GenXJamerican

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s response to a journalist asking what questions she would pose to the administration regarding Venezuela’s future frustrated me.

youtu.be/wllEReh_w…

Warren’s framing of Trump’s kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro as a violation of his campaign promise to lower prices serves as an egregious example of “majoring in minors”. She didn’t use the word “illegal” even once to describe what Trump did, despite the clear violation of international law. She didn’t talk about the administration’s failure to get permission from Congress before this action. She effectively treated this illegal action as normal. She and her team chose to put this clip out on social media so they must think it’s good messaging!

If a journalist asks about Venezuela, lead with the illegality of what Trump did. Talk about the potential consequences for everyone who followed those illegal orders. Talk about the murderous boat strikes—also illegal. Talk about the mass deportations of Venezuelans to a country our State Department has announced is no longer safe for Americans there.

Better yet, talk about ICE invading American cities and kidnapping people just like Special Forces did in Venezuela. Talk about ICE murdering innocent people, just like Trump’s operation in Venezuela did. Compare Trump’s actions in Venezuela and his threatened action in Greenland to Putin invading Ukraine. And above all, remind people all the Epstein files still aren’t released—yet another illegal action by the Trump administration.

To kickoff my 2026 posting, I’m sharing this story from ContrabandCamp, on the anniversary of Medgar Evers’ birth. The Republican majority on the Supreme Court is poised to deal a fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act—legislation which finally made this country a democracy for its black citizens as well as every other.

It’s tragic that a country which turns just 250 years old this year seems hellbent on returning to a past that was more violent and less free—while certain people pretend that isn’t exactly what’s happening. ContrabandCamp and other independent media organizations provide a vital counterweight to a mainstream media that has helped normalize the sort of gutter racism we haven’t seen since the days of civil rights leaders like Evers being murdered.

If you follow me on social media and you’re interested in supporting and sharing independent media more widely, reach out to me via direct message on whatever platform you see this post. I will share the five gift subscriptions I have to ContrabandCamp with the first five responses I see.

I wish everyone who reads this all the best in this year.

After migrating to Blacksky some weeks ago, I wanted to return to my custom handle as well. The instructions I found were Bluesky-specific, so I captured some screenshots as I went along in case it might help others who want to switch from a blacksky.app handle to using a custom domain instead.

Once you’re logged into blacksky.community, click the Settings button (gear symbol) at the bottom of the left navigation in your browser window. You should see something like this:

Next you’ll click on Account, shown here:

Now you should see the following:

Click Handle and you should see this:

I own the genxjamerican.com domain, so I clicked the “I have my own domain” button as shown here:



What displayed next for me is this:

Technically, I didn’t need to update the domain record since I’d switched to that domain soon after joining Bluesky originally. But to change the comment associated the record, I went in here:



Then I edited the note as shown here and pressed the “Update Record” button:



Next I filled in my domain, which automatically filled in the domain record in the modal dialog and activated the “Verify DNS Record” button as shown below:

Pressing the “Verify DNS Record” button updated the modal dialog to this:

Pressing the “Update to genxjamerican.com” button completed my handle change.

Ian Dunt, a British journalist wrote [this piece] (https://iandunt.substack.com/p/how-to-be-a-man-4ae) in August 2025 as an attempt a “a progressive view of masculinity and on men getting laid.” Understanding that his intent was to be helpful, there are a at least a couple problems with this: (1) it puts yet another thing into the realm of politics that it is ill-suited to handle and (2) it’s reactive to dysfunction on the right. Progressives don’t need to have an opinion on masculinity and “men getting laid” just because conservatives have one. What might be more useful is a focus on how social darwinism and free marketing economics have damaged society to an extent that many people aren’t having fulfilling relationships.

Reading this piece reminded me of a scene from the show Luther, where Idris Elba’s detective talks about his father’s expectations of how his son would perform masculinity because of his size (6'2") and physique and his disappointment because he was more interested in books. Absent from Dunt’s piece about masculinity is any mention of fathers or mothers–the parents whom I would expect to the primary shapers of masculinity (and femininity) because they raised the boys and the girls that have become the subjects of his piece.

Our parents should be the primary people teaching us both values (whether secular or religious) and competence. My father taught me things like how to study the Bible, how to iron a dress shirt, and manage financial matters. My mother introduced me to science fiction and poetry, as teaching me how to cook and clean. Both of my parents did yardwork–including mowing the lawn. My dad in particular still talks about the importance of having an avocation as well as a vocation (the former being a fancy word for “hobby”, which he uses as a Jamaican man whose formative years preceded the island’s independence from the United Kingdom).

No one’s parents are good at everything, but this is where extended family, churches, youth leagues, camps, Boy Scouts, etc come in. All these institutions should provide lessons and positive role models to guide men in a positive direction should they choose to follow it. The success of people like Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and Kevin Samuels in being viewed as men whose advice regarding relationships should be followed suggests a catastrophic failure of all the aforementioned institutions.

I’m nobody’s model husband or parent by any means. I engage in therapy and reading regularly to try and improve in both roles. But I’ll be damned if I let some random person from the internet–or anywhere else–have more influence over my children than I do. Those of us who are parents need to have enough pride–if not jealousy–about our position in the lives of our children that neither politician, nor influencer, nor pickup artist, nor grifter, nor professional opinion maker can gain meaningful purchase or influence ahead of us.

by Dylan Goforth, The Frontier
September 17, 2025

This week on Listen Frontier, we’re looking at Operation SAFE, Governor Kevin Stitt’s effort to clear homeless encampments in Tulsa with the help of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

The Frontier sat down with Gov. Stitt, who told me the operation isn’t about solving homelessness, but about enforcing the law. He said Oklahomans are experiencing “compassion fatigue,” and that many of the people removed from encampments “didn’t want help.”

We also spoke with Steven Whitaker, CEO of Tulsa’s John 3:16 Mission, who offered a different view. Whitaker acknowledged the risks of being too compassionate, but stressed that the people living on Tulsa’s streets are our neighbors, and most of them are in desperate need of empathy, shelter, and support.

Their perspectives paint a complicated picture of homelessness in Tulsa, and the divide over how the state and city should respond.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt says his administration’s Operation SAFE in Tulsa is less about solving homelessness and more about “enforcing the law,” even as local shelter leaders warn the sweeps are displacing vulnerable people.

The operation, launched in early September, has seen the Oklahoma Highway Patrol clearing homeless encampments on state property in Tulsa under bridges and overpasses across the city. Stitt has touted the effort as a success. Critics, including Tulsa’s new mayor and some service providers, argue Stitt’s operation lacks long-term solutions.

“This is not about solving homelessness,” Stitt said in an interview with The Frontier. “This is about enforcing the law and making sure you’re setting the culture to allow people to go get the help that they need and make sure that they’re not breaking the law, camping in areas that they shouldn’t. And I think that’s a big distinction.”

Stitt said business owners pushed him to act after frustration grew over encampments across Tulsa. 

Bill Knight, chairman of Tulsa’s Regional Chamber of Commerce and owner of a local car dealership group, has supported Stitt’s initiative.

”Tulsa’s business community supports leadership that prioritizes the safety of those who live and work within our city and region,” Knight said in a statement. “We appreciate the governor’s actions to enforce the laws and bolster Tulsa’s pursuit to enhance quality of life. This initiative complements the ongoing efforts by various Tulsa entities, reinforcing our collective commitment to addressing complex issues like homelessness and public safety.”

“The biggest issue facing Tulsa is homelessness. And so I started asking more questions. We started doing research. Why isn’t the city fixing these issues? So I instructed the Highway Patrol to just simply enforce the law,” Stitt said.

The governor argues that allowing people to remain on the streets perpetuates suffering. 

“We can never build enough houses, we can never have enough compassion, because it is going to continue to bring more and more and more people into Tulsa,” he said. “We want to help people, but if you don’t want help, we’re not going to let you continue to break the law and do drugs and harass people and live on the street.”

“They don’t want help”

Stitt dismissed concerns about shelter capacity, saying only one person encountered during the sweeps had requested help from law enforcement to reach a shelter. He said his plan was focused on creating an environment that would give Tulsa’s homeless population little choice but to get off the street.

“They don’t want help. They haven’t hit rock bottom yet,” Stitt said. “So if you create an environment that allows them to stay in your city and lay on the street, then they’re going to keep going there. But as soon as you say, no, no, we’re going to enforce the law here … that’s compassion.”

He said some may choose to leave Tulsa altogether.

“Or they’re going to go to Portland or Los Angeles, they’re going to move on,” he said. 

State officials reported collecting hundreds of thousands of pounds of debris during the sweeps, as well as stolen credit cards and large quantities of syringes. 

“Just in the last three or four days, (we’ve cleared) about 600,000 pounds of debris and trash,” Stitt said. “(Oklahoma Highway Patrol) reported to me that they found 100 stolen credit cards. They have a 50-gallon drum, almost 100% filled with needles.”

Politics in the background

The sweeps have also sparked speculation about political motivations. Tulsa’s new Democratic mayor, Monroe Nichols, recently struck an agreement to send traffic tickets and other municipal charges involving tribal citizens to the Muscogee Nation that Stitt strongly opposed. The governor’s crackdown followed soon after.

Stitt denied the connection, though he was critical of the settlement. 

“There’s no possible way that this is good for public safety for you to co-govern the city of Tulsa with another nation,” he said. “When we turn over the policing of our city to Russia, to France, to another sovereign nation, it just makes no sense whatsoever.”

While acknowledging disagreements with Nichols, Stitt said he liked Tulsa’s mayor and he was focused on public safety, not the mayor’s policies.

“This specific homelessness issue is not a retaliation,” Stitt said. 

Local shelters push back

Steven Whitaker, CEO of Tulsa’s John 3:16 Mission, agreed that encampments had become a public health issue but criticized Operation SAFE for moving people without linking them to services.

“There’s not been any transport offers occurring from OHP of the folks that they’re sweeping in encampments to service providers, so they’re just kind of being pushed along and made to move out, and that’s been the approach. And so that’s not ideal,” Whitaker said.

He acknowledged that some people had sought help at his shelter since the sweeps began, but “not a tremendous amount.”

“If it can be a catalyst for that, and we can make lemonade out of lemons, then that’s a good thing,” Whitaker said.

Whitaker described the sweeps as disruptive and said some people lost personal belongings that were some of their only remaining connections to families as troopers worked to clear camps. But he agreed with Stitt that some more heavily trafficked locations across the city were unsafe for the homeless population as well.

“You could argue (the cleanup is) a positive. Those areas weren’t clean, weren’t sanitary, and it wasn’t dignifying, it wasn’t humane,” Whitaker said. “And so we’re just trying to balance that out while remaining compassionate and redefining what compassion means.”

The mission, which recently invested $20 million into a west Tulsa recovery campus, offers year-long treatment and rehabilitation programs. Whitaker said permanent solutions require long-term commitment, not just enforcement.

For Whitaker, compassion requires patience and planning. 

“We believe that people are created for a purpose, and there’s an opportunity for them to be restored and go through recovery,” he said. “That’s not cheap. It’s not easy, but it is the best way to get people from the low spot that they’re in to a functional spot.”

This article first appeared on The Frontier and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

It is very unfortunate that any 31-year-old man already have a legacy–because that means he is dead. One of my friends, an academic who teaches political studies, described Charlie Kirk’s legacy as complex. Elizabeth Spiers, writing for The Nation magazine, shares a blunter view of Kirk’s legacy that has already exposed her to hateful responses and threats online. I subscribe more to Spiers' view. I do not find Charlie Kirk’s legacy complex at all.

Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist subjected numerous academics and their institutions to harassment and death threats. This Baltimore Banner piece published in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s murder touches on just a few of the professors at universities in my state negatively impacted by Kirk’s watchlist.

He consistently used his charisma and rhetorical skills to denigrate the intelligence of black people—especially black women—far more academically accomplished than himself. Like many conservatives, he also opposed the LGBT community having legal protections (marriage, gender-affirming care, becoming parents via adoption, military service, etc) and abortion. He was one conservative voice among many who pushed falsehoods about COVID-19 (complications of which would kill the co-founder of Turning Point USA in 2020). Kirk’s rhetoric helped amplify and spread the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which as of 2022 had inspired mass shootings in Christchurch (51 dead while worshiping in their mosque), El Paso (23 dead), Pittsburgh (11 dead while worshiping in their synagogue), and Buffalo (10 dead). Many of Kirk’s publicly-stated views are accurately described as hate speech. This fact did not prevent Matthew Dowd from being fired.

Kirk’s comments regarding the Second Amendment valued it ahead of the lives of children dead due to gun violence in their schools, and most recently in Minnesota their churches. It seems the state of Utah may share those values as well. Per the law in Utah as of 2021, open and concealed carry of guns was already legal. Nor does Utah have extreme risk protection orders (colloquially known as red-flag laws). Just last month, Utah extended gun rights even further by passing a law legalizing open carry on college campuses. Literally a minute after Kirk was shot, first responders were called to another school shooting in a school in Colorado.

To the extent that any complexity exists in the Kirk legacy, it exists because our media landscape is so fractured that there are probably as many people completely unaware of the hate speech he regularly engaged in as there are people who know it well–if not having been directly targeted by it.

Kirk’s legacy is his worldview being enacted as policy by Donald Trump and his appointees. Kirk’s brief life is an unfortunate and sad example of the words of Proverbs 18:21: Death and life are in the power of the tongue. And those who love it will eat its fruit.