humanity
Humanity topics include pieces on the real lives of politicians, legislators, activists, women in politics and the everyday voter.
Fear: The Quiet Architect of Closed Minds
I use AI the same way any creator uses a tool to support my imagination, not replace it. My stories, my voice, my face, my lived experience are mine. If you choose to judge or ostracize people for using modern tools, that’s your bias, not my truth. I’m not hiding. I’m not cheating. I’m creating. And I’ll keep doing that with whatever tools help me express my work.
By Vicki Lawana Trusselli 2 months ago in The Swamp
Is Capitalism a Convenient Scapegoat?
There is something psychologically satisfying about discovering a single word that appears to explain nearly everything that is wrong with the world. For some, the word is capitalism . War, imperialism, fascism, exploitation, alienation, environmental destruction, cruelty, loneliness, even sadism and abuse can be placed beneath one enormous conceptual umbrella. Once this is done, history acquires an appealing simplicity: remove the economic system and perhaps the pathologies produced by it will disappear as well.
By ANTICHRIST SUPERSTAR2 months ago in The Swamp
Wielding Fear: Control Through Fear Culture
Shut up. Don’t disagree. Agree with the majority. Go with the flow and don’t make waves. Don’t balk at the system or speak your mind. Be like them. Agree with them. Say what they say; believe what they tell you. Don’t be yourself, question, or have your own mind, or else. They’ll ruin you, destroy you, and cast you out of the herd.
By Alexandra Grant2 months ago in The Swamp
Drama for Drama
Heart-breaking news came out yesterday regarding a high school performance because a small group of people in school’s community found the material “too offensive.” Youth Performance Art School in Jefferson County, Kentucky must cancel their production of Ragtime and have less than a week to find a replacement. Ragtime is a musical adaptation to E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel set in New York during the early 1900s about three different racial families. Mother and Fatherwith their son Edgar, reside in New Rochelle and live an upper-class lifestyle. Meanwhile, Coalhouse Walker Jr and his wife, Sarah, live in Harlem, struggling the racism, poverty, and tragedy. Last, a Jewish father arrives in America with his daughter and seeks a new opportunity in his new home. Eventually, all three families live intertwine, just as the Ragtime era comes to a close, leaving the stage with important themes such as unity, diversity, and resilience. While these groups of students dedicated weeks to this performance, they must now find a replacement in less than a week, unless the school board changes course and allows them to proceed.
By Iris Harris2 months ago in The Swamp
WORKER OF PATHWAYS
Disclaimer: All writing, ideas, and creative work in this story are my own. I draft my pieces, take my notes, and develop my concepts independently. I also edit my own videos and create my own music. Every idea, note, edit, and creative choice comes from my lived experience, my training, and my craft not from automated tools or “pushing a button.” What you read here is mine.
By Vicki Lawana Trusselli 2 months ago in The Swamp
Target Becomes the Target, Again
Y’all heard the latest on Target? If not, then grab a beverage and a comfy place to sit because this will blow your mind. Once Trump took office last year and signed an executive order to end DEI nation-wide, Target was one of the first companies to take a flame to their DEI handbook. Word went out across the land and immediately, the nation responded with a massive boycott of Target. However, Target’s plan to cut DEI did not begin with Trump. It began with a small group of conservatives upset with the corporation’s support of the LGBTQ+ community.
By Iris Harris2 months ago in The Swamp
Family-Directed Support. AI-Generated.
American family policy has a basic design failure. Government can spend heavily around a low-income household—on subsidized child care, food assistance, housing support, tax credits, disability services, provider reimbursements, case management, and repeated eligibility reviews—while the household itself remains cash-poor, overregulated, unable to save, and vulnerable to every ordinary emergency.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast2 months ago in The Swamp
Pay Families Directly Without Paying Them to Remain Poor. AI-Generated.
Every debate over family policy tends to collapse into two positions: keep the current fragmented, provider-directed welfare system, or replace a household's entire public-spending footprint with one large, unrestricted cash payment. Both sides of that argument are, in their own way, correct about something important. The status quo really does trap families in cliff-ridden, cash-poor dependency on institutions that treat parental caregiving as economically worthless. The buyout really does identify a genuine contradiction — government will pay almost anyone to care for a child except the parent — and it's right that fixing that contradiction is worth real money.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast2 months ago in The Swamp
A Third Way for Family Support. AI-Generated.
The debate over family assistance is often framed too narrowly. One side defends a fragmented welfare system that routes money through child-care providers, food programs, housing subsidies, disability services, tax credits, and administrative agencies while many families remain cash-poor and heavily constrained. The other side responds with a sweeping alternative: calculate what government already spends around a household, convert perhaps 60 to 75 percent of that amount into direct cash, and let the family assume responsibility for ordinary living costs. Both positions identify real truths. The current system is expensive, paternalistic, and often irrational. A broad cash buyout would give families far more control. The strongest policy, however, lies between them: family-directed support that pays parents for real caregiving, replaces cliffs with gradual earnings phase-outs, protects savings and asset formation, preserves medical and protective services, and expands broader cash support only as the economy becomes productive enough to sustain it.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast2 months ago in The Swamp
Family-Directed Support. AI-Generated.
The American welfare system spends heavily around low-income families while leaving those families with little cash, little control, and strong financial penalties for earning more. The full Family Support Buyout correctly identifies that failure and the deeper inconsistency of paying almost anyone except a parent to care for a child. Converting an entire household’s historical public-spending footprint into a permanent unrestricted payment, however, overreaches. International experience and economic logic converge on a stronger middle path: Family-Directed Support. This architecture transfers real authority to families, compensates parents when they perform care the public would otherwise purchase, eliminates cliffs that punish work, and keeps medical, protective, and specialized functions separate because those risks are not ordinary household consumption.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast2 months ago in The Swamp
Do Not Replace the Welfare State With a Stay-Home Salary. AI-Generated.
The existing welfare system deserves major reform. It can spend enormous amounts around low-income families while leaving those families with very little cash, little flexibility, little ability to save, and strong incentives to remain below benefit thresholds. Child-care subsidies can exceed the wages a parent earns by leaving the home. Food assistance, housing subsidies, refundable tax credits, cash benefits, caregiving authorizations, and administrative overhead can push the government's total expenditure on a household far above the household's private earnings. Those contradictions are real. The current system can absolutely become more expensive than the problems it is attempting to solve. The answer, however, should not be to convert most of that expenditure into a large permanent cash payment that makes withdrawal from market production financially attractive.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast2 months ago in The Swamp
