God fucked up. He made a world where oppression is existential. We are fucked because God made this mess. Why are you miserable? Blame God. Because Circumstances. End of Story. Full Stop. Periodt.
If God is a loving God, then he is doing it wrong. My needs aren’t getting met. Doesn’t he promise to provide for us? Then . . . what the fuck? Why do I have to pay for my phone? Work for an asshat boss so I can eat and have a place to live? That’s so wrong!
That’s so funny right there. 82 words of infantile, chickified tantrum. It ignores agency. If you feel the first 82 words of this post I have great news: history isn’t destiny. You can improve the shitshow you find yourself in. And “because circumstances” doesn’t have to be “so I’m stuck with this fate”.
Because Circumstances Becomes Because Jesus
Yes, Jesus. That’s an answer. But the altar call isn’t the finish line — it’s the starting gun. Welcome to the rest of your life. The work doesn’t stop once you join the crew following that malcontented Nazarene stone mason. You’ll always be doing your best right now, and you’ll always have room to grow.
Don’t stress. Those two truths were already here before you said yes, and they’ll stick around until the end. There’s beauty and joy in the Way, mixed with challenge and heartbreak. When God built this world, He wired it with complementary pairs — light and shadow, peace and struggle, grace and grit.
From the Democratic Socialists of America perspective, that whole “God built the world with complementary pairs” idea doesn’t fly. The focus isn’t on accepting tension as part of creation — it’s on removing the stressors that make people suffer.
So the answer, in their view, is to reshape the world so ordinary people can actually breathe. Make life less punishing, make work less crushing, make survival less of a fight. Because if we don’t do that — if we leave the world exactly as it is — then we’re just reinforcing the same oppressive structures that benefit the privileged and grind down the workers. And things as they are explain the bad behavior, just saying.
Ya But
“In the beginning there was nothing. Then there was something. Then the something became two and the two became many,” from Joseph Campbell’s chat with Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth. Well . . . not cool, man. In Democratic Socialist orthodoxy? Yeah, that’s a problem. Because if the world comes preloaded with opposing forces, then even perfect stress‑remediation won’t produce a perfectly frictionless society. There will always be some tension.
Saying that out loud — that creation itself has baked‑in contrasts that can’t be fully smoothed out — is basically political heresy. You need to push that heresy out of your mind. Spit the thought out before it pollutes you.
If God is dead, though, and we have killed him, problem solved, am I right? We just need the correct governance structures to push the means of production and the governing power into the hands of the workers. Job done!
陰 Ain’t Gone and 神 isn’t Dead
DSA needs a massive blind spot. Its program depends on a purified human nature — cooperative, selfless, untouched by status or envy. It imagines that universal material security will make everyone behave. The vision is pretty, seductive, and impossible. The blind spot is God and the way He built the world. Fun fact: purified humans was a passion for early twentieth century leaders of socialist movements. Fun fact 二号: Purity didn’t diminish trouble.
There have always been people who won’t behave, no matter how much provision you give them. We ran that experiment enough times to see the outcome is consistent. Give everyone universal material security and what happens? People have time, energy, and resources to get into trouble — so some do. Doh.
God isn’t dead. His creation — built on complementary opposites — still stands. You can love that or hate it, but it doesn’t change. Wishing it away or storming the streets won’t rewrite the design. When a system denies the shadow, the shadow migrates upward and concentrates in whoever has the power to enforce the vision.
But Muh Grievance!
Which one? Only one? Or all of them? *ism, *ist, or whatever the next freshly‑minted outrage label is. We work through the grievances, reach a resolution, and the zealots immediately spawn new ones. Grievance is centrifugal — it tears outward, demanding new enemies, new injustices, new targets. Without grievances, some zealots have no center, no identity, and worse, no purpose.
Grievance eats us. In the thick of it we feel empowered, righteous, destined for victory. Then the dark side of grievance comes home with regrets, depression, and a long recovery arc. After a while the dog pile of regrets becomes a PICC line on our soul. So fun to realize we’re on the menu for the dark side. Woo.
And here’s the kicker—once people get a taste of that moral‑high‑horse energy, they start speed‑running new complaints like it’s a side‑quest grind. Every minor annoyance becomes ‘the discourse.’ Every disagreement becomes a saga. It’s grievance as content, as clout, as a whole personality. And when the algorithm rewards it, folks double down, because outrage feels like purpose when you don’t have one..
I Deserve My Sugar Daddy
Adulting is so annoying. I mean, seriously. DSA promises to take care of me. I won’t have to think about paying bills, save for college or afford groceries. Sign me up!
Every damned time. Turns out the Sugar Daddy is broke as fuck. He can’t afford us. “The wealthy need to pay their fair share!” “We’ll make the rich pay for our lifestyle!” So the rich move their wealth into safe harbors where Sugar Daddy can’t get to it. Damn.
Fuck your agency, your “pull myself up by my bootstraps.” You don’t understand the level of oppression interfering with my bliss! I have a right to be taken care of the correct way! Get a job? Are you serious? What job will pay my bills? I have an MFA. My work won a juried show. Get a job? Please.
The Party is Moral, Full Stop
“And… it’s not about my opinion. It’s about what’s correct. Obvi, God is dead. Jesus was just a failed rebel who got himself crucified by the Romans. The resurrection story? A later add‑on, not something the original twelve supposedly pushed. I paid attention in college, okay? I know the facts. And the facts are that too many people believe lies — lies that make them act wild, get dramatic, and treat every disagreement like a cosmic battle.”
Inside the bubble, moral outsourcing feels obvious: the Party defines what’s good, what’s evil, what’s allowed, what’s canceled. You don’t have to wrestle with conscience or complexity — just download the latest moral patch notes and vibe. Outside the bubble? Yeah, not so much.
Truth isn’t as solid as some want it to be. I’m Christian, and for me, God is not dead. Second, He died and rose again, periodt. His revolution changed the world like a cultural fungus — slow, stubborn, everywhere, reshaping the landscape whether you notice or not.
No Dirt
Socialist movements often demand purity: total alignment, agreement, ideological cleanliness. But real societies live in the messy middle — compromise, pluralism, mixed economies, imperfect solutions. Purity politics can mobilize a vanguard, but it cannot run a nation.
And honestly? I feel for the zealots, for DSA. The world is a mess. It’s not safe to walk the streets in plenty of places. In the tough neighborhoods, addicts live outside and leave behind feces and used paraphernalia. ICE is detaining immigrants who are escaping nightmares in their origin countries to build a better life here. Then… Trump. Salmon Voldemort is a whole category of trouble by himself. How he is alive and still in office is a complete mystery — but here we are.
Purity politics thrives in chaos because chaos makes purity feel like salvation. If the world is burning, the promise of a perfectly aligned movement feels like a lifeboat. But purity demands obedience, and obedience demands enforcement. And enforcement? That’s where things get dark fast.
What’s It Mean? Is “Because Circumstances” the Final Word?
This is the third post in a set of three on Socialism. The first one, “Five Pillars” made a satirical case for what you need to be truly woke. Leopard Spots makes the case for agency, for doing what we can with what we have right now to affect ourselves and those in our immediate circles. It includes five suggested disciplines we can do to live as a lamp on a lampstand. This post, “Because Circumstances”, arose because DSA is in my feed promising all sorts of pretty sounding things that amount to words written on wind and water.
It means — and sorry if you’re on the wrong side of this — DSA and everything socialist, communist, and adjacent is losing and will keep losing. The Woke True Folk are on the wrong side of history. Disagree? Cool. I’m a troll, so the flame‑war vibes should be fun. You can find me on X at @wordfirerva, if you want to yell at me. Bring snacks.
Because Circmustances isn’t the final word. The final word belongs to God because we live in his fish bowl. If you want a better normal there is a way that isn’t a palliative. This 道 follows a familiar triad arc. The beginning is terrible. Failure dominates. Also a strong desire to quit, to stop this painful nonsense. Keep going. Then as you start to get good at it you enter the middle, where you are all technique. Keep going. Last, and this is lifetime—you grow beyond technique to a new level where the methods and your identity merge. The 道 becomes a deeply rooted part of who you are.
So . . . does the misery ever end? No. But the misery does transform you into something stronger, healthier and closer to God. The price? Time, effort, and surrender. Everybody can afford that. No DSA membership required.