August Siedel

Human Flourishing Advocate || Mental Health Theologist || Husband/Father || #Bitcoin || #NOSTR: npub1yhx7whfnmuq76wn7s8uheamql6nxr3wyj84plml23j06n4me0elqm6um6r

[August Siedel @alexgs]

Blaming Trump is bad leadership.

You signed bills in 2025 shifting some costs to large users like data centers and expanding low-income aid. Residential rates in Oregon jumped ~30% from 2020-2024 and approached 50% higher since 2020-2021, driven by state clean energy mandates (e.g., HB 2021) and utility rate cases approved under your administration—above national trends despite abundant hydro.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

Last year, I traveled to Germany and Austria. There are minor cow towns in those countries that are more “world class” than Seattle. Highly evident civic pride. Cleanliness. Quality public amenities.

All without having to stumble around people dying at the hands of small-minded public policy.

Seattle is a middle schooler that desperately wants to be an adult, but continues to make silly choices that reflect poorly on itself.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

@TommiPedruzzi @NavalismHQ Skill

[August Siedel @alexgs]

EVERY Oregonian needs to read this, now.

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

What the West Still Doesn’t Get It:

Communism’s True Core: The Systemic Lie

Most people in the West think they understand communism. They picture bread lines, gulags, failed five-year plans, and the collapsed Soviet Union. They treat it as a discredited economic theory – an experiment that proved that abolishing private property doesn’t work. Case closed, history moved on.

This misunderstanding may be the most dangerous intellectual failure of our time.

Communism was never primarily an economic system. Economics was the surface. Beneath it lay something far more insidious: a total, systemic, institutionalized commitment to lying. Not occasional dishonesty. Not spin or propaganda in the ordinary sense. Something deeper – a civilizational war against truth itself, waged through every institution, every classroom, every newspaper, every conversation, until reality itself became negotiable and the lie became the air people breathed.

The Words We’re Missing

The Polish language, forged by decades of living under this system, produced words for this phenomenon that English simply cannot match:

Zakłamanie [zah-kwah-MAH-nyeh] – a state of total, pervasive, socially embedded falsehood, a condition in which an entire society is saturated with lies so thoroughly that truth becomes almost inaccessible.
Obłuda [ob-woo-dah] – a deep, performative hypocrisy, the gap between what is proclaimed and what is actually practiced, the mask worn so long it begins to feel like a face.

These are not words for individual liars. They describe a system – a mode of social organization built on organized mendacity, where the lie is not the exception but the foundation. English has no single word for either concept, and that linguistic gap is not a coincidence. It reflects a gap in experience. Cultures that did not live under communism lack the vocabulary because they lack the wound.

And because they lack the vocabulary, they struggle to recognize the thing when it reappears in new clothing.

The Continuity: Communism, Leftism, Wokeism

What we call wokeism today, or the broader radical left, is not a new phenomenon. It is the same operating system running on updated hardware. The specifics have changed – instead of the proletariat, we have marginalized identity groups; instead of bourgeois class enemies, we have racists and transphobes; instead of socialist realism, we have DEI statements. But the deep structure is the same.

That deep structure is this: truth is not discovered, it is assigned. Reality is not something to be understood honestly but something to be narrated strategically. Language is not a tool for communication but a weapon of power. And anyone who resists the approved narrative is not simply wrong – they are dangerous, and must be silenced, shamed, or destroyed.

This is zakłamanie in its modern form. This is obłuda wearing a human rights badge.

The same movement that insists men can become women will insist, with equal fervor, that questioning this is an act of violence. The same institutions that claim to champion free inquiry systematically suppress dissent. The same people who invoke tolerance as their highest value are among the most intolerant forces in public life. The contradiction is not accidental – it is structural. It is the system working as designed.

Why the West Still Doesn’t Get It

People who grew up in freedom tend to assume, at some level, that bad actors know they are lying. That somewhere behind the ideological performance, there is a cynical operator who privately acknowledges reality. This assumption is wrong, and it is why Westerners consistently underestimate what they are dealing with.

The totalitarian lie, at its mature stage, is not cynical. It is believed. Or rather, it creates a condition in which the distinction between belief and performance collapses entirely. People learn to say things they do not believe so fluently, and for so long, that they lose access to what they actually think.

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[August Siedel @alexgs]

@paulg Step 3: Justify ever-increasing surveillance tech.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

@RonWyden @ChrisMurphyCT Hah. If you take the standard of hours worked per year - 2080 hours - it adds up to $52,000 per year. Hardly enough to make ends meet in most metro areas.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

@Oregonian This huge loss will shatter Oregon beyond repair.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

@KATUNews A pretense for more traffic cameras?

[August Siedel @alexgs]

@OregonianPol Yes, people sometimes make mistakes.

But $7k oversights?

This is who levies taxes on Portland citizens’ hard-earned income.

And this is who manages and spends the city budget.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

@KOINNews Important note:

The mayor likely has more fiscal management experience than all of the city councilors combined.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

@KATUNews Umm, there's always backroom negotiations. Don't people realize how our current so-called council operates?

[August Siedel @alexgs]

Based on my recent deep dives into AI tech, theory and current practice, it is becoming painfully clear that public education has become largely obsolete.

The pace of change is so fast, while the educational establishment plods far behind. The public education status quo doesn't even know what hit it.

While @PPSConnect halts adoption, it will be left even farther behind. Who suffers? The students.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

@JeffMerkley “I’ve been in office for 17 years, fighting like hell.

But nothing has improved.”
Jeff Merkley

[August Siedel @alexgs]

Taxpayers foot the bill for broken promises. Results get worse. The vulnerable remain in bondage to the streets.

This is fraud by local politicians and homeless NGOs that rely on public funding.

Promises made. Promises unkept. The people in power continue to earn on the backs of hard-working citizens and worse, of the broken and vulnerable.

If this doesn’t torch your conscience, you should not be voting.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

Portland city and county governments’ approach of helping the homeless.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

I'm 59, 6'8" and around 250 lbs. A couple of years ago, I noticed I was having a harder time getting off the pot. If this basic daily movement was becoming difficult, how would the rest of my tall body fare as I aged?

This was a chilling moment for me, especially as an older father of younger kids, and it became my catalyst to get into the gym.

Since then: 4-5 CrossFit sessions per week, gymnastics, weight lifting, conditioning, and sauna/cold plunging.

I spent a difficult and humbling year overcoming the humps of my lost strength, mobility, and flexibility. My strength is back, I can rise from a low squat, and I am pushing my capacities further than I ever thought possible.

You don’t have to give up as you age. Your body is capable of wondrous things.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

The average human earns $6.74 per hour based on a 2080 hour work year.

You earn $83 per hour.

The median net worth per adult (half earn less, half earn more) is $8650.

Your net worth? Over $5,000,000.

My recommendation: Tax politicians who end up not rally creating any long term economic value.

Or, pay politicians their full salary only if they can empirically deliver tangible economic benefits for all citizens.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

@RepDexterOR Your economic illiteracy is showing.

Perhaps you and your staffers should display some courage and read something that might challenge your naive biases - https://t.co/zOtyMfCZOy

[August Siedel @alexgs]

@fox13seattle The whole point of electronic voting machines IS the software vulnerabilities.

[August Siedel @alexgs]

@KGWNews This money, squandered without results, should be returned to the taxpayers as restitution for fraudulent use of public funds.