Stumbled out of the cafe, the late afternoon sun a raw assault even through the dark lenses welded to my face. Headspace felt like a frantic game show buzzer, those mushrooms hitting in weird, unpredictable pulses – one minute, shimmering cosmic truth; the next, just… the tram.
Yeah, the tram. Caught the clanking beast towards Leidsaplein, groaning like it was ready to give up the ghost. Slumped into a seat, tried to dial down the weird, project ‘normal’. Hard to pull off when your internal feedback loop is screaming about the sheer absurdity of it all and the dude opposite has ‘plainclothes spook’ written all over his vacant stare. Five PM-ish. The city humming low, that drained, end-of-shift vibe. For me? The strange was just getting started.
Leidsaplein. A vortex of tourists, bikes, and that sticky-sweet smell of weed cut with my anxiety. Needed grounding. Something solid. Three cans of Amstel from a corner joint – cold, metallic anchors. Drifted into Vondelpark, the green lung offering temporary asylum from concrete and land trains.
Found a bench, sunk onto it like a sack of damp cement. Pop, hiss. The first gulp was pure, unadulterated now. Finished the first can, then the second, and then sat watching the parade of humanity – joggers, lovers, dog-walkers, people who looked like they knew exactly where they were going, which felt like a cruel joke. And the thoughts… oh, the thoughts. They weren’t just random; they were connected, but in that terrifying, hallucinatory way where everything points to the same central, nauseating truth, which is frustratingly just out of reach. The news reel started up in my head, the stories I should consider reporting.
Trump’s Deportation Drive & The Erosion of Due Process
Trump. Always circling back to Trump. Ranting about mass deportations. No trials? Just grab and dump? Like expired groceries? He actually said trials were “impractical.” Impractical! The man talks about constitutional rights like they’re inconvenient road closures. Even the Supreme Court, bless their black robes, slapped a temporary hold on shipping some poor souls off to El Salvador without so much as a heads-up.
But then you get Alito, that cold-eyed statue, dissenting. Twisting facts like malicious origami. Misrepresenting case details? Standard operating procedure. Lie, twist, deny. Due Process? Just a speed bump on their highway to authoritarian hell. And digging up that ancient, ugly Alien Enemies Act from 1798? This isn’t about impracticality; it’s a purge, plain and simple. The machinery is already grinding.
Tesla’s Phantom Plunge: Market Chaos Signals?
Then a flash: Tesla. Stock tanking 71%? Seventy-one percent? The number just hung there, a glitch in the matrix. No source, no timeline popped into my head. Didn’t need one. It felt true, didn’t it? Felt like the whole glittering tech-bro facade was catching fire. Musk’s electric chariot, nose-diving into the market’s black heart. Seventy-one percent. A number that screams panic, collapse, chaos. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t, but the vibe was undeniable.
Bureaucratic Battles: VOA vs. Trump & Rubio’s State Dept Shuffle
And that Voice of America snippet. Some federal judge ordering staff back, reversing Trump’s crony installations. Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, right? More bureaucratic churn. A tiny counter-current in the tsunami of crazy. Does it even matter who reads the state-sanctioned news when the whole damn system feels compromised? Then Rubio, Marco “Smooth Operator” Rubio, apparently wants to “reorganize” the State Department. Translation? More layers of obfuscation? New back channels for dark money? Carving out fiefdoms for loyalists before the next power shift? The gears of state, grinding on, producing nothing but friction and smoke.
Vance, The Pope, and The Theater of Political Absurdity
But the real kicker, the psychic jolt that made the ducks look menacing, was Vance. JD. At the Vatican, meeting the Pope. Forget simple morbid speculation; this felt like an envoy. Vance, the articulate attack dog, the bridge between the rust belt howl and the DC swamp, dispatched straight into the heart of Old World power. A bizarre diplomatic mission from the kingdom of chaos, carrying the Trump banner into that sacred space – fundamentally destabilizing, like watching a known glitch suddenly presented as a core system feature.
The chemicals weren’t creating the madness, just cranking up the contrast, showing Vance as the advance scout for whatever warped territory they planned to conquer next. And seeing him there, shaking that papal hand… that felt truly unnerving, making the park air feel thick and suffocating. It wasn’t just weirdly political; it felt like watching a dark prophecy unfold in real-time. Like his presence alone was enough to curdle the holy water, casting a shadow so long it reached all the way to the inevitable fade-out that comes for everyone, even pontiffs.
This wasn’t just morbid fantasy; it felt like foreshadowing. Vance as the goddamn harbinger, his handshake a symbolic timestamp before the eventual end. A cold dread settled in the gut, deeper than cheap lager, fueled by the feeling that the world’s script was being written by something malevolent, using guys like Vance as its poisoned pen. The encounter shifted from diplomatic curiosity to watching a clock tick down, sped up by proximity to raw political ambition.
The Alien Enemies Act: Trump’s Tool and The Specter of Fraud
Next up. Trump pushing warp-speed deportations via that dusty 1798 “Alien Enemies Act,” while advocacy groups are screaming bloody murder about fraud. The predators are circling. “Verify credentials!” “Avoid false documents!” Yeah, good luck verifying anything when the government itself feels like a vast, predatory grift built on cruelty and lies. Kick ’em out fast, no due process. The Fear. It’s thick in the air, tastes like cheap beer and stale mushrooms. That’s the real currency now.
Finished the third Amstel. Crushed the cans, the metal screaming in protest. Sat watching the ducks carve serene lines across the pond, blissfully unaware. Better to be a duck? Maybe. No worries about Alito’s glare, phantom stock crashes, or that harbinger Vance. The mushroom waves were flattening out, leaving the familiar dull throb of baseline reality. But the images stuck: Alito’s dead eyes, the ghostly 71% plunge, Vance glad-handing a Pope who refused to die on schedule.
Yeah. Just another Tuesday. Or was it Wednesday? Time felt slippery. The madness was the only constant. Hauled myself up. Tossed the cans. Needed somewhere less… exposed. Somewhere the internal howling felt less likely to leak out. The park was a decent refuge, but the thoughts it triggered were radioactive. Just keep moving. Ride the weird wave. Don’t look back. Don’t think about the Pope, 71%, or the Alien Enemies Act. Just… think like a duck floating on them waves.
Quack!
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