Category: mission

1919 Cover of The Natural Economic Order

Discovery of Interest-Free Money

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It was September 2008. The banking crisis was getting out of hand. Things were falling apart. It seemed as if the financial system could collapse at any moment and that civilisation, as we know it, could end. Today, the 2008 financial crisis is a distant memory, but at the time, the financial press was worried, or more precisely, panic was setting in, as the jobs of suit-wearers in finance were at stake. It was like 1929, but modern people are not as resilient as in the early 1900s, so the crisis had apocalyptic potential. I had long feared an apocalyptic financial collapse and believed that usury, or charging interest on money and debts, would be the underlying cause. On the surface, the reason may seem irresponsible lending, but interest is a reward for bearing the risk of default. So, without interest charges on debts, there would be far less irresponsible lending.

The unfolding financial crisis led me to watch the animated film ‘Money as Debt’ on YouTube and to reflect once again on Silvio Gesell’s idea of charging a holding fee on money to eliminate interest. I jotted down my thoughts and tried to make an ordered, coherent whole out of them. The idea had never seemed workable. Why should you lend out money interest-free if you can receive interest elsewhere? It is why interest-free money had remained a fringe idea, mainly attracting eccentrics like me.

Then, in the first days of October, I made a startling discovery. Banning interest promotes financial stability by preventing usurious, irresponsible, and unproductive financial schemes. That would improve the economy. Think of it like so. When credit card debt and high-interest payday lending disappear, people will have more disposable income, and there will be no usurers living off others’ work. That would be more efficient. It also reduces the need for government and central bank interventions to manage the interest-bearing debt. Usury requires government deficits and central bank money creation.

That is because most of our money is debt-backed. If you go to a bank and take out a loan, the bank creates money out of thin air, but you must pay back the loan with interest. You repay the loan with money borrowed by someone else. And the money you need to pay the interest doesn’t exist. Someone else must borrow that as well. On a larger scale, due to interest charges, we need to take on additional debt to repay existing debt with interest. To prevent the usury scheme from collapsing, governments run deficits and central banks print money, which leads to inflation. The inflation rate is often higher than the interest rate you get on a bank account. The profits are for the usurers.

Now comes the skinny. The economy would do better without usury. If the economy performs better, investment yields would be higher, so investors would receive higher returns despite the negative interest rates. The difference comes from inflation. Without interest charges, there is no need for government deficits and money printing. The economy can thrive without more debt, so there would be no inflation. During the Great Depression, the Austrian town of Wörgl issued a currency with a holding fee. Those holding the money had to pay a 1% monthly fee to keep it valid, thereby encouraging them to spend it rather than save it. The existing money continued to circulate, and Wörgl’s economy boomed without money issuance, while Austria suffered from the depression.

If the money is interest-free, the currency’s value may rise more than the interest you would receive on an interest-bearing currency. Think of it like so. You can have 2% interest with 5% inflation or -2% interest with 0% inflation. The latter would be a better deal. The question then becomes: why lend money at interest when interest-free money offers higher returns? If the idea is that good, and the ‘Miracle of Wörgl’ suggests so, investors would bring their money to the interest-free economy, and the usury economy would end. If this became more widely known, the idea would spread and change the world.

And so I figured that if the money is interest-free, the currency’s value rises more than the interest you would receive on an interest-bearing currency. Think of it like so. You can have 2% interest with 5% inflation or -2% interest with 0% inflation. The latter would be a better deal. The question then becomes, why lend out money with interest when interest-free money offers better returns? If the idea is that good, and the ‘Miracle of Wörgl’ suggests so, investors would bring their money to the interest-free economy, and the usury economy would collapse. If this became more widely known, the idea would spread and terminate the usury financial system forever.

Until then, I had believed that interest-free money was sound in theory but impossible in practice. Force, rather than good intentions, drives change in this world. It is a constant in history: the strong dominate the weak. But this money could be the terminator of usury, and a better future for humankind seemed possible. Making this knowledge public, I speculated, could unleash an unspeakable force. The Austrian central bank banned the Wörgl money, so we don’t know how it would have ended if it had continued. Perhaps, we would have lived in an entirely different world. A similar money lasted for over a thousand years in ancient Egypt. Had I discovered the secret that explains these successes? That seemed doubtful. How could an amateur have found what the experts have missed?

Amateurs who think they know better than the experts have become quite a plague recently. ‘Think for yourself and do your own research,’ has become the motto of an ever-expanding squad of nutters that the Dutch call Wappies. Often, there is something afoot, but there is little or no evidence, so people speculate and go crazy. I was anxious about having it wrong, which made me doubt the discovery’s greatness. It might be a good idea, but it can’t be that good. And that is correct, a decade of research has confirmed, but it is possible. And the proof came when Europe saw negative interest rates in the next decade.

Then, on a website promoting Gesell’s ideas, I found the following quotes,

‘The creation of money that cannot be hoarded will lead to a different and more real kind of property.’

– Albert Einstein

‘Gesell’s name will be a leading name in history once it has been disentangled.’

– H.G. Wells

‘The application of Gesell’s principle of circulation of money will lead the nation out of the depression within two to three weeks. I am a humble student of this German-Argentine businessman.’

– Irving Fisher

‘The future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx.’

– John Maynard Keynes

‘Gesell’s work will initiate a new epoch in the history of mankind.’

– Prof. Dr. B. Uhlemayr

‘Gesell’s discoveries and proposals are of the greatest importance for centuries to come.’

– Dr. Theophil Christen

These brilliant minds agreed that something epic lay beneath the surface and that it could change the future forever. John Maynard Keynes and Irving Fisher were among the greatest economists of their time. If Keynes believed Gesell would make us forget Marx, I might have found out why. And so, the Miracle of Wörgl and the grain money in ancient Egypt may not have been freak accidents but a sign of something more. Ending usury, the scourge that had haunted humankind for thousands of years, seemed within reach. While considering the implications, the following song played on the radio,

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends
Like my father’s come to pass
Twenty years have gone so fast
Wake me up when September ends

– Green Day, Wake me up when September ends

September had just ended. Silvio Gesell first proposed money with a holding fee in his book ‘Natural Economic Order,’ which he first published in German in 1916 as ‘Natürliche Wirtschaftsordnung.’ I figured that its abbreviation could be NWO, which stands for New World Order, not knowing that the German ‘Wirtschaftsordnung’ was, unlike in English and Dutch, one word. So, was my discovery meant to happen? Was it part of something bigger? These thoughts arose, ironically, because I didn’t see ‘Wirtschaftsordnung’ as a single word. It made me feel small and insignificant. Paranoia was creeping in.

What is less known, but definitely worth noting, is that the German Nazis also aimed to abolish interest and contemplated Gesell’s ideas. Gesell himself was not a Nazi, but a liberal and an internationalist. Adolf Hitler was more impressed by the ideas of Gottfried Feder, who had the same kind of moustache Hitler had. Feder had written ‘The Manifesto for the Abolition of Interest-Slavery’ around the same time Gesell wrote ‘The Natural Economic Order’ and proposed nationalising all banks and abolishing interest. Gesell argued for charging a holding fee on currency and not interfering with markets and banks.

I named the discovery Natural Money as a reference to the Natural Economic Order. Strange things began to happen. When I woke up at night, the clock always showed times like 2:22, 4:44 or 5:55, with no exception. That was creepy. Something seemed seriously off with reality. Then, my wife told me she was seeing those time prompts as well. Until then, I hadn’t told her that I was seeing them. Once you enter the Twilight Zone, it begins to affect you. Meaningful coincidences started to occur, making me open to suggestions. What happened around me and in the world seemed to interact with my thoughts. Even the covers and titles of the books in the bookshop at the train station in Leeuwarden radiated a sense of spookiness, with references to my situation. They call it synchronicity.

The animated picture Money as Debt started with a list of assassinated US Presidents who supposedly opposed the banking system, suggesting evil bankers were behind these assassinations, making me fear death under suspicious circumstances if Natural Money would get serious attention. Still, if a repetition of the miracle of Wörgl were to occur, the news would spread fast, and if it were that good, it would be impossible to stop. Killing me wouldn’t help. The Secret Service would be too late. Of course, I had worried far too much. I posted the idea on several message boards. Most people didn’t get it. I mailed the findings to 200 Dutch economic researchers. None of them was interested.

Natural Money had a more favourable reception on the message board of Opednews.com. It generated some discussion as some visitors saw the potential. Still, it didn’t lead to a further propagation of the idea. I also went to Strohalm’s office in Utrecht. They had been working on interest-free currencies for decades. The people of Strohalm received me politely, but they had other priorities. They had a promising project in Uruguay. Doubt crept in again. I didn’t know enough about monetary economics and the financial system to see whether it was an idea worth pursuing. And even if I was right, no one would listen, so I planned to give up and resume my life.

It was disappointing, but not as bad as being evicted from the dormitory by A* nineteen years earlier. To remind myself of that and make me feel better, I played the Sleepwalking album by Gerry Rafferty, the album I had come to associate with the events at the dormitory because of the lyrics of the first song, ‘Sleepwalking.’ And then I wondered whether A* had something to do with the discovery of Natural Money. Over the years, several incidents had occurred, suggesting that She was still interfering with my life. It didn’t take long before clues came up. There is a thin line between paranoia and psychosis. The lyrics of the fourth song of the album ‘On The Way’ were noteworthy,

Drifting along with the wind, telling yourself you can’t win
It’s over, and now we begin, oh yeah, we are on the way
…
Only one woman, one man, just doing the best that we can
There’s so much we don’t understand,
Oh yeah, but we’re on the way
Light shining down from the east,
bringing a love that won’t cease

– Gerry Raffery, On The Way

In my bed, I was imagining again. By giving up, I had just told myself I couldn’t win. Was this just the beginning? The beginning of what? What did I not understand? What was this love that won’t cease? Was my destiny connected with that of A*? I had loved Her in secret all that time, but never thought, or even hoped, that we could be together. The distinction between my make-believe world and reality, which had been there since I was a child, began to blur. The lyric wasn’t specific, so the suggestion came from me linking the album to the events in the dormitory. And I might still have ignored it if it weren’t for the fifth song,

People come and people go, friends, they disappear
There’s only one thing that I wanna know, tell me where do we go from here
Everybody’s on the make, everybody’s trying to get ahead
In a world like this, you just exist to feed the walking dead.
…
Lookin’ out on a world gone crazy, waitin’ for the fun to begin
The race is on, yeah, they’re gettin’ ready, Jesus, what a state we’re in
Meanwhile, down in my backyard, I’m sitting doing solitary
Now that I’ve milked the sacred cow, I just worry ’bout the military.
…
Get ready
Get ready

– Gerry Raffery, Sleepwalking

It is a strange lyric, and it made me think. Is the world about to go crazy, and is something about to start? We exist to feed the walking dead, which could be the defunct banking system, I reasoned. The phrase probably refers to what Karl Marx once wrote, ‘Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.’ I didn’t know that, so I made up my own interpretation. The sacred cow made me think of Joseph explaining the Pharaoh’s dreams, which is also not so obvious. Now, the story originates from a holy book, and one of the Pharaoh’s dreams involved cows, so that was the connection. Joseph introduced the granaries in Egypt, the story goes. Grain stored in these granaries became the basis of the Egyptian grain money, which, like Natural Money, had a holding fee to cover the storage costs.

These are some incredible leaps of thought that you wouldn’t make if you aren’t psychotic, so by then, I had crossed that line. Sleepwalking was the only album Gerry Rafferty had recorded outside the United Kingdom, and it was in the Netherlands, where I was living at the time. That was not a coincidence, I supposed, and I was right about that at least as it turned out. I had grown open to suggestions. Natural Money could change the world, some of the most brilliant minds had agreed on, and it was something epic, and it had to do with A*. And so, I was well on my way towards the shadow world where I was about to meet A* again after nineteen years. That evening, I felt A * trying to do a mind melt with me, like the Vulcans do in Star Trek, once again. This time, I didn’t resist. And there She was, on the other side. It seemed like a telepathic connection. By then, it was 11 November 2008.

Latest revision: 25 September 2025

Featured image: 1919 Cover of The Natural Economic Order. Wikimedia Commons.

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).

The Twilight That Could Be Dawn

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The sudden collapse of liberalism

In 2016, Trump supporters took over the GodlikeProductions.com message board. The mood turned grim, much as it had fifteen years earlier, when Fortuyn fans flooded the IEX message board. This time, I stayed as I had missed something important. Given my possible future job, not understanding fascism was no excuse, so I familiarised myself with the MAGA crowd, as I had done with the Moroccan minority in the Netherlands. 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 multicultural society. So what stands in the way? Hanging out with the Moroccan minority had already given me an impression. And the former Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende answered the question: norms and values. Still, having an answer is not the same as solving a problem, and that is also because the answer fell short. We also identify with groups.

There is blatant racism inside the MAGA movement, but that is not why fascism is seeing a revival, and we have to separate the racism from genuine arguments. People worry about migration causing crime. The issue is not new. In the United States, Jewish, Irish, and Italian gangs brought with them gang violence, while they were met with racism. Yet, it is also a cultural issue. The mafia is a typically Italian phenomenon. These groups eventually integrated, but it took time and effort, including going after mobsters. And ethnic groups often still live in separate quarters. Shared values and norms, and their enforcement, are the principal requirements for a good society. Our myths, so our religions and ideologies, also fail us, causing confusion and strife. There is no authority everyone respects. Finally, Western culture itself is suicidal, and it is the problem that led to the other problems that need fixing. The pursuit of money ruins its moral foundation, destroys the planet and promotes a rat race that drives migration and is about to terminate humanity.

Turning the world into a single agreeable society will require unorthodox methods of an unimaginable kind. Yet that seems to be what the Kingdom of God is about. And even though it seems impossible, if God wants it to happen, it will. I can try to figure out what it might look like and how we can get there. Whatever may be required, the alternative is probably worse. We need a new social contract for the world. It requires widespread agreement and following through. That will never come from the interplay of social and political forces, so it needs to be an act of God. GodlikeProductions.com had the annoying feature of banning you for no apparent reason, only to let you back in after some time. It also made me use Reddit, where you can hang out with other groups, like a fly on the wall.

The first Trump presidency was not a clean break with the past, as his cabinet featured several Republican establishment 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, with Trump naming buildings after himself, declaring his birthday a public holiday, and numerous other self-aggrandising acts. It was sometimes hard to see a plan behind his actions, prompting his followers to praise his brilliance for keeping his plans secret and taking his opponents off guard, which he often did. His economic policies included raising tariffs on Swiss imports because he didn’t like how the Swiss leader spoke to him. Then there were his brazen lies, his self-enrichment and that of his family members by abusing his office, eclipsing all previous corruption by US presidents, his pardoning of criminals, and his divisive Christmas message.

Also noteworthy were Trump’s war threats against Denmark, for, among other reasons, not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, which he blamed on Norway. Then he went to war with Iran while negotiations were still ongoing for enriching uranium after he had torpedoed the previous nuclear agreement with Iran because Bibi Netanyahu told him it was a bad deal for Israel. As Europe did little to help him in his war efforts in Iran, Trump revived his idea of leaving NATO, while leaving the rest of the world to pay for the disaster that war caused. Meanwhile, Mr Trump was already eying an attack on Cuba. As a Swedish newspaper put it, ‘This is the problem with having a giant baby in charge of the free world.’ As a Swedish newspaper put it, ‘This is the problem with having a giant baby in charge of the free world.’ Also, on the GodlikeProductions.com message board, I was cautious about expressing my opinions.

No doubt that the second Trump administration will go down in history as the greatest joke in the history of government. Most of his voters know, but many still back him because he delivers on halting immigration and deporting illegal immigrants. Many of them believe that God sent Donald Trump. They are right. The name Trump means trumpeteer, which is noteworthy as the loud noise 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 no one else. And the word ‘trumped-up’ refers to the fantasy level of Trump’s statements, in which the connection to reality is often remote at best. God likes a good joke. Trump is also the greatest blasphemer. He sold his followers $3 made-in-China Trump Bibles for $60. After the Pope criticised Trump for threatening to wipe out an entire civilisation by bombing Iran into oblivion, Trump lashed out at the Pope and then posted on social media an image portraying himself as Christ healing the sick. Also, on the GodlikeProductions.com message board, I was cautious about expressing my opinions.

By 1 January 2025, it was already clear that the second Trump administration would be different from the first. Trump had ousted those who might rein him in, so his erratic conduct could destabilise the world. The world adapted, but with no one to check the orange madman, things could spiral out of control. The Trump government may seem like a clown show, like the fascist parties in the Netherlands, but their success comes from the failure of the liberal order. In Hegel’s scheme, this can lead to progress if the contradiction is resolved. My preparations were not yet complete, but seemed good enough had the time come, and close to the finish line, the moment when additional preparation would make little sense. I figured it would be around 1 April 2027. I further surmised that the job would start before Trump’s second term ended. My new deadline became 1 January 2029. I promised myself to stop by then if nothing had come out of it.

Things will not return to what they were before. Fascism is on the rise in Europe as well. The liberal world order has ended. The dark side of it is a dramatic rise in savagery and nuttery, such as online hatred of women, LGBTQ people, and ethnic minorities, death threats, false accusations against public officials, ranging from being part of a paedophile network or planning genocide with vaccines, and violent riots near asylum seeker centres. It is a natural development when order collapses, and we revert to our default state, gangsterism. Behind that are our tribal identities and violent nature. We want to protect our tribe against others, and for good reason. Humans are not an agreeable species. We may seek enemies and attack the weak if we fear they will bring us down. That is behind the effort to bring back a male fighting spirit in the US military, which included purging transgender individuals.

Liberal states have long had an edge because of capitalism and science. When the Soviet Union collapsed, liberalism seemed to have won. Yet, it is better to say that our consumption addiction has won. The communists had given up on their project because they had promised their workers more stuff, while everyone knew that workers in capitalist countries had more stuff. The modern consumer is not much unlike a drug addict busy committing suicide by overdosing, wanting his dealer to bring on more. He has no survival skills and is hooked on a system he can’t survive without. The merchants of death, selling us that merchandise, are like drug dealers selling opioids. Liberalism was yet another fairy tale. It has just collapsed in front of us, but liberals have yet to catch on.

We are at a turning point in history. A pillar of Western civilisation, social progress, is falling apart. That is due not only to migration but also to ecological destruction, resource depletion, the replacement of humans by artificial intelligence, and the threat of World War III. What is the point of it all if the nukes are soon flying? Civilisation is just a thin veneer to keep the beast within us in check. Liberalism was an attempt to achieve a good society through a social contract, giving all groups in society a suitable place based on the idea of a fundamental equality of all individuals. That is only possible if we all share the same values and adhere to the same norms, which includes the amount of freedom we allow. It begins with the myths we believe in. They give our lives meaning, and our values and norms come from them. And so, we are at the end of Hegel’s ride. We may either see the end of civilisation or the completion of our journey to Paradise.

Mediocre vision

Humanity’s lack of collective intelligence suggests that a single leader with the right vision might already do better, provided this individual has unlimited authority like a messiah. That might be the point of having a messiah. If you happen to be that person, you must do what you think is best, regardless of what others think, because God appointed you. What needs to be done requires trampling on the rights people believe they have, so you need unlimited authority. If you take your job seriously, there are no excuses for avoidable mistakes, but you can’t always know what the right course of action is. So, if something goes wrong because of a choice you make, the alternative can still be worse. So, if you saved the Titanic, but made a mistake that killed 200, the alternative would be 2,000 more fatalities. If you are the messiah and only human, you can only do what you think is best, and for the remainder, you have to rely on the script God wrote. For the job that may await me, I needed answers, and so I tried to find them.

What I write is the truth as I see it. I may have to revise my views, but the truth I present to you may be the truth that saves you. You can find older writings of mine, but insofar as they contradict my current writings, they reflect increased insights from my truth-finding exercise. My views haven’t changed in principle, but my newer insights reflect a greater deal of experience-based realism about the execution. God isn’t going to change human nature, I gradually came to assume, and human nature is more depraved than I previously thought. Yet, it is no accident that I live in the Netherlands, one of the most progressive countries on issues like dealing with the limits of growth, LGBTQ rights, animal welfare, balancing work and private life, opportunities for ethnic minorities, and the right to decide to terminate one’s own life. The Netherlands was also the first to have a fascist party in parliament, and later, a fascist messianic leadership cult like MAGA. The Netherlands even had a political party named New Social Contract. Think of it.

The Netherlands has been ahead for a reason I can explain now. 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, a paradise, maybe, as it is one of the most socially progressive countries in the world. But progress always comes with drawbacks and losers. So, feminism comes at the expense of conservative men. And that explains to a great extent, the misogyny among them. If they can, they will reverse women’s rights. Men even rewrote the Bible to that aim. You don’t have to doubt that history is written by the winners. Yet, social progress has reached the end of the line. We face fundamental disagreements about the direction we should take, leading to an authority crisis and a moral crisis in the Netherlands as well. As Judgement Day could be approaching, it seems not a coincidence that the International Court of Justice is in The Hague, the Netherlands.

If the world is to become one society, it will be multicultural, but that is an intermediary phase, as cultures will gradually give way to folklore. People from different cultures may live separately, like the Dutch did in the pillared society, until the differences between the identity groups have become irrelevant. Cultural differences are the last remaining obstacle to the unification of humankind. The issue can be fixed, but it takes time and may require pressure. To illustrate the point, the Danes descend from the raping and pillaging Vikings. Now, we don’t need to wait for hundreds of years. We should picture what the future requires of us all and define what is acceptable conduct. Then, we must deal with those who don’t fit in. Can they be re-educated?

That is not going to work in a liberal environment because it requires sharing beliefs, so there is less room for deviant opinions. You can’t question the messiah’s leadership, even if he is wrong. God knows better. As a liberal-minded person, I know that it will be hard on liberals. Multicultural societies work best when the state is more powerful than the tribes living within it, and when everyone believes the same myths and shares a sense of common destiny. The problem is not only with people from premodern cultures who have trouble integrating into modern societies, but also the suicidal nature of modern culture, which is ‘creatively destroying’ itself in the pursuit of money. Only a brutal truth exercise that spares no one can save us now. I know first-hand that it can be excruciating. 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.

Make America Go Apeshit

A 2013 poll indicated 26% of Americans believed that Obama is the Antichrist or might be.1 Most of these people later voted for Trump. For a liberal-minded person like me, that is hard to believe, as Obama seems like a kind man. No woman has accused him of sexual misconduct, nor did his name pop up in the Epstein files. Racism plays a role here, but it is not the entire story by any means. The introduction of public healthcare insurance has infuriated conservatives. Some believe that public healthcare is a Satanic communist scheme because communists oppose religion. 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.’ How people came to think that Obama is an evil genius, and a Muslim, while the Allah-praising Donald Trump is the best choice for Christians, is a mystery for those who don’t understand American conservative culture.

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 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, which seemed like dangerous extremism to government bureaucrats, but violated the freedom of speech. 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. And there may be racism involved, as Kennedy had proposed the Civil Rights Bill to end racial segregation shortly before his assassination.

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.

America has been ruined. The two-party win-lose district system contributed to that. Small margins can make the difference, so voter turnout is key, so extremists on both sides can take a party hostage. That is less likely to happen in countries with proportional representation and coalition governments, such as the Netherlands. There is a lot of aggressive rhetoric coming from both sides. Liberals and conservatives hate each other’s guts. 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 under the name RealDonaldTrump. That was the gist of the joke. The post wasn’t offensive, yet it became one of the most downvoted I’ve ever written on Reddit. Praising or bashing Trump may draw ire, but this? It is impossible to say whether Trump haters or Trump lovers did it, but there is something seriously wrong in the minds of those who found it offensive.

Conspiracy thinking is more widespread in the United States than in the Netherlands. Acquaintances of mine who regularly visited the United States and spoke with Americans have confirmed it. And I could see it for myself on message boards. Conspiracy theories often relate to the facts, but if you investigate them, much would be unproven, inaccurate or wrong. Conspiracy theorists don’t adhere to strict logic. Pizzagate may be a fabrication, but they claim the Epstein files prove it. Humans are political animals who scheme and plot, in secret if they can. 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. Yet, the conspiracy theorists aren’t paranoid enough. There is a script. These secret dealings, as well as conspiracy theories, seem part of the ultimate psyop: God’s scheme to undermine trust in US society to make America go crazy and ready for the messiah. It made me think that MAGA stands for ‘Make America Go Apeshit’.

Culture: selling versus convincing

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. 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, as we are religious beings who need myths to believe in. A bit of corruption greases the wheels of industry, but the graft has gotten out of hand because once you allow it, it will grow like cancer. The United States is not the most corrupt country by far. Yet, compared to North-West Europe, it is corrupt.

You may not buy the science of climate change because you don’t like taking public transport or eating less 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. A large swath of Americans now genuinely believes that climate change is a hoax made up by governments to raise taxes, but that is because they believe what they want to believe, not because it is the truth.

Moral corruption especially affects some denominations of Protestantism. History and culture go a long way in explaining that. Catholic doctrine holds that faith and good works can save you. Catholics must perform good works, such as giving money to the Church, to atone for their sins. That promoted corruption within the Catholic Church through the sale of indulgences. Protestants objected to this moral corruption and took moral integrity very seriously. They made morality a matter of personal choice, making them personally responsible for their moral choices. Catholics are more morally flexible, so Catholic countries in Europe tend to be more corrupt than Protestant ones. Protestants should think for themselves, while Catholics merely follow the Church’s lead.

And so, despite the presence of a sizeable Roman Catholic minority, the moral conflict defining Dutch culture, the vicar versus the merchant, is ‘dominee versus koopman’ rather than ‘pastoor versus koopman.’ It was the Protestant vicar, not the Roman Catholic priest, who objected to the merchant’s wicked deeds. The merchant was also a Protestant. This dualism still profoundly affects Dutch culture, making the Netherlands a nation of merchants and vicars. For a vicar, money can never be the highest good, while successful merchants are morally depraved, as greed drives them. The merchant usually prevailed, so the Netherlands became the wealthiest nation before the Industrial Revolution started.

Roman Catholics didn’t suffer from that kind of gut-wrenching ethical dualism. It made Protestants seem sanctimonious and sneaky to them. They would take the moral high ground and lecture Catholics on trivial matters of the scripture while acting as greedy merchants. That is also a caricature. Protestants generally take ethical matters seriously. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have had idealists like Kant and Hegel seeking absolute truth and absolute morality. And it affected Roman Catholics in the Netherlands, making the Dutch Catholics think for themselves on ethical matters and rebel against Rome after the Church reversed progressive reforms. There is a profound difference between most Protestant vicars, also in the United States, and televangelists, who are the personification of America’s religious corruption. So, what is the origin of the Protestant moral corruption?

The Protestant doctrine also holds that faith alone suffices. And Protestants take the scriptures more seriously than Roman Catholics. That 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, more prevalent in the United States. What the Bible says is right and wrong is not always objectively so. 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.

Yet, there is no objective moral reason to condemn gays and lesbians or deny them the right to marry. It became a problem 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. Catholics merely followed the Church’s lead, and Catholics must do good works to compensate for their sins, so that gets them off the hook. And Catholics knew that many nuns and monks did it with each other, since joining a convent or becoming a priest was a way to avoid marriage. Priesthood also attracted paedophiles, as several scandals have revealed.

This morally problematic 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, are amoral merchants, and this, rather than racism or religious bigotry, stands at the root of today’s anti-Semitism. Jews are often the merchants and usurers who buy the American politicians. It makes the moral corruption in the United States a sensitive issue, most notably because anti-Semitism has led to the Holocaust. Now we are at the bottom of the manure pit.

Idealism and realism

A society has rules, but to arrive at a good society, you need social trust. Social trust means that you can trust strangers, and everyone knows it. There are always people trying to take advantage of others, but when there are few of them, most people keep their end of the bargain, and social trust is high. If you believe that others are as trustworthy as you are, and you are trustworthy, you are more willing to contribute to the common good. Yet, if we believe that others are only interested in the best deal for themselves or are untrustworthy, we are more likely to assume the same attitude, so that degenerate morals become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A system of rewards and punishments can help to make people obey the rules and keep the group focused on the common good. It is why we have prisons and fines. As we are nearing an apocalypse, we face a global collective action problem. We can only save humanity if we do it together.

That is why we may be incredibly lucky to be simulations, with God controlling the script. Otherwise, we wouldn’t stand a chance. Even when most people are good, the outcome is terrible, driving us toward the apocalypse. Only one of the disciples betrayed Jesus. That already proved fatal. Judas must have seen for himself that Jesus was the messiah and had witnessed God’s power, but even then, he betrayed Jesus, either out of patriotism or greed. He may have hoped that Jesus would oust the Romans to establish a Jewish state, and grew disillusioned, or the lure of money proved stronger than his fear of God. Most Christians talk about Jesus, but are after the money, or they think their tribe is superior. Only one Indian patriot sufficed to murder Mahatma Gandhi. Since then, India and Pakistan have been one step away from a great patriotic war with nukes. So, without God controlling the script, being a messiah is a losing proposition of 100% certainty, not worth entertaining for any rational individual.

Muslims are no better. Money also turns their religion into a hollow custom. Most of them are poor, but where the oil money flows, the rich flaunt their excessive lifestyles, outdoing the excessive consumption in places like the United States, while leaving their less fortunate Muslim brothers to toil in misery. A few generously donate money to religious charities helping the poor or funding nutters who blow up things and randomly murder people in the name of Islam. They are, however, more interested in building the largest skyscrapers. And Jews? We don’t even have to discuss the Jews. So, what about the Dutch? Yeah, what about whataboutisms? It takes one to know one. So, if economic growth and competition are the problem, trade is the problem, and if that is what brings us down, trade is the greatest of all evils.

It doesn’t mean most merchants are evil. It is the system we work in. How to deal with that problem comes next, but solving it begins with acknowledging the true cause. It seems we can’t do without trade and money, so the odds of religion defeating money in a realistic scenario are zero at best. There is enough for everybody’s need, but not for everybody’s greed. The privileged never have enough. And those who have the money decide what happens. Greed will prevail unless brute force ends it. That force must be truly brutal, as even the communists weren’t up to that task. The salespeople are just too cheeky. You must be willing to murder billions of people and have the means to do so, like God, to frighten us to the point that we stop listening to the merchants.

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. The cynical view is more prevalent among conservatives. Whether we try to prevent it or not, human nature makes the apocalypse a done deal. As Christianity points out, we are all sinners and need a saviour. Human nature is so depraved that a messiah wouldn’t be enough. God needs to control the script. That is indeed the case, so we can try to leave our cynicism behind and care for others and nature, while understanding that everything is interconnected, so that our actions affect others and nature, and that transgressions like usury that disturb the balance in Paradise are the most heinous crimes.

Muslims are no better. Money also turns their religion into a hollow custom. Most of them are poor, but where the oil money flows, the rich flaunt their excessive lifestyles, outdoing the excessive consumption in places like the United States, while leaving their less fortunate Muslim brothers to toil in misery. A few generously donate money to religious charities helping the poor or funding nutters who blow up things and randomly murder people in the name of Islam. They are, however, more interested in building the largest skyscrapers. And Jews? We don’t even have to discuss the Jews. So, what about the Dutch? Yeah, what about whataboutisms? It takes one to know one. So, if economic growth and competition are the problem, trade is the problem, and if that is what brings us down, trade is the greatest of all evils.

It doesn’t mean most merchants are evil. It is the system we work in. How to deal with that problem comes next, but solving it begins with acknowledging the true cause. It seems we can’t do without trade and money, so the odds of religion defeating money in a realistic scenario are zero at best. There is enough for everybody’s need, but not for everybody’s greed. The privileged never have enough. And those who have the money decide what happens. Greed will prevail unless brute force ends it. That force must be truly brutal, as even the communists weren’t up to that task. The salespeople are just too cheeky. You must be willing to murder billions of people and have the means to do so, like God, to frighten us to the point that we stop listening to the merchants.

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. The cynical view is more prevalent among conservatives. Whether we try to prevent it or not, human nature makes the apocalypse a done deal. As Christianity points out, we are all sinners and need a saviour. Human nature is so depraved that a messiah wouldn’t be enough. God needs to control the script. That is indeed the case, so we can try to leave our cynicism behind and care for others and nature, while understanding that everything is interconnected do that our actions affect others and nature, and that transgressions like usury that disturb the balance in Paradise are the most heinous crimes.

The pragmatic view is that trade, finance, and money are invincible until God intervenes. And that is correct. It has built the European empires, ranging from the Spanish to the Dutch and the British. And it has made America strong. There may be more graft in the United States than in Western Europe, but most countries are more corrupt than the United States. And the Hegelian dialectic is the way God sees social progress. The West has progressed the furthest on that path and must lead the way. My reason for focusing on the United States is not only that America has become an evil empire and the world’s gravest problem, but also that Americans are more pragmatic, get things done, and, above all, are the most eager to receive the messiah.

Europeans lack their pragmatic attitude and religious fervour. And so, the coming world revolution will probably start there. Compromising with the old, corrupt order is a dead end. We need a spiritual rebirth and must break away from the system run by merchants and usurers, and ground our society in ethical principles and make humankind part of nature rather than above it. Europe will probably be next, and the rest of the world will follow. So, don’t worry about the Muslims. They fear God and also expect Jesus to return. And don’t worry about the Chinese. It is their state’s official goal to run the Hegelian dialectic to its completion and abandon the market economy once the workers’ paradise arrives. That is my guess for now. Things hardly ever go the way I foresee. Yet, they go precisely according to God’s plan.

As for the question I asked myself as a teenager, ‘Is it possible that communists had good intentions?’ If you know how deep the problem runs, you can only appreciate their effort. If there is no God, we, the little people, are on our own, against the superior force of money and tribalism, and there is no chance at all that we will succeed. The elites will play us out by sowing divisions with religious and nationalist fairy tales. They make others toil for them so they get rich without working, and it will end in destruction, albeit creative destruction, economists tell us, so that our suicide will go down in memory as a form of concept art. The elites fund think tanks that tell us fairy tales about individual freedom, so that we will not question the order in which they are our masters, and we are their serfs. And we, the gullible people, need myths to believe in. The communists faced that brutal truth and tried to stamp out nationalism and religion. Maybe for that reason, they named their newspapers ‘The Truth’. Only, communism doesn’t change human nature, so new class societies arose in communist societies with elites and perks.

If this happens, you will have to deal with the consequences. Central planning of every detail doesn’t work. If we try that, it will become a disaster 100 times worse than the Great Leap Forward. Software engineers who have learned from their mistakes design, build, test, start small to see if it works, correct errors, scale up, and fix bugs until the system operates smoothly. That is, unless changes are required. Then, you have to do it all over again. And small changes can have a dramatic, unexpected impact. It is why the absence of further changes is the single most crucial success factor in this endeavour to build a world society for the coming 1,000 years. Future generations will have to resist pressures to make improvements if things were okay to begin with. Things were okay in Eden, and all that happened since then made matters worse.

Kicking off the revolution

A society has rules, but to arrive at a good society, you need social trust. Social trust means that you can trust strangers, and everyone knows. There are always people trying to take advantage of others, but when there are few of them, most people keep their end of the bargain, and social trust is high. If you believe that others are as trustworthy as you are, and you are trustworthy, you are more willing to contribute to the common good. Yet, if we believe that others are only interested in the best deal for themselves or are untrustworthy, we are more likely to assume the same attitude, so that degenerate morals become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A system of rewards and punishments can help to make people obey the rules and keep the group focused on the common good. It is why we have prisons and fines. As we are nearing an apocalypse, we face a global collective action problem. We can only save humanity if we do it together.

That is why we may be incredibly lucky to be simulations, with God controlling the script. Otherwise, there is no chance of success. Even when most people are good, the outcome is terrible, because in competition, the most unscrupulous win out. Only one of the disciples betrayed Jesus. That already proved fatal. Judas must have witnessed God’s power, yet he still betrayed Jesus, either out of patriotism or greed. He may have hoped that Jesus would oust the Romans to establish a Jewish state, and grew disillusioned, or the lure of money proved stronger than his fear of God. And only one Indian patriot sufficed to murder Mahatma Gandhi. Since then, India and Pakistan have been one step away from a great patriotic war with nukes. Without God controlling the script, being a messiah is a losing proposition, not worth entertaining for rational individuals.

Muslims are no better. Money turns their religion into a hollow custom. Most Muslims are poor, but where the oil money flows, the rich flaunt their excessive lifestyles, leaving their less fortunate Muslim brothers to toil in misery. A few might generously donate money to religious charities helping the poor or funding nutters who blow up things and randomly murder people in the name of God. Yet, they are more interested in building the largest skyscrapers. And Jews? We don’t even have to discuss the Jews. So, what about the Dutch? Yeah, what about whataboutisms? It takes one to know one. So, if economic growth and competition are the problem, trade is the problem, and if that is what brings us down, trade is the greatest of all evils.

It doesn’t mean merchants are evil people. Many are not. It is the system we work in. How to deal with that problem comes next, but solving it begins with acknowledging the true cause. It seems we can’t do without trade and money, so the odds of religion defeating money in a realistic scenario are zero at best. There is enough for everybody’s need, but not for everybody’s greed. The privileged never have enough. And those who have the money decide what happens. Greed will prevail unless brute force ends it. That force must be truly brutal, as even the communists weren’t up to that task. The salespeople are just too cheeky. You must be willing to murder billions of people and have the means to do so, like God, to frighten us to the point that we stop listening to the merchants.

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. The cynical view is more prevalent among conservatives. Whether we try to make the world a better place or not, human nature makes the apocalypse a done deal. As Christianity points out, we are all sinners and need a saviour. We must leave our cynicism behind and care about other people and nature, while understanding that everything is interconnected, so that our actions affect others and nature, and that transgressions that disturb the balance in Paradise are the most heinous crimes.

As Hegelian dialectic is the way God sees social progress, and the West has progressed the furthest on that path, the West must lead the way. My reason for focusing on the United States is not only that America has become an evil empire and the world’s gravest problem, but also that Americans are more pragmatic, get things done, and are the most eager to receive the messiah. Many are literally begging for the Second Coming and are willing to perform the craziest acts to make it happen. Now, I am not going to criticise it, for only God can save us and God wrote the script.

It makes the United States the best place to start the coming world revolution. Europeans lack the religious fervour, but also the pragmatic attitude of Americans. Compromising with the old, corrupt order is a dead end. We need a spiritual rebirth and must break away from the system run by merchants and usurers, and ground our society in ethical principles and make humankind part of nature rather than above it. Europe will probably be next, and the rest of the world will follow. That is my guess for now. Things hardly ever go the way I foresee. Yet, they go precisely according to God’s plan.

As for the question I asked myself as a teenager, ‘Is it possible that communists had good intentions?’ If you know how deep the problem runs, you can only appreciate their effort. If there is no God, we, the little people, are on our own, against the superior force of money and tribalism, and there is no chance at all that we will succeed. The elites will play us out by sowing divisions with religious and nationalist fairy tales. They make others toil for them so they get rich without working, and it will end in destruction, albeit creative destruction, economists tell us, so that our suicide will go down in memory as a form of concept art.

The elites fund think tanks that tell us fairy tales about individual freedom and make us fear collectivism, so that we will not unite and overturn the order in which they are our masters, and we are their serfs. And we, the gullible people, need myths to believe in. The communists faced that brutal truth and tried to stamp out nationalism and religion. Maybe for that reason, they named their newspapers ‘The Truth’. Only, communism doesn’t change human nature, so their economic system performed poorly while a new class society with an elite of party bureaucrats arose.

Kicking off a revolution

Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ You can save yourself by following me, accepting that what I say is the truth, and that is how you survive. We need a fairy tale and a leader to believe in who tells us what the truth is. That is how we can save ourselves. Otherwise, we will continue to fight over our fair tales and not do what we must. The idea of being the messiah is an uneasy predicament for any sensible person. It also made me question my views. I have been proven wrong countless times. Progress comes from being proven wrong and learning from it. Minor oversights can have dramatic consequences. Preventing mistakes is better than correcting them afterwards. And correcting them sooner is better than correcting them later. Changes in society and its institutions have unexpected consequences. Still, God wrote the script, so we can only do our best, like Boy Scouts, and expect God to do the rest, like an Akela.

Many, perhaps most, US politicians are corrupt, but Donald Trump is Mr Graft himself. Between 2024 and 2026, his net worth nearly tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.5 billion, thereby outdoing the most brazen grifters in US politics. Unlike ordinary politicians who accept bribes to finance their campaigns, Trump and his entourage exploit the office for personal gain.2 It seems to include insider trading preceding Trump’s social media posts.3 So much for draining the swamp and ridding US politics of corruption. 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.4

The United States today resembles France before the French Revolution. The system is broken. Reform is impossible. Cleaning the slate is all that remains. Dutch television once aired a fragment, probably because it was hilarious, 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 Trump and tends to look on the bright side of what he is doing. Forcing Ukraine to accept a bad deal? That’s fine with her if it stops the killing. Taking out Maduro? Things were bad in Venezuela already. And he ended the Gaza war. Invading Greenland? She didn’t express an opinion. Bombing Iran back to the Stone Age? They shouldn’t have a nuclear bomb. And so, my wife’s feelings didn’t get in the way of forming that opinion. At the very least, the orange madman is impulsive, vindictive and unwilling to listen to people with wisdom and experience. When I later recalled the moment, she said the preacher had said ‘Antichrist’ rather than ‘Satan.’

Donald Trump doesn’t seem to fall into the category of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Pol Pot from Cambodia murdered a quarter of the Cambodians. Had he run Russia or China, he might have outdone Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Still, we shouldn’t be too sure. Trump is a savage constrained by the United States’ political and judicial institutions. Had he free rein, things would probably have been much worse. And as far as the supposed qualities of the Antichrist go, few people qualify for all of them. Still, his lambasting of the pope’s peace efforts, while portraying himself as Jesus, and the religious display of Donald Trump and his circle of evil in the Oval Office, give him a great shot at the title of Antichrist. Is pride not the gravest sin, and is MAGA not all about pride? Not to mention money and patriotism, the likely reasons for Judas betraying Jesus. And what to think of all the hatred, while Christianity is about love. MAGA is the opposite of what Christianity stands for.

It shows that American conservatives are willing to let Satan run their country. Trump being a jerk is why people voted for him. It is natural human behaviour. When order falls apart, we revert to gangsterism and choose gangsters as our leaders. It is our survival mechanism at work. There might have been no second Trump term had there been no surge in immigration during Biden’s tenure. Millions of immigrants came in unchecked, and from a country ridden by gang violence. It was the issue that decided the election. Europe faces similar issues, and fascist movements gain momentum. The Democrats let Biden run for a second term, and when that fell apart, let Harris, who was part of Biden’s government, take over.

Cultural differences divide us, but none of today’s cultures is fit for our future. The outcome of all we do is a total disaster. We should define how we should live and seek those willing to go along with it. And because we will never agree, we need a messiah to tell us. We will have to separate the good people from the bad people. We must try to rehabilitate troublemakers, if necessary, in prison labour camps. It would be the end of human rights as we know it. And we cannot accept alternative myths because people fight and murder over them, so everyone needs to accept the same fairy tales. That is a great leap for a former liberal, but I need to think ahead. If I am indeed the messiah, I should aim to have a plan that will work for the next 1,000 years. I can’t foresee what will happen, but there is a script, so God is in full control, so that worrying is pointless.

Humans are a failed species. Christians would say that we are sinners, not worthy of God’s grace and in dire need of a saviour. Order can only come from the top down, and only by force, because force is humanity’s most convincing argument, and why humanity is a failure. I might be able to guide humanity to the future, not because I am a genius, but because it is the script of the story. And so, it will be a role I play, nothing more. It is up to you to do miracles. If you don’t get it, you are a moron. And you are either on my side or on the side of the morons. And we need a holy war against the morons.

On 15 May 2025, exactly 8647 days after the terrorist attacks of 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 generated some media attention and drew the ire of the Trump administration after the MAGA movement had previously sold hats with ‘8646’ on them, calling for Biden’s removal from office. There is no evidence that Comey intended to create that 8647-day interval, but it could have been. Yet the incident is also part of the 11 September 2001 coincidence scheme, which is beyond the capabilities of human conspirators to organise. My home was formerly owned by the Tromp family, which is the Dutch equivalent of Trump, so that is quite odd given the situation at hand. The name means ‘trumpeter,’ and according to prophecies, trumpets would herald the end times. Removing Trump from office and me taking his place could be part of God’s plan for the End Times. That is by no means certain, but it is a cryptic message that you can see in these coincidences. And until it is disproven, it is worth considering.

Donald Trump should face trial 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 between liberals and conservatives, but that Donald Trump and his pal Bibi Netanyahu have violated international law and committed crimes against humanity by starting the Iran war cannot be in doubt. The ultimate 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.

How to bring the orange madman down? That hadn’t been on my mind, but 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 soccer fans sing when disagreeing with the referee’s decision. 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. From then on, no one called him President Trump anymore. Everyone called him dog dick. I don’t know the future, but I have to work with assumptions. Play time is over. Adults should run the world. As Adam reincarnate, I am 6,000 years old. There may be no one else left to save you.

Latest revision: 15 May 2026

Featured image: AI-generated

1. One in four Americans think Obama may be the Antichrist, survey says. The Guardian (2013).
2. The Corruption Chronicles: Donald Trump’s profiteering from public service, by the numbers. Kei Chin, Michael Beckel, and Oliver Ni (2025). Issue One.
3. The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump’s presidency. Nick Marsh (2026). BBC.
4. The 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Eliza Relman and Azmi Haroun (2017). Business Insider.

Perhaps You Can See the Irony of It

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On a road to nowhere

After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, a populist politician, Pim Fortuyn, gained popularity because traditional politicians had failed to address the growing unease of the Dutch about Muslim immigrants. Fortuyn promoted a messianic personality cult. He called himself the Son of the People of the Netherlands. About the leader the Netherlands needed, Fortuyn wrote in his book De Verweesde Samenleving (The Orphaned Society), ‘A leader of stature is Father and Mother in one. He dictates the law and oversees the herd’s cohesion. The skilful leader is the Biblical Good Shepherd.’ Fortuyn anticipated the coming of the Great Leader of the Netherlands as he wrote, ‘Towards a Father and a Mother, on the way to the Promised Land,’ and, ‘Let us prepare for his arrival so that we can receive him.’ He posed himself as the Messiah. It was one of the reasons I didn’t like him. Perhaps you can see the irony of that.

Fortuyn called Islam a backward religion and claimed that Western civilisation was superior. He valued the achievements of Western civilisation, such as the separation of church and state, LGBTQ rights and freedom of opinion. Many Muslims hold on to a medieval worldview. Still, Islam opposes interest charges on money and debts, and I believed that interest was one of the gravest threats to civilisation, so my views of Islam were more favourable. We could learn something from Islam. Even more so, out-of-control technology might end human civilisation, either through an apocalyptic event or by altering humans to the point that they cease to exist. You can’t blame Islam for that. It is Western civilisation that has brought us to the brink. And if you can only choose between doom and women wearing body covering garments and honour killings, the choice is not that difficult, for a rational individual at least. We are on a road to nowhere,

We’re on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Taking that ride to nowhere
We’ll take that ride
I’m feeling okay this morning
And you know
We’re on the road to paradise
Here we go, here we go

Talking Heads, Road To Nowhere

The song says that the road to nowhere is to paradise. That is the duplicity of it. Everywhere Fortuyn went, there was chaos and conflict. He seemed to enjoy it. Establishment politicians didn’t like him because they feared he would undermine society. The Netherlands has had a consensus-building tradition known as the Polder model for over a century. Fortuyn broke with that tradition.

False Messiah

Fortuyn saw himself as the coming Great Leader of the Netherlands. History took an unexpected turn. On 6 May 2002, a left-wing loner assassinated him, an event that shocked the Netherlands. ‘The bullet came from the left,’ Fortuyn’s supporters claimed. Exactly 911 days later, an Islamic fanatic murdered the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Fortuyn’s sudden popularity was closely linked to 9/11, while Theo van Gogh had just finished 06/05, a motion picture about the assassination of Fortuyn. Van Gogh was killed on 2 November 2004 (11/2 in American notation), while 112 is the European emergency services telephone number. That points to the hand of God. The Bible has warned us of false messiahs like Fortuyn. I hope you can see the irony of that as well.

Jan-Peter Balkenende
Jan-Peter Balkenende

Fortuyn aspired to become Prime Minister. Instead, Jan-Peter Balkenende got that job. He looked like an apprentice from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry Potter became his nickname. And that was not a coincidence, as the Netherlands was in for a massive bout of magic. Captain Decker, a song by Boudewijn de Groot, has the following lines,

Captain Decker, Flying Dutchman,
climbs above the timeless
space machine you’re living in,
starts to turn you inside out,
he needs you to know
what he was really all about

Captain Decker, Boudewijn de Groot

The timeless space machine could refer to the place where God is living. A Dutchman may need God to know what he is about. The animated picture Kroamschudd’n in Mariaparochie by Herman Finkers explores the possibility of Christ being born in Twente. My birthplace is Eibergen, just over the border in Achterhoek. In the 1980s, there were plans to create an independent province of Twente. It was to include Eibergen and Nijverdal. Finkers came from Almelo, like Ilse DeLange. DeLange’s fourth studio album, The Great Escape, plays a central role in God’s messages in pop music.

World peace

In December 2008, there were many strange incidents. One of them was that the candy vending machine at the office delivered a particular message. Often, I went there to fetch a Twix bar. This time, the machine malfunctioned and failed to produce a Twix. It repeatedly misfired. That had never happened before, and to my knowledge, no one else had trouble with the machine that day. After trying three different options, it finally worked when I chose option 22: a Nuts bar. That was nuts, even more so because 22 = 11 + 11.

It was about to get even nuttier. To me, 11:11 represents a strange coincidence with two parts. The next day, I bought a bag of potato crisps from the same machine. This time, it worked fine, but after opening the bag, I found a small piece of paper with the crisps. It was a temporary tattoo with the following Chinese text:

世界和平

One of my colleagues knew a Chinese man who translated it for me. The characters stand for world peace. No one else got a temporary tattoo with a bag of crisps. It was a production glitch. The paper had slipped into the bag, perhaps from another product line, and it ended up in my hands. Remarkably, my colleague Ronald Oorlog was absent that day. He had fallen ill. His last name, Oorlog, is the Dutch word for war. Now, that is a funny coincidence. Another colleague, Rene H, joked about the text, saying, ‘World peace is what Miss World would say she wanted after winning the prize.’

Linking it to Sneek

A nursing home in Sneek is named Nij Nazareth (New Nazareth). The nickname is The Banana because the building is banana-shaped. A former neighbour of Allard and Geke, nicknamed The Hedgehog because of his hairdo, has taken residence there. If the name New Nazareth means anything, it could mean that the Second Coming comes from this particular town, which was, by some miraculous accident, my town of residence. It could be that there were other places and buildings with the same name. And so, I used a search engine to look for them, but nothing else came up. Perhaps I was making too much of this coincidence. In the song Het Sneker Café, the unrivalled poet of the Dutch language, Drs. P mocks the making of outlandish connections to a pub in Sneek,

There once was a girl of seventeen years of age,
the only child of a wine merchant,
who sought shelter in the Jura,
because she was lost on a trip.
She found an unoccupied house at the edge of the forest,
and felt from the outset that this is not right.
She took a glance at the window and what appeared:
Inside was the skeleton of a salesman in toiletries,
who had been missing for years
and had once stayed with his uncle and aunt in Bordeaux when he was young.
And there, they had almost exactly the same type of lampshades
as a small pub in Sneek.

Drs. P, Sneker café

There is a nursing home in Sneek named Nij Nazareth (New Nazareth). Its nickname is The Banana because the building is banana-shaped. A former neighbour of Allard and Geke, nicknamed The Hedgehog because of his hairdo, has taken residence there. If the name New Nazareth means anything, it could mean that the Second Coming comes from this particular town, which happens to be my town of residence, perhaps for the same reason that the building is there. To rule out the possibility that there were other places or buildings with the same name, I used a search engine, but nothing else came up, which made it more noteworthy, though perhaps I was making too much of this coincidence. In the song Het Sneker Café, the unrivalled poet of the Dutch language, Drs P, mocks the making of outlandish connections to a pub in Sneek,

You see now how the pub again and again
affects the social interaction.
How here and there, and yes, even overseas
one stumbles upon this pub from Sneek.
It’s inexplicable and almost occult,
something that fills the world with trepidation.

Drs. P, Sneker café

As a prophecy, it is slightly off the mark by focusing on a pub, of which Drs P did not disclose the name, so that it remains a subject of speculation, and not on Sneek itself. Prophesies somehow tend to be off. That seems to come with predestination. If we knew our predestined future, it wouldn’t materialise. Yet there are inexplicable, occult connections that fill the world with trepidation. And that nursing home, New Nazareth, is not the only thing that justifies the trepidation. You pronounce Sneek like ‘snake,’ and there was allegedly a serpent in Paradise. In scripted reality, there is no coincidence, so we can safely argue that there might be more to it.

Pope end times prophecy

In January 2013, an Australian poster on the message board Godlikeproductions.com started a thread titled ‘112 Keeps Coming Up In The Media.’ Others joined in with their own selective biases and found many 112s popping up in the media. That same number is the European Emergency Services telephone number, and since I had lived in room 112 in that fateful dormitory, the thread caught my attention. The discussion remained active for several weeks. During that time, Pope Benedict XVI resigned on 11 February 2013, a highly unusual move. He was the first pope to step down in almost 600 years.

That became material for this thread. 11 February is also the 112 European Day, which celebrates the emergency services telephone number. 11 February is 11/2 in European notation, and 112 is the European emergency services telephone number, so that is why. You must admit the European bureaucrats have found a most peculiar occasion to throw a party. In any case, the Pope’s resignation came unexpectedly, like a bolt from the blue. And lightning struck the Vatican a few hours after the Pope had resigned.1 It made several people wonder, so the thread came back alive.

Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation on European 112 Day is also noteworthy because of the 112th Pope End Times Prophecy attributed to Saint Malachy. The prophecy alleges 112 popes would reign, starting with Celestine II, until the End of Times. Benedict XVI was the 111th Pope. His resignation prepared the way for the 112th Pope, Pope Francis, who, according to the prophecy, would become the last Pope before the End of Times and Jesus’ return. That made me curious, so I investigated the matter and discovered that Saint Malachy had died on 2 November (11/2 in American notation) 1148, and I added that noteworthy item to the thread.

The prophecy raves about the 112th Pope, ‘In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations, after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed, and the dreadful Judge will judge the people.’ Some claim it refers to Judgement Day or the second coming of Jesus Christ. It requires quite a stretch of the imagination to make it fit Francis’s tenure, but humans are imaginative beings. Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, 21 April 2025, at the age of 88, and the 113th Pope, Leo XIV, came. My preparations weren’t yet complete, but had progressed far enough to think that the End Time could commence within a few years.

If so, that century-old prediction could be remarkably close in time, even though it doesn’t match the described events. It seems too accurate to be a coincidence, yet not entirely on the mark. The same holds for Finkers’ animated picture of Christ’s birth in Twente. My birthplace, Eibergen, is a few kilometres outside Twente. Likewise, the 9 February 2009 superstorm prediction was too accurate to be a coincidence. The date was correct, but the location was off by about 400 kilometres. Route N666 didn’t precisely end in Borssele, the location of the only remaining Dutch nuclear power plant, but in nearby Heerenhoek within the Borssele municipality. The other Dutch atomic plant, which had been closed, was in Doodewaard (Death Holm), a remarkable name. The former Doodewaard municipality had been 66.5 square kilometres in size, so close to 66.6 that it is noteworthy.


Jesus’ ministry occurred sometime between 26 and 30 AD, a period that will soon mark 2,000 years, which is worth noting. We might find out soon whether or not God finally means business this time. After 2,000 years of waiting, you wouldn’t expect that anymore, and most people live as if Judgment Day will not occur during their lifetimes. And as you might know, the hour will come as a thief in the night. The Day of the Lord will come unexpectedly, suddenly, and without warning. That is to say, if that day ever comes. Likewise, you wouldn’t expect an autistic individual like me to be the messiah. Okay, men with Asperger’s Syndrome tend to be faithful, and God might prefer a man with ‘a heart of gold’, but maybe there is more to it. So, what makes autistic people special?

Latest revision: 11 February 2026

1. Lightning strikes St Peter’s Basilica as Pope resigns. BBC (12 February 2013).

Der Untergang der Titanic. Willy Stöwer (1912)

Harbinger of Things to Come

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In 2006 or 2007, a software upgrade of the disk controllers on the principal systems went wrong. For a week, they were out of operation. It was one of the biggest crises in the history of the government office CJIB, and perhaps the biggest of all. At the time, Kees and I were working on the systems renewal project at another location. The other database administrators dealt with the issue, as did many others. I knew there was a serious problem because we received regular email updates, but I didn’t realise how serious it was. After a week, the telephone rang at home. It was 9 PM. My wife, Ingrid, took up the phone. It was the IT director. He said there was an emergency and asked me to come to the office. His voice reflected fear. ‘As if the Titanic had hit the iceberg,’ Ingrid later noted.

I hurried to the office and arrived by 9:30 PM. Many people were still in. It was a massive crisis. There was an atmosphere of fear. The database administrator on duty, Dirk-Jan, brought me up to speed. I searched the database log files, found the error messages, and typed them into the Google search bar. In this way, I found an online document with the remedy. I then repaired the failures and brought the systems online one by one. Board members and senior managers were standing around me, watching me type. Solving the issue wasn’t complicated, but few people used Google to find the answer at the time.

I learned that the last backup was over a week old, and the mirror copy was offline. You may know what backups are and why you might need them, but you may not know what a mirror copy is. A mirror copy is a safety measure. If you own a computer or a mobile phone, it contains data. That data is on a device. In the early 2000s, it was usually a hard disk. If that disk fails, your data may be gone forever. If you lose some photographs of your late cat, you might feel sad about it, but after a few years, you get over it, perhaps after consulting your psychiatrist and taking a lot of pills.

Corporations can’t afford to lose their data. That would bankrupt them. Their business is their data. Without it, they are out of business. If you have a backup, only data after the latest backup may be lost, but that can still kill you, especially if you haven’t backed up for a week. We were a government agency, so loss of data wouldn’t have bankrupted us, but it would have been a national political scandal.

Corporate computers have multiple data storage groups in different locations. If one group catches fire or stops operating because of a failed software upgrade, the other groups still have the data. These groups are called mirror copies. We had two groups: the original and the mirror. You can imagine my bewilderment. We had no backup, and the copy wasn’t available. So much had gone wrong that it was a miracle that I succeeded in recovering all the data. But having no mirror and no backup meant we were still on the brink.

An even greater surprise was yet to come. The managers and the board wanted to return to business as usual and run the backlog of batch jobs. Then I said, ‘This is perhaps the most important advice I will ever give in my entire career. Don’t start the batch jobs yet. We are on the proverbial edge of the precipice. Running the jobs might just push us over. Everything went wrong for a week and there is no guarantee whatsoever that it will be all right now. We should bring the mirror copy back online and make a backup first.’

They planned to ignore my advice. Bringing the mirror copy back online and taking a backup would take eighteen hours of precious time. It was a lot of data to back up, as it was everything we had. I was a low-ranking official while the IT director had claimed there was nothing to worry about. But he had left the building. I kept stressing that making a backup was the right thing to do. ‘If something goes wrong that could finish us,’ I told them. It was the worst crisis ever. And so, I pressed for an extensive check-up to see if everything was in order. On that, they could agree.

During the check-up, I found another failure that everyone had overlooked. That scared the managers and the board, prompting them to start another meeting. And then they followed my advice. The IT director was no longer there, and they faced a determined saviour who told them in no uncertain terms that they were about to do something stupid. The operators brought the mirror copy online and made a backup before we resumed normal operations. In this way, rational decision-making prevailed. Nothing went wrong anymore, but no one could have known that beforehand.

If it had gone wrong, the agency would have survived. Operations would likely have had to stop for several weeks—that had already happened for a week—and it may have been impossible to recover all the data. That would have made the headlines. But it never came to that. When the local newspaper’s journalists smelled a rat, the board could tell them that the situation was under control and that the data was safe. My wife’s comparison of this situation to the Titanic hitting an iceberg was not entirely apt. Saving the Titanic once it had hit the iceberg was technically impossible. It would have required a miracle. What I did may have appeared to be a miracle, but it was technically possible.

The audit department later evaluated the crisis. The auditors noted that after a week of failures, all the problems suddenly vanished, which they found already hard to believe. What they found even more difficult to fathom, and they stressed the inconceivability of it during a meeting, was that after a week of irrational decision-making, sanity suddenly took hold as we had brought the mirror copy back online and made a backup. They couldn’t figure out why that happened. Our management had kept them entirely in the dark. I didn’t enlighten them either, as it would make our management and board appear incompetent.

My manager, Geert, complimented me for handling the situation. He stressed that my colleagues had been content with me. ‘I was a pleasant colleague,’ he added. Strangely enough, Geert didn’t say something like, ‘Your contribution was critical in saving us from a disaster.’ It reveals something about Geert’s thinking. To him, it was teamwork. Geert wasn’t present that evening, so he may not have learned the details of what transpired. And so, it didn’t help my career. A few years later, the senior database administrators received a higher salary grade, except me. Geert was involved in that decision. If you save people from their own stupidity, you shouldn’t expect gratitude. In this case, the truth had remained hidden because it would have hurt the egos of those in charge. My dealings with the crisis could be a harbinger of things to come.

Latest revision: 25 February 2026

Featured image: Der Untergang der Titanic. Willy Stöwer (1912). Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.