The Torch Report

Life is interesting. Before I begin, I’d like to apologize to the friends, family, and long-time subscribers who have so faithfully encouraged, supported, and followed along with me on this four-year learning journey. Facts being what they are, life has not allowed adequate time for me to crank out proper daily reports, and for that I’m sorry. This is something that I’ve been struggling with. Whereas in the past, I was able to spend four to six hours a day reading and researching, then writing and recording, that is a luxury I no longer have. It is what it is, and I’m sure many in the audience can relate. When I was a younger man, I used to wish there were 30 hours in a day and 10 days in a week—operating on the false assumption that if that were the case, I should be able to accomplish at least half the projects I had on my plate. The wiser perspective came slow, and it came in the form of a question. True or false: there is always enough time? The answer, no matter how I wrangled with it, was invariably true. There is only time and what we make of it. Wishing for more time was a splendid waste of mental and emotional energy that inevitably generated stress and ate at my ability to function. Next came the lesson of letting go, and that has proven to be the most difficult lesson of all. Letting go comes in many forms, and it is widely applicable to everything in life, from the big and monumental changes to the little things that clutter up daily living. This time last year, I was working in radio as a news director for five local stations. I’d also been running an hour-long weekend show for over a year at that point. One memory I recall, with fondness, was recording the Torch Report Weekend Review in my car at a pull-out alongside the highway in central Washington, before zipping back to the arena to watch my daughter compete in an equestrian event. My days were long, with morning news hitting the wire by 5 a.m. and the many meetings that I was assigned to cover often going to 9 p.m. This schedule ultimately proved to be incompatible with raising a family, and I knew I had to let go. To top it off, I was getting paid a paltry $2,000 a month for the effort, which was a far cry from a living wage. I’d originally justified this as a sort of initiation, a putting in my time, proving my commitment, and showcasing my talent, with the expectation that sowing these seeds would yield a fun and fruitful career in radio. In reality, looking back on the experience, I was grossly under paid and way over-worked. It wasn’t meant to be. I had to let go and move on—and that was sad. People in the local area had come to appreciate hearing my voice. Everyone said I did a great job and they missed the show. In other words, I was letting people down by letting go of radio, but in my heart I still knew it was the best thing for my family. I was grateful for the experience, the taste of radio, and I may still pursue this path once the nest is empty. As fate would have it, freeing up my schedule allowed for more time and experience in the political arena. I was honored to be elected as a state and national delegate, and I got to make several trips to Washington DC to bump elbows and engage with panels of politically ambitious movers and shakers. For the record, I am not a politically ambitious mover and shaker. I had very reluctantly stepped into the political arena, not seeking status or an office for myself, but to better understand the process and how the system worked. I sought to learn how local uproar might be pushed through to political impact. At that point I had attended hundreds of meetings, via news reporting, at the city and county level, and even a handful of national meetings I was invited to attend. Through all of this, my eyes were opened to the vast complexity of problems that beset us. Citizen activists were at a significant disadvantage, by design. The cogs of the political wheel were specifically calibrated to ground down any opposition to the status quo. It was just as I had always expected: the entrenched two-party establishment didn’t give a damn about the peasants. All they cared about was maintaining and gaining more power and control. Hence, the vexing situation. With a nod to the current political circus, I’d point out that despite all the “winning” there is still essentially zero accountability for the many heinous crimes that have been perpetrated against the American people. Still, the majority of patriots have been pacified by the election of Donald Trump. Most conservatives are too busy trying to keep up with the break-neck speed of each passing news cycle to keep the bigger picture in mind — and the enemy knows this. It disgusts me to hear conservative pundits squawking about trivial matters, always chasing the latest “news” the way a dog chases a bone. When I started the Torch Report, it was never my intention to regurgitate what everyone else was talking about. Indeed, my aim was just the opposite: to expose the bigger issues that were being ignored, like the Great Reset, toxic injections, commie infiltration, et cetera. Unfortunately, due to certain irrevokable elements of human nature, choosing to ignore what the majority of people were talking about translated into painfully slow growth. The issues I’ve brought to light have been “fringe” in nature — like Algorithmic Social Interventions and mind control, for example — though they are imminently more important than the dominant narratives. On top of that, much of what I’ve had to say has been throttled and censored, because, well, I’ve stubbornly insisted on addressing the issues that don’t play well with the algorithms. If one were to ask me at the outset of this project, writing on Substack and publishing a daily podcast, I would have anticipated the audience would be much larger, and that the efforts four years in would be adequately compensating the time invested. That is not the case. Thus, as life would have it, I’ve had to invest myself in more fruitful endeavors in order to make ends meet. And so it is, I’ve not had the time to continue cranking out reports at pace — which as I’ve said, is something I’m struggling with. Let’s zoom out. I am not naive enough to believe that I can change the whole world. My ego is not big enough to think that my meager musings are going to change the course of history. My intention, in contrast, has always been to share what I was learning, to shine light on counter-narrative perspectives, in a way that might propagate the tiniest of ripples in the public psyche. My desire has been to stimulate curiosity and conversation. This is an extension of my overarching intent to elevate awareness, which has been the driving factor in my life for much longer than all the political stuff. Being somewhat detached from the news and commentary for the last couple of months, while working away day after day to make my own little world go round, I suppose some part of me has regressed to this higher purpose. While I’ve addressed the various angles of elevating awareness in many prior reports, and maintain that the elevation of awareness at the individual level is the most essential element of any winning political strategy, in the absence of daily immersion, I felt a disconnect. To be brutally honest, nobody really misses my daily reports. If I were abducted by aliens, everything would continue moving along just as it always has. I am but a spec in the cosmos, and this is a fact that I am quite comfortable with. The Torch Report, though I’ve poured my heart and soul into it, is ultimately inconsequential. The question I’ve pondered this morning is this: do I need to let go? If I cannot do it justice, if it’s not paying the bills, is all this effort to create daily reports just a grand exercise of ego? Do I think my perspective is really that important? Am I serving the people, or am I serving myself in all of this? My heart has always been a heart of service. I’ve served every community I’ve ever lived in, in one way or another. In some places I’ve been Pastor Luke, tending to the spiritual needs of the flock. In other places I’ve been hailed as a healing guru — “Guru Luke” as one doctor claimed — teaching the ancient secrets of yoga and meditation to the community. In each of these modes, my focus was always to lift people up, to help them heal, grow, and thrive in life, regardless of their circumstance. It has been much the same in the political arena too, albeit with a different bent. My purpose in fanning the flames of the liberty movement has been to lift people out of oppression, by elevating awareness to the stranglehold of tyrannical government regulations. Much like guiding people in prayer and study, similar to teaching people how to heal mind, body, and soul, this political elevation of awareness always involved presenting practical solutions to real world problems. The effort was born of necessity, and seeing a need for both inspiration and strategy, I set my mind to task. But that was then, and this is now. Much like the passing of seasons, like letting go of the church and the labels that came with it, like letting go of the yoga studio and the labels that came with that, I am faced with the reality of similar circumstances, where it feels like life is taking me in a different direction. No longer am I a radio host, I’ve had to let go. Time constraints have forced me to let go of producing daily reports and podcasts. Has the time come to let go of the Torch Report? I squirm at the thought of it. It makes me sad to think about. I don’t want to let go, that’s for sure. What I want is for this effort to be meaningful and bear fruit — but in the absence of such fruit, I must contend with reality. Wishful thinking doesn’t provide much consolation. Like my grandma always said: “You can wish i