Afterword

Concluding the First Hundred Days of Ruin

As if scripted by a bitter cosmic jest, the perfect symbol arrived:

A $70 million Super Hornet, assigned to the once-proud USS Harry S. Truman, simply rolled off the deck and sank into the Atlantic.

No battle.
No enemy.
No purpose.

Only exhaustion, neglect, and rot.

The ship sailed on, adrift under tattered flags,
unaware or unwilling to notice its own terminal drift.

Thus ended the Republic:
not with a roar, but with a slow, stupid splash,
as a once-mighty war machine slipped beneath the waves, forgotten even by those who built it.

One hundred days into the second coming of this distinctly American calamity, the wreckage is no longer theoretical. It is real. It is quantified. It is, in many cases, televised.

Grocery prices climb with the enthusiasm of a con artist on commission. Tariffs strangle trade routes while claiming to liberate them. Public trust, already emaciated, now resembles a carnival mirror reflection of itself—distorted, hollow, and vaguely wet.

Allies have gone to voicemail. The Fed stares into the abyss and sees a mirror. Corporate America churns out optimism reports as their legal departments quietly update their risk disclosures. Meanwhile, pundits cheerfully compare this to “other disruptive periods in history,” which is a polite euphemism for national ulcer.

* * *

There is no plan—only posture. No compass—only vibes. The chaos is not a byproduct; it is the point. We are governed by a man who cannot finish a sentence and advised by those who cannot start one without consulting a focus group of lobbyists.

And still the question echoes in beltway ballrooms and cable news command centers: “How did this happen again?”

The answer, as ever, is a reflection—dark, cracked, and disappointingly familiar. The lesson, if there is one, is not to await deliverance from above, but to cease handing the matches to the man shouting “Fire cleanses all!”

One hundred days down. Two hundred more to go. If there's anything left to go back to.

Thus concludes the opening chapter of our long, unraveling.

Apologia

We did not wish to write this.

Truly, there are better uses for ink than chronicling collapse. One might draw maps or annotate recipes or sketch the faces of those we hope will still be here when the smoke clears. And yet, here we are—inking despair in serialized format, binding absurdity in chapters, whispering into the parchment before the next act begins.

If this read more like prophecy than reporting, that is only because the cycle has become a spiral, and the spiral a drain. We take no joy in the accuracy of our dread.

But history demands record-keepers. Even when the emperor is nude and the jesters are in charge of procurement.

We do not claim to be impartial. We claim only to be awake.

— The Editors

The Panican Ledger

 

100 Days of Ruin
Part VI: The Fall of Governance

Governments may fall to invaders.
They may rot from complacency.
They may be swept aside by the tides of revolution.

But rarely do they fall as America did — sabotaged from within by its own stewards, with an admixture of incompetence, corruption, willful ignorance, and cruelty so potent, it seemed less a political project than an act of ritualized national suicide.

The machinery of state once moved with sluggish dignity — bureaucratic, imperfect, but bound by rules, procedures, and at least a whiff of accountability.

Now, under the sacred banner of “efficiency,” it was disassembled with memes & chainsaws.

When Trump resumed power, the plan was already inked:
Project 2025 — a madman's blueprint for wrecking governance itself.

At its center sat DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency), not a reform agency, but a demolition crew, led by Russell Vought, Elon Musk & his merry band of incel acolytes -- and every MAGA halfwit with a grievance and a Twitter following.

They did not seek to govern.
They sought to rule over the ruins.

And they began by cutting the wires, shattering the levers, and salting the gears of state.

“They came not to fix the machine, but to break it, strip it for copper, and auction the gears to the highest crypto donor.”

Schedule F was revived, allowing the White House to fire career civil servants en masse and replace them with loyal influencers, reality TV contestants, and interns with headshots.

Regulatory agencies were gutted. Legal memos were crowdsourced. A Department of Energy memo went viral after being formatted as an X post.

The ordinary business of governance — disaster response, infrastructure, food inspection — became not dysfunctional, but mythological. You heard tales of it. You never saw it.

What incompetence left standing, corruption looted.

In their madness, they declared that knowledge itself was the enemy.

• Scientists were sacked for suggesting the climate was changing.

• Economists were exiled for whispering about deficits.

• Public health experts were gagged, banned from even uttering the word "pandemic."

Weather forecasts were rewritten to "emphasize optimism."
Economic reports banned words like "recession."
School textbooks were purged of historical realities that might provoke critical thought.

It was not simply stupidity.
It was a holy war against reality itself.

The symptoms of the great dismantling were no longer deniable:

• Hurricanes leveled towns, with no federal response beyond patriotic hashtags.

• Food safety collapsed, with contaminants flooding unregulated markets.

• National parks turned into garbage heaps and infernos.

• Courtrooms clogged with ideological lawsuits, with no one left to interpret or enforce the law.

The gears of governance, once noisy but enduring, froze and shattered.

Public trust cratered.
Public services evaporated.
And yet the banners still flew:

"Efficiency Achieved!"

"Freedom Restored!"

"America Unleashed!"

---

Afterword - The Splash Was Only the Beginning

 

The 100 Days of Ruin

An Illustrated Chronicle of Collapse

It is with exhausted hand and heavy heart that we present this chronicle of the Hundred Days since the Second Coronation of Donald John Trump, Mad King of Mar-a-Lago, Self-Anointed Emperor of the Absurd, and Chief Profiteer of a Once-Great Republic. By chronicle, we don't presume a straight timeline, for none would make sense in the whiplash inducing chaos that has unfolded since January 20, 2025.

What follows is not satire. We wish it were.
It is a semi-faithful record of folly, avarice, cowardice, and collapse.
May posterity forgive us for failing to arrest the madness sooner.

Chapters

• Publisher’s Foreword
• Chapter I: The Coronation
• Chapter II: The Tarantella of Tariffs
• Chapter III: Death from Above and Below
• Chapter IV: The Fall of Defense — Signalgate
• Chapter V: Diplomacy Undone
• Interlude: The Passing of the Pope
• Chapter VI: The Fall of Governance
• Afterword: The Splash Was Only the Beginning

“The republic was not toppled. It was sold for parts, broken for spite, and abandoned by fools.”

Proceed with Caution...

Chapter 1: The Coronation

Typeset for The Panican Ledger | Reproduction permitted for posterity, parody, or penance.

© 2025

 

 

Interlude: Musings on the Passing of the Pope

JD Vance visited. The Pope died. 

At least he was spared the ignominy & indignities to be further unleashed by an administration built on cruelty (especially to the poor and downtrodden, once championed by him).

In another age, in another country, the death of a pope would have called forth statesmen, sovereigns, and saints to stand beneath the sorrowful banners of the world and offer due respect.

In this age, under this Pretender, there came instead a blue-suited narcissist, late and loud, posing like a squire at a joust he had mistaken for a pageant.

The bells tolled; the crowds wept; the flags drooped under mourning crepe — and still the Pretender smiled for cameras that had not been raised for him.

"Grief is a language he does not speak. Reverence is a nation he does not visit."

He wandered the aisles of that ancient basilica as if lost in a discount warehouse. When at last he found the bier, he lingered not in prayer but in calculation — measuring camera angles, not legacy; rehearsing slogans, not requiems.

The world mourned a shepherd. America sent a wolf.

There are tragedies that play upon the grand stage of history, and then there are tragedies that unspool like threadbare pantomime. This, alas, was both.

---

Continue with Caution...

 

100 Days of Ruin
Part V: Diplomacy Undone

There was once a final bulwark against madness.

Even as the markets convulsed,
even as the skies rained wreckage and defense crumbled into emoji-flecked scandal,
there remained one last thread tying America to the world:
diplomacy.

It was a thread thin and fraying, but real —
woven by treaties, alliances, quiet negotiations, human effort spanning decades.

Into this fragile breach stumbled Marco Rubio,
armed not with strategy, nor vision, but with a half-drunk water bottle, a clutch of slogans, and the vacant certainty of a man who mistook verbosity for wisdom.

It was once said that diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell in such a way they look forward to the trip. Under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it became the art of forgetting where hell was — and selling the ticket to Canada.

Rubio's first acts were theatrical and petty: renaming conference rooms, cutting foreign language services, and proposing the annexation of Canada — an idea first floated in jest, then repeated without irony, and finally echoed in a televised interview.

His reorganization of the State Department gutted USAID. Programs for famine relief, maternal health, and education were dissolved with bureaucratic finality. Only the regime-change initiatives for Cuba remained untouched — an obsession as persistent as mold and far less nutritious.

“The shelves of diplomacy are empty. Only the canned grievances remain.”

When asked about NATO, Rubio called it "an aging subscription service" and wondered aloud if the U.S. should "pivot to bilateral vibes." Aides clarified he meant one-on-one agreements. The rest of the world clarified that it had stopped taking his calls.

Ukraine was told to "tough it out." (Diplomacy was tough.) Africa was told to "grow locally." Europe was simply told nothing — and returned the favor.

And so diplomacy was not killed outright. It was unstaffed, unspoken, unfunded, and eventually, unseen.

---

Continue with Caution...

Interlude: The Passing of the Pope

100 Days of Ruin
Chapter IV: The Fall of Defense — Signalgate

The department of Defense had once been a citadel — solemn, deliberate, sober. Under the new regime, it became something closer to a frat house with nuclear codes.

Pete Hegseth, once a minor television courtier, had been elevated from Fox News greenroom bluster to Secretary of Defense — chosen not for his strategic brilliance, but for his willingness to smile, salute, and flex right-wing tattoos.

The new Secretary of Defense, brought with him few credentials save a taste for flag-waving and television grins. Strategy meetings were now attended by his wife, his brother, and a Signal chat group that included the editor of The Atlantic — none of whom, it must be noted, were vetted for security clearance.

Signal — an encrypted messaging app prohibited on government devices — became the true war room, hidden from oversight, judgement, and often from sanity itself.

And somewhere, across the oceans, enemy operatives toasted his career with cheap vodka and finer intelligence than they had dreamed possible.

"Text STOP to unsubscribe from war plan updates."

The Pentagon purges soon followed. DEI programs were gutted with the fervor of a bonfire; statues of Jackie Robinson and plaques to the Tuskegee Airmen vanished into dumpsters marked “Woke Trash.” In their place, historical "correctives" — such as a commemorative reprinting of Mein Kampf for "strategic study" — were quietly, chillingly circulated.

Thus the third of the Great Collapses unfolded:
not from foreign invasion,
nor technological surprise —
but from the willing decapitation of national seriousness,
and the elevation of clownery to command.

---

Continue with Caution...

Chapter V: Diplomacy Undone

 

100 Days of Ruin
Part III: Death from Above and Below

Even as the markets burned and the fields withered, there remained the comforting illusion of safe passage:
the ability to lift one’s eyes to the sky, 

to move freely along the roads.

This too was doomed.

It began with Sean Duffy, a man whose résumé consisted largely of dancing naked on MTV, complaining about his congressional salary, and losing arguments to traffic signs.

For these feats, he was crowned Secretary of Transportation — chief steward of a nation’s air, rails, roads, and dreams.

He had ideas.

Terrible ones.

But the hundred days told another tale.

The planes fell first — a mid-air collision over the Potomac, then a medical jet in Philadelphia, then a dozen small craft sputtering down across the land like broken birds. March brought helicopters slamming into fields, experimental aircraft tumbling from cloud to ruin.

Duffy declared that America's aging, overworked air traffic system could be "streamlined" — not by hiring, but by firing.

• Mass firings of FAA probationary hires.

• Privatization of air traffic control.

• Slashing of safety inspections and oversight.

When pilots and controllers raised alarms, Duffy shrugged and muttered: "Pilots need to get better at adapting to freedom."

"Rapid Unscheduled Disassemblies became the new national pastime — in air, on asphalt, and, too often, in the ledger of lives."

When questioned, Secretary Duffy blamed "pilot error" and "woke bike lanes".

The Death of the Roads

But lest Americans believe the ground was safer, Elon Musk, prophet of broken deadlines and gilded dreams, stepped forward with his latest miracle: "Full self-driving by June 2025," he declared.

The promises (as with DOGE savings) were as plentiful as the graves:

• 2015: Full autonomy by 2018.

• 2016: Drive coast-to-coast without touching the wheel.

• 2018: FSD within six months.

• 2019: Unsupervised robotaxis by 2020.

• 2020–2023: Each year, the dream postponed,

  • Like a drunkard promising to quit tomorrow.

Yet under Duffy’s regime, the fantasy was law.

Self-driving vehicles, still in beta, still hallucinating children and road signs, were unleashed without meaningful oversight.

Whether by wing or wheel, the truth was the same:

Public safety was no longer a public good.

It was a market commodity, auctioned to the reckless, the incompetent, and the gleefully blind.

The skies rained down ruin.
The roads became silent executioners.
And the nation, once so proud of its ability to move,
now flinched at the sound of a passing engine —
whether roaring overhead, or humming quietly at street level.

---

Continue with Caution...

Chapter IV: The Fall of Defense

Typeset for The Panican Ledger | Reproduction permitted for posterity, parody, or penance.

© 2025

 

100 Days of Ruin
Chapter II: The Tarantella of Tariffs

It was not, at first, a crash.

It was a quivering, a crackling —
like a sheet of ice fracturing underfoot,
while the fool dancing atop it shouted about "record crowds" and "tremendous strength."

In the early days of Mad King Trump's second reign, the stock market, for a time, played along.
The courtiers cheered, the headlines sang —
until the first wave of tariffs hit like a hammer dropped from a drunken god’s hand.

The rot had long been hidden behind banners and bluster.

When the first volleys of tariffs were announced — 60% upon China, 125% the week after, and then 145% with frantic exceptions (Apple, but only somewhat) — the economy stumbled as if struck behind the knees.

Liberation Day, they had called it — the grand announcement of tariffed freedom. But the bond market, like an old banker muttering into his teacup, knew better. The invisible hand did not lift; it struck.

The stock tickers, so long enchanted, now flickered like candles in a gale. Farmers blinked at warehouse doors swinging shut. Retailers drafted apology signs for empty shelves.The Dow Jones, once paraded like a victory float,

lost 9,000 points in a single month —
the worst single-month plunge in American history.

And above it all, the King stood grinning, deaf to the moans of the timbers,
blind to the cracks widening beneath his feet, his sycophants - Bessent and Lutnick bleated: 

Markets are stronger than ever

The maths don't lie

The American Dream isn't cheap flat screens

But the House was falling.
And no decree, no slogan, no golden curtain could halt its ruin.

"Adam Smith’s invisible hand, long patient, finally slapped — for even Mad Kings must answer to the Invisible Hand — and no banner, no slogan, no crown of fools can stay its judgment.."

The President, faced with rumbling markets and mutinous donors, staged a retreat disguised as an advance. Exemptions fluttered like ticker tape; exceptions oozed from press releases; Liberation gave way to Litigation.

It was not a clean break. It was a sickening, twisting descent — like the fall of the House of Usher, not with a scream, where every stone and beam, once proud, now groaned and shifted in protest against its own betrayal and with the slow horror of inevitability.

---

Continue with Caution...

Chapter III: Death from Above and Below

 

The 100 Days of Ruin
Part I: The Coronation

It was cold. Too cold for spectacle. And so the coronation of the Pretender took place indoors, beneath the rotunda, where frost clawed the windows and the breath of history fogged the marble halls.

The Democrats stood like pallbearers at a state funeral — silent, grim, unwilling — as the courtiers assembled. There were the oligarchs, in blue suits tailored to conceal their contempt: Bezos, Musk, Thiel, and the others whose coin greased the gears of governance until nothing moved but for profit.

Trump entered not to trumpets but to mutterings. He did not place his hand upon the Bible — not truly — for what is an oath to a man who swears only upon mirrors?

J.D. Vance stood at his side, pallid and poised like a haunted valet. Behind them, Melania in her funereal hat and young Baron, now taller than all, loomed like a silent rebuke carved from arrogance and Slavic marble.

“Democracy did not die in darkness — it was seated politely, applauded by donors, and then quietly escorted from the room.”

It might have seemed normal, for a moment. The room had the air of ceremony, of state. But then the Pretender opened his mouth and ad-libbed. He spoke not of unity, nor duty, nor the burdens of leadership — but of scores to settle and enemies to jail.

He called it restoration. Others called it vengeance. The republic, alas, had no say.

---

Continue with caution...

Chapter II: Tarantella of Tariffs

Typeset for The Panican Ledger | Reproduction permitted for posterity, parody, or penance.

© 2025

 

 The Centrist Shapeshifter

Formless. Positionless. Lovingly quoted by Politico.

“He’s not like the others. Until he is. But ironically.”
— Observation scribbled in the margins of a Beltway brunch invite

The Centrist Shapeshifter is a curious entity, long thought to be an unstable fusion of Joe Manchin’s self-importance and Kyrsten Sinema’s performative independence. When that binary star collapsed, a new mass took its place: 

Fetterblob.

Current Form:

A Carhartt-clad contradiction.
A creature of hoodies, quips, and carefully curated working-class cosplay.
He appears to speak plainly—but what he says is often carefully positioned to land precisely in the median between Fox News ire and MSNBC discomfort.

Like the Sinemanchin before him, the Centrist Shapeshifter:

• Votes unpredictably but always with maximum spectacle.

• Complains loudly about dysfunction while basking in the glow of media fascination.

• Frames contradiction as authenticity.

  “He’s not flip-flopping—he’s complex.”

---

Morphology:

• In photos: schlubby.

• In committee: silent.

• In interviews: zingers, mug clinks, and “Look, I just think...”

• In actual votes: TBD, then retweeted.

He appears in memes. He spars on X. He shuns decorum—but somehow remains beloved by editors desperate for a centrist savior who can “talk to the base.”

---

Former Occupants of This Space:

• Joe Manchin: Powered by coal subsidies and vibes.

• Kyrsten Sinema: Last seen ascending a corporate ladder in sequins and contempt.

The Access Wraith

Once a Journalist. Now a Vessel.

“He says outrageous things to control the narrative.
I say reasonable things to keep my seat at the table.
We are both, in our way, performing.”
— From the private notebook of a fully transformed Access Wraith

The Access Wraith was not born. It was made—in the crucible of late-stage media, where exposure is currency, outrage is traffic, and access is all.

This specter was once someone. They asked hard questions. They won awards. They quoted style guides.
Then came the lure of “exclusive access to Trumpworld.” A campaign plane. A leaked memo. A one-on-one in a Mar-a-Lago breakfast nook.

To remain inside the velvet rope, the Access Wraith shed its form—and with it, all vestiges of skepticism. What remains is an echo that nods along, tweets quotes without context, and whispers, "Yes, but what if he wins again?"

Phases of the Wraithing Process:

1. Proximity – "I’m just here to cover what he says."

2. Pretext – "You have to understand his base."

3. Parroting – "Sources close to Trump say he’s more focused than ever."

4. Possession – "He’s changed. You’ll see."

Distinguishing Traits:

• Spectral Press Pass: Still worn proudly, though no longer necessary.

• Haunted Bylines: Pieces that resemble journalism but function as transcripts with light editing.

• Obligatory Objectivity: A reflexive tic requiring bothsidesing of attempted coups.

Notable Access Wraiths

Still visible to the naked eye. Still credentialed.

• Maggie Haberman, The New York Times
  Once a reporter. Now an archivist of palace intrigue.
  Possesses an uncanny ability to delay major revelations until book launch, at which point national security concerns are rendered “complicated.”
  May be glimpsed in Mar-a-Lago’s hall of mirrors, scribbling into a leather-bound notebook labeled For Later.

• The Specters of Fox & Friends
  Not individual wraiths, but a swirling collective.
  They do not interview so much as amplify. They summon Trump not with a phone call, but with flattery.
  Feed off guest segments, soft lighting, and off-screen producers whispering “Don’t interrupt.”

  Known to emit phrases such as:

• “He seems sharper than ever.”
• “What the media won’t tell you…”
• “It’s just refreshing to hear someone speak their mind, even if it's in all caps.”

Diagnostic Signs of Access Wraithdom

If you observe three or more of the following, consult an ethics manual immediately.

• 
  
  Sane-Washing:
  The persistent tendency to recast erratic or dangerous behavior as calculated political maneuvering.

  “He was surprisingly disciplined in last night’s speech, despite the screaming.”

• Exclusive Syndrome:
  A compulsive need to prefix every Trump interview with “exclusive,” even when it’s the third that week and the questions are pre-approved.

  “In an exclusive sit-down, the President repeated his usual threats, but more slowly this time.”

• Off-the-Record Reliance:
  The majority of “reporting” is now shaped by unnamed “advisors,” “insiders,” or “aides with knowledge,” all of whom suspiciously sound like the same three people.

• Abuse as Access:
  Returns eagerly to sources who insult them publicly. Accepts being called “fake news” as a sign of insider status.

  “He yelled at me, but I think that means I’m getting to him.”

• Contextual Erosion:
  Reports statements without correction or counterpoint, then posts clarifying tweets twelve hours later.

  “We are not the fact-check. We are the transcript.”

• Panel Proliferation:
  Appears on cable panels to describe what Trump “really meant,” usually in opposition to what he very clearly just said.

  “It’s more nuanced than that.”

• Vanity Metrics Over Veracity:
  Prioritizes pageviews, Twitter followers, and book pre-sales over public understanding.
  Is known to refer to crisis coverage as “good for the brand.”

 

Four Horsemen of Herd Immunity

Final Tract: The Fifth Horseman Is You

“Certainty is the deadliest contagion.”

Measles is on the rise again. The kind of measles we used to just vaccinate away without fanfare, before the influencers made it edgy to host a pox party and call it parenting.

Research funding has been gutted. Science, we are told, is "just another opinion" — less credible than a meme, and far less popular than a podcast.

COVID mandates are struck down by the courts. Childhood immunization is under siege in statehouses. Even the artificial coloring in M&M’s is in the crosshairs of the crusaders. Red 40, we hardly knew ye.

The four riders — Influence, Paranoia, Grift, and Ignorance — have done their work. The soil has been tilled. But it is not they who will finish the harvest.

Margin Note: There is nothing so dangerous as certainty when wielded by an idiot and aided by his cohort of crazies.

The fifth rider does not ride a horse. The fifth rider refreshes the feed. The fifth rider leaves a comment. The fifth rider “just wants to do their own research” — and rarely does.

The fifth rider is a neighbor, a cousin, a parent at the PTA meeting, a senator in committee, a billionaire with a biotech startup and a grudge against regulators.

The fifth rider is the algorithm. It’s you. It’s me. It’s everyone who let it happen, watched it happen, or benefited while it did.

You cannot unride the horse. But you can refuse the saddle.

The End — and just possibly, the beginning of the end.

---

🕮 For additional absurdities, misjudgments, and public health parodies, watch this space — only at The Panican Ledger.

Tract V: The Rider of Disinformation — RFK Jr.

“The Bloodline Betrayal”

Once he bore the name of a legacy. Now he bears a microphone and a detox smoothie.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — environmental crusader turned platformed peddler of paranoia — now rides the airwaves, podcasts, and conference circuits as the most dangerous Kennedy since the Chappaquiddick silence.

His voice trembles with conviction, but his facts tremble harder. Vaccines cause autism. 5G causes cancer. The CIA caused everything. Each assertion delivered with courtroom gravity — and Substack formatting.

His presidential campaign runs not on ideas, but on followers, merch, and the algorithmic fumes of Joe Rogan’s guest chair. The American Camelot now sells tickets to a health freedom summit.

Chart Available on Request: Public trust in vaccines vs. public exposure to RFK Jr.

He calls it questioning authority. The medical community calls it malpractice-by-proxy. His fans call it courage. Epidemiologists call it a superspreader of nonsense.

His weapon is his last name. His armor is denial. His steed? A podcast mic with the gain turned all the way up.

The legacy is no longer service — it is signal distortion.

---

To be concluded...

 

 Four Horsemen of Herd Immunity

Tract IV: The Rider of Ignorance — Chaya Raichik

“The Loudest Lies Travel Fastest”

She does not whisper — she reposts. Loudly. Repeatedly. Without context, without conscience, and always with the whiff of righteous indignation.

Chaya Raichik — once anonymous, now amplified — rides the algorithm like a steed. Her feed is fire and her fingers are matches.

From the crypt of Libs of TikTok she emerged, not as a journalist or critic, but as a summoner of mobs, a merchant of outrage, and a conjurer of consequences she does not have to answer for.

The formula is simple: isolate, distort, incite. Take a teacher, a nurse, a stranger in a rainbow shirt — and turn them into a monster, framed for the wrath of an audience eager for enemies.

She wields a smartphone like a torch — and calls the fire light.

Facts are fragile here. The truth is a casualty of the scroll. And once the damage is done — jobs lost, threats made, lives disrupted — the account simply posts again.

This is ignorance at scale — optimized, monetized, and cloaked in the language of concern.

And still, she rides.

---

🦠 Next: An heir to Camelot arrives — bearing not legacy, but a Substack login and a speaking slot at a wellness summit.
Tract V: The Rider of Disinformation — RFK Jr.

To be continued...

Four Horsemen of Herd Immunity

Tract III: The Rider of Grift — Dr. Oz

“You may already be cured!”

He emerged from the television like a handsomely scrubbed oracle, prescribing miracle berries and green coffee extract with the conviction of a man who once studied the human heart.

Dr. Mehmet Oz — surgeon by training, salesman by practice. Once a healer, now a huckster in designer scrubs, hawking wellness like it’s clearance-priced enlightenment.

His show blurred the line between advice and advertisement, between science and supplement. Snake oil returned to the market, rebranded as “life hacks.”

When medicine demanded rigor, he offered resonance. When scrutiny loomed, he gestured vaguely toward “Eastern wisdom” and the applause sign lit up.

When the Senate rejected his ambitions, the administration intervened — and elevated him not to the clinic, but to command. Dr. Oz was named Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The nation’s most vulnerable now awaited coverage decisions from a man who once recommended raspberry ketones and psychic surgery.

Buy three bottles of Oz Wellness Liver Flush™ and receive prior authorization for knee surgery.

He left behind a trail of “miracles” that were neither, and followers who asked their doctors fewer questions because television had already answered them.

Thus rides the Grifter — not with a stethoscope, but with a federal appointment and a monetized conscience.

---

🐄 Next: A torchbearer of ignorance gallops forth, leaving only hashtags and headlines in her wake.

Tract IV: The Rider of Ignorance — Chaya Raichik

To be continued...

Four Horsemen of Herd Immunity

Tract II: The Rider of Paranoia — David Geier

“The Mercury is Rising”

He does not gallop — he lingers. In comment sections. In outdated forums. In the whispered recommendations between desperate parents.

Once banished from the kingdom of science — stripped of license, rejected by journals, rebuked by courts — David Geier returned, not as a doctor, but as a myth.

His gospel? A crude alloy of fear and falsehood. Autism, he claimed, had a chemical culprit: mercury in vaccines. The science said otherwise. He kept going.

Alongside his father, he built a house of mirrors: retracted studies, cherry-picked charts, expert testimony so dubious it bordered on performance art.

The courts caught up. The licenses vanished. But the lies endured, like lead in water.

There is no such thing as “just raising awareness” when the awareness is a weapon.

Today, his words echo through digital catacombs — recycled by influencers, repackaged by activists, reanimated by algorithms that cannot distinguish harm from engagement.

And so he rides on: a revenant of the early internet, dragging behind him a legacy of mistrust and a thousand unread disclaimers.

---

🧴 Next: From television to tinctures, the grift gallops forth in a lab coat and designer shoes.
Tract III: The Rider of Grift — Dr. Oz

To be continued...

Four Horsemen of Herd Immunity

Foreword: A Nation Bewitched by Podcasts and Pseudoscience

“The greatest threat to public health is an unchecked ego with a platform and a sponsor.”
— From the Surgeon General’s Secret Diary, vol. III

We live in an age where microphones outnumber microscopes. A guest spot on Rogan carries more influence than peer review, and ivermectin flows freer than logic.

This is not satire. We wish it were.

The apocalypse wears earbuds and takes supplements.

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Tract I: The Harbinger — Joe Rogan, Rider of Influence

"Who needs a medical degree when you have Spotify?"

He arrived not on horseback, but on a podcast feed — a friendly voice asking “just questions,” trailing plumes of confusion and creatine. Joe Rogan, the Harbinger, bears no scalpel, no peer-reviewed citation, only a studio and an audience ready to believe the guy from Fear Factor.

From his microphone flows a strange brew: distrust of institutions, fascination with fringe theories, and a libertarian fog thick enough to cancel any mask mandate.

“I’m not a doctor,” he reminds you — before explaining virology, immunology, and public policy to millions.

And yet, his power lies in the shrug: “I don’t know, man…” is not a disclaimer. It’s a spell. One that leaves facts trembling, and truth somewhere beneath a pile of kettlebells, steroids and DMT.

The most dangerous misinformation is the one prefaced by “I’m just asking questions.”

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🔮 Next: A Pale Rider Approaches, clutching expired studies and a grudge against mercury.
Tract II: The Rider of Paranoia — David Geier

To be continued...