THE DECK | The Jet Stream

Winning The State

Oct 25, 2025

🌳 The Season of Compression

Boise wakes in red.
Every branch on the maple outside my window glows like a filament. The veins of the leaves look wired, as if someone built a nervous system into autumn itself. You can almost hear it hum—a slow electrical sigh moving through the neighborhood before the feed turns on and drowns it out.

Fall used to mean harvest. Now it means compression.

Outside my shop is a maple tree protrayed in this ai enhanced image Every branch on the maple outside my window glows like a filament. The veins of the leaves look wired, as if someone built a nervous system into autumn itself. You can almost hear it hum—a slow electrical sigh moving through the neighborhood before the feed turns on and drowns it out. Fall used to mean harvest. Now it means compression. — Autumn maple outside my shop glowing red like circuitry, symbolizing civic compression and seasonal reset. Oct 24, 2025

🌊 The Wave We Don’t Talk About

Nobody wants to say it out loud: the pandemic wasn’t just a health crisis. It was a tsunami.
First came the flood — fear, loss, shutdowns — and then the pullback, when the water went out and left everything exposed.

That’s when Woke rose like a rescue mission. It tried to name pain, to build fairness out of shock. But it crashed into MAGA with equal and opposite force, and the collision turned both into caricatures. What began as empathy became ideology; what began as backlash became religion.

Now we’re living in the undertow. Corporations, agencies, universities — all quietly scrubbing the evidence, deleting every policy and training that might trigger another wave. In the process they’re erasing the good along with the bad.

The flood receded, but it took our vocabulary with it.

Spear Check at the Apple: A spear fallen before a glowing apple in the roots of a dark tree; knowledge and consequence intertwined. Hybrids: Two figures straddling a fence between “Pro Life” and “Jesus Saves” signs, their roots entangled — commentary on divided faith and identity. Mamma Mia’s Lump: An elderly woman counts money labeled for 2024 donations; hypocrisy and denial made domestic. — Three images rights lost in America by Radical Right Trump Crime Family TCF

We don’t even have the words anymore to talk about inclusion without apology. Every meeting starts with people scanning for offense instead of truth. That’s how compression works culturally: one overreaction cancels another until only silence feels safe.

The Truth Engine calls this Cultural Compression — the phase where awareness is treated as contagion, and language itself becomes radioactive.

But here’s the counter-signal: you can’t delete learning. You can only bury it temporarily under fear. The roots are still there, waiting for the next rain.

Satirical illustration of a suited politician blocking traffic with a plugged-in Tesla; text reads “It may be golf money to Trump, but it’s healthcare to us.” — Golf Money

Alligator Pope Says What? It took our vocabulary with it.

Images of Alligator Pope artist sketches in AI on pastel brown ink campaign is Alligator Pope say what?1. Pope on a lounge chair with Grok drone over golf 2. Town over the Gulf 3. 420 Lowrider Malibu full of weed plants 4. Pope driving the same Malibu with his head and hat out the window — Come say hi @Alligatorpope X twitter what ever

⚙️ Off Deck | Idiocracy as Policy

Steve Bannon’s new trick is the oldest in politics: projection as prophecy.
He blurts “Trump 2028,” watches who repeats it, and calls that loyalty data.
Every retweet is a free poll. Every denial, free advertising.

Meanwhile, the Speaker, “Grinder Mike,” praises Trump for not being a king. After all, if he were, the parks and monuments where people protest would be closed. That’s how low the bar has dropped: gratitude for tyranny being withheld.

Idiocracy isn’t a movie. It’s a monetization model.

💸 Compression Math

Twenty-four days without a functioning House = ≈ $700 million in overhead.
For billionaires, that’s tee-time money.
For everyone else, that’s hospitals, housing, and teachers.

Forget ’28. Win the State.
Because survival isn’t a luxury item.

Minimalist red-gradient line graph showing cost rising over 24 days of congressional paralysis. — cost rising over 24 days of congressional paralysis.Truth Engine 2550 ™

🧠 Truth Engine Read

🔴 Compression — noise disguised as process.
🟠 Projection — prediction sold as prophecy.
🟢 Reset — local action restoring bandwidth.

When billionaires protest, markets rally.
When citizens protest, feeds throttle.
That’s not irony — it’s calibration.

🗳️ The Real Race

More than 50 000 local contests close ballots in two weeks.
Mayors. Judges. Clerks. School boards.
They decide whether democracy still funds the library, not the lobby.

So: