The United States of Astounding, Awful Absurdity

Do you remember what the US was like a mere ten years ago? I certainly do. It was very far from perfect, for sure — but it also wasn’t chaotic to the point of complete absurdity and insanity. Nor was it this cruel, confused, and heartless.

A decade ago, the US was at least minimally functional and minimally sane. A few vestiges of good faith communication and bipartisan cooperation remained.

But that was before the rise of ‘Trumpism’ and the hateful, ‘burn it all down’ MAGA movement. It has been both astounding and deeply agonizing to witness — and live through — this period of dark social devolution and accelerating collapse.

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In my writing over the past few years, I attempted several times to capture the essence and (awful) ‘felt experience’ of life in the US during this period. At times, I likened it to a creepy, escalating ‘Twilight Zone’ reality. At other times, I compared it to an absurd and endless ‘MAD Magazine’ cartoon.

But after ten years of this mounting craziness and mass social dysfunction, I have to admit: none of my metaphors or descriptions quite do the trick anymore. None of them adequately capture the full nutso bizarreness of our current ‘reality,’ for this simple reason: our new ‘reality’ actually surpasses both the Twilight Zone and MAD Magazine in utter weirdness and crazy-making chaos!

Our current ‘reality’ has devolved into complete unsanity and social catastrophe.

We’re ‘stuck’ in a dark downward spiral

When I say we and our society have ‘devolved,’ I mean exactly that. Once, during and immediately after WW II, the US was the acknowledged savior of the Western world. Ever since — until recently — the US was often the envy of the world (whether deservedly or not).

But today we are universally despised or even… pitied. Why? It’s simple. We have abandoned any pretense of compassion, democracy, social justice, or climate realism. Instead, we have veered into chaos, mad corruption, renewed racism, and almost total denial of truth, science, and reality itself.

In today’s US, bullies, racists, misogynists, greedy oligarchs, and lying manipulators of every description are running amok and running the show. That horrid ‘in-group’ includes our megalomaniacal and super-narcissistic president, whom I will refer to as ‘TACO Don.’

Under the malign influence of TACO Don and his destructive MAGA movement, the US has undergone a staggering and truly astounding metamorphosis. During his first administration, from early 2017 to 2021, TACO Don began dismantling many of the social and political advances of the past 60 years, especially in the areas of race relations and environmental awareness and action.

But when TACO Don’s new administration began in January 2025, this vast dismantling effort took off like an accelerating rocket. It quickly spread through every aspect of our federal government (recall the MAGA ‘burn it all down’ motif).

The vehicles for this widespread — indeed, almost total — dismantling were Elon Musk and his bogus ‘Department of Government Efficiency.’ I call it ‘bogus’ because it is not an actual government department; rather, it is a TACO Don-inspired wrecking ball that his regime uses to attack and, willy-nilly, undermine and gut most real agencies and departments.

It’s been a wild, infuriating, and utterly chaotic shitstorm.

Slash, burn, and rape — and then repeat

The mindless, backward nature of these poorly thought-out changes and ‘downsizing’ was bad enough. But the cruel, abrupt, and pitiless way these changes were implemented was even worse. Without any warning, over 200,000 federal workers were laid off or suddenly fired via email.

Entire agencies — like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — were shuttered or stripped down to almost nothing. DOGE’s modus operandi was and is heartless ‘slash and burn.’ And, on the emotional level it feels like a series of savage assaults and outright rape.

Yes, in our new American reality, massive social, economic, and political rape is intensifying all around us. Rape is never really about sex, it’s about power — specifically, exerting power over ‘lesser,’ weaker people or groups.

What we’re experiencing now, in the US, is the widespread rape of our American ideals of ‘liberty and justice for all’ and of the governmental agencies responsible for implementing and protecting those ideals.

We’re living through the horrid, unconscionable dismantling of most of the social and environmental progress of the past 60 years. Hell, today our ‘new, improved’ EPA is busy gutting or revoking many environmental protections and policies, instead of doing the crucial job it was designed to do.

The ultimate goals of TACO Don and his Christo-fascist backers are all in clear view, now. We’re seeing the rapid roll-out of their cruel, White Christian supremacist vision and antisocial, misogynistic actions. It’s truly a demented ‘nightmare reality,’ and it’s being imposed on us at lightning speed.

Yes, folks, we’re already far beyond any dark ‘Twilight Zone’ fantasy or absurd ‘MAD Magazine’ storyline. We’ve entered the realm of full-scale horror, and are increasingly ‘stuck’ in a nationwide horror show: The Attack of the Brutal, Backward Christo-Fascists!!

Karma is a real bitch

I wish — oh, how I wish — I saw a clear way forward for the US. I wish I could see a viable way out of this mess for our beleaguered nation.

But the terrifying truth is that ‘we the people’ and our idiotic, bought-off ‘representatives’ enabled all this, over and over again, over many decades. We coddled the fraudsters, oligarchs, and white-collar criminals; authorized vastly increased power and influence for ‘big money’ in our politics; and bent over backward to do as little as possible to confront our fossil fuel addictions and climate change.

I wish there was a way — any way — to reverse these horrible trends. I wish there was a way to fully stop the cruel, ongoing rape and pillage of our nation and its citizens. But we Americans (a majority, anyway) have, knowingly or unknowingly, set all these forces in motion — and now they’re practically set in stone. As I see it, today we’re finally reaping what we’ve sown… fully, horribly, and relentlessly.

As a popular saying puts it: Karma is a bitch.

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This post was previously published on This America.

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