We didn't just let the dogs out; we opened the gates, built them a stage, handed them a megaphone, and told ourselves the barking was music. For a while, it was almost funny. Cable news cashed in. Twitter turned politics into pro wrestling. The country mistook noise for power and chaos for change. But here's the thing about wild parties: they don't end when the music stops. They end in a mess. And this one? It's going to take generations to clean up.
The Party
The Trump years aren't a movement; they are a raucous house party. The kids are having the party of a lifetime while the parents in Congress are out of town for four years. Nobody's in charge, nobody's sober, and nobody's worried about the neighbors. Every time a lamp gets broken or the cops get called, they just laugh and turn the music up. And the neighbors? They're too stunned — or too entertained — to do anything but watch.
The Dogs Were Always There
The ignorance didn't start with Trump. The rot's been setting in for decades. Reality TV taught us that confidence beats competence. Talk radio taught us that volume is proof of truth. And the internet? It made every crank with a webcam a prophet. By the time Trump came along, the crowd was primed — not for ideas, but for spectacle.
The Gate Gets Kicked Open
Then 2015 hit, and the gate didn't just open; it splintered. Suddenly, your cousin with "research" from Facebook threads had as much authority as a PhD. Every grifter, podcaster, and wannabe pundit built their brand on outrage, and nobody wanted to check the receipts. Expertise wasn't just distrusted — it was mocked. If you knew something, you were "elite." If you knew nothing, you were "real."
The currency of the day is ignorance — and YouTube is giving out PhDs in ignorance. Everyone's an expert, as long as they've watched the right three videos or memorized the right talking points. And so we built a politics where executive orders are the way laws are made, where governing is done in tweets, and where "policy" is whatever fits on a bumper sticker or can be shouted over a cable news chyron.
The Gospel of Grievance
And then there were the evangelicals — the self-proclaimed moral guardians who handed their faith over to a serial philanderer reality TV actor with the impulse control of a teenager. They proved that they can read the Bible but not see what's there, hearing instead the words of Satan whispered back to them in their own rage. Love thy neighbor became build the wall. Blessed are the meek became poor people are worthless garbage that deserve their lot in life. It wasn't theology; it was tribalism dressed in Sunday best. And every verse of humility, compassion, and sacrifice got drowned out by the roar of grievance and the applause of power.
Tariffs and the Price of Ignorance
And then there were the tariffs — the economic equivalent of treating pneumonia with leeches. Every real economist, from Warren Buffett to your local Fed staffer, said the same thing: tariffs are just a tax, paid by the American consumer. But expertise doesn't matter when the crowd's chanting for a wall, or for China to "pay up." So we slapped taxes on imports, tanked parts of the supply chain, and congratulated ourselves on being "tough negotiators" while the bill came due at Walmart.
It wasn't policy; it was performance art. The same people who think climate change is a hoax were convinced you can rebuild a 1950s steel economy with a tweet. Meanwhile, the world kept moving forward, supply chains got smarter elsewhere, and we got stuck in a loop of nostalgia and bad math. And here's the worst part: we are burning through decades of goodwill in the world. Trading partners who once trusted the United States to play the role of rational adult now see us as the drunk uncle at the barbecue — loud, sloppy, and convinced we still run the show.
The Real Party Upstairs
But here's what really happened while everyone was watching the circus downstairs: the biggest heist in American history, carried out in broad daylight while you were arguing about pronouns and border walls. The rich didn't just join the party — they threw it.
They sold you "tax reform" and gave corporations a permanent cut from 35% to 21% while your "middle class tax break" expires in a few years. Meanwhile, your wages haven't kept up with the cost of a candy bar, let alone a house. Productivity shot up 70% since 1973, but your paycheck barely budged. Where did all that extra value go? Corporate profits hit record highs while they told you there's no money for raises.
They've got you fighting culture wars while they win the economic war. You're mad at your immigrant neighbor making minimum wage while the guy who owns the factory moved your job to Bangladesh and bought his third yacht with the savings.
The party upstairs never stopped. It just moved the noise downstairs so you wouldn't notice them going through your wallet.
The Hangover
The worst part of the hangover isn't the headache. It's looking around and realizing what you thought was temporary is now permanent. All the dumbest, stupid behavior is normalized. The shouting. The lying. The conspiracies and shouting matches that we somehow mistake for serious political discourse. Democrats, for sure, have their share of problems, and those that have read my op-eds know that I don't spare them — but nobody could have dreamt up this untethered Republican Party.
And it's not just the noise and chaos — we're burning through generations of people who actually know how to do their jobs. Career military officers, FBI agents, CDC scientists, economists who understand how markets actually work, diplomats who spent decades building relationships with allies. People who may not be perfect, but who dedicated their lives to learning their craft. We're replacing them with podcast hosts and cable news contributors whose main qualification is knowing how to work a crowd.
The "deep state" they keep railing against? It's just Susan from the EPA who's been testing water quality for 15 years and knows which chemicals will kill you. It's Bob at the State Department who speaks three languages and has spent a decade building trust with European allies. It's Dr. Martinez at the CDC who can spot patterns in disease outbreaks because she's seen it before. There is no there there. It's just normal people with government health insurance and boring commutes who happen to know how to do their job.
But calling it the "deep state" makes expertise sound sinister instead of what it actually is: institutional knowledge. The kind you get from showing up, doing the work, and learning from mistakes over years and years. And now we're torching all of that because someone with a podcast convinced people that knowing things is elitist.
You know nothing about vaccines — other than the idea scares you — so now they're no good. Your YouTube medical education makes you an expert. You don't trust doctors, but you'll take advice from a guy selling supplements during his livestream. And cruelty — cruelty and public shaming are now the norm. Mocking the weak, celebrating failure, turning every disagreement into a televised execution. And in this new reality, a former drug-addicted, ambulance-chasing buffoon can be put in charge of public health, and half the country cheers because "he tells it like it is."
The Morning After
There's no easy way to put the dogs back in the yard. Ignorance, once it finds an audience, doesn't retire. It just reloads. And here we are — still in the static, still chasing the noise, still pretending that knowing nothing is the same as knowing everything.
And the media? They're not the responsible adults calling for order. They're the neighbors with camera phones, filming it all for YouTube views. The news is just selling toothpaste now — Trump is good for ratings, controversy drives engagement, and outrage pays the bills. So they keep booking an unhinged serial liar for interviews as if he's going to suddenly start making sense. They keep "both sides-ing" stories where one side is based in reality and the other is pure fantasy. They keep chasing every tweet and tantrum because it generates traffic.
It's not journalism anymore — it's entertainment marketing. And Trump understood that from day one. He knew that as long as he kept being outrageous enough to drive clicks, they'd keep putting him on air. The crazier he got, the more money everyone made. Meanwhile, actual governing — the boring stuff like infrastructure bills and treaty negotiations — gets ignored because it doesn't trend on social media.
Meanwhile, abroad, we've torched decades of goodwill — allies exhausted, rivals emboldened, everyone else hedging their bets because they can't tell who we'll elect next or what stunt we'll try next.
And here's the cruelest irony: the educated elites they rail against, the ones they think they're fighting for "the little guy" against, will be just fine. They'll adapt. They'll cash their checks, pivot into high tech, and sail through whatever comes next. It's everyone else — the voters sold the fantasy of rage as power — who'll be left standing in the wreckage when the music stops and the hangover really begins.