The Liberals' Feckless Opposition To Trump: A Rant

The liberal response to Donald Trump has been nothing short of infantile. They can act any way they want, I can’t tell them any differently, but it’s not doing anything to get Trump out of office. I’ve tried explaining it to them for the last four years, but they’ve had their fingers in their ears and been screaming, “Nyah, nyah, I can’t hear you, Russian bot.”

The problem with an infantile mindset is that infants are not capable of doing anything for themselves. The best an infant can do is cry and hope one of its parents comes and takes care of the problem for them. That’s what liberals are doing now. They shriek in the hopes that someone will take care of the dirty diaper that is their president.

In the absence of actual parents, they glom on to any authority figure they hope will fight their fight for them. Enter Daddy Deepstate. For four years he’s been yanking their chain and they’ve been lapping it up. “The authorities are going to come and take care of the big bad monster,” they say. It’s been four years yet and nothing’s been done, but you know how kids are able to watch the same damn movie night after night for years.

Yeah, they’ve got the TV on in the background while the grownups are busy trying to do grownup stuff. I’ve heard the same damn story hundreds of times already. I’ve seen their little eyes get all wide when the lady on TV announces a bombshell. They get up and do their little happy dance in their footie pyjamas as the good witch says she’s going to lasso the orange ogre at last. She mixes powerful incantations into her speech, words like “if true”, “allegedly”, and “unnamed sources”.

But it always ends in disappointment. The ogre gets away in the end.  

Which they should know! Because they watch the same damn video EVERY FREAKING NIGHT! If someone would please buy them another video to watch.

Do they really think the latest evidence-free assertion from anonymous sources is going to be what brings down Trump? Has Daddy Deepstate and Mommy Media ever really done anything for you? But you know how kids tend to obsess over purple dinosaurs and the like. You can’t tell them it’s just a guy in a purple suit. And he's singing their song: "I love you, You love me, Trump and his supporters are SCUM!"

The thing is, all the liberals have to do to take down Trump is get out of his way and let him stumble down the ramp in front of his legions. There’s an exploding debt, a crashing economy, and a completely inept handling of a pandemic. All they have to do is step back a little bit and let happen what will come naturally. Just shut up and let the big oaf expose himself.

BUT THEY JUST CAN’T HELP THEMSELVES! They try to attack Trump, but they are only capable of doing so in the most atrocious ways. And in the process, they are making themselves repugnant to both the centrists and the far left, the two voting blocs they most require. Calling anti-war activists “Putin puppets” is doing nothing to win their vote.

Dear God, watching liberals get outmaneuvered by Trump is like watching some guy lose a wrestling match to an oversized stuffed bear. In a pit of filth. You ask yourself how it's even possible, but time after time you watch as liberals somehow end up on their backs gasping in the filth with the bear perched upon their chest, a mindless grin on its face and not a drop of crud on its fur. IT’S A STUFFED BEAR! HOW CAN YOU BE LOSING TO A STUFFED BEAR? But no sooner does the next round begin than they somehow get all tangled up in their Kente cloth and the bear’s again on top of them and they turn purple at the indignity of it all. It’s hard not to laugh, people. Harder still not to turn the channel.

I find myself wishing Jerry Springer still had a show so I could watch something a little less repulsive. I find myself wishing the Democrats had someone a little less insane than Adam Schiff, like say Joe McCarthy. I wish they had a more youthful and vibrant candidate, like Bernie Sanders, or a more charismatic one, like Walter Mondale. Or even just a better strategist, like Charles Manson.

If Trump gets reelected, I want liberals to promise me something: stay out of his way. Because I guarantee you before his second term is ended, his own supporters will force him to resign. That’s how incompetent he is. The only reason he’s made it this far is because they hate the alternative and are willing to blame everything on them. And because your total ineptness to oppose him in any meaningful way has given people who don’t like Trump no reason to join with you. Trump has only made it this far with your help.

Okay, rant over. You can take your fingers out of your ears now.

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Spreading Gossip Ruins Lives, Especially When The Gossip Comes From The CIA

If you share a news article, it is your responsibility to research the veracity of the article, otherwise it is simply gossip. We might think gossip is harmless, but it ruins lives. And when it is gossip planted by intelligence agencies that exist to promote U.S. dominance all over the world, it could quite possibly ruin hundreds of millions of lives.

Here’s how a rumor starts. Some nefarious individual has an agenda and so whispers an idea into the ear of someone whose job it is to collect news. Now collecting news, like picking apples, is hard work, so both the apple picker and the journalist aren’t going to question too much when someone drops what they’re working to get right onto their lap. But if you’re a responsible fruit picker, you should give that apple a quick inspection to make sure it’s not rotten.

But the paid gossip thinks even a rotten apple is a juicy item. The only thing different between a gossip and a journalist at this point is that a journalist makes sure to be precise about the unverifiable information they receive.

The nefarious rumor starter knows which ears to whisper into first. They only speak to the most respectable news institutions, usually The New York Times and The Washington Post. They do this to give their rumors a veneer of legitimacy. And the NYT and WaPo, respected institutions that they are, will qualify the story they report by mentioning somewhere in the article that the entire story relies on anonymous sources within agencies whose job it is to create rumors to advance their agenda. Okay, they don’t say it quite like that, but they do admit—if you read it carefully—that they have no actual proof for anything they’ve said in the article.

But that’s just how a rumor is born, not how it spreads. Like some infectious disease in a country crammed with people who don’t believe in masks, it gets around quickly. First the other news outlets take the story and run with it. Because, as I’ve said before, why pick fruit when ripe ones are already falling onto your lap? Because the second tier gossips can’t stake claim to breaking the rumor…er, news, it is their job to put a twist to it. And in twisting it, the first thing they tend to do is drop the “according to unnamed sources working for agencies that exist to spread misinformation that supports their agendas” part of the story. You see, since they’re reporting second hand, they can now claim they got their information from The New York Times rather than from those unsavory rumor mongers who have been known to tell a whopper or two in their time that have led to a few million people dying in needless wars. 

Now it used to be when people got news, they paid for it. And having paid for a newspaper, they took the time to actually read it. That’s not how news works in the 21^st Century. Today people receive their news for free, and since it is free and abundant, they have no appreciation for it and merely take it in on a superficial level. Today, people get their news from headlines.

And since nobody pays for their sources of information anymore, the providers of information have had to look for other sources of income. Which is to say that the sources of information are no longer working for you, they are working for others whose intent it is to get you to believe what they want you to believe. To that end, they are more concerned about grabbing your attention than educating you. And they are more interested in providing cheap content than insightful articles. In short, our journalistic institutions have become click-bait farms. And gossip mongers, willing ears for those with stories to tell.

Once unsubstantiated rumors have been echoed through the establishment media in order to give it a perceived respectability, it is then bounced around social media by those who were told when they were young that gossip was just a sin but never really saw the harm in it. And from that point, the damage has been done. Because no matter how un-subtantiated the gossip is, it makes a mess. It's like throwing a mudball at someone in a white dress, you're never going to get the stain out. Start a rumor, and it will always be in the consciousness of the public no matter how wrong it was. Like pee tapes. Or Weapons Of Mass Destruction. 

Which is why your mother always told you, don't be a gossip. It hurts innocent people while those who started the gossip just sit back and smile.

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This Is What Resistance Looks Like

When a new power came on the scene and routed the Democratic Party in 2016, it would have been easy for them to just quit. But like the true Jedi warriors they are, they felt it was their duty to 

oppose the enemy, and so formed the resistance. From the moment they were brought 

low until now, they have been brick by brick building a path to ultimate 

victory for their party. Now, mere months away until they unleash 

their assault  against the Death Star, it is time to look 

back on the heroic struggle they have waged. 

This, then, is the story of

 the Resistance 

in pictures.

(Cue Music)

First they donned hats and missed brunch to attend a rally:

They let people know they were offended by Trump's vulgar ways:

They created art to show that they would not tolerate men reducing women to mere sex objects and body shaming anyone who had a less than idealized physique:

They created art to show that love is love and that homosexuality was not something that should be used to mock people:

They showed that, unlike Trump, they they weren't xenophobes with an irrational fear of people from other countries:

Obama's and HRC's communication director

Unlike Trump and his supporters who pushed ridiculous conspiracy theories, the Resistance stuck to the facts. Because facts matter: 

These were not mere token displays of resistance, these were meaningful, impactful acts of protest: 

And when it came time to take a stance on police violence, the Democrats got real: 

They worked to build alliances with other rebel factions:

Of course, when the nation's leaders needed to come together to deal with the financial crisis resulting from the pandemic, the Resistance showed that they were able to work with the Republicans to help the average American: 

Yes, the Democrats had a master strategy for success. That's why, when it came time to take Trump down in the 2020 election, they knew they needed a special kind of firebrand to handle the job, a man with bold new ideas and the kind of fire in the belly that would be required to stand up to Trump:

It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Here's hoping these pictures have inspired you to take up the flag of resistance and carry it into victory in November. Because once Trump's gone, everything will once again be as it should:

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The Protests Aren't (Just) About Racism

The George Floyd murder was no more about racism than Nazism was about Antisemitism. It’s about authoritarianism and institutionalized violence. It’s about the rule of law enforcers rather than the rule of law. It’s about power standing in the place where justice should reign. It’s about placing security above compassion and the interests of class and caste above equality.

It is about a law enforcement system that protects itself first, property rights second, the average person last and the poorest and most disenfranchised not at all.

Racism is but one inevitable aspect of authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is necessarily racist because authoritarians are always looking for excuses to rationalize their brutality. Authoritarians always need to divide in order to conquer. Because while they talk tough, they are afraid of an honest and honorable fight. 

Those who wish to dominate others through force will never come right out and admit that that is their motivation. Even Hitler took great pains to paint himself and his supporters as victims who had no choice but to use violence to defend themselves. Whether it was the scheming machinations of the Jews, the violence of the communists, or the injustices perpetrated upon Germany by other European powers, there was always an excuse for violence and thug tactics.

We are told that it is not a matter of systemic brutality but merely a few bad apples in a police force that is composed of mostly heroic police putting their lives on the line to protect the public. But where are the examples of the good cop we are told is the rule rather than exception? Instead we see three officers staring at the bad cop and doing nothing. We see one police officer attempt to check on the elderly man another cop has pushed to the ground and then walk on when urged by yet another officer.

We have seen police officers take a knee with protesters, but that is little different than the kind of lip service Hitler gave to Christianity or peace, a publicity stunt meant to assuage those who questioned his motives. We have seen police officers rise from their knees, and a short time later assault protestors with mace and clubs.

Both protesters and especially those who condemn the rioting that exists at the protests’ edges must come to understand there is more to protest than racist police officers. They need to see that though black people may be the most obvious targets of institutional violence, institutional violence goes far beyond mere racism. Racism isn’t inherently violent, but authoritarian beliefs and systems are inevitably racist AND violent. Authoritarianism places some above accountability so that they become emboldened to use force against anyone they think is not protected by the system they are a part of exist to protect.

Racism is a weed that perhaps can never be utterly eliminated, but it will never come to its rank fruition without the fertilizer that is authoritarianism. Show me a place where racism thrives and it will be a society where not merely people of a different race who will be treated terribly. Women’s rights will count for little, those outside of the religious minority will be looked down upon, and the poor will be blamed for their moral failings rather than given a hand up.

To reduce the problem we now face to racism makes it a fight we can only fight on a single front against a problem that is attacking us from many fronts. To reduce it to nothing more than racism means that those who are not African American have no personal stake in the fight. It takes those who are not black out of the fight insomuch as it takes us out of the crosshairs.

This concerns all of us, and not merely as people with a conscience who feel obliged to do the right thing. Black people have always been at the forefront of this fight but it is one that affects us all. African Americans have been fighting for freedom since the time of the American Revolution and even before. Their entire history has been one unceasing fight for freedom. They fought in the Civil War. They fought in World War I, only to come back to the same lack of freedom at home. They fought in World War II, though they were not allowed to fight next to their white brothers in arms. They have fought in every war every white American has ever fought in, and they have fought in a constant battle for freedom and dignity in a never ending war that few white people have ever fought in and none can ever fully understand.

I hear a lot of people talking about the fight for freedom from people who expect it as their God-given right. I’m sick to death of people talking about freedom who have never sacrificed their privileges in its name nor felt the true bitterness of not possessing it. We, white people, as a whole have never been on the front lines of the fight for liberty and justice. We have always sat one place removed from the edge, believing that should we choose to keep silent we could keep ourselves safe from the harshest effects of an authoritarian system. But in truth, we are merely the next domino in line. It is time, at long last, for us to get to the front of this battle. It is our fight, as well.

P.S. The white man in the picture above is Jim Zwerg. Learn his story and be inspired by it, because the world needs more people like him. 

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Trump Is The Pig Without Lipstick

I will leave it to you to determine how much sarcasm went into the writing of this. 

I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. I didn’t vote for Trump either, but I wasn’t afraid of having Trump as president. Democrats have for years been telling me that a vote for a third party is a vote given to the Republican candidate, but I don’t listen. To me, the difference between a Republican and a Democrat is the difference between a pig and a pig with makeup. Sometimes the pig with makeup is actually worse, especially if you’re lonely and had too much to drink. Democratic voters have definitely been lonely for a long time, and they’ve been on a three year Russiagate bender. Not a good combination.

I’m against pigs with makeup for numerous reasons. There is just something inherently wrong with the idea. Let a pig be a pig, let the truth be the truth. People need to get real. They’ve been living in a manipulated reality for too long, living in a world where advertising (i.e. corporate propaganda) has become so ubiquitous we no longer question it, no longer notice its impact on our lives. It messes with our ability to think clearly, warps our brains and plays upon our worst emotional impulses.

It’s time to get back to basics. I want people to see that our country is being ruled by pigs. I want to scrub the makeup off and let the world know The United States Of America is ruled by pig ethics.

Which is why I don’t mind having Donald Trump as a president compared to any Democrat that has a chance of getting the support of the DNC. I don’t want anyone in this country or elsewhere in the world getting the image of our white, male ideologies being pushed by a woman of color or a homosexual. I’m sick of seeing Trump in drag or in black face. It's gross. Let the pig be a pig.

I hope my Trump supporting friends understand where I am going with this. I look upon Trump as the most certain leader to once and for all bring an end to corporate capitalism, to bring down all the systems and ideals you all hold most dear. I see Trump as the decisive nail in the coffin of the notions of white privilege, military might, and social Darwinism. I want Donald Trump to serve as the poster boy for capitalism, and in so doing usher in an age of socialism.

I want to destroy the evangelical movement and replace it with genuine Christian behavior, and I see their support of Donald Trump as the means to show the rest of the world what a morally and intellectually bankrupt belief system fundamentalism has become. Maybe Trump is not the Antichrist, but they are most certainly Anti-Christians.

I don’t mind if Trump is elected for another four years, because I want to destroy forever the idea that socialism is the greater evil than capitalism. I want capitalism to have free reign for a few years without any excuse to blame socialism for society’s ills.

My message then to Trump supporters is this: I’m quite certain that he is the person most likely to tear down all the illusions you hold most dear. I am firmly convinced his presidency will bring about a fundamental change not only in how the world views us but in how we view ourselves. I have no doubt Trump will not Make America Great Again but instead will destroy once and for all those things you believe made America great in the first place. 

This is the world I envision will rise from the ruinous reign of Trump (if climate change or nuclear war does not obliterate our planet entirely, distinct possibilities regardless of who our next president will be). I see a South where statues of Civil War heroes are torn down and replaced with Statures of Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton. I see a country where Hinduism and Islam is taught equally with Christianity and atheism. I see a world where Trump is not despised so much as pitied, where he is not noted for his financial success but rather his spiritual emptiness. I see a world without gas-powered cars. I see a world where the people of the United States don't worry about being great but instead try to be good. I see a country that celebrates Indigenous People's Day rather than Columbus Day. I want your children to learn to speak Spanish and Chinese. And I see it all taking place because of Donald Trump's epic failure. Look around you and tell me it ain't happening. 

If there is a silver lining for you, it is Trump’s presidency will tear down the Democratic Party as well. People will realize how utterly unable and unwilling they were to provide an alternative, how they were not and never would be an answer to Trump. That, at least should make you happy. 

Now get out there and vote, a new tomorrow awaits.

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Go Easy On The MAGA Hat Wearers

Be gentle with the Trump supporters

Be patient, loving, kind.

For in Trump they see all they have been taught to love about America.

For them he is John Wayne and Evel Knievel, and also the third Duke brother.

They will not lightly let go of an American icon.

He is the living embodiment of a dying paradigm.

Denouncing him is like denouncing White Jesus.

He is the face of capitalism,

He is the George Washington they were told about in school,

A fighter for liberty, not a slave owner.

He is the role model the media wanted us to emulate.

To insult him is to insult Rambo 2 or Rocky 4.

He is everything they were programmed to adore, stripped of the political correctness.

He is the milk they suckled from TV’s teat.

His is the success that garners the envy of others,

The Swedish bikini team, Jordache Jeans.

He is everything Madison Avenue told us makes life worthwhile.

He is extreme Doritos and Monster Juice

G.I. Joe and G.I Jane

He is attitude and swagger winning out over discipline and sacrifice and intellect.

He is The American Way.

He will be clung to like memories of youth

A youth made sweeter with the passing of years

He is big block engines and cheap gasoline and senior prom

He is Peggy Sue and Linda Lou

And Elvis singing the blues.

But he is more than that.

He is the subconscious awareness that TV lied to them,

That the parent who raised them

Manipulated and abused them.

Trump is their inner voice saying that their lives were not like what was portrayed on TV.

That they were lied to and betrayed.

That Mountain Dew tasted good but made you feel bad.

That all that plastic crap they could afford to buy had a hidden price.

Trump is their response to the lie,

A found receipt for the happiness they were promised but never received.

Their Trump card for never receiving the American Dream

Their long-delayed compensation package from the factory that moved overseas.

Trump is what happens to a delusional dream deferred.

Trump is a social contract remembered by an idiot.

He is an avenging angel, God’s just wrath.

Trump is the lie that is clung to in the wreckage of a ship of lies

Because there is nothing else to cling to,

Because the ship of lies had no lifeboats, though its owners claimed it did.

Trump is the delinquent father who promises to buy his child cake

When their mother will not even give them bread.

Trump is the parent who will still say “I love you” to the bastard child.

Be gentle,

For they will never bow to the cold-hearted queen

Who sits in her ivory tower.

A Reading From Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom Of God Is Within You

From Tolstoy's The Kingdom Of God Is Within You (Taken from Luke 17:21):

We think to-day that the requirements of the Christian doctrine—of universal brotherhood, suppression of national distinctions, abolition of private property, and the strange injunction of non-resistance to evil by force—demand what is impossible. But it was just the same thousands of years ago, with every social or even family duty, such as the duty of parents to support their children, of the young to maintain the old, of fidelity in marriage. Still more strange, and even unreasonable, seemed the state duties of submitting to the appointed authority, and paying taxes, and fighting in defense of the country, and so on. All such requirements seem simple, comprehensible, and natural to us to-day, and we see nothing mysterious or alarming in them. But three or five thousand years ago they seemed to require what was impossible...

Humanity can no more go backward in its development than the individual man. Men have outlived the social, family, and state conceptions of life. Now they must go forward and assimilate the next and higher conception of life, which is what is now taking place. This change is brought about in two ways: consciously through spiritual causes, and unconsciously through material causes.

Just as the individual man very rarely changes his way of life at the dictates of his reason alone, but generally continues to live as before, in spite of the new interests and aims revealed to him by his reason, and only alters his way of living when it has become absolutely opposed to his conscience, and consequently intolerable to him; so, too, humanity, long after it has learnt through its religions the new interests and aims of life, toward which it must strive, continues in the majority of its representatives to live as before, and is only brought to accept the new conception by finding it impossible to go on living its old life as before.

Though the need of a change of life is preached by the religious leaders and recognized and realized by the most intelligent men, the majority, in spite of their reverential attitude to their leaders, that is, their faith in their teaching, continue to be guided by the old theory of life in their present complex existence. As though the father of a family, knowing how he ought to behave at his age, should yet continue through habit and thoughtlessness to live in the same childish way as he did in boyhood.

That is just what is happening in the transition of humanity from one stage to another, through which we are passing now. Humanity has outgrown its social stage and has entered upon a new period. It recognizes the doctrine which ought to be made the basis of life in this new period. But through inertia it continues to keep up the old forms of life. From this inconsistency between the new conception of life and practical life follows a whole succession of contradictions and sufferings which embitter our life and necessitate its alteration.

One need only compare the practice of life with the theory of it, to be dismayed at the glaring antagonism between our conditions of life and our conscience.

Our whole life is in flat contradiction with all we know, and with all we regard as necessary and right. This contradiction runs through everything, in economic life, in political life, and in international life. As though we had forgotten what we knew and put away for a time the principles we believe in (we cannot help still believing in them because they are the only foundation we have to base our life on) we do the very opposite of all that our conscience and our common sense require of us.

We are guided in economical, political, and international questions by the principles which were appropriate to men of three or five thousand years ago, though they are directly opposed to our conscience and the conditions of life in which we are placed to-day.

It was very well for the man of ancient times to live in a society based on the division of mankind into masters and slaves, because he believed that such a distinction was decreed by God and must always exist. But is such a belief possible in these days?

The man of antiquity could believe he had the right to enjoy the good things of this world at the expense of other men, and to keep them in misery for generations, since he believed that men came from different origins, were base or noble in blood, children of Ham or of Japhet. The greatest sages of the world, the teachers of humanity, Plato and Aristotle, justified the existence of slaves and demonstrated the lawfulness of slavery; and even three centuries ago, the men who described an imaginary society of the future, Utopia, could not conceive of it without slaves.

Men of ancient and medieval times believed, firmly believed, that men are not equal, that the only true men are Persians, or Greeks, or Romans, or Franks. But we cannot believe that now. And people who sacrifice themselves for the principles of aristocracy and of patriotism to-duty, don't believe and can't believe what they assert.

We all know and cannot help knowing—even though we may never have heard the idea clearly expressed, may never have read of it, and may never have put it into words, still through unconsciously imbibing the Christian sentiments that are in the air—with our whole heart we know and cannot escape knowing the fundamental truth of the Christian doctrine, that we are all sons of one Father, wherever we may live and whatever language we may speak; we are all brothers and are subject to the same law of love implanted by our common Father in our hearts.

Whatever the opinions and degree of education of a man of to-day, whatever his shade of liberalism, whatever his school of philosophy, or of science, or of economics, however ignorant or superstitious he may be, every man of the present day knows that all men have an equal right to life and the good things of life, and that one set of people are no better nor worse than another, that all are equal. Everyone knows this, beyond doubt; everyone feels it in his whole being. Yet at the same time everyone sees all round him the division of men into two castes—the one, laboring, oppressed, poor, and suffering, the other idle, oppressing, luxurious, and profligate. And everyone not only sees this, but voluntarily or involuntarily, in one way or another, he takes part in maintaining this distinction which his conscience condemns. And he cannot help suffering from the consciousness of this contradiction and his share in it.

The toiling masses, the immense majority of mankind who are suffering under the incessant, meaningless, and hopeless toil and privation in which their whole life is swallowed up, still find their keenest suffering in the glaring contrast between what is and what ought to be, according to all the beliefs held by themselves, and those who have brought them to that condition and keep them in it.

They know that they are in slavery and condemned to privation and darkness to minister to the lusts of the minority who keep them down. They know it, and they say so plainly. And this knowledge increases their sufferings and constitutes its bitterest sting.

The laborer of the present day would not cease to  suffer even if his toil were much lighter than that of the slave of ancient times, even if he gained an eight-hour working day and a wage of three dollars a day. For he is working at the manufacture of things which he will not enjoy, working not by his own will for his own benefit, but through necessity, to satisfy the desires of luxurious and idle people in general, and for the profit of a single rich man, the owner of a factory or workshop in particular. And he knows that all this is going on in a world in which it is a recognized scientific principle that labor alone creates wealth, and that to profit by the labor of others is immoral, dishonest, and punishable by law; in a world, moreover, which professes to believe Christ's doctrine that we are all brothers, and that true merit and dignity is to be found in serving one's neighbor, not in exploiting him.

Tolstoy, Leo. The Kingdom of God Is Within You.  Kindle Edition. .

You can get a free digital copy of the entire book here.

A Message From Leo Tolstoy

Just as the individual man cannot live without having some theory of the meaning of his life, and is always, though often unconsciously, framing his conduct in accordance with the meaning he attributes to his life, so too associations of men living in similar conditions—nations—cannot but have theories of the meaning of their associated life and conduct ensuing from those theories. And as the individual man, when he attains a fresh stage of growth, inevitably changes his philosophy of life, and the grown-up man sees a different meaning in it from the child, so too associations of men—nations—are bound to change their philosophy of life and the conduct ensuing from their philosophy, to correspond with their development.

The difference, as regards this, between the individual man and humanity as a whole, lies in the fact that the individual, in forming the view of life proper to the new period of life on which he is entering and the conduct resulting from it, benefits by the experience of men who have lived before him, who have already passed through the stage of growth upon which he is entering. But humanity cannot have this aid, because it is always moving along a hitherto untrodden track, and has no one to ask how to understand life, and to act in the conditions on which it is entering and through which no one has ever passed before.

Nevertheless, just as a man with wife and children cannot continue to look at life as he looked at it when he was a child, so too in the face of the various changes that are taking place, the greater density of population, the establishment of communication between different peoples, the improvements of the methods of the struggle with nature, and the accumulation of knowledge, humanity cannot continue to look at life as of old, and it must frame a new theory of life, from which conduct may follow adapted to the new conditions on which it has entered and is entering.

To meet this need humanity has the special power of producing men who give a new meaning to the whole of human life—a theory of life from which follow new forms of activity quite different from all preceding them. The formation of this philosophy of life appropriate to humanity in the new conditions on which it is entering, and of the practice resulting from it, is what is called religion.

And therefore, in the first place, religion is not, as science imagines, a manifestation which at one time corresponded with the development of humanity, but is afterward outgrown by it. It is a manifestation always inherent in the life of humanity, and is as indispensable, as inherent in humanity at the present time as at any other. Secondly, religion is always the theory of the practice of the future and not of the past, and therefore it is clear that investigation of past manifestations cannot in any case grasp the essence of religion.

The essence of every religious teaching lies not in the desire for a symbolic expression of the forces of nature, nor in the dread of these forces, nor in the craving for the marvelous, nor in the external forms in which it is manifested, as men of science imagine; the essence of religion lies in the faculty of men of foreseeing and pointing out the path of life along which humanity must move in the discovery of a new theory of life, as a result of which the whole future conduct of humanity is changed and different from all that has been before.

Tolstoy, Leo. The Kingdom of God Is Within You (p. 54).  . Kindle Edition.

You can get a free digital copy of the entire book here.