During my time as a football coach at Santa Monica High School I was fortunate enough to coach all three of my sons Jordan, Max and Brady. Over the years we were blessed with a wealth of talent but the 2010 season was probably my favorite year. We were stacked with players and had a great defense and my oldest son Jordan was playing quarterback for me.
The absolute worst year was the 2016 season during my son Max’s junior year when we had a very young and inexperienced team. If that wasn’t bad enough our new head coach tried to run a “No Huddle Offense” and to have the quarterback just call out the next play we were running at the line. This gave the other team a chance to hear what play we were calling before we ran it. By the second series of the game the opposing team’s defenses had most of our play calls figured out and just te-ed off on us blowing up our offense on one play after another. We would actually hear the other team’s coaches tell their players to listen for the call and sure enough they did. The other coaches on our team and even the players begged our new head coach to call the plays in the huddle so we would not give our plays away every time but he refused to listen.
We got absolutely destroyed by everyone that year. God we were awful. We even lost to Beverly Hills. Still I took one great memory from that season that I will never forget. It was the last game of the season against Culver City and we were getting beat 21-0 in the 4th quarter which was actually pretty good for us that year. Then our quarterback threw an interception and it was run back for a touchdown. The player from Culver City who had made the interception came up to me on our sideline and handed the ball to me and pointed at the scoreboard which now read Culver City-26 Visitor -0 with less than 20 seconds left in the game.
I knew the kid. His name was Peirce and had coached him in an All Star game a few years ago. I looked the kid dead in the eyes and said to him with a straight face.
“Serioulsly. Y’'all ain’t that good. The good teams are up on us by 50 by now.” I said. Now the entire Vikings sideline burst out LAUGHING!!
“Yeah man, Grace Brethren was up on us by 30 points at halftime.” our Center Juan Castillo yelled. We had a running clock the whole second half. We were home by 10:00. You guys ain’t all that”
The other Viking players joined in the smack talking.
“Mater Dei beat us by 40 and y'all are scared to even play them. Seriously. It’s true. Y'all really not that good.”
“You know who was good was Valencia. Those guys could play. We do suck this year y'all really not good”
Now the rest of the team joined in calling out the names of the teams who had beat us bad that year.
“Now get out of here Peirce.” I said. Before I call your mom, that is if I still have her number in my phone.”
Now the Vikings tore into Peirce.
“Damn Coach Jason got your mom’s number, Peirce. You better tell your mom to watch out for Mrs. Detamore. She don’t play around!”
Our sideline erupted with laughter. It had been a long time since we had all had a good laugh and now everyone on the sideline was laughing at Peirce. Peirce just looked at us all like we were crazy then turned around at us and ran back to the Culver City sideline.
As we got ready to receive the kickoff, I watched the Viking players high fiving each other like we had just won the game and I thought to myself that this might have been my finest hour as a coach. We hadn't won a single game all season but it is a rare and precious moment that we find the perfect words for the moment and this was just such a moment. As we took the kickoff and the final seconds of the game ticked away and I told myself.
“Damn it Jason, you are one hell of a football coach.”
I coached football in Santa Monica for 15 years and won over 100 games, but I have forgotten most of them. I will never forget that game. I have seen many coaches celebrate with their team in victory and then shun them in defeat. It’s easy to keep it together when things are going your way. Winning solves all your problems for the moment but the cold hard truth is that we all lose in the end. Defeat comes for most of us at some point and even the mightiest of us face death in the end. It is how we face it that defines us. To be able to keep your head when things are not going your way and to laugh at your opponent and yourself in the face of defeat may be the hardest lesson we need to learn.
I was proud of the Vikings. We had lost every single game that year but we hadn’t stopped fighting. Even when we threw that interception at the end of a game when we had no chance of winning I was ok with it. Most teams would have been trying to run the clock out but we were still trying to score. That was without a doubt the most untalented Santa Monica Vikings team I had ever coached but I never loved a bunch of guys more. They never lost heart.
“Alright. Bring it in. Helmet’s off.” our Center Juan shouted.
The Vikings all took a knee.
“Now how did we get here?” Juan asked.
“Together!” the Vikings shouted back.
“And how are we leaving?” Juan called out.
“Together!” the Vikings shouted, and the sound filled up my heart with pure joy.
“Gentlemen, let's pray.” Juan said.
As the team knelt, their captain Juan led them prayer. The Vikings recited the Lord’s prayer for the last time of the season, uttering the words with passion until it reached a martial crescendo like a war cry.
“Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.”
For thine is the kingdom, and the power,
And the glory, for ever and ever.
Amen.”
I loved that prayer and there was a time when the sound of it struck fear in the hearts of the opposing team. It meant that we were coming for that ass. Not that year.
I will always remember that moment for another reason. Less than six months later our captain and our Center Juan Castillo who led us in prayer that day was shot and killed in the street right off of Pico Blvd here in Santa Monica. Juan had grown up with my son Max and they had played football and baseball together. We felt his family’s loss very deeply. When I went to Juan’s memorial and looked at pictures of him playing football his entire life first with his family and then the Vikings and it reminded me of how much football means to so many families and why coaching is such a sacred duty. Many of my former players have gone on to play college football or into military service and to become police officers and firemen. I have truly been blessed to be part of so many wonderful moments in so many young people's lives and to see them grow into fine young men. Still I will never forget “Juan” whose star burned so bright for only a moment and who we lost for no reason at all. This gift of life is very precious indeed.
At the end of the 2016 season every coach was required to submit an evaluation of the team’s progress to the head coach. I made the mistake of being truthful in my evaluation and the new Head Coach Ramsey Lambert did not ask me to come back and coach at Santa Monica High School the following year. Coach Lambert also decided to take it out on my son Max and did not allow Max to play football for Santa Monica High his senior year. Some people may think that it is no big deal for a kid to not be allowed to play football his senior year. After all, playing football is a privilege not a right. For my son Max who grew up with dyslexia and had trouble making friends outside football, not being allowed to play his senior year by the new effeminate, long haired metrosexual coach with an ax to grind was just too much to take. After his senior year, Max slipped into depression and began smoking weed and drinking alcohol. After numerous threats of suicide he had to be admitted to a mental hospital.
That was the absolute worst time of my life. My beautiful, strong boy had snapped. He was hearing things, he thought people were talking about him and he was not making sense. He was in the hospital but I still worried about him all day. At night I could not sleep thinking about him. Max had had a few concussions playing football and rugby but never wanted to quit playing. I wondered if it was our fault for allowing him to keep playing. I swore to myself that if he got out of the hospital, I would be there for him every day if I had to be.
Max was a big strong kid growing up but he also struggled with dyslexia and autism which can create mental health problems. After spending weeks in the hospital on the medication that he was prescribed Max began to act like himself again. I have never been a fan of the pharmaceutical industry but now I must humbly admit that they have created some amazing treatments for mental illness and I am eternally grateful to them. Max now works as a direct home healthcare provider, helping others with disabilities. Max has grown up to be such a kind and caring person and has made me so proud of the young man he has become.
In 2019, the new head at Santa Monica High School Matt “Captain” Kirk hired me back to coach the freshman team. I will be eternally grateful to Coach Kirk for this opportunity because I had already coached my two older sons Jordan and Max and now I would get to coach my youngest son Brady as a freshman at Samohi. It also made it possible for me to get my 100th win as a coach for the Santa Monica Vikings when we were down by 14 points with 6 minutes left in the 4th quarter and we came back to defeat Culver City on the final play of the final game of the 2020 season.
https://youtu.be/bBFqlzNiTi4?si=9QSys6RKc-lvMlUT
That would be my last year as a coach for Santa Monica High School. Brady would develop kidney disease the next year and fall seriously ill. He would have to stay home from school and give up playing sports. Brady did recover and returned to graduate with his class at Santa Monica High School his senior year. He is now enrolled in the Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology and is studying to be an airplane mechanic.
Jordan, Jason, Lisa and Max Detmamore
I was 54 years old and all three of my sons had graduated from Santa Monica High school. My oldest son Jordan attended Loyola Marymount University and was now a hospital administrator at Cedar Sinai Hospital. Max was working in St Clairesville, Ohio as a Direct Healthcare Provider and Brady was studying to be an airplane mechanic. My plan was to live to be 108 years old. That meant that technically I was at the halfway point of my life, if things had gone the way I planned. They had not. Everyday I woke up facing the very real threat of losing our home and going to prison. Oliver was gone now and with him the faintest hope that some magical solution would present itself. We were barely hanging on and unless we thought of something soon I couldn’t see us lasting till the end of the year.
I did have one last Hail Mary Play.
We had filed two civil lawsuits against my former business partner Devon Wheeler and our former landlord Suresh Jain. In 2016 we filed the first complaint Detamore v Wheeler after our partners locked us out of the business. Jay Handal then negotiated the settlement in which Wheeler agreed to give up his share of Grace on Pico Blvd in return for our share of Marina Caregivers at 13453 Beach avenue [Highway Cannabis]. After we dismissed our case against Wheeler and agreed to give up our share of Marina Caregivers, Jain evicted us and then leased the Grace Pico Blvd property back to Wheeler through his step brother Gabriel Dezio.
In 2018 we filed a second lawsuit Detamore v Jain in which we claimed that Jain’s leasing to Wheeler interfered with the 2016 settlement agreement Wheeler and I had made and that leasing to an “illegal dispensary” Jain would cause our business Grace significant economic damage if they were able to somehow obtain a licence and we were forced to close. In 2018 Erba was able to obtain a licence and the DEC Medical request to move to the new Grace location was denied. After 10 years of operation our business was closed, the damage done.
Jain’s attorneys managed to delay the case from going to trial for 7 years from 2016 until 2023. In 2019 they agreed to settle for $500,000 but after the trial date had passed and our business was raided and closed they refused to pay the settlement. By the time our case got to trial our business had been raided and closed for years and we had nothing to show for it but a hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills. Our partner Barret Slome had been murdered and none of the witnesses who had previously agreed to testify were willing to come forward. It would be my word against Jain’s in Judge Mark Epstein's court.
In my lawsuit I claimed that I told Jain to buy the building because it was zoned for cannabis even though the City of Los Angeles claimed it wasn’t. Jain on the other hand denied that he knew me at all and claimed that had bought the building to build an apartment complex. By the time the case went to trial Jain was collecting $50,000 a month from ERBA, had owned the building for 10 years and still hadn’t built an apartment complex on it. Still he claimed that our lawsuit was preventing him from building low income housing on the property. My wife and I were portrayed as drug dealers who got shut out of a business because we were criminals that were now trying to take advantage of Jain, a poor Indian businessman.
Judge Epstein who admitted to knowing Jain’s chief witness Jay Handal then delayed the trial for a week and by the time the case reached the jury for a verdict weeks had gone by since my testimony. The defense even managed to weaponize my brutal honesty against me when I acknowledged that a document had been forged by Devon Wheeler and that I had revealed that to our former partners at Herbalcure Peter Tajera and James Catipay. Somehow that fact that I told the truth about this forgery was used as proof that I was dishonest. The jury had sat through tales of Jain’s poor upbringing and listened to his hard luck stories. Both of Jain’s attorneys had solicited his chief witness, LA Neighborhood Council Member Jay Handal and Jain himself to commit perjury under oath and it had worked. Jain, who was worth more than $50,000,000 was portrayed as a poor Indian immigrant who wanted to build low income housing on the property but could not because I was suing him. If he had to pay this judgment he would never be able to build his apartment complex. It was total bullshit but that was the story they stuck to in front of the jury.
Still after Judge Epstein told Jain “I don’t believe your story for a New York Minute” we thought we had won for sure.
The question put to the Jury was.
Was there a settlement between Detamore and Wheeler?
Did the Defendant know about the settlement?
If the answer is no, stop here.
And they did.
After 7 years of waiting and 3 weeks of trial the jury was back in 10 minutes with a “Not Guilty” verdict and they let Jain walk.
“God help the man who tells the truth in this courtroom.” I remarked.
I could not restrain myself.
Judge Epstein was not pleased. We would recover nothing.
The second case Detamore v Jain for Civil Conspiracy, and the Unjust Enrichment was set for trial in Santa Monica on July 24, 2025. We had already gathered all the evidence from the first trial and I was planning to present only one witness at the second trial, Los Angeles City Attorney Jon Prosser. Prosser, who had charged Jain in criminal court with operating an illegal cannabis business at 12320 Pico Blvd and my plan was to have Prosser explain how Suresh Jain, Jay Handal and Devon Wheeler had evaded detection and prosecution by using straw men and have him explain how ERBA was granted an Adult Use Recreational Cannabis License at the location while operating illegally.
The elephant in the room was that during the trial in Detamore v Wheeler Suresh Jain had admitted to leasing the property back to Devon Wheeler making him the owner of two marijuana businesses a violation of Proposition-D the law governing marijuana businesses at the time. Jain also admitted that he was charging Wheeler $50,000 a month in rent. These two admissions alone should have enough to prove the Civil Conspiracy, and the Unjust Enrichment claims. Under the law I still had a chance to make them pay.
In Detamore v Wheeler Suresh Jain had gone before the jury and claimed that he did not know me and that he didn’t know anything about the settlement that Jay Handal had negotiated in which we gave up the Marina Cultivation in exchange for the Grace Retail location. Jain did admit under oath that he had evicted us and leased the property back to Devon Wheeler through his brother Gabriel Dezio. Dezio had admitted that Jain leased the building to him to conceal Wheeler’s ownership of the business.
Suresh Jain’s attorneys then filed a Motion to Dismiss on the Pleading based on our loss in the previous trial. We filed an Opposition to their Motion Dismiss claiming that the two cases arose from Jain’s interference with two separate businesses. In Detamore v Wheeler we sued Jain for not leasing 12320 Pico Blvd to me after he had promised to do so. In Detamore v Wheeler we sued Jain for interfering with the 2016 Settlement and interfering with our new business at 2340 Centinela Avenue. I also filed a Motion for Summary Judgement based on evidence and the facts that established that the DEC Medical move to 2340 Centinela was denied because it was within 700 feet of another ERBA, another Adult Use Recreational Cannabis Business.
In Detamore v Jain the Defendant Jain filed an Anti SLAPP Motion to Dismiss arguing that Suresh Jain and Jay Handal’s fraudulent behavior in convincing us to give up the Grace Marina Cultivation Operation in return for Devon Wheeler’s share of the Grace Retail Store was protected by “litigation privilege”. In my Opposition to the Motion to Dismiss and Motion for Summary Judgement I argued that in Detamore v Wheeler had sworn under oath in trial that he did not know me and had no knowledge of the 2016 Settlement but in Detamore v Jain he had argued that fraudulently inducing me to give up my share of the business to Wheeler was protected speech under “litigation privileges. Both could not be true and therefore Jain had either obtained a verdict through perjury in Detamore v Wheeler or was committing perjury in Detamore v Jain by claiming the fraudulent settlement was protected speech.
What a lot of people don’t know about the Hail Mary play is that it is not just to have everyone run down the field and try and catch the ball. In a true Hail Mary 3 receivers line up on one side of the field and the Inside Man and the Outside Man run deep while the Target Man in the middle trails them running 5 yards behind them. The Inside and Outside man’s job is not to catch the ball but to draw the defenders deep and to tip the ball back to the Target Man who is following them.
The two lawsuits against Suresh Jain were my Inside and Outside man. The Motion for Summary Judgment was my Target Man. We had taken Suresh Jain to trial and lost the first case Detamore vs Wheeler but the Defendant had his admitted guilt in a previous case and the Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss was before this court improperly. I filed the motion with the court myself and I thought that there was no way Judge Mark Young could rule against me. The facts were before the court as plain as day. Still it was a long pass. The ball was in the air for a long time!
Judge Young first ruled in my favor. The Defendant Jain’s motion to Dismiss on the Pleadings was before the court improperly which was grounds to dismiss motion for the case to proceed to trial. The Defendant’s Motion for Judgement on the Pleadings was before the court improperly and rightfully was denied. The Outside man tipped the ball into the air. The Hail Mary had a chance now!
Judge Young then refused to hear my Motion for Summary Judgment and dismissed the case himself. We had fought the Detamore v Jain case all the way to the California Supreme Court to get it to the trial and the Court had ruled that our remaining causes of action were intact. Our argument that the Motion for Judgement on the Pleadings was before the court improperly was 100% correct. Then without being asked Judge Mark Young, a former prosecutor and head of the Organized Crime Task Force stepped into the shoes of the Defendant as he had previously during the course of the litigation and dismissed the case himself demonstrating his clear and “implicit” against us. What is “implicit bias"? When I say kindergarten school teacher you think female. It was just like my lawyer said before I fired him. “No judge is going to award you what you lost in this case. There is no way this judge is going to award a drug dealer a penny from a landlord and be right. After the years of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars we had spent to get that case to trial our case was dismissed. We would not get a penny.
Even Jain’s attorney Mr. Angwin was ashamed to have won that way. Following the ruling Mr. Angwin took off his tie, folded it and presented it to me, like an officer presenting his sword to the general who had defeated him. It was a surprising thing to do for someone who had taken me behind the woodshed and absolutely kicked my ass but Angwin knew the fix was in. He was a first class gentleman and I will always appreciate the gesture.
My Hail Mary had failed miserably, not in spectacular fashion for all the world to see but with only me alone in the courtroom the sole witness to the crime. I told myself that I hadn’t lost anything that wasn’t gone ago. That was true but it still stung like hell. I had been robbed of everything that I had worked for in broad daylight by predators who took whatever they wanted and then played the victim and there was nothing I could do about it. The legal system in the United States was designed to legitimize the theft of the Native American savages property while at the same time keeping captive African Americans enslaved in subhuman bondage. Along the way it has been perverted by some of the greatest minds in history and evolved into the greatest legal system on the planet when it comes to guaranteeing the rights of citizens and corporations to lie, cheat and steal from each other and to legitimize these activities.
I knew all of this, going into trial at the Santa Monica Courthouse, the same building in which O.J. Simpson got away with murder. Still like a gambler who has lost so many hands in a row that he believes he is now due, I foolishly believed that justice could be found in a court of law. I knew better but still I wanted to believe so badly that I convinced myself that because we were right we would win in the end.
I sat on my front porch rocking back and forth to calm myself down. I took a corncob pipe out of the teak wooden box on the table next to the couch. I opened a small glass jar labeled “Runts” and packed the pipe full of the crispy, sticky, purple dried flowers. I lit the flowers and inhaled. I looked out at the “bloody red sun of fantastic LA” and exhaled. My friends the Crows were returning from their daily foraging and landed in the palm tree that I had helped them defend from the Owls all those years ago.
The Crows of Sunset Park had been fruitful and multiplied under my protection and I was proud to see them thriving. Their flock had grown over the years and I now counted 23 of them. I . Their flock had grown over the years and I now counted 23 of them. sat on my front porch and watched the next generation of Crows feeding their chicks and I thought of my boys Jordan and Max who had already left the nest and my youngest son Brady who would be gone soon. There was a time that I thought that Grace would have been a legal cannabis empire by now. I imagined that after working my entire life to legalize cannabis like Joe Kennedy I would retire to a life as a country gentleman and my sons would run for political office. I thought that I would one day leave my sons a fortune, an empire that created generational wealth based upon a commodity but now I had nothing to leave them and it was my own fault. I could not look the other way when I saw Tulsi being abused by my business partner’s son or bend the knee and pay a crooked politician a bribe to “guarantee” my business would get a license. My ex-partner Devon Wheeler who had encouraged his son Chad’s sexual relationship with his aunt Tulsi and had tried to murder me was now partnered with Woody Harrelson and Bill Mahr two icons of the cannabis movement. I who refused to compromise with the predator elite was now like Dan Akroyd in “Trading Places” forced to survive as a common criminal.
Odin, ancient sire of the flock, looked down at me with his one milky eye feeling sorry for myself with and showing no mercy. I imagined Odin saying to me.
“You’re still alive and you’ve still got both of your eyes. Suck it up sissy.”
Odin was a cold blooded son of a bitch but he always put things in perspective. My hound dogs Copper and Lola came out onto the porch, hopped up on the couch and sat next to me. They must have sensed that I was feeling low. I sat on the couch petting the dogs and looking out at the Crows and I started to feel a little better.
“So what are my orders from the Dog Star?”
I asked Copper, the hound dog who now stared at me, his eyes boring into the depths of my soul before looking away after finding himself bored there and looking away. I had written a screenplay “Empire of the Sea” about an advanced microscopic civilization, the Akari, that lived underwater and an empire of dog people, the Cannabi, who ruled the universe from Sirius (the Dog Star) and communicated through telepathy. Sometimes I would ask my dogs questions about what the Cannabi Empire wanted from me. Now Copper just looked at me with his wise old hound dog smile and it made me laugh at myself for thinking of such foolishness. As crazy as it sounded this made as much sense as any of the religious origin stories that I have heard. After all, dogs did live in luxury on this planet and were loved and worshiped by humans. It was true that some dogs were kept in pens and euthanized, but if the Cannabi Empire was an intergalactic fascist empire who believed in Eugenics like the Nazis, maybe humans were just doing the bidding of their imperial masters.
Looking at Copper the hound dog sitting there calmly looking at me, I thought to myself that maybe I could write my way out of this jam. But how? My life was in shambles and I was going deeper into debt all the time. I had never worked a day in my life for anyone else or held a real job my entire adult life. I had 3 felonies on my record for selling marijuana and was facing charges of tax evasion. Still I have always been a glass half full kind of guy. I tried to look on the bright side. I could still run for president of the United States or governor of California. I didn’t expect to win but writing a best-selling book and running for political office would solve all my money problems and winning a political office would solve my legal problems.
For the past 10 years almost nothing had gone according to plan and so maybe it was time for a change. Lisa and I talked it over and decided to put the house up for sale. After Brady graduated from Santa Monica High School in June we would have raised three sons in the home my father and I built before he passed away and that I now call the White Castle. We had defended the White Castle for 21 years but it maybe was time to give it up and move on. We would sell the house and I would run for political office. I might not win right away but I was still young. I had time. Besides, if I really was the “Angel of the Lord” anything was possible.
Lisa Detamore the best Real Estate Agent in the World.
18. PAX AMERICANA con la ILLUMINANTI
To run for president all I had to do was raise $100,000 in 20 states and then I would be eligible to receive matching public funds. Then I could raise as much money as I wanted for my “campaign” and the government would have to match those donations. If I won, thanks to the Supreme Court I could not be prosecuted or incarcerated while I served in office or while I was running for office again. Even if I didn’t win I could keep all the money left over for “fundraising” and “future campaigns” and use it to pay my legal fees thereby avoiding prosecution indefinitely.
Of course if I ran for public office all the grimy shit from my past would come out but maybe the dirt in my past could be an asset. Most people elected to political office are lawyers but in my opinion drug dealers, thieves and pimps cause far less damage to society than lawyers who pass laws that allow companies to poison our air, our water and our land and pervert the very constitution and the law they are sworn to uphold. Most Americans know that politicians, corporations and foreign governments are lying to them and stealing from them like the partner of a cheating spouse knows the truth. The problem is that every time these crooks get caught stealing they play dumb. It’s like when you catch a thief breaking into your house or your car he will lie and say “This is your house. I’m sorry. I must have got the wrong house or I thought this was my car.” playing dumb.
The public, like the frightened homeowner or the battered spouse, pretends to believe the lie just to keep the peace. It’s complete bullshit but is how so many people get fooled into thinking the government can’t do anything right when that is just not true. If you want proof that the government can work properly, just ask anyone who parks illegally in Los Angeles. You can say what you want about the mayor, LAPD, even the Fire Department but if you park illegally in Los Angeles you will get a ticket and you will be towed. That is proof enough to me that even in the most chaotic, sprawling city in America where the police and other emergency services are overwhelmed the government works just fine if the same rules are applied to everyone equally. They are not. One party in this country claims that good government is the solution and tries to fix it and another party claims government is the problem and then gets elected and tries to prove it. Both sides blame the other but in reality they work for the same people. The Republicans are the Harlem Globetrotters and the Democrats are the Washington Generals. Neither of them work for you. So who do both parties really work for?
“Those who say do not know.
Those who know do not say.”
The Tao De Ching
Most politicians are lawyers and most lawyers are lazy crooks. Just ask any good lawyer. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Washington, DC on K-Street which functions like an open air drug market where bribery and corruption have been legalized by the Supreme Court and rebranded as dark money political contributions and protected industry lobbying. While the news, media and celebrity watching shows like TMZ cover the daily lives of thousands of movie stars, and athletes, not a single news channel follows any one of the 535 politicians who represent Americans around Washington, DC to see who they meet with in a day. Instead Americans are subjected to a constant onslaught of “news and entertainment” which has been weaponized into a tool of psychological warfare to divide them by the special interest groups and the fringe elements that drive the narrative. So who is really behind the curtain?” Who is that the media is talking about when like the great and powerful Wizard of Oz they scream? ”Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
There is absolutely no way a regular citizen with a family to raise and support can be equipped to deal with the truckloads of bullshit that is heaped on them by their government and that overwhelms them with the help of the media. I certainly didn’t want to get involved with politics when I was selling weed. I was trying to be respectable. I have been down in the muck my entire life and I’ve had to know where the bodies are buried to survive. Now they have grown so bold and so accustomed to winning that they operate in broad daylight with no fear of repercussions. We are expected to look the other way and tell ourselves “That’s the way it is.” and that was what I was being asked to do. I had always remained quiet because I did not want to draw attention to myself. Maybe now that I had lost all respectability, I was ready to go into politics.
Rome did not collapse from a powerful republic into an empire overnight. Instead, Rome drifted through centuries of civil wars and conquests with emergency powers granted to rulers and through a series of legal workarounds changed from a republic to an empire. Romans allowed more and more foreigners to be part of the empire and continued to buy expensive luxury goods from the far east. Eventually all the gold from Rome ended up in India and the empire collapsed. We are now witnessing the same thing happening in the United States. The United States of America was formed in opposition to monarchy but since World World War II the United States has become the chief defender of monarchies and dictatorships and now functions as an empire while maintaining the facade as a republic as its wealth is drained. To understand how we got here we need to have a basic understanding of human history.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe entered the “Dark Ages” and was overrun by barbarian tribes and later suffered through the Crusades, the Black Plague and the Inquisition. On the northern frontier of China, Genghis Khan hordes broke through the Great Wall and slaughtered and burned their way to gain control of Northern Asia. In the Arab world and the Middle East and India the Islamic jihad came as death to all who stood in its path and opposed submission to Islamic rule. In Mexico and South America the Mayan, Aztec and Inca empires brought most of Mexico and South America under their rule. The Dark Ages were the Golden Age of Africa. While the rest of the world descended into chaos, Africa entered a golden age of expansion as the kingdoms of Mali and Ashanti were created. Yin and Yang baby.
When Marco Polo returned from China bringing with him maps, paper and gunpowder Europe rebounded sharply after reaching the tipping point and hitting rock bottom in its thousand-year spiral. Contact with Islamic scholars during Crusades and the invention of the printing press led to an unprecedented diffusion of knowledge in Europe. After centuries of war and pestilence Europeans had built up an immunity to alcohol and diseases, and with the printing press they now had the ability to transmit knowledge from generation to generation. They also had an ace in the hole. Gunpowder. After centuries of relative isolation Europe was ready to share these “gifts” with the rest of the world. Within a century of Columbus’s voyage, maps, sailing vessels, gunpowder and European resistance to disease had allowed the European and Asian monarchs to carve up Asia, Africa, North America, South America and Australia into colonies. Can anyone say, “Punctuated Equilibrium?”
Above all these European nations, Great Britain emerged as the dominant colonial power which history tells us was because of Great Britain’s first-rate navy and exceptional diplomatic skills which were both true. What history does not tell us is that it was also a matter of luck. Disease killed far more soldiers than combat in these foreign wars but the English soldiers boiled water and drank tea instead of drinking from the local water supply. While other colonial powers drank the water that ran from the local streams and wells and were exposed to such ailments as dysentery, typhoid and cholera the British soldier drank tea long before it was discovered that boiling water killed the bacteria that caused these diseases. If you have ever been unfortunate enough to have typhoid or dysentery you know this is good luck indeed.
England was the first European power to gain the advantage at sea commissioning and organizing a first-rate navy under Queen Elizabeth 1. In 1588 King Phillip of Spain sent the largest fleet of ships ever assembled against England. The Spanish Armada which was dispatched by Phillip II to subjugate England was destroyed by a freak storm that sank almost half of the warships in the Spanish Armada. From that point on Great Britain never lost its command of the seas. During the American Revolution General Howe's fleet set sail from New York in 1776 for an attack on Philadelphia but were blown off course to the West Indies allowing Washington’s army to escape and live to fight another 2 years. It really is better to be lucky than good.
In 1778 the French king Louis XVI made a decision that would forever alter the course of human history. The Treaty of Alliance brought France into the American Revolution on the side of the American colonists. Up until that time Washington had just about every major battle that he fought but had managed to hold the Continental Army together. Though Washington was not nearly as gifted of a military commander as my ancestor the infamous traitor Benedict Arnold who had won victories at Ticonderoga and Saratoga, his narrow escapes had molded him into the image of a Robin Hood and he was very popular in England. Many intellectuals in England and France sympathized with Washington and the idea of a republic based on John Locke’s Rights of Man. Locke rejected the concept of Divine Right, which asserts that monarchs derive authority from God and argued that legitimate government is based on the consent of the governed. Locke believed in natural rights, including life, liberty, and property, which must be protected by the government. He posited that if a ruler violates these rights, citizens have the right to revolt.
After 5 years of the Revolutionary War, King George of England was having none of it and in the spring of 1781, General Charles Cornwallis landed in Yorktown, Virginia with an army of over 7000 men to unite with Howe and finally crush Washington once and for all. Cornwallis did not know that the French Commander of the West Indies had left the islands undefended and dispatched his army off 5,500 French troops as well as a fleet of warships commanded by Admiral DeGrasse to come to Washington’s aid. Cornwallis found himself trapped and without naval support and was forced to surrender which effectively brought an end to the Revolutionary War. After this defeat at Yorktown, England abandoned its attempts to regain the 13 Colonies and focused its resources on the conquest of India. The Earl of Cornwallis would eventually become the governor of India, and George Washington would become the first President of the United States.
The 13 colonies would not have gained independence if not for France’s help or Britain’s desire to conquer the fabulously wealthy Mogul Empire in India. Britain valued India far more than America's forests, river lakes and mountains. Great Britain’s world domination would begin with its conquest of India, but the myth of the moral superiority of the British Empire would end in India when confronted by Mahatma Gandhi’s “nonviolent protest” movement. After England clawed its way to the very top of the colonial food chain Gandhi then used nonviolent protest to show the English the inferior nature of the conqueror, just as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had shown it to the Chand Quazi in Bengal in the year 1492. In the United States Dr. Martin Luther King would follow Gandhi and Chaitanya’s example during the civil rights movement employing non-violent protests rather than violence to change hearts and minds.
The wars in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq have demonstrated that the United States is not capable of winning wars of conquest because the price is too high. War has always been hell. The conquerers would burn the cities, rape and pillage, exterminate the males or sell them into slavery and take the women into captivity. Television and the internet has made winning a modern war extremely difficult. It turns out that when people actually see what war is they don’t like it very much. Even the Russians historically known for their brutality have been unable to win in conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine because of pressure to not exterminate their opponents and destroy their cities. Now we find ourselves in an endless succession of limited proxy wars between these neo-colonial powers, the European and Asian monarchs and the corporate empires that dominate the globe.
If the United States did not intervene in World War II, Communism or Fascism would have relegated monarchy to a forgotten institution. Hitler or Stalin would have deposed all the European and Asian monarchs and taken possession of their kingdoms and their colonial possessions. Then along came Uncle Sam and the American taxpayers to save the day. With the help of the United States the European and Asian monarchies emerged on the victorious side of World War II and were preserved along with the fabulous wealth these monarchies had accumulated over centuries of mass murder and international banditry. These royal families that had carved up the entire world before starting two World Wars resulting in the death of over 100,000,000 people were not surgically removed from the body and continued to grow in power and influence.
When the former colonies of the victorious European monarchies gained independence they were required to respect the property rights of the former colonial monarchies and their subjects by allowing them to maintain their plantations, and their mineral, oil, gas and property rights in the former colonies if they wanted to participate in the new economy under the US protection. The European constitutional monarchies were allowed to keep the wealth they had accumulated from centuries of conquest and slavery. Under the protection of the United States the Asian monarchs have managed to hold on to both their sovereignty and their kingdoms and have even established new monarchies. Many of the newly formed democracies in former colonies elected socialist governments and the United States and its European allies looked on with suspicion.
Communism has collapsed on its own in every nation that the United States did not intervene to stop it. The threat of nuclear war kept the United States from attacking the Soviet Union directly during the Cold War but Communism collapsed on its own in the USSR. The United States and the Soviet Union did fight a series of proxy wars in Korea, Viet Nam, South America and Afghanistan but by the end of the Cold War in 1993, the only places where Communism still survived were China, North Korea, Cuba and North Viet Nam, the very places where the United States had fought wars to actively try to stop it.
In 1953 for the first time in history, the United States of America overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran and established a monarchy and the world is still dealing with the fallout from this decision. After gaining independence from Great Britain the people of Iran elected Mr. Mohamed Mozadeh as Prime Minister. Prime Minister Mozadeh then demanded that the Anglo Persian Oil Company [BP- British Petroleum] submit to an audit. When Anglo Persian Oil refused, Prime Minister Mozzadegh nationalized Iran’s oil industry. The United States and Britain were terrified that Iran would fall to the Soviet Union and that Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States could fall like dominos to Communism. So in 1953 the CIA and MI-6 launched Operation Ajax and overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran. Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt directed the coup from Tehran personally and even threatened to go ahead with the coup without the Shah’s cooperation. With the help of the CIA the Shah was placed back on the throne of Iran until he was overthrown in 1979.
Iran, once the greatest ally of the United States in the Middle East is now America’s sworn enemy and this was not an isolated incident. Since World War II, in the name of halting Communism the United States has supported monarchs, dictators and tyrants all over the world but the monarchies of Europe and Asia have remained in power long after the threat of Communism was neutralized. The Communist states that exist today are a reaction to anti-democratic US foreign policy just as US interference in the Middle East on behalf of the European and Asian monarchies is responsible for the rise of Islamic movements hostile to the US in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
Meanwhile the United States of America has been left holding the bag supporting 41 of the 43 monarchies in the world. I have compiled a list of these rulers by Divine Right below for the benefit of the American taxpayers who now go to work each day to pay for the defense of their properties. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica, Antigua, Belize, Bahamas, Jamaica, Grenada, St Lucia, St. Kitts, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon and Grenadine Islands are all monarchies ruled by King Charles of England. In Europe, the kings of Belgium, Denmark, Liechtenstein, Monaco, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Spain and the Pope in the Vatican still sit on their thrones. Though these are constitutional monarchs and their power is limited they still control vast fortunes in farmland, commercial real estate, water, cattle, timber, mining and industrial production in the countries they once colonized. In the Islamic world monarchs’ rule in Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Kuwait, Oman, Quatar and Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates controlling over 50% of the world's oil reserves. In the Far East royal families sit on the thrones of Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Bhutan and Tonga. In Africa, though only Lesotho, Malta and Eswatini remain as monarchs since the fall of the Ethiopian King Haile Salasiah. The African nations of Algeria, Angola, Chad, the Central African Republic, the Congo, Barundi, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Gabon, Libya, Rwanda, Somalia, the Sudan, Uganda, Western Sahara and are all ruled by dictators who will no doubt attempt to establish dynasties. Add in the dictatorships in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Syria, Laos, Tajikistan, Tibet, Turkey and Russia and China and we come to find that less than 25% of the world’s population now lives under full democracy. Long after the fall of communism the United States has maintained the most powerful military organization in the world and contrary to the wishes of its citizens that military has been systematically directed at the enemies of these powerful monarchies. This has required consistent and constant manipulation of the public to convince them to go to war from the day Roosevelt allowed the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor to the day President Trump attacked Iran without provocation in 2026.
I was in India in 1979 when the Shah of Iran fell and the Islamic Revolution took place. I remember when Jimmy Carter ordered the failed attempt to free the US hostages at the embassy in Tehran. The mission ended in total disaster and after that disaster I was glad when Ronald Reagan was elected president. Immediately after Reagan was sworn into office, Iran set the hostages free. I was so proud to be an American on that day, proud to think that we finally had someone in the office who was ready to handle business. Years later I learned that during the campaign, members of the Reagan Administration were already in negotiations with Iran to sell them the American weapons and spare parts they needed for their war against Iraq in exchange for the release of the hostages. “The Ayatollah Khomeni had agreed not to release the hostages until Reagan was elected.” That meant that American citizens who were being held as hostages by foreign adversaries were used as pawns to gain an advantage in a US election. This was my first experience with the calculated psychological manipulation that we as citizens of the Empire of the United States are subjected to on a constant basis. No other nation’s population is subjected to this level of manipulation because the US elections are quite frankly the most important elections on the planet and maybe the only ones that matter anymore. The President of the United States has control of the United States Military and he can do pretty much whatever he likes.
In 1982 the United States Congress passed the Boland Amendment cutting off military aid to the Contras, a rebel army fighting against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas had overthrown the brutal dictatorship of the Somoza dynasty which had ruled Nicaragua since 1936 with the support of the United States and the United Fruit Company. The Contra rebels were accused of of carrying out acts of terror including kidnappings, mutilations, rapes and mass murders and therefore Congress had cut off all military support to the Contras. President Reagan decided to support the Contras anyway and so under the direction of Colonel Oliver North the Reagan Administration continued to send weapons to the Contras while the CIA allowed operatives under its control to smuggle kilotons of cocaine into the United States.
Most of this cocaine was sold in poor urban neighborhoods fueling the “crack epidemic.” in America’s cities and the exponential growth of the prison population during the 1980s. The “crack epidemic” in the United States was created when the DEA’s sophisticated interdiction and eradication efforts severely restricted the supply of Mexican cannabis entering the US while the CIA had allowed a massive 50% increase in the supply of cocaine. The introduction of freebased cocaine also known as “crack” in a smokeable form made the drug cheap, convenient and extremely popular. Almost overnight in America’s cities it was hard to find grass but crack was everywhere.
Most people I know that smoked “crack” for the first time did it because they couldn’t find weed. I am sure many of the people that got hooked started that way. I used to wonder if that is what happened to Len Bias. Len Bias had played basketball at the University of Maryland and had just been drafted by my favorite NBA team the Boston Celtics before he overdosed and died after reportedly smoking “crack “ just one time. I was 13 years old at the time and living with my Grandma Jane in Severna Park Maryland. I attended Magothy River Middle School and on Sunday I worshiped at Hope Presbyterian Church where my grandfather the Rev. Allan Moore had been the pastor.
I was glad that President Reagan was doing something about the crack epidemic. Rival drug gangs had armed themselves and now competed for territories in America’s cities. At night the sound of sporadic gunfire and sirens made sleeping more than a few hours at a time almost impossible. During the daytime base heads walked along the avenues like zombies alarming the commuters. Restaurants lost millions because people were so coked out they people weren’t eating. Crack vials and bullet shells littered the streets. Blood stains and chalk outlines painted the sidewalks. Police departments found themselves overwhelmed by the violence and and riddled with corruption. The headlines were filled with stories of drive-by shootings, and overdoses. I had no idea what cocaine was or where it was coming from.
In 1986 Congress passed The Anti-Drug Abuse Act which created mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. Lawmakers on both sides lined up to throw the book at drug dealers and passed the bill creating mandatory minimums for drug offenses in record time before the election and Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law. Then in September of 1989 President Bush came on television from the White House and announced that the United States had declared “War on Drugs” and that drug dealers would be caught, arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated. Back then I didn’t even know what grass/ganja was. I definitely had no idea that I, like millions of other Americans, would be sent to prison under this law a few years later.
It actually turned out that Len Bias did not smoke crack for the first time and did not die from taking one hit. That was the official story we were told “for our own good” and it was widely accepted as fact. The United States government has repeatedly denied that it was responsible for creating the “crack epidemic”but it has been proven that the Reagan Administration sold weapons to Iran and funneled the profits from money to the Contras and at least looked the other way while the supply of cocaine in the United States doubled. CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz even testified before a House congressional committee.
“As I said earlier, we have found no evidence in the course of this lengthy investigation of any conspiracy by CIA or its employees to bring drugs into the United States. However, during the Contra era, CIA worked with a variety of people to support the Contra program. These included CIA assets, pilots who ferried supplies to the Contras, as well as Contra officials and others. Let me be frank about what we are finding. There are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the Contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity or take action to resolve the allegations. “ Source - Wikipedia.
Translation. It happened but there is nothing anyone can do about it now. Now that would be believable if it only happened once. Burn me once. Shame on you. It was not just once though. After first allowing the crack epidemic to take hold and decimate the black population in our cities during the 1980's the Drug Enforcement Agency [DEA] then looked the other way as pharmaceutical companies like Purdue and Lilly created generations of opiate addicts in America’s Heartland including my home state of West Virginia. These states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee were especially hard hit by the recession of the 80’s and NAFTA in the 90’s but the DEA continued to focus its efforts on the low hanging fruit of cannabis eradication and interdiction while doing almost nothing to slow the spread of legal but deadly narcotics like oxycodone (hillbilly heroin).
My brother-in-law was 16 years old when he was first prescribed oxycontin for a football injury. By the time he was 18 years old Oxycontin, Prozac and Adderall were being fed to America’s youth like tick-tacks for halitosis and opioid addiction was out of control. During one 6 year period of time 780 million pills of oxycodone were shipped to West Virginia, 433 pills for every one of the 1.8 million people in the state. All of this was completely legal and the DEA did nothing to stop it while actively pursuing medical marijuana cultivation and transportation even in states where the voters had legalized cannabis. Millions of Americans have become addicted to these opiates and millions more continue to rely on Suboxone, a pharmaceutical substitute to treat their addiction. In some parts of the United States almost 20% of the population is addicted to a combination of these opioids. That is 1 out of 5 people. In 2025 Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family were ordered to pay 7.4 billion in damages for their contributions to the addiction of generations of Americans. While millions of Americans have spent decades in prison for cannabis, not one person from Purdue Pharma or a single member of the Sackler family has spent a day in prison. In 2016, Harper’s Magazine revealed that the “war on drugs” was concocted as part of Richard Nixon’s broader “war” against Black activists and opposition to the Vietnam War. Nixon had commissioned the Shafer Commission to study cannabis which had recommended federal decriminalization of marijuana but Nixon instead increased penalties and began the draconian enforcement of new laws. White House Council John Ehrlichman stated in the interview.
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Richard Nixon may have invented the War on Drugs as a political tool but every president Republican and Democrat alike has found it useful for one reason or another. Under Ronald Reagan. George Bush and Bill Clinton those policies continued and the skyrocketing cost of the War on Drugs is now impossible to ignore: billions of dollars wasted, countless lives lost on the streets of our cities, and millions of lives destroyed by draconian punishment that doesn’t end at the prison gate but in the disenfranchisement of millions of American voters because of a felony conviction. The deliberate campaign of defamation, poisoning and incarceration of Ganja prisoners should be treated as a war crime. President Nixon knew that he was misleading the public and waged a private war with the express intent of targeting his political opponents. This war was continued by his successors for decades for political expediency.
When we see these examples of government inaction and uneven application of the laws as unrelated events it is easy to mistake them for incompetence and not corruption. As I said before when you catch a thief stealing they pretend that it is a mistake or an accident. When we see this as evidence that in the United States we have created our own aristocracy that is not subject to the rule of law in the same manner that medieval dukes and barons were not subject to “common law” it is difficult to accept that these are just mistakes or accidents. If you see them as examples of psychological warfare waged against American citizens who were perceived as potential threats such as young black men empowering themselves in the 1980s and radicalized rural whites disillusioned with the loss of manufacturing jobs arming themselves and joining militias in the 1990s then what? Who would actually do such and who could possibly benefit from keeping Americans so weak and divided?
If all men are created equal there is no Divine Right to rule and therefore monarchy is the antithesis of what it is to be an American. Franklin Roosevelt allowed the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor in order to convince Americans to join the war against Japan and Germany on the side of Britain, France and the Soviet Union because he knew that Hitler was killing 50,000 Jews a day and had to be stopped. After World War II, the Soviet Union abolished all monarchies under the territories that it captured from Germany. The United States was in a position to abolish the monarchy as an institution as the Soviet Union did but did not. Even after these European and Asian monarchs had carved up the entire world through centuries of conquest and slavery and had caused 2 World Wars resulting in the deaths of over 100,000,000 people these predators were allowed to remain on their thrones. Most predators are not creepy old men flashing little girls in the park. They are charismatic and powerful people who get away with rape and murder because no one suspects them or stops them when they do find out the truth. Somehow the United States of America has fallen under the sway of these European and Asian monarchies. Beguiled by their predatory charm America has now become the theatre and the instrument of wealthy and powerful families led by Great Britain and and conducts itself as an empire on their behalf while maintaining the illusion of the republic for the public at home.
Even more disturbing is the growing power of an unscrupulous and mercenary clergy and their sycophantic and “unholy alliance” with this nouveau-royalty. This “unholy alliance” has its nexus in the fanatical belief that it is the church’s God-given right to not pay taxes. Churches were originally granted tax-exempt status because the state did not provide social services and relief aid and the churches did.
Following the Great Depression, the advent of Social Security, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (welfare), Food Stamps, Medicare and Medicaid shifted all these burdens from the Church to the State. Still the Churches retained their tax-exempt status but having been freed from the responsibility of caring for their poor in their flock they have continued to acquire wealth and properties and support their extravagant lifestyles like cardinals breaking away from the Holy Roman Empire. Jesus said that “It is easier for a rich man to enter the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” but you will not hear that message in the church today. You will hear that greed is good as long as Jesus gets his 10%.
The United States government’s assumption of all the liabilities of the Church while refusing to tax this estate is much akin to the assumption of the responsibilities of European and Asian monarchs in these kingdoms while allowing them to retain their wealth and property. The gospel of wealth and prosperity has utterly polluted our churches just as our tolerance for monarchy and dictatorship has polluted our government. To prevent the emergence of a permanent aristocracy in the United States the wealthy citizens of the United States were once taxed at a very high rate as much as 70%. To avoid paying these taxes the wealthy would spend their money on paying their employees high wages, improving and maintaining their businesses and funding the arts and other charities to keep the government from taking most of their profits. Robber Barons like Carnegie and Rockeffeler spent the first half of their lives building their fortunes and the rest of it giving it away so that the government could not take it from their children in inheritance taxes designed to protect against the emergence of a permanent aristocracy.
In 1981 Ronald Reagan cut these taxes on the wealthy to stimulate economic growth. The theory was that if the government cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans they would use the money to create more jobs and the money would “trickle down” to the middle class and back into the economy. What actually happened was that once these tax rates on the wealthy were cut from 70% to 28%, the United States was forced to borrow almost 10% of its annual budget to cover its expenses and increased military spending.
The wealthiest taxpayers did not invest in job creation but instead purchased tax exempt United States Treasury Bills allowing them to lend the money they should have paid in taxes back to the US government and collect tax free interest payments from the American taxpayers. This created a permanent aristocracy who could now collect interest from the American public while contributing almost nothing. They also borrowed money against the value of these Treasury bonds and bought back shares of their own companies which pushed their own stock prices up and increased their own paper wealth which could not be taxed unless they sold these securities. The national debt grew from $985 billion in 1981 to $2.9 trillion in 1989. Since 1981 the national debt of the United States has grown from less than $1 trillion dollars to $40 trillion dollars. The United States taxpayers have paid $20 trillion in tax free interest to bond holders since then. That is 60 trillion in total spending that the United States has borrowed and spent since 1981. Remember that 60 trillion number. It is going to come up again.
In that time total dollar value (market cap) of all companies in the S&P 500 the largest 500 companies has grown from 1.1 trillion in 1981 to approximately $61.1 trillion as of late 2025 for a gain of, you guessed it, $60 trillion dollars. Since 1981, the wealth of the top 1% in the United States has grown dramatically, capturing a significantly larger portion of the nation's total net worth. As of the third quarter of 2025, the top 1% collectively held a record $55 trillion of the $60.1 trillion dollars in the S&P 500. Since 1989 their wealth has increased from approximately $4.7 trillion to $55 trillion—a growth of over 1,000%. Forensic accounting research indicates that between 1981 and 2021, an estimated $50 trillion in wealth was effectively transferred from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1% due to shifting tax policies and the resulting growth of the stock market. So when you hear people bragging about their $401k’s keep in mind they are tooting their horn about their share of 0.89% of the index while the other 99% is held by the 1%.
Now they are squeezing us all again. Between 2022 and 2025 the United States saw the sharpest increase in interest rates in history as interest costs on the National Debt doubled from $476 billion in 2022 to an estimated $970 billion in 2025. The US will spend more than $1 trillion dollars in interest payments in 2026. 1 out of 5 dollars that Americans now pay in federal income taxes goes to pay interest to these bondholders. Of course they have enough money to buy the media, to manipulate public opinion, depress voter turnout and to buy politicians, judges and even elections in order to prevent this from changing.
People may argue that I’m simplifying things but what I am trying to say is actually pretty simple. There is nothing new under the sun. Just follow the money. The growth of the S&P 500 since 1981 is almost dollar for dollar what the United States has borrowed, spent and paid in interest since then. People may argue that the government wastes money but that money doesn’t disappear. It just changes hands. Tax cuts do create economic growth. They increase the amount that the government deficit spends creating debt thereby transferring wealth of the republic from the taxpayers to the bondholders. Anyone who tells you different is pissing on your leg and telling you it’s raining. Remember when you catch a thief stealing they also act like you are dumb making a mistake too.
I recently had a chance to watch Ken Burn’s “The American Revolution.” It was a brilliant portrayal of the most important time in American history up until now. America was forged by the most intelligent and enterprising men of their time in opposition to the tyrannical rule of the most cunning and ruthless empire in the world. It was an existential battle between those who believed that all men were created equal and those who believed that God had ordained that a king should rule them. When General Washington took the city of New York 4 out of every 5 families were Loyalists who supported King George.
During the American Revolution only 1 out of 3 people supported independence. 1 out of 3 people supported King George and 1 out of 3 could care less. Today 1 out 3 people in the United States vote Republican, 1 out of 3 vote Democrat and 1 out of 3 people do not vote. In our 2 party system the two sides are split so evenly that the only place to get votes is with the people who don’t care, the so-called Independents. So both parties chase the votes of the 1 out of 3 people who don’t care and that is who is deciding our elections. That is who is running the United States right now. The 1 out of 3 people who absolutely do not give a fuck and it shows.
The United States is listed as a flawed democracy under which 39% of the world’s population lives. For all the political outrage we see in the media the US has unusually low levels of participation in elections. In a flawed democracy elections are free and fair, civil liberties are respected but these nations struggle with:
1. Low levels of participation in politics.
2. Maintaining a functional government.
3. Politicians subvert the will of the majority due to foreign influence.
I think this is a pretty fair assessment of democracy in the US. I realize that we are jumping around a lot here and now I have gone on quite a tangent here but if you endure with me for a short while longer you will see that there is a point to all this if you are an American.
Despite everything that has happened to me I still believe that the United States of America is the last and greatest hope for humanity. Abraham Lincoln found himself in this same struggle as he fought to rid the Republic of the United States of the last vestiges of the Divine Right of one man to have dominion over another. After the terrible victory at Gettysburg Lincoln delivered a speech that will forever enshrine the highest ideals of this Republic and inspire us all to reach the sacred ideal for which it stands.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
Never was there a more powerful speech delivered when the fate of the republic was still in doubt. Unfortunately, what we once believed was the most powerful force for good on planet Earth is no longer “a government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
The Author smoking a joint on Stonewall Jackson’s gravestone. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Today the United States Government’s primary function often appears to be to suborn and thwart the will of the majority of the citizens of Planet Earth, suborning democracy in favor of monarchies, borrowing money for wars while neglecting the citizens at home. The “thousand points of light” flicker anemically like some opiate induced hallucination in the misty valley below and there is no “shining beacon on the hill”. To the rest of the world we are savages dancing around the smoking embers of a once great bonfire beating our chests and shouting our own praises while the fire dies out and the darkness closes in around us. Our leaders, the people we have entrusted with keeping this eternal flame burning appear to be incapable of even gathering firewood and this is no accident.
What great men do common men follow? The Achilles heel of a republic is that the leaders reflect the public consciousness. This works well if the republic promotes the well-being of the majority of citizens by providing the essential components of a healthy, educated, economically stable and independent electorate. When the electorate is the constant target of sophisticated and uninterrupted psychological manipulation by factions that transform conflicting ideas into divided tribes unwilling to compromise, the machine of the republic breaks down. Power alternates between the party in power and the party out of power, each side refusing to cooperate on any meaningful legislation out of fear of giving the other side a victory. Each side does as little as possible while in power and lays the blame on the other thereby avoiding accountability to their own constituents. This has not gone unnoticed by the populace, half of whom have checked out of the electoral process entirely refusing to participate in the charade.
So what does that have to do with you?
The United States has 350 million people, about 4% of the world’s population. About half of all Americans vote so only 2% of the world’s population votes to choose the next President of the United States. The presidential election is always very close, again splitting the electorate in half. The domestic power of the President of the United States is limited by congress but as the Commander in Chief the president has control over the most powerful war machine ever known to man and almost unlimited discretion to overthrow regimes through both military and covert action. For all of our progress mankind has not evolved so much from the days in the cave. If you look around, the guy with the big stick is still in charge. The voters of the United States, just 1.5% of the world’s population, decide who has the biggest stick in the world but 1 out of 2 Americans will tell you they don’t vote because “Their vote doesn’t count.” In the movie “The Usual Suspects” Verbal Kint AKA Kaiser Soze tells Detective Kujan
“The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people he doesn’t exist.” The greatest trick anyone ever played was convincing the American public that their vote doesn’t count so that more than half of them don’t vote at all. Which brings me to the point of this story which is you. If you are an American you are part of the 2% of the world’s population whose voice actually counts for something but I hear people tell me all the time that they don’t vote because it doesn’t matter. It matters to everyone on Planet Earth. Unfortunately we haven’t evolved as a species much since our days in the cave and the guy with the “big stick” which is us is still in charge. America may have paused, staggered and even gone backwards along the way but its path has been clear since Benjamin Franklin uttered the words. “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, hang separately.”
The United States formed as a republic but it has behaved like an empire since the beginning. Just ask the Native Americans. Alexander said that empires grow or they shrink and history has taught us that where one empire ends another begins. The Sumerians, Spartans and the Persians all built walls that fell eventually. The Chinese built the Great Wall to stop the Mongols but the Mongols eventually overran them. The Romans built Hadrian’s wall to keep out the Northern British tribes but within a few hundred years Britain had emerged as the greatest empire in the world. The Russians built the Berlin Wall but it was America who emerged as the greatest empire in history. So when I hear people talk about building a wall on America’s southern border I worry about America’s future. Do we really want Mexico to become the next great empire?
So what can we do? What is the next step for us as citizens of the last and greatest hope of humanity, the Republic of the United States of America if we want to avoid becoming another failed empire. The first step is becoming a solvent nation not dependent on bondholders to decide policy. This is a problem that no one has been able to solve and so I asked Chat GPT to come up with a solution. I asked “How can the United States balance the budget, provide universal single-payer healthcare and eliminate net national debt within 30 years and this is what it created.