Ben Sasse Has Hope & a Message

Former private equity underwriter (PEU), U.S. Senator and College President Ben Sasse believes TechGods usurping of God's various realms will bring challenges but eventually pave the way for a renewed community based on family, neighbor and a spiritual rebirth which respects faiths of all stripes.  

Sasse is charitable in not projecting social media and other addictive harms forward to AI.  He never strikes out at obvious imbalances brought on by arrogance and greed, the poster children of such are PEUs and TechGods.  Sasse noted their political benefactors who favor self over service and use language to divide while scoring short term wins.

Sasse irritated me in the past as I considered his "loneliness" epidemic to be "leadership abandonment" of common folk.  No more.  

I am grateful to have heard his words.  They are needed given the number of dark arcs rising at home and across the globe where leaders impose widespread harm on their populations for the sake of appropriation of power and resources.  

To his warning I add my own.  Politicians Red & Blue love PEU and their new TechGod/CryptoBro brethren.  Increasingly more are one and for that, citizens suffer.

Update 5-3-26:  My wise friend believes Sasse served the PEU class and himself and did not hear much in the way of regret on these fronts, other than the cardboard box of hotel room keys.  

I find it kind of funny for a man that preaches community to always be taking away from others as part of a policy strategy. Maybe our dear friend Ben has never dealt with financial insecurity, obsolescence, and deprivation. These things create stress, especially when the leaders do all of the taking and none of the listening.

To make reference to Edmund Burke given his critique of the French Revolution (extreme inequality among the masses) in an interview to quell the polarization of the nation struck me as a dance meant for another floor. 

His use of the word capitalism and regulation signified it's not the system but the player's responsibility. Oh that's right he's a Calvinist. I'm still not even sure what that word is given the predeterminism and elitism of its religious philosophy.

He spoke about technology being the core of our problems but it didn't stop him from taking money from Microsoft and Google. I also wonder how it feels to have worked against health care for the masses and now needing so much for himself.? God works in strange ways. 

I wonder how others in a similar terminal health situation do if they are not set up financially with a salary for not working and a home that doesn't require rent? Maybe I am being too harsh but I felt it's too choreographed. 

My daughter went to the University of Florida So I remember the budgetary changes plus his over the top parties for friends. It's a real poor community in Gainesville.  Charity begins at home.  Soup kitchens anyone?

Sasse did not own up to the harms he encouraged, implemented and enabled in his various roles where money flowed to him and his various peer sets.  My wise friend made that clear.  

It's interesting to note the multiple themes the political realm has going at the moment:

1. The return of actually living the Gospels within Christianity (contra Trump - the penultimate Old Testament King). 

2.  The earthly heaven that awaits due to AI and technological advances 

3.  The need for the government to structure, fund and subsidize these corporate efforts while cutting actual services for people. 

4.  Gospel speaking Government may be a set up to shift the burden of "people care" to the Church.

The pairing of the first three should be nails on a chalkboard given the widespread harm TechGods have already inflicted on society, Trump II's history of savage whims and his close advisors' buffoonery, maliciousness and operational incompetence.  

Trump II will need to be jettisoned for the fourth shift to occur as any move needs to appear to be a peer to peer transfer.  Trump has no peers and his takedown of the Pope is going away as his war on Iran.

If God has predetermined that Elon Musk lives forever and garners 200 million shares of SpaceX then let it be so.  I think that's earthly machinations dangled by TechGods to steer attention away from their actual magic, picking Uncle Sam's wallet and mobilizing regulatory heft toward meeting their obscene, outsized needs (to the detriment of the common person's agency. privacy and integrity).  

Jesse noted:

The moral fiber of the oligarchs and financiers is negligible, and their concern for others is worse. 

It's not that they simply do not care. They see the rise of lawlessness as government is undermined as an advantage. 

If the great mass of people are impoverished and impaired, it makes the country all the more pliable for their depraved plans of inhuman acquisition and control. 

This is being propagated from the top, from several seats of worldly power. And the weak-willed and the corruptible are being taken up in this maelstrom of malevolence. 

But whatever happens, you can certainly affect how you act, how you choose to respond. 

And this is what, in the end, really matters. This is what it is all about. Little will remain in the relative blink of an eye, except for your soul. That is what this is all about.

There are people who see and say something.  I am grateful to them all.

Update 5-11-26:  Jesse offered this today:

A serious economic dislocation is gathering on the horizon. And the captain and crew of the goodly ship of state are busy looting the purser's office, and walking the decks saying 'all is well'. Who could have seen it coming?