Wealth vs. Government

American election security has always been a bit of a mixed bag and, at times, a rogue's gallery

You learned the fairy tale in civics class. The ballot box is the one clean machine — the sacred mechanism, the great equalizer, the place where the powerful and the powerless cancel each other out one vote at a time. The peaceful transfer of power is American scripture. We even built a little ritual around it: the concession call, the inauguration, the loser standing on the dais clapping for the winner.

It’s a lovely story. The documentary record just doesn’t back it up — especially after the 2020 election and the events of January 6, 2021.

This is part of my daily Mini Histories series — 40-second tilt-shift AI-created video dives into the moments American memory conveniently misplaced, each one built around a thesis that runs against the grain of what you were taught. (You can find the whole archive on the channel.)

And the elections file is one of the thickest, because the thing the fairy tale leaves out is that American elections don’t get stolen on election day, via so-called voter fraud. They get stolen before it, broken around it, or bought after it — by the very elites who cry big crocodile tears about the unfairness of elections as they rig them in their favor (sometimes, with the blessing of SCOTUS including recently). Election denial becomes a whole grift in itself for the unpopular party that cheats. Using three failure modes, over two hundred years, one remarkably consistent cast of beneficiaries emerges again and again to wield power against the will of the people.

Let’s go to the tape.

Stolen: the backroom

Long before anyone “stopped the steal,” the steal was a gentleman’s arrangement — the proverbial smoke-filled back rooms where deals were made amongst men of influence.

The Corrupt Bargain (1824)

The first stolen presidential election happened earlier than you think — Andrew Jackson won the most votes and the most electors, and still walked away with nothing after the contest got thrown to the House and the runners-up cut a deal.

Reconstruction, Thwarted (1877)

A half-century later they did it again, only this time the price was an entire people’s freedom. To settle a disputed election, the parties traded away Reconstruction itself — federal troops out of the South, the door held open for Jim Crow.

Continue reading Stolen, Broken, Bought: A Short History of the American Election
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gerrymandering -- an illustrated guide to its effects

A new long-form data brief on how representativeness has been gerrymandered away — and the first installment of a series on how American democracy was engineered to stop being competitive.

In 2024, Americans went to the polls to elect 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. 366 of those races were over before a single ballot was cast.

Not “predictable.” Not “incumbent advantage.” Decided — by maps drawn years earlier, with software, by politicians choosing their voters instead of the other way around. According to the Cook Political Report‘s 2024 ratings, only 69 of 435 House seats — 15% — were genuinely competitive in the general election. The other 85% were already in the Republican or Democratic column before campaigning began.

That’s the headline of the new Doctor Paradox data brief, The Gerrymandered Republic, and it’s the launch piece for a new series: Structural Sabotage, on the ways American democracy has been engineered to stop being competitive.

This first installment is the receipt-collection edition. It covers:

  • The vote-share vs. seat-share gap in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio — and Maryland as the Democratic counter-example, because honesty matters
  • Packing and cracking — the two techniques every gerrymandered map uses, unchanged since 1812
  • The efficiency gap — the metric that quantifies how badly a map cheats
  • The collapse of swing seats from 164 in 1999 to 82 today — a 50% loss of competitive districts in 25 years
  • What actually works — independent commissions draw 19% of America’s districts and produce 41% of its toss-up races, a four-to-one ratio in favor of taking the pen out of politicians’ hands
  • The Supreme Court’s 2019 Rucho v. Common Cause decision, which closed the only federal door left

Click the image below to open the new mini-magazine style format:

gerrymandering -- an illustrated guide to its effects

Stay tuned for part 2 of the Structural Sabotage series — on how primaries weaponize safe seats — that will be coming next. If 85% of seats are decided before the general election, then who actually decides them? The answer is a much smaller and more ideological electorate than most Americans realize.

Please share. The cover-up that worked is still working, and the least we can do is make sure people can see the map.

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Results from the Kansas experiment with SAVE Act rules -- 99.9% of the voter registrations blocked were US citizens

The Kansas Prophecy: We Already Ran This Experiment and the SAVE Act in Kansas Was a Disaster

When Kansas tried its early version of the SAVE Act, a whopping 31,089 eligible American citizens were blocked from voting. Meanwhile only 39 noncitizens were “caught”… over 19 years. And many of them turned out to be administrative errors.

That’s the final score from Kansas’s proof-of-citizenship experiment — the same core policy the SAVE America Act would impose on all 50 states. Republicans are selling it as “election security.” Kansas already has the receipts on what it actually is.

Been There, Done That

In 2011, Kansas passed a law requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote — a birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers. It was the brainchild of then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who styled himself as America’s foremost crusader against the specter of rampant illegal voting. The law went into effect in 2013 and immediately went sideways.

DMV clerks weren’t allowed to request the new documents — or even tell people the requirement existed. Voter registration drives cratered: one effort at Washburn University collected 400 applications but managed to fully register roughly 75 people. A process that used to take five minutes stretched to an hour. Steven Fish, a warehouse worker born on a now-closed Air Force base in Illinois, couldn’t produce an acceptable birth certificate. Multiple plaintiffs in the lawsuit that followed were military veterans. All were U.S. citizens. None were the noncitizen bogeymen the law was supposed to stop.

The federal courts annihilated it. A 118-page district court ruling struck it down as unconstitutional. The 10th Circuit affirmed. The Supreme Court declined to hear it. The judge sanctioned Kobach personally and ordered him to take remedial legal education — a humiliation nearly without precedent for a sitting state official. Kansas paid $1.9 million in attorneys’ fees to the winning parties. The state’s current Republican Secretary of State, Scott Schwab — who voted for the law as a legislator — delivered the epitaph: “It didn’t work out so well.”

The “Problem” Rounds to Zero

And it’s not just Kansas. Everywhere officials have looked for the noncitizen voting crisis, they’ve found a rounding error:

The Heritage Foundation itself — which advocates for the SAVE Act — found 68 documented cases of noncitizen voting since the 1980s out of over a billion ballots cast; a rate of 0.0000001% (!). Utah reviewed its entire voter list of two million registrants and found one noncitizen registration and zero noncitizen votes. Georgia audited 8.2 million voters and found 20 noncitizens. The Brennan Center found 30 suspected cases across 23.5 million votes. This isn’t a policy responding to a problem. It’s a solution in search of a pretext.

The bill is also set to take effect immediately, which is fairly insane to think about such a radical change to the rules of voting mere months before an election. I’m old enough to remember when supposedly Good Governance dictated that we leave a Supreme Court seat empty for an entire year — allegedly so “The People” could have their say on this important lifetime appointment. If the precedent is supposed to be that no major structural changes happen during an election year, then how does the right wing justify the sudden about face? It’s okay only when a Republican is in office, no doubt.

Kansas at Scale

The SAVE America Act is Kansas’s disaster, federalized and supercharged. In addition to the proof-of-citizenship registration requirements, it would force states to hand voter roll data to DHS with no safeguards on how it’s used, criminalize election workers who register someone without the right paperwork — even if that person is a citizen — and effectively eliminate online registration, mail registration, and automatic voter registration programs used by millions.

It passed the House in February 2026. The Senate opened debate March 17. Prediction markets give it roughly an 11% chance of becoming law. Trump has threatened to block all other legislation — including DHS funding during a partial shutdown — until it passes. A leaked 17-page executive order draft would require all 211 million registered Americans to re-register in person if the Senate doesn’t comply.

SAVE Act Network Graph Explorer

Explore the web of people, organizations, and money behind the push.

Open full screen ↗

The Quiet Part Out Loud

Kansas proved that proof-of-citizenship laws don’t catch noncitizen voters. They catch citizens. The 31,000-to-39 ratio isn’t a bug — it’s the feature. And the bill doesn’t need to pass the Senate to serve its real purpose: manufacturing a narrative that “Democrats are blocking election security,” setting the stage for executive overreach, filibuster destruction, or post-election delegitimization.

The Kansas cautionary tale isn’t that the policy is flawed. It’s that it works exactly as intended — just the opposite of the way they’re selling it.

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The SAVE Act explainer -- voter suppression disguised as "integrity," delivered by people with no integrity

In this video, we break down the SAVE Act (H.R. 22) — a bill that demands documentary proof of U.S. citizenship just to register to vote in federal elections. It sounds reasonable for about 3 seconds, until you realize it’s a voter suppression machine dressed up in a flag pin. It is the legislative endrun around democracy that Trump promised when he told voters on the campaign trail that “you won’t have to vote anymore!”

What is the SAVE Act?

The “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act” amends the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require a passport or birth certificates paired with photo ID before you can register. For the roughly 21 million eligible citizens who don’t have easy access to those documents — disproportionately elderly, low-income, rural, Indigenous, and minority voters — it’s a wall. By design.

The problem it claims to solve doesn’t exist

Continue reading Watch: The SAVE Act — Solving imaginary voter fraud with very real disenfranchisement
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The nation’s top law enforcement officer is supposed to be the people’s lawyer. Instead, we got a corporate lobbyist who spent six years at Ballard Partners repping Qatar, Amazon, GM, private prisons, and Pfizer — then waltzed into the DOJ without disclosing any of it as a potential conflict. She listed exactly two conflicts on her committee paperwork: a policy institute gig and her brother’s law practice. That’s it. Thirty-plus clients and the government of a foreign nation, and Pam Bondi basically said “nothing to see here.”

Since her confirmation, Ballard Partners has become the highest-paid lobbying shop in D.C. and taken on ten new clients with business directly before Bondi’s DOJ — more than they had in the first Trump and Biden administrations combined. One of those clients, American Express Global Business Travel, paid Ballard $200K to lobby Bondi’s DOJ — after which the department conveniently dropped its challenge to a $540 million merger that would have let Amex GBT devour its biggest rival.

Then there’s Qatar. Bondi lobbied for the Qatari government. Then as AG she personally signed a DOJ memo blessing Qatar’s $400 million luxury jet gift to Trump. When the Freedom of the Press Foundation sued for that memo? Her DOJ stonewalled. Meanwhile, Trump announced a shiny new golf resort deal with a Qatari government-owned company. Totally unrelated, surely.

Oh, and remember the Trump University $25K donation her Florida AG office received right around the time fraud complaints landed on her desk — after which she declined to investigate? The IRS literally penalized Trump’s foundation for that one, and yet here she sits.

This isn’t a conflict of interest. It’s a business model.

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They do not care about you — you are expendable to them. They do not GAF. Especially now with AI — they are gonna replace you anyway brah! At best they are biding time putting you on a drip feed of murder porn and revenge fan fic until the moment they are completely certain they’ve hijacked the electoral system at which time you too, buddy, will be shown the airlock into a deep space void no one will ever hear you from because they have all the powers of the earth to override whatever puny narrative you may have had for yourself.

You will be crushed like a bug 1000x tinier than Kafka’s roach — millions at a time under the heels of casually sadistic billionaires many of whom were Democrats up until 5 minutes ago when someone offered them a deal to cut their tax bill in exchange for a measley few million dollars. It’s “irrational” to not take the deal. You have to take the deal. Your competitors have taken the deal. You’d be the only chump not taking the deal. It’s the Art of the Deal, right?

Deals are all that matter. Transactionality is all there is — including reducing the beautiful, awe-inspiring teachings of Jesus to a mere materialistic creed, draped in a flag, shouted from a bullhorn, fired into an already capsized boat, and shot into the heads of innocent bystanders if they don’t comply with conflicting directives.

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Liberal Tears illustrates the sneering cynicism of the right wing who refuse to articulate political values

There’s something conspicuously absent from American political discourse: actual discussion of values and the morals, ethical choices, and beliefs that go into the creation of good government policy.

Think about the last major political debate you watched, or the last campaign ad that stuck with you. How much of it was about what government should do versus who you should hate? How much was articulating a vision for society versus performing dominance over the out-group?

This isn’t an accident. It’s a strategy.

When your policy positions are wildly unpopular — when majorities oppose you on healthcare, taxation, abortion, climate change, guns, and wages — you don’t engage on the substance. You change the subject. You make politics about identity, grievance, and tribal belonging. You turn every election into a referendum on vibes rather than vision.

The American right has become extraordinarily sophisticated at this evasion. They’ve built an entire media ecosystem designed not to argue for right-wing values, but to ensure those values never have to be argued for at all. And the Trump administration is chock full of people from that media ecosystem.

The Polling Problem

Here’s the uncomfortable reality the modern right has to navigate, and we need to trumpet: their actual policy preferences are not popular.

Exposed to the individual provisions of the Affordable Care Act, majorities supported them — even among Republicans. Majorities support raising taxes on the wealthy, protecting Social Security and Medicare, acting on climate change, keeping abortion legal in most cases, and implementing universal background checks for gun purchases. On issue after issue, when you strip away the partisan framing and ask people what they actually want government to do, the “conservative” position loses.

This creates a strategic problem. You can’t win elections by articulating positions most people reject. So you articulate… something else.

The Retreat from Argument

Meanwhile, the right-wing has indefensible values, which is why they no longer even bother to try to articulate them. Instead, they express them obliquely through “memes” and mores that evince cruelty, bigotry, narcissism, domination, supremacy, greed, selfishness, and contempt for vulnerability — all while maintaining plausible deniability through irony, “just asking questions,” and the ever-ready accusation that anyone who names the pattern is being hysterical or unfair.

This is the function of the perpetual rhetorical shell game: you can’t pin down a position that’s never stated plainly. The cruelty gets expressed through policy and aesthetic, but when challenged, retreats behind procedural objections or “economic anxiety.” The bigotry shows up in who gets mocked and who gets protected, but is never admitted as such — it’s always reframed as “common sense” or “tradition.”

Continue reading The Quiet Part Loud: Why the right stopped talking about values
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Wealth Cult -- rich men behaving badly, by Midjourney

A network of exceedingly wealthy individuals and organizations have channeled their vast fortunes into influencing American politics, policy, and public opinion — they’ve formed a wealth cult. And they’ve leveraged that cult and its considerable fortune to influence and in many ways dramatically transform American politics.

The most succinct way I have come up with to explain American politics is that the wealthy are dividing us over race and religion. Today far more openly than in the past, where much oligarch shadow influence was delivered via dark money kept intentionally untraceable back to its origins.

The term “dark money” refers to political spending meant to influence the decision-making and critical thinking of the public and lawmakers where the source of the money is not disclosed. This lack of transparency makes it challenging to trace the influence back to its origins, hence the term “dark.”

And, it is dark indeed.

Wealth cult anchors the trench coat

The Wealth Cult is one of 3 primary groups or clusters supporting the right-wing and generally, the Republican Party. It anchors the trench coat by funding the 2 cults above it: the Christian Cult, and the White Cult.

Its story is stealthy and significant.

A bunch of billionaires toast themselves to themselves, by Midjourney

The wealth cult has funded disinformation campaigns, the spread of conspiracy theories, created fake social movements through astroturfing, enabled violent extremists to attack their country’s capitol, aided and abetted a convicted felon, cruelly deprived vulnerable people (especially immigrants, poor people, and women) of the kind of state aid granted generously throughout the developed world, bribed regulators, rigged elections, crashed economies, and on and on in service of their extremist free market ideology beliefs (which, by the way, have resulted in catastrophic market crashes every single time).

They believe in “makers and takers,” or Mudsill Theory, as it was once called by pedophile and racist Senator and slavery enthusiast James Henry Hammond. Some people were born to serve others, they say. Hierarchies are natural, they claim. Wealthy men should make all the decisions — because that’s what’s best for everyone, they say in paternalistic tones.

I don’t buy it. I believe all men are created equal. So did a certain Founder of our country.

Continue reading Wealth Cult: The oligarchs influencing American politics from the shadows
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You’ll hear a common retort on the extreme right that now holds sway in the mainstream Republican Party, in response to protests about the dismantling of democracy in this country — that we’re “a republic, not a democracy.” Right off the bat, a republic is a form of democracy — so they are claiming something akin to having a Toyota and not a car. It’s a rhetorical trick, in which people who fully know better are hacking the simple ignorance of civics and basic political philosophy of the right-wing political base.

But it manages to get worse — the origins of the bully taunt “a republic, not a democracy” go way back — they’re actually located in the segregationist movement. Specifically, the concept comes from the pro-segregation book You and Segregation, written in 1955 by future Senator Herman E. Talmadge.

John Birch Society loonies laud “a republic, not a democracy”

The “republic, not a democracy” meme would go on to be featured in the John Birch Society Blue Book — an organization so toxically extremist that even conservative darling William F. Buckley distanced himself from them. They feared the idea that increasing democratization would be a shifting balance of power away from white conservative men, and they spun numerous conspiracy theories to explain this as the result of nefarious undercover plot to overthrow Western Civilization.

In reality, the trend towards greater democracy is something the Founders themselves envisioned — though they likely could not have imagined how it would turn out. They believed fiercely in self-governance, and a clear separation from the tyranny of kings.

Continue reading “A republic, not a democracy” came from segregationists
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progressive capitalism as articulated by Ro Khanna as interviewed by Heather Cox Richardson

After last night’s solid trouncing of the entire GOP steez by the Democrats in elections coast to coast (p.s. don’t miss Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech — it’s a banger), the time is ripe for articulating a new vision of the American Dream. And the vision of progressive capitalism is sounding like the right tone for a nation state that wishes to remain the leader of the free world.

I believe there is pent-up energy in the Democratic reservoir — with a deep bench of political talent of people who actually seem to care about other people. And who actually understand and exalt the real promise of America — as a beacon of hope for a new experiment in self-governance — if we can keep it.

One of those politicians is Ro Khanna, who represents the bulk of Silicon Valley in his California district. He recently sat down with my favorite historian of all time, Heather Cox Richardson, to talk about the vision of progressive capitalism for lifting us out of this moment of reactionary pessimism and “nostalgia populism” — a promise he says is fake in the age of AI because it won’t generate real opportunity (I agree). The following video is a great introduction to this promising vision for a way out of the quagmire we feel ourselves in.

What is progressive capitalism?

Progressive capitalism summary

1. What Khanna means by “progressive capitalism”

  • Khanna argues that place matters: for decades, US policy has let capital go wherever it wants and told people in hollowed-out towns, “move if you want opportunity.”
  • His version of progressive capitalism says:
    • Markets and free enterprise are valuable for freedom and innovation, but
    • Government must intentionally invest in people’s health, education, and communities so they can actually develop their capabilities where they live.
  • He calls for a national economic development strategy — a kind of “Marshall Plan for the United States” — tailored to each region:
    • Advanced manufacturing in some places
    • Trade schools and tech institutes (AI, data, cyber) so people don’t have to leave small towns
    • Jobs in healthcare, education, childcare, and elder care

2. Care economy and tech economy, not either/or

  • Heather Cox Richardson pushes him on care work (childcare, elder care, education), noting it’s already present in every community, dominated by women and immigrants, and chronically underinvested in.
Continue reading Progressive Capitalism: A vision for the future
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why is health care so expensive, illustrated by a man sitting on a pile of medical debt

Why Healthcare Costs Stay High—And How the ACA Actually Helps Lower Them

America’s health care cost problem has a perverse logic at its core: we’ve committed to providing emergency care to everyone who needs it, regardless of ability to pay — but we’ve historically failed to ensure people have access to the preventive and primary care that would keep them out of astronomically expensive emergency rooms in the first place.

This contradiction creates a predictable—and expensive—spiral. Uninsured patients, lacking regular access to doctors, delay care until conditions become acute. They end up in emergency departments, where hospitals are legally required to treat them under EMTALA (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act — signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1986). Those visits generate massive uncompensated costs that hospitals pass along to everyone else: insured patients through higher prices, insurance companies through higher premiums, and taxpayers through increased public spending.

The Affordable Care Act was designed, in part, to break this cycle by attacking the problem at its source. The logic is straightforward: expand insurance coverage, and you enable people to seek preventive and primary care before minor issues become medical emergencies. Fewer emergency visits mean less uncompensated care, which translates to lower costs for hospitals, taxpayers, and the broader healthcare system.

And the data backs this up. Research consistently shows that after the ACA’s implementation, emergency department visits by uninsured patients declined significantly. More people with insurance meant more people managing chronic conditions, catching health problems early, and avoiding the emergency room when they had other, more appropriate care options. The shift from reactive emergency care to proactive preventive care doesn’t just improve health outcomes—it fundamentally reduces the financial burden on everyone in the system.

an infographic showing some of the key outcomes of the ACA health care law including lower taxpayer costs and more preventive care

The image above captures the four key outcomes: more insured people leading to fewer ER visits, lower taxpayer costs, and increased preventive care. Understanding this mechanism reveals why expanding coverage isn’t just a moral imperative—it’s a rational economic policy that makes the system work better for everyone, including those already insured.

But how exactly does this work in practice? And if the ACA helps lower costs, why don’t more people understand this benefit? Below, we answer the most common questions about healthcare costs, the hidden “emergency room tax” that everyone was paying before the ACA, and why the law remains one of the most misunderstood cost-saving policies in American history.

Why is health care so expensive in America?

Because hospitals must provide emergency care to everyone under EMTALA (1986). When patients can’t pay, those uncompensated bills ripple into higher local taxes and insurance premiums. It’s the costliest way to fund care.

Continue reading Why is health care so expensive?
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Peter Thiel sits in a far future, under an all-watchful digital eye

Peter Thiel FAQ: The Contradictions of Silicon Valley’s Dark Philosopher

Peter Thiel occupies a rarefied place in the modern pantheon of tech billionaires — less the tinkerer or engineer than the theorist-king of the movement. A venture capitalist, PayPal co-founder, Facebook’s first major outside investor, and the billionaire backer of numerous reactionary causes, Thiel has built a career at the intersection of money, ideology, and myth. He is the financier of futuristic dreams — and dystopian nightmares.

Born in Frankfurt and raised in California, Thiel studied philosophy at Stanford, where he was captivated by the writings of Leo Strauss and René Girard. These thinkers — one obsessed with the hidden logic of political elites, the other with the contagious nature of human desire — shaped Thiel’s enduring worldview: that civilization is locked in cycles of envy and collapse, and only an enlightened few can see beyond the herd. In this sense, Thiel has always seen himself less as a businessman and more as a philosopher of power.

His ventures, from PayPal to Palantir, form a kind of metaphysical architecture of control. PayPal, the proto-financial infrastructure of the internet, made Thiel his fortune. Palantir, as explored deeper in What Is Palantir?, has monetized the surveillance state. In between, Thiel cultivated a cadre of disciples — the so-called PayPal Mafia — that went on to dominate Silicon Valley. His investments in companies like Facebook gave him not only wealth but leverage: a front-row seat in the grand experiment of data-driven social engineering.

Peter Thiel at an imaginary round table of Peter Thiels

But Thiel’s influence extends far beyond technology. He bankrolls candidates, think tanks, and movements aimed at reshaping our very democracy itself. In Peter Thiel and the Antichrist, I explored how Thiel’s quasi-religious futurism blends techno-eschatology with authoritarian politics — a longing for an end-times “reset” that he sees as necessary for renewal. His protégés, like Palmer Luckey and J.D. Vance, carry forward the same paradoxical ethos: rebellion against democracy in the name of “freedom.” As I argued in Palmer Luckey, Peter Thiel, and the Welfare Queens of Defense, his ventures often feed off the very government systems they publicly scorn.

Continue reading Peter Thiel FAQ
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What is fascism, and what are the signs of fascism? The fascist form of government is a complex and multi-faceted ideology that can manifest in various ways, making it challenging to pin down with a single definition.

Fascism resists simple definition precisely because it’s a syncretic ideology—adaptable to different contexts while maintaining core structural features. Rather than a fixed doctrine, it operates as a political methodology characterized by specific power dynamics, rhetorical strategies, and institutional patterns.

Structural characteristics of fascism

These are the ideological foundations and belief systems that define fascist movements—not merely policy positions but the fundamental orientations toward power, identity, and social organization that shape how fascism understands the world and its place in it.

  1. Authoritarian Consolidation: Fascism centralizes power through the dismantling of horizontal accountability structures, typically concentrating authority in a charismatic executive who positions themselves above institutional constraints.
  2. Ultranationalism as Identity Politics: Goes beyond patriotism to assert inherent civilizational superiority or racial supremacy, often manifesting as collective narcissism where national mythmaking replaces historical accuracy.
  3. Militarized Social Order: Valorization of martial virtues, hierarchical discipline, and violence as political tools. Fascist movements frequently draw from veteran communities and paramilitary traditions.
  4. Anti-Intellectualism and Epistemic Closure: Systematic devaluation of expertise, academic inquiry, and empirical reasoning in favor of intuition, emotion, and revealed truth. The “coastal elite” or “ivory tower” becomes a rhetorical enemy.
  5. Ethno-Nationalism and Boundary Enforcement: Xenophobia operating through strict in-group/out-group categorization, often targeting immigrants, religious minorities, or racialized “others.”
  6. Reactionary Temporal Orientation: Deployment of a mythologized past as political program—the promise to restore a golden age that never existed, weaponizing nostalgia against pluralism.
  7. Anti-Leftist Mobilization: Positioning communism, socialism, and progressive movements as existential threats, often conflating disparate left ideologies to create a unified enemy.

The Us vs. Them Architecture: In-group/Out-group dynamics as core infrastructure

Fascism doesn’t just exploit social divisions—it requires their constant production and intensification as its primary source of political energy. While most political movements contain some degree of group identity, fascism is structurally dependent on a stark binary between insiders and outsiders, making this dynamic its foundational operating system rather than an incidental feature. The movement coheres not around shared policy goals or governance philosophy, but around the ongoing project of boundary maintenance: defining, defending, and purifying the “us” against an ever-present “them.”

Continue reading Warning Signs of Fascism
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Peter Thiel at Isengaard looking into the Palantir

Peter Thiel has a plan to save the world, and it looks like a nightmare. He’s casting around for scapegoats, but perhaps Peter Thiel and the Antichrist are one and the same.

The PayPal co-founder, Facebook‘s first outside investor, and Silicon Valley‘s most influential political operator has spent years developing a political philosophy so strange that most people assume it can’t be serious. Democracy and freedom are incompatible, he says. Global cooperation is the Antichrist. The only hope for civilization is absolute monarchy modeled on tech startups. And he’s not just theorizing—he’s building it.

Thiel has poured millions into political campaigns, funded think tanks, mentored a generation of “New Right” intellectuals and alt-Right screeders, and cultivated politicians who share his vision. He’s amplified fringe thinkers like Curtis Yarvin (the blogger behind “Neoreaction” who openly advocates abolishing democracy), but Thiel’s worldview is uniquely his own—a bizarre synthesis of Christian eschatology, corporate governance theory, and techno-authoritarianism that’s far more sophisticated and disturbing than anything coming from the intellectual dark web.

This isn’t just eccentric billionaire philosophy. Thiel’s protégés include a sitting Vice President (J.D. Vance) and multiple Republican senators. His ideas circulate through conservative think tanks and Trump‘s inner circle. What sounds like science fiction is increasingly becoming Republican policy doctrine.

The media often portrays Thiel as an enigmatic libertarian or contrarian thinker. But that framing misses what’s actually happening. This is a systematic rejection of 250 years of democratic governance, wrapped in theological language and corporate efficiency rhetoric. And it’s weirder and more methodical than most people realize.

Peter Thiel and the Antichrist in 8 minutes (video)

This NotebookLM video does a great job explaining the background and impact of Thiel’s dangerously apocalyptic rhetoric inspired by Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt — and below it you can find a deeper explanation of all major points:

Here are the five interlocking beliefs that form Thiel’s vision—and why each one should terrify you.

1. Democracy Is the Bug, Not the Feature—Replace It With a Tech Startup Dictatorship

Thiel doesn’t just critique democracy—he’s concluded it’s fundamentally incompatible with freedom. In a 2009 essay, he wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Not ideal partners; not in tension — but incompatible.

His alternative is coldly corporate: run countries like founders run startups. One CEO. One vision. Absolute authority. No consensus. No debate. No democracy.

Continue reading Peter Thiel and the Antichrist: 5 Weirdo beliefs driving the new tech right
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The Rise and Fall (and Rise?) of Gazprom: What the World’s Biggest Gas Company Teaches Us About Power, Monopolies, and Strategic Failure

How a $360 Billion Giant Lost 90% of Its Value—and What It Reveals About State Capitalism

In 2008, Gazprom was worth more than $360 billion, making it the third most valuable company on Earth. It was Russia‘s energy monopoly and largest gas company, and one of the largest companies in the world. Today? It’s worth $34 billion—a staggering 90% collapse that tells one of the most fascinating stories in modern business history.

This isn’t just a tale about natural gas and pipelines. It’s a masterclass in how monopoly power, geopolitical weaponization, and strategic overconfidence can destroy even the most seemingly invincible empires. And in an era where AI, tech platforms, and energy systems are being disrupted faster than ever, the lessons from Gazprom’s trajectory are surprisingly relevant.

Let us take you inside the story of Russia’s energy leviathan—and what its dramatic arc teaches us about power, strategy, and the dangerous illusion of permanence.

The Ultimate State-Owned Monopoly

First, let’s grasp the sheer scale we’re talking about:

  • 17% of the world’s proven natural gas reserves
  • 180,600 kilometers of pipelines (the world’s largest network)
  • Production of 414-500 billion cubic meters annually
  • Operations in 20+ countries, supplying 100+ nations

Gazprom didn’t just dominate Russia’s energy sector—it WAS Russia’s energy sector. Born from the Soviet Ministry of Gas Industry in 1989, it became the first state-run private enterprise in Soviet history, even before corporate laws existed in the USSR. That’s how strategically vital it was.

The Russian government maintains 50%+ control through various entities, making Gazprom the textbook example of a “state champion”—a privately structured company that serves as an extension of national power.

Energy as Geopolitical Weapon: The Gazprom Playbook

Here’s where things get interesting from a strategy perspective.

Gazprom wasn’t just selling gas—it was wielding it. The company’s toolkit included:

1. Strategic Supply Disruptions
Cut off countries that didn’t play ball politically. Ukraine, Belarus, and others experienced “technical problems” with their gas supply that mysteriously coincided with diplomatic disagreements.

2. Pricing Manipulation
Friends got sweetheart deals. Adversaries paid premium rates. Simple, effective, brutal.

3. Infrastructure Control
Build the pipelines, control the flow. Europe became dependent on a single supplier for 40% of its natural gas by 2021.

This is the “monopoly network effects” mental model taken to its extreme: Once you control the physical infrastructure, you don’t just have market power—you have geopolitical leverage that can shape foreign policy across an entire continent.

The Nord Stream Strategy

The Nord Stream pipelines perfectly embodied this approach. By routing gas directly to Germany via the Baltic Sea, Gazprom could:

  • Bypass unreliable transit countries (Ukraine)
  • Lock in Germany as a dependent customer
  • Divide European unity on Russia policy

It was strategic brilliance… until it wasn’t.

The Fatal Flaw: Mistaking Leverage for Invincibility

Charlie Munger often warned about “incentive-caused bias“—the tendency to believe your own narrative when you’re winning. Gazprom fell into this trap spectacularly.

The company’s leadership made several critical miscalculations:

1. Weaponizing Your Product Destroys Trust

Using energy as a political weapon worked… until customers decided they’d rather pay more than remain vulnerable. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Europe went into overdrive finding alternatives.

Result: Gazprom’s European market share collapsed from 40% to 8% in just one year (2022-2023).

2. Infrastructure Becomes a Liability

That vaunted 180,600 km pipeline network? Much of it now represents stranded assets. You can’t exactly redirect physical pipelines when your largest customers ghost you.

Meanwhile, competitors with LNG terminals can ship to whoever’s buying. Flexibility > fixed infrastructure when geopolitics get messy.

3. The “Too Big to Fail” Illusion

Gazprom assumed its monopoly position was permanent. Major gas fields hit production peaks. Investment in new fields (requiring $50+ billion for Yamal or Shtokman development) was delayed. Technology partnerships with Western firms provided crucial expertise.

When sanctions hit, the company faced:

  • Asset freezes
  • Technology transfer restrictions
  • SWIFT banking isolation
  • Loss of Western expertise and financing

Suddenly, “too big to fail” looked a lot like “too rigid to adapt.”

The Pivot to Asia: Too Little, Too Late?

Facing European abandonment, Gazprom is desperately pivoting eastward:

  • Power of Siberia 1: Operational pipeline to China (38 bcm capacity)
  • Power of Siberia 2: Planned pipeline through Mongolia (50 bcm capacity)
  • Expanded LNG operations: Playing catch-up in a market they largely ignored

But here’s the problem: China knows Gazprom is desperate. Beijing isn’t paying European prices. They’re negotiating from strength while Gazprom negotiates from necessity.

This illustrates the “alternative available” principle—your leverage is only as strong as your customer’s next-best option. Europe had alternatives (LNG from US, Qatar, etc.). Russia? Not so much for customers.

From Profit to Loss to Profit Again: The Volatility of State Champions

The financial swings tell the story:

  • 2021: Record profit of 2.68 trillion rubles (during European energy crisis)
  • 2023: First loss since 1999—629 billion rubles
  • 2024: Back to profit—1.2 trillion rubles

This wild volatility reflects a fundamental truth: When your company serves political objectives first and commercial objectives second, financial performance becomes subservient to state goals. Sometimes that works (2021 energy crisis). Often it doesn’t (sanctions, market loss).

Strategic Lessons for the AI Era

So what can we extract from Gazprom’s saga that applies to today’s rapidly evolving landscape?

1. Network Effects Work Until They Don’t

Gazprom’s pipeline monopoly seemed unassailable—until geopolitical shifts made customers willing to pay the switching costs.

AI Parallel: Today’s AI models and platforms building “moats” through data, compute, or user lock-in should remember that trust, reliability, and user sovereignty matter. Abuse your position, and users will fund alternatives.

2. Geopolitical Risk Is Business Risk

Gazprom learned this the hard way. Over-optimizing for one strategic relationship (Europe) without diversification created catastrophic vulnerability.

Content Creator Parallel: Platform dependency is the same risk. Building your entire business on YouTube, or Instagram, or any single platform means you’re one algorithm change or TOS update away from collapse. Diversification isn’t optional.

3. Asset-Heavy Models Lose Flexibility

Physical infrastructure becomes a liability in fast-changing environments. LNG companies with flexible shipping could adapt; Gazprom with fixed pipelines couldn’t.

Digital Business Parallel: Heavy CapEx models and legacy infrastructure become anchors. The future belongs to modular, composable, rapidly adaptable systems—whether that’s in content creation, AI deployment, or business operations.

4. The Innovator’s Dilemma Applies to Nations Too

Gazprom focused on protecting its existing business model (pipeline gas) rather than aggressively pursuing LNG and diversified markets. Classic Innovator’s Dilemma.

When you’re dominant, investing in what might disrupt you feels unnecessary… until it’s too late.

The Future: A Giant at a Crossroads

Gazprom in 2025 faces questions that will determine Russia’s economic future:

  • Can they truly pivot from European to Asian markets?
  • Will their aging infrastructure support next-generation needs?
  • Can they adapt to climate pressures and carbon transition demands?
  • How do they compete without Western technology and financing?

The company’s 2024 return to profitability might suggest resilience. But structural challenges remain: aging fields, massive investment requirements, geopolitical isolation, and customers who’ve learned not to trust a monopoly supplier.

Final Thoughts: The Illusion of Permanence

Gazprom’s story reminds us that nothing is permanent—not monopolies, not market dominance, not even control over critical resources.

The company went from seemingly invincible to struggling for survival in less than three years. That’s faster than most product cycles in tech. It’s a humbling reminder that in an interconnected, rapidly changing world, strategic rigidity is fatal.

For anyone building in digital media, content creation, or AI-driven businesses today, the lessons are clear:

✅ Diversify your dependencies
✅ Trust and reputation are assets, not tactics
✅ Flexibility beats fixed infrastructure
✅ Geopolitical and platform risks are real business risks
✅ Never mistake current dominance for permanent advantage

The same forces disrupting Gazprom—technological change, strategic competition, trust erosion, and rapid market shifts—are reshaping every industry. The question isn’t whether disruption will come. It’s whether you’ll see it coming and adapt fast enough.

In the age of AI and digital transformation, being the biggest doesn’t guarantee survival. Being the most adaptable just might.

 

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