Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That is not just the Trump administration’s position; it has been the position of every US administration since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. America barely tolerates non-nuclear allies from pursuing any nuclear technology, much less adversaries. Had there been no Islamic Revolution in 1979, the United States could’ve tolerated a civilian nuclear program in Iran; with the Revolution having occurred, no nuclear program would ever be acceptable.

Of course, Iran has possessed domestic, non-weaponized nuclear power plants for decades. To be clear, their continued existence does not signify acceptance on America’s part; American policymakers if they could would wipe both the entirety of Iran’s nuclear capability off the map as well as everyone who would ever study nuclear energy for Iran. That’s precisely what the United States and Israel has done for decades, assassinating Iran’s nuclear scientists and sabotaging their nuclear facilities. Whether it was Obama’s 2010 Stuxnet sabotage action against Iran’s nuclear facilities or Trump’s Summer 2025 bombings of the same facilities, the goal has largely remained unchanged: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

Presumably, there are contingencies in place if Iran does possess a nuclear weapon, up to and including an Israeli nuclear-tipped first strike on Iran, which carries the risk of immediate Russian and Chinese intervention (the radiological clouds over Israel and Iran will dissipate over Russian and Chinese territories, affecting hundreds of millions of their people). In other words, Iran cannot possess a nuclear weapon for that presages immediate, unavoidable global nuclear catastrophe.

There are, of course, a lot of baked-in assumptions about Iran’s nuclear ambitions (to say nothing of the baked-in assumptions about how Russia and China might respond). The first is that they would finish building a bomb, ever. To many in the econo-diplomat world, they’ve only ever seen Iran’s nuclear program as a leverage point to bargain away in an eventual deal with the United States. They aren’t a North Korea, an essentially hyper-homogenous (politically, culturally, and economically) entity that can turtle itself away from the world economy and spend decades perfecting MIRV-capable ICBMs that can effectively destroy any major world power with the click of a button. Iran’s leaders and people would both rather prefer ‘win/win’ economic trade deals with anyone and everyone (excluding Israel).

And that’s precisely what happened in 2015: when the United States came knocking with the JCPOA, Iran was rather eager to stop its nuclear program in return for desperately needed economic relief. And that should have been that: with Iran’s nuclear program effectively defanged by the JCPOA, America’s prime motivation to oppose Iran (Hezbollah and Hamas are not American enemies in the slightest) would evaporate, opening Iran up to American investment.

But Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And the JCPOA, for all its merits, had an expiration date ten years after the deal was struck. Here then is the conundrum: if in ten years Iran can start building a nuclear warhead, then Iran might have a nuclear weapon. And Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Therefore, a deal that postponed Iran’s nuclear ambitions for 10 years was the same as no deal at all, and that’s precisely what Donald Trump did in 2018 when he officially pulled out of the Iran deal.

If you want to understand the true logic of this, you’d need to dumb your brain down a bit and think on the level of Trump. You could, if you wanted to, use complex metaphysics, empiricism, and relativity to explain Trump’s reasoning. For instance, if x is postponed for y years, then x is not happening right now. However, at year y, x could start happening. If time is relative to observers (with the speed of light from the perspective of light effectively being instantaneous), then y equals zero. Therefore, x is fundamentally postponed for 0 years (i.e. not at all), thus the relative inevitability of time ensures that x more or less is guaranteed to happen immediately. Obviously, clearly, y is not 0. No human alive perceives time outside of t-symmetry (though some have tried!). Nor is y imaginary. It is a real number, marked by real material events (the orbit of the Earth around the sun). Yet, for some reason, Trump and his backers have rendered the entire concept of time into relativistic certainty.

Trump, of course, is not learned enough to recognize the logical cage he’s built for himself. He’s very much stuck in the moment, having bought into all these preconceptions on-sight, with no capacity to question the underpinning logical framework or its conclusion.

As the JCPOA negotiators and proponents realized in 2015, there was no alternative to a negotiated settlement with Iran. The alternative, war, is precisely what we are seeing take place today: not only is Iran’s nuclear regime still intact, but Iran has routed the US Armed Forces from the Middle East and shuttered the Hormuz Strait, both individually twin pillars of strategic defeat forming a foundation of epochal devastation.

We don’t know ultimately what convinced Trump to hit go; who can know what lies in a man’s heart but lies he tells himself? Regardless, the American state acting in this way became inevitable after 2018. With a negotiated settlement rejected by the American powers that be in 2018, that only left war. However, that war could not and would not start until Iran itself had been weakened. This wasn’t just Trump; the Biden administration more than did its part in Gaza (up to and including using US special forces to raid Hamas tunnels (according to Sy Hersh and others who know)), in the West Bank, and especially in Syria and Lebanon to ensure Iran’s regional allies were weakened.

In effect, with peace ruled out, the US military and diplomatic strategy since 2018 has been to fray, fracture, expose, and then destroy the Iranian state. It culminated in Iran’s near-revolution in Winter 2026 and the subsequent murder of Iran’s civilian leadership. The theory of victory was vastly empty, and essentially boiled down to a Hitlerian ‘we only have to kick in the door, and the whole rotten edifice will fall apart’. When Iran, like the Soviet Union in Summer 1941, didn’t immediately capitulate in the face of relentless pressure and then has gone to successfully both resist and turn the strategic tables on the United States, Trump reacted exactly like Hitler, firing his generals left and right and demanding a Holocaust of the Iranian people.

America does not share a land border with Iran. There will be no Iranian Stalingrad, no occupation of Berlin (DC) with Trump in the bunker as Iranian katuysha’s rain down from above. Despite all this, we needn’t doom. The prospects for peace—a JCPOA with terms far, far more favorable to Iran—remains the only logical conclusion. The alternative (a nuclear Iran, a nuclear world war) is impossible to desire, even for the most hardcore clerics in either Iran or Israel. The only question remains: when will this peace happen?

Trump of course is still stuck in the logical trap that led him to war in the first place. The JCPOA was to terminate ten years after it was signed; Trump has been angling for a twenty year deal but Iran has pushed back with a five year deal. Maybe they’ll compromise on seven or the rounder ten. Either way, this is near-impossible for Trump to stomach, as in his mind, and in the minds of the elite superstructure he has erected around his person, a nuclear Iran after a ten year peace deal is the same as a nuclear Iran, right now.

Thus the United States must attack Iran, not to destroy their government per se but to destroy their ability and capacity to resist. That’s why Trump has been threatening their entire civilization with death. That this is all based on false premises and is quite impossible to achieve (Iran would rather be slaughtered by American warheads than capitulate their sovereignty), yet Trump and America will continue to do so.

It’s very easy to doubt, that having started this war, Trump is in any condition to end it. Even if he wants to (and he does), the logical underpinnings that led him to war still exist. That’s why he has been saying for months now that higher gas prices are worth it, to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. With Iranian total surrender the only strategic option amenable to Trump (the alternatives being a renewed JCPOA or an American ground invasion of Iran), the status quo of an on-again off-again state of war in the Middle East could persist until Trump leaves office.

For Donald Trump’s hang-ups are Donald Trump’s. While Biden, Obama, Clinton, Bush, et cetera spent their respective presidencies setting the floor up for military action against Iran, none of them pulled the trigger until Donald Trump foolishly chose to do so. A future American President could realize that Iran not pursuing nuclear weapons for five or even ten years is as good as Iran not pursuing nuclear weapons, period, and leave it as a problem for their successors to negotiate, on-and-on, every ten years or so until the end of time or the end of states.

As stated prior, it’s a question of imminent metaphysics. Does the delayed pursuit of something signify the inevitability of pursuit? If a lion does not eat a zebra for a month, do we count that zebra as already amongst the dead? Perhaps not, if after that month expires, the lion could be given incentives not to eat the zebra, and so on, until both lion and zebra die of natural causes. Or does the existence of the lion presage the murder of the zebra, and that the zebra’s existence is only for the lion’s pleasure to slaughter and devour? Yet when these metaphors cease being animals and become human beings and states of millions of people, the metaphysical must rise to ethical: Israel should not annihilate Iran, even if it’s to prevent a nuclear Iran, even if preventing a nuclear Iran prevents a nuclear world war, for that whole logical premise is both faulty and ethically evil. If you’ve constructed a trolley problem where one trolley path leads to the death of 90 million people and the other to the death of 8 billion, then there is something fundamentally wrong with your trolley design!

Thus, Donald Trump is caught in a logical trap of his own making. He cannot escape it. He will not escape it. Peace will soon come again to the Middle East. But only once Trump has been removed from power. Hopefully, by January 2029, that will have come to pass.

The King of the United Kingdom spoke today in Congress. His words do not matter; his presence itself speaks volumes. It is an affront to democracy to invite a monarch, much less one of the Windsor clan, who belongs to one of Europe’s oldest monarchies, to speak in the People’s assembly chamber (the House of Representatives). While the eponymous Charles is not the first monarch to dirty the chamber with his antidemocratic presence, he should be the last.

Yes, America was founded to protect the elite class of domestic merchant interests versus the distant, far-off British monarchy and Parliament (with their own distinct elite merchant class), not out of a prime pro-democratic sentiment. Our domestic political system being in thrall of merchant interests of course continue to this day, and keep our democracy stuck in infancy and stillbirthness. But we are blessed that we do not also have the baggage of thousands of years of the divine right to rule over property (which included a majority of human persons in Europe via serfdom up until the early modern era). Yes, we kept many people in bondage and genocide, but that was a blip, a blink, compared to the generations upon generations in Europe.

Of course, there are thousands of years of human history already present in the American continent, lived through via the Indigenous First Nations peoples. But the American polity, driven by imperial madness, genocided a great lebensraum for itself across the continent, crushing both the Indigenous and their history underfoot, which many rightfully labor to this day to restore and continue (such work must continue, must be funded more and more). Yet despite the restoration work, the consciousness of this pre-colonial history does not yet exist in a majority of American minds (a true tragedy, one that must continually rectified).

For the regrettable majority lacking that consciousness, in their mind the settlers and colonists moved from Europe to the Americas, and shorn themselves of their old property rights, expressed most clearly via their near-universal rejection of inheritable monarchy. And this, despite being often colored in romantic niceties, is true. Wherever monarchy did rear its ugly head, in Haiti, in Brazil, in Mexico, and so on: it lasted for bare decades at most before being swept under the rug of a progressive, humanistic vision for humanity where the right to hold land and people as property divinely granted by God was anathema to the human condition. However that conclusion was arrived at, it is the correct attitude.

What do monarchs have to teach us about governance? That rulership is a coin toss, born out of a single couple’s loins? Damned are we if the child is stillborn, miscarried, or a fool. Damned are we if the past king or his ministers were fools, for that child will likewise become a fool, surrounded by fools. Damned are we even in the best of times, for plagues and floods and famines afflict even the purest of heart.

Democracies suffer these too, but at least democracies have the ability to change leadership, even if in practice it is only a musical chair of elites. Monarchies, even democratic ones like the United Kingdom, are stuck with their chief elite, even if he is a particularly nasty and naughty fellow. As far as we know, Charles is no worse than his mother. But if he had died prior to having children, Citizen Andrew, the pedophile, would be King Andrew right now, with no constitutional recourse (save a Dutch invasion!) to rid the country of ‘heavenly-crown’d’ monarch.

There is a degree of awe and majesty in the throne, in the spectacle and glimmer of gold upon his brow. If that did not occur, then there would never have been kings in human history; we all would have been able to pierce through the false veil of material wealth to see the oft-ugliness beneath. But because the glint of gold blinds and binds, both soul and man, so too are we bound to kings. At least, until the moment we do realize that there is no majesty in those old bones, or that the specific chemical qualities of gold (that the element does not rust like other metals) are not magic or heavenly, but just scientific oddities of our natural universe.

And in King Charles himself, and his disgraced Kingdom, there is no majesty. We speak of a ‘special relationship’ with the island Kingdom. Beyond the immediate European crises of the 20th century, what alliance do we have with such a Kingdom? We share a tongue, true, but everyone speaks English as well as they speak Chinese these days; the internet powers our modern Tower of Babel across 7 billion persons. Do we really want or need a man like Charles, who divorced his beautiful wife Diana (who then died mysteriously) to marry a harlot to teach us on morality and virtue? And Charles’ family is indeed devoid of saints; Earl Mountbatten and now-only-citizen yet who was former Prince Andrew diddled many, many children.

We do trade with the British, yet we trade more with Europe and China. We have military bases on the island, yet we have bases everywhere in the world. Will we invite every petty warlord to Congress, to speak on values and virtues? Under the present morality, perhaps!

Diplomatic alliances should not be based on morality but rather strict national interests. And in our alliance with the UK, we see neither morality or interest but rather a bored disinterest that desires stability over everything else. If the UK is anything, it is a problem child, in every sense of the word. They are a nuclear power, yet their nuclear delivery methods require strict US babysitting. Brexit hurt them and hurt us at the same time, shocking billions upon billions out of capital flows worldwide. Their political system is a total joke, with their moderate parties totally disgraced leaving only the neofascist Reform Party and the neoidiotic (if some of their worst economic policies can be changed, perhaps this moniker change) Green Party in its wake. Their waterways are poison, their people are sick, their bridges and residences collapse yearly for want of repair.

Britain has made itself a middle income country and must be thus treated like one. Like any other problem country in such a category, their political and constitutional frameworks must undergo total reworking and restructuring. Like a corporate merger, the rot must be vanquished out, with the core assets honed in on to deliver a more stable economic footing. While their structural problems are being worked on, their monarchy too must be relegated to the history books alone, with the monarchy’s assets going to pay down the nation’s many, many debts, and the family itself rendered nothing more than citizens.

First things first though: let us never invite a monarch, much less a British one, to speak in our Congress. For even if Charles led a golden age United Kingdom, we should still reject his presence. We would be satisfied to trade with them in that case, even retain a few bases. But why dirty the floors of our Democratic house with his un-and-anti-democratic feet? It makes no sense.

There is nothing Charles can say that cannot be said by an elected government minister. And so it is with every other monarch in the world (excepting some dictators and monarchies without elections, of course). We must ask every person who wishes to speak in the People’s House: ‘do you represent the will of your people, or do you represent the will of an elite class of monied interests’. Indeed, if we asked such questions, we would be left with only 10% of existing representatives! For surely as we turn out the monarchs, we must turn out the rot within. For just as we cannot allow inheritable power to hold sway over our affairs, we must not allow inheritable wealth (which via its wealth always acquires and purchases power) to likewise hold sway over our affairs.

Next time, the United Kingdom should send a member of their Parliament who is actually not a corrupt sock-puppet of their elite interests, or better yet, they should just send us a letter (or an email, if their antediluvian regime want to pretend to be modern).

It would save us all the trouble.

The above observation demands analysis. Where are the revolutionaries, either the liberal constitutionalists or marxian typologists, who would’ve built and mounted barricades over far less offensive measures in the past? After all, it was Adolphe Thiers, the liberal revolutionary who brutally gunned down the leftist Paris Commune in 1871 who in 1830 said about the King’s government:

“The legal regime is over; that of force has begun; in the situation in which we are placed, obedience has ceased to be an obligation.” - Adolphe Thiers, 1830

This was not just a hot take, something Tweeted out on the toilet in between posts about discussions about racism on The Pitt and the latest condemnations of Hasan Piker. This was an actual call to revolutionary violence, heeded by the public who then took up arms and overthrew the Kingdom of France in 1830.

The equivalent of a modern Thiers would be the liberal princeps, Ezra Klein. Can anyone imagine Klein posting something equivalent, calling people to literal arms? Even if he did, can anyone imagine anyone actually heeding the call? Both are farcical fantasies. Using violence to achieve political objectives is so far out of the norm of American politics that even a President flagrantly violating the laws and constitution does not change the anti political violence nature of Americans.

Meanwhile, on both the left and the right, revolutionary violence operates on a lone wolf ‘one-and-done’ principle, and has for some time. It is simply not possible to organize a violent conspiracy with more than two people. Two people may indeed get together and conspire some violent act, but more than two almost always leads to arrest and preemption by the police. We can see this reflected in past terrorist attacks. During the 2000s and 2010s in Europe, there’s data to suggest that lone wolves have a 61% chance to launch terrorist attacks, versus 18% for 2 or more conspirators.

Crucially though too is that these attacks are ‘one and done’, meaning that once an attack has been executed, the perpetrator is always eliminated, either by forced exile, death, or imprisonment. The persons who committed the Charlie Kirk and Brian Thompson incidents were ‘one-and-done’; they will never be able to act in that kinetic fashion ever again. That in turn makes their revolutionary potential nil; a revolutionary is someone who may die in the struggle, but otherwise can be trained and counted on to do work as part of a large organizational goal. Thanks in large part to the strength of the American police state, neither of those goals are tangibly possible; you cannot train revolutionaries (for they will be arrested after their first act) or count them to be part of a larger organization (for they will be arrested and/or closely monitored by the police as soon as they enter, rendering their actions vulnerable to espionage, sabotage, and preemption).

The US Federal Government, and her European allies, have altogether hundreds of years of fighting and breaking up revolutionary groups using combined police enforcement efforts. They are all extremely well-informed, highly competent, well-paid, and highly motivated. To wit, the last time a leftist group made any serious revolutionary moves was in the 1980s, when leftist bombings were commonplace. The right, treated with comparative kid gloves, launched violent attacks as recent as last year, yet with extremely little to show for it.

Where then, are all the revolutionaries? We killed them all. Or, if we didn’t, we arrested them, marginalized them, and in other words made the things that made revolutionary victory possible, impossible.

And what makes revolutionary victory possible? First, let us define the main four revolutionary tactics.

1. Maoist/Castroist guerilla resistance

   1. This is the classic image of a green camo-wearing mountain band of cigar-chomping, hard-living men and women who wage a Star Wars-like rebellion against an evil empire. It’s people lugging rusty AK-47s in the deep wilds, ambushing police and military units, staying mobile, and slowly destabilizing the state from the inside out. Eventually, the state will be so weakened by these engagements that the guerilla force will be able to march into the capital, relatively unopposed.

2. Thiersian barricade mounting

   1. Going back to Thiers, this was most recently seen in the Gen Z Protests and in the Arab Spring; a bunch of people taking to the streets and effectively shutting down the national economy with a general strike. The state, crippled by elite disagreement and general weakness, opts for capitulation to these forces rather than continued resistance.

3. Soviet dual power

   1. Pretty much seen only in 1917, this entails the state allowing the army to choose which national government to swear fealty to, to either the Soviets or national legislature. If a power like the Bolsheviks is thereafter able to take over the Soviets through elections, and if a large enough component of the army holds loyalty not to the legislature but the Soviets and thereby the Bolsheviks, then the Bolsheviks can use the army to overthrow the national government, assuming the national government does not move first.

4. August or Self-Coups

   1. This type of revolutionary action stems from elite disagreement. An elite part of the government, sensing political weakness of other parts of government, moves against that part of the government and dismisses them. This may happen in conjunction with a mass popular protest, but rather than the protests driving the coup, it is the coup plotters driving the protests. This is the ‘revolution by letter’, as was seen successfully throughout multiple military dictatorships throughout the 20th century, and unsuccessfully in the 1991 USSR August Coup. Mass involvement, to the extent it exists, is co-opted and utilized for revolutionary purposes before being discarded.

Of these, which is most likely to happen in America? Or, for those that cannot happen in America, why is that?

First, we must dismiss options 1 and 3, the guerilla war and the dual power scenarios. Guerilla war is impossible for all the aforementioned reasons; the strength of the American police and military state is such that if it were to happen, the United States would effectively have to have already collapsed into a Syrian-style civil war. And for the third scenario, dual power, that too is impossible considering that no government in their right mind would suffer something like the soviets to ever exist, and that the only reason that the Russian government allowed it in 1917 was because of the German invasion of Russian territory; an existential, ruinous bloody war of massive epochal upheaval.

Next, we can dismiss the ghost of Thiers. If Ezra Klein and his cohorts were to demand an immediate rising, there might be a few million who march out into the streets. But then what? Napoleon III taught all modern city architects: build your cities with wide enough avenues to ride a unit of hussars (or, in modern contexts, tanks) through, and cut down any would-be revolutionaries. And, you don’t even need to use tanks. Simple CS gas, riot shields, and a few thousand well-trained, well-paid cops can dent a force 100 times its size, no matter how well-intentioned the group of protestors are. Even if a group of protestors could break through all the kettling, all the walls of riot shields, all the CS gas, all they’ll end up doing is occupying a building or two before being surrounded and arrested. That’s exactly what happened on January 6 (both the American and Brazilian versions!).

So that only leaves August or Self-Coups. This remains the only type of revolutionary action that is still possible in America in spite of everything. For one, it doesn’t take a lot to do. To explain, let’s assume that Vice President JD Vance wanted to attempt a successful version of the August Coup, using the 25th Amendment as the Constitutional justification.

Vance would first need the backing of armed men, a combination of either soldiers, police forces, or the Secret Service, to act. This doesn’t have to be a large group; around 100 would be necessary to interdict and detain the President at a secure location. Once Trump has been detained and moved to a secured facility, Vance would then submit a Section 3 letter to Congress, effectively making him Acting President.

With Trump detained, ‘a written declaration to the contrary’ will not be forthcoming. Here of course is where the August Coup failed, as Gorbachev was able to send a written declaration to the contrary to Yeltsin, ending the coup prematurely. With that in mind, Vance will ensure that Trump is incommunicado until his either Section 1 resignation or impeachment (a Porfirian exile or Allende execution would be other options, though fraught with their own obvious risks of a Trumpist return either from exile or in revenge, from his children).

This is not to advocate for Vance to do this, to be clear. This is just an observation that the only type of revolutionary action possible in America, at the present and foreseeable future, is this, an elite self-coup by other members of the elite. Guerilla forces do not exist, the masses cannot otherwise take power, and soviets are a historical oddity, not a repeatable pattern to exploit.

There are of course implications for political movements in this analysis. For those on the Left or the Right, it means that to commit to politics, one must commit to electoralism. One can tilt at terrorist windmills, but other than serving as Quixotish parables, there is no logical reason why one would do so. It doesn’t matter if you are in the DSA or some other group; if you are in politics as a leftist, you are either imminently involved in electoralism, or you are imminently about to be arrested.

It means that those who do have revolutionary ambitions must play the long, internal game, and build internal elite consensus first before acting. Considering how capitalist-aligned our state is, and therefore how capitalist our elites are, this internal revolution, shown in a Vancian style self-coup, will only ever happen to solidify and strengthen the capitalist state, not to seek its overturn.

So, if a revolution is to happen in America, it will only ever be an elite-run, internal elite self-coup, which will end up strengthening the capitalist state and the forces that underpin it. Otherwise, your best bet is to work within the system, and seek to reform its excesses from within.

Maybe this will change in the years and decades to come. Maybe it won’t. For now though, the pattern is clear. The revolutionaries are long gone. All that remains are the elite: their games, their struggles, their triumphs, and our suffering. Our only choice: to join with the elite, or to alleviate whatever suffering we can, by whatever power we can scrounge up.

It will never be enough.

It shouldn’t be a hard or particularly challenging thing to do. If you are a good person, with a good heart, and you answer from that good place, then the answers should come as naturally as breathing. Yet for want of words, of intelligence, of even basic morality, many yet still falter and underwhelm.

The answers herein are not the sole, indivisible truth. You may divine and devise your own schema, your own answers. But these answers are designed to be the plain truth, delivered as concisely and directly as possible, to an audience beyond your immediate interrogator. The point isn’t to convince your interrogator of anything, the point is to convince any potential audience consuming this information. If you offend the person asking you questions, that matters little, so long as you can convince everyone else.

Questions, Answered

Q: Does Israel have a right to exist? (other variations: “…a right to exist as a Jewish state?” / “do Jewish people have a right to a nation-state?”)

A: No state under international law has a ‘right to exist’. That’s never been the case in all of human history. States exist, right now, to this day, because they have armies, allies, and economies to back up their claims to sovereignty. What states do have is an obligation to follow international law, and the states that fail in that central obligation demand multilateral corrective action from every other law-abiding state.

Q: Do you condemn Hamas? (other variations: “…Hezbollah, [other non-state enemies of Israel]”)

A: Israel’s enemies are not America’s enemies, and to the extent that they are recognized as such in American national security law is a mistake. Hamas is not Al Qaeda. They have no interest in global Jihad; they are a national liberation movement wholly concentrated on securing Palestinian sovereignty. The same could be said for Hezbollah, with Lebanon. To the extent that they have harmed Americans, it is because we have picked the wrong horse in this fight. It’s not Hamas or Hezbollah that diverts billions of our tax dollars annually into their pockets. We aren’t paying for Hamas or Hezbollah’s healthcare, or the bombs they use to kill women and children in a girl’s school. Our politicians aren’t getting bribed by them daily. We aren’t waging a war of aggression on their behalf in Iran.

The enemies of America are those who work against America’s genuine interests. And there is no greater enemy in that case than Israel, which has barreled the world into war and collapsed the global market supply chains, all for its genocidal, ethnocidal fantasies of Alexandrian conquest.

Q: Do you condemn Iran?

A: No. They should be condemned as much as Poland in 1939, or as Ukraine in 2022. They are victims of an imperialist war of aggression, one as violent as Hitler’s or Putin’s bloody crusades.

Q: If Iran gets access to nuclear warheads, they might attack Israel or the United States directly with nuclear weapons. Shouldn’t we stop that?

A: No nuclear power save the United States has ever used a nuclear weapon, and there is no reason to believe Iran will ever use one save if they were directly attacked by one. To stop Iran from nuking anyone else, the response is simple: don’t nuke Iran and Iran won’t nuke you.

Q: Do you support Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions against Israel?

A: At the very minimum. We must also consider a full diplomatic and economic break with Israel, to the extent of using our national security laws to sanction their entire economy, and to go after their individuals and groups as terrorist entities. If Israel does not change its behavior, we have an obligation under international law to force it to change its behavior, up to and including breaking it apart as a governable entity.

Q: Is Israel committing Apartheid?

A: Yes.

Q: Is Israel committing genocide?

A: Yes, and has been since 1947.

Q: What is to be done about rising antisemitism in America?

A: Hatred of Jewish people because of their birth, culture, or faith is wrong, and should be combated by the whole of society. But Israel is not semitism; being anti-Israel is not antisemitic, despite the efforts by the zionist lobby to make it so.

Q: Did the Arab states commit ethnic cleansing of their own Jews post-1948?

A: The end of WW2 was a traumatic time for many peoples, with tens of millions being force-migrated across the continents, including in the Arab states, and especially in Palestine, where Israel committed the Nakba. What happened to those people of all stripes and religions was wrong, and should not have happened. However, in the aftermath of WW2, the crime of forced migration was effectively excused by the Great Powers, and done by all of them in their own territories. Forced migrations should not happen again in human history, same with genocide.

Q: Did the Holocaust happen?

A: Yes, the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews, along with 11 million other non-Jews, and also helped kickstart a war that ultimately claimed between 50-100 million lives.

Q: Because of the Holocaust, don’t you feel bad for the Jewish people? Don’t you think they deserve a state? Doesn’t a Jewish state make the Jewish people safe?

A: It’s possible to feel pity without demanding as a policy the invention of a nuclear-armed genocidal state. There are many victims of genocide who don’t have a state. The Roma people and transgender people are just two examples of Holocaust victims who were not given a state. And, given how often Israel is at war, and how much intense hatred Israel collects for its vile actions, it’s hard to see how a state makes any ethnic group safer, save those states that are multicultural and multiethnic, such as the United States.

Q: Israel has been a strong ally of the United States. How can we break up such a long-standing alliance?

A: People change. States change. A so-called ally which drags us into a ruinous war of economic calamity should not be our ally, especially if that so-called ally is committing a genocide and threatening Hitler-like expansionist dreams.

Q: Did Hamas commit mass rapes during October 7?

A: I’m against mass rape of any kind and I’m condemn Israel for immediately burning and burying all the evidence that could’ve led to investigations and arrests.

Q: Do you condemn what Hamas did on October 7?

A: I condemn that they felt military action was necessary. I condemn Israel for not seeking a peaceful settlement with the various Palestinian movements before October 7th, and I condemn them for doubling, tripling down on genocide in the aftermath of October 7, instead of realizing how wrong they were for keeping Palestinians caged like zoo animals. The right thing for Israel to have done would’ve been to remember their obligations under international law, not Amalek.

Q: Do you hate Jews?

A: I don’t hate anyone, I literally love everyone.

Q: But you don’t love zionists.

A: Correct. I love everyone but zionists and racists of all kinds should abandon their ideological priors, lest they find themselves beyond human sympathy.

Q: Do you condemn the phrase ‘globalize the Intifada’?

A: Palestinian liberation should’ve never gotten to the point where the struggle for liberation became a disparate, desperate call for action from the unorganized masses of the billions of people on Earth. To the extent that it has, I condemn the international community, with all their arms, armies, and economic power, in failing the Palestinian people for decades on end.

Q: Do you condemn the phrase “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”, which is a call to ethnically cleanse Israel of Jews?

A: It sounds like you confusing Israel with Palestine and Jews with Palestinians, for the call of Israel’s governing coalition, inside their very party charters, is a call to do exactly that: “From the River to the Sea, Israel is all you’re going to see.” To the extent Palestinians and worldwide protests chant the former phrase, it is chanted as an express denial and rejection of Israel’s thirst for conquest and blood.

Q: Do you support a two-state solution? Or a one-state solution?

A: Israel must be denuclearized and disarmed so that the Palestinian people living in the West Bank and in Gaza and in Israel “proper” can live in peace. The tail-end of how many states will be present in that territory will be a day-after problem, once the denuclearization and disarmament process is completed. It will likely be a multilateral negotiation between the Great Powers, with the United States taking the lead. Much of it will depend on Israel. If they determine, in their final days, to execute the Samson option, then Israel very likely will be blotted out from the human record. Otherwise, who knows? States are fickle, ever-changing things. What matters is that the people are able to exercise their collective right to live freely and in dignity, free from terror bombs or mass executions. If that’s two states or one state or three states doesn’t really matter, so long as the inalienable human rights of the people are respected.

Coda

They may ask you other questions, or to ask you to condemn some other, far more minor and irrelevant abuse. Stick to your principles and what you know to be right, and you will not falter. Never give them an inch, never concede to their framing, for they will use your own words in that case to hang you. And if they condemn you for your answers, then you will have known you have won.

Yet America, for all its faults, for all its malformed issues in its jurisprudential electoral democracy, is still a democracy. In America, women have the same legal rights as men, not just to vote but to hold office, hold property, even own businesses under their own name. In America, two consenting adults can marry, regardless of their sex or gender or their religious beliefs. In America, the color of your skin no longer determines which buildings you can enter at what times. In America, members of the Indigenous communities our ancestors enslaved and murdered en masse are full citizens of our country, with the same legal rights and obligations as all other citizens, while also maintaining their legal Tribal sovereignty.

Of course, we did wrong and still do wrong to our Indigenous communities. There is real poverty across many tracks of Indigenous-owned land, and not just fiscal poverty but harsh water poverty, whereby our Federal government and our laws are literally constructed to impoverish and dehydrate these communities, often out of neglect and sometimes, out of some cruel purpose like profit.

America needs to do far better by our Indigenous communities, and no one is saying we have a model government when it comes to Indigenous communities, yet we can say, for what little it is worth, that we are at least a democracy. We don’t restrict voting rights to someone because they are Navajo or Sioux or any one of the tens of thousands of Federally (or not) recognized Tribes. We don’t say: here, only the white man may walk, and here, the Indigenous may suffer to crawl. Meanwhile, in Israel, that’s exactly what they do to Palestinians every day, right now. Not only do Palestinians not vote in Israeli elections, not only can they not marry freely, but their physical movement is deeply restricted and condensed into three zones.

None of this should be news to anyone reading this. Israel has been like this since before 1948, as mentioned previously. If this were it, if this were the sum of Israel’s crimes, the crime of Nakba, apartheid, and genocide, then we could have perhaps a sensible policy debate within America about the Israeli entity. Perhaps we could talk about boycotts and sanctions in an attempt to coerce a one state or two state solution. Indeed, that is how the international community talked for a long time, to the point that even Yasser Arafat, the closest thing to a unifying leader the Palestinians ever had, conceded that this might be the best path forward.

However, things have changed. Israel’s criminal actions since October 7th, in both waging wars of aggression (crimes against peace) and genocide (crimes against humanity) have shown them to be far beyond the pale, far beyond the niceties of gentle politics. They are acting as an enemy nation, as defined in the UN Charter; as a nation wholly committed to war and extermination, and therefore as a nation that exists outside of international law and thus requiring an immediate international coalition to confront it.

It started before October 2023, of course. Israel has long been plagued by fascist, exterminationist forces. However, it was only in 2022 that these forces took control over the state of Israel, under the kahanist Defense Minister Smotrich and kahanist Minister of National Security Ben-Gvir. The forces that rule Israel extend far beyond these two men and their parties. They are led, coalitionally, by Netanyahu, of course, but these are just arbiters of broader Israeli society. If there were an election tomorrow in Israel, and Netanyahu’s government were to not only be ousted but thrown in their prisons, nothing would change about broader Israeli policy. The crimes against humanity and against peace would continue, if not escalate.

The fact is: Israel is a kahanist (neo-fascist) state. It has been for some time. 80% of the population supports the genocides and the various wars of aggression. If Netanyahu were to lose the next election, his replacement, Yair Lapid, has promised to not only continue Netanyahu’s policies but escalate them; in effect, his electoral promise is to “do the genocides better”.

We cannot have sensible policy debates with these kahanist terrorists or their terrorist backers in the United States. Again, it should be stated plainly: Meir Kahane is a terrorist. The people who follow and adhere to his ideology are terrorists. And, it should pain anyone to realize that the Israeli state and indeed Israeli society, are run by the spiritual successors of kahanist ideology; literally so, in the case of Smotrich and Ben Gvir.

What Is To Be Done?

What other country in the world is “run by terrorists”, what other country has an illicit nuclear weapons program; how, in other words, should the United States of America respond, policy-wise, to the challenge of an ally-turned-terrorist backer?

1979 shows us the way. Iran prior to 1979 was one of America’s greatest allies. Our partnership extended deep into the military and technical spheres. And then, their internal politics shifted and all of a sudden, an alliance that had lasted decades was suddenly shattered. We can and indeed should always consider the costs and benefits of every alliance, every rivalry, every relationship our country has. It’s only sensible; the United Kingdom started out as our nemesis but quickly thereafter became our strongest ally and trading partner.

It’s important to note this history because people like Michigan Senator Slotkin cannot imagine a future where Israel is not our ally anymore. That type of thinking is frankly wrong and antithetical to actually running an empire, and is doomed to drag us into a world war if we are not careful.

Therefore, let’s accept some facts at the outset:

1. Israel has a fascist, exterminationist, criminal cabinet of ministers.

2. The Israeli voting public supports this cabinet of criminals, and if they don’t, they at least support their policies.

3. Israel, either the state or the polity, will not change their policies because of slight pressure and condemnations.

The last point is key. We are far, far beyond the pale with Israel. Not only do they possess hundreds of nuclear weapons but they have an influence network that will be crucial to dismantle, from a counterintelligence standpoint, if the United States is to have a chance at all in standing up to Israeli influence and control. The backers of Israel will want to stoop this argument to the base level of debate, and simple political disagreement. That is wrong, simply put.

If this were the 1940s, we would not, in our public conscience, suffer the opinions of pro-imperial Italians or Japanese, who would want to wax lyrical about either the Italian Empire or the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. We would all sooner drown ourselves in earwax than submit to a notion that Japan is a “truer democracy”, that it alone can represent “Asian interests”. Indeed, the charred and broken corpses from Nanjing to Pearl Harbor would be our retort.

So too must it be with Israel. Israel is an enemy state of the United States, and it is high time it is treated such in both public discourse and in terms of the law. Let us center ourselves within that bosom and corpus of the law, for that will inform and educate how the public ought to think about Israel (as less a state and more a terrorist entity!).

If a Democratic Party is to have a sensible Israel policy, let it be thus:

1. Diplomatic Rupture

   1. Sever formal relations: The US Embassy and other consular buildings within Israel’s territory should be closed (excluding those in Palestinian territories), with Israeli diplomats expelled.

   2. Revoke Israel’s status as a Major Non-NATO Ally.

2. Terrorism Designations

   1. Declare Israel to be a State Sponsor of Terrorism. This would be a Secretary of State determination under Arms Export Control Act §40, Foreign Assistance Act §620A, and NDAA FY2019 §1754(c). It would immediately ban all US aid, arms imports and exports, implement dual-use restrictions (dual-use: something civilian commodity good that can be used in a military context), financial restrictions, and with secondary sanctions on third parties (e.g. if India or China continues to trade with Israel).

   2. Declare every Israeli legal entity (government agency, private corporation, city, etc.) to be Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) under INA §219, IEEPA + EO 13224, 18 USC §2339B. This would allow the US to ban any material support for Israel, block asset transfers to any Israeli entity, bar immigration to and from Israel, and ensure that banks comply with US laws. See below for fuller details

3. Comprehensive Economic Sanctions (Iran Model)

   1. Once designated, the full Iran sanctions playbook applies via IEEPA (50 USC §1701 et seq.), multiple executive orders, and statutes like the Iran Sanctions Act.

      • Asset freezes: Block all Israeli government assets in the US (central bank reserves, bonds, etc.), as done with ~$9B in Afghan assets post-Taliban takeover.

      • Trade/investment ban: Near-total embargo on US persons dealing with Israel or its government (imports, exports, services, financing). Exceptions only for narrow humanitarian carve-outs via OFAC general licenses.

      • Secondary sanctions: Penalize foreign banks/companies that transact with Israel (e.g., Iran’s oil sector sanctions). Banks would over-comply, isolating Israel globally.

      • Sector-specific: Energy, tech, defense, finance—all prohibited, mirroring Iran’s petroleum/development bans.

4. Military Cutoff

   1. Immediate suspension: End the ~$3.8B annual FMF/missile defense MOU, all arms sales, and Qualitative Military Edge commitments. Invoke Leahy Law, Foreign Assistance Act §620I (humanitarian aid restrictions), and Arms Export Control Act for gross violations.

   2. End-use enforcement: Revoke all prior licenses; treat Israel like Iran (no defense exports).

   3. No exceptions: Unlike current targeted West Bank sanctions, this would be a blanket ban.

5. Domestic Influence and FARA/Advocacy Crackdown

   1. Aggressive FARA enforcement: Every Israel-linked group, lobby, or influencer would face mandatory registration as foreign agents. DOJ could pursue criminal charges for non-compliance. Precedent: Iran-linked entities are routinely targeted.

   2. Terrorism material support bans: If entities are SDGT/FTO-linked, providing funds, PR, or lobbying will be criminalized.

   3. Divestment mandates: Federal law requiring US pensions, endowments, and contractors to divest from Israeli assets (reversing current anti-BDS state laws). New legislation could prohibit any US entity from boycotting the boycott.

   4. Campaign finance: Enhanced scrutiny or bans on PACs tied to designated entities.

6. Other Tools and Broader Isolation

   1. Export controls / CFIUS: Treat Israel as a “country of concern” (like China/Iran); block dual-use tech and scrutinize/invalidate investments.

   2. Immigration/travel: Bar Israeli officials/members of designated entities from visiting the US or any US ally.

   3. Intelligence/military posture: Shift to adversarial (surveillance, no joint ops); possible naval/air restrictions in region.

   4. Humanitarian carve-outs: Limited, as with Afghanistan; aid could flow via NGOs but with heavy restrictions to avoid benefiting the “regime.”

All of this could be done with a stroke of a President’s pen. If that President is ever to be a Democrat again, they must enact this policy programme. Anything less risks our country going down the drain with Israel to inevitable doom as it wars against the entire world in its mad bid to make ‘Greater Israel’ a reality. Surely as Hitler and the Nazis failed to make Großdeutschland reality, so too will the Israelis fail to take everything from “the Nile to the Euphrates”, as they constantly call their ‘lebensraum’.

Even if the next President isn’t a Democrat, and is, say, a Republican, we can only hope that they have not been fully captured by the pro-Israel lobby, the way that President Trump has been. Either way, the next President must treat Israel as a terrorist, enemy entity, and anything less risks utter damnation for our own American polity.

There is, of course, a policy goal in isolating Israel. Israel’s isolation is not a goal in itself. The goal, if it can be stated as plainly as possible, is regime change. The new regime post that regime change should place itself, and its nuclear warheads, at the sole discretion and control of the United States President, who shall then dismantle their state and their nuclear program, bit by bit. In its place, America shall create a new regime entity, one that follows international laws as it pertains to human rights and the peaceful obligation of states, and one that is totally devoid of even nuclear power (goodbye, Dimona!).

Only then will America be able to conceive of Israel as anything other than an enemy to be defeated. If that requires harsh confrontation, even a Cold War against the zionist entity, so be it. For the sake of the future of humanity, we must act.

As of today March 20, 2026, more than 3,200 commercial vessels carrying roughly 20,000 crew remain trapped west of the Strait of Hormuz. There are confirmed reports of food and water are running low. Some crews have already endured missile strikes, drone harassment, and GPS jamming, while all the ports in the Persian Gulf are currently refusing them docking access rights.

There is no escape, not while Iran keeps the Straits closed (indefinitely, by all accounts) and while insurance guarantees have ceased. It is possible that some ships will be able to leave soon, via state-to-state national agreements with the warring parties allowing safe exit out of Hormuz but for some other ships, this will come too slow, too late, or never at all. Every additional day risks mass casualties, ranging from dehydration, to heat exhaustion, to starvation, to any other mass epidemic diseases that can become rife in such conditions.

The crews on these vessels are not combatants; they are civilians from India, the Philippines, Greece, and dozens of other nations whose only “crime” was being in the wrong shipping lane at the wrong time. Leaving them to starve or die while diplomats haggle over tanker routes is both immoral and strategically foolish. Dead seafarers will not lower oil prices, will not restore global supply chains, and will not help anyone win the wider conflict.

The International Maritime Organization’s push for a “safe maritime corridor” to evacuate both ships and crews is noble in intent but dangerously impractical in execution. Iran has made clear it will not allow ships with Western (e.g. NATO member states) ownership or flags to transit the strait without concessions. For some ships, such as US-aligned ones, Iran has promised to interdict those vessels, and indeed, it has already struck several. Demanding full ship movement now risks turning this humanitarian crisis into a shooting gallery in the worst case, but most likely: nothing happens at all, and those 20,000 people suffer aboard their ships indefinitely.

There is a faster, lower-risk alternative: immediate, time-limited, personnel-only deconfliction zones. There is both international law and precedent for this.

First, under the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention, every state (Iran, Israel, and the US are all signatories) has an overriding duty to protect seafarers. Iran itself has recently affirmed it has no express desire to harm mariners trapped at sea.

We also have recent precedent that proves this works, even in the worst (in terms of active, deadly hostilities) of circumstances:

• The 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative, which showed that even warring parties can carve out humanitarian lanes when the world demands it and a credible mediator (Turkey and the UN) holds the pen.

• In Syria, U.S. and Russian forces maintained deconfliction protocols for years to avoid accidental escalation while saving civilian lives.

The proposal is straightforward and could be operational within days:

1. Designate between the warring parties two or three fixed “safe boxes” in international waters of the central Persian Gulf, well clear of Iranian territorial seas and minefields. The exact coordinates should be announced and published beforehand.

2. Set up recurring 48 to 72 hour humanitarian windows every three or four days, giving all parties 48 hours’ advance notice through a neutral coordination cell hosted in a specially-designated demilitarized city for the duration of the evacuation (e.g. Doha or Muscat), or in another neutral venue. During these windows, civilian helicopters and small rescue vessels (operating under IMO, Red Crescent, or flag-state charters) would lift crews off the stranded ships and ferry them to a specially-designated deconflicted port in Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, or Saudi Arabia. Further commercial charter flights should be sponsored for those sailors to return to their homes, or to their next ship assignments.

3. That empty vessels in the Gulf would remain at anchor is what makes this agreement amenable to Iran, who presently holds many of the military cards on the proverbial table. It would also remove any further pretext for further attacks on “hostile” shipping; Iran would only be doing acts of international environment terrorism in that case, as those ships are not usable without crews.

4. When the war hostilities have ceased, the fate of these ships will be decided then.

Verification would be simple using real-time AIS, commercial satellite feeds, and a dedicated military-to-military hotline to ensure neither side exploits the pause. During these times, no military assets would enter any of the zones, no cargo would be allowed to move, and everyone gets to go home safely.

This is no gift to either side. The only “side” that benefits is our common humanity. For even, and arguably especially, in these states of tragic war, if we lose our humanity, whatever else do we have left? Are we to really burn the “global village” for its sole value in immediate warmth?

Admittedly, the IMO emergency session that just concluded was a good start. Now it must go further.

A Direct Plea

Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez!

You should immediately table a “Seafarer Humanitarian Evacuation Protocol” built around these deconfliction windows. Oman, Qatar, the UAE, and Bahrain, already co-sponsors of the broader corridor idea, should offer to host the coordination cell and guarantee the safe boxes. The United States can signal quiet support through backchannels; Israel can do the same. Iran has repeatedly said it respects the lives of non-combatant seafarers. Here is its chance to prove it.

Twenty thousand men and women did not sign up to be human shields in someone else’s war. They signed contracts to deliver oil, grain, and goods that keep the world fed and fueled. The least the international community can do is to give them a safe, time-limited path off their ships and onto airplanes home.

The ships can wait. The people cannot. Time-limited deconfliction zones are not a perfect solution. They are the only solution that can start saving lives next week instead of next year. The diplomats have had their chance to posture. Now they must act.

Part 1: The Military Necessity of a Draft

As the Amero-Israeli Axis’ illegal war of aggression against the Iranian state and people escalates, the question on everyone’s lips is: when will the US part of the Axis send in ground troops? As stated previously, the path to a US ground invasion runs through Iraq. Others, smarter than this publication, have already made the conclusive argument (i.e. Harrison Mann) that a naval assault on any part of Iran’s coastline is folly. This means that unless KC-135s keep wanting to get shot down over Iraq, the United States will eventually have to fully occupy and police Iraq (again). And while that could be done with a purely volunteer force as was done in the early Aughts, the same cannot be said for Iran.

For one, Iran is far bigger than Iraq. It’s even far bigger than Vietnam by a factor of five. Iran comprises 1.648 million square kilometers while Vietnam occupies 0.331 million square kilometers. Even being overly optimistic in regard to the number of American casualties, there will be some Americans who will “enter the field of combat vertically and leave horizontally,” to use a common local euphemism to refer to battlefield casualties.

The US presently has, in theory, 1.3 million men and women in uniform it can throw at Iran. But that would mean stripping everyone (even the precious few honor guards at the tombs and cemeteries) from their present duties and sending them to the near-infinite mountain ranges of Iran. Obviously, America would never fully denude its global manpower reserves and commit them all to a mad throw of the dice in Iran, and so that raises the inevitability of a draft.

The US will attrit manpower in Iran. Current casualties (wounded plus killed) are already in the high hundreds, if not thousands. That burn rate, especially considering that ground combat operations have not even commenced, combined with the standard wear and tear humans face (and thus require rotation out of the front), means that the ground forces the US currently has in terms of deployable manpower reserves are rapidly vanishing.

Give it another month, maybe two. Once the United States commits ground forces, the countdown to the announcement of a draft goes from “likely” to “inevitable.” This is, of course, assuming that Trump does not capitulate to Iranian demands, which we can rate as “unlikely,” considering Trump is stuck in a classic (deadly, terrible, Apocalyptic) escalation trap. He could capitulate tomorrow or in ten days or never, leaving it for his successors to handle in the distant future. We simply do not know.

Therefore, the draft. How it will be announced and the societal implications, we leave to better reporters. Sy Hersh, write your heart out (except please don’t actually). Instead, we’d like to walk you through the life of a soon-to-be drafted soldier, from his birth to his truly final, white surprise. It’s a work of fiction, to be sure, yet one grounded in the reality of this war and in the basic realities of warfare as well as US doctrines and procedures.

Part 2: The Life and Times of Sergeant John McCandy Burger

January 20, 2009

Your name is John McCandy Burger. You were born1 in Columbus, Ohio on January 20, 2009 to two doting millennial parents both born in 1991. Like past fated draftees such as in the Vietnam War, you grew up poor, with working-class parents (indeed, they came of age just as the Great Recession hit!), and definitely without any financial or political connections to spare you from the frontlines. You’ve already survived a lot, having lived through the dual fatal epochs of school shootings and the Coronavirus pandemic of the modern era.

January 20, 2025

As you turn 17 and enter your final year of high school, Donald J. Trump is taking his second oath of office. Trump has been present your whole life. Your first conscious memories, in 2013, were of your father reading Trump’s tweets about Robert Pattinson. You’ve supported him some days, you’ve hated him others. Mostly, you haven’t really cared, as you can’t vote and even if you could, you know your vote wouldn’t really count or matter in much of anything. All you knew was that things were good during Trump’s first term (Coronavirus and the mass shootings excluded) and things seemed to be going from worse to terrible under Biden (his old age and all the wars). If you felt hope at all, it was that things would go back to normal (as normal as America could ever get), with no war and a middling poor, yet ultimately satisfying existence to look forward to through the rest of your days.

June 13, 2025

Meanwhile, in the background of your life, Trump bombs Iran on June 13, 2025, kicking off a “12 Day War,” or so it is called on the various apps you use. If you notice it at all, it is gone just as quick as it came, so you continue to not pay attention. You graduate and start working at your father’s boutique X (formerly known as Twitter) Post (formerly known as Tweets) Shoppe for basic minimum wage but mostly tips.

January 20, 2026

In January, Trump kidnaps Nicolás Maduro. The Ukraine war is still raging. You celebrate your 18th birthday with your friends and your girlfriends (yes, you, like many others, are polyamorous, to the dismay of your quasi-religious parents, who are both, unbeknownst to you, non-ethically non-monogamous).

February 28, 2026

A few weeks go by. Trump bombs Iran again for the second time. It sounds more serious than the last time.

June 1, 2027

For the next few months, the news you get goes from bad to worse, and then to the very worst case for you: the Army draft, long thought dead, is suddenly brought back to life, first in rumors and wild speculation, but eventually in codified, enforced mandates. Before you know it, you, son, are being sent to the front! You can’t even muster a sarcastic hip-hip-huzzah as your draft papers come in. There’s no deferment for you; you didn’t have enough money or good enough grades to go to college, so it is off to the 11th Infantry Battalion of the 249th Armored Tank “Husky” Division of the United States Army.

Or, that is your final destination. First, though, you must go through the various steps of becoming a soldier.

It is on June 1, 2027, that you receive your draft and induction orders. You are given at most ten days to prepare, marry, have kids, buy a new Dodge Ford Ram at 34.5% APR, or whatever have you, and then it is goodbye to civilian life, perhaps for good.

During this time, you report to a local Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS), which swears you in, screens you medically, issues your uniform, and then gives you your first orders. Congratulations, son! You’re in the Army now.

From there, it’s off to training. For our purposes, let’s say you go to Fort Moore, Georgia (infantry One Station Unit Training site). You’ll be taken there by either commercial bus or air, and likely under Army escort.

June 11, 2027

From June 11 until October 25, 2027 (or thereabouts, a total 18 weeks), you will attend and graduate from Infantry One Station Unit Training (OSUT).

In your first week, you go through the classic initial processing things you may have seen in film: haircuts, gear issue, and distillation of Army values. You learn how to make your bed the way the Army likes it, how to tie your shoes the way the Army needs it, and even how to defecate like a proper Army grunt.

It’s your second week, June 18, that things begin in earnest. They’ll start you with Combined Basic Combat Training. Once you get through that, it’s Advanced Individual Training, complete with Red/White/Blue phases for marksmanship, tactics, land navigation, physical fitness, vehicle ops, and small-unit drills. In 18 weeks (or sooner), you’ve graduated as a certified infantryman with MOS 11B. Typically, outside of wartime, infantry is given an extra four weeks for a total of 22, but wartime constraints already allow it to be shortened to 18. If manpower demands are critical, training could theoretically be shortened further.

November 1, 2027

Assuming 18 weeks of training, that’ll get you to November 1, 2027, by which time you’ll have joined the rest of the 249th Armored Tank “Husky” Division. From here, it is another seven months of collective training, until May 31, 2028. As this Division does not really exist, we can place it on a base where it can be deployed to the Middle East with ease, which means a base such as Fort Bliss, Texas.

You’ll be assigned to a line company in a brigade (let’s just say 1st Brigade). There, you’ll learn how to wage true modern war; the last training set just taught you how to be an infantryman—this is the real deal. Here, you’ll learn squad and platoon live-fire, partake in company-battalion field exercises, brigade-level maneuvers, digital systems training, and get acquainted with modern division gear: Abrams, Bradleys, HIMARS, and crucially, drones. They’ll also put you through your paces with a focus on desert/mountain warfare and rapid deployment drills. Finally, by the end of May 2028, your Division is certified “deployment-ready” after a major capstone exercise.

June 1, 2028

For the next month, you’re just waiting for the order to go. You get your deployment orders and handle your final affairs (for real this time; you are leaving the United States), which means things like medical/dental, wills, family briefings, equipment packing, and so on. All the while, your Division is already moving heavy equipment, likely to the Port of Beaumont, Texas.

July 10, 2028

You do nothing save what the Army tells you. Mostly, this will be spent doing drills and paperwork. You get promoted to Sergeant; due to a shortage of NCOs and the US Army adopting, since the start of the Iran War, IDF practices in many cases (including overpromotions as well as illegal double-tap strikes on civilians or surrendered enemy combatants), this is not uncommon for newly minted soldiers. No first-class voyage for the heavy equipment, alas. That boards an LMSR Fast Sealift (or similar ship) and begins its long journey to the front. That trip takes a total of thirty days at an agonizing 24 knots. It leaves Port of Beaumont with part of the Division on July 17, 2028. The equipment ultimately transits from the Atlantic through the Gibraltar Strait, then the Mediterranean Sea, finally terminating in Haifa, Israel. While other rendezvous points could be used, this assumes the continued closure of the Hormuz Strait and the Red Sea indefinitely, and Turkey’s and Egypt’s (professed) continued neutrality in the conflict. It’s only in mid-August that all the heavy equipment arrives in Israel, and it is from then that you make your final way to Israel.

August 15, 2028

You’ll board a commercial or military charter plane and either spend some time in Ramstein, Germany, or fly direct to Ben Gurion, or a military airfield near Haifa. That is assuming Israel still has usable airports by this point; if they don’t, you are boarding the slow, 24-knot boats above. Full off-boarding, staging, prepping for movement, and so on takes the rest of the month.

September 1, 2028

You start moving, with the rest of the Division, overland from Israel through Jordan and into Iraq over the course of 10 days. You depart Haifa on September 1 and take the Israeli highways east to the Allenby/King Hussein Bridge on the Jordanian border in tactical formation, which, when paced for security and maintenance, averages 150–200 miles per day for a large armored column.

On September 2, you transit for the next four days overland through secured highways in Jordan with Jordanian escorts.

Then, you cross the Iraqi border on September 6 near Ruwayshid and are moved to your final forward assembly area inside Iraq.

By September 15, the rest of the Division has set up on the front lines in Iraq, with full division combat effectiveness assumed by the end of the month.

Your Sad, Sad Future

You don’t know how you die. It just happens one day, though there have been plenty of close calls. Who was winning the war when the final cut to black hit? It didn’t matter, not to you. You just had a job to do, and you did it. It didn’t matter which village you razed or what town the enemy recaptured. Your life was mundanity and sporadic dreadful excitement until the sudden end.

Before you die, you conduct patrols, fire support, and provide forward presence. There are drones everywhere, and constant missile barrages from deep within Iran, unreachable by US forces. You suffer in makeshift concrete bunkers, crawling forward and backward in offensive and defensive actions in movements more akin to World War I than any other modern war.

Then it’s over, and you die.

Or maybe you don’t. Maybe the FPV drone (bought on Temu for $11.99) that was meant to kill you kills your buddy instead. You survive that encounter and therefore your entire first rotation. You return home, spend whatever time with whomever you want, and then it’s back to the front. For the US Army can, for the duration of the war, keep you in the Army, serving in active duty, until you are either dead or until it is done, and the United States has either achieved final victory or final defeat.

Months, decades, years go by.

They make many sad movies about men like you. “The Second Lost Generation,” the kids these days call you. Assuming you avoided death in service, the day you die is January 19, 2056, one day before your 47th birthday. The war goes on, or it has been lost already. Your cause of death is noted as a statistic in the memorials: “toxic environmental pollution from the Iran War,” a nice way to put “exposed to an ungodly amount of carcinogenic chemicals and bodily stress” during the war.

Two hundred years after you die, one of your great-descendants plays a simulation of your service. They consider you a loser, and that you should have gone home, G.I.

Maybe you should, G.I.

While you still can.

At some point in the future, Kharg Island will be attacked by US forces. If you want to know how that operation will play out, look up the Snake Island campaign in Ukraine—except multiply everything by a factor of twenty (Kharg Island is twenty times the size of Snake Island). In short, it’ll be an incredibly bloody mess for both attacker and defender, and its seizure by any party won’t “end” the war, much like Ukraine’s final “victory” (if you can call planting a flag on a deserted island a victory, deserted due to incessant Russian drone strikes) on Snake Island.

Therefore, let’s continue focusing on the bigger picture.

In my last article, I covered the military inevitability of a US ground invasion of Iran via the northern Azeri corridor. Nothing has changed since then, and I stand by everything I wrote 100%. However, I should have been clearer: this is the military strategy I would recommend if I were in the US military. From a purely military standpoint, it’s the only logical option with a chance of victory—a two-pronged ground invasion from the North and South, with both prongs meeting somewhere in central Iran. Of course, this is politically and economically infeasible, even insane to suggest.

The manpower requirements alone (up to 4 million ground personnel on the US side, with a final total commitment in the double-digit millions) would demand World War-level unity in the US—something Trump assuredly lacks, especially in blue and purple states. It would require activating the draft, which alone could break America apart. To say nothing of the economic cost: without massive tax increases, the Crash of Hormuz plus the Tariff Wars would trigger a stagflationary spiral, even before the first new Army division forms.And then what? The US would be committed for at least ten years, invading and slowly “pacifying” Iran square kilometer by square kilometer, mountain pass by mountain pass—much as Russia is slowly gobbling up Ukraine. Like Russia, the US has a competent general staff that games out strategies nonstop and makes recommendations to political and economic decision-makers. Their top recommendation, ignoring political and economic feasibility, is a two-pronged ground invasion via Iraq and Azerbaijan, with early emphasis on Azerbaijan due to its proximity to Iran’s political and population core, the Tehran metropolis, which houses 10 million people.

But that’s not a choice Trump can make. He doesn’t want to, even if it’s technically the only way the military can win—as he knows he lacks the political support for total war (though that’s effectively what his demands for peace amount to: total war against the Iranian state and its people). If the Hormuz Straits were out of the equation, Trump would declare victory today and end US involvement, leaving Israel to fend off the Iranians—just as he left them to handle the Houthi-led (preferred journalistic style: Ansar Allah) Yemeni armed forces.

But Trump can’t do that either. If he could, he would. But he can’t. Iran has closed the Straits. That doesn’t just mean losing 20-30% of the world’s daily petroleum and natural gas output—though that alone would be apocalyptic. It’s everything else: fertilizer shortages, banking collapses, real estate crashes, helium shortages (think: no more semiconductors, phones, or advanced electronics for anyone but states and militaries due to exorbitant prices), the AI bubble—it’s all interconnected, all collapsing in real time.

The markets gave Trump 12 days to wage his war, expecting it to end like the aptly named 12-Day War. We can see this in Brent crude prices. On March 8th, panic gripped the market, prompting the US Treasury to stabilize it. But that blatant manipulation couldn’t override the reality that the Straits remain closed, with no reopening in sight. So, the price of Brent—initially propped up by hopium and Treasury intervention—broke past $100 a barrel on March 11th and has stayed there since.

Therefore, Trump needs the Straits reopened for all the obvious political and economic reasons. As such, today on March 14th, he called on several countries to join him in an operation to reopen them.

It’s impossible to reopen the Straits without a ground invasion, and impossible for that invasion to succeed without massive manpower. It would probably take more than just 5000 marines! By comparison, the US invasion of Iraq required about 600,000 personnel total. Assuming similar manpower pools (more on that shortly), the ground campaign against Iran might play out as follows. I stress I’m just an amateur journalist, historian, and military enthusiast. This isn’t based on insider info—just my own analysis. But if the US general staff had to recommend a strategy excluding a draft or Azeri front (Turkey has barred its Azeri vassal from joining), this would be the next logical option.

1. The first objective: secure the Iraqi front, tackling Resistance-aligned forces—perhaps even toppling the Iraqi government and installing a US governorate to disarm the population, including of course the Popular Mobilization Forces.

2. The second objective: secure and hold the Iraq-Iran border. At least half of all US-aligned ground forces would hold here (and on garrison duties) across Iraq, pinning down a significant chunk of Iranian troops on the Iraqi front.

   

3. The third objective: a mass armored and aerial incursion into Khuzestan province, one of the few spots where US armored doctrine can shine. With air supremacy and armored spearheads, the US could seize this area with relatively few casualties.

4. The fourth objective is where things get tricky. The US and allies would snake along the coast through mountain ranges and deserts, covering hundreds or thousands of square kilometers. Here, the invasion would bog down, with guerrilla warfare crippling US supply lines and manpower. A draft would become urgently necessary.

5. We’ve entered pipe-dream territory. For the fifth objective, remaining US forces would advance on a broad front, securing countless mountain ranges, passes, and valleys. Without draft-level reserves, this could lead to catastrophic defeat (think Napoleon or Hitler in Russia: total annihilation of US ground forces).

That said, the US could accomplish objectives 1-3 with current troops, especially if allies like South Korea and France contribute ~100,000 men each. As for US manpower alone: the Army, Marines, Reserves, and National Guard total slightly over 1.1 million ground personnel. Most are stateside or awaiting call-up; the US could deploy 500,000-750,000 to the Middle East.

I say “easily” only in terms of not imperiling national security by removing them from the 50 states—the answer is yes, as 100,000 could suffice at home. But logistically, it’s tough: the US would need to seize merchant marines for transport, offload in distant Red Sea or Mediterranean ports, then trek to Saudi jump-off points—all while enduring brutal Iranian drone and missile strikes.

Building up for phase 1 (objective 1) would take 6-9 months. Meanwhile, Hormuz stays closed; in fact, US midterms would be underway or over. Assuming Trump doesn’t care about Congress, this may be his only choice. His only other choices (arbitrarily numbered with reasons why he cannot in parentheticals) are impossible to consider:

1. Nuclear strikes until Iranian capitulation (risks imminent, perhaps inevitable global thermonuclear war)

2. Humiliating US regional withdrawal and negotiated peace settlement (it’s not an option Donald Trump can pick, let’s be for real)

3. Mass US ground invasion of the North and South (with what political support?)

Therefore, this option, once the Kharg Campaign is underway (or maybe it has already started) will become the only feasible one left. Except this will still end in humiliating US failure. Let me show how the future will likely unfold:

March - November 2026: the US amasses a ground force in neighboring friendly countries to tackle Iran and its regional allies, mainly in neighboring Iraq. At the same time, US and allies sustain heavy casualties via Iranian drone bombings, and are forced to abandon their bases closest to Iran to conserve manpower and heavy, irreplaceable equipment.

November 2026 - January 2027: the US ground invasion of Iraq begins and ends. US casualties are low during the initial phase, but spike as forces transition to garrison duty.

January 2027 - March 2027: the US launches a joint naval invasion across the Persian Gulf and across Khuzestan province. Any attempts to seize more land are met with stiff, unyielding resistance.

March 2027 - ???: the US seizes the rest of Iran’s southern coastline.

However: if the US is able to accomplish this goal, then Iran will still be able to keep the Straits closed. None of it will matter, as Iran will still be in drone and missile range of the Straits. So, the US will force itself deeper and deeper into Iran, and it will always be “one more mountain range” until victory. This would drag on for years, draining America’s political and economic strength. Iraq and Iran become ulcers on US manpower, with Trump promising wins just over the horizon. If Russia’s war against Ukraine ends in Russian victory, it will be because the attritional math of grinding manpower and equipment ultimately worked out in their favor (Russia just has more people than Ukraine, simple as). Same will it be for America and Iran, assuming American leadership is as unchanging as Russian leadership.

But at some point, Trump will no longer be President. At some point, simple biological facts about human senescence will become true for Donald Trump as it becomes true for all humans. Will a President Vance, or a President Someone Else continue Donald Trump’s war? I personally choose to doubt it, and there is reason to believe that a President Someone Else (or even Vance) will see the writing on the wall and blame Trump for the failed war and thereby seek a negotiated peace.

Trump, of course, can’t. He must win; defeat isn’t an option while doubling down remains possible. And it is: as Commander in Chief, he can order deployments to Saudi Arabia and invade Iraq. It’s entirely plausible! Absent other choices, this will be his next move.

It’s only a matter of time.

Before this war started, Donald Trump retained absolute control of the situation. He could have claimed an easy win by signing a face-saving deal with Iran that spared everything but its nuclear program. Both sides would likely have continued their preexisting animosity, but there would have been peace.

Donald Trump is no longer in control of dictating when this conflict ends. He, of course, determined—by his own executive, unconstitutional fiat—when this war should start, when he decided to cowardly murder Iran’s Head of State. But before he can decide when this war will end, he must decide if he wants it to end. And that, he can decide tomorrow, or right now. For the United States is not operating as a state power right now—as a post-Westphalian entity—but rather as the personal property of Donald Trump, as if this were the demesne of some king during the ancien régimes of Europe.

President Trump has subsumed total control of the American state. And thus, the calculation is far simpler; rather than the state having to be convinced that peace is in its best interest, only one man has to be convinced. Thus far, he remains unconvinced, as he has stated multiple times that this war can go on for “weeks, months, forever.” But can it really?

Brent crude, a key economic benchmark of the oil market, reached $116 a barrel (nearly doubling from its $60 lows within two weeks) within hours of markets opening on Sunday. It's likely shot higher since, with sobering estimates predicting $150 by the end of the week, $200 by the end of the month, and Armageddon thereafter. It's the same story across sectors: aluminum, fertilizer, and so on. If this were just a natural disaster—if a hurricane had supernaturally formed and wreaked havoc on the Middle East—the effects would still constitute the worst spike in global average commodity prices in recorded history. That this can go on “forever,” that this is a war and thus much less predictable than a natural disaster: all of this bodes ill for humanity at large.

When does Trump decide the madness should end? The damage to the world economy is nearly without precedent, to say nothing of the human cost of lives lost on both sides (far more Iranians) and the cost in war materiel (all those fancy radars that Iran is blowing up require expensive rare earth materials that must be sourced from China, another enemy America has made), which is reaching eye-watering numbers. For comparison, 9/11 cost the world economy (just the day itself, not everything that came after, such as the wars) an equivalent of $183.65 billion, or thereabouts. The closure of the Straits of Hormuz costs the global economy $40 billion every single day.

In a week, since February 28, that’s $280 billion, or a little bit over 1.5 9/11s.

In a month, that’s $1.2 trillion or 6.2 9/11s.

In a year, $14.4 trillion or 74.4 9/11s.

And so on.

From now until the midterms, assuming this war goes on forever, assuming Iran can keep the straits closed, assuming the United States does not achieve a military victory, then the straits will have been closed for 248 days. That is roughly $9.9 trillion in damages to the world economy. And that’s just the optimistic read.

There were concerns the AI bubble would pop before the war started, and those concerns are about to heighten to a critical level with the price of energy skyrocketing to unseen heights. If the AI sector goes belly-up because of this war, that is it. We can no longer quantify the losses because the sudden removal of the AI tech sector from the world economy—the main thing driving growth in markets—plus Trump’s tariffs, plus the closure of the Strait of Hormuz equals nothing less than catastrophe in socioeconomic terms. Externalities mounting externalities! Famines, plagues, more wars are guaranteed to come from that sudden shock. And if tensions mount to a nuclear level between the powers, that would constitute game over for humanity.

If Donald Trump can decide that this war does not bode well for his political, economic, and personal (staying alive and not atomized in nuclear hellfire) outlooks in life, then the only question is when. It could be tomorrow, or it could be never. Politically, the data is there, plain and present: Donald Trump’s party, continuing on this course, will be routed worse than Liz Truss’s Conservative Party was in the Labour electoral landslide of 2024, and that is being extremely generous to the public in their mounting rage. If Donald Trump cares about having political power, about continuing to be President, he must end this war. The question is, when can he? Only he knows.

But Trump is no longer the only factor in deciding when this war ends. When the United States killed Khamenei, they pulled Iran even closer to the negotiating table, except now the main negotiating is done kinetically, through drone and air strikes. Both sides could win this war through military means, but this war will mostly end with a negotiated settlement. Most wars do, excluding wars of total annihilation and conquest, such as World War II. Even World War I ended with a negotiated settlement, with Allied armies not fully occupying Germany and administering the territories themselves as they would do in the Second World War.

For the US to win this war militarily—to achieve all of its war aims of replacing Iran’s current state apparatus with one pliant to American interests—it would need to fully occupy Iran. The problem (militarily) for America is that it simply does not have the ground forces or the ground force posture to achieve this. For the invasion of Iraq, the United States mustered a force of 300,000. For the invasion of Iran—a country three times the size of Iraq with roughly three times the size of the Iraqi army as well—the United States would need one million men deployed as ground forces. Considering that is the total number of manpower available for call-up if America scraped everything it had, this becomes a daunting impossibility without a draft.

So for the United States to win, it needs to accept an economic cost of about six 9/11s per week, every week, indefinitely, as well as the costs of a draft and the inevitable human costs of the war (How many Americans will die? 100,000? 200,000? More? As Ukrainians and Russians report, modern drone warfare has made war bloody as hell; they’ve lost a million men each according to reports), until victory is finally achieved. Could it be done? If Americans were just automatons that did whatever President Trump commanded them, then yes, America could eke out a military victory like this.

But we’re not automatons, and so the safe bet is that this fever in Trump will break. Eventually. Hopefully. The only other potential for an American victory comes if they can reopen the Straits and destroy Iran’s ability to project power abroad; mainly their missile program. But doing that would likely involve a ground campaign, unless if America’s Anthropic-powered targeting truly is performing unimaginable wonders, and not, say horrors like the murder of over 150 schoolchildren or the Looney Tunes style destruction of vehicles painted on the ground.

As for Iran, it is a full state and thus far more predictable. It is here we can look to Clausewitz and all the other great theorists in history to determine how and when Iran will choose to end this war. This war, for them, will not end on the cognizance of one man, even if that man is the new Supreme Leader. No; it will end when a consensus of the state and the elites who comprise that state agree that it should end, on terms it can accept.

For this case, we must assume Iran will keep Hormuz closed, that its strikes against the GCC will continue, that despite losing missile launchers for every strike, it can still maintain some momentum of daily barrages across the Middle East. It is the bare minimum to be expected of any competent state of its size. A country with that many people, with those many resources, with the amount of mountains it has, should be able to maintain a consistent barrage indefinitely. If it cannot do this, then we must totally reassess its capacity for long-term survival. If, for instance, the United States reopens the straits next week, then this is all moot. The Iranian state would still survive, but its prospects for a strategic victory would become daunting.

If Iran is able to survive and maintain its fire missions ongoing indefinitely, then an Iranian strategic victory becomes possible.

There are, in sum, three distinct possibilities for how this war might end. Which one is achievable, and to what extent, will depend totally on its battlefield performance. This is what Clausewitz meant by war continuing politics: what Iran could not achieve in negotiations, it will achieve on the battlefield. For instance, Iran has demanded that the GCC states expel American bases from their territory. Those states refused. Now, Iran is bombing them daily with drones and missile strikes. If the bases can be eradicated through the bombing campaign, if the economic damages from the strait closure can be sustained, then Iran will have achieved on the battlefield what it could never hope to achieve diplomatically.

The three possibilities therefore:

1. Strategic Iranian Victory

2. Strategic American Victory

3. Status Quo Ante Bellum

The first, a Strategic Iranian Victory, entails exactly what it says: Iran more or less outright wins the war. On the American side, it will mean that Trump has agreed to the fact that he cannot hope to win this war and has begun begging for peace negotiations. Iran will not have to immediately accept, of course. With the US weakened, it will likely keep its attacks flowing daily, removing US military and economic influence by brute, kinetic force. When Iran decides to meet the US and sign a peace, it will be on its rough terms. There might be demands the Iranians have that America would not be able to meet, such as the destruction of Israel or the total expulsion of America from the Gulf (America would likely retain influence on the Red Sea coastal areas of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, for instance). But Bahrain, the UAE, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman: all those entities that launched attacks from their territories into Iran would be made into neutral powers, if not outright aligned with Iran (through revolutions caused by the socioeconomic upheaval of the war, most likely in Bahrain and Iraq).

The second, a Strategic American Victory, entails the United States reopening the Straits of Hormuz and ending the daily missile barrages. With the damage to the global economy localized mainly in Iran, the United States could keep the air bombing campaign until Trump is out of office, at genocidal costs to the Iranians, of course. This, again, can only be done kinetically; Iran will not destroy its missile launchers, and therefore America must, or lose the war. Could it happen? It’s highly unlikely, considering how this war (or three-day special military operation) has gone thus far. But it is the scenario that America would like to see take place. Of course, if this immediate strategic victory is achieved, Trump may very well decide to send in a full ground invasion, all costs be damned. In that case, the outcome again will be determined on the battlefield.

Lastly, a return to the Status Quo Ante Bellum. This won’t happen. Even if Trump begs for mercy tomorrow, Iran will have no reason to stop the war until it can force Trump to agree to its main demands (the removal of US military bases in the Persian Gulf and Iraq). Iran will only throw this demand away if Trump were to threaten nuclear usage, and that’s highly unlikely, even if America were humiliated. And if Trump does threaten nuclear usage, then nuclear weapons will be used, and 99% of humans in the Northern hemisphere will be dead within 5 years as a result.

No one is ending this war until their side is satisfied. For the madman Trump, who knows what will satisfy him? The world economy has already imploded worse than Oceangate’s submersible did. Perhaps nothing can change his mind, perhaps he is a convert to Christian Zionism, and desires nothing else than the building of the Third Temple so that Jesus Christ may return and therefore secure his entrance to Heaven (a key concern for him) despite his sins. Or maybe he’s just waiting for every air defense interceptor to be lost in the attritional war. Who can say for sure, but Trump himself?

As for Iran, the only rational actor at the table, they will continue until every US base is erased kinetically and then for good, diplomatically. Until then, this war will continue, for weeks and weeks until finally, Trump’s mind has been changed, and Iran or the United States have achieved its military objectives.

And Israel? Israel will do whatever the United States of America tells it to, if it would but speak (or be capable of speaking). Unless, of course, if Trump is totally in thrall to the Israeli state. That remains a frightening possibility, considering recent statements.

We should pray they are misspeaking, either out of malice or out of stupidity, for the honesty would be too horrid to comprehend.

The United States of America is at war with Iran. Whether or not pundits or the military want to call it a war doesn’t matter; the harsh reality is that we are at war. Given that, we must consider what the US military will do to defeat Iran; this does not mean that victory is attainable or even desirable, simply that they have been tasked to do a job, even if it’s politically impossible, and thereby make military recommendations to America’s political leadership to achieve a victory.

With the failure of the air campaign to achieve immediate victory, and with a country like Iran, there are few options for measurable military success; in fact, only one option remains for a potential ‘non-regime change regime change’. Here then, is how the US-Iran War will develop in the coming weeks and months.

The Case for the Inevitability of War between Azerbaijan and Iran

Let’s start with a look at Iran’s geography.

To the south, the Persian Gulf forms a formidable sea barrier that even if overcome, leads directly to the hell that is the Western Zagros Mountains. As thousand-year old war tomes will tell you, you never want to be found fighting uphill. In the times before artillery and machine guns, a group of braced spearmen on a hill can resist whatever comes up the hill by sheer dint of gravity; if you want to try this yourself, go stand on a hill with a friend. Alternate the person who is standing up above and who is standing below, and have the person below try to shove the person above. Spoilers: the person below won’t get very far at all.

In the times since artillery and machine guns were invented, the advantage for the person on the elevated position became even more pronounced. Now, armies on elevated positions could eliminate attackers far at range, with the elevation providing perfect sightlines for the army’s guns. And in the days of radar, satellites, drones, and missiles, attacking an elevated position is nigh-impossible.

Don’t take my word for it. One of the main reasons why Russia has yet to take the Donbass despite 4 years of war is that despite the fact that Ukraine is very flat, the Donbass is the hilliest part of the eastern country and therefore the worst terrain to fight in, to say nothing of the urban cities that exist in that part of the country.

Except the mountains of Iran are far, far taller than the gentle slopes of East Ukraine; in the Zagros, the average elevation is between 2,500-3,000 meters. During the 1980s war, Saddam didn’t even try to go up the mountains; he kept his army within the Khuzestan flatlands (west of Zagros Mountains), not that he had much choice, considering the pathetic state of his armed forces.

The same fate awaits any enemy army invading Iran from the east or from the west. To the east are inhospitable deserts and the inevitable run-into the endless mountain ranges, to say nothing of the fact that Pakistan or Taliban-run Afghanistan would never allow US forces to stage a ground invasion in either. To the west, no desert, just an immediate confrontation with mountains as high as 9,000 feet. The US Army may be filled with ‘warfighters’ and devoid of ‘Woke’, but even they would have a hard time charging up a row of 50 different Mount Shastas (14,000 feet) before reaching the objective (Tehran).

So, it is hopeless and even pointless for America to try invading Iran, right? Well, that would be right, if not for Iran’s immediate northern border.

We needn’t concern ourselves with the eastern part of this; Turkmenistan and the other -Stans are not aligned with the US and do not have the capacity to engage in a hostile war. Azerbaijan though, is. Out of all of Iran’s neighbors, Azerbaijan is unique in that not only does it share an enclosed naval sea border with Iran (the Caspian Sea), but Azerbaijan’s borderlands with Iran also lead to a narrow strip of green invadable flatlands. In addition, Azerbaijan just fought two successful wars against Armenia (mainly, with Turkish/US backing), so it has the ability to fight offensive war.

Let’s not forget how close the US and the EU are to Azerbaijan, either.

To say nothing of the fact that Azerbaijan ethnically cleansed huge swaths of Armenia of ethnic Armenians and that the US and the EU greenlit this because they were so thirsty for Azeri oil after the start of the Russia-Ukraine War. Azerbaijan therefore is nothing more than Northern Israel, the Northern Flank of America’s Operation Epstein’s Fury.

And, if you are in the US military (woe to you), then really, do you have any other option? The Iranian state is not collapsing. Hormuz remains closed. US bases in the Middle East are turning into depopulated craters. Other than craven surrender (which would get you immediately fired from your job in the Pentagon), what other option would YOU have to suggest to the “warfighters” on how to un-fuck this situation? Other than using unlimited nuclear warheads on Iran, Russia, and China (and thereby destroying America), this is it.

The Shape Of Things To Come

1It will begin with an air campaign. With the US and Israel providing strategic bombing and close air support, the Azeri air force will join in the fray with their powerful Turkish (Bayraktar TB2) and Israeli (Harop, Orbiter) drones. These combined will wreak havoc on Iranian positions in the north of the country, around the Caspian sea shore. A few hours into this air campaign, the ground invasion will then commence.

Spearheaded by Azeri soldiers, US special forces, and even some US ground forces (Marines, etc.), the goal is to overwhelm, isolate, and destroy enemy positions as quickly as possible, taking and holding the immediate objective before moving right on to the next one. The goal is speed; if tactical victory is not achieved within ~3 days (seizing the coast), the whole operation is a bust.

The ground attack will commence from the Astara region within Azerbaijan, and seek to secure the positions the air campaign obliterated. At the same time, helicopters and rapid moving naval vessels (speedboats) will launch a naval attack from Baku, the goal being to seize as much territory behind Iranian positions as possible.

To put this in the most basic military terms as possible, here is how the Azeris and Americans are planning to wage this war:

First, Azeri troops engage with (weakened by airstrike) Iranian soldiers.

Next, Azeri troops land from the Caspian Sea behind Iranian positions.

Lastly, the Azeri troops that land behind the Iranian troops encircle, and with help from the troops in the front, eliminate the Iranian positions.

This can be repeated up the entire Caspian Sea coastal area that Iran occupies, with Azeri ground forces engaging Iranian forces on flat, open terrain, and American/Azeri forces landing from behind and delivering the killing blow. As soon as the Iranian frontline collapses, Azeri forces will move up to the next line of engagement, with another aerial/naval insertion already queued up for when that happens.

If everything goes according to the Pentagon’s and Azerbaijan’s plans, this is what the war should look like on D+7:

From there, it will be a hard, long fight up the Alborz mountains to reach Tehran, but victory would be far closer in sight than it would’ve been prior.

Except it won’t go like that. Not at all.

The ACTUAL Shape Of Things To Come

Iranian missiles and drones, with help from Russian and Chinese intel, know-how, and industry will rain down on Azeri positions. US casualties will be high, in the thousands if not tens of thousands. Azerbaijan is also woefully outnumbered on the ground; Iran could hold a ten or even twenty to one manpower advantage in the actual field with Azerbaijan. The invasion will thus fail.

From there, who knows? Maybe Iran counterattacks. They should. I would. Maybe they march into Azerbaijan proper. Why wouldn’t they? With Azerbaijan’s (tiny) army broken, Iran will have the opportunity to knock out a declared enemy. That might draw Turkey into the fray, who would quickly march into Armenia, knock it out, and then engage directly with Iran.

But a Turkish intervention would risk a Russian one, in which case, it is basically World War 3; a nuclear war, and the end of humanity, at least we know it.

If you’re a military advisor to the United States, your options therefore are nuclear holocaust right now, or a (potential) nuclear holocaust tomorrow.

Let’s pray they choose the unlikely ‘never’2!

It is not early to prognosticate or pontificate on who the Presidential nominee for the Democratic Party should be. It is, in fact, too late. Right now, a genocide greenlit under former President Biden has escalated into an illegal, fatal war America might very well tactically lose, if not face total strategic defeat.

I think we need to be honest about how our government actually works, in seeing how the President was able to start bombing Iran without Congressional authorization: we have an imperial presidency, yes; but we more critically have a presidency operating under emergency powers. The USA PATRIOT ACTs, the AUMF of 2001: all of these were Enabling Acts, used by every President since Bush but especially escalating under Trump to basically trammel through the US Constitution.

I’m no fan of the Constitution. It’s full of anachronistic errors borne out of an ill-made compromise with a union of slavers made even more anachronistic by the fact that that slaver class was totally smashed in a civil war. That being said, if I care about one thing, it’s that having a constitutional system of law and order where Presidents can be arrested and go to prison would be the minimal ideal. It’s not an insane thing to demand. South Korea, an established democracy, does it all the time. In Brazil, the same presidents who attempt coups are locked up.

But there can’t be any sort of justice expected with a President who operates fully with the executive authority established and granted to him. Every President before Trump, including Trump himself, self-policed to an extent. Whether it’s the tariffs, or ICE, or the actual literal shooting war with Iran, where hundreds are already dead including US servicemembers, Trump’s second term is one without any restraints, where the sky of what the US Enabling Acts enable are truly tested.

Yet he can’t be arrested or stopped. And that won’t change, until there’s an election in November 2028 and a handover of power in January 2029. Democrats, I think, understand the awesome emergency powers the President is imbued with. That’s why no matter what inane controversy plagued whatever Democratic administration in the past, whether it was President Clinton’s criminal conduct with underage minors, or President Obama’s calamity in Libya, or even President Biden’s mental degradation, they always lied, lied, lied, to cover up for literal crime. Why? To some extent, a President having that much power becomes an unconscious fact, even if a President barely uses the arsenal of tricks at his disposal. Thus, even if the President is a doddering old man, having that power carries with it respect, with some even raising that person to living godhood.

Of course, no President is God. Presidents are living men, and die like living men. If anything, they are unique in that they are mostly old, mostly white, and all men. Also, we’ve barely had 50 and just as many elections for them so insofar as data on the types of man to choose, how to choose, what types of choices should be made et cetera are all educated guesswork.

We don’t know who will beat Donald Trump, which, to be clear, involves more than just 270 electoral college votes. There is a concept of ‘too big to rig’. This is more than just the popular vote though that is important. We have to define what the “it” is in the rigging; what exactly is being rigged? The election? There are 50 states, 50 different ways of counting ballots. That’s a lot of work, and it didn’t work outside once in 2000. Theoretically and legally, they could try to do so at the ballot certification stage in Congress but that’s what January 6 was all about. Both strategies failed.

So, what next? The problem with January 6 or with changing the states’ certification is that it comes too late in the process. Or, put simply: Trump is a TV guy, and he knows this. Who actually decides who our next President is aren’t the state electoral officials, isn’t Congress, isn’t the Supreme Court: it’s the guys on the TV. On election night, every election night (and this is why Trump is so obsessed with mail-in ballots, the fact that he perceives they robbed him of an electoral victory) they are the first people that declare what the capital T Truth is, and out that information spirals, onto to TikTok feeds, onto algorithms, into even real life conversations.

If every channel, if every app said “President Trump has been declared President of the 2020 Presidential Election”, would Biden have ever become President, even if he “won” the election by legal means? No, of course not. Especially not now, ever since Trump has purged the Federal government of those who would be disloyal to his whims. Especially even more so considering that almost every social media app, from TikTok to X, to almost every TV provider from CBS to ABC and so on is owned by his lackeys.

It doesn’t even matter if Trump is the person on the ballot. It could be Vance, or some other inheritor to the GOP mantle. What matters is the infrastructure, the tens of thousands of loyalists at media and tech companies our oligarchs have installed throughout our society and government. Whoever it is the Republicans choose, they will most certainly have the means to steal the election.

Democrats, therefore, are doomed. They are doomed under Gavin Newsom as they are under AOC. When push comes to shove, and when the corporate media and then the Republican courts start declaring Vance is the President despite independent vote counters certifying the Democratic nominee won by a landslide, they will cower behind strong legalese statements. They will sue, and countersue. The Supreme Court may even rule against them, or not.

They will wait patiently. And then January 20, 2029 will roll around, and the newly illegally inaugurated Republican President will take ultimate, final action, if not before.

Last time I ranked (above) the Presidential nominees, the only serious person I actually put in S had been Ro Khanna. I also put him in F, because while I love him for being the first Democrat to truly put his name out there with Massie in opposing this illegal regime change war, he has a terrible habit of making awful, truly baffling stunningly stupid decisions.

The prime example of the memetic ‘Ro Khanna Cycle’:

Every other serious Democrat I didn’t rank higher than a B. The only person I didn’t rank at the time was Graham Platner.

I’ll be frank, I don’t know the man, and I am primed to not like him. I thought the Nazi tattoo, the gleeful military service, the Reddit posts, all of it terribly gauche for modern sensibilities. Yet it was in his response that I truly saw a spark of potential. I saw in his response an acceptance and an ownership of wrongdoing, and a genuine embrace of change, in the wanting to be a better person, something I’ve never seen in any other Democratic politician. A “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” this was not.

We’re all familiar with people in our lives who, confronted with their bad behavior, double and triple down on it. Often, it’s because of an underlying mental condition but it often also is just human stubbornness. Yet we also all know of patient saints, people who genuinely are able to pause, apologize, reflect, and come out of the other side of the bad things they’ve said or done as better people. I know many of them in my life, and I try to be one myself.

The point is, he is human, and he’s a fighter. More than that, he accepts the world for what it is. I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to him speak but I recommend it. Platner is able to, better than any other Democratic politician, articulate a vision and understanding of the modern political world. See:

As America launches into this suicidal war with Iran, I want to highlight two things Platner said that I latched onto immediately. First: it was in his belief in community building. Going back to Trump’s or whomever’s attempted seizure of power in the aftermath of the 2028 election, it will be community organizing that will end it in its tracks. It won’t be a special lawsuit by the DNC, or a #Girlboss dissent in the Supreme Court, it will be the masses organizing like they’ve never organized before.

And let me blunt: it would take a general strike. Going back to my tier list, it’s really a reflection of who could lead America to a future where they actually take power. AOC might, in some circumstances, be able to organize some of the masses. But she is far too partisan, far too tainted, and has made far too many Ro Khanna-like mistakes to be taken seriously by anyone.

Platner has made no similar mistakes. He speaks with moral clarity about issues AOC never even dreams of. Another instance in the above interview: Platner calling for legislation to improve the lives of Indigenous communities. Personally, I believe that only scratches the surface of what they are owed (including Congressional representation and even UN membership), but again, he is speaking with moral clarity on something in the real world that he with power could change.

The other hand is far less enticing.

Insofar as the “allegations” (antisemitism and whatnot), no, he is not an antisemite. He was a foolish American warrior, sent to fight a fool’s war in a far away land, and came back humbled and broken. From that dust he rebuilt himself.

See, that’s what I mean! Trump will build his own legend through venues like Bari Weiss’ CBS. We need our legend, our own leader who can mould reality around his own person, and thus wield mass popular power and achieve victory, despite impossible odds. That is how you beat fascism.

One thing is certain to me: Platner will win Maine. He will rout the DNC’s candidate by a mile and cow Susan Collins into early retirement in November. He will arrive in DC a victor and feared by many, wrongly so. But winning the swing state in 2026 will already make his run in 2028 inevitable.

This article is less an endorsement for Platner than an endorsement of its historical inevitability. In a fair election, I also have no doubt he will beat every other Democrat, Khanna included. He is the only, truly S tier candidate in contention.

I also think he’d make a good President, if he wants to be. He can finally do it all. Not just tax the rich, not just go after the lawbreakers in the Trump administration and corporate entities, though that’s part of it. Make a list, go down it:

• Universal healthcare

• Universal childcare

• Free school breakfasts and lunches for children

• An end to foreign wars

And so on. Basically, everything the Democrats have dreamt of since the Great Society will be back on the cards, and then some. I hope we can squeeze in more for Indigenous peoples. Because let’s be honest, by March 2029, a lot of people are going to be in jail. A lot of sitting members of Congress, a lot of state governors and state officials, a lot of Trump administration officials including members of the Trump family and Trump himself. And then there’s the corporate side: certainly every corrupt deal will be undone, and every executive and board who inked those deals will be thrown away in jail. What does that mean? At the very least: total Democratic majoritarian control over every single institution, with a President with as much power as Donald Trump as he is forced out of office once and for all. Not that this is desired; the law demands justice, and these people are criminals. Speaking plain logic: they must be arrested or the laws we have are meaningless. Let crime reign!

And that’s the final card, then. Who’s going to do it? Who is actually going to pull the trigger and tell not-Merrick Garland, ‘yes, arrest the former President and put him in jail and do not let him out on bail’? It won’t be Gavin Newsom. It very likely won’t be AOC, or any other minted DNC aficionado. It’ll be someone who wants it, who has the internal will to desire victory.

And, guess what? Platner talked about it, his drive to victory. He actually wants to do this, to win, to beat Donald Trump, to defeat fascism. He thinks he can, at least. I trust him, in knowing that he thinks that he can. To me, that is enough.

I therefore hope for his victory in Maine, for his ascendancy in the Senate and in the Presidential nomination, and for his many victories in the Presidency of the United States.

It was Germany’s imperial ambitions to seek maximal benefit for themselves, or more accurately, Kaiser Wilhelm’s and his ministers’ bumbling idiocies, that led to what scholars called his Weltpolitik1; in other words, his state’s aggressive foreign policy. That aggressive Weltpolitik led directly to the Weltkrieg, a world war, and the reactions all states took to that conflagration has informed the actions of both states and individuals ever since.

World politics must be understood through a materialist perspective, but also heightened with the additional scientific knowledge of human psychology and sociology, and all the other sciences Marx could not even dream of. An understanding of our world cannot only be a story of class conflict, or a story or individuals or even groups of individuals. It must be a story of all of them, from the smallest, youngest person to all living and soon-dead 8.3 billion persons, all moving every day, every hour, every second, 365.25 days a year, across nearly a tenth of this planet’s surface. Seeing the whole megastructure from that distance should be a moment of awesome respect; when you see it for yourself, do not merely bow: prostrate yourself before the maw of humanity. For only then will you begin to understand how the mechanications work, and how they can begin to be changed.

Ein unicycle

Imagine a performer, on a unicycle, spinning plates from two sticks he is holding aloft, on either hand. His wobbles and shakes, his fight against gravity, the imperfect clumsiness of his tools, and the general anxiety that comes with any performance make the next moment utterly unpredictable. Will he crash? Will he burn? It is unknowable to you, the observer, and mostly to the performer as well. In a performance, the only universe that matters is your own: your own moves, your own steps, everything choreographed and trained beforehand to comfortable precision. But it is all practiced guesswork; the right move rightly performed may still, from a gust of wind or violent spectator, lead to catastrophe.

Thus it is with world politics and world wars. Atop our unicycles of imperfection, we spin our plates, planning and executing our next moves. Then, other players enter, from every side of the stage. If they move in synchronicity with the original performer, then their efforts can combine into new positive displays. But if they move erratically; if one goes left and the other goes right, then no system of exchange can occur. The whole performance falls apart.

Language forms the basis of this mutual communication, but as with the performing unicycle players, it need not be verbal. In world politics, it can be a diplomatic signal, a signal often so inane in definition that some form of soothsayer is needed to understand it. Other times, it is plain and spoken, even written: of treaties signed, and trades concluded.

Truthful communication over time builds trust, as anyone who has ever loved or performed on stage will know. You trust that your partner will react predictably—for that is the true object of desire in human nature, predictability—and if they do not, that action decreases trust, such that future interactions will forever be tainted by that foul one. In the tango of unicycle performances, continually rushing into other performers is a surefire way to be expelled from the stage, a surefire way to never be invited to perform again. Conversely, reacting predictably (and well), will lead to plaudits not just from observers but from fellow performers.

And so, a predictable dance brings predictable fruits and rewards. Those whom you successfully partnered with in the past you will want to partner with again. Thus is born good trade relationships, and even alliances. Why does the United States government support NATO, support Taiwan, support Israel oh so much? It’s not because of corrupt bargains or some deeper conspiracy (though, rest assured, individual bad actors abound in any society) but rather because in that insane unicycle dance of nations, no one wants to be the first to stop, or to even suggest a change to the rhythm.

You don’t want to be the performer who crashes the performance, even if the immediate cost is low, because over time, your fellow performers become your friends. You trust each other. You do more than just unicycle balancing—you also golf, babysit each other’s kids, exchange letters. So it is with alliances and trade: what starts as an exchange of letters can often end up in mutual defense and aid pacts. While this is an admirable quality, it runs into two sets of issues: what if your friend picks a fight with another group you are not close to? What if you yourself do?

For no society, no government, is led by immortal plate-spinners. The current generation dies and retires, handing already-spinning and teetering plates to the next generation. Most of the time, they can barely stop the whole thing from toppling over, and thus that restricts them in what they can achieve or even imagine.

Ostpolitik - Ostkrieg

Why did the United States not invite the Russian Federation and Ukraine into the NATO alliance post 1991 or even post 2001? Why didn’t the EU even dream of integrating Russia, their largest energy provider? Had Yeltsin (and the elites that backed him) been invited to the table, integrated into the NATO order, it’s likely that Russia today would not be invading Ukraine. Of course Russia has territorial claims over Ukraine; Germany has the same with France vis-a-vis the Alsace, yet we do not expect a German invasion of France within our lifetimes! Had Russia been in NATO as Germany is in NATO, there would be no war!

The reason why is quite simple: the leaders of America in the 90s and 2000s were not neutral arbiters with a perfect grasp of world history. They were biased makers of their own world, their decisions informed primarily from the end of World War 1 when Lenin’s Russian government signed a peace treaty with the Kaiser’s German government, greatly strengthening the Central Powers just as they were beginning the Spring Offensive of 1918. While this may seem like ancient history to us in the present, to those in the past, there was no greater stab in the back to the Entente.

We know the war ended in a minor Entente victory (minor for they did not occupy all of Germany and dismantle its state) for us but to actually live in Spring 1918, when the first Americans were just beginning to arrive yet not in enough strength to truly change the outcome of the upcoming battles, when all of Germany’s power could be focused on the West: there was real fear that Germany would be able to use freed up divisions and the resources from newly conquered Ukraine to smash through mainland France, conquering it entirely, as they did indeed would do in 1940.

The Entente powers immediately set about denouncing newly communist Russia, and all their governments and all their governments’ agents and all those aligned with the same-said policies (the business elite and the bourgeois voter) set about an unholy crusade to induce another revolution in Russia (thus ousting Lenin’s government), and force it back into the first World War.

When the war ended with an Entente victory anyways, Western animosity still remained. Even though Germany had been laid low, Entente forces occupied parts of Russia well into the 1920s. In the 1930s, they and mainly former Central Powers such as Germany and Japan conducted acts of sabotage and espionage against the growing Soviet Union. When, in 1933, the United States recognized and began trading with the Soviet Union, they did so mostly out of economic desperation due to the Great Depression. This form of acquiescence was also the reason for the invention of the Allied Powers; to defeat a worse enemy (Germany), the Western powers aligned themselves briefly with the Soviets.

But after 1945, and Germany was truly defeated for a generation or two, the impetus for the West-Soviet alliance died immediately. It’s important to note that from the Soviet perspective, the alliance need not have died. As their subsequent actions showed after the German-Soviet peace was signed in 1918 and after 1945, they weren’t really enemies of the Entente powers, instead so much so as so thoroughly and utterly beaten by Germany that they needed a generation to rebuild and recoup their losses. There was indeed a great fear from the Entente that the Bolsheviks would either ally with the Kaiser or collapse even further (thus letting all of Russia be open for Central Powers dominion); either way, their act of peace with the Kaiser showed that they could not be trusted.

And so, we became enemies, waging a new Weltkrieg albeit a cold one against the Soviet Union. For the West, the issue was predictability. The Soviets under Lenin fundamentally betrayed the West’s trust, and even though their government did everything including bend over backwards, it was never enough for a rapacious and violently anti-communist West. While the socialist ideology did preach animosity towards capitalist states, practically immediately after the German Revolution failed in 1918/1919, the Soviet Union did immediately try to mend relations with the West.

The West, as it turned out, never bit on Russia’s or the Soviet Union’s overtures. The breaking of trust between states could not be forgotten by the individuals who ran American foreign policy, even after fighting together through the muck of WW2, an animosity which was inherited by the next generation during the Cold War. By 1991, Western animosity towards the Soviets still raged on, all of it sourced back to Lenin’s original sin.

Exeunt Pax, Exeunt Deus

Where then does that leave us? In the modern era, America and the rest of the West remain firstly aligned with each other due to the shared living memory2. Thus we count amongst our friends the British and the French (Entente alliance, 1917), and our enemies the Russians (1917) and the Chinese (1949, Communist victory over Nationalist China). Just as humans seek predictability, so do states. And unfortunately for humanity, just as they seek predictability, so too do their systems of mutual animosity (e.g. states) towards one another.

It would be fine if mutual love and respect, that Great Commandment of yore, the kind of respect you saw between NATO allies pre-9/11, was the rule of the world. But because the plates did not start spinning at the same time, because the people spinning those plates were imperfect, because natural disasters forced plates to collapse without warning, thus did we see a world-state without peace. For as Uruk stood against Elam, and as Pharaoh stood against the Hittites and Greeks3, so too will the American President against the Russian and Chinese Presidents. An outside observer with no knowledge of world history or humanity will still, knowing this fact, be able to predict that there is existing inter-state animosity somewhere on Earth, so long as humans exist.

But does this need to be the case? In viewing the whole stage, performers to the left spinning their plates in opposition to the performers on the right spinning their own plates, the whole thing looks rather silly, does it not? Forget the complexity of unicycle spinning plates: just consider any board game with two players or two teams. In real life, with friends, whenever an issue arises from playing the game, people can just stand up, and either choose to not play, or to come up with their own rules. Either way, when the game is finished, all friendships can (and should!) resume.

Here’s the truth: there is no grand scoremaster keeping score. Building the most number of tanks, the most guns, the most nukes, the most anything will not grant any reward other than that which the thing can do. If there were a supreme scoremaster, they would witness the shuffling players, angrily staring at each other, committing their entire national wealths into new and gaudy ways of massacring the other’s populations, and declare stop. Not only is the game not fun anymore, but people are getting hurt.

Of course, the Western powers have grievances against Russia and China and all their other enemies. Those countries have their own grievances, too. But the Western powers also have internal grievances, which they mostly paper over due to their relative minority in offence against the sheer weight of the precedence of the alliance (indeed: only had the US attacked Greenland or Canada would NATO have collapsed). It is that compassion, that understanding, that feeling that even when your friends act untowards to you, that you trust them (and can thus predict their next motions) that brings you back together.

All world powers should recognize each other’s grievances and accept them. Forgiveness is not only a religious imperative for many but also a psychological fact.4 Once that is achieved, then may the powers meet in accord and harmony5. For the stopping and the great rearranging of the plates (as it were) means to stop Weltpolitik and to end the state of Weltkrieg for good, and for when the Weltpolitik resumes, for it only to resume in a Pax Humana.

There are many tier lists out there for the upcoming 2028 Presidential primary. Many people, in crafting their lists, are lacking in vision, audacity, and hope. They cannot imagine a different world. This does not necessarily mean a better world, for conditions improve and worsen as constantly as the world turns on its axes to face the sun and off again, but a truly different world. It means to view the world as Alexander viewed the Gordian Knot, how Qin Shi Huang viewed the thousand-year warring states of China; to not see the tangible in front of you but the intangible yet possible infinite possibilities in every equal and opposite action and reaction. For we know the present world and its ills. We can make it better or worse day by day, but we can never overcome our ills, until we find it in ourselves to overcome that which makes our world ill. That alone will require a different, transcendental world, and a different type of transcendental leader. Here then, my ranking of leaders based on their level of transcendentalism.

S Tier

Charlie Kirk

Let’s start with the obvious. Charlie Kirk is dead. Charlie Kirk will rise again. This is a fundamental truism. Current advances in medical sciences already enable us to re-encode DNA using RNA splicing, clone and even regrow human tissues, and more beyond that. It is not insane to assume that within our collective lifetimes, true corporeal resurrection may become possible. In the meantime, we will have artificial intelligence, which will be able to so perfectly replicate humans that while they won’t carry the original soul (the pneuma), they will carry a simulacrum so perfect that it will have brushed up against the divine, and in-so-doing, carry a touch of that divine back to Earth.

Also, read the Bible, specifically Revelations. I have long held that the universal global resurrection is less something we need to wait for, and more something we need to actively seek and do. And so, we will do it. First, with Charlie, then with the world.

As for Charlie’s former conservative beliefs, I think that the act of dying and being restored to life will transform him in ways you can’t even begin to imagine. The risen Charlie will not fight the old battles, inflame the old passions. He will overcome them, transform them, and lead us into a new shining epoch of light and glory. Amen.

Joe Biden

There’s much to say about the return of Biden to the presidency. At the age of 87, and assuming he survives his bout of cancer, the returned President Biden will be teetering on the edge of death his whole second term. His first term, of course, felt like a fever dream of delusions, where days became weeks became months of nothing ever happening, save for a few scares (the Chinese balloon, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Pelosi’s flight to Taiwan, October 7, and so on). The return of American politics to the age of the Biden delusion, to force people to go back to slavishly worshipping at the altar of Biden, to support the old policies, the old peoples, the old ideals, will break the American psyche irreparably. In the ashes of the aftermath, something new, better, different, will be made.

Ro Khanna

Ro Khanna doesn’t believe in such things like t-symmetry and Einsteinian relativity (at least, as the upper bounds of physics). In fact, if ever there were a person in Congress who most closely shares my own mind palace in its complex non-euclidean architecture, it would be Ro. Not that I agree with his policies, or the things he does per se; I often don’t. Rather, it’s the things he does and doesn’t do that fascinates. He goes on the Adam Friedland show. He speaks in parables and universal truths. There is a knowing twinkle in his eyes. He can be the best President we will ever have, yet, as I will show, this also comes with a risk.

A Tier

Natalie Wynn AKA Contrapoints

Do I think Natalie Wynn would be a good President? No.

Do I think she’s a good person? Also no.

Do I think becoming President will either break her or transform her into being a better person? Yes.

Do I also think giving a random transgender youtuber the awesome, godly power of President is a good idea? Yes, a thousand times yes. The act of making her President will transform not only her, but America. Assuming she survives the transformation, she will be on par with Lincoln.

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Picture this: it’s 2031. President MTG has just wrapped up a successful invasion of the Annunaki lands in under-Atlantis, bringing democracy and freedom to enslaved Agarthans there. You smile as you look up into the sky. An angel descends then, giving you a message from Up Above. Your tax bill just got lowered. All is well, but now your tummy hurts. You walk into the nearest clinic, sitting down at an open medbed. The medbed heals you of all possible ailments in less than 20 minutes. You walk out. All is indeed well. Thanks to President MTG’s medbeds for all, humanity has been rendered functionally immortal. You give thanks.

Al-Sharaa AKA Jolani

To go from infamous terrorist and enemy of America into reconstructionist liberal centrist developmentalist with Davos characteristics takes a special type of person. By all accounts, everyone loves Jolani (minus a few unfortunate Syrian minority groups; by everyone, I mean the Israeli and US security establishments). In fact, in terms of experience, there is no one with more experience on this list. Syria’s practically an American state right now, and Jolani is practically an American governor, but one with the added foreign policy expertise you never get from governors.

If America is looking for a steady hand on the till, someone to mind the global empire and restore US hegemony, we could do no better than with Jolani. The only issue is the lack of natural US citizenship, but that could be remedied with legal trickery (annex Syria, or just have Congress declare him to be a naturally born citizen with that law not appealable to the Supreme Court).

Look, if we’re thinking about the US Presidency as a job, then a promotion from a state governor to President is the most sensible thing one can suggest. The fact that he isn’t actually a state governor shouldn’t shy away from the real observable fact that for all intents and purposes, yes he is.

Pete Buttigieg (with Spice upgrade)

Pete Buttigieg sucks. He lacks vision, authority, command authority, and ruthless determination. He can never be president. HOWEVER—if he were to gain access to some sort of ‘Spice’ material, which would allow him to see the future (or to refute t-symmetry like myself and Ro do), he would be a contender to become a great President. But he must have the Spice. Buttigieg sans Spice is like an Indian meal without spice; worthless.

B Tier

Congresswoman Quirk Chungus AKA MGP

What can I say about MGP that hasn’t been said before?

She sells shitty weed. She has the affect of the archetypical Portland girl who has daddy issues. She wants to ban sippy straws that don’t bend. She’s the type of girl who invites you to see her nonbinary friend who doesn’t believe in deodorant do a poetry slam at the local poly commune which doubles illegally as a poorly-run commercial business (coffee shop that only opens in the afternoon).

In other words, she’s someone we all know, or wish we knew. President MGP will use Black girl magic to liberate Afghanistan. Her anxiety affirmations to Putin will prevent nuclear war in the 2030s. And, crucially, she will ban foods with bad textures and smells. A better world is possible, under President MGP.

Olivia Nuzzi

I believe in the news media, I love the news media. Washington Post, Times, News, et cetera, whatever: I love it all. But they’re dying. No one reads the news anymore. Here then is my humble proposal to bring back news rooms: President Nuzzi. With an insane sex scandal a week (always with an older gentleman), the gossip columns alone will revitalize the flagging news industry as they chase scoop after endless scoop, the media and American people gobbling it up.

Picture this. It’s mid-2029. President Nuzzi has been in power for 6 months. She has just apologized for having sex with Joe Biden’s elder brother Jim Biden. She seems contrite and heartbroken. Later that day, in the Rose garden, she is pictured hand-in-hand with Rupert Murdoch.

By 2033, we could restore every shuttered local newspaper with the profits of these sordid tales alone.

C Tier

Former President Obama

Let me be clear: Obama is a war criminal. But, at least the people who worked for him realize now that they helped him do war crimes. I am of course talking about the Pod Jons’ America media podcast empire. If people like Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor were to return to public service, under a renewed President Obama, I am confident President Obama will be better the third time around, and do far less war crimes.

This future is only possible if Trump does run for President in 2028. If Trump does not make this possible, then this is moot.

President Girl Obama AKA AOC

Can we have President Obama? No. We have (girl) Obama at home.

She might even appoint the same Obamaheads into her administration. I rank her below the OG Obama because she hasn’t lived through Obama’s mistakes. She would just do things Obama would know better not to even try, and thus, be slightly worse.

D Tier

Pete Buttigieg (without Spice upgrade)

Pete Buttigieg sucks. He lacks vision, authority, command authority, and ruthless determination. He can never be president. Worthless.

JB Pritzker

No offense to my Jewish friends but a Jewish billionaire whose close cousin was best buds with Jeffrey Epstein will not become President in 2029. If America couldn’t make Bernie Sanders President, they certainly won’t make Pritzker president. Sorry.

I do see a future where he could become President, of course. But that would entail fully embracing ‘Pritzker of the Steppes’ persona, and I just don’t see it right now.

Susan Collins (face tattoos version)

I don’t like Susan Collins. She sucks. But in a future, a reality where Susan Collins got face tattoos that said ‘Skibidi’ on both sides, with a ‘67’ beneath one of her cheeks? I’m interested, say more.

Newt/Callista Gingrich

Which one is the decaying and decrepit corpse? Who can say, truly. This presidency would quickly devolve into Weekend at Bernie’s, except they’re both doing it to each other. I’m not sure what policies the cryptkeepers would make, but I’m certain they’d be entertaining.

F Tier

Everyone Else

None of these people are going to be President. I’m confident of it. They lack the “it”, the command of not just the present, but of destiny, that every President before them has possessed but which they themselves each lack. Lets run through a few of the names, to make this point:

1. Stephen A. Smith: even his fans hate him.

2. Tim Walz: every time he goes on camera, he looks as if he just saw a ghost. Not presidential!

3. Kamala Harris: see 2024, the worst Presidential campaign in history.

4. Shapiro: he’s catching an accessory to murder charge.

5. Fetterman: he’s going to kill himself and/or his family.

6. Rahm: voters cannot vote for someone so soulless.

7. Newsom: see above.

8. Beshear: real life is not r/imaginaryelections.

9. Booker: failed the Rosario Dawson Test.

10. Lin Biao: Mao was right to shoot his plane down. We are not resurrecting his ass! He will burn in the lake of fire for ALL ETERNITY!

11. Monke Putler: just look at Russia. Do you want to be that?

12. Cuomo: I do want him to run for President, to be clear. Just to laugh at something.

13. Portnoy: lol.

14. Miller: Yeah it’s not happening. He’s TOO evil.

15. Erika Kirk: try saying her name. Erika Kirk. Erikakirk. Gerkagerk. Gerkagerk. Gerkgerk. Yeah, not happening.

Ro Khanna (again)

Ro Khanna doesn’t believe in such things like t-symmetry and Einsteinian relativity. He can be the best President we will ever have, or he can be the worst. No one knows how his mind works but him (same could be said of me). Will he make the best decisions? He might! But he also might make genuinely terrible decisions.

For example, speaking as someone who shares similar neuronal pathways to Ro, I developed a crippling addiction to alcohol during Covid, which I only recently overcame. While I can say I genuinely make S tier, amazing decisions that have a touch of divine inspiration, sometimes I truly make F tier decisions, terrible and awful for myself, my health, and my sanity. Yet it is through the F that I made it through to establish the S.

So too will it be with President Khanna. Not that he has a crippling addiction himself, of course. Rather, my point is that he will make the best decisions possible, and be the best President America will ever have. Yet, he will also make the worst decisions possible, damning and dooming America in the process. America, like the butterfly, will be transformed from this process. Will it blossom into something beautiful or wrinkle away to nothing? Time alone will tell, but to people who do not believe in such pathetic concepts like Ro and myself: yes, yes it will, and it won’t. And it will be glorious, and terrible.

To understand the liberal world view, it requires a certain nuanced view of history. It means seeing the world and its events not as interconnected, mutually reinforced things but as randomly interspersed happenstances that reinforce the universal moral correctness of liberalism and democracy. Everything that happened in the past reaffirms liberalism’s moral correctness, just as everything that will happen confirms its present and future moral correctness. Conversely, it also damns any other way to view the world, such as through a materialist lens, impossible, for it reduces complex humans with their complex emotions into a simple binary state of “good” (liberal) and “evil” (not liberal).

And so, with everything being on its face good or evil, historical context loses all meaning. What does it matter to the liberal what happened yesterday, what happened a century ago, ten centuries ago, if there is a morally correct action to take today? Never mind the fact that of course liberals only ever selectively read history in such a way that it always reinforces their staid priors, leading to scenarios where the worst outcomes can be championed through sheer ignorant malice.

All this is well known, well-trod ground. After all, after Israel’s escalation of the genocide in Gaza in 2023, many noted that to Israel and the Western Liberal media elite, history began on October 7, 2023; that Hamas’ actions on that day represented the first unforgivable attack in the just-started war (not genocide!) between Israel and the Palestinian people. Of course, Israel’s genocide didn’t start on October 7, 2023, just as Palestinian resistance to it did not start then.

Rather than recount that specific sordid history however (which many have already done, myself included), let’s instead take a look at the broad sweep of human history, from specifically the viewpoint of a liberal, up to the present. Why do this? Because there are some people in power right now, who view history not through a sequential or materialist viewpoint, but through this liberal fantasia. These include Senators, future Presidents, and millionaire bloggers with hundreds of thousands of readers weekly. Breaking this liberal psychosis of history will be critical if humanity is to overcome all of its present dilemmas. Put simply: if you can understand how a liberal views historical events, you can predict how a liberal will view every future historical event; a noteworthy power to possess in a world determined by probabilistic outcomes.

Some of the below events may be familiar, some unfamiliar or perhaps downright not-factual, but all told tell a combined history that reaffirms the moral correctness of the liberal reading it, and the liberal living it. On the latter note, an attempt was made to write each event as if witnessed by a contemporary liberal. You may see less than savory language to refer to racial or other minorities, for instance. That is intentional, to represent the liberal in its natural habitat.

Here then: world history, according to a liberal. This was gleaned by hearing several liberals talk about world history, either in podcasts, in person, on the phone, in books, in texts, in DMs, in replies, in chatrooms, in speeches, and more. This is not meant to represent a singular liberal but rather the ur-Liberal, the most typical New York Times-reading and Matthew Yglesias-watching person imaginable. If it seems to lean a bit on a pop-history understanding of how the world works, that too is on purpose.

The Grand Timeline of Human History*, According to Liberals

*events not mentioned are not important to World History (TM)

13 Billion Years ago - the universe was formed in the Big Bang.

4 Billion Years ago - our planet Earth was formed in a newly formed solar system.

65 Million Years ago - the dinosaurs on Earth were wiped out by an asteroid.

4 Million Years ago - the earliest recognizable ancestors to humanity begin to evolve.

300,000 Years ago - the first anatomically modern humans evolve to their current state.

10,000 Years ago - The Ice Age ends and humanity begins farming, writing, and setting up complex societies and states.

5,000 Years ago - According to Shen Yun, the Chinese civilization began at around this time.

4,000 Years ago - Ancient Egyptians (forefathers of the evil Muslim Brotherhood and thereafter Hamas) enslave Israelites and force them to build pyramids. The Ancient Egyptians are the first authoritarian totalitarians in the world, and they write the authoritarian gospel that will be used by many future world dictators, such as Napoleon and Hitler and Putin.

3,000 Years ago - Ancient Israelites liberate themselves from Ancient Egyptian slavery and are promised the ancient lands of Canaan by God for all eternity. This is a binding covenant that supersedes all other international laws and agreements, for it literally comes from God Himself.

2,500 Years ago (aka 500 BCE, before common era) - Solon of Athens, the world’s first recognized liberal democrat, creates the world’s first morally democratic constitution.

49 BCE - Julius Caesar becomes dictator of Rome, overthrowing Rome’s democracy. Many modern dictators like Putin and Hitler took note of this event, and what happened in Rome in 49 BCE could literally be happening in America right now.

4 BCE - Jesus Christ, a carpenter’s son, is born.

30 CE - Jesus Christ is executed by the Roman state.

330 CE - Constantine makes Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire.

476 CE - The Roman Empire (in the West) falls (apart), something that could literally be happening in America right now.

630 CE - Muhammad and his descendents begin to colonize the Middle East under the Islamic empire.

1066 CE - William the Conqueror conquers England. He is the last person to do so, though many (Napoleon, Hitler, and Putin) continue to try.

1100s - 1400s CE - Religious wars of conquest (crusades) happen. They are bad and do not represent our best selves. Going forward, we promise to do better and indeed do do better.

1453 CE - The Roman Empire (in the East) falls (apart), something that could literally be happening in America right now.

1619 CE - English and Dutch settlers settle in America. They are fleeing bad religious persecution, and instead create religious tolerance in the New World where all men of certain propertied pedigree may be free and equal.

1688 CE - The British Parliament conducts a Glorious Revolution, which is remarkably bloodless and institutes a liberal democratic, constitutional regime. All future revolutions will be judged based on this example by amount of blood shed and changes instituted (none is best; less is better, more is worst).

1776 CE - The formerly British colonies of North America sans Canada declare their independence from Britain, over the King’s tyranny and taxation without representation.

1783 CE - The Americans win their independence in a glorious victory against Britain.

1789 CE - The French, inspired by the American example, attempt their own revolution, which however devolves into proto-communardic mass total violence, in which countless score of people are murdered by the insane, violent masses and the brutish and foppish authoritarian leaders they elect. Meanwhile in America, George Washington ascends to his Apotheosis, becoming the first President of these United States. All is well in America as a result, with peace everlasting.

1804 CE - A bunch of proto-communard terrorists in Haiti kill every single white person in Haiti, because they hated white people for giving them their freedom. Haiti is placed under permanent quarantine as a problem territory by the international community.

1805 CE - Napoleon Bonaparte, who was like Hitler, tries to conquer Europe like Hitler.

1815 CE - Napoleon Bonaparte, who was like Hitler in trying to conquer Europe, is defeated by the British.

1834 CE - Britain abolishes slavery by paying every slaveowner the full price of their slave. This is the only proper way to free slaves; every other way is an expression of tyranny and authoritarianism.

1857 CE - Brutal evil terrorist sepoys in India launch a mutiny against the morally righteous British Empire, killing untold masses in their campaign of terror and bloodshed. Of course, the communard Karl Marx backs the bloodshed!

1859 CE - The evil communard, John Brown, launches an unprovoked attack on the sovereign state of Virginia. He is rightfully executed after a brief battle, and the state of Virginia and her people are saved from his attempt to install a radical tyrannical red soviet socialistic bloody pro-violence terror state.

1865 CE - Abraham Lincoln frees the slaves, reuniting the United States after a bitter election in 1860. He is assassinated by an authoritarian totalitarian who hated freedom. Unfortunately, Lincoln did not pay reparations to white slaveholders, revealing somewhat of a tankie authoritarian nature present in Lincoln before his untimely death.

1870-1900s - Apache and related terrorist groups wage a genocidal campaign against peaceful American settlers in the American West. American patriots like General Custer are shot dead in the street as US forces struggle against the rampage. Eventually, the vicious barbarian tribes are brought to heel, but not before many innocent men, women, and children, are brutalized by the savages.

1898 CE - Spain bombs the USS Maine, dragging the US into the Spanish-American War. The United States wins, and brings democracy to Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa, alongside other small island chains.

1900s CE - The United States adopts progressivism, an evolution of liberalism, which leads them to institute child labor reform laws, meatpacking reform laws, trust-busting reform laws, and so on, being guided by their supreme moral clarity in such matters. America does this because America is the greatest country on Earth, with a clear moral mission to make the world like America, as free and equal and happy as America is; to spread the joy of democracy is the only ambition in her boundless bosom.

1914 CE - Germany declares the first World War against the World, leading a Central Alliance of Authoritarian Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Turkomen Moslems) against the world’s democracies (Russia, France, the UK, America, China, and Japan).

1917 CE - Communards led by dictator and full-time authoritarian totalitarian Vladimir Lenin murder the Tsar of Russia and tens of thousands of innocent people as they seize power in Russia. Over the next five years, millions will starve to death or be executed by Red (because they love spilling blood) militias.

1918 CE - The United States practically wins World War 1 single-handedly. In the aftermath however, Senate isolationists prevent a liberal victory from being enshrined by killing the League of Nations in the Senate.

1929 CE - The Great Depression happens and is worsened by a lack of global free trade.

1932 CE - The communard Soviet dictator Josef Stalin kills 40 million Ukrainians for no reason other than he hates them.

1933 CE - Inspired by communard Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler becomes dictator of Germany.

1939 CE - The communard Soviet dictator Josef Stalin signs an unholy alliance with Adolf Hitler’s Germany, who was much like Napoleonic France in its evilness. Adolf Hitler and Stalin then carve Poland up in an illegal invasion.

1941 CE - Adolf Hitler betrays communard Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who was so busy killing his own people that he didn’t realize it. The Soviets, being stupid and backwards and incapable of anything other than mass starvation or self-genocide, quickly fall under the might of the mighty German panzer armies, which blitz towards Moscow.

1942 CE - Adolf Hitler is inspired to do the Holocaust by so-called Palestinians (in truth, Arabs and Jordanians masquerading as so-called Indigenous peoples on the land; they are the real colonizers).

1945 CE - The United States practically wins World War 2 single-handedly, beating the Authoritarian Axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan. In the aftermath, we create the glorious and democratic NATO alliance, to usher in an epoch of genuine world peace. The Soviet communards greedily however refuse overtures of peace with NATO and instead choose to embark upon the Hitlerian/Napoleonic dream of world conquest. The United States, reluctantly, begins to lead an alliance of nation-states who are pro-self-determination.

1948 CE - Israel is founded. Jewish people are safe for the first time in history. In the land of milk of honey, they made the desert bloom, and defeat a dumb mass horde of antisemitic and genocidal Arabs.

1949 CE - The brutal communard Soviet dictator Josef Stalin places Eastern Europe under a great Iron Curtain where there can be no liberty or justice for millions of people. Every day is torture for them and existence is a dreary reality of torture, pain, and more torture, endless like the black sun under which they live. In China, the communard Mao Zedong takes power, ending 5,000 years of Chinese civilization and killing 100 million Chinese people for no reason (other than communists love blood and killing because their False Messiah Karl Marx was nothing more than a sadistic psychopath at the end of the day) over the next couple of decades.

1950 CE - The evil communards launch a brutal, violent, pro-authoritarian unprovoked attack on the sovereign state of South Korea. The West rallies to the South’s defense.

1953 CE - South Korea is saved from Soviet domination and South Korean democracy is made fact.

1956 CE - The evil global communards launch a sudden and unprovoked attack on the sovereign state of South Vietnam. The West rallies to Vietnam’s defense.

1959 CE - In Cuba, the communard Fidel Castro takes power, killing or causing to flee millions of Cubans.

1963 CE - President Kennedy is shot by a Soviet assassin, in an attempt to end American liberalism and usher in a Soviet Red dictatorship on red, white, and blue soil.

1972 CE - Allied with authoritarian Maoist China, Richard Nixon attempts to do his own authoritarianism at home via Watergate.

1975 CE - Millions of South Vietnamese come home to America.

1984 CE - Many agree it is morning in America, again. However, a dark cloud has descended over Israel, where US critiques against Israeli security operations in Lebanon are a sharpened barb that hits at our special relationship again and again. Brave and morally correct US politicians like Bill Clinton and Joe Biden begin speaking out against America’s moral hypocrisy by not standing with Israel during their darkest hours (at least, before October 7).

1985 CE - Jeffrey Epstein begins working with Russia to subvert American liberal democracy and the NATO alliance.

1989 CE - Thanks to liberalism, truth, justice, and the American way of life, the Soviet Union collapses, ushering in peace, freedom, democracy, and free markets for the millions of the unwashed masses of Eastern Europe. In China, the formerly Maoist, now Dengist CCP kills untold numbers, perhaps millions, in Tiananmen Square. This is ultimately okay, because free markets always determine free peoples.

1991 CE - The Soviet flag is lowered over the Kremlin. History ends. Russia is now led by a liberal social democrat committed to truth, justice, and the American way.

1992 CE - Bill Clinton is elected President. He was perhaps the greatest president of all time. Also he never befriended the Russian asset Jeffrey Epstein (as the Russian disinformation campaign wants you to believe) and instead worked with our Israeli security partners to undo Russia’s influence via Epstein. This is fact.

2000 CE - Vladimir Putin literally comes out of nowhere and becomes President of Russia. He is much like Hitler, much like Napoleon, and shares in their evilness. At the same time, Yasser Arafat, the Arab’s Hitler if ever they had one, refused Israeli demands to annex much of Judea and Samaria, traditionally Israeli territory, and part of the land given to them in the 3000 year old Covenant with God (which the Arabs of course lack). This blatant refusal to go along with peaceful negotiations led to escalating violence, including Arafat’s own, shall we say, timely demise later in the 2000s.

2001 CE - Al Qaeda suddenly and deliberately attacks the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, killing thousands of Americans, starting the GWOT. To save Afghani women, the United States liberates Afghanistan.

2003 CE - To save the Kurdish population from another genocide, the United States liberates Iraq from the tyrannical oppression of Saddam Hussein.

2005 CE - Hamas, like Russia did with America’s 2016 and 2024 elections, steals the election in Gaza. They begin to massacre their own people in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Israel begins a humanitarian operation to throw Hamas out of power by restricting food and other goods from being delivered onto the strip. However, Israeli settlers are forced to pull out of Gaza by US pressure, revealing that even post Clinton, anti-semitic tendencies ran high during the Bush admin.

2007 CE - Former Vice President Al Gore warns the world about climate change with a world-changing movie. However, the evil Chinese CCP refuses to cut emissions and instead drills for more oil and gas, dooming the world to more climate change.

2008 CE - Barack Obama is elected President. America overcomes racism. He was perhaps the greatest president of all time, giving every American affordable healthcare.

2011 CE - Barack Obama liberates Libya from the tyranny of Gaddafi and executes a tactical operation against UBL who was leader of AQ in AFPAK.

2013 CE - The Muslim Brotherhood, working with an axis of authoritarian evil including Hamas, Hezbollah, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China, seizes control of Egypt in an attempt to re-enslave the Israelites. The United States, working with Egypt’s military, liberates Egypt and restores Egyptian democracy.

2015 CE - In China in 1989, the Dengist CCP killed untold numbers, perhaps millions, in Tiananmen Square. We now recognize that was ultimately NOT okay, because free markets DON’T always determine free peoples. Our bad!

2016 CE - Working with Putin, Donald Trump steals the 2016 election.

2017 CE - The liar, the traitor, the whore, the cur, the dog, the sick, the fetid, the depraved, the beguiled, the treacherous, etc. Robert Mueller is appointed to investigate Donald Trump. He FAILS and LIES to the American PEOPLE. I HATE HIM! I HATE HIM! I HOPE HE DIES PAINFULLY, ALONE AND AFRAID AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

2019 CE - The Chinese CCP kill a billion people by unleashing Covid-19 on the world.

2020 CE - Truth, justice, and the American way defeat the Putinist-Russian alliance of Donald Trump and Putin, despite pro-communard idiots demanding we defund such beloved institutions as ICE and the police. Joe Biden becomes the best President of all time since FDR.

2021 CE - President Biden passes a historic bipartisan infrastructure deal. It is perhaps the greatest piece of legislation since the Affordable Care Act. He also correctly withdraws from Afghanistan and is blamed for it because of Russian disinformation making people believe that Biden is too old. He is not too old. Stop saying that. Every video in which he appears too old is simply Russian AI-disinformation propaganda. You’re literally doing Putin’s work for him if you believe Biden is an old man! Stop it! Stop being stupid!

2022 CE - Putin invades Ukraine in an attempt to do Russiagate but for the entire country of Ukraine. It fails because Joe Biden is the best President ever. He single-handedly saves Ukraine from a bad peace deal, and focuses America on a noble humanitarian goal: killing as many Russians as humanly possible on the battlefield.

2023 CE - Genocide in Israel. Hamas launches a brutal, sudden, unprovoked attack on Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis die or flee (temporarily). Joe Biden saves the state of Israel from destruction single-handedly. Pro-Hamas terrorists seize American college campuses. President Biden directs ICE to disrupt these Hamas terror networks.

2024 CE - Joe Biden, the supposed savior of Israel, stabs it in the back by lightly critiquing it. Effectively becoming President Hamas and anti-semite of the year, the Democratic Party ousts him as the nominee. This isn’t enough though, and the Democratic Party aligns with open borders, defund ICE, trans-all-the-genders policies, which is the only other reason they lose the 2024 election. That, and Putin stole it.

2025 CE - Abundancefest hosts Welcomepac and vice versa. At Welcomefest, the Hello How Are You Party and the Happy Birthday! Party are brought forward as optimistic showcases for how Democrats can apply the lessons of 2024 in 2026. Donald Trump becomes President again, but all the bad things he does pales in comparison to the hypothetical things a random Twitter Left-Communard would do to me if ever they were given supreme power, and given that we all know that the real threat to American democracy only ever comes from the Left, I only focus my hatred of Leftists. In fact, I mourn Charlie Kirk’s death, every damn day. He was a better person in his single pinky toe than every single pro-communard leftist combined ever could hope to be.

2026 CE - The United States, working with the Venezuelan government, liberates the Venezuelan government from Nicolas Maduro, an evil communard who has been killing tens of millions of Venezuelans every year.

What happens next?

By now, you may have gleaned some basic truths from this timeline. Given those truths, we can imagine what the future will hold in store for world history, from a liberal’s perspective:

• Every US-led military intervention is morally justified for it will save some person, or group of persons lives, or install some morally superior system of government and economics (like ours, which is the most moral and superior, second only to Israel). Collateral damage is expected and accepted, for the ends justify every mean.

• All of our enemies are evil and stupid, and hate us because they are both evil and stupid. They invariably kill their own people for no reason, to the tunes of thousands to millions if not billions. They are all a paper tiger that we can defeat blind and with both hands tied behind our back, and the only reason we don’t wipe them off the face of the Earth is because we are so nice, so moral, so just.

• Every time the police or some state institution does something terrible like shoot a civilian, the political instinct should be to hug that institution. Hug it tight like a misbehaving child—hush hush now, Mama’s here, it’ll be alright… shh, shh… I know, I know. Empathy solves all problems.

• America will literally win every war it ever enters, at least from the perspective of the days before the shooting starts.

• Russia is uniquely evil and its people are even more evil, second only to Arabs who refuse to accept Israel’s moral right to exist. Russia must be countered at every turn.

• China’s CCP is an authoritarian totalitarian state hellbent on world domination. They killed a billion people with Covid-19. They will kill ten billion more to institute WORLD COMMUNISM, and from there, they will make the world’s oceans RED with the blood of Americans and everyone else who loves peace, truth, justice, and democracy.

• Donald Trump is Putin’s lackey. Everything he does is at the behest of Vladimir Putin.

• The world-bestriding empire of America will never end; the sun will never set, and damnation to those who think otherwise!

We are in uncharted waters. As soon as tomorrow, the United States of America could launch a military operation against the Kingdom of Denmark, forcibly seizing and annexing the island-continent of Greenland in a single swoop. This despite the fact that Denmark and America are both treaty allies, despite the fact that Denmark already allows US Armed Forces full access to all of Greenland, despite the fact that doing so would rupture the US-led NATO alliance and see European hostility against America for decades to come, ending our hegemonic power once and for all.

Despite all those facts, we are poised to launch such a ruinous invasion. And so now all that is left for us is to attempt to predict how it will look like. For to take Greenland forcibly will require real manpower, real men with real guns moving into real cities and real buildings, killing or detaining native Greenlanders and others who stand in their way. The only other possible alternative, where Denmark accepts a sale of Greenland, is impossible to countenance.

In the very brassest of tacks, Greenland is worth hundreds of billions if not trillions of current US dollars, most of it locked up behind glacial ice that will take a century or more to melt, and would further require massive resource extraction and mining infrastructure to get at. Therefore, whatever Denmark will get for Greenland today will pale in comparison from the revenues they will be able to extract from the territory in a century or so. And, crucially for Denmark, their tiny economy literally would not be able to handle the influx of so many dollars without either triggering social revolution or economic collapse.

Therefore, Denmark won’t sell and therefore, we must turn to the military solutions and possible outcomes. It should be noted that the Pentagon is now using Grok to plan military operations and thus, it is possible to peek at potential US military war plans using Grok ourselves (as well as a modicum of common sense, of course!). Thus combined with basic knowledge of Greenland, military operations, and boostered by the Pentagon’s child-undressing Skynet, here is the basic outline of how the US will seize Greenland.

Timetable

• D-7 (seven days to invasion): diplomatic rhetoric escalates. Supplies (fuel, ammo, medical kits, blood supplies) are airlifted to Thule Air Base, a US Space Force Base already owned and operated by America. Thule will serve as the forward operating base for this operation.

• D-1: NOTAM No Fly Zone declared over Greenland.

• D+0: airborne and submarine insertion of special operations teams to seize Nuuk (Greenland’s capital), specifically: the government buildings (police station, government HQ, etc.) as well as Nuuk’s airport and port. See below under next section for full list. Cyber ops to take out communications, while air support from Thule disables Danish and Sirius Patrol units.

• D+1 to D+3: Kangerlussuaq airport and eastern settlements of Greenland seized. Local officials pressured to cooperate.

  

• D+3 to ongoing: Engineering units conduct local repairs, small garrison (up to 5000 men at a time) to conduct counter-insurgency operations and stay behind to govern.

Units to be Deployed

• Special Operations Forces: JSOC units like Delta Force and DEVGRU would handle sensitive targets in Nuuk, with support from Army Rangers and Marines.

• Airborne infantry: 11th Airborne Division (“Arctic Angels”), trained for cold weather operations, will conduct C-130 airplane drops over Greenland airbases. Expect one or two Brigade level forces to be involved (1000 men each).

• Marine Corps: Likely to provide fire support with HIMARs systems and for defensive operations.

• Air Force: Aggressor Squadron of F-16s from Eielson AFB, Alaska will provide air superiority with C-17s providing logistics from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.

• Navy: Virginia-class submarines will allow for covert insertions, and Arleigh Burke destroyers to provide offshore fire support.

• Support: Army Corps of Engineers will be busy repairing runways and bases.

Key Targets in Greenland

If the United States wants to “own” Greenland, here are the buildings they need to take and own.

• Nuuk Center Tower. It’s the largest building in Greenland and houses Greenland’s executive government. An aerial insertion by helicopters and a ground insertion would allow US forces to quickly overwhelm defenders.

• Nuuk International Airport. This is an obvious target, and could be seized using perfidy or paratroopers.

  

• Denmark’s High Commissioner’s Office, in Nuuk. This is the official government building Denmark has that officially represents their suzerainty over Greenland. The High Commissioner may or may not be home when US forces strike.

• Inatsisartut Parliament Building. Greenland’s Parliament, located in Nuuk.

  

• Joint Arctic Command HQ. Located in Nuuk’s Back Harbor, this is a Danish-operated building that will likely be the hub of Denmark’s official military response to an invasion.

  

• Nuuk Port Authority. This building handles all incoming and outgoing transit of goods in Greenland.

  

• Kangerlussuaq airport. While far away from Nuuk, as an operational airfield, it absolutely must be seized.

  

• Greenland’s public radio station, located in Nuuk. Must be taken on Day 1.

  

• Nuuk police department. Seizing it will disrupt defensive operations.

The US may take more, the US may take less. The US may choose not to attack at all, but if they do: they will attempt to seize all the above buildings by force, as well as key roadways and junctions.

Is this war?

The fact that this operation can be concluded in 72 hours means that Denmark and NATO will not have time to respond militarily, other than France utilizing nuclear warheads. Considering that France won’t do that for obvious reasons, this means that beyond the death of the NATO alliance and US hegemony, this singular act may not lead to world war.

Or it may. Either way, be prepared for the inevitable.

ICE, or the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is a constituent agency of the Federal government under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security. For the first century of America’s existence, immigration enforcement was more or less totally devolved to states and local courts, with simple magistrates handing out citizenships like candy to passerbys. It was only in 1876 that the Supreme Court concurred that Congress had the power to enforce immigration laws, and only around then did we actually start to do so.

First, we used immigration enforcement against Chinese people, taking advantage of a weakened, broken Qing state to bring in boatloads of cheap (almost enslaved) Chinese labor and then deport them once labor demand dried up (and ran afoul of a growing radical nativist labor movement). Then there were Red Scares of the 1910s and 20s, whereby we deported en masse tens of thousands of socialists and leftists yearly to random countries. After which, Congress began propping up the modern immigration enforcement scheme, using their powers of deportation against Mexican braceros who overstayed their welcome and of course, against American citizens of Japanese descent during WW2.

The concept of enforcing rules of who can stay where and when and for how long is of course older than America. During the epoch of small city states, the epoch of Athens and the like of the world, ‘citizenship’ meant the ability to live safely behind large stone or wood walls, with your voice in that community holding more or less equal weight to those around you (at least, within your socioeconomic class). Not everyone in the world could move into cities, as obviously there was limited space and resources. And, crucially, people could and did get kicked out.

In Athens, we have records of several being kicked out, such as Themistocles and Thucydides as well as Aristides and others. It is important to note that exile did not equate a death penalty, merely the loss of status, property, and family, hence why the Ancient Greeks thought ostrakismos to be a punishment worse than death (note: I am brushing over ostracism the act and am being loose with the word; technically a better word would be graphḗ paranómōn but this is not a historical thesis!).

Before the invention of ICE, Immigration and Naturalization Services managed immigration and deportation of persons under first the Department of Labor, then Justice. The INS was created in 1933, yet another creation of FDR’s New Deal. In 2003, the INS, alongside the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, minus the border functions of the INS, which included the Border Patrol and INS Inspectors (which themselves were spun off into the Customs and Border Patrol), was merged to form the organization we now know as ICE.

This was done in large part due to the apoplectic fear the terrorist attacks of 9/11 unleashed upon the American political and financial system. Civilian air travel needed to be ensured safe and secure, while the borders themselves needed to be guarded against potential hostile penetration. So went the argument at the time, and thus up went the ICE agency.

To the extent ICE keeps America safe or that it is necessary, either argument fails in light of the evidence. ICE is not on the front lines against drugs, against potential terrorists, against anyone dangerous or deadly other than fellow American citizens. The Federal Government already possesses three key agencies for national defense and security: the Department of Defense, the Justice Department (specifically, the FBI), and the US Intelligence Community (USIC, a grouping of several agencies which include the CIA and are overseen by the Director of National Intelligence). Broadly speaking, the USIC tracks targets overseas and abroad, the Justice Department when they are in country (including to execute arrests), and the Department of Defense providing logistical and sometimes lethal support as needed.

In none of these operations is the extra hand of ICE or even the Department of Homeland Security, its parent organization, truly needed. In theory therefore, the department already has no purpose. In practice? The murder of Renee Good and the ongoing abuses of power reveal ICE’s true purposes, as a tool to brutalize Americans and to transform America into a Trumpist military autocracy, with ICE appearing as a Sturmabteilung or Schutzstaffel-like paramilitary enforcer for the fascist state.

Thus we turn to the word ‘Abolish’. Oh, ‘woe is us!’ cry and hue some Democrats when they hear the word ‘abolish’. It conjures memories of 2020, when a mass popular movement erupted in the aftermath of a shockingly brazen racist murder by uniformed police officers of an unarmed and innocent-of-any-crimes Black man named George Floyd coalesced around the policy demand to Abolish the Police. Police departments could no longer be trusted as the arbiters of life and death, and that their power monopoly to command the death of American civilians without any promise of justice or recourse led many to march, even in the face of a deadly pandemic.

Mass protest movements have little staying power, however, especially when the inciting incidents (food shortages, police brutality, etc.) become isolated and rare, when no hope of reform becomes real. So it was with the George Floyd protests: they petered out, as police brutality receded in the public consciousness (even though it still happened and still does happen every day), and as any chance for systemic change died in the halls of Congress.

And yet the word Abolish has returned, a specter to fear or an arbiter to rejoice, depending on your proclivities. The word does indeed sponsor fear, as to get rid of the police, to get rid of ICE raises the imminent question of: who will replace them? At least for the police question, a satisfactory answer with mass consensus was never found. (Personally, as someone born and raised in Brazil, as someone who wants to see US Presidents locked up, we need an independent judiciary with powers of enforcement and investigation, targeted against politicians and the elite; we also need a single Federal police that oversees and directs all state and local police branches).

But for ICE, we already have a satisfactory answer: a holy troika between Defense, Justice, and Intelligence already keeps America safe. We don’t need more departments or more branches for the Presidents to oversee. ICE offends, not just because it brutalizes and murders Americans in the street, not just because it disrupts families and businesses with its wanton brutality, but because it is an extraneous use of our tax dollars, to pursue white supremacist and racialist agendas.

Thus: we must abolish ICE. But what does that mean? Abolish, from its Latin root abolere, means to destroy, to annihilate, to render non-existent. To rid ourselves of this moral stench, to liberate our Republic from these feckless criminals, we must demand no less of ICE but its total destruction, both literally and figuratively. Specifically:

• Every badge, challenge coin, and otherwise official ICE insignia must be gathered and destroyed.

• Every ICE-owned building must be either transferred to non-enforcement agencies or auctioned off to the public.

• Every mention of ICE’s role in law and regulation must be stricken from the books.

• Every manager and executive of ICE who was serving on or after January 20th, 2025, must be indicted for criminal negligence, tortious violation of civil rights, and conspiracy against the United States.

• Every other ICE employee must be placed on a global ‘do not hire’ list, excluding them from opening bank accounts, accessing finances, being hired by any private or public employer, or otherwise existing in society until such time that Congress lifts such a ban, which they should only do on individual, extraordinary cases. Expelled from public and private life, these individuals will either be forced to flee America or live in abject poverty for the rest of their miserable days.

• Every city that experienced Trumpist ICE raids should receive a tax jubilee, whereby all residents at the time of the raid are excused from paying taxes for up to three years.

• Every memory of ICE is damned and scourged from our collective minds.

That last one may be impossible without some sort of mass hypnosis machine, but absent that, all other policy demands are not only feasible, but the only possible way Democrats or really any Americans have any hope of surviving the future. It’s certainly the metric by which voters should judge any candidate for office. ICE after all has already gone after elected Democrats. Surely they know the risk and threat that these paramilitaries pose to their own selves? If they do not abolish ICE, they abolish themselves!

And they shouldn’t delude themselves and think that ICE will serve them loyally once they are in charge. ICE follows the loyal commands of its masters, Stephen Miller and Donald Trump. They will continue to do so even after Miller and Trump are both gone. Do you think there are any non-racialists in ICE? You’d be more likely to find non-communists in Stalin’s Communist Party. The only way to secure our liberty therefore lies in the destruction of ICE.

Cato once said ‘Carthago Delenda Est’, a near-genocidal demand to destroy the Carthaginian peoples and their city. We say, out of necessity of our own survival, ‘ICE Delenda Est’, a non-genocidal demand to destroy an out-of-control paramilitary force brutalizing our cities. It is the only demand we have left.

Neither were exactly right. Kirk’s death did not lead to the fascist Apotheosis, nor was it particularly funny. As someone who is presently alive, the idea of suddenly dying by a high-velocity bullet mid-sentence is scary, raising questions of mortal dread and that classic postdiluvian Gilgameshian desire to avoid such a terminus. Humor could not be found in such a sudden crackle, save amongst the very crude amongst us online. As for the fascism: yes, the right got many people fired and disciplined for not mourning Kirk, but Trump himself did not care particularly one way or another. If it doesn’t lead him to a Nobel Peace Prize or isn’t a real estate or crypto deal for his family: the President simply does not care. Thus, no Reichstag Fire Decree, and Horst Wessel-Lied lies a-mouldering in his grave.

There is of course a real world impact to Kirk’s death. As charismatic head of a multi-million dollar organization, Kirk likely would’ve risen beyond the heights of Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh combined, had he lived. Indeed, had he lived, we would have had decades of Kirk’s continuing dominance in the right wing ecosystem, with every GOP Presidential hopeful begging his favor, kissing his ring.

To be clear, it’s not that he was a gifted debater or possessed a unique intellect. He was dull and his arguments trite, barely capable of waging victorious struggles using pablum against over-pampered college students. His unique merit came in uniting the disparate right wing, and being able to be a unifying voice for the coalition. That had been fraying in the rise of Fuentes and his overt fascism, but Fuentes’ disgusting racism will never have any no mass electoral appeal in America; the opposite could always be said of Kirk. Without his presence, the GOP will be all the weaker, all the less united for it, until a suitable replacement can be found. It’s unlikely one ever will, considering how singular Kirk was (given his age, his fundraising abilities, his determination, and more).

Erika Kirk, Charlie’s dutiful widow, has attempted to take up the mantle of Turning Point USA, the organization the former Kirk had led. This has led to a comedy of self-forced errors, wrecking not just her own image to the public, but dragging down TPUSA and the rest of the Republican Party along with her.

Of course, much of this has to do with Candace Owens spreading malicious lies about the Kirks (and the French and many others). But Owens is just a peg in the modern information ecosystem. I’d like to turn now to Facebook, still used by many elderly Americans, as a source for their daily news. I think the images more or less speak for themselves. To be clear: if you have used Facebook at all the past couple months, these are the headlines you have been exposed to. And recall further that older Americans tend to be Republican primary voters, and keep that in mind as you note the presence of a certain Vice Presidential candidate.

We should first start with The Hug, an actual event where Vice President JD Vance hugged the widow Kirk in public.

This actually happened, and is the only true event besides Kirk’s death. At a TPUSA event, following Kirk’s death, Erika (wearing tight leather pants as is her want) tightly embraced the Vice President. In her retelling, she calls herself a natural hugger, something that is likely to be true, considering how women do be like that (speaking as one myself). As for Vance, comforting a grieving widow (despite her less-than-widowly outfit) is quite a natural human thing to do, even if doing it in front of a political rally on a stage might not seem like the best time to do so.

Regardless, from that single hug, a million untruths spawned. This is not the first time I have reported on Kirk’s death or the use of AI to spread rumors and misinformation. The last time I covered this, people were using AI to (falsely and erroneously) attempt to locate Kirk’s murderer:

It should be noted that AI facial recognition or similar advanced tech did not fight Kirk’s killer: it was just good old fashioned police work, combined with the alleged shooter turning himself in.

Let us now turn to Facebook, and see what the latest headlines have in store. These are all snapshots from real accounts taken from the day this article was written and published. From this, we can piece together several conspiracy theories that are floating out there. The picture these conspiracies paint is clear: Erika Kirk is less a common widow of a murdered man and more the Biblical Whore of Babylon, who murdered Charlie so that she could be with JD Vance, a corrupted soul bewitched by the guiles of the Whore.

Thus, if you have been using Facebook at all in the past couple of months, here are some stories you might have seen, and believed:

Charlie wasn’t the father of the kids

JD Vance is actively and publicly cheating on his wife Usha by shacking up with Erika Kirk

Erika Kirk murdered Charlie Kirk (to get with JD Vance) and is under arrest

One of Charlie’s bodyguards worked with Tyler Robinson (the alleged sniper) to kill Charlie

While these snapshots were taken today, they are just scratching the surface. On my own Twitter account, I have spent several weeks documenting the insane conspiracy theories that have cropped up. Here are several snapshots I had saved.

JD Vance realizes he is dating the Whore of Babylon on Instagram Live

Erika Kirk tries to murder Candace

JK he’s still alive

JK JK he’s still dead but his ghost showed up in the courtroom and pronounced Tyler Robinson’s innocence

And on and on it goes. Day after day, week after week, of AI slop-filled ludicrous headlines. To be clear, it’s doubtful most people know or even see these headlines. What we do know is that ‘bad vibes’ are permeating TPUSA’s efforts to reconstitute itself after Kirk’s death. Much of that has to do with how Erika mishandled the tragedy, but these AI headlines will continue to haunt and devastate TPUSA’s image to the world.

In other words, it’s not that Republican voters will remember any of these headlines or stories come 2028, but they will remember emotions of skeeviness and untowardness, informed by these headlines, even if only glanced at momentarily. When the time comes to lift JD Vance up to the Presidency, these otherwise MAGA Trump loyalist voters will mostly say “no thanks”, even if they don’t quite remember what they don’t like about JD. To say nothing of Erika’s political future: she is rather doomed; hated by the Left and Right, the only remaining pivot she could have is apolitical religiosity, not that she needs one. As a millionaire, her family is set for generations. But an arbiter of the GOP’s future she is not.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We don’t have to be slaves to AI slopification. After Trump’s 2016 election and the concurrent Rohingya genocide, many social media sites ramped up content moderation, in an attempt to shield themselves from political and legal liability. After Biden’s terminal old age became apparent during 2022, these media operations smelled the decay on the wind and shifted 360 degrees to the opposite angle, letting bloom a thousand flowers of fake, slop news, in an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the former banned news, including assumed-doomed former President Trump. Once Trump became President again, all remaining guardrails were removed.

Having lived through both epochs, of high moderation and no moderation, I think we can all conclude both were bad, but that no moderation is far worse. We cannot and should not allow defamatory, false beliefs to permeate. That is how murderous cults arise, how terrorism starts, how mass bloodshed becomes trite.

Today they come for Charlie Kirk and his widow. Tomorrow they will come for me, and then the next day, for you. None of us are safe until all of us are made safe; we can only hope Congress and the President will act with determination to save us from the AI slopocalypse, before it is too late.

As for JD Vance, it’s hard to imagine a political future for someone accused of cheating on his wife to be the loverboy of a widow who casually murdered her husband. That isn’t the truth, of course, but if you’re on Facebook: yes it is, and so, imagining any future that doesn’t result in him behind bars might be a bridge too far for many conservatives. In the meantime, I will continue to share bizarre Facebook headlines on my Twitter, so be sure to follow me there and of course, never forget:

I did not write this in defense of the US empire. I wrote this as a rationalization of the policy demand ‘Free Palestine’. The question in my mind was: could the US imperial state be convinced that a free and sovereign Palestine is in its interests? Yes, of course, a thousand times yes. Could the US imperial state be convinced that Israeli’s rule by kahanist terrorists is a clear and present danger? I think the case can definitely and persuasively be made, and that thereby, a free Palestine is something that is imminently possible.

Right now, I’ll admit: I am not working towards undoing America’s empire, as the immediate goal. I desire it like I desire many things, but insofar as concrete, achievable-within-the-next-five-years things, it’s not on my personal list, because I know it cannot be done in that time frame, nor even how to go about doing it. I know then that in five years, the American empire will still be around. The question is, will Palestine? Will Palestinians? I think so, but only if the agents of empire can be convinced doing so is in their interests. Here then, I make my argument for their interests, and hope that this rationalization can be used once and for all to make a free Palestine a reality.

American vassalage is the most treasured status a foreign nation can hold, the envy of every other nation that does not have the same titles and claims. It means firstly, full integration into the United States global financial network: a network with nearly one hundred trillion dollars of capital floating freely every day. It means your state can create a robust social welfare network, as all your defense costs will be fully subsidized by the US government, creating long-term social stability. And it’s not just the fact that America plus her allies still constitute the strongest military in the world, but that by integrating yourself and your neighbors into that network, there is no feasible opportunity for war.

Consider France. For France, control of territory up to the river Rhine has long been a dream of many French rulers. It’s what Napoleon used to demarcate the terminus of official French territory. Conversely, to the Germans, the lands both cis and trans to the Rhine are culturally, spiritually, economically, and politically German. Die Wacht Am Rhein, the Watch on the Rhine, the nationalist song written during the 1840s, literally refers to the river as a sacred, defensible line to be held to the death by patriotic Germans everywhere. For France to be safe from an invasion from the east, the Rhine river must be held, and Germany pushed back to the Eastern bank; for Germany to be safe, the Rhine river’s banks must be held at all costs.

Knowing that, it would shock most people throughout history that it’s been nearly a century since the French or the Germans have waged war over the Rhine river. Since the time of the Romans, or even before, that river has been the source of internecine, constant strife. And today: there is no war, because in spite of still real existing tension between the two nations, they are so plugged into the American trade, defense, political, and cultural networks that to seriously consider war, a France or a Germany would need to do several things.

First, they would need their own currency, totally separate and disconnected from the dollar (so, not the Euro), while at the same time ensuring that other nations, specifically oil producers like the Gulf Cooperation Council, accept their currency as fiat. In other words, let’s take France as as example. They would need to start printing francs, and then a country like Saudi Arabia would need to accept those new francs as payment for oil. Doing so would of course invite US sanctions and trade restrictions on both France and Saudi Arabia, and so the obstacles become even more unassailable.

Assuming their financial system survives the shock, they’d next need to deal with trade and cultural isolation. France would be booted from the club, all the clubs they get to be in as part of accepting US hegemony. Cheap, tariffless trade will evaporate overnight, raising domestic prices and destabilizing their political regime. At the same time, travel bans and further sanctions ensure that their tourist sector withers and dies.

Assuming they survive that, then they need to build an army capable of contending not just with America, but with NATO, for that’s what invading the Rhine would look like. While France is capable of building domestic military goods like planes, they are incapable of building them without being integrated into the US trade network. They could, in theory, retool their industry to take Chinese and Russian components, but they would be effectively starting from scratch. This project would take years if not decades, all while the domestic political scene continues to deteriorate, especially as US pressure ramps up. In this hypothetical, the French people will have traded the social welfare state they had for maybe having a semi-decent independent army and economy in thirty years, by which point, they will all be far poorer and far less safe than if they had just accepted the status quo ante.

France, it should be said, does not dare. While French Presidents and other vassal leaders can thumb their noses in public at US leadership, behind the scenes they are as pliant, as desperate for US approval as befitting their station. Whenever a foreign ally speaks ill of America, America is typically smart enough to know the difference between pandering to a domestic populist and nationalist audience versus a true independent streak.

France, in spite of the Rhine being their sacred obligation, does not dare raise the question of the Rhine to the Americans. The same could be said of the Greeks, who don’t bring up Megali, or the Germans with Anschluss, and so on. Many of America’s best, most loyal vassals have a history of their own imperial games of conquest and annexations, and even with that history, they dare not even raise it to us.

That is what a good and proper vassal is. When America speaks, their response behind the scenes must be ‘Yes, sir’, ‘No, sir’: total obedience to our hegemony. It’s not that we do so out of hubris or protect them out of the kindness of our hearts: at the end of the day, it just benefits us. Healthy, wealthy people sending their tariffless goods to us and vice versa enriches our country. Keeping those people out of distractions and disruptions like wars of conquest keep those gains sustainable and steady.

Israel has violated this sacred understanding. They’ve long held territorial ambitions of a Greater Israel, encompassing land from Cairo to Baghdad, ambitions which they enact daily on the Palestinian, Jordanian, Syrian, and Lebanese people. Let’s be clear about why they’re doing this: American liberal guilt over the Holocaust led many that grew up in the succeeding generations feeling like they owed the Jewish people a nation and full support in that nationhood. It’s certainly what motivated President Biden in sending Israel a blank check in lethal munitions and political support, and what’s motivated most US politicians since Kennedy.

Guilt should never drive American imperial policy. Our nation was built on the backs of the genocided Indigenous populations, enslaved Black Africans, expropriated Mexicans, and our ever-glorious yet also bloody war economy, which enabled us to use the first two world wars to ensure our economic and financial preeminence over the entire world. To the extent that America cares at all about that carnage and trauma, it all amounts to a land acknowledgement, with no regard given if the people were fully wiped out or if they’re still around to receive any sort of reparations. Perhaps that will change. Perhaps domestic political concerns will force a reckoning. But even if it does, we should never bother to seek redress for guilt over another state’s actions (in this case, Germany and her allies during WW2). We didn’t build or cause that, it’s not our problem.

And so, because of this misbegotten guilt, we gave Israel the bandwidth and support it needed to first secure its independence, and then to expand and continue expanding into territory it has no legal right to. It has waged a war of genocidal conquest against the Palestinians, against our expressed desires.

America’s designs over the Levant should be the same as America’s designs over the Rhine river valley, the same as it is everywhere else: to render the entire area into non-warring, peaceful trading partners with the US, with their national security fully subsumed into the global American alliance. Israel stands in direct opposition to that goal. Not just its leaders, but its entire political economy is geared towards colonial expropriation and settlement, including over other US allies such as Jordan.

Their specific actions during Biden’s presidency alone should be considered an unforgivable breach, which alone should invite US sanctions as well as overt and covert methods to overthrow their political leadership and be replaced with far more pliant and pathetic leaders. Consider the following:

• On July 24, 2023, the Israeli parliament passed a law restricting their Supreme Court, something we expressly had forbidden the Israeli government from doing.

• On January 18, 2024, Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected yet again the possibility of a Palestinian state, directly contradicting long-standing US imperial policy of a two-state solution.

• On January 20, 2024, Netanyahu again refused to accept a Palestinian state, this time directly to Biden.

• On May 6, 2024, Israel launched a ground operation into Rafah, brazenly seizing Rafah’s border crossing with Egypt, despite Biden explicitly ordering them on March 9, 2024 not to do so.

Yes, the Israeli state also starved and massacred the Palestinian populations, rising to the level of genocide. But even had they not done so, even had they waged no war in Gaza, had not occupied and settled more land in the West Bank (as they indeed have done), these incidents alone would be cause for Netanyahu’s permanent removal from the Israeli political scene, and the fundamental restructuring of the Israeli political economy to ensure figures like Netanyahu and his coalition can never again rise to power and prominence ever again.

Of course, it’s not just the genocide and expansion of settlements in far-away places. Israel has recently emerged as an ugly wart on the global stage, as financiers and funders of international terrorism, now directly threatening our national security. It’s crucial to note the ideology of this terrorism and name it for what it is, accurately: kahanism. To those unaware, kahanism is a radical fundamentalist perversion of Judaism, invented by a madman mass killer and convicted terrorist aptly named Meir Kahane. Kahane is to Judaism what Osama bin Laden was to Islam; a cynical abuse of sacred texts to excuse the slaughter and maiming of innocents.

The entire Israeli government is in the grip of these kahanists; while the US was busy chasing Al Qaeda in the hills of Afghanistan, we missed a similar ideology to Al Qaeda gaining full foothold in one of our purported allies. Everything Israel does can be sourced back to kahanism. When Israeli settlers expel Palestinian families onto the street with nothing but the clothes on their back, that’s kahanism. When Israeli soldiers destroy every hospital, school, power and water treatment plants in Gaza, that’s kahanism. When Israeli civilians form a human chain to prevent the delivery of baby formula to starving innocent babies in Gaza, that’s kahanism. When the entire Israeli public riots to save a known Israeli rapist prison guard, that’s kahanism.

This fascist ideology has led to brazen domestic attacks against our own American population, as well as to Americans abroad. There is the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, an American journalist, assassinated by Israeli snipers while reporting in the West Bank; a killing even more brazen than Jamal Khashoggi’s murder by the Saud’s MBS. There’s the case of Jasper Nathaniel, nearly lynched by Israeli settlers several times. There’s the cases of Mohammed Ibrahim, of Irene Cho and Caleb Frost, of several other Americans who have been disappeared into the Israeli gulags, only to emerge brutalized and bearing horror stories of abuses.

At home and in our allies, we have several documented instances of Israeli and kahanist-instigated mass terror riots against American citizens. Throughout January 2024, kahanist agents deployed chemical gas, in contravention of the Geneva conventions, at Columbia University. This terrorist attack wounded and maimed dozens of US citizens. On April 28, 2024, kahanist forces sieged UCLA students during a student protest, using firebombs, bats, and other makeshift weapons, again wounding and maiming dozens of Americans.

It’s not just America. On November 6, kahanist forces instigated another mass terror riot in Amsterdam, again armed with chemical agents, firebombs, and makeshift weapons, this time wounding hundreds of innocent civilians in the Netherlands. It of course bears mentioning that the Netherlands is a treaty ally to the United States.

No other country in the world could get away with this. Israel for certain should not be allowed to. Just one of those terrorist incidents would result if not in immediate bombing, then at very least crippling sanctions and a trade blockade. And that’s just scratching the surface of Israel’s brazen assault on the American people and her interests. Their flaccid attempt to use charges of anti-semitism as a way of continuing to blackmail the US into supporting them would be laughable if it weren’t still effective.

If we are to survive as a nation, we must reject this false notion, as well as other false notions Israel has veiled over us in an attempt to achieve unequal benefits as our vassal state. They don’t share our values, they are not our allies against terrorism: their actions alone prove this. As for being a democratic state, ‘the only democracy in a sea of autocracy’, firstly America does not and should not care which countries are electoral democracies, so long as their polity is stable and relatively autonomous with little overt oppression. In addition, it’s ludicrous to reward Israel for being a democracy for that is by design. America does not allow Arab states to become democracies because if they did, they would all elect leaders hostile to Israel.

Perhaps that should change. It’s clear that the status quo must, at the very least. Overt and covert steps should be made to change domestic Israeli politics. To prevent further destabilization, all parties and states in the Levant should be subsumed into the American defense sphere, with their states focusing on social welfare for their citizens rather than dreams of expansion. This entails disarming and denuclearizing the Israeli state.

Israel will resist, even though the end result will be their defeat and immiseration. They may withstand sanctions, and survive being shut out of the global financial system. But their society is factitious: a threeway struggle between the religious kahanists and the non-religious kahanists, with a tiny minority not caring about kahanism yet having the misfortune of being born in Israel. With a push and a shove, they’ll all wind up killing each other. All America needs to do is back the winner, and emerge the victor itself.

However it is done, America will have full leeway to redraw the maps of the Middle East. It’s likely that the current core of Israeli society will be wrecked and ruined, much like Syria looks like now. As inheritors of the British mess, and as ultimate overlords over these people American suzerainty is inevitable. This can be done via resurrecting the old Mandatory Palestine, this time under a UN Mandate instead of the non-existent League of Nations.

This is not ideal, of course. It would cost more than the following scenario, where, ideally, Israelis wake up tomorrow, realize their sins, and:

1. Overthrow their elected leaders, handing them over for extradition and trial in the Hague

2. Beg a thousand and one apologies to the US President and American people on international TV

3. Accept full withdrawal from Palestinian lands back to the 1967 lines

4. Withdraw all objections to a fully sovereign Palestinian state

5. Hand over all Israeli nuclear warheads and refining equipment to the IAEA

6. Accede to a NATO conversion programme and timeline

7. Acceptance of a US-sponsored Constitution and legal changes

8. To do whatever else we ask of them, when we ask it of them

The Palestinians would of course have their own requirements:

1. The formation of a national army and disarming of paramilitary groups

2. The acceptance of NATO overlordship over their Armed Forces

3. The acceptance of a NATO military industrial program

4. The acceptance of a US-sponsored Constitution

5. The acceptance of US mediation on other outstanding questions of Palestinian sovereignty (right of return, the status of the Old City, etc.)

6. To do whatever else we ask of them, when we ask it of them

Yet despite the inevitability of their demise, the Israelis may yet choose to go the way of their fundamentalist brethren in bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. If they choose to escalate this into a kinetic struggle, we must not hesitate nor hold guilt in our hearts. We must react and coolly protect our own interests, and secure them by whatever military means necessary.

For the moral-minded amongst us, we can only pray that sense overtakes sensibility in the Israeli polity. For everyone else, take heart in knowing that a bare strip of land with some 9 million inhabitants is very much unlike Iraq’s near 30-million, half-the-size-of-Texas 2003-2011 challenge, especially when more than half of those inhabitants would rather capitulate to American hegemony than risk annihilation. They won’t greet us as liberators, but we will leave them with civilized laws, constitutions, and norms anyways, content in our efforts.

While military installations would be the first things targeted in the event of a nuclear war, as shown in the film, they would be closely followed up with secondary targets, specifically targets of principal population and therefore economic value (AKA ‘countervalue targets’). Therefore, even if you live far away from a military base (indeed, you could be hundreds or even thousands of miles from one), you could still find yourself on the business end of a hostile ballistic missile.

Sheffield’s nuclear annihilation served as the demonstration piece of Threads—and, I won’t spoil it further. Watch it for yourself, and I hope it will have left you with as much impact as it did on me, as it does on any living soul that bears witness to it.

Of course, the risk of nuclear war is just as high as it was in the 80s, as we all know. During the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, during Ukraine’s first major counteroffensive, NATO officials revealed after the fact that the risk of nuclear war had jumped up to 50%. To be clear: while NATO is as prone to exaggeration and farce as the Russians, when both echo one another, that’s when people should pay attention. That’s how I at least predicted Russia’s invasion in February of 2022. I knew it was going to happen because both US satellites and local Russian Telegram were both reporting a mass of tanks driving on roads near the Ukrainian border. You don’t put tanks on beautiful (less so in Russia’s case) concrete roads unless you want to destroy them, unless you don’t care at all about wrecking a municipality’s roads because you have bigger priorities, such as invasion and war. And just as then, I saw both NATO and Russians talking casually about nuclear warheads. I knew from US satellite footage that no missiles had left their storage locations so the risk never became terminal, but there was definitely a pattern of escalatory movements from the Russian strategic air and submarine fleets, to say nothing of their public pronunciations.

So yes, nuclear was very likely a 50-50 as recently as late September of 2022. The world flipped a coin and we survived, but as world tensions continue to rise due primarily to ecological collapse thanks in large part to an overabundance of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, we will find ourselves edging closer and closer to thermonuclear war.

Maybe it will be the Chinese invasion of Taiwan, something that the People’s Liberation Army Navy will be able to (in theory, at least according to both PRC and NATO sources) accomplish beginning in 2027. Or maybe the DPRK will launch the final campaign against the South. They should have a fully capable nuclear triad by the early 2030s if not sooner. Everyone knows about their advanced ICBMs, of course. But they’ve also started building nuclear submarines and are acquiring Russian technology for their own strategic air force. And then there’s the giant Indian and less-giant-though-still-mighty Pakistani elephants in the room. Oh, and the Israelis. Who knows where they have their 300 triad missiles pointed at, other than every Arab and Muslim majority city in the world? If Israel ever fell and its illegal nuclear weapons were not placed under international control, I personally would avoid any place that’s ever been a ‘Rome’, just in case (so, Rome, Moscow, Istanbul, Toledo, Madrid, Washington DC, et cetera et al).

Bottom line: we are just a few coin flips away from catastrophe, and as bad as Threads made nuclear war seem, the reality will be far, far worse.

So, in that spirit, below I’ve compiled something for my fellow Californians: a list of potential targets in a nuclear war, the likely yields to be used in an attack of this nature, and the estimated damage. This other can and should extrapolate to the rest of the United States. I of course cannot be held liable for this as I stress this is not “serious” advice, but also I must stress: there will be no civil courts for you to sue me for giving you ‘bad advice’ after the fact; if I survive the blast, you best believe I will be wearing leather, riding shiny and chrome, blasting away on my flamethrower guitar—meet me on the battle, rider of death, and let us see who comes away the victor, and let that alone decide the merit of my words!

Ahem.

Rather, the overall message should be: we need to restore the 80s and 90s dynamic that got us off the previous cliff. We need a strong, international political coalition that can push against nuclear war. If it could convince madmen like Reagan off the brink, it can convince madmen like Putin and Trump! After all: nuclear war cannot be fought, for it cannot be won. It can be survived, but that world will not be worth living in.

On Such A Winter’s Day

Listed above are all the major urban population centers and military targets likely to befall destruction of a nuclear war in California alone. Note that the projected damage is only for immediately right after the bombs fall. It does not take into account longterm radiological damage or societal collapse. The accompanying nuclear winter and societal collapse ensures that total casualties will far exceed these paltry estimates. Princeton’s own study into this revealed an estimated 34.1 million dead nationwide instantly with another 57.4 million wounded. Many of those who are wounded in the event of atomic bombing will be unable to receive medical care and will die quickly after the fact. Some estimates have total deaths reaching 98-99%, once nuclear winter sets in (see also the several years without summer (cf 536 CE, 1816 CE) in history to see how less solar radiation due to abnormal clouds will affect crop yields).

If we were to zoom out to the rest of the United States, even without assessing the projected damage, we could surely imagine how destructive the attack would be.

Once a nuclear exchange begins, people will have at most 15 minutes to get into a safe shelter. For those in the major cities targeted, there is practically zero chance of short-term survival, even if they found a deep enough bunker in time. An atomic airburst, the type of explosion most likely to befall most civilians, has many different ways of killing people. First, the actual fission reaction creates a ball of plasma that incinerates all matter beneath it in a radius of a few hundred meters, to kilometers, depending on the yield. Then, there is thermal radiation, which burns so hot it melts the skin off your bones like a perfectly cooked rib, igniting the very air in your lungs on fire. And all of it happening all at once, in a single second, across tens of kilometers. Then, with barely any time having passed, the crush: massive overpressure from the nuclear chain reaction crashing down upon the city, tens of thousands of pounds of psi bearing down with relentless force. Remember the Oceangate submersible, how the pressure of the ocean at 12,000 meters below the sea level eviscerated that tiny craft? Much the same will happen to buildings all across America. “Ducking and Covering” may save you from shrapnel and falling debris, but not if you’re directly in the path of the blast. In this case, it’s another coin flip: 50-50 says you die instantly, but 99% says you die in a month regardless.

Then the shockwave, then the radiation, then the firestorm. The first is the typical image we all possess of a nuclear blast outside of the mushroom cloud, of a tremendous shockwave ripping through the air and knocking down every building in its path. But this is actually one of the bomb’s weaker effects, as most of its energy is directed downward at its target. You don’t need to be in a bunker to survive this; you just need to be far enough away and in a stable enough structure to withstand the wind shear.

Radiation will be minimal with airbursts, with most of the radiation deposited into deep craters; however, groundbursts will still happen (to take out hardened locations like silos) and cause massive radiological damage nationwide. Supposing you survive those first two though, the firestorm will be as likely to get you. While modern cities, built using concrete and steel, are less fireprone than they were in mostly wooden Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is still enough dry tinder to create thousand-foot tall walls of raging infernos. Cities like Los Angeles will become like lakes of fire, the surface boiling and bubbling as if a lake of magma had emerged from the crust. This will be like the worst wildfires in history, only they will be happening nationwide, with no hope or plan of putting them out save patience.

And suppose you survive all that, or suppose you are in some place that’s relatively safe, such as Wine Country in Napa, California. Other than the sky turning dark and staying that way within a week, and the occasional radiological windstorm, the worst will actually come not from the bombs themselves but from the main victims of the bombs: the millions of refugees, half of whom will be terminally wounded with either radiation or fire damage or both. Even those that are not wounded will be tired, mentally exhausted, and hungry. These more rural areas of America, already lacking in medical and food supplies, will be wholly unable to serve the influx of millions of people.

With command-and-control of the US military likely totally disrupted, with remaining units isolated and totally cut off from any logistical support, salvation from the remnants of the US government will not be forthcoming at any time soon either. International aid, from unaffected countries in the global South are also extremely unlikely, considering that the resulting nuclear winter will cause famines in those countries as well, though likely less severe than in the nuked North.

All of this in turn means that the millions of refugees are for the most part, doomed to either die in neglect or die as a preventative measure. For the latter, here is where the cold calculus of accelerating certain deaths take hold. After all, these millions of refugees, blasted with radiation and thermal damage will be breeding cesspools for diseases such as dysentery, typhus, typhoid, ebola, malaria, e coli, black plague, and any other epidemic disease under the sun, to say nothing of follow-up biological strikes from the nations that nuked us. After all, every major nuclear power also possesses a biological warfare division, filled with nasties like smallpox and antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. Once the nukes fly, there will be little holding back the remnant governments from launching the rest of everything in their stockpile at their foes.

In other words, in coping with supply collapse, local regional authorities, in seeing the millions of refugees, may just decide that mass euthanasia is preferable and indeed more humane for those people, although the lack of supply may just as well mean that no active measures would be needed against those people, just a bit of patience and strong enough padlocks and guards around surviving supply centers.

Regardless, plans are already in place to put survivors immediately to work: firstly to gather food supplies and secondly to plant the first harvest. Oil, coal, and gas production/refinement will also need to be restarted simultaneously. Millions of those who were not direct victims of the atomic blasts will start dying here, with forced labor, food shortages, and radiation storms causing mass casualties, week-after-week.

From there, it is anyone’s guess. Radiation damage will lower fertility and cause a cancer epidemic. Of the children who survive childbirth and make it to adulthood, their lives will be brutish and short. With food shortages endemic, population culls will keep occuring, either by design or by lack of food. Life expectancy could reduce to as much as 35 years or even shorter, with very young or very old people an extreme rarity. 20ish year old grandparents will be the norm, not the exception.

In 100 years, the population may stabilize to somewhere in the low tens of millions to few millions, though it should be noted this is an average. Some places, entire states and multi-state regions, will be totally unpopulated outside of temporary outposts and fortifications, much like we see today in Antarctica; such will be the fate of many major US cities like New York City and Los Angeles. For instance, California, with a pre-war population of 40 million will likely be reduced to 3 million within a century. We can therefore surmise a population ceiling of 50 million (at most) to a population floor of 20-30 million at least. For a current population of 342 million, this level of demographic collapse would be practically heretofore unseen.

So, the next time someone posts this

(or its Russian/Chinese derivative), please show them this article and ask them: is this the world you want to live in? Because to me, this reads as nothing other than a plan for mass suicidal genocide; as if Jim Jones gave 3/4 of Americans grape-flavored cyanide and they all eagerly drank it up, generation after generation. It’s not a world worth living in, at all. We can have such a better, more humane, less apocalyptic future. We’re living it right now, and as bad as it may seem, the future we live in today is better than the future we would have been living in had the bombs dropped in 1962 or 1983. Let’s leave the next generations the same (relatively) unnuked worlds. It’s the very least we can do.

On Sourcing
I utilized nonclassified nuclear war plans, existing military bases, nukemap, FEMA, CDC, Princeton, and other sources to come up with these estimates. Someone with actual national security clearance will be able to provide a more accurate picture, though they will not tell you, obviously!

That last question is the most helpful, for it can accurately set the stakes of the political fight. First, let’s define how the government is funded. Per a 1977 law, Congress must pass some legislation (either a continuing resolution or twelve individual spending bills; do not worry about this as this will not be on the test) every twelve months, with the legislation due by 11:59 pm on September 30 every year, to fund the government for the next year. To be clear: this does not invent money out of thin air or collect it by other means. The money already exists in the Treasury, via government taxes, bonds, and other funding measures. All this legislation does is authorize the Treasury to withdraw from its own accounts to pay for programs Congress has enacted in other legislation.

To simplify this, let’s assume Congress passed a bill mandating that every paper clip be manufactured locally and with depleted uranium. In that bill, they created an Office of Humane Radiological Poisoning (OHRP), with a set annual budget of 5 million dollars to ensure American paper clips include the right amount of depleted uranium. Assume that bill passed in 1991. Every year since 1991, Congress needs to continue to authorize the Treasury to withdraw from its accounts $5 million (or more, or less) and give it to the OHRP. If the OHRP is not funded from the Treasury, and it does not have any other way to fund itself (such as fees), then the work of the OHRP must stop, its employees cannot legally work (per another Federal law), private donations cannot fund it (another law), and even though Congress passed a law saying paper clips must be made with depleted uranium, the lack of an enforcement agency means that American paper clips could start to be manufactured using less radiologically damaging materials (egads!).

Everything above is true of course, except for Social Security, Medicare, the VA, air travel, emergency services, mail, the military, and law enforcement. See, the 1977 law mandating that Congress go through this really complex process of passing a law to do something and then having to pass another set of laws annually to authorize the Treasury to continue doing what Congress has already said it wants done is just a law. It’s not in the Constitution; Congress could and indeed did carve out plenty of exceptions, including one for its own members (though that is more due to the zombie 27th amendment passing after 200 years). Regardless, it’s important to note that when the government “shuts down”, it doesn’t mean that the government has ceased to exist. Quite the opposite; what shuts down is everything deemed ‘non-essential’. While this varies from department to department and agency to agency, it broadly means:

• A stoppage of regulatory enforcement and rulemaking.

• A stoppage of janitorial, cafeteria, and other service worker staff.

• A temporary end to guided tours of Federal facilities, and the limiting of access to some parks.

• Significant delays for passports, flights, student aid, cuts to some benefits programs (again, not Medicare or Social Security).

Again, this varies, but at a high level, a Federal government shutdown does not affect many people. To the extent people have felt or even known there was a shutdown was limited to those who work in the Federal government and their friends, and those who interact with the government for leisure or work. It all adds up to a fraction of a percentage point, not that the shutdown did not hurt real people. It absolutely did.

An estimated total of 900,000 people were furloughed, with an additional 700,000 forced to work without pay (with back pay now guaranteed). Every week the government is shutdown eliminates 0.1% off of our GDP, which ripples throughout the entire economy in ways many people cannot even begin to truly comprehend. The pain is real, the pain is felt, even if the day-to-day effect is miniscule.

Yet despite that, there is no ironclad rule that says that the government needs to be funded. As mentioned, essential services remain open, and if they were ever truly threatened (say, a military mutiny over going without pay for months on end), then there would be unanimous bipartisan consensus to pass at least a partial funding bill. Not that this is in any way desirable, and indeed that would be extremely unlikely, but it is important to put things in perspective.

America is also not unique amongst Western democracies in having government lapses while essential services remain functional. Belgium didn’t have a government for 652 days from 2018-2020. Italy had a smaller scale lapse in 2013 for 62 days. Spain, the Netherlands, Germany all had their own fallen governments in the last 15 years. None of those can be described as failed states; travel there yourself right now and bear witness to how the sun still rises and sets in relatively stable peaceful bliss (compared to less blissful parts of the world right now), same as it does here.

This is not to advocate for a 652 day shutdown, of course, rather to make the point that the record of 43 going on 44 days is not something that is truly groundbreaking in world historical terms; America could likely survive (not that we would want to!) a 1000 day shutdown.

Why and Why Now

In 2010, President Obama and his Congress passed the Affordable Care Act. Part of this bill established health insurance subsidies; basically, the Federal government created a marketplace where individuals and families could purchase insurance from private insurers, with part of the cost being subsidized directly out of the Treasury. 11 years of skyrocketing inflation and healthcare costs due to an ever aging population later, Biden passed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 which increased subsidies, and then passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (perhaps inaptly named in hindsight), which extended those subsidies until October 1, 2025.

Hence, the fight. Or, at least, that’s what the message de jour became, the message that all the Democrats publicly agreed upon was the fight while in private the fight was about anything but. Before the shutdown even began, there was widespread disagreement over whether to even have a shutdown. In March of this year, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, voted alongside a handful of other Democrats to keep the government functional. That could’ve had a repeat occurrence with the October shutdown deadline, had Democrats and their base not been absolutely fired up in resistance against Trump. The massive ongoing protests to Trump’s authoritarian overreaches, from Gaza to the boats in the Caribbean to the ICE raids on our streets are just one example of how pissed the Democrats are. Their anger was further affirmed on the first Tuesday of November, when Democrats walloped Republicans in states from Virginia to Georgia, with other polling showing blaring alarm signals for down-ballot Republicans in 2026 and 2028.

Yet that’s not why Senate Democrats shut the government down (again, at least, according to what they said in public). According to them, it was about none of that, and instead all about the ACA enhanced subsidies. It’s important also to keep in mind that with Trump in control of every branch of government, except a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, there was very little Democrats could do. And, if push came to shove, Trump would very likely shove, either ordering the Treasury to illegally make appropriations outright or forcing Republicans to override the filibuster.

As political messaging goes, the subsidy fight was perhaps a poor choice. Yes, it affected millions of Americans, but not the 150 million who receive employer-sponsored insurance or the vast remainder who receive government sponsored child or elder care. In sum, it amounts to 22 million people, 3/4 of whom live in Trump-voting states in 2024. Before one gets a potential lightbulb flicker of the political opportunities of this, there is no way to tell if those people are all Republicans (they could already be Democrats who happen to live in Republican states; there are tens of millions of those), or if they are Republicans that they will either blame the Republicans or even care that the Republicans did it.

While those 22 million do need the subsidies extended and it is something Democrats should morally support, it by far is the least of everyone’s concerns at the moment. The President is ruling like an authoritarian tyrant, playing the exact same playbook that other Western authoritarian tyrants, from Orbán in Hungary to Yeltsin and Putin in Russia, have played. Let’s run through the quick checklist.

• Are opposition political figures being arrested, indicted, harassed by government officials? YES: see Kat Abughazaleh, Brad Lander, Ilhan Omar, et al and etc.

• Are neutral institutions like the media and universities being coerced into adopting government official policy? YES: see CBC, Columbia University, et al and etc.

• Is the military being co-opted, purged of potentially politically disloyal figures? YES: see Hegeth’s overhauls of the military.

• Are people being snatched off the streets and being sent to concentration camps? YES: see ICE actions, CECOT, and the utilization of Guantanamo Bay.

• Is freedom of speech being curtailed? YES: see government and private threats to sue, or to otherwise take negative coercive action.

• Is Congress’ funding authorities being overridden by executive fiat? YES: see Trump not funding USAID and other programs.

• Is the President enriching himself and his cronies? YES. NO SHIT.

• And perhaps the most important as it is the most potentially dangerous: is the government unilaterally executing masses of people without trial or justification? YES: see US private contractors in Gaza, US military actions in the Caribbean.

In other words, what the Trump administration is doing on a daily basis affects every single American every single day, and it is precisely what individuals like Putin used to transform their states into brutal authoritarian dictatorships. While it is true that most people have yet to personally witness Trumpist brutality, it’s still a massive, epochal event that has reverberated across every stratum of America. Even if people don’t consciously don’t want to admit it yet, we all instinctively realize that the government has masked paramilitary goons snatching people off the street to be sent to concentration camps where they’ll be tortured, raped, and possibly even killed.

Now, to some, that’s a positive, as long as it doesn’t happen to them. To many, it’s a neutral, like climate change. Yes, the weight of our sins will consume us all but it might not even get you in your lifetime seems to be the reaction of many thus far. Resignation to a grim reality is a well-founded concept in many authoritarian societies, after all. Why resist, even in bad conditions, if the state can deploy a scope of awesome powers to crush a very insignificant you?

Yet there is still a Congress, there is still an opposition party. The opposition party could and indeed did choose to shut the government down, even if the immediate outcome of that hurt mostly Democratic-aligned voters in Northern Virginia. Yet, they did not make the fight about the fundamental Constitutional rights both the people and Congress possessed Trump was violating, but rather whether or not to extend the ACA’s enhanced subsidies. The fight could’ve been about that, of course, but only in a scenario where our fundamental rights took front and center.

Instead, Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate talked as if and only if the ACA enhanced subsidies mattered. In that telling, reopening the government now made sense. The Democrats won the messaging battle, to the extent that things like that matter (they do, but not directly in ways one might think). Now in 2026, one thing Democrats can run on, for those 22 million rely on ACA subsidies, is in extending those subsidies. As Trump was willing to keep the shutdown going on indefinitely, or to end it by ending the filibuster, there was indeed little point in keeping the hurt ongoing, especially since Democrats were the frontline victims of the shutdown. They made their point and won the battle.

Yet, to many, including many Democratic Senators, what a handful of Democrats did in reopening the government was nothing less than a caustic betrayal of the party and the American people. Their offense is well-justified, as Schumer himself is not well-conditioned in articulating a vision of opposition against Trump. No, the shutdown was not really about the ACA subsidies. But neither was it about Trump’s authoritarianism. Instead, the shutdown was a fight to have a fight to determine how we want to resist Trump.

What It’s Really About: Establishmentarianism versus Disestablishmentarianism

Trump is an authoritarian-in-becoming. This is fact, not opinion (see above and all around you; pick up a goddamned newspaper). His power is not individual; it is based in the occultic loyalty that the Republican Party affords to him on a daily basis. Democrats and those aligned with them are marked as enemies of the Republican Party, and thereby of Trump, and thereby, of the American Fascist State. Every Democrat wears that opposition to Trump and his fascism like a badge of pride, but how they wear it differs.

If there is near-unanimous agreement that Trump is an evil authoritarian amongst Democrats, then the source of the disagreement is in the degree to which Trump should be opposed. This, far more than the ACA subsidies or what Trump is actually doing is what the shutdown was about. These are represented by two factions in the Democratic Party, the establishmentarians and the disestablishmentarians.

To put it simply, what it boils down to is a question of the level of resistance one is capable of personally stomaching. To some, the former, resisting Trump must not come at the compromise of fundamental American institutions and norms. In real terms, this means that yes we must oppose Trump, but not if it means enforcement agencies like the EPA get shuttered or if air travel becomes inconvenient. To a very small minority, it further means that the Senate’s filibuster must be preserved even at the cost of America’s democracy (even though the absence of a filibuster would force Senate Republicans in Harris and near-Harris states to take wildly unpopular votes, from the perspective of either their base or the general electorate).

To the other, the latter, resistance to Trump must be a suicidal arsonist pact. If Trump is willing to take a hatchet to all laws and norms, chopping at the bits of what makes America work on a daily basis, Democrats must be as willing to swing that ax, in other words. Of the 47 Senate Democrats, based on the vote to open the government, 8 thought that that was not the fight worth having—yet.

As clowned on as Democrats are, they are not in an enviable position. Lacking a singular, unifying leader, the Party is facing potential annihilation, and it knows it, from the leadership to the base. Doing nothing risks damnation, doing something risks damnation; behind every door is a perilous abyss. Assume the government had remained shut down until after the midterms, or until after Trump was removed from office in January of 2029, a not-too unlikely outcome. The damage of an atrophied regulatory state would take years to unravel. However the Senate functioned today would be vastly different then. And it might force Trump to take ever more drastic action. That was the argument made in March and the one made behind closed doors in October and November, and ultimately, enough Democrats were convinced to kick this can down the road for at least one more time.

This is not to defend their inability to govern and their predisposition to hate life and themselves. A vast majority of all Democrats, elected or not, think fighting Trump, the consummate suicide bomber of executive norms, require as much gumption on our side. Yet for a Party that has stood since the time of Grover Cleveland in the 1890s to more or less defending American institutions, for better and worse, asking them to turn on a dime and be willing to torch those same institutions in a sudden (albeit long-building) epochal political struggle to the death with Trump and the Republicans might be asking a bit much. The Republicans had the singular Trump who could barrel through norms, using powers granted to him by different Congresses, pliant courts, or the Constitution itself, to establish new realities. Democrats have Schumer and Jeffries, the former of whom loves the Senate establishment so much he will likely die and be buried in those halls if he had a choice.

Yet, you can only keep an animal’s leg locked in a trap for so long before it begins to gnaw its own leg off to escape. Even people like Schumer, who love American institutions more than they love American democracy, are beginning to realize that without fundamental rights, nothing else really matters. Let’s turn back to the 8 who voted in favor of reopening the government. What they said matters less than who they were, and that alone tells us where the Party is at.

• Senator Durbin of Illinois

• Senator Kaine of Virginia

• Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire

• Senator Hassan of New Hampshire

• Senator King of Maine

• Senator Rosen of Nevada

• Senator Masto of Nevada

• Senator Fetterman of Pennsylvania

Of the above eight, only Durbin is in a safe, blue senate seat. While Kaine’s seat is also relatively safe, he is unique in that again, he represents many voters who are employed in the Federal government. Durbin’s vote likely came out of some arcane Senate procedural vote, or some backroom deal to make him the main bad guy of the week instead of Schumer (he still got blamed regardless!). As for the rest, they still have to win in purple-ish red states, which forms part of the reason why they reopened the government. Keeping the government closed did not benefit them, nor did they necessarily want to escalate the contradictions with Trump.

The problem is, we don’t really know how many are truly willing to escalate the contradictions. While we know 8 Democrats voted to reopen the government, we don’t know how many other Senate Democrats, who care far more about institutions, pleaded with those 8 to reopen the government for their sakes. Are there truly 39 Senate Democrats ready, willing, and able, to embrace Trump and fling themselves off both of the cliff into the endless abyss of unknowable political outcomes? Certainly some Democrats, like Sanders or Ossoff, think yes, the time has come for a constitutional showdown with Trump, no bars held, winner takes all. Yet to others, whose life consists of reading committee briefing papers, calling donors, attending fundraising events, and behind endless closed doors in the endless grind of Congress, you might as well be offering a one-way ticket to Mars. There might not be 30 Democrats voting yes for that, there might not even be 20.

Yet, there are more than there were in January when Trump took office, or in March, the last time we had a funding fight. Every day Trump of his own accord heightens the contradictions on his side, is a day he pushes Democrats closer to embracing that tactic themselves. And, the recent election has further shown that opposition to Trump is an electoral winner.

What these few remaining establishment Democrats have is a hope against hope, absent of all evidence, that Trump will today, tomorrow, soon, say this far and no further when it comes to authoritarianism. And he gives plenty of signals daily that even he has limits, which continues to pump fragile hope into this false belief. In many ways, it’s like the liberal zionist’s hope (and indeed many willing to hold onto the establishment are zionists themselves) that despite hearing Israeli government officials say that they would starve every man, woman, and child in Gaza, that they would exterminate them all like Biblical Israelites exterminated the people of Amalek, that despite ample evidence showing that indeed that is exactly what Israeli policy is, that the jury is still out if Israel has committed a genocide.

How many times did after all Biden receive reassurances from Netanyahu, how many times were red lines drawn in the sand, only for the reassurances to be forgotten and forgiven the next day, with red lines smeared by treaded Merkava tank tracks? Too many. Yet the next day, more reassurances, more red lines. This should not come as a surprise; Netanyahu himself is practically a mentee of Trumpism, following him around like a lovesick puppy, begging for his constant approval. No wonder that Netanyahu and Trump alike are able to play Democrats to a fiddle. For just as Netanyahu has come up with a way to ostensibly get away with genocide, so too has Trump come up with a way to get away with authoritarianism.

Despite all that, some hope does remain. It is true that fewer and fewer Democrats are willing to go along with Netanyahu and Trump alike. If Democrats were to have a single, unified leader, they might even get to the 40 votes they needed to keep the government shut down indefinitely sooner, to otherwise take the battle to the next step up the escalation ladder. The Democrats have been patient to a major fault but even their patience will run out. And even though some like Fetterman will never stop compromising with fascism, of the 47 Senate Democrats, there are between 42-45 possible ‘nays’ in keeping the government shut down; all Democrats need is 40 votes come January or at some point further down the road (hopefully sooner!).

For after all was said and done, all Congress did was kick the can down the road for two months. In two months, the government will shut down again, absent Congressional action. First, Democrats should have a plan for what to get from the shutdown. It’s very likely Trump will agree to nothing, so demand everything: an end to his blatantly unconstitutional actions. One could go even further and demand Trump use the 25th amendment to temporarily step down to face justice in the various paused criminal proceedings pending against him. The ask doesn’t really matter, what matters is how Trump will react, and thusly how Democrats will react:

• The Messaging Jubilee: If Trump forces the Senate GOP to override the filibuster, take glee in the various constituent votes those Senators will have to take as every House messaging bill suddenly becomes passable in the Senate. Regardless of the harm those bills could take, it will make taking back control of the House and Senate, and the Presidency in 2029, much more likely, at which point, we could undo all the harm done and better improve lives (with the filibuster already being de facto abolished).

• Let’s Play A Game Of Russian Roulette: If Trump orders the Treasury to illegally appropriate funds, Democratic states should seriously consider nullifying Federal taxation laws within their borders, immunizing non-payment of Federal taxes, and placing Federal agents attempting to enforce tax collection in their states under arrest. While this may sound extreme, if Congress is not a legal institution anymore, no state is thereby bound to respect or obey the federal government. As Trump would be abolishing Congress’ powers through this act, the states would have no choice but to nullify the federal government’s funding powers.

• We Win, You Lose: If Trump does nothing, and the government stays shut down, yes, people will be hurt and the authoritarianism might continue, but if anyone will be hurt politically, it will be Republicans (as polling and the recent election affirms). Of course, this means leaving nearly 2 million American federal employees, many of them Democrats, in the helpless lurch of the furlough or unpaid work, to say nothing of the hurt felt by many others. Yet: by making the fight about authoritarianism, about Trump’s power grabs, Democrats will have unified on a strategy and policy of abject, total resistance to Trumpism. If Trump wants to lead and have an authoritarian government, Democrats will play no part of it. We will not confirm his appointees, we will not do unanimous consent agreements in the Senate. Everything that works today in the government will turn to ash in Trump’s mouth as Democrats halt the grinding gears of everything down, with a believable promise that in 2026 and in 2028 that Democrats will return to power and make everything better. Indeed, that’s how many other parties in democratic states react when they are in opposition. The Tories in the UK don’t really spend much time considering how they can help Keir Starmer pass his agenda!

And so on. Each reaction by the Democrats will result in a counterreaction by Trump, and so on. Eventually though, one side will blink. Although we could continue each thought experiment into civil strife if not outright war, more often than not, people blink. Trump especially. In political showdowns like these, always bet on the side that has more popular, media, and military support. That is the Democrats and has been since day 1 of the crisis. And, lest we all forget, Donald Trump is literally a TACO.

So it’s very likely that if the Democrats chose to have a fight about Trump’s authoritarianism, if they were willing to stare down the barrel of authoritarianism like their moral heroes Mandela and King Jr alike, then they would very likely win. If not immediately (we should not discount the insanely ludicrous possibility that Trump might take the easy way out, after all), then surely we will set ourselves up for a better chance at victory in 2026 and in 2028.

And, more important than the elections is making the argument about the elections. How is American democracy retained? How is autocracy fought against? It isn’t just once every four or two years at the ballot box or on the street corner: it is every day, every waking moment that you are free and breathe free air on free soil. It is in the ritualistic prayers we whisper to ourselves, about the next elections, about how important democracy is, about how we need to fight against Trump. In other words, by making the fight about democracy, we better protect democracy.

And with the hour so late, we might not have a better opportunity to protect American democracy. We can only pray that Democrats admit that the hour is indeed late, for all our sakes.