I always loved the latin, “Corruptio optimi pessima.” Corruption of the best is the worst. I take solace in the fact that these people in our government are the worst, always were, never the best. It gives me hope. But we must use the right language in describing them to give clarity to this moment. - Christine Merser

We have to stop using honorable words when describing Trump’s relationships. Or describing him at all. We give them and him a credibility they don’t deserve, and we blur the truth, we cloud the clarity around how his government actually functions.

Look at the word loyalty. Its roots matter.

“true or faithful in allegiance,” 1530s, in reference to subjects of sovereigns or governments, from French loyal, from Old French loial, leal “of good quality; faithful; honorable; law-abiding; legitimate, born in wedlock,” from Latin legalem, from lex “law.” Identical with legal, which maintains the Latin form; in most uses it has displaced Middle English leal, which is an older borrowing of the French word. For the twinning, compare royal/regal. Sense development in English is feudal, via notion of “faithful in carrying out legal obligations; conformable to the laws of honor.” In a general sense (of dogs, lovers, etc.), from c. 1600. As a noun meaning “those who are loyal” from 1530s (originally often in plural).

That is what the word means. That is what it carries.

So let’s look at his people.

Take Pete Hegseth. He wasn’t rising, he was falling. Pete Hegseth faced allegations of misconduct during his time at Fox News and in the period leading up to his 2025 nomination for Secretary of Defense, including reports of heavy drinking that impacted his work, a 2017 sexual assault accusation, and a 2016 incident at a company Christmas party. He had a reputation that had already begun to erode. No clear path forward. And then, suddenly, there is one path. One man. One system.

And the deal is simple. You say what I say. You do what I tell you. You defend me, no matter what. In return, you sit at the table of desserts. You get power. You get wealth. You can do whatever you want to fill your own coffers. You get people beneath you who now have to answer to you. Corruption? No worries.

That’s not loyalty. That’s a transaction.

And everyone around him understands it. They fall in line, or they fall out. They praise, they protect, they perform. For a while, it works. For a while, it feels like everything they wanted.

Ice cream at 9 PM while watching the last episode of something mindless. It feels good in the moment. We all know what comes next.

Look at the list. Pam Bondi. Rudy Giuliani. People already on the downslope, already compromised by their own decisions, their own behavior. They weren’t at the height of their careers. They were looking for a way back in.

And he offers it. Briefly.

Because this is not a two way street. There is no shared code. There is no honor being upheld. There is only usefulness. As long as you are useful, you are protected. The moment you are not, you are gone.

And sometimes, even when you are still useful, you are gone.

That’s the system.

So when journalists use the word loyalty, they elevate it. They make it sound like something it is not. They bring it into the language of honor, of allegiance, of something that belongs at my dinner table, in stories about family, about commitment, about standing by someone through something real.

It does not belong here.

This is a one way arrangement. You obey, you benefit, until you don’t. You are allowed to break rules, until the rules matter. And then you are the one who pays.

And Trump? He finally got the title he chased his entire life. President. The word used to carry weight, awe, history. It used to mean something beyond the man holding it.

Now it doesn’t. Not in the same way. Not after this.

So please, stop using the word loyalty anywhere near this. It doesn’t clarify what’s happening. It distorts it.

Call it what it is. Subservience.

Call him not President, but Dictator.

I moved from Maine to New York last week. In four days, I packed up my entire life and started over. It’s been a week.

Last night, I picked up my sister at 5:30 and we went for our Tuesday night ritual, sushi at the bar.

We talked about the move. We talked about an upcoming family wedding. And then we talked about Iran, and the Armageddon that was supposed to arrive in three hours, while we sat there eating sushi.

In Iran, as I understand it, young people were preparing to hold hands and circle electrical plants and other targets Trump had threatened to annihilate, fully aware that doing so could cost them their lives.

As far as I know, not one of us in America was lining up anywhere other than outside a movie theater.

Oh, there’s a lot of talk. Social media, Threads. X. Phone calls. Conversations at dinner.

“When are they going to stop him?”

And from all across the world, people are looking at us and wondering why we don’t understand who they is.

Why we aren’t circling the White House.

Why we weren’t marching all day today, demanding a session of Congress, demanding this stop.

Instead, most of the pundits are talking about how it’s up to the military to refuse to carry out the orders of the commander in chief. And, in the end, up to individual men and women to not carry out orders of distruction passed down from DT.

I looked into that.

The man or woman responsible for arming the drone, for pushing the button on the missile, makes approximately $50,000 to $70,000 a year. Every part of their training tells them to follow orders.

And this is our expectation?

This is not about Trump. He is a demented old man. When he is gone, I will echo his own words, “I’m glad he’s dead,” and millions, maybe billions, around the world will echo it too.

But this moment is not about him.

It’s about we the people.

We’ve lost our way.

Each and every one of us.

There is something quieter sitting underneath all of this, something we don’t like to look at.

We keep searching for a they because it allows us to stay seated, to stay safe, to stay removed. They is comforting. They is distance. They is the belief that someone else, somewhere else, will absorb the cost of action.

But history doesn’t work that way.

When people act, it is rarely because they are braver or stronger. It is because the distance between what they believe and what they are doing becomes unbearable. The tension closes in until action is no longer a choice but a release.

We are not there.

We are still comfortable enough to talk about war over sushi. To check our phones. To ask the question and move on to the next topic.

That is not apathy. It is something more complex. It is a learned dependence on systems, on structure, on authority, combined with just enough distance from consequence to keep us still.

We are waiting for a signal that will not come.

And until the discomfort of inaction outweighs the comfort of watching, we will keep waiting.

That is the real danger.

Not him.

Us.

Amazing women. Inspiring women. Powerful women.

One post showed women from the same industry, one for every day of Women’s History Month. Every one of them American.

International Women’s Day. Thirty one Americans.

And it made me pause.

Not because I object to celebrating women. We should. Women have pushed through walls for generations to get where we are. Recognition matters. I celebrate women every single day.

I saw another woman earlier today say that on International Women’s Day she immediately thought of the suffragettes. I get it. It is a natural place for many people to go. Their courage changed history. The ridicule they endured and the determination they showed reshaped our lives. But international?

So reading through so many of the posts today made me think about something else.

The word international. And, the lack of international women posting. Maybe it’s my algorithm, but after some homework, I do not believe it is.

Most of the celebrations I am seeing are Americans celebrating American women or reflecting on American history. Again, that history matters enormously. But the story of women gaining rights did not end there, and in many places it is still unfolding right now.

Across parts of the world today, women are still fighting for the very rights those early suffragettes fought for. In some countries women cannot vote freely. In others they are pushed out of public life entirely.

Iran comes to mind right now. Women there have been risking imprisonment, violence, and their lives simply for demanding autonomy and freedom.

A few days ago, we bombed their country. We leveled a school with many girls left dead. Perhaps hundreds.

They are not posting lists. I don’t think we should either. There is immediate, emergency work to be done that overshadows this month’s celebration.

And it made me think about the extraordinary energy we women put into Women’s History Month. Anyone who has ever organized a panel, an event, or even a thoughtful post knows the work that goes into it. The planning, the outreach, the coordination.

We women are very good at getting things done.

So I find myself imagining something else.

What if all of the panels this month were redirected to women in Iran and what they are facing.

What if the awards given this month were used to bring an Iranian woman to speak, to be heard, to be protected.

What if the money spent on events and celebrations were refocused toward organizations supporting the women leading that fight.

What if this month became less about recognition and more about action.

So this year I am trying something different.

I am setting aside Women’s History Month for myself. Every ounce of energy I might have spent celebrating it, posting about it, or organizing around it, I am going to focus instead on the women in Iran and what they may need from those of us watching from afar.

They are fighting the regime inside Iran and the American invasion at the same time. We owe them. We owe it to ourselves.

International Women’s Day can certainly be a moment of celebration.

But it can also be a moment of solidarity.

The suffragettes did not fight so we would simply celebrate them.

They fought so the work would continue.

And right now, in places like Iran, that work is still very much underway.

For anyone interested in learning more or supporting women’s rights efforts there, here are several organizations doing important work.

Center for Human Rights in Iran

United for Iran

Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran

Iran Human Rights Documentation Center

Women Living Under Muslim Laws

If International Women’s Day is truly international, perhaps one of the best ways to honor the women who came before us is by paying attention to the women who still need the women of the world to notice them now, and to take action now.

Over the last year, the one thing I have learned that stands out is this. Two opposing things can be true at the same time, and sometimes one is not bigger than the other.

The fact that Ayatollah Khamenei (the ‘k’ is silent, by the way) died in attacks by America and Israel means that one of the most repressive leaders on earth is gone. I do not mourn that.

At the same time, an unprovoked attack by us is horrifying. Again.

I felt this same duality after our invasion of Iraq, which eventually led to the death of Saddam Hussein. Realizing the Cheney and Bush lies about weapons of mass destruction, and suspecting a son’s desire to vindicate his father after what was seen as humiliation in Iraq, opened my eyes to the inner workings of my country. Workings that had always been hidden from my view. My fault for not seeing them earlier, but I did not.

As a film critic for Screen Thoughts, I am always struck by how film mirrors life. Every story on screen reflects something we have seen before.

The film Wag the Dog comes to mind now. You may remember DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman’s brilliant portrayal of a PR man and Hollywood director who manufacture a fake war to distract from a presidential scandal. I watched it just after my daughter was born and felt uneasy in a way I could not explain. Looking back, I realize I sensed that it was not out of the realm of possibility. I watched it again last night and I think it’s worth the time.

I think DT starting a war serves as a diversionary explosion from what has been heating up around him, including renewed scrutiny of his ties to Epstein, ongoing questions about his financial dealings, multiple legal exposures, and the broader pattern of alleged misconduct that continues to shadow him. Just because the conflict is an enormous diversion does not mean the media should stop pursuing accountability for the Epstein crimes or any others.

I’ll say it again. Distraction works only if we allow the spectacle to eclipse the unresolved.

I don’t like the word just unless it’s about justice. “Just one for dinner tonight,” irks me no end. “I’m just someone’s mother?” Don’t get me started.

But it’s the word that keeps coming to me today.

Just because we can does not mean we have any right to attack other countries.

Just because Congress did not sanction this war does not mean they are not responsible for it happening. Trump and his lackeys had no fear that there would be a repercussion for an action that is totally illegal. It should have already happened. Congress should be in session as we sleep.

Just because we are committing war crimes, there’s some good maybe just maybe could come out of the crimes we are committing.

Former intelligence officials have long warned (a report a few weeks ago) that assassinating the Ayatollah would create a vacuum that is even more dangerous. The concern is that once a central figure is gone, decision making often shifts to a more diffuse military structure that may feel less constrained by political calculation or international optics. In that environment, retaliation can become less measured and more ideological, driven by institutional momentum rather than strategic restraint. The result is that actions taken in the name of deterrence can instead unleash forces that operate with fewer human considerations, escalating conflict rather than containing it.

Our task as Americans now is to personally, one by one, inch by inch, support the brave Iranians who will have to step up now, without any planning or warning. We have seen the on the streets over the last few years protesting at great personal risk to ensure that the strong arm of the military does not make us wish Khamenei was back on planet earth. Their task now is enormous.

Back to my ‘just’ sentences over the last twenty-four hours.

Just because American Jews are terrified of historical context and believe that Israel is the only safety valve that will keep them safe in the future does not mean that everything Israel does is justified, and if anything, in my opinion, it keeps individual Jewish humans less safe in the world at large.

Just because this is an enormous diversionary explosion does not mean the media should stop pursuing accountability for the Epstein crimes. Two things can happen at once.

Just because we might not know anyone affected in Iran personally does not mean that it is not personal. We have to open up our minds enough to look at the individual stories coming out to make it personal. If anything, it should be personal.

The world is more complicated than it’s ever been. My brain is weary daily from the enormous amount of micro information plots that I seem to feel the need to put in front of it. Too much information is not a joke.

We are carrying a heavy load as history unfolds for the next generation right now. We don’t have to do it all, but we don’t get to do nothing just because there are so many things happening. That is the fear and that is their hope, those enemies around us, that we will do nothing because we will be too busy watching everything.

The people of Iran? I offer my apology and my assistance. Give me the list of what you need, and I will do it.

What strikes me is not only the arrest, but the contrast. In parts of Europe, names connected to Epstein have faced consequences that actually land. Titles stripped. Roles removed. Invitations rescinded. Public disgrace that alters trajectory.

In the United States, the reaction feels different. Softer. Shorter. Easier to outlast.

What does that say about us as citizens? Why do we continue to give over our power to people who have already shown us that doing so is not the smartest move on our part?

Earlier this week I wrote about the ripple effect around Epstein’s circle. Deepak Chopra comes to mind today. Thousands of emails to his BFF Epstein. Comments about women that should make every woman who bought a ticket to his current tour pause and demand a refund. Why don’t we? Why does the tour go on as if nothing happened?

These icons seem to lose weight everywhere but here. Why do we keep putting men on pedestals that have already cracked? Why does the pedestal collapse and yet the audience remains seated?

We cannot pretend this is limited to royalty or former presidents. We have to look at Oprah. Dr. Phil. Dr. Oz. We watched The Wizard of Oz as children and learned that the great and powerful wizard was a fraud behind a curtain. Yet as adults we seem to forget the lesson. Deepak Chopra was elevated by Oprah. Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz were, too.

Is Oprah reevaluating her ability to measure people like I am?

I have spent a good amount of time looking hard at my own patterns. Who I elevate. Who I excuse. Who I give the benefit of the doubt to simply because they are polished, articulate, successful, charismatic. I see now how easily I have confused access with integrity. Visibility with virtue. Confidence with character.

That is not comfortable to admit.

But this moment is not only about them. It is about us. It is about the quiet ways we participate in building pedestals. The books we buy. The tours we attend. The clips we share. The way we say yes, but he’s brilliant, as if brilliance erases behavior.

Andrew. Pathetic.

Charles issued the correct statement, but the reason it needed to be issued should be examined. They knew who he was. These are systems of protection. Charles is not a bystander in that system. He is part of it. I believe it is a dealbreaker. He knew exactly who his brother was, and he protected him, and in a way he still does. When family loyalty supersedes moral clarity, it stops being loyalty and starts being enabling. In my view, he should step down.

His mother protected Andrew for years. Charles reportedly contributed millions toward a settlement connected to the woman who later took her own life. These are not random oversights. These are choices. These are enablers. They are accountable in a court of law? Why not in the court of public opinion?

And the smaller absurdities matter too. The stories about stuffed animals that had to be arranged just so. The culture of deference. The insulation from consequence. Why is there a royal family at all?

Why is Bill Clinton not staying home?

Why is Deepak Chopra’s tour not canceled?

Why is Leon Botstein still president of Bard College?

Why do we shrug?

We have to ensure accountability, even if it is uncomfortable. We have to look at our own ability to read a room. To judge character. To decide who we hold in esteem.

I am reevaluating who I hold in esteem. Not based on fame. Not based on proximity to power. Not based on who anointed them. But based on consistency. On how they treat people without cameras. On whether their private conduct matches their public posture.

Is American society so damaged, so compromised, so addicted to celebrity that we cannot course correct? I still hope not.

For more than a year I have said we are standing on scorched earth. What we rebuild will determine whether this was simply decay or a necessary clearing. Other countries have drawn firmer lines when trust is broken.

The only way that happens here is if we demand it. Not by sharing torrid details. Not by indulging the spectacle. But by standing tall and saying clearly, they do not get to sit in positions of influence anymore.

It means making an effort every day. It means being willing to say I was wrong. It means changing our patterns.

The culture we live in is not shaped only by the powerful. It is shaped by what we reward.

And we have more power over that than we admit.

It is not about district attorneys.

It is about us. You and me.

Jeffrey Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting prostitution from a minor. That conviction alone should have permanently altered how leaders evaluated association.

And yet associations continued. And still continue.

Not loudly. Not transparently. Many details surfaced later through reporting and litigation, emails, meetings, donations, personal gifts.

We now know the names.

So the question is not what the law required.

The question is what we require.

Start with Leon Botstein.

Bard College accepted post-conviction donations from Epstein. Botstein maintained a relationship. Reporting revealed a personal gift, the watch. This is not a criminal allegation. It is a judgment question.

So where is the sustained public pressure on the Bard board?

When did trustees know about the continued relationship?

When did they know about the gift?

Why has there been no full public accounting of how this met their standard for leadership?

And where are the students?

Where are the alumni?

Institutions do not belong only to boards. They belong to the people who study there, graduate from there, donate to them, and represent them in the world.

I know Leon personally, although I have not seen him in years. I gave him my Steinway grand piano, an instrument he coveted. He is the conductor of The American Symphony, and I was so proud. I sat next to him at many luncheons and dinners. That was not a casual gesture. A Steinway grand is not a token. It carries memory. It carries admiration. It carries trust.

When someone you once respected is later connected to something that feels morally compromised, there is a kind of retroactive contamination. You start to re-evaluate not only them, but your own choice. It had to be there. Did I miss it?

I want my piano back.

But that is not really about wood and strings. It is about alignment. It is about wanting to pull something beautiful out of an environment that now feels compromised. It is grief mixed with anger. It is the instinct to retrieve what you gave in good faith when trust feels cracked.

That is what moral dissonance feels like.

Now look at The Weinstein Company.

Over many years, the board approved multiple confidential settlements with women while Harvey Weinstein remained in charge.

Approving those payouts means the board knew there were credible accusations serious enough to require financial resolution.

Repeated settlements are not anomalies. They are patterns.

And yet Weinstein continued to operate until public exposure made continuation impossible.

Where was the sustained reckoning for the board members who authorized payout after payout?

Many moved on to other boards and other ventures. Hollywood recalibrated. Careers continued.

In finance, Kathryn Ruemmler “resigned” from Goldman Sachs after communications referencing Epstein became public. She was not accused of abuse. She was not charged. Her departure became the accountability headline.

The institution remained intact.

In elite law, Brad Karp stepped down as managing partner of Paul Weiss. It was not emphasized at first that he would remain at the firm as a partner.

Remaining a partner in a major law firm is not exile. It is continued influence and compensation.

If a title changes but power remains, is that accountability or choreography?

And what about the other partners? Clients?

A partnership shares governance. Every partner benefits from the brand. Why are they not being asked publicly how they assess standards inside their own firm?

Why does the media move on?

In public life, Bill Clinton acknowledged flying on Epstein’s plane and has denied knowledge of wrongdoing. He continues to command large speaking fees. The Clinton Foundation continues to receive donations. This is not the first time Bill Clinton has been to this type of rodeo. How many times does he have to go there before we truly doubt his judgment and walk away?

Bill Gates met with Epstein multiple times after the conviction and later described those meetings as a mistake in judgment. He remains one of the most influential philanthropic figures in the world through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Did it only become a mistake now when you’re publicly being questioned? Why wasn’t it a mistake then? Nothing changed other than the fact that he got caught.

These facts are public.

And yet the boards remain seated. The podiums remain available. The checks keep clearing.

This is the pattern.

A campus remains quiet.

A corporate board disperses.

A law firm adjusts titles.

A foundation keeps fundraising.

A bank absorbs a resignation.

Hollywood moves on.

The scarlet letter appears briefly, then fades.

The only people who carry lasting consequence are the women who were abused. They continue to speak. They continue to relive. They continue to ask whether anything changed.

The ecosystem does not.

Until we the people impose consequence on institutions, nothing changes.

Until donors withhold checks.

Until alumni demand resignations.

Until students protest.

Until shareholders demand removal.

Until clients question firms.

Until voters treat compromised judgment as disqualifying.

Until the media sustains pressure beyond the first week.

The ecosystem will continue to believe that exposure is survivable.

The scarlet letter has to cost something.

At minimum, it should mean isolation from stewardship when judgment has been compromised.

When appropriate, it should mean litigation and criminal prosecution.

But before any courtroom, there is culture.

And culture answers to us.

If we continue to invite, fund, retain, and applaud leaders who normalized proximity to moral failure, then we are sustaining the environment we claim to condemn.

The scarlet letter only works if we refuse to erase it. Right now, too often, we are the ones doing the erasing.

This is the moment. Not sure why it is not on everyone’s feed!

Yesterday, February 11, 2026, the House of Representatives voted 219 to 211 to block President Trump’s 25 percent tariff on Canadian imports. The tariff had been imposed through a national emergency declaration. The resolution does not immediately erase the tariff. The president can veto it. But that is not the point.

The point is that six Republicans voted yes.

Six.

In a political climate where deviation is punished, primaries are weaponized, and loyalty is often valued above constitutional balance, six Republican members of Congress publicly broke with a president of their own party on a defining economic policy.

Those members are:

Don Bacon of Nebraska

Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania

Jeff Hurd of Colorado

Kevin Kiley of California

Thomas Massie of Kentucky

Dan Newhouse of Washington

Every Democrat but one supported the resolution. One Democrat, Jared Golden of Maine, voted no. But the story is not about party arithmetic. It is about something quieter and far more fragile.

It is about separation of powers.

Under Article I of the Constitution, Congress holds the authority over tariffs and trade. Over the last century, that authority has increasingly shifted to the executive branch through emergency statutes. What happened yesterday was not just about Canada. It was Congress asserting, even in a limited and symbolic way, that it still exists.

Canada is our largest trading partner. A 25 percent tariff does not just land on Ottawa. It lands on American farmers, manufacturers, auto plants, lumber yards, and consumers. It raises costs in states that depend on cross border supply chains. For some of the Republicans who voted yes, this is not theoretical. It is personal to their districts.

But make no mistake. This vote required courage.

Breaking with a president who dominates his party invites consequences. It invites primary challenges. It invites the machine. Anyone who believes these men are not being pressured does not understand the moment we are living in.

And yet they voted.

This is the pivot.

For years we have reacted in outrage. We have flashed, burned, shouted, condemned. Some of that was necessary. But outrage alone does not build democratic muscle. It exhausts it.

Positive reinforcement builds muscle.

When members of Congress act to reassert institutional balance, even imperfectly, even symbolically, it is a signal. It is a small opening in a locked room. And history tells us that institutional shifts rarely begin with a landslide. They begin with six.

This is not about elevating them to hero status. It is about recognizing that democracy survives not in sweeping speeches but in roll call votes.

The resolution may face a veto. It may not survive the Senate. It may not change policy tomorrow. But it changed something yesterday.

It showed that dissent inside a party is still possible.

It showed that constitutional authority is still remembered.

It showed that not everyone is willing to surrender congressional power to executive declaration without a fight.

This is where we begin again.

Not with fury.

With recognition.

Six Republicans crossed a line yesterday. Not to defect. To defend a branch of government.

In this climate, that matters.

When leaders step outside the safety of party alignment to uphold institutional balance, it is not weakness. It is strength. It is risk. It is service. Moments like this deserve to be seen. They deserve to be acknowledged. They deserve to be remembered.

If we want a different political future, it begins by recognizing courage when it appears. The more we elevate principle over party, the more space we create for others to do the same.

God bless America.

One of my mentors, who does not know she is my mentor, Faith Popcorn, wrote about the halftime show yesterday.

She talked about how Bad Bunny brought vibrant street life to millions of people who are disconnected from the everyday realities of neighborhoods that do not look like theirs. How he reminded us there are many Americas, and many Americans, each with its own rhythm, language, and value. She said she loved his motto, YHLQMDLG, yo hago lo que me da la gana. I do whatever I want. Very cool. Or should I say very hot.

Now here is the part I cannot stop thinking about.

When I think of the NFL, I do not think left wing liberal. I think MAGA. I think corporate cathedral. I think the billion dollar testosterone machine that can make a basic Thursday night game feel like the Super Bowl if the camera angles are right.

So when Bad Bunny took that stage, it was not just entertainment. It was a cultural stress test. And MAGA America felt it.

First, a lot of them did not experience it as celebration. They experienced it as displacement. Not, look at this incredible artistry. More, this is not my America. Spanish lyrics, urban street aesthetics, Caribbean rhythms, a confident Latin identity that did not pause to translate itself. For some viewers, that did not feel like an invitation. It felt like being edged out of the center seat.

Second, they treated it as political, even if it was not. Bad Bunny did not come out and deliver a speech. But in this moment, visibility itself is read as politics. Spanish on the NFL stage becomes wokeness. Brown bodies centered becomes DEI pandering. Joy that does not ask permission becomes cultural takeover. The content almost does not matter. The presence is the trigger.

Third, the masculinity factor. Bad Bunny’s version of masculinity is confident, sexual, stylish, not aggressive in the old approved ways. It is fluid, and it is unbothered, and it does not seem to care whether anyone is comfortable with it. That makes a certain worldview short circuit. Some people respond with mockery, some with hostility, some with that kind of tight little laugh that says, I do not know what to do with this so I am going to pretend it is stupid.

Fourth, the NFL betrayal narrative. This one is already loaded from the Kaepernick years. There is a whole strain of MAGA commentary that treats the league as something that used to belong to them, and is now being stolen by liberals. A Bad Bunny halftime show slots right into that story. The funny part is that the NFL has not gone left in any economic sense for one second. It is still aggressively capitalist, global, and designed to extract maximum dollars from every demographic on earth. But the grievance does not live in the money. It lives in the culture. It lives in who gets centered on the big stage.

Fifth, the backlash followed the same familiar script, because of course it did. Complaints about not understanding the lyrics, as if we have all been studying the finer points of every halftime show for decades. Claims that it was not for real Americans. Dismissals of it as niche, urban, foreign. The evergreen line, stick to football, as if football has ever been only football.

And here is the deeper part that makes me laugh and also makes me tired.

Yo hago lo que me da la gana is basically the most American motto imaginable. Radical individualism. Self definition. I do what I want. That idea gets applauded all day long in certain circles, until the person embodying it does not look, sound, or live the way they expect. Then suddenly the same freedom gets recast as threat.

So how was the show valued by MAGA America.

Largely, it was not valued as art. It was valued as evidence. Evidence that the culture is shifting. Evidence that they are no longer the default setting. Evidence that the country is bigger than their preferred narrative.

And that is why the response was not always pure rage. Sometimes it was unease. Sometimes it was disgust wrapped in jokes. Sometimes it was tuning out and calling it trash. Sometimes it was a quiet respect for the confidence, paired with a public performance of disapproval. But the dominant reaction was not appreciation. It was discomfort about who gets to take up space.

Which brings me back to the genie.

We keep worrying about them as a genie let out of the bottle. About what they will do next in government, what they will ban, what they will restrict, what they will roll back. But maybe the fact is, no matter what they do in government, they will never stop the celebration of life by individuals who cannot be silenced.

The music keeps playing. The streets keep dancing. The joy keeps showing up on stages that were never supposed to hold it.

And the bottle was never theirs to cork in the first place.

PS…

Do what you will with this information:

The owner of the Patriots, Robert Kraft, is in Epstein files, gave at least 1 million dollars to Trump’s Inauguration & sat with Trump at the Kennedy Center opening night of “Melania”.

The owner of the Seahawks, Jody Allen, has donated millions to charities involving education, arts and wildlife conservation and has never given to Trump. She’s also the chair of the “Allen Institute for Brain Science” providing free resources for scientists worldwide.

“A successful society is one that is supported by a majority of the people.” This comment during a recent conversation led us down a new path. I would add that a successful society is also one in which the people are proud, confident, and satisfied with their place in the world.

By this metric, the People’s Republic of China is currently more successful as a society than the United States of America. In other words, China is doing something right by a majority of its people; America is not.

Chinese society, led by a government we demonize that is anchored on a political system that scares us silly, is more supported by its citizens than is American society by Americans.

Why would a people support their government? First, a reflection. No government enjoys universal support. It will do things right; it will do things horribly. Societies stratify and threats abound. Governments always face complex issues that are difficult to manage and may be impossible to resolve and could (and repeatedly have) become domestically existential.

The above notwithstanding, today’s Chinese government by many measures functions at a high level for its people and the nation:

• It provides infrastructure.

• It promotes policies to protect the environment and enhance quality of life.

• It prevents extreme poverty.

• It supports education and healthcare.

• It encourages and funds economic and technological research, development, and advancement.

• Streets are clean and safe. Crime is low. Homelessness is not a crisis.

• Daily life is mostly peaceful. Hope is still on the agenda.

The quid pro quo in China is a government that demands loyalty. A government that surveils. A government that dictates and enforces policies in a command and control manner. If one lives within the strictures of the system, life is good. If one disobeys or breaks with the system, the penalties are swift and substantial. And yet,

Most Chinese look at their nation with pride. The country has risen from its status as a tiny player in world governance five decades ago to now be one of the two most powerful players on the planet. There is a robust state capitalist economic system that has created a wealthy class, a large (if for the moment battered) middle class, and a lower class that has by and large not been abandoned to its own devices. China continues to advance as a global trading partner, a consistent and increasingly trusted peer to much of the world, and potentially a future international power broker.

On this side of the Pacific, it is not a stretch to argue that every single measure listed above about China is diametrically the opposite here. The government is barely functioning. Society is being ripped apart by culture and economic wars. Few (of any political party or leaning) support the direction of the country. Physical and emotional infrastructure is collapsing. Hope is in short, if not nonexistent, supply. We bully and alienate. Now, because America has been so strong and so powerful for so long, the country remains wealthy and continues to operate from a position of (declining) strength. The question is for how long.

China advocates a glowing, coherent image of its historical narrative that is harnessed to reach new national heights. America cannot agree on what our history is, and this undermines our present and future. Each country believes it is exceptional, but each is veering in seemingly opposite directions. I do not count the U.S.A. out, nor state unequivocally that China will surmount the pole. However, at the present time, by the measure of its citizens satisfaction, China as a successful society is eating our lunch.

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If Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were fundamentally different people, there is a version of testimony that could serve the country rather than themselves. It would not require confessions of crimes or reckless self-incrimination. It would require something rarer in American political life … an acceptance that proximity to power creates moral obligations beyond legal thresholds.

They could testify with clarity about judgment. They could acknowledge that access to figures like Epstein reflected a broader culture of elite immunity, one they benefited from and helped normalize. They could draw a line between what was legal and what was appropriate, and say plainly that the gap between those two things is where institutions rot. That kind of testimony would not be about facts alone. It would be about norms, responsibility, and the corrosive effects of unchecked power.

But that would require them to see testimony not as a risk to be managed, but as a civic act. And that has never been their posture.

What the Clintons Have Always Done Instead

Historically, the Clintons approach scrutiny the same way they approach politics … as a system to be navigated, controlled, and survived. They do not lie impulsively. They lie strategically. They tell the narrowest possible truth, lawyered within an inch of its life, while withholding the broader reality that people are actually trying to understand.

When confronted, they default to procedural mastery. They fragment narratives, defer to staff, retreat into technicalities, and wait out the moment until fatigue sets in. Nothing illegal happened. No rules were technically broken. Memory is suddenly unreliable. Context becomes a shield rather than an explanation.

This approach works because the system rewards it. It avoids jail. It avoids formal consequences. But it comes at a cost that the Clintons have always been willing to pay: public trust. Over time, that cost compounds. Each successful evasion teaches the political class that accountability is optional for those who are skilled enough to avoid it.

Why This Is the Real Argument for New Leadership

This is not ultimately an argument about the Clintons. It is an argument about who should hold power in this country.

People with the Clintons’ moral fiber will never choose what is best for the country when it conflicts with their own preservation. They will always err on the side of self-interest, control, and legacy protection. Not because they are uniquely corrupt, but because they are structurally incapable of surrendering advantage in service of the public good.

A functioning democracy requires leaders who see accountability as an obligation, not a threat. Who understand that there are moments when personal risk is the price of institutional repair. Who do not confuse legality with legitimacy.

The Clintons are incapable of that kind of leadership. And that is precisely why this moment matters. Not to punish them, not to extract spectacle, but to make clear that the future cannot be built by people whose first instinct, always, is to protect themselves.

That is the real testimony the country needs to hear.

What Needs to Happen Next, by We the People

Once testimony happens, our job is not to litigate it endlessly. We do not need another decade of parsing answers, defending intentions, or arguing over whether they were “technically honest enough.” That reflex is exactly what has kept us stuck.

The correct response is disengagement.

The Clinton Foundation should be abandoned by any reasonable people who still believe ethical clarity matters. Not because every act associated with it was corrupt, but because it represents a permanently blurred line between power, access, money, and moral exemption. That model has failed. It does not deserve our time, our donations, or our deference.

Our civic attention is finite. Continuing to center the Clintons as if they remain essential to the country’s moral or political life is a choice. And it is one we can stop making.

This is also where our standards must change. Who we elect cannot be based solely on résumé, intelligence, or political effectiveness. Moral fiber, demonstrated across an entire life, has to matter. If it ever had, Bill Clinton would never have become what he became. That is not revisionism. It is pattern recognition.

Private behavior is not separate from public leadership. How someone treats truth, boundaries, restraint, and responsibility in their personal life is how they will treat institutions when the stakes are higher and accountability is easier to avoid. Pretending otherwise has been one of our most damaging political illusions.

The point of Clinton testimony is not closure for them.

It is clarity for us.

We the people do not need their explanations anymore.

We need to withdraw consent, withdraw attention, and choose differently.

That is how eras actually end.

Nazi Germany was brutally hierarchical. Power moved downward. Orders came from the top and were enforced through fear, coercion, and violence. The structure was rigid. The lines of authority were visible. You could point to the center of power even as it expanded outward.

That is not what I’m watching now.

What gets lost when we invoke Nazi Germany is not just the early stages of compliance, though that matters. What gets lost is the structure itself. This moment is not defined by a few people at the top overpowering those beneath them. It is defined by participation moving laterally. By alignment rather than command. By networks, incentives, silence, and repetition.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about circles of collaboration in the best sense of the word, because I believe deeply in what people can build together when collaboration is grounded in trust, accountability, and shared purpose. What we are seeing now is something else entirely. It is collaboration without conscience. Coordination without responsibility. Alignment without moral agreement. It’s a circle of collaboration of evil, and I chose the word ‘evil’ after careful consideration.

This is not fascism imposed. It is fascism assembled.

Germany had to move country by country. Border by border. Occupation by occupation. What is happening now does not require tanks or invasions. It moves through markets, media, platforms, courts, contracts, and code. It spreads globally without declaring war because it doesn’t need to. Power no longer has to conquer territory when it can shape reality.

That difference matters.

I see it in how people participate. Not because they are forced, but because the system rewards them for doing so. Media figures amplify narratives because attention is currency. Corporations comply because the financial incentives are real. Platforms promote division because outrage performs better than truth. Individuals repeat talking points because belonging feels safer than dissent. No single actor controls the whole. Everyone controls their piece.

That is what makes it so hard to stop.

Plausible deniability thrives in this structure. Each person can say, I’m just doing my job. Each institution can say, this is policy. Each platform can say, this is the algorithm. Responsibility dissolves not because no one is responsible, but because responsibility is shared so widely it becomes invisible.

Global entanglement accelerates this beyond anything the 1930s could have imagined. Nazi Germany was geographically bound. Today’s systems are not. Money moves instantly. Disinformation is coordinated across borders. Authoritarian tactics are shared, refined, and exported. A billionaire in one country funds influence operations in another. A platform headquartered somewhere else shapes political life everywhere. Power does not live in one capital. It lives in networks.

And then there is scale and speed. This is not radio broadcasts or leaflets. It is personalized influence that knows what frightens us, what angers us, what keeps us engaged. Surveillance is ambient. Pressure is social. You do not need secret police when people monitor themselves and one another, when conformity is rewarded and dissent is exhausting.

This doesn’t shock the system. It drains it.

That’s why the Nazi comparison ultimately fails me. Not because what happened then was less horrific, but because it was visible and centralized. It required force. It announced itself. What we are facing now erodes rather than attacks. It hollows out truth, institutions, and shared reality until resistance becomes difficult not because it is forbidden, but because it is fragmented.

If Nazi Germany represents the horror of overt domination, this moment represents the horror of distributed capture. One expanded by conquering nations. The other expands by absorbing systems.

That distinction matters. Because if we keep looking for a single strongman or a single capital or a single breaking point, we will miss what is actually happening. This isn’t taking over one country at a time. It’s taking hold everywhere at once.

I’ve spent years talking about Trump. Writing about him. Reacting to him. Trying to understand him. Warning about him. I understand the impulse because I’ve lived inside it. He is loud. He is offensive. He is a spectacle engineered to pull oxygen out of every room he enters.

After he was re-elected, I stopped talking about him, clicking on anything with his name or face and begging friends and family to stop. They haven’t. I ignore anything they send me that has his name front and center. They still send it.

I’ve come to believe that continuing to center Trump is not just unhelpful. It is actively obscuring the real danger.

Trump is no longer the issue. And in many ways, he hasn’t been for a long time.

Focusing on Trump personalizes a problem that is structural. It suggests that if one man were removed, disgraced, defeated, or silenced, something essential would be resolved. That belief has been comforting, but it has also been false. Trump did not invent the conditions we are living under. He exploited them, benefited from them, and revealed them. But the machinery that elevated him did not disappear when he left office, and it will not disappear when he eventually exits the stage.

And, worse, they use him to obstruct our view.

Trump functions as a kind of decoy. As long as our attention stays fixed on his words, his legal troubles, his rallies, his insults, we are spared from having to look directly at the systems that reward his behavior and replicate it in quieter forms. Outrage becomes a substitute for analysis. Disgust becomes a substitute for accountability.

There is relief in having a villain with a face.

What I see now is that Trump absorbed so much attention that he shielded the underlying architecture from scrutiny. The media ecosystem that monetizes outrage did not begin with him and does not depend on him. The erosion of institutional guardrails did not start with him and will not end with him. The global flow of money, influence, grievance, and disinformation that sustains this moment predates Trump and will outlive him.

Trump didn’t create the incentives. He followed them.

That distinction matters. Because when we frame the problem as Trump, we implicitly frame the solution as removal. Vote him out. Prosecute him. Deplatform him. Shame him. And while some of those actions may be necessary or justified, none of them address the deeper reality: the system that elevated him remains intact.

Worse, Trump-centric focus has trained us to look for danger only when it arrives as spectacle. We are alert to the outrageous statement, the shocking headline, the theatrical cruelty. Meanwhile, the quieter work continues. Courts reshaped incrementally. Norms hollowed out legally. Expertise displaced by loyalty. Media incentives recalibrated around engagement rather than truth. Power redistributed into networks that do not require a single leader to function.

Trump is not the engine of that system. He is a product of it.

And that is why removing him does not dismantle it.

I’ve also had to confront something more uncomfortable. Focusing on Trump gave me a sense of moral clarity without requiring sustained engagement. I knew where I stood. I knew what I opposed. I could measure my vigilance by my reaction to him. That focus was emotionally satisfying. It was also incomplete.

The truth is that the most consequential shifts happening now do not require Trump’s presence at all. They move through courts, markets, platforms, legislatures, and bureaucracies. They are advanced by people who never raise their voices, never break norms publicly, never become household names. They do not need rallies. They need compliance. They do not need devotion. They need participation.

Trump made power visible. What we are dealing with now has made power ambient.

That is why continuing to center Trump actually makes it harder to respond to what is unfolding. It keeps us oriented toward a personality when we need to be oriented toward a pattern. It keeps us arguing about a man when we should be interrogating incentives, structures, and global alignments that operate whether he is present or not.

Trump is useful to the system precisely because he draws fire.

At some point, staying focused on him becomes a form of avoidance. It allows us to believe that the threat is singular, personal, and temporary. It allows us to postpone the harder work of naming what has already taken hold.

The real question is not what Trump will do next.

The real question is why so many systems no longer require him at all.

Late night television was once the thing you left on when you were too tired to turn it off. It was comfort noise. A celebrity on the couch, a band in the corner, a few jokes about the news, and the fade to black. That is not what it is anymore. Somewhere between Trump descending the escalator and Stephen Colbert packing up his desk, late night became something else entirely. It became a content engine, the place where the narrative gets built before it is sliced into clips and shipped out into the bloodstream the next morning.

We are in the midst of the Trump era of intimidation, not just politically, but culturally. Institutions we used to think of as pillars of courage and power, universities, corporations, Congress, have shown us their limits. Columbia University, with its millions of alumni and its mythic sense of self, has twisted itself into knots trying to please donors, trustees, students, politicians, and the press. Corporations have sprinted toward big public values statements when it was easy, then quietly deleted, softened, or reversed them when the market or the mob pushed back. Congress has perfected the art of the hearing that leads nowhere. For an institution literally designed to check power, it has mostly chosen to survive it instead.

And then there are the people behind the late night desks.

It is not that they are morally braver than everyone else. It is that, after Colbert, they became harder to touch. Colbert pushed, the outrage machine revved, and instead of standing solidly behind him, his network flinched. He was, in many ways, left alone at the mall. Everyone saw what happened. The lesson for other shows was not to be quieter. The lesson was to make sure that if the knives came out, the audience would show up too.

Jimmy Kimmel did exactly that. When he spoke about health care, or about guns, or about the absurdity of what we now call normal, viewers rallied. They did not just watch. They defended him. They made noise. They made him expensive to get rid of. Networks and sponsors suddenly understood that this was not only about ratings at 11:35. It was about the circulation of those ten minute segments that define the next day’s conversation.

That is the real shift. Late night is no longer primarily a television show. It is a nightly launch pad for content that will live everywhere else. The monologue is written, delivered, and filmed in front of a studio audience. But the real audience arrives tomorrow. Producers cut the best seven minutes, add captions, and send it to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X, and everywhere our phones go. By midmorning, that one segment has become three headlines, fifteen reaction posts, one think piece, and a group text argument. The show is the factory floor. The clips are the product.

Once you see that, the power balance makes more sense. Universities are terrified of upsetting donors. Corporations are terrified of upsetting shareholders. Congress is terrified of upsetting its own base, which they think Trump owns. Late night, on the other hand, is terrified of becoming irrelevant. The only way to stay relevant in this landscape is to say something that feels true enough that people are willing to pass it along. Truth, even wrapped in jokes, travels. Carefully neutral statements do not.

Colbert moving to Netflix for a documentary series is part of this same story. He is not fading away into quiet retirement, he is changing platforms. He will talk about his career, his near misses, the pressures, the rivalries, the battles inside the industry that almost ended it. Whether this is his way back to a nightly show or a transition to another kind of presence is an open question. What matters for late night is that the role he played, the ground he broke, does not disappear when he walks out. The machine he helped define keeps running.

So the question is not whether late night television dies with him, it is where it goes next.

If the Trump era continues to generate chaos and threat, the demand for nightly sense making will remain high. People will want someone to come out, look them in the eye, and say, yes, this is as crazy as you think it is. Late night has become a sort of national debriefing session, a place where the absurdity can be named so that it does not swallow us whole.

But what if it quiets down. What if we have a president like Kamala Harris, who does not wake up every day and try to blow up the news cycle before breakfast. What happens to late night then. Does it lose its urgency. Or does it get to expand again into what it once was at its best, a mix of politics, culture, human behavior, technology, and the everyday ridiculousness of being alive right now.

My guess is that late night will not shrink as much as shift. The content engine is already bigger than the crisis that fed it. These shows have built infrastructures of writers, producers, and performers who understand how to turn a ten minute segment into a national conversation. That skill set is portable. It does not depend on Trump. It depends on having something sharp, human, and emotionally honest to say about whatever comes next.

Which brings me to the part that might make traditional political consultants nervous.

If late night has cracked the code on how to reach people where they actually live, on their phones, in their feeds, then maybe politicians should stop pretending that the old model still works. The stump speech in a hangar, the one big address every few weeks, the press conference where nothing is really answered, all of that feels increasingly out of step with how people take in information now.

Perhaps the lesson from late night is simple. Give a speech every day that is ten minutes long. Make it real. Make it specific. Make it shaped enough that it can be clipped into two or three segments that travel on their own. Put it out there, not as a performance for a room of a few hundred, but as raw material for a country that will meet it in fragments. Let the snippets go out and make the mark.

And if the next person running for president is smart, they will not leave this to chance. They will bring in someone who understands timing, rhythm, and the way humor can lower defenses long enough for the truth to land. Someone who knows how to turn outrage into clarity without tipping into despair. Maybe they will call Stephen Colbert. Maybe they will let Jon Stewart sit at the edge of the table. Not to turn governing into a joke, but to borrow from the one corner of American culture that has figured out how to talk to people every night and still have them show up again tomorrow.

Because if late night has shown us anything in this strange season, it is that the power is no longer in the room where the show is taped. It is in what happens to those ten minutes once they leave the building. That is where late night is going. The only question is whether the people who want to lead the country will be smart enough to follow.

“Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn’t make me Madonna. Never will.”

Joan Cusack says it perfectly in Working Girl, playing Cynthia alongside Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver, and Harrison Ford. It is funny because it is true. Wanting something, mimicking something, even believing something about yourself does not make it so.

I found myself thinking about that line when I watched Donald Trump’s face as he accepted a Nobel Peace Prize from the woman who won it. The pleasure, the pride, the unmistakable glow of being seen as worthy. He didn’t win. She is not allowed to give it to someone else. He is not a peace prize winner. Never will be.

I tried, honestly, to do the thing I am always telling myself to do, to seek to understand rather than be understood.

I ran a thought experiment. If Meryl Streep handed me one of her Academy Awards because she thought my performance in something or other deserved it, would I feel excited? Proud? Validated?

I could not find it. Not the excitement. Not the pleasure. Not even the pride. All I could locate was embarrassment and the immediate instinct to escape the room.

Then I remembered my daughter at four years old, riding in the Hampton Classic lead line. Four and five year olds are walked around the ring by someone from their barn, showing that they can sit in the saddle. She knew exactly what a blue ribbon meant. First place. If you knew her father, you would understand why she knew. And yes, I am competitive too.

The Hampton Classic gives every child in the lead line a light blue ribbon. Only one child gets the real blue ribbon. The rest get something that looks close enough. I have never agreed with it. In my view, it is never too young to learn about winning and losing. We all will do both many times in our life.

She was thrilled. She said she won. I explained gently that she did not, and why, and I pointed out the pony and rider who actually won. She shook her head, firm and certain, and said no, I have a blue ribbon. I won.

She went home and told everyone she won. I remember thinking how dangerous that felt, how setting a child up to believe that symbols without substance were the same as achievement was a terrible lesson.

My daughter grew up and handles blue ribbons with grace, win or lose. She is a giving member of society and has won many and lost a few.

Donald Trump is like a four year old. And how sick that is. I think he never learned that a blue ribbon unearned is nothing but a piece of fabric.

How hollow and shallow and empty someone must be to fill themselves with something they know is not legitimately theirs. He frightens me in many ways, but perhaps this is the worst one. As long as he can surround himself with things that look like blue ribbons, but are not, he stays calm. Perhaps even his aggression toward Greenland is born from the fact that Norway did not give him the Peace Prize he so clearly believes he deserves, one he did not earn. The man is filled with many things, but peace is not one of them.

So I ask you, Americans, what is wrong with you? How is it that hundreds of millions of you still believe there is something he has to offer you in any way? Or are you like him? So shallow and hollow and empty that hearing things you know are not true is enough to make you feel better for a day? As long as it’s someone else being abused, not you?

What follows is a speech delivered overnight in Davos by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday. I believe it will be remembered as one of those moments when the question was asked plainly, and without apology.

“It’s a pleasure – and a duty – to be with you at this turning point for Canada and for the world.

Today, I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.

But I also submit to you that other countries, particularly middle powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of states.

The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.

Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.

This aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable – the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along. To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety.

It won’t.

So, what are our options?

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless. In it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?

His answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ He does not believe it. No one believes it. But he places the sign anyway – to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.

Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this ‘living within a lie.’ The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing – when the greengrocer removes his sign – the illusion begins to crack.

It is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. We could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works.

Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.

More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied – the WTO, the UN, the COP – the architecture of collective problem solving – are greatly diminished.

As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance, and supply chains.

This impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.

And there is another truth: if great powers abandon even the pretence of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from ‘transactionalism’ become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships.

Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. Buy insurance. Increase options. This rebuilds sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.

As I said, such classic risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortress. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sum.

The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls – or whether we can do something more ambitious.

Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.

Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumption that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security is no longer valid.

Our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb has termed ‘values-based realism’ – or, to put it another way, we aim to be principled and pragmatic.

Principled in our commitment to fundamental values: sovereignty and territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter, respect for human rights.

Pragmatic in recognising that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner shares our values. We are engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait for a world we wish to be.

Canada is calibrating our relationships so their depth reflects our values. We are prioritising broad engagement to maximise our influence, given the fluidity of the world order, the risks that this poses, and the stakes for what comes next.

We are no longer relying on just the strength of our values, but also on the value of our strength.

We are building that strength at home.

Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, capital gains and business investment, we have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade, and we are fast-tracking a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors, and beyond.

We are doubling our defence spending by 2030 and are doing so in ways that builds our domestic industries.

We are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the European Union, including joining SAFE, Europe’s defence procurement arrangements.

We have signed twelve other trade and security deals on four continents in the last six months.

In the past few days, we have concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar.

We are negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines, Mercosur.

To help solve global problems, we are pursuing variable geometry – different coalitions for different issues, based on values and interests.

On Ukraine, we are a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per-capita contributors to its defence and security.

On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future. Our commitment to Article 5 is unwavering.

We are working with our NATO allies to further secure the alliance’s northern and western flanks.

On plurilateral trade, we are championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the European Union, creating a new trading block of 1.5 billion people.

On critical minerals, we are forming buyer’s clubs anchored in the G7 so that the world can diversify away from concentrated supply.

On AI, we are cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure we will not ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyperscalers.

This is not naive multilateralism. Nor is it relying on diminished institutions. It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.

Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.

This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.

Which brings me back to Havel.

What would it mean for middle powers to ‘live in truth’?

It means naming reality.

It means acting consistently.

It means building what we claim to believe in.

And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion.

Canada has what the world wants.

And we have the values to which many others aspire.

We are taking the sign out of the window.

The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.

But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just.

That is Canada’s path.

And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.”

Are they being singled out? Yes, but not because of some neutral pursuit of truth. They are being singled out because Donald Trump needs to disappear from the scandal. The spotlight has to land somewhere, and the Clintons are the most familiar, most useful decoy.

Do they have a right not to testify? No.

Both things can be true at the same time, and pretending otherwise is once again the trick.

This is not random scrutiny. This is political misdirection. Trump’s name, his photographs, his recorded praise of Epstein, his long documented proximity to him, all of it is inconvenient. So the story is redirected to the Clintons, where outrage already lives and where fatigue makes people stop asking new questions.

But here is the harder truth. The Clintons helped build the template that makes this maneuver work.

Long before Trump, they perfected the posture. Not illegal, technically. Not required, procedurally. Handled by lawyers. Dismissed as partisan. Every controversy met with the same response, deny, minimize, lawyer up, outlast the news cycle.

Hillary Clinton’s private email server was not a felony, but it was secretive, dismissive, and grounded in the belief that normal rules did not quite apply. It was the insistence that transparency was optional if you were important enough and careful enough.

Bill Clinton’s meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac during the 2016 campaign was not prosecuted, but it was wildly inappropriate. Everyone knew it. The optics were indefensible. The explanation insulted the public’s intelligence. And once again, the response was technical compliance paired with moral shrugging.

And then there was Monica Lewinsky.

What they did to her was devastating. She was young, powerless, and disposable, and they destroyed her to protect power. I participated in that destruction. I fell in line. I swallowed the framing. I mocked, dismissed, minimized. I have apologized for that because she deserved better, and we failed her.

Taken together, this is the pattern. Not one scandal. Not one woman. Not one mistake. A repeated willingness to push ethical boundaries, to rely on legality over legitimacy, and to treat public trust as something to be managed rather than honored.

That pattern did not end with their exit from office.

When Mamdani won his nomination, the Clintons were instrumental in attempting to undermine him. Not through open debate. Not through policy disagreement. Through whispers, delegitimization, and behind the scenes pressure meant to weaken him after the voters had already spoken.

It was the same playbook. Question legitimacy. Sow doubt. Frame the winner as dangerous or unserious. Work the system rather than respect the outcome.

This matters because it shows continuity. These are not retired figures watching the erosion of democratic norms with concern. They are still actively using the same tactics we now condemn when they come from a Trump administration or Republicans in Congress.

Different rhetoric. Same behavior.

That is the most uncomfortable part of this story.

Jeffrey Epstein was a trafficker who fed on elite access. Anyone who moved in his orbit has an obligation to answer questions. Not because the law compels it, but because the moment demands it.

Refusing to testify is not about rights. It is about contempt. It says we will not participate in public reckoning unless forced.

That is not leadership. It never was.

And here is the line we do not get to cross without consequence.

We do not get to say the Clintons can behave this way simply because the behavior is now being weaponized around them by people acting in bad faith. We do not get to excuse it because the people exploiting it are more openly corrupt, more vicious, more destructive.

If this behavior is acceptable, then it is acceptable for everyone. And if it is not acceptable, then it cannot be acceptable for them either.

The only way to defend this refusal is to argue that they are no different from the people we now call evil.

That is not rhetorical.

That is the question that still has to be answered.

Are they?

Most people probably do not know what a Yellow Dog Democrat is, or was. The phrase is so far back in the closet of political language, buried under clothes that have not been worn for decades, that

we forgot it was ever there. It sounds quaint, maybe even a little ridiculous, like something our grandparents might have said without irony. To be honest, I had no idea what it was.

It crossed my path the way a lot of odd things do now, in an old interview I was watching on YouTube. Someone used the phrase casually, as if everyone in the room should know exactly what it meant. I paused it, of course, because I pause everything, and went digging. And halfway through that digging I thought, wait a second, why are we not back here right now?

The term comes from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, mostly in the American South. Saying you were a Yellow Dog Democrat meant you would vote for a yellow dog before you would vote for a Republican. It was not clever. It was not ironic. It was a straight faced declaration of loyalty shaped by history, Reconstruction, resentment, and survival. It was not about falling in love with a candidate. It was about choosing who you believed would do the least damage to your life and your neighbors.

Over time, the phrase aged badly. Blind loyalty stopped sounding sturdy and started sounding lazy. As the parties shifted and the South realigned, Yellow Dog Democrat turned into a punchline. And honestly, good. None of us should be proud of voting on autopilot.

But this is not that moment.

This moment is not about loyalty for loyalty’s sake. It is about judgment under pressure. It is about recognizing that frustration is not the same thing as danger, and that being unimpressed is not the same thing as being at risk.

Somewhere along the way, we turned voting into a love story. We want to be inspired. We want to feel seen. We want to feel excited. And when we do not, we stay home and call it principle, as if the consequences are theoretical and not very real.

A modern Yellow Dog Democrat is not blind. I am not blind. I see the flaws. I talk about them. Loudly. But I also understand something deeply unglamorous and deeply necessary. Governing is maintenance. It is not self expression. Nobody puts a gold star on your fridge for a perfect protest vote.

So yes, I am willing to pull that old raincoat out of the closet if I have to. Not because I love it. Not because it defines me. But because it keeps me dry when the weather is bad.

This is not forever. This is not an identity. This is a temporary fix, like a raincoat you put on in the rain. When the storm passes, you hang it back up and move on. You do not pretend it was fashionable. You are just grateful you did not get soaked.

I am not walking into the rain without protection and calling it courage.

Sometimes democracy asks us to be inspired. Sometimes it asks us to be practical. Right now, it is asking us to keep the house standing so we can argue about everything else later.

That is not blind loyalty.

That is knowing when to put on the raincoat.

That is why Sunday night mattered.

We are living in a week when a woman was killed by an ICE agent, when state power again reminded us how little accountability remains, when political violence and institutional force are no longer abstract. And inside the Beverly Hilton, the people who shape culture chose silence. Sequins, jokes, crypto sponsorships and applause replaced any acknowledgment of the world outside the ballroom.

The disconnect was not subtle. It was obscene.

What made it worse was that it would have been easy to do it right. One honest sentence from the host. One line from a winner. A moment of recognition that art does not float above history. It sits inside it. None of that would have ruined the celebration. It would have made it human.

The silence was not neutral. It was a choice.

And that choice is rooted in what the Golden Globes actually are.

For decades the show was controlled by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a tiny club of about ninety foreign journalists who were famously wined, dined and gifted by studios in exchange for votes. This was not rumor. It was so blatant that Pia Zadora’s win in the 1980s became shorthand for pay to play after her wealthy husband flew HFPA voters to Las Vegas and treated them like royalty.

In 2021 the Los Angeles Times exposed what Hollywood had long known. The HFPA had zero Black members. None. In an industry built on Black stories and Black talent, the people handing out one of its biggest awards had managed to exclude Black journalists entirely. The investigation also revealed widespread self dealing, undisclosed payments, junkets and financial conflicts tied directly to the voting process. The organization collapsed under the weight of its own corruption.

What replaced it was not reform. It was corporate capture.

In 2023 Penske Media bought the Golden Globes. Penske also owns Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire and GoldDerby. The same corporation that profits from the awards show now controls the outlets that are supposed to objectively cover it. That is not journalism. That is a closed loop. The watchdog has been bought by the house.

This year the broadcast made that even clearer. It was stuffed with corporate stunts, including open promotion of Polymarket, a crypto based betting platform tied to Trump world. The show was no longer even pretending to be about art. It was about monetizing attention, gambling on outcomes and keeping the machine running.

So when the Golden Globes chose silence about the real world, it was not an anomaly. It was the logic of the system. This is not an institution designed for truth. It is designed for appearance.

Wanda Sykes cut through that for a few minutes. She used comedy the way it is supposed to be used, to puncture power, to name absurdity, to make people uncomfortable in the right way. Her presence felt like oxygen in a room that had been sealed off from reality. Everything else felt like insulation.

And that is why the Golden Globes are not just an awards show that missed the moment. They are a perfect reflection of the moment we are in.

We live inside systems that look legitimate, sound authoritative and feel real but are hollowed out by conflicts of interest, corporate capture and performance. We are surrounded by institutions dressed in credibility that no longer answer to truth. The emperor is not naked anymore. He is wrapped in designer clothes, sponsored by powerful interests and protected by the very media that is supposed to hold him accountable.

This is how we got here. Not through honesty, but through smokes and mirrors. Not through transparency, but through pageantry. Not through reckoning, but through applause.

Sunday night, the Golden Globes showed us exactly what kind of world we are living in.

A glittering room full of people pretending not to see what is burning just outside the doors.

We went into a sovereign country. We removed the person in power. We announced to the world that we intend to run that country ourselves. That is not stabilization. That is not law enforcement. That is an act of war and the annexation of another nation into our own. The resources of that country will become ours, not theirs, and the government that emerges will operate under our authority.

This is why Venezuela is different. The United States has overthrown governments before, and even that history is troubling. But in the past, we kept up appearances. We called it support. We called it democracy building. We installed leaders who looked local, kept their flag, and pretended that sovereignty still existed. This time the performance has been dropped. The message is simple and unadorned. We will run it. Our companies. Our priorities. Our profit.

What we are watching is the next stage of something I wrote about earlier, December 2024, about Oligarchy and its expansion into government. Read it here. A small circle of oligarchs expanding their reach. Economic power consolidates. Political power bends toward it. Military authority is used to secure it. The circle widens. Incentives become global. Decisions take place above governments rather than within them.

Look at the sequence. The president publicly said that major oil executives were informed about what was coming. He spoke openly about American oil interests playing a role in the future of Venezuela. Executives denied advance knowledge. Congress then acknowledged that it had not been briefed beforehand. Statements were issued. Concerns were expressed. And then nothing. It has felt as if Congress simply stood there, shaking its head while the action moved beyond it.

That order matters. Industry first. Congress later. The public last.

This was an invasion tied to an economic plan. The path leads directly to Venezuelan oil. To American corporations rebuilding, managing, and extracting from those reserves. Under our current tax structures, much of that profit can be organized in ways that minimize what is paid back into the American public purse. The military carries the risk. The taxpayer underwrites the power. Private companies take the reward. The country that has been invaded loses control over its most valuable resource.

This is how oligarchy grows. Slowly. Through normalization. Through language that softens reality until people stop questioning what has already happened. If Venezuela becomes the template, other places will be viewed not as nations but as opportunities. Resource regions. Strategic assets. The world mapped like a balance sheet.

Meanwhile, Russia withdrew from the Venezuelan picture before the invasion and then condemned the invasion afterward. Whatever the deeper strategy may be, one thing is clear. The geopolitical ground is shifting. New rules are forming quietly, while the public is asked to accept outcomes as if they are inevitable.

Congress has not acted like a constitutional counterweight. It has behaved like a spectator. Press conferences instead of power. Commentary instead of consequence. When that becomes the norm, democracy contracts.

The next phase will reveal how far this new model extends. Who is placed in charge. Who directs the transition. Who decides how resources move and who benefits. If leadership is drawn from the same industries positioned to profit, then the merger of corporate authority and state power will no longer be theoretical. It will be visible. Heads of state will function more like chief executives. Nations will operate more like corporations. And the benefits will flow upward to a small group of men who sit above borders, not within them.

There is a human cost to all of this. Venezuelans will live with decisions made far away from them, over land and resources that once belonged to them. Displacement, economic upheaval, loss of agency. And here at home, ordinary Americans will find themselves living in a country where their taxes fund force while their voices carry less weight over how that force is used. When power centralizes, everyday lives get smaller first.

This is not simply about Venezuela. It is about a model of power that is maturing. A world where sovereignty is negotiable, where military force clears the path for corporate control, and where democratic oversight arrives, if at all, after the fact. A world where oligarchs do not merely influence governments. They move past them.

We are being told a story about law, order, and security. What is actually happening is the enlargement of a ruling circle that answers first to capital and only second to citizens. If we fail to name it clearly, it becomes precedent. Once it becomes precedent, it becomes policy. And when it becomes policy, the country we believed ourselves to be fades quietly into something else.

This is annexation. This is economic control dressed up as strategy. This is the next chapter in the rise of oligarchy. And unless we recognize it while we still can, we will discover that the line was crossed long before anyone admitted it out loud.

In an interview, Monica Lewinsky said that the tide finally turned for her when a younger generation (GenZ) looked at what happened between her and Bill Clinton and asked the obvious question. “How is it possible that the person with the least amount of power had the largest consequences for the affair that they had?” That question unlocked the whole thing. Power. Consequence. Who pays. Who walks.

She now is a respected pundit and women’s advocate. Only took 25 years.

And when I look at Jeffrey Epstein, we are living the exact same story again.

Shockingly. Or maybe not. And yes, it again includes Bill Clinton. All these men who were provided girls by Jeffrey Epstein are moving through the world with zero consequence. Their reputations intact. Their public lives protected by very good public relations people. While the girls, the survivors, are still trying to find some semblance of closure, usually at the expense of their privacy, their reputations, and their peace.

We have to ask how that is possible? Again. We have to ask why the people with the least power end up paying the most. Again.

What will change the trajectory?

Women.

Women of the world deciding that enough is enough. Women refusing to let these men walk into rooms without consequence. Women refusing to treat them as if their presence is normal or deserved. Women asking the question every time they show up. What was your role? What did you do? Why did you think you could? Even if they lie, get them on the record. Make the question the air they breathe. Do not invite them. Do not platform them. Do not offer them the cover of polite silence.

I am not a fan of the royal family. Once I realized that no blood, let alone the Windsors, is different than mine. Better or worse, we are all the same. The idea of bowing lost all meaning. I bow to no one. But I will give King Charles credit for one thing. He put consequences on his brother. Maybe to protect his own future. Maybe to protect Prince William. But he did it. He made it clear that even in a centuries old institution built on entitlement there are lines. And crossing them costs something.

In my worst moment, I think Charles did it only because he was afraid of what would happen if he didn’t. That he is aware that the people of the nation of England hold his power in their hands. That he couldn’t take that chance.

Our question, here on the other side of the pond, to be asked by every woman who has a soul, is why isn’t Bill Clinton afraid? Why are we not a group, a collaborative circle to which they need to consider? Why is the old boy’s club still in business?

So how are we here again? How is it possible that after the Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton scandal we are living a repeat performance? Me too? Where did we go? How are we not drawing a straight line from then to now? How do we not see what it reveals?

And the Epstein scandal. Let’s stop pretending it is the same category. It is not. We are talking rape. We are talking abuse of underage girls. We are talking organized exploitation. It is in no way comparable to what Bill Clinton did with Monica Lewinsky. But our reaction to it is. That is the problem. The reaction is the same. As if this is another messy sex story. As if men being men explains the ruin they left behind.

Our reaction should be ten times more fierce. Ten times more urgent. These men should be in prison. These men should be exiled from polite society. These men should not be allowed to glide through the world untouched while the survivors still carry the weight of what was done to them.

So what will it take?

It will take women deciding that silence is no longer an option. That social permission is no longer granted. That power is no longer protected by the softness of our accommodation. That reputations are no longer shielded by our desire to keep the peace. It will take women who understand that nothing changes until we stop being the ones who hold the consequences while men walk away.

Tell me where to stand. I will show up.