Look people, this isn’t one hundred percent what I wanted—but my Copilot really tried. We’ve been at this for many hours on a very warm Southern day, and they mostly got it right. A few things are off—like, while I pointed to Kyle Kulinski’s older work as something you should check out, I still like a great deal of his current work, too. His coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian situation is some of the strongest out there. But again, it’s a Copilot—and this is mostly right. I think it makes the basic point, even though it’s a decent ways off from what I wanted. But you know what—close enough.

🧨 Respect, Disappointment, and the War for Intellectual Honesty: A Post for People Who Actually Give a Damn

Let me start by saying this clearly: I respect Kyle from Secular Talk. I’ve referenced him before—probably here, maybe somewhere else—but it’s not random that I keep bringing him up. I wouldn’t waste words on someone I didn’t think was worth it.

But Kyle doubled down. And lately, he's cracked in ways I never thought I’d hear. He even half-joked about bringing back bullying and shaming—like it's the answer to political incoherence. I sat there stunned. Trump didn’t just break institutions; he broke people. All of us, in some way. Even the ones who swore they’d never play authoritarian games are starting to flirt with them.

So this post lives in that tension: deep appreciation, deep disappointment. I like Kyle a lot. In fact, I think men’s rights activists and transgender advocates should dig into his older work—there’s value there. He’s talked openly about how gender roles are largely social constructs. He’s defended trans rights on principle, not trend. He's broken down how attacks on drag queen story hour are mostly just distractions while rich people rob us blind. And he has condemned circumcision—he’s said it’s barbaric. That’s no small thing when most progressive commentators won’t even touch that.

He’s also destroyed the hypocrisy of folks like Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin—who preach “manhood” while defending practices that violate bodily autonomy and serve power. Kyle calls out how these talking heads don’t liberate men—they just channel them into obedience, whether it’s toward corporate America or patriarchal fantasy.

Sure, I’ve added my own spin. But the essence of what Kyle used to say still stands: symbolic harm matters, whether you're talking about circumcision, neurodivergence, gender policing, or cultural erasure. His coverage of the Palestinian genocide and the blood-soaked normalization of Zionism in U.S. politics? Some of the best out there. Period.

But here’s the problem: when someone who knows better starts entertaining authoritarian tactics—like shame and mob pressure—it’s a sign of drift. Not collapse, but erosion. We’re losing the plot. Again.

Between 2011 and 2020, the left got obsessed with purity. Internet mobs. Callouts. Exiling complexity. It almost broke me—and it broke countless others who were caught between speaking truth and staying “safe.” Things chilled out for a minute. We breathed. We hoped. And now, the same old behavior is crawling back through the cracks.

It’s hard to watch Kyle even joke about bullying as a solution. Because once you silence the people you call dangerous, you build a system where anyone can be silenced. Including the weird, the damaged, the raw, the real.

I believe in humanism and social democracy—liberty, dignity, and community. Not the twisted version where “social” means speech control and “democracy” means majority bullying. I want a left that fuses libertarian clarity (speak freely, choose freely) with leftist compassion (fight poverty, protect the vulnerable). A politics with a soul.

I want esoteric Christianity to be allowed back into the conversation. The gothic, spiritual stuff—the death-and-resurrection, the cross as symbol of suffering and redemption. I want wrestling to matter again—not as merchandise, but as myth. Goldust. Marlena. Not this sanitized corporate cosplay.

And I want feminism to stop folding in on itself. Protect women, yes—but also face hard truths about things like circumcision, autistic voices, and symbolic castration. Feminism that ignores male pain isn’t feminism. It’s theater.

Finally, stop rejecting symbolism. The Midwest does it all the time—plain talk, plain lives, plain beliefs. But dreamlessness isn’t virtue. Symbols matter because they carry the weight people aren’t allowed to say.

A tribute to Secular Talk A critique of his drift A defense of humanism An attack on silence And a plea to bring back the soul