History

Game Theory for WW3: When Rational Decisions Create Insane Outcomes

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What if the geopolitical insanity of 2026 isn’t actually insane? Game theory suggests something more disturbing: perfectly rational nations, each acting in their own self-interest, can collectively produce disastrous outcomes that nobody actually wanted. Born from Cold War-era work at RAND, the Prisoner’s Dilemma explains everything from arms races to alliances and deterrence. Sometimes nobody has to be crazy for the world to go completely nuts.

PRE-ELECTION: Trump, Dracula, and the Art of Looking Crazy

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Maybe Donald Trump isn’t crazy. Maybe looking a little crazy is the whole point. Vlad the Impaler understood that reputation, fear, and unpredictability could be weapons against a stronger enemy. Six centuries later, Trump may be playing a strangely similar game: keep Putin, Xi, and Tehran wondering, “WTF…he might actually do it.”

5th Generation War , Part 3: How Do We Save the Republic Without Committing Suicide?

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The greatest danger in fifth-generation warfare may not be what our enemies do to us, but what we do to ourselves trying to stop them. Lincoln warned that if America were ever destroyed, “we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” The answer isn’t censorship, blind trust in government, or blind distrust of it. It is resilient institutions, transparent elections, evidence, critical thinking, and citizens willing to defend the rights of people they despise. The Human Domain is contested terrain—but if we surrender our liberty to defend it, we have already lost the battle.

Twisted Logic, Shifting Morals: How High-Profile Trials Are Distorting American Justice

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During my career with the Chicago Tribune, I covered my share of criminal and civil trials.  One thing I learned early on was to watch the jury for telltale reactions that might indicate how jurors were processing the evidence.

5th Generation War, 1462: Vlad the Impaler Understood the Human Domain

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History remembers Vlad the Impaler as a blood-soaked medieval psychopath. But what happens if we assume Vlad was a rational actor? Suddenly the stakes, the terror, and the infamous Forest of the Impaled start looking less like random savagery and more like calculated deterrence. Vlad couldn’t outspend or outfight the Ottoman Empire, so he weaponized the one battlefield where a small power could compete with a giant: the human mind. Five hundred years before “fifth-generation warfare” became fashionable, Dracula was already playing game theory—with sharpened stakes.

5th Generation War, Part 1: Don’t Capture the Capitol—Just Convince Half of the People it’s Corrupt and Illegitimate

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You don’t have to invade a nation to defeat it. You may only have to convince its citizens that their elections are rigged, their courts are corrupt, their institutions are illegitimate, and their neighbors are the enemy. As early as 2012, the U.S. military was wrestling with the Human Dimension and emerging ideas about the Human Domain—the recognition that wars ultimately turn on human behavior and human will. Add smartphones, algorithms, information warfare, color-revolution dynamics, and fifth-generation warfare, and the battlefield starts looking considerably different. The Capitol can still be standing, the flag can still be flying, and elections can still happen right on schedule. But if nobody believes any of it anymore, an enemy may never have to conquer us. We may eventually do the job ourselves.

No Green Vomit Required — The Spiritual War Hiding in Plain Sight

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What if the greatest victories of evil don’t involve possession, spinning heads, or levitating furniture? What if they’re much simpler—pride, lust, greed, deception, hatred, and division? Ephesians 6 reminds Christians that our struggle is not ultimately against flesh and blood. Maybe we’ve become so busy identifying the enemy in everyone else that we’ve forgotten where the real battlefield is—and which weapons Paul actually told us to carry.

Fort Wilkins: Once again, US Army Sends a West Pointer to the End of the Earth

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In 1844, the U.S. Army sent a West Point graduate and a couple companies of infantry to the very tip of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula to keep order during America’s first great copper rush. Captain Robert Emmet Clary and his soldiers arrived in the wilderness, built most of a fort in five months, and then watched history move somewhere else when war with Mexico began. But Clary’s story gets even better: his West Point classmate—and reportedly his wedding best man—was Jefferson Davis. Three decades later, Davis headed the Confederacy while Clary remained loyal to the Union and earned brevet promotion to brigadier general for his Civil War service. Fort Wilkins is a wonderfully obscure reminder that long before Gettysburg, some remarkably tough Americans were already busy building this amazing country.

The Original Deer-Camp MRE: The Lost Art of Canning Venison

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Before freezers and generators, Michigan hunters had another way to make November’s deer feed the family all winter: the Mason jar. Pressure-canned venison may be the original deer-camp MRE—simple, shelf-stable, already cooked, and requiring no refrigeration. It’s a nearly forgotten skill worth bringing back.

From Finland to the U.P.: SISU, Socialism, Saunas

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From Finland’s rocky farms to the copper mines and forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Finnish immigrants brought more than strong backs and “SISU” to America. They brought faith, saunas, traditions—and fierce arguments over labor, capitalism and socialism that divided “Church Finns” and “Red Finns” more than a century ago. Their remarkable story of immigration, revolution, war and assimilation helped shape northern Michigan and reminds us that many of the political debates Americans wrestle with today are anything but new.

Where Are the Watchdogs? The Media’s Deafening Silence on Government Fraud

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Where are the watchdogs? I have been asking myself that question for months. It is a story every American needs to hear, yet legacy media outlets have decided you don’t need to know.

Paying UK back: Why Trump sings ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish.’

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Nigel Farage said Trump’s comments were not helpful. They were not meant to be.

You know what was really unhelpful? Refusal to let the U.S. use its bases on British soil for the opening offensive strikes against Iran. This included B-2s based at Diego Garcia as the British tried to veto the war.

The politicians may be against Trump, but the Irish love him.

September is US Constitution Month

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Quiz: How well do you know the U.S. Constitution?

There is universal agreement that the American Declaration of Independence by our Founding Fathers in 1776 was a gift to humanity of inestimable value. That document eloquently declared the inherent right of all people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Eleven years later, the Constitution of the United States of America was brought forth, the purpose of which was to create a governmental framework intended to fulfill and sustain the lofty and audacious ideals of that earlier declaration.

The Infantry: The Guys Who Get the Dust While Everyone Else Gets the Glory

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The cavalry gets the glory. The infantry gets the dust. For thousands of years, warfare has invented faster horses, bigger guns, tanks, aircraft, drones, and now cyber warriors—but eventually somebody still has to walk onto the objective with a rifle and take the ground. Call them ground pounders, earth pigs, grunts, soldiers, or Marines: they are the infantry. Not everyone should be one, and thank God for that. But every army needs them, because wars may be shaped by technology, artillery, armor, and airpower—but ground is still won by the poor bastard standing on it.

Before You Mock the 6.5 Creedmoor, Learn What “Creedmoor” Means

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The 6.5 Creedmoor has been around for 19 years, and apparently that still hasn’t been enough time for some gun enthusiasts to learn what the word Creedmoor actually means.

Before you utter “6.5 Man Bun” again, try Google.

Muslims and Their Silent Invasion of America and Europe

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Americans have short memories. Very short.

It’s only been 25 years since Muslim terrorists launched the deadliest attack on American soil in 250 years, yet many Americans (especially Muslim-Americans) seem oblivious to that event and instead are eager to denigrate our nation as a toxic cauldron of white supremacy and Islamophobia.

Meanwhile, they push for Sharia Law and encourage women to wear the Hijab, Chador, Khimar, Niqab, etc. That tells me that those Muslims believe women should not be free to dress as they wish, and that clearly contradicts American culture and values.