It isn’t hard to spot the pattern:

Peace is declared. Oil prices go down. War returns. Oil prices skyrocket. Peace is declared. Oil brices go down. Rinse, repeat.

How would you make money from that, if you were a supremely dishonest, amoral, profitizing president? Simple: Buy low, sell high. Buy peace — and then crank up the war. Oil spikes. You sell. You declare that peace is at hand! Oil drops. You buy. Crank up the war again!

This is exactly what is afoot.

And much, much more.

The Evidence

This is not speculation about vibes. It is documented movement of large sums of money in the minutes before the public learned what was about to happen.

• In early March, Reuters and the Financial Times both reported that traders placed roughly $500 million in crude oil futures bets about fifteen minutes before the White House announced a pause in strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure. Rep. Ritchie Torres called it potentially the largest instance of insider trading in American history and formally asked the SEC and CFTC to investigate.

• In late March, Sen. Chris Murphy identified a trade in which $1.5 billion in S&P 500 futures were bought while $192 million in oil futures were sold, in the minutes before Trump announced a five-day pause in strikes.

• In April, a $760 million bet on falling oil prices was placed roughly twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister announced the Strait of Hormuz was open to commercial traffic. Reuters reported the trade directly: investors sold 7,990 lots of Brent crude futures in a single minute. Brent fell more than 10 percent within the hour; WTI fell as much as 12 percent. Rep. Ritchie Torres asked the CFTC to expand its investigation to cover this trade as well.

• A later Reuters analysis found a pattern across four separate days — March 23, April 7, April 17, and April 21 — each time involving large, well-timed sales of oil and fuel futures minutes before a Trump announcement moved the market. Reuters put the combined total at roughly $7 billion. A veteran oil trader consulted by Reuters, said the trades looked "well informed."

• Blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps identified nine connected Polymarket accounts that earned $2.4 million with a 98 percent win rate across more than 80 bets on U.S. military actions in Iran. Four of the accounts made roughly $400,000 each on the February 28 strike alone.

• Separately, the Financial Times reported that a broker for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth contacted BlackRock in February about a multimillion-dollar investment in a defense-sector fund, weeks before the February 28 strikes. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, sent a letter to the SEC on April 20 requesting a formal investigation into the matter.

What the cases above describe is money moving on the precise timing of war and peace, before the public had any way of knowing which was coming.

Perverse Incentive
A government facing a costly, unpopular war typically has pressure pushing it toward ending the war. But what is actually being rewarded here? Every escalation moves oil and defense-adjacent assets. Every de-escalation moves them back. That means profit is not tied to which side wins. It is tied to the swing itself. Escalation rewards one set of positions. De-escalation rewards the opposite set. Someone who knows in advance which is coming can profit either way.

That is not a flaw in the system. It is a structure that pays out regardless of direction, as long as there is still a direction to bet on. The one outcome that is not rewarded is a stable, lasting peace — because a stable peace ends the swings, and the swings are where the money is.

The Cost in Blood, Treasure and American Prestige

While this pattern repeats, the human toll continues to rise for people with no stake in any of these trades. Estimates put total deaths across all sides between roughly 9,000 and 18,000 as of early August, depending on the source. Seventeen to twenty American service members have been killed and hundreds wounded.

The financial bill is not abstract, either. The Pentagon’s own comptroller told Congress the first six days of the war alone cost $11.3 billion — roughly $1.88 billion a day. By the time an early ceasefire held in mid-June, one running tally built from Pentagon briefings put the total at $113.3 billion over 108 days. That figure covers direct military costs only: munitions, deployments, fuel for the fleet. The nonpartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense estimates the public’s fuel costs at the pump — separate from anything the Pentagon spent — at more than $40 billion and climbing.

Some economists, factoring in long-term veteran care, debt servicing, and reconstruction obligations, warn the Iran war’s lifetime cost could eventually exceed $1 trillion.

And the world has been watching, closely and unfavorably. A Pew Research Center survey of 36 nations found a median of 74 percent of adults disapproved of how the war was being handled. Favorable views of the United States itself declined by double digits in many places. And for the first time in Ipsos’s tracking, more people globally believe China will have a greater positive impact on the world over the next decade than the United States — 50 percent to 39 percent.

Americans themselves are deeply unhappy. Chicago Council polling from mid-July found 68 percent of Americans now say the war’s costs have outweighed its benefits. Majorities said it has been bad for their cost of living (86 percent), for America’s international relations (72 percent), for the country’s reputation abroad (72 percent), and for national security itself (65 percent).

Yet the war goes on, and on, And on.

And the profits of gambling the live of American soldiers and Iranian civilians continues to flow into Republican coffers.

Scared witless of the massive socialist takeover???

Consider:

There are roughly 500,000 elective offices in the United States.

Around 300 of those seats are controlled by self-described ‘socialists’. They have virtually no power

Capitalism, on the other hand, has actually overthrown your republic. Past tense. Your government serves banks, Wall Street, insurance corporations, oil companies, weapons manufacturers. There is little threat of it serving We the People (‘socialism’) anytime soon.

So if you are being terrorized with ‘the socialist threat’, you have to ask yourself:
‘How in the world was I convinced that this tiny minority is a threat? Who convinced me of that? Who are they serving? Should I believe anything else they say—about anything? Do I want to be deceived, terrorized, manipulated? How did they completely override my basic logic? How can I keep them from doing that in the future?’

Answering these questions is your obligation to yourself, your family, your country, and the truth.

Now I was intrigued. Did some guy just randomly pick a fight with her to be an asshole? Or was he just telling her she’d made a factual error, and she took umbrage?
Her reaction seemed odd to me. If someone fact checks me, and I’ve gotten something wrong, I simply thank them, and make a correction. If I’m right, I might explain why and move on. The hostility seemed both wrong and unprofessional.

I went to Alisa’s page and found an article on water quality that I had intended to read, after a fact check.

As I told her in response to the post above, ‘I never read anything of any length in the wilds of the internet without an AI fact check. I recommend the same for others — including you.’

My response continues:

Your piece is a fine example of why. Your credentials are impeccable. You have all the journalistic training in the world, and wonderful accolades. You’re as competent as one could hope for in a human.

You still got things wrong in your piece on water quality.

AI is not a god. AI gets things wrong all the time.

But have you talked to a human lately? We — including you — are quite fallible. And we’re not even pretend-objective about it. We believe what we believe. And if someone disproves it, we double down on the belief rather than accepting that we could have been wrong … about anything.

Ah, but we are.

And here on Substack, especially, folks are working without a net. No publisher looking over our shoulder; no editor staring at you balefully over the rims of her glasses; no fact checkers to double check us.

We’re the science people, remember? Those things are the science of journalism. Those redundancies give journalism credibility, and some assurance of accuracy. Otherwise, no matter who we are, we’re just flying by the seat of our pants and hoping for the best.

Ah, but … we have AI!

AI can be trained, by you, to be critical … of you. AI can also be trained to draw from only select sources. AI can be a godsend to a writer who can’t afford a fact checker or an editor.

And yes, it IS obsequious. To anyone who goes that route, I emphasize: Train, train, train, and keep training. Tell it every time, ‘I want to know if this is accurate. And do NOT blow sunshine up my ass. If fact, I want to be wrong. If you don’t find things wrong with what I wrote, I’ll use another AI who can do the job.’ Be stern and brutal. It works.

We’re just humans. We no longer have to claw at the rocks and sand with our hands — we have shovels. Use the tools available to you. Like Google was a tool, AI is a tool. Use it carefully, just as you would Google.

Now, laugh at me and block me if ye will. Imma still keep fact checking stuff.

Like your recent article on water quality (Note: Alisa’s article suggested that tap water is causing obesity. I did not challenge her on this claim, though it fails a fact check. I thought I would offer a fact check that actually worked in her favor, to dampen my rebuttal. Continued:).

No, obesity doesn’t cost $173 billion annually.

Those are old numbers.

According to Gemini (ahem), obesity ‘costs $260 Billion to $300+ Billion (reflecting full direct medical expenditures).

Total Societal Impact (Direct + Indirect): If lost workplace productivity, absenteeism, short-term disability, and military unfitness are added, the total annual economic burden exceeds $1 trillion.’

Now: Why would you not want to correct that — especially if it strengthens your own piece?

And by the way — fact check the things I wrote. I’m just human. I also consulted AI. All of it and everything and me and you and Google and even fact checkers and editors can get stuff wrong.

But if we rely on each other and all the tech we have, we might just get it right.
———————

That was all I wrote.

As promised, she blocked me.

Which is a pity. I really do enjoy her writing.

But more importantly, it is revealing of her character. A journalist who cannot egoically survive something as germain to the journalist process as a fact check certainly isn’t going to publishing any retractions anytime soon. And journalism without corrections and retractions is not credible journalism. It is a vanity project.

Take your writers to task, folks. And if they don’t have a publisher, they most likely don’t have an editor or fact checker. That leaves you — and the tools at your disposal. Use them well — and use them before you invest a lot of time in an article. Because misinformation, once swallowed, is as difficult to dislodge as microplastics in tap water.

ocracy has a fatal flaw: The lower IQ hoards are much more likely to be unified, to have more in common, than the intellectual minority.

Very intelligent people will be educated in different fields, hold disparate views(including conservatism), have differing interests, personalities and opinions. There really isn't much to unite them.

The simplest folks have much to unite them: Fear of minorities, fear of foreigners, fear of LGBTQ people, sports, pop culture. They are similarly embittered by the economic situation. They are also united by a complete lack of comprehension of policy, and therefor an easily-manipulated mistrust of government.

We see this dynamic playing out in real time in American politics.

In the Democratic primary debate, high ideas vie for dominance. The party flails and disunites, while the common people look on, baffled by all the policy talk.

But those common people are themselves united ... against minorities, foreigners, LGBTQ people, and anyone speaking the incomprehesible language of policy. And the Republican Party is happy to reflect all that back to them, and scoop them up as voters.

I have spent much time with this under-educated, struggling class of Americans. They have little chance of sorting out the messages delivered to them through the high-tech systems of social media, messages designed and funded by sophisticated New York, Washington D.C., and St. Petersburg (Russia) think tanks.

The modern age, with the advent of the internet, is probably as close as we've come to pure democracy.

It is a disaster.

As Jefferson wrote, "The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive."

The vast majority of Americans could not even decipher that sentence.

They're supposed to correctly decipher the internet?

What would YOU do if you ran for office and one corporation threw $17 million dollars into destroying you?

You’d be destroyed, that’s what. You and I have no hope against such an entity.

Steyer has the resources to fight back—and to fight forward. He can run ads explaining why he is fighting PG&E(bullet pointed at the end).

Last election, we watched billionaires literally buy the highest office. By the absurd rulings of SCOTUS that is now perfectly legal.

50% of political contributions are made by the top 1% and corporations. The other 50% are made by 10% of the common citizens.

I am in that 10%. And brothers and sisters, I need help! I am thrilled to have a progressive billionaire on our side! I’d kind of like to have five more!

We The People cannot win this alone. Too much wealth has been transferred to the very top. We need someone with the resources to fight on our behalf. Against things like this:

2014 — Judge Shopping / Regulator Collusion

Federal investigators discovered illegal collaboration between PG&E and the CPUC, including PG&E successfully requesting a more lenient judge to oversee the San Bruno pipeline case. Three PG&E executives and CPUC President Mike Peevey were ousted.

2018 — Falsified Safety Records

The CPUC found PG&E had falsified tens of thousands of “Call Before You Dig” records, triggering a federal investigation.

2017–2018 Wildfires

PG&E has been blamed for more than 30 wildfires since 2017, wiping out over 23,000 homes and businesses and killing more than 100 people.

2018 — Camp Fire

The Camp Fire destroyed 153,336 acres and 18,804 structures. PG&E’s CEO pleaded guilty on behalf of the company to 84 counts of felony manslaughter.

2019 — Bankruptcy #2

PG&E filed for Chapter 11, facing at least $30 billion in wildfire lawsuit damages. The bankruptcy deal left fire victims last in line, receiving payouts half in PG&E’s own unreliable stock.

2020 — Bonuses While on Probation

PG&E sought court approval for $454 million in executive bonuses just days after asking a separate federal judge not to require the company to hire more tree trimmers.

2020 — $200M Fine Forgiven

The CPUC voted 5-0 to waive a $200 million fine — the opposite of what the presiding federal judge had recommended. The judge called PG&E a “continuing menace to California.”

2021 — Dixie Fire

The CPUC penalized PG&E $45 million for the Dixie Fire, on top of $125 million for the 2019 Kincade Fire and $106 million for violating Public Safety Power Shutoff guidelines.

2022 — Kincade/Dixie Settlement

PG&E paid $55 million to avoid criminal prosecution for the Dixie and Kincade fires, submitted to five years of oversight — and acknowledged no wrongdoing.

2023 — Zogg Fire Charges Dropped

Criminal charges from the 2020 Zogg Fire were dismissed after a $50 million settlement, including a $5 million civil penalty to Shasta County.

---

**The throughline:**

Nobody goes to jail. Fines are routinely forgiven or settled away. The company declares bankruptcy, restructures, and repeats. Sixteen million Californians remain captive customers with no alternative.

Join us! FIGHT BACK!

#tomsteyerforgovernor

For those of us interested in psychology and sociology, the Trump era has been a gold mine of data and insight.

I used to think I understood authoritarianism.

“I prefer a strong leader,” I would imagine the authoritarian thinking/feeling. “I want someone who is strong on crime and national security.”

I know now that this is shallow— and therefor wrong. It misses the root.

Trump is not the result of the authoritarian “preferring” or “wanting” anyone or anything. Trump is not, in this regard, a conscious choice. He isn’t a choice at all.

Authoritarians are simply hardwired to obey a tyrant. And they will do so, regardless of philosophy — unless a greater tyrant comes along.

An interesting case study in this phenomenon is Alex Jones. Jones shouted and emoted for years warning of federal tyranny. But the second an actual tyrant came along, Jones heartily supported him.

His followers followed.

Until Jones didn’t. Jones broke with Trump in April, 2026.

Likely Jones followers will follow Jones(until they revert).

What happened?

Trump’s Iran policy displayed his weakness. As did the political rebuffing he received as a result of the violence committed under his ICE policy.

To be clear, Trump’s weakness was not in the violence he illegally waged against Iran or against American citizens and immigrants. The weakness the authoritarians perceived was in his inability or unwillingness to follow through with an iron fist.

A psychopath like Jones perceives this weakness, and claims it as an opportunity to project his own strength, attacking the tyrant.

Again, the philosophy of either man is irrelevant. What is important to the authoritarian follower is the perception of strength, masculinity, brutality, and the willingness to wage (or threaten) violence.

Not incidentally we saw some of this in play in the soft support, by authoritarians, of Bernie Sanders (who I supported and continue to support). Sanders egalitarian politics dulled his appeal to authoritarians. But it was easy to find hard-right conservatives who would say, “I like old Bernie. He’s okay.”

Many leftists assumed that this was evidence that Sanders policies were popular across the political spectrum. While there may be instances of this to be found here and there, the overwhelming basis for this approval was much simpler: Sanders booming voice, and frequently angry demeanor.

As the oft-cited Mehrabian rule suggests, 60% of someone’s reaction to your communication is determined by how you look, 35% to how you speak, and only 5% to what you say.

If you doubt this — or that authoritarians are hardwired to obey, and ignore all evidence contradictory to their own ethics, interests, or goals — simply observe Trump’s many lies, contradictory statements, and outright betrayal of his followers.

None of it matters. Because he barks awful things and threatens violence. He projects domination. They submit. They expect everyone else to submit.

For as long as humanity and science survive, this era and phenomenon will be studied, dissected.

For what it is worth, above are my observations — and below are my recommendations:

Public education is key, and should be undertaken on an emergency basis. Psychopathic leaders — buttressed by the obedient violence of authoritarian followers— rule much of the planet today (Roughly 70% of Earth’s population live under dictatorship). We teeter on the edge of complete global authoritarian rule.

1-4% of the population are psychopaths. Charming, persuasive, manipulative, and entirely without conscience, they excel at climbing the ladders of power. Among the most common positions they occupy: politician, pundit, clergy, CEO. They excel at these positions because they are ruthless — and because authoritarians follow them, giving them power.

Authoritarians themselves are roughly 35% of the population, though this fluctuates by nation and culture. And otherwise “normal” people can become authoritarians under the right (or rather, wrong) circumstances. If a psychopathic leader convinces a population that they are under attack, incidence of authoritarianism may exceed 50%. This is what has now occurred in Israel.

This is the death of democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.

The public must be made aware of these facts. They must be encouraged to unite against authoritarians, and to resist attempts initiated by psychopaths and psychopathic alliances to divide their opposition through inflammatory algorithms — as we have seen in the alliances of Trump, Musk, and Putin.

Unity of opposition removed Viktor Orbán in Hungary.

Beyond this, looking to the future, psychopaths, malignant narcissists, and other anti-social personalities must be diagnosed as early as possible and their damage to society avoided at the outset. Recent studies show that psychopathic traits can often be identified as early as three years old. Children should be screened, just as they are screened for disease and treated.

Psychopaths can play constructive roles in society. They excel at policing (but must be carefully monitored). Oddly, they also make excellent surgeons — because, incredibly, their lack of empathy for the patient means that their hands do not shake.

Whether you would want to undergo surgery by a diagnosed psychopath is another matter altogether. Nonetheless, they must be diverted away from some of their other preferred pursuits — like wielding power over congregations and nations.

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Iranians celebrated in the streets of LA yesterday as word came that Khamenei was dead. This is much as it was back in January, when Venezuelans celebrated the toppling of Maduro.

I certainly understand why, in both cases. If Trump were to suddenly zap Greg Abbott or Florida governor Ron DeSantis, I’d probably be tempted to do a little dance, too.

But then I’d think about it.

Jews for Hitler — the Association of German National Jews — was an actual thing. As middle class conservatives, they supported Hitler out of fear and hatred of the communists.

He certainly took care of that problem.

The thing is, though, Hitler still viewed Jews, even ‘Jews for Hitler’, as being subhumans, little more than animals.

This is exactly the way Donald Trump views Iranians, and Venezuelans.

I have heard members of both groups say, ‘He did what had to be done and I applaud him!’ Well, that is certainly what he wants. Applause. Accolades. Stroking. Worship. Power.

See: Trump, like Hitler (and Khamenei and Maduro) is a psychopath (actually a member of the Dark Triad — narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy — which is a bit worse. But that is another article). What he craves is power. Applause — from anywhere — is power. And giving people like this power is a bad idea. Always.

Again, I understand the desire to celebrate.

But is celebration really warranted?

An analogy: You’re tied to serial killer Ted Bundy’s bed. The man himself lurks over the bed, leering down at you. The fun is just about to get underway.

Suddenly the bedroom door is kicked in. A shadowy figure bursts in and tackles Ted. They fall to the floor, where there is a great struggle. You can tell, just from the choking sounds, that Ted is being strangled. After a few seconds there is only silence.

Then, your savior stands up and faces the bed. It is serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer!

Should you applaud?

Well, look: Applause, happiness, relief, joy, all of these would have been appropriate — between the time the door burst in, and the time Dahmer smiled a greeting. After that, not so much.

Dahmer is not there to do you favors. And Trump (and Netanyahu, for Iranians?!?) isn’t there to do anyone any favors, either. Venezuela and Iran will be either abandoned or exploited, as it serves the psychopath.

And as for Venezuelans or Iranians in Los Angeles, they’re still on President Dahmers menu.

Celebrate today. That is certainly understandable.

But get your wits back as soon as possible. Because the new boss is the same as the old boss

.

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