Little Morsel

Have you ever noticed how the people screaming loudest about freedom are always the ones getting the worst deal? It’s like cheering for a team that keeps tackling you. Every. Single. Play. And after the game, you still buy the jersey. You defend the coach. You swear, with a bloody lip, that next season will be different.

That’s the modern conservative movement. Not “conservative” like careful, or thoughtful. Conservative like preserving a system that’s perfected the art of hurting the very people who swear loyalty to it.

The core belief goes something like this: Everyone is on their own. Suffering builds character. If you’re struggling, you didn’t try hard enough.

It sounds tough. It sounds virtuous. But it’s a psychological trap. It trains people to resent anyone who gets help—including, secretly, themselves. It makes compassion feel like a moral failing.

So when a policy comes along that would actually make life easier—cheaper insulin, a cap on a medical bill, anything that stops an illness from becoming a financial death sentence—the reaction from that base isn’t relief.

It’s suspicion.

Because if hardship is the proof of your worth, then easing hardship feels like cheating. The system has them scared of the cure.

Let’s look at the part that should stop everyone cold.

There was a rule, a simple one. It said medical debt couldn’t go on your credit report. Not erase the debt. Not forgive it. Just… stop a hospital from destroying your financial future because you got sick.

That protection was killed.

Let’s translate that:

You can survive a heart attack… and still lose your apartment.

You can beat cancer… and still get denied a car loan.

You can do everything ‘right’—and the system still gets to look you in the eye and say, “Too bad.”

And who gets hit hardest? The same working-class voters who were told, for decades, that this party was “on their side.”

This isn’t strength. It’s not discipline. It’s not freedom.

It’s loyalty to a machine that profits from your pain. You’re not a fan in the stands; you’re the tackling dummy.

Now—before anyone claps too hard for the other team—let’s be brutally honest. Democrats have their own symphony of failure. They fundraise off fear. They talk a big game about justice while protecting the donor-class backers. They mistake a well-meaning tweet for a result, a symbolic gesture for systemic change.

That’s precisely why this isn’t about liberal versus conservative anymore. That’s a stale food fight.

This is about progressivism versus stagnation.

Progressivism isn’t left. It’s forward.

It’s the radical, common-sense idea that if one of us drowns in medical debt, all of us are poorer for it. That a society should be judged not by how cruel it can be to the “undeserving,” but by how many people it keeps standing. It’s the understanding that you can’t MAGA your way out of a $200,000 hospital bill. You can’t bootstrap your way through chemotherapy. And you sure as hell can’t call it “freedom” if getting sick costs you your home, your credit, and your future.

At some point, the question stops being, “Who do you vote for?” That’s the easy part.

The real question is, “Why is anyone still defending the team that keeps tackling them?”

When does the loyalty you show to them ever come back to you? Where’s your jersey? All you get is the bill. And another concussion.

The play isn’t going to change. The coach isn’t coming to save you. Maybe it’s time to stop cheering for your own bruises.

The play isn’t going to change. The coach isn’t coming to save you.

If a team keeps tackling its own fans, that’s not tradition — that’s a business model. And every time you defend it, you’re not proving your toughness. You’re underwriting the next hit.

Maybe freedom isn’t cheering harder. Maybe it’s finally leaving the stadium.

Little Morsel #7: We Are All Antifa Now

They sold us the illusion of sides—blue ants, red ants, left and right. But the jar was always theirs.

Picture it: a glass jar, gleaming under sterile light. Inside, red and blue ants tear each other apart. On the lid, a manicured hand—labelled OLIGARCH—tilts the glass just enough to stir rage. Etched into the surface, one word: MEDIA. And somewhere behind the reflection, a corpulent face grins with gold-capped satisfaction. He doesn’t hate the ants. He just likes the sound they make when they fight.

I. The Hand That Shakes the Jar

We’ve been trained to treat politics like a football game with no off-season—endless scrimmages, different jerseys, same owner. Every news cycle: “The left did this,” “The right did that.”

Meanwhile, the oligarchs refill their glasses.

Division isn’t a bug; it’s the business model. Algorithms were designed to keep us angry because calm people don’t click. Rage is renewable energy in the attention economy. It burns clean for them and toxic for us. And nothing keeps a country docile like believing its neighbor is the enemy instead of its landlord.

They tell us to pick a team while they own the stadium.

II. The Enemy They Needed

Enter Antifa—the perfect villain. A movement with no headquarters, no CEO, no stock symbol to subpoena. Trump didn’t invent that trick; he just slapped his logo on it. Call dissent “terrorism,” and you can raid empathy in broad daylight. Call conscience a crime, and you’ve franchised fascism.

Every empire needs a rebellion to justify its armor. Every rebellion needs an empire to make sense of its scars. The difference now is that the empire owns the screenplay.

Nothing says “I’m fighting tyranny” quite like outlawing the people who resist it.

III. The Psychology of Control

You want to know why some people cheer for their own chains? Start at home.

Kids raised in chaos learn that safety means control. The world makes no sense, so they build one with strict borders and louder rules. Later, when a politician promises “law and order,” it sounds like therapy. They don’t crave freedom—they crave predictability. The iron fist feels familiar.

Some people don’t want freedom; they want a curfew. They were raised on punishment and call it love.

Fascism isn’t born from ideology; it’s born from injury. Fear looking for a father figure will always mistake the boot for an embrace. Neuroscientists can even trace it—overactive amygdalas lighting up like warning flares at every hint of difference. The more frightened the brain, the more absolute the politics. Ambiguity feels like danger, so certainty becomes religion.

IV. The Gospel According to Power

And religion—when bent just right—becomes the halo around the whip.

Pastor-politician James Talarico said it clean: “Christian nationalists walk around with a mouthful of scripture and a heart full of hate.” He’s right. We’ve built pulpits out of podiums. Faith became branding. Love became a slogan you can trademark. I used to think faith was supposed to save us. Turns out it’s just marketing with better lighting.

They quote Leviticus like a menu and love their neighbor like a tax deduction.

Real faith should make us uncomfortable. It should remind us that love is risk, not rhetoric. Talarico says if religion ever comes between him and compassion, he’ll choose love. That’s heresy in today’s marketplace of moral convenience.

In an empire of cruelty, kindness is contraband. Empathy gets you flagged by the algorithm. The prophets of profit can’t sell redemption that doesn’t come with a subscription fee.

V. The Economy of Chaos

Meanwhile, the oligarchs keep shaking the jar. Their empires thrive on division the way crops thrive on manure. Every outrage headline is a deposit slip. Every culture war is quarterly growth.

They preach stability while profiting from instability. They fund both sides of every argument to make sure neither side wins. They call it the “free market of ideas.” It’s just a rigged carnival where every ball lands in the oligarch’s pocket.

The oligarch doesn’t shake the jar because he hates the ants. He shakes it because motion is money.

Their favorite disguise is virtue. They wear Sunday suits, quote Corinthians, and confess their sins in bulk. A little public contrition keeps the dividends divine. God, apparently, loves a strong portfolio.

VI. The Distraction Machine

And when the noise starts to fade—when attention drifts toward something that might actually hold them accountable—they crank the volume.

Remember the Epstein files? Still half-sealed, still “under review.” Every few months, calls for transparency swell, and suddenly the air fills with fresh scandals, fresh outrage, fresh ants. Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe it’s choreography. Either way, the effect is the same: no one’s looking at the jar’s contents long enough to read the names etched inside.

This isn’t tinfoil theology. It’s standard operating procedure—agenda control, manufacturing consent, whatever the think-tank word of the week is. When accountability looms, flood the zone with nonsense. Turn the news into static. Turn citizens into spectators. Turn memory into background noise.

VII. The Cycle of Faith and Fear (Rewritten)

The pattern doesn’t just repeat—it performs. Fear goes first, slipping on its preacher’s robe, whispering that empathy is naïve. Then religion strolls in, late but dressed for judgment, blessing the fracture like it’s a baptism. The media catches it on camera and calls it breaking news, and the oligarchs, polishing their smiles, call it stability.

It’s a pageant of pathology—each act applauding the last. Fear feeds faith, faith feeds profit, profit feeds fear. By the time the lights come up, no one remembers who started the fire—only that the smoke smells faintly of righteousness and melted plastic.

The people doing the shaking rarely look like villains. They look like mentors, CEOs, deacons. They’re calm, articulate, well-lit. They talk about civility while underwriting cruelty. They call exploitation “freedom” and obedience “patriotism.” And if you notice the pattern, they call you radical.

VIII. We Are All Antifa Now

Here’s the truth buried beneath the hashtags: Antifa isn’t an organization. It’s a reflex. A flicker in the conscience that says no further. It’s the civilian echo of every soldier who landed on Normandy’s shore. It’s the whisper of every grandmother who hid a refugee. It’s the moral immune system of a nation that keeps trying to forget its own antibodies.

You can outlaw a group. You can’t outlaw a nerve ending.

When the state labels antifascism as extremism, it isn’t warning you—it’s confessing. It’s telling you the disease has entered the bloodstream. And the people cheering loudest won’t realize they’re infected until the medicine comes for them too.

IX. The Confession and the Call

Maybe fascism isn’t a political movement at all. Maybe it’s the collective trauma of a country that never learned to love without needing to control. We don’t heal; we project. We export our pain and import new reasons to feel righteous. The oligarch just sells the packaging.

But the cure is still embarrassingly simple. It isn’t found in manifestos or megachurches. It’s found in the oldest commandment that ever threatened a tyrant: love thy neighbor. No exceptions, no fine print, no loyalty oath. Just love—radical, disobedient, unprofitable love.

Because empathy, in a system built on cruelty, is the ultimate act of rebellion.

That’s the morsel for today: When fascism rebrands itself as order, remembrance becomes rebellion.

The jar is still shaking, but now you can see the hand. Don’t bite the wrong ant.

Little Morsel: Edition 6

Neurochemical Nationalism: The Ratings of Retribution

A satirical biopsy of the hippocampus, the republic, and the dopamine-fed spectacle of cruelty.

Pleasure Is Policy

The nucleus accumbens doesn’t care about your moral compass. It lights up for revenge the same way it lights up for cheese, cocaine, or conquest. And in this administration, cruelty isn’t a glitch—it’s the dopamine loop.

Scientific consensus confirms:

Dopamine surges in the ventral striatum during acts of revenge.

The prefrontal cortex, our moral regulator, gets bypassed when tribal righteousness takes the wheel.

The result? A feedback loop of violence, applause, and policy.

“Revenge activates the same reward pathways as aged cheddar. But only one gets served in the Rose Garden.”

Trial by Torpedo

Eleven people. No names. No trial. No confirmation. Just a boat, a blast, and a press release.

JD “Just Dance” Vance twirled onto the stage:

“Killing cartel members is the highest and best use of our military.”

Pete “Drunkard” Hegseth followed with a toast:

“We smoked a drug boat… 11 narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean.”

No evidence. No remorse. Just dopamine and doctrine.

“They called it justice. She called it her son. And when the sea swallowed him whole, the silence was louder than the gunfire.”

The Addiction Loop

Perceived threat

Righteous rhetoric

Dopamine surge

Public applause

Policy reinforcement

Empathy suppression

Repeat

This isn’t governance. It’s gratification. And the people on that boat? They were just the offering.

The Crusade of Casein

You hunt for venison. You love your dog. You bless your bullets. You cry at church.

But empathy isn’t selective. It’s either ritualized or rationalized.

“You’re not evil. You’re addicted. You’re not heartless. You’re compartmentalized.”

The hippocampus doesn’t care if you vote blue or red. It just wants the dopamine. And righteousness tastes like casein.

The Ratings of Retribution

Justice, now brought to you by your favorite sponsor. Drone strikes with commercial breaks. Execution clips trending on PatriotTok. And a leaderboard for moral disengagement.

“Retribution is the new reality show. Empathy never made it past the pilot.”

The Colosseum Protocol

Rome had lions. We have algorithms. Rome had thumbs. We have likes.

The Rose Garden becomes the new arena. The UFC fight becomes the new ritual. And the republic becomes a ring.

“The crowd doesn’t ask for truth. It asks for climax.”

Welcome to PatriotTok

Where justice is algorithmic, empathy is shadowbanned, and executions go viral. Swipe up for drone strikes. Swipe down for moral disengagement. Comment “USA” if you think due process is overrated.

“On PatriotTok, cruelty isn’t a bug—it’s the brand.”

The Cheese Board of American Righteousness

They gathered like apostles at the Last Supper, if the Last Supper had been catered by Kraft Singles and sponsored by Lockheed Martin.

Trump chewed on a wedge labeled Justice with the same expression he reserves for golf scores and indictments. JD Vance nibbled Vindication like a man who just discovered nuance was a garnish. Pete Hegseth devoured Revenge with the enthusiasm of a frat boy at a tailgate. Stephen Miller didn’t eat. He just stared at the Power cheese like it owed him a childhood.

“It was a charcuterie of cruelty. A tasting menu for the hippocampus. And the crowd? Oh, the crowd. They didn’t ask for truth. They asked for seconds.”

The Mothers

Not the ones on podiums, but the ones screaming into the void. Their children weren’t confirmed traffickers. They were just gone.

“She didn’t want revenge. She wanted a name. But the dopamine had already been served.”

Closing Invocation

This edition is not just satire. It’s a biopsy. Of the hippocampus. Of the republic. Of your neighbor who thinks empathy is a liberal conspiracy.

Look in the mirror. You’re not immune. You’re just better at hiding your dopamine addiction behind a tote bag and a rescue dog.

You hunt for venison, but cry during Pixar. You vote blue, but cheer when the drone strike hits “the bad guys.” You say “nuance,” but you mean “I want to feel righteous without guilt.”

“You’re not evil. You’re just exquisitely compartmentalized.”

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Empathy isn’t a personality trait. It’s a discipline. A ritual. A refusal to let your pleasure center write policy.

So here’s your final slice:

“May your dopamine be tempered, your outrage be earned, and your cheese board labeled with actual facts.”

Because satire isn’t just a mirror. It’s a scalpel. And this edition? It cuts.

Memory doesn’t just preserve love songs and childhood scents. It preserves grudges. It preserves hate. The Nazis at Madison Square Garden didn’t vanish; they went home and rocked babies to sleep, humming lullabies of resentment. Those babies grew up, taught their own, and now their grandchildren are storming capitols, chanting at rallies, clutching cheese labeled “revenge.” This is the hippocampus trap at scale: the inheritance of rage as tradition, prejudice as heirloom, spectacle as ritual.

Restraint is maturity, even when you are right. Without it, we’re not citizens — we’re just dopamine animals with badges, ballots, bullhorns. Or worse: bullies, bandits, and boomers, teaching the next generation how to feed the loop instead of how to break it. This is Little Morsel #6: The Hippocampus Trap. A dispatch on memory, rage, and restraint. That is the morsel for today.

Little Morsel #5 — The River That Forgot Its Name

Capitalism didn’t forget the river. It ghosted it. Left it on read while swiping right on quarterly returns.

The factory used to hum like a hymn. Now it wheezes like a drunk uncle nobody listens to. The Craftsman carved his name into the foundation. The CEO carved his initials into a Cayman account.

We used to build companies like neighborhoods—messy, proud, haunted by stories. Now we build them like bombs: for impact, not for life. The Craftsman is gone. The lunchroom is gone. The river glows in the dark, and shareholders cheer.

Gen X isn’t just a chemical—it’s a generation that watched its childhood swimming holes taped off as crime scenes. The EPA calls it “Tuesday.” Wall Street calls it “engagement.”

And the whistleblower? She didn’t die for being wrong. She died for being right too early.

Meta is just the latest parable. Not the metaverse headset or dopamine slot machine feed—the Hidden Harms hearing. Two former employees testified that Meta erased research showing how its VR platform exposed kids to sexual harassment, grooming, and violence. Cayce Savage described children being dropped into virtual strip clubs. Jason Sattizahn tried to document adults masturbating in shared VR spaces where minors were present. Meta’s response? Delete the data.

That isn’t negligence. It’s systemic suppression. Poison in the water, with a memo attached: Please don’t test it.

The machine doesn’t care if you’re red or blue. It cares if you’re billable. And when the Craftsman is replaced by a dashboard, we all drink the water.

The 1980s didn’t just deregulate—they rewrote the hero’s journey. “Greed is good” wasn’t satire; it was scripture. Citizens became speculators. Outsourcing was brilliance. Losing your job meant celebrating the stock price of the company that fired you. Pride traded for pivots. Legacy traded for liquidity. The river traded for returns.

And now we’re shocked when the fish glow in the dark.

But here’s the truth buried beneath the shareholder reports and the ESG slide decks: Most CEOs aren’t stewards. They’re gamblers. They roll dice with rivers. They play chicken with aquifers. They run billion-dollar experiments on ecosystems and call it “innovation.” They contaminate tap water with PFAS and call it “acceptable risk.” They poison the bloodstream of towns and call it “cost of doing business.”

It’s not that they don’t know. It’s that they don’t care. Because caring doesn’t scale. Because stewardship doesn’t spike stock prices. Because the river doesn’t have a lobbyist.

This is the age of “let’s see what happens.” Let’s deregulate and see what happens. Let’s offshore and see what happens. Let’s bury the data and see what happens. Let’s expose children to virtual strip clubs and see what happens. Let’s pump forever chemicals into the tap and see what happens.

And when the fish glow in the dark? They call it “growth.” When the whistleblower drowns? They call it “noise.” When the river forgets its name? They call it “progress.”

But the river remembers. The soil remembers. The Craftsman remembers. And one day, the audit won’t be financial. It’ll be mythic.

This is Little Morsel #5. It belongs to the canon—a shard in the mirror we hold to the culture.

In moments of cultural rupture, satire steps aside. This is one of those moments. The murder of Charlie Kirk—polarizing, symbolic, and deeply American—demands not mockery, but clarity. Empathy, guns, and tribalism: three forces braided into the DNA of our democracy, now fraying at the edges. This edition is not numbered. It is not part of the rhythm. It is an interruption. A dispatch from the edge of civic coherence.

Empathy is not agreement. It is the first act of listening before language arrives. Democracy, in its purest form, is not consensus—it is coexistence. And coexistence without empathy is proximity without peace. Charlie Kirk denied empathy. Mocked it. Weaponized its absence. But we are not absolved of offering it. To extend empathy is not to excuse, nor to surrender. It is to remember what makes us salvageable. It is to remember that the arc bends only when we remain willing to witness those we do not understand. Empathy is not weakness. It is the last civic muscle we have left before the body politic seizes.

Tribalism is humanity's original software. Democracy is the glitch. Liberal democracy doesn't erase tribe — it interrupts it. It is a spell we cast daily, one that says: "I will not kill you, even if I can." But spells fade. Rituals decay when not renewed. Charlie Kirk belonged to a tribe. So do we. But liberalism is the only tribe that defends your right to leave it. That is its magic — and its fragility. When the spell breaks, we return to bone and blood. To the law of the fang. To the comfort of the known enemy. And the algorithm knows how to summon that faster than any scripture.

The right to bear arms is often framed as a partisan wound. But beneath the blood lies an evolutionary truth: survival demands defense. Animals grow claws. We forged triggers. Autonomy, when absolute, demands the means to defend the body that houses it. But when liberty outpaces compassion, the body becomes a battlefield — and the child in the classroom, collateral.

Kirk's death was not a punctuation. It was part of a pattern. A day later, a student opened fire at Evergreen High School in Colorado. Two classmates were shot. The shooter turned the gun on himself. Evergreen is twenty miles from Columbine. These events are not metaphors. They are coordinates. These moments don’t rhyme in poetry. They rhyme in blood.  Violence is no longer exceptional. It is ambient. Radicalization is no longer fringe. It is predictive. Empathy is no longer optional. It is endangered.

In the hours after Kirk's death, the right blamed the left — before the facts arrived. Jesse Watters declared, "They are at war with us." Laura Loomer called for Trump to "crack down on the Left with the full force of the government." Trump blamed "leftist rhetoric" for the violence. But the facts say otherwise: Right-wing extremists have committed over six times more politically motivated murders than left-wing extremists since 1975. 

• The January 6th riot

• The hammer attack on Paul Pelosi

• The kidnapping plot against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

• The assassination of Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman

This is not just hypocrisy. It is projection. The rhetoric that fuels violence is used to condemn it. The ideology most associated with political terror blames the one most committed to civic restraint.

Right-wing militias are organized, armed, and aligned with power. Oath Keepers and Three Percenters boast over 80-200 active members. They are responsible for nearly 57% of political violence. Left-wing formations like the Socialist Rifle Association are scattered, defensive, and marginalized, with fewer than 10 active members. They account for a quarter of political violence. This is not a war. It is a mirror. What we fear from others is often what we refuse to see in ourselves.

Elon Musk called the left "the party of murder." His own AI, Grok, disagreed—citing ADL data that shows right-wing extremists commit the overwhelming majority of political killings. Trump blames "radical rhetoric" while his own rallies echo with threats. The conservative base is not just being misled. It is being weaponized — through fear, inversion, and narrative laundering. This is not confusion. It is choreography. McCarthyism with memes. The Southern Strategy, rebooted for the For You Page. This is governance by distortion. And we deserve better than a puppet show.

The President invited Nick Fuentes to dinner. He praises Charlie Kirk in public. One is a white nationalist. The other, a populist firebrand. But to him, they are the same: loud, loyal, and useful. This isn't about belief. It's about utility. He doesn't care about the difference. Because his base doesn't know the difference. And when violence erupts, he blames the left. Not because it's true. But because it works.

The shooter was a 22-year-old white man from a conservative family. He wasn't trans. He wasn't Left. He didn't like Charlie Kirk's rhetoric. That was the motive. But the narrative was already written — before the facts arrived. This is not leadership. This is narrative engineering. This is gaslighting at scale. This is the fragile spell breaking in real time.

Some now call for Charlie Kirk's legacy to continue. That is not mourning. That is myth-making. Kirk's work was not neutral. It was tribal, polarizing, hostile to pluralism. To canonize his politics is to codify fracture. We don't need more characters. We need clarity. We don't need more scripts. We need mirrors.

This edition is not satire. It is not myth. It is a dispatch from the edge of civic coherence. Empathy is the weapon we forgot we had. Liberalism is the only tribe that defends your right to leave it. Democracy is not self-sustaining. It is a ritual. And rituals must be kept.

The murder of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy. But it is also a test. A crucible in which we will decide, once again, who we are and who we intend to be. In this moment of fracture, we are called to bear witness. To extend empathy even to those who denied it. To uphold the rituals of democracy against the pull of tribalism. To remember that coexistence is not a state of being, but an act of will.

We are not passive observers of this moment. We are its authors. The story of American democracy is still being written, in real time, with every choice we make. To succumb to tribalism is to erase ourselves from that story. To choose empathy is to write ourselves back in.

Charlie Kirk is gone. But the forces that shaped him, and that he shaped in turn, remain. The guns. The tribes. The spells we cast and the ones we break. These are our inheritance. And it is our responsibility to decide what we will do with them.

Will we use them to write a new story? Or will we let them write us out of the one we've already begun?

The choice is ours. The pen is in our hands. The page is not yet dry.

What will we write next?

This is Little Morsel: Special Edition — The Fragile Spell. It does not belong to the rhythm. It interrupts it. It is a fracture in the canon, a record of rupture. When satire bows its head, clarity must take its place.

That is the little morsel for today. Make sure you check out our other Editions: alittlemorsel

Little Morsel #4: Make Empathy Great Again

This morsel was written before the events surrounding Charlie Kirk’s death. It is not a reaction to that news, nor an attack on any individual. It is a meditation on empathy—how it's weaponized, politicized, and quietly removed from the national bloodstream.

If you're reading this as partisan critique, take a deeper breath. This isn’t about left or right. It’s about iconography and hypocrisy. About how we’ve taken the face of a refugee messiah and airbrushed him onto a border wall. About how a painting of compassion can trigger more outrage than the policies that inspired it.

This piece isn't satire for sport. It’s elegy disguised as sarcasm. It’s reverence dressed in irreverence. It’s a reminder that realism, when done right, doesn’t just depict pain—it reflects power. And sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do is simply refuse to look away.

If empathy is weakness, then Jesus was the weakest man who ever lived.

Try telling that to the people foaming at the mouth over some paintings.

Rigoberto A. Gonzalez paints migrants like saints — not metaphorically, not coyly, but full-tilt baroque: chiaroscuro lighting, Renaissance poses, the kind of reverence once reserved for martyrs and monarchs. His migrants aren’t statistics. They’re sacred.

And for that, he’s been crucified.

Not by critics, but by the same folks who hang crosses from their mirrors and scream about “values” while voting to criminalize compassion.

Biblical Realism in the Age of ICE

In 2020, Gonzalez’s Immigrants Crossing the Border Wall Into South Texas was named a finalist at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. It shows a family mid-crossing: a man clutches a child, a woman carries a baby in a sling. Hands reaching. Bodies climbing. Faces praying. (photo below)

The lighting is divine. The brushwork, reverent. It could be the Flight into Egypt, the Crucifixion, the Deposition — but updated. ICE instead of centurions. South Texas instead of Golgotha.

The reaction? Predictable as a Fox News chyron:

“Woke.” “Divisive.” “Propaganda.”

Translation: empathy is illegal here.

The Light That Exposes

Gonzalez’s obsession with light began on a ranch in rural Mexico, where kerosene lamps replaced electricity and Rembrandt danced on adobe walls. He doesn’t paint with glow. He paints with exposure. His light doesn’t comfort — it convicts.

It’s the kind of light border agents use to flush out bodies in the dark.

It’s the kind of light González uses to remind you those bodies have souls.

Jesus, Without Papers

Imagine Jesus at the border: sandals dusty, robe weathered, no passport, just stories and scars. ICE moves in. Riot shields. spears or Tasers. Brass armor or Tactical gear. One agent asks,

“Do you have papers?”

“I am the Word,” he replies.

They arrest him anyway.

The crowd cheers.

They wear red hats. They quote scripture. They mistake cruelty for conviction.

This isn’t a metaphor. This is a mirror.

In a country allergic to nuance, empathy is contraband.

Let’s keep smuggling it in.

Well, that’s today’s little morsel.

Next Edition is Little Morsel #5: The River That Forgot Its Name (also written before Charlie Kirk shooting)

— The Baker (Photo of painting below: The White House identified the piece titled Refugees Crossing the Border Wall into South Texas as one of the artworks and exhibitions it deemed objectionable. Rigoberto A. Gonzalez)

Little Morsel #3 — Thou Shalt Not Drag

“In a country where sequins are more regulated than semi-automatics, we’ve finally found the real threat to children: storytelling in heels.”

Welcome to Operation Protect the Children from Sequins — a fictional congressional hearing that feels disturbingly plausible. The chamber is lit like a runway. Politicians in camo suits clutch Bibles and AR-15s. Enter Miss Trigger Happy, drag queen extraordinaire, heels clicking like a countdown.

She takes the mic:

“I’m not here to seduce your children — unless they’re into literacy and sparkle. I’m here to testify that glitter doesn’t kill. Guns do.”

A senator interrupts:

“Jesus wore robes, not rhinestones.”

Another adds:

“If God wanted drag queens to read books, He wouldn’t have invented cable news.”

The hearing devolves into a fashion critique disguised as moral panic. Sequins are declared a national security threat. One congressman proposes mandatory background checks for mascara.

Charlotte’s Web of Lies

Outside, protest signs bloom like satire in spring:

Ban Wigs, Not Weapons

Jesus Wore Robes. You Wear Camouflage. Who’s Performing Now?

Glitter Over Gunpowder

Inside, Miss Trigger Happy reads Charlotte’s Web of Lies to children in bulletproof backpacks. Red laser sights aim at the book, not the gun rack behind her. A senator proposes the Drag-Free Zones Act to protect children from storytelling in heels.

The Closet in Camouflage

Then comes the glitter-encrusted dossier:

Mark Foley, sexting teenage pages

Ralph Shortey, convicted of trafficking boys

Dennis Hastert, hush money for abuse

Ray Holmberg, sentenced for sex tourism with minors

Robert Bauman, caught soliciting a 16-year-old

Miss Trigger Happy pauses:

“You clutch your pearls at drag queens reading Charlotte’s Web, but your own colleagues were writing chapters in Lolita.”

A senator yells:

“This is a smear campaign!”

She replies:

“No, darling. It’s a highlight reel.”

The Gospel According to Gunmetal

So let us kneel — not in reverence, but in recognition.

Let us genuflect before the altar of satire, where sequins outshine sanctimony and storytelling in heels exposes the gospel of hypocrisy.

Let us remember: the louder they preach, the deeper the closet. The more they clutch their Bibles, the tighter they grip their rifles. And the more they fear drag queens, the more they reveal their own costume.

Because in the end, it’s not about protecting children. It’s about protecting power — even when that power wears camo and shame.

Final Reflection

So let’s reframe the question. Do guns kill kids, or do people kill kids? The answer is yes. People with guns kill kids. And while we argue semantics, the body count rises. Other countries studied the problem, reformed their laws, and lowered the numbers — including child deaths. We offer “Thoughts and Prayers” and wait for the next time. And the next. And the next.

If the solution is obvious but politically inconvenient, then the real threat isn’t drag queens.

It’s denial dressed in righteousness.

Well, that is your little morsel for the day. Thank you for reading. Next edition will be: Little Morsel #4 – Make Empathy Great Again.

Little Morsel #2 — “Goodnight AR-15” We’ll pull a novel off a shelf faster than we’ll pull a weapon off the street — and somehow call that safety. Picture it: A fluorescent‑lit school board meeting, folding chairs in neat rows, the smell of burnt coffee and anxiety. A mother clutches a paperback like it’s radioactive. She reads aloud a single sentence — the “offending” passage — her voice trembling with moral urgency. The room nods. The vote is unanimous. The book is gone by Friday.

Meanwhile, on the muted TV in the corner, a news ticker scrolls: Another shooting. Multiple victims. Suspect at large. No one looks up.

The Speed of Outrage

Banning a book is quick work. One complaint. One meeting. One memo. By Monday, the shelf is lighter, the librarian is quieter, and the children are “safer.”

Addressing gun violence? That’s a decades‑long pilgrimage through the desert of “thoughts and prayers,” punctuated by the occasional oasis of a committee hearing that leads nowhere. We can redact a wizard in a week, but regulating a weapon takes generations of funerals.

Safety Theater

In a bold stand against the creeping menace of literacy, the Board has heroically purged our shelves of the most dangerous works ever to threaten young minds. Gone is The Very Hungry Socialist, whose reckless advocacy of cupcake redistribution could topple entire economies. Banished is The Giving Tree Pays Her Taxes, a subversive ode to civic responsibility. Goodnight, AR‑15 has been removed for promoting firearm bedtime neglect, while Charlotte’s Web of Lies was deemed an insidious attempt to radicalize children into believing spiders can read. And of course, If You Give a Mouse a Minimum Wage — a thinly veiled manifesto against the free cheese market — will never again gnaw at the moral fiber of our youth.

The Cultural Reflex

Why is it so easy to ban a book and so hard to touch a gun? Because banning a book is symbolic control. It’s a gesture. It’s a way to say, Look, we’re doing something without actually doing anything.

Regulating weapons is actual control. It’s tangible. It’s messy. It’s political suicide in certain zip codes.

We’ve turned the Second Amendment into the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not infringe. And like all commandments, it’s interpreted selectively — absolute when it suits us, negotiable when it doesn’t.

The False Equivalence Parade

We’ll ban drag queens before we ban high‑capacity magazines. We’ll regulate pronouns before we regulate background checks. We’ll police bathrooms before we police gun shows. We’ll protect children from fictional wizards, mythical beasts, and the occasional queer subplot — but not from the reality that someone can walk into their classroom with a weapon designed for war.

Each misplaced priority is a drumbeat. And the rhythm is always the same: Control the symbol. Ignore the substance.

The Quiet Indictment

This isn’t about banning guns. It’s about the absurdity of what we do ban first. It’s about the moral math that says a paperback is a greater threat to a child than a semi‑automatic.

If we can move this fast to protect children from fiction, imagine what we could do if we tried protecting them from reality.

Coda

The school board meeting ends. The paperback is gone. The mother feels victorious. The librarian feels defeated. The children feel nothing — they weren’t reading that book anyway.

And somewhere, in another fluorescent‑lit room, another meeting is starting. Another book is on trial. Another shelf will be lighter by Friday.

The ticker will keep scrolling. The headlines will keep coming. And we’ll keep calling it safety.

That’s your Little Morsel for the day. Sweet dreams, America — mind the bedtime stories, not the body count.

Next up: Little Morsel #3 – Thou Shalt Not Drag. Follow, share, or scream into the void — just don’t look away.

Little Morsel #1: Crusade Casual

They call it socialism when it feeds the poor.

They call it patriotism when it fattens the state’s wallet.

Funny how the same people who clutch their pearls at food stamps will throw roses at a government equity stake in Intel. Suddenly, centralized control is noble. Suddenly, state ownership is “strategic.” Suddenly, the iron hand is holy—so long as it’s wearing a red tie and quoting Corinthians.

This isn’t policy. It’s cosplay.

We’re not governing. We’re reenacting the Crusades—with better branding and worse theology.

The religious right used to preach humility. Now they preach vengeance.

They used to talk about grace. Now it’s grievance.

They used to wash feet. Now they want to stomp necks.

And they do it all while screaming about socialism, communism, and authoritarianism—without realizing they’ve built a gilded altar to all three.

Let’s break it down.

Universal healthcare? “Socialism.”

School lunch programs? “Dependency.”

Affordable housing? “Moral decay.”

But when the government takes a 10% stake in Intel, it’s “genius.”

When it demands a 15% cut of AI chip sales to China, it’s “protecting national interests.”

When it uses executive orders to bypass Congress, it’s “strong leadership.”

So let’s be clear:

They don’t hate socialism.

They hate who it helps.

If it uplifts the poor, it’s tyranny.

If it enriches the state or the elite, it’s strategy.

The Authoritarianism They Love

Executive orders used to be a red flag. Now they’re a red carpet.

The Constitution used to be sacred. Now it’s a prop.

Checks and balances? Optional.

Due process? Inconvenient.

They want one man, one voice, one decree.

As long as it’s their guy.

And if you question it, you’re un-American.

If you resist it, you’re a threat.

If you remember history, you’re a heretic.

The Religion They Weaponize

This is where it gets rich.

The same crowd that quotes Jesus to justify tax cuts is now cheering on policies that mirror the very empires he resisted.

They talk about freedom while building surveillance states.

They talk about morality while gutting social programs.

They talk about family values while cheering on cruelty.

It’s not Christianity. It’s Crusade cosplay.

A holy war against nuance.

A spiritual purge of empathy.

They don’t want the Sermon on the Mount.

They want the sword of Constantine.

And they’ll swing it in the name of righteousness, even if it cuts the poor, the immigrant, the sick, and the stranger.

The Irony They Can’t See

We’re living in a paradox so thick you could spread it on toast.

The government is now part-owner of a private tech giant.

It’s dictating trade terms like a Soviet ministry.

It’s bypassing democratic norms with executive fiat.

And the people who once screamed “tyranny!” at mask mandates are now silent.

Or worse—cheering.

Because it’s not about ideology.

It’s about identity.

If the policies come wrapped in nationalism, religion, and grievance, they’re palatable.

Even if they’re authoritarian.

Even if they’re socialist.

Even if they’re hypocritical.

The Morsel

America doesn’t hate socialism.

It hates sharing.

It doesn’t fear authoritarianism.

It fears losing control.

It doesn’t worship Jesus.

It worships power dressed in scripture.

And the irony?

The very people who claim to defend freedom are laying the bricks for its undoing—one executive order, one corporate stake, one holy war at a time.

But hey, at least the flag’s still waving while the fridge stays empty.

Chew slowly. Well, that is your little morsel for the day. Thank you for reading. Next edition will be: Little Morsel #2 – Safety