Trump took the podium like a bloated circus barker, riding high on the fumes of his own bombast, delivering a 100-minute ramble that stretched the limits of human endurance. A record-breaker, they said—the longest presidential address in history. By the end, the walls seemed to sag, and the audience had developed the thousand-yard stare of hostages too far gone to resist. If you’d thrown a bag of popcorn in the microwave at the start, you’d have returned to find your house engulfed in flames—just another casualty of the great American experiment.
The chamber was a lunatic symphony of red and blue. Republicans howled “USA! USA!” like it was some ancient incantation that could bend reality to their will. A whole mob of meat-brained patriots, hammering the walls of their own collapsing republic with blind, drunken fists. On the other side, the Democrats clutched their little signs—“This is not normal,” “Save Medicaid,” “Musk Steals.” Musk steals what? The moon? The last decent thread of sanity left in this godforsaken place? It was the sort of meaningless gesture that Congress had perfected—one half roaring in triumph over an empire on fire, the other half waving whiteboards like Wile E. Coyote in freefall. The last cartoon before the abyss.
Pelosi, that skeletal queen of the old guard, had a plan—let Trump “stew in his own juice.” But this is a man who considers ketchup a vegetable. His juice is a thick, rancid slurry of fast food grease and vintage Cold War paranoia. We’re all in the pot now, floating like bloated carcasses in a crockpot that nobody can unplug.
And outside, in the great, howling madhouse of the internet, Casey Anthony had slithered back into the limelight, now a self-proclaimed legal advocate. TikTok, the digital colosseum of our collective decay, had made room for yet another ghoul. A woman who waited a month to report her child missing now offering advice on navigating the legal system—like Bernie Madoff hosting a finance seminar or O.J. giving knife safety tips. There is no bottom.
Meanwhile, at the Oscars, Hollywood performed its yearly pageant of self-congratulation, awarding their golden idols to films no one had seen. Anora swept the big prizes while Inside Out 2, the highest-grossing animated film in history, was left to rot in the shadows. The Academy, ever allergic to mass appeal, once again chose to praise the obscure while sneering at the billion-dollar juggernaut. It’s like giving a Michelin star to a restaurant nobody eats at while patting McDonald’s on the head and saying, Nice try.
This is the world now—a carnival of grifters, lunatics, and conmen, all selling their own brand of snake oil while the rest of us choke on the fumes. The empire is cracking, the lunatics are in charge, and somewhere, deep in the halls of power, they’re still chanting “USA! USA!” as the flames rise higher.
