This wasn’t just an election; it was a metaphor. A metaphor for a political system spinning out of control. A metaphor for a nation that has the strongest economy in the world, and the most dynamic private sector, but a political class who have lost their minds.
Look at the insanity of the ads, a record $11.21 billion spent on innuendo, deceit and defilement. Look at Decoy Dan. Look at Vivek Ramaswamy’s deployment of the mother of an opponent who was abused as a child.
This isn’t about who is worse, Democrats or Republicans. It’s about a great nation being dragged from its ethical moorings by the excesses of one side feeding the excesses of the other in a bizarre waltz that will astound future historians.
And this isn’t just about ads but policy, too. I mean, look at how every election over the last decade and more has been a vote not for anything constructive but against whatever lunacy has been enacted in the asylum called Washington.
We had the woke overreach of the Dems in which biological men became women, leading to the first MAGA wave of Trump — a president who later denied the result of a free election and pardoned those who assaulted law-enforcement officers.
Viral infection
The Democrats under Biden thought the best way to deal with this lurch was to throw open the borders, a position supported by nobody except those whose minds have been deranged by progressive ideology.
This, in turn, created the conditions for Trump 2.0: a tariff-hiking, Iran-invading, crony-enriching spasm — which has now birthed perhaps the most radical Democratic slate in history.
Newton said that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. American politics is offering a new twist: for every insanity there is an ever more extremist version on the other side.
I have no doubt that social media sits near the epicenter of this dynamic, even if not explaining it fully. The mathematical structure of these algorithms mirrors almost perfectly the gyrating psychosis in American politics. Grifters on the MAGA right know that by making ever more incendiary claims they will gain virality, inciting the more extreme hyperliberals to respond in turn, transforming the middle ground into the political equivalent of no-man’s-land.
And who is celebrating this carnage? That’s right: China, Russia, North Korea and the rest of the democracy-hating totalitarian axis.
This is why their growing army of bots keep inflaming the hostilities and stoking conspiracy theories. The old communists of the Soviet Union used to call their naïve Western supporters “useful idiots.”
It’s the perfect phrase when you look at the army of keyboard warriors making ever more wild claims about their fellow Americans — Josh Turek is a communist, J.D. Vance is a fascist. Ridiculous. Embarrassing. But most definitely a way of monetizing YouTube if you are a charlatan like Candace Owens or Hasan Piker, who will demonize almost anyone for clicks.
End the madness
And I am sick of it. Sick of the MAGA excess. Sick of the Democratic “squad.” Both have lost all contact with perhaps the most important value in a free society: truth.
The wokesters equate feelings with facts while the MAGA ultras think that by saying something often and loudly enough — we won in 2020! — people will believe them.
The American people smell bulls–t.
But there’s a golden opportunity here. America has a strong economy, even if inflamed with high prices. Growth at 3.4% is something Europe would die for. This dynamism is being driven not by Washington, but in spite of it.
It is down to the people who actually go out and do things, rather than sitting on social media inflaming things. Engineers. Entrepreneurs. Workers. Just think how much stronger the American economy would be if Washington were not so deranged, distracted and corrupt.
And this is why it’s time for both sides to end the madness by calling out the loons on their own side. By escaping the algorithmic cesspool. Oh, and by ending the catastrophism.
I kept hearing from Democrats before the 2024 election that if Trump won, it would be the last election in America — because if his party lost in 2026, he would instantly deny the result and send in ICE, the military or perhaps an AI robot army. This isn’t analysis; it is Russian bot-fueled paranoia.
But I heard the same nonsense from MAGA, too. That if the Dems win the midterms, the nation will no longer be America. They are all (yes, “all”) fifth columnists. Get a grip!
Sure, the democratic socialists pose a risk to the American way of life, but they have momentum only because of the extremism that has wrenched political debate away from the patriots and rationalists that have always existed on both sides, and hopefully always will.
People like Eisenhower and Kennedy, Reagan and Clinton: great Americans, all.
The real threat
This is what China fears most, by the way. A political dynamic in touch with reality. An America whose eyes are trained not on conspiracy, deceit and ephemera but the true enemies of freedom. An America that rids itself of bad-faith attacks — whether red on blue or blue on red — and glimpses something far more important: the greatness of red, white and blue. The Stars and Stripes. The American miracle. This indispensable nation that soars highest with some degree of bipartisan consensus across the aisle.
I’ve mentioned the autocratic axis a couple of times, and you may be wondering why nations so far away matter. Well, permit me to note that the phone in your pocket was likely assembled in China, by a regime that can shut factories at will.
Beijing’s hackers, US officials say, already lurk in the networks that run our power, water and transport, and have broken into the carriers handling our calls. These regimes answer to no voters, no courts, no free press. If they flick the switch and the lights go out, nobody will ask whether you voted red or blue.
This is why every useful idiot howling at fellow Americans for no good reason beyond the full moon outside the window is doing the autocrats’ work for free.
Good-faith attacks in a democracy are indispensable. Bad-faith attacks are toxic. Wisdom, my friends, is the ability to tell the difference.
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