Constitutional Spitroast
Field Notes From Under the Shadow of Babel
For a more formal text dealing with this idea, it’s here: The American Schismogenesis and is part of a section of the same name.
Military occupies ground, Executive has elections. Twin invasions, same source.
Colorado sky bleeds pink against mountain silhouettes. Early morning. Or late evening. Time gets funny when institutions collapse. My hormone pills rattle in the orange bottle. A sound like bones thrown by ancient priests divining which laws apply to my body next week.
Coffee tastes like pennies dissolved in battery acid, the republic corrodes on my tongue in real time.
April 11, 2025. Just another Friday until it wasn’t. Executive orders don’t sound like gunshots when they execute republics. NSPM-4. Military troops on US soil. “Sealing the Southern Border.” “Repelling Invasions.” Language so antiseptic you’d think they were discussing bathroom caulk not constitutional collapse.
I touch the cold cafe window. Real glass. Solid. Unlike the border between civilian and military authority that just evaporated with a signature at 3:17pm but feels like it happened last century. Time stretches, snaps back, fractures again.
The legal language glows on my laptop. Bloodless. Technical. “The Secretary of Defense may determine those military activities that are reasonably necessary and appropriate.”
Reasonable…
Appropriate…
Words still dressed in their Sunday best while weekend passes expired for constitutional separation of powers.
Weather alert flashes. Storm warnings. Barometric collapse. Democracy depression incoming from the southwest. Pressure dropping inside my skull in time with atmospheric systems.
Trump’s order hands federal land to the military. Creates “military installations” on US territory. Gives Pentagon jurisdiction over American soil with rules of engagement drafted by generals, not legislators. Legal document reads like necropsy report for republic that died without anyone noticing. Constitution didn’t flatline dramatically. Just got quietly rewritten in bureaucrat-ese while Americans argued about gas prices.
Phone buzzes. The Atlantic blinking on screen. Paul Rosenzweig seeing it clearly: “Trump Is Already Undermining the Next Election. And the one after that, and the one after that.” Words arranging themselves into prophecy while my coffee grows cold. Tuesday’s headline shows up Friday morning but describes events that haven’t happened yet but already did.
The TV plays financial channel. Tech stocks exempt from tariffs. Markets jump 9, 12, 22 percent. Coffee shop patrons stare at phones. Nobody looks up. Nobody sees military occupation merging with election seizure like weather systems colliding. Same day. Same fucking signature. Same pen.
Colorado sunshine feels pornographic in this context.
Two elk cross the road outside. They move through jurisdictions without documentation. Without constitutional crisis. Without hormone prescriptions that transform from medicine to contraband at state lines. They know nothing of executive orders or judicial collapse. They will outlast republics.
Same presidential hand signing military authority over federal land also signed executive order seizing control of elections from states. Demanding “documentary proof of citizenship” that birth certificates don’t satisfy. Forcing mail ballots to arrive by Election Day regardless of state laws. Ordering recertification of all voting machines to excise demons of QR codes and barcodes. Constitutional text pixelating in real time.
Which god? Which nation? Which timeline?
— Timeline Arbitrage: Profiting from Constitutional Collapse —
My estradiol pills shift in their bottle as I reach for my coffee. Tiny pink oracles predicting which version of America I’ll inhabit next month. The rattle sounds like tiny avalanche, like systems failing in miniature.
Republicans tried legislating this through Congress. The SAVE Act. Democracy’s immune system rejected it. So executive order instead.
Governance doesn’t think anymore. Just convulses, forgets, contradicts itself, doubles down, forgets again. Rinse and repeat until constitution drowns in its own procedural fluids.
Was that this morning? Was that two weeks ago? Time doesn’t flow now. Pools in toxic eddies. Wednesday’s headlines arriving Tuesday describing Thursday’s catastrophe that already happened last month.
Waitress refills coffee that already tastes burned though I haven’t tasted it yet. “More coming?” she asks, pointing at the storm outside. “System’s already here,” I mutter. “What hon?” “Nothing. Thanks.” Three tables over, couple wearing flag-pattern shirts with eagles. Smiling. Content. Different atmospheric pressure system than mine. Different gravitational field. Same physical cafe. Inhabiting different centuries within same GPS coordinates.
Meanwhile presidential fingers tweet “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” hours before announcing tariff pauses that send markets rocketing. S&P up 9 percent. Nasdaq up 12. Trump Media up 22.
Twenty two fucking percent.
Senator Murphy calls it insider trading. The Independent calls it “a new low.” Trump’s supporters call it winning. Three ontologies of same mathematical event. Cash registers ring while law books burn.
Tectonic plates shift regardless of constitutional arrangements.
— Pill Bottle Divination: Medicine as Legal Contraband —
My body functions as jurisdictional seismograph. Woman in Colorado. Criminal suspect in Texas. Legal human in California. Enemy propaganda in Florida. Different laws apply to identical molecules depending on area code. America isn’t bordered. It’s fractally subdivided into competing legal regimes accidentally sharing flag design.
I line up pill bottles on cafe table. Orange plastic sentinels standing guard between existence and erasure. Estradiol that tells my cells which America we live in. Sertraline that makes constitutional crisis endurable. Lisinopril because blood vessels collapse under institutional stress just like republics do.
Phone shows Trump’s election order from last Thursday. Or Monday. Or both. The walking Cheese-it demanded the Election Assistance Commission “recertify” all voting machines. Same signature as military border order. Same pen. Same temporal paradox. Military occupies territory. Executive occupies elections. Twin invasions from same source.
My knuckles crack without moving. Like the bones feel gravity shift. I reach for my coffee and knock over a pill bottle. The tablets scatter like dice thrown to divine which legal fate applies this month.
Same hand writing death certificate for voting rights and birth announcement for military governance. Same pen. Same collapse.
Phone alert shatters chronology again. Deutsche Bank analyst warning “the market is rapidly de-dollarizing” as investors flee. Dollar falling through floor while Trump crashes through markets like drunk rhino in porcelain museum. The Pentagon expands as the dollar recedes, two graphs diverging like reality and myth.
Elk return, crossing road in opposite direction. Animals move through collapsing timelines without noticing legal fiction disintegrating. Their bodies don’t require documentation to exist in their correct category. Their migration patterns don’t transform into felonies at county lines.
I gather spilled pills from table. Count them like ammunition. Survival inventory for regime change. The bottle becomes relic, oracle, weapon, identity papers — all depending on which jurisdiction recognizes its contents as medicine or contraband. The plastic rattles different prophecies depending on who’s listening.
Everything functions normally except republic itself.
— Geological Indifference: Hills Watch Democracies Dissolve —
I drive past three churches with three different versions of “Prayer for our Nation” on signboards. Which god? Which nation? Which timeline? Everything means nothing and too many things at once.
News report says gold hit record high as central banks drop dollars like contaminated meat. Screen changes. Tech stocks soaring after tariff exemptions for “smartphones, computers, semiconductors.” Financial weathervane spins wildly. System diagnosing itself with multiple terminal conditions simultaneously.
Currency collapse. Equity bubble. Military occupation. Election seizure.
All contradictory. All synchronous. All true.
April sun glints off empty pill bottle rolling on passenger seat. Three months supply remaining at current dose. Who knows about next quarter. Time horizon collapsed to prescription refill window. America doesn’t project power or plan policy anymore. Just lurches emergency to emergency. Like addict chasing next hit. Or pretending it’s the last.
Tuesday news merges with Friday memory that hasn’t happened yet. Border troops. Election certification. Insider trading tweet. Events arrange themselves in non-chronological sequence. Time itself fractures along jurisdictional lines. Military decree happening yesterday though calendar says next week.
Birth certificate: invalid. Yesterday: valid. Today: maybe. Tomorrow: who knows. Depends what “citizen” means in your zip code. Depends who’s holding the pen.
Receipt says 2:43PM. Sky says apocalypse o’clock.
The road stretches ahead. Mountains watch with geological indifference. Tectonic plates shift regardless of constitutional arrangements. Nature writes longer time horizons than democracies. Elk outlast republics.
7:45PM. Or maybe AM. Trans friends gathered in an apartment that exists simultaneously as safe house and potential crime scene depending on which executive order applies this hour. Six bodies functioning as doppler radar across state lines. We compare notes like field biologists monitoring extinction event. Where healthcare exists. Where existence itself criminalized. Where propaganda frame overrides personhood. Our bodies map America’s fracture lines more accurately than any congressional district.
Was that lightning an election order or a military deployment?
— Shell After Substance: Democracy as Empty Ritual —
Phone notifications stack grows like sedimentary record of institutional failure.
Military preparing for border operations under rules written by generals. Election commission being pressured to implement requirements rejected by legislature. Markets oscillating based on presidential emojis. The Constitution still streaming live while election laws rewritten in background like silent app updates nobody reads.
Pill bottles rearrange themselves across kitchen counter like chess pieces in game with rules changing mid-move. Orange plastic oracles predicting which jurisdiction might recognize my humanity next month. Same bottle. Different crime depending where I stand. Same person. Different rights, different courthouse.
The pattern doesn’t require explanation. Doesn’t invite analysis. Just exists like bloodstain pattern at crime scene. Military expands jurisdiction under “invasion” pretext. Executive seizes election machinery under “integrity” justification. Voting machines requiring recertification while bodies requiring new documentation. Different mechanisms. Identical purpose. Constitutional text dissolving while surveillance camera networks solidify.
Same pen. Different document. Same collapse.
Water glass sits untouched on counter reflecting light that left the sun eight minutes ago but feels like it traveled from before republic fractured. Prescription bottles arranged in defensive perimeter. External world still provides utilities. Internal world of shared meaning flatlined months ago while machines kept whirring.
I count remaining hormone pills like survivalist counts ammunition. Four months at current dose if bureaucracy continues functioning at current degraded capacity. Medical stability measured in tablet inventory.
Coffee still stimulates central nervous system. Plumbing still delivers water. Electricity still powers screens showing constitutional collapse. Everything functions normally except republic itself.
Storm front moves across mountains. Barometric pressure drops in sync with institutional integrity. Weather system operates independently of legal system but both collapse in parallel. Lightning forks like executive power — sudden, blinding, unaccountable. My sinuses compress with the approaching front, body registering collapse before mind can process it.
Not sanctioning America as concept. Sanctioning specific Republican voting districts as operational reality.
Louisiana soybeans. Florida cigarettes. Kansas beef. Nebraska popcorn.
Foreign powers mapped our dissolution into competing jurisdictions before we’d admit it domestically.
Rain begins. Elk vanish into forest. I wonder if they have contingency plans or just experience weather as it happens. Either way they persist. Constitutional systems less adaptive than wildlife. Democracy dies not through revolution but through procedural documents citing authorities that didn’t exist until someone invented them on letterhead.
Storm intensifies. Pressure drops inside skull cavity. Constitutional guardrails designed for political climate that no longer exists. Thunder rattles windows, shaking loose something in temporal perception. Was that lightning yesterday’s election order or tomorrow’s military deployment?
…like elections under executive control.
…like borders under military occupation.
…like America in April 2025.
I swallow tomorrow’s estradiol today. Jurisdictional hedge against uncertainty. Never know when pill bottle transforms from healthcare into criminal evidence.
Same pill. Same molecules. Different crime depending where I stand. Same person. Different rights, different courthouse.
Maybe if I arrange the pill bottles in proper formation, they’ll reveal which state borders I can safely cross next month. Maybe if I take them at exactly midnight, they’ll loop time back to functional republic. Maybe if I place them under pillow, constitutional norms will regenerate overnight like lost teeth.
I check ID card. Still valid in Colorado. Still suspect in Texas. Still propaganda target in Florida. Small laminated rectangle that changes meaning every hundred miles like magic talisman losing power outside ritual boundary.
Empty pill bottle catches last light. Transparent plastic prophet. Shell without content. Form persisting after function vanished.
Same as democracy after collapse.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌ 🜏 ❌❌❌❌❌⛧❌❌❌❌❌ 🜏 ❌❌❌❌❌❌❌
Come find me on Mastodon: https://infosec.exchange/@pixelnull
… or don’t. I don’t give a shit. <3