Criticizing this administration does not make me a Democrat. It does not mean that I think “the left” is trustworthy, clean, or beyond scrutiny. It does not mean I have a team. And when I point out contradictions or hypocrisy, it’s not to argue that one side is right and the other is wrong. It’s because those things are worth naming wherever they show up.
Do I think there’s a lesser of two evils? Honestly, yes. But that doesn’t mean I’m not looking at the complete picture. Holding a position isn’t the same as wearing a jersey.
I built my company, Grunge Luxe, around the idea that rebellion and resistance are not aesthetics. They are orientations. Ways of moving through the world that require you to stay awake, ask questions, and refuse to be shaped by whoever is loudest. That didn’t come from nowhere. It came from a life that required me to question things early, sit with hard answers, and keep going anyway.
It also came from the music.
I grew up shaped by heavy metal, grunge, and punk rock. Music that was built on anti-authoritarianism, on questioning power, on speaking for the outsider and the overlooked. That wasn’t just noise to me. It was a value system. So, I’ll be honest, one of the things that has left me most dumfounded throughout all of this is watching how many people who grew up on that same music are now supporting the very thing it was screaming against. The establishment. The authoritarian. The billionaire who claims to speak for the people, while the people foot the bill. At some point, that contradiction deserves a real look.
I’ve known for a long time that both parties are two wings on the same bird. Corruption is not partisan. Power protects power, and the people at the top of any system are largely running the same game with different branding. If you’re waiting for a political party to save you, you’re going to be waiting a long time.
But “both sides” can become its own kind of avoidance. Acknowledging that corruption exists everywhere doesn’t mean both sides are doing the same things, at the same scale, right now. We have to look at what is actually in front of us and respond to it. That’s not bias. It is presence.
And if we were all genuinely looking out for each other, from an authentic place rather than a political one, I think we’d see things more similarly than we do. Most people want the same basic things. Safety. Stability. A decent future for their kids. The division runs so deep partly because we’ve been convinced that wanting those things requires picking a side. It doesn’t.
I also think we need to be honest about who is asking for our loyalty and why. Anyone who believes a billionaire is looking out for their best interest should look more closely at where that money comes from and who actually benefits from their decisions. Wealth at that scale is not built on generosity. It is built on systems that concentrate power upward. That’s not a political opinion. That’s just how it works.
Sticking to documented facts, even when you don’t love where they point, does not put you on a side. It means you’re paying attention.
A federal jury found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. The judge clarified that what the jury found meets the common definition of rape. A second jury awarded Carroll $83 million in defamation damages when he kept calling her a liar after the verdict. He has 34 felony convictions. The Mueller investigation (widely dismissed as a hoax) produced 34 indictments, 7 guilty pleas, and convictions of Trump’s campaign chairman, national security advisor, and personal attorney for obstruction and lying to federal investigators. These are not opinions. These are verdicts and public record.
And then there is the Epstein question.
To be clear, Donald Trump is not a convicted pedophile. But he is credibly accused of being one. There is a difference, and that difference matters. What is not in dispute is that a jury found him liable for sexual abuse, that a judge said what he did meets the common definition of rape, and that his closest social companion for over a decade was a convicted child sex trafficker who ran a network that preyed on minors. At some point, the pattern asks a question that his supporters seem remarkably uninterested in answering.
I have watched people I love get pulled into a place where their faith and their politics became the same thing — where questioning one felt like betraying the other. I’ve felt the cost of that personally. And I understand it, because belief is powerful and community is powerful, and the feeling of belonging to something larger than yourself is powerful.
But when any system, religious, political, or otherwise, starts drawing circles around acceptable thought and calling everything outside of it dangerous, that’s worth paying attention to. Not because the belief itself is wrong, but because that’s how people get isolated from anyone who might ask them a hard question. Including the people who love them most.
Here’s what I most want to say, and what I think gets most lost.
Being loud about the things that matter does not mean abandoning kindness. It is not in conflict with softness, empathy, or compassion. Those things are actually the reason for it. You don’t fight for people you don’t care about.
The core of who I am is someone who holds space for people, for perspectives, for complexity. Human first. Always. That’s actually the name of a shirt I’m releasing today, earlier than planned, because this moment called for it. You can find it here Human first.
I extend that until the point where people are being hurt. That’s where I stop extending and start speaking.
When people look at what I write and see hatred, I’d ask them to look again. What they’re seeing is anger. And anger, when it’s rooted in love and aimed at injustice, is not something to apologize for. I’ve had to learn that myself. Anger can be quite healthy. Apathy is not.
To anyone who says they don’t care about politics, or that parenting isn’t political, or who has stepped back from all of it and reframed that as maturity — I get it. It’s exhausting. I’m exhausted too. But disengagement doesn’t protect you from any of it. It just means someone else is making those decisions while you’re not looking.
Neutrality is not peace. Neutrality is allowing those in power to keep control of our lives.
The people who actually changed things, in every era and in every movement, refused to look away. They held their convictions and their humanity at the same time. That’s the harder thing. Not choosing between being soft and being loud, but learning to be both.
That’s what I’m working toward. That’s what this brand is about. That’s what I keep coming back to, even when it costs me something.
Pay attention. Not to a side, but to what’s actually in front of you. And to each other.
