Psychedelic Zionism Evolving: 11 More Unapologetic Provocations
OK, we're overdue for another culling of our subscriber list. Here are some controversial views that we are going to start talking about more. They may alienate some folks. And that's OK.
Every now and then here at God of the Desert Books, we like to do an intentionally-provocative post that we know will likely alienate a portion of our regular readership. So often, whether here on Substack or in media broadly, writers can fall into writing in "audience capture" mode. They develop a niche of content and attract a single type of reader whom they grow financially reliant on, and whom they, accordingly, cannot afford to alienate or offend.
We are committed to avoiding this at GOTD. We seek to shine light into the nooks and crannies of the world where the hidden and ugly truths lie, for we believe that's the only way to get rid of them.
We’ve spent decades now diving into radical ideologies, terrorism, human-rights abuse, the history of the Holocaust, religious fundamentalism, sexual harassment, and occult practices. All of these have led us to confront face-to-to face hateful, evil, and even demon-possessed people.
And this scares the fuck out of a lot of people. Ignoring evil is what we as humans are naturally inclined to do. And that's understandable! It tends to be those of us who have been abused by bullies, cruelties, and authoritarian beliefs who demand change - who choose to stand up and push back, to call attention to the tiger chasing after all of us: the invisible beasts it's much easier to pretend aren't fucking there.
In founding this publishing company in 2022, we have sought to advocate for a different set of underlying moral values which integrated together our unusual political, religious, and cultural experiences.
There are numerous articles related to the moral values of our publishing company, but for now, we will focus on those articulated in the following two pieces from May 2024 and February 2025.
More than a year ago now, we published a description of the principles behind an acronym we had chosen to guide our efforts:
Psychedelic Independent International Zionist Artists Publishing Society
We defined ourselves primarily as a group of writers and artists united by shared values, working to put out books that promote greater cross-cultural, interfaith, and international partnerships. We wanted to do this as a way of countering the spread of authoritarian ideologies.
In February, we laid out ten more viewpoints that shape our mission:
Here are those points, in brief:
We are post-partisan and post-ideological, neither entirely left nor entirely right, rejecting blind devotion to either dominant political party while remaining open to supporting particular politicians and/or legislation.
We regard culture and technology as more influential on the world than politics.
We believe in the God of Israel. We do what we do now out of religious commitment to serving Him and protecting his chosen people.
We are reluctant mediums: Engaging with ghosts and demonic spirits is a regular routine. We regard spiritual entities as the primary accelerants of evil, chaos, crime, suicide, national disasters, diseases, and human misery more broadly, a theological position articulated in The Book of Job, Book of Enoch, Book of Jubilees, and other mystical literature across religious traditions.
We are occultists and magick practitioners, while continuing to embrace the Judeo-Christian traditions. These elements do not oppose each other: In fact, they complete each other. Spells and conventional mystical practices are effective tools at both engaging with spiritual entities and repelling them when they become malicious. The Bible is a form of grimoire and is largely correct in the broad strokes of what it describes. (We can quibble about the details, AKA “debate theology.”)
We advocate for responsible drug use, if any - particularly in the use of marijuana and psychedelics, and specifically those used within the bounds of the law. Using illegal drugs is always risky—you can’t be sure of the contents of what you’re getting or whether you’re buying it from an undercover cop ready to snap the cuffs on you: Beware. And, of course, we know that most recreational drugs are simply dangerous poisons with no redeeming value, spiritual or otherwise.
You’ll also continue to find mentions of hard-won sobriety and the generational effects of alcoholism.
We advocate for justifiable wars and revolutions, which are often necessary to overthrow tyrannical, oppressive regimes. In particular, the genocidal axis of Iran-Russia-China-Turkey-Qatar-North Korea is of special concern. All of these countries are human-rights atrocities, and their leadership needs to be overthrown, held accountable for their crimes, and replaced with constitutional, democratic republics. Saudi Arabia and El Salvador are also acute concerns.
We see dark times coming. There are a whole lot more malevolent people on this planet than we were led to believe growing up, and now they have greater platforms to project their evil into the world. The next few years are going to be dark as fuck.
There are a lot of very "problematic" regional cultures in America, variously fueled in the parts of the Deep South, Appalachia, and Midwest right now. We are based at the meeting point of the Far West and El Norte, and we put ourselves here intentionally. We like it here in our desert, away from the wild political and cultural wars that are led by the more than 75% of the country residing east of the Rockies.
We believe that animals have souls and that it is possible, through spiritual means, to talk with them, including our pets, as we do with our dog, Jasmine. This manifests toward strong opposition to animal cruelty and an encouragement toward vegetarianism, or at least a more omnivorous diet featuring ethically-raised meat, if any. People can choose to reincarnate as animals if they want to get that experience. We understand dolphins are an especially popular incarnation to try.
With those previously-articulated values summarized, it's time to lay out 11 more. These will guide this publishing company as we make the major transition - in less than a week! - of getting married.
1. We are going to speak more in one voice as a couple.
We urge men, women, and other genders to come together in greater collaboration, whether they are spouses, friends, or colleagues. The genders are being set and divided against each other - now, more than ever by social media and the extreme ideologies flowing through it. Both men and women need to come together to bring their insights to chart a better path where both masculine and feminine voices receive honor, as well as the voices of our non-binary and transgender friends. Of course, we will also still write pieces as solo individuals, in which we support the other, editing the other.
2. We accept that whether we want it or not, in the current political culture, we now count as part of “the Left.”
While we both draw on a mixture of liberal and conservative views—and are very cognizant of a radical, anti-Israel contingent in the constellation of people characterized by the oversimplification that is"the Left"—the Putin-Miller-Trump administration has moved so far to the right, so fast, that now people who used to qualify as centrists, moderates, or even “center-right” now qualify as "the Left." It's time to just accept this and own it. What used to count as "neoconservatism" 20 years ago now passes as "leftism" today. How fucking insane is this? Dave has spent 15 years writing about the evils of “the Left,” and now Trump has pushed so hard that he’s fallen back into it.
You can still expect strong pro-choice advocacy and a leftward tilt from Sally, a slight right skew from Dave, and vociferous shared support for the traditional liberal priority, the LGBTQIA+ community, from both of us.
3. With Trump in the White House, we now temporarily shift to a “dovish” foreign policy.
Despite Sally belonging to a pacifist religion, we maintain (to different degrees) our understanding that wars are often necessary and violent revolution justified. But we have no faith whatsoever that the current occupant of the White House can responsibly pursue either. The strikes on Iran did not make the world safer. They were an escalation that made the world more dangerous and increased the potential of terrorism and hate crimes against Jews. We now embrace a traditional, hippie, anti-war, pro-peace stance. As long as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth controls the military and Trump remains Commander-in-Chief, we cannot condone military action, except in clear, obvious cases of self-defense. After many years of calling for war, it is now time to advocate for peace.
4. We see our Southern California region as a near-future war zone and the Ground Zero in the Trump regime’s white supremacist war on brown-skinned humans.
Part of why we must advocate for peace is because the authoritarian, racist regime here in America has declared its intent to wage war on Southern California, the region of the country with the most undocumented immigrants. This alone would necessitate a further shift in what we are doing. We have started to document journalistically what is happening in our desert, beginning with attending four protests over the last three days for an article that we're preparing. We're going to continue doing this as ICE’s war against people of color ramps up, now that their budget has been so boosted by the “Big Beautiful Bill.” We’ve written polemics for years, but now it’s now to get out into the streets and document what’s happening today.
5. It is morally necessary to compare the current Trump regime to Germany in 1933. This is a new Nazi movement that has simply shifted the target from Jews to brown people.
I know this makes a lot of people—particularly those on this list and in this publishing company—very uncomfortable, but we are going to start regularly comparing what is happening today in America to what happened during the rise of the Nazis in Germany. We believe that this is a regime that literally hates brown people and wants to see them suffering, even dead. If our "provocative" rhetoric frightens you more than the reality of the evil that we're trying to document, then we won't miss you.
6. Given that the war zone is opening up in our backyard and Israel has seen such victories since Oct. 7, 2023, we are now shifting to a domestic- rather than foreign-policy focus.
While
will continue to write about Israel and Iran, particularly in his articles for The Algemeiner, the on-the-ground reality is clear now: The threat against Israel is not as severe as it was years ago. Israel has successfully gutted Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and now Iran itself. Regime change could happen any time now. Right now, it seems more important to write about domestic antisemitism (which will continue to rise as organized hatred rises more broadly) than to put in as much focus on Israel. Times have changed, and we're changing with them. The wars haven't been won yet, but Israel is over the hump now in dealing with the terrorists and terror regimes attacking them.7. We are doubling down on our supernatural investigations and explorations.
We have encountered multiple forms of demonic spirits in the last month. They appear to have originated with human beings seducing spirits, much as The Book of Enoch suggests. So as we write about human-rights abuses, protests, and marching fascism in Southern California, you can anticipate our engagement with this stuff to deepen as well. Don't be surprised if these subjects start intertwining more, too. As we drive around this part of the state to do investigative journalism, we will encounter spirits (primarily ghosts needing help crossing over) who will bother us. We'll take the time to learn more about what we encounter and report our findings back to you.
And let me just emphasize here, particularly for our new readers: We are not trying to scientifically prove any of this supernatural crap to you. It can’t really be done. (These often scary creatures bend and break the laws of nature, so our scientific methods are very limited here.) As the line goes, we're reporting: You decide. And if you want to ignore this aspect of our writing while appreciating others, we get it. You're certainly welcome to do that. We are a buffet here at GOTD. Pick up what you want. This one is likely a more acquired taste.
8. As the world grows darker, we need more joy and fun in escapist literature.
Of our three imprints, the ones we are most focused on growing right now will be
and . We have some more literary titles coming, but this category will not be as strong a priority moving forward. We've found that high-brow literature and the often prickly authors who write it are rarely worth the effort: publishing these books requires more work for much less reward. So in our own writing, as we pursue further creative turns both together and as solo writers, we will explore greater the genres of fantasy, science fiction, supernatural thrillers, and mysteries. Content will still continue at , but it will likely not be the area in which we grow as a publishing company in the coming years.We suppose this isn't quite the provocation that the other points are, so to spice it up a little, we'll just say this: We encourage authors to more pursue "middle-brow" and "genre" writing that aims to engage with broad audiences, rather than "high-brow" and “literary” writing for a small, elite audience.
9. Traditional professional ethics must guide the Artificial Intelligence Age.
We advocate for ethical AI use, and we’ve begun offering instructional articles on how to employ this new technology in creative work. We have begun calling for writers, creatives, and everyone else to start educating themselves in AI. However, in using this new tool, we must do so in an ethical manner. Plagiarism is still plagiarism, whether you copy and paste from a term paper written by someone else, a Wikipedia article, a blog post, or a chatbot. Copying something AI has written and saying you wrote it is unethical. And we hope it goes without saying that we will never publish anything not written entirely by a human.
Then how can writers get around this and utilize AI ethically? Simple: Use it only to plan or disclose your AI use. If you use an AI to help you create, then disclose that. This isn't really necessary with AI images because it's already acknowledged with them that AI is helping. But with writing and other potential mediums, this isn't clear, so it should be disclosed. Using AI to help brainstorm ideas or research is entirely ethical. It’s just a turbo-charged form of reading books or googling to learn more. Whether AI use itself is ethical, given the methods of training these LLMs and the amount of electricity and water needed to use them—that’s a new question, and it's very much open for debate. There are a lot of critiques of AI that are legitimate, and AI advocates like us should grapple with them.
10. We advocate for the transcendence of dualism.
Life should not be either/or. It's both/and. We advocate for Meta-modernism, a style of thought suggesting that we should oscillate back and forth between modernism and postmodernism as a situation may demand.
Regrettably, Sally cannot pronounce this word correctly and is given to calling it “MAGA-Mormonism." If you hear this word in a podcast, please know that what we mean is “meta-modernism." If MAGA-Mormonism exists, we are in no way authorities on it and would instead defer to our pal
, an experienced authority on both the ideological movement and religion.
Someone shared a wise point on Notes recently that aligns with this concept:
In a nutshell, that is this publishing company.
Both sides are wrong.
Both sides are right.
There are further sides hidden whose voices are marginalized and silenced.
And we will provide a platform to challenge the “conventional wisdom” and the “common sense” that has so impaired progress in this country for generations.
11. Yes to Open Borders: We Hold Radical, Pro-Immigration Views.
Fifteen years ago, David enjoyed a great, extended conversation with the Cato Institute’s libertarian economist
which persuaded him to embrace a broad, capitalism-inspired approach to encouraging more immigration to America. At the time, Sally was engaged to an immigrant from Iraq and thus saw firsthand the great value which immigrants can bring to America.
We believe not just that undocumented immigrants should be protected from being sent to a concentration camp to be tortured, but that they should be put on a quick path to citizenship, and that America should essentially have an "open borders" policy where as many people who want to come to this country and work and become citizens as possible should be encouraged and supported in doing so. (And these two words do not mean “have no border security and let terrorists just flow on in.”)
This country was built on immigrants who wanted to make a new life. The first Swindles in this country apparently came over at Jamestown to work as lead smelters (how ironic given our current fascination with the impact of lead poisoning).
Some of Sally's relatives came over more recently, in the late 1920s, giving her a lifelong fascination with other cultures and a deep respect for immigrants and all the comfort and familiarity they must discard and adapt from. The Trump policy of purging America of immigrants and stopping more people from coming here is not just morally wrong, but practically and economically destructive (not unlike his horrific tariff obsessions) and painful to our sense of justice.
Immigrants are a net gain on the economy, and the cultures they bring here are uniquely valuable. After all, the more types of global cuisine we can order in a 45-minute radius, the fucking better, right? And that's just the most obvious tip of the iceberg of value that immigrants bring to this country.
OK, so if any of this sounds too scary or offensive to you, then by all means, please unsubscribe or remove yourself from our author roll. Likewise, if you feel that it resonates with you and you want to jump on board (new contributors are welcome. Go ahead and respond to any email, hit us up on Notes, or my open direct messages), then, as the YouTube kids say:
