America Loses Every War it Declares…

… and that’s not an accident.

There’s a pattern no one seems to want to talk about: every time America declares a “”war” on something, it loses. Spectacularly. Repeatedly. Almost like it’s designed to fail–or at least never meat to succeed.

Let’s take a stroll down our hall of shame:

The War on Drugs

Launched in the 1970s and ramped up in the 80s, this war didn’t end drug use. It militarized police, packed prisons, and devastated communities (especially Black and brown ones). Meanwhile, Big Pharma ran its own cartel out in the open with opioids. The result? A multi-decade failure that somehow made drugs more common. But hey, prison stocks are doing great.

The War on Poverty

LBJ declared this one in the 60s. Ambitious? Sure. But instead of ending poverty, we got decades of underfunded programs sabotaged by both parties. Fast forward to now: wages are stagnant, homelessness is rising, and billionaires are joyriding to space. Poverty didn’t lose. It adapted, got a tech job, and learned to live in a car.

The War on Terror

We “won” this one by destabilizing the Middle East, fueling global extremism, and wasting trillions of dollars. Afghanistan? A 20-year disaster with a Taliban victory lap at the end. Iraq? Invaded based on lies. Terrorism didn’t disappear, it diversified and learned to livestream.

The War on Crime

What this really turned into was a war on poor people, especially people of color. Instead of addressing root causes–like inequality, housing, education–we militarized police, filled private prisons, and normalized, a surveillance state. Crime didn’t go away, it just got rebranded. And the police budget? It’s still the only socialist program America will never cut.

Losing is the business model. These “wars” aren’t meant to be won. They’re meant to be permanent. They justify bloated budgets, feed private industries, and generate endless political theatre. You can’t win a war if winning means ending the gift.

It’s not a bug, it’s the point.

Mandatory Breeding for Billionaires

In a bold new initiative to save humanity from extinction, I propose a simple, elegant solution: every billionaire must be legally required to produce no fewer than fifty biological children. No surrogates. No cloning. Full participation required. If you’re rich enough to buy a planet, you’re rich enough to birth its next fifty caretakers … personally.

Why, you ask?

Because billionaires love growth. They love expansion. They believe the future is built on more: more markets, more people, more productivity. Elon Musk, noted tech daddy and meme necromancer, has warned us of the “population collapse crisis” while fathering a small village. So let’s make it official: if you think birthrates are too low then congratulations, you’ve just volunteered your body for the cause.

But here’s the anti-natalist twist:

We don’t actually want anyone to have any more kids. Especially not people who treat life like a startup–launch it, leave it, let the chaos scale. But if you’re going to promote infinite growth on a finite planet, if you insist the world needs more people to “fix” things, you should be the first to drown in diapers and existential dread.

Let the billionaires change 500,000 diapers, stay up for 3 million sleepless nights, and explain to fifty children why the ocean is on fire and their water tastes like lithium. Let them homeschool fifty screaming avatars of late capitalism and field their therapy bills for the next century. If life is so sacred, let them carry its burden to the absurd conclusion.

Because life isn’t a gift–it’s a gamble. And no one should be forced into existence for the sake of GDP.

Mandatory billionaire breeding is not about justice. It’s satire. It’s vengeance. It’s the logical endpoint of pro-natalist capitalism: turning humans into infinite labor inputs for someone else’s profit margin. We simply say: if you love humanity so much, you go first. You breed the next generation of doomed innovators. We’ll watch.

Anti-natalism doesn’t mean hating life. It means questioning the unthinking worship of it. It means asking whether existence is worth it, especially when it’s engineered by those least affected by its consequences. And sometimes, it means forcing a billionaire to push out fifty kids, just to see the smirk fall off their faces.

Trumpism vs Conservatism

Once upon a time, conservatism had a brand. You might not have liked it–hell, you might have hated it–but you knew what it stood for: limited government, free markets, family values, and a worship of Ronald Reagan that bordered on the religious. It was buttoned-up, corporate-friendly, and polite at dinner parties. Conservatism had talking points, a think tank for everything, and just enough moral panic to keep the suburban vote.

Then came Trump.

Traditional conservatism is like a country club: exclusive, outdated, and pretending it’s still 1955. It champions small government while bloating the military. It preaches personal responsibility while handing tax breaks to the wealthy. It’s a polished ideology, wrapped in American flags and “founding father” cosplay, with a Constitution in one hand and Ayn Rand in the other.

At its core, conservatism believed in institutions such as courts, constitutions, and capitalism. You could argue with it, debate it, but it had a script. Trumpism burned the script though.

Trumpism isn’t an ideology. It’s a vibe. A movement built not on principles but on performance. Trumpism is what happens when conservatism gets radicalized by reality TV, Twitter algorithms, and decades of right-wing media rage. It’s not about shrinking government. It’s about weaponizing it. It’s not about free markets, but about loyalty, tribalism, and the illusion of “winning.” Where conservatism says “let’s preserve tradition,” Trumpism screams, “Burn it down unless it worships me!”

Trumpism didn’t evolve from conservatism. It hijacked it. It slapped a red hat on it, handed it a flamethrower, and said, “Say something racist on live TV.” Suddenly, the old guard–McConnell, Bush, Cheney–look like moderates. Even Mitt Romney, the human embodiment of corporate power is now “too liberal” for the party he once led.

This isn’t a party shift. It’s a personality cult, draped in the decaying skin of the GOP.

If you’re hoping this ends with a return to “normal,” good luck. “Normal” is what built the staircase Trump descended. Conservatism laid the foundation. Trumpism built the casino on top and rigged every slot machine to spit out conspiracy theories and bootlicking.

But here’s the thing: we don’t have to pick between Reagan’s America and Trump’s circus. The problem isn’t just the flavor of right-wing decay, it’s the whole rotten system. Conservatism and Trumpism are two wings of the same vulture, circling the corpse of a world built on exploitation. So…

What if we stopped trying to salvage this system altogether? What if we built something beyond it? No billionaires, on bootlickers, no CEOs, no bosses. No political theatre where our choices are a condescending suit or a fascist clown. Imagine direct democracy. Mutual aid instead of tax breaks for mansions and yachts and private jets. Housing and food because you’re alive, not because you’re useful to a corporation. Community defense instead of bloated police budgets. Power, not hoarded at the top, but shared at the roots.

We don’t need Trumpism or conservatism. We need liberation. Burn the script. Burn the stage. Tear it all down and re-build something worth living in.

What “The Wire” Got Right About Drug Policy

If you’ve watched The Wire, you probably remember the “Hamsterdam” storyline in season three. It’s one of the most controversial, radical experiments in the show, and maybe in TV history. For those who haven’t seen it: a police major named Bunny Colvin, frustrated by the utter futility of the drug war, creates unofficial “free zones” where drug dealers can operate without interference. In return, they have to move their business out of residential neighborhoods. He doesn’t legalize drugs, he just stops enforcing the laws in those pockets.

It’s a mess. It’s hopeful. It’s heartbreaking. And it’s probably the most honest take on U.S. drug policy ever aired. The whole thing gets shut down, of course. Because it worked. Hamsterdam reduced violent crime. It made it easier to get help to addicts. It gave communities some relief. But it also violated every sacred cow in American law enforcement. You can’t admit the war on drugs is unwinnable. You can’t show mercy. And you sure as hell can’t make policy based on reality instead of moral panic. That’s the part that stuck with me—because Hamsterdam worked. Not perfectly. But it worked better than what we’ve been doing for fifty years.

Our drug laws have always been more about control than safety. More about punishment than healing. We criminalize addiction, lock up the poor, and turn neighborhoods into war zones—all while pretending we’re “getting tough” on crime.

Meanwhile, drug use continues, overdose deaths skyrocket, and entire communities are hollowed out by mass incarceration. Hamsterdam wasn’t a utopia. It had problems. But it was rooted in a radical idea: What if we treated drug users as people instead of criminals?

Imagine if we took all the money we pour into SWAT raids, private prisons, and DEA sting operations—and used it for housing, harm reduction, mental health care, and treatment on demand. Imagine if we decriminalized drugs entirely, stopped arresting people for possession, and focused on actually helping people instead of ruining their lives.

Portugal did it. Overdose deaths dropped. HIV rates dropped. People got healthier—and the sky didn’t fall. The U.S.? We double down on failure because we’re addicted to punishment. Because it feels good to punish.

That’s why Hamsterdam couldn’t survive. It was too honest. We need more honesty. We need more Bunny Colvins willing to break the rules because the rules are broken. And we need drug policy based on compassion, not cruelty. Because right now, the real crime isn’t using drugs, it’s pretending our system works when we know damn well it doesn’t.

Why I Hate Elon Musk

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I don’t hate Apartheid Clyde out of any form of jealousy. It’s not because he’s wealthy, or famous, or “successful.” It’s because he’s the perfect embodiment of everything wrong with our world, gift-wrapped in a smug face and a broken social filter.

Apartheid Clyde is capitalism’s final boss. Not because he’s a genius–he’s not–but because he’s really good at taking credit for other people’s work while cosplaying as a messiah. He didn’t invent Tesla. He didn’t found SpaceX from scratch. What he did do was use inherited wealth to buy his way into tech projects already in motion, then spin a mythology around himself with the help of media and a small army of reply guys convinced he’s the second coming of Nikola Tesla, Tony Stark, and Jesus rolled into one.

Spoiler: he’s none of those things.

He’s a union-buster. A climate grifter. A serial breeder who thinks repopulating the Earth with his own genes is a noble cause. He preaches about saving humanity while exploiting workers and cozying up to dictators. He pretends to be a free speech absolutist while banning journalists on Twitter for criticizing him. He bought one of the most important online platforms just to turn it into his personal plaything–a megaphone for crypto scams, far-right rhetoric, and fragile billionaire egos.

He’s not a visionary. He’s a distraction.

Musk sells the illusion that billionaires will save us if we just let them run wild with our data, our money, and our futures. That if we tolerate their tantrums and bow to their brilliance, they’ll build us a utopia on Mars. Meanwhile, here on Earth, wages are stagnant, cities are burning, and the richest man alive is picking fights with disabled employees online.

I don’t hate him because he’s unusual. I hate him because he’s typical–a grotesque symptom of a system that rewards narcissism, hoarding, and unchecked power. A system that mistakes wealth for wisdom. A system that tells us the people breaking the planet are somehow going to be the ones to fix it.

He won’t save us. He can’t. He doesn’t even care to.

A Gun Owner Who Wants Gun Control

I’ve already posted once today, but I felt like I had to post this in lieu of the recent shooting in Florida. Your thoughts and prayers aren’t enough.

Let’s get this out of the way: I own guns. Plural. I’ve owned them for years. I even own an AR-15. Some were gifts, some I keep around for “just in case,” and no, I don’t sleep with one under my pillow whispering sweet nothings about the Second Amendment. But I am a gun owner.

And I want gun control.

Cut the screeching “Traitor!” “Liberal!” “You just want the government to take everything!” bullshit. Calm down, Yosemite Sam. Nobody’s kicking in your door to confiscate your tactical Hello Kitty rifle. But let me explain this in a way that even your average ammo hoarder can understand: owning guns and supporting regulation isn’t hypocrisy. It’s sanity.

I don’t want everyone’s gun banned. I want people who think a Red Bull and a grudge is a personality to have a slightly harder time buying an AR-15. That’s it.

See, the problem isn’t gun ownership–it’s the wild ass fantasy roleplay that’s metastasized around it. Some of you treat the gun range like a cosplay convention for failed protagonists. You’ve got more gear than the National Guard and a brain that could maybe pass a middle school civics test if it was a group project. And these are the people we’re supposed to trust with zero oversight?

I’m not buying it.

We regulate everything else. Cars, food, prescription meds. Hell, I need a license to fish. But guns? Nah, let’s just let any twitchy rage troll waltz into some store and suit up like it’s Call of Duty. Seems smart.

Gun nuts love to say, “If you don’t know anything about guns, you can’t talk about gun laws.” Cool. I do know. I’ve shot them, cleaned them, owned them, and locked them up when I wasn’t using them. And that experience is exactly why I know how dangerous our current free-for-all is.

The truth? Guns are fine. Gun culture is diseased.

It’s built on fear, fantasy, and fetish. It’s no longer about self-defense or even sport–it’s about ego, paranoia, and performative patriotism. Half the guys screaming about tyranny wouldn’t last five minutes without DoorDash and a cell signal, but sure, let’s arm them like they’re about to liberate Nakatomi Plaza.

You want to call me a “bad gun owner” because I want regulation? Fine. I’ll take it. You know what’s worse than a bad gun owner? A delusional one.

So yeah, I support background checks. I support waiting periods. I support red flag laws. I support licensing and training. And I still own guns.

If it breaks your brain then good. Maybe it was already cracked.

I’m a gun owner and I want gun control.

Share this. Re-post it. Piss off your relative with a Punisher decal on his lifted truck because the only way we fix this mess is if the “responsible gun owners” actually act like it.

Why I and People Like Me Hate Trump

People hate Trump for all sorts of reasons and they’re all valid. Why do I hate him? Well, I’ll tell you.

I hate that he represents the worst combination of arrogance, ignorance, cruelty, and power. He’s the embodiment of everything wrong with American politics–corruption, racism, greed, and narcissism–and he’s turned politics into a grotesque reality show. I see him not only as a bad president but a symptom of a much deeper rot in our system: capitalism run amok, cultish nationalism, and the glorification of stupidity.

He brags about things he should be ashamed of. He lies like it’s breathing. He panders to white supremacists, demonizes immigrants, mocks the disabled, and dodges accountability at every turn. And somehow, he became president.

I hate him because he made it clear that cruelty isn’t a bug in the system–it’s a feature. He ripped children from their parents and bragged about it. He treated a pandemic like a PR problem and let hundreds of thousands die while pushing bleach as a cure. He spent years dog-whistling to fascists until the whistles became bullhorns, and then claimed no responsibility when his mob stormed the Capitol.

He doesn’t just represent conservative politics–he represents a cult of personality built on lies, resentment, and fear. He’s not just a symptom of decline, he accelerates it. He made it okay for the worst people to say the quiet part out loud–open racism, misogyny, transphobia, conspiracy theories–he gave it a platform and a suit.

He’s everything people warned us about in history books, except with a golf course and a gold toilet.

And the worst part? Millions cheer him on because of this, not in spite of it. That’s what really makes my blood boil.

Trump didn’t break America. He just held up a mirror, grinned, and asked if we wanted to make it worse.

Official Member of the Democratic Socialists of America

I recently received my membership card from the Democratic Socialists of America. I also donate a few bucks a month to this organization. Now, you may be saying, “But Kafkaphony, you’re a Libertarian Socialist. What’s this about?”

Well, libertarian socialists don’t have a website because they are more decentralized by nature. Libertarian socialists are inherently suspicious of centralized power–even in organizations. So creating a single “official” website or group is contradictory to a lot in the movement. Also, the DSA has membership dues, elected leadership, and is involved in electoral politics. Libertarian socialists reject those kinds of structures, which means they lack the resources to build or maintain polished sites or public campaigns.

So, how can I be a libertarian socialist and donate to the DSA? I like to work within the DSA for strategic reasons. The DSA is a “big tent” and includes: Marxists, social Democrats, Democratic socialists (obviously), libertarian socialists, and even some anarchists and syndicalists.

The DSA is a vehicle, not an identity. It’s a way to build power, influence policy, and meet like-minded people, even if the ultimate goal (like abolishing the state or capitalism entirely) goes beyond what the DSA is currently pushing.

I prefer to use the DSA to push for reforms that improve people’s lives now, even if the long-term goal is revolution or abolition of hierarchies. I use it for organizing opportunities like meeting people who might be down for more radical actions outside of the DSA. It’s also for learning skills, gaining political, experience, and building networks.

There will be disagreements between the two though. The DSA sometimes supports electoral politics, which some libertarian socialists reject. However, it’s the best we’ve got right now. I don’t have to buy into the DSA’s entire platform.

I plan on using the DSA to connect with organizers, practice power building, and to push for transformative demands, but I’m always keeping my eye on the bigger picture: dismantling capitalism, hierarchy, and the state–not just reforming them. I’m looking for shared goals and ways to push the DSA further left by putting theory into action.

Elon Musk’s Breeding Fetish

I’ve always thought Elon Musk has a creepy breeding fetish. Hey, I’m all for fetishes, let that freak flag fly, but not when it comes to bringing more people into the world. Blow your load into someone all you want as long as she’s on birth control or you’ve had a vasectomy. Aside from that? Wear a condom or don’t have sex at all. Contrary to what Apartheid Clyde says, we don’t need more people on this planet.

His obsession with population growth seems to stem from his belief that declining birth rates in developed countries could lead to a societal and economic collapse. He has repeatedly expressed concern that a “collapse” of civilization could occur if the global birth rates continue to fall. I say let the collapse happen. We as a society, we as civilization have failed miserably. This little homo sapien experiment didn’t work. Destroy all of it and either start over or don’t. I’ll be dead and won’t care one way or the other.

Apartheid Clyde’s neediness for wanting others to breed and his own having fourteen kids doesn’t have to do with anything altruistic for the planet or civilization. There are several problems with his obsession with birth rates:

It ignores environmental limits. The planet is already struggling with overpopulation in terms of resource consumption, pollution, and climate change. Pushing for more births ignores the ecological consequences of an ever-growing human footprint.

His stance also aligns with capitalist concerns about shrinking labor forces and economic stagnation rather than a genuine concern for human flourishing. A declining population could be beneficial in terms of resource distribution, quality of life, and sustainability. Also, if Apartheid Clyde truly believes in AI and automation replacing human labor, then a shrinking workforce shouldn’t be a problem. His push for higher birth rates contradicts his own predictions about technological advances reducing the need for human workers.

It’s also easy for a billionaire with immense resources to advocate for having many children. Most people don’t have the luxury to provide for large families in a world where wages stagnate, housing costs soar, and healthcare remains inaccessible.

There’s also an authoritarian aspect to his desire for population growth. His rhetoric could feed into dangerous population policies, where governments or societies pressure people into having children against their will. Historically, state-driven population growth policies have led to human rights abuses, especially against women.

And what about us that are already here? Why not focus on improving conditions for existing people–healthcare, education, workers’ rights, and wealth redistribution–Apartheid Clyde fixates on increasing birth rates as its quantity is more important than the quality of life.

Civilization isn’t doomed, as he seems to think. The whole “civilization collapse” is a myth. Societies can adapt through better resource management, immigration, and restructuring economic models rather than resorting to a blind push for more births.

Ultimately, Apartheid Clyde’s obsession seems less about genuine human well-being and more about maintaining a system that benefits people like him–billionaires who can rely on endless economic expansion, cheap labor, and a future workforce to exploit.

The Final Dividend

(Foreward: A dear friend of mine encouraged me to write this. It took a couple of days to get the ideas down and get me thoughts together. I hope you enjoy it. And thank you to V a.k.a. “the forgottenblog1.)

The world’s last remaining stock market boomed. It was the only one left, because there was no one left to trade but them.

It had started as a whisper in boardrooms, a casual joke among the ultra-rich: “What if we just got rid of everyone else? The poors? The lowest of the low? What if it was just us elite billionaires?” They has always treated the rest of the population as a liability: wages to be cut, benefits to be slashes, lives to be extracted for profit. But then, someone finally asked the real question: Why not eliminate the expense entirely?

At first, they used the usual methods: starving out the poor through manipulated supply chains, forcing millions into homelessness while hoarding resources. Governments, long in their pockets, stood by. Then they accelerated the process. Bioengineered pandemics swept through the slums and working class neighborhoods, perfectly tailored to spare those who had access to the right treatments. Automated drones enforced curfews in the name of “public safety,” but only ever seemed to fire upon protestors. AI-controlled banking systems ensured that those without wealth found themselves unable to access even the most basic necessities.

Then came The Dividend.

It was announced through a simple memo, circulated among only the elite:

“Congratulations, shareholders. Effective immediately, the burden of the lower classes has been liquidated. Your assets will now be divided amongst the survivors.”

And just like that, the last of the workers were gone.

At first, they celebrated. The billionaires threw opulent parties in their isolated compounds, toasting to their genius. The world was finally efficient. No more whining about wages, no more regulations, no more taxes. They had reached the pinnacle of civilization: an Earth owned and operated by the few who truly mattered.

But soon, cracks began to show.

The automated factories still produced goods, but who would innovate, repair, and improve them? The fields of genetically modified crops stretched for miles, but the systems that maintained them required technicians–people who had been deemed expendable. The billionaires, so accustomed to being catered to, found themselves unable to do anything beyond shifting numbers on a screen.

Worse, the infighting began almost immediately. Without an external enemy, they turned on each other. One by one, they disappeared. Eliminated by poisoned wine, rigged self-driving cars, security drones that “malfunctioned.” Each death resulted in a wealth redistribution among the remaining few.

The final survivor sat alone in his penthouse, overlooking a silent, empty city.

The stock market was at an all-time high.

And there was no one left to spend a dime.