Some days feel like a long purgatory. I find myself carrying the weight of headlines like extra baggage drained, conflicted, and quietly asking: how long must this last? It is as if we are eavesdropping on the great ledger of government, watching the costs rise, yet never seeing them fully tallied. Security details, one-day meetings that cost millions, legal battles and settlements the public bill grows, while the human toll deepens. Careers are disrupted, voices are muted, and trust thins to a fragile thread.
This is not a matter of red or blue, left or right, but of humane indiscretions. The media cycle leaves us spiritually and mentally exhausted, while public figures are elevated, martyred, or discredited in turn. We watch with paralyzed observation, caught between truths and untruths, craving clarity.
And so the “what next” gathers: midterms, impeachment, removal, the name-calling of the 25th Amendment. What are we to make of these things? Here are some truths worth holding onto…
Eavesdropping on Power: When the Costs Rise and the Voices Dim
Sometimes I feel as if I’m eavesdropping on a great, unending ledger—the billowing costs underwritten by the present machinery of government, the sums we never see itemized in their entirety but only whispered through updates and briefings. The enormity feels staggering: the everyday expense of security and convenings, the bandwidth consumed by litigation and investigations, the ambient price of public fatigue. Beyond line items is a heavier toll—lives disrupted, careers displaced, trust thinned to a filament.
It isn’t left or right, not red or blue. It’s about humane indiscretions—how quickly people in public service, heads of agencies, even lawmakers can be discredited, dismissed, or indicted. When voices are muted or menaced because their words aren’t welcome, what does that teach the rest of us about speaking?
Maybe I am misguided in my presumptions; maybe I’m just an exhausted arbiter of truths and untruths, caught between what is revealed and what is withheld. The profusion of media and orchestrated distraction is spiritually, emotionally, and mentally crippling. We martyr public figures and pay homage to spectacle; indignities play on repeat, and we watch—paralyzed.
This is where the “what next” taunts. Midterms loom. Hypotheticals gather like storm clouds: impeachment, removal, or the noisy invocation of the 25th Amendment. The names of processes are hurled more than understood. So here are the facts we can hold, because literacy is steadier than outrage:
