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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought

@crucibleofthought.com
800 followers 292 following 1.6K posts

Assigned Evangelical At Birth. I'm writing a book on the abuse & weaponization of fear in religion. Blog at crucibleofthought.com

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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 27/09/2026
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral says that our theological method is based on scripture, tradition, reason, and Christian experience. But our interpretation of scripture is inherently based on our received tradition. One may claim "prima scriptura" but in reality tradition arrives first.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 27/09/2026
Here's exactly what's wrong with the right wing today. This was a response from a Christian evangelical acquaintance, to my detailed and sourced and fact-checked post about the supposed but illusory drug price reductions under TrumpRx. "I see your facts and I raise you my dogma."
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 21/09/2026
"I have since stopped locating evil outside myself, because every time I have looked at it honestly I have found it in human choices and in the systems we build and tolerate and profit from, and I would rather take responsibility for that than hand it off to something I cannot see." (from my book)
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 20/09/2026
"The tradition in which I was raised considered “hell” to be a place of eternal torment: punishment that lasted for eternity. For decades, I accepted that definition unquestioningly." I no longer think that's the best reading of the scriptures.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 19/09/2026
"Fear can unfortunately become a trusted companion, keeping you on what you see as the right path. And that fear is probably doing some unhealthy work in you, even while it may seem to be helping you. It’s a hideous but stealthy poison that can taste oh so sweet and be perversely oh so comforting."
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 14/09/2026
Putting this image on the big screen during the entire sermon and printing it on the bulletin cover screams "we're lazy and careless."
An obviously-AI-generated image of a man laying on the ground, raising his arm to protect his eyes from blinding light, probably a reference to Saul on the road to Damascus in the Book of Acts. But the right arm appears in two different places, an obvious physical impossibility.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 14/09/2026
The church I attend recently started using AI-generated images on its social accounts and printed bulletins. I wonder, would your participation in a church be affected by its obvious use of AI imagery?
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 13/09/2026
I'm writing a book! I just sent the first full draft to a printing service for a couple of hardcover copies. Time to get some other people's eyes on my writing.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 10/09/2026
This is the party of family values and traditional heterosexual purity, folks. www.irishstar.com/news/politic...
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 08/09/2026
Just sayin'...
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 07/09/2026
What a powerful photo from an award-winning photojournalist (Omar N Ashtawy).
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 30/08/2026
I grew up playing in the Canadian water on the shores of Lake Ontario. It will never be "Lake of America" no matter what some arrogant politician claims.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 29/08/2026
Here’s a sign I saw in Florence, Italy, yesterday. The world is watching us, and is not impressed.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 20/08/2026
Just a reminder that no matter how important you are, birds will poop on your statue too.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 17/08/2026
I went looking on Fox News for stories about North Korea or South Korea. I found none. Your conservative friends have no idea what's going on.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 14/08/2026
I posted over on Threads about the idiocy of Trump's new directive to go back to steam catapults. www.threads.com/@crucible_of...
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 12/08/2026
Get ready for an ugly November. Don't expect to wake up on the 4th and know who won any election; in any race with a Republican candidate who didn't get enough votes to win, there will be challenges. The inevitable cases will clog the courts. The precedent has been set; the facts no longer matter.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 06/08/2026
The picture painted here is damning. Chaos in the leadership. A Commander-in-Chief so toxic that his underlings have to lie to him to keep their jobs, but then he yells at them for failing to report bad news. And he foolishly assumes that telling them to buy more will instantly fix the problem.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 05/08/2026
The failure of the Republican Party to eject Max Miller from the race tells you that there is no longer any pretense of following a Christian morality; it's been replaced by a Trumpian morality. "If Trump can do it, so can I" instead of "What would Jesus do?"
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 01/08/2026
After sorting thru well over a hundred neckties from my dad’s estate, I’m convinced that if not another single tie was manufactured in the course of human affairs, we would still be bequeathing boxes of them a million years from now. And they’d still be paisley and boring stripes.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 01/08/2026
Yet another embarassing setback for the Justice Department, as they drop the Reflecting Pool vandalism case. "Evidence prosecutors had recently received refuted the idea that vandals were to blame." Of course, literally everyone outside MAGAville knew this already that he was totally innocent.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 31/07/2026
America's response to COVID was a symptom of evangelicalism. For decades, if not longer, that branch of Christianity pushed distrust of the government and martyrdom and victimhood and dominionism and nationalism and xenophobia and anti-science and personal prosperity. /1
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 27/07/2026
Because of course there's no conflict of interest or pay-for-play going on between Musk's SpaceX and Trump, right? arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 22/07/2026
I don't find anything like that posted on their Facebook page, although the footer is what you would actually see on their FB page (their logo and the green dot). www.facebook.com/Comal.County...
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 19/07/2026
I saw this first image, and it occurred to me that when you see God like the second image, the evangelical church's strong support for ICE makes a lot more sense. In my evangelical upbringing, this is "tough love." It's how they see God. Naturally it extends to law enforcement and the military.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 16/07/2026
Too long to repost here, but here are my thoughts on the reckless and dangerous Blue Angels beach flyover. www.threads.com/@crucible_of...
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 16/07/2026
In a sane administration, not only would the pilot be instantly fired, so would the Secretary of Defense. It's his fault that this culture exists; he has now effectively pardoned three blatant showboating violations of military aviation regulations. Mark my words, it WILL lead to a mishap.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 15/07/2026
Please, y'all. THOSE ARE NOT TIRE TRACKS. They're lines of algae from incremental draining of the pool. Yes, Trump's still lying. But don't give MAGA any excuse to point out some gullibility on our part.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 10/07/2026
I'll be happy to see my tax dollars rot in the back lot of Trump's Presidential Library, because I don't want any future president risked by flying in it.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 10/07/2026
in his administration gave up arguing about this is explicitly because he insisted that he was going to keep the jet after his term of office ended. They realized that this "bridge" jet (between the aging VC-25 fleet and the behind-schedule replacements)
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 10/07/2026
There's a reason why the real replacement Air Force One jet is behind schedule and over cost: building it with total security is HARD. The idea of a gift airplane ever being secured properly is absolutely laughable. It's possible that the only reason that Secret Service officials
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 10/07/2026
From the moment that the gift of the Qatar jet was announced, thousands of people posted on social media, and dozens of reporters wrote, that this gift was a Trojan horse, that refitting the aircraft into a proper flying fortress with suitable defenses and communications
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 10/07/2026
The new jet was an easily-identified aircraft with nearly zero defenses. So I assume their highest officials had to beg and plead with him to change planes. And unusually for him, he listened. But then he undercut them: He immediately went on social media to complain about it,
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 10/07/2026
Despite Trump's arrogance and narcissism, the people charged with keeping him alive despite his best efforts are not stupid. When he flew into Turkey, right next door to Iran and all the other Islamic nations who are currently pretty pissed at him, the Secret Service knew the score:
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 10/07/2026
But we only have ONE jet from Qatar. And this 747 is a different model entirely; it's got a longer upper deck section, making it easy to tell the aircraft apart, even if they were identically-painted. So a careful observer could tell which was which.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 10/07/2026
As a former US civil servant flight test engineer, I've been around military aviation a long time, especially big heavy commercial-derivative jets with top-notch defensive systems installed. There's no way in hell that this Qatar-gifted 747 was properly fitted with defensive systems ... (/1 of many)
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 05/07/2026
Here's the old Air Force One flyover. Listen to the announcements.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 05/07/2026
I find it supremely ironic that at the very moment of the old and new Air Force One flyovers, the organizers of the 250 celebration were forced to tell people that the event was temporarily closed due to approaching thunderstorms. You can hear the announcement over the jets in both AP News clips.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 30/06/2026
Here's a photo of the 1976 Bicentennial celebration on the National Mall. See all the people wading in the Reflecting Pool? Do you see any National Guard chasing them? I don't.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 28/06/2026
Images from the Bicentennial celebrations in 1976, under President Gerald Ford. I remember the Yorktown celebrations, when I was not yet 10 years old - there was barely anywhere to stand. And two photos from this weekend; maybe there will be more on July 4th? Draw your own conclusions.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 24/06/2026
Please don't post pictures of a supposed tarp going up around the Reflecting Pool. That's an AI hoax. And the fencing? That's normal for July 4th fireworks precautions, to keep people away from a lot of dangerous explosives.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 23/06/2026
This theory might explain a lot. "Trump may be mystery patient in odd case of 79YO getting experimental obesity drug." arstechnica.com/health/2026/...
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 19/06/2026
Happy Juneteenth. Today marks the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas finally learned they were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. The road to true equality and equity is still rough; let's remind ourselves to push forward where change is needed.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 17/06/2026
Now see, Chicago needs to talk to DC about their St Patrick's Day "green river." I'm sure they're jealous about this entirely-natural bright green color.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 15/06/2026
I'm disgusted on many levels, but I'm just gonna say this: If Michelle Obama is trans (she's not, you MAGA idiots!), then her absolute grace and integrity and unimpeachable character is proof that we ought to be accepting and celebrating queer people at all levels of our society.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 11/06/2026
Now look at which stock market moves were made just before this tweet by President Trump, calling off hostilities for this evening. I'll bet some of his administration officials made some fairly large moves.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 11/06/2026
Painting the Reflecting Pool with a dark blue bottom will cause algae to grow faster because the water stays warmer. This is a widely known problem; the Pool was already set up with an ozone bubbler and filtration system to try to kill algae. Trump didn't drain the swamp, he created more of one.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 09/06/2026
So... Iran denies intentionally downing the Apache; it probably inadvertently collided with a Shahed drone sent to attack a tanker. But Trump wastes no time making this an excuse to strike Iran yet again. x.com/Osinttechnic...
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 07/06/2026
The newly repainted Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is 2030 by 167 feet, and over 11 printed pages of the Epstein Files deep.
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Brandon @ CrucibleOfThought @crucibleofthought.com · 23/05/2026
A story in two photos.
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