It’s exhausting. And I know that most just want to look away. “I just can’t deal with politics”
But this isn’t politics. It’s the soul of a nation that is rotting from the inside. It’s the soul of a rotting corpse making its last hurrah.
We turned the other way when Emmett Till was tortured and killed. We turned the other way at the lynchings and vicious cruelty of slavery. We turned the other way when husbands locked their wives in asylums for disagreeing with them
I want to say, “It’s just politics.” But that seems like the privilege of an older white male. They aren’t coming after me yet. I’m not LGBTQ. I’m not Mexican or Native. I’m not brown-skinned. I’m not a child, not Palestinian, not POC, not a woman.
It’s only privilege that gives me the choice to look away. But something in me can’t.
My enemies tell me that it is just because I crave attention. But I think I can do without that attention. My body just wants to sit in my library and read. I didn’t want to flee my home and my church.
But something in me can’t keep quiet. I just can’t watch human beings suffer unseen and unheard. I can’t say, “No one notices you. Neither do I notice you. Be warmed and fed.”
It seems to me that we are experiencing the last hurrah of a horrible past. We are experiencing the full-on hatred of weak white men whose power is challenged, whose world-view proved as flimsy as a spider’s web, falling apart while feasting on the blood of prey.
Eventually it collapses. It is exposed. It falls to ruin. The mouth of the wicked is never satisfied. 47 will never be satisfied. He will continue to consume and destroy, demanding more and more accolades and statues seeking to fill the emptiness of desperate narcissism. It never gets enough, and eventually the web collapses.
It seems to me this is what is happening.
The spirit that drove the puritans to kill and banish the outsiders, the spirit that bought and sold humans, the spirit that whipped the maidens and the field-workers for fun, the spirit that tortured and killed the uppity ones, the spirit that locked the wives away and raped the boys and girls – that spirit is giving its last dying, murderous gasp.
Don’t look away now. The web is collapsing. Your vote this year is absolutely crucial. We can’t look away.
I told you a little about my background. I was the 2nd son of 6 boys in a fundamentalist, Christian nationalist church. We feared hippies, people of color, people with long hair and people who voted McGovern over Nixon.
We called them communists.
I remember one particular Sunday. My father took all of us out to dinner after church. He was told that it was OK to go out to dinner because the Jews and the athiests could work on the Sabbath.
(To be fair to my father, he lived long enough to outgrow a lot of these ideas and became a far better man as he learned and grew. I wish the rest of the GOP did)
We were four boys and one baby sitting at the table in our Sunday best. We learned from quick and vicious discipline to fear the belt so we were “good”.
There was a woman in her 70s that passed by our table and smiled at my mother and father. She said to them, “It is so nice to see a family clothed and in their right minds.” For some reason that stuck with me. Kids retain weird things.
It is a reference to a gospel story about Jesus casting demons out of a man and hurling those demons into a herd of swine. The townspeople found the man “clothed and in his right mind”.
As I grew older and started to see my hometown for what it was, I understood things a little deeper.
First, the children were terrified of church. One toddler I remember would scream at the sight of the building.
Second, everyone was in a competition for whose kids could be “clothed and in their right minds” the best.
The external “Sunday best” was taught to all of us as the way to honor God. You wouldn’t stand before a king in shorts and a t-shirt, would you? But the reality was that the Sunday best was a way to separate those who belonged from those who didn’t. The sinners, the wayward, the poor, the homeless, the hungry – were not welcomed and they all knew that they weren’t welcome. The easiest way to separate the saint from the sinner was by the Sunday best unspoken rule. The outsiders knew it. I would invite friends to church and they would say, “I don’t have anything to wear.” I told them that it didn’t matter. But it did, and they knew it did.
Third, and now I am at my long-winded purpose. The woman in the restaurant had no idea what we endured. She didn’t see the abuse, the neglect, the pain.
Everyone I knew, including my parents, were abused or neglected at home. They had no concept of love. They never learned it from their parents who never learned it from theirs. It was generational trauma.
Every adult I knew growing up was beaten, neglected, starved, molested and verbally abused when they were children and they carried those scars.
Every home I knew had the outward veneer of “clothed and in their right minds” and were falling apart. One man I know from my childhood church would be frequently beaten until he bled.
Everyone knew it. Everyone shook their heads sadly. Everyone said, “Through much tribulation we enter the kingdom of heaven.”
When Stephen Miller speaks of the “leftist radical” hating beauty, he isn’t speaking about dignity, rose gardens, clean water, historical buildings, beautiful music…he is speaking of the outward veneer of “clothed and in their right minds”.
With a big enough stick to beat wives and kids with, you can certainly put on that show. It makes small men like Miller feel like they are somehow more righteous than others.
In fact, he actually said it outloud – “They are envious of our moral superiority”.
Mr. Miller, I lived that morality. You can shove it. No more. I will fight with every fiber of my being to protect human beings from your vicious hatred.
We’ve unclothed your righteous rags, and they have proven to be worthless and filthy. Slither back under that rock. The light has found you out.
It is common for those in power to use the Bible to justify their greed and hatred. The lust of the GOP to throw people off of their benefits while raiding the treasury is disheartening to me and it needs to be addressed.
I do not believe that the Bible is meant to be a guide for modern political discussions, since that is not what it was written for, but since our opponents have chosen to quote the Bible in order to oppress and condemn others, I believe I should correct a few things.
First, when the Bible says, “If a man doesn’t work, he shouldn’t eat”, Paul wasn’t teaching Thessalonians about how to avoid their responsibilities for the poor. The poor didn’t have an option about working and there were no SNAP benefits, or anything like that in the Roman Empire.
The church community had set up “food banks” to feed the poor. The “man who would not work” was the idle rich man who refused to contribute anything of value, but just sponged off of others.
Paul is giving advice on the best way to manage their stores of food and advising that maybe allowing a wealthy man who refuses to contribute to raid the pantry isn’t the best way to run a community.
And I don’t know about you, but forcing a single mom, a disabled person, a homeless person, or anyone else to jump yet another hurdle in order to eat, and using this verse to justify it, really pisses me off.
I know that the cult will just call me a communist and a ignorant heretic, so this isn’t to change anyone’s mind. It is to alleviate guilt.
If you are compassionate towards those who need help, the bible is on your side. Not the side of the oppressor.
We can change the narrative and make the community better for everyone.
I was going to post a video today. Earlier, the road construction outside my porch was in full swing. The porch was rattling and the house shaking. So the video will have to wait…
Then I see the news.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed with the darkness.
The lies, the false witness, the suffering, the destruction of our monuments, the soaring prices, the struggling farmers, asylum seekers living in fear, the white supremacy in the highest places of our country…
Abuse, greed, theft, lying as an executive pastime, assault…it gets me.
I don’t think this is a “politics as usual” campaign. I think that this fall we are fighting for the soul of our nation, including right here in Minnesota.
Why do communities have to “assimilate” or go “back to where they came from”? Humans aren’t borg. Maybe a better answer is for Tom Emmer to assimilate. America has never been mono-culture. We have always, from the beginning, had a wonderful mix of humans from around the world. Assimilate into America, Tom Emmer!
How boring the world would be if everyone were like me! That is the promise of this country. It is actually printed on the plaque on the Statue of Liberty – you remember, the poor, the tired, the huddled masses?
Moving on in the news, the fate of those seeking asylum is crushing my soul. They came here because of a promise made, and the SCOTUS just declared that promise null and void on the whim of an abusive reality TV show host. Haitians betrayed again and again. Human beings bearing the divine image, called “filth” from the highest levels of government. Elections have consequences. This is not politics as usual. This is life and death.
There will be a massive amount of work to do to rebuild trust, the economy, and everything else this country had promised. How a madman destroyed so much in 18 short months will be studied for decades to come.
But WE, we have work to do. We have a country to rebuild, we have safeguards to put in place so that this will never happen again. We, together, can do this. We can make America the land of the free again…
It will take all of us, and sometimes the sheer amount of work ahead is so daunting…
So tonight, I will pray for my neighbors, my community, my district, my country…
And tomorrow, I will dust myself off again, and head back into the battle.
When things are dark, that is the time when even a dim light makes all the difference.
My name is Sam Powell, and I am running as a DFL candidate for Senate District 19 in Minnesota. I am seeking your endorsement.
Please allow me to introduce myself. I was born and raised in California in an extremely conservative environment. My father was a pastor of a congregation that was Christian Nationalist, before it became a household word. In that congregation, the seeds were sown which eventually gave birth to the Heritage Foundation and project 2025. My father learned it at Bob Jones University and it was in the environment that I swam in every day.
(My father with Bob Jones Sr., 1961)
None of the platforms of Project 2025 are a surprise to me, because this is what I heard and what I was taught from a very young age.I was wrong, though, in thinking that these ideas were fringe, as I would soon find out.
I eventually became a pastor in that denomination, thinking that I would be able to slowly turn them away from their politics of distrust and separatism towards a more open and accepting love as Jesus taught us.
The congregation were having none of it, and when Covid hit, a large faction tore my congregation apart.
My wife and I moved to Faribault in 2023, looking for a fresh start.
Before I pastored, I worked in Food Service so I put my management background to work. I worked Human Resources for Hy-vee before moving to Walmart, where I am currently serving as their People Lead (Human Resources Manager).
At my job, I work with many from various cultures – Somali, Hispanic, white, disabled, deaf – and see so many hurting and desperate people.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
But somebody needs to step up. So here I am. Brand-new to politics, but not brand new to compassion, community and courage.
I believe that we don’t have to be divided and distrustful. We can listen to our communities. We can honor cultures and religions as well as common humanity. It is what our country was founded upon.
We can mutually make our communities stronger – first by listening and finding our common ground.
We all need healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt us. We all need to be able to have preventative care and mental health care, whether we are trying to scrape pennies together to make ends meet, or whether we have cushion in our bank accounts.
I’ve sat in enough hospital rooms to know that when our loved ones are sick, desperation and fear of the unknown are universal. Illness doesn’t discriminate. But together we should be able to take away the fear of one choosing health care or housing, or health care and food.
And I’ve worked with enough people to know that those are very real choices that our communities have to make daily. Should I buy groceries, or should I get my baby to urgent care?
This is not the way that healthy communities should operate.
A woman should be free to make the best choice for her health with her doctor, without fear.
We should not have to fear being tackled in the streets and tased because of the color of our skin.
Together we can keep Minnesota beautiful, strong and welcoming. But we can’t just sit by and wait for someone else to do it.
For this reason, I am seeking your endorsement. I don’t know everything and I am relatively new to Minnesota. But this is my home. We loved it the second we drove in on that snowy day in 2023. The community called to us and we are here.
It’s our home. Our safe place.
I want to work with you all to bring that safety and belonging and peace to EVERYONE, because, as Maya Angelou said, …”if we aren’t ALL free, then none of us are free.”
We spend so much time and attention on the movers and shakers, the money people and the builders and the leaders. And yes, every community needs them.
But in the corners are those that are left behind, forgotten, left without a voice.
They are the ones who are too busy trying to eat today and tomorrow; they are the disabled, the outcasts, the strange, the lonely, the poor.
You walk past them and don’t notice. You don’t see the fears. The diagnoses that they can’t afford the treatments for; you don’t see the single mom that loses her job because her childcare canceled at the last minute one too many times.
The desperation and the rejection are painful to see, so people ignore it. And if they are forced to look and see the hopelessness and the dying, they will convince themselves that there must be some moral failing.
If you can blame the sufferer, maybe you can make better choices so that the same thing doesn’t happen to you…
I have a better way.
Let’s look right at it and solve it.
Let’s take on hunger and housing and healthcare. Let’s quit looking away.
Let’s stop pretending that there is some moral failing, or some reason that the fringes deserve to be the fringes.
Let’s quit giving billionaires more dollars, and more corrupt contracts, and actually make some hard choices.
No one should ever avoid healthcare because they can’t afford it.
No one should ever lose their job because of childcare.
No one should ever go hungry because some billionaire isn’t raking in enough.
No one should ever be tackled in the streets or tased because of the color of their skin.
First, this is the week that my former denomination would hold its annual meeting. So those memories come up in my feed.
I remember how miserable those meetings were.
The horrible things that leaders of the church would say out loud.
The pride and entitlement that they didn’t earn
The hardened hearts and disregard of covenants
For the last ten years, I was just looking for an out. I stayed too long, but I kept thinking about the women and children still left there and the horrible things they were enduring and didn’t want to abandon them.
And it is hard to break away from the church of your childhood…
Then they tried me for “false teaching” without telling me what that false teaching was, tore my congregation apart, and left us to pick up the pieces. There were a handful of families left who hadn’t bent the knee to Baal, and we decided to sell the building and close the doors.
Three years ago, my wife and daughter and I said goodbye to my daughter, my son-in-law, and my grandchildren. We had one last breakfast at their house and hugged, and then left California for good.
This is where the mixed feelings come in. I miss them intensely and still get choked up.
I had a few very close friends that went through the fire with me and I miss them so much it hurts.
But when I think about everything else we left, there is a lightness in my heart and a spring in my step. I see the old pictures of our meetings and shake my head.
“I can’t believe I sat through that garbage. I can’t believe I participated in it.”
And I’m so, so glad I’m out. And I love our new town and our new community. I get asked so many times about “why I left California”, and it is always asked with a sort of hushed incredulous tone. I left because after spending most of my life there, and being born and raised there, it wasn’t home.
My niece told me a while back “You were just in the wrong circles…”
For the first time in my life I feel like I’m home, like I belong, like this is where I fit. I think she was right.
I know my old circles think that I’m a far left, liberal lunatic, who has gone off the rails. I know that they tell each other that I left the safety of the “church” and now I don’t have any rails on my thinking…I know that I am the topic of many conversations as a warning…but I don’t care.
Those in the cave never understand the ones who got away. Those who are afraid that God will punish them if they step out of line will never understand a God who loves freely and unconditionally and calls us to freedom. To release fear and suspicion and hatred of the “other”.
But those who got away understand completely. They are my people.
A lot has happened in three years. My thinking has become for firm, and less dogmatic all at the same time. The destruction caused by conservative Reformed churches is reaching its peak and will burst soon.
For those who don’t know, Pete Hegseth is a member of a cult lead by Doug Wilson from Moscow, Idaho, who has been corrupting Reformed churches for thirty years. Those who think like Wilson and have his books on their bookracks in church were those who destroyed my congregation.
The breaking of covenants that I saw repeatedly in my denomination is now carried out internationally and is destabilizing the whole world.
This is one area that I really wish I wasn’t right about. But I had warned about it for years. And then I see the architect of patriarchal rot standing in the Pentagon “preaching” and I say – I was right about this.
Those who whisper in hushed tones about feminism like it is a dirty word; those who crush the poor and the widow, those who mock the orphan and the fatherless…
By the way, in those circles a “feminist” is a woman who expressed disagreement with her husband or her (male) church leaders. They believe that “feminists” must be defeated or society will fall apart.
But this rot will tear itself apart. We live in similar times to Isaiah, who wrote to the faithful outcasts:
“Fear not, says your God, I will never leave you, nor forsake you.”
And he never has. Even through fiery trials, hard times, hard goodbyes, nights of vomiting, heart palpitations, heart attacks,
He is still there, walking with us. He hates what is happening because he hates injustice and cruelty. The one who loves me also loves Iranian schoolgirls and hates what happened to them. And he will come in vengeance when the time is right.
For now, he is giving us all a chance to reflect and turn away from this course before it is too late.
For this reason, I have decided to run for Senate in District 19 in Minnesota. If not me, who? If we don’t stand up for that which is good and right, who will.
Until then, hold on. Be kind to each other. Encourage your neighbors. Give to the food banks. Fight for justice and integrity, and walk humbly with your God, and he will lift you up.
Sam Powell for Senate 