The screen fades in on mist. The remains of Argynvostholt rise like a broken cathedral above a grey valley. Then, faintly, the sound of boots, breathing, and whispered plans. This is Session 22 — a full visual chronicle of the night our party defied the ghosts, webs, and curses of Barovia’s most haunted ruin.

The video podcast version of Fire in the Webs captures the energy of play in a way that only a tabletop camera can. The dice roll in frame. The players’ faces shift between tension, humor, and awe. You see every movement of the miniatures on the map, every quick exchange that turns a near-death moment into triumph.

The story begins with a decision: to re-enter Argynvostholt, the fallen seat of the Silver Dragon’s order. Within minutes, everything unravels. Radley Fullthorn, the human Eldritch Knight, pauses to gauge the room. From above, the ceiling trembles—and from the darkness, nine spiders the size of horses descend. The table explodes with action. Dice scatter. Spells ignite. Radley casts Thunderwave, the camera catching his player’s hands lifting as the blast shakes miniatures across the board. When the knight falls to poison, the scene slows. Traxidor, half-elf cleric, murmurs the words to Spare the Dying as his player leans forward over the table, eyes fixed. The room holds its breath until the roll succeeds.

From there, the session ascends into exploration and unease. Through dim corridors, spectral soldiers emerge—phantoms of the fallen order. The lighting in the studio turns blue-white as Channel Divinity erupts across the map. Ghosts flee. The camera pans over character sheets: empty spell slots, dwindling health bars, notes scrawled in haste.

But Barovia is never finished. Outside, under a sky that never brightens, a wagon departs and leaves behind a coffin. The engraving on its lid: Radley Fullthorn. Laughter cuts the tension. He lies down inside it, “just to see,” then climbs out and orders it burned. The table breaks into uneasy smiles. It’s macabre humor born from exhaustion and survival—the real language of adventurers who have stared too long into the dark.

Morning brings the final battle: animated scarecrows advancing through mist. Their eyes glow. Fire answers. The table’s energy shifts from fear to exhilaration as the party wins, spent but unbroken.

Visually, this episode bridges two worlds: the haunted imagination of Barovia and the tangible magic of players at the table. You can see how Dungeons & Dragons becomes more than a game—it’s performance, collaboration, and living story.

Fire in the Webs – Session 22 is part theater, part documentary, and part survival tale. Watch it to understand how dice and friendship can build worlds—and how courage can still burn, even in Barovia’s endless night.

Step into Barovia’s haunted silence in The Mists of Argynvostholt, an audio journey through one of the most intense chapters of our Curse of Strahd campaign. This is Session 22 — an evening of peril, faith, and endurance that tested every spell slot, every saving throw, and every nerve at the table.

Our adventurers—Urihorn Tenpenny, a halfling ranger with a loyal beast companion; Radley Fullthorn, a human Eldritch Knight balancing sword and spell; Traxidor, a cleric of light carrying the last fire of the Morninglord; and Daermon Cobain, an elf arcane trickster who fights with precision and wit—return to the fallen fortress of Argynvostholt, once home to the Order of the Silver Dragon.

They come seeking redemption for a past defeat. Instead, they find the manor alive with malice. When Radley hesitates in the ballroom ruins, the ceiling comes alive: nine giant spiders descend on threads as thick as ropes. The sound of Thunderwave crashes through the hall, stones crack, and poison drips into the silence. The cleric’s voice rises over the chaos—“Spare the Dying!”—and breath returns to the fallen knight’s lungs.

You’ll hear the rhythm of the table as it happens: dice hitting wood, pages turning, whispered tactics, the exhale when a roll lands just high enough to survive. The fight spills through rooms where portraits still watch and cobwebs hold centuries of regret. Upstairs, spectral soldiers emerge through the walls, remnants of knights who once swore to serve the light. Divine radiance flares, the dead scatter, and the group presses deeper into the heart of Barovia’s grief.

Then—outside, silence. A coffin waits, freshly carved, Radley’s name etched across the lid. He opens it. Empty. Without a word, he lies down inside, stares at the sky, and climbs out again. Later that night, they burn it for warmth.

At dawn, the mist parts just long enough to reveal the glowing eyes of animated scarecrows, shambling through fog. Fire bolts and sacred flames turn darkness to light, if only for a moment.

Every sound in this session matters: the flicker of fire, the scrape of steel, the faint breath between rolls. This is Dungeons & Dragons not as spectacle, but as shared memory—friends, imagination, and danger made real through voice.

The Mists of Argynvostholt invites you to listen close. Feel the dice, the story, the fear, the laughter. Barovia is calling.

Imagine watching a pot of water with frogs in it. The city adds a little heat — higher taxes, new regulations, moral lectures — and waits to see what happens. At first, nothing. The frogs get used to it. Then one day the temperature crosses a line, and they jump. That’s how modern economies lose their wealth. Not with protests, not with revolutions — but with relocation.

In the past, money was trapped. Rockefeller couldn’t just move Standard Oil to Singapore. The state had leverage. That’s why we could run top tax rates near 90 percent in the 1950s — and still fund highways, NASA, and free public universities. But we deregulated, digitized, and globalized, and suddenly money turned into vapor. Now it flows wherever the vibe is better.

Today, every governor plays host instead of sheriff. They beg for headquarters, sports teams, rich residents. Remember Amazon HQ2? That wasn’t a competition — it was a collective confession. Cities have to woo wealth because they can’t hold it anymore. Modern taxation isn’t punishment; it’s marketing.

And it’s not just billionaires. It’s every dual-income family earning mid-six figures — the real tax base. They can move to Florida, Texas, or just twenty minutes north to Westchester. If you make them feel like villains, they’ll leave quietly, and when they do, you’ll lose the revenue that funds the compassion.

I want cities to care for people — I believe in that deeply. But compassion without arithmetic is just performance art. If we want social programs that last, we have to keep the contributors from leaving. Make prosperity feel safe, not shameful.

The stadiums, the Olympic bids, the waterfront makeovers — they’re not just vanity. They’re bait. The trick is pretending it’s about culture while it’s really about capital.

That’s the truth nobody likes to say out loud: in 2025, the rich don’t live in cities; cities live under them.

It’s not the 19th century anymore. The world of heavy money and civic loyalty is gone. What’s left is the great escape — quiet, legal, and constant — and the only cities that will survive are the ones smart enough to keep the frogs comfortable.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how money moves — and how we still talk about it as if it doesn’t. It all started with a TikTok comment. Somebody asked, “When have rich people ever moved to avoid taxes?” I typed back a few examples — Eduardo Saverin to Singapore, the French actor Gérard Depardieu to Belgium, the wave of Californians to Texas — and before I knew it, I was deep in the rabbit hole of what economists call capital flight.

It’s the quiet migration that rewires everything. Cities still pretend they control wealth, but wealth learned how to walk. In the twentieth century, capital was heavy. Factories and banks were physical. You could trap it with paperwork. That’s how we ran 90-percent tax rates in the 1950s — because money couldn’t leave.

Now it can. And does. The second you make the rich uncomfortable, they don’t argue; they relocate. You can’t run 1950s taxes in a 2025 economy. You can’t play chicken with people who can teleport.

Take New York right now. With Zohran Mamdani elected mayor, talk of new taxes and rent freezes is driving the same professionals who fund the city to look for exits: Westchester, Jersey, Connecticut. These aren’t oligarchs — they’re the $400k-a-year scaffolding that holds the budget up. Lose enough of them and the math collapses.

We’ve turned taxation into courtship. Look at Amazon HQ2: Arlington and a dozen other cities groveling for the same HQ like contestants in an economic beauty pageant. Modern governments don’t tax the rich — they audition for them.

And it’s not ideology. It’s comfort. Make the princess-and-the-pea class uneasy and they’ll hop to somewhere cooler. The same dynamic drives gentrification: mayors won’t admit they want to bulldoze blight, so they build stadiums and call it “revitalization.” Nationals Park did it in D.C.; the Olympics do it every time. Prestige becomes a permit for displacement.

I don’t hate any of this. It’s just physics. Money follows comfort, and policy either acknowledges that or dies pretending otherwise. Charity is opt-in. Tax support is opt-out. And when cities forget that, they lose the people who keep the lights on.

It’s not the 19th century anymore. The steam still rises from the streets, but the power that once drove it has already left the city.

Every now and then, America drags its elites out of the faculty lounge and into the street fair. It doesn’t matter if the excuse is a war, a crisis, or—this time—the 250th birthday of the country. Eventually, the people who think they’re running the story are reminded that they’re just living in it. That’s what’s happening now: the same class that spent a decade deconstructing the flag is being told to wave it. The same pundits who said “America was never great” are now workshopping how to make patriotism sound inclusive.

The Great Patriotic Heist, they called it—the Left’s plan to steal back the language of the Republic before Trump’s fireworks light up the sky in 2026. But something unexpected is happening. The performance is starting to take.

At first, this was supposed to be patriotic drag—ironic flag-waving, focus-grouped “love of country” speeches, and diversity parades that felt as managed as corporate training videos. It was meant to be safe, even antiseptic. But you can’t play with fire without getting burned. Pretending to love something, especially something as big and unruly as America, has a way of sneaking past the mask. Before long, the act starts to feel like belief.

That’s how America wins—not through conquest, but through absorption. It’s cultural judo. The Default Republic doesn’t shout down its critics; it invites them to the barbecue. It doesn’t exile dissenters; it makes them neighbors. Everyone who tries to overthrow it eventually becomes part of it. The Puritans became merchants. The rebels became regulators. The hippies became consultants. The Republic doesn’t punish revolution—it digests it.

Now it’s digesting the Left’s moral managerial class. The people who spent years treating patriotism like a symptom of privilege are suddenly out in the sun with people who don’t apologize before loving their country. And it’s changing them. Because the thing they thought they were parodying—this easy, unselfconscious affection for the Republic—is exactly what they’ve been missing.

The great secret of American normalcy is that it isn’t ideological. It’s a temperament—a default mode of stubborn optimism. The 80 percent of Americans who still think the country’s worth arguing over don’t live on Twitter. They don’t see patriotism as a brand or a trauma; it’s just part of the background music of belonging. They grill, they vote, they raise kids and hope they do better. They’re the ballast—the rowers in the galley who keep the ship moving while the captains yell about ideology from the deck.

That’s why every attempt to control the national mood eventually dissolves. The Default Republic doesn’t fight back; it absorbs. It takes whatever the intellectual class invents—critical theory, corporate virtue, even performative patriotism—and turns it into background noise.

The irony is that while the Left thinks it’s teaching America to be moral again, America is teaching the Left how to be human again. The activist who goes to “monitor extremism” at a small-town parade ends up humming the marching-band tune. The journalist covering “reactionary patriotism” wipes a tear during the fireworks. It’s not conversion; it’s contagion.

By 2026, the great rebranding of patriotism will look less like propaganda and more like repentance. The country’s critics will have become its defenders without realizing it. They’ll call it progress, or “inclusive nationalism,” but the rest of us will just call it Tuesday.

Because in America, everyone eventually comes home. The Republic doesn’t need to win the argument; it only needs to outlast it. And when the fireworks burst again over the National Mall, the nation won’t be healed—just reminded that underneath all the noise, the Republic is still there, humming along, unbothered, undefeated.

The Default Republic always wins—not because it’s right, but because it never stops inviting people back.

Every few generations, America forgets how to argue and starts to dance instead. This time the excuse is the 250th birthday — the Semiquincentennial, a word that sounds like it was cooked up by a government subcommittee. But behind the bureaucratic branding, something strange is happening. The same cultural class that once rolled its eyes at patriotism is now rediscovering flags, fireworks, and the word “Republic.” The same people who called the Founders colonizers are suddenly quoting them. It’s as if the left decided to go on a national Rumspringa — to step outside its echo chamber and see how the rest of America actually lives.

At first, this was just The Great Patriotic Heist — a marketing strategy meant to stop Trump from owning the 250th anniversary. Progressive elites thought they could perform patriotism without believing it, using flags as props and slogans like “defend democracy” as emotional camouflage. But America has a funny way of reshaping everyone who touches it. Pretend long enough, and the pretending starts to feel real. The Left wanted to rebrand patriotism; instead, patriotism is rebranding them.

That’s how the Default Republic wins — not through power or ideology, but through absorption. It doesn’t conquer its critics; it invites them to dinner. It doesn’t punish hypocrisy; it forgives it. It’s the quiet, unbreakable America that exists between extremes — the one that works, pays taxes, cheers at Little League games, and thinks the country’s still worth arguing about. It’s not the cathedral or the revolution. It’s the barbecue in between.

The managerial class doesn’t understand this because it was trained to see belonging as a system, not a feeling. They think patriotism is something you teach through messaging campaigns and moral supervision. But patriotism isn’t pedagogy — it’s muscle memory. It’s the unselfconscious act of standing for something larger than yourself. It’s what happens when belief outlasts irony.

That’s why the “new patriotism” the Left is trying to choreograph feels more like theater than conviction. It’s carefully diverse, emotionally calibrated, algorithmically sincere. But America has always been a place where sincerity can’t be faked. You can’t focus-group affection. You can only live near it until it gets under your skin. The Left thought they were managing a narrative; the Republic knew it was hosting a conversion.

And conversions are contagious. Once you’ve sung along to “God Bless America” at a minor league game, it’s hard to go back to sneering at flags. Once you’ve seen ordinary people — plumbers, nurses, veterans — celebrate something together without cynicism, you start to suspect that the real rebellion isn’t against the country but against despair itself.

That’s what makes the Default Republic undefeatable. It’s not ideological. It’s gravitational. Every attempt to overthrow it eventually gets absorbed — the Puritans became merchants, the rebels became bureaucrats, the hippies became consultants. The Republic doesn’t fight revolutions; it metabolizes them.

By the time America hits its 250th, that metabolism will have done its work again. The activists who came to police the parades will find themselves clapping along. The journalists covering “performative patriotism” will find themselves moved. And the country — messy, vulgar, generous — will go on doing what it does best: forgiving everyone for coming home late.

The lesson isn’t that America is perfect. It’s that it’s patient. The Republic doesn’t need to win the argument; it only needs to outlast it.

And when the fireworks burst in 2026, the think pieces will call it reconciliation, or narrative evolution, or managed healing. But it won’t be any of that. It’ll just be America doing what it always does — absorbing the noise, baptizing the cynics, and reminding everyone that you don’t have to like the song to learn the chorus.

Because in the end, belief here isn’t something you think. It’s something you sing.

“You become what you pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend to be.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

In The Great Patriotic Heist, I argued that the American Left has begun performing patriotism — not feeling it, performing it. The same institutions that once mocked the flag now wrap themselves in it, speaking solemnly about “our Republic” and “the unfinished promise of 1776.” It’s not rediscovered affection — it’s narrative survival. The populist Right took the flag hostage, so the only way to reclaim it was to start waving their own. My warning then was simple: performance has a half-life. It either collapses or becomes real.

This episode is about what happens if it becomes real — if people pretending to love America start actually loving it. Here, pretending isn’t lying — it’s creation. We perform ideals until they exist. We said “all men are created equal” long before we believed it, and through repetition made it partly true. America evolves not through honesty but rehearsal.

Sartre called it “bad faith.” Not hypocrisy, but self-entrapment — when you play a role so long you forget it’s a choice. America’s moral managers — experts, editors, educators — now perform patriotism because they know you can’t govern people who think you hate their country. But repetition changes people. Roles have gravity. Pretending shapes the pretender.

What happens when actors start believing their own script? When “freedom,” “democracy,” and “the Republic” stop being props and start being convictions again? Maybe the costume fuses to the skin. Maybe the same Left that once saw America as villain becomes its strictest guardian. That fusion could create something new — not the populist Right’s raw nationalism nor the technocratic Left’s therapy-state, but a hybrid: moral nationalism wrapped in empathy, managed through control.

That’s the Hegelian rhythm — thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The thesis was neoliberal order: global, expert, moralized. The antithesis was populism — Left and Right fusing in rebellion. For a moment, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump spoke the same language of revolt: different grammar, same fury. That was synthesis one — populism as authenticity, revolt against curated virtue.

But populism became self-aware. Its anger turned ritual, its authenticity cosplay. MAGA became fandom. Once authenticity becomes aesthetic, the establishment knows how to sell it back. Enter synthesis two: Progressive Patriotism — focus-grouped, diverse, emotionally ergonomic. Patriotism as lifestyle brand.

It looks real, sounds real, even feels real — but it’s patriotic the way a corporate mission statement is heartfelt. Still, America’s hunger for sincerity is so deep even simulation can work. If enough people perform belief, it becomes belief.

Picture 2026 — the 250th anniversary. “America 250” events: diverse, polished, professional. Fireworks with spoken-word poetry. Speeches about freedom delivered like mindfulness apps. It’ll be immaculate — and in some way, it might succeed. Millions will feel pride, gratitude, even tears. The performance may cross into faith.

And when belief hardens, rebellion returns. Every orthodoxy breeds heresy. Somewhere, a younger generation is already rolling its eyes at both MAGA’s nostalgia and the Left’s choreography. They’ll want danger, not safety; truth, not optics. Their patriotism, if it exists, will be quiet, personal, unbranded.

That’s the American cycle: imitation becomes belief, belief institution, and institutions rebellion’s target. Each generation pretends until the mask becomes its face — then rips it off.

Maybe progressive patriotism sticks. Maybe the country becomes gentler, managerial, moralistic — a nation of caretakers with flags. But someone will always stand up, roll their eyes, and say “enough.”

Because America’s soul belongs to the unmanageable — the ones who stop pretending.

And that, in the end, was Sartre’s warning: the danger isn’t pretending. It’s when the pretending works.

“You become what you pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend to be.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

In The Great Patriotic Heist, I argued that the American Left has begun performing patriotism — waving flags, quoting Jefferson, rediscovering “our Republic” — not from love of country but from narrative panic. The populist Right had taken ownership of rebellion, freedom, and 1776’s mythic energy, leaving progressives with a choice: mock it or mimic it. They chose mimicry. My warning then was that performance can’t last forever; it either collapses or becomes real.

This episode asks: what happens if it becomes real — if the actors forget it started as theater?

Sartre’s “bad faith” applies perfectly here. It isn’t lying; it’s self-deception — performing a role so convincingly that you trap yourself inside it. America has done that for centuries. We pretended to be a land of liberty until the pretense began shaping reality. Pretending here is creative, even dangerous. So when the Left wraps itself in patriotic language — “No Kings,” “Our Republic,” flag emojis on bios — it isn’t just PR. It’s ontological trial and error: trying on belief until it fits.

And maybe it will. That’s America’s trick — performance and belief blur until the act becomes identity. The Left may start by faking affection, but the repetition could harden into conviction. The question is what kind of nation that conviction would build.

Think dialectically: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The thesis was the curated moral order of the 2010s — technocratic, globalist, emotionally micromanaged. The antithesis was the populist revolt — a messy fusion of Left and Right embodied in Trumpism. For a brief, volatile moment, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump spoke different dialects of the same rebellion: against expertise, against the soft tyranny of moral management. That was synthesis one — populism as raw authenticity, a revolt against hypocrisy dressed as virtue.

But every revolution becomes self-aware. The movement that began as candor became theater. Its outrage hardened into ritual; its populism into fandom. The Right began mirroring the spectacle it loathed. And that’s when the Left made its move. If authenticity couldn’t sustain itself, it could be domesticated. Patriotism was rebranded for polite society. The institutions that once scorned the Founders began praising them again — provided the “work” never ends. Thus the rise of Progressive Patriotism: corporate, focus-grouped, inclusive, safe.

It looks real but feels like simulation — an algorithm’s impression of love of country. Yet Americans crave sincerity so badly that even counterfeit conviction sells. Pretend long enough, and it might stop being pretend.

If “inclusive patriotism” becomes orthodoxy, it will dominate for a generation — until someone notices that enforced sincerity isn’t sincerity. Then the rebellion resets. Each synthesis ossifies into a new establishment; each establishment breeds its own opposition. The next populists will reject all theater entirely. They won’t wave flags or hashtags. They’ll simply live differently.

That’s the American metabolism: we don’t resolve contradictions; we absorb them. We act first, believe later. We fake it till we make it — or till it breaks us. Pretending isn’t harmless; it’s nation-building. When you play patriot long enough, you forge the country you deserve.

So maybe this new performance will stick. Maybe the Left’s flag-waving feels genuine by 2026. Maybe the fireworks and “inclusive Republic” sermons convince millions that the dream still lives. But belief engineered from above is belief with a leash. And when people start feeling the collar, they’ll tear it off.

That’s America: not thesis or antithesis — perpetual rehearsal.
A country pretending to be free, and somehow, staying that way.