In his book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, Facebook investor Peter Thiel argues that founders should build startups that are so innovative they don’t have competitors. It’s best, as the title indicates, to go from zero (nothing) to one (something original). If you do this, you’ll have a monopoly. And this is good because, according to Thiel, “monopoly is the condition of every successful business.”

Thiel might be right about all of this. But what Thiel doesn’t account for — and what capitalism itself doesn’t account for — is the process of going in the opposite direction, from something back to nothing, the way nature does. Life gives way to death, which creates nutrients that give way to life. One to zero to one to zero to one.

Capitalism is good at getting products on shelves, but it isn’t so concerned beyond that — about the full life cycle of products. It doesn’t account for going from one to zero, and so it ultimately results in a lifeless, flat-lined zero.

• We produce more than a million plastic bottles every minute. More than 90% end up in landfills instead of being recycled.
• We cut down a forest the size of Portugal every decade and leave much of the land barren instead of replenishing 100% of what we cut.
• We create products with indestructible toxic chemicals that poison our bodies and have been found in breastmilk “at levels nearly 2,000 times what is considered safe in drinking water.”

Why is this happening?

Because, as the writer David Bollier says, “Markets do not really care about human need; what matters to them is consumer demand.” And since consumers demand going from zero to one, we forget about going from one to zero. That’s why we produce billions of plastic bottles, even while we ingest 70,000 microplastic particles a year against our best interests.

Framed in a more positive light: If you want to make money, you must “create value for people with money,” as Gumroad founder Sahil Lavingia says. And it’s true. That’s the secret. Create a product that can be sold to people who have money, or convince venture capitalists that they can sell their share in your company to someone else for more money. That’s how this game works. Amass money for those who already have it, and you’re gold.

It follows that groups without money can’t win. Children, animals, trees, our descendants. They’d plead with us not to harm them if they could. But they can’t. They don’t have the money. So we do what our current system demands and go from zero to one, full stop.

Groups without money can’t win. Children, animals, trees, our descendants. They’d plead with us not to harm them if they could. But they can’t. They don’t have the money.

To see why this system is a dead end, consider a thought experiment about an artificial intelligence that’s programmed to do one task: Create paperclips. This AI takes all the materials it can find and turns those materials into the single product it’s designed to create. Paperclips, paperclips, paperclips. A world full of them. In the process, the AI lays waste to Earth’s natural resources. The AI doesn’t mean harm. It’s just doing its job.

Such is our current system — a system that’s designed to turn everything on the planet into capital.

But you can’t grow a forest from a plank of wood. When everything’s capital, that’s the end. We break nature’s cycle, and then the cycle breaks us.

Perhaps you’ve seen that a majority of young Americans now have a negative view of capitalism. Perhaps you’ve seen the responses as well: “So you want communism? Like the Soviet Union?? Venezuela???” It’s all a false binary. Contemporary capitalism and authoritarian communism are not the only two possible modes of human existence, and social and economic systems from the past 300 years won’t get us through the next 300.

Certain countries are already making inroads on this front. Norway, for instance, has reached recycling rates of 90%+ through its deposit return scheme, which combines market forces, government regulation, and a shared sense of public responsibility to help people view all single-use containers as borrowed rather than purchased. The country isn’t free of problems (as evidenced by the fact they’re recalling foods containing toxic pesticides). In addition, some people might argue that their system is still, in fact, capitalism, while others might call it socialism.

Whatever label we use for the new model we desperately need, one thing is clear: We must account for the full life cycle of what we make. Creating a wooden plank isn’t the end of the process; planting a replacement tree is. Putting tuna on a shelf isn’t the end of the process; replenishing the fish is. Selling a cleaning product isn’t the end of the process; ensuring that the chemicals used can safely return to nature instead of live forever in our bodies is.

We need a system that, in a phrase, accounts for going from zero to one and back to zero. We can’t wall ourselves off from nature and pretend we’ve transcended it. We must follow the cycle of life and death and life and death and life. Even recycling falls short in many ways, as a bottle recycled 1,000 times never gives way to new nutrients the way nature’s cycle does. In so many ways, we need completely new ways of envisioning the world.

Is it possible? I believe so. “We live in capitalism,” wrote the author Ursula K. Le Guin. “Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” Then she added, “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”

Those without power or money would plead with us to imagine their future if they could. We should listen.

One to Zero: What Capitalism Ignores, and How to Build the Future was originally published in Age of Awareness on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Meditation on Evolution and Purpose

For most my life, I’ve thought of my heritage as coming from a single tradition: Mormonism. That’s my people, who I am—part of a pioneer story.

It’s like this: Six generations ago, my ancestor William Ogden joined the LDS Church in Lancashire, England and immigrated to Richfield, Utah. On my Layton side, Samuel Leighton joined the LDS Church seven generations ago in Bedfordshire, England and then immigrated to Kaysville, Utah, where his grandson Charles became a polygamist. (I descended from Elizabeth Bowler, his first wife.)

But what about my line before all this?

As far as I can find, my Ogden ancestors lived in Lancashire through at least 1506 and my Layton ancestors lived in Bedfordshire through at least 1589.

So I know this much: My ancestors were living as non-Mormons in Lancashire and Bedfordshire for longer than we’ve been Mormons living in Utah. These non-Mormons are my ancestors too, and their collective lives and stories are just as real. Without them, I wouldn’t exist.

The same is true of my heritage extending before Lancashire as well. I don’t know the details, but I can imagine what it was like for my first ancestor who experienced the bustle of civilization somewhere a few thousand years ago—crowded streets and a marketplace. I can imagine my first ancestor to fear a king. The first to hold a coin.

And 10,000 years ago—the first to start a farm, the first to stay in one place their whole life, near a river that irrigates their crops. The first to worry whether a dry season would mean no harvest. The first to domesticate sheep, goats, pigs, cows, and, before that, wolves.

And a thousand generations in the past: 50,000, 100,000 years. The first to hold a statue of a fertility goddess in their hands, the first to say a prayer or perform a ritual for rain. The first to draw animals in caves, to make jewelry, to use blades and bones for tools. The first to bury their dead. The first to believe in gods.

And back through the more than roughly 200,000–300,000 years of human history, before our pre-human ancestors evolved into homo sapiens.

How can we understand all this? I made a visual below to explore the scale of it all. Each circle in the image represents 200 years, going left to right, row by row, through time.

This is our human heritage.

Why stop there?

We can go back more than one million years ago to imagine being our first ancestor to cook with fire. The first, perhaps, to look at the stars and wonder what secrets they keep. The first to use a stone tool to cut or to kill.

And we can go back five million years to be among the first primates to regularly walk on two legs, allowing us to travel tremendous distances over our lifetime, to never see the place we grew up again.

We can keep going, 20 million years to be among the first great apes who’s slightly distinct, slightly more human, than the other animals we see every day. The first to separate from the other tribes, to form a group that collaborates with more just a bit more efficiency than the rest.

And on to 65 million years. The first primates, the first mammals with forward-facing eyes on the front of their skull and a domed cranium to protect our relatively large brain.

Go 150 million years. Be among the first mammalian reptiles, with hints of fur, sweat glands, and jaw joints—darting around forest floors, searching for insects.

Then 500 million years. Imagine our first amphibian ancestors, the first to live a majority of life on land. And go beyond that, even. Be a fish with bony appendages, squirming in the sea.

Go back a billion years and more. Be our first ancestor with lungs, the first with a jaw, the first with a backbone.

Go a billion years before that. Be the first eyeless, few-celled organism, darting around in water.

And on to 3 or 4 billion years or more. Be the first a single-celled life form.

Go back and for billions of years be water and be rock and be heat.

So what?

What do you feel when you sit with all this—really sit with it, instead of just scanning it as though it’s a bunch of gee-whiz facts?

Personally, I’m bewildered. I can’t fully comprehend that my ancestral line consisted of being a fish for more than 100x longer than it has consisted of being a human.

But my bewilderment doesn’t give me permission to disregard the reality of it all. As Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” I have to learn to integrate reality, to let it shape my identity and worldview rather than the other way around. And this practice, in my experience, leads to a renewed sense of direction and purpose.

Here are few takeaways for me, personally:

I am many.

Yes, my lineage is Mormon. And my lineage is part of the Church of England before that — and likely Catholic or pagan before that, and so on. I am all these identities, and at some level they’re all still alive in me. I don’t have to disregard any of them.

This means, in part, that I can take in timeless insights from the world’s wisdom traditions (including Buddhism, Stoicism, Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, Sufism, and many others). They’re all part of the human story, and I’m either connected by a direct descendent or a cousin to them all.

I am one.

Since I was once an ape, a primitive mammal, a fish, and a single-celled organism, everything is a relative. I must therefore treat all life with reverence, even as I consume an animal or a plant to survive. I must also oppose practices that torture animals in mass factories, poison the planet, fill the oceans with plastic, and so on. To do otherwise is an act of self harm.

I can’t be confined by fundamentalism.

I’ve written elsewhere about the split between the LDS prophet Joseph Fielding Smith, who opposed the theory of evolution, and famed LDS scientist Henry Eyring, who embraced it.

Obviously, I agree with Eyring. And I think it’s worth being clear-eyed about the implications of evolution, since an understanding of the theory erases the fundamentalist ideas that humans have been around for 6,000 years, that Adam and Eve were literally the first people on Earth, that Jesus lived in “the meridian (middle) of time,” and so on.

In my opinion, this erasure is desperately needed, as I see the rise of corrosive conspiracy theories that overlap with a Christian apocalyptic worldview, including Qanon. We must reject the theory of conspiracy in favor of the theory of evolution and honor a more expansive worldview that brings a healthy sense of unity with our brothers and sisters around the world instead of small-minded paranoia.

I belong to a rapidly evolving species.

We’re an evolving species. It’s part of our purpose, to evolve.

And we’re evolving faster than ever.

To illustrate: A team of U.S. anthropologists studied four distinct ethnic groups: Han Chinese, Africa’s Yoruba tribe, Japanese, and Utah Mormons. What they found was that 7% of the human genome has shifted dramatically over the past 10,000 years. According to Henry Harpending, a University of Utah anthropologist who worked on the study, this means that “we’re more different from people 5,000 years ago than they were from Neanderthals.” The researchers added that if we’d always evolved at this pace, “genetic differences between people and chimpanzees would be 160 times greater than they are.”

But genetic evolution is only part of it. We’re also taking technological leaps with every generation, at a pace unlike anything previously seen in our history.

Think of it this way: Before 100 years ago, no one talked about technological progress in terms of decades. People in 1270 didn’t marvel at how rapidly technology had progressed since 1260. The difference was barely noticeable. But today we look at the state of certain technologies — self-driving cars, virtual reality, augmented reality — and marvel at how quickly they’ve evolved in just 10 years.

And we’re on the cusp of another leap with the invention of devices that link human brains to the internet, something that will become a reality far sooner than the general public realizes with neurotech companies such as Kernel, led by Provo-native Brian Johnson (who sold his company Braintree to PayPal for $800 million), and Neuralink, led by Elon Musk.

This technology from Kernel and Neuralink aims to enable humans to instantly download information to our brains and process copious amounts of information at speeds now only available to computers.

As I’ve written elsewhere, we are becoming as the gods. But what sort of gods? If we’re not extremely careful as a species, we risk creating technology that gives us god-like powers only to use it to destroy ourselves and the planet.

I have a debt to the future.

The poet T.S. Eliot asked, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” Today we could add, based on what I often see in my social media feeds, “Where is the information we have lost in misinformation?”

To stay on the road we’re on—a road filled with an unhealthy fixation on monetary growth at all costs—will starve humanity. Our current systems are unsustainable and ultimately destructive. They must be changed at the root.

It’s our responsibility, then, to help the next generation take science, wisdom, and compassion seriously, to be deeply aware of the timeless virtues that will serve as a foundation in our species being able to thrive alongside all other living things. I’m exploring what one type of sustainable model might look like in a side project with a group of friends, and I’m on the lookout for any other ways we can best help future generations thrive with this relatively new understanding of where we came from, why we’re here, and where we’re going. It will take a worldwide communal effort.

In the end, we owe so much to the lives of those who came before us. Their lives compel us to help those yet to come.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a letter to LDS Trump supporters that got far more attention than I expected. The response was almost uniformly positive, but I also received several messages I feel are worth addressing.

Why? Because I’m haunted by the words of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer. “Trump will never leave office peacefully,” he says. “The types of scandals that have surfaced in recent months will only continue to emerge with greater and greater levels of treachery and deceit. … I’m certain that Trump knows he will face prison time if he leaves office.”

I believe Cohen is right about Trump’s well-documented crimes and that unless Biden wins in a landslide, 2020 will end with a lengthy court battle where Trump accuses the system of being rigged against him and eventually wins the presidency.

So I want a landslide for Biden, and the only thing I know to do to help that happen—aside from volunteering and giving money, as I have—is to write. (I’m open to all suggestions on this front.)

Here are comments I saw, along with my response:

“Arguments like this don’t persuade anyone.”

That might be true! I don’t expect to persuade any ardent Trump supporters.

And yet my worldview has changed by arguments like this. I used to vocally oppose gay marriage, for instance, because I believed that homosexuality was a choice, as I’d been taught. Then I stumbled on scientific data that demonstrated why homosexuality isn’t a choice, and I changed my mind.

This happens to me constantly, and I want to believe I’m not alone. I have hope that some people who make incorrect claims about Trump being great for the economy, healthcare, manufacturing, and so on simply haven’t encountered the data (cited in the letter) that suggests otherwise.

“Trump just has a different personality and communication style.”

Every LDS Trump apologist I’ve interacted with uses a line like the one Utah senator Mike Lee recently used to defend him. “The way he speaks sometimes gives people pause,” Lee said. “I was raised in Provo. He was not raised in Provo. He has a different way of communicating than I do.”

But Trump isn’t horrible because he says the f-word, or because he has a brash personality.

Here’s how the arguments sound:

Claim: “Trump was charged $25 million for a fraudulent university business.” Response: “He sure has a brash personality!”

Claim: “Trump dropped a record number of bombs on Afghanistan.” Response: “That’s just a different way of communicating!”

Claim: “26 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, including one who’s suing him in court right now for rape.” Response: “Yeah, he was raised in New York, not Provo!”

It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. Raping women, cheating contractors, pathological lying, and defrauding people — all things Trump has gone to court for — aren’t “a way of communicating” or a “personality type.”

They certainly aren’t a reason to compare Trump to Captain Moroni, as Mike Lee has, saying, “[Trump] seeks not power, but to pull it down. He seeks not the praise of the world.” What a groveling and embarrassing thing to say about someone who’s entire career has been about seeking power and praise.

“You don’t know Trump and shouldn’t judge him.”

Voting is judgment.

Here’s what people who know Trump say about him:

“He has no principles. None. None. And his base … if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.” — Maryanne Trump (his sister)

“I knew him better than even his family did because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.” — Michael Cohen (his former lawyer)

“Erratic,” “stunningly uninformed,” and “unfit for office.” — John Bolton (his former security advisor)

“A man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things.” — Rex Tillerson (his former secretary of state)

“Lying is second nature to him. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.” (Tony Schwarz, his ghostwriter)

And so on…

“Biden is just as bad.”

Then where are similar quotes from Joe Biden’s sister? Where are similar quotes from the people who have worked with Biden? (Even Biden’s Republican colleagues have nice things to say about him.)

Biden wasn’t my pick in the Democratic primary. And yet I still believe he’s far better than Trump, for the reasons I list in the letter.

“You didn’t say enough about why you’re for Biden.”

I’m for Biden because he’s more likely listen to experts in a range of fields, from doctors to teachers to economists (700+ of which have publicly favored Biden). He’s less likely to “trust his gut” or gush about his own IQ, as Trump does.

This is especially important when it comes to science, which is why I agree with the many scientific journals and magazines that made the move to publicly support Biden, who will be better for the planet. (To learn more, read the article “75 ways Trump made America dirtier and the planet warmer” and Biden’s environmental plan.)

Admittedly, “listen to experts” can sometimes be code for “catering to special interests and lobbyists”—something to watch carefully and oppose under Biden (especially lobbyists for war). If Trump had actually drained the swamp instead of cozying up to Goldman Sachs execs and oil tycoons, he would have the upper hand here. But since he did the exact opposite of draining the swamp (giving clients of Trump-connected lobbyists $10.5 billion in Covid-19 aid), Biden is the clear choice.

“I respect the flag.”

This one surprised me.

Until Trump was elected, I’d never seen a Confederate flag in Provo, Utah before. Now I’ve seen several.

Until Trump was elected, I’d never seen so many flags with a president’s name flown alongside or even higher than the American flag.

Until Trump was elected, I’d never seen so many people wearing clothes with the American flag on it.

Until Trump was elected, I’d never seen an altered American flag. Now I see lots of blue line flags (the black and white American flags with a blue line through the middle). Can you imagine the response from the right if a left-leaning organization widely adopted an altered American flag as their symbol? Are we just going to be a nation with altered versions of the American flag to represent our tribe from now on?

Most of this is explicitly against official flag code. None of it shows respect for the flag. Just the opposite.

“I’m defending the Constitution.”

When it comes to the Constitution, the main worry I’ve seen people express is that Biden will extend the number of Supreme Court nominees beyond nine. But expanding the Court is not contrary to the Constitution. The Court started with six people and eventually expanded to nine. Franklin Delano Roosevelt pushed to expand the Court beyond nine and failed, but that didn’t stop Utah for voting for him multiple times, nor did it mean he was “against the Constitution.” The Constitution allows for expanding the court.

By contrast, Trump has repeatedly threatened the Constitution. As Sharlee Mullins Glenn, a member of Brigham Young University’s Civic Engagement Advisory Board, writes:

“President Trump’s many violations of the Constitution are well-documented. … He flouts the emoluments clauses which prohibit any president from profiting off the office; has repeatedly tried to suppress and discredit the free press, a common ploy of dictators; ignores checks and balances; routinely oversteps his executive authority; and has attempted to suppress freedom of speech and the right to peaceful assembly, two of our fundamental constitutional rights.”

Glenn also mentions that Trump has said he should be president for life and plays coy about making a peaceful transfer of power. He has said, “The president of the United States has the authority to do what the president has the authority to do, which is very powerful. The president of the United States calls the shots.” And, “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

“When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s going to be.” —Donald Trump

And yet Mike Lee, a professed Constitution lover, spends his time comparing Trump to Captain Moroni and embracing the party that threatened to hold the number of justices to eight if Clinton had won.

“I’m opposed to the media.”

I’ve been slowly working on a longer piece about the media generally (stay tuned if you’re interested), but for now I’ll say:

1. When Fox News says “the media,” they mean “our competitors,” and their take on the matter should be given as much credence as, say, Adidas talking about Nike.
2. Only one candidate was employed by NBC for more than a decade.
3. Only one candidate caused the CEO of CBS to say of their rise, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”
4. Only one candidate was employed by Jeff Zucker, who is now CEO at CNN and who hired Trump at NBC. Zucker was in close contact with Michael Cohen during the 2016 debates, telling Cohen, “I have all these proposals for [Trump], like I want to do a weekly show with him and all this stuff… I’m going to wish him luck in the debate tonight.” Zucker added, “As fond as I am of the boss [Zucker’s name from Trump], he also has a tendency, like, you know, if I call him or I email him, he then is capable of going out at his next rally and saying that we just talked and I can’t have that.”

In short, the narrative around the media is as broken as the media itself. Yes, it’s true that, as Fox News likes to point out, most journalists lean left. But it’s also true that the owners of media empires primarily want to make a ton of money and are willing to do whatever it takes on that front, including playing foil to Trump as a way to boost their ratings. They’re infotainment stations.

“I have all these proposals for him, like I want to do a weekly show with him and all this stuff.”—Jeff Zucker, CEO at CNN, talking about partnering with Trump in 2016

As far as social media companies go, they do at times make terribly boneheaded partisan decisions, as Twitter did when it completely shut down the Hunter Biden email story. But they’re objectively not “out to get conservatives” as many Trump apologists like to say. To the contrary, conservative sources overwhelmingly dominate Facebook, as has been thoroughly documented (here, here, here, here, and here) by the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

“You didn’t mention that abortions dropped under Trump.”

It’s true that abortion rates are and have been dropping for decades.

But my point was about how abortion rates have fallen more under Democratic presidents compared to Republican presidents. After all, abortion rates also dropped during Bush’s eight years(from 16 per 1,000 women to 15.6). But they dropped faster during Obama’s eight years (from 15.6 to 11.6). Time will tell if rates fall faster under Trump. So far, we don’t have enough data to analyze his full term.

On this topic, here’s something I did not see anyone address: Fertility clinics dispose of millions of fertilized embryos, and the antibody drug that Trump used after he got Covid-19 was developed from human cells “originally obtained from an elective abortion.” But I don’t see Latter-day Saints protesting either thing.

I’m not saying these things should be protested, but I have to ask:

Why the disparity in responses? Why do so many Trump supporters call all abortions “infanticide” and yet remain quiet about fertility clinics and Trump’s Covid-19 treatment?

“You didn’t bring up that unemployment reached the lowest level in 50 years under Trump.”

Trump loves this line, and so do his supporters. But the unemployment rate slowed under Trump. If the decline in unemployment had trended at the same speed it was already trending under Obama, we would have reached what’s called “full employment” faster.

Of course, the closer to zero the unemployment rate gets, the more likely it is to naturally slow down since it’s harder to reach an unemployment of 0% compared to, say, 4%. But Trump doesn’t talk with that sort of nuance. He just wrongly claims all the credit for himself when in reality the decline under Trump was simply a continuation of the trend under Obama.

Also note that Trump has not brought back manufacturing and coal mining jobs as he promised. Not even close:

“You didn’t mention that Biden voted for the Iraq War and that Trump has overseen historic peace deals in the Middle East.”

True, Biden voted for the Iraq War, and that’s one of many reasons I did not want him as Democratic primary candidate. But someone who drops a record number of bombs on Afghanistan and goes on Rush Limbaugh to say “If you f*%# around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before” about Iran—as Trump did—should not be praised for “historic peace deals” in the Middle East.

“Trump respects the military.”

Nah. Read the many reasons why 780 retired generals and leaders have publicly opposed him, including this from retired Air Force Gen. Charles Boyd:

“There’s a saying in the military that ‘officers eat last,’ which means that leadership is all about what’s best for your troops and for the nation. President Trump has no concept of that kind of leadership. Everything he does is driven by what’s best for him personally.”

“We should support Trump because Amy Coney Barrett is the best Supreme Court pick in my lifetime.”

I don’t yet know enough about Amy Coney Barrett to have a strong opinion about her. But I couldn’t possibly make the claim that she’s “the best Supreme Court pick in my lifetime” without being able to confidently answer the following questions:

• Why does her voting record so consistently favor large corporations against workers?
• Why were so many millions in untraceable money funneled into making sure she got the seat, if not in the hope that those who anonymously invested would get a bigger monetary return?
• Why has big business won again and again in recent Supreme Court cases, and how will Barrett vote on that front?

In addition, the fact that Barrett has never argued an appeal in court or tried a case to verdict gives me pause. Why the urgency to rush someone with so little experience through?

“But what about taxes?”

Assuming Biden wins and gets his plan passed:

Unless you make more than $400,000, your taxes will go back to what they were before Trump came into office.

If you make more than $400,000, everything above that amount will be taxed at a higher rate. That means that if you make $410,000, then $10,000 of that total amount will be taxed at a higher rate while all $400,000 will be taxed at the same rate.

This should not be a reason to vote for Trump.

“People should vote for whoever they want.”

Yes, and what they want should be… not Trump.

“You can follow Jesus and vote for whoever you want.”

Perhaps — but there’s certainly a line somewhere, right? Otherwise, you’re preaching moral relativism or even moral nihilism.

“You shouldn’t weaponize religion.”

Where’s the line between mentioning religion and weaponizing religion? I’ll admit, I’m not always sure. In making religious references in the letter I’m not at all saying, “God agrees with me and you’re unworthy if you don’t.” I could see how the letter could be read as saying that, and I apologize for that. I should have been clearer.

I’m simply saying that I personally see incongruity between supporting/excusing Trump and espousing LDS standards.

You may see things differently. If you do, I disagree with you. And disagreement is okay.

I can still see you as human, and I hope you can see me as human as well.

Growing up in Utah County during the nineties, I couldn’t hear the end of Bill Clinton’s sex scandal in the White House. It was one of the first stories in my political awareness, and the whole thing affected me so deeply that for years if you’d asked me what I thought of the Democrats, I would have told you they were horrible—almost solely because of what Clinton did. It seemed to me that my entire community agreed, and I understood that a sex scandal like Clinton’s was a deal breaker for Latter-day Saints.

Then along came Trump, a man who cheated on all three of his wives, paid off porn stars, raved about his daughter’s sex appeal, and faced more than two dozen accusations of sexual misconduct, including rape.

And yet LDS voters cast ballots for him in 2016 and gave him the highest approval of any religious group in 2017. In 2018, Mormons had the chance to band together with other Republican Christians and launch a moral primary challenger. Instead, many supported him.

You had the chance to band together with other Republican Christians and launch a moral primary challenger to Donald Trump in 2018. Instead, you supported him.

To me, it felt like a betrayal.

I can’t help but think of the words of Trump’s own sister, who said, “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”

You might say, as a Trump-supporting Latter-day Saint, that while you don’t condone Trump’s behavior, lots of our prior leaders have had moral baggage. And I’d agree. George Washington had slaves. Jefferson abused Sally Hemings. Hamilton had an affair. In more recent times, JFK and Lyndon Johnson had “secret” lovers.

But Trump’s depravity isn’t limited to several dozen sex scandals. The scale is mind-boggling. Bullying the least fortunate, mocking the religious, stiffing contractors, withdrawing healthcare from his ill nephew, cheating on tax returns, using “charity” to funnel money to himself, refusing to rent to Black people, pathologically lying, and much more — these things aren’t the marks of someone who is “rough around the edges.” These are the marks of someone who is fundamentally at odds with the heart of the stated ideals of the LDS Church.

“He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.” — Maryanne Trump Barry, Donald’s sister

Having said these things, you likely still have reasons why you’re supporting Trump. After all, even someone who is morally depraved could be worth supporting—if they had plenty of other noble qualities that benefited the world.

However, the problem with Trump is that even his so-called strengths are surface deep. He’s gold foil—veneer without substance, a phony act. He’s a PR genius and he’s TV smart, but he lacks the generous and noble qualities we celebrate in otherwise deeply flawed leaders of the past.

I understand that might sound unconvincing, so let’s get specific.

Here are reasons I’ve heard you give for why you support Donald Trump, along with explanations for why I hope you’ll reconsider.

“I’m concerned about child sex trafficking.”

In 2020, I’ve seen a growing number of you express concern about child sex trafficking. You say that you’re voting for Trump because he’s working to save these children.

The only problem with this view — and it’s a major problem — is that under Trump federal investigations and prosecutions for child sex trafficking have fallen by a lot.

As is the case with so much that Trump does, he talks a big game and makes the right PR moves. He gets people to think he’s doing a great job. But in reality, it’s hot air.

“I really care about abortion.”

Perhaps you say you’re voting for Trump because you’re a single-issue voter, and your issue is abortion. But why? Was Jesus’s ministry a single-issue ministry? Jesus never spoke about abortion, even though other people at the time did.

Of the hundreds of issues at play in an election, it seems odd to be a single-issue voter about this one thing, particularly while defending Trump, who dodges questions about whether he’s been involved with someone who’s had an abortion.

Consider the position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints here, which says that “some exceptional circumstances may justify an abortion, such as when pregnancy is the result of incest or rape, when the life or health of the mother is judged by competent medical authority to be in serious jeopardy, or when the fetus is known by competent medical authority to have severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth.”

If abortions were outlawed, none of these exceptions would be possible. So according to the LDS Church the law should allow some abortions.

In light of this, you might sympathize with the LDS mother of six who had a late-term abortion under incredibly painful circumstances. She was set to have twins, but faced complications late in her pregnancy that resulted in one twin dying and the other facing certain death. Even worse, the pregnancy also put her life at risk. So, rather than have three deaths in the world, she saved her own life to help raise the six kids she’d already given birth to. That’s what a late-term abortion looks like — and why they should be legal and rare (as they are, representing 1% of total abortions).

Imagine what would happen in a world where all abortions were outlawed and treated like murder. Not only would that woman likely be dead, but many women who suffered miscarriages would be tried as criminals, viewed as suspicious by juries. (Did it die naturally, or did she have a secret abortion?) At scale, that’s terrifying, considering that anywhere from 10–20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. What woman who’s just suffered a miscarriage deserves to go to trial?

Next, consider fertility clinics. Fertility clinics dispose of millions of fertilized embryos, but I don’t see any Mormons protesting them (in part because many Mormons understandably use these resources to grow their families).

In this vein, also consider stem cell research. The antibody drug that Trump used after he got Covid-19 was developed from human cells “originally obtained from an elective abortion.” But I don’t see you protesting Trump’s drug of choice.

Finally, note that for decades abortions have consistently decreased more under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents. For instance, under George W. Bush abortions held more or less steady while under Obama the number of abortions comparatively plummeted. You might not want to admit it because it goes against your narrative, but it’s true. Voting for a Republican president isn’t a guarantee that we’ll see fewer abortions. In fact, the opposite may be true, since expanding access to birth control can reduce total abortions.

“I’m concerned about out-of-control government spending.”

In 2009, many of you protested the deficit as part of the Tea Party. And yet the deficit increased more under Trump in his first three years—before Covid-19—compared to the last three years under Obama.

Since Covid-19, the deficit has exploded to unprecedented levels ,enough to make the 2009 deficit increase look paltry. And now you’re silent about the deficit?

Instead, you’re largely concerned about riots, despite the fact that the original Boston Tea Party refers to an event where rioters who were angry about systemic injustice destroyed the equivalent of roughly $1.7 million of property in an act of protest. If you believe it’s always wrong to destroy property in protest (and it generally is!), why align yourself with the Boston Tea Party at all?

“I want a successful businessman in office.”

If someone were to get rich robbing a bank, we wouldn’t call them successful. Likewise, we shouldn’t call someone successful who stiffs contract workers, defrauds students at a phony university, or cheats on their taxes (paying his daughter $700k in consulting fees while also paying her as an employee). That’s not “success.” That’s fraud.

You also know by now that Donald Trump’s business record isn’t impressive. He received $413 million from his dad over the course of his life. If he had put that money into an index fund for 30 years, he would have more than $3 billion dollars. Instead, he’s now worth less than that and owes more than $400 million to some unknown lender.

He’s lost money on every business endeavor he’s touched with the exceptions of Trump Tower and The Apprentice, where he pretended to be a successful businessman on TV and licensed his image for money.

Behind the scenes, Trump repeatedly went bankrupt and told Forbes he was 20 times richer than he actually was to get on their list. (If you made $50k a year and persuaded people you were 20 times richer, they’d think you were a millionaire.)

“I just want a strong economy.”

In the three years prior to Trump, the unemployment rate dropped 2 percentage points. In Trump’s first three years it slowed, dropping only 1.2 percentage points. Then it skyrocketed to levels not seen since the Great Depression.

Even before Covid-19 hit, manufacturing under Trump plateaued, wages remained stagnant, GDP growth slowed, and the cost of rent shot up.

Trump constantly touts the stock market, which is a marker of how the rich are doing (since the richest 10% own 84% of all stocks), while the economy as a whole collapses.

Also note that manufacturing and coal jobs have not returned. Not even close:

“I’m tired of endless wars.”

I’ll admit, I’m a fan of some of Trump’s rhetoric on war. I’d love to see us end the fighting in the Middle East and bring the troops home.

The only problem is that Trump hasn’t actually done it. He’s increased war spending, and unlike Obama, who systematically decreased the number of troops overseas almost every year he was in office, Trump has held the overall number steady.

What’s worse, Trump is needlessly aggressive when it comes to war. Regarding Iran, he said, “If you f*%# around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before.” Going rogue on stuff like this has completely eroded our support with allies, which makes it harder for us to bring peace to the world.

The truth is that in 2003 many of you pushed for war in the Middle East at a cost of more than $6 trillion and at least half a million deaths, and now you’re supporting a man who tells baldfaced lies about always being against those wars when in reality he’s still not.

“I want to protect religious liberty.”

If the US government were to build a oil pipeline through a sacred LDS space — through the Sacred Grove, for example — would you protest? If so, how did you feel about Trump renewing the Dakota pipeline? When Trump equated his travel ban with a Muslim ban a dozen times, did you denounce it as an affront on religious liberty or did you make excuses for Trump?

If you can’t see the Dakota pipeline or the Muslim ban as an attack on religious liberty, you might care more about power than religious liberty.

What’s more, almost without exception, everyone in power in the United States is Christian (or, like Trump, says they are). This is one reason why Christians in particular get special privileges such as the freedom to enforce pipelines through the sacred spaces of other religions.

When it comes to religious liberty, Christians will almost certainly have it good whether Trump stays in office or whether Biden, a lifelong Catholic, gets in.

“I worry about gun rights.”

Even if you’re an ardent gun advocate, you almost certainly believe in some limits. For instance, you likely don’t want to arm prisoners, allow children to buy pistols, or permit Walmart to sell bazookas. In other words, the question isn’t, “Should limits exist?” but instead “Which limits should exist?”

In this vein, more than 80 percent of Americans agree we should: implement universal background checks regardless of where the sale takes place, prevent the sale of firearms to those convicted of violent misdemeanors (including domestic assault), prevent the sale of firearms to those convicted of stalking, require licenses for gun owners, and more.

If we elect Trump, we won’t likely get a single new limit passed at the federal level, regardless of whether it has mass support. If we don’t elect Trump, we might get a few.

Of course, it is possible that with a Biden presidency, we might also see an assault weapons ban—a measure that 63% of Americans support. Admittedly, you might oppose this. But I believe you also know deep down that some things are more important than assault weapons.

“I want better healthcare.”

Millions of Americans have lost health insurance since Trump took office, including 5.4 million since Covid-19 alone. In addition, premiums have continued to climb year after year under Trump.

Trump talks about his “great” healthcare plan, but he never gives specifics. We should stop believing he has a plan at all. If he’s elected we’ll see a repeat of what we’ve seen already: Fewer people insured, higher deductibles, more than 200,000 people dead from Covid-19. That is not great healthcare.

Under Trump, we’ll continue to suffer from higher combined public and private spending than other rich countries.

“I’m nervous about the nation turning Communist.”

One of Trump’s tactics in this election is to scare Republicans into thinking that Biden is going to enact the platform of Bernie Sanders, which he equates with Soviet-style Communism.

Two things:

1. Sanders has repeatedly urged Biden to do more to court leftists precisely because Biden has done so little on this front.
2. Sanders does not want Soviet-style Communism.

Rather, Sanders argues for something far closer to the Western European model of government, especially the Norway model. This primarily means extending public education to K-14 or K-16, implementing robust environmental legislation, and instating single-payer healthcare.

Biden has pledged to make small efforts on this front, covering tuition for a two-year college “for hard-working students,” creating “science-based” environmental initiatives, and starting a new public option for healthcare.

But none of that is anywhere close to Soviet-style Communism. For better or worse, Biden is a mainstream Democrat—not a leftist. Leftists are deeply disappointed in Biden.

“I don’t want the United States to be the laughing stock of the world.”

If you want respect, don’t support Trump. Our allies don’t:

I just don’t like the Democrats.

Finally, you might say that you’re not voting for Trump so much as voting against Biden. On that point, I’ll concede. That’s somewhat valid. As I’ve recounted elsewhere, Joe Biden has a history of breaking physical boundaries with women and young girls, producing endless gaffes, spinning false stories about himself, and excusing nepotism.

However, this is increasingly the only move you have: What about Biden? What about the media? What about the Democrats?

It’s a tired move. For my part, I’m not excusing hypocrisy from the Democrats, of which a lot can and should be said.

What I am saying, however, is that you should be honest about the fact that Biden, a lifelong Catholic, is far more committed to Christianity than is Trump. Trump uses religion as nothing more than a prop (while mocking you behind the scenes, including mocking LDS garments). Biden, by contrast, has a long history as a Christian.

In addition, you should be honest about how most accounts from co-workers (including Republicans) portray Biden as someone deeply empathetic and compassionate, in line with the core teachings of Jesus.

By contrast, people who have worked with Trump say just the opposite. His former White House employees say he’s clueless and selfish, and his former business employees paint the picture of someone who’s callous and narcissistic.

So, what can you do?

First, stop making embarrassing excuses for Donald Trump. Don’t say, “Yeah, he’s a buffoon who’s rough around the edges, and I wish he didn’t tweet so much, but…” Instead, be honest about who Trump actually is.

Second, consider your legacy. If you want to risk pushing your descendants away from Mormonism, vote for Trump. One day you might look around and wonder why they’ve left. Perhaps it’s because the Christ they read about in the New Testament is so often the inverse of the man you support.

Third, do what you know you should do. Acknowledge that despite legitimate shortcomings, Biden is still worlds apart from Trump when it comes to human decency and morality.

Since Trump is antithetical to good and true principles, I personally believe that Latter-day Saints shouldn’t support him and should instead vote him out.

Thanks for reading! If you found this letter helpful, click the hands or share so others will see it.

Also see my response to people who messaged me about the letter:

A Response to Latter-day Saint Trump Apologists

Why I Changed My Mind About Politics

Recently, a friend messaged me. “You used to be a moderate free thinker,” he wrote, “but somehow the left got you. Retrace your steps and let me know what it was.” I’ve heard similar things from other people, including a loved one who wrote to me saying, “I see the media is convincing you.”

These sentiments weren’t completely unexpected given the things I’ve written lately, so I thought I would take my friend’s invitation and retrace my steps.

Has the left “got me”?

Here’s my story.

Until my mid to late 20s, I was a constant and ardent conservative. I read writers like Dinesh D’Souza and Robert George, and I argued throughout my undergraduate degree and into my graduate degree for conservative causes. I always voted Republican.

Then I read, of all things, Ron Paul’s book The Revolution. The first chapter, which is about American foreign policy, shifted something in me. For the first time in my life, I considered the possibility that people in the Middle East might not “hate us for our freedoms,” as Republicans at the time loved to say. Instead, after reading the stats and stories in The Revolution, I realized that they might very well hate us because we invade their countries and kill their family members.

This realization was monumental for me. It represented the first moment in my life when I deviated deeply from the party line.

As a result, I campaigned for Ron Paul in 2011. However, several things about his fanbase didn’t sit well with me. Too many of them harbored fundamentalist religious views, were intensely pro-gun, loved Ayn Rand, rabidly opposed the Fed, and so on. Put simply, I didn’t feel like I fit in.

That was also when Occupy Wall Street hit the headlines. Since I was curious and angry about the 2008 financial crisis, I did a deep dive into Wall Street’s inner workings. Over a year and a half, I read more than 30 books on the topic and wrote a 100-page manifesto about Wall Street. By the end of the experience I was convinced that the wealthy had far too much power in the United States. They committed rampant and obvious fraud before, during, and after the 2008 crash and because they were insanely rich they got away with it. They also own the major news networks (which are, unsurprisingly, all pro-billionaire) and politicians in both parties (who are also, with very rare exception, all pro-billionaire).

This research shifted me toward a deeper sympathy for the powerless and an anger at the constant abuse by the powerful. It completely broke me from identifying as a Republican.

But I still didn’t know where to land in terms of a political identity. After all, it was the Clinton administration that repealed regulation on Wall Street that aggravated the crisis, and it was the Obama administration, with the help of Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson, that ensured that saving Wall Street remained the top priority throughout the recovery. To embrace the Democrats, then, seemed like hypocrisy to me.

That’s when I read The Three Languages of Politics by Arnold Kling, which says that the major political ideologies in America each have a different primary concern:

1. Conservatives primarily care about order over chaos.
2. Progressives primarily care about equality over oppression.
3. Libertarians primarily care about freedom over coercion.

It’s a useful framework, in my opinion, because it frees us from believing that any single ideology or political party is right in every instance.

Of the three ideals listed in Kling’s book (order, equality, and freedom), I felt, in light of what I’d read about Wall Street, that the one Americans lack most severely *right now* is equality. The share of total income going to the top 1% exploded under Reagan, and that trend continues today, returning to levels unseen since the 1920s. (A recent example: The wealth of American billionaires has grown by more than $400 billion during the pandemic, while more than 30 million people have found themselves unemployed. Meanwhile, real wages have stagnated.)

It’s true that order and freedom matter (and the encroaching surveillance state worries me tremendously), but I felt—and continue to feel—that equality matters more in the US right now and is more urgent. I feel this in part because in analysis after analysis that I have seen, countries that have less inequality have higher levels of general wellbeing and have some form of a universal higher education system, a universal healthcare system, and policies that contribute to the country’s social fabric instead of funneling billions of dollars to a handful of people (at least compared to the United States).

So that’s how I ended up where I am today. I still oppose the mainstream Democratic party, which caters to wealthy funders and cares more about posturing (see: Pelosi and Schumer in kente cloth) than radical reform. But I oppose Trump even more—a serial cheater and billionaire(?) who makes phony attempts to appeal to populists and evangelicals while grabbing more cash for himself from those very people (see: Trump University and… the presidency).

So have I been duped? It’s quite possible! I’m just one person with one perspective, after all.

The only thing I’m certain of is that as I encounter new evidence, my mind will change again. I hope it does.