Notes from the edge of civilization: April 5, 2026
Bonfire of insanities means an unstoppable gravy train; Canada wins gold in the Equity Olympics; plus, the 'K' economy in action.
The running tab on Operation Epic Burn Rate Fury is already somewhere between $16 and $23 billion, according to an analysis from the American Enterprise Institute. That bill includes damaged infrastructure, lost hardware, and repairs to assets like the USS Gerald R. Ford (which, in a twist no screenwriter would have dared pitch, experienced downtime due to a laundry fire. Man the Tide pods!)
According to Axios, damaged or destroyed materiel include: one Lockheed Martin F-35A costing about $85 million; one Boeing E-3 Sentry costing between $300 million and $500 million; and one RTX AN/TPY-2 radar, which typically costs between $300 million and over $1 billion per unit. The losses don’t stop there:
Three Boeing F-15E Strike Eagles (roughly $90–$97 million per unit, per 2023–2024 estimates, with fully combat-ready configurations reaching up to $117 million)
Multiple Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers (roughly $70–$80 million per unit)
Multiple General Atomics MQ-9 Reapers (around $30-$32 million per unit, though some estimates range from $16 million to over $56 million, depending on the specific variant, sensor payload, and inclusion of ground control systems)
Then there are the human costs, which don’t fit neatly into an Axios graphic: thousands of civilians killed and injured in Iran and Israel, millions of people displaced across the region, more than a dozen US service members killed, and over 200 injured (although some reports suggest those official numbers may be significantly undercounted).
As American hero, Major General Smedley Butler, summed it up: “All wars are bankers’ wars.”
There is serious money to be made in bloodshed and broken infrastructure.
Which leads us to an uncomfortable question: if there is a genuine effort being made to end this war and save innocent lives on all sides, including military lives, why is there a concerted effort to assassinate anyone in Iranian leadership who appears open to de-escalation?
Among the most recent targets was former foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi. He’s not dead yet, but he’s pretty badly injured. And he was back-channelling through a Pakistani intermediator to Vice President JD Vance to try and negotiate some sort of ceasefire.
So it’s worth asking: cui bono? Who profits?
War is good for banks. It’s good for the Military Industrial Complex. And it’s great for governments, especially fiscally broke governments that need a unifying narrative and a reason to rally the public. It’s bad for pretty much everyone else.
Suffice it to say, somewhere, in some meeting room, the people with their hands on the levers of power (and marionette strings) have decided this particular gravy train isn’t supposed to stop.
A political party doesn’t always need policy platforms or campaign slogans to tell people what it stands for. Sometimes all it takes is a series of performative rituals to suck all the oxygen out of the room.
Just look at the widely circulating videos from the Canadian New Democratic Party’s leadership convention in Winnipeg last week.
Delegates were reportedly issued color-coded “equity cards,” each tied to a specific identity category — race, gender, sexuality, indigenous status — which could be used to move ahead in the speaking queue. In theory, the system was designed to ensure broader representation in debate. In practice, it seems to have turned identity into a kind of competitive sport.
At one point, competing claims between a “gender equity” card and a “race equity” card became the entire substance of an exchange. Elsewhere, a speaker drew applause for addressing foreign policy, stating Canada should not be drawn into the war in Iran, only to be reprimanded for misgendering the chairperson. You can’t make this stuff up!
On X, users dubbed the event the “oppression Olympics,” a sort of bureaucratic decathlon where the main event is competitive credentialing. Others called it a “clown show,” which feels like a tiny bit of an understatement.
And then there were literal “race card” jokes — because when you introduce actual, physical cards tied to identity, you’re not exactly leaving much room for subtlety.
God help us.
If there was ever any doubt that banksters rule the world, here’s your confirmation: Wall Street just had a banner year.
According to the New York State Comptroller:
Wall Street’s securities industry bonus pool reached a record $49.2 billion in 2025, up 9% from the previous year, while the average bonus rose 6% to $246,900, according to New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli’s annual estimate. The increases reflect a rise of more than 30% in Wall Street’s profits, which totaled $65.1 billion in 2025.
Bankers make money gambling with other people’s money. For doing that, just the average Wall Street bonus is the equivalent of about four median American salaries — around $62,000 per year in 2025 — paid out in one shot, on top of an already generous base.
In a recent Collapse Life podcast, Peter Grandich talked about a “K-shaped” economy — where one segment of society rockets upward while the other slides in the opposite direction. If you’re looking at those numbers and wondering what exactly justifies a bonus worth four times your annual pay, join the club. The question most of us in the disappearing middle class are wondering is, how do we prevent ourselves from slipping onto the bottom arm of the ‘K’?
I am thoroughly amazed at the insanity exhibited at the 2026 Canadian New Democratic Party’s leadership convention... Apparently, Democrats are Democrats the world over... Stupid as a bag of hammers.
I am shocked that you wrote above- "thousands of civilians killed and injured in Iran and Israel." Are you not concerned about deaths in Palestine?