'Nautical Disaster'

The whale ship’s captain, ever querulous, sailed the ship straight towards the reef.

Yawing back-and-forth the whole time, while the old man spoke only of how the world had always done him wrong.

He blamed the sextant, he blamed the sailors.

Anybody but himself and his own inability to read the charts and respect the weather.

The typhoon had now found him - a tempest in every way of his own making.

A storm that would soon sink their ship, yet he continued to spit empty words into the spray.

He threatened the very rocks on which he would soon run aground. As if his own arrogance could overcome the ocean. The waves laughed in his face.

Born into privilege this one, inherited it all.

Had never known the chalky taste of hardtack or curled his flimsy lips to taste the last drops of water in a musty keg, like the greenhands who were lucky to even have it.

It was all beef and burgundy for this spoiled princeling. He would never lie awake with an empty belly in a borrowed bed.

A life of entitlement that only led to more taking. Never once gave back or said thanks. His only mantra was ‘More’.

‘Me’ was his epitaph and his undoing.

His body now bloated by wind and sagging like the mainsail, the sea was saving him for last.

It would eat through the hull first before it came for the captain’s quarters.

The crew damn well knew it, like they knew they would miss their mothers when this ship went down, so they hurriedly devised a plan before it was too late for all.

The rudder stock was cleaved, its pintels and gudgeons splintered and soaked. The main mast and boom would surely be next.

The forestay had already said ‘So long,’ yet there he stood, this coward of a captain, refusing to release the lifeboats and order ‘Abandon ship!’

Yellowed hair matted and soaked, falling down the sides of his ruddy cheeks, sticking to it like a saddle to a haunch. Dead eyes reached into the distance, empty of both memory and mirth.

He could not feel the terror of the men under his command as he had no taste for the stars, the bracing tickle of snowflakes or the green fields of spring.

The wonder of seasons that would not come again for these poor souls.

There would be no songs sung to mourn his passing. No new wife left widowed or child born lonely, nothing to miss unlike so many of the new world sons soon to be lost to a nautical disaster not of their making.

They shipped out under a flag that had once held promise, their phantom fortunes had now been surfeited by a tyrannical toddler of a man.

A funk rose off of him that repelled both flies and rats. Funny that.

For him there was no heart to break, just an empty hole that no amount of treasure would fill.

The wind seemed to sing one last command in its howling symphony of fury. It came more as whisper than a roar.

‘Save yourselves, he does not matter now,’ but would they hear its command?

Perhaps a useful way to understand where we are as a nation is to study shipwrecks. The ocean floor is filled with treasure that cost lives.

The general laws of maritime customs always stated that the crew must obey the ship captain’s orders during a voyage, but in the instance of a shipwreck the captain no longer had absolute authority if he is deemed unfit for duty.

The old rules did not always apply in perilous times.

In the era of whale ships and merchant vessels, this became an important distinction. And many a young deckhand had sought to save themselves and abandon ship, rather than continue to listen to the ‘old man’ (as captains were often called).

The captain’s allegiance was often to the owners of the ship and the lucrative industry under which they sailed; perilous circumstances had a way of becoming obscured and ignored in a quest for profit. Freezing in fear at the prospect of lost fortune.

Gold will do that to a man, sometimes it is hard to let it go. Even in the face of certain death. There are no shortcuts at sea, the ocean always gets the last say.

‘Every man for himself’ is about survival. When it becomes so painfully obvious that the ship is taking on water, often the best thing you can do is get in a life boat, point it towards land as best you can - and row.

Being led into certain destruction is the right time to change a deadly course, and to bravely ignore the orders of those already shown to be unfit for duty; the maritime version of ‘good trouble’.

Our republic is being run like a pirate ship, sailing in turbulent waters with one objective - to pillage and plunder.

There’s thirteen billion dollars missing from the Venezuelan economy. It was generated from the proceeds of the Venezuelan nationalized oil sector - after Trump took unilateral military action without the approval of the U.S. Congress or the American people, and started selling the oil on the global market.

DJT essentially performed a smash and grab in the middle of the night with only one objective: to steal the shiny black jewel that is the nation’s oil industry. He did not change their dictatorial government, or offer democracy, or economic and humanitarian aid. He again on Saturday posted a meme depicting Venezuela as the 51st state. Meaning, of course, in his mind it belongs to him; actions that are no different than a mob boss claiming his territory.

POTUS is a thief and has always been one - and he has now turned the United States’ geopolitical agendas into a gigantic grifting operation.

Marco Rubio was appointed to oversee the sale of the country’s oil, and the thirteen billion dollars has disappeared on his watch. Only a paltry 300 million has made its way back to the long suffering Venezuelan people according to their own official ledgers.

Over half of the country lives in extreme poverty. This is cruelty and larceny on a massive scale and it is mostly flying under the radar: we cannot get a straight answer out of the Trump administration as to where that money has gone.

I’m sure Trump himself knows exactly where the purloined oil revenue has gone - and like everything else he sees as under his purview, his answer is basically, ‘None of your f’n business’. This is a POTUS spent twenty years claiming the U.S. were suckers for not ‘taking the oil’ in Iraq.

Donald ran a fraudulent Trump Organization (along with his co-conspirator children) for over four decades before he became president. Cooking the books and keeping all of the profits for himself, while cheating on his taxes and reneging on his contractors, is standard operation procedure.

Then he would send his businesses into bankruptcy to escape whatever debt he had accrued on what essentially amounted to money laundering operations for organized crime, and for which he profited handsomely all along.

Capital One on Friday pushed back on a Trump Organization lawsuit that claims the company was a victim of ‘woke debanking’, by releasing documents showing the bank closed 300 Trump Organization accounts in 2021 only after review by their anti-money laundering experts.

This occurred after DJT was POTUS the first time. Imagine what he was getting away with before 2016.

Trump’s children were raised in an environment of perpetual criminality which is why they are serving so steadily as the legs to his banquet table of graft right now.

Don Jr., Eric and Jarvanka, (and even Barron with his Polymarket bets and upstairs-in- the-White-House insider trading), are helping themselves to a feast which may, in the end, send much of the world into a famine.

Trump essentially hijacked the armored car and his kids are unloading it.

That corrupt methodology has now seemingly been adopted by our State Department under the greasy guidance of Marco Rubio, a man who seems hellbent on becoming the dictator on deck.

A scary proposition because a more disciplined man with the same immoral attributes as POTUS could do remarkable damage in the world, perhaps even extending out from the calamity Trump has already caused.

All signs point to Rubio’s involvement in the Ceuta migrant situation this past week, which looks like it was a stunt engineered by our own State Department.

In April, under Rubio’s direction, the U.S. sent 20 million dollars to Morocco specifically earmarked for ‘diplomatic engagement’ between Morocco and Spain concerning the ‘future status’ of Ceuta (an autonomous Spanish city on the northern coast of Africa). This week’s stunt was engineered with the seeming complicity of the Moroccan government as a sort of payback to Spain for not opening their airspace to the U.S. military during Trump’s illegal war with Iran.

Most of the shirtless (another tell) young men who were victims of online disinformation campaigns (falsely stating European immigration policy had suddenly changed, creating a “pull factor” for the mass migration event) returned immediately to Morocco. Participants said they had been driven to the maritime and land border (that Moroccan security forces themselves control) in trucks and buses, and pointed towards Ceuta. Where cameras happened to waiting to document their arrival.

Nothing about the situation looked spontaneous; it was political theater and most likely an act of retribution against Spain for standing up to the United States-an opportunity to reinforce Trump’s immigrant rhetoric which he immediately seized upon and said it should be used as an issue to benefit the GOP in the midterms.

A tailor made distraction from the calamity caused by both the United States and Israel in the disastrous war in Iran.

Ceuta provided the sort of ‘migrant invader’ social media agitprop content that is so popular with POTUS and MAGA influencers. It feed the fears of the psychologically stunted men and women to whom the ‘America First’ movement has become a balm.

Too burdened by their own xenophobic dysfunction to understand they are being preyed upon by billionaires who are stoking a sociological disease to strip them of their rights and their economic futures.

Our current mad captain has struck his own metaphorical reef in the Strait of Hormuz.

He didn’t listen to his own military advisors that warned him it was there, he did not take heed of the caution displayed by his predecessors when it came to military engagement with Iran. His hubris and historical ignorance, not to mention his malleability when others seek to manipulate him and exploit his venality for their own aims - as Netanyahu did so deftly at the beginning of this incendiary imbroglio, guided him into a quagmire.

Nor did DJT honor the diplomatic achievements of the past, namely the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which, besides the years worth of diplomatic manpower that went into the drafting and signing of the JCPOA, there were millions of U.S. tax dollars spent on achieving that viable and effective diplomatic solution.

Trump flushed it all down the toilet on a whim, and now he finds himself the one circling the drain.

We are also spending billions bombing a country and destroying it’s civilian infrastructure while doing nothing to help the people who have lived under a theocratic rule for almost fifty years, and who bravely stood up to tyranny in recent months, who are now being punished twice for it.

A country of over 90 million people is being made to suffer by the actions of a few.

We are creating more enemies, not vanquishing them.

The Iranian economy has been so damaged over the last year (for Iran the turmoil began with the U.S./Israeli strikes in June 2025) that most folks are only buying rice one cup at a time and fresh vegetables are a luxury.

There is no sign of a solution in sight, either diplomatically or militarily, for either side.

The self-proclaimed ‘Peace President’ is causing more calamity, human suffering and unbridled warfare than I have seen in my lifetime. Once again pivoting back to Saturday night social media posts claiming ‘perimeters of a deal’ are in place with Iran, preceded by his usual bellicose threats of ‘military terror’ - just in time for Monday’s market manipulations.

POTUS is essentially shipwrecked and not admitting it.

Reality eludes him when it comes to how stuck we are as nation right now - and the old man is incapable of saving the vessel without sacrificing much of the crew, having very nearly run out of dry gunpowder, so to speak, after being so loose and uneven in the firing of their cannons early on. They were being led by clowns and now cannot get out of this battle by cutlass and courage alone.

So the captain and his officers continue to bray and boast, ignoring all the damage they have done and the hell and hardship that may be yet to come.

Even going so far as to blame their own people for cyber attacks that their own reckless actions have engendered.

Trump allowed DOGE to dismantle the U.S. Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the early days of his second term because Elon Musk helped get him elected - and now Iranian hackers are attacking our nation’s water supply and Trump blames it on Minnesota, instead of acknowledging the threat and protecting the American people.

POTUS did this while sitting next to Minnesota native son, Pete Hegseth, who did nothing to defend his home state or correct the Commander-in-Chief when his own government officials and F.B.I. had already admitted it was the work of Iranian-backed hackers.

Pilsner Pete sat there and smugly let him lie, another awful act in an ignoble tenure as Defense Secretary, making it painfully obvious to all why we are losing this war: he’s all hair gel, no heroics.

The kind of coward who would rather do bicep curls in the mirror of an air-conditioned gym than stand up to a real threat that is right in front of him.

Or protect the troops he was appointed to serve. The flag is merely a pocket square to men like Hegseth; a symbol, not something sacred. His patriotism is performative and designed to polish an allegiance with Trump, and cover for his own demons and inadequacies by being a caricature of the modern MAGA military man.

He has abused the military and led them to commit multiple war crimes, including the ongoing murder of the poor souls who find themselves on fishing vessels off the coast of South America, leading to the executions of at least 221 innocent people.

An Ecuadorean prosecutor, Gloria Alexandra Bravo Cedeño, who was actively investigating the U.S. military drone and boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean, was also killed by a hitman on a motorcycle in June.

I have no doubt that there is a shadow paramilitary force backing up much of the actions of our nation’s new ‘warfighter’ imperialistic stance.

This would be nothing new for us, especially when it comes to Latin America.

What do you think the reaction of those who wish to do us harm is when they see such immature and feckless leadership from the President of the United States? The self-dealing and surreptitious side hustles? The sadism mixed with a sanctimonious Christofascist agenda?

Trump blamed vandals for his botched Reflecting Pool renovation instead of his own subpar contractors and his moronic multi-vehicle motorcade excursion of the newly installed surface that wasn’t designed for heavy vehicles.

DJT then enlisted his own DOJ and the odious and ever-inebriated former Fox News legal screecher turned U.S. Attorney, Jeanine Pirro, into arresting innocent civilians until ultimately admitting it was all just another lie designed to protect Trump’s ego and coddle his obsessions.

We are in a codependent dance with disaster.

If our capsized ship of state is ever to become righted again we must make all bad actors stand trial and answer for their crimes and audacious ineptitudes.

But for now we are forced to watch them tread water in roiling seas, knowing there is not a strong swimmer in the bunch.

The good news is still the same: they only keep getting away with all of this if we let them.

This country still belongs to us, not the corrupt and craven few.

We either sink or swim.

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