”Dateline: The Bunker. Sunday, 4 January 2026.”
The air in here is stale, recycling the same panicked oxygen I’ve been breathing since the news broke. My hands are shaking—not from the fear, though God knows that’s a constant hum in the background like a refrigerator on the fritz, but from the sheer, vibrating frequency of the ‘stupidity’ radiating off the screens.
I woke up to the sound of the world ending, or at least, the sound of the Monroe Doctrine being exhumed, slapped with a fresh coat of orange paint, and paraded around Mar-a-Lago like a prize hog.
They actually did it. The absolute madmen.
Midnight Meat-Grinders and the Green-Tinted End of Days
It’s 3:00 AM in the bunker, and the coffee tastes like battery acid. Outside, the world is likely sleeping the sleep of the medicated and the indifferent, but down here, the wires are burning. The news is a screaming, fleshy hydra of headlines: ”TRUMP INVADES VENEZUELA. MADURO BAGGED. WE RUN IT NOW.”
I stare at the footage. It’s grainy, chaotic—night vision green and the strobe-light flashes of explosions over Caracas. It looks like a video game played by a bored teenager on Adderall. But it’s not a game. It’s the raw, unfiltered, savage reality of American foreign policy in the year of our Lord 2026.
They kicked down the door of a sovereign nation in the middle of the night, snatched a head of state—tyrant or not, the man has a title—and dragged him onto a boat. The ‘USS Iwo Jima’. You can’t make this up. If I wrote this as fiction, my editor would shoot me for being too on-the-nose. “Too heavy on the symbolism, Rip,” he’d say. “Subtlety is dead,” I’d scream back. And I’d be right.
Subtlety didn’t just die; it was executed by a drone strike and buried in a shallow grave next to “International Law” and “Shame.”
High-Octane Nihilism: Smashing the Vending Machine for its Spare Change
The official line is “narco-terrorism.” They’re parading Maduro around in a tracksuit like a trophy buck on the hood of a Chevy. But then you watch the press conference. There he is, the architect of our doom, the Commander-in-Chief, flanked by his court of ghouls at Mar-a-Lago. The palm trees are swaying, the gold plating is gleaming, and he just says it. He says the quiet part out loud with a megaphone.
“We’re going to run it.”
Just like that. No pretense of “restoring democracy.” No song and dance about “liberating the people.” Just: ‘We are taking the keys. The oil companies are on standby.*
It’s a vibe check from hell. It’s the ultimate expression of late-stage imperial brain rot. We aren’t even pretending to be the good guys anymore. We’re just the biggest guys in the room with the most expensive toys. It’s feral. It’s a smash-and-grab robbery on a geopolitical scale, broadcast live in high definition.
I pour another cup of this sludge I call coffee and try to process the sheer audacity. They dismissed the Nobel Peace Prize winner—Machado—because she didn’t have “respect.” Instead, they’re cutting deals with the Vice President, a woman who was part of the very regime they just decapitated. Why? Because she’ll play ball. Because she’ll sign the leases.
It’s transactional nihilism. It’s the art of the deal written in blood and crude oil.
The Spectacle of the Damned: Turning War Crimes into Prime-Time Content
And the American public? I scroll through the feeds. It’s a mix of performative outrage and cheering emojis. The discourse is terminal. We are so desensitized to the spectacle of violence that an illegal invasion is just “content.” It’s just another season finale in the reality show that is the United States. “Did you see the raid? totally electric.”
This is the crack in the veneer I was talking about. The reportage—the “objective” news anchors with their perfectly coiffed hair—they’re trying to use words like “intervention” and “strategic operation.” They’re trying to sanitize the savagery. But down here in the bunker, with the hum of the servers and the smell of ozone, I can see it for what it is.
It’s a primal scream of power. It’s the Empire flexing its atrophy, proving it can still break things even if it’s forgotten how to fix them.
I feel a physical sickness in my gut, a distinct American nausea. It’s the realization that we are all complicit. Every time we fill up our gas tanks, every time we scroll past the headlines, every time we let the absurdity wash over us without screaming back, we are signing off on this. We are the shareholders in this doomed enterprise.
Feral Geometry: Squaring the Circle of Imperial Decay
The lights in the bunker flicker. The power grid is probably failing again, or maybe it’s just the universe blinking in disbelief.
Maduro is on a boat to New York. The oil execs are probably already measuring the drapes in Miraflores. And somewhere in a boardroom, a defense contractor is buying a third yacht.
This is the feral state of things. The rule of law is a suggestion. Sovereignty is a punchline. And the truth? The truth is hiding in a bunker, scribbling furious notes on the back of a napkin, waiting for the inevitable knock at the door.
Reader discretion advised? No. Reader panic required. Sanity was never guaranteed, but now it’s officially off the table.
This is Rip Thorne, signing off from the edge of the abyss. Good night, and good luck. You’re going to need it.
Need more? Here’s the roundup of 2025, the year the simulation cracked.
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