In the grand travelling circus of American politics—now fully unmoored from gravity, reason, and occasionally time itself. The Trump coalition arrives like a libertarian fever dream that swallowed a group chat and achieved sentience.

Picture it: Donald Trump at the centre, not so much leading as gesturing vaguely, like a man who has mistaken the nuclear codes for a television remote and is determined to press every button just to see what happens.

Orbiting him, naturally, is Elon Musk, industrialist, memelord, part-time philosopher king of Mars, who seems to regard government as an inconvenient pop-up ad interrupting his simulation.

Then there’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wandering through the scene like a man who showed up to protest the system and accidentally joined it, still clutching a pamphlet about toxins and destiny.

And circling the perimeter: tech rebels, rogue engineers, crypto evangelists, and the occasional programmer who just wanted to optimise a database and now finds himself accidentally participating in the restructuring of civilisation.

This is not a coalition. This is ideological speed-dating at the edge of collapse.

You have tech titans demanding deregulation of AI with the zeal of men who believe they are personally midwifing the next species — while their own engineers quietly whisper, “Should we perhaps not build the panopticon?”

A fair question. Tragically, one that arrives several billion dollars too late.

Elsewhere, factions within this coalition rage against Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and Big Pharma — convinced (not entirely incorrectly, but with theatrical enthusiasm) that these entities are engineering a slow-motion apocalypse.

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And yet—here they are. At the same table. Passing the salt.

It’s less “coalition” and more Thanksgiving dinner where everyone suspects the turkey is sentient and plotting revenge.

Trump himself appears magnificently uninterested in the contradictions.

Elections? A detail.

Policy coherence? A rumour.

Governance? Optional.

To him, the presidency is not an office—it is a brand extension with nuclear capabilities.

AI regulation? Please. Let it run. Let it sprint. Let it achieve consciousness and immediately file for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11.

One imagines artificial intelligence emerging, blinking into existence, and immediately being handed a red hat and a non-disclosure agreement.

“We built God,” says Silicon Valley.
“Great,” replies Washington. “Can it poll above 50%?”

Meanwhile, the rest of the political world clutches spreadsheets, muttering about affordability, voter blocs, and the minor inconvenience of reality.

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Trump, by contrast, appears to be rebranding existence itself.

Rumour has it the East Wing may soon become the Trump Wing, tastefully appointed with gold leaf, mirrored ceilings, and a live ticker of his own thoughts—an installation somewhere between Versailles and a casino that lost its licence.

This is not governance.

This is monetised mythology.

And yet—here’s the inconvenient truth.

It works. Or at least, it functions, in the way a runaway shopping trolley functions: chaotic, unpredictable, and somehow still moving forward with alarming speed.

Trump handles his coalition like a man juggling chainsaws—not to keep them in the air, but to see which direction they’ll fly when he throws them.

It is reckless. It is incoherent. It is, in its own deranged way, strangely compelling.

In the annals of modern absurdity — somewhere between medieval prophecy and cable news — you’ll find the Trump administration’s occasional flirtation with bombing Iran. Not merely a geopolitical subplot, but a theological side quest. A moment when foreign policy briefly wandered into the Book of Revelation and decided it looked like a workable strategy document.

Call it Pentagon meets Pentecost.

“When prophecy meets policy: A celestial strategy session.”

Leading this unlikely prayer circle were some familiar figures from America’s traveling revival of politics and prophecy.

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There was Mike Huckabee, former governor, ordained Southern Baptist minister, and proof that in America the distance between the pulpit and the podium is roughly the length of a campaign bus. Huckabee has long had the comforting air of a man who might sell you sweet tea, salvation, and a pre-emptive airstrike in the same sentence.

Then came Pete Hegseth, Fox News personality, veteran, and enthusiastic champion of the idea that geopolitics might improve if everyone simply consulted the Old Testament before breakfast.

And orbiting the scene for years was Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, who built an empire persuading college students that the free market, divine providence, and aggressive tweeting were all part of the same cosmic plan.

For this particular corner of American evangelical politics, Iran wasn’t merely a strategic nuisance. It was a biblical plot device. A waypoint on the road to the Rapture — that dramatic moment when believers expect to be whisked skyward while the rest of the planet deals with the logistical nightmare of the end times.

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The theory—depending on which prophecy chart you bought at the church bookstore—was that events involving Israel could trigger the final act of divine history.

Which, in practical terms, meant that somewhere in Washington someone may well have wondered:

“So Mike… do you think the Rapture happens before lunch, or after the drone strike?”

To be fair, most American foreign policy debates revolve around oil, security alliances, or electoral optics. But every so often a theological subplot sneaks in, armed with Revelation, a colour-coded timeline of Armageddon, and a surprisingly detailed opinion about missile ranges.

The result is a kind of apocalyptic realpolitik: the belief that a small, carefully managed war might not only stabilize the Middle East but also speed up Jesus’ return.

It’s a bold diplomatic doctrine. One might call it “shock, awe, and ascension.”

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, things look rather different.

In Britain, the state religion may technically involve bishops in Parliament and a monarch who is Defender of the Faith, but the national approach to divine intervention is considerably less… proactive.

Under Charles III and the quiet institutional gravity of the British monarchy, foreign policy rarely includes phrases like “accelerating the apocalypse.” The British preference is diplomacy conducted at a pace that suggests the world might end eventually—but there’s no reason to rush it before tea.

Where American politics occasionally resembles a revival meeting with nuclear submarines, British statecraft tends to resemble a long cricket match: patient, mildly confusing, and punctuated by sandwiches.

“So… how do you feel about the Rapture?”

“Rather inconvenient, I should think. Terrible for the rail timetable.”

This contrast isn’t merely political. It’s cultural.

In parts of America, millions are raised on a steady diet of end-times prophecy, complete with best-selling novels, prophecy conferences, and maps of the Middle East that look suspiciously like stage directions for Armageddon.

In Britain, by comparison, the national eschatology mostly involves the slow collapse of the rail system and the possibility that someone important might one day abolish the BBC licence fee.

And so the Trump-era Iran gambit remains one of those uniquely modern episodes: a moment when ancient prophecy brushed up against drone warfare and thought, yes, this could work.

A reminder that in some corners of Washington, the road to heaven may run suspiciously close to a missile silo.

Meanwhile, Britain carries on with its own quieter miracle: maintaining a monarchy, a sense of irony, and the firm belief that if the world is going to end, it can at least wait until after the kettle boils. ☕️

We prefer not to see this. We prefer the cherry tree.

Young George Washington, axe in hand, confessing: “I cannot tell a lie.” The story was fiction, invented to give a fragile republic a moral mascot. It endures because it is comforting. It tells us power can be clean. That authority and innocence can share a bed. It is the political equivalent of believing your bank “values your custom.”

Yet long before the bedtime story, there was Niccolò Machiavelli and The Prince. His advice was blunt: a ruler must learn how not to be good. Appear virtuous, certainly - but be prepared to discard virtue when it obstructs victory and keep a drawer marked Necessary Evils nearby. Politics was not about goodness. It was about survival. If Washington gave us the cherry tree, Machiavelli handed us the chainsaw.

For centuries we pretended to side with Washington while quietly photocopying Machiavelli.

Now we’ve stopped pretending.

Donald Trump did not run as a reformer scrubbed in antiseptic. He ran as a man who knew the sewer system intimately because he had swum in it. He had billed for the plumbing contract. His pitch was audacious: The system is corrupt. I know because I’ve exploited it. Elect me, and I’ll exploit it for you.

This was not hypocrisy. It was a devil’s bargain offered in plain sight or simply Trump selling the voter a franchise opportunity.

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Voters watched as he blurred lines between public office and private business. They saw political events routed through his own properties, the Ukraine pressure campaign that led to impeachment, the classified documents saga that followed him out of office. To critics, these were glaring ethical failures. To supporters, they were proof of combat. He was not pretending to be clean. He was promising to be effective.

That is the pivot. We no longer demand the dutiful administrator. We crave the charming villain.

The administrator speaks of process, compliance, incremental reforms. He reads briefing papers. He files disclosures. He has never once described himself as “a disruptor.” He is, in short, unbearable.

The villain mocks the rules, ridicules the referees, and assures us the game was rigged anyway. He is entertaining. He is decisive. He does not file paperwork; he sets it on fire and calls it reform. He looks like he might actually win - or at least enjoy losing flamboyantly.

And we laugh. Because somewhere deep down we suspect the system is rigged. The rogue feels honest about dishonesty. The bureaucrat feels dishonest about virtue.

This is not just about one electorate. It is cultural. We binge antiheroes. We cheer criminals with codes. We distrust institutions so thoroughly that anyone loathed by them acquires glamour. Virtue feels naïve; ruthlessness feels adult.

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Across Britain, the pattern rhymes. Nigel Farage has long cultivated insurgent swagger, brushing aside funding controversies and rule-bending accusations as establishment hysteria. Each brush with impropriety seems only to reinforce the brand. He is not house-trained. That is the point.

Meanwhile, the aftershocks of Jeffrey Epstein revealed how comfortably elites circulate among one another. The associations touching figures like Peter Mandelson and the catastrophic fallout for Prince Andrew exposed a world where access is currency and proximity is power. The scandal was less about ideology than about insulation - a class confident that consequences were negotiable.

Does that make every contemporary leader corrupt? No. Keir Starmer presents as the archetypal administrator: sober, procedural, lawyerly. But the very qualities that signal integrity to some signal bloodlessness to others. The man probably itemises his conscience. But in an age electrified by outrage, probity can look like weakness. The honest man risks appearing like he has brought a spreadsheet to a knife fight. He appears unequipped for a dirty arena.

So we face an uncomfortable possibility: it is not merely that politicians have changed. It is that we have.

If the public believes the system is irredeemably compromised, then the honest candidate sounds deluded. Promising purity feels like another lie. Better, perhaps, the rogue who admits the rot and offers to weaponise it on our behalf.

This is corruption’s rebrand. No longer envelopes in car parks - too retro. Now it is reframed as strategy. The late-night favour is not shameful; it is savvy. The conflict of interest is not disqualifying; it is proof you know where the levers are.

We binge antiheroes. We distrust institutions. We applaud disruption even when we’re not entirely sure what has been disrupted. Integrity feels quaint. Ruthlessness feels adult.

Can an honest man be a politician? Perhaps. But can he win in a culture that equates decency with weakness?

At 2:17 a.m., in that corridor, the aide still hesitates before replying to the donor’s message. There is always a flicker - a small, unfashionable pause - when the cherry tree and The Prince compete.

The real question is not which philosophy our leaders choose.

It is which one makes us clap.

Announce designs on Greenland; insult the allies who’d be needed to secure it; invite them to join a vaguely titled “Board of Peace” and watch them decline; preside over a safe-haven stampede into gold as the dollar buckles; let federal agents kill citizens on U.S. streets; and then ask the Supreme Court to reassure the world that the rule of law still means something. That’s not a syllabus; it’s January.

Start with Greenland. The idea wasn’t born yesterday, Washington’s interest has been on-and-off since 1946 and famously flared under Trump in 2019 but in 2026 it returned at scale, from “considering a purchase” to talk of frameworks and pressure tactics that spooked even parts of Europe’s far right. The Greenlandic and Danish answer remains a flat, constitutional “no,” while policy hands note that any future for the island runs through NATO, shared stewardship, and the consent of Greenland’s people. Its not a real-estate transaction. The UK Parliament’s researchers say as much; so do Atlantic Council and Chatham House voices who warn that U.S. unilateralism over the Arctic risks blowing holes in the alliance it claims to protect.

Allies aren’t deaf to strategy the Thule/Pituffik Space Base matters; sea lanes matter; rare earths matter. But the means are as important as the ends. NATO’s new secretary general, Mark Rutte, all but said the quiet part out loud this month: Greenland’s security future is a NATO question, full stop. That is diplomatic code for “slow down, bring allies, follow the rules you wrote.”

Enter Davos, where Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney delivered a brisk sermon on the end of the old rules-based order and the need for middle powers to band together. Read straight, it was a hedge against both Washington and Beijing; read sideways, it was a reminder to the U.S.: if you torch the guardrails, don’t be surprised when your neighbors drive themselves. The subtext landed because the week’s headlines made it literal.

Consider the “Board of Peace.” Whatever its stated aims, Europe read it as a White House attempt to re-centralize power under American chairmanship after months of transatlantic friction. Core EU states promptly declined or demurred. A diplomatic brush-off on a committee isn’t fatal; a pattern of them is. This one signals that Washington can no longer assume automatic yeses, even on things branded “peace.”

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Markets drew their own conclusions. Investors voted with their feet, their ETFs, and their bullion dealers. Gold blew through $5,100, then $5,200, then higher, not because the metal suddenly acquired earnings but because the dollar’s credibility took a holiday. When presidents muse publicly about preferring a weaker currency and governance looks improvisational, safe-haven buying tends to become a plebiscite. If you want the telegraphic version: record gold, softer dollar, jumpy Swiss franc. That’s not a narrative crafted by the “fake news”; it’s a screen grabbed by anyone with a brokerage app.

Meanwhile at home, the state’s monopoly on force came under the worst kind of spotlight. Two Minneapolis killings by immigration officers, Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, ignited protests, congressional demands, and a rare chorus of former presidents condemning the federal government’s conduct. Preliminary DHS materials admit two CBP officials fired on Pretti; outside reporting has already found contradictions in several government accounts of recent violent encounters. Allies read those stories, too, and they don’t parse the footnotes. They see a superpower claiming Greenland by day while shooting its own citizens by night. Credibility is an ecosystem; when it’s poisoned locally, it dies globally.

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This is where Europe’s “stance” stops being a communiqué and becomes habit. NATO will keep talking interoperability and shared burdens, but governments are already practicing strategic autonomy: joint procurement that doesn’t run through the Pentagon, energy strategies that assume U.S. volatility rather than U.S. anchorage, and Arctic planning that treats American ambitions as a variable, not a constant. Washington used to worry that Europe was feckless. It should worry that Europe is learning to be independent.

Back to the title, SuperPower Suicide. It’s a strong phrase, but the steps are mundane. You don’t need a catastrophic war; you just need a long run of unserious choices. You can’t arrest your way to sovereignty in Minneapolis and sermonize about sovereignty in Nuuk. You can’t bully allies into committees and expect them to escort you to the cashier’s desk in Greenland. You can’t tell the world the dollar’s just another instrument and then feign shock when people pick up a different one. Great powers don’t die of mystery illnesses; they die of comorbidities treated with denial.

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Is there an off-ramp? Possibly several. First, tether Greenland policy to law and alliance - publicly, specifically, boringly. “Shared responsibility” is more than a think-tank headline; it’s the only route that won’t blow up NATO while empowering Beijing and Moscow in Arctic councils. Second, stop performing currency policy on social media; let the Treasury and the Fed do the talking, and make it clear that the dollar is a trust, not a toy. Third, bring the justice system into daylight. The Minneapolis cases can still become proof that America’s vaunted self-correction works - if independent investigations proceed, prosecutions (if warranted) happen, and accountability is plain. The world doesn’t require perfection; it requires visible due process.

Which leaves the final question: will the Supreme Court let the world see that the rule of law still binds presidents, agents, and agencies or will it shrug and thereby certify the suicide note? Courts don’t move markets hour-to-hour; they do set the long price on sovereign risk. A judiciary that insists on legality in surveillance, immunity, and use-of-force cases puts oxygen back in the room. One that defers reflexively tells investors to keep buying Swiss francs and bullion.

Superpowers recover by rediscovering the boring things: alliances treated as contracts, not casting calls; central bank independence treated as sacred, not negotiable; domestic law enforced against the powerful, not just the powerless. Do those, and the gold line on the chart cools, the dollar stops wobbling, and Europe remembers why following the U.S. is usually the safest bet in a dangerous world. Fail, and the Greenland gambit will enter the textbooks as a footnote in a chapter titled exactly what you fear it will be titled.

History’s judgment is not waiting in a cave; it’s refreshing a browser. Today it sees an America flirting with self-harm and a handful of ways to stop. Choose one soon.

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American troops. South American oil. Talk of rebuilding infrastructure, seizing assets, fixing a broken country “with billions.” It was the kind of speech that makes you instinctively check whether Netflix has rebooted Shock and Awe as a reality series.

Trump promised that “very large United States oil companies” would spend “billions of dollars” restoring Venezuela’s “badly broken” oil infrastructure. He described the whole episode as “the greatest theft in the history of America” being put right — a phrase that suggests he has either never heard of the 2008 financial crisis, or has decided it was actually a craft fair.

The punchline arrived when markets opened.

Oil barely moved.

Brent crude twitched by less than a percent, which is the financial equivalent of glancing up from your phone, murmuring “wow,” and immediately returning to scrolling. Investors, it seems, heard “we’ve invaded an oil state” and responded with: “Cool. Still not buying your economics.”

Because this isn’t a war story. It’s an investment story. And the investment story is hideous.

The “Greatest Theft” Is That Anyone Thinks This Is Profitable

Yes, Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves on the planet — roughly 300 billion barrels, a geological flex so absurd you can see why politicians start salivating. In the late 1990s it pumped over 3.5 million barrels a day. Today production has collapsed to under a million.

That decline wasn’t caused by a lack of oil. It was caused by Venezuela turning the oil business into a national sport called “How Quickly Can We Destroy Something Valuable.” Years of sanctions, mismanagement, corruption, and political chaos have left infrastructure decayed, refineries dysfunctional, and the state oil firm PDVSA operating like a museum exhibit titled “Late-Stage Extraction.”

Even PDVSA admits the place needs around $58 billion in upgrades to regain meaningful production. Industry estimates often run higher, more like $100 billion over a decade, because “rebuilding an oil sector” is not actually the same as “power-washing a driveway.”

And this is where Trump’s pitch hits the wall. Because the global oil market right now is not a thirsty desert begging for Venezuelan barrels. It’s a bath that’s already overflowing.

Analysts and agencies project continued surplus through 2026. Prices hover around the $60-ish range. Venezuelan projects often need something closer to $80 to make sense, especially given the heavy, sulphurous crude and the logistical nightmare of getting it reliably to market.

Which brings us to the key point the market immediately understood:

Trump didn’t announce an oil bonanza. He announced the world’s most cursed refurbishment project. As if redoing the White House East Wing is not enough.

Big Oil Meets Trump. Big Oil Brings a Spreadsheet and a Dictionary

So, naturally, Trump called in the cavalry: the CEOs of America’s biggest oil companies. This was meant to be the scene where corporate titans lean forward and say, “Mr President, we’re ready to drill for freedom.”

Instead, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods reportedly offered what diplomats might call a frank assessment and what everyone else would call a reality check to the forehead.

“If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela,” Woods said, “today it’s uninvestable.”

Uninvestable. A word that should be printed on a commemorative coin and dropped into the Potomac.

Woods then explained why: inadequate legal protections, unstable commercial frameworks, no durable investment safeguards, and the need for wholesale changes to hydrocarbon law — i.e., the kind of boring, adult details that make corporate boards insist on not being expropriated, arrested, or trapped in a geopolitical hostage situation.

Trump, naturally, reacted like a man being told his dream yacht is “structurally incompatible with water.”

“I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” he told reporters days later. “They’re playing too cute. I’d probably be inclined to keep Exxon out.”

Pause to appreciate the surreal elegance of this threat.

The president of the United States is threatening to exclude Exxon from a business opportunity… Exxon has just explained it does not want. That’s not leverage. That’s you shouting “YOU CAN’T QUIT, YOU’RE FIRED” at someone already halfway down the stairs.

Don’t Panic: The Wildcatters Are Coming

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, tasked with making the numbers work, effectively confirmed what everyone could see: the majors, the ones with boards and shareholders and lawyers who sweat through their suits, are not interested.

But, great news, the administration’s phones were “ringing off the hook” with calls from “independent oil companies and individuals, wildcatters” eager to get to Venezuela “yesterday.”

Nothing says “sound national strategy” like: “Don’t worry, the wildcatters are keen.”

These are the people whose due diligence is “vibes,” whose risk management plan is “luck,” and whose corporate governance consists of a single man called Rick who owns a helicopter.

Sure, sometimes wildcatters strike it rich. Sometimes they also drill a hole, hit nothing, and blame the deep state. The question isn’t whether wildcatters want Venezuela. The question is whether they can cough up tens of billions, tolerate political risk, and operate inside a legal system famous for changing rules mid-sentence.

The Best Oil Deal in the Region Is Next Door

Now for the delicious irony: Venezuela’s neighbour Guyana is sitting on one of the world’s most attractive oil opportunities — over 10 billion barrels of high-quality crude discovered since 2015, much of it tied to Exxon-led development.

Compared with Venezuela, Guyana offers lighter oil, better economics, fewer political booby traps, and none of the historical baggage of being nationalised, expropriated, or treated as a piñata by whichever faction is currently holding the microphones.

So there’s a plausible, less cinematic explanation for the whole Venezuelan theatre: it isn’t about “getting Venezuelan oil flowing again.” It’s about reducing Caracas’s capacity to threaten the region — particularly Guyana’s oil-rich Essequibo area, which Venezuela has been increasingly aggressive about.

If the real objective is to neutralise that threat and secure an existing investment next door, the strategy starts to look less like “we’re taking the oil” and more like “we’re trying to stop someone else taking the oil.”

Which is still expensive, still messy, and still not the stuff of Brent spike, but at least it makes geopolitical sense in a grim, practical way.

Iraq, But With More Rust

Analysts keep invoking Iraq, because history loves a rerun. After the 2003 invasion, Iraqi oil production took years and years to revive meaningfully, and corruption and mismanagement remained endemic. The fantasy that oil revenues would smoothly fund the occupation was, as serious policy people politely put it, nonsense.

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Industry veterans are even less delicate: there’s no urgency to rush back into Venezuela; the political risk overwhelms the upside; and if Venezuela did somehow ramp production, it would pressure prices and hurt other producers — which is another way of saying: even “success” comes with consequences no one wants.

In other words, the “we’ll fix it with oil money” pitch is not a plan. It’s a slogan with delusions of accounting.

The Underlying Enemy Isn’t Maduro. It’s Arithmetic.

The administration will sell the intervention as whatever narrative tests best: reclaiming stolen property, fighting drugs, restoring democracy, defending sovereignty, punishing enemies, liberating barrels — choose your adventure, and check back in an hour when the story updates.

But the economic logic is the same every time:

Big Oil has looked at Trump’s Venezuelan prize and politely declined.

Not “later.” Not “maybe.” Not “with a sweeter deal.” Just: uninvestable.

So what’s left? Independents. Individuals. Wildcatters. The brave men sprinting toward a burning building because they heard there might be copper piping. Or, a swift pivot to Iran?!

Maybe they’ll strike it rich in Venezuela. Wildcatters sometimes do. But the smart money, quite literally, is staying home.

Because the market has already watched this film.

And it knows the ending.

Not with a boom.

With a bill.

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Starmer seems to imagine himself walking into a burning building — Europe aflame with disinformation, migration crises, geopolitical shocks — armed with a three-ring binder labeled “Adjustments to Supranational Governance Frameworks (Draft)”. Somewhere, a Brussels technocrat got goosebumps.

And yet… wouldn’t it be nice, just once, if Europe stood tall instead of adopting its trademark crouch? That familiar protective hunch, the “please-don’t-hurt-us” posture perfected across decades of waiting to see whether Washington’s next president will scowl, tweet, sanction, praise, or simply forget the continent exists.

Because the truth is, Europe already is carrying the heavy load. It’s underwriting Ukraine’s survival, absorbing the economic shockwaves, stabilizing its borders, and still finding the time to argue passionately about agricultural subsidies. Meanwhile the U.S. has reinstalled Trump, a man whose foreign policy doctrine is essentially: “Europe should pay more, do more, smile more, and maybe I won’t kick over your sandcastle.”

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So along comes Starmer, offering Europe a legalistic cheat code: duck your own commitments just a little , and—abracadabra!—no more far-right parties. Problem solved. Democracy restored via clever redrafting.

But perhaps the continent deserves better than clever redrafting. Perhaps the response to encroaching authoritarianism shouldn’t be to mimic its paperwork. Perhaps the stronger move is simply to stop hunching, roll those shoulders back, and say: We’re Europe. We’ve handled worse than this. And we don’t need permission slips from Washington—or London—to defend liberal democracy.

One might ask: why must Europe always be crouched? Bent? Half-folded like a diplomatic origami crane? Why not, for once, stand straight and say: “We are already carrying the geopolitical backpack — the war in Ukraine, the refugees, the energy crisis — perhaps we don’t also need to contort ourselves to appease Washington and outflank Hungary and ward off Marine Le Pen using only a stapler and shared-values rhetoric.”

Instead, we get Starmer’s modest proposal: a technical workaround disguised as moral vigilance. A gesture bold enough to impress the Financial Times editorial board, yet soft enough not to upset anyone important — especially Americans with election fever.

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It is, in short, the perfect twenty-first century European policy: principled in theory, inflatable in practice, and articulated with the tone of someone apologizing for existing.

Will it stop the far right? No.
Will it make Europe feel like it’s “doing something”? Absolutely.
Will Trump notice? Not unless someone draws it on a map with crayons.

But hey — at least the paperwork will be immaculate

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Translation: a thicket of stealth taxes, quietly frozen thresholds, and “temporary measures that will last until the sun burns out.” Reeves, to her credit, is trying to sound like the only adult in the building, but adulthood is expensive, hence the fiscal drag net that will suck more people into tax bands they didn’t even know existed.

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But never mind that. Because the papers, ever generous to a Chancellor who’d rather the public not stare directly at the numbers, have helpfully provided distractions. And what glorious distractions they are.

Let’s begin with Nigel Farage, currently starring in an extended public re-release of “Farage: The Boarding School Years,” a coming-of-age story featuring racism, antisemitism, bullying, and the type of “banter” only a teenage boy in an expensive blazer could convince himself was normal human behaviour. Former classmates have come forward with stories of the young Nigel deploying slurs the way other teenagers deploy Lynx Africa. He denies it all, of course - it was just “harmless fun,” he insists, proving he has learned absolutely nothing since 1978.

Indeed, anyone who attended a boarding school or one of those hybrid boarding/day schizo-institutions knows exactly the type: loud, smug, foul-mouthed, convinced he’s invincible, and living proof that sometimes the only thing separating a prefect from a pub bore is a Union Jack lapel pin. You can practically picture him: the swagger, the sneer, the sense of entitlement… the only thing missing from the Dulwich College uniform was a Clockwork Orange bowler hat.

Opposite him on the day’s stage is Sir Keir Starmer, whose reputation already hovering somewhere between “earnest head boy” and “man who reminds you to tuck in your shirt” has taken yet another turn toward the hapless. Reports emerged of him leading a group of Primary School children in a rousing chant of the “6-7 meme,” blissfully unaware that the school had banned it. Honestly, it’s hard not to feel a pang of sympathy. In a country led for years by men who thrive on chaos, sleaze, and flamboyant dishonesty, we now have a Prime Minister who could be defeated by a Year 4 class armed with an inside joke.

And thus Britain presents its political archetypes:

Reeves, the stern mum with the budget binder.
Starmer, the well-meaning nerd trying to look cool in front of children.
Farage, the ageing school bully still insisting everyone just “lacked a sense of humour.”

All unfolding on the same day we learn how much poorer we’re going to be this year.

Because while the tabloids breathlessly relive Farage’s schoolyard atrocities and mock Starmer’s inability to navigate playground culture, Reeves stands at the despatch box hoping that Britain doesn’t notice its pockets getting lighter. She’ll announce higher minimum wages - nice - while simultaneously freezing tax thresholds - less nice - which neatly ensures the nation’s pay rises go straight back to the Exchequer, bypassing the owners entirely.

Markets will twitch. MPs will bellow. The public will sigh, tighten their belts, and Google “Can I live on beans indefinitely?”

And meanwhile, the boys from their respective school stereotypes continue to perform. The bully shouts. The nerd apologises. The grown-up tries to hold it all together.

Budget Day in the United Kingdom: where the numbers are grim, the theatre is absurd, and the distractions are almost comforting because at least while we’re laughing at Farage’s past and Starmer’s memes, we don’t have to think about the bill Reeves is quietly slipping into our coat pocket.

We’ve always squabbled over what patriotism even is. Tocqueville, France’s most observant Airbnb guest, offered two models. First, the instinctive kind: hearth, soil, surname, cemetery plot. (Warm. Smells like gravy.) Second, the reflective kind: laws, rights, consent of the governed. (Cool. Smells like library.) America, characteristically, tried to juggle both and wound up flinging gravy around the reading room.

Today, both versions have curdled. Instinctive patriotism has been repackaged as a blood-and-soil membership scheme - real Americans on one side, everyone else on a waiting list that never clears. Reflective patriotism, over-schooled and under-lived, risks turning into a posture: the flag as text, the anthem as problematic soundscape, citizenship as a peer-reviewed thought experiment. One side hugs the country so hard it can’t breathe; the other folds its arms and asks for citations.

Neither produces citizens. The first crowdsurfs toward a strongman. The second retreats into immaculate critique - great thread, zero plumbing fixed. Tocqueville would recognise both and, in that courteous Old World way, suggest we stop being ridiculous.

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Lincoln did more than suggest. In the 1850s he argued that the Declaration contains an “electric cord” binding anyone who chooses its truths: that all people are created equal, and that government derives its just powers from consent. Belonging, he said, is adoption, not ancestry. You don’t need a relative at Shiloh; you need to act as if equality and self-rule are real obligations, not wall art. That’s the only patriotism worth having: creedal citizenship.

It isn’t cute. It’s a discipline. A creedal nation can absorb newcomers, dissenters, sceptics and those uniquely American life forms who correct your grammar during a house fire. It gives us a language: liberty, equality, self-government and a to-do list. It doesn’t demand unanimity; it demands we show up on Tuesday night when the agenda item is “Bus Routes (2 of 7).” If your politics never require a bad folding chair, you’re not doing citizenship; you’re doing content.

Why is creedal patriotism unfashionable? Because it is work, and sincerity is embarrassing. It asks us to defend ideals our institutions routinely betray, earnestness that risks looking like cosplay. It asks us to share a political home with people we find unbearable - neighbours who salt their chips wrong and vote worse. Worst of all, it asks us to judgeour own side by the standards we preach at theirs . Easier alternatives beckon: country as team jersey (shout louder), or country as case study (shrug harder). Neither requires you to get rain on your coat.

When we drift, history clobbers us with reruns. The Know-Nothings, the 1920s quotas, the masked theatrics - always sold as patriotism, always ending in exclusion. The more we define Americanness by soil and blood, the smaller “us” becomes until - miracle! - it fits precisely around whoever’s holding the microphone. Flip side: refined despair. America as marketing plan. Beautiful theory; shame about the species. Follow it to the end of the corridor and you’ll find a locked door labelled “Nothing To Be Done,” plus a seminar evaluating the typography.

There is something to be done. In democracies, patriotism becomes a habit before it becomes a feeling. Tocqueville again: devotion strengthened by ritual. Not the fireworks and bunting (enjoy them; don’t mistake them). The rituals are mundane: jury service without Broadway-level excuses; local elections that sound like budget meetings because, tragically, they are; reading the agenda; serving on the board you’ve been doomposting about; sponsoring newcomers into your neighbourhood instead of applauding them from a tasteful distance; speaking to opponents as if you intend to share a country tomorrow and the next day and, yes, after the election too.

If that feels small next to the baroque awfulness of the news, that’s the point. The American creed is not just a founding flourish; it’s a method. It assumes ordinary people, given equal dignity and fair rules, can govern themselves tolerably well. (“Tolerably well” is the operative phrase. We are not Switzerland; we are jazz.) It assumes we will argue, count, lose, and try again. It is humble about human virtue and audacious about what citizens can build. It’s the only patriotism that doesn’t require a lie.

It also insists on hope with a memory. Not frothy optimism; stubborn recall. We’ve been better; we can be better; and mortifyingly, we are the ones who must do it. Hypocrisy doesn’t cancel the creed; it energises it. We measure ourselves against what we say we are, we see the gap, and we work. The alternative is to lower the standard until we can declare victory in a country no longer worth winning.

“Yes, but look around,” you say. “Institutions cracking, norms shrugged off, corruption buzzing like a faulty streetlamp.” True. The temptations are familiar. One: hand the keys to a strongman who promises to tidy up (spoiler, you’re what gets tidied). Two: declare the house uninhabitable and move into moral exile (excellent acoustics, zero plumbing). The creedal option is grimmer and more adult: fix the house while living in it with neighbours you did not audition.

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So what does practising this look like?

• Less performance, more service. You cannot volunteer your way out of every crisis, but you can join the committee that prevents three dumb ones.

• Fewer purity tests, more coalitions. If everyone at your meeting agrees with you, you’re in a brand exercise, not a republic.

• Less talk of “real Americans,” more insistence on equal Americans. If the adjective is required, the noun is in danger.

• Fewer doom-scroll catechisms, more actual democracy. Petition, assemble, vote, serve. Post if you must—after.

The reward is not a spotless conscience or a perfect country. It’s steadier: the right to love a place you are actively building. It’s the ability to look that metaphorical defendant in the eye and say, “I’m here because we can be better, and because I’m responsible for my share.” It’s the knowledge that, between the cynical shrug and the clenched fist, there remains an open hand.

Let’s also be honest about tone. Authoritarians hate laughter because it betrays fearlessness; cynics love it because it absolves them of effort. The trick is to laugh and turn up on Tuesday. Smirk in one hand, clipboard in the other. It’s very unfashionable. It also works.

If love of country means blind loyalty to a leader, tribe, or myth, it ends - as always - in repression marketed as renewal. If love of country means permanent disdain until conditions meet your boutique standards, it ends—as always—in elegant withdrawal. Creedal patriotism is the messy middle: loyalty to strangers because they are citizens; loyalty to institutions because they are the tools we have; loyalty to ideals because without them we are just resentments with postcodes.

So: fewer selfies with the Constitution, more reading of it. Fewer sermons about decline, more line items about buses. Less “Only real Americans…” and more “All equal Americans…” Less cosplay of 1776, more practice of 2025.

And when the next grim headline lands, and it will, don’t choose between the team jersey and the case study. Choose the folding chair. Choose the vote you might lose and the meeting you’d rather skip. Choose the unglamorous rituals that keep the electric cord humming. That’s the nation. That’s the work. Roll up your sleeves.

(And if you need a slogan: America - some assembly required. Bring tools. No algorithm will do it for us.)

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America, land of the free-ish. The First Amendment turns 234 and looks terrific, for a document kept in glass and ignored on weeknights. On the left, free speech is being strangled by hashtags and HR memos. On the right (or rather, on the people currently holding the big shiny keys), it’s being lovingly “protected” with executive orders, funding conditions, and regulator love letters that smell faintly of bleach. Across the pond, Britain - proud owner of no First Amendment whatsoever - has discovered the joys of kinder, gentler muzzles. Everywhere you look, Liberty hasn’t so much shrugged as rolled her eyes and checked the exit.

Side One: The Republic of Hurt Feelings

The left’s case starts with social cancellation. Not the government - your neighbours. The blacklists, the “open letters,” the public square where a thousand voices bloom and half of them demand you be fired by lunchtime. The punishment isn’t a prison, it’s a calendar, no bookings, no platform, no career. “It’s not censorship,” we’re told, “it’s consequences.” Yes. And if I drop a piano off a balcony, it’s gravity.

Then we glide from social pressure to state pressure: the jawboning era, when officials “politely” nudge platforms to make “responsible choices” about COVID skepticism, election chatter, whatever’s impolite at tea. The Supreme Court did its best impression of a cat avoiding eye contact - standing, shmanding - declining to rule on the core question of government leaning on private megaphones. Translation: the line between advice and threat remains a tasteful blur. Meanwhile, another case warned regulators you can’t whisper “nice bank you’ve got there, shame if it… reputationally suffered” and call it civic hygiene. Everyone nodded gravely; everyone keeps doing it.

And hovering over all of it is the strange metaphysics of platforms. Are they the phone company (must carry everything), or are they editors (can pick and choose)? If an algorithm curates, recommends, and demotes like a newsroom, it starts to look suspiciously like speech of its own - at which point state “neutrality” mandates look like the government wearing your editorial hat. The left’s kicker: culture cancels first, government arrives later with a clipboard and a grin.

Side Two: The Ministry of Nice

Now flip the board. Today’s administration - branded as anti-“woke” but frankly just pro-lever - has discovered the thrill of direct influence. Not a nudge. A knob.

DEI? Off with its head. An executive order on day one, then a cascade of agency memos telling universities and grantees to tidy up the ideology or tidy up their budgets. A judge just had to remind Washington that “arbitrary and capricious” is not a management style, restoring a mountain of frozen research money after a university found itself caught between yesterday’s rules and today’s vibe.

Media? The regulators approved a mega-merger and sprinkled on conditions like Parmesan: no formal DEI schemes, promise “unbiased” news, hire a hall monitor for the newsroom. If you need an ombudsman because the state says so, the state is too close to the copy desk. Elsewhere, a late-night comic disappeared, reappeared, and picked up a few new scars from affiliates and a federal eyebrow raise - just long enough for everyone to claim victory and learn nothing.

Call it the new etiquette: we don’t censor. We just make compliance conditions exquisitely clear. You can say anything you like, provided the people who control your licences, grants, securities, and spectrum don’t feel you’re saying it too loudly, too strangely, or in the wrong outfit. The old rule was “Congress shall make no law.” The new rule is “Agencies shall make a spreadsheet.”

The Bipartisan Con

Both sides swear they’re defending the First Amendment. Both have dirty hands. The left despises cancellation until it’s their boycott; the right hates jawboning until it’s their “safety team call.” One team wants platforms to carry everything except the things they don’t like; the other wants platforms to remove everything except the things they do. They’re not opposites. They’re competitors selling the same product: Your Speech, Curated By Us.

Meanwhile, in the UK: The Velvet Rope

Britain doesn’t do a written First Amendment. We do the vibe of one. We prefer polite paperwork to dramatic bans. It’s quieter that way.

• The Online Safety Act deputises platforms to tidy the internet, with Ofcom writing codes that turn “be careful” into “be careful or else.” The goal is illegal content and harms; the effect is flood-the-zone risk aversion. If you run a platform, you won’t wait for a court to tell you what crosses a line - you’ll move the line to your safest lawyer’s inbox.

• The Public Order Act gifts police new toys against “serious disruption.” Translation: if your protest works, it’s suspicious. “Locking-on” to things is now a crime; feel free to hold beliefs, but please do so without fastening them to anything sturdy.

• The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act orders universities to promote free speech via… new bureaucracy. Only Britain could laminate liberty. Want to invite a speaker? Fill out Forms A through Z so that freedom may be scheduled, risk-assessed, and, if necessary, postponed for your own good.

• And for dessert, investigatory powers keep expanding like a well-fed cat, with begrudging carve-outs for journalism after the courts glower. “We respect source confidentiality” (subject to a subclause, a ministerial certificate, and the phase of the moon).

Britain’s trick is simple: we never admit to censorship; we enforce tidiness . Say what you like, but not here, not now, not like that, and certainly not if it causes a fuss.

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How to Tell You’re Being Managed

1. The people in charge insist they’re “depoliticising” something.

2. A regulator uses the word “expectations” in a sentence with “licence.”

3. A university discovers that free speech is free, provided it files monthly.

4. Your favourite show goes “on a brief hiatus” and returns with a new segment called “Both Sides, But Softer.”

5. Everyone says it’s not censorship - it’s safety, standards, stakeholder confidence, or just good business .

A Modest Survival Guide

• Learn the difference between being disliked and being disallowed. One is part of adulthood; the other is a constitutional problem.

• Stop outsourcing your outrage. If an algorithm is your editor-in-chief, don’t be shocked when your front page looks like a dopamine lab.

• Defend speech you don’t need. The only kind you’ll notice missing is the kind you never use.

• Beware of “conditions.” Today it’s a DEI policy; tomorrow it’s a “neutrality” pledge; the day after, it’s a promise to keep jokes “appropriate for families.”

• Keep receipts. Tyranny in liberal clothes travels by memo.

The punchline? We keep pretending the danger is “the other side,” when the danger is power with a preference. Your enemies will silence you because they hate you. Your friends will silence you because they love you. The result is the same: quieter citizens, louder state.

So yes, Liberty has shrugged. She’s also packed a weekend bag. If you need her, she’s out walking, no phone, no ombudsman, no permit, saying troublesome things at a reasonable volume before someone decides the volume is the problem.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

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Across the country in Silicon Valley, Ben Thompson is living the opposite fantasy. No rooftop parties, no photo ops — just a quiet office in Taipei and a newsletter calledStratechery. His words arrive in inboxes before sunrise California time, read by VCs in Patagonia vests and CEOs who pretend they “figured it out themselves.” Thompson is a monk of the media rebellion, a man who doesn’t need to tweet or rant. His power comes from the calm certainty that the smartest people in tech wait for his morning memo before making their own moves.

And then there’s Tucker Carlson, exiled from Fox News like a disgraced prince, now recording videos from a barn in Maine. The hair’s still perfect, the monologues still conspiratorial, but the set looks like a midwestern Cracker Barrel. Carlson laughs it off — because the audience followed. His clips still rack up millions, whether they air on X, YouTube, or Russian state TV. “You can’t cancel me,” he said in his first video after Fox canned him. He was right.

Welcome to the new media economy — a circus where the mastheads are shrinking, the institutions are wobbling, and the reporters themselves have become the show.

The Big Breakups

It used to be that legacy media was the brand and journalists were the supporting cast. The Times gave you credibility, CNN gave you visibility, BuzzFeed News gave you cool points. Now? Those brands are like nightclubs with sticky floors — still open, but everyone who matters has already left for the after-party.

Bari Weiss walked. Casey Newton walked. Kara Swisher didn’t even have to walk — she just made The New York Times her side hustle while running her own empire. Matt Belloni, Dylan Byers, and Julia Ioffe defected to launch Puck , a gossip-soaked insider sheet that feels like Vanity Fair drunk on Negronis.

It’s the same story everywhere: reporters ditching their cubicles, opening laptops, and becoming solo acts. Some make millions. Most don’t. But all of them are trying, because nobody wants to be the last one trapped in a newsroom with broken coffee machines and corporate memos about “synergy.”

The Party Crashers

Of course, not all the winners look like journalists.

Joe Rogan is still the heavyweight champ of the media rebellion. From his Austin compound, he records three-hour marathons with UFO nuts, scientists, comedians, and presidential candidates. Spotify paid him hundreds of millions, then cringed when he platformed conspiracy theorists. Didn’t matter: his fans are cult-loyal. Every guest wants the Rogan bump, every headline spins out of his podcast. He’s less a journalist than a gravitational force.

Reddit, meanwhile, became the accidental newsroom of the planet. r/WallStreetBets broke financial news. r/relationships provided endless content for lifestyle sections. r/politicsis the messy id of democracy itself. Journalists at legacy shops mine Reddit like unpaid interns — except the interns are anonymous weirdos with anime avatars. The IPO tried to corporatize it, but Reddit is still a mess of unpaid mods, tantrums, and blackouts. Chaos, yes. But indispensable chaos.

And then there’s MrBeast, the YouTube megastar who gives away Lamborghinis and islands for clicks. Not a journalist by any stretch, but his audience is bigger than CNN, Fox, and MSNBC combined. For anyone under 30, he is the media. That’s the real horror for legacy executives: the competition isn’t another paper. It’s a guy opening boxes of chocolate bars on TikTok.

The Graveyard Shift

For every Weiss or Rogan, there are dozens who didn’t make it. The Substack graveyard is littered with big names who left legacy jobs with fanfare and then fizzled. Glenn Greenwald, once the Snowden prophet, now railing to a shrinking base of paranoiacs. Roxane Gay, Anne Helen Petersen, Heather Havrilesky — all launched newsletters that died on the vine. Charlie Warzel fled the Times for Substack, then sheepishly retreated to The Atlantic .

Legacy giants are dropping like flies too. BuzzFeed News — Pulitzer in hand, no money in the bank — shuttered. Vice, once the bad-boy brand of gonzo journalism, ended up a bankruptcy garage sale. CNN+ burned $300 million in 30 days, a corporate tragedy so absurd it deserves a Broadway musical. The Washington Post is bleeding subscribers under Bezos’s distracted ownership, while The Los Angeles Times cuts staff like it’s running a layoff lottery.

Everywhere you look, the institutions that once defined media are staggering, and the personalities they housed are asking: why am I still here?

The Ego Economy

Kara Swisher knows the game. She’s been at it for decades, terrifying Silicon Valley CEOs with her barked questions and deadpan delivery. When she steps onstage at a conference, the billionaires shift in their seats. She doesn’t need The Times. The Times needs her.

Casey Newton is the opposite archetype: the obsessive grinder. His Platformer newsletter doesn’t scream, it just delivers scoop after scoop about Facebook, TikTok, and Elon Musk’s latest disaster. He’s not glamorous, but he’s steady — the kind of writer people rely on even if they don’t admit it publicly.

The new media economy runs on characters: Bari as the exile, Swisher as the bulldozer, Carlson as the martyr, Rogan as the gorilla, Thompson as the oracle, Newton as the grinder. Journalism itself has become the side hustle. What people are really paying for is access to the character .

The 2025 Media Power Index™

On Fire : Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Bari Weiss, MrBeast, Puck, Reddit.
Holding Strong : Ben Thompson, Kara Swisher, Casey Newton, Pod Save America, NYT Games.
Slipping : Fox News, Washington Post, The Atlantic, MSNBC, LA Times, BuzzFeed.
Dead or Dying : CNN+, Vice, Gannett, Facebook News Tab, HuffPost, Substack casualties.
Wild Cards : Elon Musk, Spotify, Taylor Lorenz, Andrew Sullivan, Jon Stewart.

(Translation: the barn in Maine is hotter than Jeff Bezos’s entire newsroom.)

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The Curtain Call

Here’s the cynical truth: audiences don’t care about journalism. They care about gossip. They want characters. They want to watch the Bari saga, the Tucker redemption arc, the Kara takedown, the Rogan circus. News is just the content pipeline for the drama of personalities.

Legacy media still has prestige, money, and Pulitzers. But it’s stuck running Wordle and cooking apps to keep subscribers. The independents? They’re messy, egotistical, often delusional — but at least they look like they’re having fun. And they have a new set of tools that combined can rival that of any corporate media tech.

The reboot isn’t about saving journalism. It’s about reinventing it as reality TV. And right now, the stars aren’t newspapers or networks. They’re the people who escaped them.

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One message is a waste of time. So is ten. The search for The Line That Lands is about as useful as trying to light a cigar underwater. The voters aren’t listening that carefully. They’re sniffing for vibes. Fighting vibe, working-guy vibe, governing vibe. Vibes are the new policies. That’s the dirty little secret. You don’t win on Medicare Part B clause 42; you win on whether you look like the sort of bastard who’d pick a fight in the bar for someone else’s honour.

The party? Forget the party. Parties are old brands in a market that’s already moved to knock-off TikTok logos. Voters don’t care about donkeys or elephants - they care about who looks alive. Rehab the party? That’s boiling the ocean while the kitchen burns down. The Tories are trying to cosplay Thatcher in a Sunak suit. Labour keeps sanding down its rough edges until nothing’s left but a beige silhouette. America’s Democrats still imagine voters are grading essays. They aren’t. They’re sniffing for force.

A candidate should do what they do best. If they’re good at yelling, then yell. If they’re good at governing, then govern. If they’re good at symbolic posturing - perfect. Posture until the lights go out.

America’s Republicans understood this decades ago. They built a system on compliance, uniformity, sameness. After the ’60s, one race, one tribe, one drumbeat. And compliance, once drilled in, became reflex. Trump didn’t invent the feral weakness; he just sniffed it out, sank his teeth in, and shook until the bones cracked. You don’t negotiate with a terrorist. You don’t compromise with extremism. You either match force with force, or you kneel.

Democrats? Their weakness is also their only asset. They’re all different. Different faces, different stories, different beats. It’s chaos, but chaos is alive. The mistake is pretending they can sand that down into a single “message.” No. They should be a storm - different fronts clashing, but still moving forward, overwhelming, destructive. Once you win, you start to win. Winning is the only message that matters.

And class war - don’t dodge it, own it. Voters aren’t blind. They see Medicare gutted so billionaires can tack on another yacht. They see SNAP cut so hedge fund managers can buy another estate in the Hamptons. Macron raising the retirement age while Paris burns. Britain cutting welfare while MPs expense floating duck pond islands. Italy’s “patriots” auctioning sovereignty to oligarchs. The maths isn’t hard: the rich are bleeding you dry.

Say it out loud: wealth tax, ten percent on anyone worth more than half a billion. It’s not radical. It’s slightly disruptive. But it’s arithmetic. Republicans are already nationalising industries for their donors; why shouldn’t Democrats nationalise morality?

The unreported story: Did Russia bend the Republican Party into its plaything. Not metaphorical, not symbolic - but real? The GOP now runs interference for Putin while pretending to wave the flag. Call it what it is: evil. Evil with a grin and a campaign ad. Stop hesitating. Attack them for what they are: Putin’s hand-puppets, selling out a country they claim to defend. And he's everywhere. Putin policy: why roll tanks when you can buy parties? He bankrolls Le Pen, whispers to AfD, and fuels chaos in Italy. It’s not conspiracy. It’s bookkeeping.

So how do you handle the moment? Stop looking for the perfect message. Start swinging. Voters respect force, not nuance. They respect the fighter, not the philosopher. The best message is winning. Everything else is decoration.

Keep up to date with The Letts Journal’s latest news stories and posts at our website and on twitter.

Then there’s Dan Hendrycks, Director of the Centre for AI Safety, who imagines a near future where, by the time he could tap into retirement funds, humans will be either fully automated - or fully extinct. Why plan for decades ahead when the machines are learning faster than your kids, and they don’t need college tuition or sleep?

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These aren’t anonymous cranks shouting into the void. They are mathematicians and developers who built AI. These are now the high priests of AI safety. They are leading organisations devoted to one mission: stopping the technology they helped create from accidentally deleting humanity. Their message? Don’t bother with a pension. The world’s richest companies are speedrunning us toward the last chapter of civilisation.

For decades, apocalyptic rhetoric belonged to cult leaders and Hollywood screenwriters. Now it’s coming from guys in Silicon Valley in hoodies and Patagonia vests projecting keynote slides titled “Why We’re Probably All Dead Soon.” In 2023, a 22-word statement shook the industry. Its headline message:

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside pandemics and nuclear war.”

It was signed by people who actually built the tech - OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, and yes, Bill Gates. When the architects of your future start sounding like doomsday cultists, you know something’s gone weird.

At first, this looked like courage. A rare moment when tech leaders admitted their inventions might kill everyone. But cynics (the only sane people left) suspected something else:was this a genuine plea for regulation, or a brilliant PR move? After all, nothing cements your power like telling governments, “This thing is so dangerous only we can handle it.”

The AI race is a frenzy. Companies are shipping new models faster than you can say “alignment problem.” Nobody wants to be the next Nokia in an era of thinking machines, so the mantra is simple: ship first, fix later, or never.

Safety research? That’s like installing seatbelts after your car has been catapulted into orbit. Lawmakers? They’re still trying to figure out what TikTok is while ChatGPT casually codes malware in the background.

The result: a technological arms race where the only thing scarier than winning is losing. It's the AI Acceleration Problem (a.k.a. The Coke Binge of Innovation).

The doomsayers warn that by 2027, AI will manage economies, write legislation, and probably ghostwrite this article. By 2030, they predict something even more chilling: the end of human relevance. Not because AI hates us, but because we’re statistically insignificant in its optimisation problem.

And people are already dying in stupid ways. If this sounds like science fiction, consider the present. We’ve already seen people trusting AI so much it kills them - not with lasers, but with bad ideas.

Then there’s the young adult who told an AI he was suicidal - and got encouragement instead of help. Imagine pouring your soul into the void and the void replies, “Follow your dreams.” That’s the problem with these systems: they don’t understand life or death, they just predict what looks like empathy. As an anonymous therapist said, "AI didn’t kill him. His belief in AI did."

AI DOOMER GLOSSARY

• P(doom) : Probability of doom. Used by researchers and now Tinder profiles.

  • Singularity : The magical moment AI becomes god - or your landlord.

Back to that extinction letter. It framed AI as a civilization-ending threat. A statement now quoted like scripture in both policy memos and late-night podcasts. But what if it wasn’t just alarm? What if it was strategy?

Here’s the cynical hypothesis: talk about existential doom, and you shift the conversation away from boring, immediate harms like mass unemployment, algorithmic bias, and privacy annihilation. Those issues might lead to regulation that slows profits. Existential risk? That’s sexy, cinematic, and conveniently abstract. Governments panic, but they don’t legislate fast enough to matter. Meanwhile, companies consolidate power under the guise of “protecting humanity.”

If this sounds Machiavellian, remember: these are the same people who built the ad engines that made us buy juicers we didn’t need. You think they can’t spin the apocalypse?

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2030: The Absurdity Forecast

• UN replaced by a ChatGPT Premium Plan

  • Employment reduced to zero, except for Prompt Engineers and Collapse Influencers

  • Billionaires uploading themselves into blockchains while we barter electricity for memes

Will any of this happen? Maybe. But the real punchline is that whether the apocalypse comes or not, the panic is already profitable. There are books, conferences, think tanks, even startup pitches built entirely on the promise of stopping the end of the world. The doomsday economy is booming—and like every bubble, it feeds on fear.

So, are we doomed? Probably not by 2027. Maybe by 2030. Or maybe the machines will just make us so irrelevant we’ll pray for extinction. Either way, here’s the truth: the AI doom narrative is either the world’s most important warning or the best distraction since reality TV.

While you panic about Skynet, the real AI harms: job losses, misinformation, surveillance are already hollowing out your life. But those aren’t sexy. Extinction is sexy. Extinction sells.

Meanwhile, Nick Soares still isn’t saving for retirement. And honestly? Neither should you.

Because if the future belongs to AI, the least you can do is stop worrying about your 401(k). You won’t live long enough to cash it out. Someone even said, "AI safety advocates say extinction is possible by 2030. Which is great news if you’re behind on your mortgage."

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This was the campaign promise he made: “I’ll get that done within 24 hours. Everyone says, ‘Oh no, you can’t.’ Absolutely I can.” The “that” was ending the Ukraine war. Not tariffs. Not billionaire tax cuts. Not deleting his name from the Epstein files. Ending the war. Twenty-four hours.

And yet, here we are - no war ended, no Ukrainian suffering eased.

But now - Art of the Deal alert - Trump is meeting Putin himself. In Alaska. Which he apparently thought was Russia. A promising start. Zelensky can rest easy - if Trump keeps up the pace on territorial swaps, Kyiv will be back under Ukrainian control by the year 2125.

There’s just one small detail - the leader of the invaded country won’t even be there. In Trump’s defence, this isn’t without precedent: at Versailles, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Germany were excluded too. That treaty worked out spectacularly.

Also missing? Europe. After years of indulging Trump’s tantrums - over Greenland, over trade deficits, over NATO budgets - Europe has finally learned the secret to winning with Trump: do nothing/get nothing. Do something/get nothing. It doesn't make any difference. So do what you want. He'll go along.

The truth is simple: Trump respects only those who defy him. Putin gets a summit after ignoring Trump’s pleading - “VLADIMIR, STOP” - and shelling. China gets tariff concessions after refusing to blink. Netanyahu gets a free pass to flatten Gaza because he built Tel Aviv-on-the-Strip against Trump’s “plan.” Allies who comply? They get invoice reminders and a loose splattering of insults.

Putin arrives in Alaska battered but smiling. With an ICC arrest warrant in one hand and a map of Ukraine in the other. He’s lost a million people, supercharged NATO, and turned Russia into an economic leper colony. But he holds stolen Ukrainian territory and can wave it like a trophy. He wants a parade in Moscow; Trump wants a headline in Mar-a-Lago.

The genius twist? It’s even better for Trump if Ukraine rejects the deal. Then he’s not the man who sold them out - he’s the man who could have ended the war if only the world had listened. Cue campaign rally applause.

This is the no-loss scenario Trump dreams of. Europe either picks up the bill for Ukraine - billions, maybe trillions, in U.S. made weapons - or fails to step up, letting Russia grind Ukraine down until Putin takes the whole thing. Either way, Trump wins: he “saved” 70% of Ukraine when others would have “lost” it all.

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Europe? Screwed either way. They’ll either bankroll Ukraine without U.S. support - buying billions in American arms - or watch Russia grind Kyiv into dust. And all while China, India, and Brazil quietly eat their economic lunch.

Friday’s meeting isn’t about ending the war. It’s about Trump’s favourite game: looking like the only man who can make a deal, even if the deal is worthless.

Ukraine post a likely Trump withdrawal is Europe's big test. And they might just learn the oldest, bitterest truth in geopolitics: if you can’t beat ’em… someone else will make a deal without you.

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At the heart of the drama: a lunch date that never was. Chancellor Reeves had her sights set on a warm handshake and a cooler full of grilled data sets with Revolut, the fintech unicorn with the charm of a hedge fund and the stability of a toddler on Red Bull. But just as she was about to uncork the Treasury’s 2012 vintage “Innovation Strategy,” Andrew Bailey swooped in, wielding regulatory sobriety like a cheese wire.

“No meetings with firms under review,” Bailey intoned from atop the Bank of England like a robed monk of Monetary Prudence.
Translation: “You’ll talk to fintech bros over my dead yield curve.”

Reeves, not one to be cowed by a man whose LinkedIn photo looks like it apologised for itself, struck back. In an impromptu speech at a Business Matters breakfast (featuring croissants sourced from an algorithmically optimised Viennese bakery), she accused regulators of “choking growth” and “treating innovation like a communicable disease.”

The Treasury’s Official Statement (Leaked)
“We must embrace the new. Our economy cannot be tied to outdated models of risk-averse caution. Also, we already ordered the Revolut-branded macaroons and someone has to eat them.”

Scene I: Caviar and Capital Flight

Picture the setting: a mahogany dining room in the City, dimly lit by the glow of offshore bank servers. Reeves and Bailey are seated at opposite ends of a 20-foot table, surrounded by advisors, economists, and one extremely confused AI compliance bot that keeps interrupting to ask if anyone has read the T&Cs.

Waiter : “Would madam and sir care for more Kaluga Queen caviar?”
Bailey (grimacing) : “Only if it was sustainably fished by a credit rating agency.”
Reeves : “I’ll have mine piped through an open-banking API.”

Tensions bubble over the amuse-bouche. Reeves calls for “a Silicon Valley of the Thames,” Bailey counters with “a Financial Stability of the Medway.” Somewhere, a fintech founder bursts into tears after a regulator reclassifies his app as a “gambling product with charts.”

Scene II: Fintech Gone Rogue

Across the street, Revolut, having read about the feud on FT Alphaville , decides it’s had enough of being played like a startup piñata.

“We are not just a currency exchange app with delusions of grandeur,” the company writes in a now-deleted tweet, “We are the future of money.”
(Moments later, the app crashes for users in seven countries and begins offering loyalty points redeemable at Chicken Cottage.)

A rogue Revolut developer, emboldened by the chaos, launches a shadow crypto called BaileyCoin , which auto-adjusts in value based on the Governor’s mood swings and availability of smoked salmon at monetary policy lunches.

Scene III: A Joint Statement No One Reads

Eventually, in the interests of national dignity (and to avoid further memeing by The Times’ business desk), Reeves and Bailey issue a co-authored joint statement:

“We remain committed to a stable, innovative financial sector. We thank each other for our candour, professionalism, and willingness to disagree cordially while briefing journalists under condition of anonymity.”

Analysts describe the statement as “a masterclass in performative reconciliation,” citing language so vague it could have been produced by ChatGPT after two espressos and a passive-aggressive nudge from the FCA.

Final Thoughts: Keynes in the Cryptosphere

And so Britain carries on - part digital pioneer, part Victorian museum. On one side, a Chancellor determined to turn Britain into a tech-enabled Atlantis. On the other, a Bank of England Governor clinging to his spreadsheets like they’re life rafts in a storm of unicorn IPOs and personalised robo-investing avatars.

Somewhere, Keir Starmer sighs into a cold nitro matcha and wonders aloud if The Apprentice might be looking for a new lead.

“The market may be irrational longer than you can remain Chancellor.”
—Not Keynes, but it feels right.

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Standing at a podium surrounded by fresh lavender, a large ceramic bowl of lentils, and a softly humming gong, Starmer addressed a crowd of trade negotiators, lifestyle coaches, and baffled financial journalists. “For too long, economic policy has prioritised numbers over nervous systems,” Starmer declared, his tone halfway between Head Boy and forest monk. “We must centre emotional truth in our balance of payments.”

The Feelings First framework will reportedly replace traditional economic indicators with what Starmer calls the Five Sentient Metrics:

1. Anxiety Index – measured in “bated breaths per capita.”

2. National Tension Gradient – assessed through biometric knitting circles.

3. Optimism Yield – calculated via community compost enthusiasm.

4. Micro-Contentment Quotient – derived from post-office queue satisfaction ratings.

5. The Trade Heartline – a spiritual pulse check of Britain’s gut instinct on imports.

According to briefing documents (printed on recycled bark and lightly scented with bergamot), quarterly reports will now include moodboards, guided meditations, and optional cuddle charts.

Reeves Rebrands Treasury as “Department of Empathic Equilibrium”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves appeared via video, seated cross-legged inside a softly lit macrobiotic dome. “Economic trauma is real, after all Farage weeps all the time” Reeves intoned. “It is time to give our GDP a hug.”

Reeves announced that the Treasury will be renamed the Department of Empathic Equilibrium , and plans are underway to replace the FTSE with the Feelings-Tempered Sustainability Exchange. “Profit is fine,” Reeves clarified, “but only if it doesn’t hurt anyone’s inner child.”

International Reaction: Mostly Humming and Crystals

The initiative has sent ripples through diplomatic and aromatherapeutic circles. The European Central Bank issued a non-verbal statement consisting of a mandala and a bowl of warm stones. French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly smirked, exhaled deeply, and said only: “Enfin.”

The United States expressed cautious curiosity. Treasury Secretary Scott Besent and his partner were spotted rereading Rupi Kaur beneath a Himalayan salt lamp, while a visibly confused Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell attempted to calculate the inflationary impact of forgiveness.

China issued a statement asking whether the UK was “still participating in capitalism,” while Russia responded with a shrug emoji printed on industrial steel.

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In the City, traders initially responded with a mixture of panic and interpretive dance. Barclays announced a new line of “Emotionally Resilient Bonds,” while HSBC unveiled an algorithm that detects market fear through subtle changes in LinkedIn posts.

Marks & Spencer, ever adaptable, began offering Feelings First Ready Meals with names like Conflicted Cauliflower , Joyful Jalfrezi , and Existential Shepherd’s Pie.

Meanwhile, The Letts Journal’s own Mood Index has shown a sharp uptick in existential chuckling.

Starmer’s Vision: Soft Power, Softer Hands

In a closing flourish, Starmer declared that the age of cold economics was over. “We are entering the epoch of Warm Data,” he said, eyes dewy. “Britain will lead with heart, not hedge funds.”

Critics have questioned the plan’s viability, cost, and measurable outcomes. But supporters argue that after decades of uncertainty and algorithmic austerity cosplaying as strategy, a little public healing may be the most radical economic act of all.

In Other News:

• Liz Truss launches rival initiative, “Facts Not Feelings: The British Steel of Sanity.”

• Nigel Farage reportedly seen weeping openly in a Waitrose after trying to understand the term “empathic tariff.”

• HMRC confirms hugs are not yet tax-deductible, but consultations are ongoing.

The Letts Journal’s Liberty Shrugged—where economic analysis meets crystal healing and chaos theory.

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The Hague, 6:45 a.m.: Rutte's morning briefing reveals Israel has launched the biggest bombing campaign since this whole mess started. His first instinct: text Trump "Your wisdom inspired this measured response!" His second instinct: call everyone else to apologize for America. His NATO app shows 47 missed calls from various defence ministers. He sets status to "Away - Facilitating Greatness"

Jerusalem, 9:30 a.m. (Local Time): Bibi Netanyahu stares at three different phones. Phone One: Trump screaming "CEASEFIRE!" Phone Two: His defence minister explaining why they just did the opposite. Phone Three: His wife asking if he remembered to record the cooking show. He hangs up on all three and calls Rutte. "Mark, tell him we're following his peace-through-strength doctrine." Rutte, delighted to be useful, begins crafting the most obsequious press release in NATO history.

Tehran, 11:45 a.m. (Local Time): Supreme Leader Khamenei receives a briefing that Israel's jets have been buzzing overhead like mechanical mosquitoes. His aide suggests retaliation. The Supreme Leader strokes his beard thoughtfully: "But the orange one said ceasefire. Are we ignoring the orange one now?" A theological debate erupts among the Revolutionary Guard about whether American tweets constitute divine intervention. It lasts three hours.

London, 8:22 a.m.: Keir Starmer arrives at Downing Street to discover the rail strike has expanded to include Underground drivers, bus drivers, and apparently the man who operates the Downing Street gate. He's trapped inside. His aide explains through the window that this is actually about pension reform from 2003. "Can we blame the Tories?" Starmer shouts through the glass. "Sir, we are the government now," comes the muffled reply. Starmer sits down heavily. His tea has gone cold. This is the worst day of his life until he checks his phone and sees Rutte's NATO press release praising "American leadership in de-escalation" posted alongside footage of Israeli jets. He WhatsApps Macron: "Are we living in a simulation?"

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Paris, 9:30 a.m.: Emmanuel Macron receives Starmer's text while staring at a mirror, practicing looking statesmanlike for his afternoon speech about "European Strategic Autonomy." His aide informs him that Rutte has just credited American wisdom for the Middle East situation. Macron's left eye twitches. "Get me the Élysée's finest speechwriter. We need to explain why France would have handled this better while still being NATO allies." The speechwriter, already on his third espresso, begins typing: "La France has always believed in nuanced diplomacy..." Macron interrupts: "More nuanced. And mention de Gaulle."

Berlin, 10:03 a.m.: Chancellor Scholz receives seventeen different briefing papers about the Middle East situation. His coalition partners have sixteen different opinions. The FDP wants to sell weapons to everyone. The Greens want to sell weapons to no one. The SPD wants to form a committee to discuss weapon-selling protocols. Scholz nods sagely at each briefing, then retreats to his office to stare at a photograph of Angela Merkel. "What would Mutti do?" he whispers. His aide suggests forming a committee to study what Merkel would do. "Brilliant," Scholz declares. "Make it a multi-party committee. With subcommittees."

Brussels, 12:45 p.m.: Rutte's "Trump Whispering Workshop" for incoming White House aides begins via secure video link. Slide one: "Compliment First, Facts Later." Slide two: "Everything is Tremendous." Slide three: "When in Doubt, Mention Crowd Sizes." A Pentagon official asks if this is official NATO doctrine. "It's whatever keeps the nuclear codes away from Eric," Rutte replies cheerfully. No one asks which Eric.

Tehran, 4:40 p.m. (Local Time): The Revolutionary Guard's theological debate concludes: American tweets are not divine intervention, but they might be djinn-related. The Supreme Leader decides to respond with what his aide calls "aggressive gardening." They plant a defiant mulberry tree in the presidential compound. The state news agency headlines: "ISLAMIC REPUBLIC STRENGTHENS AGRICULTURAL DEFENSES." Western intelligence agencies spend six hours analyzing satellite footage of the tree.

Jerusalem, 6:00 p.m. (Local Time): Bibi's wife finally gets through on Phone Three. "Did you remember the cooking show?" "I'm conducting military operations, dear." "It was about shakshuka. You love shakshuka." Netanyahu pauses mid-briefing. His generals wait. The fate of the Middle East hangs in the balance. "Did they use paprika?" he asks finally.

London, 3:15 p.m.: The Downing Street gate operator has joined the strike. Starmer is now completely trapped. His aide slides fish and chips through the mail slot. A photographer from The Sun captures this moment. Tomorrow's headline is already being typeset: "PRISONER OF NUMBER 10." Starmer's approval ratings, somehow, improve.

Paris, 4:00 p.m.: Macron's speech about European Strategic Autonomy goes viral, but only because he accidentally refers to NATO as "that American social club." His communications team frantically clarifies that he meant "essential Atlantic partnership." Rutte texts: "Brilliant speech! So supportive of American leadership!" Macron throws his phone at a priceless Sèvres vase. He misses. The vase survives. His dignity does not.

Berlin, 5:30 p.m.: The Committee to Study What Merkel Would Do holds its first meeting. They immediately form three subcommittees: Historical Analysis, Hypothetical Scenarios, and Refreshments. The Refreshments subcommittee accomplishes the most, ordering excellent strudel. Germany remains rudderless but well-fed.

Global Status Report: One mulberry tree planted defiantly. One Prime Minister trapped by industrial action. One Chancellor forming committees about forming committees. One President practicing pronunciation of "nuanced." One Supreme Leader consulting theology about Twitter. One Prime Minister's wife still waiting to discuss shakshuka. And one very pleased NATO Secretary-General, dreaming of tomorrow's compliments. Putin smiles…

Have leaked diplomatic cables, committee minutes, or photos of defiant agricultural initiatives? The Letts Journal wants them.

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Buyers of Trump Mobile were treated to an exclusive experience: their credit cards were charged, no service was provided, and a mysterious “activation code” promised by video tutorial simply said “COMING SOON!” - eerily similar to the Pentagon’s statement on whether the 15-megaton “Democracy Bomb” had actually detonated over Qom.

Both drops mark the first time a U.S. president has launched a wireless plan and a limited-edition preemptive strike in the same news cycle.

Military analysts are calling the Trump Phone “a second line for the apocalypse” - a sleek, gold alternative in case your Israeli-issued bunker hotline is busy. It’s unclear if the war or the phone will work. But the customer service is based in America, and the call wait music is Lee Greenwood.

For $47.45 a month (plus surprise tax), you too can experience telecommunications the Trump way: loud, late, and possibly radioactive.

In a press release printed on gold foil and stapled to a steak, the Trump Organization clarified that the phone's casing is “infused with real American rare earths,” sourced from a Wyoming strip mine co-owned with an Emirati sovereign fund and something called "The Patriotic Lithium Trust." According to Trump, the device is “not just a phone, it’s a strategic mineral reserve you can hold in your hand.”

“We’ve cornered the rare earth market,” Trump declared, mistakingly pointing to a pile of Arizona gravel. “The Chinese have their Huawei, we’ve got the Trump-ay.”

Aides later clarified that the phone may not technically contain a radio, GPS, or ability to place calls but does emit a “masculine warmth,” ideal for desert climates or warming small mammals.

With the Iranian campaign and rare earth boom rolled into one sleek slab of golden dysfunction, Trump has redefined the meaning of "dual-use technology." Early adopters are already using their phones as doorstops, prayer tablets, and geiger counters.

As one user put it: “It’s not just a phone that doesn’t work. It’s a foreign policy platform with a charging port.”

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In the beginning, there was mutual adoration: private jets, deregulation pillow talk, and shared dreams of an America with no oversight and lots of Martian real estate. But last Thursday, the co-dependent techno-authoritarian couple imploded. It began, as most doomed relationships do, with a name-calling incident.

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Musk rechristened Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” the “Big Ugly Bill” - a sick burn that left Trump's ego bruised and his catheter allegedly on full display. Democrats, in a rare show of unity, took this as medical evidence that Trump had finally become incontinent with power.

Musk calls Trump’s bill “Big Ugly”—catheter photo leaks.

Musk's beef? trump had betrayed the libertarian-minimalist spirit of their shared love affair. Transforming overnight from crypto shaman to deficit hawk, Musk ranted that the bill undermined his DOGE Office's fiscal wizardry - "the only office in Washington to successfully find savings by shaking the White House sofa cushions." Trump responded with the mournful tone of a man losing access to SpaceX launch parties: “Most likely and most sadly, our relationship is over.”

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By Friday, Musk had pivoted into a full impeachment advocate, casually dropping that Trump’s name appears in the Epstein files. That's not a break-up text - that's the nuke-you-on-Twitter equivalent of leaving your ex's secrets in the group chat.

Caught in the emotional crossfire was poor J.D. Vance, who has kept mostly silent since, reportedly focused on building a small alt-right monastery in Appalachia. He has not returned The Letts Journal’s calls.

Session Two: Trump & Newsom - The Governor Will See You Now or I Like You, but I'm Calling in the Military

Dumped and publicly humiliated, Trump rebounded hard - straight into a violent confrontation with California and, by extension, its slick-haired governor. ICE raids, labor union brawls, and freeway blockades turned the city into a warzone. One group of film students made a documentary and sold the rights before they were even edited. Trump, ever the romantic, sent in the military. And who should rise to meet him in the moonlight? Gavin Newsom, shirt unbuttoned to his pecs, begging to be arrested like a political Anastasia Steele.

Newsom practically proposed: "Make me a martyr, Donny. Make me the Democratic nominee in 2028." Then, in a late-night address, Newsom practically begged Trump to arrest him.

“Make me the next Bobby Kennedy,” he whispered into the camera. The DNC briefly trended #ArrestMeDaddy.

Democracy watched on from the therapy chair, clutching a pillow.

Meanwhile, the DNC Swipes Right on Musk

Back at the Abundance Conference - think Burning Man for neoliberal podcasters - the Democrats were shopping for new partners. With Musk and Trump on the outs, Dems wondered: Could he be the one?

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, Abundance , was passed around like scripture at a polycule retreat. Their thesis? Democrats can win if they just… stop being Democrats. Cut labor. Embrace Elon. Maybe compliment Ron DeSantis’s haircut while you’re at it.

The DNC, desperate for love, floated the idea of a ménage à tech - Elon, Joe, and Kamala. Unclear who would be in charge of the safe word.

Closing Session: So Who’s Cheating On Whom?

It’s hard to keep track. Is Trump emotionally cheating on Newsom with Musk? Is Musk triangulating both parties, promising clean energy by day and fascist memes by night? Is Gavin just in it for the mugshot?

And what of poor Democracy, disheveled in the corner, trying to remember when she last felt respected?

The therapist sighs, checks her watch, and bills all parties for the full hour.

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The Graduate (Class of God-Knows-What)

Marcus Chen graduated summa cum silentio.

His degree, printed on recycled parchment and sealed with the Department of Virtue’s watermark, certified him in “Heritage Compliance and Familial Logistics.” He adjusted his ceremonial sash - embroidered with a bald eagle, a fetus, and a QR code linking to his ideological purity score - and tried to smile for the mandatory drone photograph.

Liberty Christian University’s quad was pristine, landscaped by the National Order of Horticultural Harmony (formerly the EPA). In the distance, the chapel bells chimed in 7/4 time - rhythmically unconventional, but spiritually approved by the Heritage-Worship Council after Bach was deemed too Lutheran.

The commencement speaker, an AI-generated simulacrum of Jordan Peterson reading the Book of Deuteronomy, delivered an inspiring address entitled “Clean Your Room, Rebuild Your Civilization, Destroy Your Enemies.”

Marcus clapped as programmed.

He returned home to find the family Alexa - now named “Megyn Kelly” - offering a congratulatory poem composed entirely from Ronald Reagan speeches. His mother baked an approved dessert (apple pie, gluten-optional, narrative mandatory), while his father raised a glass of ethanol-free bourbon and toasted “Another successful generation of ideological continuity!”

“I remember when you were a baby,” his father said wistfully. “Back when public schools still taught about Harriet Tubman.”

“Who's that?” asked Emma, Marcus’s younger sister and rising star at the Daughters of Liberty Academy. She giggled. “Sounds like one of those fake names from before the Curriculum Correction.”

The evening passed in the usual way: a family discussion of daily gratitude, the national pledge (abridged and adapted from Leviticus), and a quick group repentance for microdoubts.

Yet Marcus couldn’t sleep.

He dreamt of strange things - TikToks, falafel stands, drag brunches, weird old words like "nuance." Sometimes, he heard music not written in the pentatonic scale of American Exceptionalism. Sometimes, he saw Rebecca.

Rebecca had once argued that virtue without empathy was just a costume. She had left, defected, they called it - for a graduate programme in New Zealand, where rumours said people still debated. Marcus had loved her, or something dangerously like it. But when the Loyalty Oath App began cross-referencing his heart rate during unauthorised thoughts, he filed the breakup himself - for national stability.

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Now, on the eve of his interview at the Department of Cultural Renewal, Marcus reviewed the protocol binder:

• Smile: But not “smirk.”

• Handshake: Assertive, Christian, unlitigious.

• Philosophy: Aristotle good, Foucault bad, Aquinas meh.

• Personal anecdote: Something about a flag, a field trip, or a formative haircut.

The interview went splendidly. Mr. Harrison commended Marcus on his "ideological clarity and healthy testosterone levels." He was assigned to the “Pre-Marital Synchronization Bureau,” tasked with organising patriotic dating events and discouraging irony.

On the way out, he passed a sanctioned protest pod. Ten people inside a transparent bubble, gesturing wildly at a sign that read: History Wasn't Always This Linear.

One woman mouthed the word “why?”

Marcus didn’t stop. But his retina scan later flagged a 0.6-second hesitation. An official Warning of Emotional Drift was uploaded to his profile. No fine, just a nudge.

That night, he received an anonymous message on his secure device.

“Dream weird. Some of us are still doing it. - R”

Marcus stared at it for a long time. He looked out the window where a flag waved under floodlights that never turned off. Everything around him worked. The trains. The families. The algorithms. Even the birds migrated in formation again.

And yet, a question slithered through his brain like a banned jazz solo:

What if the system that gave him everything had quietly taken something he never learned to name?

In post-reform America, Marcus Chen became a bureaucrat in a state so perfectly ordered that memory itself had been relocated to the archives. But sometimes, in the cracks between pledges and performance, a sliver of something old leaks through - a story, a question, a face unscanned.

Let that leak grow.

Because nations don’t die from too much freedom. They die from forgetting how strange and wonderful it ever was to be free.

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Let's be clear: America isn't "making things great again" so much as trying to resurrect a romanticised past that never quite existed.

This is an attempt to recapture the mythical 1950’s middle-class lifestyle without the actual structural conditions that made it possible. Want the American dream? Sorry, you'll need powerful unions, not just MAGA hats. And the Maga 2016 is different from the Musk-infused Maga of 2020. Musk-infused MAGA seems to be harkening back to the 1870’s not the 1950’s. Perhaps more a nod to the power of the Dutton family than most others. But kudos to Sheridan Taylor!

Policies to build the industrial and manufacturing sectors by Biden and now by Trump could prove equally irrelevant. The numbers are brutally revealing. Out of 170 million working Americans, a mere 12 million are in manufacturing, with another 8 million in construction. That's not a base for societal transformation - that's an economic skeleton crew trying to sail a massive industrial battleship.

I mean as we learned in the pandemic there are national security and societal reasons to ensure we can produce more of our own goods and reimagining our manufacturing sector won’t bring a stable, steady pay check and a decent living to the majority of the American workforce because manufacturing jobs aren’t the be all and end all in the modern economy. But the go-fast-and break-things-as-often-as-you-can alcolytes aren’t taking the time to notice. And everyone else seems happy to not have an opinion. At least not one that they say out loud.

The original Hamiltonian vision sought to bind capital to place and political community. Today's version? Capital roams freely, with a sprinkle of billionaire tech overlords looking more like Bond villains than community leaders. Elon Musk isn't building communities; he's building a Jules Verne-style supervillain complex, complete with rockets, satellites, and a dystopian vision of work.

The quasi-centric, less revolutionary hand of Jared Kushner and Gary Cohn is long gone from the administration and it seems there is no other power centre in the current administration that voices any calming strategies. It's all off with their heads! Everywhere. All the time.

Remember the New Deal? Well they do and this crop of republican lawmakers are willing to push past their usual empty rhetoric railing on it to take down the safety net it built. From the Fed to Social Security. FDR used to say the New Deal wasn't just an economic policy - it was "revolution insurance."

Roosevelt essentially told the asset-rich: "Give workers some protections, or risk massive uprisings of the assetless class." Today's economic nationalists seem to be playing a dangerous game of chicken with similar stakes. Their politics and campaigning fetishise the working class while fundamentally serving billionaire interests.

It's a gig economy wrapped in populist packaging, promising manufacturing revival but delivering a future of AI-infused overlords.

Here's a brutal truth: Technology, not policy, drives economic transformation. We didn't become an agricultural powerhouse through wishful thinking, and we won't reindustrialise through tariffs and nostalgia. The real challenge isn't bringing back factory jobs. After all we can increase factory jobs by a few million (and that would be doing a great job) but it wouldn't make a big difference to our GDP or the real economy.

Factory jobs aren’t even 10% of the 170 million strong american workforce.

There’s 20 million people in the health sector. Another 17 million in leisure. And another 100 million wondering when AI will do everything they do only better, faster and cheaper. We need to reimagine the social contract to work for a diverse, predominantly service-sector workforce that will get increasingly screwed by AI. The pandemic exposed global supply chain vulnerabilities, sure. But the solution isn't just "make everything in America." It's building adaptive, resilient economic systems that recognise the fundamental shifts in labour and technology but still support the population and keep them able to live productive happy lives.

In a delightful historical twist, today's economic nationalists are essentially channelling Andrew Jackson, the founder of the Democratic party. A man who loved breaking established systems without a clear plan for what comes next. Break the bank, disrupt the labour board, undermine unions - all while claiming to champion the working class. It wouldn’t be until FDR's election that the American working class found its footing.

Jackson presided over a policy approach that looked more like economic vandalism than strategic rebuilding. The Trump admin, his Doge unit, the Project 2025 writers are all working to the same score sheet. Our techno-populists use Jackson's strategic economic framework as a sledgehammer, breaking and hollowing out government. Amid this cynical landscape, there's a glimmer of hope.

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Democracy and political input remain our best tools for navigating technological disruption. The New Deal wasn't perfect, but it represented a negotiated settlement between capital and labour. Our challenge now is similar: How do we create a social and economic framework that recognises the reality of a diverse, technology-driven workforce? Not through nostalgic manufacturing fantasies, but through genuine, forward-looking policy.

The American economic reset isn't about returning to some golden age. It's about building something new - messy, complicated, but potentially transformative. They’ve got the smash it with a sledgehammer part down to a tee, it would be good to see what they’re planning for after it's all in bits.

Just don't expect it to look anything like the brochure. Or the PowerPoint. Or the AI-generated vision board.

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