Both Sides Are Calling Me a Traitor. That's How I Know I'm Right.
You're not a Republican or a Democrat. You're a Puppet. Let me cut your strings.
I spent yesterday animating a parody video where a satirical ICE agent arrests Jesus Christ on a suburban sidewalk because he thought “Hay-soos” was Mexican. I thought that was going to be the most disturbing thing I put out this week.
Then I read the news…
While I was slopping out cartoons, real federal agents in tactical gear were spraying military grade chemical weapons into a minivan on a Minneapolis street. Inside that van was a family of six American citizens coming home from a basketball game. Mom. Dad. Four kids. The youngest was six months old. Barely able to hold up its own head. Lungs the size of your fist.
And that baby got a face full of chemicals designed to incapacitate grown men in combat situations.
Six months old!
I want every single person cheering for this operation to explain that one to me. I want you to look at a picture of your own child or grandchild and tell me with a straight face that gassing an infant is immigration enforcement. I want you to walk me through the tactical necessity of deploying chemical weapons against a baby in a car seat.
You cannot do it. Because there is no explanation. Because this was never about immigration and it was never about keeping you safe. It is about control. It has always been about control. And if you cannot see that yet then I genuinely do not know how to help you because you have let the television do your thinking for so long that the part of your brain responsible for pattern recognition has completely atrophied.
But I am going to try anyway.
Because fuck it, somebody has to.
They Are Playing You Like a Fiddle and You Keep Dancing
This is the part where I am supposed to pick a side. This is where a normal pundit would tell you that Republicans are the problem or Democrats are the problem and then you can share this article with your friends who already agree with you and everyone can feel good about being on the right team.
I am not going to do that. Because there are no teams. There is only the illusion of teams, manufactured by people who understand that a population busy fighting itself will never look up long enough to see who is actually holding the strings.
You think you are a Republican? You think you are a Democrat? You are neither. You are a puppet. We all are. And until you understand that, nothing I write is going to make a damn bit of difference.
To my friends on the right who are cheering for skull masked federal agents dragging people out of churches and gassing babies in minivans. What the hell happened to you? I remember when “conservative” meant limited government and individual liberty and deep suspicion of federal power. I remember “don’t tread on me.” I remember the Tea Party before it got hijacked. When did all of that become “please tread on them” and “unlimited power for agencies we like” and “who cares if they gas a few citizens as long as they are deporting the right people”?
You understand that boot does not check your voter registration before it stomps on your neck, right?
You understand that the surveillance state and the paramilitary police force you are cheering for today will be pointed at YOU the moment you become inconvenient? You understand that is how this works every single time throughout all of recorded history?
Of course you do not understand. Because Fox News told you this is patriotism and you stopped thinking for yourself somewhere around 2015.
And to my friends on the left who are suiting up in black bloc and throwing bricks at federal agents and cheering for armed Black Panther patrols in the streets. You absolute morons. You are doing exactly what they want you to do. Every window you smash is a campaign commercial. Every molotov cocktail is a recruitment video for the other side. Every armed “community patrol” is a gift wrapped justification for martial law that you are handing directly to the people you claim to oppose.
You are not fighting fascism. You are auditioning for the role of “violent radical” in a movie that somebody else is directing. And when the credits roll, you are going to find out that the people funding your little revolution and the people funding the people you are fighting against have the same home address.
Wake the hell up!
The Oldest Trick in the Book and You Fall for It Every Time
I have spent twenty years studying how power actually operates behind the curtain. I have read more books on political manipulation and psychological warfare and historical patterns of authoritarian takeover than most people read in a lifetime. And I am telling you right now that what is happening in America follows a script so old and so well documented that I cannot believe I have to explain it to adults in 2026.
You engineer a problem. You wait for the predictable reaction. Then you introduce the solution you wanted to implement all along and the public begs you to do it. Problem. Reaction. Solution. Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. The Reichstag fire. The Gulf of Tonkin. Exposed government operations that somehow never get discussed on cable news. The same trick over and over and over again for a hundred years and people keep falling for it because they cannot imagine that anyone would be that calculating.
Now watch what is happening in Minneapolis and tell me you do not see the pattern.
ICE conducts a raid that kills a US citizen. Not in some random town in Arizona. In Minneapolis.
The same city where George Floyd died. The same community that exploded in 2020. They knew exactly what would happen. They knew the protests would start. They knew things would turn violent. They chose this location and these tactics because they wanted the reaction.
And right on cue, the protests begin. And right on cue, agent provocateurs in the crowd start throwing things and breaking things and turning a peaceful demonstration into a riot. And right on cue, “Black Panther” armed citizen patrols show up to “protect” the community. Armed black men in berets marching through American streets. Do you have any idea what that footage does to suburban voters who just want things to calm down?
It terrifies them. It makes them willing to accept almost anything if someone will just restore order. And who is waiting in the wings to restore order? The same people who engineered the chaos in the first place.
This is not accidental.
This is choreography.
And you are the dancers.
The Cowardly Lion and the Circus Act Sideshow
I need to talk about Trump and I need you to actually hear me on this one because I know half of you are going to reflexively defend him and the other half are going to reflexively attack him and neither response is useful right now.
I voted for the man twice. The first time I do not regret. He shook up a corrupt system that needed shaking. He said things that needed to be said. He exposed how deep the rot went in both parties. But that was a different Trump. That was before six billion dollars in cryptocurrency appeared in his accounts since taking office. Six billion. A man who bankrupted casinos. A man who could not sell steaks and vodka to Americans.
A man who has been in debt to mysterious foreign creditors for decades. Suddenly at 78 years old he is a crypto investment genius?
That is not investment returns. That is payment. That is bribe money with extra steps. And the people paying it have names you should know by now.
Musk’s grandfather founded an organization in Canada called Technocracy Incorporated. Try to look it up. You will not find much because it has been scrubbed from most of the internet. They wanted to overthrow democratic government and replace it with rule by technical elites who knew better than the common rabble. They threw the same salutes the Nazis threw. They used the same symbols. They believed the same things. And now his grandson has the ear of the President of the United States and direct access to every federal database and the ability to fire anyone who might blow the whistle on what he is actually doing behind closed doors.
Thiel just hosted a private conference on the Antichrist.
I wrote about it months ago and everyone thought I was crazy. Nobody is laughing now. No cameras were allowed inside. No press. Every attendee had to sign a non disclosure agreement before walking through the door. The mainstream media, when they bothered to cover it at all, said it was a conference about how to stop the Antichrist using technology because Thiel is a “Christian.” Absolute bullshit. If this was a legitimate theological conference about protecting humanity from evil, there would have been pastors invited. There would have been theologians. There would have been cameras rolling and press releases and livestreams for the faithful. Instead there was secrecy. Instead there were NDAs. Instead there was a room full of tech billionaires discussing the Antichrist behind closed doors and you are supposed to believe they were figuring out how to stop it.
Remember when Musk said that with artificial intelligence “we are summoning the demon”?
He chose those words specifically. He said them publicly. He said them clearly. He wanted everyone to hear it. And then he went right back to building the demon anyway. Thiel named his company Palantir. Do you know what a palantir is? It is the seeing stone from Lord of the Rings. The all seeing eye. The direct phone line to Sauron. The device that corrupted everyone who used it and brought them under the control of ultimate evil. He named his surveillance company after that. On purpose. As a joke that nobody was supposed to get.
These men are telling you who they serve. They are telling you openly, publicly, laughing while they do it, because they know the average person is too distracted or too programmed or too afraid to connect the dots. This is not coincidence. This is not edgy marketing. This is confession disguised as cleverness.
These are not Republicans. These are not conservatives. These are techno-authoritarians who view the American experiment as an obstacle to be overcome and the American people as a resource to be harvested. Trump is not leading them. Trump is their mascot. He is the reality television face they slapped on a movement that wants to burn down everything this country was built on and replace it with something out of a dystopian science fiction novel.
And both parties are helping them do it because both parties take money from the same donors and answer to the same masters and exist only to give you the illusion of choice while the real decisions get made in rooms you will never see.
It Cannot Happen Here
I mentioned to a pundit the other day that Trump said on television we might not have midterm elections this year. He told me that was impossible. Article I Section 2 requires House elections every two years. Congress sets election dates. The president has zero authority to suspend elections. Any district court would rule against it immediately. He told me the last thing we need right now is misinformation.
He does not understand the difference between what is legal and what is possible.
You want a real world example? Here is the blueprint.
The Weimar Republic, 1933. Germany had a constitution. A damn good one actually. Democratic elections. Separation of powers. Civil liberties. Independent judiciary. All the things my pundit friend thinks will protect us.
Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution allowed the president to take emergency measures to restore public safety and order. It was meant for genuine emergencies. Temporary measures. Everyone agreed it had limits.
Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January 1933. Legally. Through the existing constitutional process. He did not seize power with tanks. He was handed power by politicians who thought they could control him.
One month later, the Reichstag burns. Nobody knows who really did it. Does not matter. Hitler convinces President Hindenburg to invoke Article 48. The Reichstag Fire Decree suspends freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assembly, privacy of communications, and protection against unlawful searches and seizures. All “temporarily” of course. For public safety.
Two weeks after that, the Enabling Act passes. Legally. Through the Reichstag. With a two thirds majority because the opposition members were already being arrested or intimidated into staying home. This act allowed Hitler to enact laws without parliamentary consent. For four years. Renewable.
The courts still existed. The constitution was never formally repealed. Germany remained technically a republic until 1945. On paper, all the protections my pundit friend mentioned were still there. They just stopped meaning anything because the people with guns stopped caring what the paper said.
Hindenburg’s advisors told him not to worry. Hitler was a loudmouth. The institutions would constrain him. The courts would rule against overreach. The constitution was clear about the limits of power.
Hindenburg was dead within eighteen months. Hitler merged the presidency with the chancellorship the day he died. Nobody stopped him. The constitution said he could not do that. He did it anyway.
“Not possible” said the German lawyers in 1933. “The constitution is clear.”
Twelve years and sixty million dead bodies later, they found out the difference between what is legal and what is possible.
So when someone tells you it cannot happen here, ask them what makes America so special. Ask them why the same patterns that have toppled every other republic in history will magically stop at our borders. Ask them if they have read a single history book or if they just trust that the people currently consolidating power will voluntarily stop when they reach some invisible line.
The Constitution is a piece of paper. It only works when the people with guns agree to follow it.
A Word for the Clutched Pearls
I already know what is coming in my inbox after this one.
Some of you are going to unsubscribe because I criticized Trump. Go ahead. You were never actually reading anyway. You were just looking for someone to validate what you already believed and I am not in that business.
Some of you are going to unsubscribe because I criticized the protestors and the armed patrols. Go ahead. Same deal. If you need a cheerleader there are plenty of other substacks that will tell you what you want to hear.
And some of you, I can already see the emails forming in your heads, some of you are going to write me angry letters because I said “fuck” in this article.
Are you serious right now?
Federal agents tear gassed a six month old American baby until she screamed in agony, her undeveloped lungs burning from military grade chemical weapons, and you are upset about my language?
A tiny citizen of this country who cannot even crawl yet got chemically assaulted by her own government and the word “fuck” is what crossed the line for you?
Do not let the door hit you on the way out. I do not want readers who care more about decorum than babies getting gassed. I do not want subscribers who clutch their pearls at profanity while nodding along to fascism. If that is you then we were never going to see eye to eye anyway and your departure will improve the average reading comprehension of my audience.
Cut the Strings or Your Grandchildren Will Wear Them as Chains
Turn off the television. I mean it. Right now. Walk over to whatever device is feeding cable news into your brain and turn it off. Fox News is not your friend. CNN is not your friend. MSNBC is not your friend. They are owned by billionaires who have spent decades playing a long game to split this country into tribes that hate each other so much they will never notice who is actually robbing them blind.
The woke movement did not happen organically. It was engineered to make Democrats fight about pronouns and trigger Republicans into apoplectic rage over things that affect almost nobody in their daily lives. While you were arguing about bathrooms, they were consolidating power.
MAGA did not stay organic. It was captured and redirected. What started as a genuine populist movement against corrupt elites became a vehicle for different corrupt elites to ride into power. While you were cheering for the wall, they were building a surveillance state that makes the Patriot Act look quaint.
You are not on a team. You are on a leash. And both leashes lead to the same hand.
I am not pro illegal immigration. I do not want open borders. I want people to follow the process like my ancestors did and your ancestors did. But I also do not want masked paramilitary thugs with skull faces gassing American babies and calling it patriotism. Those two positions are not contradictory. That is not some radical centrist take. That is basic human decency combined with functioning border policy.
You want to deport people who came here illegally? Fine. Scoop them up, put them on a bus, send them home. You do not need a private army with a budget larger than every other federal law enforcement agency combined. You do not need alligator moats and skull masks and chemical weapons deployed against US citizens. You do not need any of this theatrical bullshit unless the goal was never immigration enforcement in the first place.
Unless the goal was always control.
And it was.
What Your Grandchildren Will Inherit If You Do Not Wake Up
You will not own any of it.
Your grandchildren will not own any of it.
They will stand in bread lines for five hours in the freezing cold waiting for a moldy loaf while their betters fly overhead in private jets laughing about how easy it was to convince an entire nation that tyranny was freedom and slavery was patriotism. They will live in apartments so poorly maintained that diseases we eradicated decades ago will come roaring back because healthcare is for the productive citizens, not the useless eaters. They will watch their children die of things that were curable when you were young and they will wonder why grandma and grandpa did not do anything when there was still time.
This is not hyperbole. This is not conspiracy theory. This is what happens every single time a population allows authoritarian consolidation of power.
It happened in Russia. It happened in Germany. It happened in China. It happened in Cuba and Venezuela and a dozen other countries where people thought it could never happen there. It is happening here, right now, today, while you argue with strangers on the internet about which team is winning.
Nobody is winning except the people who own both teams.
Stop arguing. Start seeing.
The Part Where I Ask You to Do Something
I do not have a cable news budget. I do not have billionaire backers. Lily and I are doing this from a home office with nothing but a Substack account and a willingness to say what everyone else is too bought or too scared to say. We are being censored on every platform. Our reach has been throttled. Our subscriber growth has flatlined even as more people read than ever before because the algorithm has decided that what we write is dangerous.
They are right. It is dangerous. Truth is always dangerous to people who rule by lies.
If this article made something click in your brain, share it. Not because I need the ego boost but because there are people in your life who need to see that there is another option besides the two fake choices being shoved down their throats. Share it with your Republican uncle who thinks Trump can do no wrong. Share it with your Democrat cousin who thinks burning down a Starbucks is revolutionary praxis. Share it with anyone who still has the capacity to think for themselves.
And if you have the means, become a paid subscriber. Not because I want your money but because Lily and I cannot keep doing this for free forever and the people who want to shut us up know that. Every paid subscription is a middle finger to the machine that is trying to bury us.
I am running the 50% off for a full year special AND the 20% off for life special together. Pick what one you can afford.
This is happening whether you participate or not. Whether you are twenty years old or eighty. Whether you voted red or blue or not at all. The only question left is whether you are going to do something about it or sit there scrolling and hoping someone else saves you.
Nobody is coming to save you…
We have to save ourselves.
And we have to start right now.
“Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Matthew 25:40
That baby in Minneapolis was one of the least of these. Six months old. American citizen.
Gassed by its own government while people who call themselves Christians cheer for the fascist thugs that did it.
What we do next determines what kind of country your grandchildren inherit. Whether they grow up free or whether they grow up in chains wondering why nobody did anything when there was still time.
Very good. In fact, there's only one minor point on which I'm inclined to disagree:
I don't think that the technocrats are "confessing" when they openly telegraph their tactics and objectives.
I think it's more likely some occult power theory or, more mundane, that it gives them a kick to expose themselves and watch people squirm in distress and powerlessness. Like a flasher on public transport.
Enjoy your Substack, I find them very eye opening. Let’s say we stop arguing and start seeing, now what do we start DOING?!