The Brown Cardboard Box Theory of Virginia’s 2025 Election Environment

Why what’s good for America gives patriots in Virginia the shaft - and why we should continue mission, anyway.

Most readers of Captain K’s Corner are, or were at one point, subject to the whims of the economy and the basic forces of supply and demand which govern everything in our transactional world. No matter if you’re a paid employee of a larger organization, or you’ve made it on your own, you always carry some risk of losing your employment and its associated income. This is, of course, why one of the most valuable skills you can teach a young person is to be frugal with finances and to learn how to navigate fiscal emergencies, which are inevitable.

In July 2015, less than a week before the birth of my son, I was laid off from my project management position in Houston’s Oil and Gas industry when commodity prices tanked. It was my first job post-military, and the stress placed on me was unfamiliar, since I had very little risk of having my military service halted prematurely. Military service members who get selected for early discharge are generally given a one-year runway to make a steady landing before they’re off the payroll, anyway. Getting pushed out of my new civilian job with a two-week safety net check was a system shock.

Naturally, I rushed to get a job – any job – and wound up walking right into a terrible gig that was oversold to me; it was so miserable that I quit it on my own in seven weeks, with no opportunity for collecting unemployment benefits as I did when I was laid off. I landed my next job two months later in Houston’s Healthcare industry as a business analyst. That job wasn’t a particularly good job, and had a modest paycheck I had to really hustle for with three hours of daily commuting. That company was going through a very tumultuous merger in which countless millions were lost, forcing a massive employee reduction. Through no fault of my own, I was laid off a second time and got a pretty cushy parachute for the inconvenience.

I was then forced to find another job, and after a lengthy stay on the job market, wound up selling traffic control technologies for a local company. It was a fantastic job and identified skills I didn’t know I had – such as salesmanship. That job put me back in Army officer mode in which I recalled my ability to brief anyone of any rank, in any place, with top-notch confidence and not an ounce of worry. I was holding that position when the emerging world of election integrity pounded my door down in the wee hours of the morning on November 4, 2020. Just as I was coming to be known widely as “Captain K” in mid-2021, I switched companies, only to get canned on a lazy Tuesday afternoon in early January 2022. I can’t prove the motivation was political, but it just so happened to come shortly after Reuters dealt me my first major hit piece on a global scale.

That was the end of my six-figures W2 career, and it came because I pursued election integrity as my primary focus. I believe in God, and as such, I believe God has provided for me to stay on this path. This newsletter kicked off in 2022 and opened for paid subscribers right out of the gate; now that I speak at far fewer events (supply and demand at work, again), this newsletter is vital for supporting my continued activism and feeding my family (thank you to those who support my work). Long story short, I have survived, and God has made a way. The mission must continue.

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The personal anecdotes above lay the foundation for why I am so thoroughly disgusted by the open wailing of supposed diplomats carrying their possessions out of the State Department late last week, surrounded by clapping seals who feel entitled to a life of security, fat pensions, and low performance expectations placed upon them by the public. As far as I can recall, no detachments of federal employees have ever lined the sidewalk outside a Pennsylvania steel mill or the dusty parking lot of a Texas drilling site after mass layoffs decimated families living on far less.

Please understand, if you’ve lost your job in federal cuts since the Trump 47 administration took office, I’m not trying to rub salt in your wounds. Many Trump supporters cheered the idea of mass cuts for the federal workforce until the trickle-down effects hit their bank accounts. I am giving a gut-level assessment of how I, and most of the country, feel about the reactions of people who clearly could care less that the rest of us have been living day-to-day with no guarantee of any future paycheck other than the one in hand.

I’m writing as one of those vulnerable right now. Substack could change owners, usher in moderation standards, and simply cancel me – although doing so would cost them substantial revenues and lead to similar writers packing up shop for safer pastures, which would pop up because of – you guessed it – supply and demand. You, listening to this article on your way to work on some busy suburban bypass loop, may pull into your parking lot this morning and see your friends carrying a cardboard box like the one you’ll own as soon as you get to your desk. That is life, and I attest it is even God’s way of closing one door and putting you through another.

31 states plus Maine’s 2nd Congressional District voted for Donald Trump to drain the swamp. That phrase was a pillar of each of his three presidential campaigns, and while many of us have hopes and dreams that draining the swamp includes landing criminals in prison, it at bare minimum means gutting the federal bureaucracy, discarding entrenched employees who are non-essential workers (take that, Branch COVIDians), and passing down the savings to the taxpayer. It’s not personal, it’s business – and you hired a businessman to run the show the right way.

Preaching is over. Now comes the time for a more practical and relevant thought exercise.

After Mary Jo packed up her belongings and signed her severance form, where do you think she went? If she’s rich enough and has just been separated from a very high posting, maybe she lives in a penthouse in Georgetown. If she’s more from the rank and file, it’s a safer bet that she lives in Montgomery County, Maryland, or more likely, in Arlington, Virginia, or a few miles to the south in Alexandria, Falls Church, or Fairfax County. For a refresher course, check out what I said about Virginia in my Summer 2024 preview and my post-mortem in my 2024 Election Compendium.