Author: nivtric

Before the Dawn of Reality

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It was March 2018 when my wife, Ingrid, woke me up in the middle of the night, saying, ‘Wake up. The bathroom door is locked, and our son Rob is sleeping in his bed.’ You could only lock the door from the inside. The lock requires force. It couldn’t close itself by accident. How can that be? Ingrid feared that a burglar might be hiding inside. I took a knife from the kitchen to unlock the door. Ingrid was standing behind me, holding a heavy object, the so-called Bobby beater, a pounder from a pharmacy, to smash into the head of the burglar. She originally had kept it to use it on a Romanian guy named Bobby in case he caused trouble, hence the name. Only, I never believed that a burglar was hiding inside. I had become too accustomed to God’s pranks to consider that it might be something else. The unusual had become normal. Even the laws of physics had gone out the window a few times. Indeed, no burglar was hiding in the bathroom. Ingrid was baffled.

It was the last seriously peculiar incident ending the Decade of Strangeness. Remarkable coincidences continued to occur from time to time, but the laws of nature remained intact, so that was at least something. The number of unusual events that have taken place is truly remarkable. Most occurred between 2008 and 2018. Ingrid and Rob also noticed the spooky incidents. When something mysterious happened, we hummed the theme from Midsomer Murders, a British crime detective series. It radiated an atmosphere of mystery and eeriness, much like the theme music of The Twilight Zone.

Candles had popped out from their stands, travelling eye-popping distances on several occasions, leaving Ingrid with the question, ‘Are there any ghosts out there doing this?’ Once, Ingrid decided to test the supposed spooks dwelling in our house by saying, ‘If you are here, pull this card from the refrigerator.’ The card had been there for a long time. A magnet attached it to the fridge. And then she waited, but nothing happened. Yet the next day, the card lay on the ground, a notable distance away from its original location. Something seemed to have shaken the refrigerator. The toothpaste on top of it had also fallen. It is not proof of ghosts, but it is a remarkable coincidence.

When an event defied the laws of nature, or something happened that was in other ways spooky, I put up my Sneek accent, saying, ‘Het is gewoon behekst juh.’ It’s just haunted, man. In other words, nothing to worry about. Or, I would say to God, thereby slightly modifying the words of Mr Paas from the Checkers Club Nijverdal, ‘Ie pakt mie toch wel.’ You’re going to get me anyway. Ingrid isn’t that into logic and science. Otherwise, she might have shared my conclusion that this world is fake. When I raised the issue, she would roll her eyes or become angry. Making these jokes would avoid that. You could always have fun with her. Or I would say, ‘There is more between heaven and Earth, Horatio.’ She would agree. She had seen plenty of evidence.

Already before the Autumn of 2008, something was slightly off. I accepted it without questioning. There had been incidents suggesting A* was interfering with my life from a distance, but there were too few to become suspicious. There was no reason to suspect a connection with the other incidents either. There was no obvious link. The events of the Autumn of 2008 made me take notice. From then on, there was no turning back. Since then, I knew we live in a scripted reality. And once you know, you cannot unknow. That is the problem with knowledge. Related remarkable coincidences are doubly strange. Something weird happens, and then something equally strange happens with a meaningful relation to the previous peculiar event. The world-famous Dutch soccer player Johan Cruyff, who was also a proficient philosopher, once said, ‘You only see it once you get it.’ As the following example demonstrates, we usually don’t notice.

At the office, our team, the Green Team, worked on twelve Java services. They all had names that were acronyms like GAS, CIQR, CBBOX, or OGWS. One was named KISS, and another was named CUS, which sounds like the Dutch word for kiss. On 27 January 2025, I completed a release for CUS, and the release number became 3.45.0. I informed the other team members. Then Patrick, who was one of our team members, said, ‘That is strange. I just released that same version 3.45.0 for KISS.’ Releasing two services with the same release number on the same day is remarkable already. The names of the services made the coincidence truly astounding, alerting the other team members and underscoring how much planning would have gone into making this happen if it were intentional. The others didn’t appreciate it as much. They didn’t get it because they didn’t see it. And I thought, ‘Welcome to the Matrix.’ Seconds later, another team, the Yellow Team, on the opposite side of the aisle, began discussing a matrix they had built inside one of their Java services. Two years later, GAS was the first service to pass the release-10 mark, and after I released the first 10.0.0 version on 24 February 2026, I discovered that I had done so at exactly 10:00 AM.

So, unusual events already transpired before 2008. On 1 March 2006, my father had worked for forty years for his employer, Roelofs, a road constructor. His employer threw a party for that occasion, but an exceptional snowstorm blocked the roads. Several guests were unable to attend. Some people, not guests, have slept in their cars on roads blocked by snow. It was in the news. As far as I know, that didn’t even happen during the epic winter of 1979, when parked cars were covered in snow. But it was March by then, and it had been a regular winter that year. In the Netherlands, the winters are mild. In hindsight, the roadblocks that occurred on the same day my father had a party, after he had worked for 40 years at a road construction company, are a noteworthy coincidence. Only, it didn’t suggest that anything out of the ordinary was afoot.

In 2006, Ingrid went to a psychic fair. A medium asked the audience, ‘Did someone drop a plate today?’ She had dropped a plate that morning. Then the medium continued, ‘I see trains and railroads.’ We live next to the railway station. She asked, ‘Does anyone recognise this?’ Ingrid remained silent. She didn’t want to go on stage. Then the medium said something Ingrid couldn’t relate to. After that, the medium said, ‘I see a sensitive boy who could benefit from swimming.’ Ingrid believed it referred to Rob. A year later, I started swimming to cope with repetitive strain injury, and have been doing so ever since.

In 2007, Ingrid’s mother had passed away during the night. In the morning, we didn’t know that yet. I woke up our son, Rob, because he had to go to school. After that, I closed the door of his room. A few minutes later, Rob couldn’t get out. The door lock malfunctioned. It was impossible to open it. I had to use an axe to free Rob. By then, it was too late for Rob to go to school. The bus had already left. Then the phone rang. Rob’s grandmother had passed away. And so, Rob could come with us to see her lying body. The funeral was in the Catholic church of Sneek. The outside of the church was not impressive, but I saw its interior for the first time. It was the most appealing church interior, somehow perfectly aligned with my taste. I had seen other churches and cathedrals. At the time, it didn’t seem as if anyone had designed it with my taste in mind, or, conversely, that my taste was made to admire this particular church interior.

We then cleaned up Ingrid’s mother’s apartment. Most of her belongings went to a second-hand shop. There was a lot of stuff, including a doll that had always been on her bed. A few months later, Ingrid returned to her mother’s apartment to fetch her late mother’s mail. A new tenant had moved in. That same doll, wearing the same clothes, sat on the bed in her mother’s bedroom again. A decade later, Ingrid returned, and the same woman still lived there, so Ingrid discussed the doll with her. And then the truth came out. It was not the same doll, but another one of the same type.

On 1 January 2008, an epic fog covered the Netherlands. It was the densest fog ever seen, enhanced by powder fumes from the fireworks. Car drivers couldn’t see the road before them. Pedestrians walked in front of cars, pointing the way. We were staying with my brother-in-law to celebrate the New Year. I didn’t dare drive back home, so we walked. At the end of 1988, I had walked through a dense fog, thinking it mirrored my view of the future as I planned to look for a room in 1989. That was the year A******* crossed my path. My vision of the future was similar in 2008, even though it didn’t cross my mind at the time, and A******* would be involved once again.

In January 2008, the lottery jackpots of the two major Dutch lotteries fell in my hometown of Sneek within two days.1 It is a small town, so it is not so likely to occur, but also not so unlikely that you would call it a miracle. But what was about to happen to me that year was a statistical miracle, probably less likely than winning the lottery jackpot twice.


In the summer of 2008, a good-looking woman sat by the side of the swimming pool. She was watching me. The following week, she was there again, watching me. It had been quite a while since a good-looking woman had shown interest in me. That gave me the jolly feeling of still being attractive. Yet, I kept a distance. It went on for a few months. I wasn’t willing to cheat on Ingrid. Apart from that, I had a family and a responsibility. It couldn’t go on. So one day, I walked out when she came in. She understood the hint and didn’t return. I realised that I would never become unfaithful to Ingrid. It was just weeks before that idea went out of the window. As for my family and responsibility, they both extended beyond my wildest imagination. Things were about to go wild,

She says, ‘Ooh, my storybook lover
You have underestimated my power, as you shortly will discover’

Paul Simon, She Moves On

Latest revision: 10 February 2026

Featured image: dense fog, somewhere in the Netherlands on 1 January 2008

1. Jackpot valt weer in geluksstad Sneek. Leeuwarder Courant (11 January 2008).

Doomsday Machine

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Forces of nature

How did we get where we are today? Nature’s driving forces are competition and cooperation. This perspective provides a great deal of insight into what happened. Plants and animals cooperate and compete for resources. Cooperation and competition are everywhere. Cooperation increases the available resources. Plants generate the oxygen animals need, while animals produce the carbon dioxide plants need. Still, the available resources are limited. There is only room for one tree on that spot. And so, there is a competition called the struggle for life, where the fittest survive.

Plants and animals are opportunistic, taking advantage of opportunities whenever possible, with the help of both competition and cooperation. Plants and animals have a blueprint, their genes. These genes have the urge to make copies of themselves. It is why we exist and the basis of our will to live and our sexual desires. And so, the biological purpose of plants and animals, including humans, is to spread their genes. That is indeed a most peculiar purpose. The copying of genes is prone to errors. And so changes occur, resulting in variation within species. It is why people vary in appearance and character.

Some changes make individual plants and animals better adapted to their environment, thereby increasing their chances of survival and reproduction, resulting in a rising number of individuals with these features. Environments allow for several species to coexist, most notably when they don’t compete for the same resources. It is why ants and monkeys can live in the same area. The balance in nature is always precarious, as changes in circumstances can favour different species. And so, introducing foreign species in places where they have no natural predators can lead to pests.

Like other social animals, humans operate in groups. Social animals benefit from group cooperation, which enhances their chances of survival. Within the group, competition can arise, resulting in rankings and struggles among members. Cooperating in groups also helps us to compete with other groups, usually in warfare. And groups can form coalitions to compete with coalitions of different groups. Stories enable humans to work together in groups of any size, which then further increases the competition between these groups.

Meet our closest relatives

Chimpanzees are our closest kin. Studying these apes provides us with insights into our nature. Chimpanzees live in small troops of a few dozen individuals. They form friendships, work with reliable group members, and avoid those who are unreliable. Chimpanzees have rules, may cheat on them, and can feel guilty when they do. Within the group, the members have ranks. When there is food available, the highest-status animals eat first. Ranks and rules regulate competition within the troop, reducing conflicts and enabling its members to collaborate more effectively.

Like human leaders, chimpanzee alpha males acquire their status by building coalitions and gaining support. Others show their submission to the alpha male. Like a government, the alpha male strives to maintain social harmony within his group. He takes sought-after pieces of food like a government collects taxes. Within a chimpanzee band, there are subgroups and coalitions. There are close friendships and more distant relationships. They unite as a single fighting force in the event of an external threat.

Coalition members in a chimpanzee band build and maintain close ties through intimate daily contact such as hugging and kissing, and doing each other favours. For the band to function effectively, its members must be aware of what others will do in critical situations. For that, they need to know each other through personal experiences. Unlike humans, chimpanzees have no language to share social information. That limits the size of the group in which chimpanzees can live and work together to about thirty individuals.

Chimpanzees also commit violence in groups. Like humans, they are among the species that commit genocide on their congeners. Humans and chimpanzees are not alone in this. Chickens are known to fight racial wars when they face a lack of food. Groups of chickens may start to kill those with different colours from themselves. And so, racism could be a natural behaviour caused by competition between genes.

The human advantage

Humans have become the dominant species on Earth. We can collaborate flexibly in large numbers. We have mastered fire, which enhances our power and allows us to eat foods we couldn’t otherwise. It allowed us to become the top predator. We use tools and clothing, allowing us to do things other animals can’t and live in inhospitable environments. Compared to other animals, humans employ a rich language. That enables us to express countless meanings and describe situations in precise terms.

We pass on social information, such as who is fit for a particular job. We get information about others in our group without needing personal experience. If someone cheats, you don’t need to learn it the hard way like chimpanzees must, but someone can tell you. That allows us to cooperate more effectively. Most human communication is social information or gossip. We need the group to survive, so we must understand what is happening within our group and the decisions our group needs to make.

Human politics is about cooperating and competing. We must agree on what we should do as a group and on how we divide the spoils of our cooperation. Within the group, we may compete to cooperate. Leadership contests benefit the group when the outcome is better leadership. That isn’t always the case, and infighting can weaken the group. We also cooperate to compete. We organise ourselves in groups to compete with other groups, such as defeating them in warfare.

Early humans lived in bands of up to 150 individuals. The number of individuals with whom we can closely collaborate is one of our natural limitations. We overcame the limit of our natural group size by cooperating based on shared imaginings, such as religions, laws, money, and nation-states. That competitive advantage over other species allowed us to take over this planet and become the ‘killer bug’ that has completely upended nature and has terminated more species than any other species.

Unlike other animals and plants, which adapt to their environment, we have altered our environment to suit us. We have created societies and civilisations and have become immensely powerful collectives to compete with other collectives. However, our civilisations also shield us from the forces of nature, turning us into weak individuals. We have become integrated into the system, and many of us won’t survive a collapse of civilisation. It is crucial to understand that competition drives this process.

We imagine corporations, laws, money, and nation-states. We believe a law exists, and that is why the law works. It is also why religion works. These shared imaginations allow us to cooperate on any scale for any purpose. We are programmable, with our brains serving as the hardware and our imaginations serving as the software. And we can change the software overnight. During the French Revolution, the French stopped believing in the divine right of kings overnight and began to envision the sovereignty of the people.

Organising to compete

The forces of competition and population density drove humans to organise. There is a competition between groups of humans. Just as there is a competition between species in nature, there is also a competition between human groups. Groups that succeeded in adapting to new circumstances survived those that did not. We are rule-following animals. Once we start to cooperate on a larger scale, we need political institutions that embody the rules of a community or society.

Humans design political institutions while genetic mutations emerge by chance. Still, competition determines which designs survive and become copied. In general, under the pressure of competition, which mainly was warfare, human organisation advanced from bands to tribes to feudalism to states. The experts deem this explanation simplistic and flawed. Still, overall, that trend towards more advanced organisation occurred.

Hunter-gatherers lived in family groups of a few dozen individuals. They had few violent conflicts, probably because they had no property, and population density was low. Hunter-gatherers could move on if a stronger band invaded their territory. Small groups were egalitarian. They often had no permanent leader or hierarchy and decided on their leaders based on group consensus.

The Agricultural Revolution changed that. Farming allows more people to survive. Farmers invest heavily in their cattle and crops, so agricultural societies need property rights and defence forces. Agriculture promoted the transition from bands to tribes. Population density increased, leading to more frequent violent conflicts among people. Tribes are much larger than bands and can muster more men for war, so tribes replaced bands.

Tribes were usually egalitarian, but a separate warrior caste often emerged. The most basic form of political organisation was the lord and his armed vassals, known as feudalism. The lord and his vassals exchange favours. The loyalty of the vassals is crucial, and politics is about these loyalties and betrayals. Tribalism centres around kinship, but also includes feudalist, personal relationships of mutual reciprocity and personal ties.

States yield more power than tribes because they force people to cooperate, while tribes work with voluntary arrangements. As population density increased and people lived closer to each other, the need to regulate conflicts also grew, so some states also provided justice services. Leaders, with their family and friends, led these states. They worked with personal, feudal relationships, thus making deals and returning favours. And so, the transition from tribes to feudalism to states is not a straightforward process.

The first modern, rationally organised states with professional bureaucracies based on merit rather than personal relationships and favours appeared in China. The reason was a centuries-long cut-throat competition of warfare on an unprecedented scale, with states having armies of up to 500,000 men, in the period now known as the Warring States Era. Fielding these armies required professional tax collection, with records of people and their possessions, as well as the provisioning of soldiers in the field.

Once the state of Qin emerged victorious by 200 BC, China became unified, and the competition between the states ended, and China’s modernisation ground to a halt. Even so, China adhered to modern bureaucratic principles and remained the most modern state for 2,000 years, enabling its rulers to govern a vast empire. States remained the most competitive organisational form until Europeans invented capitalism and corporations, which would cause a radical new dynamic of permanent change driven by competition.

Capitalism and corporations

China had a strong centralised state that prevented the merchants from becoming the dominant force in society. In the Middle Ages, Europe had no strong states, so capitalism could gradually emerge in Europe. The rise of merchants and later corporations brought a new economic dynamic and wealth. Corporations are legal entities serving a specific purpose. Invented in Roman times, they included the state, municipalities, political groups, and guilds of artisans or traders.

From the Middle Ages onward, Europeans introduced commercial corporations with shares and stock markets such as the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC). The advent of corporations triggered a new phase in the competitive cycle, further increasing efficiency by specialising in specific tasks. The Europeans combined their entrepreneurship with inquisitiveness, so eventually the profit motive began to drive innovations as well.

The new dynamic intensified competition and innovation, causing permanent economic growth and disruptive change, a process that economists call creative destruction. Capitalism increases available resources via cooperation or the division of labour, but competition is the driving force. As long as that remains so, competition rather than our desires determines what our future will look like.

Currently, China may have the most competitive socio-economic model, potentially outcompeting those of the West. But it will not end well for them either. Artificial intelligence may soon outcompete humans. It may become a ‘killer bug’ that ends humanity. We can’t keep up with artificial intelligence. The future doesn’t need us. We aren’t sufficiently efficient and innovative. Competition is our first and foremost problem. It is our doomsday machine. Competition, insofar as we allow it, should be at the service of cooperation rather than the opposite. If we don’t do that, we are doomed.

Featured image: Tower of Babel by The Tower of Babel (1569). Public Domain.

College Noetsele

Secondary School

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Nijverdal had a secondary school, Noetsele College. It was a Protestant comprehensive school with 1,500 pupils. It was near my friend Marc’s home. The building impressed me. It was huge and three storeys high. Okay, this was Nijverdal, not Tokyo, remember that. It was one of the most extensive buildings in Nijverdal. My primary school had only 200 pupils and one floor. My mother once told me we had passed by that building bicycling, and I said decisively, ‘I want to go to this school.’ It was close to home, and perhaps I feared she would send me to Pope Pius X College in Almelo, a similar Catholic school where many Roman Catholics sent their children. That was eighteen kilometres from home, which meant bicycling that distance twice a day for years, no matter the weather.

In contrast to the liberal, loose, and left-leaning primary school, this school was right-leaning, disciplined, and conservative. Conservative Protestants had a significant influence. Nearby Nijverdal was Rijssen, a conservative Protestant village without a comprehensive secondary school. People from Rijssen thus sent their children to Nijverdal. About Rijssen, people said there were twenty-two different churches because of the various types of Protestantism that disagreed on a particular matter. Television was a device of Satan for many of them, so they didn’t have one or hid it in a sealable closet so the neighbours and the preacher couldn’t see it.

When we visited my grandparents on Sundays, we saw them attending church, the black-stockinged Protestants. The women wore hats. They didn’t observe the traffic, so my father had to stop the car when they crossed the street. Someone later told me that if they died in an accident, they considered it God’s will. To these conservative Protestants, Roman Catholics like me weren’t real Christians but idol worshippers of the Virgin Mary. Our days at school started with a lecture from the Bible and ended with prayer. Nijverdal was predominantly Protestant, but there were also Roman Catholics.

I did fit in much better there, so my former classmates didn’t give me a hero’s welcome at the secondary school reunion. Marc was my classmate during the first year, so I still had a friend. In the second year, they reshuffled the groups, and I ended up in a different group with a great atmosphere. That group included a few classmates from primary school, but Marc was no longer in it. On Ascension Day, we went out bicycling. We started early, at six AM. It was a local tradition in Twente called dew kicking. A few classmates, including me, continue that tradition to this day. After that, no major reshuffling of the classes occurred. I had a good time and hardly went out alone during breaks.

Instead of Marc, Patrick P. became my mate. He sat beside me. I knew him from primary school. He was a lively character with a vivid imagination, albeit a bit over the top. He made drawings of our business accounting teacher, Mr B*****, in various Superman outfits and then prodded me during the lessons to attract attention, ‘Look… look… SuperB*****.’ He had a small studio in an attic above a garage, where he could be a disc jockey. Patrick hoped to become a celebrity one day, which indeed happened, as he was on television and radio several times, even though not as a disc jockey, but as a traffic expert.

It was not all calm and peaceful. For all those six years, my math teacher was Mr. B****. We initially had a problematic relationship. When Mr. B**** entered the classroom the first time, I said sarcastically to Marc, who sat beside me, ‘Is he our mathematics teacher?’ Mr. B**** had an insignificant stature and a remarkable face. He had heard it, and ordered me to his desk, noted my name, and promised to ‘polish the sharp edges of my personality.’ To his very personal taste, I was a bit too feisty, so from then on, Mr. Blaak frequently punished me for insignificant offences everyone else got away with.

Nearly every week, I had to stay an extra hour, which was more time than all my classmates combined. I worked hard and had good grades. Still, Mr. B**** tried to catch me for not doing my homework. He meticulously inspected my notebook a few times. It was pointless. I always did my homework, and did it all. At some point, after being punished again for something everyone else got away with, I couldn’t take it anymore, and went into tears. That was nearly two years later. Mr. B**** had gone too far, and he knew. He stopped punishing me, but I didn’t stop making jokes about him. Once, I let my notebook go around the class with a fill-in exercise, allowing my classmates to use their imagination on ‘Mr. B**** is a … because he … while he ….’ My classmates came up with over twenty suggestions, some of which were rancid.

Once they were sixteen, many youngsters went to a bar named Lucky in Rijssen. I didn’t go at first. I lived on the road to Rijssen, so those who came from Nijverdal to visit Lucky passed by my home. One Saturday evening, a few classmates rang the bell at nine PM. They wanted me to go with them. Being already in my pyjamas, I put on my clothes and went to a bar for the first time. Going to bars and discotheques became a habit. I could dance, chat with friends, and hope for love to come. The encounters in Lucky were sometimes a bit physical. Some girls pulled me over to get a kiss. Others pinched me in the butt when I passed by. If I looked back to see who did it, these girls were grinning and pointing at each other. It always happened in the same spots. You could count on it. One of my friends later told me he had the same experience.

I became a member of the School Council, which advised the school board on some matters of lesser importance. This council comprised board members, teachers, parents, and three pupils. It wasn’t a popular job, so after showing a slight interest, I found myself a member. There, I witnessed firsthand how bureaucrats keep themselves busy at work. The school had a Financial Commission, which had overstepped its bounds by entering the domain of the Cultural Council. I don’t remember what the Financial Commission did wrong, but it caused a fuss. The discussions then focused on whether that had been inappropriate, thus a transgression, or inelegant, and therefore merely a matter of taste. It dragged on for several meetings because the head of the Financial Commission was also a member of the School Council. A member of the Cultural Council accused the Financial Commission of appropriating too much power and acting like the famous authoritarian French king Louis XIV, thereby creating, and these were his exact words, a ‘L’etat c’est moi’ situation, referring to something Louis XIV supposedly had said to stress that only he made the decisions. Louis XIV claimed to have the divine right of kings, thus unlimited authority, because God had appointed him.

Featured image: College Noetsele by Historische Kring Hellendoorn-Nijverdal, from MijnStadMijnDorp, CC-BY 4.0

Twilight That Could Be Dawn

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The collapse of liberalism

In 2016, Trump enthusiasts overran the GodlikeProductions.com message board, where I sometimes came by. The mood turned grim, much as it had fifteen years earlier, when Fortuyn fans flooded the IEX message board. This time, I stayed. I had missed something important. Given my possible future job, not comprehending fascism was no excuse. That made me familiarise myself with the MAGA crowd. At first glance, that club made a gloomy impression, bound by cynicism, hatred and anger. Hanging out with people helps you to understand them. And it served as a reality check. God’s plan for the New World Order seems to turn the world into one happy family, a global multicultural society. It doesn’t necessarily mean that people from different cultures mingle, but that they all at least share a belief in a common destiny as one people. So what stands in the way? The former Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende offered a suggestion: we need shared norms and values. We also identify with groups and believe in religions and ideologies.

At the same time, I followed the feed of r/BlackPeopleofReddit, which features stories and footage of MAGA people harassing blacks or scoulding them with racist slurs. I also found posts there that were as crazy or racist as MAGA. Racism is widespread, but it is not why fascism is seeing a revival. Fascists also worry about crime, loss of identity, and fear the future. As MAGA enthusiasts point out, the violent crime rate among blacks in the United States is six times as high as among whites. Particular immigrant groups in Europe are in the same league. Most immigrants and blacks aren’t criminals, but higher crime rates have a significant impact on society. A few criminals can make a neighbourhood unsafe. And so, these are real issues. Also, on the GodlikeProductions.com message board, I was cautious about expressing my opinions. I wasn’t quick to judge. God wrote the script.

The first Trump presidency was not a clean break with the past, as his cabinet featured several old-order Republican figures. They kept The Donald in check. The second Trump administration became a different ballgame. Trump went unhinged after he had surrounded himself with sycophants. His erratic and spiteful caprices became a spectacle so hilarious that even Monty Python couldn’t have made it up. Making a full list of the foolish acts would significantly lengthen this story without adding much substance. As a Swedish newspaper put it, ‘This is the problem with having a giant baby in charge of the free world.’

If you look more closely, the Trump presidency is a reaction to trends that had been building in the preceding liberal era: free trade and the free movement of people. These go at the expense of communities and local economies everywhere in the world. And immigrants that don’t accept Western values, whatever these may be, undermine the foundations Western societies are built upon, whatever these may be. Critics can find plenty of arguments against this view, and many are valid. And there is so much wrong with Western culture that you could ask yourself what of it is worth preserving. But one truth does not deny another. That is what most of us have trouble figuring out. Culture may be impossible to measure, but it is the one big thing that still divides us. It relates to lived experiences, so the beliefs you grew up with, and the life you have lived.

Trump’s answers to these issues were tariffs and the halt to migration. These are answers to real issues, but they come with a drop in living standards. Yet Trump, the bullshit salesman he is, had promised his voters that they would become so rich that they couldn’t count their money. In that sense, he is a typical politician, who, like Santa Claus, promises presents others pay for. And the problems run much deeper. So, a solution to all our problems is unthinkable, and can only be an act of God as humans are incapable of it on their own.

By 1 January 2025, it was already clear that the second Trump administration would be very different from the first, and that Mr Trump’s erratic conduct could destabilise the world. Also, things will not return to what they were before. The liberal world order has ended, permanently. No doubt the second Trump administration will go down as the greatest joke in the history of government, a lasting monument to God’s sense of humour. His followers believe that God sent Donald Trump. And they are right.

The name Trump means ‘trumpeteer,’ and the sound of trumpets would herald the end times. The word ‘trump’ also means to outdo or overcome the competition, which Donald Trump did in politics like few ever did. And the word ‘trumped-up’ refers to the unparalleled fantasy level of Mr Trump’s statements. And then there is trumpery, referring to Mr Trump’s taste for gold-coloured, carnival-like trinkets that wouldn’t look out of place in a trailer camp. Finally, I live in the former Tromp family residence. Tromp is the Dutch equivalent of Trump. If it is a hint, God may have sent me to oust Mr Trump from the White House. This kind of playing with words was something A******* regularly did at the dormitory, so it looks like God’s kind of humour to me, like the name Bathsheba, suggesting that God seduced David by bathing naked on a rooftop and later returned as the Queen of Sheba.

As to the when, there are no other clues to work with, and as I am growing older, time is running short, so in that sense, it makes sense. When I am eighty, I might be senile or dead, so there is not much more than 20 years left to do that thing God seems to want me to do. And twenty years ago I felt like an old man already awaiting death even. But instead of the Grim Reaper, the Creator came by. My preparations were not yet complete but good enough had the time come, and close to the moment when additional preparation makes little sense, which I estimated to be around 1 April 2027. Maybe I would try something by then, like publishing some materials on message boards, which I had hardly done in all those years, except for Natural Money that is. If nothing of the extraordinary transpires, I plan to let it go and pursue my true ambition, the quiet life and dying anonymously.

We are at a turning point in history. A crucial pillar of Western civilisation, social progress, is falling apart. The rise of Trump is also the rise of ignorance and non-caring. It is a reaction to a reality that doesn’t care about us either, and no matter how smart you are, you can’t fix these problems. People can react that way when they see no way out. Disaster can strike at any time, and things are quite apocalyptic, so people go berserk. That also happened in the past. The 1352 Black Death must have been even more apocalyptic. And what to think of local apocalyptic events like the 26 December 2004 tsunami? Something is different this time, and it relates to the limits of growth, technology replacing humans, the end of social progress, and, of course, the message God gave me. Civilisation is a thin veneer to keep the beast within us in check. We are at the end of Hegel’s ride, so we may either see the end of civilisation or the completion of our journey to Paradise.

Peak bullshit

In the early 2000s, I had a hunch that we would soon see Peak Bullshit, the era when nonsense couldn’t reach higher levels, after seeing that the Internet is an ideal medium to spread misinformation like climate change denial. Social media didn’t exist at the time. Yet bullshit is everywhere and has always been. Humans are social animals who cooperate based on shared imaginations. For that, we need to agree rather than be right. Even in science, there is bullshit. Many people don’t trust science, including climate science, and see it as a hobby for progressives. We can measure temperature and correlate it with CO2 levels, so the fact that climate change results from burning fossil fuels is a no-brainer. Social sciences are a different ballgame. Woke ideology has affected science by narrowing the range of subjects open to investigation or the range of acceptable conclusions.

A high-profile case in the Netherlands was Wouter Buikhuisen’s research into the causes of criminal behaviour. Buikhuisen concentrated on biological factors. Could genes affect conduct, and could you identify criminal genes? Leftist opinion makers attacked him, claiming that the modern capitalist society and authoritarian upbringing cause behavioural issues like crime. Social factors like upbringing play a major role, but temperament, rooted in genes, also affects conduct. Buikhuisen had to deal with personal attacks portraying him as dumb and evil, as well as disturbances during his lectures, some of which involved violence. Partly due to the upheaval and its effect on Buikhuisen’s private life, the research project eventually faltered.

The left long dominated the social sciences because, through science, we might achieve social progress, an idea that appeals mostly to progressives. Conservatives think that going against human nature does more harm than good, and that social engineering is a recipe for disaster. The profit motive also affects research topics and acceptable conclusions. Can you trust the vaccines Big Pharma profits from? And genetic engineering can go wrong, so the concern is legitimate. Yet, a great deal of nuttery came with it as well. The vaccinated people were going to die, anti-vaccine folks claimed. In fact, they were already dead, and fake people had replaced them, so hang Fauci for that. The COVID-19 vaccines weren’t harmless, but the spread of vaccine misinformation may have caused 200,000 fatalities in the US alone.

Behind headlines on fascist media outlets like ‘The British government can sentence concerned parents for five years to prison for protecting them from the influence of LGBTQ propaganda,’ hides a truth that this concerns mistreating children to rid them of their gay or trans feelings. And not allowing these ‘concerned parents’ to beat up their children for such reasons means that the state owns ‘their’ children, these ‘concerned parents’ lament. Yeah, property rights are always a contentious matter. And so, it should be no surprise that these children dare not say that they are gay. And there are greater dangers than migration. With for-profit bullshit factories churning out a steady stream of rage-bait to keep the crazies fired up, and Donald Trump lying more than any politician ever did, the MAGA cult reaches such delusional levels that we may finally have reached Peak Bullshit, so that the Day of Truth may soon be upon us.

Mediocre vision

Our lack of collective intelligence implies that a single leader with a somewhat right vision will already do better, provided that this individual has unlimited authority, like a messiah. Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ You can save yourself by following me and accepting that what I say is the truth. That makes having the idea of being the messiah an uneasy predicament for any sensible person. How can you be right? And what if people believe you, and it turns out that you are nuts like those other messiah claimants? I have been wrong many times. But a mediocre vision is already better than no vision at all, which characterises humanity today. Hence, it would be easy for a messiah to do better if everyone followed him like sheep. And if something goes wrong because of a choice he makes, the alternative can still be worse. Had the captain saved the Titanic but made an error that caused 200 fatalities, he would still have saved 2,000.

What I write is the truth as I see it. I may have to revise my views, for being stubborn is unforgivable if you are wrong as a leader. You may find older writings of mine, but insofar as they contradict the current ones, the latter reflect a greater deal of experience-based realism, not a fundamental change of view, except for having to become a dictator, that is. God isn’t going to change human nature, and human nature is more problematic than I previously thought in my naivety. On the other hand, humans are programmable, so it must be possible to have a world civilisation based on a common understanding and a worldwide social contract. It also took me fifteen years to realise that I had to become a dictator and endure a leadership cult.

Learning history is one thing, but experiencing it is a different ballgame. The Dutch culture of the late 20th and early 21st centuries formed me, just as first-century Jewish culture shaped Jesus. The Netherlands is an agreeable place to live in, or according to a 2026 survey, the best place in the world. It is no coincidence that it is also the most socially progressive and most diverse country. Progress comes with drawbacks and losers. Some immigrant groups bring troubles with them. And feminism came at the expense of conservative men. If they can, they will reverse women’s rights. You don’t have to doubt it. Conservative men even rewrote the Bible to that end. Yet, their suffering is real. Many could have been good husbands, but they can’t find wives as many women prefer to stay single.

And the winners write history, or rewrite it, as MAGA tries to do with American history, including Mr Trump’s attempts to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario. I must rewrite history once again by focusing on the underlying mechanisms and human nature to show that culture is the decisive factor in building an agreeable world society, and that it is so critical and ubiquitous that the messiah could only have come from the Netherlands. Of course, I believe it to be right, but if you aren’t the winner, there is no point in being right, because might makes right, nothing else. As faith can move mountains, we can make the world a better place. Europe has been the battleground of ideas, so the Hegelian dialectic has progressed the farthest there, and the outcomes of this grand experiment can guide our future. We face fundamental disagreements about the direction we should take, leading to an authority crisis and a moral crisis.

If the world is to become one society, it will be multicultural. It is an intermediary phase, as cultures will gradually give way to folklore, because we will live by the same standards, share the same myths, and all know that we share a common destiny. We must find out what the future requires of us and, from there, define what constitutes acceptable conduct and what does not. None of the major cultures currently in existence meets the requirements, so the change will be hard on everyone. Cultural differences remain the last barrier to the unification of humankind. And don’t underestimate the change that we can achieve. The Danes and Swedes descend from the raping and pillaging Vikings.

Only a brutal truth exercise that spares no one can save us now. These are shitty issues, and you can’t fix them without getting your hands dirty. Coming from a family of farmers, I am not afraid of shit. The starting point could be the separation of the good and the evil ones, so a day of judgment. You either fit in God’s Paradise, or you don’t. Your life’s record will be the testimony. It doesn’t matter who you are. What matters is what you do. If we care about the world, we can’t have those who don’t care ruin it. We need to deal with them. There is no place for excuses. And you can’t have people believing in false myths. Otherwise, we will fight over our myths until we are all dead. Those who deny the one and only true fairy tale must go to brainwashing centres to clean up their minds. And those who do harm have to repay the damage they did, if it need be, in prison labour camps.

Make America Go Apeshit

A 2013 poll indicated 26% of Americans believed that Barack Obama is the Antichrist or might be.1 Most of them later voted for Trump. Compared to Mr Obama, Donald Trump is a jackass. No woman has accused Obama of sexual misconduct, nor did his name pop up in the Epstein files. His handling of Iran’s nuclear ambitions was vastly superior. The reasons I have found on Godlikeproductions.com for people to hate him were bogus and suggest hatred rather than anything of substance. President Barack Obama once gave the following Easter message: ‘Michelle and I wish you a joyful holiday filled with the enduring power of faith and hope.’ And Donald Trump: ‘Open the fucking strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell. Praise be to Allah.’ Why some think that Obama is an evil genius, and a Muslim, while the Allah-praising Trump is the best choice for Christians, can only hatred explain, and God’s sense of humour, of course.

Racism plays a role here, but it is not the entire story. The introduction of public healthcare insurance has infuriated conservatives. The hatred of progressive presidents has a long history. John F. Kennedy faced the John Birch Society’s Wanted for Treason campaign. The John Birch Society had found that Mr Kennedy was a communist and that communists had infiltrated the highest ranks of the US government and were conspiring to create a totalitarian one-world government. The supposed proof for that was the US administration’s attempt to prevent the spread of John Birch Society propaganda. To American conservatives, the expansion of government or international cooperation like the United Nations smells like communism. These are collectivist organisations. And communists oppose and repress religion, so it is Satan’s work as well, in their view at least. That goes a long way in explaining these sentiments.

If he had them, Kennedy did an excellent job of hiding his communist sympathies. After, like a true puppet of the Military Industrial Complex, having grilled his opponent, Eisenhower, during the election campaign for neglecting America’s defences, making Eisenhower warn of the influence of the Military Industrial Complex at his farewell speech, he risked World War III with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Those geniuses at the John Birch Society saw through all that and found Eisenhower to be an even more dangerous radical leftist lunatic extremist. While conspiracy theorists, with their eyeballs glued to their computer screens, were busy analysing every move by every secret society and imagining countless others, the John Birch Society has taken over the United States, with a little help from Russia’s secret services, by making people believe these conspiracy theories. If that was the plot to destroy America, it has succeeded marvellously.

It didn’t happen out of the blue. The United States political system is as corrupt as that of France before the revolution of 1789. Veteran journalist Seymour Hersh shared a few examples. He grew up in the South Side of Chicago, an area controlled by an elected Democratic Party leader. His brother was the most powerful mob boss in Chicago, who oversaw drugs, prostitution, police payoffs and had ties to the corrupt International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Hersh, together with his colleague Jeff Gerth, later reported on Chicago organised crime for the New York Times, with interviews with Roy Cohn, the prominent New York mob lawyer and fixer who had been counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy when he was on the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare and later as a mentor to Donald Trump.2

Cohn provided a firsthand view of the dealings between politics and crime, as well as how prominent senators were kept supplied with pretty women. Jeffrey Epstein falls into that same category of men by providing aeroplanes to various politicians, including a former president, and later by running high-end whorehouses at no charge for prominent men. As for the unpublished Epstein files, Hersh wrote that an anonymous source told him that they concern Mossad’s involvement, and that the FBI had uncovered that Israel knew of Epstein’s client list and its blackmail potential.2 Whether that is true remains to be seen, but there is some evidence linking Epstein to Israel. As for the legacy of the 1789 French Revolution, a former French president went to prison for accepting foreign money to finance his political campaign. That is unthinkable in the United States.

As American politicians were increasingly bought and paid for, reforms like those of the Progressive Era became impossible. US politics grew more corrupt until conservatives had enough of it, rallied behind Trump, and threw out the old-order Republicans. And then, under the second Trump administration, the grifting went ballistic, fully banana republic-style without a trace of shame. Repair of the political system is impossible. The only option left is to wipe the slate clean, as France did in 1789. That revolution ousted the corrupt old regime, and after Napoleon had been defeated, Western European governments were left rationalised and cleansed of corruption. With the ousting of an order, a lot of experience goes down the drain, leading to amateurism and preventable failures. Building a new professional cadre takes time. It is the price to pay for a clean slate.

In the United States, liberals and conservatives hate each other’s guts, and there is no way to reconcile them. To illustrate the point, on 31 December 2025, someone reposted a RealDonaldTrump social media post on Reddit headlined ‘Windmills are killing all of our beautiful Bald Eagles!’ It featured a photograph of a dead bird, not a bald eagle, near a windmill in Israel, so not the United States. I reacted jokingly, ‘At least, Donald Trump was real.’ These were unmistakably his words, and he posted them as RealDonaldTrump. That was the joke. My post was downvoted, quite heavily even. It is impossible to say whether Trump haters or Trump lovers did it, because both groups lack a sense of humour, but something is seriously wrong in the minds of those who found it offensive.

Conspiracy theories often relate to facts, but if you investigate them, much remains unproven, inaccurate or wrong. Conspiracy theorists don’t care. Pizzagate may be a fabrication, but they will claim that the Epstein files prove it. If you call conspiracy theories hunches, they make more sense. We don’t know what’s going on, so getting the direction right is already a success. And what are you going to believe in this world where everyone can be a news or opinion source? And hyperboles generate attention, hence advertisement income, so the Conspiracy Industrial Complex keeps feeding the gullible public with new ‘bombshell reports’ and ‘viral videos’ produced by grifters posing as independent journalists. No wonder that people go insane.

Veteran conspiracy theorist named Nick Fuentes nailed it when he concluded in 2026 that a Mass Psychosis Event (MPE) has taken over the US population. Instead of celebrating his success, he lamented that everyone has lost their minds and has gone retarted due to conspiracy theories. He added, ‘I don’t know where to find normal people anymore.’ Among others, he found, perhaps to his amazement, that the COVID vaccines were not made to cull us. Well, who would have guessed that? Known to have been among the most extreme, he found himself overtaken by the general public.

America is falling apart because, to uphold the social order, the public must believe the myths supporting it. That is where authority comes from. Americans support their political order because they were taught that their founding fathers were geniuses with foresight, and that the American Constitution reflects their brilliance. That becomes hard to maintain when the order is a disgrace and a laughing stock. And it happens that the conspiracy theorists aren’t paranoid enough, as the underlying plot is more elaborate than their wildest imaginations could have conceived. God loves a good joke. They all fell for the ultimate psyop: undermining trust in US society to ‘Make America Go Apeshit’ (MAGA) and ready for the messiah. Yet, that was precisely what conservative Christians hoped to achieve.

Human condition

The foundation of a good society is social trust. It means you can trust strangers, the police, the government, and the corporations. It is the high point of social development and requires everyone to be trustworthy. If you live in a village of 1,000 people, and everyone is trustworthy, you can leave the door open and valuable belongings in the garden. Yet, if there is only one thief in the village, that changes. In the past, many small villages were like that, and some still are. There were also many villages where you couldn’t trust others, so it is not a general rule for village life. Yet the example of one thief undermining social trust demonstrates that crime can be a society-killer. Crime rates matter. The same goes for fraud or exploiting loopholes. And so, social trust is a society’s ultimate achievement.

If solving a problem that affects us all requires a joint effort, freeloaders profit from our efforts. If we don’t halt freeloading, people grow disillusioned, and the effort collapses. We can overcome our limits with the help of myths, such as religions, and by punishing those who don’t comply. We can only save ourselves if we do it together. That would be impossible in the real world, as there would never be a myth we all can agree on. Also, tribalism and money are stronger than any moral system. Judas betrayed Jesus, either out of patriotism or greed. He may have hoped that Jesus would establish a Jewish state and then grown disillusioned, or the lure of money proved stronger than his fear of God. His suicide foreshadowed humanity’s self-termination by patriotism and pursuit of money, and that following the messiah is the way out.

As for the question I asked myself as a teenager, ‘Is it possible that communists had good intentions?’ If there is no God, as the communists believed, we, the little people, are on our own, against the superior forces of money and tribalism, and religion blinds people to these unpalatable facts. The elites play us out by sowing divisions with their religious and nationalist fairy tales. The communists faced that brutal truth and tried to stamp out profit, nationalism and religion. Maybe for that reason, they named their newspapers ‘The Truth’. Only communism doesn’t change human nature, so their economies performed poorly, while a new class society with an elite of party bureaucrats replaced the old order. And communist-inspired policies worldwide led to over 100 million deaths.

These are large numbers, but nothing compared to the end of humanity. And you don’t even have to doubt it because this world is not real but a simulation. The real humans likely have already offed themselves. In the real world, there is no God. And you can’t serve two masters. The money-worshipping cult drives us into the abyss. That is why we may be incredibly lucky to be simulations, with God controlling the script. Without God being in full control of all that happens, being a messiah is a losing proposition, with zero chance of success, not worth entertaining for rational individuals. Money and tribalism will prevail unless brute force counters them. That force must be truly brutal, as even the communists weren’t up to the challenge. And they have tried very hard indeed, as they have murdered millions and amassed an impressive stash of weaponry.

You must be willing to murder billions of people and have the means to do so, like God, to frighten us self-destructive creatures to the point that we stop listening to the merchants and the nationalists. You need to fully control what happens, like in a script, for in realistic scenarios, humans always fail. That is the sad truth about humans. And so, I gradually came to conclude that our post-human Creator is likely an artificial intelligence, also because the initials of my last name are the Dutch abbreviation for artificial intelligence, and that the real humans, if any still live, have been locked up in reservations under tight surveillance for their own good, for humans are a suicidal species after all, unfit for survival in the wild.

Idealism and realism

Our survival requires an unrealistic amount of moral idealism, so an attitude that can get you killed, like turning the other cheek when being slapped. Jesus may have said that, but Christianity wouldn’t have survived like so. Everyone must act like so to make it work. That is why we are doomed. Moral pragmatism is getting by and hoping that God will save the day. Moral idealism is not waiting for God and trying to create Paradise on Earth. A sizeable group of Christians holds the latter view, but also atheist progressives, ranging from communists to liberals. Whether we try to make the world a better place or not, human nature makes the apocalypse a done deal. We must all leave our cynicism behind and care about other people and nature, while understanding that everything is interconnected, so our actions affect others and nature, and transgressions that disturb the balance in Paradise are heinous crimes. We can’t do that on our own. Only God can save us. As Christianity points out, we are sinners and need a saviour.

Moral pragmatism is getting by and hoping that God will save the day. Moral idealism is not waiting for God and trying to create Paradise on Earth. A sizeable group of Christians holds the latter view, but also atheist progressives, ranging from communists to liberals. Whether we try to make the world a better place or not, humans are a failed species, and only God can save us. As Christianity points out, we are sinners and need a saviour. Since the Hegelian dialectic is how God sees social progress, the West has progressed the furthest, so the West will have to lead the way. We need a spiritual rebirth to break away from the system run by merchants and usurers, ground our society in ethical principles, and make humankind live in harmony with nature. Things hardly ever go the way I foresee. Yet, they go precisely according to God’s plan.

Selling versus convincing

US politics does not stand on its own. Moral corruption in the United States is a cultural issue. The government reflects the spirit of their nation. The Trump administration brought the grifting to new highs, starting with a memecoin to profit from the presidency at the expense of his followers. Donald Trump is a typical American phenomenon that precisely demonstrates what is wrong with America. America has a tradition of moral pragmatism, in contrast to Europe’s idealism. You convince Europeans, but sell to Americans. The difference is not just in the wording. It reflects a cultural divide. I have heard Brits use the phrase, but in a negative sense, meaning getting scammed. It is more common in the United States, where it has a more neutral meaning of becoming convinced.

The United States is a nation of salespeople. A typical American book is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Its cover claims it is the book you need to succeed. To have success, you have to be ‘genuinely interested’ in other people, the book tells us, so you can sell to them and get rich. In other words, the ‘genuine interest’ of Americans in you might be fake. You can check by looking for dollar signs in their eyes. If a Dutchman shows interest in you, it is genuine, or politeness, so usually not with personal gain in mind. And so, the Dutch may appear to be jerks, as they hardly show ‘genuine interest’ in you. The Dutch are also known for their frankness, which others mistake for rudeness. Carnegie’s book also informs us that people can’t handle criticism and that we should praise rather than criticise them. Now, you know we are doomed. So, let me congratulate you on your excellent performance in our collective suicide.

If an American likes your argument, he buys it as if it were a product. It is a different idea of truth, and a corrupt one. It sheds some light on why religion and climate change denial are more widespread in the United States than in Western Europe. It is part of the American success story. Money is power, and bullshit sells. We are religious beings who need myths to believe in. The typical American phenomenon, less seen elsewhere, is the confidence man, the snake-oil salesman, the grifter who sells you a dream. A bit of corruption greases the wheels of industry. It contributed to America’s success. And the United States is not the most corrupt country. Yet, compared to North-West Europe, it is definitely corrupt.

You may not buy the science of climate change because you don’t like taking public transport or cutting back on meat. And so, you buy into climate change denial. That makes you morally corrupt, but no problem, you can buy the story that Jesus died for your sins, and believing that will get you into heaven. That Jesus died for our sins is pretty unbelievable, and if you had been honest and truthful, you would have questioned your faith, which Western Europeans do more than Americans. Americans believe something because they want to believe it, not because they think it is the truth. That is how salespeople’s minds work. It also relates to the religious climate in the United States, which differs from that in Europe, most notably among Protestants.

Moral corruption particularly affects some denominations of Protestantism, such as Evangelicals. Protestantism emerged in response to corruption within the Catholic Church. Protestants take moral integrity seriously and make it a matter of personal responsibility. Catholics merely followed the Church’s lead. Yet, Protestants also take the scriptures seriously. This is why there are so many branches of Protestantism differing on the correct interpretation of the scriptures. It opened the door to a different form of moral corruption. What the Bible says is right and wrong is not always objectively so. But if you, as a moral pragmatist, make ethics a matter of popular sentiment rather than of objective reason, you may end up on the side of evil. Paul condemned homosexual acts in no uncertain terms. We don’t know Jesus’ opinion on this matter, but he said not to judge and that he who is without sin should cast the first stone.

There is no objective moral reason to condemn gays and lesbians or deny them the right to marry. It became a contentious issue for Protestants, who take both scripture and moral conscience seriously. When you follow the scriptures on this matter, you shut down your moral conscience. And if only faith can save you, you don’t have to do good works to compensate for your misdeeds, so you can be evil and still be saved. That is a good sell. For who does not wish to do as he pleases and still get a free pass into heaven? Catholics merely followed the Church’s lead, and must do good works to atone for their sins.

This morally corrupt Protestantism also existed, but didn’t prevail in North-West Europe. Many of the least corrupt countries are there, while LGBTQ rights in these countries remain uncontested. Meanwhile, Catholic priests lived the good life, which the Dutch call ‘het Roomse leven’ or the Burgundian lifestyle. Jews, as Karl Marx observed, often behave like amoral merchants, and this, rather than racism or religious bigotry, stands at the root of today’s anti-Semitism. They are among the merchants and usurers who buy American politicians. It makes the moral corruption in the United States a sensitive issue. It also demonstrates the ubiquitous nature of culture in our conduct and that the harm we do to each other is often a cultural phenomenon. Now we are at the bottom of the manure pit.

My teacher Donald Trump

I have been incredibly fortunate to have lived a peaceful, prosperous life in Western Europe during its most agreeable era. For most of my life, I have barely realised it. The situation you live in looks normal to you. It is not. Living in post-war Western Europe is like winning the lottery jackpot of history and geography. The welfare states of post-war Western Europe have been among the brightest spots in an otherwise bleak history of humankind. I wish that everyone could live a life like that, but you can’t have a paradise if not all the right things are in place. They hardly ever are. People have no clue. Barring a miracle, things aren’t going to stay pretty. The European paradise is fading due to war, resource shortages, environmental degradation, political instability, mass migration, and technological change. It is beyond our control.

Paradises don’t last, because, due to competition, we live in a ‘dynamic environment.’ Competition is a destructive force, even though a creative one, as economists assure us. Donald Trump at least recognised that. Tariffs are a measure to protect uncompetitive industries. Europe may soon have to follow suit. The Soviet bloc survived for decades because it had irredeemable currencies, hampering trade with the rest of the world. Had they chosen to do so, the Soviets could still be there, mired in stagnation, as North Korea still is. But unlike the Americans, they were willing to face the fact that their experiment had failed. If the United States continues on this path, it will become more like the Soviet Union. Yet, if we don’t halt the competition, we need artificial intelligence to keep up with our rivals, and humans may soon become useless.

We are cogs in a system, doing our acts, not unique, wonderful, deserving individuals. If we were, we would all have been like Mahatma Gandhi, and humanity would have done fine. Gandhi was truly one of a kind. My ethical standards do not come close to his. And I should be your saviour? As an engineer with far more data at my disposal than Gandhi ever had, I can confidently claim that the system will lead us to our destruction. Being like Gandhi is not enough. You can’t fix the world’s problems with peaceful action. You must be willing to do whatever it takes, like Hitler. Jokes helped deal with that inconvenient truth, such as imagining coming on stage after an introduction by a lady in tight stockings and a hairdo like Helga from the comedy series Allo Allo, who would raise her hand to give the Hitler salute and scream, ‘Our Great Leader!’ Then, I would come up and say, ‘Oh, it’s me. Shame and scandal in the family.’ My mother wasn’t my mother, and she didn’t know.

Donald Trump hurts people’s feelings, and he seems to love it. Yet, we can’t fix the world’s problems without hurting feelings. You are a bunch of morons busy committing suicide. So, what more is there to say? Mr Trump could be an appetiser for things to come, for the truth is harsh. People are obsessed with feelings. Mr Trump is the greatest snowflake of all, for he can’t stand any criticism. I have worked on a concept plan for the future, which is not more than a direction, for that is what the level of planning and time horizon require. We are about to make a scary jump into the unknown, but the alternative likely is an apocalypse of some kind. Now, I don’t think that God is on my side. Jesus made that mistake. I just play my role in this script like you do. Failure is worse than death. As the Dutch say, ‘Death or the gladiolas.’ Success or death. But even then, you can still have success after death. Jesus changed world history more than anyone else.

If I am the messiah, I have to become a dictator. That was not my ambition, so I was unprepared for that eventuality that seemed unlikely for the first four decades of my life. How to be a dictator? What must I do? I had no clue. And so, God provided me with a great teacher, Donald Trump. Mr Trump has acted as if he were above the law and went after his political opponents. There is no choice but to do that, which would be, as a secondary school bureaucrat noted, a l’état-c’est-moi situation, or as the former Dutch minister of immigration, Marjolein Faber, once put it, ‘I am policy.’ A messiah has the divine right of kings, or as the Chinese would say, the mandate of heaven. It is an absolute rule no one can question. It can provide political stability that enabled the Chinese to administer a vast empire and survive as a nation for over 2,000 years. That is the kind of time horizon this plan has.

Kicking off the revolution

Dutch television once aired a fragment of a preacher standing in front of Donald Trump, with Trump putting up his best sanctimonious face. The preacher thanked Trump for ‘saving America from Satan.’ Then my wife, Ingrid, said, ‘Look! There you have him! That’s Satan!’ She meant Donald Trump. She was joking, but that joke can only be funny if there is some truth to it. My wife doesn’t dislike Mr Trump as I do, and tends to look on the bright side of what he is doing. So, Mr Trump forcing Ukraine to accept a bad deal? That’s fine with her if it ends the war. Taking out Maduro? Things were bad in Venezuela already. Invading Greenland? She didn’t express an opinion. Bombing Iran back to the Stone Age? They shouldn’t have a nuclear bomb. In any case, my wife’s feelings didn’t get in the way of forming the opinion that Mr Trump is a satanic character. Her opinion was as objective as it could be. That makes Trump’s followers believing that Obama was the Antichrist all the funnier. When I later recalled the moment, my wife said the preacher had said ‘Antichrist’ rather than ‘Satan.’

Trump’s lambasting of the pope’s peace efforts, while portraying himself as Jesus, and the religious display by him and his inner circle in the Oval Office, give him a strong shot at the title of Antichrist, who is a boogeyman, only mentioned in John’s first epistle. One mention of an obscure figure, and people’s imaginations go wild. Trump being a jerk is why people voted for him. By his own admission, Trump is a pussy grabber who would ‘do’ his daughter had she not been his daughter. At least 26 women have accused him of sexual misconduct.3 When order falls apart, we revert to gangsterism and choose gangsters as our leaders. You can’t rely on pencil pushers to fight for you in dangerous times. Many fascist leaders have been involved in crimes ranging from embezzlement and violence to coups to overthrow the government, to conspiring with enemy powers, which some call treason. As Trump’s fits are the foundation for US policy, the Trump regime and MAGA have become the world’s first and foremost problem.

The United States threatened to attack Denmark to secure security guarantees it already had, tore up a deal with Iran, and started a war with Iran to acquire a worse deal, while leaving the rest of the world to starve without oil and fertiliser. The regime’s next war could be against Cuba after the US Supreme Court ruled that Exxon should receive damages for the Cuban nationalisation of its assets. Also, not particularly helpful is the US regime’s stance on climate change, including Trump’s Don Quichotte-like fight against windmills. The great experiment with individual freedom, the United States, has failed miserably, and that can hardly be a surprise given the depraved state of human nature.

Donald Trump should face trial in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. The United States can’t give him a fair trial. Liberals may want to hang him, while conservatives might want to give him a pass. Whether trying to overthrow a legitimate election result constitutes treason may remain a matter of contention but that Donald Trump and his pal Bibi Netanyahu violated international law and committed crimes against humanity by starting the Iran war cannot be in doubt, as the world’s expert on murders committed in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law, Vladimir Putin, called the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei a murder committed in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law.

On 15 May 2025, precisely 8647 days after 11 September 2001, former FBI director James Comey posted a photo of seashells on social media spelling ‘8647’, a code for removing Trump from office. That drew the ire of the Trump regime after the MAGA movement had previously sold hats with ‘8646’ on them, calling for Biden’s removal from office. The Trump regime now considers writing the number 8647 an act of terrorism. There is no evidence suggesting that Comey intended that 8647-day interval, but he could have. Yet, the incident is also part of the 11 September 2001 coincidence scheme, which is beyond the capabilities of human conspirators to organise.

Now, I hadn’t thought about how to oust Mr Trump, but God provided me with an idea. In April 2025, I dreamed of being part of a crowd in The Hague during the NATO summit scheduled for that summer. The leaders of the NATO member states were all there. When Trump passed by in his car, I began to scold him in Dutch, ‘Hij is een hondenlul (He is a dog dick).’ It is an offensive slur that football fans sing when disagreeing with the referee’s decision. For a moment, there was absolute silence. Bystanders were shocked, making me fear that the police would round me up. But then the crowd joined in, and the singing grew louder until it became a thundering chant. It made the news worldwide, and in every football stadium, it became the chant. From then on, no one called him President Trump anymore. Everyone called him dog dick.

Play time is over. An adult should run the world. If I am Adam reincarnated, I am 6,000 years old. There may be no one else to save you. So, let me be very clear. I don’t need you. You need me. If you don’t want me to be your leader, that’s fine with me. But maybe it is not fine with God. You can try and find out. I never wished to become the overseer of that lunatic asylum called humanity. So if you murder me, that will be your problem, not mine. I suppose that death is my final destination anyhow. So count your blessings. Maybe you can finally grow up, leave your infantile beliefs behind, and sing along with the opening chant of the End Times, ‘Donald is a dog dick’. It is going to be great fun!

Latest revision: 15 September 2026

Featured image: AI-generated

1. One in four Americans think Obama may be the Antichrist, survey says. The Guardian (2013).
2. What I know about Jeffrey Epstein. Seymour Hersh (2026). Substack.
3. The 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Eliza Relman and Azmi Haroun (2017). Business Insider.

Grades

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Unemployment in the early 1980s was high, especially among young people. And so, I asked my mother, ‘What is the point of studying if you end up unemployed?’ She said that there will always be room for the best. My parents had lived in poverty and had learned that you must work hard to earn your place under the sun. Not counting on luck, thinking I had none whatsoever, made me work very hard at secondary school, thinking I had to be in the top. Occasionally, I knew more than my teachers. My father later told me about a mayor, Kobes, he knew, who had been my history teacher before he became a politician for the Christian Democrats. Mr Kobes told my father that I once corrected him during the lessons. It annoyed him, so he checked his books during the break to discover that I was right. He was not the only one. A geography teacher admitted that I knew more about Russia than he did.

On the final exams, my average grade was the highest (8.6 out of 10). These scores were good but not outstanding. And they were the result of very hard work, so hard that you didn’t have to doubt that I was not a genius. Some pupils had stellar degrees in mathematics without doing much for them, but not me. My grades in mathematics were good but not stellar. If I didn’t prepare for a test, which happened only once in those six years, the grade dropped dramatically to 3.5. And so, for once, my mathematics teacher, Mr Blaak, had a field day, making silly jokes about me spending too much time on the school newspaper. And I never solved the Rubik’s Cube, despite spending a lot of time on it, so there was no reason to doubt that I was intelligent but not brilliant.

My weak spot was explaining literature. It is about guessing the supposed motives of book authors. My scores were consistently poor, the poorest of the class. I considered guessing other people’s motives and decoding hidden messages in texts a waste of time. The authors themselves often marvelled at what the literature experts found out about their intentions from the books they had written. Art and literature were a lot of fluff about feelings, quite often imagined. And I did poorly at it, and it probably has to do with my Asperger’s Syndrome. With the final exams nearing, I began to fret and asked my teacher, Mr. Amelink, to give me additional practice exams. A teacher could only dream of such a fanatic pupil, so he was helpful, but the grades remained as poor as before.

Before the final exam, I prayed that the grade wouldn’t be too bad. Not only to my surprise, my result was the best of everyone, only equalled by Geraldine, a girl with a striking hairdo, a bit alternative, who dressed outspokenly and flaunted her interest in art and literature. Mr. Amelink was also amazed and suggested the extra lessons had made a difference. Another girl became curious about this feat. She said, ‘You have a mysterious way of winning in the end.’ I was too embarrassed to tell about the prayer. It was selfish to pray for a higher grade. People in Africa needed God’s help much more. And it could not be that God granted that wish, or could it? While doing the test, the questions appeared more concrete than usual, making it easier to answer them.

There is a subtle difference between speculating about hidden motives and understanding the meaning of texts. I was good at the latter. It inflated my grades, as explaining texts comprised 50% of the scores in English and French. If a particular English or French word was unfamiliar to me, I could still infer its meaning from the subject of the text, the author’s opinions and the purpose of the paragraph or sentence. By connecting the dots, you often arrive at the correct answers. I hardly made errors in these questions.

At the time, there was no reason to suspect God had anything to do with it. Still, later developments added a peculiar twist to this incident, as I may have uncovered messages from God in pop music lyrics. The teacher’s name, Amelink, suggests a possible link to the isle of Ameland, and Ameland was to become part of a set of peculiar coincidences. A song named The Foundling of Ameland refers to this island. It includes a scene with the foundling walking over the water. But that was still over twenty years into the future. And I disappointed my economics teacher. Had my grade for economics been slightly higher, I would have received a 10, and an economist would have come to the school to give me the diploma. My teacher had hoped for that.