Twilight That Could Be Dawn

The collapse of liberalism

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

There I was bombarded with a constant feed of blacks doing nasty things, such as making racist comments about whites and causing mayhem in supermarkets. At the same time, I followed the feed of r/BlackPeopleofReddit, which features stories and footage of MAGA people harassing blacks or scoulding them with racist slurs. There, I also found posts that were as batshit crazy and racist as MAGA. When someone complained that African blacks didn’t see American blacks as their family, I replied, ‘We are all family, and that also includes whites, by the way,’ a comment which was subsequently flagged as offensive and removed. The mood there is as racist as among MAGA. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have surprised me, as there was once no place for me in the guesthouse in a black neighbourhood in Miami because I am white. Needless to say, I rarely posted there.

Racism is widespread, not only among whites, but it is not why fascism is seeing a revival. Fascists also worry about crime, loss of identity, and fear the future. As MAGA enthusiasts point out, the violent crime rate among blacks in the United States is six times as high as among whites. Particular immigrant groups in Europe are in the same league. Most immigrants and blacks aren’t criminals, but higher crime rates significantly impact society. A few criminals can make a neighbourhood unsafe. These are real issues. And bigots make use of that. Also, on the GodlikeProductions.com message board, I was cautious about expressing my opinions. And I wasn’t quick to judge, for God had written the script.

The first Trump presidency was not a clean break with the past, as his cabinet featured several old-order Republican figures. They kept The Donald in check. The second Trump administration became a different ballgame. Trump went unhinged after he had surrounded himself with sycophants. His erratic and spiteful caprices became such a spectacle, so hilarious that even Monty Python couldn’t have made it up. To illustrate the point, a post Trump made on his social media goes, ‘The White House considers anyone that uses the term Artificial Intelligence, as opposed to the highly accepted and more accurate term, Super Intelligence, THE ENEMY!’ Total idiocy it is. Listing all his crazy acts and words would add little substance, and require a large team working 24/7 on it for years. It could easily suffice as proof that this world is a simulation and that God likes to joke around. As a Swedish newspaper put it, ‘This is the problem with having a giant baby in charge of the free world.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peak bullshit

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

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

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

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

Mediocre vision

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make America Go Apeshit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Human condition

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

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

As for the question I asked myself as a teenager, ‘Is it possible the that communists had good intentions?’ If there is no God, as the communists believed, we, the little people, are on our own, against the superior forces of money and tribalism, while religion blinds people to these unpalatable facts. The elites play us out by sowing divisions with their religious and nationalist fairy tales. The communists faced that brutal truth and tried to stamp out profit, nationalism and religion. Maybe for that reason, they named their newspapers ‘The Truth’. Only communist economies performed poorly, regularly leading to starvation, while a new class society with an elite of party bureaucrats replaced the old order. Nevertheless, communism was humanity’s last chance to save itself.

Communist-inspired policies worldwide have led to over 100 million fatalities. These are large numbers, but nothing compared to the end of humanity. Now, suppose that our only choice is communism or death. In that case, it is only reasonable to say that those who wish not to live under communism should kill themselves right now and not drag the rest of us with them. Yet, this world is not real but a simulation. The real humans likely have offed themselves by allowing AI to take over. Their euthanasia might have been agreeable, and we are all going to die someday, so it doesn’t seem a terrible option compared to living under communism. In the real world, there is no God. Now we have another option, but you can’t serve two masters. And it is only reasonable that those who choose suicide kill themselves right now and don’t drag the rest of us with them.

We may be incredibly lucky to be simulations, with God controlling the script. Without God being in control of all that happens, being a messiah is a losing proposition, with zero chance of success, not worth entertaining for rational individuals. Money and tribalism will prevail, and lead to our collective suicide, unless brute force counters them. That force must be truly brutal, as even the communists weren’t up to the challenge. And they have tried very hard indeed, as they have murdered millions and amassed an impressive stash of weaponry. And we may be even luckier, as we can probably do better than communism. That still requires a lot of hard work and stark choices. If you don’t like it, you can still off yourself right now. And it doesn’t matter in the end, for in the end we are all dead, while humans, being so destructive as they are, are not a great asset of Creation either.

Idealism and realism

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

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

Selling versus convincing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My teacher Donald Trump

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

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

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

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

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

Kicking off the revolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Latest revision: 15 September 2026

Featured image: AI-generated

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

Grades

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps You Can See the Irony of It

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).

Heaths near Nijverdal

Worried Parents

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.

Close up of chestnut tree branch at De Famberhorst in the Netherlands

Tree Garden

Once I went to bed in the evenings and sometimes during the day, my imagination took over, most notably when sitting on the swing in the back garden. There were several different fantasies, often recurring. In one, I drove a car on a road called De Weg (The Way), reflecting my life path. There is a parallel with the Chinese Tao. And our home had wings and could fly, but only in my imagination. Once, in a dream, all the houses in Nijverdal spread their wings, went up in the air, and installed themselves in new locations during school time, so I got lost on my way home. That gave me the idea.

A few times, I had a crush on a girl. And out of nowhere came a strange and scary imagination. She would consume me or digest me inside her stomach. The inside of her stomach consisted of giant gears that crushed me. That imagination didn’t relate to my feelings for these girls, which weren’t particularly strong, or a fear for them as they weren’t particularly intimidating. It just seemed to come out of the blue. In hindsight, it was a foreboding of things to come three decades down the line.

In the autumn of 1976, I had gathered a bag of chestnuts and left them on the ground behind the shed in the backyard. The following spring, dozens of small chestnut trees popped up on the spot. It was the start of my tree garden in the backyard land and the germinate club that specialised in growing trees, most notably chestnut trees. The backyard land belonged to our neighbour, Mrs. Schaap (Mrs. Sheep). She came from the Dutch Indies and was in her sixties when we moved there. She was a widow. Her husband had died a few years earlier, and the patch would become a kitchen garden tilled by her husband. And so, that land remained fallow, and I could begin a tree garden there.

Mrs. Schaap didn’t mind, and we could get along. I was often on her terrace, drinking lemonade with her. She also drank nettle tea, ate nettle soup against her rheumatism, and let me taste them. They were not a thrilling taste sensation. They were like green tea. Ms Schaap became very old and died in 2014, aged 100. On the other side was a garden centre owned by the Ter Horst couple. The wife often came over to let my mother do her hair. To me, the garden centre was an adventure centre. I could hide between the bushes and trees and move inconspicuously. I saved trees and plants from the garbage heap, sometimes with friends, to relocate them in the tree garden. Once, I sold a plant to Ms Schaap, but my mother cancelled the sale.

For over a decade, Mrs. Schaap had a fancy man, Mr. Langelaar. His wife had dementia and later died. He often came over, and they sat in the garden reading books. Ms Schaap sometimes came to buy a few cigarettes from my mother. She didn’t want to keep them at home as that would make her smoke more. I vaguely remember Ms Schaap having a fish tank in the living room at first. My father later confirmed it. That is noteworthy, as at our previous address in Eibergen, our next-door neighbour was also a lady of the same age from the Dutch Indies with a fish tank. I regularly visited the other neighbours as well. They were mostly older people who had kitchen gardens, chickens, cows and rabbits.

We had a horse, first a pony named Tilly, and later, a real horse, Desi, for my mother to ride. A horse in your pasture attracted girls who wanted to ride it. My mother only allowed Alexandra to do that. She had long, curly blond hair and was beautiful, but she was six years older, so I barely looked at her. As the story goes, she had been on holiday with her parents in Morocco once, where a wealthy man offered her parents 3,000 camels to marry her. My mother sold the horse in the early 1980s when interest rates skyrocketed, and mortgage payments became a drag on the budget.

Trees became special to me. I made drawings of trees and made up stories about them in which they could talk and fly. And I began drawing maps, first of the Netherlands and later of Europe or imaginary countries with coastlines, villages, cities, roads, and rivers. These imaginations made life more agreeable. In bed, a fairy tale world took over. This situation remained so during my teenage years and didn’t change during adulthood. There was a strict disjunction between reality and imagination. I was imaginative but didn’t believe my imagination. That was unusual. Most people are less imaginative but believe in their fantasies.

I still love trees. After buying my house, I left the garden and the trees the way they were, much to the chagrin of my neighbour, a lawyer who wanted them cut down. And I planted Christmas trees next to the railroad near my home. One survived and has grown large. In the early 2000s, a deadly chestnut disease began to kill chestnut trees. They suffered the same fate as the elms culled by the Dutch Elm Disease. That is peculiar, as I was born on Elm Street in the Netherlands and had grown chestnut trees later on. The fact that the elm disease is Dutch adds some juice to this coincidence.

In school, a book once presented the children with a choice about the type of future they preferred. Option one was a sober room with a light bulb. A boy on a wooden stool asked his parents, ‘When will there be electricity so I can read?’ This option represented a simple life with little comfort. Option two was a boy attached to a machine. He didn’t appear all that healthy. It represented an advanced technological society. I chose the first option.

Feature image: Close-up of a chestnut tree branch at De Famberhorst in the Netherlands. Dominicus Johannes Bergsma (2016). Wikimedia Commons.