yermin

The claim here is narrow but important: Early Christian art suggests “what Jesus looked like” was never a fixed portrait, images were a network output (region + style conventions + patronage), not a preserved photo. Before we go further, let’s be clear about what this isn’t. I’m not claiming this painting is “the one true face of Jesus.” I’m saying it’s evidence that the modern default image is not inevitable or original. If the goal is historical honesty, the question worth asking isn’t “my Jesus vs your Jesus". it's how images propagate through institutions, copying, and canon-building in the first place. What most people miss when they see an early Jesus like this Look at the painting: tight curls, dark tones, a battered surface, and a very “Mediterranean” feel, nothing like the sanitized, Northern-European Sunday-school poster. The reaction most people have is to turn this into an identity argument, but that misses the deeper mechanism at work. To make a serious claim that “Jesus looks like X,” you’d need a stable, early visual tradition tied to eyewitness-era communities, consistent descriptors across regions, or evidence that later depictions preserved rather than rebranded an original image. What we actually see is something else entirely, a system where images emerged from local conditions and then calcified through institutional power. Local artists used local faces and local styles because you paint what you know. As Christianity gained scale, institutions standardized the “safe” image. Copying, through icons, manuscripts, and church art, locked in defaults via repetition. Power and patronage decided what became “normal,” not archaeology or preserved memory. Now, it’s true that pigments age and styles vary, so no single image proves skin tone or exact features. But the broader pattern is hard to miss: the “default Jesus” is downstream of transmission networks, not historical certainty. Which raises a question worth sitting with: If images are shaped by institutional copying rather than preservation of fact, what other “defaults”, in theology, politics, or identity, are we treating as original when they’re really just the winners of a distribution war?

A question I keep running into in U.S. politics isn’t “how much immigration,” but: What does “American” mean? Two definitions keep colliding: • Civic/legal: citizenship (birthright + naturalization), equal standing under law. • Inherited: ancestry/“stock”/a cultural baseline treated as the “real” nation. My hypothesis is a recurring pipeline: definition → orgs → policy templates → campaign messaging. A compressed throughline: • 1937: Pioneer Fund is chartered with “heredity/eugenics” + “race betterment” language (nation-as-bloodline stated explicitly). • 1980s–90s: records/reporting describe Pioneer Fund grants to FAIR (often summarized ≈ $1.2M). • 2023–25: Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership functions as a coalition transition blueprint; contributors include people tied to FAIR/IRLI/CIS. • 2017–present: Miller isn’t the origin—he’s an operational connector across the enforcement ecosystem (incl. AFL overlaps/distancing). Two Ohio snapshots of “who counts” politics: • “Replacement” framing in candidate messaging (“End the Replacement of Ohio Workers”). • Open boundary enforcement (Coulter: “I wouldn’t vote for you because you’re an Indian”; Fuentes urging a block on Vivek). Question: is this a traceable continuity—American = inherited membership—moving through institutions into everyday politics? Or am I linking separate arguments that only look connected from 30,000 feet?

We built civilization by outsourcing ourselves. Writing = memory. Money = value. Networks = communication. Bitcoin = verification. AI = cognitive labor. Every upgrade scales cooperation and control. So don’t act shocked when it works.

This piece argues that constitutional protections exist to safeguard the conditions people need to discover and become their true selves, but culture-war politics and certain systems—including monetary policy—have become machines that capture identity and interrupt human flourishing. View Article →

Examining the documented history of Christian Right legal organizations founded by leaders who explicitly defended racial segregation in the 1950s-70s, and asking whether today’s dismantling of DEI programs and affirmative action, resulting in measurable declines in Black institutional access. represents coincidence or infrastructure working as designed with evolved messaging. View Article →

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Yeshua Was a Dark Brown-Skinned Semitic Refugee One of the earliest images of the Messiah, painted in the Roman catacombs centuries before Europe rewrote the visuals, showing Yeshua (YHWH Saves): a dark-brown skinned, dark curly short-haired Semitic refugee-immigrant from the Galilean ‘ghetto,’ remembered as his own people saw Him, not as later empires rebranded Him.

New op-ed: The Hidden Story Behind US-Israel Policy US backs Israel with billions based on Jewish historical claims—yet stayed silent as African Jews (the oldest populations) faced discrimination. Why does American policy support a racially selective version of Jewish identity? 👇

Yakihonne

The Hidden Story Behind US-Israel Policy: What African Jewish History Reveals

US policy has backed Israel with billions based on Jewish diaspora historical claims, yet remained silent as African Jews—representing some of th...

📜 New article: The African Roots of Ancient Jewish History Africa wasn’t peripheral to Jewish diaspora—it was central to it. Ancient communities in Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya & Tunisia preserved Hebrew traditions for 2,000+ years. The history they don’t teach you 👇 View Article →