God's Spies by Thomas Neuburger

The world-historical clock on the wall says 'tick tick tick.' Let's look at what's in store.

Welcome to God's Spies by Thomas Neuburger. I’m a long-time professional writer, author of stories, poems, essays and non-fiction books. My work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Common Dreams, Alternet, Naked Capitalism, DownWithTyranny! and many other venues. I’ve written political analysis under my own name and the byline “Gaius Publius” since 2003.

Who Are God’s Spies?

God’s spies are all of us. In so many ways it feels like we’re in a novel, doesn’t it? A massive tale peopled with “packs and sects of great ones” in which hundreds of the powerful rule and ruin the lives of the mainly helpless. All this plays out blindly as if the “big one,” the global climate crisis, weren’t waiting in the wings to end the tale and launch a thinner, much more primitive book.

I’ve been seeing what-is through the eyes of what-will-be, an inescapable vision, since I started producing political work in 2010. It’s a unique perspective, I think, and one I hope you’ll find enlightening … perhaps even entertaining. After all, if we weren’t all in this story, subject to the monsters of its plot — if this were something we read to get to sleep — we’d be up all night, dazzled by its comic and tragic twists, its clowns and villains and unlikely heroes.

What better story to engage ourselves with than this? What’s at stake is only the world — the political future of the United States as it gives birth to its next constitution, and intertwined with that, the biological future of all of the rest of the globe.

How could we resist a canvas so broad, and stakes as great as these are?

What You’ll See Here

Since I write for many venues, this site will collect all of my better current work — or at least the most substantial — and there should be something of that here once or twice a week. This is its primary purpose.

From time to time I'll add some edited earlier work that still seems lively and pertinent to what’s happening today, pieces that add to an understanding of what we’re going through.

I’ll also offer Substack-only writing — goodies that won’t appear elsewhere — essays for list subscribers and previews of works-in-progress, some fiction, some non-fiction. There are three long works in the bin right now, starting with a look at the Next American Constitution — the one we’re drafting as we speak.

You won't be spammed — emails will come at most once or twice a week — and you won't be hounded with requests for money. Anyone is welcome to become a paid subscriber (with my heartfelt thanks!), but that's not the point of the site. The point is to collect new work, give supporters a chance to comment on it in the context of the rest of the site, and build a readership for a coherent vision of where these world-historical times are taking us.

Regardless of genre, the primary lane of God’s Spies will be politics — what the “great ones” do to each other and to us, and why, and at what cost. I hope you’ll join me.

In the meantime, please tell your friends!

All the best,

Thomas Neuburger