Month: May 2026

The Self Sam Harris Couldn’t Make Disappear

This morning, I quit a meditation before the timer expired.

That is not unusual. I have done it before. But today felt different. Today it did not feel like impatience, laziness, or resistance. It felt like clarity.

I was listening to Sam Harris’s daily meditation in the Waking Up app. Once again, he used the finger snap. Once again, he tried to direct attention toward the familiar exercise: look for the looker, notice the absence of the self, recognize that consciousness contains appearances but no one standing behind them.

And once again, I found myself thinking: I do not buy this.

Not anymore.

Maybe I never fully did.

I have benefited from Sam Harris. I have listened to him for years. He has helped me think more clearly about religion, politics, violence, free will, consciousness, and the dangers of dogmatic certainty. I remain grateful for much of his work.

But gratitude is not agreement.

And this morning, as the meditation unfolded, I found myself pushing back against one of his central claims: the idea that when we look closely enough, we discover there is no self.

That may be true if by “self” we mean an immortal soul, a supernatural essence, or a tiny ghost sitting behind the eyes pulling levers.

But I do not mean that.

I do not believe in that kind of self either.

The self I am talking about is natural, embodied, brain-based, conscious, and alive.

And the more I think about it, the more I believe meditation itself may prove that such a self exists.

The Self That Meditates

Meditation is often described as simple observation. Thoughts arise. Sounds arise. Sensations arise. Emotions arise. Everything appears in consciousness.

There is truth in that.

But meditation, at least as Sam Harris teaches it, is not merely passive observation. It is activity.

He says to notice the breath.

Then he says to look at an object.

Then he says to notice the space around the object.

Then he says to shift attention.

Then he says to look for the one who is looking.

Then he says to begin again when distracted.

That is not random appearance.

That is instruction, understanding, intention, direction, evaluation, correction, and choice.

Something hears the instruction.
Something understands it.
Something directs attention.
Something notices distraction.
Something gets irritated by the finger snap.
Something decides whether to continue or stop.

That something is not nothing.

Call it the organism.
Call it the person.
Call it the embodied mind.
Call it the conscious brain.
Call it Richard.

But do not tell me it is not a self.

When I am told to look at an object and I look at the object, I have found the looker. The looker is not hiding. The looker is engaged in the act of looking.

When I shift attention to peripheral vision, the self has not disappeared. The self has followed an instruction.

When I decide I have had enough and stop the meditation before the timer expires, that decision does not float in from nowhere. It arises from this life, this brain, this history, this irritation, this judgment.

It arises from me.

Consciousness as Self

The deeper question is this: why should the self have to be something separate from consciousness?

Maybe that is the mistake.

Maybe the self is not a little thing inside consciousness.

Maybe consciousness itself is the self.

I do not have Sam Harris’s consciousness.
I do not have Richard Dawkins’s consciousness.
I do not have Christopher Hitchens’s consciousness.
I have mine.

This field of awareness is not generic. It belongs to this life.

It is shaped by my body, my memories, my family, my dogs, my work, my deconstruction, my writing, my land, my failures, my griefs, my mornings, my aging, my choices.

My consciousness is not interchangeable with anyone else’s.

That seems important.

If someone says, “There is no self,” I want to ask: then whose consciousness is this?

Not as a clever trick. As a serious question.

Experience does not occur nowhere. It occurs from a point of view. It is tied to a living body. It is shaped by memory and biology. It has continuity. It has preference. It has concern. It has resistance.

This consciousness is not Sam’s. It is not yours. It is mine.

And that “mineness” is not an illusion in any ordinary sense.

It is what I mean by self.

The Controller Behind the Eyes

There is another phrase often used to dismiss the self: there is no little controller behind the eyes.

I understand the objection. If by “little controller” we mean a magical homunculus sitting inside the skull, then yes, I agree. There is no tiny man inside my head watching the movie of my life and issuing commands.

But there is something behind the eyes.

The brain.

And the mind is what the brain does.

Without the brain, there is no personal consciousness. When the brain dies, consciousness dies. When the brain changes, the self changes. Injury, disease, exhaustion, memory loss, medication, fear, trauma, age, and sleep all affect the person because they affect the brain.

So perhaps the old phrase is not entirely wrong.

There is a controller behind the eyes.

It is not supernatural.
It is not separate from the body.
It is not perfect.
It is not in total control.
It does not choose every thought before it appears.

But it does regulate, direct, remember, evaluate, inhibit, attend, compare, imagine, and act.

That is control.

Limited control, yes.
Conditioned control, yes.
Embodied control, yes.

But real control.

A driver does not control the weather, the road, the engine’s physics, or the behavior of every other driver. But we do not conclude there is no driver. We understand that the driver operates within conditions.

The self operates within conditions too: genetics, memory, habit, culture, emotion, fatigue, fear, desire, and circumstance.

But operating within conditions is not the same as not existing.

Why the Finger Snap No Longer Works for Me

The finger snap is supposed to interrupt something. It is supposed to cut through the illusion, perhaps giving the meditator a glimpse of awareness before thought reassembles the familiar self.

But for me, the finger snap has lost whatever usefulness it may have once had.

Now it feels like a trick.

Not a dangerous trick. Not a dishonest trick necessarily. But a technique that asks me to interpret a moment of interruption as metaphysical insight.

A snap happens.
The nervous system reacts.
Attention jolts.
Thought pauses.

And then I am supposed to conclude something profound about the nonexistence of the self.

But why?

The fact that my nervous system can be startled does not prove there is no self. It proves I have a nervous system.

The fact that thought can pause does not prove there is no self. It proves thought can pause.

The fact that attention can shift suddenly does not prove there is no self. It proves attention can shift suddenly.

In my case, the snap now reveals something quite different. It reveals continuity.

I remember the previous snaps.
I recognize the pattern.
I anticipate the move.
I feel irritation.
I judge the method unhelpful.
I decide to stop.

That is not the disappearance of self.

That is selfhood in action.

Dawkins, Hitchens, and Permission to Trust My Own Mind

I have also thought today about Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, two thinkers who helped me during my own deconstruction.

Neither man, so far as I can tell, built his life around meditation.

Dawkins, in conversation with Sam Harris, reportedly tried the guided meditation exercise and disliked it. His reaction was not mystical awe. It was more like: I followed the instructions, but I do not see the point.

That matters to me.

Not because Dawkins is an authority I must obey. I have spent too much of my life recovering from authority-based thinking to simply replace pastors with public intellectuals.

But Dawkins’s reaction reminds me that a serious, rational, secular person can encounter meditation and remain unconvinced.

Hitchens died before the Waking Up app existed, so it would be unfair to claim he rejected it specifically. But I find it hard to imagine Hitchens submitting patiently to “look for the looker” as a final revelation about the human condition. His path was argument, language, wit, memory, history, literature, conversation, and moral clarity.

Dawkins and Hitchens woke up in their own ways.

They did not need a finger snap.

And perhaps neither do I.

I Am Not Rejecting Awareness

I want to be clear about what I am not saying.

I am not saying meditation is bad.

I am not saying no one benefits from it.

I am not saying Sam Harris is foolish.

I am not saying the Waking Up app has no value.

I am not saying I have learned nothing from it.

I am saying something more personal:

This particular practice may no longer be helping me.

That is enough.

I do not need to turn that into a universal conclusion. I do not need to build a campaign against meditation. I do not need to prove that everyone else is wrong.

I only need to be honest about my own experience.

And my honest experience is this: the daily meditation has begun to feel repetitive, irritating, and philosophically unpersuasive.

I no longer feel awakened by it.

I feel interrupted by it.

Other Forms of Presence

The deeper truth is that I already have practices of attention.

I write.

I sit at my desk early in the morning.

I walk.

I listen to the dogs.

I work on cabins.

I notice the weather.

I read.

I question.

I watch my own mind argue, resist, grieve, remember, and revise.

I build.

I doubt.

I pay attention to ordinary life.

Those are not inferior forms of awareness.

For me, they may be better.

There is a kind of presence in walking the runway without headphones.

There is presence in drinking coffee before daylight and noticing what thought is doing.

There is presence in writing a sentence and then realizing the sentence is not yet true.

There is presence in feeding dogs, carrying lumber, watching light move across the trees, or sitting quietly without turning the moment into a lesson.

Maybe I do not need to “look for the looker.”

Maybe I need to keep living honestly as the looker.

The Self I Am Willing to Defend

So here is where I have landed, at least for today.

I do not believe in an eternal soul.

I do not believe in a supernatural essence.

I do not believe in a little ghost behind the eyes.

But I do believe there is a self.

The self is the conscious life of the brain-body system.

The self is this particular field of awareness.

The self is the embodied person who remembers, attends, chooses, resists, loves, regrets, acts, and dies.

The self is not separate from the brain.

The self is what the brain does when the brain produces a conscious person.

When the brain lives, the self lives.

When the brain changes, the self changes.

When the brain dies, the self dies.

That is not mystical.

That is not religious.

That is not crude.

That is real enough.

Closing

This morning, Sam Harris snapped his fingers.

And I did not awaken to the absence of self.

I awakened to the presence of one.

A tired, questioning, irritated, conscious, brain-based self who had followed the instructions long enough and finally said:

Enough.

Not out of avoidance.

Out of honesty.

And perhaps honesty is its own form of waking up.

The Self in the Dental Chair – Why I Am Not Trying to Disappear

Yesterday morning, I spent about three hours in Dr. Wallace’s dental chair.

The original plan, at least as I understood it, was for her to place a crown on one of my upper right teeth. But as dental work often goes, the plan changed once she got inside the real situation.

She also filled a tooth on the upper left side. Then she turned her attention back to the upper right tooth — the one intended for the crown. She numbed the area, ground the tooth down, and prepped it as much as she could. But she was not satisfied that it was quite ready for the permanent crown. As I understood her, she did not think she had gone deep enough into the gum area to permanently set the crown the way it needed to be set.

So the permanent crown was delayed.

Instead, she prepared and placed a temporary tooth on the upper right tooth — the crown tooth — while we wait for the next step.

I did not understand every technical detail. I did not need to.

That is one of the strange things about sitting in a dental chair. You are awake. You are conscious. You are listening. You are participating in your own life. But at the same time, you are surrendered in a very practical way. Someone else has the tools. Someone else has the training. Someone else is looking into a part of your body you cannot see for yourself.

Toward the end of the visit, Dr. Wallace explained what she thought we needed to do over the next few months. She went into detail. She laid out the plan. She spoke as a professional who knows her field and cares about the person in the chair.

And I said something like, “Well, my life is in your hands. I trust you. You’re the expert here.”

I meant it lightly, but I also meant it.

She smiled, or at least responded in that familiar way people do when they know where the conversation is going.

“You know what I’m going to say,” she said.

I told her to say whatever she wanted.

And she said, “Your life is in God’s hands.”

There it was.

The sentence I have heard in one form or another for most of my life.

Your life is in God’s hands.

I did not argue with her. I did not challenge her. I did not turn a dental appointment into a theological debate. I love Dr. Mary Wallace. We have a wonderful relationship. She has always treated me with kindness, skill, and care. She is a believer, and from what I have heard her say over the years, her view of life seems to sit close to the world I came out of — the Southern Baptist fundamentalist world where God is sovereign, life belongs to him, and every human moment is finally interpreted through divine ownership.

But as I sat there, numb and tired, I noticed something inside me.

Not anger.

Not ridicule.

Not even disagreement exactly.

More like clarity.

Because I had spent the early morning struggling again with Sam Harris and his Daily Meditation. I have used the Waking Up app for quite a while now, and I still find much of it valuable. I often save Sam’s short “Moments.” Many of them land well. They interrupt the day in a helpful way.

But the Daily Meditation has become harder for me.

Too often, the session moves beyond simple attention, breathing, noticing, and returning. It becomes a lesson in Sam’s deeper claim that there is no self. Thoughts appear. Sensations appear. Emotions appear. But when we look for the one who is looking, Sam says we cannot find anyone there.

No rider on the horse.

No thinker behind the thought.

No self.

And this morning, as has happened many mornings before, I found myself not meditating but arguing.

Who is being asked to follow the breath?

Who is paying close attention?

Who heard the instruction?

Who decided to sit down in the chair at 3:00 a.m.?

Who is responsible for the day ahead?

Who went to Marvin’s yesterday and decided not to buy the pre-built steps for $89 but to buy the materials and build them himself for the cabin down the runway?

If there is no self, who is living this life?

I understand part of what Sam is saying. I do not think there is a tiny ghost hidden behind my eyes, pulling levers and operating Richard like a machine. I do not think there is a little captain sitting somewhere inside my skull, separate from the body, separate from the brain, separate from experience.

But I do think there is a self.

I am a self.

Donna is a self.

Keith, my new next-door neighbor, is a self.

Brandon, who is renting our first East Hollow cabin, is a self.

Dustin and Chelsea, who have moved their cabin onto one of our East Hollow leased lots, are selves.

Each person is a separate, living, embodied center of experience. Each has a history, a memory, a body, a temperament, a pattern of choices, a web of relationships, a private inwardness no one else can fully occupy.

We can call the self a process. I am fine with that.

But a process is not nothing.

A river is a process, but it is still a river.

A family is a process, but it is still a family.

Oak Hollow Cabins is a process — land, roads, cabins, water access, agreements, work, mistakes, hopes, people moving in and making lives there — but it is still Oak Hollow.

So why should Richard disappear just because he is also a process?

That is where I find myself parting ways with Sam Harris. He may be right to question the illusion of a fixed, separate, unchanging observer behind consciousness. But I think he overstates the case when he says there is no self.

Maybe the more careful statement is this:

There is no ghostly little owner of consciousness hidden behind experience. But there is a real self — the living person whose consciousness this is.

That seems closer to reality.

My consciousness is not Keith’s consciousness. Donna’s consciousness is not mine. Her life is not mine. She grew up in her own family. She made her own choices. She became a special education teacher and spent nearly forty years helping struggling students learn to read and survive school. She has loved, suffered, endured, chosen, regretted, served, rested, and continued.

No one owns Donna more than Donna does.

No one owns me more than I do.

That does not mean we are isolated. It does not mean we are self-created. It does not mean our choices float free from biology, culture, trauma, memory, influence, habit, or circumstance. Of course we are shaped. Of course prior causes matter.

But prior causes do not erase the self.

They become part of the self.

I am the one those causes have formed. I am the one who must live from them, revise them, resist them, continue through them, and sometimes lay them down.

That is why Sam’s Daily Meditation has begun to feel, to me, less like meditation and more like a quiet argument. It is not unlike consuming political commentary. One side tells me what Trump did and why it proves he is destroying the country. Another side tells me what Trump did and why it proves he is brave, strong, and chosen for the hour. Everyone has an angle. Everyone has an interpretation. Everyone is pushing a frame.

And I have learned, slowly and imperfectly, that not every voice deserves entrance into the morning.

Not because I want to hide from reality.

Because I want to stop letting other people’s certainty colonize my attention.

That is what the Southern Baptist fundamentalist world did to me for decades.

It told me who I was before I had a chance to ask.

It told me I was a sinner.

It told me my heart was deceitful.

It told me my mind could not be trusted.

It told me my desires were dangerous.

It told me my life was not my own.

It told me I was born under judgment and could be rescued only by accepting the system’s diagnosis and cure.

And now, here comes another kind of certainty, this time dressed not in hymns and altar calls but in calm language, neuroscience, and meditation:

There is no self.

I do not want to exchange one authority structure for another.

I do not want to leave Southern Baptist certainty only to kneel before secular certainty.

That does not mean Sam Harris is the same as a preacher. He is not. There is much in his work I value. But for me, the Daily Meditation has begun to smuggle in a conclusion I do not accept. And once I notice that, I cannot unnotice it.

The practice no longer quiets the mind.

It starts the debate.

So maybe my practice needs to become much plainer.

Sit down.

Feel the chair.

Notice the body.

Notice the breath.

Let thoughts come.

Let thoughts go.

Return.

No doctrine.

No metaphysics.

No need to solve consciousness before breakfast.

No need to disappear.

That feels much closer to The Pencil-Driven Life.

Because The Pencil-Driven Life is not about proving there is no self. It is not about finding a new theological system. It is not about replacing one master with another.

It is about living this life attentively.

The life actually here.

The dogs.

Donna in the next room.

The gravel road.

The cabin down the runway.

The lumber from Marvin’s.

The leased lots in East Hollow.

The work still waiting.

The words still wanting to be written.

The ordinary morning.

The self who is here for it.

And that brings me back to Dr. Wallace.

After she told me my life was in God’s hands, we later talked about what she was going to charge me. It sounded to me as though she was giving me some of her time and professional care. I told her I understood that. When I practiced law, there were times I helped people and did not charge them. Professionals do that sometimes. Not always. Not carelessly. But sometimes, when the person and situation call for it.

That led her to tell me about a man she knew from Mexico. He was both an architect and a lawyer, she said. A gracious man. A generous man. A wonderful person. Someone who had grown up poor and went out of his way to help others.

And then she told me he was killed by someone he was trying to help.

I did not say what passed through my mind.

But I noticed it.

If my life is in God’s hands, then so was his.

And look what happened.

That is not a cheap argument. It is not meant as a sneer. It is the problem that eventually breaks the frame for me.

When something good happens, believers say God is faithful.

When something terrible happens, believers say God is mysterious.

When the crown goes well, God guided the dentist.

When the generous man is murdered by someone he tried to help, God’s ways are higher than ours.

The system protects itself no matter what reality does.

But I cannot live there anymore.

I do not know that my life is in God’s hands.

I know that, for three hours yesterday, part of my dental life was in Dr. Wallace’s hands. Her trained, skilled, human hands.

I know that my decisions today are in my hands, in the only sense that matters: not as an uncaused soul floating above nature, but as Richard — embodied, shaped, conscious, responsible, and alive.

I know that Donna’s life is Donna’s.

I know that the man from Mexico owned his life too, and that his goodness did not protect him from tragedy.

I know that saying “God is in control” may comfort some people, but it no longer explains the world to me.

And I know this: surrendering to a good dentist is not the same as surrendering my life to a doctrine.

Trusting an expert is not the same as abandoning myself.

Letting another person help me is not the same as believing I am not real.

So this morning, I think I am ready to pause Sam’s Daily Meditation.

Not meditation.

Just that meditation.

I do not need an agenda-driven voice in my ear telling me there is no self.

I do not need a preacher, religious or secular, defining my inner life before the day begins.

I need silence.

I need breath.

I need the chair.

I need the simple practice of being here.

Not as a ghost.

Not as an illusion.

Not as a soul under judgment.

Not as a selfless field of appearances.

As Richard.

A living self.

A changing self.

A responsible self.

A pencil-driven self.

Here for this breath.

Here for this day.

Here for the life that is still, in the only way I can honestly say it, in my hands.

The Map on the Wall — and What Steve Marshall Revealed Next

In my last post, I wrote about the flyer I saw on the door at Sand Mountain Family Practice Center — a flyer promoting a Steve Marshall rally.

What bothered me first was the setting. A medical clinic should not feel like a campaign office. A patient sitting there for lab work, test results, or a diagnosis should not have to wonder whether the people responsible for his care are also quietly signaling political loyalty. A clinic should be a place of care, not tribal branding.

But as I wrote then, the deeper problem was not just that politics had appeared in a medical space. The deeper problem was which politics had appeared there — and which man was being normalized.

Now, only days later, Steve Marshall has revealed himself again.

This time, not through a flyer.

Through a map.

Through voting power.

Through his celebration of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that weakens one of the last meaningful protections left in the Voting Rights Act.

On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Louisiana v. Callais, a case involving congressional redistricting and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The decision sharply changes how Section 2 can be used in racial vote-dilution cases. The Court held that states cannot be forced to draw districts based on race and that plaintiffs challenging a map must now do much more to prove intentional racial discrimination rather than partisan mapmaking. The practical effect is obvious: in states where race and party overlap heavily, a state can say, “We were not diluting Black voting power because of race. We were just pursuing partisan advantage.” (Alabama Attorney General’s Office)

That distinction may sound lawyerly.

It may sound neutral.

It may sound clean.

But in Alabama, it is anything but clean.

Because Alabama’s history is not neutral. The South’s history is not neutral. Voting rights are not an abstract academic exercise here. They were fought for, bled for, marched for, beaten for, and in some cases died for. The Voting Rights Act was not born out of paranoia. It was born out of real, deliberate, sustained racial exclusion.

So when the Supreme Court makes it harder to challenge maps that weaken Black political power, and when Steve Marshall rushes to celebrate that decision, we should not pretend we are watching ordinary legal disagreement.

We are watching values reveal themselves.

Marshall did not respond with caution. He did not say, “This is a serious decision, and we must be careful to ensure that every Alabamian’s voting power is protected.” He did not speak about Black citizens, minority representation, democratic inclusion, or the moral weight of Alabama’s history.

He celebrated.

His office called the decision “momentous.” Marshall called it a “watershed moment.” He said the Court had “shut the door” on vote-dilution claims that use racial data to disguise partisan disputes. He also said the South has made “extraordinary progress” and that laws “designed for a different era” do not reflect present reality. (Alabama Attorney General’s Office)

There it is.

That is the old Southern move in modern legal language.

Declare the past sufficiently healed. Declare the present essentially fair. Declare race-conscious protection to be the real problem. Then call the dismantling of protection “progress.”

The very next day, Marshall filed emergency motions asking the Supreme Court to lift injunctions that have blocked Alabama from using its 2023 congressional map. In other words, he did not merely applaud the Louisiana decision from the sidelines. He immediately tried to use it to revive Alabama’s preferred map — the one blocked after courts found Alabama had failed to comply with the Voting Rights Act. (Alabama Attorney General’s Office)

That matters.

Because this is not theoretical.

This is not Steve Marshall writing a law review article.

This is Steve Marshall using the power of Alabama’s Attorney General’s office to reduce the force of voting-rights protections in this state.

And now he wants to be a United States Senator.

That should alarm anyone who cares about democracy, equality, racial justice, historical honesty, and basic human decency.

Marshall wants Alabama voters to see him through the language of faith, strength, and tradition. As I noted in the earlier post, his Senate campaign branding leans into the slogan “God. Grit. Alabama Strong.”

But slogans are not character.

A man’s values are revealed by what he celebrates.

Steve Marshall celebrates power when it is used against the vulnerable.

He celebrated the weakening of voting-rights protections.

He defended Alabama’s aggressive posture in redistricting.

He has aligned himself with Donald Trump.

He supported legal efforts after the 2020 election that sought to discard certified election results in states Trump lost.

He has threatened legal theories against those helping women travel out of state for lawful abortion care.

He has defended harsh state intrusion into the medical decisions of families with transgender children.

He has promoted Alabama’s role in pioneering nitrogen-gas execution.

Again and again, the pattern is the same.

Control.

Punishment.

Domination.

Tribal loyalty.

State power turned against people with less power.

That is what is obvious about what Steve Marshall stands for.

He stands for power wrapped in piety.

He stands for the state’s right to dominate, so long as the domination is framed as law, order, faith, tradition, or constitutional principle.

He stands for “freedom” when powerful people want fewer restraints.

He stands for “states’ rights” when Alabama wants to escape federal civil-rights oversight.

He stands for “colorblindness” when Black voters seek protection from dilution.

He stands for “life” when controlling women.

He stands for “family” when overriding vulnerable families.

He stands for “law and order” when expanding punishment.

He stands for “values” when the actual value being protected is hierarchy.

This is not a man fit to represent Alabama in the United States Senate.

Not because he is conservative.

Not because he is Republican.

Not because he uses religious language.

He is unfit because his public record shows a repeated willingness to use government power without adequate humility, compassion, historical honesty, or concern for the human beings most affected.

A person deeply interested in all humanity stands somewhere else entirely.

A person deeply interested in all humanity begins with the vulnerable, not the powerful.

Such a person asks: Who will be harmed by this decision?

Who will lose representation?

Who will be silenced?

Who will be made more afraid?

Who will have less access to care?

Who will be treated as a problem to manage instead of a person to understand?

Who will be crushed under the machinery of the state while politicians congratulate themselves for defending “values”?

A person deeply interested in all humanity does not look at the Voting Rights Act and see an outdated inconvenience.

He sees a hard-won protection born from suffering.

He sees Black Alabamians who were denied the vote for generations.

He sees literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, violence, courthouse doors, sheriff’s clubs, Sunday sermons, white citizens’ councils, respectable men in suits, and the long, bitter machinery of exclusion.

He sees Selma.

He sees John Lewis.

He sees the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

He sees blood on asphalt.

He sees why federal protection became necessary in the first place.

And because he sees that, he does not celebrate when protection is weakened.

He grieves.

He studies.

He asks what justice requires now.

That is the difference.

Steve Marshall looks at this decision and sees a victory for Alabama’s power.

A person concerned with all humanity looks at the same decision and asks what it means for Black citizens whose voting strength can now be diluted under the convenient label of partisan politics.

Steve Marshall sees the Court shutting the door on certain vote-dilution claims.

A person concerned with all humanity asks why that door existed in the first place — and who will be left outside now that it is closing.

Steve Marshall says the South has made extraordinary progress.

A person concerned with all humanity says progress is not proven by declaring racism over. Progress is proven by protecting people who have historically been excluded, even when protection complicates the ambitions of those in power.

And that is why this matters so deeply.

Alabama does not need another senator who performs righteousness while defending hierarchy.

Alabama does not need another politician who wraps aggression in God-language.

Alabama does not need another man who treats cruelty as courage, coercion as conviction, and exclusion as constitutional purity.

Alabama needs leaders with moral imagination.

Leaders who understand that democracy is not merely majority rule.

Leaders who understand that “the will of the people” cannot mean only the will of those already holding power.

Leaders who understand that voting rights are not favors granted by the state but protections against the state.

Leaders who can look at Alabama’s past without flinching — and then refuse to repeat it in cleaner language.

That is not Steve Marshall.

His reaction to Louisiana v. Callais makes that clear.

He did not merely accept a Supreme Court ruling. He celebrated the weakening of protection. Then he moved immediately to apply it in Alabama. That is not incidental. It is revealing.

And it takes me back to that clinic door.

The flyer bothered me then because it signaled that Steve Marshall’s politics had been given a place of casual respectability in a setting devoted to human care.

This Supreme Court reaction bothers me even more because it shows exactly why that casual respectability is dangerous.

A flyer can make a man look normal.

A slogan can make him sound virtuous.

A rally can make him appear strong.

But a voting-rights decision shows what he does when history, power, race, and democracy are on the table.

Steve Marshall chose the side of power.

He chose the side of less protection.

He chose the side of making it harder for minority voters to challenge maps that weaken their political voice.

He chose the side that Alabama has chosen too many times before.

That is what the flyer revealed.

That is what the map confirms.

And that is why Steve Marshall is not merely the wrong man for the United States Senate.

He is a warning.

A person can vote for Steve Marshall without knowing all of this. Many people vote from habit, family tradition, party loyalty, church culture, fear of the other side, or a few familiar phrases about faith and Alabama values. I understand that. But a person who does know — who knows about the Trump loyalty, the election-overturning effort, the abortion-travel threats, the transgender medical-care battles, the nitrogen-gas execution, and now the celebration of weakened voting-rights protections — is making a different kind of choice. That vote is no longer merely Republican. It is no longer merely conservative. It becomes a decision to accept these things as tolerable — or perhaps even desirable — in exchange for political power. And that is where moral responsibility begins.