Editor’s Note: Lots of theatre this week in the Great Con II. An obvious coverup of the Epstein files continues. Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, the administration rolled back climate change regulations. Trump posted then deleted a racist video depicting the Obamas as apes, and expanded efforts to revoke at least 200 citizenships a month.

Keep up the fight.

In assessing the state of the country, I’ve noticed a troubling trend related to social issues. Anything that falls outside “MAGA White” immediately gets a label of woke, weak, or loser. It has worked for several years now with a portion of the population, yet it has done nothing to improve the standing of the United States or the economic condition of Americans.

The Make America Great Again movement has always been more about the image of power: redefine what’s real (that’s the perpetual lie strategy), erase inconvenient facts (Stop the Steal), and punish those who disagree (the justice department pursuing individuals who played a key role in stopping Trump).

This struggle to protect the truth has eroded politics and hurt the concept of democracy itself. The 2026 midterms are shaping up to be the last stress test of whether American democracy can survive.

In 2016, Donald Trump’s campaign elevated the idea that expertise and evidence were suspect (that’s the woke or elite part), and that any institution pushing back against him must be “rigged.” Over the next decade, that mistrust metastasized like a cancer. Public health officials became villains (instead of a seasoned medical doctor with no profit motive (Dr. Fauci), we now have a conveyor of medical witchcraft), journalists became “enemies of the people,” (even having them arrested), and the judiciary was told it could not be trusted if its rulings displeased the leader.

This campaign of disbelief is strategic. Once you undermine faith in facts and science, it creates a vacuum that can be filled by grievance and the con show. Once enough people doubt the legitimacy of elections, science, and the press, the idea of a shared civic reality dissolves and the gears of an autocracy start turning.

By 2024, the MAGA ecosystem had perfected fear as a product. I invite you to listen to right-wing radio or Fox News. You’ll hear a constant indoctrination attuned to the fear of immigrants, fear of crime, and the fear of cultural change. It is the God, gays, and guns playbook on hyperdrive.

As we approach the 2026 midterm elections, this strategy has evolved into a political black market where extreme behavior garners more attention. Let’s take our elections as an example. We have long had the most open, free, and fair elections in the world; a model that budding democracies send their people here to observe and to learn. Yet if you continue to bluster that elections are crooked (they’re not), people might start to think federal agents patrolling polling places is a plausible idea. Speaker Mike Johnson, now a central figure in legitimizing these doubts by letting them fester, has openly suggested that “concerns about election integrity” justify new restrictions and investigations. Never mind that none of it is true. It only needs to be constant enough to create doubt.

The practical goal of this long game is not simply to win an election. The goal is to make the process seem untrustworthy enough that people can either challenge or ignore the results (that’s where the insurrection came in). The election interference we are actually experiencing is a constant disinformation campaign warning of immigrant voters and the passing of laws to make it harder to vote.

If the climate of suspicion discourages even a few percentage points of turnout in key states, that’s victory enough. And if it doesn’t, the fallback plan remains the same as in 2020: declare the election fraudulent and litigate endlessly until confusion reigns. The pattern recalls tactics from authoritarian movements abroad that work to delegitimize institutions, disparage accountability, and portray the made-up chaos as proof of needing to override the rules.

That is exactly where this administration is taking us.

Perhaps the most dangerous consequence of this strategy is people giving up. When every election is a crisis, every fact a battle, when you have educated people falling into line for immoral purposes, people grow exhausted. Cynicism takes root. People begin to feel democracy is hopeless and corrupt and stop defending it.

The historian Richard Hofstadter once wrote that American politics is vulnerable to movements that turn suspicion into a civic religion. MAGA has done exactly that. Its most loyal adherents see themselves not as participants in a democracy but as soldiers in an apocalyptic struggle over existence itself. Using almost biblical portrayals of good vs. evil and Christian soldiers rooting out bad institutions, that mindset makes compromise impossible, because compromise implies two sides that still believe in the same system.

The midterms this November will not just decide control of Congress. It will determine whether the United States is legitimate. That is the real “coming meltdown”: not mass unrest, though that is possible, but the steady normalization of purposeful chaos as a political weapon. The test of citizens, institutions, and leaders alike is whether we recognize that pattern before it becomes irreversible.

If the republic is to endure, the defense of truth must become a civic priority again, not a partisan one. That will require courage from journalists and real conservatives, better protections of institutions, and active vigilance from voters and everyday citizens. The alternative is not merely defeat in a political contest. It’s the slow disintegration of the idea that votes, laws, commonalities, justice, education, and facts still matter.

That’s the true danger of the MAGA con, that through exhaustion, we might give up and let our kids have to deal with it.

Don’t.

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This isn’t talked about much but is important to be aware of. I’ve long known that much of our political preferences go beyond simple choice. Some of it has a real emotional attachment which is part nurture and part nature. While this doesn’t explain everything of why someone would vote for Trump, it should be at least as interesting to understand who else would be voting for Trump.

For example, the definition of personality types that support Trump don’t necessarily explain the percentage of self-described Christians that are supporting him. For that, you have to go to the other area mentioned here which includes a desire for certainty, fear of threats, and a preference for rigid hierarchies. The biblical part of Christianity can lead one to believe in hierarchy, the need for certainty (faith) above all evidence, and an outsized expectation that threats, even unseen ones, are all around us. In that vein, a seasoned con artist such as the current occupant could influence Christians without actually being one.

That’s the grave danger with psychological predispositions. Know thyself is what the philosophers say, and for breaking away from a cult-like following, that will be the key.

To question one’s own belief systems is to understand where freedom of thought begins.

When I spent time in the urban planning and conservation worlds, I often mentioned we would be better off if we considered everything from the vantage point of a child: where we build, how we design, when we have classes, what children see, and what they have access to. Not only does most mass media and the built environment not help parents, much of it runs counter to what science and research say.

We must do a better job of making the right choice the easy one, and until that happens, public policy needs to step in. When it comes to restraints on advertising, truth in advertising, or internet monopolies, Europe is far ahead of us in valuing the end use as much as the business. I believe we will see much more of efforts like the ones described in this article as certain costs rise, frustrations grown, and a new generation of parents take over.

And Now….

Two women I knew personally were in the news this week. One is going to prison and one passed away. Both are about the same age as me. It’s a reminder not to waste the time you have. Be busy doing good things. Build character and protect your reputation. Don’t let your work define you or separate you from doing the right thing.

Make sure to keep up your regular reading habit (I just finished a good book by Sarah Kendzior).

Continue to practice your gratefulness.

Always strive to be a good human.