George W. Bush — my old boss — once stood before a classroom in South Carolina and asked, with characteristic confidence, “Is our children learning?”

The line became a punchline.

It’s been twenty years since I stopped working for him, and it still follows him everywhere. What got lost in the laughter is that the question itself is structurally correct. Not grammatically — obviously not grammatically — but analytically. The right question about any policy isn’t what did we do? It’s is it working? Are we getting the outcome we were told we’d get? Is the stated theory of the case producing the stated results?

So let me apply that question to the present situation.

The President of the United States stood at the Capitol on January 20, 2025 and told America — with characteristic confidence — that energy prices were going to come down. That we were going to drill, baby, drill.

That his team had a plan.

WTI crude oil on inauguration day: $76 per barrel.

WTI crude oil today: somewhere north of $95, depending on when you’re reading this. The peak, on March 9, was $119.48.

Thus, as a policy wonk, I have to ask: Is our children learning?

We built a tool. We’re calling it the Trump Fuckupometer™, which is not a serious name for an unserious situation. The situation is serious. The name is the appropriate response to watching an administration claim — in the same week that oil hit $100 and 13 Americans came home in body bags — that the war is “going great” and will be “over soon.”

The Fuckupometer lives at fuckupometer.thelongmemo.com. It is free. It updates every five minutes. It does not take a position on whether Operation Epic Fury was justified, necessary, or strategically wise.

It does arithmetic.

Here is what the arithmetic says.

The Strait of Hormuz handles roughly 20% of global oil flow. Since February 28, when Operation Epic Fury began, and Iran’s IRGC announced it would set on fire any ship that tried to pass, tanker transits through the Strait have collapsed by 92–95%, depending on the tracking service you use. S&P Global measured a 95% drop in the week of March 1. Kpler’s vessel intelligence platform put it at 92% as of last week. The Windward maritime AI platform reported a stretch of days in which the only vessel crossing was a single Iranian-flagged ship.

The IEA released 400 million barrels from emergency reserves — the largest such release in history. Oil held above $100 regardless.

The Trump administration granted a sanctions waiver on stranded Russian seaborne crude to ease supply. Oil held above $100 regardless.

This is what structural supply shock looks like. You cannot paper over the world’s most important energy chokepoint with reserve releases and waiver paperwork. The physics don’t care about the press release.

The Fuckupometer tracks five things simultaneously.

It tracks WTI crude and Brent crude — live, refreshed every five minutes, indexed against the January 20, 2025 baseline. It tracks the War Economy Dashboard: natural gas, gasoline, wheat, corn, and fertilizer. It tracks the Butcher’s Bill — the confirmed US and allied casualties, the Iranian dead (disputed between 1,348 and 32,000 depending on who you ask), the Lebanese civilians, the schoolgirls in Minab.

It tracks what this is costing the average American — not abstractly, but arithmetically. At the pump. On the grocery bill. On the tax bill for a war that the Pentagon told Congress cost $11.3 billion in its first six days alone, at a sustained rate of roughly $220 million per day thereafter.

And it tracks what that money would have purchased, had different decisions been made. How many people are insured? How many teachers were hired? How many Pell Grants have been written? How many families are fed?

We are not telling you what to think about those numbers. That is genuinely not our job. Our job is to put them in front of you clearly enough that you can think about them yourself.

That is the entire point of the exercise.

There is a running section of the dashboard we call “Trump Said vs. Reality.” It is not a partisan document. It is a log. The President said, on January 20, 2025, that energy prices would come down. He said, on March 1, that the operation would take “four to five weeks.” He said, on March 9, that “it will be over soon.” He said, on March 11, “We won.” He said, on March 13, that Iran will “take years to rebuild.”

On the same day he said that, Iran’s new Supreme Leader — Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the man killed in the strikes that opened the war — issued his first public statement. He vowed to maintain the Hormuz blockade. He threatened US bases throughout the region. He did not look like a man whose country was taking years to rebuild. He looked like a man who had just been handed the argument for everything he was about to do next.

Oil was above $100 that day.

I want to be precise about what the Fuckupometer is and is not.

It is not an argument against the war being fought. Unfortunately, the President never brought the case before the American People. I think our acts are foolish and have said so. Reasonable people disagree about that, and that disagreement involves classified information I don’t have, strategic calculations I can’t fully assess, and moral weights I can’t assign for you.

It is not a progressive document. The alternative-spending comparisons — what $12.8 billion would have bought in healthcare, schools, infrastructure, food assistance — are not a political argument. They are an opportunity cost. Every dollar spent on anything is a dollar not spent on something else.

We (the American people) were told we don’t have money for healthcare subsidies. We don’t have money for tax cuts for everyday Americans. We don’t have the money to hire teachers or reform education. We don’t have money for so many things.

This has always been true. The only question is whether the trade-off is visible.

This website attempts to make it visible. You will pay for this conflict in how your community and daily life function, and in how much money is available to you over the next several years.

There are tradeoffs being made every day, whether you’re aware of them or not.

For most of American history, it hasn’t been. Defense spending is complicated and slow, and happens in appropriations committees that most Americans cannot name. Energy price increases are abstract until you fill up your tank. The gap between the stated promise (”drill baby drill, prices are coming down”) and the actual outcome ($95/barrel and climbing) is legible only if someone does the work of putting it in front of you.

That is what we built.

George W. Bush asked, “Is our children learning?” and America laughed.

The funnier question — the one that turns out to matter — is what happens when the answer is no, and nobody changed the lesson plan.

Thirteen Americans are dead. Oil is above $100 per barrel. The Strait of Hormuz is 92% closed to commercial shipping. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates the war will cost between $40 and $95 billion in direct expenditures, and up to $210 billion in total economic impact.

Every one of those numbers is on the dashboard.

It updates every five minutes.
(Some of the things I update daily to ensure their accuracy.)

The question of whether we’re getting what we were told we’d get — that one’s yours.

Open the Fuckupometer →

If you’re watching the institutions and asking what you can do about the risk to your family — not the geopolitical risk, the personal financial and jurisdictional risk — that’s what Borderless Living is for. The people who read it aren’t pessimists. They’re doing the same arithmetic.

The Long Memo is a reader-supported, independent analysis. If this is useful to you, forward it to someone who needs to see the numbers.

Subscribe now

In the early stages of collapse, the warning signs come like alarms: loud, unmistakable, emotionally triggering. You feel compelled to respond. To signal. To warn others.

But we’re not in that phase anymore.

We’re in the part where everything bleeds together. Where Trump’s criminal and idiotic antics, Supreme Court nullification, dollar decoupling, tariff tumult, and cabinet secretariat stupidity all feel like background noise.

We are experiencing the flattening of outrage.

This isn’t a failure of attention. It’s a feature of the system now. And it’s not just cultural. It’s strategic.

Here’s how it’s been for me.

Typically, something happens - like Trump decides he will have the Park’s Department collect Student Loan Payments (which, hey, I finally got a copy of my Promissory Note, huzzah!). Then, I go, “Well, that’s ridiculous, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.”

Now, because I’m me, it takes me about 90 minutes to sketch out a banger of a rant complete with law, policy, and witty rantisms that results in a piece that gets read by half a million stackers, winds up being picked up by Reddit and Business Insider and a bunch of other publications, pilloried, piled on, etc.

And that’s fine. I’ve done it 10 times now. It’s almost routine for me. Trump does something cuckoo bananas. I go, “Well, that’s not how this works,” and we’re off to the races.

The result: another banger of an article that you’re all entertained with. We all end up smarter, and I end up less bananas.

Win-win.

Well, for the past two weeks, I’ve just been flatlined.

Oh, Trump wants to have the biggest financier of terrorism give him a plane, huh? Sure, why the fuck not. That makes sense. Trojan Airplane. That never went sideways.

Next.

Oh, Trump’s pissed that Wallmart is raising prices? That makes sense, maybe he should tariff the “country” of Wallmart like he did Mattel.

Next.

And so on.

But then, enter that twerp jackass Jake Tapper.

Tapper decides, I am the Oracle of CNN. I alone shall reveal why we lost the election. It was all Joe Biden you see.

And then, we find out, the poor man is dying of cancer. So, let’s all heap more shit on that guy. The former President. You know, the guy who gave his entire life to public service. Who put aside his own ego, to try and save the country. Who has suffered more personal loss than like any other public servant in history, yet continued to give to his country?

Let’s shit all over that guy.

And again, no outrage about that. I mean there should be the “Have you no decency? HAVE YOU NO SHAME?” from the likes of TNR or The Atlantic.

Instead we get doodly ass nothing. Nada. Zilchareeno.

I was so disgusted by it, I felt compelled to say something in a Substack note. A good number of you agreed with me. I mean, I’m like, if someone like me, a guy who stood on the other side of the aisle from the President for most of the guy’s life, can support him at this moment, what the hell is wrong with the likes of Jake Tapper and the rest of you Democrats for crying out lout?

And that’s when I realized, shit. I’m not paying attention.

We’ve hit the noise saturation phase.

Unfortunately, this is all very predictable in regimes that are bordering on collapse, and we are entering the most precarious phase of them.

We have moved into what I’d call Phase IV: Strategic Saturation:

• Phase I: Shock events – pandemic, insurrection, sudden destabilization

• Phase II: Legal maneuvering – institutional capture, court reshaping, rule reinterpretation

• Phase III: Narrative normalization – the rewriting of what is allowed to matter

• Phase IV: Signal collapse – all inputs are noise, no inputs change behavior

The circus isn’t a distraction anymore. It’s the architecture.

Why This Is So Dangerous

In classic authoritarian regimes, power consolidates around one or two central institutions. In postmodern soft coups, power decentralizes into unreality. The goal isn’t persuasion. The goal is fatigue.

This is why your brain feels fogged. Why aren’t you writing as fast? Why you’re wondering, “What’s the point?”

This isn’t depression. It’s data overload without resolution.

And it’s working.

What Comes After Signal Collapse

Signal collapse doesn’t mean violence. It means emptiness. It means the collapse of consequence. A kind of ungoverned drift.

In the U.S., it looks like this:

• Courts that can’t enforce their own orders

• Agencies that ghost whistleblowers

• Cities where crime and corruption become indistinguishable

• Presidents who no longer speak in policy—just vibes

What follows isn’t fascism in the boots-and-flags sense. What follows is patrimonial drift—a society governed by legacy holders, loyalty networks, and procedural deadlock. You don’t get jackboots. You get jargon.

And no, it’s not exciting. It’s not cinematic. It’s slow, boring rot.

How to Recover Signal

This is what I’m watching for now:

• Cross-institutional breakdown: When the judiciary, finance, and infrastructure all start to degrade in the same jurisdiction

• Silent elite exits: When hedge funds move family offices offshore without press releases

• Disappearing nodes: Courthouses that stop scheduling trials. Agencies that stop answering FOIA. Banks that ghost their clients.

These are the non-events that define collapse. Not the big explosions—but the quiet surrenders. None of this is happening yet, so I’m not saying freak out and run for the hills. And none of this might happen at all.

But there are warning signs to pay attention to. For example:

1. The U.S.–Canada Border Incident

Recently, American border agents began blocking Canadian (and other U.S. allies, and even temporarily detaining U.S. citizens) citizens from entry in certain cases—based not on documentation, but on suspicions tied to political affiliations or past social media behavior.

• This isn’t policy. It’s ad hoc enforcement drift.

• But it reflects something bigger: bilateral trust eroding quietly. Borders are slowly being hardened.

• That’s the first crack in the post-9/11 continental “safe passage” doctrine.

Signal: Border friction isn't about immigration anymore—it's about trust collapse between formerly integrated liberal democracies. It’s ultimately going to be about controlling the movement of people.

2. Worcester, MA: The ICE Standoff That Wasn’t

In Worcester, local police stood by as federal ICE agents used force against a community member. Not a criminal fugitive—just a foreign national caught in the jurisdictional gray zone.

And no one stopped them. No mayoral speech. No state intervention. No national coverage.

Signal: Local law enforcement is being quietly deputized by federal agencies without legislative mandate. Anti-commandeering doctrine is eroding. Cities are losing autonomy—not through law, but through passive compliance.

This is how the new enforcement regime spreads—not through executive orders, but acquiescence.

3. The FCC vs. Paramount: When the State Quietly Claimed a Veto on the Media

• The FCC, under pressure from Republican state attorneys general, is threatening to revoke approval for the merger and license renewals of CBS-owned stations, citing “ethics” and “responsibility” concerns tied to past political reporting.

• Paramount settled quietly—divesting key assets, restructuring station ownership, and avoiding a full legal fight that might have set precedent.

• KCBS has come under FCC investigation for allegedly reporting about an ICE raid that allegedly put ICE agents “at risk.” The claims are without merit, but their licensure is now at risk.

• Brendan Carr’s short tenure at the FCC has been nothing short of a complete shitshow of abuse and malfeasance, bullying television, radio, and media companies to bend to Trump’s will “or else.”

• CNN? Tapper’s out here writing books instead of noticing the playbook.

The message was clear: the federal government now reserves the right to revoke your ability to broadcast if it doesn’t like how you’ve covered a presidential candidate.

And the reaction?

Silence.

These are lawsuits and revocations that CBS would undoubtedly win in court. Undoubtedly. They are claims without merit. The “KCBS” claim is particularly egregious since the FCC is claiming they outed an “ICE” raid and placed officers at risk and violated the law. Which is a complete farce. They did no such thing, reported on the story hours after the raid had taken place, and reporting on the raid was most certainly within the scope of being “newsworthy” and in the public’s interest under their licensing. Again, a claim completely without merit and a suit that KCBS would undoubtedly win at trial if they forced the FCC’s hand.

Instead, nothing. My guess is you’ve never heard about this. No mass media defense. No congressional outrage. No public mobilization.

These stories are minor in scale, major in meaning. They tell you where the fault lines are forming:

• Border trust (international sovereignty drift)

• Jurisdictional integrity (domestic sovereignty drift)

• Media integrity (narrative sovereignty drift)

And almost no one is talking about them. Why?

Because the noise has done its job. We’ve become numb to change unless it’s explosive. But power doesn’t always explode. Sometimes it just reroutes.

And if you miss that moment, you miss the future being built.

If Nothing Surprises You, You’ve Already Lost

The scariest part of this moment isn’t the next Trump EO, or Gaza escalation, or SCOTUS ruling.
It’s that none of it surprises you. None of it feels urgent.

And when nothing feels urgent—it means the coup already happened.

So we have to stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Stay awake.

And above all else...
don’t buy Jake Tapper’s fucking book.

Seriously. Fuck that guy.
Joe Biden is dying of cancer—and Tapper wants to pin the entire Democratic trainwreck on him while the entire media industry is at risk of being burnt to the fucking ground by a demented lunatic currently occupying the White House?

What the fuck already. Truly.

The GOP being assholes is one thing.
Jake Tapper is operating on some kind of Zen Master tier of betrayal.
A true high priest of hollow institutions.

I may have lost my mojo for a while, but I think I got it back.

Like what you just read?

Briefings aren’t ordinarily available to all subscribers, but I promised I’d bring “warnings” to all readers. Well, this is one of those moments.

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Good morning, and welcome to this week’s edition of The Brief.

Unlike my deep-dive essays, this is your start-of-week situational awareness. What’s happening, what’s brewing, and what could shove the entire American experiment off a cliff.

This week’s signal is clear: we’re not in the “slide toward authoritarianism” anymore—we’re on the edge of capture. One more strategic rupture, and it’s no longer creeping. It’s done.

Let’s walk through the pressure points.

Read more

Good morning, and welcome to this week’s edition of The Brief.

Unlike my deep-dive pieces, this is a high-level survey of everything unfolding—what’s happened (an ICYMI) and what’s coming (the gird-your-loins section).

These will drop every Monday morning and cover:

• U.S. and global politics

• Key economic and market trends

• Legislation and congressional maneuvering

• Critical reports and data on the horizon

• And anything else that might rattle the system

Welcome to the land of confusion. Let’s plow through last week.

Read more

We’ve got a heavy drop schedule this week, so I’ve spaced out the recommendations and brief to avoid flooding your feed. Hence, today’s Brief lands in the afternoon.

This week, the world feels increasingly unstable—tariffs ignite global tensions, a record-breaking Senate protest captures national attention, and Europe's preparations hint at deeper geopolitical fears. Meanwhile, Tesla faces a crisis fueled by controversy, the DOJ escalates its war on digital privacy, and stark revelations about wealth inequality underscore America's widening divisions. It's a world shaped by uncertainty, driven by influential personalities and shifting alliances.

Let's dive into the details.

Read more

Let me apologize for skipping last week. Honestly, between my “day job,” and the nonstop circus that is American Politics, I spaced and forgot it.

This week, the mask slips. Speaker Mike Johnson openly questions the authority of courts. Powell says Trump can’t fire him — but the legal firewall protecting him may be about to fall. The Senate Intelligence Committee turns into a live rehearsal for an institutional purge. Meanwhile, the markets aren’t waiting: capital is moving, quietly but deliberately, away from U.S. stability.

The system isn’t breaking down.

It’s being taken apart.

The brief starts now…

Read more

This past week, the economy tanked, tariffs spiraled into chaos, and Trump’s own supporters got steamrolled by his policies—again.

• Markets Crashed: The Dow plunged nearly 1,500 points in two days, erasing $4 trillion in market value. Trump’s response? “Rebuilding takes pain.”

• Trade War Escalates: Trump doubled tariffs on Canada, then reversed course after Ontario called his bluff. Meanwhile, Kentucky bourbon is getting wrecked by retaliatory tariffs.

• Mass Layoffs Begin: Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—led by Elon Musk—axed thousands of federal jobs, mostly in red states. Turns out, gutting the government means gutting their jobs, too.

• Confirmed Cabinet Picks: WWE’s Linda McMahon takes over Education (with zero experience), and Lori Chavez-DeRemer moves into Labor (to deregulate it).

• Legal Showdowns: Courts blocked Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship, and unions are fighting back against Musk’s mass firings.

And in the “Hoisted on Their Own Red Petard” department: MAGA voters are shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, to discover that burning down the system…roasts them alive. Payback is indeed a bitch.

Let’s get into it…

Read more

Good morning, and welcome to this week’s edition of The Brief.

As always, this will be a high-level survey of what’s happening, what’s coming, and what you should pay attention to. If you’re still holding onto the delusion that normalcy is just around the corner, bless your heart.

Let’s get into it.

🏨 U.S. Political Trends

Trump’s University Purge: Defund…

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Good morning, and welcome to the first edition of The Brief.

Unlike my deep-dive pieces, this will be a high-level survey of everything unfolding—what’s happened (an ICYMI) and what’s coming (the gird your loins section).

I’ll be dropping these midweek, covering:

• U.S. & global politics

• The economy & key market shifts

• Congressional actions & legislation worth watching

• Major reports & indicators on the horizon

• Anything else that could shake things up

With that, let’s dive in.

Read more