Part and parcel of the phenomenology of hyper-authoritarian Christians: The more they claim their affinity and psychical binding to Jesus Christ, the more pronounced their shadow half, that could be termed as demonic. In essence, individuals who insist they are light-bearers — who insist they are delivering good news to the world — who claim the mantle of divine radiance, yet, as a rule, cast a huge shadow within which broods palpable evil, and are bad news for all they have been given dominion. To wit:

Sports reporter Sarah Spain on sitting near JD Vance at the Milan Olympics: “When I see JD Vance’s eyeliner face, I literally feel ill. I feel like I just looked at a demon, like the devil, and I don’t even believe in that. My body felt like when you have been spooked, and you have a little tingle that feels like, ‘Ooh, something’s not right.’ Or like when you get in a situation, and you feel like, ‘Oh, some of the energy’s bad, something could go wrong here, maybe I should get out of here,’ or something’s dangerous. He’s a human being, allegedly, but he exudes demon energy….[His presence] was disgusting to me.”

JD Vance's mentor and key financial backer is Peter Thiel. The capitalist tech elite are maneuvering men like themselves to be the leadership templates of the future. The mythology of The Book Of Revelations was a Lovecraftian pulp jeremiad against the Roman Empire. Sarah Spain has sent back a dispatch from being within cringing distance of The Beast.

If you are so inclined, please check my recent Substack article:

https://open.substack.com/.../human-all-too-inhuman-the...

Phil Rockstroh's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.)

 

Let’s get one thing straight, folks. The problem is not just one politician, one party, or one election. That’s the puppet show! That’s the part we’re allowed to argue about while the real power sits comfortably behind the curtain, untouched, unbothered, and still getting richer either way. That's why we will NEVER vote our way out of this. It's deeper than that.

What we’re actually living under is oligarchy. An oligarchy is a system where real power is held by a small group of elites, usually the wealthy, well-connected, or influential, rather than by the public, even if elections and democratic institutions still exist.

We are ruled by a permanent power class that doesn’t run for office, doesn’t lose elections, and somehow wins no matter what we do. The government isn’t the final boss, lol, not even close. It’s middle management. The customer service desk. The smiling face that tells you everything is fine while the machine keeps moving in the same direction, which is never in favor of "we the people".

This shit system always benefits the same people and spoiler, it's not you and me, my friend. Our outrage becomes a product. Our attention becomes currency. Our life becomes something to manage, market, and monetize. It’s not some secret smoky-room fantasy, it’s structural, it’s baked in, and it’s everywhere you look.

So how do we fight something that embedded?? Not by screaming into the void. Not by picking a team and yelling at strangers online like that’s revolutionary. The oligarchy loves that shit. It keeps you distracted, divided, and completely harmless.

The real threat to oligarchy is people who are hard to control. People who aren’t easily scared, easily bought, or easily herded into the next manufactured panic. People who build independence, real community, and resilience outside the systems that feed on dependence.

This isn’t overthrowing anything overnight. Unfortunately. It’s about starving the machine slowly, steadily, and deliberately, by withdrawing what it needs most: your fear, your attention, your obedience, and your participation in the circus.

I wish I had answers and solutions, friends. I wish I had a plan of action. This post isn't about that, obviously. Moreso just to bring attention the beast we are facing. The oligarchy doesn’t collapse when people get loud. It collapses when people stop playing along. I don't know the "how" part, but maybe ny discussing and sharing this post, someone smarter than me might have a suggestion. Stay hopeful, my friends.

#WeThePeople #StandForTruth #WakeUpAmerica #Oligarchy #USvsTHEM

What happens when you elect a 34-times indicted and convicted on 34 felonies mental midget rapist racist conman (twice!) to be “Leader of the Free World?” Well, in 13 months time BAM you are no longer the leader. That is what just happened in Munich. I am sick to my stomach that my own FAMILY wanted this. I come from a military family. My grandfather, dad, two brothers and me - all served. Fucking hell, there is no reaching these MAGA cult members.

I Fucking Love Australia carries it forward:

Alright mates, this is a long one, but I promise it's worth your time, so buckle the fuck up because this is absolutely fucking beautiful.

Germany's new Chancellor Friedrich Merz just stood up at the Munich Security Conference and basically told Trump to go fuck himself with a brick - diplomatically, but unmistakably.

Here's the full story, and I'm going to eviscerate that orange fucking colostomy bag when we get to it.

THE SETUP:

The Munich Security Conference is where the world's top security leaders gather every year. It's been the backbone of transatlantic relations since 1963. Last year, JD Vance showed up and spent his time lecturing Europeans about free speech and immigration like some kind of fucking MAGA missionary. It was a disaster that set the tone for the entire year of Trump's second term treating allies like shit.

MERZ'S BOMBSHELL:

This year, Merz opened the conference and didn't fuck around. Here's what he said:

1. The world order is dead: "This order, as flawed as it has been even in its heyday, no longer exists." Not "under threat" - DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST. Past tense. Done. Trump killed it.

2. America can't do this alone: Switching to English to make sure the Americans heard him clearly - "In the era of great power rivalry, even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone. Being a part of NATO is not only Europe's competitive advantage. It's also the United States' competitive advantage."

3. Europe is building its own nuclear deterrent: Merz revealed he's in confidential talks with France's Macron to join their nuclear program. This is MASSIVE. For 80 years, Europe has relied on America's nuclear umbrella. Now they're building their own because they can't trust Trump not to abandon them.

4. Direct rejection of MAGA bullshit: "The culture war of the MAGA movement is not ours. We do not believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade. We stick to climate agreements and the World Health Organization."

5. Called out the divide: "A deep divide has opened between Europe and the United States. Vice President JD Vance said this very openly here at the Munich Security Conference a year ago, and he was right."

THE CONTEXT THAT MAKES THIS BEAUTIFUL:

This didn't come out of nowhere. Since Trump's second term started:

- He threatened to ANNEX GREENLAND from Denmark (a NATO ally!)

- He imposed tariffs on European allies

- He pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement (again)

- He pulled out of the WHO (again)

- He threatened military action in Latin America

- His National Security Strategy literally said "the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over"

AMERICA'S PATHETIC RESPONSE:

Now here's where it gets fucking hilarious. The U.S. sent Mike Waltz (UN Ambassador) to respond. His big move? He handed out "MUNGA" hats. "Make the UN Great Again." I'm not fucking joking. While Germany is announcing they're building nuclear weapons because they can't trust America anymore, Trump's emissary is handing out fucking novelty hats.

Waltz claimed that "more Americans are dying from drugs from Latin America than in wars" (which is why Trump is focusing on the Western Hemisphere instead of Europe), and that "NATO and the UN are stronger because of Trump."

Meanwhile, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas had to remind him: "When America goes to wars, a lot of us go with you, and we lose our people on the way. You also need us."

TRUMP'S ACTUAL RESPONSE:

When asked about the conference as he left the White House, Trump said - and I fucking quote - he has "a strong relationship with NATO leaders" and claimed NATO defense spending was at 5% because of him (it's not - the actual target is 2% with a new goal of raising it to 3.5% by 2035).

That's it. That's all he fucking said. His Chancellor-level counterpart just announced Germany is going nuclear independent and Trump's response is "we have a strong relationship." It's like watching someone's wife file for divorce and the husband saying "we're very happy together."

NOW LET ME EVISCERATE THIS WALKING COLOSTOMY BAG:

Donald Trump, you fucking moron. You absolute fucking simpleton. You've managed to accomplish in 13 months what Putin couldn't do in 30 years - you've broken NATO.

For 80 fucking years - EIGHT DECADES - the United States led the most successful military and economic alliance in human history. We won World War II together. We stood together through the Cold War. We built the richest, most peaceful era in European history. The whole fucking point of NATO was "an attack on one is an attack on all" - it was about COLLECTIVE SECURITY.

And this brain-dead fucking carnival barker decided that transactional bullshit and threatening allies was better than the system that made America the most powerful country on Earth.

You want to know what "America First" actually means? It means "America Alone." And guess what happens when you're alone, you fucking dipshit? You're WEAKER.

Germany - GERMANY, the country that wasn't even allowed to have a military after WWII - is now building nuclear weapons because they can't trust the United States. France, Britain, Germany are forming their own defense alliance. They're creating their own nuclear umbrella. They're preparing to defend themselves without America.

Do you know what that means for American power? It means you lose:

- Forward military bases across Europe

- Intelligence sharing with dozens of allies

- The ability to project power globally

- Economic leverage over the world's largest trading bloc

- The moral authority that came from leading the free world

And for what? So you could fucking peacock around about "tariffs" and "America First" while China and Russia high-five each other watching the Western alliance crumble?

THE ECONOMIC SUICIDE:

Here's what this fucking moron doesn't understand: NATO isn't charity. It's the foundation of American economic and military dominance. Every dollar we "spend" on NATO returns ten dollars in:

- Access to European markets

- Intelligence cooperation

- Shared military R&D

- Forward deployment capabilities

- A united front against adversaries

But Trump sees it like a fucking protection racket. "Pay up or we won't defend you." Well guess what, you orange fucking idiot? They're calling your bluff. They're building their own military. They're creating their own nuclear deterrent. And when they don't need American protection anymore, they don't need American influence either.

THE IRONY THAT WOULD BE FUNNY IF IT WASN'T TERRIFYING:

The Munich Security Conference's theme this year was "A World Under Destruction." Merz said even that wasn't harsh enough - the world order doesn't exist anymore. It's already gone.

And who destroyed it? The country that built it. The United States, under this fucking halfwit, dismantled 80 years of American global leadership because he's too fucking stupid to understand that alliances aren't transactions - they're force multipliers.

You know who's celebrating this? Putin and Xi. They're probably popping champagne watching America's allies build nuclear weapons because they can't trust you. China doesn't have to DO anything to replace American leadership - you're just voluntarily giving it up so Trump can feel like a big man.

THE GEOPOLITICAL CONSEQUENCES:

When Germany has its own nukes and doesn't need American protection:

- Why would they follow American sanctions on China?

- Why would they support American military actions?

- Why would they align their economic policy with Washington?

- Why would they share intelligence?

They wouldn't. You lose all that leverage. All that power. All that influence.

And it gets worse. With a European nuclear deterrent:

- Russia becomes even more paranoid and aggressive

- Nuclear proliferation accelerates

- The risk of miscalculation skyrockets

- American influence in European affairs plummets

THE DOMESTIC POLITICAL REALITY:

Here's the part that really fucks me off: Trump's base will CHEER this. They'll see "Europe building their own military" as a win. "Finally they're paying their fair share!" they'll crow, completely missing that they just lost the most valuable alliance in human history.

It's like bragging you got your roommate to finally pay rent after you burned down the fucking house.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Friedrich Merz stood in front of the world and announced that Europe can no longer trust America. They're building their own military. Their own nuclear weapons. Their own alliance structure.

And Trump's response was to send a guy with novelty hats.

This is what American decline looks like. Not because you lost a war. Not because your economy collapsed. But because you elected a fucking moron who's too stupid to understand that American power isn't about military might alone - it's about alliances, influence, and leadership.

And that walking colostomy bag just flushed it all down the toilet because he can't see past his own fucking ego.

Europe is done waiting for America to be reliable. They're moving on. And when they do, the American Century is over.

All because 74 million fucking idiots voted for a conman who thinks "Art of the Deal" is foreign policy.

Unfuckingbelievable.

 

Just in the last few months, the development of Artificial Intelligence has reached a new stage. We appear to be at an inflection point for humanity and for the immediate future of post-industrial civilization. Perhaps this sounds hyperbolic, but I do not think it is. People throughout the AI industry are calling the release of GPT-5.3 Codex and Claude Opus 4.6 (as well as Claude Code and Cowork) as harbingers of a massive shift: AI is on the verge of becoming self-recursively self-improving. This means it may quickly accelerate beyond human capacity not in a single domain like chess or mathematics, but in all domains at once.

As I explore creating AI videos, I am finding that this resonates. The tools are getting better week by week, almost day by day. I have this vertiginous sense of limitless possibility which also gives me this burning desire to move as quickly as possible. I understand why employees who are working with AI are suffering from burn-out. You have this sudden sensation that anything you ever wanted to do—in media, software, product design, and so on—is now possible. The rush is dangerously addictive.

I am grateful that, in my first books, I carefully explored the ideas around the Singularity developed by Terence McKenna as well as the ideas around the Noosphere that Jose Arguelles explored, following thinkers like Teilhard de Chardin and Vladimir Vernadsky. It gives me some theoretical and even emotional preparation for what may be coming, although I think it remains very unpredictable and difficult for any of us to fully fathom. Elon Musk posted on X recently that we have entered the Singularity. If we are not there quite yet, we are very close to it.

Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and CEO of Microsoft AI, recently told the Financial Times that, within 12 to 18 months, AI will achieve human-level performance (or better) on most white-collar tasks. This includes the potential automation of professions such as lawyers, accountants, project managers, and marketing professionals. As Sam Harris discussed in a recent podcast, if this prognosis is accurate, our society is standing on the precipice of total disruption, with almost no preparation for what is coming. Personally, I find it ironic—and, also, as I will explore, amorphously hopeful—that the first jobs getting programmed out of existence are white-collar jobs. The robots are not coming for the janitors, plumbers, or nurses. At least initially, they will be fine. Instead, AI poses an immediate existential threat to high-status, high-income professions.

We are already seeing a collapse in entry-level positions in white-collar professions. A Stanford study found a 13% decline in jobs for early-career workers, and the real figure may be considerably higher, depending on the sector. Young people—who may have just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an advanced degree and put themselves into serious debt—are finding themselves stuck. The whole point of that education was to reach the first rung of the corporate ladder. But if the cognitive tasks they were trained to master are now automated, those degrees will be essentially worthless. And even beyond that, the entire ladder may be evaporating.

Software engineering is the current “proof of concept” for this transition. The role of a software engineer has fundamentally shifted in just the last six months. Rather than writing code line-by-line, engineers now function as “architects” or “debuggers,” scrutinizing and strategizing over code produced by AI. This meta-function allows a single individual to do the work that previously required a team, effectively signaling the end of the traditional coding hierarchy.

Just a few days ago, Matt Shumer, a 26-year-old AI CEO (co-founder of OthersideAI and HyperWrite), published a short essay, “Something Big Is Happening,” that went viral—racking up over 60 million views on X. Shumer believes we are no longer in the phase of “incremental improvement.” Instead, we have entered a new era of an intelligence explosion. He noted that AI has crossed a threshold and everything has shifted over the last months, writing:

For years, AI had been improving steadily. Big jumps here and there, but each big jump was spaced out enough that you could absorb them as they came. Then in 2025, new techniques for building these models unlocked a much faster pace of progress. And then it got even faster. And then faster again. Each new model wasn’t just better than the last... it was better by a wider margin, and the time between new model releases was shorter. I was using AI more and more, going back and forth with it less and less, watching it handle things I used to think required my expertise.

Then, on February 5th, two major AI labs released new models on the same day: GPT-5.3 Codex from OpenAI, and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic (the makers of Claude, one of the main competitors to ChatGPT). And something clicked. Not like a light switch... more like the moment you realize the water has been rising around you and is now at your chest.

I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built, in plain English, and it just... appears. Not a rough draft I need to fix. The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well, done better than I would have done it myself, with no corrections needed. A couple of months ago, I was going back and forth with the AI, guiding it, making edits. Now I just describe the outcome and leave.

With the latest Codex model, Shumer notes, the AI was instrumental in its own creation. It debugged its own training, managed its own deployment, and diagnosed its own failures. When intelligence is applied to the development of intelligence, the feedback loop accelerates beyond human control. What this implies for the broader economy is a “general substitute for cognitive work.”

Shumer believes this is unlike previous waves of automation. When factories automated, workers moved to offices; when the internet disrupted retail, workers moved to services. However, AI does not leave a “convenient gap” to move into because it is improving at every cognitive task simultaneously. From legal document review to medical diagnosis and complex software architecture, the “ladder” of white-collar advancement is dissolving—as Karl Marx once noted about Capitalism, “all that is solid melts into air.”

Harris is usually a stable middle-of-the-road person—not someone I consider an alarmist. But even he realizes we have reached a threshold of imminent civilizational disruption with almost zero preparation for what’s coming. In fact, we could not have worse leadership for this meta-crisis at this moment, with Trump and his avaricious lackeys and slavish apparatchiks. But I also doubt that Democrats would have any idea on how to handle this challenge.

Many have forecast a scenario where the economy bifurcates violently, with a tiny cohort of founders and tech leaders who become stratospherically wealthy, alongside a small layer of early adopters who manage to secure the last remaining positions. Below this elite tier, everybody else is left without much to do or hope for. The danger is not just that new jobs won’t be created, but that the mechanisms for wealth distribution will fundamentally break down. Harris notes that a world where a single founder can run a billion-dollar company with barely any employees outside of AI agents is “totally untenable” without a radical redesign of the economic system. (But then you also have to ask who will be buying the products from that billion-dollar company if there is no consumer base).

If the timeline of 12 to 18 months is even remotely accurate, the time to anticipate this transition is now. The traditional link between labor and survival is likely to break—it may already be breaking down. If AI makes human labor “optional at best,” we must rewrite the societal contract to ensure that the abundance generated by synthetic super-intelligence benefits the people as a whole.

That doesn’t look likely at this point!

Harris concludes by noting that the scenario of economic upheaval—mass unemployment, the obsolescence of human cognition, and extreme wealth concentration—is what happens if everything goes right. This scenario represents the “success case” of AI development, where the technology works as intended. But this ignores the “failure modes” of AI, such as cyber-terrorism, engineered pandemics, or the hacking of critical infrastructure. The current emergency is not about AI going rogue; it is about AI doing its job so well that it breaks the economic foundations of modern society. Wild times!

I also appreciate David Shapiro’s ongoing video investigation of the AI inflection point. In a recent video, Shapiro proposes that the coming of AGI will quickly dismantle the traditional hierarchies of knowledge elites. Once again, I see some very positive potential in this... (read the rest on Substack, see link in first comment)

 

 

Russ Vought didn’t just gut aid, he stole it for himself. Here is what happened, in plain English. Reuters reports that the White House is using $15 million from leftover USAID funds to pay for Vought’s U.S. Marshals Service security detail through the end of 2026.

That money was part of a system built to fight HIV, malaria, polio, and the kinds of outbreaks that quietly kill people who never make the evening news. Now it is buying armed protection for the guy who helped torch the agency.

Call it “reprogramming.” Call it “budget authority.” Call it “security needs.” Regular people have a simpler word for taking money meant to keep other people alive and using it on yourself: STEALING.

Maybe it is technically legal on some spreadsheet. Morally, it is looting.

And the worst part is the shamelessness.

Vought is not some anonymous bean counter. He is a Project 2025 architect who has openly celebrated the idea of making federal workers miserable. In the Congressional Record, a senator quoted Vought saying federal employees would be put “in trauma.”

That is not the mindset of public service. That is the mindset of a man who thinks the government exists to punish people he dislikes and reward people like him.

So when you hear “he had a threat” or “he needs protection,” notice the ugly irony.

The people most endangered by a collapsed aid system do not get marshals. They get clinic stock outs, delayed treatment, and preventable deaths that never get a press conference.

A major study cited by Reuters warned that deep cuts to USAID could contribute to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including millions of children. Vought’s response to that world is not urgency or repair. It is to grab what is left and buy himself a bigger bubble.

This is what corruption looks like in the Trump era. Not always a suitcase of cash. Sometimes it is a polite memo that reroutes life-saving funds into a personal moat.

If you want a concrete demand: Congress should block any further diversion of aid dollars for domestic perks, require public reporting of every transfer, and restore health and humanitarian programs that were cut.

And if anyone tells you this is “just paperwork,” remember the bottom line. When a powerful man takes money meant to keep people alive and spends it on himself, that is not fiscal responsibility. That is a moral crime, wearing a name tag.

 

In a sweeping critique of what he calls “economic statecraft,” Sachs argued that Washington is no longer using financial power to promote cooperation — but to coerce and destabilize rival governments.

According to Sachs, modern U.S. sanctions policy amounts to “economic warfare.” He pointed specifically to Iran and Venezuela, claiming sanctions were designed not merely to influence policy but to crush entire economies in hopes of triggering regime change.

He described how cutting countries off from dollar-based transactions can paralyze trade, collapse currencies, and spark domestic unrest. But Sachs warned that such tactics come at a long-term cost.

“The dollar’s dominance,” he suggested, “is being abused.”

Sachs argued that America’s unique leverage over global finance — through the dollar system, SWIFT networks, the IMF, and U.S.-controlled financial institutions — has allowed Washington to impose extraterritorial sanctions far beyond its borders. Banks anywhere in the world, he said, risk punishment if they facilitate transactions involving targeted nations.

But now, he claims, that dominance is accelerating the creation of alternatives.

Pointing to Russia and China, Sachs said parallel financial systems are already being built — including non-dollar settlement networks and digital payment platforms designed specifically to avoid U.S. oversight. He predicted that within the next decade, a significant portion of global trade could shift away from the dollar.

If that happens, he warned, U.S. sanctions power would weaken dramatically.

Sachs framed the moment as historic: either Washington rethinks its reliance on financial coercion, or it risks undermining the very currency system that underpins its global influence.

He also tied economic pressure to a broader pattern of regime-change strategies, arguing that sanctions often function as the first phase of political destabilization — softening governments before further intervention.

Taken together, his message was clear: economic dominance is not permanent.

If overused as a weapon, Sachs warned, the dollar’s “exorbitant privilege” could erode — reshaping the global financial order and limiting America’s ability to dictate outcomes abroad.

Analysts say the debate highlights a growing tension in a shifting multipolar world: whether financial coercion preserves U.S. power — or accelerates its decline.