Someone brought a guillotine to a city council meeting in Salem, Oregon on July 27, 2026. Not a sign shaped like one. Not a drawing. According to community accounts and social media posts, an actual guillotine structure appeared at the protest outside Loucks Auditorium, where hundreds of residents had gathered to oppose a proposed multi-billion-dollar AI data center. Company representatives reportedly assessed the scene and left, citing safety concerns — though that detail hasn’t appeared in formal news coverage or official minutes.
That can be negotiated! As a century+ of American foreign policy demonstrates, you can’t just ride up and wax the existing power structures and call it a day.
You have to have something ready to replace it or you’ll get the same thing again but worse.
I got it. We keep exactly the same system, except every time someone amasses a net worth exceeding say, 100 million dollars, we drag them behind a truck in front of everyone who considers themselves “upper” middle class. Every year we pick someone at random who’s worth at last 50 million and do the same thing.
You know, like The Lottery, but all you have to do to avoid it is not hoard wealth.
The thing is there’s like a hundred things yo do instead.
I’m not telling you how to live your life. I’m telling you that if you keep going like this, you won’t have one.