How Not To Do Magic: A Magic Monday Addendum

[ecosophia]

Yet again, one of the classic ways to fail at magic is getting the ol' Hogwarts try.

One of my readers -- tip of the hat to Tunesmith -- brought to my attention another attempt by people on the leftward end of the occult scene to use magic to influence US politics. You can read about it here if you like; the short form is that the organizer gave the script for a simple (as in abject beginner-level) spell intended "to bind Donald Trump and all who abet him," and instructed participants to do the spell on every waning crescent moon. 

I discussed the problems with this kind of magic in a post on one of my old blogs, but the point deserves making again -- and this example of the species has an interesting feature some of my readers may want to know about. 

A surprising number of people seem to think that binding spells are exempt from the kind of blowback that tends to happen with curses. Not so; no magic, anywhere, is exempt from blowback. Whenever you do a magical working, the energies of that working are going to affect you as well as the target of the working. That's why spells for healing, blessing, and other good things are a good idea; the person for whom you do them benefits, and so do you. The underlying principle is what I call the Raspberry Jam Law: with magic, as with raspberry jam, you can't spread it on anything else without getting it all over your own hands. 

The blowback from a binding spell is quite simply that you bind yourself when you bind anyone else. (Tip of the archdruidical hat to Dewey, who commented to this effect in the original discussion.) If you keep this in mind and choose your intentions judiciously, you can do it and not have any troubles; for example, quite early in my magical training I did a very effective binding spell on a domestic abuser -- he stopped abusing his victim (and in fact dropped entirely out of her life), and accepting the same binding on myself was as acceptable as it was unnecessary. The intention in this spell wasn't done with any particular care, though, and I doubt the people who are hard at work doing it really want to bind their own tongues and works -- but that's what they've done. 

Still, there's another dimension to this particular epic fail. Er, folks -- 

NOTHING ON THE INTERNET IS PRIVATE. 

If you set up a magical working of this kind on a public blog, and get people to splash eager discussions of it all over other public internet spaces, guess what? People who disagree with your goals will find out about it. There are a lot of people in the alt-Right who are into occultism, and some of them know quite a bit about the subject. By splashing this all over the internet, the organizer of this project guaranteed that on every waning crescent from now until Trump finishes the second term he's probably going to get at this point, alt-Right occultists are going to gather and do their own magic to mess with the proposed spell. Since they already know the dates, the time, the intention, and every detail of the ritual, throwing a metaphysical monkey wrench into the gears is child's play -- especially since they won't be limited to the kind of simple magical working in which everyone can participate. 

All this is uncomfortably reminiscent of another failure along similar lines. Some years ago, when the late Isaac Bonewits was dying of cancer, people in the Neopagan community organized a so-called "Rolling Thunder" ritual to try to keep him alive. It was put together online in the same way as the working we're discussing, and it failed completely -- he died a few months after the working got going. Why? Bonewits was the opposite of an uncontroversial figure in the Neopagan scene; he was in fact very good at making enemies, and since the organizers of the working obligingly made sure that everyone knew exactly what the spell was that they were trying to use, those people who hated Bonewits' guts (and there was no shortage of those) had everything they needed to mess with the spell. I don't know for a fact that that's what happened, but that's my best guess. 

And it's my best guess, in the present case, that blowback from the working we're discussing may be one of the factors behind the really quite impressive failure of the Democratic Party to learn any of the lessons of its 2016 defeat or come up with a meaningful alternative to Trumpismo on the march. I wonder how many would-be anti-Trump activists have systematically placed a binding on their own tongues and works by plunging into this misbegotten project -- with, no doubt, the genial help of alt-Right mages.

What a flustered cluck. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

OK, so how about I do a healing and blessing spell aimed at a person who has hurt me. Perhaps abused me in childhood. I feel that taking the high road is the best tack to help this person and to help myself. But ya know I really don't like this person. How well will this working go? Can and will my will and focus be able to override my personal feelings?

[ecosophia]

Magic doesn't work well when the will is divided, so I don't recommend this. Instead, direct your healing and blessing spells to those you can heal and bless with a whole heart -- preferably those who have given their consent to your working magic on their behalf.

[(Anonymous)]

Like the rolling thunder for Isaac Bonewits, it's a totally incompetent spell --- if you include the publicity and the inevitable counterspells, a whole world of fail. I wonder if the backlash will create a rise in popularity for Trump, and/or enable him to get more of his agenda through Congress?

[ecosophia]

Incompetent? You bet -- vaguely phrased, diffuse in intention, and contradictory in its symbolism. As for the backlash, we'll see...

[peristaltor]

So she bound herself with her binding.

Interesting, but if I send this to my friend who has had two binding parties so far, we won't be talking in the future. She was as invested in Hillary (The Candidate™ whose logo pointed to the right!) as she was dismissive of Sanders and anyone (including her husband) who supported him.

Come to think of it, I wonder how much of her attitude predetermined the outcome?

[ecosophia]

Ding! We have a winner. Yes, exactly.

[(Anonymous)]

The original post you linked to was posted a little over a year ago, February 20th 2017. It was the last blog post that Mr. Michael M. Hughes posted since that time. He had maintained his blog, apparently consistently since 2007. Indeed, it appears that his own tongue has been bound good and proper...

[ecosophia]

True enough.

[(Anonymous)]

Idea for alt-right mages: do a working to amplify the blow back for the "do no harm to any human soul". If Trump loses the next election, after all, it will harm people, so they've now bound themselves motto to let it happen.

That's just one of several thoughts I've had. This could be quite fun....

[ecosophia]

I'm sure the alt-Right mages working on this are having a field day. The option that occurred to me at once was to exploit the internal contradiction in the symbolism, between the intent of binding, which relates to stasis, and the Tarot trump the spell uses, The Tower, which embodies the opposite of stasis. It would be practically child's play for a competent mage to turn the energies of The Tower against the working itself, so that the binding becomes the thing that's shattered by the Tower's mighty fall.

Of course there are many other ways to go about it, and your thought of aiming the blowback is also highly elegant.

[(Anonymous)]

It's worth mentioning that there are Traditionalist Catholic groups who are fully aware of the curses being laid on president Trump and so regularly do their own binding spells-- er, binding prayers-- to counter magic directed against him.

-Steve

[ecosophia]

True enough. There are also vast numbers of ordinary conservative Christians who pray for Trump's well-being when they kneel beside their beds every night to pray. Getting through that kind of countering momentum is a heartbreaking task for a mage, even a competent one using well-designed rituals.

[(Anonymous)]

Somebody suggested above that Hughes hasn't been active in the past year; not so-- his platform has changed, and it's linked from his website. Here is the one year update: https://medium.com/@michaelmhughes/binding-trump-looking-back-on-one-year-of-magicresistance-and-looking-ahead-46c1f46a264c

Shortly after the original working, he posted a response to common concerns about it that troubled me:https://medium.com/@michaelmhughes/art-activism-magic-answers-to-questions-about-the-mass-ritual-to-bind-donald-trump-11e52f94c23e

I'm troubled because in the post of the original working, Hughes acknowledged the existence of blowback as a thing, even if he was apparently mistaken about it not occurring in this case. But the follow-up postakes me suspect that he is, in fact, aware of the blowback from binding but used devious language to hide this from inexperienced people who won't know netter.

From the first post: "It is understood, in this context, that binding does not generate the potential negative blowback from cursing/hexing/crossing, nor does it harm the caster’s karma." (No word on the Blowback that one would get from a binding, in other words.)

From the response post:
"[QUESTION] My Wiccan friends tell me this spell is dangerous. They say that anything negative you put out comes back to harm you threefold.

[HUGHES] Ah, yes, the 'Three-fold Law' or the 'Law of Return.' It is a core belief of many Wiccans, witches, and pagans.

[QUESTION] But you’re not afraid of it?

[HUGHES] Actually, no, because I’m not Wiccan. But not every witch accepts it as relevant anyway. It originated not in some ancient European coven hundreds of years ago, but in High Magic’s Aid, a 1949 novel by Gerald Gardner, one of the inventors of modern witchcraft.

[QUESTION] Oh.

[HUGHES] What’s your next question?"


I find this extremely disingenuous and willfully, dangerously misleading-- he pointedly discounts Three-fold return as though it fully addresses the issue of blowback, and clearly intentionally leaves crickets where it comes to the issue of singlefold return.

In other words, he seems to be consciously leading beginners into negative blowback that they won't expect, to boost the power of his working. Perhaps the binding spell won't affect the Karma of others performing it, but given this deception I do wonder whether it might affect his own.

--Tunesmith

[ecosophia]

It's a very common fallacy in modern pop occultism that traditional ethical rules only apply to those who believe in them. That's as silly as insisting that the law of gravity only applies to those who believe in it. As I noted in the Ecosophia post linked above, I've known a certain number of occultists who insist on this, and their lives are smoking craters.

The laws of magic are what they are, and they don't care whether you believe in them or not. The rule of threefold return is a good working approximation of the way my Raspberry Jam Law works in practice, and those who insist that it can't happen to them -- well, they get to deal with the consequences of their actions, whether they believe that happens or not.

[(Anonymous)]

It occures to me that the first sanity check for a spell might be something close to: if I replace the target's name (symbolism, hair, image, what have you) with my own would I still wish the spell to be effective? It seems to me that if you wouldn't that is a pretty strong sign to stop and think very carefully about what you are doing.

I cannot help but imagine a person like the author should to some degree be capable of perceiving the problematic nature of this working. Seems very unfortunate.

Wasn't there a comment recently in MM about curses being based on a truth that the target if liable to try ingoring, and malicious spells being built around lies? I will look it up in the morning, anyway it seems to me that the disclaimer about there being no blowback and all such is somewhere in the murky territory amidst those two. I mean wishing failure, and all that, assuming harmful intent, name calling too tedious to list. It is basically a revenge dream. Then laughing as a 'ground' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y , creepy.

I will say that I don't understand the details about the importance of secrecy, it is still strange to me that aspect of the vunerability of a magical working.

I cannot help but suspect that the author of this working would be umpteen times more intelligent and clear thinking on a topic sans Trump. The degree to which the left has been dumb-struck by this political shift is chilling.

Chilling.

Ray Wharton.

[ecosophia]

The point about secrecy can be understood easily enough if you simply shift it into another context. If you were commanding an army in wartime, would you let the other side know your plans? If you were playing poker, would you show the other players the cards in your hand? Of course not, unless you want to lose. If the other side knows what you plan to do, they can find the vulnerable spots in your plans and mess you over.

The same thing applies here, because there's a comparable conflict between mages who hate Trump and mages who support him. Since the person who put this working together has published all the details right there on the internet, alt-Right mages can work magic aimed at his spell to disrupt it, and that's much, much easier if you know the details of the spell, the times and dates when it's being performed, and so on. If he'd maintained the secrecy that's usual in such things, the other side wouldn't have any of those advantages.

Blowback (from Fuzzy)

[(Anonymous)]

Hello! Can the blowback affect people who weren’t in on the original spell? I’m thinking of a couple of liberal web sites whose commenters have become more and more deranged since Trump won the presidential election.

Re: Blowback (from Fuzzy)

[ecosophia]

I'm honestly not sure what's causing that. What some people on the right are calling Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real thing, and frankly rather spooky.

Raspberry Jam Principle

[(Anonymous)]

I have come to the conclusion, that the Raspberry Jam Principle does not only apply in magic, but in other endeavors, too, like arts and handicrafts. My experience was that doing things with my own hands in an analogue fashion has different repercussions on my personality than doing things with a computer. Interestingly, using modern computers is, in regards to creativity, less satisfying than using computers from the 80s and 90s.

Re: Raspberry Jam Principle

[ecosophia]

It applies to everything. I simply stress its magical applications because that's what I teach.

Alas.

[andrewbwatt.com]

It's also probably worth saying that a working against the ruler of one's own country, whether you like that ruler or not, is rarely a good idea. The power to make decisions that affect millions of people at a pen-stroke is rarely well-exercised under any circumstances; trying to curse that power magically, when it has secular rulership over you and all your friends and neighbors, strikes me as folly.

Far better, it seems to me, is to create workings that enable good government — that leaders recognize and welcome people of sound judgement and honest character into their circle of advisors; that accurate information reaches the councils of government in a timely manner; that accurate information is acted upon with the appropriate balance of speed and comity; that corrupt officials are exposed and removed; that elected and appointed leaders encounter and recognize their best vote-option in a series of lucky encounters; that the courts operate within a framework of justice tempered with mercy; that unnecessary violence by officials of the state is reduced in frequency; that laws are enacted which promote the general welfare, and that they are fairly enforced.

Any one of those is a reasonable target for a large amount of spellwork, each of which could be more precisely targeted and timed and directed; and all of which taken together have a tendency to bring about great benefits to the working, the worker, and the community in which they live.

Jason Miller, in his recent book on spell crafting, wrote something that resonates with me a great deal: he said "Magic is a rhizome". For those who don't know, rhizomes are plants that live beneath the ground, sending up stalks and shoots wherever convenient. They get into all the nooks and crannies, and spread both horizontally and vertically; you might kill the plant above ground, but it will always reappear some distance away. Magic does seem to be like that — it gets into all the nooks and crannies of our own lives first, then into the lives of our friends, and finally in the targets; it seems to wind up in the water, in the air, in the ground...

But in the framework of the Raspberry Jam (isn't Raspberry a rhizome?) Principle, it strikes me that having a more honest and fair and smooth relationship with my government is a good thing; and chances are that it is also good for my friends, and it's also good for my community. As a set of general guidelines (and not a specific spell), it strikes me as a good thing all around.

Re: Alas.

[ecosophia]

Exactly. All those would have positive blowback for every participant, and benefit the country and its people. You could even do carefully considered bindings -- binding elected officials to obey the laws of the land, for example, or binding law enforcement officers from abusing their authority -- and if the people doing the working gave it a material anchor in their own lives by following the laws more precisely and refusing to abuse whatever authority they themselves have, that could be extremely effective.

The skeleton in the closet of the political Left, as I've noted before, is that they're desperately looking for an excuse to hate, abuse, and destroy someone, while still feeling good about themselves. The contemporary cult of mandatory niceness is as stifling as the Victorian cult of mandatory sexlessness, and the result is the same -- massive hypocrisy attempting to paper over the inevitable return of the repressed.

[(Anonymous)]

It failed because no unflattering photo of Trump could be found (come on, that one's *awesome*). Translating the serious part of the bad joke: that the snowflakes get viscerally shaken by Trump's body language shows how out of touch with normal people they are. (Disclaimer: not Trumpist, also not stupid.)

[(Anonymous)]

I was with the Dianics in the early 2000s, taking a ritual-priestess training course, and we devoted a daylong class to magical ethics, focusing mainly on healing and binding. Our teachers were careful to inform us of this very thing, that a binding binds both parties, but of course we were talking primarily about binding rapists and abusers, as with your experience.

It's really disheartening to hear that something so basic is forgotten or ignored--is it that they think their cause so righteous that there can't possibly be any negative consequences? This spell strikes me as more political theater, a la the Yippies, than a genuine magical working, but as we all know, just because you're playing at magic doesn't mean you get an exemption from consequences.

--Sister Crow

[ecosophia]

Good to hear that your teachers were competent and knowledgeable! It's an interesting question, though, whether the ignorance of basic magical principles that drives workings like the one we're discussing comes out of belief in the supposed righteousness of their cause, as you've suggested, or from some other source.

Fuzzy Again

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder how voodoo-ists avoid blowback? A couple of people from Louisiana have told me there’s a brisk business in hexing.

Re: Fuzzy Again

[ecosophia]

You'd have to ask them. The religions and magical systems of the African diaspora have their own subtle and sophisticated ways of dealing with magic. My sole contact with that end of occultism is via traditional Southern conjure, which I studied some years ago with Cat Yronwode; in the conjure scene, there's a great deal of disagreement between people who use curses and people who don't, and even between subtler distinctions -- for example, there are people who consider it appropriate to use mirror spells to throw somebody's bad work back at them, and people who feel that this comes too close to a line they aren't willing to cross. Of the people I know who use conjure, though, the ones who maintain a high ethical standard in their work are reliably happier, healthier, and more prosperous than the ones who don't, so blowback does seem to be an issue there too.

Good Heavens

[(Anonymous)]

Do these mages not understand how dangerous this is for non-magical people? Putting curses on the internet is a standing invitation to the devout believers of many different denominations that, just as they always suspected, The Devil is real and among us and Must be Fought by any and all means possible. Think of the probable innocent casualties, anyone different, "weird", unpopular and so on, and then the fact that crusades are nearly always coopted by their paymasters.

It is clear that I had better add appeals for good government and wisdom among the leadership to my own daily devotions.

Re: Good Heavens

[ecosophia]

An excellent point. I've noticed that an astonishing number of people seem to suffer from the delusion that nobody notices what they do online, and can't grasp the possibility that their actions could have consequences...

Fuzzy Again

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry; I’m like the Elephant’s Child. You have mentioned laws of magic, comparing them to the laws of physics. Is there a list of these laws and if so, where can I read it?

I enjoy your site. Where else can I chat with a Druid?

Re: Fuzzy Again

[ecosophia]

I don't know of a list of the laws of magic. Most of the discussions of them I've seen have been in the private correspondence lessons of magical orders.

Fuzzy Redux

[(Anonymous)]

Oops, I meant to type “ sites,” sorry.

[helen_in_oz]

I read this post when it first came out.
Earlier that day I listened to a Time Soup podcast featuring that very man.
Whoa!
He went into some of his childhood which included some pretty bad experiences with rather unpleasant entities.
He also mentioned being drawn to the dark side of things.
The topic of the discussion was actually about Tarot and although he had some interesting things to say, some of it was a bit snobbish and somewhat discouraging to a just starting out beginner like me.
My final impression of him, was not particularly positive.
Then not long after I read this post.
From never having heard of him, 2 instances in one day.
Hmmm
For anyone interested in listening Google his name and tune soup

[helen_in_oz]

Rune soup, not tune

[(Anonymous)]

Didn't you say something about this awhile back? Someone beating their heads into a wall screaming Trump, Truom , Trump

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amp/secret-service-responds-reports-shots-fired-white-house-n852921

Hastur, the king in yellow!

[ecosophia]

Any day now Cassilda will be heard running through the streets of Washington DC, shouting, "Not unto us, O Trump! Not unto us!"

How not to do magic

[(Anonymous)]

What I know about spell casting would probably fit into a fortune teller’s teacup. But the raspberry jam image is interesting as well as the comparison to rhizomes.

An earlier commenter asked if raspberries were rhizomes. Raspberries aren’t rhizome plants (they are members of the rose family) but they do have the habit of producing something called suckers which are sprouts that pop up from the base of the plant and can develop their own root system. If you want them to spread, just carefully dig them up and replant elsewhere. However if you are trying to get your plants to produce berries, you want to remove the suckers as they will pull strength from the main plant and reduce production.

Using that as an analogy, I wonder if an ill-conceived spell (not properly worded, focused or what have you) might also produce unwanted ‘side shoots’ draining off the energy of the spell reducing its intended effect or causing unintended effects either on the caster (the raspberry jam effect) or on others in the vicinity not the direct target of the spell? A badly cast spell could well be the gift that keeps on giving whether you want it to or not, at least until the energy finally dissipates. How long can a spell or curse last?

JLfromNH

Re: How not to do magic

[ecosophia]

You know more about spellcasting than you think, if it occurs to you to use ecological metaphors. It's been my experience that by and large, if you apply concepts out of ecology to magic, you'll rarely go astray.

Which is to say: yes, exactly.

As for the duration of a spell, spells are information rather than energy, so they don't run down like a battery-powered bunny. To use Dion Fortune's useful metaphor, a magical working establishes a "track in space" that will tend to draw moving things into its trajectory, and the more things end up following that trajectory, the deeper the "rut" and the more persistent the effect. Every spell you cast is therefore a gift that keeps on giving; whether or not it affects its target, it affects you, and will keep on affecting you indefinitely.

If you decide you made a mistake, you're kind of screwed; you can neutralize the effect by doing several spells with the opposite intention, but the original "track in space" is still going to be there, pulling at you and locking up some part of your capacity to do anything else. That's why it's so important to think through your workings before you do them, use divination as well as reason and ordinary common sense to make sure it's a good idea, and aim at precise, limited goals.

The Trump binding spell

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, no wonder my ears have been burning!

As a longtime fan and personal friend of JMG (who helped me enormously in my magical journey), I am happy to discuss and answer questions about the spell I created and all of the criticism here, which I find largely misplaced, if well-intentioned. Consider this an AMA, if that's allowed :-)

Suffice it to say, there are many ways to approach magic, many definitions of magic, and many sets of rules embraced by many people. For one example, let's take secrecy. I've been called all sorts of nasty names by mages because I chose to make this spell public, violating some cardinal "rule" of magic as explicated by our old pal Levi.

Well, it just so happens that some pretty common magic violates that rule. Let's look at cursing, for example. It is common among many forms of indigenous magic to make the target aware of the magic done against him/her. In fact, that's what contributes in large part to its effectiveness.

So yes, I made this spell public. It has been embraced by many in the Pagan/witch/magic communities and blasted by others. Those who have embrace the spell, and there are thousands, do it every waning crescent moon. Is it working? Well, that's always the question, isn't it? I'd say in many respects it has bound the current occupant of the White House fairly well. Look at the resignations, look at the Mueller investigation, the raid on his lawyer's office, and so on.

As for the alt-right magicians, I laugh at them, as I do the HOGD Grand Poobah David Griffin, who has labeled me a "black magician" and continues to lie about me at every opportunity.

So, if JMG agrees, I'm happy to answer any questions and explain my magical philosophy.

Oh, and I find it funny that some people commented I was "bound" by my bad magic just because my blog wasn't updated. I've been working on a two books, one of which contains even more political magic and will be published in September. So much for being "bound" :-)

Michael M. Hughes

Re: The Trump binding spell

[ecosophia]

Michael, you have the right to make your own choices, of course, even when those involve the practice of malicious magic. I consider what you're doing misguided, certain to fail, and even more certain to blow up in your face, but time will show who's right about that.

Failing to take your opponents seriously is not necessarily a good plan, by the way, as that habit on your end of the political spectrum played a major role in putting Trump in the White House, but here again, you have the right to make your own mistakes.

I do have one question, though. Did you at any point consider doing a benefic working -- a working to restore American democracy, say, or to revitalize the Democratic Party -- instead of a malicious and destructive one? I ask this because I've noticed (as discussed in this essay among others) that a lot of people on the leftward end of the political spectrum turn to malicious magic by preference, even in situations where something with a benefic focus would be far more clearly justified. It's a curious pattern, and suggests to me that the old saw "what you hate, you imitate" may be more than usually relevant here.

A separate post

[(Anonymous)]

JMG, perhaps it was a bit naive of me, but I am the one who contacted Michael M Hughes to let him know that you had written a stringently critical post about the Trump binding spell. It was my hope that given the particular admiration for you that he has publicly expressed more than once, he might, might, might be willing to reflect and adjust his point of view in some way. I still naively hope this, in fact-- as I see it, there are a great many people who are getting into something they don't really understand the bad consequences of, and there is still an opportunity to avoid worse pain and heartache if Michael were to come to a different understanding of the situation.

Michael suggested above having a sort of "AMA" here for your readers. This post is quite old at this point and nobody except us is likely to actually see these comments, in the present tense, at least. It's your virtual drawing room here, of course, to do with as you see fit. But may I suggest that it might be instructive to start a new post with a conversation with Michael as its subject?

[(Anonymous)]

Continuing my previous comment, for which I accidentally hit the "post" button too soon:

I feel that such a conversation could serve three purposes.

(1) it could help advertise the blowback dangers to people who are considering performing the spell;

(2) it could be a useful exercise in good rhetoric, a recent important theme over on the main blog;

(3) there is always the chance you might influence Michael to change his perspective still. People are going to get hurt here.

Best regards,
Tunesmith

[ecosophia]

We'll see if he responds to my comment. If so, an online conversation might be worth trying, as a teaching opportunity for those who are willing to learn.

Hey, I'm not anonymous anymore

[michaelmhughes]

Okay, JMG I'll leave it up to you as to how you want to do this Q&A or whatever you want to call it. If you or any of the others want to explicate the issues you have with the binding spell, I am happy to answer them individually or as a list. It's your sandbox, so just let me know.

I would prefer to avoid political questions, as I think that might derail the discussion of the purely magical aspects that are being so roundly criticized. But again, I'll be happy to follow your lead.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Re: Hey, I'm not anonymous anymore

[ecosophia]

Duly noted! In the next day or so I'll post something here on my Dreamwidth journal, setting out my critique of your project in a form that should make it easier for you to respond. I have four basic criticisms, each of which can be developed in some detail, and it may be helpful to set them out in detail one at a time so that all sides know what exactly is being discussed.

I'd also prefer to leave the political dimension out of it, for two reasons. First, of course, it's irrelevant to the magical dimension -- whether or not Donald Trump is the evilest evil that ever eviled has no bearing on whether a working to hinder him is competently planned and performed or not. Second, people on both sides of the current political standoff tend to melt down completely when they have to encounter someone who disagrees with their personal political stance, and listening to shrieking tantrums gets boring very quickly.

That said, there's one aspect of politics that will have to be brought into it -- those aspects of the political situation that provide evidence for the effectiveness, or lack of same, of your project. You cited the various resignations, the Mueller investigation, and so on as evidence your project is working. I'll have some things to say about that same point as well, of course, and that will also require citing evidence from the political news.

If that's acceptable, we can proceed.