Neutrality vs. Complicity: a Powerful Pencil

So, I’m journaling in the evening this time — which is rare. Usually, I spit these thoughts into the mic during the 15-minute ride from my daughter’s school, letting my brain roam freely between stoplights. But today, I discovered something that pulled me into a deeper stream of thought and just wouldn’t let go.

A podcast.
A Dutch one, titled Amerika in 15 minuten.

Highly recommended if you want a sharp, clean take on what’s going down in the U.S. — politically, especially. The host, Raymond Mens, has this remarkable quality: he tries to be neutral. Not Switzerland-neutral or journalistically sterile, but truly: here are the facts, make of them what you will.

And that’s fascinating.
And also… unsettling.

Because here’s the dilemma that’s been gnawing at me:
At what point does neutrality become complicity?

When do you move from observer to opponent — especially if what’s developing is, let’s say, not a healthy democracy but more like an authoritarian regime in disguise? There’s that classic internet law — Godwin’s — that says every debate eventually leads to someone invoking Hitler. Well, if that’s true, then when do we actually have the moral duty to say: this is not okay?

Take this example: 200 alleged gang members rounded up in the USA and tossed into Venezuelan prisons without due process. No trials. One already turned out to be innocent. That’s the point of due process. That’s the universal principle. It’s not about left or right or religious beliefs. It’s about having the right to defend yourself, to be heard, to not be crushed by the state because someone thought you looked like trouble.

So when does a podcast host — or a dad, a citizen, a technologist — have to speak up? When do I speak up?

The answer, for now, is:
I’m listening.
And thinking.
And maybe that’s okay.
Maybe not.
But it’s intentional.

Also, maybe I don’t want to spend every waking moment podcasting or raging against the machine. I’ve got other threads I’m following, too — like another podcast called Mindful Machines. Kind of a strange one. Utopian. Dystopian. Thought-provoking. I had to rewind half of it because I was either zoning out or zoning in too deeply. You know how that goes.

Anyway, I also rewatched The Matrix trilogy… even Resurrections. There’s a strange power in that architect/analyst duality — that idea that the world runs on equations that must be balanced. Feels like a metaphor for life lately.

And in the background of all this, I’m just a guy turning 48 next month. A dad of six (yeah, six), a husband, a son of two parents in their 70s. And a product manager by day, juggling AI projects and geopolitical ponderings by night. I’m trying to get fit, too — because my youngest daughter still wants to swim and chase me around the park, and I want to be there, fully there, for that.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been quiet — not posting as much, not publishing every journal. But I’ve been recording. Just… quietly. Editing takes time, and AI transcripts are hit or miss. Still want to turn some into proper podcasts, though. This whole “Digital Dialogues” experiment still excites me.

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Tech, Treasuries, and a Theory

I was listening to this Dutch tech entrepreneur and internet infrastructure expert — Bert Hubert — and he made a strong case that we (as in the Dutch, or Europeans more broadly) are way too dependent on American tech. If things ever go south — politically or morally — we’d be in deep trouble, because the entire infrastructure of our digital world is theirs.

That’s the kind of message more tech people should be voicing.

And here’s my own little theory — something I picked up via Substack, I think. It’s a bit conspiratorial, but strategically plausible. The idea is this:

When political chaos hits and stock markets crash, investors panic and flee to the safest asset they know: U.S. Treasuries bonds. That raises demand, lowers yields, and gives the U.S. government cheaper access to cash — perhaps even helping them reduce their deficit. If that’s even remotely true, then creating panic becomes… economically beneficial. Dark, but efficient [update: backfiring]

And speaking of deficits — the U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, but the downside is massive. You shouldn’t be able to run huge deficits as a reserve issuer. Yet here we are: over $36 trillion in the red. And while I’m not an economist, I’ve always been fascinated by macroeconomics. The whole system is just… wild.

There’s that old Milton Friedman clip where he holds up a pencil and explains how it took thousands of people, across multiple continents, to make just one of them. The graphite, the yellow paint, the wood, the rubber — each a product of global cooperation. And that’s just a pencil. What about a chip? A data center? A smartphone?

It’s… mind-blowing how much coordination the modern world actually requires. And yet, all of it is held together with fragile threads — geopolitics, trust, treaties, and sometimes, wishful thinking.

And maybe that’s where neutrality becomes more than a moral stance — it becomes a myth. Because that pencil? It looks neutral. It feels apolitical. But it’s the product of thousands of choices, interdependencies, and systems that are anything but neutral. The moment you trace it back far enough, you realize every artifact of our modern world sits at the intersection of power, politics, and policy.

So yeah, maybe I’m not just journaling. Maybe I’m sketching a map of meaning, a kind of puzzle path that I — or someone else — can look back on and say: “That’s where the dots started to connect.”

And that’s what I love about this GPT project I’m running — where I throw in transcripts like this and ask it to create a cohesive story. That’s what this is. A cohesive story pulled from the chaos of my mind, the headlines of our time, and the weight of all the hats I wear.

To the listener, the reader, the dreamer, the dad.
Thanks for joining me.
Until the next ride from school.