The Collapse Of American Judgment

Politics

from the false-equivalencies dept

Western allies are abandoning American leadership while we stand by, morally bankrupt and intellectually spent, watching children starve in Gaza with weapons we provided to a corrupt authoritarian we’re too cowardly to constrain. Meanwhile, the same brilliant minds who assured us Trump was a master negotiator who’d never actually implement his policies are already preparing their next round of false equivalencies.

The progression is as predictable as it is pathetic. These are the people who convinced themselves that a man who bankrupted casinos—businesses literally designed to print money—would somehow master the complexities of global economics. Who looked at his fraud convictions, his scam university, his shuttered charity, and saw business acumen. Who insisted his tariff threats were just “negotiating tactics” and that “adults in the room” would contain his worst impulses.

They were wrong about everything. Catastrophically, obviously wrong. Trump is implementing exactly the policies he promised, wreaking exactly the havoc any sentient observer could have predicted. He’s using Air Force One to hawk his golf courses while conducting trade wars that are already cratering American competitiveness. He’s hawking cryptocurrency from the Oval Office while our allies move to recognize Palestinian statehood without us.

But rather than acknowledge their staggering failure of judgment, these same voices are already preparing their next dodge. If democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani becomes New York’s mayor, they’ll suddenly discover they can’t tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans. A young progressive who wants to tax rich people will become morally equivalent to a president who tried to overturn an election.

This is the epistemic closure in action—the same intellectual cowardice that led them to normalize Trump’s corruption because the alternative was admitting they’d been played by a obvious con man. Now they’ll normalize whatever comes next rather than confront the reality that their worldview produces nothing but disasters.

Let me be clear: I’m no socialist. The twentieth century showed us that centralized economic planning leads to misery. But regulated markets aren’t socialism. Progressive taxation isn’t Marxism. And a young mayor who believes in public services isn’t equivalent to a corrupt president who sells access for meme coins.

The refusal to make these basic distinctions isn’t sophistication—it’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy. It’s the same false equivalence that treats Netanyahu’s documented corruption as equivalent to criticism of his policies, that equates starving children with geopolitical complexity, that transforms every clear moral choice into an impossible both-sides dilemma.

Meanwhile, our allies watch in horror as America becomes the unreliable partner, the unstable democracy, the country that can’t maintain consistent policies from one administration to the next. Britain threatens to recognize Palestinian statehood. European leaders distance themselves from our erratic leadership. We’re becoming what we once opposed: the rogue state that can’t be trusted.

How do we lecture other countries about democracy when we elect someone who tried to overturn an election? How do we lead on human rights when we enable war crimes? How do we promote international law when we ignore it whenever convenient?

The answer is simple: we can’t. And our enemies are taking notes.

The price of American epistemic collapse isn’t just domestic chaos—it’s the collapse of the international order we spent decades building. When the world’s supposed moral leader becomes a corrupt autocracy run by grifters and defended by intellectual cowards, the whole system breaks down.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And the people who told you Trump would moderate, who assured you his corruption was competence, who promised his authoritarianism was strategy, were wrong about everything.

Don’t let them gaslight you about what comes next.

Remember what’s real.

Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.

Filed Under: con man, donald trump, zohran mamdani