A Moral Divorce

A year into Trump’s second term, the argument is over.

We can list the lies, broken promises, petty humiliations, institutional arson, the wrecking of norms and lives. Count the betrayals like beads on a rosary: this judge, that agency, a new pardon, more intimidation, another rollback, deafening silence, their shrug.

A thousand cuts until America stops fighting the Red Hat predators foaming for permission to be cruel in public, treating other human beings like collateral, and turning the country into a stage where the loudest bully gets to call himself “strong.”

They crowned a man who was handed everything—money, fame, influence—and still managed to turn grievance into his only real talent. He built nothing. He sold a vibe. And found the oldest human shortcut: hurt someone else and call it strength.

Millions clap and call it leadership.

Cruelty became their identity. Facts don’t matter, neither do outcomes. Even hypocrisy doesn’t matter, because the only goal is dominance.

A whole ecosystem is cashing in.

Loyalists and opportunists. Media parasites who found a bigger paycheck in “both sides” than in calling a lie a lie. Influencers who turned human suffering into content. Politicians who looked at the fire and thought, How can I make this about me? Donors who treat democracy like a stock in their portfolio.

The world is going to shit because a bunch of small, frightened, power-hungry losers decided their conveniences are worth more than other people’s lives, families, and communities.

They didn’t “fall” for it. They chose it. They excused the madness, met proof with silence, became fluent in indifference, watched harm happen and still felt righteous. As long as someone else gets hurt, they’re fine.

And Democrats?

Feckless cowards. Professional hand-wringers. Always shocked, always “concerned,” always too late. Always performing grief like it’s a brand strategy. Always asking for donations like bravery, while regular people stand in the open as targets for a system that keeps getting more confident about what it can get away with.

They keep playing by rules the other side sets on fire. Keep bringing etiquette to a knife fight, and telling you to be patient while your door gets kicked in. They keep saying “this is not who we are” while refusing to become who we’d need to be to stop it.

People laughed off the warning signs because it’s easier than admitting you might be living through collapse in real time.

“He won’t do that,” they said.

“You’re hysterical.”

“He’s joking.”

“It’s just rhetoric.”

“It’s just politics.”

And then you wake up in a country where the rules still exist on paper but no longer apply equally, where the law is a costume and loyalty is the only currency. Where accountability is treated like a partisan preference and empathy is treated like a weakness.

We could spend a lifetime cataloguing the wreckage like museum curators: democracy in the dead exhibit, ethics in the forgotten wing, decency boxed up in storage with a tag that reads obsolete.

Some people are awake already. They don’t need a narrator screaming in their ear or an essay. They can feel the air changing and they know exactly what they’re looking at.

But the ones who can’t see it—who refuse to see it—are either benefiting from it or addicted to it. Either way, you can’t build a future with someone who thinks cruelty is a personality trait.

They’re Terrified

They’re loud because silence is the one place they can’t win. The show, the rallies, the tantrums, the endless obsession with being seen and dominating every moment, that’s a confession, not strength.

Money can rent attention and hire applause, but it can’t make anyone truly give a shit about you.

The quiet makes them face what they are without the noise. And the quiet contains the questions they can’t answer:

Who are you when you’re not hurting someone?

Who are you when you don’t have a target?

Who are you when the show ends and the crowd goes home?

They built a life out of transactions.

Loyalty for access.

Silence for safety.

Cruelty for belonging.

Nothing they do will ever feel like enough. Not the bigger house or better PR. Not the curated admiration, or the “friends” who laugh on cue and take the call because there’s something in it for them.

They can buy attention, but can’t buy love.

They can rent applause, but can’t bribe their way into dignity.

They can meme their way through shame, but not through the truth.

Deep down, they know the difference between being respected and being feared.

Death comes to all of us. And history is ruthless about what it keeps. It remembers the people who stood up with far less, people with minuscule power compared to them, but enough dignity to defend their neighbors, enough humanity to feel someone else’s pain and say, “Not on my watch.”

And it forgets the ones who tried to replace love with transactions.

Billionaires. Petty tyrants. Wannabe kings. Grifters who think the algorithm made them immortal.

When their moment comes, most of them will be surrounded by leeches in big rooms, on golden frames, covered in silk sheets, and filled with noting but emptiness.

Stop

You can’t debate someone out of an addiction to dominance. You can’t fact-check someone out of a hunger for a target. And you can’t politely persuade someone who enjoys watching other people suffer.

Stop romanticizing it. Stop bargaining with it. Stop treating it like a misunderstanding we can solve with a better explanation.

This is a moral divorce. Not a disagreement about taxes.

You win by leaving. By refusing to live in the same psychological prison and call it a home. By breaking the endless cycle: they do something vile → we react → they feed on the reaction → we exhaust ourselves trying to keep up → they do something even more vile.

They want you in the ring with them, locked in the cage. They want your attention because attention is their oxygen.

So stop treating them like they’re worth your time. Like their foul breath and smooth-brained slogans deserve debate, like their cruelty deserves nuance. Stop pouring your life into the attention machine they worship.

Build a life without them. Beyond them. With reality. With community. With mutual care. With actual competence.

Build. Organize. Protect each other. Get competent. Get stubborn. Get practical, coordinated, and hard to break. Create the conditions where their bullshit can’t breathe.

Don’t waste your life trying to educate people who treat cruelty as a hobby.

Let them keep their slogans. We’ll keep each other.