The Steam Room Verdict

Two programs walk into a steam room. One German, one Israeli. Both are certain. Both are wrong.

I enrolled in a gym-spa combo. Almost entirely empty — noonish, usually. Perfect. I’d sit in the steam room after a workout and just dissolve — until, for some bizarre coincidence orchestrated by the universe, a woman in her mid-forties began appearing at almost exactly the same time I did — with atomic timing, even though I kept no semblance of a schedule.

Her facial features and dialect could have been the textbook example of an Israeli. I stayed quiet. Which, given my background, is a survival skill as much as a personality trait.

Bearing a German passport, a German dialect, and a missile-shaped, semi-bald head, I don’t come across as someone who has an objective take on the war in the Middle East. I’m also male, white, and in good enough condition to be classed as a right-wing extremist. Prime suspect for antisemitism. So I avoid getting entangled in conversations about Hamas or IDF or Gaza — even if the Promised Land has been dropping somewhere between six and thirteen Hiroshimas’ worth of explosive power into a strip of land the size of a mid-sized European city. I have opinions about it. And about Lebanon. And Iran. But my conditioning, slowly cooked since childhood, tells me to keep them in my skull.

My father was Hitlerjugend. Junior marksman champion, special permission to join the Luftwaffe at thirteen. The rest of his story is better left unpacked. At eight, my primary school teacher found out, lifted me against a wall, and told me I was a dangerous mongrel. Did it leave a mark? I’d like to think it didn’t. But sometimes —when my Germanness could become incendiary — I still hold my tongue.

So, instead of talking, I run movies in my head. Short B-movie outlines. Elevator pitches for paranoia. Like maybe she’s a honeypot, sent to assess my political views -- one-world projections, digital matrix narratives, the whole tinfoil catalog. Maybe I accidentally hit a jackpot with one of them. Maybe she’s got a poison dart under her towel?

In reality I would not just be a low-value target. I’m more like a no-value target. There are a million conspiracy nuts out there with much more radical insights. I’m not a whistleblower, either. I’ve never released a book with nuclear secrets. No social downline worth mentioning. Getting a real honeypot sent after me would be a wet dream. Probably a good way to go, too.

So I shut up. And sweat. And glow in the steam.

But I see her checking me out —quick and analytical. A threat assessment. Friend. Foe. Irrelevant. Filed.

Well, hold that thought. She pulls the towel back just a tad too much not to be subtly provocative. The leg comes up, stark naked to the hip. Then she lies down and pretends to cover herself without covering herself. All in my imagination, of course. A honeypot so obvious she couldn’t possibly be a honeypot. Which is exactly what a honeypot would want me to think.

I quiet the conspiracy generator. Stare into infinity. Breathe slowly through my nostrils. Four in. Seven hold. Eight out. The kind of deliberate calm that fools nobody — least of all someone trained to read faux indifference from across a steam room.

Was I interested? In every possible manner. Eagle nose. Exotic. Piercing eyes that have obviously seen a lot. Intelligent, observant, in remarkable shape for her age. Probably an interesting conversation partner.

On the third —slightly too synchronistic — encounter, I hear my own voice delivering the corniest opener possible.

Are you a long-term fan of the establishment?

Just a different way of asking if she comes here often. I expect total silence.

Instead. The sentence blows the floodgates wide open.

She delivers her entire life in one pressurized burst. What she does. Where she works. Oh, and how she misses Israel, and what neighborhood got erased by her enemies yesterday, and how they should all be dealt with — gruesomely, definitively. Total annihilation to ensure peace. There is not a single flicker of doubt that her tribe deserves total vengeance.

She’s got a dark timbre radio voice. Sensual. Beauty and a beast in one. I’m numbed out, unsure whether to move my lips at all. Just blink, as if sweat got into my eyeballs.

I refrain from mentioning the Palestine map since 1948. The Hannibal Directive. The Lebanon campaign the international community condemned on a Tuesday and forgot by Thursday.

Instead I nod about a millimeter. Oh wow. Terrible. Mmm. Then I tune out. Like a cat withdrawing into a sunny corner for a snooze, oblivious to the cement drill outside the window. Her voice becomes part of the hissing steam.

---

Here’s what I think about, sweating in the corner like a man serving a sentence.

A belief system, once installed, is the most energy-efficient machine ever built. It runs on nothing. Requires no maintenance. No proof.

The brain doesn’t seek truth. It craves coherence. It wants the incoming data to rhyme with what’s inside. Confirmation doesn’t feel like bias. It feels like victory.

The tighter the loop, the better it feels — which is why people in the grip of a strong conviction walk around looking like they cracked the code on vitality. They’ve been relieved of doubt. Doubt is exhausting, enervating. Certainty is cocaine, liberating.

Maybe there have never been any bad guys. Even if you’re a homicidal nut strangling someone to death, it’s really about your survival, isn’t it? You’re responding to a threat. Us or them.

The program gets handed to us early — before we’re old enough to ask what the logic behind it all is. The wound goes back further than anyone can remember. Inflicted by someone who needed your anger pointed at some other guy. To manufacture chaos —the chief ingredient of control — we need this opposition to go on ad infinitum.

My father woke up one morning already enrolled in the only team available. Same mechanism. Different uniform. He was conditioned to survive against an overwhelming threat, not realizing the other side thought exactly the same of him.

A teacher slammed an eight-year-old against a wall for the sins of his father. Same mechanism. Smaller hands.

No difference in her case. She probably saw some hard shit. Real rockets. Real attacks. Real October mornings nobody sane would minimize. The genuine, diabolical, almost admirable beauty of it is that it never feels like a program. It feels like eyes wide open. Like being the one person in the room who finally gets it, while everyone else stumbles around in comfortable denial.

My program is equally convinced. I’m certain someone is programming the program — a level above the wars, above the sides, above the fury. Her country, my country, every country currently on fire is a chess piece in a grand design where mutual hate generates a preordained end result. Energy collapse. Economic collapse. Supply chain collapse. Mass unemployment. Government stepping in as the helping hand. UBI. CBDC. Digital identity stapled to your ATM card. All for the sake of control.

I’m not going to tell her that.

I may not have a national, religious, or racial agenda. I genuinely don’t give a shit about that. But I have an agenda. I spawn division with my words -- especially against the bureaucrat class, the human bots who execute orders regardless of consequences, with total disregard for human welfare. I’m out to get someone for these infractions. Or maybe I’m out to get someone because my teacher slammed me against a wall. Who knows.

Just like her.

This woman is not a bot. Nor are most Israelis. And they may actually be right about their victimhood -- in one specific sense. If you count programming as a form of weaponry, they may be the most comprehensively targeted society in history. That is a heavy destiny.

I’ve never been to North Korea. Yet.

I finally excuse myself. Not because of her rant, but because I’m melting. Cold shower. I float in the pool. Dim out on a stretcher. Finnish sauna.

She’s already there. Waiting to deliver the truth about the Middle East.

I stay, because I want to. Because listening to her makes me more convinced of my convictions. Just like her.

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