College Noetsele

Secondary School

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Twilight That Could Be Dawn

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The sudden collapse of liberalism


In 2016, Trump fans took over the GodlikeProductions.com message board. The atmosphere turned grim, much as it had fifteen years earlier, when Fortuyn supporters flooded the IEX message board. Since then, the new fascism has grown stronger. This time, I stayed on the message board because I had missed out on something important. And given the job that may lie ahead, and me supposedly being Adolf Hitler reincarnate, not understanding fascism was no excuse. And so, I familiarised myself with MAGA people, as I had previously with the Moroccan minority in the Netherlands. Hanging out with people helps you to understand them. GodlikeProductions.com had the annoying feature of banning you for a while for no apparent reason, probably to get you to switch to a paid subscription. That eventually made me use Reddit. There, you can hang out with BLM and MAGA like a fly on the wall, and with many others as well. 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 as Trump went unhinged.

There are people on the left as extreme as MAGA, but they don’t run the United States. The foundation of Western civilisation, and by extension world civilisation, is social progress through the Hegelian dialectic. MAGA could mark the end of social progress, hence of Western civilisation, and even of civilisation in general. On the surface, MAGA may appear an orgy of nuttery and jerkism, but the end of social progress is a watershed moment, and one with apocalyptic potential. So, are the barbarians standing at the gates? Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten has received threats every day for the past ten years because he is a homosexual. And that is in the Netherlands, one of the most liberal countries. Yet, in the case of social justice, the law of diminishing returns also applies. Social justice causes hit the limits of human nature. Or they overreach, thereby creating other injustices. To promote social justice, the best candidate may not get the job.

There are people on the left as extreme as MAGA, but they don’t run the United States. The foundation of Western civilisation, and by extension world civilisation, is social progress through the Hegelian dialectic. MAGA could mark the end of social progress, hence of Western civilisation, and even of civilisation in general. On the surface, MAGA may appear an orgy of nuttery and jerkism, but the end of social progress is a watershed moment, and one with apocalyptic potential. So, are the barbarians standing at the gates? Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten receives threats every day because he is a homosexual. And that is in the Netherlands, one of the most liberal countries. Also, in the case of social justice, the law of diminishing returns applies. Social justice causes hit the limits of human nature. Or they may overreach, thereby creating other injustices. For example, to promote diversity, the best candidate may not get the job.

Humans are savages, especially in groups. Nature has shaped us that way. In that sense, Woke is no different from MAGA. Stating a mere fact could get you cancelled, and the social justice warriors could treat you like a heretic from then on. We have reached the end of the line, and without an inspiring fairy tale to guide us, further progress seems impossible, and we might decline into savagery. Knowing that God wrote the script, I kept my calm. In 2019, with no idea how the apocalypse might begin, I had a hunch it would be clear before 2025. That became a deadline. On 1 January 2025, I figured that Trump’s erratic conduct might destabilise the world, but the world adapted. My preparations were not yet complete, but good enough had God called upon me at that time, and close to the finish line, where I would have a vision and a strategy, and additional preparation would make little sense. 1 April 2027 became the new deadline. So, is this going somewhere, or would I be setting deadlines until the Grim Reaper arrives to take me to the eternal hunting fields where death is beautiful all the time?

We have seen the collapse of liberalism, and with it, the so-called rules-based liberal world order. Things will not return to what they were before. The liberal world order has ended. Liberal states have long had an edge because of capitalism and science. Liberalism is as much a part of the Western heritage as Christianity, perhaps even more so, for without liberalism, science, and social progress, Western civilisation wouldn’t be distinct from the others, and the Christian and Islamic world would have been the closest kin in cultural values and outlook. Science and capitalism thrived most in a liberal environment with freedom of expression and property rights. When the Nazis took over Germany, several Jewish German scientists fled to the United States, including a fellow named Einstein. They helped the United States develop the atomic bomb. And then Adolf Hitler made the error of invading the Soviet Union. That is how liberalism won the day.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, liberalism seemed to have won. Yet, it might be 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. And like nearly every previous president, Donald Trump has promised Americans more stuff. The modern consumer is not much unlike a drug addict who commits suicide by overdosing. He has no survival skills and is hooked on a system he can’t survive without. The merchants of death profiting from our suicide are not that much different from drug dealers selling opioids. They made us believe in fairy tales of individual liberty and bribed us with a wide choice of products we could buy. It is a claim that the bribed suicidal ones would like to debate, but it is an insightful one. As we are on the way to a collective suicide, the problem is not what is wrong with the critiques of capitalism, but rather what is right about them, as we live in a capitalist world.

Complacency set in. High on delusion and lured by the prospect of profits for the businesses they represented, the neoconservatives, a breed of conservatives that had adopted Hegelian dialectic much to the horror of true conservatives, and therefore believed that Western culture is superior, so that after toppling the regime in Iraq, a liberal democracy would magically appear, made the United States invade Iraq. Since then, China has revised its economic model and now outcompetes the West, while mass migration of non-Westerners has eroded the West’s liberal foundations. Most Muslims, Africans, and Eastern Europeans show little interest in LGBTQ rights or women’s rights, in the liberal sense that is. They have no upbringing in a tradition of progress rooted in Hegelian dialectic. Liberalism was yet another fairy tale. It has just collapsed in front of us, and quite suddenly, also to my surprise, but liberals have yet to catch on.

We are at a turning point in history. Western civilisation’s foundational pillar of social progress seems to have collapsed. We have reached the limits of human nature. Savages as we are, we can’t keep up appearances for too long. 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. With the arrival of people from illiberal areas, where social progress has been lacking, this becomes increasingly difficult, as diversity requires everyone to accept society’s rules. That is why fear is on the rise, the beast in us awakes, order collapses, the rule of law begins to look like a luxury we can’t afford, and gangsters like Donald Trump take over. Maintaining a good society is like a juggler keeping several balls in the air, as Denmark does. A juggler can only keep so many balls in the air, but more if no one makes his job more difficult.

The political scientist Francis Fukuyama used the phrase ‘Getting to Denmark’ for turning nations into stable, prosperous, and well-governed states with low corruption, rule of law, and accountability, an ideal yet difficult-to-achieve goal in the development of societies. Paradises don’t last because they try to regulate the forces of nature, and the competition never stops. After some time, tensions build, either inside society or in its environment, and existing arrangements stop functioning properly. Change may require gathering people around a new myth, starting a revolution, and going to war to spread it. The myth I bring you could be the final one, the one ending all other myths, and thereby all wars, and forever, and a vision of Paradise that has proven to work, Denmark. Time is drawing close. The balls are falling to the ground. 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.

Peak Bullshit

In the early 2000s, I figured that we would soon see Peak Bullshit, the era when nonsense couldn’t reach higher levels, after seeing that the Internet is an ideal medium to spread misinformation, such as climate change denial. Social media didn’t exist at the time. It was a prophetic thought. But bullshit is everywhere, even in science, so many conservatives don’t trust science and see it as a hobby for progressives. Woke ideology has affected science, either by narrowing the range of subjects open to investigation or by limiting the range of acceptable conclusions. A high-profile case in the Netherlands was Wouter Buikhuisen’s research into the causes of criminal behaviour. He concentrated on biological factors. In other words, could genes affect conduct? Leftist opinion makers attacked him, claiming that the modern capitalist society and authoritarian upbringing cause behavioural issues. Buikhuisen had to deal with personal attacks that portrayed him as dumb and evil, as well as disturbances during his lectures. His research project eventually faltered.

Woke ideology affecting science is one of the issues raised by MAGA. Science projects funded by businesses suffer from similar issues. The profit motive can affect the research topics and acceptable conclusions. The left long dominated the social sciences, possibly because, through science, we might achieve progress in society, an idea that appeals to progressives. Humans are programmable but also constrained. Progressives think we are programmable, while conservatives think we are constrained. And it had long been politically incorrect to link conduct to genes because the Nazis used it as an excuse for exterminating entire population groups, which casts some light on the Buikhuisen controversy. The general mood in society shapes what science can investigate and what it can conclude. MAGA sets up an alternative myth with alternative facts, so climate science has become the new politically incorrect. Still, the facts don’t depend on what we believe or society’s mood, and we can ignore them at our own peril.

After Peak Bullshit, things may collapse, and perhaps, The Truth comes out. We all have a model of reality that we use to make sense of the world. Without a model of reality, nothing makes sense. We cooperate based on myths we share, like liberalism and fascism, that provide us with a model of reality with instructions on how we should behave. We all cling to our worldviews because once everything we believe in collapses, and nothing makes sense anymore. I have been there. It is horrific. And so we ignore facts that contradict our worldviews. Peak Bullshit has the following symptoms:

  • Outright fabrications: many claims were simply bogus, so untrue. But they riled up people nonetheless. Anti-vaccine posts were usually of that nature.
  • Improper sourcing: a Twitter account claims something has happened, but there is no other evidence. You have to trust the gutter on that one.
  • Hyping incidents: if a black guy molests a white guy or rapes a white woman, the fascists claim it is evidence of white genocide.
  • Distorting the truth: if you get access to the same news from regular sources, you find that the reporting of the alt-right paints a caricature of reality.
  • Finally, there are definitely things that the traditional media do not report on, and are worth knowing. You can think of what preceded the war in Ukraine.

It is not just MAGA. The left uses similar tactics, for instance, by hyping violent incidents committed by neo-Nazis, claiming fascism was on the rise. They were vindicated, but so were those fearing that migration can lead to more violent crime. An example of a problematic cause is Black Lives Matter, which made an issue out of the police killings of black people. The incidents that inspired the movement were acts of police brutality and vigilante policing with fatal consequences. Compared to European police forces, American police make about thirty times as many casualties. Several incidents were appalling, such as the police shooting an unarmed boy. The problem is that BLM made a race issue out of it rather than a police brutality issue. When you take violent crime levels into account, you get a different picture than what BLM was telling us. Blacks are three times as likely to be killed by the police, but six times as likely to be convicted of murder. So, relative to the number of murders they committed, the police killed fewer blacks.

Parents will be angry if the police kill their unarmed son, and rightfully so, but when you misinterpret statistics in this way, you rile up people without probable cause. An issue raised by MAGA is that social justice fights promote divisions in society. Mentioning the crime levels amongst blacks or saying that white lives also matter could rile up quite a few people, ‘That’s a racist thing to say.’ If you want to know why people voted for Trump, here is one reason. Triggered liberals were a favourite item of mockery among MAGA people. You don’t have to doubt that MAGA is racist. The Trump social media post portraying President Obama and his wife as apes alone is more than enough proof. But intentions don’t invalidate an argument. It is better to accept the facts and stay positive. There is a bias against blacks in the justice system, leading to 10%-20% longer sentences for similar crimes and 10%-20% more wrongful convictions, but that is a different issue, and the cause is likely not simply racism. And even though blacks are overrepresented in the US prison population, most blacks aren’t criminals. Likewise, 95% of criminals are men, but that doesn’t mean 95% of men are criminals. That needs reminding, as people may draw incorrect conclusions from data.

MAGA also riles up people without probable cause. That is how the process of escalation through extremism works. Donald Trump and his cronies can only remain in power by promoting division. Like BLM, MAGA thrives on anger. It would be better if sensible people made the best of it based on a correct assessment of the situation. The BLM cause is not comparable to that of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, when whites were standing in the way of equality. Today, black Americans gain more from addressing the issues plaguing their communities. Social justice advocates have hoped that equality can solve the issues in black communities, but it is the other way around. Addressing these issues is the way to social equality. Even when others wrong you, it helps you more to focus on your own issues than on what others do wrong. And I speak from experience. Other ethnic groups do better, and some do better than whites. And the Jews, despite centuries of discrimination and persecution, do exceptionally well as a group at least.

Believe it or not

For a long time, I found it hard to understand that people believe things that are disprovable. Yet the proof is everywhere around me. It happened to me as well. We want to believe in something. I hadn’t questioned my religion until becoming an adult, and only because of a crisis that made me question everything. And I had ignored signs that the multicultural society could be failing. The rise of Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands served as a wake-up call, prompting me to investigate the issue. It was due to a misunderstanding of human nature. We cooperate based on myths. Things are never precisely as the myth tells us, but our myths can shape reality. In other words, our belief in the myth can make it work. Myths are often stronger than reality because we are religious animals. Myths can make us ignore reality until they collapse. And then we search for new myths like MAGA. They can change our perception: what was once far-right becomes normal, while what was once normal becomes far-left. So, it is a matter of competing myths.

Here we arrive at the issue of conservatives distrusting the liberal mainstream press. Liberal media may not lie plainly, but may forget to mention crucial facts like the Innocence Project does, which is as bad. So when liberals say that MAGA people are idiots, it is because liberals don’t fall for Trump’s blatant lies, but require somewhat more sophisticated methods to get misguided. It requires even more intelligence, or experience, to see through sophisticated propaganda, so the jury is still out on which group is the dumbest. On the bright side, our intelligence doesn’t work to our advantage, so a high IQ is not something to be proud of. Worms don’t develop weapons of mass destruction or make themselves obsolete by inventing artificial intelligence. So, three hoorays for the worms. Their collective intelligence overclasses ours by a wide margin.

Mainstream journalists pay little attention to issues we learn about in other ways, because it is politically incorrect to do so. Not only is that to protect the myths that support society, but also because many people can’t handle the facts in an adult fashion. Just discuss the Israel lobby’s stranglehold on US politics and their efforts to control the debate on universities. Mearsheimer and Walt were among the few adults in the argument by stating the truth in no uncertain terms while not going down the road of Jew-hating. Sensible people don’t want a race war, but perhaps they are too cautious, because leaving the matter untouched helps the case of the anti-Semites. If we can’t discuss these issues frankly without people going crazy, whether they are Jews or anti-Semites, it is obvious why the worms have an edge and will still be there long after humans are gone. There are many issues where our feelings get in the way. We are unfit to survive because we are intelligent enough to invent things that can terminate us and stupid enough to use them.

Our gut feelings are a survival mechanism, not a fact-finding instrument. If you suspect that someone is planning to murder you, waiting for proof can be a fatal mistake. Fascism appeals to our gut feelings and tribal instincts. We cooperate in groups to compete with other groups, and that competition includes warfare. Multiculturalism allows tribes within a country to coexist until they develop a common identity. That works as long as everyone respects the authorities, the national law supersedes tribal justice, and shares the idea of a common destiny. Another issue is that a society’s institutions are built on the assumed behaviour of those who lived there at the time of foundation. Newcomers may not understand them and may miss out on benefits or exploit weaknesses in these systems, for example, with fraud schemes. Fraud and corruption are everywhere, but if immigrants do it, we are more alarmed because ‘they’ are robbing ‘us’.

That is why we have to be serious about fascism. Otherwise, things only get worse. Those who abuse a system may feel no connection to the society they live in and may be more loyal to their tribe. And so, society has reasons to expel them. We can only address these issues if we are candid, and if needed, politically incorrect, but also fair and truthful. The solution to the problem may also lie in fascism: turn humanity into a single tribe. That could be my mission, so one people, one nation, one leader, which was also a Nazi slogan by the way. And they must follow their leader without questioning, like the Germans did with Adolf Hitler, because we are too stupid to think for ourselves. Otherwise, the worms, as a species, wouldn’t be so much smarter than humankind.

Mediocre vision

Humankind’s lack of collective intelligence sets the bar for a prospective world leader not particularly high. Someone with mediocre vision will already do better, provided this individual has unlimited authority, so that is the point of having a Messiah. Unlike politicians, he doesn’t need to promise you more stuff, for if we keep making decisions based on our pocketbooks, we won’t make it. Nearly everyone thinks, ‘What’s in it for me?’ Few think, ‘What can I contribute?’ We ruin the world for money and suicide ourselves in the process, and we can’t stop ourselves, for what would otherwise be the point of a saviour? Jesus said that our allegiance should be with him, not with our family or friends. The Quran says that the angels had to bow before Adam. God made Jesus believe he was Adam reincarnate. That trick didn’t work as well on me, but well enough to make me think I could be the Messiah. If I must be your shepherd, you are my sheep. So, let’s practice on our baa, for if we all say baa together, the world will tremble.

For the job that may await me, I needed answers. So, let’s start with a warning. It is the truth as I see it. I try to have a fair and balanced view, but above all, an insightful one that presents solutions. It is not a neutral view, but if I am your saviour, it is the truth that you should accept. It is no accident that I live in the Netherlands, the most advanced country in the Hegelian sense on issues like dealing with the limits of growth, LGBTQ rights, animal welfare, balancing work and private life, and the right to decide to terminate one’s own life. The truth has many sides. Different views can highlight different aspects of it and reveal errors in other views. You run into contradictions. Turning it into a consistent whole is challenging because it depends on the relative importance of the arguments.

We face fundamental disagreements about the direction we should take, leading to an authority crisis and a moral crisis that divides societies. Think of it. An Antifa activist is as concerned about the future as a neo-Nazi. Authority and morality come from the stories we believe in. The United States faces a moral corruption issue. Money has corrupted everything. Even protesters who show up at social justice rallies may receive pay for their attendance. Most Americans are ordinary people who feel that what they do is right. Yet, Americans live in a tradition of pragmatism, while Europeans live in a tradition of idealism, and that is a profound difference. Both paths are dead ends. Without a measure of truth and good and evil we all agree on, there remain only perspectives and views over which we will fight without end.

As Judgement Day could be approaching, it is not a coincidence that the International Court of Justice is in The Hague, the Netherlands. If I sound judgmental, it is because it is my role to judge. Try to view it as a problem description. Remember that I am a systems engineer appointed to fix the biggest clusterfuck in the history of humankind. There are several harsh truths we must deal with. One is that if you work hard to get ahead, you may live at the expense of the planet, other people and future generations by taking more than you need. So, there you are: hard-working, obeying the law, paying taxes, raising your children properly, giving money to charities, perhaps being faithful to your spouse, only to find out that your work and consumption ruin the world. That is hard to stomach, but the capitalist economy is about transforming energy and resources into waste and pollution to make the rich richer. As they say, no pain, no gain. Only the truth can save us now.

This is, by far, not the only issue. Whatever I am going to tell, no matter how rude or harsh it may seem, it is said in good spirits, so that you might learn from it. Most of us aren’t intentionally evil. We all grew up in a particular tradition, believe in myths, and cherish values we hold dear. Yet the outcome of it all is a total disaster. This is a script of a story God wrote, so She has intended every bit of it. No one can blame you for who you are if you don’t know any better. Unwillingness to change is an entirely different ballgame and a grave crime. Only a brutal truth exercise that spares no one can solve the current predicament. I know first-hand that it can be excruciating. Coming from a family of farmers, I am not afraid of shit. These are shitty issues, and you can’t fix them without getting your hands dirty. Some of the most profound truths are at the bottom of a manure pit.

Wishful thinking

For a long time, I had hoped the world would become a multicultural society. In hindsight, that was wishful thinking, as that only happens in fairy tales. The same is true for an interest-free financial system. Despite being theoretically sound, a usury-free financial system would never have prevailed in the real world. It is not that hard to convince people that they deserve interest on their money, so the usurers have the edge. We all like money for free and make others work for it. And, despite the problems that come with unification, nation-states and borders create even more problems. Yet it is easy to make people believe that their nation is the greatest, and that they deserve perks for that reason, so, like usurers, nationalists also have the advantage. Even I, after a lengthy study of history, cannot arrive at any other conclusion than that the Netherlands is by far the greatest nation on Earth, as it has progressed the furthest on God’s Hegelian scheme, and God chose to live there. So, may he who is without sin cast the first stone.

And so, I don’t blame you for being a nationalist. The Netherlands was great for another reason, as it was not a particularly nationalistic country. On the question of whether they would fight for their country, only 15% of the Dutch answered yes. Only in Japan was that number lower. I would be willing to fight and die for a cause if my sacrifice makes a meaningful difference, but nation-states and tribalism are the reasons why we have no peace, so they aren’t good causes to begin with. Had the Soviet Union still existed, Russia and Ukraine wouldn’t be fighting a bloody conflict. So, what is the point of Russia and Ukraine being independent countries, except for generating profits for the arms industry? And this was not the only war fought within the borders of the former Soviet Union. The Soviet Union may have been bad, but this is worse. And let’s not forget former Yugoslavia. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Muslims had lived relatively peacefully together for centuries, until they didn’t when nationalism reared its ugly head.

Either we become one nation, or we will keep on murdering each other in tribal wars. That made me willing to accept a considerable degree of inconvenience, while I hardly experienced any inconvenience when living in multicultural neighbourhoods, and later, near an asylum seeker centre. Taking personal experiences as a measure, I would think that the fascists exaggerate with their visions of hordes of barbarians overrunning the country. Yet, not everyone shares my experiences, and the statistics bear this out. Most immigrants don’t cause trouble, but it doesn’t take that many troublemakers to make the neighbourhood unsafe. And if the percentage of criminals rises from 2% to 4%, society is significantly affected because the number of criminals doubles. And there were so many newcomers that I would also worried about the long-term consequences had I not known that God had written the script.

So, what if I had been wrong? My best friend at secondary school sympathised with the anti-immigration party. I disagreed with him, but he presented his arguments reasonably. He was not a racist, but believed that foreigners have trouble adapting to Dutch society, and as a result, could become a problem. In the 1980s, the issues he raised seemed insignificant, and his worries overdone. Most Dutch felt the same, so the anti-immigration party remained a tiny faction. That was forty years ago. Yet, immigration continued, and its impact on society has grown, so more people feel uneasy about it.

Migrants not only want to escape misery but also want the good life. Still, if everyone lived like the Dutch, we would need four Earths, so that is impossible. The Dutch economy depends on immigrants. Had the Dutch not pursued economic growth but lived sustainably, and had life in the countries migrants come from been better, fewer migrants would have come. Had everyone around the world lived a more-or-less equal lifestyle, migration wouldn’t be an issue. And so, the challenge ahead is to turn humankind into a single society, and not to aim for some average, but the best possible society given the possibilities. Whatever problems may arise from that choice, the alternative is worse.

Over the years, the anti-immigration party PVV, led by Geert Wilders, gradually grew in popularity. In the 2023 elections, it became the largest faction. Wilders supported Trump and associated with gangsters like the Hungarian leader Orban. Still, the PVV differed from MAGA, partly because conspiracy theory belief in the Netherlands is low. And there is no Pizzagate, and no Epstein files. It is only lower in the Scandinavian countries, a European survey suggests. The Netherlands is the exception, not the United States. It may be due to the naivety of the Dutch, but it is also social trust. History and culture go a long way in explaining these differences. And so, I felt the need to come into touch with MAGA people and understand them like I previously did with Muslims. If you want to know MAGA, you must learn to know America and Americans.

Make America Go Apeshit

When Wilders tried to copy Trump’s ‘I lost because of election fraud’ tactic, even his supporters didn’t believe him, so he quickly backed down. Wilders faced the brutal reality that spreading false claims only works when they are believable. The Dutch elections are clean and uncontested, whereas in the United States, they are rife with innuendo and prone to manipulation, including gerrymandering. Democrats have opposed voter identification requirements, even though they can help to prevent election fraud. Many poor people in the US don’t have IDs, and they mostly vote Democrat, so Democrats argued that ID requirements disadvantage poor people. Conversely, Republicans try to prevent these people from voting with measures that make it harder for them to vote. Both parties are interested only in winning, not in fair elections. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been so much gerrymandering.

In the Netherlands, district borders don’t matter, and everyone is required to have an ID, so the issue of ID requirements disadvantaging people doesn’t arise. With proportional representation rather than win-or-lose elections, there is less to gain from fraud. Instead of fixing the problems in a joint effort, Democrats began accusing Republicans of trying to exclude poor people from the vote. And Republicans began accusing Democrats of allowing election fraud. There have been a few instances of election fraud in the US. Allegations of election fraud surfaced after the 1960 Presidential election, which the Democrat John F. Kennedy won. Investigations by Republicans indicated that fraud could not be proven or ruled out, but that it was unlikely to have swayed the outcome.1 In 2000, Republicans prevented a full recount of the votes in Florida. They didn’t want a fair election. They wanted to win. In the Netherlands, if there is any doubt, there is always a recount, and a full one if needed, to rule out all doubt.

In 2004, a voting machine in Ohio erroneously added nearly 4,000 votes to Bush’s total. That was likely not fraud but a glitch. Concerns about voting machines led to their termination in the Netherlands. Due to these issues, lingering concerns remained about the integrity of the US elections. Republicans were already suspicious of the Democrats’ efforts to prevent ID requirements for voting, so Trump’s accusations fell on fertile ground. There was no evidence for Trump’s claims, while Trump phoned a Republican governor asking him to ‘find votes.’ Trump, because of the size of his ego, might have thought that he couldn’t lose, so he might have thought that his loss was due to fraud, and that the votes he asked the governor to find were somewhere lying around uncounted. Yet, we can’t be sure. Donald Trump has told more lies than all previous US presidents combined.

Not only do MAGA people believe in election rigging conspiracies. A 2016 poll suggested that nearly half of the Hillary Clinton voters believed that Russia had meddled with the election tallies and made Trump win. That was after Russian hackers targeted the Florida election company VR Systems, and after malfunctions occurred in Durham County, North Carolina.2 Like Donald Trump supporters in 2020, they found it hard to believe they had lost. In 2020, 74% of registered voters were concerned about organised voter fraud.3 So, it is not just MAGA. It is how deep the distrust in America runs. Yet, proof of voter fraud is virtually non-existent. In Pennsylvania, a contested state, data covering 32 elections with over 100 million votes cast show only 39 cases of proven voter fraud.4 Spreading false claims generates eyeballs, hence advertisement income, so plenty of ‘investigative journalism’ websites ruin American society for profit.

Conspiracy thinking is more widespread in the United States than in the Netherlands. Acquaintances of mine who have regularly visited the United States and have spoken to Americans confirmed it. I could see it for myself on message boards. The conspiracy theories range from aliens, faked moon landings, who killed Kennedy, 9/11, vaccinations, Jews running the world, and the elites being a network of paedophiles. The Epstein files give us an insight into how the elites are interconnected and engaged in various questionable dealings, of which abusing underage girls is only one. And there are links between Epstein and the Israeli secret services that raise questions.

Conspiracy theories often relate to the facts, but if you investigate them like a journalist, much would be unproven, inaccurate or wrong. Conspiracy theorists don’t mind. Pizzagate may be a fabrication, but they claim the Epstein files prove it. The logic of that is not particularly strong, but if you call conspiracy theories hunches rather than facts, they make more sense. Humans are political animals, so they scheme all the time. We don’t know what’s going on, so getting the direction right is already a success. There are also those who benefit from conspiracy theories, such as bullshit salespeople and foreign secret services. And the conspiracy theorists weren’t paranoid enough. The secret dealings, as well as conspiracy theories, could all be part of the ultimate psyop: God’s scheme to undermine trust in US society to make America go crazy so the country becomes ready for the Messiah. And so I figured MAGA stands for ‘Make America Go Apeshit’.

Compared to Dutch politics, US politics is filthy and corrupt, and on every level, which my acquaintance also confirmed. Even for local positions like sheriffs, candidates air advertisements in which they accuse each other of being a paedophile, or even worse, a communist. In other words, US elections are highly competitive, leading to a race to the bottom in ethical standards. Casting doubt on your opponent works better than explaining your plans. Child abuse is a widespread problem, and most of it remains under the radar. And the elites get away with anything. People sense that, which promotes moral panics, including witch hunts. In such a competition, the filthiest and most corrupt win. The outcome of that race to the bottom called competition is Donald Trump.

There is widespread quid pro quo in US politics. That is bribery. Businesspeople pay for political campaigns and expect something in return. That is unthinkable in much of Western Europe. A former French president went to prison for accepting foreign funds for his political campaign. And that is unthinkable in the United States: going to jail for receiving funds from foreign interest groups. Political corruption is legal and commonplace in the United States. Both political parties were equally corrupt. That is part of the Anglo-Saxon tradition of moral pragmatism, while continental Europe has a tradition of moral idealism. There was a long cultural divide between the Anglo-Saxon world and mainland Western Europe. While most Anglo-Saxon countries have grown closer to Western Europe, the United States drifted further away, until it committed cultural suicide by departing from Hegel’s grand scheme of social progress.

Culture: selling versus convincing

The corruption in the United States is a foundational cultural issue, so it is not only politics. You convince Europeans but sell to Americans. The difference is not just the wording. It reflects a cultural divide. Americans buy or don’t buy your argument. I have heard Brits using the phrase, but it is more common in the United States. The United States is a nation of salespeople. Salespeople have no problem with lying. That comes with their profession. When an American likes your argument, he buys it as if it were a product. It is a different idea of truth, and a profoundly 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 made America powerful. Money represents power, and bullshit sells, so it is our path to destruction. We can’t do much about it, unless God intervenes.

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 climate change denial instead. That makes you morally corrupt, but no problem, you can buy the story that Jesus died for your sins, and believing that will save you. That Jesus died for our sins is pretty unbelievable, and if you were honest and truthful, you would question your faith, which Western Europeans do more than Americans. Many Americans now genuinely believe 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 they want to know the truth.

Moral corruption affects some denominations of Protestantism, such as Evangelicalism. Catholic doctrine holds that faith and good works can save you. Catholics can perform good works, such as giving money to the Church, to atone for their sins. It promoted corruption within the Church through the sale of indulgences. Protestants objected to this corruption and took moral integrity very seriously. 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 Roman Catholics, the Dutch moral conflict, vicar versus 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. And the merchant was also more often a Protestant. The merchant usually prevailed, so the Netherlands was the wealthiest nation before the Industrial Revolution started.

Hegelian dialectic pervades Dutch culture. The Dutch were also a Protestant nation of merchants and vicars. Their vicars were strict and incorruptible, or so this notion implies. This dualism still profoundly affects the Dutch. For a vicar, money can never be the highest good. Yet, successful merchants are morally depraved. Greed drives them. Capitalism has turned the beast within us all into an unprecedented, destructive force. If that is fine with you, you have taken the bribe, a consumerist lifestyle.

The Netherlands had a sizeable Roman Catholic minority. 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 like the veneration of the Virgin Mary while they acted as merchants who were after the money. That is also a caricature. Many Protestants take ethical matters very seriously. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have had idealists like Kant and Hegel seeking absolute truth and absolute morality. 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 holds that faith alone suffices. Protestants also take the scriptures more seriously than Roman Catholics, which 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 words. We don’t know Jesus’ opinion on this particular matter, but he said not to judge and that he who is without sin should cast the first stone. That made reasonable people cautious. There is no objective moral reason to condemn gays and lesbians or deny them the right to marry. It became a problematic issue, most notably among Protestants, who take both scripture and moral issues very seriously. When you follow the scriptures on this matter, you shut down your moral conscience and can become evil. And if only faith can save you, you don’t have to do good works to compensate for your wicked deeds. That is moral corruption at its finest. Catholics merely followed the Church’s lead. And Catholics must do good works to compensate for their sins.

This morally perverse Protestantism 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, stands at the root of anti-Semitism. When the anti-Semites argue that Jews run the United States, they have a point. It makes the moral corruption in the United States a complex issue. An unpalatable fact may be that Adolf Hitler helped to prevent Europe from tilting towards the direction of becoming a cesspool of corruption. Europe has also witnessed the brutal side of fascism: mass destruction and industrial-scale murder. It goes a long way toward explaining the differences between Western Europe and the United States, including the rise of MAGA. It may be my personal view, and you may have a different opinion. Only, I am the Messiah, and you are not.

It reflects a deeper problem of the evil pervading US society. America is a nation of salespeople. And bullshit sells. Conspiracy theorists may rile you up for profit, keeping you glued to the screen waiting for the next bombshell report. It can make you feel frustrated, and you may want to see heads roll. It prevents you from taking matters into your own hands. And God wrote the script, including each and every conspiracy and conspiracy theory. We can do without the elites, but that requires accepting a simple lifestyle, which you may not like to hear. If you intend to end oligarch rule but buy their products and services, you aren’t serious about it. We must set our differences aside and build a parallel society with an economy that sustains itself. That is one of the truths hidden at the bottom of the manure pit.

Idealism and realism

The basic problem we face looks like a prisoner’s dilemma. Let’s explain that with an example. Suppose that the police have arrested two gang members and have put them in solitary confinement so that they can’t communicate with each other. The police tell both criminals that they don’t have enough evidence to convict them on the principal charge, so they plan to sentence them to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Both receive the same offer. If he testifies against his partner in crime, he will be free, while the partner will be sentenced to three years in prison for the main charge. There is a catch. If both prisoners testify against each other, both will serve two years in jail. The prisoners get a little time to think this over, but don’t learn what the other has decided until both have made up their minds. And each of them knows that the other gets the same deal.

If they both stay silent, they are best off as a group by serving one year each, for a total of two years. If one defects, he is better off as he walks free. Yet, together they are worse off, with three years in prison. If both rat out the other, they are the worst off as a group, facing a total of four years in prison. If both are interested in the best deal for themselves and think the other is as well, they may both defect, believing that serving two years in prison is preferable to three. If they are best mates and both think that the other will not defect, they may not defect. Being an idealist or not is a similar bargain.

The bargain depends on the group’s cohesion or social trust. There are people trying to take advantage of others, but if there are few of them, most people would keep their end of the bargain. 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. Had we all been idealists, we would be better off, but if we believe that others are only interested in the best deal for themselves, we are more likely assume the same attitude, so degenerate morals become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A system of rewards and punishments can help to keep the group focused on the common good. Gangs torture and murder defectors. And somehow, that works quite well. That is also why we have prisons and fines.

Featured image: AI-generated

1. The drama behind President Kennedy’s 1960 election win. Scott Bomboy (2017). National Constitution Center.
2. How Close Did Russia Really Come to Hacking the 2016 Election? Politico.
3. Exclusive: Republicans, Democrats agree on one thing: Doubt about fair election – Reuters/Ipsos poll. John Whitesides and Chris Kahn (2020). Reuters.
4. The 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Eliza Relman and Azmi Haroun (2017). Business Insider.
5. One in four Americans think Obama may be the antichrist, survey says. The Guardian (2013).
6. Race Alone Doesn’t Explain Hatred Of Obama, But It’s Part Of The Mix. Alan Greenblatt (2014). NPR.org.

Latest revision: 27 February 2026

The Grades

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Unemployment in the early 1980s was high, especially among young people. I had asked my mother, ‘What is the point of studying for unemployment?’ She stressed that there would always be room for the best. They had lived in poverty and had learned that you must work hard to earn your place under the sun. I never experienced poverty, but my parents kept reminding me that you shouldn’t take a comfortable life for granted. It made me work hard, possibly harder than everyone else. It was a conservative Protestant school, so that says something. In primary school, I didn’t see the point of working hard.

Occasionally, I knew more than my teachers. My father later told me about a mayor he knew. He had been my history teacher before he became a politician for the Christian Democrats. He told my father that I once had corrected him during the lessons. It annoyed him, so he checked his books during the break to discover I was right. He was not the only one. A geography teacher admitted I knew more than he did about Russia.

On the final exams, my average grade was the highest (8.6 out of 10). The scores were good but not outstanding and resulted from hard work. Some pupils had stellar degrees in mathematics without working hard, but not me. My average was good but not stellar. If I didn’t prepare for a test, which happened once, my grade dropped dramatically to 3.5. And so, the mathematics teacher, Mr. Blaak, had a field day and made jokes about me spending too much time on the school newspaper. And I never solved the Rubik’s cube, despite spending much time on it. It demonstrates I was not a genius.

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

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

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

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

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

That is indeed scary, that skeleton being the remains of someone who once stayed at a home with lampshades almost identical to those in that particular pub in Sneek. Equally sinister is the following. Sneek is one of the Frisian cities of the famous 11 City Skating Tour. The only junction on the tour is at Bartlehiem, which loosely translates to ‘Bart’s home’ but originally meant Bethlehem. And that brings us back to New Nazareth. Drs. P’s song reveals a few more equally sinister connections to the pub and then concludes,

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, not on Sneek itself. Prophesies somehow tend to be off. That comes 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 thepidation. You pronounce Sneek like ‘snake,’ and there was allegedly a serpent in Paradise. After what happened to me, there seemed to be more to it than just a coincidence. In scripted reality, there is no coincidence. And had the connection been meaningless, my noticing it would still have been part of the plan. So, behind every escape hatch hides another monster.

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).

Heaths near Nijverdal

Worried Parents

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The school switched to a new method called the Jena plan. There were no old-fashioned classes. Mr. B was my teacher for four years. He was a gentle person with a beard and perhaps a bit of a hippy. After all, these were the 1970s. You had some freedom. The Jena plan had task hours. Every day, you had one or two hours to perform tasks you had to finish before the end of the week. Once you had finished them, you were free to do as you please. You could read books or make drawings if you wanted.

At the start of the fourth grade, Mr. B gave everyone a weekly task schedule for the entire year. I remember finishing the whole task list for the year in three months. Mr. B then gave me my work for the fifth grade. I then slowed my pace and spent two and a half years, most of the time drawing or doing other things. At the end of the sixth grade I had finished all these tasks precisely on schedule.

The school emphasised group work. That might have been due to the Jena plan. The classes consisted of children from different levels, ranging from the first to the third or the fourth to the sixth grade. They split the class into small groups of mixed levels so we could help each other. We still had old-style classes and different teachers for some fields, such as calculus or geography. Mr. B took personal development, expression, social skills and teamwork seriously. He probably found them more important than learning. And so he reported to my parents that I did well on my school tasks but was a strange kid who didn’t connect with other children, often went out alone during playtime, and acted oddly.

My parents became worried. My mother then forced me to join the Boy Scouts to play with other children and work in groups. Perhaps a psychologist had given my parents this advice. A young woman led the group. In the narrative of the Boy Scouts, she was our mother. She supposedly was a wolf, and we were her pups. We had a yell, ‘Akela, we do our best, and you do the rest.’ I endured being a Boy Scout for over a year while trying to find an excuse to quit.

Then came the epic winter of 1979, with snow storms and temperatures reaching minus twenty degrees Celsius. The bad weather started just after Christmas. On one of the last days of 1978, we split into two groups and went outside. One group supposedly was lost in the forest while the other group came to the rescue. We were the lost group. It took the other group a long time to find us. By then, it seemed we indeed needed rescuing. But no one was injured, so it wasn’t that serious.

After this chilly adventure, I refused to go there again. My mother then made me choose a sport. I wasn’t good at sports and didn’t like them. My father later recalled that I once wrote a hilarious essay about sports being a waste of time and energy. I selected judo because my friends Marc and Hugo did it, too. Judo is about harnessing your opponent’s force to your advantage. Again, I schemed to get out and succeeded after over a year.

My parents sent me to Almelo for psychological evaluation. I went there by bus every week and stayed for hours. Psychologists questioned me and watched me play with other children. I didn’t trust them and didn’t tell them about my thoughts and feelings. After accidentally saying I loved to dream, the psychologist asked me to elaborate. I cut off the conversation and tried to do and say what they expected of a normal child. And I took the hint. In later school reports, Mr. B noted I socialised more and played like an ordinary kid. He also mentioned I had a vivid imagination and appreciated my writing skills.

The report further noted that my desk drawer was a mess. Mr. B then made me responsible for keeping the materials closet in order. But I am very organised, not in irrelevant detail, but in essential matters. My files are currently neatly organised, but the room is not tidy. The drawer needed no organisation. It was easy to find what you needed. The materials cabinet had drawers for various parts, which was a file-type organisation, so I could indulge in organising it, which I did with fervour, much to the delight of Mr B, who believed he had taught me something.

Featured image: Heaths near Nijverdal. Jürgen Eissink (2018). Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.