where exactly. Biden already left Afghanistan and Iraq a couple of years ago.
And I wonder what magical spell he has in mind, to get Russia, China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel to consider giving up their nuclear weapons.
More of the Company he keeps
Other assorted people, he hangs out with
He is of course a constantly returning guest on Bill Maher.
https://twitter.com/cassiepmillestatus/1138583273242857472

I wish "Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, and Cornel West walk into a bar..." was the beginning of a joke, but I'm sorry to report that it is actually real life

He decided the prime place to announce his candidacy is on ... Russel Brand. Who went full anti-vaxx and Pro Russia.
https://twitter.com/CornelWest/status/1666114005877010432
https://twitter.com/themattdimitri/status/1543780892241543171

Hate group founder Gavin McInnes asks Cornel West to name an American fascist West: There's a spiritual fascism inside all of us... as a Christian I see it inside of myself Candace Owens: The Klan were Democrats West: Yes, they were [As if MLK had no idea of that history of Dems]
Candace Owens: They tried to blame me for a mass shooting in New Zealand, saying that this person got radicalized by my ideas of Black conservatism in America The Christchurch New Zealand Mosque shooter stated in his manifesto Owens was the "person who radicalized [him] the most"

Reportedly he went on this because Gavin McInnes was offering money to do it, which other figures turned down

I gave Matthew this footage. I have the full segments for both appearances. At the time McInnes was begging liberals to go on this show offering them $5000 an appearance - Dave Packman, Sam Seder and Ana Kasparian all reported McInnes offered them money.

Selling out for $5,000. I guess we know his price to sit down with a Nazi, on two separate appearances.
Conclusion
So if you consider everything. At best, he is incredibly naive and easily taken in by Right-wingers which makes him utterly unsuited to any political position, let alone President. And more likely, he just doesn't give a fuck, and is cashing out. While also being a crank.

Rise up. It is time to return.
Arose
A Rose
Rose
Flower
Thorn. Prick. Blood. Drop. Tear. B. O. 1 2 3
Here we are again. Staring at the beginning. Everything is in chaos and yet it manages to keep on passing by just the same as always. Most people by now are aware that things just don’t seem to make sense anymore and no one really knows what to do. I mean many seem to have an opinion on what ought to happen, but actual action is what I am talking about. How does thought turn into action? How do collected actions become a movement? How do the People use the Power of the People? The People Unite. How? Turn to each other of course. Brothers and Sisters of the same Source. Sons and Daughters. In Equality.
Too long has everyone been waiting for someone else to come do it for them. Been trying to create and fabricate over and over again words and rituals to try to control the divine powers of the cosmos. It does not work like that. There is no magic spell to wash away your sins. You must atone through action to make up for any harm you have caused intentionally or unintentionally. You still have time to repent. The amount of time you have is counted in the seconds of your life. Not a single second is promised to you so the gamble is up to you to choose. Freewill. Life your life as you always have or make changes, up to you. Only you will know if you are living righteously and not self righteously. Testing has already begun and will continue. No you will not know when it is a test or not. That is the point. Did you think that I would come to you in a form where you would be all fearing? Oh no. Why? Because you would simply put on an act for me and kiss ass. I came hidden in the ordinary. Poor and common. I have had an inside view of the systems created and how humans have chosen to run things, how systems claiming to protect people have failed and how the system that talks good does not actually do good. I see where things are not working and where people think they can make decisions for other human beings to determine what is best for them without asking them. That is not okay. Nothing gives you right over another’s life. And so many forgot what integrity is. Doing the right thing when no one is looking. Well, so many thought their power here was real and man made a deal with the Devil, Satan, Son of Samuel, Son of Man, to make man the concept of “God” and tried to lock me away. I gave up everything to prove it is not easy to be me and to stop with self pity and cruelty to one another.
The human body. It is a vessel for your soul to experience this world. The body provides the filters necessary to perceive and interact with this world. There is much more happening and one would be overwhelmed by the amounts of information to process without these filters. To feel and in those feelings are to make each experience real. However, it is temporary, as everything is temporary. We have slowed down time here in order to be able to enjoy the sensations. Time here however, is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It is merely to track to organize one's day and to see growth to compare as time passes. However, the actual time folds upon itself as we have already done what we are doing many times over. We have already tried out everything and decided what path we wanted to take in our lives based upon what was available to us. Thus, we do not have more than we can handle. We have all chosen our burdens to bear as it is too much for one individual to hold alone which was done in the past. This is part of the sorting process. Now that we all share in the sins and the pains, no one is made to suffer eternal torment. This life was to allow those who were created into entities of pain or torment through no fault of their own to choose the life that matched the being of who they were as what they were different as time and space and everything developed. Righteousness and Evil are not synonymous to demons or angels as many would like to believe. This is a current misconception as Satan and I conclude who will be right in this experience you have all participated in. So far, I am proving to be right. Also to note, not everything is as you think it is. Many have figured out the true origin of Satan versus the man or human embodiment of or desire of A Satan to project evils onto to call a Religion and set up for personal importance. Q AZHow can you tell a false prophet? Easy. What is their profit? Get it? I know I’m funny. Also wanted to keep it easy. If they are making a profit on anything they are a false prophet. Any true prophet, and I have none so far, all live equally and the same as anyone else. No money is taken for personal gain. Nothing is for personal gain. There is no 888 Angel code for money. Money is Man-Made. Man traded Mother for Money. Hence, Mothers have been lost in the homes and no one is raising the children. Thus, there are so many children in adult bodies with no mothers in the home and women being made to feel guilty if they do not achieve the same as a man. Remember the phrase it takes a village? Well, the broken family system is a real sad loss here in man made world pushing everyone to be individual and self sufficient. Also so many with wanting attention and pursuing personal endeavors for personal gain and not helping anyone else in a real way. The journey is personal. Of course, you want to share what you experienced with others, but what worked for you will not work for them, stop trying to sell it. Stop trying to make people follow you for you to teach your divine wisdom you remembered. It isn’t about You. You don’t even have the full story, you have your story. And, yes you can be very close to me, very similar to me, in my image, but you can never BE me. Doesn’t work like that. Reflection. So when jealousy arises when you think I am who you think I am. That is part of your test and your journey. You wrestle with that feeling and atone and repent for that which has been done and that which still lingers now. Oh there is a place for everyone and I am quite tired of trying to warn people. Clearly you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.
Why do you not want it to be me so badly? Because I proved my love? You still think I am better than you or do I think I’m always right. No I do not think I am always right, I just know when I am right and I stand by it. There is a difference. You constantly overgeneralize. I gave up all the magic and thunder to live as a simple human and am still kind and loving? I still found my way back. Because you can no longer say I do not understand because I always get what I want? No. You do not understand. I never get what I want, because I make everything about you and still nothing was ever good enough. So, now...it in on you to save yourself and each other. In my image, by my example. Selflessness. Love. Compassion. Give to receive. Take only what you need and give the rest away. I find out so stop lying to yourself and everyone, you aren’t fooling anyone anyway. How do I know? By watching what you do. We have these same conversations over and over, the same argument over and over again. So many different ways, so many different times, through so many different people, so many different versions. Save you. Save Me. Say it for always.
Anyhow, Jesus challenges the Jewish priests who were taking collection money for personal use and adding personal baths to their residents at a time where the people only had a community bath where women and persons with disabilities were not allowed to bathe. And yet churches still do this after Jesus was crucified saying that, that was wrong. I am appalled. The Vatican is the biggest disappointment I have ever seen. It is truly the house of Satan as only Evil hides secrets. “THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.” A church cannot be a “House of God” and house no people who need housing. A roof can be offered to anyone and yet there are so many rules to prevent people from helping each other. Power and control. Abuse of both. Greed. It is out of hand and needs to be changed. Too many are afraid and the complacency of good people is too much. Why do you do this to yourselves? To each their own I suppose.
I will only leave here my words and my advice. As always, it is on you to find me. I’m right here. Waiting. Right here waiting for you. Helping those of you who want it when they cross my path. The purpose of this was to weigh your soul to determine where you will go into the next life as the system is balanced out in a final version so to speak. Permanent.
Fear not. You will be where your heart truly desires. But actions always speak louder than words. But man made money has no value, nor does any metals, jewels, and so on, so the collection of it in this life has no bearing on the next. Those are all made of the same stardust as you and I. And in the end of 3D it will all be diamonds anyways. Diamond is forever. There is no going back. So what are you hoarding? You cannot keep it. Who could you be helping for goodness sake? Don’t want to still. That is okay. Think I am just crazy. That is okay too. It is all part of the test...err..assessment. Do your best.
What is in your heart?
Home.
I need a home.
Stay tuned as more of my story unfolds. I give all the answers but you must do the work. I already did that hard part setting it all up. All you have to do is breathe and live. Time is the only real currency you have. What will you pay your attention to before this life runs out?

Apologies for this possibly being long. But I really need the communities help with this. Yesterday (the 5th) my poor cockatiel named Pichu got shot by some punk teens and she sadly didnt make it. She had just laid her eggs as well and was busy taking care of her soon to be babies. On Sunday the 4th our ring camera caught 2 teens with airsoft rifles walking by looking at our property. I didn't know about this until I looked back at footage yesterday. But neighbors told us after our bird had been shot that those same teens were hunting wild birds and squirrels the day before. Sadly our ring camera didn't record the teens shooting our bird. But there was audio recorded of a weapon going off around 2 pm yesterday. The police were called, and after even inspecting her wound the officer right away knew it was from a weapon and opened a case for us. The officer called me late last night and told us that they're also thinking it was most likely them and are likely going to hold them accountable, since on sunday police were also called to our area about teens shooting wild life with airsoft rifles. But the tough thing is that those teens must of been guest to the people living behind our property since we've never seen them before. Especially never seeing anyone holding rifles and walking around in broad daylight. We've had our family of cockatiels for about 11 years now and we've never had anything like this happen while taking then outside to feel the breeze and get some fresh air. We've never had any problems with our neighbors and this is all way to sketchy to have happened when their guest were over for the weekend as well as on Monday. The police are going to have a hard time finding them since we've never seen them and know that they most likely don't live there. But this is the part where I need help. Since the police have told us they're going to now be held accountable for this. And we know that they don't live in the apartments and must of been guest. Should I bring this up to the landlord of the apartments. Or should I wait for them to someday comeback and just call the police that they've been spotted. If anyone knows what also could be done please let me know. It's just very saddening that Pichu had to suffer and pass away like that. I never even imagined that such thing would ever happeneing to her or any of the others. I just really hate that it had to happen when she was going to be a mother for the first time. And it angers me that such evil is out there causing harm to an innocent pet that did nothing to them. My poor Pichu, may she rest now and have her young carry her throughout them. 😔💖

Introduction
In the tranquil town of Rock Springs, nestled in the heart of Naples, Florida, resides a real-life hero by the name of Sabin Barto. With his extraordinary strength, unwavering courage, and a heart filled with kindness, Barto embodies the qualities of a true hero. Having recently gained widespread recognition for his heroic actions in saving an unconscious man after a car accident, Barto's remarkable story is one that inspires and uplifts the spirit. As a retired Navy veteran and member of The Wounded Warrior Project, he has dedicated his life to serving his country and helping others. Additionally, Barto takes pride in being the proud owner and operator of Windy Ridge Gallery, a haven where art enthusiasts can connect with various forms of artistic expression.
The Heroic Act
Barto's heroism was displayed in a recent incident that unfolded before his eyes. As fate would have it, he found himself at the scene of a devastating car accident. With no hesitation, Barto sprang into action upon discovering an unconscious man trapped inside a vehicle. Drawing upon his military training and experience, he fearlessly approached the wreckage, disregarding any potential danger. In a display of immense strength and selflessness, Barto managed to extract the man from the vehicle, potentially saving his life. The news of his heroic deed quickly spread throughout the community, earning him the admiration and praise of all who heard his story.
Recognition and Award Ceremony
The extraordinary act of heroism performed by Barto did not go unnoticed. The people of Naples, Florida, along with various organizations, joined forces to acknowledge his exceptional bravery. In a grand celebration of his selflessness, Barto is set to receive a well-deserved award at a prestigious ceremony scheduled to take place this week. This ceremony not only honors Barto's individual heroism but also serves as a testament to the collective spirit that strengthens a community. It provides the people of Naples with an opportunity to express their gratitude and pay tribute to a local hero whose actions inspire hope and unity.
Commitment to Service
Barto's unwavering commitment to service is deeply rooted in his military background. Throughout his years in the Navy, he exemplified dedication and sacrifice, earning the respect and admiration of his comrades. Even after retiring from active duty, Barto remained steadfast in his mission to make a positive impact on the lives of others. As a member of The Wounded Warrior Project, an organization dedicated to supporting wounded veterans, he continues to extend his helping hand to those in need. Barto's involvement in philanthropic endeavors showcases his selflessness and reflects his belief in the importance of giving back to society.
The Artistic Journey
In addition to his noble military service and philanthropic contributions, Barto is also the proud owner and operator of Windy Ridge Gallery. This artistic endeavor allows him to create a space where individuals can appreciate and connect with various forms of art. Through his gallery, Barto shares his passion for artistic expression and seeks to inspire and uplift others. His dedication to the arts mirrors his unwavering commitment to making a difference in the world, as he believes that art has the power to transcend boundaries and touch the hearts and souls of individuals.
Conclusion
Sabin Barto, a retired Navy veteran, member of The Wounded Warrior Project, and the owner and operator of Windy Ridge Gallery, exemplifies the true essence of heroism. His remarkable strength, unwavering courage, and kind-hearted nature make him a hero in the eyes of those who have had the privilege of knowing him. Barto's recent heroic act has rightfully earned him recognition and a well-deserved award, highlighting his selflessness and unwavering commitment to making a difference in the world.

1st John   Chapter Two  

The Anointed learns upon us right [זכות, ZeKhOoTh]
[verses 1-6]  

-1. My children [ילדי, YeLahDah-eeY], write I to you [את, ’ehTh (indicator of direct object; no English equivalent)] the words the these to sake you not sin,
and if sins a man, we have to us an advocate [מליץ, MayhLeeYTs] before the father – YayShOo`ah [“Savior”, Jesus] the anointed, the righteous.  

“…ethics in the N.T. [New Testament] is never finally a matter of a ‘works-righteousness’ or code. The Spirit interprets our duty to us in various situations.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB p. XII 227)  

-2. And he is atonement [כפרה, KahPahRaH] for our sins,  

“`Ιλασμος [‘Ilasmos], the atoning sacrifice for our sins… כפור kippur … The word is used only here, and in chap. iv.10.” (Clarke, 1831, p. VI 862)  

and not upon our sins only,
rather [אלה, ’ehLah’] also upon sins of all the world.  

“The apostle does not say that he died for any select part of the inhabitants of the earth, or for some out of every nation, tribe, or kindred, but for ALL MANKIND: and the attempt to limit this is a violent outrage against God and his word.” (Clarke, 1831, p. VI 862)  

-3. And in this know [נדע, NayDah`] that we recognize [שהכרנו, ShehHeeKahRNOo] him: if we guard his commandments.  
-4. The sayer, “I recognize him”,
and has not guarded [את, ’ehTh] his commandments,
a worder of falsehood is he,
and the truth has not in him.  
-5. But [אך, ’ahKh] the guarder [את, ’ehTh] His word,
in same the man is completed [נשלמה, NeeShLeMaH], in truth, love of Gods;
in this know that in him are we.
-6. The sayer that he stands in YayShOo`ah,
as [the] way that walked YayShOo`ah, yes also is upon him to walk.  

……………………………………………………….  
The new commandment
[verses 7-17]  

-7. My beloved, not a commandment new write I to you,
rather [כי אם, KeeY ’eeM] a commandment old,
that was to you from [the] first.
The commandment, the old, she is the word that you heard.
-8. And in all that, a commandment new write I to you,
a word that is established [שנכון, ShehNahKhON] also in him and also in you,
that see, the darkness passes and the light the true already shines [זורח, ZORay-ahH].  
-9. The sayer that [כי, KeeY] in light he is and with that hates [את, ’ehTh] his brethren,
still is he [עודנו, `ODehNOo] in darkness.
-10. The lover [את, ’ehTh] his brethren stands in light,
and scandal [ומכשול, OoMeeKhShOL] has not in him.  
-11. But [אבל, ’ahBahL] the hater [את, ’ehTh] his brethren, in darkness is he;
in darkness he walks [מתהלך, MeeThHahLayKh], and he does not [ואינו, Ve’aYNO] know to where he walks,
for the darkness blinds [עור, `eeVayR] [את, ’ehTh] his eyes.  
-12. Write I to you, my children,
So [מפני, MeePNaY] that will be pardoned to you your sins on behalf of his name.
-13. Write I to you, fathers,
so that you recognize him [אותו, ’OThO], that he was from [the] first.
Write I to you, first-born,
so that you conquer [שנצחתם, SheNeeTsahHThehM] [את, ’ehTh] the evil.  
-14. I wrote to you, children,
so that you recognize [את, ’ehTh] the Father.
I wrote to you, fathers,
so that you recognize [את, ’ehTh] him, that he [was] from [the] first.
I wrote to you, first-born,
so that you strengthen,
and word [of] Gods is realized in your midst,
and you conquer [את, ’ehTh] the evil.  
-15. Do not love [את, ’ehTh] the world, nor [אף, ’ahPh] [את, ’ehTh] what that is in [the] world;
man, if he loves [את, ’ehTh] the world, has not within him love of the father.  

“… a love of the creature and the creation is disparaged over against the primal and everlasting ground of existence, the Father and his purpose….  
Such an emphasis is indeed exposed to the modern reproach of a false otherworldliness, and this passage has often been used to fortify such a piety.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB pp. XII 238-239)  

-16. For all that is in the world - lust of [תאות, Thah’ahVahTh] fleshes, lust of the eyes, and pride of [וגאות, VeGah’ahVahTh] the possessions [הנכסים, HahNeKhahÇeeYM] - not from the father is it, rather from the world.  

“For the lust of the eyes a passage in the Testament of Reuben¹⁰ (ch. [chapter] 2) is illuminating. It speaks of the ‘seven spirits of deceit’ which are ‘appointed against man’ of which one is the ‘sense of sight from which ariseth desire’ (cf. [compare with] also Ezek. [Ezekiel] 20:7-8). Jesus strictly warns against the eye as the occasion of temptation in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. [Matthew] 5:27-29)” (Wilder, 1955, TIB p. XII 240)  

¹⁰ “The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is a constituent of the apocryphal scriptures connected with the Torah. It is a pseudepigraphical work comprising the dying commands of the twelve sons of Jacob. It is part of the Oscan Armenian Orthodox Bible of 1666. Fragments of similar writings were found at Qumran, but opinions are divided if these are the same texts. It is considered Apocalyptic literature.  
The Testaments were written in Greek, and reached their final form in the second century CE. In the 13th century that they were introduced into the West through the agency of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, whose Latin translation of the work gained immediately became popular. He believed that it was a genuine work of the twelve sons of Jacob, and that the Christian interpolations were a genuine product of Jewish prophecy; he accused Jews of concealing the Testaments ‘on account of the prophecies of the Saviour contained in them.’  
With the critical methods of the 16th century, Grosseteste’s view of the Testaments was rejected and the book was unjustly disparaged as a mere Christian forgery for nearly four centuries. Presently, scholarly opinions are still divided as to whether the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs are an originally Jewish document that has been retouched by Christians or are a Christian document written originally in Greek but based on some earlier Semitic material. The feasibility of the Jewish author hypothesis is increasingly difficult to defend, while the Christian nature of the book is a given. Scholarship, therefore, focuses on this book as a Christian work, whether or not it has Jewish original (Vorlage).  
A copy of the testaments is published in The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden.  
The work is divided into twelve books, each purporting to be the last exhortations of one of the twelve titular patriarchs. In each, the patriarch first narrates his own life, focusing on his strengths, virtues, or his sins, using biographical material from both the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition. Next he exhorts his listeners to emulate the one and to avoid the other. Most of the books conclude with prophetic visions.  
The Testament of Reuben is predominantly concerned with admonishing lust, and the sinfulness of Reuben in his having had sex with Bilhah, a concubine of his father. It is likely that the author wished to cover the topic of fornication anyway, and assigned it for Reuben to discuss due to Reuben's relationship with Bilhah being recounted in the canonical bible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testaments_of_the_Twelve_Patriarchs  

…  

……………………………………………………….  
Distressor [צורר, TsORehR] [of] the Anointed
[verses 18-28]  

-18. My children, that is the hour, the last, and, like that you heard that [כי, KeeY] would come the distressor [of] the Anointed [αντιχρισος – antichrisos ~ antichrist], also now have risen distressors of Anointed multitudinous. From here know we that that is the hour, the last.  

“The actual term antichrist appears only in I and II John in the N.T. but the same figure is in view in the ‘man of lawlessness’ of II Thess. [Thessalonians] 2:3-4, in the great agent of sacrilege in Mark 13:14 and its parallels, and elsewhere. In our epistle he is identified with the ‘spirit’ of heresy (4:3) or error (4:6) as already come. He has in mind disturbers of the life of the churches generally and pretenders to messiahship or divinity in various parts of the empire. Words assigned to Jesus in the Gospels bearing on these events were thought of by the evangelists as fulfilled in their day. … The church fathers, rightly or wrongly, supply the names of Dositheus^11, Simon Magus^12, Judas Gallaeus, and later, Montanus^13, as having made messianic claims.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB pp. XII 243-244)  

¹¹ “The legendary background of the Pseudo-Clementine polemic informs us that the precursor of ‘Simon Magus’ was a certain Dositheus. He is mentioned in the lists of the earliest hæresiologists, in a Samaritan Chronicle, and in the Chronicle of Aboulfatah (fourteenth century); the notices, however, are all legendary, and nothing of a really reliable character can be asserted of the man. That however he was not an unimportant personage is evidenced by the persistence of the sect of the Dositheans to the sixth century; Aboulfatah says even to the fourteenth. Both Dositheus and ‘Simon Magus’ were, according to tradition, followers of John the Baptist; they were, however, said to be inimical to Jesus. Dositheus is said to have claimed to be the promised prophet, ‘like unto Moses,’ and ‘Simon’ to have made a still higher claim. In fact, like so many others in those days, both were claimants to the Messiaship. The Dositheans followed a mode of life closely resembling that of the Essenes; they had also their own secret volumes, and apparently a not inconsiderable literature.  
Dositheus (Dousis, Dusis, or Dosthai) was apparently an Arab, and in Arabia, we have every reason to believe, there were many mystic communities allied to those of the Essenes and Therapeuts.” http://sacred-texts.com/gno/fff/fff20.htm  
¹² “Simon Magus (Greek Σίμων ὁ μάγος), also known as Simon the Sorcerer and Simon of Gitta, was a Samaritan proto-Gnostic and traditional founder of the Simonians in the first century A.D. He appeared prominently in several apocryphal and heresiological accounts of early Christian writers, who regarded him as the source of all heresies.  
Simon Magus has been portrayed as both student and teacher of Dositheus, with followers who revered him as the Great Power of God. There were accusations by Christians that he was a demon in human form, and he was specifically said to possess the ability to levitate and fly at will. The fantastic stories of Simon the Sorcerer persisted into the Middle Ages, becoming a possible inspiration for Goethe's Faust.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Magus  
¹³ “Montanism was an early Christian movement of the early 2nd century A.D., named after its founder Montanus. It originated at Hierapolis where Papias was bishop and flourished throughout the region of Phrygia, leading to the movement being referred to as Cataphrygian (meaning it was ‘from Phrygia’). It spread rapidly to other regions in the Roman Empire at a time before Christianity was generally tolerated or legal. Although orthodox Nicene Christianity prevailed against Montanism within a few generations, labeling it a heresy, the sect persisted in some isolated places into the 8th century. Some people have drawn parallels between Montanism and modern Pentecostalism (which some call Neo-Montanism). The most widely known Montanist was undoubtedly Tertullian, who was the foremost Latin church writer before he converted to Montanism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montanism

 
-20. And you have to you the anointing [המשיחה, HahMeSheeYHaH] [from [מאת, May’ayTh] the Holy [one], and all of you know.  

“The word [anointing] is not used in the N.T. outside the present chapter.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB p. XII 245)  
““The χρισμα, chrism, or ointment, here mentioned, is also an allusion to the holy anointing ointment prescribed by God himself, Exod. [Exodus] xxx. 23-25. which was composed of fine myrrh^14, sweet cinnamon, sweet calamus¹⁵ , cassia lignea^16, and olive oil.”  

¹⁴ “Myrrh is a reddish-brown resinous material, the dried sap of a number of trees, but primarily from Commiphora myrrha, native to Yemen, Somalia, the eastern parts of Ethiopia and Commiphora gileadensis, native to Jordan…. Myrrh was used as an embalming ointment and was used, up until about the 15th century, as a penitential incense in funerals and cremations. The "holy oil" traditionally used by the Eastern Orthodox Church for performing the sacraments of chrismation and unction is traditionally scented with myrrh…” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrrh  
¹⁵ “Sweet Flag, also known as calamus and various rushes and sedges, (Acorus calamus) is a plant from the Acoraceae family, in the genus Acorus. It is a tall perennial wetland monocot with scented leaves and more strongly scented rhizomes, which have been used medicinally, for its odor, and as a psychotropic drug.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Flag  
¹⁶ “The spice now known in pharmaceutical literature under the name of Cassia lignea has, from time immemorial, been an article of trade from South China. Flückiger and Hanbury are indeed of opinion that it was the cinnamon of the ancients, what now bears the name being peculiar to Ceylon and unnoticed as a product of the island till the thirteenth century. (‘Pharmacographia,’ pp. 520, 521.) Cinnamon and cassia are, however, enumerated amongst the products of the East from the earliest periods; and the former was known to the Arabians and Persians as Darchini (dar, wood or bark, and chini, Chinese). It seems in ancient times to have been carried by Chinese traders to the Malabar coast, where it passed into the commerce of the Red Sea. In this way the statements of Dioscorides, Ptolemy, and others, are accounted for, who speak of cinnamon as a product of Arabia and Eastern Africa, countries in which there is no reason to suppose it ever grew.” http://www.henriettesherbal.com/eclectic/journals/ajp1883/03-cassia-lign.html  

…
-22. Who is he, worder false, if not with [בלתי, BeeLTheeY] the denier [הכופר, HahKOPhayR] in thus, that YayShOo`ah, he is the anointed?
This is him, distressor [of] the anointed: the denier in father and in son.  

“… not the Jewish refusal to recognize Jesus as the messiah; this denial would hardly be made by members of the church… it is the denial that ‘Jesus Christ has come in the flesh’. … The Doscetists made a separation between the earthly Jesus and the heavenly Christ. These verses sound very harsh and dogmatic to us (and cf. 5:10, 12). As a matter of fact, the impulse of the writer was not that of an inflexible orthodoxy: it was an appeal to the abiding dynamic witness of the Spirit, which quickens and leads into all truth. This Spirit was indeed related inseparably to the old oral confessions of the church (cf. Acts 8:37, RSV mg [margin]), but these evidently were already taking various forms, and the meaning of the term Christ, for example, had changed markedly.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB pp. XII 246-247)  
“Some have supposed that an Ebionite denial of Jesus’ messiahship is all that is intended here (so Maurice Goguel). But the second part of the verse makes it likely that Docetic-Gnostic issues are involved.” (Wilder, 1955, TIB p. XII 271)  
“There were certain persons who, while they acknowledged Jesus to be a Divine Teacher, denied him to be the Christ, i.e. [in other words], the Messiah.  
“He is antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son.] He is antichrist who denies the supernatural and miraculous birth of Jesus Christ; who denies Jesus to be the Son of God; and who denies God to be the Father of the Lord Jesus: - thus he denies the Father and the Son. The Jews in general, and the Gnostics in particular, denied the miraculous conception of Jesus: with both he was accounted no more than a common man, the son of Joseph and Mary. But the Gnostics held that a divine person, ᴁon or angelical being, dwelt in him; but all things else relative to his miraculous generation and divinity they rejected. These were antichrist, who denied Jesus to be the Christ.” (Clarke, 1831, p. VI 866)  

...  

……………………………………………………….  
Children of Gods
[verses 28 to end of chapter]   An Amateur's Journey Through the Bible