Dispatches from Dumbfuckistan: Microdosing in the Land of Delusion

August 13, 2026

Coming to you live from the majestic, reality-adjacent utopia we call Dumbfuckistan where, if you don’t like the actual reality, you simply manifest your own personal delusion and then continue to while away the hours, conferring with the flowers, consulting with the rain. Nothing like a little microdosing on some really pure confirmation bias to make the days go by, is there? I’ve got the good shit. I’ve always got the good shit. I’m your pusherman.

So, to try to convince you and I, the gullible public, that everything is hunky dory in Iran and the check is totally in the mail and he definitely won’t leave us holding the geopolitical hot potato, our beloved Catering Truck Commander (Trump) updated us on the regime’s straight-to-DVD remake of the Vietnam War on Pravda Social: “The U.S.A. has total control over the Strait of Hormuz. I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT! Our Naval Blockade is being called, by everyone, ‘A WALL OF STEEL,’ and there is nothing Iran can do about it. They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, their remaining soldiers are unpaid, the IRGC is decimated and fleeing, and their ‘Leadership’ is uncertain, at best! They have No Money - Their country is ‘shot.’ All they have is FAKE NEWS and 300% INFLATION, and getting worse! Iran is all talk and no action, the Bully of the Middle East No Longer. Praise be to Allah!”

He’s got the tiny willow, not the big bamboo. The terrifying part is that I think he actually believes his own fan fiction. Iran, of course, is trolling him with a new Lego video (Cater Force One; which you need to see because it’s a masterclass in brick-based mockery). He’s trying to be all Cool Edgy Teacher with the “Praise be to Allah!” because he can scream it into the digital void all he wants but if an actual, certified public school teacher said that in a classroom they’d be dogpiled by the booboisie: a tactical squad of perimenopausal soccer moms who missed their “wine moms” Zoom calls to go protest a teacher living large off of $27/hour who just wants kids to learn and not feel rejected for who they are. No wonder 4,000 teachers packed up their Vionic sneakers and quit in the Houston ISD alone.

It’s not just educators fleeing the interview, either. Public servants are stuck in salary stagnation, you are not hallucinating the giant sucking sound emanating from your bank account. I had an unpleasant surprise yesterday: I went to get a Schlotzsky’s sandwich—not some artisanal “farm to table” bullshit with truffle oil and gold leaf-- and it was nearly $11. I mean, it was good, but it wasn’t a religious experience or anything.

The Consumer Price Index is here to give us the unvarnished, anxiety-provoking math and those numbers, like hips, don’t lie.

Here it is, no lube: The CPI reports that inflation is up 3.4% from July 2025. Remember the utopian Federal Reserve target: 2%; at that point, everyone will have a good hair day every day and small woodland creatures will approach you and offer to make you clothes. The number reflects the high gas prices, which will keep going up as Iran patiently outwaits the Catering Truck Commando in the shittiest game of Risk ever. Gas is up 24.6% from last year. Food is up 3% from last July but go to the grocery store and tell me that’s not just a polite lie. Housing? 3.2%. Utilities? 4.3%. Apparel? 3.9% (which is why you need the small woodland creatures). All in all? Not great, unless your retirement plan consists of wearing burlap and living in a re-creation of the Unabomber’s cabin in a remote forest setting until it’s torn down by bulldozers to build a border wall.