The Chris Abraham Show

I didn’t come to Meshtastic with a plan. I bought a cheap purple device off Etsy for about fifty-five dollars because I’d heard the word a few times and vaguely understood it meant LoRa mesh messaging. I wasn’t a prepper. I’m not a ham. I didn’t have a scenario in mind. The buy-in was low enough that curiosity won. I live on the 8th floor in Arlington Heights, with windows facing southeast. From that height, there’s a clear line of sight over a golf course and across low-rise terrain toward the Gaylord MGM. That’s not a metaphor or a thought experiment. It’s just geography. If you’re going to put a radio somewhere, elevation and openness matter. So I plugged it in and turned it on. At first, it behaved like a gadget. I paired it with my phone. Sent a few test messages. Watched nodes appear and disappear. It worked, which was reassuring, but nothing about it felt consequential. Traffic was sparse. Most activity looked like people checking in, not routing through. I left it on. That turned out to matter more than anything I did deliberately. Over time, it became clear that Meshtastic doesn’t reward interaction. It rewards presence. Nodes that come and go don’t contribute much beyond their own visibility. Nodes that stay up quietly start to matter in ways that aren’t obvious from the app. Eventually, I changed the device role from node to router. Not out of altruism, but because the device was stationary, wall-powered, and well-placed. Letting it sleep made no sense. A sleeping radio with good placement is just wasted capacity. That’s where the friction started. Router mode changes how the device behaves. Power management becomes aggressive. Bluetooth access becomes opportunistic instead of persistent. From the phone’s perspective, it feels unreliable. From the network’s perspective, it’s doing exactly what it should. There was a stretch where Bluetooth access felt broken. It wasn’t. The control plane was sleeping while the radio stayed active. Once I connected over USB and adjusted the settings with that in mind, the behavior made sense. Deep sleep off. Bluetooth given more patience. The display left on, because power wasn’t scarce. Once that was done, the device became boring. And boring is the goal. Around the same time, the local Arlington / MeshDC area started showing more consistent LongFast traffic. More ACKs. More multi-hop messages. Nodes sticking around instead of flickering in and out. Not because of anything I personally changed, but because more devices were staying online, placed well, and allowed to just exist. I chose the handle ABRA. Originally short for Abraham. That felt too personal. Now it’s Abracadabra, which fits better. I connected the node to MQTT so it appears on the global map, which is still quietly astonishing. A little purple radio in a window, visible via the modern web, routing messages it doesn’t need to read. Most of the coordination, discussion, and culture happens elsewhere anyway. Discord. Reddit. The meta layer. The mesh itself just moves packets. What I learned wasn’t radio theory or emergency planning. It was simpler. Meshtastic works best when you stop treating nodes like personal devices and start treating them like infrastructure. Infrastructure doesn’t demand attention. It needs uptime, placement, and restraint. I didn’t set out to build anything. I just left something on in a good place. Everything else followed.

This episode of The Chris Abraham Show is an unscripted, exploratory monologue that circles a single question from multiple angles: what happens to large war-oriented systems when they no longer have an obvious external war to fight? Rather than arguing for or against specific policies, this episode looks at structure, scale, and inertia. For much of modern American history, war has functioned not only as foreign policy but as an organizing principle for labor, industry, logistics, and federal spending. The Global War on Terror normalized enormous budgets, standing emergency authorities, and sprawling institutional ecosystems that extended far beyond the battlefield. Those systems trained people, built careers, created regional dependencies, and locked in expectations about what “normal” government capacity looks like. As external wars become harder to sustain politically and strategically, the question is not whether those systems disappear, but where they go. In this episode, immigration enforcement is examined not primarily as a moral or partisan issue, but as a systems problem. At scale, mass deportation and detention require transportation networks, facilities, staffing, courts, legal processing, medical care, procurement, and coordination across multiple layers of government. Structurally, it begins to resemble other national mobilization efforts the United States has undertaken during periods of crisis. The episode introduces the idea of a “deportation industrial complex” to describe the interlocking public and private systems that emerge around large-scale enforcement. This is not presented as a conspiracy or a claim of intent, but as an observation about how large bureaucratic systems behave once they are built. Any apparatus of that size creates economic, political, and institutional incentives for its own continuation, much like the prison system or defense contracting before it. From there, the conversation turns to the concept of a Domestic War on Terror, or DWOT, as a descriptive framework rather than a declared policy. The logic that governed the Global War on Terror did not vanish when foreign interventions slowed. It internalized. Categories of risk, emergency elasticity, and extraordinary authorities begin to operate inside national borders, often framed as administrative rather than military. The machinery remains largely the same; the theater changes. The episode also explores how protest, resistance, and public opposition interact with enforcement systems. Rather than assuming resistance always slows expansion, it looks at how visibility and escalation can sometimes become part of the feedback loop that sustains additional capacity. This dynamic is discussed without assigning blame, focusing instead on how systems respond to pressure. Throughout the episode, real-time statistical queries are used to contextualize fear, risk, and public perception, not to reach definitive conclusions but to illustrate how narratives form around numbers. This is not a call to action or a warning. It is an attempt to describe a recurring pattern in American governance: large systems tend to persist, normalize, and adapt rather than shut down. Temporary measures become permanent. Emergency budgets become baselines. Recorded as Season 10, Episode 2 of The Chris Abraham Show, this episode is intentionally exploratory and reflective, meant to be heard as a thinking-out-loud session rather than a polished argument.

After a long hiatus from live, human-voiced podcasting, Chris Abraham returns with the unofficial kickoff to a new season of The Chris Abraham Show. Call it Season 10, or just call it “one more than whatever came before.” This episode is less a formal broadcast and more a fireside check-in. No hot takes yet. No grand thesis. Just Uncle Chris catching up, taking inventory, and letting listeners back into the workshop. Chris opens by reflecting on a year spent experimenting with AI-assisted writing and audio. Substacks fed into NotebookLM. Podcasts assembled more like orchestration than performance. He likens himself to a Renaissance painter running a studio: sketch the idea, let the assistants fill in the canvas, then obsessively revise until it feels true enough to sign. It sparked conversations, which felt like a win, even if the whole thing occasionally resembled “DJ Slop.” From there, the episode turns personal. One week post-second ablation, Chris reports that his heart is finally humming along in sinus rhythm after a long struggle with atrial fibrillation. The first procedure failed and took the wind out of his sails, contributing to weight gain, lethargy, and a general retreat from movement. This time feels different. Better sleep. BiPAP nights. The cautious hope of eventually shedding some medications. The slow return to walking, cycling, kettlebells, and the familiar ritual of getting back in the saddle, literally and figuratively. Fitness and body discipline weave through the episode, including a rueful confession: Chris once tattooed a kettlebell on his hand as a motivational Hail Mary… and then promptly stopped lifting. Future tattoo ideas may include a Concept2 logo and the muted horn from The Crying of Lot 49, because symbolism apparently works better than guilt. Work life is steadier. SEO, Google Business Profile recoveries, and AI-adjacent consulting are keeping the lights on. But the real joy lately lives in the nerd margins. Chris dives deep into decentralized systems, inspired by Ghost in the Shell, particularly the sentient blue tanks that sync their “souls” to a server. That idea metastasized into a home-rolled infrastructure project: seven identical Lenovo ThinkPads running Linux Mint, all synchronized via a cloud droplet using Syncthing. Not a backup. A living sync mesh. Every laptop a node. Every document everywhere. That fascination with nodes and meshes extends into the physical world via Meshtastic. Chris recently deployed a LoRa-based radio node, ABRA (short for Abracadabra), hanging from an eighth-floor Arlington window, quietly strengthening a local, license-free mesh network. No voices. No feeds. Just short messages hopping node to node, old-school and strangely comforting. It’s part prepper tech, part early-internet nostalgia, part philosophical itch scratched. Elsewhere in the ecosystem: Mastodon survives for now at abraham.su, rescued at the last minute despite the .su clock ticking toward 2030. Micro.blog joins the stack under chrisa.micro.blog and ChrisA.org. Digital homesteading continues. Chris also shares the unexpected joy of joining a long-running Dungeons & Dragons campaign, Curse of Strahd, playing a stubborn Eldritch Knight named Radley, refusing to read the manual, and delighting in chaos alongside a group of grizzled old nerds on Discord. Dice are rolled. Plans go sideways. Everyone survives, mostly. The episode closes with quieter notes: a growing devotion to the Gospels, nightly Episcopal Compline prayers, the simple rhythm of rereading rather than rushing ahead. A Powerball ticket purchased. Gym plans deferred. Kettlebells waiting. A rowing machine sulking upright in the corner. This isn’t a manifesto. It’s a temperature check. A reintroduction. Uncle Chris is back, heart steadier, systems syncing, curiosity intact, and ready to spend the rest of the year talking through the small things before returning to the big ones.

Today, I want to talk about a claim that shows up every Christmas season, especially online: the idea that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were refugees — that they were undocumented migrants escaping a hostile government, and that the Nativity somehow maps onto modern U.S. immigration politics. It’s an idea repeated so often that it feels unquestionable. But once you look at the world they actually lived in, the analogy collapses instantly. To understand the Flight into Egypt, you have to understand Rome. Not Rome as a distant city, but Rome as a system — the political world the Holy Family lived inside. Rome wasn’t divided into separate nations with visas and passports and immigration systems. It was a unified empire, more like the continental United States than anything else. Judea and Egypt weren’t foreign countries. They were Roman jurisdictions. Moving between them was internal movement, not crossing a border. That’s the first thing modern people miss. The Holy Family didn’t leave their country. They didn’t enter a foreign state. They didn’t become stateless or undocumented. They were Roman subjects everywhere they went, protected by the same imperial authority that governed the entire region. Now yes, Rome had borders — real borders, violent borders. When people tried to enter the empire from the outside, Rome enforced those boundaries with an iron fist. Caesar’s armies blocked outsiders, pushed back tribes, and made sure that entry into the empire happened only on Rome’s terms. In that sense, Caesar actually behaved more like a modern head of state than people realize. He controlled who entered the empire. He didn’t control internal movement. And that’s exactly where the analogy to modern refugee policy breaks. When Joseph took Mary and the infant Jesus to Egypt after receiving the angel’s warning, they didn’t present themselves at a checkpoint. They didn’t apply for refuge. They didn’t cross into a sovereign foreign nation. They simply went from one part of Rome to another part of Rome. If you want a modern parallel, you don’t look at asylum seekers crossing into the U.S. You look at internal displacement inside the U.S. itself. Think of the Dust Bowl migrants who fled drought and famine by heading west. Think of the Great Migration, when Black Americans fled Jim Crow violence and resettled in northern cities. Think of families uprooted by hurricanes and moving across state lines for safety. These were dramatic, traumatic movements — but they weren’t refugee movements. They were internal migrations. And that is exactly where the Holy Family fits. Their flight was driven by danger, but it didn’t change their political or legal status. They weren’t outsiders. They weren’t undocumented. They weren’t in violation of any law. They were moving within their own world. So why do we keep reframing the Nativity as a refugee story? Because it serves a modern narrative. It gives people a moral shorthand. It lets contemporary political debates borrow the emotional power of a sacred story. But the history doesn’t support the analogy, and neither does the geography. This isn’t about rejecting compassion or undermining anyone’s convictions. It’s about accuracy. The Holy Family’s flight isn’t an ancient version of modern asylum. It’s an internal relocation under threat, inside the same empire. As we hear the familiar Christmas commentary this year, we can appreciate the moral impulse behind the analogy — but we should also acknowledge the reality. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were not refugees. They were Roman subjects reacting to a local threat, not crossing a foreign border into a foreign country. Their story is dramatic, moving, and sacred — but it isn’t a blueprint for modern immigration policy.

Welcome back. Today we’re taking on a Christmas claim that resurfaces every year: that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were refugees, undocumented migrants, or ancient asylum-seekers. It’s emotionally appealing, politically useful, and completely incompatible with the world the Nativity took place in. To understand why, we have to put aside modern nation-states and step into Rome. Rome wasn’t a patchwork of countries. It was a unified imperial world, more like a continental-scale United States than anything else in antiquity. Judea and Egypt were not separate nations. They were Roman jurisdictions. Moving between them was like moving from one state to another, not crossing an international border. And that’s the heart of it: the Holy Family never left their own political system. They never crossed into foreign territory. They never became stateless. They never occupied any category resembling “undocumented.” They were lawful Roman subjects everywhere they went. Now, Rome did have borders — fierce ones. Caesar defended the external edges of the empire with levels of force modern governments wouldn’t dream of using. Unauthorized groups approaching Rome from outside were blocked, repelled, or crushed. In that sense, Caesar absolutely behaved like a modern head of state securing a national border. But none of that applied to people already inside the empire. Rome didn’t deport internal subjects for moving from one province to another. There was no immigration system for internal movement because internal movement didn’t require permission. So when Joseph took Mary and the infant Jesus to Egypt after receiving a divine warning, they weren’t entering a foreign country or seeking asylum. They weren’t applying for refuge. They weren’t presenting themselves to a host government. They were relocating inside the only political world they belonged to. If we want analogies, the closest modern parallels come from American internal displacement, not international refugee movements. Think of Dust Bowl families fleeing starvation and drought by heading to California. Think of the Great Migration, when millions of Black Americans fled racial terror in the South and rebuilt their lives in northern cities. Think of families uprooted by hurricanes or wildfires and moving across state lines. These were dramatic, sometimes desperate relocations. But they weren’t refugees under law. They were citizens moving inside a single national system. The Holy Family fits this pattern far better than the refugee framework we keep projecting onto them. Their story is about danger, intervention, and survival — but not about crossing a border into a foreign land. So why do we keep forcing the Nativity into modern immigration politics? Because the analogy is emotionally powerful. Casting Jesus as an undocumented child and Herod as the voice of border enforcement gives modern debates a moral clarity many people crave. But it rests on a misunderstanding of both worlds: Rome and our own. Rome enforced external borders. The United States enforces external borders. But Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were never on the wrong side of those borders. They were not outsiders seeking entry. They were insiders seeking safety. Their legal status never changed. Their political identity never changed. Their movement never triggered anything resembling asylum, deportation, or refugee law. This isn’t about shutting down compassion. It’s about keeping the historical record intact and resisting the urge to retrofit sacred stories into modern political frameworks. The Nativity is many things — a theological hinge, a confrontation with violence, a narrative of protection — but it is not an immigration parable. Thanks for listening. For sources, notes, and the full written version, check the show notes.

Discussions about the birth of Jesus often include the assertion that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were refugees fleeing persecution. This framing is intended to connect the biblical story to contemporary global crises and highlight empathy for displaced people. While the intention may be understandable, the historical circumstances of the Holy Family do not align with the modern category of refugee status as defined by law, borders, and international recognition. In the first century, the Eastern Mediterranean was not divided into nation-states. It operated under one imperial authority: Rome. Judea, the birthplace of Jesus, was ruled by Herod the Great as a client king under Roman oversight. Egypt, where the Gospel of Matthew records that the family traveled, was a Roman province governed directly by imperial administration. Movement from Judea to Egypt was therefore not a departure from one country into another, nor did it require permission, documentation, or protection from a foreign sovereign power. The journey to Bethlehem, prompted by the census described in the Gospel of Luke, was not migration at all. It was internal travel for administrative purposes, a reality familiar across the empire for those subject to taxation and bureaucratic recordkeeping. The subsequent flight to Egypt described in Matthew was a response to danger, specifically the threat posed by Herod’s directive to kill infant boys in Bethlehem. This reflects urgency and real risk, but urgency alone does not make the Holy Family refugees in the modern sense. A refugee, in contemporary legal terms, is a person who crosses an internationally recognized boundary and receives acknowledgment or protection from another state. Many people flee danger without ever being recognized as refugees; they are displaced, endangered, or in flight, but not legally categorized under that term. Another key element distinguishing this narrative from typical migration or displacement is the presence of explicit spiritual and supernatural agency. Herod’s actions are portrayed as a response to prophecy. Joseph’s decision is directed by a dream in which an angel provides instruction. The narrative presents a specific threat against a specific child, rather than a generalized persecution of an entire population. The movement was personal, not collective. It was prompted by divine warning, not legal petition, social negotiation, or state-to-state appeal. Understanding these distinctions does not diminish the gravity or significance of the story. Instead, it preserves the historical and spiritual context in which it occurred. Using modern terminology to describe ancient events may blur rather than clarify the meaning of the narrative, substituting contemporary categories for ancient realities. The account of the Holy Family’s journey remains important without translation into the language of modern policy. It is a narrative of faith, danger, obedience, and protection. It illustrates vulnerability met with guidance, threat met with trust, and uncertainty met with action. Its power does not depend on its alignment with contemporary refugee frameworks; its significance rests in the world it emerged from and the faith it continues to inspire.

The story of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is one of the most recognized narratives in human history. During the Christmas season, it becomes a focal point of faith, culture, and reflection. In recent public conversation, a growing claim circulates that Jesus and His family were refugees or asylum seekers, meant to serve as a direct parallel to contemporary refugee experiences. While this comparison is often used to provoke empathy or social concern, it is historically inaccurate and incomplete when measured against the political and legal realities of the ancient world. In the first century, the Eastern Mediterranean was not divided into modern nations. It was unified under the Roman Empire. Judea, where Jesus was born, was ruled by Herod the Great, a client king installed under Roman oversight. Egypt, where the family later traveled according to the Gospel of Matthew, was a Roman imperial province. Movement from Judea to Egypt did not involve crossing from one sovereign state into another, nor did it require permission, documentation, or recognition by any foreign authority. There was no concept of immigration control that resembles present-day systems, and there was no legal category of asylum as defined in international law after the mid-twentieth century. The journey to Bethlehem, prompted by census requirements, was not migration motivated by danger or opportunity; it was compliance with administrative order. Census relocations were a normal part of life across the empire. People traveled for taxation, commerce, pilgrimage, military obligation, and family reasons, without changing legal identity. The later departure to Egypt, described in Matthew, is framed as a response to threat, specifically Herod’s directive to kill newborn males in Bethlehem. This makes the event serious and urgent, but it does not confer the modern status of refugee. A refugee is someone who flees their home and is formally recognized by a different sovereign authority as having a protected status. A person fleeing without recognition or adjudication is displaced, in danger, or in flight—but not, in the legal sense, a refugee. In ancient contexts, exile and flight existed, but they were not processed categories with rights, obligations, or international protections. The biblical narrative also introduces elements not present in most historical cases of displacement. The decision to leave was prompted by divine revelation through a dream. The threat identified was specific to one child, not a generalized attack on a population seeking collective escape. The prophecy believed by Herod and the vision given to Joseph set this event apart from common social or political movement. This was not a civic negotiation or a governmental plea; it was a personal response to spiritual instruction within the context of faith. Understanding this distinction matters because precise language matters. To lift modern terminology and apply it directly to ancient narratives can blur historical reality. The intent behind the comparison may be sincere, but the category is modern, and it assumes systems, borders, and legal definitions that did not exist at that time. The story of the Holy Family remains powerful without translation into modern political language. It speaks to vulnerability, obedience, faith, and protection. It illustrates the collision of power and prophecy, of danger and deliverance, without needing to be framed through the structure of twenty-first century international law. This account may still speak to contemporary crises and human suffering. It may still inform moral views about how we treat strangers or those in need. But it should be acknowledged in the terms in which it took place: internal relocation inside a single empire, motivated by danger, guided by faith, and understood within the spiritual framework of the time.

This episode examines the United States as the only modern nation where privately owned firearms—hundreds of millions of them—form a silent, decentralized balance against the three visible layers of power: local government, shadow networks, and federal authority. We are told the Second Amendment is about hunting, recreation, nostalgia, and home defense, but those explanations describe utility, not purpose. The American model disperses power by design, not tradition. The firearm is not symbolic here—it is structural. Much of this structure is invisible precisely because it functions without activation. A half billion firearms are not mobilized against police precincts, not deployed against neighborhood crime syndicates, not marshaled into rebellion against federal agencies. They remain dormant by choice, not by accident. The absence of widespread misuse is not evidence of irrelevance; it is the evidence deterrence leaves behind. Firearms in America operate like stored energy—sequestered carbon in social form—held back by consent, trust, and the expectation of constitutional negotiation. What complicates the simplified narrative is that private firearm ownership does not align with a single culture, ideology, or grievance. The modern landscape includes conservative hunters, urban first-time buyers, LGBTQ+ self-defense groups, Black gun clubs, immigrant business owners, feminist training circles, and veterans who prefer not to rely entirely on institutions. Rather than react with suspicion, many gun-rights advocates have responded with pragmatism: if the right belongs to all, then its legitimacy is strengthened when all claim it. The conflict is not over who holds firearms—it is over who seeks the authority to decide others may not. Private firearm ownership creates a fourth layer of power—quiet, unorganized, unsupervised, and largely uninterested in confrontation. There is no roster. No activation code. No central ideology. The boundary it creates is not aggressive; it is conditional. It demands that change—cultural, political, legal—move through process rather than proclamation. Not every proposed reform is tyranny. Not every amendment is sabotage. But when cultural mandates bypass the mechanisms the Constitution requires, the existence of parity matters—not as a threat, but as a reminder. Critics argue that if these firearms mattered, they would have been used. Yet the strongest deterrents in human history—from nuclear stockpiles to strategic reserves—prove themselves through silence. This fourth layer is not a militia and not an insurgency; it is the retained possibility that legitimacy requires consent, and consent requires dialogue. It does not guarantee wisdom or stability. It guarantees negotiation before acceleration. In this episode, we explore how this dormant architecture shapes trust, policy, civic patience, and the boundaries between governance and governed. We ask how a right exercised mostly in private still influences every public decision made about force, safety, and the social contract. And we consider why, in a landscape of polarization, the paradox holds: weapons most powerful in use may be most valuable unused.

The United States is the only modern nation where nearly half a billion privately owned firearms—most dormant, unseen, and unorganized—form an unspoken fourth layer of power within civil society. Public debate reduces guns to crime, culture wars, or personal safety, but the deeper structural reality is that private firearm ownership disperses consequence and prevents any single actor—local government, shadow authority, or federal power—from assuming uncontested monopoly over civilian life. The Second Amendment was not written for hunting or nostalgia. It was written for parity—citizens maintaining access to contemporary tools comparable to those used by the state they authorize. This fourth layer is defined not by rebellion but by restraint. Despite their scale, America’s firearms are not mobilized into vigilantism, organized insurgency, or paramilitary politics. They sit in homes, safes, closets, glove compartments—present but unused. Deterrence operates through uncertainty. The absence of uprisings is not proof the deterrent is fiction; it is evidence that the boundary is understood. Power is negotiated, not assumed. Unlike cartels or militias abroad, American gun ownership is not aligned to a single ideology. It is not a tribal uniform. It cuts across geography, race, and politics. Recent trends—LGBTQ groups training, Black gun clubs expanding, feminist self-defense movements growing—have not terrified the traditional 2A crowd. Paradoxically, the reaction has been: welcome. Because the principle is not cultural; it is constitutional. The fear is not who owns the guns. The fear is who believes only they should. Critics claim that if these guns mattered, they would have already been used. But deterrents are measured by the events that do not happen. Nuclear arsenals prove themselves through silence. Privately held arms shape governance not through force but through the impossibility of unilateralism. The Fourth Layer has no leader, no roster, and no headquarters. It is self-policed by consequence: misuse a firearm and the state itself removes you from the equation. In a century defined by institutional mistrust, rapid social revision, and attempts to frame America as pure “democracy” rather than a constitutional republic of negotiated powers, the presence of privately held parity matters. It does not guarantee virtue. It guarantees consent must be earned, not presumed. These firearms are not mythology and not menace. They are sequestered carbon—stored energy, dormant pressure, waiting not for ignition but for justification. They remain the silent ballast of a system that expects debate before decree. Not a threat. Not a promise. A boundary.

When governments fail — slowly, suddenly, or simply enough to be noticed — power doesn’t evaporate. Power reallocates. The world abhors a vacuum, and politics is physics with human consequences. Somewhere between the speeches and the streets, between the slogan and the morgue, new systems emerge to do what the old system can’t or won’t. They collect debts. They settle disputes. They hand out punishment, protection, and paychecks. They build their own justice without courts and their own economies without banks. They step in because someone must. In this episode, we explore the phenomenon most people pretend not to see: the rise of parallel governance — the cartels, gangs, militias, and movements that become de facto institutions where the real institutions have failed their stress test. To outsiders these groups are criminals, extremists, terrorists. To insiders they are the only available infrastructure. The labels flip depending on where you stand and what you need. It’s easy to condemn until your cousin gets sick and the man with the envelope is the only one with cash. It’s easy to moralize until you have no job, no security, and the dangerous path is the only one paved. The modern state calls itself the monopoly on legitimate force, but legitimacy is not a crown — it’s a lease. It must be renewed constantly through competence, fairness, and presence. When the state becomes distant, bureaucratic, condescending, corrupt, or simply indifferent, the legitimacy clock runs out. Into that expiration gap walk the people with guns, money, charisma, or enough audacity to organize chaos into hierarchy. That’s not an endorsement — it’s an observation. From Bogotá to Baltimore, Kandahar to Chicago, the pattern repeats with maddening consistency. There are three layers: the official government that claims authority, the shadow structure that exercises it, and the outside force that interferes with both — whether that force arrives as peacekeepers, cartel networks, federal task forces, insurgents, or investment capital. Everyone has an angle. No one is neutral. And the people in the middle adapt because survival is non-negotiable. What makes this conversation more volatile today is speed — narrative speed, technological speed, economic speed. Once upon a time power shifted in whispers and generational drift. Now it shifts in news cycles. A drone strike can redraw a local hierarchy overnight. A video of police brutality can flip a neighborhood’s allegiance before lunchtime. A cartel’s public works project — a road, a playground, a clinic — can secure loyalty faster than an election promises paperwork will. Democracy asks for patience; desperation has none. We also confront the uncomfortable symmetry: the state and its rivals look more alike than either side will admit. Both collect taxes — one calls them taxes, the other calls them “protection.” Both administer justice — one through courts, the other through threats. Both recruit — one with scholarships and slogans, the other with cash and certainty. Both bury their dead and swear they died for something bigger. And both rely on stories to explain why they are necessary and why the other side is dangerous. This is not moral equivalence. It’s moral realism. Violence isn’t random. It’s bureaucratic. It’s political. It’s economic. When an F-35 drops a precision bomb, when a cartel assassin leaves a message on a bridge, when a SWAT team raids a rowhouse, when a militia posts its manifesto — those are all forms of messaging. Force is just the punctuation. The sentence is power. The paradox is simple and brutal: the state sees itself as the answer; the people filling the vacuum see themselves as the alternative. Each side claims to be solving a problem; each side claims the other is the problem. They are both right and both wrong — because the problem is bigger than labels and older than flags.

When people debate terrorism, cartel violence, insurgency, or the so-called war on drugs, they usually argue morality — who is good, who is evil, who is defending civilization, who is poisoning it. But morality, for all its emotional voltage, explains almost nothing. What explains far more is power — who has it, who wants it, and who steps in when the official architecture of governance collapses or simply stops caring. The line between freedom fighter and terrorist, protector and predator, patriot and criminal, isn’t drawn by ethics. It’s drawn by legitimacy — and legitimacy is an asset backed not by universal truth but by narrative control. In this episode, we explore the three-layer structure that exists in every conflict zone, every “failed state,” and, increasingly, every major American city. There is the official government, the one on paper, the one with flags, seals, and press briefings. There is the shadow authority, the unofficial power that feeds the hungry, settles disputes, provides jobs and revenge and punishment. Then there is the outside force — the state that flies drones overhead, signs extradition orders, raids safe houses, or sends special operators to kick down doors at 3 AM and drag someone out as the neighbors silently watch through blinds. Overseas this looks like Marines patrolling Helmand, tribes negotiating in back rooms, and politicians promising order they cannot enforce. At home it looks like city councils, street crews, and federal task forces — each claiming jurisdiction, none fully in control. The actors change — militants, cartels, militias, gangs, extremist networks — but the logic doesn’t. Wherever the state fails, someone else shows up with cash or guns. Often with both. And once people become reliant on the parallel system that pays them, protects them, or threatens them, the question of “who is the terrorist” depends entirely on who is holding the microphone that day. We also dismantle one of the most stubborn myths: that non-state actors are monsters operating outside the logic of community. They are not. They are community solutions — brutal, corrupt, violent solutions — but solutions to real needs that governments ignored or failed to address. The drug boss who funds funerals and buys school supplies is not benevolent. But he is present, and presence is power. The insurgent who promises justice through the barrel of a rifle may be wrong — but he is visible when the courthouse is closed and the state has barricaded itself behind armored glass. Meanwhile the state — whether American, British, Colombian, Nigerian, or otherwise — justifies its own violence by insisting its enemies are less legitimate, less human, less deserving of due process. A Hellfire missile operates with extraordinary precision; the story wrapped around it is far less precise. A speedboat blown up in international waters can be framed as a surgical strike — or the execution of civilians who chose the wrong employer. The semantics hide what the debris cannot. The question isn’t whether these parallel power systems are good or bad — they are almost always both. The question is simpler and far more uncomfortable: If the state was delivering what people needed, would those systems exist at all? Or do they persist because the official promise of order, safety, and opportunity became a slogan instead of a contract? In this episode, we don’t excuse the violence. We don’t romanticize the outlaws. We don’t exonerate the state. We simply acknowledge the ecosystem as it exists — not as we’d like to pretend it does. Because one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. One neighborhood’s gang is another neighborhood’s protection service. One nation’s war on terror is another nation’s foreign invasion. And when systems fail, the labels become weapons, the violence becomes currency, and the people caught in between learn quickly that survival is rarely ideological — it’s transactional.

Barovia doesn’t believe in quiet mornings. The sun doesn’t rise so much as negotiate with the fog, and when the party left Argynvostholt—bruised, burned, and out of everything but sarcasm—they were just trying to make it to the Wizards of Wine without adding another ghost to their growing collection. But the Svalich Road had other ideas. As the grey dawn crept in, the flicker of a bonfire appeared between the trees. Cut to: pine forest, heavy mist, silhouettes moving around a ritual circle. Urihorn scouts ahead and finds a scene straight out of a Barovian horror mural: wild druids preparing a sacrifice. Their prisoner—bound, smeared with wolfsbane, mugwort, and nightshade—is Riven Thal. What happens next is chaos. Cut to arrows, spell flashes, a druid collapsing into ash under Riven’s Moonbeam. Riven, newly transformed into a chimeric cat, bolts up a tree and refuses to come down. He stares at the party through branches, glowing eyes full of mistrust. When he finally shifts back, he drops Moonbeam like a glowing warning line between himself and us. And that’s how Riven joins the group: cautious, wounded, and deeply convinced we might be worse than the cultists. The road continues. The fog thickens. The camera follows the party to the next clearing where another campfire burns low. And standing there—with an axe and the world’s worst timing—is Izek Strazni, Vallaki’s executioner. The man who beheaded our former companion Valen’eir. Traxidor sees him and snaps. Cut to: Guiding Bolt blasting across the grass. Radley joins in. Daermon, too. Riven casts Hold Person just to stop the cleric from doing something irreversible. And then the forest explodes. A teenage wizard bursts from the trees, screaming, “Leave him alone!” Cue the orange surge of a Fireball blossoming across the clearing. Slow-mo: Urihorn’s panther hurled backward and instantly killed. Radley shielding himself. Traxidor thrown to his knees. Riven staggering from the blast. The boy is Victor Vallakovich—son of Vallaki’s previous burgomaster, amateur necromancer, full-time disaster. When Traxidor tries to heal, Victor flicks off a Counterspell like he’s dismissing an insect. Daermon charms him before he unleashes round two. Then everything stops. Izek breaks free of the magical paralysis but doesn’t attack. Instead, he talks. And the truth he gives is nothing like the one we built in our heads. According to Izek, our fallen companion Valen’eir murdered Milivoj the gravedigger, confessed to serving Strahd, and promised the town would burn. And the next day, Vallaki did. As the truth settles, even the fog seems to pause. Ravens circle overhead. Victor awkwardly waves at Daermon. And Izek, dragging the boy away, tells us to leave him be. Cut to ravens descending to peck at the remains of Urihorn’s panther. A grim little epilogue to the morning. Finally, the party reaches the Wizards of Wine. Warm light. Family. Safety, or something like it. Over dinner, the Martikovs debate Vallaki’s future, but Danika ends the conversation with a single chilling line: “Barovia has only one ruler.” The whole room goes quiet. The fire pops. And that’s when someone notices something wrong—something impossible. Urihorn, sitting among friends, bathed in candlelight… does not cast a shadow. Cut to black.

In Barovia, exhaustion isn’t just a condition. It’s a worldview. And when Session Twenty-Three began, that’s exactly where we were—drained, bruised, and barely held together after ghosts, scarecrows, giant spiders, and one very opinionated abandoned manor. We left Argynvostholt like survivors crawling out of a collapsed mine, heading toward the only place in Barovia that still feels remotely like home: the Wizards of Wine Winery. A place with warmth, family, and maybe even joy, if the mist isn’t listening too closely. But Barovia never lets you walk in peace. At dawn, we spotted the glow of a bonfire hidden in the trees. Urihorn scouted ahead and found—of course—a ritual sacrifice in progress. A druid and a pack of wild men preparing to carve open a bound stranger smeared with wolfsbane and nightshade. Classic Barovian hospitality. That stranger was Riven Thal. And he joined our party in the most Barovia way possible: crawling through the dirt, blasting his captors with Moonbeam from the top of a pine tree, and then refusing to come down because he did not trust us at all. Fair. Riven’s introduction said everything we needed to know: this man survives. And he survives suspicious. After a tense standoff, he agreed to travel with us, keeping one eye on the road and one eye on us. But the day had other plans. Further along the Svalich Road, we found a small camp where Izek Strazni—the executioner who beheaded our former companion—was quietly chopping wood. Traxidor saw him and immediately tried to smite him out of existence. And that’s when the forest exploded in fire. A teenage wizard came screaming out of the trees—Victor Vallakovich, the old Burgomaster’s son—and launched a Fireball straight into our group. Urihorn’s panther died instantly. The rest of us barely stayed standing. Traxidor tried to heal himself, but Victor Counterspelled him like he was swatting a fly. Daermon charmed the boy before he could kill us all. And then came the twist. Izek, freed from the Hold Person spell, didn’t attack. He explained. Calmly. Honestly. Maybe even painfully. Our friend Valen’eir—the wizard Izek executed—had murdered a young gravedigger, confessed to serving Strahd, and threatened Vallaki. Izek claimed he was carrying out justice, not vengeance. The explanation didn’t fix anything, but it changed everything. Suddenly the question wasn’t “Is Izek evil?” It was “What do we not know about each other?” Riven watched this unfold like someone judging a very poorly run cult. Urihorn remembered that Van Richten once warned him Radley and Daermon might secretly serve Strahd. And at that moment, it didn’t feel crazy. Both sides stepped back. A truce. A temporary ceasefire. Izek dragged the charmed Victor away. Ravens descended to pick at the scorched remains of Urihorn’s panther. When we finally reached the Wizards of Wine, the Martikovs welcomed us like family returning from war. Dinner was warm, loud, and painfully normal—until Danika reminded us of a truth Barovia never lets you forget: “Barovia has only one ruler.” The table fell silent. And in that silence, someone noticed something impossible. Urihorn—our halfling ranger, our loyal friend—did not cast a shadow. In a land ruled by a vampire, a missing shadow isn’t a quirk. It’s a warning. And that’s where Session Twenty-Three ends—not with a battle, but with a question. If Barovia takes pieces of you one at a time… who will you be when it’s done?

The screen fades in on mist. The remains of Argynvostholt rise like a broken cathedral above a grey valley. Then, faintly, the sound of boots, breathing, and whispered plans. This is Session 22 — a full visual chronicle of the night our party defied the ghosts, webs, and curses of Barovia’s most haunted ruin. The video podcast version of Fire in the Webs captures the energy of play in a way that only a tabletop camera can. The dice roll in frame. The players’ faces shift between tension, humor, and awe. You see every movement of the miniatures on the map, every quick exchange that turns a near-death moment into triumph. The story begins with a decision: to re-enter Argynvostholt, the fallen seat of the Silver Dragon’s order. Within minutes, everything unravels. Radley Fullthorn, the human Eldritch Knight, pauses to gauge the room. From above, the ceiling trembles—and from the darkness, nine spiders the size of horses descend. The table explodes with action. Dice scatter. Spells ignite. Radley casts Thunderwave, the camera catching his player’s hands lifting as the blast shakes miniatures across the board. When the knight falls to poison, the scene slows. Traxidor, half-elf cleric, murmurs the words to Spare the Dying as his player leans forward over the table, eyes fixed. The room holds its breath until the roll succeeds. From there, the session ascends into exploration and unease. Through dim corridors, spectral soldiers emerge—phantoms of the fallen order. The lighting in the studio turns blue-white as Channel Divinity erupts across the map. Ghosts flee. The camera pans over character sheets: empty spell slots, dwindling health bars, notes scrawled in haste. But Barovia is never finished. Outside, under a sky that never brightens, a wagon departs and leaves behind a coffin. The engraving on its lid: Radley Fullthorn. Laughter cuts the tension. He lies down inside it, “just to see,” then climbs out and orders it burned. The table breaks into uneasy smiles. It’s macabre humor born from exhaustion and survival—the real language of adventurers who have stared too long into the dark. Morning brings the final battle: animated scarecrows advancing through mist. Their eyes glow. Fire answers. The table’s energy shifts from fear to exhilaration as the party wins, spent but unbroken. Visually, this episode bridges two worlds: the haunted imagination of Barovia and the tangible magic of players at the table. You can see how Dungeons & Dragons becomes more than a game—it’s performance, collaboration, and living story. Fire in the Webs – Session 22 is part theater, part documentary, and part survival tale. Watch it to understand how dice and friendship can build worlds—and how courage can still burn, even in Barovia’s endless night.

Step into Barovia’s haunted silence in The Mists of Argynvostholt, an audio journey through one of the most intense chapters of our Curse of Strahd campaign. This is Session 22 — an evening of peril, faith, and endurance that tested every spell slot, every saving throw, and every nerve at the table. Our adventurers—Urihorn Tenpenny, a halfling ranger with a loyal beast companion; Radley Fullthorn, a human Eldritch Knight balancing sword and spell; Traxidor, a cleric of light carrying the last fire of the Morninglord; and Daermon Cobain, an elf arcane trickster who fights with precision and wit—return to the fallen fortress of Argynvostholt, once home to the Order of the Silver Dragon. They come seeking redemption for a past defeat. Instead, they find the manor alive with malice. When Radley hesitates in the ballroom ruins, the ceiling comes alive: nine giant spiders descend on threads as thick as ropes. The sound of Thunderwave crashes through the hall, stones crack, and poison drips into the silence. The cleric’s voice rises over the chaos—“Spare the Dying!”—and breath returns to the fallen knight’s lungs. You’ll hear the rhythm of the table as it happens: dice hitting wood, pages turning, whispered tactics, the exhale when a roll lands just high enough to survive. The fight spills through rooms where portraits still watch and cobwebs hold centuries of regret. Upstairs, spectral soldiers emerge through the walls, remnants of knights who once swore to serve the light. Divine radiance flares, the dead scatter, and the group presses deeper into the heart of Barovia’s grief. Then—outside, silence. A coffin waits, freshly carved, Radley’s name etched across the lid. He opens it. Empty. Without a word, he lies down inside, stares at the sky, and climbs out again. Later that night, they burn it for warmth. At dawn, the mist parts just long enough to reveal the glowing eyes of animated scarecrows, shambling through fog. Fire bolts and sacred flames turn darkness to light, if only for a moment. Every sound in this session matters: the flicker of fire, the scrape of steel, the faint breath between rolls. This is Dungeons & Dragons not as spectacle, but as shared memory—friends, imagination, and danger made real through voice. The Mists of Argynvostholt invites you to listen close. Feel the dice, the story, the fear, the laughter. Barovia is calling.

Imagine watching a pot of water with frogs in it. The city adds a little heat — higher taxes, new regulations, moral lectures — and waits to see what happens. At first, nothing. The frogs get used to it. Then one day the temperature crosses a line, and they jump. That’s how modern economies lose their wealth. Not with protests, not with revolutions — but with relocation. In the past, money was trapped. Rockefeller couldn’t just move Standard Oil to Singapore. The state had leverage. That’s why we could run top tax rates near 90 percent in the 1950s — and still fund highways, NASA, and free public universities. But we deregulated, digitized, and globalized, and suddenly money turned into vapor. Now it flows wherever the vibe is better. Today, every governor plays host instead of sheriff. They beg for headquarters, sports teams, rich residents. Remember Amazon HQ2? That wasn’t a competition — it was a collective confession. Cities have to woo wealth because they can’t hold it anymore. Modern taxation isn’t punishment; it’s marketing. And it’s not just billionaires. It’s every dual-income family earning mid-six figures — the real tax base. They can move to Florida, Texas, or just twenty minutes north to Westchester. If you make them feel like villains, they’ll leave quietly, and when they do, you’ll lose the revenue that funds the compassion. I want cities to care for people — I believe in that deeply. But compassion without arithmetic is just performance art. If we want social programs that last, we have to keep the contributors from leaving. Make prosperity feel safe, not shameful. The stadiums, the Olympic bids, the waterfront makeovers — they’re not just vanity. They’re bait. The trick is pretending it’s about culture while it’s really about capital. That’s the truth nobody likes to say out loud: in 2025, the rich don’t live in cities; cities live under them. It’s not the 19th century anymore. The world of heavy money and civic loyalty is gone. What’s left is the great escape — quiet, legal, and constant — and the only cities that will survive are the ones smart enough to keep the frogs comfortable.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how money moves — and how we still talk about it as if it doesn’t. It all started with a TikTok comment. Somebody asked, “When have rich people ever moved to avoid taxes?” I typed back a few examples — Eduardo Saverin to Singapore, the French actor Gérard Depardieu to Belgium, the wave of Californians to Texas — and before I knew it, I was deep in the rabbit hole of what economists call capital flight. It’s the quiet migration that rewires everything. Cities still pretend they control wealth, but wealth learned how to walk. In the twentieth century, capital was heavy. Factories and banks were physical. You could trap it with paperwork. That’s how we ran 90-percent tax rates in the 1950s — because money couldn’t leave. Now it can. And does. The second you make the rich uncomfortable, they don’t argue; they relocate. You can’t run 1950s taxes in a 2025 economy. You can’t play chicken with people who can teleport. Take New York right now. With Zohran Mamdani elected mayor, talk of new taxes and rent freezes is driving the same professionals who fund the city to look for exits: Westchester, Jersey, Connecticut. These aren’t oligarchs — they’re the $400k-a-year scaffolding that holds the budget up. Lose enough of them and the math collapses. We’ve turned taxation into courtship. Look at Amazon HQ2: Arlington and a dozen other cities groveling for the same HQ like contestants in an economic beauty pageant. Modern governments don’t tax the rich — they audition for them. And it’s not ideology. It’s comfort. Make the princess-and-the-pea class uneasy and they’ll hop to somewhere cooler. The same dynamic drives gentrification: mayors won’t admit they want to bulldoze blight, so they build stadiums and call it “revitalization.” Nationals Park did it in D.C.; the Olympics do it every time. Prestige becomes a permit for displacement. I don’t hate any of this. It’s just physics. Money follows comfort, and policy either acknowledges that or dies pretending otherwise. Charity is opt-in. Tax support is opt-out. And when cities forget that, they lose the people who keep the lights on. It’s not the 19th century anymore. The steam still rises from the streets, but the power that once drove it has already left the city.

Every now and then, America drags its elites out of the faculty lounge and into the street fair. It doesn’t matter if the excuse is a war, a crisis, or—this time—the 250th birthday of the country. Eventually, the people who think they’re running the story are reminded that they’re just living in it. That’s what’s happening now: the same class that spent a decade deconstructing the flag is being told to wave it. The same pundits who said “America was never great” are now workshopping how to make patriotism sound inclusive. The Great Patriotic Heist, they called it—the Left’s plan to steal back the language of the Republic before Trump’s fireworks light up the sky in 2026. But something unexpected is happening. The performance is starting to take. At first, this was supposed to be patriotic drag—ironic flag-waving, focus-grouped “love of country” speeches, and diversity parades that felt as managed as corporate training videos. It was meant to be safe, even antiseptic. But you can’t play with fire without getting burned. Pretending to love something, especially something as big and unruly as America, has a way of sneaking past the mask. Before long, the act starts to feel like belief. That’s how America wins—not through conquest, but through absorption. It’s cultural judo. The Default Republic doesn’t shout down its critics; it invites them to the barbecue. It doesn’t exile dissenters; it makes them neighbors. Everyone who tries to overthrow it eventually becomes part of it. The Puritans became merchants. The rebels became regulators. The hippies became consultants. The Republic doesn’t punish revolution—it digests it. Now it’s digesting the Left’s moral managerial class. The people who spent years treating patriotism like a symptom of privilege are suddenly out in the sun with people who don’t apologize before loving their country. And it’s changing them. Because the thing they thought they were parodying—this easy, unselfconscious affection for the Republic—is exactly what they’ve been missing. The great secret of American normalcy is that it isn’t ideological. It’s a temperament—a default mode of stubborn optimism. The 80 percent of Americans who still think the country’s worth arguing over don’t live on Twitter. They don’t see patriotism as a brand or a trauma; it’s just part of the background music of belonging. They grill, they vote, they raise kids and hope they do better. They’re the ballast—the rowers in the galley who keep the ship moving while the captains yell about ideology from the deck. That’s why every attempt to control the national mood eventually dissolves. The Default Republic doesn’t fight back; it absorbs. It takes whatever the intellectual class invents—critical theory, corporate virtue, even performative patriotism—and turns it into background noise. The irony is that while the Left thinks it’s teaching America to be moral again, America is teaching the Left how to be human again. The activist who goes to “monitor extremism” at a small-town parade ends up humming the marching-band tune. The journalist covering “reactionary patriotism” wipes a tear during the fireworks. It’s not conversion; it’s contagion. By 2026, the great rebranding of patriotism will look less like propaganda and more like repentance. The country’s critics will have become its defenders without realizing it. They’ll call it progress, or “inclusive nationalism,” but the rest of us will just call it Tuesday. Because in America, everyone eventually comes home. The Republic doesn’t need to win the argument; it only needs to outlast it. And when the fireworks burst again over the National Mall, the nation won’t be healed—just reminded that underneath all the noise, the Republic is still there, humming along, unbothered, undefeated. The Default Republic always wins—not because it’s right, but because it never stops inviting people back.

Every few generations, America forgets how to argue and starts to dance instead. This time the excuse is the 250th birthday — the Semiquincentennial, a word that sounds like it was cooked up by a government subcommittee. But behind the bureaucratic branding, something strange is happening. The same cultural class that once rolled its eyes at patriotism is now rediscovering flags, fireworks, and the word “Republic.” The same people who called the Founders colonizers are suddenly quoting them. It’s as if the left decided to go on a national Rumspringa — to step outside its echo chamber and see how the rest of America actually lives. At first, this was just The Great Patriotic Heist — a marketing strategy meant to stop Trump from owning the 250th anniversary. Progressive elites thought they could perform patriotism without believing it, using flags as props and slogans like “defend democracy” as emotional camouflage. But America has a funny way of reshaping everyone who touches it. Pretend long enough, and the pretending starts to feel real. The Left wanted to rebrand patriotism; instead, patriotism is rebranding them. That’s how the Default Republic wins — not through power or ideology, but through absorption. It doesn’t conquer its critics; it invites them to dinner. It doesn’t punish hypocrisy; it forgives it. It’s the quiet, unbreakable America that exists between extremes — the one that works, pays taxes, cheers at Little League games, and thinks the country’s still worth arguing about. It’s not the cathedral or the revolution. It’s the barbecue in between. The managerial class doesn’t understand this because it was trained to see belonging as a system, not a feeling. They think patriotism is something you teach through messaging campaigns and moral supervision. But patriotism isn’t pedagogy — it’s muscle memory. It’s the unselfconscious act of standing for something larger than yourself. It’s what happens when belief outlasts irony. That’s why the “new patriotism” the Left is trying to choreograph feels more like theater than conviction. It’s carefully diverse, emotionally calibrated, algorithmically sincere. But America has always been a place where sincerity can’t be faked. You can’t focus-group affection. You can only live near it until it gets under your skin. The Left thought they were managing a narrative; the Republic knew it was hosting a conversion. And conversions are contagious. Once you’ve sung along to “God Bless America” at a minor league game, it’s hard to go back to sneering at flags. Once you’ve seen ordinary people — plumbers, nurses, veterans — celebrate something together without cynicism, you start to suspect that the real rebellion isn’t against the country but against despair itself. That’s what makes the Default Republic undefeatable. It’s not ideological. It’s gravitational. Every attempt to overthrow it eventually gets absorbed — the Puritans became merchants, the rebels became bureaucrats, the hippies became consultants. The Republic doesn’t fight revolutions; it metabolizes them. By the time America hits its 250th, that metabolism will have done its work again. The activists who came to police the parades will find themselves clapping along. The journalists covering “performative patriotism” will find themselves moved. And the country — messy, vulgar, generous — will go on doing what it does best: forgiving everyone for coming home late. The lesson isn’t that America is perfect. It’s that it’s patient. The Republic doesn’t need to win the argument; it only needs to outlast it. And when the fireworks burst in 2026, the think pieces will call it reconciliation, or narrative evolution, or managed healing. But it won’t be any of that. It’ll just be America doing what it always does — absorbing the noise, baptizing the cynics, and reminding everyone that you don’t have to like the song to learn the chorus. Because in the end, belief here isn’t something you think. It’s something you sing.

“You become what you pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend to be.” — Jean-Paul Sartre In The Great Patriotic Heist, I argued that the American Left has begun performing patriotism — not feeling it, performing it. The same institutions that once mocked the flag now wrap themselves in it, speaking solemnly about “our Republic” and “the unfinished promise of 1776.” It’s not rediscovered affection — it’s narrative survival. The populist Right took the flag hostage, so the only way to reclaim it was to start waving their own. My warning then was simple: performance has a half-life. It either collapses or becomes real. This episode is about what happens if it becomes real — if people pretending to love America start actually loving it. Here, pretending isn’t lying — it’s creation. We perform ideals until they exist. We said “all men are created equal” long before we believed it, and through repetition made it partly true. America evolves not through honesty but rehearsal. Sartre called it “bad faith.” Not hypocrisy, but self-entrapment — when you play a role so long you forget it’s a choice. America’s moral managers — experts, editors, educators — now perform patriotism because they know you can’t govern people who think you hate their country. But repetition changes people. Roles have gravity. Pretending shapes the pretender. What happens when actors start believing their own script? When “freedom,” “democracy,” and “the Republic” stop being props and start being convictions again? Maybe the costume fuses to the skin. Maybe the same Left that once saw America as villain becomes its strictest guardian. That fusion could create something new — not the populist Right’s raw nationalism nor the technocratic Left’s therapy-state, but a hybrid: moral nationalism wrapped in empathy, managed through control. That’s the Hegelian rhythm — thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The thesis was neoliberal order: global, expert, moralized. The antithesis was populism — Left and Right fusing in rebellion. For a moment, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump spoke the same language of revolt: different grammar, same fury. That was synthesis one — populism as authenticity, revolt against curated virtue. But populism became self-aware. Its anger turned ritual, its authenticity cosplay. MAGA became fandom. Once authenticity becomes aesthetic, the establishment knows how to sell it back. Enter synthesis two: Progressive Patriotism — focus-grouped, diverse, emotionally ergonomic. Patriotism as lifestyle brand. It looks real, sounds real, even feels real — but it’s patriotic the way a corporate mission statement is heartfelt. Still, America’s hunger for sincerity is so deep even simulation can work. If enough people perform belief, it becomes belief. Picture 2026 — the 250th anniversary. “America 250” events: diverse, polished, professional. Fireworks with spoken-word poetry. Speeches about freedom delivered like mindfulness apps. It’ll be immaculate — and in some way, it might succeed. Millions will feel pride, gratitude, even tears. The performance may cross into faith. And when belief hardens, rebellion returns. Every orthodoxy breeds heresy. Somewhere, a younger generation is already rolling its eyes at both MAGA’s nostalgia and the Left’s choreography. They’ll want danger, not safety; truth, not optics. Their patriotism, if it exists, will be quiet, personal, unbranded. That’s the American cycle: imitation becomes belief, belief institution, and institutions rebellion’s target. Each generation pretends until the mask becomes its face — then rips it off. Maybe progressive patriotism sticks. Maybe the country becomes gentler, managerial, moralistic — a nation of caretakers with flags. But someone will always stand up, roll their eyes, and say “enough.” Because America’s soul belongs to the unmanageable — the ones who stop pretending. And that, in the end, was Sartre’s warning: the danger isn’t pretending. It’s when the pretending works.