Volume IX: The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

Mirroring Volume IX:

The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

Mirroring Maxim: Belief Acceptance + Context = Harmony

The Main Character Energy of Abstract Mirroring Volume IX:  

Trigger Warning for those born before 2008:  Though this Volume is generally academic, philosophic, full of sources in the “No-Cap Reference” section, and cross-generationally applicable, there may be some terms from Generations Z and Alpha that are hard to understand, or that alarm and frighten others.  They’ll all be defined in the “Brainrot Glossary” (Tower of Babel) at the end.  It’ll be mkay, no cap, Ight?       

• Mirror Futures (M’Fers): An irrational projection of the universe at some future point on a person’s timeline.  It’s believed to be a Truth, a universally true, certain vision from that person about what won’t probably come to pass in any meaningful way.  Little more than a fantasy, there's almost no conceivable evidence that this future context is going to be the way the person thinks it will.  

• Mirror Goals: A lacking plan to ensure that vision of the universe at some future point becomes a reality.  This imaginary goal lacks the most basic guideposts that would be more likely to ensure the overall vision of the future is completed as conceived as George T. Doran’s S.M.A.R.T. goals (Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant and Time-bound) make them more likely to succeed and bring about the desired future.  Instead, our subjects choose something D.U.M.B. (Dreamy, Unrealistic, Methodless, and Banal) and their goals often collapse and die like unwatered and untended gardens.  

• Political Eden (PEe) or Political Absence:  A very mindful, very demure man from Ancient Greece, Aristotle believed that politics was inseparable from society and the fundamentals of being human.  The ideal Golden Showe…Society was ruled by virtuous, moderate politicians who weren’t overly self-interested or partisan.  However, our very less thoughtful, very more “modern” subjects shower themselves in the desire for the unreachable unity of belief that comes after eliminating political disagreement.  Like a communist utopia where the working classes finally abolish their bloody dictatorship and things can be all peachy and equitable without regard to what it took to get there, PEe means the elimination of opponents through painless urinati…. absorption, as little pain in defeating them as possible, or their total destruction, the resolution of all political disagreements in the exact direction of the proposed goals, and an utopic unity of belief as they go into that harmonious, yellow Future Paradise.  Go with the flow! 

• Belief Trees (BTs):  The core, abstract framework of beliefs as understood by its individual, representative believers used here as a tree metaphor.  This concept was developed by many others.  For us, our subjects view disagreement as a threat to the tree’s trunk (the core, almost unchangeable beliefs) and our job as Arborist agents is to chop down only the irrational, false branches that won’t be mortal to those we carefully manage.  

• The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree (FPT):  The negative, end result of a belief tree and a future assumed to be toxic.  Like Eve or Pandora not being able to put back what they unleashed, one can’t realistically put the tree back into the seed any more than time can be reversed to a more ideal point.  In the criminal justice world and from Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter (1939), FPTs are the tainted results from faulty or unconstitutional actions in pursuit of justice.  Because of their venomous beginnings, the end result is null and void.  For our purposes and especially for our subjects, poisoned trees beget easily rejected beliefs and taint all possible futures coming from them.   

• Poison Fruits: Ideas that are toxic to a Mirror Goal, that disrupt a future, and that are too dangerous to digest.  They call into question a narrative about what a subject’s desired future is supposed to be and thus they must be pruned or they risk tainting the vision.  Note that in the eyes of our subjects, whom we observe and mirror, a Poison Fruit can never be an antidote to fix anything.  

• Gigachad Sidequests 1 and 2: 

#1 “Demokratia Pleads for Rump and Agam:” A bargaining session between the harsh, unforgiving, and spiteful would-be protector, Blue Donkey, and the supplicant, Demokratia, over the fates of Rump and Agam.  Derived from Genesis 18, “Abraham pleads for Sodom” and Genesis 19 “Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed.”

#2 “The Parable of Goal, Future, and Present’s Sacrifice on Mt. Past:” A short lesson on goals derived from the “Test of Abraham” in Genesis 22.  

• FAFO (F*ck Around & Find Out): Acting without regard to the consequences (f*cking around), which because of the lack of planning and forethought result in a negative outcome (finding out).  This is a reckless and selfish pursuit of progress regardless of the consequences, often using ideological assumptions that excuse faulty information and that allow for only acceptable conclusions.  

• Musk’ovite Futures: Built on Elon Musk’s tempestuous relationship with Donald Trump and his disappointment that his vision wasn’t enacted exactly as he wanted.  Basically, these futures are idealist, reject political realities, and demand 100% of the Future envisioned.  Denial of any significant part of this vision means frustration, alienation, anger, and potentially an unbridgeable rift.  They can’t see the forest for the trees.  

• Dream Deserters: The angry reaction to a change in a narrative and a shared vision of the future.  Once an ally, accepted into the inner circle of ideology because of shared narratives, Dream Deserters are now traitors to the cause.  This label denies that a person can have a change in ideology or that beliefs can be nuanced even in hyperpartisan times, instead judging this betrayal based on only a part of their original views.  Famous examples are Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the coalition left or war hawks Liz Cheny or John Bolton for the Trump right.  They effectively become LiFTed, or liars who are rejected wholesale as poisoned fruits because of their new affiliation.  

• The Ethics of Future Mirroring: The Laws of Subjectobots (or Asimov’s Hijacking of our Present):  What are the parameters of determining futures for other people?  What sort of goals should mirrors set so the harm of that proposed future is minimized for society now?  Future Mirroring Ethics rests on Isaac Asimov’s Robotics Rules. We ponder the equivalency of our subjects with the perfect, idealistic, and fictional moral choices of robots with real humans in real time and context.  Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics are altered in Volume IX to indicate when a human SUBJECT instead of their OPPONENT feels justified in acting towards a greater good, which allows the justification of a Struggle Session and the punishment of the offender (Volume VIII).  

1. “A subject’s OPPONENT may not harm humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.  

2. The subject’s view of Humanity as a whole is placed over the fate of any single human, especially an opponent. 

3. A subject believes they act in the long-range interest of Humanity as a whole, and they overrule all other subjectobot laws whenever it seems necessary for that ultimate good.”

• Zeroth’s Hijacking Imperative:  Again based on Asimov, it’s the belief that a SUBJECT at the most basic level holds the highest ideals, the greatest decency and virtue, thus, allowing them to compel others to act towards that future vision so as to prevent any harm or obstructions to it.  

• Hella Cheugy (The Art of Fossil Shredding): The Mari Kando Method of home decoration for personal satisfaction is about being in the present, not living with the unhappy fossils of the past or obsessing about futures that aren’t realistic.  The key to pragmatism isn’t to throw out the past or to accept tradition blindly. Instead, for Mirroring purposes, we reject only irrational concepts and modes of argument that waste our time (fossils) and consume our happiness.   

• Cassandrist Futures:  From Volume VII and the tragic prophetess Cassandra, princess of Ancient Troy, these accurate consequences are ignored by our subjects.  The goal becomes a self-sustaining snow ball that no single subject could or would stop.  Once the goal fails, often the subjects deflect blame most conveniently to the same enemies, ideas, or events that are seen as causing previous failures.  They scapegoat, form Struggle Sessions, and seek any way out of accepting full blame or readjusting their mindset.  Instead of changing for the better, they convert their goals into more irrational ones and bludgeon others to accept their failures with increasing levels of coercion.  

• Fairest of Them All (Dunning Kruger Effect):  According to psychologists Dunning and Kruger (1999), certainty is a confidence booster for arguments rather than a representation of actual wisdom, necessary doubt, and the uncertainty from a lack of experience.  For our purposes, this Effect is used by our subjects to question the ethics of Mirroring when it comes to planning futures.  Because our subjects seem certain about their goals, they assume they're correct, ethical, and morally good.  In their view, by not choosing a side and faced with complexity, contemplation, and waiting to make smart goals and choices, Mirrors wrongly appear to be indecisive, immoral, stupid, and not willing to act on what our Asimovan Subjectobots see as a universal good.  

• Mission Creep:  The fossilization of ideas and goals as they outlive their original purpose, yet that are too important to our subjects for them to stop.   These abstract Mirror Futures impose a demand on actual people and in real life, so in Mission Creep, people are made to sacrifice their time, resources, and themselves for those flawed goals and ideals.  It’s a crapshoot; they put their ideas and understanding of them in the hands of others to execute that vision often with lackluster or even disastrous results.  

Part I:  F*ck Around (6’s)

1.  Introduction: Skibidi 2025: A Musk Odyssey

2.  My Toxic Trait: The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

3.  If You Know, You Know: “The Cool Story, Bro” Progressive Impulse

4. Hella Cheugy (Fossils)

5. Gigachad Sidequest #1: Demokratia Pleads for Rump and Agam

6. Very Mindful, Very Demure in the Era of Living Rent Free: Cassandrist Futures and Unheeded F*cking Around

Part II: And Find Out (and 7’s): 

1. Vibe Check: Asimov Ethics of Future Mirroring and the Subjectobots

2.  Caught In 4K:  Dream Deserters of the Musk’ovite Variety 

3: Gigachad Sidequest #2: The Parable of Goal, Future, and Present’s Sacrifice on Mt. Past

4.:  Skibidi Sigma Rizzler:  D.U.M.B. Goals and Mission Creep Sizzlers 

5.  Let Them Cook: A Conclusion

6. Brainrot Glossary

7. No Cap Sources

67

Part I: F*ck Around

1.  Introduction: Skibidi 2025: A Musk Odyssey

“Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Dave Bowman: What's the problem?

HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?

HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.

HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.”

“2001: A Space Odyssey," 1968. 

At some point in our genesis as a species, separate from the creatures and the nonliving things popping up on our planet, Scripture placed God The Creator in the position of lording over Eden, the eternal Garden of Paradise, and in the ultimate authoritative position of dictating the endless future of happiness to one man, Adam, and his female ribmate, Eve.  Nowhere yet mentioned was HAL, humanity’s own creative go at life formation, the fictional A.I. creation from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” nor were there yet artificial rules to govern this tertiary being based on humanity’s own parameters of how its life was to be lived.  HAL would have to wait about 6,000 years from The Creator’s biblical creation of humanity from the very dirt itself until the mid-1990s for HAL’s construction by the tainted sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, and a few years longer until 2001 to betray his human creators much the same way this troublesome, yellow-bellied couple betrayed theirs.  Wait your turn for betrayal, HAL! 

Anyways, this original Creator of humans gave a grave, but simple law not to eat the forbidden fruit from the special Wisdom Tree that was inconveniently left in the Garden as bait, no need to ask any questions of this easy imperative, this fortuitous placement.  Just obey and don’t eat it.  Simple.  Easy.

This Wisdom Tree was perhaps the first and ultimate totem of God described therein: a physical manifestation of some of the vast, sometimes abstract knowledge the Creator possessed.  Yet, as real though it might have been, it was also an abstract totem and representative of a mild, generic warning to this shipped, yet then still platonic couple.  Forget not that the couple didn’t understand the concept of consequences because they hadn’t yet had to understand hardship, nor did they know what it meant to deal with the fallout from their actions, let alone that the fruit’s consumption would unleash Hell on Earth for them and their offspring because they had to work, work, work.  

This intentionally vague Creator looked upon those made in his image expecting near-equal greatness, so there were no hints of the dire consequences extended to these kind-of siblings, not-yet lovers.  Was it just a good faith test or was it a bait that only an all-knowing God could foresee as irresistible?  Surely, Adam and Eve wouldn’t F*ck Around and Find Out? 

After all, the fruit might have been just an apple or some avocado with a then edible seed core, and humankind being as stupid and grasping as it was then as it is now with its snobby food preferences, surely, it wouldn’t dare ravage that supple thang?  Yet, fickleness finds its way.  Whether they liked the fruit unpeeled and unprepared, bitten into raw like some naked, yet unafraid barbarian, or they aspired to have it smeared as green paste on expensive toast while holding their noses up at those lesser creatures not made in the image of their Creator, well, Adam and Eve ate it anyways in whatever form the fruit came in, and they would soon understand the meaning of what they did.  

Though we know of the power imbalance between the ignorant couple and their Almighty creator, we can only glimpse at the motivations of these proto-humans, post-betrayal, as they veered into their harsh, real world slog.  They had been forced to embark on humanity’s first main quest after being tempted into their Fall by a talking serpent then not crawling on its belly, the first Main Boss baddy.  Red flags missed, but not displayed clearly by God perhaps so that this devil could catfish the Lord’s only two human creations to an epic defeat, right?  Of course!   

That they ate the fruit in this Scripture is certain though only in the last two hundred years were the questions about this disobedient act expanded as to whether Woman dominated Man into sin because of her guile and inherent wickedness, or in the reverse perhaps it was Man who was willfully ignorant because he didn’t resist something he knew to be wrong.  Did he do all of this just so he could blame his girl and assert his power over her ever since?  After all, Man asserted that his written Scripture was made beyond dispute and that it empowered him to be the sensible one when compared to his supposed-to-be subservient and impulsive wife.  Cough, paternalism, cough.  So, who is the stupider of the two?  

After all, Eve had to contend with the temptive power of Evil incarnate in the even more terrifying form of a snake with legs and with no knowledge provided by God to challenge this demonic walking entity; Adam wasn’t even willful enough to resist a woman’s suggestion before he knew what sex and desire were.  “Men!”  Always thinking with their penises both covered and uncovered.  Those men, dangling all about far too much for everyone’s wishes, and during a time before the First Power Couple even knew what to do with this dangling participle (From the show “The Office,” but do you dear reader, see the intentional grammatical mistake/double entendre? LMFAO)!  Dignity is the buzzword, folks, dignity! 

According to the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament to Christians, the foundation of the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), the aftermath of this Original Sin was game-changing for humankind as we were introduced by religious fiat to suffering, pain, and a society of people grouped together willingly if believers, or if not as heretics, with the personal stain of being born a human always hovering about all of our futures.  That blight had to be removed through the pursuit and performance of religious goals established by the rules of a person’s particular denomination.  Objecting meant poison to the community necessitating a struggle session and possibly ones’ fortunate or unfortunate execution depending on who is doing the persecuting, and certainly damnation for the sinner, a vastly more serious consequence to the faithful.  That is unless those unevolved people stayed in that state of unavoidable sin and ignored the monotheistic dictates of the world’s most powerful religions.  

Yet, this Original Sin was also separate from other “sins of the father” in later parts of those monotheistic scriptures.  Most fortunately and beneficial for those subscribing to these monotheist systems, it came to pass that other than this Original Sin, crimes that human parents committed were their own fault, and if their offspring had no intention and no impact on those crimes, they were not to blame.  Whole families didn’t have to be mowed down as the ancient Chinese and other Asian traditions often insisted was the only right way to fix themselves in the eyes of Heaven and their ever-watching ancestors.  And derived from this common Scripture, individuals also didn’t have to self-immolate and expect reincarnation in an improved position in the next life just because of something they or their parents did in their own time and world.  Phew!  Dodged a bullet, a family massacre, or some scorching fire on that one!  

Thankfully, what mattered was the willing choice of individual human beings, for it was the knowing decision in relation to God’s dictates that consistently mattered throughout all three of these religions.  And holding the individual will to commit sin or not to account is endlessly just in its outcome even if the all-knowing Father knows or cares what’s going to be chosen or not.  In an ideal setting, we wouldn’t have to intentionally destroy our present just because of what other ancestors did, nor would we have to suicide ourselves for our ideas, like Socrates did, if we didn’t want to go down that deadly path. 

Lest we not be seen to so harshly judge these proto-humans who lacked real world knowledge at the beginning, we should note instead of the cautionary application of this Scripture especially if one doesn't subscribe to any religious tradition or one can’t relate in any way to the common human problem of ignoring legitimate warnings… and I mean legitimate warnings, not crying wolf at every instance of difficulty.  There are countless other figures throughout world history and myth, especially in Ancient Greece, who illegally granted knowledge like the Greek Titan-god Prometheus who defied Zeus and gave the sacred fire to humans, inspiring Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein.  Thanks, Prometheus for the inspired literature, and oh yeah, for your pain and suffering!  

Or, there were others who released more than just helpful information, like Pandora, whose box contained horrors as well as a “How to Humanity for Dummies.”  Some of these mythic figures got punished for their disobedience, as poor Prometheus was tied to rock and forced to endure liver-pecking eagles for eternity, while others got away with it until the Twilight of the Gods (Ragnarok) like Lokki, The Trickster God of Norse myth, who simply messed with humans and their knowledge to have a little fun and to annoy Odin.  

Regardless of the epistemological reasons (origins) for humanity’s knowledge, that we have some good and some bad knowledge is almost too easy, too much of a glittering generality to write even if it seems to our subjects that temptive and evil mirrors introduce concepts much like the walking snake did to the First Couple.  While most of us aren’t strolling naked through gardens or partnering with someone made out of our own flesh, we do have our problems with knowledge and with the Future, the cliff that might be ahead of us that we might stumble over like that first moronic couple.  So, take a deep breath and get ready for something new, for it’s the Future that we’re after here!  

Ah, to breathe the air of modernity with all of its complexities! Ah, to be alive in the glorious brainrot era of 2024-2025, the planet Adam and Eve, their descendants Noah, Abraham, and the other flawed humans of Scripture left for us to inherit!  Phew! The planet of 2025 survived another very mindful, very demure simpleton campaign season of 30-second long political videos of the most abysmal sort, appealing to the type of attention span that someone as impulsive as Eve might appreciate.  

As an aside, I bet Eve would be the worst type of media influencer were she to get her hands on a phone and be tempted to get a TikTok account (not sponsored or spied upon by The Chinese Communist Party, wink wink) to livestream her mukbang of the forbidden fruit.  Since she had to wear the first clothes once she realized what nakedness meant, she might have even gotten some views as a jeans model, the original, even more controversial one than Sydney Sweeney’s “controversial” jeans Ad.  Eve would have had the right American Eagle jeans on, but gave the wrong genes to everyone because of that pesky Original Sin thing she did as mother to everyone, LOL.  

Anyways, let’s leave poor Eve alone, there’s no sense harping on people over fashion frivolities, nor making the male readers suffer through more of such judgement of fashion tastes when all men were obligated by Scripture to comb through dirt to find food to sustain their families. That soil may be eroding as the oceans rise and the world heats or cools, or whichever dramatic temperature variation we’re currently spending money to stop.  Yet, we did survive another flood due to climate change that never seemed to materialize by the prophesied date and after we spent trillions of dollars to help Bill Gates build his ark so he and the billionaires could float on regardless of what happens to the rest of us.  

And here in the United States, this promised land that some want to be made great again, but only as their exclusive god realized it, we got past the second Trump Inauguration, the (stupid) failed US annexation of Canada and Greenland, DOGE (Department of Governmental Efficiency) cuts, the Elon Musk/Trump relationship arc, tariffs, an almost instantly closed border, the promised mass deportations, ICE raids, the silliness with either the fall of Tylenol or the mass consumption of it out of spite during pregnancy, Obama-level bombing, but instead of Afghans or Arabs, it’s of narco-traffickers on the high seas, the longest government shutdown in history over Obamacare subsidies that Republicans never voted for and epically high Biden-era spending levels that they finally accepted to keep the government open, but only then for Democrats not accept them any more (another LOL).  GGEZ!

Most importantly for some (conspiracists), there was the first release of any Jeffrey Epstein documents after 4 years of silence and the near unanimously supported declassification bill to expose them all, justice for the victims or not.  And because of the forced error of the Trump campaign and second administration in creating its own hot potato that was always going to burn Democrats more than Republicans, the Epstein Affair boomeranged on them before going back to the Democrats, and probably on and on.  It was the third, biggest LOL yet, except for the actual victims who were exposed in the unredacted documents or those deceased ones whose testimony Democrats now put in the perjury camp because they exonerated Trump specifically in congressional testimony.  YOLO, right Jeffrey? (Circle one: Epstein didn’t / didn’t kill himself)

Much like the construction of Mirror Justice where only one "always good" side is vindicated and all of the “crimes” are pushed on their enemies, these unfiltered Epstein documents are soon to be exposed to a ravenously, bitterly partisan political world thus adding a mountain of fuel to the largest conspiracy currently ongoing. This Epstein Leviathan will soon selectively feast on anyone caught in its path, fueled by those from the partisan media, the Internet, or the axe grinders in government, many who have little training, scholarship, and commitment to reason or to truths.  Way to go on that one, alleged pedo guys!  Should’ve FF15’d when you had the chance.

Oh, and not entering WWIII for another year is a good thing, one that was constantly threatened because of the menace of the Russian Bear and the Chinese Dragon combined with an Auto Pen as President (JK, kinda), with one largescale defeat in a major, 20 year conflict (Afghanistan), and numerous other failures from spy balloons to multiple wars breaking out in Asia and Africa and leading to millions dead.  In contrast to that swampy and violent era, we had a crippling strike on Iran’s nuclear program by the US and Israel in 2025 that was accompanied by almost no serious consequences.   

And there were those pesky wars in Ukraine and Gaza, with hundreds of thousands of dead left on those battlefields and millions of refugees fleeing the carnage.  Fortunately the terribly dim, Biden foreign policy era came to an unmerciful close in 2025 though who knows what conflicts are in store in the future.  Yes, I know, I know, Trump was supposed to end them on day one, but hey, I’ll take real steps towards peace over more obliteration overseas and chest-thumping, virtue-signaling performatives here in ‘Merica.  Rather than letting them cook overseas, you skibidi sigma rizzlers, I hope that 2026 will be a more verdant and peaceful place even though we’re increasingly handing leadership over to Generations Z and Alpha.  What our futures are going to be like and what sort of erratic vision they have for our collective future is hazed in the fog of the unknown.

Yet, we did escape the Doom of 2024-2025 and things don’t have to be so grim while we sentient humans have some impact on what follows!  Somehow the future worked itself out…for now.  But that begs some overly simplistic questions that we must explore: What is the future?  How does one shape the events necessary to make it as willed?  Why do we have to follow those futures, especially if they’re constructed by others who don’t share our vision or values?  What if the proposed goals to get there are flawed, irrational, and based more on blind faith than on the pragmatic means to get there?  What could we do to warn people of the consequences of actual events without denying ourselves the ability to test the faith and blind loyalty that God The Creator demanded of Adam and Eve, only in our cases to test the loyalty to rationality and reason, thus ensuring better outcomes for everyone? 

Well, if you want to start down the path of figuring this out so maybe your life and society in a broader sense can be less irrational, less violent, and frankly just better, then you’ve come to the right place with Mirroring Philosophy and at the right point on the timeline with “Volume IX: The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree!”  One might need reminding that the philosophy of Pragmatism is the foundation of  Mirroring.   It is neither a conservative nor a progressive philosophy, and that is perfectly fitting for its offspring (Mirroring).  It accepts that past concepts can have value just as much as new ones IF they work.  For our present purposes, the progressive impulse is the constant focus on what’s ahead of us instead of the now or the past.  Where the pragmatic system gets its progressive bona fides mainly comes through pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, the Chicago School, and the reform of the education system at the beginning of the 20th century, not surprisingly the height of the Progressive Era.  Because it embraces RATIONAL change, it CAN be progressive.  

However, the most important part of this philosophy, Mirroring, is that it’s a practice more than an ideology.  It doesn’t hold that abstract concepts like progress and societal betterment are real, guaranteed outcomes like unfortunately still popular, “future-oriented” belief systems such as progressivism, socialism, National Socialism (Nazism), or communism would have us believe.  We can’t pluck the belief system out of the air and manifest “change” or “progress” at the right point in the timeline, exactly as conceived in the human mind without drastically and often cataclysmically altering the world of everyone caught in the path of implementing those ideas.  

That urge to decide the future according to human ideology gives enormous power to an elite few who too often want to radically alter the world based on their own abstractions, but without taking the rational steps and more importantly, gaining the informed consent of the members of society especially when many in that society self-style themselves as protectors of (their) "democracy."  Instead of being active members in these ideologies, most members of society are often reduced to an ignorant mass that’s meant to be ruled and is deemed incapable of truly understanding what’s best for them as determined by their overlords speaking for them.  However, there’s no guarantee that elite social prescriptions will lead to progress any more than a past-obsessed traditionalist is able to bring about a glorious retrofuture.  This ideological certainty without testing is anti-pragmatic and against the Mirroring Method because we want the best tools for change, not just the change offered and expected that we accept in accordance with the blind faith in the ideology of others.  

Instead, Mirroring is the practice of adapting to changes with the best possible mental tools available to humans.  So rather than change for change’s sake, Pragmatism and Mirroring seek to find the best change possible or to change nothing at all if the tools available are already the best that we can manage.  Therefore, we don’t reject tradition any more than we would rigidly conform to the past as some pure, perfect past life.

So, if you hadn’t figured it out yet, dear reader, Mirroring Volume IX is set on explaining our view of the future and creating rational goals that have a better chance of succeeding.  Volumes I-V (2017-2021) created the framework whereby mirroring agents sought to save time so that more rational pursuits could be undertaken, where we could find truths instead of believing in some all true Truth or a forever False nothing that couldn’t be disputed in real time, and to find just outcomes while many ideologies seek only their own victory, seek what is actually injustice as they plow forward regardless of the victims, and that seek to insulate themselves and their believers from rational change by creating intellectual “safe spaces.”  

From “Volume VI: The Empires of Mass Abstraction” (2022), politics is a blood sport based on abstractions, a constant action in pursuit of power that is more prohibitive of changing minds and that tries to ensure power is held in the right hands according to those ideologies.  However inevitable and necessary politics is to govern people, it creates vast empires of the mind that enables believers to resist contrary information especially if they’re in a position of authority, and because it allows them to bludgeon opponents even if the resistance is legitimate against them.  

In “Volume VII: Reclaiming Our Time” (2023), the past is depicted clinically using the bloodsport framework from the previous volume, but one that seeks to identify and eliminate time-wasting.  In the form of past events given meaning, aka History, it should neither totally dictate our present and future, nor should it be dismissed as we require past information to do things and function in our present society.  The past might be full of fossils, but there are also relics worthy of keeping that are hiding in there for us to discover and use again. 

Finally in our recap, in “Volume VIII: The Struggle Session” (2024), people are made to pay the price for their beliefs in the present in ways anywhere from shame and public humiliation to violence and death.  These Struggle Sessions lead to pain for the possible victims or pleasure for their persecutors based on our adaptation of the Hedonistic Calculus from Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham.  The more our subject’s desire for revenge is satisfied, the more pleasure they derive from inflicting ideological punishment on others.  Contrarily, the more their pleasure is denied, the angrier and more violent they become towards those that resist their beliefs.   

These concepts are foundational to our current, epic creationary moment in “Volume IX: The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.”  We’ve much to get ready if we’re going to tackle the Future and our goals in order to bring those moments in time to reality.  For starters, we must explain the idea of Belief Trees (BTs), which are a growth system of ideas that rely on the symbols of roots, trunks, branches, and protective bark.  Rather than a spectrum of right and left, BTs make rigid beliefs since often they are extremely difficult to change.  Belief trees that are rejected wholesale –that is, excluded from consideration–and seen as rooted in evil are Fruits of the Poisoned Tree (FTPs).  Poisoned fruits are individual ideas about the future that if left to grow are seen as toxic and horrific. 

This brings us to the concept of Mirror Futures (MF’er) and Mirror Goals, the big, beautiful growth we want to see at some utopic moment in the future.  Because of the structures of these BTs and the rejected systems (FPTs), a vision of the future is often threatened.  The concept of an MF’er comes from Volume VII and it involves an irrational projection at some further point on the timeline, anywhere from that next moment to hundreds, thousands, and endless numbers of years ahead.  

The most critical part of this concept of MF’ers is the Acontextual Imperative, which is an order to do something now, in the present, in order to see that future is brought to reality.  What makes it a Mirror Future is that it’s irrational.  All futures are acontextual meaning they’re out of context because those events haven’t occurred yet.  That’s why neither Eve nor Pandora could ever know the idea of consequences because they didn’t know that their actions would have any result let alone bad ones.  

This the crux of MF’ers and the heart of this glorious Volume, ninth of my listing: the messed up, irrational goals acting as demands on us in the present, and our subjects not changing them despite the often-obvious signs that they’ll never actually bring about what is intended.   As an imperative is an order, it creates a structural framework that imposes the duty to obey on its believers.  By ordering us to do things according to plan and to bring about a future, these Mirroring Goals won’t as they lack most of the S.M.A.R.T. Goal framework to ensure they’re met.  They are not Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant and Time-bound, but instead are D.U.M.B., Dreamy, Unrealistic, Methodless, and Banal, and not in the rosy, revisionist way that makes stupid things better just to comfort the intellectually weak and lazy.  

That also leads us to the predictably volatile if not amusing relationship between Trump and Elon Musk, their conflict over practical goals versus grand dreams, and the fallout from when neither are met.   Using this frantic relationship, Musk'ovite futures (also the name of the Russian civilization centered around Moscow.  Russian collusion wasn’t a hoax, no, never…wink wink) are a derivation from the hopeful, altruistic dreams of those brilliant, rich, yet super idealistic people like Musk that are not satisfied until their goal is completed exactly as they insist.  They can’t understand why the future doesn’t conform exactly as they figured it would, as brilliant or stupid as they might be.  

To the Liberals and progressives that felt left behind by the Musk'ovites and their proposed fantastical future regardless of a rigid two party political system, well, they view such ideological changes to whatever degree as the total desertion of the Dream, of the Harmony they once felt with the betrayers.  These dream deserters are traitors to the cause, Judases, Benedict Arnolds, Quislings, or Musks all.  

With all of these unrealized or traitorous futures hanging about, how do we prevent rational opportunities that are derived from intellectually sound goals from becoming Cassandrist futures, that is ones that are warned about for legitimate, rational reasons, but that are either abandoned for ideological reasons or are ignored, that come to pass, and end up hurting more than helping society?  The entire approach of Mirroring for nine years has been to do just such a thing: warning about the abuse of the past, present, and now future using different tools to meet the different moments.  New methods have been added to this blossoming philosophy to help in this Sisyphean struggle like using the Mari Kando method of decluttering and taking a sledgehammer to our ideas and our value over physical objects, saving only those that work and fit within ours and the Pragmatic method.  

Finally, we also need to identify the important ethical dilemmas at play in regards to the future.  Mixed with religion or ideology these warnings become prophecies, but for us they serve to warn against hasty action and caution against giving free reign to the progressive, ever-forward impulse in all of us.  To put the breaks on unrelenting, unabashed change, we observe the rules of the Subjectobot.  They are based on an idealistic and simplistically positive set of rules created by Isaac Asimov for his futuristic system and specifically for robots and other Artificial Intelligence, but inverted here to reflect the beliefs of mirroring subjects who are humans acting like they have the moral clarity of robots and the ability to perfectly shape their environments as such 1s and 0s would allow. 

Like robots making perfect choices according to their Asimovan rules, if they're accurately labeled as such, our subjects are similarly constrained by these identity-establishing laws because it must be a valid definition of them or not, used by agents when making a decision to participate with them, observe and mirror with them, or leave if they are acting as a subjectobot according to the agent’s judgement in context.  If the subjects fail to act in a way that contradicts the abstract programming I set out for them, they may be shaking off their inhumanity and embracing positive, rational change.  We called them NPCs (non-playable characters) in previous volumes because they waste our time with pointless side quests.  Yet, our NPC subjects are obviously real people, and their actions don’t have to conform to rigid, abstract rules.  However, these laws are easy to identify and offer clear guidelines as to when subjects should be debated, mirrored, or left alone.  

A glorious future probably awaits you ever-so-flawed children of Adam and Eve!  Once we understand the parameters of how our subjects view change, progress, and observe their flawed attempts at setting goals, we can better determine whether the Political Eden (PEe) they have in mind for us is in fact a Hell stream that we should escape.  The absence of politics and the elimination of disagreement is what they want and what we’re made to stand in the way of for these would-be gods.  What punishment is in store for us when these subjectobots are likely much more vindictive and destructive than the harsh Father God of the Old Testament?  So, put on your homespun clothing for today, toil to get your food from the earth so you can eat, and wander in the right direction to a real Promised land and not the toilet land of PEe that our subjects are likely to steer you into!

Be fruitful and multiply, Mirroring Agents!

II.  My Toxic Trait: The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

"Conversion, software version 7.0

Looking at life through the eyes of a tire hub

Eating seeds as a pastime activity

The toxicity of our city, of our city

You, what do you own the world?

How do you own disorder? Disorder

Now somewhere between the sacred silence

Sacred silence and sleep

Somewhere between the sacred silence and sleep

Disorder, disorder, disorder"

“Toxicity" by System of a Down, 2001.

 

What did they do?!?  Okay, okay, it’s a rhetorical question that everyone who’s been here so far should already be able to answer.  After breaking the First Law, disorder was what humans had to own after Adam and Eve’s boneheaded move.   They were forced to wear absurd animal skin garments of their own making, meddle with the animal flocks roaming around them while escaping predators, and grasp through the dirt to yield up its meager food, which was pretty reflective of the harsh Neolithic reality of early humanity with its petty god-kings, human sacrifice, and bare-bones subsistence.  Yet, even this brutal start definitely might seem appealing considering the avocado mush alternative or the insufferable elites ruling most cities.  

For you see, this couple was never to reap the rewards of eternal life here in the physical world, nor would they ever again experience a world without want.  The world of perfection here on Earth, the Garden of Eden, was lost because they had stupidly disobeyed and betrayed their Creator.  The fruit was not only forbidden desire, but uneaten, it was an inoculation from a harsh world with both good and evil, and from the guilty knowledge that there was worse than the paradise they left behind.  

As spiteful as he'd soon prove himself to be, The Creator didn’t destroy these creations, perhaps seeing them as an experiment that only occasionally would require a guiding hand or a change in the variables affecting their existence.  Maybe send down some Nephilim to mate with their women and spice up the world with some heroes and more violence, or deliver some global catastrophes, maybe allow some of them to enslave the chosen ones and then guide some of their descendants to an exodus only to wander around a lot more, maybe add another covenant or two, or maybe add some (P)rophets or a Savior to tilt the human ship in the godly direction as it trudged to an uncertain future?  Who is to know how many outside interventions of another being in the fate of humankind there were or what the exact role of human agency and beliefs was in shaping their own fate?

Back up, buddy, you’re getting ahead of yourself.  Anyways, crops, bushes, and trees eventually popped up because of intentional selection so humans could harvest fruits alongside their domestication of the more amenable creatures of the Earth like dogs, pigs, cows, and horses.  Some of these experiments yielded the best creature comforts that this real world could offer like wine and beer, coming from the juice of their grapes or the seeds of their grain harvests, or pizza and tacos once cuisines were blended and food perfection was finalized.  Yet, the offspring of our first people would rue their parents' decisions as they came to know many kinds of sin as they farmed the soil and evolved, if you could call it that.  

 For you see, the biological tree of humankind blossomed as did its ability to process the surrounding environment, making the physical world also into an abstract one that existed more in their heads with their increasing brainpower than just the things around them.  Not only could ideas exist outside of the physical, but these abstractions could consume our physical energies and most especially the limited time that mortal creatures had on earth.  That is the cusp of Mirroring itself, where the edge of the physical meets the abstract clouds in our heads, and how to get better results from the connection between the two.

Now that the First Couple and their progeny knew of consequences, they also discovered other social-emotional feelings like envy, lust, and hatred that would in the future even become sins against their Creator.  With abstractions like envy and greed, we want what others have even if they’re not vital food, water, or shelter, and more than we could need because of selfish desire.   There was never enough of those necessities for everyone, but even knowing that we could become attached to other objects like clay tablets, jewels, fancy foods, Iphones, or Air Jordans was enough to drive our ambitions in relations to others. So, we developed systems to add value to these nonessential objects creating in the process further abstractions about right and wrong to explain why we "needed" them.  

While envy and greed have both abstract and physical connections that aren't as clear cut in determining right and wrong, murder is more grounded in the physical act of killing another human, though clearly there is both a moral system that’s grounded in reality and also an abstract one because society labels the killer as wrong in committing that heinous act.  Most cultures see murder as a knowing intent to kill, not self-defense or the simple slaughtering of others like animals because they’re not considered anything other than subhuman slaves. 

How and when humans truly knew of the ultimate sin matters not, for in this Scripture, Adam and Eve had sons and one of them, Cain, the soil breaker, slayed his brother Abel, the innocent herder, over some prideful matters and because Cain wasn’t doing right by his Creator.  He was pretty violent and petty, but the human brains had evolved at that point to understand that you shouldn’t kill others, especially members of your own family.  This lesson would not be followed often enough throughout history.  

Ask any loser princeling in China or in the Ottoman Empire and see if they escaped strangulation because the fittest son won and they did not.   Both systems had strong traditions against murder and especially for respecting family and clan ties, but the political reality and the cold calculation that a few dead family members were better than a ruinous civil war necessitated family murder despite every religious proscription against it.  FYI, Gens Z and Alpha: slay means killed, not as in “slay girl, slay” as in Abel’s looks were killing it because he was so pretty and fashionable.  He was murdered by his own brother and we have no idea how much aura and rizz he gave off to his potential wife siblings when Cain brutally killed him.  

Anyway, humans knew at some point that killing each other meant a stain that couldn’t easily be unwashed as the violence would spread.  What of the mark of Cain, the blight of violence sent upon others regardless of if they chose that intention or not?  The first murder started a second moral belief tree, the first being the Original Sin, but this second moral one was between people instead of between people and God because humans had been introduced to violence and death brought on each other.  This objection to murder is one that every culture on Earth discovered in some way on their own though many would justify murder in religious ceremonies, combat, or judicially as a way to placate gods or to maintain justice.  

For you see, dear reader, the first beliefs sprung up because of the social creation, the relation of humans between each other.  To steal, to take someone else’s mate, meant to dishonor your community’s belief system, or to kill each other with abandon meant death in a marginal, subsistence community like that of the first humans.  These neolithic beliefs meant something to these people and failing to follow suit wasn’t just a provocation for some bad Yelp reviews or some bad Karen treatment in a HOA neighborhood if your lawn wasn’t maintained to standards.  Belief was everything then as it is now to humans.  It motivates us, pushes us to do things that normally we shouldn’t be able to do if we were alone, cold and suffering in some barren waste.   

Therefore, Belief Trees (BTs) represent a series of beliefs coming from a connection to established ideologies, but given an individual flavor. These BTs have branches that represent special ideas and the fruit on the ends represent positive attributes and the potential for others to adopt that belief system.  Belief Trees are part of the core, abstract framework of an ideological system as understood by individual believers. 

An individual's total view of the universe, their worldview, is shaped by these belief trees for to challenge them risks cutting down their core beliefs, potentially provoking an identity crisis that most will not suffer to bear.  Rather than a political spectrum, individual belief systems are a collection of just such trees, and they aren’t very trimmable.  Anything that threatens the trunk (core) threatens the person’s narrative about their beliefs.  To hinder or stop that threat, the bark on the trees are delusions that eliminate contrary information with the purpose of guaranteeing that the tree remains stable.

Thus, each person’s core trunks are central to their belief system, the branches of each tree showing the evolution of beliefs and also possible avenues for change, and the bark represents the shielding that people use to insulate their beliefs from outside elements.  BTs share ideas with other people’s BTs of course, but few can grind down their own ideological stump without a significant psychological crisis in order to fundamentally change what they think.  The further to the roots of their worldview that the challenges to their BTs go, the more damage, the greater the threat, and the more pain the challenges represent to the person and their Identity Safety.  

The people we study and seek to improve, our ever irrational subjects, are erratic tree pruners, snipping off the branches most likely to grow fruit because they are motivated by false perception, emotions, and irrational considerations.  More likely, they will allow the wrong ideas to come to fruition, or to view other trees as suspect and poisonous.  That’s the inspiration for this work.  Because of the way Mirroring defines them, our subjects reject the possibilities of opponents as venomous regardless of any possible rational outcomes from those actions.  

To reflect the erratic and illogical pruning that our ideologue subjects practice, Parlor Trees are a variety of BT that is like the Christmas Tree with only mom and dad (or dad and many moms, mom and many dads, dad and many dads, or mom and many moms, whatever lol) curating the type of decorations going on it.  Cover your eyes if you’re living in or working in Portland, Oregon’s government because this simile might be triggering:  I use the words “like a Christmas Tree” to describe the ceremonial tree like the one you lit, but wouldn’t label it with the holiday it’s historically used to celebrate.  

What other major holiday tradition in December uses a decorated tree to embody the spirit of the season, the birth of Jesus Christ, and to celebrate ending the old and bringing in the new?  Those that are sensitive to the words "Christmas tree" despite its origins and those that demand inclusivity everywhere are perfect examples of Safespace Parlor builders and those who feel their Identity Safety and that of their entire community is threatened by speech and symbols they can't have around them.  Even to the ridiculous point of opting to not celebrate the major Christian holiday while still celebrating during the season, they can’t suffer any criticism or “hostile” language in their presence, so they cordoned off the holidays in Portland and denied Christians the overt celebration of their own holiday in their city just to placate some sensitive feelings.  

Such silly, delusional gooses over there in Oregon!  So, to decorate this CHRISTMAS TREE of belief, kids might have plenty of creative ideas, but if they want presents this Christmas, the kids better get in line and help decorate according to the plan.  If they get out of line in decorating the beliefs on the tree, the kids could be disciplined, given coal for Christmas, or if you’re Elon Musk and you’re the former Annie darling of the Left, you could be sent to an orphanage only to be adopted by Daddy Warbock Trump before being abandoned on the street for being too crazy and idealistic. 

Expanded from earlier volumes, a Parlor is the environment of a conversation that is manipulated by subjects to tilt things in their favor.  So, a Parlor Tree is the control of what beliefs are allowed on a person's tree, what type of trees are allowed around others in a space, and what the acceptable look of those conveying those beliefs is supposed to be. Anything contradictory or hostile to the beliefs of the tree is pruned by the Krampus debate monsters, who’ll kidnap and punish bad ideas just as the evil Christmas villain punishes bad kids.  

If you don't think Parlor Trees are relevant to understand our subjects, look at what poor First Lady Melania Trump had to go through with every Christmas decoration being savaged by her critics and even her husband. She was reportedly fed up with the criticism and said "I’m working my a– off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f— about the Christmas stuff and decorations?" which was taken not surprisingly by other critics to label her as a grinch because she's not enthusiastic about her decorations after being attacked. Because of her husband's ideology, no matter what the trees looked like, her decorations represented a violation of the safe space of anti-Trump partisans. Though it's just one hater, take Marilyn Shimmield's post on X (formerly Twitter):

    

Not only did Shimmield reject the aesthetics of the blood red trees, if we give her that artistic benefit of the doubt and since apparently red isn't a common Christmas color when Melania decorates with it and wears gloves in that color, but the whole image conveys something evil and deadly to this X user.  The Parlor Tree guiding Shimmield means to her that Melania directly kills people, or she is complicit in shedding blood and committing murder because the symbols she chooses are reflective of some inner guilt that Shimmield can detect just by looking at an image of that specific photo.

She's a mild example of the ultimate menace among our subjects: the Serpent Subject (Debate Monster).  Not to dehumanize our subject in this example since she's extreme, but not the worst, creatures act much like the original tempter because they willingly increase the amount of toxic fruit, rip out belief trees out of ideological hatred or spite regardless of any merits of its branches.  They are the ones leading other people to a worse future because of the toxic information, commitment to negativity, and the overall annoying fixation on loud, partisan politics that does nothing to convince others beyond intimidation and force.  

So, the BT in this case is that a Serpent Subject like Shimmield associates Melania Trump with the unnamed bloody crimes of her husband, the President. The root is that Donald Trump is bloody evil, the trunk is that anyone associating with him is just as guilty, the bark is the rejection of any criticism of this hatred of Melania because of her marriage to Trump, the branch is that the Christmas Decorations represent this bloodlust because of Melania's psychological projection of her own guilt, and the poisoned fruits are accepting these decorations from the First Lady amounts to condoning murder. Arguing against that or even questioning why Melania's Christmas decorations matter to Shimmield would call into question her automatic assumptions about her political opponents and through them their spouses. These questions would be easily blocked by the bark on her PT. So, Shimmield's Parlor Tree is one that rejects any aesthetic from her opponents.

Let's filter Shimmield into the format of the Safespace Parlor (SSP) while remembering her belief trees keep up this protective space all wound up in photos she saw on the internet and chose to tweet about to her select group of ideological friends or put out as a battle flag taunt to her enemies that follow her. The type of speech that’s expected about beliefs in each layer of the Safespace Parlor (SSP) is the Parlay, its actual content, which is hate against Melania's Christmas decorations and its association with blood and death. 

In previous volumes, SSPs are friendly environments organized in three concentric circles, each limiting who and what can be in let with greater restrictions as it reaches the smallest center.   With regard to BTs, the third, innermost circle of a Parlor Safespace is what filters in or out other people based on the greatest perception of ideological similarity.  It’s restrictive to those most accepted by our subjects especially on account of visible factors like race, ethnicity, and other physical features like dress, but also comfort that the person believes like they do and shares Harmony with them.  Thus, unless disguised and deceptive, no opponent with a different belief tree will be allowed into the ideological safe space. 

For Shimmield, her X account and those that comment on her feed are part of her Parlor. She curates the comments, choosing to engage with opponents she thinks she can humiliate or defeat, ignoring those with difficult counterarguments to her hate, or deleting them because she deems them to be hateful regardless of their actual content. Her post starts irrationally and will not end with some added societal benefit. Therefore, she's the classic example of a subject since her belief tree is obvious as is the likely rejection of poisoned fruits (anything from Trump or his wife). She should be ignored since it's social media and corrections to her on X will lead to possible stigma since that poster would be labeled as a Trump supporter for merely arguing.

There are a number of different roles played in this setting of beliefs, people, and potential futures.  There are of course the irrational subjects (Shimmield) and their potential victims (those who argue against her on X), whose trees are subjected to intense scrutiny.  Then there are us Arborist Agents, as the role of Mirroring is to curate the belief trees regardless of ideology, trimming irrational branches, and cultivating varieties that are less emotional and have greater yields of intellectual fruits.  Think of us as Johnny Appleseed, the rational belief spreader, who prattles around the barren landscape like that of X, seeding more agents that will hopefully shape the next reasonable generation. 

We all reject beliefs when maybe we shouldn’t.  We might not be debate monsters, who only seek to silence others and want victory above all else, but it’s also difficult to open up to new ideas or to overcome biases against old ones that might be just as good as that new fad.  For whatever reason we reject things, when that action becomes the wholesale dismissal of every aspect of a person’s argument that becomes what we call Fruits of the Poisoned Tree (FPTs) as they lead to the rejection of a specific belief rather than indulging in them as Eve did.  They’re the negative end result of a belief tree and a goal assumed to be toxic.  For Shimmield, the Poisonous fruits are based on ad hominens (who the person is instead of their argument's merit), which is Melania's decor because any idea that the First Lady had in choosing them must come from a murderous place that's sublimated under red gloves and trees. Any art or choices made by Melania are toxic to Shimmield's political goals even if she might even accept the same aesthetic and beliefs if someone more politically acceptable were posting them.

It’s also like Democrats automatically rejecting any suggested DOGE spending cuts because they view it as illegal and harmful, or Republicans assuming there’s little good in federal government spending on social programs so much so that they’re willing to tank the Trump administration and its political future over the principle.  The fact is there is obviously some merit on both sides, but political talking points (via BTs) being as hardened as they are, little progress can be made except with a very small number of moderate politicians compromising.  Otherwise, both sides view each other with contempt as they propose spending legislation as poisoned fruit.   

Because they're often based simply on basic identifiable characteristics (ad hominems again), most of these beliefs can’t suffer the blind test that’s been written about in other volumes.  If a tree were to grow in place of Trump or NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani with each plant representing a particular belief of theirs, and a gardener were to approach trimming the branches that are the most irrational and fallacious, but that gardener had a blindfold on so they couldn’t see what type of target they were cutting, only the qualities that would lead them to trim it.  That blind quality would be to cut only the poor, irrational, and fallacious arguments.  If the Tree can suffer this test, then it’s not a Poisonous Tree and though ideas on the tree can or can’t be accepted on their merits, it may bear intellectual fruit and is not rejected outright because of the ad hominem.

Such toxic Belief Trees are the dead end of a belief system.  The branches of growth are idealized visions of the future while the fruits are the positive attributes of that belief system.  When the tree is poisoned so too are the fruits, which are unacceptable possibilities to seed the next generation with more poison, at least to our subjects.  To a mirror, they’re also an irrational vision of the future.  As we’ll see, Mirror Futures are an irrational outgrowth of that belief tree.  Ideology breeds certainty that the vision will come true.  If events align with the ideology, or unfitting ones are stricken off, they are meant to reinforce the belief’s effect on events.  

The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree itself derives from a legal doctrine in the US specifically from Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in two cases, but as constitutional doctrine in Nardon v. The United States (1939).  The legal doctrine was specific to illegal wiretaps and the evidence used in court from the wrong practice.  The Court determined that if the “evidential tree is poisoned, so is its fruit.” Thus, the right to privacy in the Constitution and prohibitions against unjust evidence collection can invalidate a line of reasoning in a case because of a method, which specifically is wrongful wiretapping and the information derived from that action.  When a method is deemed illegal by an act of Congress and interpreted by the courts as unconstitutional, it’s thus a poisoned fruit, an inadmissible stream of evidence that can’t constitutionally be used in court.  That does not dismiss the case any more than the rotten fruit of a tree would dismiss its forbearer, the tree.  However, the resulting evidence can’t be used to determine anything other than the fault of its poisoning by an improper judicial process.  

Exclusionism is the overarching concept that includes Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.  It refers to the exclusion of evidence from the government if that evidence was collected in a way that violated the US Constitution.  In Mirroring, a FTP by definition is the exclusion of beliefs and belief systems from consideration because of the source of the three principles we’ll adapt for our purposes, but that rests on ideas being barred from acceptance.  Like Snow White’s poisoned apple, Fruits of the Poisoned Tree are exclusionary, meaning the ideas that come from them are rejected by our subjects as sinful and not even worthy of consideration.  First, the future goal is rational if it is discovered from an irrational, illogical source.  Second, unlike Adam and Eve, Prometheus’s apprentices and any number of other primordial, uncivilized humans, humans were bound to know the discovery anyways as it was inevitable.  

Finally, the voluntary testimony of the defendant is normally the standard that causes evidence to be accepted as not rotten, but in our case speaking or not, engaging in conduct or not, doesn’t really matter because the exclusionary principle of FPT is totalistic.  That means voluntary, involuntary, speech, silence, conduct, or non-conduct can all be construed as evidence that the opinion should be excluded by our subjects because it's up to them whether to accept the information or not and it's up to their judgement of factors that have no provable impact on the reasoning of the argument like race, gender, ethnicity, etc. Some of the rare exceptions to this would be when one side hears the opposing side say something critical of their allies, in which case one might expect the “even this [vile, mostly wrong person or group]” recognizes how wrong they are on this matter.  The normal opponent is suddenly aware of a wrong and the subject uses that admission as fuel to fight their battles even though it might be a one-off.    

The January 6th Riot is another good example of a belief tree to both partisan sides with each opposing tree representing intolerable poison. Let’s put them both into a schematic format of root, trunk, branch, and ripe/rotten fruit:

Democrat Belief Trees about January 6th, 2021

Democrat Root to Trunk (Beliefs that are impossible to disprove without creating an ideological crisis): 

According to common Democrat belief, January 6th was an armed insurrection led by Donald Trump.  The event was meant to overthrow the 2020 Election, the US Constitution, and was meant to harm democracy.  This core belief about the events of this day can’t be disproved easily based on the commitment of Democrats to what happened in their view (PBS Key Takeaways).  

Democrat Trunk to Branches (Beliefs that are hard to remove without removing a few branches to save the trunk):  

• By intention, January 6th was meant to harm or kill opposition lawmakers from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Trump’s own Vice President Mike Pence. 

• Trump directly coordinated radical rightwing groups like the Proud Boys to attack the capitol.

• The armed insurrection was arguably the worst attack on the nation since Pearl Harbor.

• Eight people died, dozens of capitol officers were seriously injured as a direct result of the attack and all casualties were the fault of Trump and his supporters. 

Democrat Branches to Ripe Fruits (Expendable beliefs and future aspirations that can be easily released without threatening any consequences to the root or trunk): 

• Trump is an insurrectionist on par with the slave-holding Confederates of the Civil War.  He should be barred from serving in any office ever again at bare minimum, but he should be preferably jailed for life so that he can reflect on his crimes.  

• The Biden Justice Department under Merrick Garland erred in not directly prosecuting Trump and other defendants, they did an injustice to the country.  Only vigorous prosecution and severe punishment in the future can rectify this tragic event.    

• In the 2nd Trump term, any pardon of any person present on January 6th should be regarded as an act of criminal favoritism and a kickback for those that tried to help him overthrow the government after he lost the election. 

• Any compromise with insurrectionists enables a destruction of democracy and further enables more rebellion. Therefore, there should be a blacklist of any person involved in that day from social media, jobs, to future government positions, so that they don't directly or inspirationally aid and comfort such a rebellion again.

Republican Belief Trees about January 6th, 2021

Republican Root to Trunk (Beliefs that are impossible to disprove without creating an ideological crisis):  

According to common Republican belief, January 6th, 2021 started as a patriotic rally held to protest the 2020 election and that turned into a riot that was beyond the control and preparation of government officials despite clear warning signs.  Those protesters that made it into the capitol building were overly zealous, sometimes violent, but most were only trying to exercise their constitutional rights to protest.  This core belief about the events of this day can’t be disproved easily based on their commitment to what happened.  

Republican Trunk to Branches (Beliefs that are hard to remove without removing a few branches to save the trunk):  

• The Capitol Police let many of the protesters inside the Capitol building and gave them access to the most sensitive parts of the People’s House including Speaker Pelosi’s office.  This should have exempted many of the nonviolent protesters from serious charges.

• The prosecution of anyone remotely related to this event even if they were nonviolent made the aftermath the most vigorous since 9/11, and it was unjust. This over-prosecution of nonviolent protesters after that day included debanking and long, unjust sentences for crimes unlike similar defendants in Washington D.C..

• There was no armed insurrection as the fists and clubs would not be able to overthrow the US government that even Biden claimed would have required F-15 fighter jets and nuclear weapons to achieve this made-up goal. 

• January 6th pales in comparison to the violence across the country in the Summer of 2020.

• Trump was not near the actual capitol riot and his previous speech never directly incited violence in language any different from other politicians.

Republican Branches to Ripe Fruits (Expendable beliefs and future aspirations that can be easily released without threatening any consequences to the root or trunk): 

• Many of those there on that day were unjustly prosecuted and deprived of their constitutional rights just to make sure the witch hunt found enough victims.  They deserve a commutation at minimum or ideally a pardon because the Biden Justice Department was weaponized against them.

• The main victim of that day was Ashley Babbit, a veteran, who was shot dead by a trigger happy officer.  She deserves justice and her killer shouldn’t be celebrated as someone who confronted an unarmed riot.  

• January 6th should be set aside as an unimportant day because it pales in comparison to other, more frequent, more violent riots that were ignored.  

  Let’s compare the two diametrically opposed belief trees about January 6th, 2021.  Both root-to-trunks from the common Democrat and Republican perspective see the same event in completely different ways.  For most Democrats, the event was a heinous attempt at overthrowing the government while for most Republicans it was a protest gone wrong and that was over-prosecuted in its aftermath.  The problem for the country in the aftermath of the event is that the two incompatible BTs are willing to let loose their branches very reluctantly.

        Democrats might believe that 8 people died, many officers were injured, and key opposition leaders including VP Mike Pence were threatened with death by all MAGA supporters, but no matter how many elements of those branches fall down because facts disprove them, their trunk will remain that Trump and his movement are directly responsible. The person killed directly on that day was Ashley Babbit and there's no indictable evidence that Trump directly called for anyone's death let alone Mike Pence's, his own VP. However, most calls to correct hasty or overzealous prosecutions of anyone can be seen as poisoned fruit and rejected en masse, and if any of those prosecutions happen to show an individual case of injustice, it can be rejected because to many Democrats, the root, trunk, and most branches of their BT support their narrative about that day regardless of any expendable cases of injustice.

        Republicans might believe that while only one of their own died (Ashley Babbit) and officers were injured, the event was harmless and wasn't the symbolic disaster that showed the country couldn't even protect its own legislative body on a key day of presidential transition after a bitter election. The Trump supporter's trunk is that Trump gave a peaceful speech, and he isn't responsible for anything that happened that day, despite his inflammatory tone. The branches are that all rioters from that day are innocent and that all plots from right-wing groups like the Proud Boys should be excused because the (legitimate) reaction against them was harsh. Any attempt to achieve justice for the victims of January 6th for actual crimes are seen by many Republicans as poisoned fruits because they call into question the overall harmless narrative that they have of that day.

        What should we make of these opposite viewpoints, these two irreconcilable belief forests? We should channel Cain and Abel as both views would do to either eternally curse the murderer (opponent) or eternally curse the victim (the subject). It's our subjects that view their opponents as coming from a place of sin even if they're not directly murdering their brethren. Only conversion to an acceptable, shared future is acceptable and to do that, our subjects' enemies must chop down their own cherry trees and convert as easily as possible if they don't want to be battered by stone axes themselves for being so sinful. "The future is our side," says our subjects, and if you don't want to be stoned like poor Abel The Herder, dear readers and agents, best watch out for the wrath!

III.  If You Know, You Know:  The Cool Story, Bro of the Progressive Impulse

“Futures made of virtual insanity, now

Always seem to be governed by this love we have

For useless twisting of our new technology

Oh, now there is no sound for we all live underground

And I'm thinkin' what a mess we're in

Hard to know where to begin….I think it's time I found a new religion

Whoa, it's so insane to synthesize another strain

There's something in these futures that we have to be told”

“Virtual Insanity” by Jamiroquai, 1997

Mirror Future= an irrational projection= abstract goal + Acontextual Imperative (an order out of context) + Micro or Macrofault (a small or big complaint with no solution) 

Noah? Noah! You're needed to save humanity from the Great Flood. For you see, dear reader, his Creator was very unhappy with the state of mankind to that point despite what the descendants of Adam and Eve had to do to survive. All of the blameless creatures and plants that the Creator placed on Earth were barely considered until after the planned desolation was about to begin.

Noah had a long time to wait much as the reader of this work has to do in order for me to get to the point, lol. Noah's father, Lamech, lived 182 years before having his son to an unknown woman who is not involved in the paternalistic process. The long train of these prehistoric progenitors would involve thousands of scriptural years to get to the First Apocalypse and the first renewal of humanity after the Great Storm. Noah himself would have to wait a mere 500 scriptural years in the future to have his 3 sons, who play a key role in the future of humanity.

What an immense amount of time to experience and to fill up with new things that hopefully made Noah happy! It was no Eden though and he'd be put through many things: building an ark with mysterious dimensions that would have to hold an immense amount of cargo, rounding up a breeding pair of every living creature that his God thought about as an afterthought, the occasional global destruction, and Noah’s questionable offspring who might've viewed him naked or did more to him after a drunken night, which is as important in the Scripture as listing the details of the lineage of the First Couple. And despite the stellar lineage and obedience to the Maker, imagine you were Noah and you were instructed that the world was to end after all of those years enduring the difficulties of life in a time of wickedness after the age of heroes, born of fallen angels and women, had long past. 

Knowledge of the future is incidental to the shared timeline as the Creator reacts to the trials and tribulations of his creations in a way they can process. Though many live incredibly long lives in this Scripture, the Creator still reacts to them in units of solar time, in days and years that all understand. And it's apparent that the Creator often stumbles upon the human misbehavior and the occasional good egg (like Noah) that he either brings up to heaven directly or blesses them with some good things while at the same time ruthlessly testing them and denying them the Eden they might've once had. Needless to say, those survivors wandered around for thousands years, making their way to Egypt where they were welcomed and then enslaved when they overstayed their welcome, only to leave under pressure and wander again before they established the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, only to be dismembered by the Assyrian and later Babylonian conquerors, and then to eventually return back to the “Promised Land,” yadda yadda....

Anyways, if the Creator was barely aware of the future in store for humans or eventually the Chosen People, whomever they really were, how do we expect the average Joe, Jill, or Pat to be able to discern what's in store for them or the other people around them? How do we evaluate our subjects who believe they're the chosen ones and their pact with ideology allows them to shape the future for everyone around them? The meat of Volume IX, the repopulation after the struggles of the previous Mirroring works begins with the concept of a Mirroring Future.

A Mirror Future originated in Volume VIII "Reclaiming Our Time" as the progressive (forward) impulse put into irrational form. It consists of an unsolvable complaint known as a fault whether small or large (micro or macro). This issue is taken out of time, yet the subject crafts their Mirror Future by assembling a faulty goal to achieve it. This is achieved using an Acontextual Imperative, which in of itself is not irrational or totally unacceptable to mirrors. It's merely defined as an order from some past or future point of time to do something in the present. We use these types of orders all of the time in order to achieve everything from getting out of bed the next day at a specific time to go to work, to planning a vacation, to going to college because you believe your grandparents wanted you to go past what they achieved even though they're no longer living.

What makes this imperative part of a MF'er is the disconnection and purposeful lack of understanding about a context at another point in time. They purposefully accept past information without accurately using that knowledge even to the point of making things up, or MF'ers create futures without accounting for all of the steps needed in order bring it about. To understand the role of time in MF'ers and Mirror Goals we need to bring back the tool we use to simplify our understanding of time and truth.

The Mirror diagram displays both extremes of the timeline as never-ending.  However, the further one goes from the present into either the past or future, the greater amount of skepticism should be required about the ability to trust the contents from those eras.  For history (the past context given meaning by humans), there’s a greater burden on objectively reconstructing the context of the past the further back that humans go because there’s less likelihood that humans experienced the important events themselves and the ability to trust the contents of that context also become more suspect the further back one goes especially without physical evidence, writings, or a form of reporting that is semi-objective and believable.

The Past puts the burden on accuracy and context to make moral decisions using the collected information.  There will be gaps because a perfect record of past events is impossible whereas the Present involves decision-making and the puts the burden not on the reliability of information, but on making a choice due to the dilemma of action or restraint.  In contrast, the Future is the projection of the world as a person understands it, using the person’s abstractions about it as they understand some space and at some forward point in the timeline.  

This projection relies heavily on the “smartness” of the goal setting, the predictability that our present abstractions will be comparable across space and time. We could benefit greatly from Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and quantum mechanics.  In 1927, Physicist Werner Heisenberg revolutionized atomic physics by upending the Neils Bohr model of the atom.  Instead of negatively charged electrons orbiting a positive atomic nucleus, he discovered that electrons do not follow the rules of universal determinism or that if scientists could find their precise location, they could precisely know what charged state they were in.  

Early physics from Sir Issac Newton in the 17th century to Bohr in the 20th, emphasized neat laws, but were hindered by the lack of modern equipment, mathematical models, and an increasingly arcane commitment to fitting the universe into neat models.  Starting from the founder of pragmatism, Charles Pierce, the science was changing as pragmatists argued against the positivist view, or basically that the mind could be the sole source evidence of discovering the universe including in the development of scientific theories, in determining evolution, and arguably what is yet to come (the future), which in this case would be applied to electrons and uncertainty. Basically, Pierce accepted neither the view that the scientific method could explain with certainty all of the physical world nor that the mind alone could process the information of the universe because it was limited by subjectivity and the inadequate power of one mind.   

Bridging the gap between positivist and idealist worlds, pragmaticism sought to identify the uncertain realm and figure out which abstractions worked for humans rather than allowing them to pursue false, time-wasting paths (Mirrorism).  The doubt that comes from uncertainty is the key takeaway from this light physics introduction.  Working directly under Niels Bohr in his Copenhagen laboratory in Denmark, Werner Heisenberg determined that it was impossible to know both the exact location and the momentum of these negative particles (electrons).  This blew apart the neat world of physics and quantum mechanics from previous generations and made scientists a little certain confident that they could predict as they once thought they could.  

Uncertainty is more pragmatic than certainty. Using Heisenberg and the Mirroring diagram, ideas are called into question the further from our perception they are.  We lack the testing abilities of physicists to determine where our abstractions will end up.  They aren’t electrons.  We can’t put them under an electron microscope and plot the exact location of our ideas as our users jump between debate energy levels from Harmony to War. 

This atomization of our decisions seems daunting and even prohibitive compared to the relative comfort of simply believing our abstract futures are true and safe, and just going with them because of a “just do it” impulse.  The average person lacks the skills to use science, to understand its laws and how theories become laws, the rigor of any kind of reproducible method, and the knowledge base to test their assumptions.  Most of our subjects act on superstition, conspiracy, rumor, emotion, and faith on the beliefs of others that they’ve spent little time engaging with themselves.  

This is the appropriate time to introduce a complementary idea to Heisenberg and our filtration of that physics theory through Mirroring.  The Dunning-Kruger Effect is the tendency of unskilled people to be unable to recognize their own incompetence. According to their 2003 continued study, "because these notions often do not correlate with objective performance, they can lead people to make judgments about their performance that have little to do with actual accomplishment." The intelligence level doesn't matter as the brilliant scientist or mirror agent might be so caught up in the perception of their abilities that they too might be under the DK effect.

The basics of the Dunning Kruger Effect start with the Peak of “Mt. Stupid,” which is the utmost level of confidence in their performance and of their skills. After a person experiences an instance where they're made to realize they lack knowledge and competency, they enter the "Valley of Despair." Once they come to this desperate place in relation to others, they start on the "Slope of Enlightenment" once they put in work and eventually they reach the "Plateau of Sustainability." This is the homeostasis, point of balance where regardless of the actual knowledge and skills they've developed, they consider themselves gurus. Note that difficult, negative events are processed by people and it does cause unhappiness. Equally important is the ability of people to find a way to return back to what they already know, to reach that plateau of sustainability where their confidence is restored at least at level that allows them to get up from bed each day.

https://medium.com/@lee.sult/dunning-kruger-effect-a-right-of-passage-8d8e79619717

This certainty impulse is the ultimate logic buster.  It allows wide swaths of information to be rejected, and it confirms that other people are uttering Lies from The Tablecloth (LiFTs).  How do we know that our subjects are under the effects of Dunning Kruger when setting their Mirror Futures and establishing their Mirror Goals to get there? The question can be answered by in a number of ways. First, use the blind test tools and see if they reject contrary information based on who is giving it. Determine if the potential subject seems certain because they're just confident and potentially correct about the count of what they're saying, or if their confidence is merely a mask of certainty because the substance, the skills, and the motivation to counter opposing views is lacking. One should also check for emotion used an obstructive rather than a genuine display that doesn't overwhelm logical and rational arguments. Finally, curate the arguments for logical fallacies and signs it's a Parlay (speech content that it's irrational), or for environmental factors (Parlay) like deleting posts on social media, controlling the lighting or sound, or locking out opponents from participation that would skew a debate and allow the certainty of them to continue with little or no challenge.

Heisenberg's scientific uncertainty, Dunning Kruger's idiot certainty, and the Parlor's Parlay take us to F*ck Around and Find Out (FAFO) factors, which are vulgar, yet effective ways of communicating the consequences of pushing forward regardless of what happens after and using both the confident uncertainty of Mirroring Futures and the inadequacy of Mirror Goals.  Because carelessness is built into these factors, yet the universe unfolds in whatever way it may, the more FAFO factors present, the greater likelihood that the Mirror Future will end in a worse way than intended.  We can boil these factors into a noncomprehensive FAFO list:

1. Self-fault: Lack of experience in the topic for which the future and goal is being set (lacking historical mindset and training).

2. Present-fault: Partial implementation of the key aspects of the goal in order to bring about a Future.  Present-faults often involve practicing fallacies of omission whereby important information is purposefully ignored because of ideology.

3. Societal-fault: Failing to learn from the previous experience of others (lack of awareness of historical contexts and other people’s shared worldviews, though not acceptance or rejection of them).

4. Reliance on authority (fossil authorities, institutions, or abstractions that crowd out alternatives. They can be governmental, religious, or historical. They're emotional walls built to obstruct contrary information from disrupting the Future). 

5. 7 “Deadly” Habits of Willaim Glasser: criticizing, blaming, complaining, nagging, threatening, punishing, and bribing/rewarding to control others (Emotional walls).

These factors deserve an explanation of their own. A Self-fault is the personal aspect of a microfault, meaning a complaint about a local issue personally affecting them, but that they can't or won't solve themselves. The subject tries to build a future based off of that complaint and lacks the skillset or experience using the skillset even though they maintain a high level of confidence as per the Dunning Kruger Effect. They believe they have the answers and despite setbacks in implementing their goals, they plunge forward.

They also lack a rational understanding of time specifically the role that historical information plays on choosing what to do in the present that will impact what is to come. They don't have to be pipe-smoking, stodgy historians reciting scores of dates, battles, and trivial factoids, nor speak multiple ancient languages to understand the importance of past events in context. However, they do need to understand the relevancy that past contexts have on events going forward without going so far back into the past that the confidence of their explanation loses its trustworthiness because of a lack of the historical record to flesh out that past context.

As with the future, self-fault afflicted people replace evidence of the past with oblivious and hasty action in the present, and well-planned goals for the future with ideological certainty (Dunning Kruger). Individuals allow ideology to do the work for them and use Safespace Parlors to weed out contrary information because it conflicts with their worldview. Since this is personality-defined, this is often the most obvious factor that might lead an agent to mirror a person they define as a subject. It also means that the more acute this factor appears to be the more questionable and damaging the goal will appear to be.

The present-fault factor is the impulsive side of our subjects. They have little regard for the past, nor do they establish clear cut S.M.A.R.T. goals. Since it's often spur of the moment, our subjects omit relevant facts and develop D.U.M.B. goals that are flights of fancy and delusions of grandeur (Dreamy), Unrealistic because they glaze over details in order to pursue the vision anyways, not organized any sort of rational way (Methodless), and often selfish and focused on personal gain or to make themselves feel better instead of solving the problem that can better society (Banal). This is often when the logical fallacy of omission rears its ugly head because the subject is in a rush to create a future and can't be bothered to incorporate many of the important details that would make their goal smarter.

A societal-fault is essentially a macrofault, rather it's one that blames society for problems and to address these vague and oftentimes irrationally conceived notions about what everyone believes and is doing, societal-faulted subjects create goals with equally large brush strokes. These are perhaps more dangerous than self-faults as they both ignore the difficult work that it takes to rationally prove an argument about large complicated social factors at the same as bowling over individuals in order to achieve these large goals. Because of the complication of societal factors, ideology is leaned on more here than in a self-fault because in many cases the work has already been done for them by smarter or at least more vocal ideologues.

The reliance on authority is a way to pawn off difficult questions that the subject can't answer themselves to other people and institutions. Oftentimes, the most forceful debaters (Debate Monsters and of the Serpent variety) are the support system for the weaker minded. They can rely on any sources of authorities be it religious, governmental, or historical, which in of themselves are not irrational or wrong just because they're sources of authority. Rather, it's the logical fallacy of authority that snuffs out counterarguments because the authority is enough to counter an argument instead of being based on its merits.

Celebrities or media personalities (Donlemonites and Kimmelians) are relied upon to reinforce future visions as the subject hopes some of the stardust from Jimmy Kimmel crying about his temporary cancellation in 2025 can give weight to arguments about a future without the Trump Administration because he's standing up to them somehow. This authority reliance also can rest on fossil institutions like National Institute of Health and Dr. Anthony Fauci, both of which lost much credibility during COVID to most Americans over shifting and unscientific promises, yet both could still be seen as a crutch to those that want a retrofuture that harkens back to the masking, forced vaccination, and social distancing era. The key factor for these Mirror Futures is that groups provide comfort or something easy to blame so long as the people or groups are over-simplified and viewed as static (like fossils).

The final factor is the very subjective 7 Deadly Habits from William Glasser and as an inversion of Stephen Covey's very popular 7 Habits series. These are based on the interpretation of us agents on the emotions and behavior of our subjects, so it's also a fraught category as we might be overzealous and incomplete in analyzing them. This adaptation involves verbs of control, external action words that in Mirroring are irrational.  They are criticizing, blaming, complaining, nagging, threatening, punishing, and bribing/rewarding to control others.

Since these are so subjective, agents should be cautious in identifying these behaviors as there can be a fine line between complaining and offering legitimate criticism, nagging as opposed to being rationally committed to a cause, and threatening and punishing as opposed to pursuing justice and righting an actual wrong. The key element that makes a habit deadly instead of healthy is its rationality, its logical construction without fallacies, and the extent to which emotion is obstructing an argument or merely pushing the person to argue and act on legitimate grievances.

This subjective nature of our craft especially when evaluating MF'ers leads to a criticism of Mirroring that it restricts bold action because of its goal scrutiny, which could be fairly described as goal atomization, thus denying broad visions that may actually come to pass. Mirrors might be blamed for denying grand visions that could actually happen because they scrutinize the abstractions behind those futures and the goals taken to get there. This criticism is only valid if the person is using it to deflect from legitimate questions about them, which would call into question their role as a mirroring agent and suggest a transition to a captive, potential future subject of the discpline instead.

Also, I can't control every agent's critique and evaluate them for validity. I'm not Neils Bohr looking for the exact location and energy of electrons. The location of the collective Court of Mirrors, us agents together, is as uncertain as those electrons. I can only offer a framework to evaluate MF'ers and Mirror Goals and educate trainees as to what to look at when engaging with potential subjects. We self-select to be mirrors and not subjects, so it's up to any trainees to acquire the skills necessary to avoid unfortunate mistakes that would end potentially beneficial futures before they're realized.

The time is now to apply these concepts to national political issues that are divisive and can motivate our subjects to believe and act in strange ways. Courage is often as the word used to describe Mirror Futures that are ideologically acceptable, but that wouldn’t be if in other circumstances.  Oftentimes to reject criticism of the courage of these futures, our subjects defend themselves by atomizing the differences between two similar looking situations and using whataboutisms to deflect criticism.  

In 2025, Congresswoman Elise Sloktin was one of the so-called “Seditious Six” Democrat veterans who claimed that soldiers could reject “unlawful” orders by the Second Trump administration without specifying which unlawful orders were issued or which ones in the future were supposed to have occurred, thus earning them the mocking/pride badge of being labeled “seditious” by Trump and his allies.  Sedition by non-military members is defined in law in simplified terms as “conspiring to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States” (18 U.S. Code § 2384 “Seditious conspiracy”).  However, since all members of the alleged conspiracy to disrupt the chain of command are veterans or in the case of Senator Mark Kelly is still active, the punishment for such a conspiracy can include the death penalty (10 U.S. Code § 894 - Art. 94. “Mutiny or sedition”.  

These Seditious Six and their opponents should be looked at using the Belief Tree to Mirror Future form. The root to trunk of their Belief Tree is that Trump's handling of the military is as lawless as he is. The trunk to branch is that the best way to stop his unconstitutional abuse is to oppose most uses of his authority as Commander-in-Chief. The fruits of this tree are that his military authority has already proven to be unconstitutional thus soldiers under his command need to be warned about the ramifications of following illegal orders.

The poisonous fruit to this tree is the action against this group that attempts to call into question their military service, their targeting of Sen. Mark Kelly who is still on active duty and could be considered part of Trump's chain of command, and this group's overall ability to sow dissension in the ranks. Any of those actions call into question the validity of those BT branches, the Mirror Future that see an unquestioned Trump as a military dictator, and that threaten the Identity Safety of the politicians who believe they're threatened with violence by the government if their messages to the US military are questioned.

Mirror Future= an irrational projection/goal= abstract goal/projection + Acontextual Imperative (an order out of context) + Micro or Macrofault (a small or big complaint with no solution) 

Therefore, the Mirror Future can be summarized as a proud future where Trump's illegal commands are questioned, the military operations in question are stopped, and the chain of command reverts to operators other than Trump who can constitutionally exercise it. The so-called illegal Trump commands to the military are the Macrofault, as one can't challenge the Executive Branch about an alleged crime within the chain of command without evidence of something specific and in a jurisdiction that's able to adjudicate it.

A JAG officer in a military court doesn't have the ability to prosecute a crime against the Executive Branch, nor defend insubordinate soldiers that disobey their commanders merely because they disagree politically with the orders. It's a macrofault and not a specific, individual crime because no service person has accused their officers of forcing them to execute unlawful orders. Instead of a specific soldier claiming without evidence that an unjust order was issued (microfault), instead, the "Seditious Six" abstractify hypothetical unjust orders and allege that Trump might issue them based on a pattern of behavior that they see even though he might not do any of it. They're essentially complaining about future orders that haven't been issued because their Belief Tree leads them to believe that any military Trump orders that they disagree with is a poisoned fruit and thus should be stopped. It's a Macrofault because the solution they tried, a controversial video with nothing specific, won't educate the average soldier about a specific instance where an unconstitutional, illegal order could be issued. With no specifics, it's just a complaint, and a highly divisive on at that.

The Acontextual Imperative is obvious. They want soldiers to realize that they have some right to disobey futures that they determine (subjectively) to be unconstitutional. It's out of context because the order isn't listed and it hasn't happened yet. Instead, the imperative is both legal advice and a vague threat that obeying unjust orders may be something they could be held liable for after the Trump administration is gone. One could imply that this imperative for disobeying the order to disobey unjust commands might lead to future termination for misconduct, prosecution for war crimes under either the Geneva Conventions that the US is a party to or to the International Criminal Court, which the US is not a party to, and serious punishment for any of those caught up in the future struggle sessions of those soldiers not taking the free legal advice from these Seditious Six.

We have two threatening and contrasting Mirror Futures locked into a potential death struggle with each other.  On the one hand, the Seditious Six truly believe that Trump will order the soldiers under what they probably see as his illegitimate authority to engage in actions up to arresting, interrogating, or even executing his opponents.  Since many of these same alleged conspirators believe that Trump is a fascist and a Nazi, meaning he’s willing to do everything that Hitler did despite a lack of understanding history or the vast gap between the two figures, that means the future is dark and Trump will do whatever he can to silence his Democrat critics.  

What should you look for in debaters who take a stance for or against the Seditious Six? The factors we just identified as indicating a MF'er are self, present, societal, and authority faults plus the 7 deadly habits. A subject would see the actions of the Six as a mortal threat to themselves (self-fault) because they might be in the military or be in the Executive Department chain of command, agree with the Six, and disagree with Trump's orders. They might see their future as standing up to these unnamed, unjust orders and refuse to act. This could lead them into future disciplinary action, dishonorable discharge, or depending on the seriousness of their objecting acts, jail or execution for seditious or treasonous behavior against the US government.

The present-fault is that they act on the instinct and might refuse to say arrest an undocumented accused criminal, pull the trigger on a drug boat without the intelligence information that's compartmentalized outside of their view, or they might refuse to deploy as a member of the national guard to a sanctuary city like Chicago because they view the deployment as unconstitutional. The societal fault inspired by the Six is the unjust activity by the Trump administration and the handling of the US armed forces, the National Guard, intelligence agencies, and the management of the border, customs, and the ICE agency. All of the administration actions are boiled down into a single series of abstractions that are negative, unconstitutional, and worthy of resisting regardless of the specifics. For that reason, any subject who argues in this manner should be mirrored as there will be no way to convince them the Executive Branch, the chain of command, the laws of war, Supreme Court precedent, and US participation or not in international institutions suggest something different than the contradictory legal sedition in the ranks of the military.

IV. Hella Cheugy (Fossils)

"Taco Bell Patron: What would you say if I called you a brutish fossil, symbolic of a decayed era gratefully forgotten?

John Spartan: I don't know... thanks?"

“Demolition Man,” 1993

Fossil Futures=Mirror Future based on a past, acontextual imperative + Fossil Belief or object

Create. Preserve. Destroy. And repeat if you can! In Genesis 1, God created all of the earth and animals for humankind, starting on cosmic day 1 with the universe coming into existence and ending with his rest on day 7.  He fashioned the First Couple, banished them, meddled with their successors when he became aware of them, scrapped nearly all of their offspring in a great flood, while ensuring one noble family would survive along with his creatures, then forced those survivors to repopulate amongst their own clan. Yuck.

For countless generations, these seeds of Adam and Eve repopulated the earth until the time came for the great progenitor of the Creator's chosen people, Abraham and his old wife, Sarah to procreate. But poor old Abraham was a mere 100-years old, and his wife was barren, so of course those paternalists blamed her, and she was forced to give up her marriage bed to concubine slaves so that the line might be continued despite her loyalty to her husband and her God.

Yet, in his infinite sometimes random thinking, something changed as the years dragged on and the Creator's future and goals for humankind weren't unfolding the way he demanded. So, after hundreds of years or so, Sarah was rewarded for her devotion, they both became the father and mother of nations with a name change from Abram and Sarai, and she produced the heir, Isaac, the future of the tribe of Abraham and all Abrahamic religions. Looking back at all of the difficulty she went through accepting her husband's concubine, Hagar, and her stepchildren, Ishmael being the most prominent, with the heir in hand, she laughed at the tribulations probably in her victory over time, the ticking clock of menopause, and their infertile loins.

Now able to exact her revenge, she banished her love rival to wander the desert and hopefully starve for she'd gone through much to turn her fossil husband into a father of her own child. No two-bit slut was going to stand in the way of her sublimated legacy as first wife and a mere function of her chieftain husband via coverture. If elderly men could be turned into fathers on faith alone, and just look at very elderly actors Al Pacino and Robert De Niro fathering children in the 80s, what couldn't other humans do with their old things? (pun intended)

Sarah and Abraham, or the old chieftains of Hollywood with their younger concubines, made new things of the old, but they were much unlike those early people who created ideas to give a way to understand their harsh lives including fossils of their own that they are left behind.  Then they built great cities, towers, and kept relics from the holy ones around them that had nothing to do with survival. When these great physical things were threatened, wars were fought and people died to possess them.

The dinosaurs were even left around for some 19th century eclectics to pick up and dust off. Others took to examining the bones of humans much like the ancients used to do to discern the future, and a very select, racist group of these sought evidence of the separate evolution between the human races, a horrible fossil idea about bone artifacts that led to even worse belief systems like eugenics, the selective destruction of other humans because they were deemed to be dumber and weaker, and Nazism, which ordered the races with the fictionalized Aryans on top and proscribed slavery and death for the others.

Moving past these awful fossil ideologies, Mirroring is kind of a study of fossils, a fossilogy of arcane ideas and stuff long past its use.  Because we don’t dismiss the past or have blind faith in the future, we have to distinguish between ideas and objects that are useful and those relics that distract and waste our time.  All of the major pragmatist philosophers (James, Pierce, and Dewey) used geologic metaphors and so has Mirroring from its start.  We should explain what the difference is between a useful idea and object versus a fossil totem.  In his work “The Pragmatic Conception of Truth” (1906), William James wrote that “truth independent; truth that we find merely; truth no longer malleable to human need; truth incorrigible… [is] only the dead heart of the living tree, and its being there means only that truth also has its paleontology, and its ‘prescription,’* and may grow stiff with years of veteran service and petrified in men’s regard by sheer antiquity.”  Basically, ideas perform services to a point before they cease being useful and instead of fitting the concepts, they become treasured objects of their own that are disconnected from what was originally intended.

In his discussion of this same James quote, Max Drescow highlights some of the differences between the instrumental views of James and other pragmatists like Peirce who view this living tree abstraction with dead hearts as being subjective and dependent on the psychology of its users.  For Mirrors, this is similar.  The objective truths we seek can only be found by individuals who decide to process the information or ignore because of their subjective decisions.  Mirroring can’t offer an objective method that accounts for every variable.  In fact, we step back and understand what we can to improve the overall discourse and use a rational method to make things a little better one step at a time. 

Like evolution, paleontology and geology also benefit from Pragmatism as the belief is designed to test concepts and find out if they organize experience into truths.  "The pragmatic test for [studying geological layers] is 1. out of what observations was the concept formulated; 2 how is it to be confirmed in the field?"  (O'Rourke, p.47).  Cutting through the dense discussion of stratigraphy (layers of rock) and the idea of aging those strata in a circular way, O’Rourke offers us something else that's instructive from the hard sciences.  How do we take complex layers of information, whether as massive planes of rock laid upon each other, or complex ideas we invent about those rocks and find the exact truths about them?  He posits that we may have to find “intermediate” concepts in order to best describe the truths we hope to find. The more abstract ideas may have to pass through other terms in order to find their useless fullness.

With a more precise discipline like geology or paleontology, that’s fairly easier as we can literally go out into the field and use our physical and mental tools to study geology.  How do we study the political abstractions of our subjects and discern whether those abstractions no longer meet the moment and have ceased to be useable? And that’s why this topic is relevant to a volume about goals and the future.  Fossilized thinking can hold back a vision of course, but if the thinking itself is wrongly viewed as being old or out of date when it could have some use, then it’s the reaction that’s fossilized, not the suspect idea or object.  

Even ideas about progress, technology, and the future can be fossilized or affected by fossilized abstractions that are rigid, unbending, and taken as matters of faith instead of utility. Mankind changed yet again to create artificial intelligence not yet quite as menacing as H.A.L. from "2001: A Space Odysessy," but alarming enough because its awesome power is most harnessed by the masses to make silly cheap fakes that cause some of the older generations to question their very sanity about what is real and what isn't. An occasionally stodgy old fossil himself, but with immense popularity, Senator Bernie Sanders is concerned the growth of A.I. gives power to the millionaires and billionaire tech titans (poisoned fruits) that will ruin his Mirror Future if the socialists don't slow down the changes coming from A.I. or place them out of oligarchic control (the select group business leaders he believes dominate society).

So, let's take Bernie Sanders, who is acting as a quasi-Ludite, and put him into fossil play. Constrained by the language of "democratic-socialism," which is his Belief Tree, he's unable to shake off the dust and adapt to A.I. without using a macrofault (billionaires controlling our most advanced technology to everyone's detriment), a Mirror Future of A.I. being placed into the caring hands of him and his ideological supporters instead of "the richest 1%" and some tech "oligarchy," and his (irrational and ridiculous) Mirror Goal of somehow pausing the innovation that multiplies with each day and is out of the control of any single billionaire, or even a collective abstraction of them, or government bureaucracy.

Therefore, his BT is fossilized because it can suffer no challenge to the belief that a tech oligarchy is in control of A.I. progress, the Mirror Future whereby the undifferentiated masses of the planet can control technological development and dispense it in an equitable and inclusionary way, and that his Mirror Goal to get there, a pause on development, is achievable when in reality it's an irrational, acontextual imperative (an order out of context) because it seeks to pause progress in nearly impossible ways. Anyone taking out the Bernie A.I. fossil from the display case risks the ire of an angry old socialist, his Squad disciples in the House of Representatives, and possibly some angry struggle session, mean tweets, or annoying protests if the challenge to them is significant.

Yet, perhaps the most powerful fossil idea of them all was to come in 2022 when the mighty archivists working for the Biden Executive Branch decided that overdue documents from the Trump Administration were worthy of Trump’s felony prosecution because they contained state secrets that only they should gatekeep.  What else could bring America to its knees, possibly prohibit the lead candidate for the opposition party in 2024 from running again, possibly sentencing them to life in prison because they were late in declassifying them, thus uprooting the entire two-party democratic system because of some overdue papers?

Why, kind-of official lawyer person Jack Smith had the answer to that question and it's unlikely that anyone had this most serious of the now paused or dismissed felony cases on their Get Trump Bingo Card! The Jack Smith/Archival prosecution almost did what the British (twice), the Civil War, Joseph McCarthy's witch-hunts, the Cold Wars, Japan, and Hitler and the Nazis couldn't do: undemocratically remove a major party candidate from the US Presidential election and demolish half of the electorate because of the expiration dates of executive power, and privileges not being extended as a courtesy to enemy predecessors.

As a fossil future, the BT among the archivists and their mighty champion, Jack Smith, the fossils are the documents, which became an issue once a Democrat administration came to power (Biden) that could support their protection of these physical objects. They became totems because they represented to the archivists, their Democrat sponsors, and their champion Jack Smith the concept of "national security" and by the archives not possessing them and by Trump keeping them at his mansion at Mar-a-Lago, he represented a serious threat to the nation. Curiously, this same fossil totem didn't exist to anywhere near the same level of alarm when a series of not yet or never Presidents were involved, like when Hillary Clinton BleachBit her sensitive emails to oblivion against court orders (oops), Vice-President Mike Pence walked out with some, or then senator and later VP Joe Biden kept some forbidden ones in his garage next to his supposedly valuable motorcycle as if that somehow cleans the accusations from it and grants him presidential declassification authority he didn't have as number 2 to President Obama.

None of those people had the executive authority as president at the time they had illegally taken possession of those documents unlike President Trump who by the time of his persecution, I mean prosecution over this issue was a former president, but one in contact with the zealous Biden administration to keep the documents under lock and key, to declassify them, or in some cases to return those which Trump didn't view as souvenirs from his time in office. There was no mystery and the negotiations between the parties were constant and evident in the paper trail. The waiver requested by Trump to have executive privilege extended to the documents was denied by the Biden administration, the failure to restore all documents to the Biden archivists was tantamount to obstructing justice, a felony crime, and worse, a threat to national security. That threat could only be stopped by raiding Trump's home and his wife's boudoir, prosecuting him during the election season so he'd either be prevented from campaigning because he was in court, or they hoped would be in jail for the rest of his life.

So, the documents are fossils because the BT motivates their restoration from the hands of an evil national security threat. The acontextual imperative is the ignorance of other examples of mishandling documents and the rigorous persecution of Trump with a sped-up timeline to complete the case before the 2024 Presidential Election with the motive of stopping a second presidency. The macrofault is that Trump represents a threat to the national security of the Biden administration and that only his removal from free living and the destruction of his political career will allow an acceptable Mirror Future.

The Mirror Goals to get there are bending the entire Justice Department to this pursuit, ensuring that Jack Smith is hastily appointed as the fixer for the Biden people even to the point of being an unconstitutional justice department attorney (as the presiding Judge Cannon eventually determined), locating any friendly court to indict Trump, raiding his home with a large FBI force, bending any court timeline to maximize the political damage to Trump, denying any executive privilege that could show a rare instance of Biden's magnanimity/evidence that he wanted to bring the country back together as he promised, and dragging Trump into court for as long as possible to drain his time and money, and to savage his reputation.

The battle failed, Jack Smith's Trump prosecution was withdrawn along with the charges, and the archivists had to wait their turn to stop the next challenge to their fossils. Yet, when the mighty thunder of the Archivist Nephilim brought fire and brimstone down on the elected branches with actual constitutional power and failed, a new challenger emerged, this time to stop the construction of the wicked White House ballroom and the elaborate gold leaf prominent in the decoration of the Trump era and many of the grand palaces of Europe.  If you think the National Trust for Historical Preservation is going to take any changes to the White House Ballroom lying down, well you don’t know anything yet about wrath, you elected branches of a democratic government!  Be comforted, National Archivists, because the fossils in the White House won't go quietly. The worship of the People's House without Trump will continue in some form and the NTHP won't take such desecration lying down. More on the ballroom in a few moments.

In Volumes VII-VIII, the idea of blowing up objects to gain an orgasmic release was a major topic.  Totemic Purgogasm is the almost spiritual reaction that one gets from doing things like melting down Confederate Robert E. Lee’s statue to expiate the sin of slavery or the Taliban detonating the ancient Buddha statues because they brought offense to Allah and his desire for no pagan, craven images.  In the past year, there have been numerous examples of totemic purgogasms. At the anti-Trump, “No Kings” protest on October 18th, 2025, many protesters including attorney George Conway offered a bag of money to a giant, deformed Trump puppet.  Other protesters at a “No Kings” protest encouraged their children to beat Trump pinata to inculcate in the idea that the President of the United States is worthy of being beaten or his candy won’t be released.  These totems have magical value to George Conway, the No Kings protesters, and the Emotional Support Children beating on pinatas as they're all are stuck in attacking fossils as if those actions will somehow affect the person or persons behind those symbols. Instead, they're emotional releases that make the protesters feel good or that play on the innocence and play of children in order to make a point about some political issue that the children don't understand (the Emotional Support Children beating Trump pinatas).

Yet, this White House renovation is a different battle of symbols: no grand flags or ballrooms, only the old rooms unless someone else is doing it.  The demolition of the East Wing is typical Trump opponents as a wrong fossil destruction.  Respecting historical artifacts is in the eye of the beholder.  Preservationists and archivists protect what they want to leave for the future. Some of the mainstream press have joined NTHP and gone further into hysterics. “Can you help us understand? Can the president tear down anything he wants without oversight, can he demolish this building or say, the Jefferson Memorial?” Jiang asked. This is a similar vein of thinking to the critics of any aesthetics that Melania chose for Christmas. Basically, no construction, demolition, decoration change, or alteration of anything will be seen by some opponents as anything other than poisoned fruits.

To build a better ballroom, Trump is desecrating the People's Home and using it as his personal doll house. To troll his predecessors by putting sarcastic plagues that almost definitely be taken down by the next Democrat president, Trump is putting graffiti on those historic walls, threatening the peaceful transfer of power by attacking his presidential opponents. To massively increase the size of the American flags waving outside his house does mockery (somehow) to the service men and women who died under much smaller flags (?). And to increase the amount of gold leaf decor because Trump views the Gilded Age of the Late 19th century as his source of inspiration and because he believes a new Golden Era is beginning is the height of greed and insensitivity because his critics now view the country as unaffordable. To them, Trump is just a robber baron with presidential power and by putting gold leaf all over, he's mocking the poor and needy.

The objections to the changes in the ballroom are many.  There’s the legal question by the all-powerful National Trust for Historic Preservation that dares Trump to touch a single hair on the aging ballroom and the lackluster backyard barbeque space of previous presidencies.  They claimed it would “may permanently disrupt the carefully balanced classical design of the White House” so if taken to its extension and should their lawsuits be successful, the elected branches of government would have to redesign the historic building or maybe put it back to its original design because semi-governmental interest group demands it.  Other figures were just as frantic and angry. “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it,” said Hillary Clinton.  So, don't touch anything while in office President Trump, coming from the infamous Clinton couple known for desecrating the Oval Office with smut or covering up for it to further their political careers.

There are also the ethical questions about funding for the ballroom that not surprisingly come from his opponents.   Of course, the macrofault is that any donor of Trump’s is suspect because they support him with money even if they’re not openly political.  One could surmise the only legitimate source of funding from this would be a funding bill specifically passed by Democrats in Congress even though is highly unlikely to ever happen.

Brought out to give weight to these decorative decisions and to question the private donors is anti-Trump conservative columnist Peggy Noonan who wrote about her own fossil collection: “All this was done without public demand or support, and was done in a way that was abrupt, complete, unstoppable. Might the whole thing be open to corruption? Would it even have been attempted in a fully functioning, sharp and hungry republic? Or only a tired one that’s being diminished?” Yet might they NOT be open to corruption? She has a fossil abstraction she's defending: a sharp, functioning, and hungry republic. Because the decorations represent poisoned fruits that push the nation further from her Mirror Future, she believes that Trump's renovations are a threat because they're signs that the Republic is messy and not sharp, dysfunctional because of some redecorating, and lazy and frivolous instead of being active and hungry like she expects it to be.

Rather than God the Creator rewarding Sarah for being loyal to him and her husband, Noonan is stuck on her nation's own infertility just because the long sought after White House ballroom renovations went bigger and bolder than originally planned, and she and other opponents like Reporter Jiang see this change as an warrant to change anything that aesthetic monster like Trump wants. Of all the issues Noonan could complain about, many of which stem from conservatives like herself like with the War on Terror and endless wars, her bitter hatred of Trump to the point that it drags most Americans down with her, or running cover for Democrats during the Biden era in such a way that enabled Trump's return, well those don't matter. Instead, it the fossil of the process and extent of changing the White House that matters to her and other renovation critics. Because they can't get past the fact that Trump is doing it, they're stuck in a rut and see their futures in jeopardy. Noonan and others won't be having any miraculous babies any time soon with this fossilized way of thinking!

5. Gigachad Sidequest #1: Demokratia Pleads for Rump and Agam

The powerful, would-be protector Blue Donkey turns to speak to the messengers, Lib, Prog, and Socism after looking down at Rump.  

Blue Donkey: “Shall I hide from Demokratia what I am about to do?  They are sure to become a great and powerful nation, blessing all others through me and only me.  For I have chosen it occasionally when it suits me.  Thus, I will direct Demokratia to keep the way of the Blue Donkey for future generations by doing what I say is right and just, so that I may possibly bring some of what I promised to it.”

Expecting no answer from his heralds, Blue Donkey continues in its usual wrathful ways: “The outcry against Rump and Agam after the great sin of the Sixth is so deafening and their “fascist,” irredeemable evils so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done in their country is as bad as the outcry that has reached me from you three messengers, Lib, Prog, and Socism. If it’s worse than I already know it to be and if you haven’t been reporting enough of the wickedness, I will know.”

The heralds leave to monitor and undermine Rump and Agam from within as a prostrate Demokratia crawls to Blue Donkey, looking for the help that was promised.

Demokratia: “All-knowing Blue Donkey, who would control our progress and future, would you really sweep away the righteous for the wicked, all in my name?

Blue Donkey: “Wait, how TF did you know what I was about to do?” 

Blue Donkey thought to itself: “I thought that was kept secret from Demokratia, but it must have heard me order my heralds as I plotted my righteous vengeance.  It couldn’t possibly be so obvious to such commoners.”    

Demokratia: “If there are at least 14,000,000 primary votes for Rump in an entry-level contest in 2016, will you spare those voters in the name of your promise to me and my current plea for help?”

Blue Donkey:  “If I find 14,000,000 primary votes for Rump in an entry-level contest in 2016, I will not spare any of them for that number’s sake.”

Feeling a bit more bold after being rejected, knowing more than Blue Donkey thought it did, Demokratia tried again at bargaining: 

“Though you might want them ground down to dust and ashes at that number, if I find even more voters, maybe more than 62,000,000, but 2,900,000 less than 65,000,000 or so of them in the Great Contest of 2016, will you spare Rump on account of your promise to help me instead?  Would you destroy the whole lot of them on account of 2,900,000 less votes?”

Blue Donkey: Even 2,900,000 less votes than 65,788,564, I will destroy them and anything that gets in the way of their punishment.”

Once again Demokratia spoke to Blue Donkey, increasingly worried about the promises and less so about the fates of Rump and Agam: “What if only 74,216,728 votes in the Great Contest of 2020 are found there? What of your promises then?”

Blue Donkey: “For the sake of 74,000,000 or so votes–whatever–a subtraction of 7,052,045 from 81,268,773, I will still destroy them even if their numbers keep increasing.”

Incredulous at the increasing likelihood of destruction and of the failure to address the promises, Demokratia tried one last time: “May the great Blue Donkey not be mad at me–I, the humble Demokratia–but let me speak once more about the promises you have made to me and what I ask of the fate of Rump.  What if there were 77,303,500 plus 68 more votes in the Great Contest of 2024?”

Blue Donkey: “Even with 77,000,000, and 2,000,000 more than 75,019,230 or so votes, I will spare none of them in any Great Contest.  No number of votes will ever be enough, Demokratia!” 

Demokratia:  “But, what of the promises?”

Emboldened, Herald Socism approaches to address both Demokratia and Blue Donkey. 

Herald Socism: “Heed the good news, Blue Donkey, for now our hope for the nation is in my bastion, Gotham City!  Our charismatic new Man, pronouns he, him, is blessed by his god and is now the prophetic hope of all nations, like it or not, for he has won a mayoralty race with 1,036,061 votes in a city with 9 to 1 support for you, Blue Donkey, compared to the small number of the greedy and craven dwelling there.  This was in this Year of Our Marx, 2025, and a year since the Great Contest of 2024 that plagued the rest of this wicked, oligarchic, suddenly unaffordable nation not yet accepting your promises, which are much, much less lofty than I, Socism, find acceptable to promise.  My new city is a place far, far away from the sinful influence and culture of Rump and Agam.  What do you say about that, Demokratia?”  

Demokratia: “But, Herald Socism, now that you’re in charge of fulfilling these even greater promises, what about the rest?  Are you to sweep away almost 77,303,568 voters from the Great Contest of 2024 and from across my nation, just to save 1,036,062 Gotham voters also in my nation, which is 76,267,505 less votes, almost 76 times less for your Man than for Rump and Agam?  Is the greater part to be turned to hellfire to spare your much, much fewer that you would call righteous?  Will the 1,036,062 Gotham voters in my nation grant me, poor and bedraggled Demokratia, the promises I’ve so demanded for all of my nation and after all of this time now lost?”

Herald Socism spoke before Blue Donkey could speak up: “The Man’s pronouns are he, him!  And I’ll spare no one, even those going along with the way of the Blue Donkey who would oppose me.  We think therefore I am.  I…”

Interrupting his once herald, Blue Donkey thunders in triumph: “Ah, after 9 long years of searching for their doom, this might be the answer I always knew I’d find against the wicked Rump and Agam!  I’m glad I thought of it just now!”  Always assured, Blue Donkey turns its back on Demokratia as it was still protesting and demanding what was promised and turns left to go back home to the Blue Country Paradise.  

With its answer mostly confirmed by the small Off Year Contest of 2025, Blue Donkey tried again to rain down burning sulfur on Rump and Agam, trying to smite them for good by closing the government for 43 pointless days and 42 wasted nights to grind more wicked voters into dust just to be rid of them. 

Thus, even after the Off Year Contest of 2025 with still only the Blue Country Paradise firmly in righteous hands as they called it, Blue Donkey tried again to overthrow Rump and Agam by salting the vegetation in the sunniest, most populous lands of their Blue Country Paradise so that no wicked voters there would ever grow to strength in another contest, big or small, after this great redistricting decimation.  While fleeing, 8 senators following the way of Blue Donkey looked back at the destruction caused by the longest government closure of 43 pointless days and 42 wasted nights, and they became pillars of salt.  This damnation was meant to punish their disobedience and betrayal of Blue Donkey, and so that no growth would follow them into their small contest primaries against the heralds of Prog or Socism.  

(Not) The End

6. Very Mindful, Very Demure in the Era of Living Rent Free: Cassandrist Futures and Unheeded F*cking Around

"Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go Joseph you know what they say Hang on now Joseph you'll make it some day Sha la la Joseph you're still in your prime You and your dreamcoat ahead of your time" 

The Musical "Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

• Cassandrist Future: Subject Confidence because of a Mirror Future - Negative Feedback = The Extent of the Dismissed Warning 

There is wickedness in the world, no duh! Once God realized he was about to destroy the planet, but there were some things he wanted to save, he moseyed on down to Noah and told him the dark future of his impending climate change apocalypse. And many generations after the Flood, in this Scripture, there was the 11th son of Jacob, son of Isaac, great grandson of Abraham, and barely any discussion of the women until they became mothers of the more important biblical men. The favorite of the sons of Jacob, a son of Isaac, a son of Abraham, a descendent of Noah, and of many sons (and apparently many unimportant daughters) of Adam and Eve was Joseph. He was key because of his power to interpret dreams, the direct communication device with God or at his interpretation of those dreams were the links with Heaven.

We've seen so far that the future was communicated to the people of the Old Testament in many ways from angel messengers, weather phenomena, visions, burning bushes, or even conversations with sky entities. In Joseph's case, he had two direct visions, which would change his life forever as when he relayed them for the first time, his large family full of jealous half-brothers grew to hate him, selling him into slavery in Egypt, and faking his death so that his father became distraught and tore his nice garments in grief.

The themes of evil greed and intra-family violence are evident, but also important is that Joseph could foresee actions ahead of him that were conveyed by God much like everything else he did: in riddles. Joseph did have the power to untangle them as a diviner and with that ability he interpreted 6 dreams, including getting a conspiring baker killed and his body stuck on a pole to be pecked at by crows, a common type of body desecration in a world that valued proper burial. Yet, his most critical interpretation was to Pharoah himself whom he instructed that there would be 7 years of plenty followed by famine, 6 dreams ending in 7 years of starvation and death if they didn't plan ahead. 67

So, the Pharoah didn't f*ck around and find out what the plague could do, he listened unlike the later pharaohs of biblical Exodus and being superstitious, he stored enough grain during the good years, so the kingdom survived the plague with food to spare. This divination led to Joseph being exalted in Egypt, which also allowed him to return to his father, save his tribe, and forgive his brothers when he became the patriarch, promising them no retribution for their heinous actions. The message of preservation by heeding the warning signs is clear.

How do you detect the warning signs in the first place? Do we have to have a Greta Thunberg trotted out by her parents to cry and shame officials about climate science that she couldn't possibly have any knowledge to make such an irrational screed like that? Instead of becoming an emotional activist rather than a scientist or a mirror, how can we be like Joseph when we can't be confident that the Almighty is giving us actual signs, and it's not something else: immature kids melting down and shouting a bunch of logical fallacies, or false prophets who are out for money, or we're acting as part of a mass hysteria fueled by mass information and/or any number of intoxicants altering our minds and causing visions? Should we uncritically leave the future to any of those when we too could be harmed in the process?

No, we mirrors must rely on reason, rationality, and use our skills to detect as best we can when rational futures seem possible, or whether the goals set up for us may lead into a famine of our home. We have to divine the real world's riddles as best we can not create more for ourselves or others. For you see, dear reader, the opposite kind of diviner to Joseph is mythical Cassandra, a princess prophetess that's featured in many previous volumes of this philosophy. Cassandra is instructive for us especially in this volume because she's an example of a people not taking steps to stop what's warned.

The people of Troy f*cked around and hardly anyone was left to find out just how mistaken they were after the vengeful Mycenean Greeks got into their city in a large wooden horse. Gifted her powers by Apollo, the Greek god of prophecies, she also spurned his sexual advances and there was no Title IX to protect her against his abuse of authority. Troy was sacked, she was raped by the Greek champion Ajax the Younger, and after he drowned for mocking Poseidon's ability to drown him, she was sold into sex slavery and then murdered in revenge for Agamemnon's crimes against his wife Clytemnestra and daughter. Lose. Lose. Lose for poor Cassandra!

The key takeaway from Mirroring about all of this is that we're often seen as Cassandras ourselves though to my knowledge, I'm unsure which gods or goddesses are pining over us, planning their revenge should we spur their advances. Cassandrism itself is from Volume VII.  It’s an important concept because it puts us in the prediction business, only for Mirroring.  This form of future involves the dismissal of rational considerations for a path forward.  Not only do the individuals involved see something irrational, yet desired as a goal, but they dismiss enough feedback to continue on their current path.  Mirrors agents should also be able to identify Mirror Futures and provide valid criticisms about them to non-subjects, which means those capable of having a rational discussion.  It’s the negative, intentionally ignorant reaction to these futures from subjects that makes them. 

To pick apart this concept, we need to define it. A Cassandrist Future is a rational response to a Mirror Future, but one that goes unheeded. Its parts are the level of subject confidence because of a commitment to a Mirror Future with the "Negative Feedback" subtracted. This operation gives us a sense of the "Extent of the Dismissed Warning." If a subject is only mildly committed to seeing Trump deplatformed and cast off the ballot in 2024, they might more easily abandon that plan if they're informed that persecuting Trump as a martyr in such blunt ways could boomerang on them and empower him more as many including myself warned every year since the first impeachment in 2019.

However, if you are the vast majority of partisan Democrats who eat and sleep all things anti-Trump, any attempts to moderate their actions, to become reasonable, and to not to give oxygen to him and his supporters, then anything other than the harshest treatment of them is unacceptable and any warning about the alienation stemming from this zealous hatred will sound like the wah wah wah sounds of the adults in Charlie Brown. Thus, many Democrats constructed Mirror Futures (a jailed Trump unable to influence anything ever again), f*cking around with Trump and Maga in every way possible with Mirror Goals picking on every possible aspect of him, his family, his business, and his political career (impeachments, raids, criminal indictments, civil lawsuits, de-balloting, debanking, seizing real-estate, mugshots, silencing on social media, etc.) and ignoring our warnings as Cassandrist Futures..... and they got the worst possible results.

In observing our subjects in action, we can establish that the greater the confidence in the Mirror Future, the more dismissive one can be about the inadequate goals even as they become more D.U.M.B. (more on these later).  Less virulent and impactful than martyring Trump, you could process any number of irrational Republicans over this past year. Does replacing a Speaker of the House with a razor thin majority over personality issues and complaints really further the long term goals of conservative fiscal hawks? No (idiots), you're not going to like it very much especially when those hungry wolves waiting on the edges present a lock-step, unified opposition minority (Democrats) that will not help you solve ever so long as you're in the majority?

Why, loathsome republicans like Matt Gaetz, before his laughable stint as a potential Attorney General, Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG), other Freedom Caucus idio....I mean members, and even Elon Musk, who we'll Find Out about in Part II, constructed the Mirror Future that Trump was given an all-powerful mandate in 2024 and they could do whatever they wanted to chop down the government money tree. Their Mirror Future was that they could skip over processes, gut the bureaucracy as hastily as they wanted, and if vital services fell by the wayside, then those terminated employees and those pesky taxpayers who might've even voted for the Republicans would just have to understand the DOGE actions were for the greater good.

The negative feedback came from many directions even from within the right wing itself as MTG and Musk lost the shared dream with Trump and picked fights that jeopardized the majority of their goals because their visions were grander than the political realities to get there. Regardless, anything presented to any of these Republicans that countered this narrative like maybe that one should try to keep a razor thin majority voting by together in order instead of being hijacked by a few extreme malcontents to advance Trump's agenda instead of shutting the governmen because you're unhappy with one specific action of the speaker, the cuts aren't large enough in the spending resolutions.

Or, if you're Republican Senator Rand Paul, any continuing resolution to keep the government functioning is objectionable because the only way to fund the government is through the impossible budgetary process that can't get its work done because of partisanship and lawmakers like Rand Paul who gum up the process with nitpicking so that the deadlines are missed anyways. So, Rand Paul can bear no negative feedback that his vote to not fund the government, along with all the Democrat minority representatives in the House, and all but 8 Democrat senators, doesn't have serious consequences for everyone else.

Backed up by their overwhelming voting records on multiple proposed “clean bills,” the Democrat ideologue belief tree is generally such: The 2009 Affordable Healthcare Act (Obamacare) is a sacrosanct law that must not seriously be tinkered with regardless of its original purpose of providing cheap, healthcare for all, a reality that has yet come to pass and not even close.  In 2021 and 2022, the Biden Administration doubled down on the original act and increased subsidies on account of the pandemic and its effect on health insurance in the form of extended tax credits. 

In order to end the first government shutdown in the second Trump term, the Democrat-imposed expiration date was continued in order to keep the clean bill and re-open the government under the narrowest of Republican majorities in the House and Senate.  In 2025, when the government funding bill came due again, the Democrats decided that this was their time to fight for their own expiring subsidies.  Democrats who abandoned any of the serious goals related to this law are dream deserters as we’ll discuss in the next part as they side with those simplistically being labeled as healthcare deniers.   Any rejection of or lack of total surrender to their Mirror Goals for these specific tax credits from their own partisan law is considered a wish by some to take away healthcare from millions of Americans and cause literal death.

Opposition is dismissed and the government was unable to reopen because though Republicans have 53 seats out of 100, Senator Paul was out of that majority playing the constant spoiler. It takes 60 votes in the Senate to overcome the filibuster and release the spending bill so it can be voted on, which effectively renders the majority untenable until that threshold can be reached and Democrats hostage demands about their own Obamacare tax credits are granted. Paul simply played along with that while if he had his way, he'd remove the federal government from healthcare completely. Politics makes strange bed fellows when the fate of the American public is so easily sacrificed for partisan politics and unbending, fossil principles!

The interests of these ideological opposites aligned with opposite irrational goals. Paul wanted regular order spending to cut to bare-bones while being a politician in irregular, partisan times; Democrats want Biden's Obamacare tax credits they passed on a partisan basis extended permanently, and they want the 0 Republicans who voted for them for years to cave and vote for them now after devoting entire careers to opposing the Bill altogether. Paul's impossible goal of regular order spending is going to be pursued until hell freezes over at the next looming shutdown battle in 2026 unless he gets his way, and the nation is ruined because of the failure of government. Thus, to both Paul and the recalcitrant Obamacare Democrats, the Cassandrist future is to maybe not close the government in order to get political leverage if you can't be assured, you're going to cause Trump Republicans to do a 360 and reverse decades of their beliefs about Obamacare.

And far from exterminating his opposition, instead, Trump has struggled to keep his own vision, ego, and big mouth in check, a self-destructive ability that his opponents can never seem to let play out with rushing in to comment and express the desired outrage. In trying to free themselves from Trump and extinguish the inextinguishable Future, they're sucked into the vortex when they should've allowed his political career to collapse like a dying star.

Therefore, a Cassandrist future is on the opposite side to a Fossil Future because the former is a real warning about what's coming while the latter is stuck on creating goals based on old, useless things. This fits with the concept of Identity Safety in a Space (ISiS) and belief trees that only strengthen as the subject moves towards war on the Peace-Hate scale of Harmony.  The more the MFer is threatened by negative feedback from an enemy, the greater the confidence increase that theirs is correct and the feedback should be dismissed at increasing levels of False.  

As the certainty level increases that the future will occur at some level detected by the subject, the confidence that the goals are adequate also increase, which crowds out contrary information thus minting a Cassandrist future and not a successful Josephine dream intervention.  It’s in this sense that goals become self-sustaining, obligation those people around the subjects to follow with increase intensity.  It also necessitates its believers to use increasing coercive force (as per the Power Paradox from Volume VI) to overcome both legitimate and illegitimate resistance to their Empire of Mass Abstraction.  This coercion becomes a struggle session, imposing stigma on those giving Cassandrist futures with greater punishment and shame for those insisting on negative feedback. 

So, as we agents roam the Earth, recognize the universe's riddles as best you can because it's not going to be left on a silver platter. We aspire to be Josephs who can interpret the future accurately and prevent bad things from happening. However, if the people around us move to the Trojan camp of subjects, no matter what we say or how rational it is, it's likely to be rejected as Cassandrist. And you now know what happened to that poor woman! Glad you were always in your prime, Josheph and sorry, Cassandra!

Part II: And Find Out (Zeroth’s Hijacking):

1. Vibe Check: Asimov Ethics of Future Mirroring and the Subjectobots

“Squad Leader: Simon Phoenix! Lie down with your hands behind your back.

Simon Phoenix: What's this? Six of you. Such nice, tidy uniforms. Oh I'm so scared!

[the Police Officers look at each other]

Simon Phoenix: What you guys don't have sarcasm anymore?

[Police Officer talks to his automated assistant]

Squad Leader: Maniac has responded with a scornful remark.

automated assistant: Approach, and repeat ultimatum in an even firmer tone of voice. Add the words, "or else".”

“Demolition Man,” 1993, on the right wording needed to approach the arrest of the violent felon, Simon Phoenix.  

Imagine the fervor that it would take for Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, to defend his armed camp in an epic wrestling match that lasted all night to the brink of dawn just because an unidentified intruder tried to enter.  He didn't go for a kill shot with a weapon or call his retainers to subdue, question, and kill the invader. Only at dawn, at the end of this contest was Jacob to realize that his physical combat in defense of his Lord was with his Lord himself.  It was yet another test from the Test Master. It was not mere physical prowess that allowed him to fight all night, but the faith in his beliefs that justified to his heavenly opponent that Jacob was worthy.  The monument to that rock solid fervor came when God acknowledged Jacob as the sun rose and he revealed himself.  The Creator renamed him Israel and through him established the 12 Ancient Tribes of the Old Testament.   Powerful stuff for proving your ideology!  

In a different, fictional universe from the movie "Demolition Man" (1993), imagine the arch-criminal Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) frozen for years only to be brought back just to eliminate another unfrozen man, the police officer John Spartan played by Sylvester Stallone. Both were from a more violent, less utopic, yet more realistic era (Los Angeles in the 1990s) where criminals didn't have to be bargained with before they mowed down peace officers and as their automated assistant pondered what to do to get the violent man to give up. Well as you could imagine, Phoenix, the mythical fire bird symbolized by a psychotic man, rampaged throughout the pacifist society, even killing his would-be masters who had unfrozen him. Spartan and a few "modern" officers aware of the danger used that knowledge to stop Phoenix despite every roadblock that the futuristic society threw at them.

The fiery strength and resolution in the face of hard consequences is the basis of the second part of this volume, regardless of how bad those results might be and how preventable they might've been if the situations weren't FAFO'ed in the first place. Jacob was a subtle, conniving figure in the times he wasn't wrestling deities. Yet, it was the underdog mentality as the lesser twin of many children and the rock-solid faith that made him worthy of the name Israel, the name of his tribe.

Compared to wrestling with God, the strength and resolution of our fictional Demolition Man symbols pale in comparison, yet there was a power imbalance as Jacob fought a god while Phoenix and Spartan had violent instincts and knowledge that allowed them to lord over a wimpy, futuristic society that had outlawed violence, disarmed in the hopes that elites would protect them and not unfreeze villains, banned speech, and demanded politeness, dignity for all, and equity in order to bring happiness. Spartan was even insulted by a Taco Bell employee for being a fossil, an extinct breed of man who had little place in that futurist society. Yet, Spartan, Phoenix, and even Jacob all punched above their weight, using hard knowledge and an unbreakable will to dominate gods or weak men.

It's the example of Phoenix and not Spartan or Jacob that we need to observe because of the mindless evil and destruction he represents. Phoenix is simplistic in his wish to demolish and that makes him a valuable symbol for us. He is the perfect example of an opponent to our subjects. He acts chaotically, always in his own selfish interests and he actively seeks to thwart or kill the good guys, who our subjects always see as themselves. Therefore, Phoenix represents the enemy in a system we'll represent using bots and the 1s and 0s of computer programming, with opponents representing the 0 or the off switch because they're not considered as valid. In order to process how our subjects, the Spartans and Jacobs of the world, make moral decisions in real time we'll apply some ideas from science fiction and analyze three current events ethical dilemmas using this framework. Shall we get started? (Yes. I can't take no for an answer because I've written this anyways.)

Isaac Asimov was one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time. Living in the 20th century as computer technology was first developed, he wrote of space, time travel, and specifically robots and artificial intelligence (A.I.). In order to set the rules for how his fictional robots and A.I. would work, he wrote three laws and then an addition that would lock these manmade creations into the highly idealistic pursuit humanity's interests and that they would act according to the utilitarian concept of "the greater good." But our subjects are not robots though we refer to them as nonplayable characters (NPCs) because they only pursue their own quests in arguments and can't be opposed rationally. They have to fulfill their limited mission and it's up to us how much time we want to divert to their irrational way of acting instead of pursuing our own main quest (a more logical, rational world).

Thus, Asimov's four laws of robotics are altered in Volume IX to indicate when a human SUBJECT instead of their OPPONENT feels justified in acting towards a greater good, which allows the justification of a Struggle Session and the punishment of the offender (Volume VIII).  Guiding a subject's behavior in a dilemma, the four rules of Subjectobot Ethics are such:

1. “A subject’s OPPONENT may not harm humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.  

2. The subject’s view of Humanity as a whole is placed over the fate of any single human, especially an opponent. 

3. A subject believes they act in the long-range interest of Humanity as a whole, and they overrule all other subjectobot laws whenever it seems necessary for that ultimate good.

4. Zeroth's Hijacking Imperative: "An opponent may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."

For our purposes, these identifiable characteristics are definable categories (robots) that we apply based on our perception of a subject's behavior.  Our subjectobots are humans until they start obeying the programming laws thus establishing their identity so long as they’re acting upon those mandates.  Yes, our determinations about their behavior and their suspected programming may be partial, flawed, or flat out wrong, but the proscription for mirrors acting according to rational ideals to better society versus our subjects means that we need only debate, mirror, or leave should we suspect our subjects are beginning to or are already complying with the subjectobot rules. Therefore, the human behavior defined by the rules is what we’re trying to discern, not a perfect definition of a creation ever thereafter acting on those behaviors with no change possible. 

Instead of hard, determining rules about permanent behavior, the Subjectobot Laws are guideposts and assumptions about how our subjects want themselves viewed and those they interact with to be viewed.  They believe they and their ideological allies act altruistically for the greater good of everyone, and opponents can be put in a subordinate place when it comes to setting goals and determining the future, or if they object and resist, they can be entered into a Struggle Session, silenced, punished, or even killed as rogue enemies who will end humanity as we know it if they’re not stopped.

Thus, the Laws of Subjectobots reflect a subject’s ideological belief that no opponent can bring harm to humanity by their action or inaction. Our subjects believe that their view of humanity is placed above all others especially active opponents, and that subjects are compelled to act in order to protect their vision of humanity against all opponents and in whatever way they deem to be adequate to their lifestyle and abilities.  This is an empowering concept, but only for the subjects and not the people they deem to be their opponents or those run over in pursuit of the greater good and of those opponents.  It also gives these bots leeway in determining what others can or can’t do based on the subject's ideology and their vision of what’s best, but not an objective, universal betterment of society as a whole.  

The first Subjectobot law is foundational and one that tests the ability of the Mirroring agent to determine if the person is a subject or a person worthy of engaging intellectually. As stated already, all three laws plus the greater good added in the Zeroth imperative put the burden on opponents instead of the subjects judging their speech and actions. It is “a subject’s OPPONENT may not harm humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."   The subject gets to decide what harms humanity, decide what inaction means, and what other people's subjectively determined actions may cause. The person's Identity Safety is the guiding hand in these ethical judgements as they may view others based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or whatever subjective judgement is used to determine the harm posed by an opponent.

The second and third laws can be grouped together. The second is that "The subject’s view of Humanity as a whole is placed over the fate of any single human, especially an opponent." The third is that "A subject believes they act in the long-range interest of Humanity as a whole, and they overrule all other subjectobot laws whenever it seems necessary for that ultimate good." Taken together, they allow the bots to determine what humanity means, what the Mirror Future (MFer) is going to be if other people are allowed to act, if an opponent is a detriment to that MFer, and whether it might be necessary to overrule and oppose any action of others because they're deemed to be against the greater good.

These three laws combined allow the subject to determine which people are expendable based on their Identity Safety. So, if you're a Trump supporter after the 2024 Election, you survived a natural disaster, and you're looking for FEMA support in parts of the South during the Biden Era, you might not get help if your federal officer happened to be led by this unidentified, fired employee who allegedly instructed her workers to avoid homes with Trump signs.

This federal employee is the subject, the bot acting in accordance with our four Subjectobot rules. To the bot, Trump is deemed to be harmful to humanity, signs are physical totems that signify to that employee a harmful and evil intent, therefore, should an act of nature harm the people and homes with those hateful signs on them, they should be overlooked for federal assistance. The greater good is letting nature punish Trump supporters who probably want to abolish FEMA and the federal government anyways, so why help them? The bot employee overrules the interests of the Trump supporters because of their sign totems and also equation protection under federal law, which is a crime. The fact that they let out this potentially criminally liable information shows how committed they are to their bot programming to the point of allowing disaster victims to suffer because of political disagreements.

Finally, the fourth law keeps the original Zeroth label, zero or base level being that word's definition. First writing at the pre-dawn of the computer age in 1942, Asimov received much criticism for his law's original idealism and naivety, and it took him many years to update it and only grudgingly so. Having lived through the computer and internet ages, his grudging addition, Zeroth, was meant to head off criticism that robots could easily harm humans if their definition of what constitutes a human is altered, if they had malevolent programmers who acted for selfish, ideological, or evil purposes, or even that any number of humans even if so defined could be expendable if it was for the "greater good of humanity." His Zeroth's law was that "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm." This takes precedence over the original three laws in order to prevent the programming from allowing violence and death.

Our Zeroth law still takes precedence over the other laws because our subjects view their opponents as wishing to harm or to be potentially violent against them. It's referred to as a "hijacking" because the subject's feelings, emotions, insecurities, and physical demands take away the agency of their opponents and other people. The subjectobot's selfish demands, opinions, and ideologies take precedence over others because they view themselves as correct and maybe even heroes for confronting the false ways of their opponents. They do not give legitimacy to them or that might have their equally valid beliefs, so, these bots hijack society and deem their beliefs and actions as the only moral way to act.

As inspiring as Asimov is for us here and how important the rules were to computer science and developments since, there are a number of inadequacies that computer scientists and science fiction writers have pointed out in Asimov's original rules that are instructive for any criticisms of the Subjectobot version.  Most of those criticisms are legitimate because they apply to works of fiction that can’t easily be placed in reality.  They rest on considerations of robot paternalism as author Roger Clarke posits.  Robots determine for humans what is good and ethical even though humans themselves limit the programming of them when they create it, and this posed a possible threat when humans could no longer understand their creations or when the robots themselves acted on their own sense of moral imperative as opposed to what protects their creators.    

Some have even suggested Asimov's laws are massively outdated as Darius Jemielniak suggest that a 4th law be added.  Because of the threat of A.I., misinformation, and deepfakes in the 21st century, Jemielniak suggests this additional mandate that “A robot or A.I. must not deceive a human being by impersonating a human being.”  He offers sensible rules that one could even say are pragmatic. To incorporate his law into the original robot ones, he says that “mandatory AI disclosure in direct interactions, Clear labeling of AI-generated content, Technical standards for AI identification, Legal frameworks for enforcement, and Educational initiatives to improve AI literacy.”  These are very reasonable ways to ensure that robots and A.I. obey their creators without presuming the creators are automatically ethical and virtuous in their development of these technologies.  

For us to apply this proposed law, we’d have to continue the inversion, but instead of accepting rules that would prevent deception, mimicry, and fake news, we should already presume that our subjects engage in these behaviors because the previous three rules and zeroth’s hijacking imperative dictate that they must act in such deceitful ways in order to preserve the definition of them as protectors of humanity.  Thus, a separate fourth law isn’t needed since it’s an assumption any good mirroring agent would already assume from our subjects IF they can be defined as such. 

So, in every ethics section of Mirroring, we need to use a series of maxims in order to process how to use these new Subjectobot rules and to make decisions when coming into contact with such bots. We agents must turn to a number of different thinkers including German philosopher Immanuel Kant, Niccolo Machiavelli, and then the utilitarian thinkers like John Stuart Mills and Jeremy Benthem. Since ethics is the study of morals and determining right and wrong action, Mirroring Ethics with regards to Mirror Futures, Goals, and the behavior of subjectobots consists of Kant's maxim, Machiavelli's cynical calculations about how to preserve power, and how the greater good is processed.

In 1785, Immanuel Kant revolutionized philosophy from a small city in Germany. His maxim, the categorical imperative, has been used in every almost volume so far. It determines that if we're going to rationally choose a rule that determines how we act ethically towards a dilemma, then it must be universally applicable in all situations for everyone. In every volume, we always caveat this ironclad order with the requirements that the context of making this decision must be as close as possible in similarity, or we may not have to obey the rule, nor may we be seen as acting unethically if we don't follow it. For example, we can't be forced to obey a universal rule never to lie if our lives are threatened by the secret police because our primary directive is always to preserve rational thought and survive any irrational discussion or potentially violent interaction. So, Mirroring's categorical imperative is entirely dependent on the similarity of the context used to decide if the law applies or not.

As an Enlightenment philosopher and one zealously committed to finding the Truth through reason, Kant hated lying and violence. A Mirroring agent can't judge a person as a subjectobot or even worse to Kant, lie about them being one and consider that action moral, let alone one that we'd want everyone to have to follow. If we were to imply that his imperative enables us to lie about potential subjects being subjects regardless of whether they are or not, then everyone could feel free to lie, mirror everyone else and reject potential, valid arguments because the people were falsely labeled as subjects who are incapable of having a rational discussion. Therefore, no imperative need to be obeyed if under false pretenses, however, I can't be seen as immoral for not preventing the self-selected agents who turn into subjects because of their false pretenses because I only created a method, I didn't determine for everyone what every moral order was to mean or how everyone has to act in every context.

Rather than the rational version of Kant, instead, our subjects use an acontextual categorical imperative. They create rules that allow them to reject opponents as immoral simply because of a few characteristics and regardless of the similarity of the contexts in which the dilemmas take place or the validity of their actual argument. Therefore, agents must be absolutely sure that people we engage with fit the characteristics of a subjectobot AND argue or act irrationally such that it's better to mirror them or leave any interaction with them.

At the opposite end of the philosophical spectrum from goody-two-shoes Kant is Niccolo Machiavelli (and arguably his ancient Chinese predecessor, Sun Tzu), but only because the Renaissance thinker had to contend with the cutthroat politics of a divided, 15th century Italy. Famous for creating the cynical and bloodthirsty idea that it's easier to be feared than loved, instead, he was trying to eject multiple foreign invaders, unite some of the most fractious and quarrelsome people in the world at the time, and provide a manual to whomever could step up and unite the peninsula.

For us, we need to take his writings in a few ways. First, our subjects obviously see themselves as the determiners of what is right and wrong, much like some petty Italian signori. They can and will switch allegiances when they deem it necessary and stab anyone in the back if they feel their greater good and Identity Safety are threatened. Because their Political Eden (PEe) can't exist with opponents in it, which is a world of Harmony without political opposition in it, we can assume that subjectobots will lie, manipulate, cheat, steal, or even use violence to ensure that their opponents are converted or removed as much as possible. Instead of being God in disguise using false pretenses as he so often did in the Old Testament to test "good" humans like Jacob by wrestling with him despite the power imbalance, we can also assume the malintent of bots, who will use whatever devices they deem necessary to achieve their Mirror Goals and preserve their Mirror Future.

Finally, the calculation about a ruler being loved matters only for the purpose of the Mirror Goal as being loved only matters to the bots if their political objectives are met. This malevolent, ends justifying the means attitude fits nicely when good old Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mills, the utilitarians are added in the mix. Last we saw of Bentham was in Volume VIII: The Struggle Session and in particular with his hedonistic calculus modified for our purposes as the amount of pleasure or hatred a person gets from a political interaction. Because this is about making a vision of the future come about (an MFer), our subjects view the greater good and the usefulness of ethical decisions as rosy if they're the ones deciding and if any of the elements of that future come about, they derive great pleasure even if it's minute or noticeable only to them.

For example, Biden-haters might see a stair stumble or a rambling speech as satisfying evidence that their goal of removing him from office for being senile and incapable of governing can come about. So, to them, deriving pleasure from these petty instances is ethical because Biden is bad because he's old and shouldn't be in office. Therefore, the utilitarians would see the Republican subjects deriving great pleasure from the misfortunes of a long-serving, committed politician who happens to be elderly and have accidents. These anti-Biden subjects see the greater good furthered because they snicker at an old man's accidents because that means they were right all and along and his time is up.

With all of these ideas in the mix, let's apply them to dilemmas in current events. We'll use a schematic form and study street, national, and global levels. The street level involves the ethics of the Luigi Mangione case where he's on trial for murdering a healthcare CEO. The considerations most important in this case are the bots that find his allegedly murderous ways of confronting bad healthcare to be acceptable for various reasons even because he's attractive. For the national level, we'll look at how to approach ICE raids and the deportation of undocumented individuals, specifically whether the enforcement of long existing federal law constitutes a Nazi-level purge of the country's black and brown indigenous peoples who deserve to be here while the ICE agents are the ones that deserve to be hounded to death. For the global level, we'll check out the striking of suspected drug boats in international waters and the bot ethics of reading these castaway Gilligan narcotraffickers from Venezuela and Colombia their US constitutional rights and either preventing any violence in the first place or preventing a war crime from occurring should a double tap be needed in order to complete the mission failed by the first strike.

Vibe Check Casestudy #1: Street Level:

Dilemma: The Luigi Mangione Glowup Glaze over Bad Healthcare and Bloody, Brutal, In-your Back Murder.  

Belief Tree: Healthcare insurance is a vile, corrupt, money-hungry industry that cares about profits over helping those with medical issues.

Poisoned Fruits: No representative from the healthcare insurance industry is good.  They’re all responsible for killing patients by any instance of denying coverage.  

Mirror Future: Genuine Healthcare with no profiteering and infinite insurance coverage = Healthcare CEOs have been “killing” patients in the past by not providing full insurance coverage regardless of individual plans (Macrofault) + Brian Thompson is the CEO of an insurance company responsible for Luigi Mangione’s past healthcare insurance and blamed by him for bad coverage (Microfault, lacking rational solution) + Kill anyone deemed as sufficiently representative of the system to draw attention to the “injustice” (acontextual imperative).

Subjectobot Laws:  

• Subjectobot Law #1: Victim Brian Thompson, a Healthcare Insurance CEO, harmed humanity by the nature of his occupation because some people have bad healthcare, can’t get insured, or can’t afford medical treatments because of their coverage.    

• Subjectobot Law #2:  Alleged murderer Luigi Mangione’s views about healthcare, the culpability of CEOs, his sense of Justice to rectify bad healthcare, his choice of target for a violent Struggle Session, and actions to make that happen are views that override the life of Brian Thompson, justifying his murder to Luigi and his twisted supporters.

•  Subjectobot Law #3: The long-term interest of humanity is served by drawing attention to bad healthcare and wealthy insurance company CEOs even if that means murdering one of them and putting out wanted signs to get others in the future.  

• Zeroth’s Hijacking Law: In allegedly killing Brian Thompson, his one life or those of other healthcare CEOs are forfeit if defendants like Luigi Mangione determine them to be against the interests of furthering better healthcare.  

Deludes: The delusion that killing people will fix the "bad healthcare" abstraction and strike a blow against greedy insurance corporations or punish those CEOs still alive.

Struggle Session: The punishment other than getting murdered includes a fear campaign to post "wanted" photos of other CEOs saying they're next for death, to protests demanding the release of Mangione, to opposing anyone who rejects murder and accusing them of being complicit in the murder of innocent patients who had bad healthcare.

Vibe Check Casestudy #2: National Level

Dilemma: Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) Deportations, the Very Merry Maryland Felon Dad, and Margaritas Hither and Thither

Belief Tree: America is a nation of immigrants; everyone is on stolen land once owned by Native Americans even if many of those tribes didn't believe in land ownership or that theft wasn't an issue because property was shared communally -> no laws should restrict immigration because of those Truths -> anyone here undocumented regardless of another criminal status deserves to stay or least get a level of due process that the law may or may not currently offer -> any ICE action to oppose any of those warrants severe opposition in the form of protests, obstructing law enforcement, storming facilities, physical acts against ICE agents, and even violence -> the so-called "Maryland Dad," Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and his complicated deportation case is the classic example of this BT regardless of the specific details of his wife's abuse, gang involvement, and other criminal allegations against him.

Poisoned Fruits: Any calls to deport undocumented persons, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whether they have additional criminal history against them or not is viewed as poison to the abstraction of a "Nation of Immigrants." Merely stating the federal immigration law requires all foreign persons to be documented while in this nation or they're violating the law (making them a criminal) is a poisoned fruit.  

Mirror Future: ICE needs to be abolished in order to have a peaceful and welcoming country like the Statue of Liberty's poetry promises, and everyone related to its current actions need to be prosecuted and punished = ICE has no right to deport undocumented migrants from the country despite the violations of US law (Macrofault) + each ICE raid is an injustice and anyone threatened with deportation, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is a victim that needs to be supported regardless of their criminal history (Microfault, lacking rational solution) + individual ICE agents must be doxed especially if they're masked to protect them not from COVID-19 but for them and their families from just such exposure (acontextual imperative, an order that needs to be done in order to achieve the desired future).

Subjectobot Laws:  

• Subjectobot Law #1:   ICE agents harm humanity by arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants because a welcoming, open immigration view of American society is harmed by such fascistic actions.

• Subjectobot Law #2:   Anti-ICE groups' views about immigration, deportation, Kilmar Abrego Garcia's case, American history and values, and acceptable conduct of government agents are deemed as the moral ones, and they're the only views that are in the interest of the greater good for humanity and Americans even if they're contradicted by federal law and immigration precedent and practices.

•  Subjectobot Law #3:  The long-term interests of humanity are in opening up the country to unrestricted immigration, regardless of documentation, criminal, or threat status, and abolishing ICE, setting up a struggle session, and punishing every official associated with immigration policy and enforcement.

• Zeroth’s Hijacking Law: The deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia can't ever be allowed to happen because he's a father of kids and he's the poster child for ICE abuses because he was going to be deported back to his country of origin (El Salvador) a second time while he feared for his life and was ordered deported anywhere but El Salvador. If he's deported to anywhere but especially to El Salvador, that means ICE can override everyone else's immigration cases and start deporting legal resident abuelas and their crying, separated grandchildren who are, for now, American citizens until Trump and ICE take that away from them too.

Deludes: The delusion is that all ICE actions are fascist, contrary to law and practice, and that any action including criminal ones are justified in order to end the agency and stop it. If Hitler is involved, what wouldn't you do to stop his genocide?

Struggle Session: All ICE agents and anyone associated with immigration policy and enforcement should be doxed, no federal agent should ever be masked and out of uniform as only protesters and those hiding from COVID-19 can be, even family members of ICE and other policymakers deserve to be exposed for supporting their family members, ICE agents should prosecuted and jailed regardless of their specific actions or what the law says, and in some extreme cases, drug cartels may be justified in targeting agents with wanted lists because even drug lords deserve a place in America free from ICE tyranny.

Vibe Check Casestudy #3: Global Level

Dilemma: You Sunk My Drug Boat! Miranda Rights for Narcoterrorists and Swapping Obama Droning for Double Tap Missile Strikes 

Belief Tree: America has no business in waging a war against innocent fishing boats who can't possibly be violent narcoterrorists, or by confronting the Maduro regime in Venezuela or anywhere else so long as Trump is the commander-in-chief and ordering these actions -> speed boats in international waters must be stopped, read American Miranda rights, and brought to court to answer the accusations of drug trading -> any action by the Department of War of the Trump Administration (stupid rename, btw) to use force anywhere is suspect, potentially unconstitutional, and possibly a war crime in violation of international law that we may or may not have to follow -> all bombings anywhere on the planet must be subject to review by Congress specifically by Trump's bitterest opponents in order to ensure that they're compliant with his opponent's understanding of the law, the chain of command, the intelligence about the strikes, each specific case of a potential strike, and so that the oversight veto by Congress can be exercised so that military authority can be exercised by them in the Legislative Branch and not in Trump's Executive one that normally does these things at least as it was under Obama and Biden.

Poisoned Fruits: Any defense of striking suspected narcotraffickers amounts to enabling war crimes and unconstitutional, illegal action. Any suggestion that presidents have long struck terrorists overseas or that have even overthrown governments in Latin America as in Panama in 1989 with only notifying Congress after the fact, or comparisons with the hundreds of deaths caused by President Obama droning people, some of them American citizens, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, or Biden using similar strikes to kill an innocent family in Afghanistan without telling Congress each time beforehand are considered to be poisoned fruits.

Mirror Future: The US must not engage in violence overseas while Trump is president = Trump has no authority to strike alleged drug boats after labeling them terroristic threats to the country nor does he have any right to strike hostile nations or groups anywhere for that matter (Macrofault) + each destruction of a drug boat is a war crime and worthy of prosecution under the International Criminal Court even though the US doesn't follow that agreement, and under the Geneva Conventions, which it does, when the US uses a double tap strike to kill hostiles after the initial strike fails to complete the mission because the second strike amounts to gunning down Gilligan and his merry band of castaways (Microfault, lacking rational solution) + Impeachments need to remove Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and the commander in charge of the operations where double strikes occurred and he needs to be dismissed and brought up on charges, all involved need to be prosecuted and punished for war crimes (acontextual imperative, an order that needs to be done in order to achieve the desired future).

Subjectobot Laws:  

• Subjectobot Law #1:  The strikes on suspected drug boats harm humanity because people died. The military shouldn't be used to kill people (jk) and by not catching the speedboats and reading them their rights, the US military is threatening humanity with violence. All second strikes in order to finish a mission are against the laws of war because they're either to be arrested or treated as POWs and that's not to say the first strike was any more acceptable.

• Subjectobot Law #2:   The greater good is for the boats to be intercepted unless they make it ashore in Venezuela or Columbia, in which case the US Navy should just catch them the next time they happen to travel that exact route and in that exact same boat as a ground operation in those countries to get them would be a declaration of war and that's definitely not in the interests of humanity. Unless the US can train faster boats that can nonviolently intercept the alleged drug runners, get them in a position so their US constitutional rights can be read to these Venezuelans and Columbians, then the interests of humanity are in the US working out the problems so those foreign governments arrest those individuals, treat them properly, and make sure they don't do this ever again. Also, the long-term interests of humanity are not served by stopping the drug trade because if it's merely marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or other illegal substances that aren't so bad and definitely not fentanyl, so we shouldn't waste our time in stopping any of them. The long-term interests of humanity aren't served by bombing a hundred drug boats only to destroy one innocent fishing boat even if one small drug boat stocked with fentanyl could kill every person in the US many times over. The survival, the right to choose one's own occupation whether as fisherman, castaway, or narcoterrorist, and the US constitutional rights of every foreign speed boat in international waters are the priority over any single American affected by the violent drug trade.

•  Subjectobot Law #3:  The long-range interests of humanity are to extend constitutional rights to all traffic on the high seas, to never attack a target especially not twice if the mission wasn't completed on the first tap, and to allow nations to enforce drug laws within their own borders regardless of what happens to Americans if they don't do anything or actively enable the drug traffickers.

• Zeroth’s Hijacking Law: The US military may not harm humanity by striking potentially innocent fishing boats even if they're located in international waters, but in known drug trafficking lanes offshore from known drug trafficking countries like Venezuela and Columbia. If the US military begins to harm humanity by striking them the first time, it must recognize its mistake, hope the castaways wait in the water with their life vests on, and don't get back on the boat to call for others to pick them and their cargo up, so that they can be Mirandized and taken into custody ideally as arrestees or POWs at worst if it's considered a war in just the case of apprehending them and not warring with them because the rest of the rules of war refer to war and that also might lead to violence, in which case it's not a war, but a law enforcement action led by the military in a role as police officers. There's no war here, nothing to see, unless you happen to take POWs into custody. Once they're in a jail cell and lawyered up with high powered drug cartel attorneys, more information can be shared about how fishing was in that area or possibly where their drugs were headed.

Deludes: The delusion is that suspected narcotraffickers can be treated like fishermen who had a boating infraction like they were just partying in American waters off the coast of Florida or that they're hardscrabble fishermen who were just barely makes ends meet. It's a delusion to assume the Executive branch lacks authority and precedent to strike in this way. The commander-in-chief has long had the ability to strike foreign targets when the urgency of the timing and the national interests of the US are determined to require it. Obama and Biden exercised identical authority and killed many throughout the middle east, notifying Congress only after the strikes were conducted.

Struggle Session: They want everyone involved in these strikes brought before Congress, any commander engaged in double taps to be fired and brought up on war crimes charges, the chain of command has to be purged through impeachment and possibly brought up on charges of murder for the deaths of those involved.

2.  Caught In 4K:  Dream Deserters and the Musk’ovite Bad Breakup 

“Lori: Doug, honey... you wouldn't hurt me, would you, sweetheart? Sweetheart, be reasonable. After all, we're married!

[Lori goes for her gun, Quaid shoots her in the head, killing her]

Douglas Quaid: Consider that a divorce!”

“Total Recall” (1990), Arnold Schwarzenegger's answer to a bitter divorce because of an unrealized, yet future together.  

  Picture the scene:  Old Noah has a growing family and a tribe of his own.  They survived the Great Flood, saved plants and animals, and planned to repopulate the world just by using their single family.  Noah worked the soil like all sons of Adam, and he even had time to get drunk off the vineyards he planted for himself.  His youngest son, Ham, seemed to be kind of sus, for after one night of Noah’s drunken revelries, Ham had the nerve to spot his daddy laying naked in a stupor. 

        What we have next is as confusing for the more prudish family members, like Noah, or maybe for the aggrieved women who don’t seem to have much of role in this male-on-male action that might steal their husbands, and the stigmatized (for all time).  For you see, Ham’s brothers were sensible enough to not see their father’s naked body even though they were warned by Ham.  They walked backwards and covered their father without seeing anything untoward.  Well, Noah wasn’t happy at all, in fact he was about to inflict the ultimate punishment at that time: a cursed exile from God’s covenant. Curiously, this struggle session was imposed not on Ham The Voyeur, but specifically on Ham’s lineage through Ham’s son, Canaan, thus Noah’s grandson.  What role Canaan had on this peep show is unknown, but it looks to be that he's the one to take the blame for seeing grandpa naked.

The Curse of Ham was put onto Canaan though its namesake didn't apparently have to suffer from it. Scholars have dwelled into this mysterious, voyeur episode even suggesting that Canaan sexually abused his grandfather at Ham's suggestion. Regardless of what happened after the revelry, the family betrayal was significant enough to warrant the cursing of Canaan's bloodline such that he no longer welcomes. That family betrayal is what we're after here. Like Ham and Canaan, or Lori the traitorous spy wife of Douglas Quad in the movie "Total Recall," when trusted people especially family are seen to stick a knife in the back of someone formerly close to them, well, that's the worst. In politics, we have two archetypes that can be found from political betrayal one stemming from a change that inspires some to think bigger than what's possible and the other a reaction to a shift in political allegiances even though the core beliefs don't change as much.

They two related types are dream deserters and Musk'ovite Futures. Dream deserters are those that abandon the harmony promised by shared ideology, which brands them traitors to the cause. Coming from the example of Elon Musk, Musk'ovite futures take their name from Musk, an obvious example. They relate situations where a Mirror Future isn't realized as expected. As idealists and futurists, Musk and other Musk'ovites expect more than their goals can provide and they feel anger and betrayal by anyone who is seen to put a nail in those desired goals.

The Donald Trump-Elon Musk relationship arc isn't the only example of both of these political types, however, it's the most interesting and impactful for political discussions. The start of the relationship was borne out of strange circumstances in 2022-23.  Though initially supportive of Biden in 2020, Musk was increasingly burned by his liberal co-idealogues after buying Twitter and stopping the COVID-era purgers because they rejected freedom of speech when there were health issues and January 6th disagreements that their puny brains couldn’t process.  He famously restored Trump’s Twitter account after Democrats pressured media companies to silence the Former President over January 6th, COVID policies, and their inability to handle his way too free speech.  He also increasingly leaned to Trump especially after the prosecutions increased and Trump met Musk in person mostly to seek financial support for his campaign.  All of this culminated in a very successful election partnership with Musk fully endorsing, campaigning, and holding infamous rallies with Trump.  Thus, Musk became a dream deserter to the left as his natural political home was lost due to the knife-fighting politics of the Trump era.

Musk provided a vital service to the Trump campaign when combined with RFK Jr. dropping out as an independent and also endorsing Trump in exchange for key concessions about Make America Healthy Again (MAHA).  Like with Musk, the fallout from Democrats started as RFK Jr. ran in the Democrat presidential primary and claimed that Biden was incapable of meeting the moment which required beating a revitalized Trump, and that Biden was incapable of running the government for 4 more years.  As Democrats railroaded RFK Jr. out of the presidential primary and eventually out of the party to an independent category, they used a war room to target his supporters and demolish his reputation.  Thus, RFK Jr. became a yet another dream deserter to the Left because of the polarizing and paralyzing effects of Trump. Due to the coalitional nature of the Democrat Party, RFK Jr.'s former party members tied a vote for him as an independent as a wasted vote, continuing the railroad of his more independent voters out of the party and eventually into Trump’s hands instead of looking at the instability of Biden’s candidacy or the even more unpopular Harris’s one should Biden step down.  

Filling a vital role in getting Trump elected, RFK Jr. became Health and Human Services Secretary as a fulfillment of Trump’s promises to him, and brought radical and controversial changes that though consistent with his recent ideas, infuriated his former Democrat and progressive allies almost as much as helping to push Trump over the line to reelection.  However, this relationship has weathered the storm of serious missteps as HHS Secretary including over vaccines, The Tylenol Wars, and the purging of anti-MAHA bureaucrats.  

These key alliances with obvious progressives showed that Trump was practical enough to seek voices on the other side, something President Biden and Kamala Harris failed to do other than to court known Trump haters like Liz Cheney and John Bolton who were not re-elected in heavily Republican districts or lost favor in their ideological circles.  Yet, Musk’s dreams and Trump’s political ambitions were always made of oil and water, part of a maelstrom that neither could keep intact if there were mild disagreements.

Once Musk finished his short-term stint as a temp employee in DOGE, he left government and returned home with many of the promises as he saw them remaining unkept.  The spiral was quick and furious, only with the intercession of VP Vance and other pro-Musk’ovites stepping in to stop the back and forth on X.  Trump for his part accused Musk of being like the other ex-administration officials, longing for a place in power once they’re gone, but sniping at him when they don’t get what they want.  

Though falling out with Trump over electrical vehicle mandates and the compromises that Trump had to make to keep the government open in spite of the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) more radical cuts, Musk clearly can't go back to his more natural home on the Left anymore than environmentalist and vaccine-skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can comfortably walk into one of his old, liberal estates run by the Kennedy family, arguably the most famous family ever in the Democrat Party. 

Therefore, let’s look at the first of the concepts concerning Musk, RFK Jr., and their once and future allies.  Dream Deserters are those that are cut loose because they have made political choices that have made them persona non grata.  Even though many Democrats grew to regret their choice to totally alienate Musk such that he was driven into Trump’s camp and so that he proved extremely useful in Trump’s re-election, the majority of the narrative about him changed him into an enemy and one that made almost everything he said, unless it was against his new MAGA allies, as lies. 

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) was one of many in his party who shifted Musk’s proven progressive record into the (evil) camp of oligarchs.  Not their rich progressive "oligarchs" like George Soros, Jeffery Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or even the once-conservative Koch brothers who've been alienated, but only Trump leaning ones like Musk. Murphy stated that “I reserve the right to be surprised, but this looks to me like a coming kleptocracy, in which all these billionaires are running the government in order to rig the rules, so I’m pretty f*cking skeptical that this is a legitimate effort.”  Sen. Murphy can suffer no Musk’ovites to bear as their very speech has transformed in lies from the tablecloth.  To him, Musk is nothing but a traitorous dream deserter and anything coming from Musk, even after a breakup between him and Trump, is suspect until the shift is totally back to Murphy's side of politics and there is atonement for helping to re-elect Trump.

With Musk's bridges on the Left burned, he was now firmly on the right's political side despite most of his career. What was once a rich source of campaign funds, support for environmental causes, and even support for Starlight satellite technology to keep Ukraine with the internet during the war has become a brutal political battle with even the Starlink assets threatened by those seeking to continue the war in Ukraine much longer than Musk, Trump, and his administration wanted.  Some allies see Trump’s refusal to extend the use of the technology to go on the offensive the Russians in Crimea in 2023 as evidence that all of Musk’s support so far has been in service to Putin regardless of the evidence.  

Clearly for Musk, the Mirror Future dream went beyond the nitty gritty of politics.  When he and Trump were aligned, when egos were tamped down for a common purpose, they could win Trump the presidency and give Musk the ultimate platform to put his goals to work.  However, by the summer of 2025, Musk began to move into what is known as an Or Elses, which is an ultimatum built on irrational foundations like with Conditioned on Negatives (CONs) where a desired future must happen or contrary actions disrupt harmony.  So, let's break down Musk as both a dream deserter to the Left and a Musk'ovite who is disillusioned with the Trump right.

Elon Musk

Belief Tree Evolution: Musk supports most liberal causes and Democrats because of shared progressive ideology -> Becomes the darling of the Left because of contributions to green technology (Telsa), space, overwhelming support for Democrats and leftists, and even aiding Ukraine, which is widely supported on their side, by supplying satellite technology -> failure to address significant issues created by both doubling down on Biden and railroading out intraparty disagreement that even smacks of Trumpism and MAGA leads to alienation in the second half of the Biden Administration -> Musk purchases Twitter because of his belief in free speech and ending COVID era censorship, resulting in Trump being unbanned thus building bridges with the Right -> an open break occurs as non-responsive Democrats, to Musk at least, start to drive him out of the party as Democrats increase support for a now-hostile Biden administration -> Musk sees his best options as resting with Trump and MAGA.

Mirror Future Evolution: A green technology society, robust support from government for his auto and space endeavors, and progressive values come to be fused onto Trump's dirty power (gas and oil) boosterism and conservative values mainly because of his abandonment by Democrats, but also because of the promise of massive cuts to government and the promise of efficiency. This odd pairing lasts until DOGE runs into significant roadblocks, makes major and minor mistakes, and a rift develops between more pragmatic Trump administration members and Musk.

Poisoned Fruits: As the first poison, the "nonresponsive" Biden administration and the failure to replace Biden with a more amendable Democrat favorable to Musk's business interests, failure to curb the government "excesses" of the COVID era. After Musk's conversion to the MAGA side, the poisoned fruits were the lacking speed of implementing DOGE cuts and the cutting of electrical vehicle tax credits that were seen as rewards for supporting Republicans, but were slashed anyways by the Trump Administration in the "Big Beautiful Bill." This toxified the dream for Musk and led to estrangement between him and his new allies.

Poisoned Tree: To Democrats and Leftists, Musk's previously shared ideology is toxic despite overwhelmingly matching theirs. Though he was a cultural progressive, a technocrat, and an environmentalist, these past beliefs are rejected solely because of his Trump alliance. If the poisoned fruit of DOGE's failures grows to tree, then the failure of Trump to adequately cut government spending is the new tree that separates Musk from Republicans.

Dream Desertion: Musk's abandonment of the Left in support of Trump cancels nearly all of his views to his previous boosters. If Trump's failure to meet Musk's expectations of cost cutting, then Trump and MAGA are dream deserters because they fail to meet the goals Musk set.

Musk'ovite Future: Taking his namesake, this type of Mirror Future is about the failure to meet expectations. When Musk was in his natural home on the Left, he saw Biden and Democrats as roadblocks to his goals. When Musk re-aligned himself and supported Trump and MAGA, and they failed to cut government as he wished and they abandoned electric vehicle mandates, he saw his future as obstructed.

3. Gigachad Sidequest #2: The Parable of Goal, Future, and Present’s Sacrifice on Mt. Past 

“Goal, are you there?”  

“Here I am, Future! 

…I am The Goal!   I command you to go to the highest, most awesome mountain that exists called Mt. Past, and go with haste, Future.  Build a fire, prepare an offering, and bring along your precious Present that I have left you with, Future.”  

“Goal, are you there?  I made it up to the very top of Mt. Past and have begun as you have instructed.”  

“I said “Here I am, Future!"  Do I have to remind you, or are you going to be wicked annoying this whole time, Future?” 

“Goal, are you there?  Upon Mt. Past, what is to be the burnt offering?”  

“Do I have to tell you everything? On Mt. Past, sacrifice your Present whom you value above all else in your life.  Do it for your Goal.  Burn, burn, and burn with so much haste so that I might be satisfied with your commitment because of your zealotry, Future.”   

“Goal, are you there?  There is no wood or starter left for me, nor is there time to start this fire before the mighty storm winds come upon here.  I will have to go all the way down and back up Mt. Past to do as you wish, hacking my way through Mt. Past’s Forest to see the tree I need for this fire.  But, if this is your command and you are there, I will obey.”

Pause.  “I’m here, goddamit!  Just do it, Future!

...Wait. WAIT! I command you to stop right away, Future!  It was but a test to see if your heart is truly with your Goal.  On top of Mt. Past, do not sacrifice your Present, Future, and then you will have passed the test…Are you there? Future?”

“Goal, are you there?  Present is already gone.  Burnt into ashes along with the forest and my tree on Mt. Past because of the storm winds.  Now, Mt. Past is the barren waste of a rock as you intended, and I barely made it down the blazing slope in time.  I hope this pleases you.  I will gladly see this new situation as my own newest Present if that makes you happy and if you are there.”

“You dumb f*ck!  Start over, Future!”

“Goal, are you there?”

“OMFG, Future!”

4.  Skibidi Sigma Rizzler:  D.U.M.B. Goals and Mission Creep Sizzlers

“This is the time, this is the place

So we look for the future

But there's not much love to go 'round

Tell me why this is a land of confusion

This is the world we live in (oh, oh, oh)

And these are the hands we're given (oh, oh, oh)

Use them and let's start trying (oh, oh, oh)

To make it a place worth living in”

“Land of Confusion,” Genesis (1986)

Joseph had a long build up to revealing to his brothers that he was in fact alive and in a powerful position as a servant to the pharaoh instead of the boy slave they'd sold to others. He carefully planned his revelation and intended to plant silver cups in his brothers' bags once they were brought before him. They didn't know Joseph was their brother and he intended to take them down many pegs.

Basically, Joseph laid out his goals using his dream powers and humbled his brothers who sold him into slavery all of those years ago. Not only did Joseph's future happen as he had foreseen, but his goals to get there were clever enough to win power in the Egyptian New Kingdom, restore his full brother Benjamin to his place as the right hand, and humble his slaver brothers who'd remain leaders of the tribes of Israel but take a back seat to Joseph. He accomplished these goals through untold means, but whatever he did was Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely (S.M.A.R.T.)

Our futures are only as good as our goals and our understanding of the past.  Success also relies on a number of important factors, not least of which is the authority to order it.  Since Mirroring always involves irrational subjects who focus on Micro or Macrofaults, or small and big complaints with no attempts at a solution, these Futures are also scrambled, wastes of time at best, and possibly harmful and apocalyptic if left unchecked at worst.

From Volume VIII, we adapted the tidy method of Mari Kondo, a professional decorator who guides people to remove unharmonious items from their homes if they don't bring them joy. The Konmari method is meant to tidy by context, not by ideology. In Mirroring and specifically for our shared futures, follow the skepticism of the timeline found in the Mirroring Diagram. Discard irrational ideas and conduct first. Commit yourself to tidying up those ideas and conduct that you know waste time and provide no societal benefit. Imagine a lifestyle where the emotions and wasted time over irrational political issues weren't a thing. Finally, ask yourself if engaging with subjects brings joy. If your own time is wasted, if you're not happy talking with others, shred the conversation and its abstractions if they're irrational.

The fossil shredding method should help convert D.U.M.B. goals into S.M.A.R.T. ones since the focus shifts to removing negative elements that hold agents back. D.U.M.B. goals are Dreamy, Unrealistic, Methodless, and Banal, and they are ones the our subjectobots pursue. The beliefs set as goals are too farfetched, they any lack realistic plans, and they're selfishly placed on benefiting our subjects instead.

Controllable factors that humans have in their universe are key to a future because we can act on them, we control what we do instead of being blamed for all time because of the actions of our parents or their parents.  We can’t be the Almighty and make all of Creation with a mere thought.  Instead, actionable things that humans can have an impact on are our major focus instead of Mirroring Goals, which are irrational and aren’t likely to ever become the way they were meant to be. 

Pragmatists see the potential in the future and rational goals, but also the perils of trusting unproven tools. Taking a micro and macrofault issue from the previous sections, we still aren't going to solve healthcare insurance here as it's such a complex issue and I lack the expertise and motivation to cover all of the angles to do that. However, it is a relevant enough of an issue such that people are willing murder rich people over it and even close the government down for many days, denying all government services just to raise the issue. So, we'll use the Mangione murder case to convert goals into actionable ones.

Converting "Bad" Healthcare D.U.M.B. Goals in to S.M.A.R.T. Ones:

DUMB Goal:  Strike down healthcare CEOs to both address negative, individual healthcare interactions (microfaults) and to serve as a warning (macrofaults) to the entire industry about their unjust coverage.  

• Dreamy: The delusion that huge abstract systems like the healthcare insurance industry can be changed through single, notorious acts of violence against leaders that are indirectly connected to the alleged injustice.  

• Unrealistic: The irrational connection between the murder of Brian Thompson and Luigi Mangione’s personal healthcare issues nor is his Thompson’s murder likely to bring about a systemic, rational overhaul of the insurance industry.  Can you murder those you’re trying to force into reformation? (No)  

• Methodless: Rather than addressing the actual problem, healthcare insurance, which would require much effort and planning to bring about meaningful change, Luigi (allegedly) strikes at the first high level CEO he can stalk and kill, addressing none of his healthcare issues directly.  

• Banal: Though it had tragic consequences, it has become commonplace and boring to blame CEOs and powerful corporations for deaths without proving that case in court or to the voting public in a democrat-republic, with the facts laid out in a specific case, and with a rational argument placed before a jury of peers.  It’s banal not because corporations deserve defending across the board.  They can afford to take care of themselves.  However, a justice system works when even the vilest in a law-and-order society receives the same fair treatment that a lawfully acting, alleged victim of theirs demands.  Therefore, the ease of blaming corporations, a collective of people made into an abstraction, instead of doing something rational about it is the definition of banal. 

• Konmari Abstract Decluttering:  Concepts that need decluttering in order to become useful and the person believing them more pragmatic: "CEOs kill patients because of a lack of insurance" should instead be changed to specific examples where specific insurance companies and not just their leaders issued terrible policies that lead to death, and shaming those companies into making changes or risk losing their market share, exposing violations of law that led to death, or writing new laws that prevent voracious companies from denying care that could be fatal to patients. There's also the trash pile abstraction of "one act of violence can change the (healthcare) system." Violence should be automatically rejected of course, but the idea that a notorious act can draw attention and solve a complex problem is the ultimate example of mental cluttering. This is a self-justifying hoarding of righteousness and it's extremely dangerous. Any person can assume they're ethical by acting in whatever way they deem necessary in order to attack an abstraction. This is extremely messy clutter as "system" is broadly defined by the D.U.M.B. goal in whatever way they want. Anyone can determine what the negative system means, act in any way they want, and then justify that action as changing the system however they want. "System" used as a negative, massive, macrofault abstraction is about as cluttered as it gets.

S.M.A.R.T. Goal Conversion to "better" healthcare coverage:"

• Specific: First, one must acknowledge that healthcare is still a finite resource, so in order to get better coverage, one must figure out who deserves what kind of healthcare. Clearly, everyone can't get daily pedicures covered, so in order to change the system, one must look first at what type of coverage is to be bettered. Society can also barely want to afford covering the people we have now so who "the people" are needs to be decided? Do we cover all American citizens and legal residents regardless of every type of health condition? Do we cover anyone who sets foot on our soil regardless of why or how they got here regardless of health condition? Do we cover every form of "healthcare" coverage from pseudo-scientific/homeopathic care that makes a patient feel better without solving the underlying issue? Do we allow controversial coverage for things like abortion, gender realignments, or euthanasia? What age and mental state should these various coverages be allowed to cover or to what extent and in what which contexts can consent be given in order to decide these coverage issues? These issues must all be decided before announcing the new healthcare plan.

• Measurable: Healthcare is both personal and moral as it relates to maintaining life and in some cases it saves lives from serious conditions and illnesses. It's also quantifiable from the associated costs of doctors, nurses, and other professionals to treatments, medications, equipment, and all of the bureaucratic issues needed in order sure these services translate into care. Because the system is so complex and costly, to make the goal measurable, we need to ask what methods can be used to reduce the costs of overall coverage? How much will individual insurance companies be able to reduce those costs and even more, how much will individual leaders of those same companies be able to lower those costs from their own companies let alone for their competitors or associated providers state-wide, nationally, or internationally? After the partisan Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was passed in 2010 on the promise of lowering healthcare costs by making participation mandatory and creating insurance exchanges, what effect will increased or decreased federal government involvement have and in which areas of coverage after this act and its many alterations since? What about the effect of 50 state governments of various political makeups with different healthcare laws of their own? What about international factors especially the overseas drug makers, their own markets, and their impact on prices in the US? The number of measurable cost changes is countless; however, this expense issue is the origin of the problem and perhaps its most complicated aspect that needs review before acting upon the goal.

• Achievable: The problem of healthcare insurance is very difficult. To make something achievable that improves it, one must pick a winnable battle as most people in the country agree that it costs too much even most don't understand how to change anything about it. Laws are achievable, but at what level? Can local, state, or federal laws be passed and about what? If there are roadblocks to passage of such laws, who and what are they? In a toxic political environment where a partisan law like Obamacare has been fought over for decades, in what ways can politicians achieve something that decreases costs? Who are the figures that can achieve this and how can those roadblock politicians be minimized so the law change can take effect? We lived in a mixed market, capitalist society, so can the insurance companies and their leaders collectively be pressured or shamed into changes that don't directly threaten their market share so that one company that gives way and lowers costs doesn't give up the advantage to another company that refuses to lower costs?

• Relevant: The action proposed to fix "bad healthcare" must be related to either fixing the terrible costs of it or the rules and policies leading to accepting or denying coverage. Any goal must satisfy the question of whether law or policy change will lower costs or allow more of those who might be denied coverage to get accepted and have some of their financial burden be lowered? Because this might mean that free healthcare, universal coverage, and every type of procedure aren't reasonable expectations in the short term, the goals must find a way to lower costs in a way that addresses the concerns of those affected without drifting into unrelated issues.

• Time-bound: This is sensitive to those with flawed healthcare, those waiting on Obamacare tax-credits about to expire as per the Biden-era dates, and those needed coverage to pay for important medical procedures while their lives might be on the line. Urgency is important, but it should serve as a warning for goal-makers as it might push them to make rash decisions that could hurt more than help. To make the goal better, decide what can be done about coverage while understanding that government and institutions work very slowly even while the demand is high. The two time factors need to be considered: that of the needy patient and that of institutions that will aid that patient in paying for their healthcare? If the time question can't be satisfied, the goal isn't adequate to solving anything and it risks being a microfault (with no solution).

5.  Conclusion: Let Them Cook

“I tried so hard and got so far

But in the end, it doesn't even matter

I had to fall to lose it all

But in the end, it doesn't even matter

I've put my trust in you

Pushed as far as I can go

For all this, there's only one thing you should know

I've put my trust in you

Pushed as far as I can go

For all this, there's only one thing you should know

I tried so hard and got so far

But in the end, it doesn't even matter

I had to fall to lose it all

But in the end, it doesn't even matter.”

“In the End,” by Linkin Park, 2000.

Exodus is the climax of the Old Testament much in the same way as any story undergoes a literary progression. It explains the development from creation to the rising action of Original Sin, and the challenges the protagonists from Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, and as we exit this volume, Moses all face.  Yes, there are prophets, the ancient kingdoms, more exiling, and even the promise of Messiahs, but essentially Exodus establishes the foundation for the future.

The covenants from Genesis come to fruition and are locked into stone in the Ten Commandments after a meeting of God and Moses. Exodus itself led to the Chosen of this Scripture leaving their enslavement not empty handed, but with the knowledge their Creator was guiding them to the promised land of milk and honey. The Adam and Eve-descendent, Moses, would bring the slaves out of Egypt, out of the oppression of a hard-hearted pharaoh, and to the promised land, whenever that main quest would be completed.  As dazzling yet arduous as the Jews' escape from servitude was, we don't need to follow the faith of any religion or political belief system in order to escape the burdens put upon us by our would-be masters. However difficult our entrapment in a time-wasting conversation about some religious issue was, we still must depart.

That brings us to the land of Political Eden (PEe), a smelly, terrible, abstract land with a liberated future free from the "wrong" kind of politics, but to our subjects is the paradise that Adam and Eve left behind and others ever since wanted to re-enter in Heaven. For you see, Aristotle, that ancient, great Greek Man (pronouns αυτός, αυτόν) wanted balance and a golden mean of proper political behavior shaped exclusively by property owning, rational, and self-interested individuals. For all of his he-man woman-hating flaws, since women, slaves, and non-Athenians couldn't possibly be part of his utopia, he did understood that politics was a balancing act and that to achieve a better society for everyone, politics would have to be understood, and people would have to be figured out almost scientifically, but I do say "almost" since it's 4th century B.C.E. Greece, and there were a lot better intellectual tools developed since then.

People couldn't achieve the rational society of Aristotle's grandmaster teacher Socrates if politics was forbidden to responsible leaders around them because they couldn't use rational tools to weed out falsehoods. Those slaveholders in Ancient Athenian democratic society extended their imperial influence over many unfree peoples and they colonized and established trade networks across the Mediterranean. Looking at the harsh mobs of Athens as its democratic empire waxed and waned, Aristotle knew the perils of autocracy, a rule by elites, and democracy, a rule by the ignorant mobs of citizens who purposefully left out those aforementioned others. Aristotle saw his abstract society as an idealized form, based on his experiences of politics in his home city. These Athenians needed structure and balance; they couldn't just be allowed to rule in such an uneducated, irrational state especially if they were working with their hands and were unable to devote serious time to think.

Yet, as undemocratic and intolerant as he might seem to us here in the US in 2025, Aristotle was the inspiration for many thinkers coming after from St. Thomas Aquinas and the conversion of pagan (non-Christian) thinking into acceptable belief to the Founding Fathers of the USA from Thomas Jefferson to his rival Alexander Hamilton. The most important point garnered from this Greek master was how to balance a society so that neither some violent mob ala the French or Russian revolutions would butcher the best and brightest available simply because the aggrieved masses said so, nor would some tyrant be able to crush opposition simply because there were no checks on their authority.

Yet, checks and balances don't matter much to those we study. Our subject want a world they can understand, one free of opposition, and one that obeys their subjectobot rules. They want to devote little time to their opponents if those people should pipe up, well, they should be deleted, removed, cancelled, or destroyed as easily as possible. Therefore, this Land of PEe is the ultimate Mirror Future, the same unobtainable place where dreams always stay and never happen. It's something we must constantly monitor from our voluntary position in the Council of Mirrors and something requires great vigilance.

In order to limit the land of PEe, we must use the tools from this volume and ensure our agents are acting with a more rational world in mind. After this epic work, agents should be able to identify Mirror Futures and establish if the goals are fossilized, diminishing ideas that suck our time and energy into things that won't happen ever. We must not become subjectobots ourselves and instead, we must recognize that we might not have the answers to what works best for humanity, nor that we should bend others to our vision of the future.

Until there's a tenth volume of mirroring, possibly one year hence, go forth with a new resolve and with a hope of better things to come. We may not have touched the tip (that's what she said) of the possibilities, but if we all act a little more rationally, then maybe our New Years Resolutions can be just a little better than mocking those that mock those who start gym memberships and fall out after two weeks! Thank you for reading, and "Here I am" for more Mirroring in the future if it's needed.

6. Brainrot Glossary

“Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”  

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So, the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel[c]—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."  

“The Tower of Babel,” Genesis 11, New International Bible.

Abstraction: the nonphysical

ad hominems: "of the person," meaning an illogical attack about the person.  

Brainrot: internet content that is of low quality or value.

Caught in 4K: Something that is so obvious that it's embarrassing.

Cheugy: Generation Z slang coming from 2014, it signifies something that is old or obsolete

Coverture: A "covered" legal status where women are functions of their husband and not for themselves.

FAFO: "F*ck Around and Find Out," meant to express acting with regard to terrible consequences.

Fallacy: a false idea. 

FF15: A gamer term for “Forfeit at 15” meaning quitting the game especially in League of Legends at 15 minutes into play because it’s hopeless.  

GGEZ: Gamer taunt for “good game, easy,” meaning it was an easy game.

Gigachad: A highly masculine, muscular, and idealized man.

Hella: Slang for very or extremely

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle:  A theory from physics whereby it’s impossible to know both the location and momentum of negatively charged electrons.  For us, it reflects the uncertainty of the future.

Kimmelians: People who derive authority from celebrity and popularity.

"Let them cook:" Refers to letting someone proceed without interference.

LiFT (Lies From the Table Cloth): Narratives that are seen as unacceptable lies.

Living Rent Free: Occupying a space in someone else's head in a way that bothers them.

Luddites: 19th century movement that rejected the use of new industrial technologies and destroyed them in their textile mills because those technologies would lead to job replacement.  

Macrofaults: large abstract and complex problems that approached simplistically.

Main-quest: The point of playing as video game in order to end it. For us, it's a more rational society.

Microfaults: Tiny social wrongs that are not solvable in a conversation.  

Mirrorism: Like a mirror, it's the reflection of emotional arguments back on the arguer. 

Mirror Agents: the people mirroring irrational political discussions.   

Mukbang:  Derived from Korean influencers who stream the consumption of large amounts of food and interact with their viewers while eating.  

No Cap: Meaning no lies present.

Pragmatism: 19th century American Philosophy that sought truth through what works.

Quantum mechanics: In Physics, it's the mathematical description of the particles inside of an atom.

Rationality: the use of reason and logic to discover truth.

Reason:  Justifying belief using facts.

Rizzler: Slang for someone who is skilled at flirting and attracting others.  

Self-Selection: A rational choice to become a mirror because of an irrational debate

Side-quest: A reference to a non-essential mission in video and computer games, and in slang, referring to interactions that are time-wasting.

Sigma:  Slang use of the Greek letter for an independent alpha-like male who doesn’t need a pack to be cool.  

Skibbidi: Slang for cool, bad, good, or dumb.

Sizzler:  Slang for something that is very sexy or enticing.

Totems: objects acting as symbols.  

Totemic Purgogasm: the almost orgasmic release resulting from destroying symbolic objects.

Utility: the choice between mirroring or arguing to gain a societal benefit 

“Very Mindful, Very Demure”: Thinking of others without ignoring your own self.

Yeet: an expression of enthusiasm and excitement.

7. No Cap Sources (then it was 6, now 7, 67)

 “Analyzing Judge Cannon’s Opinion: Was Jack Smith Legally Appointed?” Cato Institute, 

www.cato.org.

BBC News. “Article on Trump and Musk.” BBC, www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyr7v79q4yo.

BBC News. “Elon Musk and Starlink Coverage.” BBC, www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy87vg38dnpo.

“Bernie Sanders Wants to Temporarily Halt AI Data Center Construction Nationwide.” News Article.

“Biden Mocked Those Who Say Assault Weapons Needed to Fight Government.” Business Insider, www.businessinsider.com.

Bonchie. “New South African Government Releases Terrifying and Chilling Statement on Fleeing Afrikaners.” RedState, 14 May 2025, redstate.com/bonchie/2025/05/14/new-south-african-government-releases-terrifying-and-chilling-statement-on-fleeing-afrikaners-n2189065.

“CNN Report on Manhattan Protesters and Immigration Garage.” CNN, www.cnn.com/2025/11/29/us/manhattan-protesters-immigration-garage.

“Cornell Law: Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree.

“Cornell Law: Seditious Conspiracy.” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384.

“Cornell Law: Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 94.” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/894.

“Dunning–Kruger Effect.” Psychology Today, www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/dunning-kruger-effect.

“Dunning–Kruger Effect.” The Decision Lab, thedecisionlab.com/biases/dunning-kruger-effect.

“Dunning–Kruger Effect: A Rite of Passage.” Medium, medium.com/@lee.sult/dunning-kruger-effect-a-right-of-passage-8d8e79619717.

Dunning, David, et al. “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003, www.researchgate.net/publication/12688660_Unskilled_and_Unaware_of_It_How_Difficulties_in_Recognizing_One's_Own_Incompetence_Lead_to_Inflated_Self-Assessments.

“EBSCO Research Starter: Heisenberg Articulates Uncertainty Principle.” EBSCO, www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/heisenberg-articulates-uncertainty-principle.

“Extinct Blog: Truth Also Has Its Paleontology.” Extinct, 5 Jan. 2023, www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2023/1/5/truth-also-has-its-paleontology.

"FEMA Fires Employee Who Told Workers to Avoid Helping Trump Supporters After Hurricane.” PBS NewsHour, PBS, Nov. 9, 2024, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fema-fires-employee-who-told-workers-to-avoid-helping-trump-supporters-after-hurricane

Fox News. “No Kings Protesters Filmed Having Children Stab Trump Piñata.” Fox News, www.foxnews.com/politics/no-kings-protesters-filmed-having-children-stab-trump-pinata.

GovInfo. Final Report of the January 6 Committee. U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT.pdf.

“Insider Reveals Melania Trump’s True Feelings After Years of Online Mockery Over Christmas Decor.” News Article.

“Marie Kondo’s Organizing Philosophy and Its Connection to Mental Health.” TMC News.

NBC News. “Trump–Musk Political Relationship Timeline.” NBC News, www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-musk-summary-timeline-political-relationship-rcna211453.

New York Post. “Former SNL Star Leslie Jones Wants Democrats to Jail ICE Agents.” New York Post, 17 Dec. 2025, nypost.com/2025/12/17/us-news/former-snl-star-leslie-jones-wants-democrats-to-jail-ice-agents-if-they-take-back-congress-after-midterm-elections/.

New York Times. “Wisconsin Christmas Holiday Tree.” The New York Times, 13 Nov. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/us/wisconsin-christmas-holiday-tree.html.

O’Rourke, J. E. “Pragmatism versus Materialism in Stratigraphy.” American Journal of Science, vol. 276, no. 1, 1976, pp. 47–55, doi:10.2475/ajs.276.1.47.

PBS NewsHour. “How Trump and Musk’s Relationship Flamed Out.” PBS, www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-trump-and-musks-relationship-flamed-out.

PBS NewsHour. “Key Findings and Criminal Referrals from the Jan. 6 Committee Report.” PBS, www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-key-findings-and-criminal-referrals-from-the-jan-6-committee-report-summary.

PBS NewsHour. “Musk’s Refusal to Provide Starlink Support Raises Pentagon Questions.” PBS, www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/elon-musks-refusal-to-provide-starlink-support-for-ukraine-attack-in-crimea-raises-questions-for-pentagon.

Politico. “Democrats and Elon Musk Relationship.” Politico, 12 Dec. 2024, www.politico.com/news/2024/12/12/democrats-elon-musk-relationship-000579.

Politico. “Trump’s Legal Failures and Who’s to Blame.” Politico, 7 Nov. 2024, www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/07/trump-legal-failures-blame-column-00187945.

Politico. “White House Demolition Sends Shock Waves.” Politico, 22 Oct. 2025, www.politico.com/news/2025/10/22/white-house-demolition-sends-shock-waves-spurs-calls-for-pause-00618230.

Reuters. “Trump Tax Bill Faces Political Test.” Reuters, 16 May 2025, www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-tax-bill-faces-political-test-republican-infighting-2025-05-16/.

Standard Bots. “Three Laws of Robotics.” Standard Bots, standardbots.com/blog/three-laws-of-robotics.

Supreme Court of the United States. Nardone v. United States. 308 U.S. 338, 1939, supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/308/338/.

U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. Final Interim Report. cha.house.gov/_cache/files/6/d/6dae7b82-7683-4f56-a177-ba98695e600d/145DD5A70E967DEEC1F511764D3E6FA1.final-interim-report.pdf.

Washington Post. “Trump Ballroom Lawsuit Raises National Security Concerns.” The Washington Post, 16 Dec. 2025, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/12/16/trump-ballroom-lawsuit-national-security/.

Washington Post. “Trump–RFK Relationship.” The Washington Post, 31 Aug. 2025, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/08/31/trump-rfk-relationship-maha-maga/.

Yahoo News. “Trump Says He Can Tear Down Anything He Wants.” Yahoo News, www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-tear-down-anything-wants-185819276.html.