The last mile of a Wisconsin trucker



On July 31, 2026, a buddy of mine whom I’ve had on my podcast, a fellow trucker who really put down the miles and kept this country fed, turned over his last mile and passed on to the great truck stop in the sky.

Kevin Kenneth Koehnke died as he lived, out on the road and working, a lifestyle he hardly strayed from in his four decades over the road. Kevin had some kind of health episode immediately after completing a delivery in San Jose, California. An ambulance came to get him from his customer’s driveway, and he didn’t make it to the hospital. Kevin was only 64 years old.

'Awww, when I got to the yard, they had a hot load going down to Pennsylvania and they asked me to go, so I took it. Sorry, Gordo.'

Man of many hats

I came to know Kevin, like so many other people in my life these days, from the internet. At some point a few years ago, selfies Kevin was posting on Facebook began to be copied and were circulated around various corners of the internet, often with commentary attached written by posters who were imagining what someone who looked like Kevin would say, and were congruous with the custom-made trucker caps that Kevin had become known for.

Kevin Koehnke

There was an incongruity to Kevin’s habit of printing these hats, which come off as abrasive and unnecessarily inflammatory to some; by all accounts, Kevin was a very warm and talkative guy who really liked people and had friends all over the country. There is an innocent quality to these photos that Kevin took of himself that I believe connected with people at a deeper level than the sort of online meme legend that grew around him. That said, the memes followed the messaging on the hats, and once unleashed on Twitter, they touched a particular nerve.

x.com/Tha_Big_Dog

x.com/Tha_Big_Dog

x.com/Tha_Big_Dog

Conversation with a 'Bub'

I’m a follower and friend of the poster "Big Sib," who first introduced me to these images of Kevin, and I became intrigued by the guy. Being a trucker myself, I’m familiar with the type that spends a lot of time on the road and, in times past, perhaps consumed a little too much AM radio, which provided a weird mental placeholder for the "normal" lives one cannot live while out over the road. Sib seemed to channel a particular "Bub" working-class outlook in the commentary he added to Kevin’s photos, especially those of Kevin enjoying a hard-earned meal, and it all sort of worked. Sib was one of the guys who helped Kevin become somewhat infamous online.

At some point I decided to try to seek Kevin out and invite him on my podcast, and sure enough, his contact details were found on a Facebook post he had made of his business card. I made a few phone calls and got in touch with him, and he agreed to come on my show, which you can listen to right here or on most podcast players of your choice.

Kevin Koehnke

Kevin had stopped at the Iowa 80 Truck Stop to call in and speak with me, and he filled my listeners in on much of his life story, from working on his parents' cabbage farm in Wisconsin as a kid, where he came into contact with the type of truckers made famous in films like "Smokey and the Bandit," through his life on the road, to various adventures and misadventures with police, abusive employers, and friends along the highway who helped him out when times were tough. It’s a fun listen and one of the most downloaded episodes of my podcast. You will also hear a lot about truck stop food and the types of freight Kevin hauled.

'Just like his dad'

When I received news of Kevin’s passing, I asked to be put in touch with his family by the folks at the Konrad-Behlman funeral home, who have been helping them along at this time. I’ve had a couple of phone calls with his mom, Pat, who is pretty spry and a great conversationalist at the ripe old age of 86. She had listened to the podcast at some point as well and got quite a chuckle out of it.

”Kevin told some pretty tall tales,” she said, laughing. “He certainly was not born in the cab of his father’s dump truck. I spent 24 hours in labor trying to push him out.”

Pat did mention that much of Kevin’s career was spent away from home and family and that he was indeed a very high miler. When Kevin’s father died, Kevin couldn’t be there and was a day and a half late getting home.

”Kevin was just like his dad — loved being on the road. Before we bought the farm, his father would drive the dump truck all day and then hop in an 18-wheeler at night for another company and run up to northern Michigan and back overnight. He often only lived on two or three hours of sleep.”

Pat tells me that Kevin worked for about 10 different companies throughout his career, and a certain pattern emerges from her confirmation about things he told me on the show. Kevin is what we in the industry call a "runner," a guy who basically lives in his truck, works his tail off, and almost never goes home. As of 2023 when Kevin came on the podcast, he told me that he had worked for 17 years straight, mostly only ever taking the mandatory 34-hour reset periods truckers are subject to under Hours of Service regulations. So no weekends, no going home, living in the truck, putting miles behind him as he crisscrossed the nation he loved so much.

The problem with "runners" is that trucking companies become dependent on them, reliable as they are, but often do not return much in the way of gratitude for all that hard work and sacrifice. Kevin told me he was fired from one company after requesting four days off to go visit family, being told he could take it, but when the time came, they wanted him to keep going. He had put over 1 million, 300,000 miles on one truck for that particular outfit and was thrown out the door as replaceable. This in an industry that has been whining about a supposed shortage of truckers since the mid-1980s. The real shortage, in Kevin’s case, was making it home for Christmas or almost anything else important.

RELATED: Despite welcome reform, the war on America's truckers rages on

Anadolu/Getty Images

No days off

I invited Kevin to join my friends and me at the Mid-America Trucking Show in March 2024 and even managed to get him a media pass, which comes with access to a room with catered breakfast and lunch, something he would have taken full advantage of. I told everyone that he was coming, and there was quite a bit of anticipation about "Uncle Kevin" or "the Big Dog" coming to MATS. Having never met him in person, I was pretty pumped about getting to meet the guy myself.

Kevin told me months prior that he had booked the time off and that he was most likely going to rent a car and drive down to Louisville from his company's yard up in Michigan. When I arrived at MATS, Kevin was nowhere to be found, and it took me a little while to get ahold of him on the phone.

”Awww, when I got to the yard, they had a hot load going down to Pennsylvania and they asked me to go, so I took it. Sorry, Gordo.”

He sounded almost embarrassed on the phone, as if he knew he had let me down.

”But they knew you were coming here. What the hell, man?”

”You know how it is. No one wants to work, and I couldn’t say no.”

No one wants to work. An eternal Boomerism.

I’m not sure if his excuse was true or not, but it followed a pattern set by himself and his previous employers. Being a runner becomes a lifestyle for a certain kind of trucker, a badge of honor for being institutionalized to the truck. Kevin was 61 years old at that time and had never been married, no kids, and he didn’t see his family much.

Kevin’s mom, Pat, was not surprised by the MATS story.

”I haven’t seen Kevin in 15 years. He doesn’t come home.”

Heavy load

On my podcast, Kevin relayed the story of how he hurt one of his big toes, but didn’t think too much of it and kept on working. Eventually it got so bad that he had to stop and have surgery to prevent gangrene at a hospital near Atlanta, Georgia, pretty far from Wisconsin. He took a couple of months off afterward to recover at his friend's place in Michigan, and that may have been one of the only, if not the only, vacation the man ever had.

Kevin turned 64 on June 13 of this year, and Pat tells me that four days later, Kevin was in the hospital with pneumonia, having water in his lungs. The type of trucking lifestyle he led was clearly not good for his health. Once he recovered, he went straight back to work, taking little oxygen bottles in the truck to help him breathe. Pat is not sure whether Kevin lied to his employers about being fit to return or if they looked the other way, or perhaps failed to engage in any due diligence on a driver returning to duty. I contacted them to ask a few questions about what went down, and their head safety guy said it was "not their place to discuss a personal matter."

Well, a man died on the job under their employ, and I doubt they would give a stock answer like that to an investigator from OSHA or the Workers Compensation Board.

It seems to me that Kevin Koehnke was one of these guys who had some kind of hurt deep inside him and either ignored it or escaped it by just staying on the road. Many Old Hands know such a person, and to be honest, its an easy way out that I myself have undertook in the past. Always working long hours away from home is a good way to let the sleeping dogs lie, but a bad way to manage your own mental health. This scheme is then compounded by employers who take full advantage of the situation, almost like a drug dealer who is always there with the next hit to soothe the pain.

The trucking industry makes a good show of highlighting health and safety, managing hours of service, trying to color between the lines where so many shady operators do not, and end up as part of the steady stream of collisions and chaos on our newsfeeds. But it strikes me that the business is also opportunistic in its use and abuse of runners like Kevin and failing to ask why such a nice man would just keep on working like that, never saying no, always getting it done no matter the cost to his own health — mental and physical — or the cost to relationships with family.

"Having an intervention" is a phrase often tossed around for those with serious problems like addiction. Maybe interventions are needed for the runners like Kevin.

Save me a seat at that truck stop in the sky, Kevin. I’ll be there sooner or later, too, and I’ll be darned if you won’t need a hug.

*******

Pat Koehnke tells me they have yet to see any of Kevin’s personal items returned to them, including his phone or his wallet with all of his ID. If anyone has intel on Kevin’s things, please email me at gordilocks@protonmail.com, and I will see to it that you are connected with his family.

He was cremated in California and thus made easier to ship home, obviating the need for assistance from an organization like Truckers Final Mile, which assists families in retrieving the bodies of loved ones who pass on the road but whose companies refuse to help with getting them back home. It tells you something about certain players in this industry that such an organization exists at all.

You can read Kevin’s official obituary here. There are links to leave a message about Kevin or purchase a memorial tree at the link above.

And make sure you reach out and say hello to someone distant. You never know what they might be going through or how much it would make their day to hear from you.

This essay originally appeared in the Autonomous Truck(er)s Substack.

MEME-FODDER MARK: Carney blew up the trade deal. Now Canada is the punch line.



After Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that Canada was “at war” with the United States and walked away from a proposed trade deal last month, Canada quickly became an object of ridicule in Washington.

But after blowing up the trade deal, Carney has been less eager to explain exactly what happened. He has ignored Official Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre’s demand to reconvene Parliament or provide the Conservative leader with details of the failed trade negotiations.

'How are we going to be at war with Canada? What, are they going to take their two submarines from the Edmonton Mall and sic them on us?'

Carney has offered a broad explanation for walking away, arguing that Washington was demanding concessions that threatened Canadian sovereignty and could eventually wipe out important Canadian industries, particularly auto manufacturing.

American officials tell a very different story.

'Best deal available'

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer flatly denied Carney’s allegations that President Donald Trump wanted somehow to interfere with Quebec culture or erode official bilingualism in Canada.

“We had agreed to, as I've shared before in the press, really the best deal available to any country on the planet with respect to Canada,” Greer told CBC News in the aftermath of Carney's withdrawal.

What Carney did emerge to address Tuesday was something else: the memes.

“When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough, and start being serious about having those discussions, we can have those discussions,” he told reporters Tuesday.

As with all attempts to demand that people on the internet stop making fun of you, Carney’s statement had the opposite effect. Even American officials couldn’t resist a little trolling.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent mocked Carney’s claim that the countries were “at war.”

“I think this is very unfortunate that Prime Minister Carney has turned this into a political shouting match,” Bessent said.

“I mean, we're not at war with Canada. How are we going to be at war with Canada? What, are they going to take their two submarines from the Edmonton Mall and sic them on us?”

Looking out for number one?

Then Bessent got more serious.

“He came to power on an anti-American, anti-Trump agenda. He was 20 points behind in the polls, and then he started this.

"It's unfortunate that he's not doing what's best for the Canadian people. He's doing what is best for the Liberal Party, what's best for Mark Carney, and in the long run, the Canadian people are going to see through that.”

Bessent reiterated the administration’s contention that Canada had been offered “the best trade deal of any country on the globe” before Carney walked away from it at "the last minute.”

Carney may not have been the only Canadian politician responsible for blowing up the agreement.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford reportedly pushed for better treatment of Ontario's auto industry and resisted returning American alcohol to the shelves of Ontario's government-owned liquor stores.

Since the deal collapsed, Ford has even suggested that Alberta could cut off oil shipments to the United States — an idea he has floated before.

There was an awkward problem with Ford’s threat: Ontario itself depends on Alberta oil that travels through the United States. Enbridge’s Line 5 crosses Michigan before returning to Canada and supplying Ontario refineries.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith quickly rejected Ford’s idea, warning that cutting off Alberta energy exports to the United States would be “extremely harmful to Canadians.”

RELATED: MILK MONEY: How Mark Carney chose the dairy cartel — and China — over a Trump trade deal

Bloomberg/Kirsty O'Conner/Nuria Gonzalez-Sanchez/Getty Images

Key role for American Democrat

There are also legitimate questions about other sticking points in the failed negotiations. Carney remains committed to Canada's heavily protected dairy sector, opposed to reviving the Keystone XL pipeline, and increasingly interested in expanding trade with China. The Trump administration has also accused Canada of serving as a route for Chinese steel transshipped into the United States to evade American trade restrictions.

And the questions about Carney’s handling of the United States don’t end with the trade deal.

Take Maia Johnson, the American and registered Democrat with ties to the Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris campaigns, whom Carney promoted to the newly created position of chief operating officer in the prime minister’s office. Before the promotion, Johnson held the revealing title of “senior adviser, United States stakeholder strategy” — meaning Carney had already put an American Democratic operative in a key role advising him on how to deal with the United States.

'Manufactured' crisis

Whatever was going on inside Carney’s office, the Trump administration has been remarkably consistent about what happened to the deal.

“Canada was going to have the best trade deal in the world,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters. “And what happened was that Canada walked away. We had a deal. We shook hands. The president announced it, right? Everybody was positive. Canada made the decision for political purposes. They wanted to walk away.”

Lutnick also rejected Carney's contention that Washington had sought concessions involving Quebec and the French language.

“Do I care about how the Quebecois speak?” Lutnick said. “I mean, what could matter less to America? We don't care.”

“This is manufacturing,” he continued. “That's why the president put out a Truth [Social post] saying it was a complete lie.”

White House commemorates death of Harambe, the much-memed gorilla — and liberals GO APE



A bizarre post from the White House about a dead gorilla has triggered many of the president's critics, who are imploding with great fury and outrage.

Harambe was a 17-year-old western lowland silverback gorilla who was shot and killed by officials of the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016 in order to protect a child who had made his way into the animal's enclosure.

'F**k it, Iran just launch the nukes, put us out of our misery, you’d be doing us a favor.'

The gorilla died but lived on in memes and jokes that turned him into a hero of the manosphere and other online communities.

On Wednesday, the White House social media account remembered Harambe as a "legend" and a patriot.

"He became a symbol of loyalty, strength, chaos, unity, and the strange beauty of the internet bringing millions of people together for one cause: never forgetting Harambe," the post read.

"Everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news," the White House continued. "And somehow, a decade later, his legacy still lives on. Gone, but never forgotten."

Not surprisingly, the outrage online has been hysterical.

"This is really abhorrent. And this will go in the National Archives," read one popular response. "It is just more evidence, that you have zero decency, understanding, nor regard for subject matter. You are mocking the death of this animal, who deserved better in life, and now, in remembrance. It further shows how you have no respect for the responsibility you hold."

"So many people are losing rights and our government is talking about f**king harambe, what are we doing bro," read another reply.

"F**k it, Iran just launch the nukes, put us out of our misery, you’d be doing us a favor at this point this is EMBARASSING," said an account with pronouns in the profile.

The post from the White House garnered more than 27 million views on social media in only 18 hours.

RELATED: Trump admin. mocks outrage of 'unhinged leftists' over White House ballroom construction

Former Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters, who presided over the case, said that it was the most tumultuous incident he experienced in terms of the social media response.

"We've had much worse cases, believe me. We've had serial killers. We've had tons of other cases, but in terms of the effect of social media in a particular case, this took the prize by a long shot," he said to WCPO-TV 10 years later.

He added that it was an easy decision not to charge the mother of the child for negligence because he didn't think a jury of her peers would have convicted her.

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Does the DHS meme strategy actually work?



Growing up, Republicans treated deportations like a topic that required careful handling. Under presidents such as George W. Bush, the language was softened, the messaging was restrained, and the emphasis was placed on policy rather than persuasion. The assumption was that if the argument was sound, the public would eventually come around to it.

That assumption turned out to be wrong.

The goal is not to explain policy in a traditional sense, but to normalize it through repetition, familiarity, and shareability.

Consider the sympathetic yet stern immigration pivots Republicans such as former Texas Governor Rick Perry had during the 2012 GOP primary. Back then, the media and liberal pundits painted Perry as hardcore and extremely right-wing. Compared to Republicans in office now, however, he would be considered passive and extremely soft on the issue.

The assumption that the independent and flip-voter public would buy in to the GOP stance was not because the policy case for enforcement lacked merit, but because the conversation was happening somewhere else entirely.

Opinions were not being decided based on press briefings or white papers. They were being shaped on TV screens, social media feeds, comment sections, and viral content ecosystems where tone and format mattered as much as the substance.

Jeremy Knauff, founder of the PR firm Spartan Media, puts it this way:

Public relations plays a far larger role in policy than most people realize. It’s not enough just to educate the public any more — today, lawmakers need to engage in a more direct effort to influence public perception. The government has always done this to some degree, but the left has been significantly more active and effective in this regard. But now we’re starting to see a measurable shift from the right.

What we are seeing now from the Department of Homeland Security’s social media team represents a break from that old model. Simply put, they’re playing to win.

The kids want memes

The DHS, along with the White House and ICE, has been using memes, viral audio, and internet-native content to promote deportation policy and immigration enforcement. This includes Christmas-themed deportation memes, TikTok-style videos set to trending music, and stylized content designed to travel well beyond traditional government channels.

Keep in mind that Millennials (roughly ages 27-42) spend an average of nearly three hours per day, or approximately 17 to 20+ hours per week, on social media.

These aren’t your father’s government employees figuring these things out on the fly, looking sloppy and rushed. The content they’re putting out isn’t just quality; it is the type of content you would see on the feeds of the most viral social media content creators. They’re in the major leagues of viral political content.

One viral video posted by the DHS, captioned 'Gotta Catch ‘Em All,' showed ICE agents blowing in doors and handcuffing and leading away undocumented immigrants to the theme song from the "Pokemon" cartoon. It certainly tugged on Millennial heartstrings, because that clip alone has been viewed 75.5 million times.

The backlash has been as immediate and intense as you would expect. Critics say this approach is dehumanizing, that it trivializes serious issues, and that it reflects a level of insensitivity that should not be associated with government communications.

CNN has gone so far as to claim that "underlining" DHS recruitment posters "are undertones that historians and experts in political communication say are alarmingly nationalist — and fraught with appeals to a specifically White [sic] and Christian national identity.”

Supporters see it as effective and long overdue after years of what they view as overly cautious messaging from the right.

RELATED: The case against ‘principled conservatism’

Erhui1979/Getty Images

Focusing only on whether the memes are appropriate misses the larger point. What is happening here is not primarily about humor or tone; it is about control over how the issue is framed and where the framing takes place.

Knauff says, “The people who are criticizing this approach are only doing so because they can see that it’s effective. And their complaints are disingenuous because it’s the exact same thing they’ve been doing for decades.”

The cool kids in control

For the better part of the last decade, conservatives did not lose the immigration argument on substance. They lost it on distribution. They had policies and data on their side, but they failed to communicate those ideas in the environments where younger voters and low-information audiences were actually forming opinions.

Put plainly, they were boring and unwilling to defend their position with the same passion as liberals.

The polling makes the gap impossible to ignore. Multiple 2026 surveys show that younger Americans are far less supportive of Trump’s immigration policies than older voters, especially Boomers who largely consume cable news.

A February PBS/NPR/Marist poll found that just 18% of voters under 30 approved of the administration's approach to deportations, while 69% disapproved. A CBS/YouGov survey in mid-January similarly found that 60% of respondents under 30 believed Trump was doing “too much” to deport illegal aliens.

This issue isn’t cut and dry. Trump was delivered a mandate in 2024, but now that optics are changing, the question is whether to keep the foot on the pedal or not.

The picture is clear though: Younger voters are not instinctively aligned with the administration’s immigration agenda, even if they support individual enforcement measures in isolation. So what to do? Keep the memes coming.

The current strategy appears to be an attempt to close that gap by meeting the audience where it already is. Instead of trying to pull younger users into formal policy discussions, the DHS is embedding its messaging inside the formats the youth consume on a daily basis.

The goal is not to explain policy in a traditional sense, but to normalize it through repetition, familiarity, and shareability.

Propaganda? Only call it that if it's boring.

RELATED: Why I support ICE as the son of an immigrant

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

It’s all about virality

What we’re seeing represents a significant shift in how the government communicates. In the past, agencies relied on press releases, official statements, and media intermediaries to convey their message carefully and cautiously. Now, the message is being delivered directly to the public in the same formats used by influencers, creators, and online communities.

The distinction between political communication and internet culture is becoming increasingly blurred.

There are clear risks to this approach. When complex policies are reduced to highly shareable clips, the conversation can quickly become polarized.

At the same time, the old model was not getting the job done. Staffers with communications degrees did not win over younger audiences, did not reshape cultural perception, and did not prevent immigration from becoming one of the most emotionally charged issues in our society today.

Backtracking to a more restrained style of messaging would not solve anything. It would only surrender the digital battlefield once again.

What makes this moment notable is not just the content itself, but what it signals about the future of political communication. The DHS is operating less like a government agency and more like a savvy political campaign, prioritizing reach, engagement, and narrative control over neutrality.

Weapons of meme destruction

The DHS’ use of memes is an indication that the rules of engagement have shifted. Political power is no longer exercised solely through policy decisions or legislative victories, but through the ability to shape perception at scale.

Republicans spent years trying to win arguments in spaces that fewer and fewer people were paying attention to. Now, they appear to be adapting to the environment as it actually exists. Whether that approach proves sustainable or backfires politically remains to be seen.

Knauff explains it like this:

I believe this strategy will not only continue to be effective, but also become more effective as time goes on. Right now, it’s novel and exciting, but as the new car smell wears off, the impact will remain — if we have the discipline to stick with the mission. Public relations requires time to create the desired outcome. It’s not something you can rush. The left had decades to slowly leverage this strategy, so the right needs to be just as patient in their execution.

If the GOP maintains its majority in Congress, Republicans might joke about how the memes saved them. If they lose, expect the old guard to say the memes were too mean.

What is clear is that the next phase of political communications will not be conveyed primarily through speeches, press conferences, or media panels. It will be fought through content and the side that understands that reality will have a decisive advantage.

May the side with the best memes win.

The military’s secret language had a name: Chuck Norris



We measure influence in the U.S. military by rank, command, sacrifice, and decorations. Another kind of influence never shows up in an evaluation report or an after-action review. It lives in barracks humor, in whiteboard scrawl, and in the jokes told seconds after a blast, when nobody knows what else to say.

For more than four decades, that language included Chuck Norris, who died Thursday at 86.

In a culture that trains people to suppress fear and keep vulnerability under lock and key, humor becomes one of the safest ways to admit the stress everyone carries.

To most Americans, Norris was a martial artist and action hero. To generations of service members, he also became the centerpiece of a strange, durable mythology. The Chuck Norris jokes — absurd, hyperbolic, endlessly recycled — turned into more than throwaway lines. They became part of the emotional vocabulary of military life.

My combat deployment was no exception. Chuck Norris jokes covered bathroom walls, T-barriers, and whiteboards. They showed up during rocket attacks, after sniper fire, and in the lulls between incoming mortar fire. In a world built on danger and uncertainty, those ridiculous one-liners delivered something surprisingly useful: familiarity, laughter, and a brief reminder of invincibility.

That mattered more than civilians might think.

Humor in combat rarely counts as trivial. It works as a pressure valve. It functions as resilience. In a culture that trains people to suppress fear and keep vulnerability under lock and key, humor becomes one of the safest ways to admit the stress everyone carries. A joke can cut the tension without breaking bearing.

The Norris myth worked because it exaggerated what warfighters hope to find in themselves and in each other: strength, competence, endurance, and an almost supernatural refusal to lose. “Chuck Norris doesn’t do push-ups. He pushes the Earth down.” The line was silly on purpose. The more impossible the joke, the better it mocked the impossible situations young Americans were asked to endure.

Over time, the jokes became a kind of oral tradition. They passed from senior NCOs to new enlisted troops, from one unit to the next, from one deployment cycle to another. Like much of military culture, they traveled informally. They still carried meaning. They created continuity between those who served before and those serving now.

RELATED: Here are some of the funniest ‘Chuck Norris facts’ memes fans have shared to honor his memory

Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

That’s how military culture often works. Doctrine and discipline matter, but shared rituals, symbols, and humor hold people together under pressure. The public tends to focus on the formal parts of service — uniforms, medals, salutes, speeches. The glue usually looks less official and more human.

It may sound odd to credit a pop-culture figure with shaping the inner life of the armed forces. Anyone who has deployed knows morale survives on unexpected things: coffee, music, dark humor, inside jokes, nicknames, and familiar reference points that make hardship feel survivable.

Chuck Norris became one of those reference points.

Warfare changes. Technology changes. The human side changes slower than people like to admit. Young Americans still deploy far from home. They still face fear, boredom, grief, and danger. They still need shared ways to absorb the psychological shock that comes with those experiences.

Whether the next generation inherits Chuck Norris jokes or builds a new mythology misses the larger point. Cultural touchstones endure because they give people a common language for courage. They turn anxiety into laughter. They remind troops that toughness isn’t only physical; sometimes toughness means smiling in the middle of chaos.

Norris did not shape strategy or write doctrine. But for a remarkable span of time, he held a small, steady place in the culture of the people who carried America’s wars.

That’s a real legacy.

Rest in peace, Chuck Norris.

'Looksmaxxing' and the war on male self-improvement



If you've been anywhere near social media lately, you have probably heard of the latest oddly named lifestyle: looksmaxxing.

It's laughed at, pathologized, and treated as a digital disease. It is filed under narcissism, extremism, or maladaptation — anything that avoids taking it seriously.

What really offends critics isn’t the vanity but the accountability. Looksmaxxing puts the burden back on the individual in a culture addicted to external blame.

But what is it?

Checklist for Chads

At its most basic, looksmaxxing refers to a loose online movement encouraging men to improve their physical appearance through deliberate, practical self-improvement rather than passive acceptance. In practice, this usually means mundane, unglamorous changes: losing excess weight, lifting weights consistently, grooming properly, dressing with intention, fixing posture, and presenting oneself as a capable human being. It is not a philosophy so much as a checklist.

There are, inevitably, outliers — internet backwaters where bone-breaking routines are discussed without irony, extreme facial surgeries are contemplated, and pseudoscientific measurements of skull angles are treated as destiny.

These exist, and they’re easy to mock. But they don't represent the broader phenomenon. They emerge at the margins, where men believe, rightly or wrongly, that they have exhausted ordinary options. The typical looksmaxxing example is far less exotic. A sedentary man quits junk food, joins a gym, gets a proper haircut, replaces stained hoodies with fitted clothes, and steps out of his mom’s basement.

Scarcity mindset

Looksmaxxing is a response to scarcity: romantic scarcity, social scarcity, economic scarcity. Young men are told relentlessly that confidence matters, that personality wins, that being “yourself” is enough.

Then reality arrives, usually with a swift kick to the nether regions. Faces, frames, height, grooming, fitness, posture — these things open doors long before a sentence is spoken. They decide who gets seen, who gets listened to, who gets to move on to the next round. The lie isn’t that personality matters, but that it matters first.

Critics default to dismissal because it requires no engagement. It costs nothing to tell a struggling man that he should simply “be kind” or “work on his inner self.” It costs nothing to shame him for caring about how he looks, while a culture sells beauty as destiny and desire as status.

The same people who insist looks don’t matter meticulously curate their appearance through filters, lighting, angles, brands, and cosmetic interventions. They publicly reject the rules while privately enforcing them. Everyone else pays for the pretense, most notably the average American man.

And the term average couldn’t be more apt. Overweight. Sedentary. Winded by a flight of stairs, pausing halfway like he’s summiting Everest. He is the product of abundance without discipline, comfort without consequence, a culture of convenience, couches, and calories. And he is told, endlessly, that his problems are emotional rather than physical.

Law of attraction

Looksmaxxing begins where denial ends. It says the body matters; the face matters; presentation matters. It refuses to treat biology as a slur. It doesn’t ask permission to acknowledge that attraction is selective, visual, and often cruel.

In a dating environment dominated by apps, where most singles are judged in a fraction of a second, this isn’t ideology but reality. That honesty unsettles people who have built careers telling men soothing stories about how the world ought to work rather than how it does.

As noted above, looksmaxxing can become obsessive. That pattern is familiar in any movement shaped by exclusion. But remove the extremes, and what remains is entirely reasonable. Lift weights. Lose the gut. Fix posture. Groom properly. Dress like you respect yourself. Sleep. Eat like an adult. Stop looking like you lost a bet with your mirror. None of this is radical. None of it is hateful. It is common sense.

Man up

What really offends critics isn’t the vanity but the accountability. Looksmaxxing puts the burden back on the individual in a culture addicted to external blame. It tells men that improvement is possible, but optional excuses are not. That message is intolerable to systems that profit from passivity. It is far easier to medicalize male dissatisfaction than to admit that a doughy, slumped, self-neglecting body will be judged accordingly.

There is also a class element no one wants to touch. Good looks are increasingly a luxury good: time to train; money for decent food; knowledge of grooming, style, and fitness. These are not evenly distributed. Telling men that looks don’t matter is a convenient way to ignore how much effort the winners quietly invest. Looksmaxxing is, in part, a grassroots attempt to close that gap — crude at times, desperate at others. But earnest.

There is also an undeniable element of misandry at play. When women improve their appearance, it is framed as empowerment, self-care, or self-expression. When men do the same — deliberately, analytically, and without apology — it is framed as an illness requiring immediate intervention. Looksmaxxing, a movement dominated by men, is treated as evidence of a psychological defect. The behavior is identical; the judgment is not. The double standard is structural.

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Alexandre Guerra/Getty Images

What about both?

And most straight women, if they are honest, aren’t confused about what they find attractive. Who doesn’t want a good-looking man? Who doesn’t respond positively to a strong frame, a defined jawline, a body that signals health and self-command?

This doesn’t negate the need for depth. No one wants a handsome face paired with the emotional range of a vacuum cleaner. But the inverse is no more appealing. Emotional intelligence struggles to shine when it is housed in a body that signals neglect. The idea that a man must choose between substance and appearance is false. It is entirely possible — indeed reasonable — to demand both.

Looksmaxxing doesn’t promise eternal happiness, but it does promise leverage — a chance to be seen before being dismissed. A chance to compete rather than be invisible. For the overweight man incapable of doing a single pull-up, it offers something rare: a clear target and a measurable path.

Looksmaxxing exists because the social contract broke first. When institutions stopped offering stable work, when dating turned into a market, when community receded and screens advanced, men adapted.

Mock looksmaxxing if you want. Call it vain. Call it sad. But don’t call it irrational. It isn’t the sickness but the symptom. And until we are willing to tell the truth about attraction, status, and the price of neglect, young men will keep gravitating toward the only strategy that abandons pretense.

Trump Cabinet leans into meme culture, turning policy into pure internet gold



The Trump administration's unique social media brand was on full display this week, with several Cabinet officials cutting through the eventful news cycle with humorous posts and online exchanges.

This administration is proving to be one of the most meme-literate administrations of our time, whether its Vice President JD Vance embracing the countless, often unflattering AI depictions of himself or Secretary of State Marco Rubio piling on to running online jokes.

'I do not normally respond to online rumors but feel the need to do so.'

Rubio most recently leaned into an ongoing joke about his various roles in the administration. In addition to serving as secretary of state, Rubio also serves as acting national security adviser and acting archivist of the United States. Given the vast responsibilities Rubio has taken on, online users will often joke that he will fill any vacant role, even if it's completely irrelevant to his current positions.

Whether its the newest vacancy in Venezuelan leadership or an open slot for an NFL head coach or general manager, Rubio took to social media to quash the rumors.

RELATED: RFK Jr. steals the show after hilarious quacking ringtone interrupts White House briefing

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

"I do not normally respond to online rumors but feel the need to do so at this moment[.] I will not be a candidate for the currently vacant HC and GM positions with the Miami Dolphins," Rubio said in a post on X. "While you never know what the future may bring right now my focus must remain on global events and also the precious archives of the United States of America."

Rubio was not the only high-profile official to chime in on the online discourse.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled his new and improved dietary guidance on Wednesday, which quickly became the subject of humorous exchanges online.

RELATED: Vance makes Jeffries a hilarious promise if Democrats end the shutdown

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Vice President Vance jokingly pushed back on Kennedy's new food pyramid, lamenting one go-to "dietary staple" he felt was underrepresented.

"Hey [Secretary Kennedy] this new food pyramid is solid but you forgot to include one dietary staple," Vance said in a post on X alongside a photo of cookies and cream ice cream.

Kennedy replied with the infamous meme photo of Vance edited to appear overweight with overgrown hair.

"Caution! Do not take dietary advice from this guy," Kennedy said in the post.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, also outlined health standards for alcohol consumption, noting that alcohol is appropriate in moderate quantities for social occasions so long as people "don't have it for breakfast." He later made a humorous clarification on in a social media post.

"Brunch is obviously different than breakfast," Oz said. "(Yes, still keep to a minimum.)"

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We Can’t Let Offensive Memes, Edgy Humor, And Nihilism Consume Young Men

There’s room between ceding ground to the left that need not be ceded and pretending like the decades-long campaign to alienate and ostracize conservatives is not pushing some people into dark corners.

‘Grandpa was Antifa’ may be the dumbest meme of the decade



The whangdoodles are at it again — raging on X, posting grainy photos of World War II soldiers, and proclaiming, “Grandpa was Antifa!”

Because, you see, Grandpa fought Hitler. Or Hirohito. Or Mussolini. They were fascists, Grandpa was anti-fascist, and since “anti-fascist” shortens to “Antifa,” presto — Grandpa was Antifa.

What these self-styled internet historians are doing is a digital form of stolen valor. ... Grandpa would be appalled.

Right.

Before scourging the ignorant cockwombles pounding keyboards across the internet, let’s define what fascism actually meant.

What fascism meant

Beyond the obvious militarism of Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hirohito’s Japan, the fascist regimes of the 20th century shared three defining traits. First, a top-down command economy controlled by a central planning body. Second, an integrated industrial and banking system. Third, a relatively homogeneous population under rigid state control.

Now ask yourself: Does the United States fit that mold? No central economic planning agency, no state-directed industrial-banking complex (ask the Fed and the Securities and Exchange Commission), and certainly no single, homogeneous racial population.

What we do have is an ever-multiplying swarm of willfully obtuse, historically illiterate useful idiots eager to join whatever digital mob happens to be trending this week.

The kind who think “being a furry” is a lifestyle choice worth defending.

You know — morons.

Grandpa fought for the Constitution

Among them are the smug keyboard warriors who post their grandfather’s old war photo without knowing a thing about his unit, his history, or the weapon he lugged across Europe — a Thompson M1A1 submachine gun chambered in .45 ACP.

These same people casually toss Grandpa’s honorable service into the same slime bucket as the modern-day anarcho-communists who call themselves “Antifa.” They hijack his image to dignify an extremist movement that despises everything he swore to defend.

Grandpa honored and fought under the American flag. Antifa burns it. They literally call it a “fascist symbol.”

Grandpa didn’t fight for a slogan. He fought for the Constitution. He raised his right hand and swore an oath — to protect and defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. If that meant bombing Tojo’s Japan, invading Hitler’s Germany, or crushing Mussolini’s Italy, so be it.

RELATED: Antifa isn’t ‘anti-fascist’ — it’s anti-freedom and anti-God

Definitely not Antifa.Bettmann/Getty Images

Generations after him have sworn the same oath. Those men fought communism in Korea and Vietnam, and later took the fight to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and, after 9/11, to al-Qaeda and ISIS across the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

Stolen valor for the hashtag age

What these self-styled internet historians are doing is a digital form of stolen valor. They wrap themselves in the virtue of men who actually faced fire, men who earned their medals the hard way — not with a post and a hashtag.

Grandpa would be appalled at his grandkids’ ignorance.

But give it time. Some nimrod, eager for another viral hit, will post a photo of his dad in Afghanistan with the caption: “Dad was intersectional.”

And the whangdoodles will cheer — none the wiser, and none the braver.

Trump made politics memorable. Vance is making it shareable.



For the first time in years, the Republican Party has momentum with America’s youth.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination jolted young voters into the political fight. Many students and teenagers first encountered politics through Kirk’s viral debate clips or the wave of conservative influencer content that followed.

The political landscape shifts as fast as internet memes. The era when a campaign could hire an intern to post twice a day is over.

Figures like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and even Alex Jones command more attention from Gen Z than most senators ever could. Ask a teenager about Mike Johnson or Ron Johnson and you’ll likely get a blank stare. Ask them about Charlie Kirk, and they can quote his videos word-for-word. Kirk was not only a cultural giant but also the leader of a network of influencers who connected conservatives with a rising generation.

Trump as proof of concept

Conservative politicians often struggle to overlap with their influencer counterparts. Donald Trump proved it can be done. His mastery of social media carried him to victory in 2024. Trump’s rapid-fire posts and fluency in internet culture convinced young voters he understood them.

Democrats tried their own version of “youth outreach” — with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz attempting to meme their way into relevance. The result? Cringe. Young voters walked away.

If Republicans want to sustain their surge, they must keep building para-social relationships. For Gen Z, politics is less about white papers and more about viral clips. Students rallied to Trump and Kirk because they were captivating, funny, and relatable. That matters more than policy minutiae.

Enter JD Vance

Vice President JD Vance may be the heir to Trump’s social media throne. He combines political stamina with influencer wit — a rare skill set.

Vance’s Yale Law pedigree and mastery of policy shine in debates and press conferences. He speaks clearly, with bold ideas on foreign aid and criminal justice. But Gen Z doesn’t tune in for long speeches. They want punchlines. Trump understood this. He may be the only president with “Funniest Moments” compilations on YouTube. Vance seems to get it, too.

When Kirk was assassinated, Vance was the first to host his show. That was no accident. A hole opened in the conservative influencer space, and Vance moved to fill it. By stepping into that role, he told young voters that Charlie’s vision of connecting with Gen Z didn’t die with him.

Kirk’s efforts helped Trump retake the presidency in 2024. His legacy may yet help Vance win in 2028. Vance has built his own digital reputation: His tweets mix humor and insight, his football posts feel genuine (unlike Walz’s forced fandom), and he has leaned into memes at his own expense. That kind of self-deprecation resonates with an online generation allergic to pretension.

RELATED: Holy defiance: Why Erika Kirk terrifies the feminist elite

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Keeping the energy alive

But Trump’s legacy is more than jokes. He delivers. He has nearly wiped out illegal immigration, shut down USAID, and pushed DEI out of government and corporate life. Winning has become a habit. Gen Z notices.

This generation didn’t grow up with the lethargic Republican Party of the 1990s and 2000s. Their political world began when Trump rode down his golden escalator in 2015. They expect leaders to win, not just talk.

If Republicans want to dominate the future, they must keep MAGA’s high-octane energy alive. The political landscape shifts as fast as internet memes. The era when a campaign could hire an intern to post twice a day is over.

Charlie Kirk understood it. Donald Trump proved it. If JD Vance keeps pace, he could lock down the youth vote for the next generation.