The End of Politics

Chris Murphy posted on social media today, arguing that the war with Iran is a failure. I think he substantially overstates the case as he examines the details, but I also think he’s not clearly wrong on the big picture: A series of tactical victories doesn’t necessarily produce a strategic victory. Iran has unmistakably been crushed, in the head-to-head fight with the tactically and operationally superior US military, and also the Strait of Hormuz is still closed, and also Donald Trump is hinting broadly on Truth Social that the war is likely to end with a new version of the old theocracy still in power. So there are Democrats who hold significant elected offices and who are deeply concerned about the war, and they have at least a colorable argument. But they can’t stop it, and they can’t even slow or alter it. It doesn’t matter. Trump will end the war when he decides to, and it will end however it ends. Senators have been reduced to the status of influencers, making TikTok noises. This war is a really bad idea, the United States Senate…posts.

The model of the elected official as just another influencer gave us figures like AOC and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who never appeared to think that the job is to legislate, making policy and law and budgets. During our second government shutdown in just the course of a few months, Democrats are now preparing to sue the administration for paying TSA officers, a couple days after they blasted Trump for waiting too long to order that TSA officers be paid. They have no consistent strategy, they have no consistent principle, and they do nothing to ensure the operation of the thing they’re supposed to be stewarding.

My argument at this point is that Congress more or less doesn’t exist, except as a social media operation. The institution has abandoned itself. The executive branch runs the country, with the judicial branch throwing down random speed bumps, because the legislative branch has no role it wishes to perform. The people who keep bitching about Trump’s authoritarianism never seem to notice that the Article II branch is expanding into a vacuum created by the erosion of the Article I branch, which is caused entirely by the weakness and stupidity of the vapid adult children who exercise the authority of that branch.

Meanwhile, compare two things. News headline from a Los Angeles TV news operation today: “Los Angeles County sees largest population decline in the U.S., census data shows.” I was at a conference over the weekend (not CPAC), and all the conservative activists from Tennessee complained about all the Californians fleeing to their state, and all the conservative activists from Texas complained about all the Californians fleeing to their state, and all the conservative activists from Arizona complained about all the Californians fleeing to their state, and all the…

Anyway, you know the rest.

California, and especially coastal Deep Blue California, is driving out an army of people who see that the state is on a forced march to ruin. X posts can be embedded at Substack, again, but it still doesn’t really work that well, so click on this link to watch the video from this post:

You were really tempted to watch the video when you saw that screenshot of the dude pointing at a giant pile of human shit at a bus stop, right?

While Los Angeles descends into all of this absolutely avoidable and preventable ruin, Karen Bass is running for re-election. So is the county supervisor Lindsey Horvath, queen of empty woke signalers, who released a campaign kick-off video that showed her smiling through a backdrop of literal annihilation. Here’s a series of screenshots from just the opening seconds of Horvath’s own campaign kick-off video:

Sample response from some random idiot:

1.) Produce a massive wave of ruin, 2.) smile and campaign on a promise to make ruined place really great. The political failure — neighborhoods destroyed, encampments and filth everywhere, population decline and accelerating middle-class flight — doesn’t have an impact on the politics, and the politicians just stay right where they are. The “politics” doesn’t connect to anything.

Our political discourse, political systems, and political institutions don’t mean anything or produce anything. They exist in a separate, sealed-off area, entirely apart from the things they theoretically do. They self-refer and self-validate, meaninglessly. Horvath 2026! There is apparently no course correction available beyond what Donald Trump personally feels like doing.

A bunch of idiots are pretty sure that’s a damning commentary on Donald Trump.