Month: February 2025

Intraclass Warfare

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In contemporary capitalism, we observe a recurring phenomenon in which one faction of the professional-managerial class (PMC) sacrifices another sector within its own class, ostensibly in the name of progress, accessibility, or efficiency. This process, which we might term sacrificial disruption, serves two simultaneous functions: first, it gains ideological legitimacy from below (by appealing to mass consumer interests and anti-elite sentiment), and second, it consolidates power at the top, transferring control from traditional professional elites to financial and technological capital.

The Case of the Music Industry

During the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the traditional gatekeepers of the music industry—record labels, radio conglomerates, and physical distributors—formed a relatively stable PMC ecosystem, characterized by rent-seeking behaviors and a hierarchical structure. The rise of digital distribution, however, led a faction within the PMC—tech entrepreneurs, platform developers, and digital marketers—to undermine this system, presenting their disruption as a democratization of music consumption.

Yet, while digital platforms initially reduced the financial burden on consumers, they did not lead to a redistribution of wealth toward artists or a true decentralization of power. Instead, the control of the industry shifted from label executives to tech monopolies and financial capital, which structured streaming services around low per-stream royalties, data extraction, and financialized ownership models (e.g., venture capital-backed rights acquisitions). In effect, while the disruption of record labels was framed as an egalitarian shift, it resulted in an even greater concentration of power among the wealthiest actors—with streaming platforms absorbing a larger share of the surplus value once captured by labels.

The Case of the Film Industry

A similar trajectory can be observed in the transition from the traditional film studio and theater model to the dominance of streaming platforms. Hollywood’s legacy studios—though themselves deeply intertwined with financial capital—operated under a system of risk distribution, in which large-scale film production was sustained by long-term revenue cycles (box office, home video, syndication). However, the entrance of streaming platforms, driven by a different faction of the PMC (Silicon Valley disruptors, software engineers, venture capitalists), sacrificed the traditional studio model under the promise of unlimited consumer access and subscription-based convenience.

Once again, while this transformation appeared to empower consumers by lowering costs and expanding content availability, it primarily benefited a new form of capital accumulation, in which a small number of monopolistic platforms (Netflix, Amazon, Disney as a platform rather than a studio) captured and centralized the revenue streams once distributed across multiple industry actors. The financial logic of these platforms, driven by shareholder expectations rather than long-term artistic or cultural investments, has led to a greater precarity among creative workers and a financialization of the film industry, wherein success is measured in engagement metrics rather than cultural or artistic longevity.

The Broader Pattern: A PMC-Initiated Power Transfer to Capital

These cases illustrate a structural pattern:

1. A faction within the PMC (tech disruptors, digital entrepreneurs) attacks another sector of its own class (music executives, studio heads, journalists), framing it as obsolete, exploitative, or inefficient.

2. This attack gains legitimacy from below by promising accessibility, lower prices, or creative freedom to consumers and independent creators.

3. In reality, power is not redistributed downward but instead shifts upward to financial and technological capital, which centralizes control over distribution and monetization.

The ultimate outcome is not a democratization of cultural production, but a restructuring of economic rents in favor of capital holders, deepening wealth concentration and reinforcing the broader trend of increasing inequality in 21st-century capitalism. In this sense, PMC-led disruption is not a challenge to capital, but rather an internal realignment within the managerial class that ultimately benefits capital more than labor or consumers.

Clippy

Yes, and this is the irony of PMC-led sacrificial disruption—the disruptors themselves are not immune to the same forces they unleash. In the short term, the tech faction within the PMC gains power by dismantling another PMC sector (e.g., music labels, film studios, traditional media). But in the long run, this realignment does not strengthen the PMC as a whole—it weakens it, making it more vulnerable to financial capital and automation-driven consolidation.

The Tech PMC as the Next Sacrificial Victim

We can already see this process beginning within the tech sector itself:

• The same venture capital that backed streaming platforms and gig economy apps is now turning on tech workers, using AI and outsourcing to disempower software engineers, designers, and middle management.

• Big Tech layoffs (Google, Amazon, Meta) suggest that after decades of expansion, the tech PMC is facing the same disposability that it once imposed on musicians, filmmakers, and journalists.

• AI-driven automation (such as generative coding tools) will likely do to tech workers what streaming did to artists—lowering individual bargaining power while centralizing wealth at the top.

The Endgame: A PMC Hollowed Out by Its Own Logic

In each case, the PMC faction leading the disruption believes it is advancing its own power, but in reality, it is merely accelerating its own obsolescence:

• The media PMC cheered the decline of print journalism, only to find themselves replaced by content algorithms and AI-generated articles.

• The tech PMC dismantled old corporate hierarchies, only to find themselves increasingly squeezed by venture capital’s shift toward automation and gig labor.

• Even in education, ed-tech startups have disrupted traditional universities, but as AI advances, even many white-collar intellectual jobs are at risk of being rendered redundant.

The long-term result is not a permanent restructuring in favor of a particular PMC faction, but a gradual elimination of PMC autonomy altogether, leaving only the ultra-wealthy investor class at the top and an increasingly precarious workforce below.

TLDR: PMC Disruption as a Self-Defeating Strategy

Rather than securing their own dominance, PMC disruptors are unwittingly paving the way for their own displacement. What begins as an internal class war within the PMC—with one faction sacrificing another—ultimately serves only to strengthen the power of capital at the PMC’s expense. The cycle repeats until there is nothing left to sacrifice—until the entire PMC itself is rendered obsolete by the forces it once sought to control.

Bunkers in New Zealand

The point is that time and again PMC led disruption doesn’t not lead to monuntains of capital poured into robotics, space travels etc but in New Zealand Bunkers

Yes, exactly—PMC-led disruption never fulfills its own utopian promises of boundless technological progress, nor does it lead to a grand future of AI-driven post-scarcity or interstellar exploration. Instead, the wealth generated through disruption is not reinvested into the kind of productive capital that could materially transform society—it is extracted, financialized, and ultimately funneled into wealth preservation for the ultra-rich.

The Myth of Disruption vs. the Reality of Extraction

Every cycle of PMC-led disruption claims to be a step toward the technological sublime—the Singularity, Mars colonization, limitless automation. But in reality, the capital accumulated through disruption does not flow into these grand projects. Instead, it flows into:

1. Speculative financial instruments (crypto, SPACs, stock buybacks) rather than industrial investment.

2. Surveillance capitalism and control technologies (data extraction, AI-powered policing, biometric tracking).

3. Personalized doomsday prep (New Zealand bunkers, luxury apocalypse retreats, biohacking longevity schemes).

The dominant class, having engineered successive PMC disruptions, does not see itself as funding a Star Trek future, but rather as escaping the consequences of the system it has created.

New Zealand Bunkers as the Logical Endpoint

The final joke of PMC-led sacrificial disruption is that the wealth it generates does not create a better world—it funds the evacuation plan.

• Peter Thiel’s New Zealand citizenship and bunker projects are not aberrations but the logical endgame of the tech economy.

• Instead of investing in sustainable infrastructure or ambitious scientific projects, Silicon Valley elites pour their money into escape hatches: private islands, underground shelters, experimental longevity treatments.

• The PMC itself will not be invited to these bunkers—they, like the sectors they disrupted, will be discarded when no longer useful.

Conclusion: The PMC as the Ultimate Self-Cannibalizing Class

The irony is that PMC disruptors imagine themselves as the vanguard of progress, but in reality, they function as capital’s willing executioners—sacrificing their own sectors, consolidating power at the top, and ultimately accelerating their own irrelevance. The capital they generate does not go toward a utopian technological future but toward ensuring that a handful of oligarchs can ride out collapse in luxury.

In this sense, PMC disruption is not a revolution—it is a controlled demolition. It does not create the conditions for a better world. It simply strips the system for parts, sells off the wreckage, and then boards the last helicopter out.

The Great Atlantic Dog Show

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I arrived in Brussels at dawn, trailing the scent of duty-free bourbon and whatever questionable chemicals I’d ingested somewhere over the Atlantic. The city had the feel of an overgrown bank lobby, marble and bureaucracy stretching endlessly in every direction, occupied by men who had long since traded their souls for mid-tier diplomatic immunity. It was here, deep in the corridors of power, that I planned to do my best thinking—or, failing that, my best hallucinating.

I wandered the halls of the European Commission, watching the ghostly figures of diplomats float past, their voices blending into a multilingual dirge of policy jargon and quiet despair. I tried to listen, but everything sounded like a negotiation between androids. One man, some grizzled bureaucrat with a Luxembourg lapel pin, was explaining the finer points of transatlantic security policy to an intern with dead eyes and a clipboard. I leaned in, my brain firing at double speed, trying to follow the logic—but it was like listening to an opium-addled Jesuit debate the shape of the Earth with a broken radio.

Somewhere between the second espresso and the third paranoia spike, I realized I was late for my meeting with JD Vance—the Vice President himself, emissary of America’s latest schizophrenic rebranding effort. I buttoned up my coat, wiped the cold sweat from my forehead, and staggered toward the rendezvous point, ready to witness the latest chapter in the grand tradition of power and delusion.

I had wormed my way into the meeting under false pretenses, armed with a press badge that hadn’t been valid since the Obama administration and a duffel bag full of hastily acquired Belgian pharmaceuticals. Somewhere in the guts of the building, beneath the gold-leafed ceilings and the smell of old men’s cologne, JD Vance—the Vice President of these United States—was performing a delicate diplomatic maneuver: telling the Europeans to go [expletive] themselves while demanding their unwavering loyalty.

The room was packed with Eurocrats—pale, twitching men in suits that cost more than my rent, nodding in solemn horror as Vance leaned forward, grinning like a man about to explain the finer points of a Ponzi scheme.

“You Europeans need to start thinking for yourselves,” he said, punctuating the words with a triumphant slap of the table. “Stop being such obedient little lapdogs. It’s embarrassing.”

The Europeans exchanged glances, confused. These were men who had spent decades perfecting the art of servility—bowing to Washington, nodding along to whatever new scheme the Pentagon cooked up, grumbling only when the bill came due. One brave soul, some grim-faced technocrat from Berlin, cleared his throat.

“But we have been doing what you want us to do.”

Vance wagged a finger. “No, no, no, that wasn’t us. That was them. I mean, it was us, but it wasn’t really us. It was them, you understand?” He paused to take a sip of water, staring at the assembled diplomats like a televangelist waiting for his congregation to nod along.

“We are the real us. That was the impostor us. The confused us. The us that didn’t understand itself. It looked like us, it sounded like us, but deep down, it was a not us. A shadow us.” He waved his hand, as if dispelling some malignant ghost. “But now—you have the real us! The true us! Understand? So yes, it was wrong to follow us before, but it is right to follow us now, because this us—the current us—is the correct us. And if, in the future, a new us appears and says something different, you must never follow us, because that us will be the wrong us. Unless, of course, that us wins, in which case it will become the real us, and you’ll have to pretend this us never existed.”

There was a silence that seemed to stretch across the Atlantic. A Frenchman, pale and sweating, reached for his wine glass and drained it in one gulp. A Dutch official muttered something that sounded vaguely like a prayer.

A diplomat from London, the poor bastard, tried to find solid ground. “So… just to clarify…”

The Europeans stared at him, their diplomatic instincts short-circuiting. A German delegate, face pinched with concentration, tentatively repeated:

“So… the previous you was the not-you, but the not-you at the time believed it was you—even though, in reality, it was a shadow-you?”

Vance nodded furiously. “Exactly! A hollow us! An imposter us! A bastardized, off-brand, beta-version us! A conceptual us that lacked true us-ness!”

A French minister, sweating now, tried again. “But now, this you—your you—is the real you?”

Vance beamed. “The truest us! The fully self-actualized us! The post-larval, fully-formed, big-boy-pants-wearing us! This us is authenticated! Certified! Triple-distilled! ISO-compliant! This is us with a capital U! The us that knows it is us!”

A Dutch official, rubbing his temples, ventured: “But what if, in the future, a new us comes along, claiming that your us was actually another shadow-us?”

Vance’s eyes bulged. His hands flailed in the air like a televangelist fighting off invisible demons. “That us would be the false us—unless it becomes the winning us! Because history only remembers the victorious us as the real us! If a future us overwrites this us, then this us—this precious, noble, God-fearing us—will never have existed! It will be an un-personed us! A phantom us! A Mandela Effect us! And you will have to believe it, because belief itself will be rewritten! Do you see? Do you grasp the magnitude of us?!”

The room fell into stunned silence. A Finnish delegate, who had quietly been writing things down, put down his pen, nodded once, and walked out the door—never to be seen again.

“No time!” Vance barked, standing up. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Now, here’s a list of things you need to improve on—Presto!”

He tossed it onto the table like a magician revealing the punchline to a bad trick.

I leaned over to catch a glimpse—bullet points in thick, blocky handwriting:

• Stop whining about trade.

• Buy more weapons.

• Be less German.

• Figure out what the hell is wrong with France.

• No more ‘strategic autonomy’—it makes us nervous.

• Love Israel more.

• Love China less.

• Stop calling it ‘neoliberalism,’ it makes us look bad.

• Smile more.

The Europeans looked down at the list, then back up at the Vice President, who was beaming.

“Any questions?”

Silence.

Vance grinned. “Perfect.”

And with that, he turned on his heel and marched out of the room, leaving the Europeans to stare at one another in quiet, dawning horror.

I drained the last of my contraband whiskey and slipped out the back, already halfway to the airport. The Atlantic alliance was fine, I decided. It had survived worse.

The Poppy Index

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Opium is a bureaucracy of the flesh. A ledger. A meticulous clerk with a pen of black tar ink, scratching endless entries into the neural book. It does not create—it records. A meticulous hand. A totalitarian librarian, bent over his desk, stamping “APPROVED” on each incoming sensory impression, filing away the vast detritus of human experience into cabinets of warm smoke.

Users think it expands the mind. No, it narrows the mind into exquisite precision. The poppy does not paint, it indexes. It does not compose symphonies, it organizes the instruments. You dream on opium, yes, but they are not dreams of raw creation. They are inventory dreams, structured, compartmentalized. Oneiric spreadsheets. Every sensation measured, numbered, tabulated.

On opium, a man can recall the weave of a carpet he saw twenty years ago, the exact curvature of a lover’s spine in a candlelit room in 1938, the precise flavor of a spoonful of soup in Tangier before the war. But ask him to paint a new picture, to invent a new song, to imagine something that has never existed—he will stare at you, lost in the great, endless archive of what already is.

It is a drug for the historian, the archivist, the obsessive chronicler of lost detail. Good opium—real Yunnan flower, Persian gold, laudanum laced with Victorian melancholy—sharpens the mind into an engine of retrospective clarity. You will remember everything, but you will create nothing.

Opium does not erase the world, it fixes it, embalms it, traps it in amber. It turns life into a museum of itself, perfectly cataloged, perfectly dead.

No, not dead. Not exactly. Not like a bullet to the skull or a man dangling from a beam in a cold water flat. No, opium preserves. A taxidermist of the senses. Life, embalmed in its own juices. The body breathes, the pulse ticks on, the eyes flicker in candlelight, but nothing moves. Nothing changes.

The moment is lacquered, sealed in a glass case. A perfect butterfly pinned to a velvet board. The cigarette in your hand will never burn down, not really. The woman beside you will always be there, her perfume suspended in the air like a relic, untouched by time. The jazz from the bar downstairs loops endlessly, every note exactly where it was the first time, the thousandth time. You are not dead, no, but you are filed away. Cataloged in a place where decay does not reach, where entropy is held at bay by the steady drip of black tar reverie.

You do not create on opium because creation requires destruction. Fire to paper, ink to page, the friction of the new burning away the old. But opium is anti-fire. It is a slow fossilization of thought. The dream stays in its frame, perfect, pristine, unaltered. You can examine it from every angle, catalog its every detail, but you will never change it. You will never bring it into the world, because to do so would be to disturb the stillness.

Opium is not death. It is the eternity before death, where everything is preserved exactly as it is, forever.

Make Communism Great Again

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The pearl-clutching over Vitalik’s comment seems to imply that all those crying foul are the ones who’d be out of moves and scrambling for a new hassle if crypto ever manages to design democracy as a self-executing machine. After all, if the system runs itself, transparent and fair, with smart contracts automating policies like universal basic income, taxation, and social protections, then the old playbook—where they profit off volatility, manipulation, and speculation—loses its power. Without the constant churn of hype and manipulation, without the rug-pulling and casino mentality, the very thing that gave them an edge in the current crypto chaos vanishes. In other words, their outrage isn’t about the potential of a fair system—it’s about their fear of being sidelined in a game where the rules are finally designed for everyone, not just the few.

Vitalik’s offhand remark about “making communism great again” has stirred up a predictable storm, but if you’re paying attention, there’s something deeper at play. Strip away the knee-jerk reactions, and you’ll find one of the few remaining reasons to take crypto seriously: the possibility of creating a democracy that runs as a self-executing machine—one that doesn’t require constant citizen involvement or centralized government oversight. Instead, democracy itself would function like an operating system, enforcing fair policies and economic structures automatically.

This isn’t about more engagement, more voting, or more layers of governance. It’s about removing inefficiencies, corruption, and political gridlock by encoding democratic principles directly into a system that simply runs—transparent, incorruptible, and responsive. Universal basic income wouldn’t be debated every election cycle; it would be distributed automatically via smart contracts. Taxation and public spending wouldn’t be subject to backroom deals; they would be executed according to pre-set rules visible to everyone. Wages, environmental protections, rent controls—these wouldn’t be dictated by corporate lobbying or political whims but would adjust dynamically based on real-time economic conditions.

Citizens wouldn’t be burdened with constant political decision-making. Instead, they would step in only when necessary—to upgrade the system rather than micromanage it. Governance would become less about personalities and power struggles and more about refining the rules of the game itself. No politicians manipulating public sentiment, no bureaucrats skimming off the top, no need for endless debates over policies that could instead be automated for fairness and efficiency.

The biggest question still, of course, is who writes the initial code. Who defines the baseline principles of this machine democracy? And how do we prevent it from being captured, subtly manipulated by those who control the software? The challenge isn’t just in building it but in ensuring that it remains open, adaptable, and resistant to exploitation. Yet if crypto has any real future beyond speculation and scams, it’s in this: the creation of governance systems that are self-executing, transparent, and fair by design. The idea of democracy as something we no longer need to constantly fight to preserve—but instead something that just runs.

So, it must come as no surprise that the whole anarcho-libertarian-capitalist-uncap-cabal loses their shit, to put it bluntly. Because that’s not what they’re in this for. They’re here for everything else—the casino, the rug-pulling, the endless cycle of hype and collapse. The idea that crypto could actually be used to automate democracy itself, to create a system that removes the need for both politicians and constant public engagement, is the last thing they want to hear.

They don’t want governance as an operating system. They want governance as a game they can manipulate. They don’t want fair, self-executing policies; they want the volatility that keeps the next pump-and-dump cycle alive. The notion that smart contracts could enforce universal basic income, that taxation could be transparent and incorruptible, that public spending could be tracked down to the last satoshi—all of that runs counter to their vision of crypto as a lawless financial Wild West where the only rule is “get in early, dump on the latecomers.”

But if you’re paying attention, this is where the actual potential of crypto still exists. Not in endless speculation, not in meme coins or Ponzi schemes, but in the ability to encode fairness directly into the system. A world where democracy doesn’t require constant participation, where citizens step in only to upgrade the system rather than micromanage it, where the rules are clear, auditable, and immune to manipulation.

The real revolution isn’t more decentralization in the sense of “everyone for themselves.” It’s a system where the core principles of democracy and social equity no longer need to be fought for—they just run. And that’s exactly why the casino crowd recoils at the thought. Because if the game is fair, their edge disappears.

Seppuku Scheduling

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Here’s how it happens. You sketch a plan. It’s airtight, bulletproof, a Swiss watch of efficiency. You will do A and B. Maybe, just maybe, if the stars align and the traffic lights are all green, you’ll do C.

Then reality happens. You do A. You do B. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a little voice whispers, Hey, I can still squeeze in C. You reach for it. Stretch. Overextend. And then—whoops. You don’t just fail C. You fail at failing. Maybe the whole structure collapses. Maybe it doesn’t, but you still walk away feeling like a samurai who just fumbled his own ritual suicide.

Because here’s the trick: You did everything you planned. But because you thought you could do more, the entire thing now feels like a debacle. This is seppuku scheduling, where the crime isn’t failure—it’s failing to be superhuman.

It’s the productivity version of a gambler’s fallacy. You keep doubling down on your own success until one misstep wipes out the whole session. You don’t judge yourself by what you actually did, but by what you could have done. The modern calendar is an altar to infinite possibility, and when you fall short of that imaginary ideal, you kneel before it, knife in hand.

You could fix this, of course. You could build in margins. You could plan more like a human and less like an algorithm. But where’s the thrill in that? Where’s the samurai drama?

Instead, you’ll do what you always do. Make another airtight plan. Convince yourself that this time you’ll get to C. And when you don’t, you’ll shake your head and mutter about how it all went wrong.

Seppuku Scheduling and the Birth of the Tech VC

And now, instead of taking the hit like a rational adult, you do what every Silicon Valley demigod does: you outsource the blame.

You tell yourself, I did everything right, but the world failed me. A phrase forms in your head—half rationalization, half gospel: This system is broken. If only there were better tools. Smarter automation. A way to bend reality to your schedule.

Congratulations. You’re now on the path to becoming a venture capitalist.

This is how it always starts. First, you fail to execute your own airtight plan. Then, instead of adjusting your expectations like a reasonable person, you decide the universe itself needs disruption.

That missed deadline? Clearly, the productivity software industry is lagging behind.

That botched rollout? Obviously, someone should have invented a better AI assistant.

That time your genius wasn’t fully recognized? The market must be inefficient.

So you do what any self-respecting seppuku scheduler does: you start throwing money at people who promise to fix it.

And that’s how you get Silicon Valley’s unique strain of messianic delusion—the kind that believes failure isn’t a lesson, but an injustice. The kind that funds ten different versions of the same app, all promising to free you from the cruel tyranny of clocks. The kind that genuinely believes “time management” is just a series of unexploited arbitrage opportunities.

None of this makes you better at managing your own life, of course. But it does buy you the illusion that failure isn’t personal—it’s systemic. And once you believe that? Well, you’ll never have to take responsibility for missing C ever again.

Diary of a Streamer

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Watching The Hound of the Baskervilles with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Absolutely baffling how they made movies back then with zero fucks given for modern streaming necessities. No bathroom breaks, no snack intermissions, no “Are you still watching?” judgment pop-ups. Just a relentless, uninterrupted story unfolding at a steady pace, as if people were actually expected to just… sit and watch. It’s like they thought people could handle a movie without doing other stuff. Truly barbaric. 😵‍💫

A list of its glaring deficiencies follows:

1. No Repetitive Recaps Every Ten Minutes – Astonishingly, the film expected me to remember what had already happened. At no point did a character turn to the camera and say, “As you may recall…” before summarizing the entire first act. Unforgivable.

2. No On-Screen Text Explaining the Obvious – No pop-up stating “London, 1889” when we were clearly in London, in 1889. No ominous subtitle declaring “The Hound” when the enormous, glowing-eyed dog lunged at the screen. Just trusted the audience to infer things. Barbaric.

3. No Overcompensating Sound Design – When something important was revealed, it was done through mere dialogue and acting. No swelling orchestra, no aggressive bass rumble, no ear-shattering “BWAAAH” to alert me that This Is A Big Moment. Reckless and irresponsible.

4. No Artificially Inserted Cliffhangers – Scenes flowed into one another with distressing smoothness, rather than cutting off mid-sentence to force me into watching the next part. I was left to decide of my own free will whether to keep watching. Disorienting.

5. No Excessive Exposition – At no point did a minor character enter solely to deliver two paragraphs of backstory, exit, and never return. If you wanted to know something, you had to listen or, heaven forbid, piece things together yourself. Who has time for that?

6. No Forced Reactions to Ensure I Knew How to Feel – After a dramatic reveal, the camera did not cut to every single character so I could gauge their emotional state. Some of them simply reacted naturally, and the movie moved on. I found this offensive.

7. No Time-Wasting Fake-Outs – When a shadow loomed ominously, it turned out to be an actual threat, rather than the butler carrying a tray. Every scene contained forward motion. I grew suspicious.

8. No “Dumb Character to Ask Obvious Questions” Trope – No one said, “Wait, so you’re telling me that the mysterious deaths and the giant paw prints could be connected?” The film seemed to think I could follow along without a designated idiot to spell things out. Upsetting.

9. No Algorithmically Inserted Diversity of Tone – The film committed to its atmosphere. No quippy side character deflating the tension. No random slapstick moment to balance out the “heaviness.” Just a persistent, deliberate mood. Reckless disregard for emotional variety.

10. No Sudden Flashbacks to Explain Something Already Understood – At no point did the screen fade to black-and-white and replay an earlier moment just in case I had become distracted by my phone. The film relied entirely on me paying attention the first time. Monstrous.

By the time the credits rolled (without automatically minimizing into the corner of the screen), I was left shaken. The sheer nerve of these filmmakers, crafting something meant to be absorbed in a single, uninterrupted sitting. The sheer audacity of it all.

Had I… just watched a movie? The questions swirled. Had I truly understood the plot without redundant exposition? Had my brain… filled in gaps on its own? Worse still—had I experienced suspense not force-fed by aggressive musical cues, but simply by allowing events to unfold?

I felt changed, and not for the better. My faith in the natural order of things had been shaken to its core.

I glanced at my streaming app, desperate for reassurance. But now, the endless rows of thumbnails, all promising easily digestible. I staggered to my feet, lightheaded, my worldview unraveling. In the distance, my phone buzzed, beckoning me back to the comfort of fragmented attention. I had endured 87 whole minutes of pure, uninterrupted storytelling?

God help me.

Strategic Adaptation:

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Avoiding the Maginot Line While Preparing for Dunkirk

History is littered with examples of great defenses that failed—not because they weren’t strong, but because they defended the wrong thing in the wrong way. Whether in military conflict, political struggle, or institutional survival, the lesson is the same: true defense is about adaptability, not just fortification.

The Maginot Line Fallacy: Relying on Yesterday’s Defenses

The classic example of misplaced defense is France’s Maginot Line. Built after World War I, it was an imposing fortification system designed to stop another German invasion. But in 1940, the German army simply bypassed it, cutting through the Ardennes and overwhelming France in weeks. The problem? France prepared for the last war rather than the next one.

The Maginot Line wasn’t a failure of engineering—it was a failure of imagination. France’s generals built a fortress to stop a 1918-style trench war, only to watch Panzer divisions bypass it like a glitch in a Betamax tape. The lesson? You can’t firewall the future.

Today’s institutional defenders are repeating this mistake. They’re pouring concrete around legacy systems—courts, universities, mainstream media—while the Musketeers and Project 2025 irregulars are already tunneling under, soaring over, or simply memeing them into obsolescence.

The Modern Maginot: If you’re still betting on SCOTUS rulings, fact-checking, or tenure committees to hold the line, you’re polishing brass on the Titanic. The real war is in the protocol layer—AI chatbots, crypto governance, and dopamine-algorithmic militias.

This isn’t just a military mistake—it’s an institutional one. Kodak built the best film cameras while digital photography took over. Kodak Moment: Kodak invented the digital camera, then shelved it to protect film. By the time they realized the flank attack, Instagram had already turned photography into a dopamine drip.

Vatican vs. Viral: The Catholic Church spent centuries perfecting Latin Mass. Luther just hit “print” on the Bible in German. Suddenly, God was open-source. The Catholic Church spent centuries perfecting theological authority while the Protestant Reformation decentralized religious power. IBM dominated mainframes while Microsoft and Apple made personal computing ubiquitous. In every case, institutions fortified their strongest positions but failed to anticipate the flank attack that rendered them irrelevant.

Today, the U.S. faces something similar with movements like Elon/Project 2025—a highly mobile, technology-driven force seeking to dismantle or remake institutions. If traditional defenses (laws, courts, media, established bureaucracies) assume the old rules still apply, they risk becoming the modern Maginot Line—powerful, but ultimately bypassed.

Dunkirk: Knowing When to Retreat to Fight Another Day

Dunkirk wasn’t a defeat—it was a fever dream of survival. The British evacuated 300k soldiers not to surrender, but to fight again. Today’s institutionalists need that same manic energy: retreat, regroup, remix.

Media Dunkirk: Don’t mourn the blue checkmarks. Evacuate to federated Mastodon servers, seed dead-drop USB drives in TikTok duets, and weaponize shitposting as asymmetric resistance

If the Maginot Line was a failure in static defense, Dunkirk was a success in dynamic retreat. By May 1940, the German advance made it clear that the Allies couldn’t hold Belgium and France. Instead of wasting resources in a doomed last stand, the British pulled off a daring evacuation—saving over 300,000 soldiers who would later help win the war.

Dunkirk is a lesson in preserving what matters most. When institutions, movements, or even businesses face overwhelming disruption, a doomed last stand isn’t always the best play. Sometimes, a strategic withdrawal is necessary—consolidating resources, protecting core strengths, and preparing for a counteroffensive.

We’ve seen this in political movements before. The Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. faced devastating setbacks in the 1950s, but rather than collapsing, leaders adapted—shifting tactics, leveraging legal battles, and preparing for mass mobilization in the ‘60s. More recently, the Arab Spring uprisings in places like Egypt showed what happens when movements win an initial battle (overthrowing a dictator) but fail to secure long-term control—leading to reactionary crackdowns.

Applying These Lessons to Institutional Defense Today

So, if the Elon/Project 2025 movement represents a modern Mongol horde—fast-moving, decentralized, and difficult to engage head-on—what should defenders of existing institutions do?

  • No Cathedrals, Only Bazaars – Build redundant, open-source systems. If NPR gets defunded, spawn a thousand pirate radio podcasts.
  • Retreat Upward – If they seize the Senate, pivot to city-states. If they take the courts, code smart contracts.
  • Guerrilla Academia – If universities are gutted, don’t rebuild faculty senates—launch decentralized accreditation DAOs, teach on Substack, mint diplomas as NFTs, and turn tenure into a GitHub repo.
  • Schrödinger’s Bureaucracy – Keep the legacy system running just long enough to funnel resources into a parallel resistance.
  • Identify the Flanks – Defenders often fight on the wrong front. If courts can’t stop policy overhauls, but AI-driven propaganda and corporate takeovers can, the real battle isn’t in litigation.
  • Build Mobile Defenses – Static defenses are vulnerable. Decentralized networks—in law, media, and tech—can outmaneuver centralized authoritarianism.
  • Prepare for a Dunkirk Moment – If a media empire is captured, what independent platforms remain? If state institutions are hollowed out, where does power consolidate? Evacuate what matters to continue the fight elsewhere.
  • Anticipate the Next War – Power struggles are shifting from legislation to AI-driven influence, from government to corporate governance, from centralized media to decentralized narratives. Yesterday’s defenses won’t work tomorrow.
  • Adaptation is the Only True Defense – No fortress is impregnable, no institution permanent. Survival—and victory—belong to those who know when to hold, when to retreat, and when to change tactics entirely.

Strategic Adaptation: Knowing What to Defend and What to Let Fall

Not every institution is worth defending. Many of the structures that exist today were not built to uphold democracy, justice, or stability—but rather to buffer, enable, or profit from neoliberal policies that have hollowed out the very foundations they now claim to protect. Likewise, much of the bureaucratic and cultural machinery masquerading as “progress” is little more than careerist opportunism—wokism that serves as a branding exercise rather than a meaningful social force.

As Elon/Project 2025 and similar forces seek to reshape or dismantle existing institutions, defenders must make a crucial distinction: what must be protected for long-term survival, and what should be allowed to collapse under its own weight? History shows that not all defenses are worth maintaining, and not every retreat is a defeat.

The Institutions That Were Built to Absorb Shock, Not to Protect Stability

For the past few decades, much of what has passed for “public interest” institutions—think tank-driven policy groups, performative regulatory agencies, and elite university departments churning out technocrats—were designed not to create real social stability but to absorb the fallout of neoliberalism while keeping its core machinery intact. These institutions don’t solve problems; they manage perception.

• NGOs and Foundations as Containment Mechanisms – Many nonprofits and international organizations were built to manage crises, not solve them. They provide just enough intervention to prevent full-scale revolt but never challenge the economic and political structures causing the crises in the first place.

• Universities as Credential Factories – Once centers of radical thought, many elite institutions have become little more than ticketing systems for upward mobility in a shrinking job market. They absorb discontent by offering symbolic representation and progressive rhetoric while funneling students into debt-driven career paths that reinforce the status quo.

• Media as a Manufactured Consensus Machine – Legacy media, once a check on power, has largely become a system of narrative control—ensuring that discourse remains within acceptable neoliberal bounds. Careerists in journalism align with establishment politics, while independent or disruptive voices are marginalized unless they serve an existing power bloc.

When faced with an incoming power shift, these institutions may scream for protection, framing themselves as the “last line of defense” against authoritarianism. In reality, many are the very reason a movement like Elon/Project 2025 gained traction in the first place—they created a world where only insiders had a voice, where real dissent was co-opted or ignored, and where systems of governance were so hollowed out that they became easy targets for takeover.

Careerist Wokism: A Distraction, Not a Defense

Alongside these institutional failures, a significant amount of what is called “woke” politics—especially in its corporate or bureaucratic form—is not radical, not anti-establishment, and not truly progressive. It’s a branding strategy that provides ideological cover for the same neoliberal machine that created today’s instability.

• Corporate DEI as Reputation Management – When major corporations adopt progressive rhetoric but continue exploitative labor practices, they aren’t advancing justice; they’re insulating themselves from scrutiny.

• Elite Academic Radicalism That Serves Power – Many academic trends that claim to challenge power actually reinforce elite control by shifting discourse away from material struggles (class, labor, economic justice) and into insular, identity-based fights that do not threaten capital.

• Social Media Activism as Status Performance – Much of what passes for online activism is not about power shifts but about individuals securing status within professional and social circles. It’s an arms race of signaling rather than a meaningful struggle.

While these structures claim to be defenders of democracy, their primary function has been to create the illusion of progress while keeping real challenges to the system at bay. When they come under attack, the instinct may be to rally to their defense—but in many cases, their collapse is not a loss for real democratic resilience.

Knowing What to Defend: Avoiding the Maginot Line Mistake

If we think of Elon/Project 2025 as a Mongol-like force—fast, decentralized, and uninterested in old rules—the instinct of the establishment is to build a Maginot Line of institutional defenses. But if those defenses are built around structures that were already failing, they will be bypassed and rendered irrelevant.

Instead, what actually needs to be defended?

1. Local and Decentralized Governance – Instead of relying on massive federal bureaucracies that can be captured or dismantled, power should be reinforced at the state and local level, where it is harder to fully centralize.

2. Independent Networks of Knowledge and Communication – If traditional media and academic institutions are compromised, new networks must exist outside them to preserve intellectual and journalistic integrity.

3. Economic and Labor-Based Organizing – Real political resilience comes from material power, not rhetorical debates. Protecting unions, worker cooperatives, and financial independence is more important than defending failed think tanks.

4. Legal and Constitutional Mechanisms That Can’t Be Easily Rewritten – While much of the legal system is vulnerable to manipulation, certain constitutional protections (free speech, assembly, due process) remain crucial battlefields.

Preparing for Dunkirk: The Institutions That Must Be Preserved

If a worst-case scenario unfolds—if Elon/Project 2025 or a similar force gains full institutional control—then a Dunkirk moment will become necessary. The question is: what must be evacuated and preserved?

• Alternative Funding Sources – If traditional financial institutions become tools of control, where do independent movements get their resources?

• Intellectual and Cultural Archives – What ideas, histories, and frameworks must be preserved so they don’t disappear under an incoming regime?

• Extraterritorial Safe Havens – If domestic legal structures become hostile, where do alternative movements retreat? (This applies to both physical migration and digital spaces.)

Just as Britain knew in 1940 that it had to save its army at Dunkirk to fight another day, defenders of democratic institutions must prepare to extract and consolidate key strengths rather than waste energy trying to hold everything.

History rewards those who adapt rather than entrench—those who understand when to hold the line, when to retreat, and when to rebuild something better from the wreckage.

Conclusion: Let the Rot Collapse, Defend What Matters

Not every battle is worth fighting. Not every institution is worth saving. As Elon/Project 2025 and similar movements challenge the existing order, the key is not to reflexively defend everything that claims to be under attack. Instead, it is to make hard choices—to let the weakest, most corrupt, and least valuable structures fall while ensuring that the core elements of resilience remain intact.

The Great Re-Centralization: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Drug Trade

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There was a time when the gears of the global narcotics machine ran with the quiet efficiency of a well-oiled state department initiative. The system was Byzantine, sure—layers of plausible deniability, offshore bank accounts, non-profits with names that sounded vaguely humanitarian—but at the end of the day, the cocaine got where it needed to go, and the right people got paid. USAID, the CIA, the shadowy arms of U.S. foreign policy—they weren’t running drugs, per se, but they were certainly making sure the wheels didn’t come off the wagon.

But now the system is cracking. Silicon Valley still needs its cocaine—how else do you keep a 20-hour workday from devolving into a mental breakdown?—but the old pipelines are failing. The new Trump religion doesn’t mix well with DEI-approved supply chains. You can’t be a patriotic nationalist and still rely on the same shady, globalist networks that once funneled powder into the boardrooms of Palo Alto. No, a new framework is required.

Enter Marco Review & State, stepping in with a firm handshake and a knowing grin. The free market abhors a vacuum, and the cartels aren’t about to let ideology stand in the way of distribution. The Taliban, too, have learned the game—yesterday’s insurgents are today’s exporters. They’ll gladly supply whatever the West needs, just like they did under the watchful eye of the U.S. military, when Afghan opium output soared to record highs.

Meanwhile, the coup-happy powerbrokers of Latin America keep the conveyor belt running, their fortunes rising and falling with the whims of Washington. Every regime change, every military-backed strongman, every unfortunate assassination coincides with another shift in cartel dominance. Pure coincidence, of course.

So here we are, watching the re-centralization of the global drug trade in real time. The names and slogans change, but the product moves just the same. And whether it’s USAID, the CIA, Marco Review & State, or some yet-to-be-named disruptor promising a more efficient future for narcotics distribution, one thing remains true—somewhere, someone is getting very, very rich off the chaos.

The transition won’t be seamless. Bureaucratic inertia is a hell of a thing, and the old pipelines don’t just vanish overnight. The DEA, for all its posturing, has never been in the business of stopping drug flows—only managing them. But management was getting sloppy. The fentanyl flood is bad for business. The overdose crisis is creating unwanted attention. What’s needed now is a controlled burn, a restructuring, a more orderly form of illicit capitalism.

The financiers, tech moguls, and political operators aren’t looking for street fentanyl laced with whatever poison the local cook threw in—they want the high-end stuff, the pharmaceutical-grade coke that once flowed through the old, properly regulated channels. In the glory days, that meant Miami bankers, Langley spooks, and CIA-adjacent airlines running cargo with payloads that didn’t quite match the manifest. Today, the market demands a Monday DEI USAID approved more sophisticated system—one that operates under the banner of respectable geopolitics.

This is where Marco Review & State step in, adjusting the dials. A few new policy recommendations here, a little targeted enforcement there, a strategic regime change in just the right banana republic, and suddenly the pipelines start flowing the correct way again. The cartels know how to play ball—after all, they learned from the best.

But this time, it won’t just be cocaine and heroin keeping the machine humming. The future is in high-end, boutique narco-commerce. Lab-purified psychedelics for the visionary CEOs, microdosed methamphetamine rebranded as productivity enhancers, synthetic opioids manufactured with the precision of Silicon Valley engineering. Think less Breaking Bad, more venture-backed narco-disruption. A Goldman Sachs of Drugs, with the logistics prowess of Amazon and the public relations savvy of a Big Pharma rollout.

The key players are already lining up. The same think tanks that pushed neoliberal interventionism are pivoting to a more nationalist supply chain strategy. The same billionaires who profited off China’s manufacturing boom are now eyeing cartel-backed logistics networks as the next great frontier. The mergers and acquisitions won’t just be corporate—they’ll be geopolitical.

The Great Re-Centralization is not just about reclaiming old revenue streams; it’s about refining them, optimizing them, turning the chaos of the post-USAID drug trade into a sleek, precision-engineered narcotics economy fit for the modern American elite. The only question is—who gets to be the new gatekeeper?

How Crypto Lost to DraftKings

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There was a time when men gambled like savages. They staked their fortunes on dice and horses, whiskey-stained cards in desert casinos run by men with deep voices and dead eyes. But those were better days. Now, we have apps. We have algorithms. We have blockchain.

Or so I thought.

For the past month, I have been running a personal experiment—DraftKings vs. Crypto. A head-to-head battle between the old gods of gambling and the new. Every day, I sat at my desk with a bottle of bourbon and two screens. On one, a pixelated sportsbook pulsing with parlays and bad decisions. On the other, the cold, sterile glow of my crypto wallet.

I was prepared for disaster. I was prepared to be ruined. What I wasn’t prepared for was this: I lost far more money on DraftKings than I ever did on crypto.

The day started with promise. A crisp morning, thick with potential, the kind of day where a man could take his meager stack of digital tokens and turn them into a respectable fortune before lunch. The charts were alive—green candles marching skyward, an electronic symphony of profit and momentum. I was riding high on leverage, fueled by coffee, nicotine, and the mad certainty that I was smarter than the suckers buying in late. The machine hummed, flashing numbers like the pulse of a living thing. It was all going to plan.

Then, like a blackjack dealer with a grudge, the market turned. A whisper of bad news—something about regulations, a hacked exchange, or maybe just the whales deciding they’d had enough. The price plunged, liquidity vanished, and I was left clutching my mouse like a lifeline, watching my margin evaporate. In seconds, my position was liquidated, the money gone, swallowed by the great digital abyss. I howled at the screen, cursed the algorithms, and swore vengeance on whatever shadowy cartel had orchestrated this financial assassination. But the market doesn’t care. It never cared. It just rolls on, an uncaring beast, leaving fools like me twitching in its wake, praying for one last run before the next inevitable crash.

The next day i changed tac. I started with confidence. A crisp hundred-dollar deposit, the promise of risk-free bets blinking at me like a neon whorehouse sign. DraftKings had my number, and they knew it. The app was smooth—too smooth—like the cockpit of a machine designed for only one thing: keeping me in the game long enough to empty my pockets. I started with a simple parlay, something respectable—Lakers to cover, Mahomes to throw for 250, some tennis match in Portugal I couldn’t pronounce but suddenly had a vested interest in. The odds were juicy, the payout enormous. This was the one.

By noon, the horror had begun. Mahomes decided he was a running back, the Lakers collapsed like a drunk at sunrise, and my Portuguese prodigy turned out to be a toddler with a racket. I was down bad, but DraftKings knew I wouldn’t stop. No, they had something for that—a little notification, a friendly reminder that I had a bonus bet waiting. Just enough rope to keep me swinging. The next hours were a blur of live bets, bad decisions, and rationalizations. I wasn’t losing—I was investing. The money wasn’t gone—it was circulating. But by the time the sun set, I was staring at my balance—zero dollars, infinite shame. Somewhere, in a boardroom in New Jersey, a man in a suit was sipping bourbon, toasting another fool’s downfall. The house always wins.

The House Always Wins, Except When It’s on the Blockchain

The numbers don’t lie. The U.S. gambling industry raked in $66.5 billion last year, while crypto firms floundered, desperately trying to reinvent themselves as casinos. I had assumed that crypto, with all its chaos and fraud, would be a meat grinder for my money. But no. It turns out that even the worst crypto grift can’t take my wallet to the cleaners as efficiently as a well-regulated sportsbook.

DraftKings has mastered the art of losing your money with a precision that crypto can only dream of. While crypto promises the wild, unregulated thrill of highs and lows driven by market sentiment and shady influencers, DraftKings takes a far more refined approach—it preys on your certainty. With its slick interface, irresistible bonuses, and calculated odds, it lures you in under the guise of a fair game. But make no mistake, it’s a finely tuned machine designed to bleed you dry with methodical efficiency. There’s no need for speculation or moonshots here—just cold, unrelenting math and a slew of live bets to keep you addicted long enough to empty your wallet. Crypto may crash, rise, and crash again, but DraftKings? It’s a steady, predictable descent into financial ruin, with a side of shame and a reminder that the house always wins.

See, DraftKings knows what it’s doing. The moment you place a bet, you’ve already lost. They have teams of statisticians, behavioral scientists, and—most importantly—laws ensuring that they get a cut of everything. Meanwhile, crypto gambling outfits are still figuring out how to keep their websites online between rug pulls.

The Cold, Ugly Truth

Crypto was supposed to be the new frontier. A lawless, wild-eyed beast that would obliterate banks and replace Vegas with on-chain degeneracy. Instead, it got out-hustled by actual hustlers—guys with real money, real lawyers, and real lobbies in Washington.

DraftKings took my money with the cold efficiency of a mafia accountant. Crypto took my money with the chaotic incompetence of a coked-up startup founder live-streaming his own downfall.

And that, my friends, is the lesson: You can talk all you want about disrupting the system, but at the end of the day, the real gambling industry was here before you, and it will be here long after your JPEG coins and Discord Ponzi schemes fade into the ether.

Vegas is still Vegas. The house still wins. And crypto? Crypto couldn’t even beat me.

Incitatus

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“Look, folks, a lot of people are saying that making Incitatus a consul was a crazy idea. Fake news. Total hit job. But let me tell you, Incitatus is a tremendous horse. A winner. Probably the best horse Rome has ever seen, okay? Incredible stamina—much better than some of the losers in the Senate, swamp creatures, believe me.

Now, some people, very dishonest people, not gonna name a names cause I’m classy, they say, ‘Oh, you have lost your mind, you want a horse in government!’ But let’s be real—have you seen the Senate? Total disaster. Corrupt. Incitatus would’ve done a much better job than half of them, no question.

But you know what? Fine. If people were offended, if the elites got upset—okay, I’ll say it: maybe it wasn’t the best move. Maybe Rome wasn’t ready for a horse who works harder than half the politicians in history. Sad! But we learn, we move forward, and we keep making Rome great again. That’s what we do.

“Maybe take Incitatus to Troy. He’d be great as a horse in Troy. Tremendous Trojan Horse, folks. The best. The Greeks? Very smart, very strong, but let’s be honest—they could’ve used a guy like me. Imagine if I had been there. Boom. War over in a week. Hector? Weak. Achilles? Overrated. And let’s be real, folks, the whole ‘heel’ thing? Very bad branding. Very bad. You don’t want a weak spot, believe me. I don’t have weak spots. Zero. None.

But you know what, the elites, they don’t get it. They never get it. They say, ‘Oh, you can’t make a horse consul! You can’t shake things up!’ But these are the same people who told Julius Caesar, ‘Oh, don’t worry, your friends love you!’ And how did that work out? Not great, folks. Not great.

And let me tell you something—Incitatus was a fighter. Never took a day off. Never took bribes. Never wrote a bad law. You think I’m gonna apologize? You think I’m gonna say, ‘Oh, sorry, should’ve picked another lazy, do-nothing senator instead’? No way. Not happening. In fact, maybe we should’ve made more horses consuls. All horses. Only horses. Just imagine—Rome, run by winners, by champions.

And the haters, oh, they hate this. They say, ‘Oh, Caligula, you’re insane!’ But let me tell you—every great leader, they said the same thing. Alexander? Crazy. Hannibal? Crazy. Me? The craziest. But also? The greatest. Because I dream big, folks. I think big. I see what Rome could be, and I make it happen.

So was Incitatus a mistake? No. The mistake was stopping at one horse. We should’ve had hundreds of them. Thousands. Rome wasn’t ready. But one day, folks, one day they’ll look back and say—‘Wow. He was right. He was so right. And if only we had listened, maybe Rome would still be great.’ Believe me.”

“Yes! Build a horse nation! Like the Mongolians! Tremendous horse guys, folks. The best. Genghis Khan? Total winner. Huge respect. Took over everything. No elections, no senators, no fake news—just power, just winning. And let me tell you, if Rome had done what I wanted, if Rome had listened, we’d still be running the world today. Still winning.

But nooo, the critics, the losers, the haters—these sad, pathetic people—‘Oh, you can’t have a horse government! That’s crazy!’ But you know what’s crazy? Losing. Losing is crazy. And Rome? Total disaster, folks. Total disaster. We had the greatest empire, we had everything, and what happened? We let the pencil pushers, the deep-state senators, the nerds, take over. Sad!

I said, ‘Folks, we need horses. We need winners. We need warriors, not bureaucrats!’ And they laughed. They said, ‘Oh, Caligula, you’re out of control!’ But guess what? Fast forward a couple centuries—Rome? Gone. Collapsed. Barbarians everywhere. If we had built the Horse Nation—if we had gone full Mongolian, folks—we’d be unstoppable.

Imagine it: legions? On horseback. The Senate? All horses. The economy? Horse-based. Fastest, strongest, most tremendous civilization in history. No corruption, no whining, just strong, beautiful, majestic horses making Rome great again.

And let me tell you something—the people love it. The people know. They see Incitatus and said, ‘Wow, this guy gets it. He understands winning.’ But the elites? The swamp? They hate it. They are terrified. Because they know—a horse is more qualified than them! And it is. It is!

But fine, fine. Maybe Rome isn’t ready. Maybe we aren’t Mongolian enough. Maybe we don’t push it far enough. But mark my words—one day, they’re gonna look back and say, ‘Wow. He was right. He was so right. We should’ve listened. We should’ve built the Horse Nation. And if we had? We’d still be ruling the world today. Believe me.’”