Chu The Cud

For all the noise about progress and justice, one group has recently been left behind by the Democratic Party: the middle class.

These are the people who clock in every day, pay the bills, raise their families, and keep the wheels of this country turning. They are the backbone of America, yet their concerns are ignored while the loudest voices on the fringe receive the spotlight.

Across Democrat-led cities and states, policies lean toward protecting criminals and illegal immigrants under the banner of “sanctuary.”

Meanwhile, everyday citizens face rising crime rates, homeless encampments in public spaces, random assaults on the street, businesses robbed in broad daylight, and career criminals emboldened by lax enforcement.

The people paying the price are the same citizens who ask for nothing more than safety in their neighborhoods and cities.

Instead of tackling the growing mental health crisis with serious investment in treatment and prevention, Democrats have elevated it into culture-war theater.

Those struggling are paraded as symbols for social movements, special bathrooms, hormone blockers for minors, and the glamorization of celebrity trends that trickle down to the most impressionable. This is not compassion; it’s exploitation.

And what else do Democrats offer? A single theme: Donald Trump. He is painted as Hitler, his supporters labeled fascists. The drumbeat is relentless, every day, every hour, every headline.

But where are the real proposals? Where are the policies that improve daily life for the working family, the small business owner, the taxpayer who quietly carries the load?

For years now, Democrats have leaned on race as their permanent fallback. Whenever policy fails, whenever results are thin, they inject race into the conversation.

They pit neighbor against neighbor, citizen against citizen, convincing people that division is destiny. Rather than working to heal wounds, they reopen them for political gain, because a divided population is easier to control.

They don’t address crime, homelessness, or the collapse of basic city services. They don’t bring forth policies that strengthen the working class. Instead, they stoke anger, telling one group it is forever oppressed and another that it is forever guilty. This is not leadership; it’s manipulation dressed up as compassion.

While the wealthy enjoy their elite parties and the poor are courted with free programs, the middle class shoulders the cost. They are the ones subsidizing a system that rarely gives back. Their hard work funds the rhetoric but rarely sees results. They are the invisible foundation, overlooked and taken for granted.

You might not agree with Donald Trump or even like him, but he is following through on the promises he made, and much of what he is doing resonates with a majority of citizens.

Agreement or disagreement aside, his agenda reflects what many Americans feel has been ignored for too long.

The Democratic Party has had years to show the middle class they matter. Instead, what we’ve seen is a cocktail of cultural distractions, sanctuary policies that protect criminals, and endless propaganda about Trump.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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I recently heard the prime rib at Tam O’Shanter was something special, but I’d never been there myself. Actually, in my almost twenty-six years living in Los Angeles, I never heard of the place

So, I asked a couple of brothers if they’d like to join me for dinner, and together we set out to see if the reviews were true. They were. The prime rib was excellent, rich, tender, and every bit deserving of the reputation that has carried this restaurant for over a century. The spinach and creme corn were also excellent.

Yet it wasn’t only the meal that left a mark. The moment I stepped through the doors, I felt the weight of history. Dark wood beams, old photographs, and that timeless atmosphere reminded me that places like this aren’t just restaurants, they’re keepers of memory. I remembered as a kid in the 1970’s this style was the norm.

I soon learned that Walt Disney himself was a regular here, often gathering with his animators around “Table 31” to eat, sketch, and dream up stories that would go on to shape the world’s imagination.

Sitting there with my lodge Brothers, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel.

In Masonry, we value tradition, fellowship, and the quiet strength of shared moments. Here we were, breaking bread in a place where others once gathered to build something lasting, something larger than themselves. It felt like a bridge, between the past and the present, between storytellers and craftsmen, between the simple act of dinner and the greater meaning of brotherhood.

If you get a chance to go, you should. It was a great experience.

c 2024 Chu The Cud

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In the 1970s, streakers became a problem in sports.

Once TV stopped showing them and the broadcasters stopped feeding the attention, the copycat behavior lost its reward and died down. The streakers weren’t doing it for the act itself, they were doing it for the audience and notoriety. Remove the audience, and the incentive goes away.

The same logic can apply to this upswing in mass shooters. Social media and mainstream outlets often turn them into household names, dissecting their lives and motives for days, even weeks.

Some even have fan clubs helping promote them to get parole. Other crazies want to marry these killers, thereby joining in with these killers new found celebrity.

That can inspire others seeking notoriety to imitate. If media shifted away from showing their names, faces, and personal manifestos, it could strip away the “celebrity” effect altogether.

This doesn’t mean ignoring the problem, but it does mean handling it responsibly.

A cultural shift, much like MLB’s decision with streakers, could make a real difference.

Copycat behavior thrives on recognition. Remove the reward, and the cycle weakens.

Just as streaking faded when the cameras turned away, so too could this darker trend if media and platforms chose discretion over spectacle.

Stop the madness in the media and the madness in society will simmer down.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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Every major entertainment company operates under a code of conduct. Jimmy Kimmel knew that.

Yet when ABC executives confronted him about his rhetoric following Charlie Kirk’s death, he reportedly pledged to double down.

With his show already dragging in the ratings and losing money, it was an astonishingly reckless stance. Sponsors were prepared to walk. ABC had little choice but to pull the plug.

Now, suddenly, the left wants to talk and protest about free speech.

Was this Kimmel’s strategy all along? Did he angle for a bigger payday elsewhere by pushing the network into firing him? We don’t know. But the hypocrisy is hard to ignore.

When Bill Maher was fired by ABC, where was the left shouting about free speech. Roseanne Barr lost her own top rated show at ABC, for a satirical tweet, where were those liberal voices then?

Last Man Standing, Tim Allen’s top-rated sitcom, was cancelled, the same silence. Gina Carano, fired from The Mandalorian despite her popularity for texts that liberals screamed about.

Curt Schilling, six-time All-Star, three-time World Series champion, World Series MVP, fired from ESPN for his views on transgender issues. Phil Robertson, suspended from Duck Dynasty for calling homosexual behavior sinful.

Where was the outrage then?

Where were the protests when Fox cut ties with Tucker Carlson, whose program was number one in its time slot?

Where was the defense of conservative actors and commentators who lost work simply for supporting Republican candidates?

Meanwhile, Kimmel and Colbert were allowed to coast for years. Both shows hemorrhaged viewers and money, yet slid by under the radar.

Now that the axe has finally fallen, I see people who never tuned in standing on picket lines, crying foul.

If Kimmel and Colbert want a comeback, perhaps they can team up for a buddy film, no one will see. 

Let’s face it: with President Donald Trump’s agenda moving forward and his approval holding steady, this is just another attempt by the left to spin a narrative and dethrone him. It isn’t working.

The fractured Democratic Party needs to regroup and find a message that truly resonates with the citizens of this great country, instead of wasting energy fighting every single policy the American people voted for.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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Social media is engineered to grab our attention, shred it, and replace what trash you just saw with new garbage. We don’t need that.

The parasites who run it weaponize our focus to widen the divide, seeding outrage with insignificant drivel. I can’t understand how anyone lets these attentivores, these cultural cancers, move into their heads, set up camp, and spark fires over things that don’t matter.

They steal our attention, sell it back as outrage, and called it progress. I refuse to feed the jackals.

They breed on our gaze, freezing our rapid eye movements for quick focused amusements and faster forgettings.

Each scroll is a stitch pulled from the fabric of attention until we are threadbare. Like a spiders sweet web, delicate, glistening, but meant only to ensnare. 

The men who profit are vultures in suits; their feast is distraction and division. I will not be served their stale course. Not even their reheated appetizer. Taste at your own peril.

Look away. Walk away from the feeding frenzy of ignorance that has bred zombie teams of mentally caged morons.

Stream your life through presence, and practice memory in your own mind, through the sacred discipline of repetition, unafraid of the shifting temperature of culture.

Lead by example, not by megaphone.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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When you shut off all media, TV, social feeds, news apps, even the endless notifications, you cut off the artificial extensions of reality. What’s left is only what your senses encounter: the people in your presence, the conversations you’re having, the work at hand, the street outside your window, the air you breathe.

Media, by design, amplifies, distorts, and prioritizes events far away. It convinces you those distant things are urgent, even when they don’t touch your actual life. But if you withdraw from that stream, those narratives vanish. They only “exist” again once you re-engage.

It’s a reminder that your immediate surroundings carry more truth and weight than the mediated noise. The world in front of you, the tangible, the lived, is what actually matters.

Read a book and see what your mind sees.

See the world before you.

c 1015 Chu The Cud

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Fences were made to be climbed, an invitation, a whispered challenge of a dare.

To step away from where life is manufactured through repetition.

Whereas breaths are not so deep and mediated.

Will the grass be greener? Step over and see. Regret is just a shadow, that fades with the sun.

Mistakes are humans rules to create hesitation with fear. For risk comes with a price.

As does stillness.

A bucket full of holes is never complete, yet it still carries water on the outside.

For candles are not meant to burn from both sides. Desperately impatience to become a watery grave that hardens with the time.

Meanwhile, breaking news repeats itself every hour, a wheel turning in circles, pretending to move.

Unless, something else managed happens inside the fenced.

To regain and retain focus of your attention from the fence.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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Why do we try so hard to fit into a mold?

Each of us carries a spark of uniqueness, yet we are told, conditioned, to believe there is one model of success, one shape of life we must aspire to.

This is nothing but illusion, hogwash wrapped in authority.

The “mold” is presented as security, as belonging, as the path to worth. But what it really demands is that we trade authenticity for imitation.

We become carbon copies, a million replicas chasing the same fabricated goal, mistaking conformity for oneness.

True unity is not found in sameness. It is found in the harmony of difference, when we allow ourselves to live as we are, not as the mold dictates.

To break free of this conditioning is not rebellion for its own sake; it is reclamation. It is the return to authenticity.

We do not need to fit a mold to be whole.

We need only to be.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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The vessel re-shapes itself, consistently through knowledge and experience.

It avoids hypocrisy, and knows that contradiction is not a fracture but a mirror, a lesson whispered back through time.

It does not hunger for affirmation, for its existence is its own justification.

Stop searching for symmetry.

Life was never designed to balance.

It was designed to expand, to bend without surrender, to contain the uncontainable.

And the one who sees you clearly already knows:

Harmony is not the absence of tension but the resonance born within it.

Language is real only in the instant it is spoken, yet its shadow lingers beyond the moment.

Truth does not compress, it unfolds, like breath after silence, like release after the weight of holding.

The decompression of its stress.

Balance comes from within.

c 2025 Chu the Cud

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Palm trees that grow in the desert, their roots tangled in shifting sands, drinking from wells the eye cannot see, stretching upward with a faith that heat cannot break.

Each frond whispers a defiance, green against the repetition of dust, shade against the tyranny of light, a soft, living hymn where silence reigns.

They are not custom, yet they endure, a contradiction sculpted by wind and sun.

Out of place, perhaps, but not without purpose.

They remind us that survival is not always comfort, that beauty is not always harmony, and that to stand where nothing else dares…

is its own kind of grace.

c 2025 Chu The Cud

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