Op-Ed: Sick of pretending
Hear me out… I’m sick of pretending this is a functioning country with a functioning government. Congress is not “divided.” It’s not “gridlocked.” It’s not “just politics.” It is a criminal class of 535 people who have spent decades selling this country piece by piece while lecturing the rest of us about democracy, values, and the rule of law. They pass spending bills they don’t read. They pile debt on people who weren’t even born yet. They take money from foreign interests, lobbyists, PACs, and industries they regulate, then act shocked when anyone calls it what it is: influence-peddling.
They protect their own. They investigate their enemies. They never investigate themselves with the same hunger. The worst part isn’t even the money. It’s the moral rot. A government that can lecture parents, churches, and working people about morality while shielding predators, burying files, redacting names, and treating elite sex-crime networks like a scheduling inconvenience has no moral authority left. If the same evidence, the same flight logs, the same sealed names, and the same “we can’t comment” stonewalling applied to anyone outside their class, those people would already be in prison. For this crowd, it becomes “complicated,” “ongoing,” or “not the right time.” Foreign interference isn’t some abstract threat they discovered last week.
It’s a business model. They take the money, take the trips, take the talking points, then wrap themselves in the flag and tell you anyone who notices is a conspiracy theorist. They will fight harder to protect their donors and their secrets than they will fight to protect the border, the budget, or the people who actually pay for all of it. I don’t hate “government” as an idea. I hate this government, the one that treats citizens like a revenue stream, treats accountability like an attack, and treats the most disgusting crimes as a club you only get punished for if you’re not connected.
No more polite language. No more “both sides” anesthesia. If Congress had a shred of honor left, they would open every sealed file, name every protector, cut the foreign cash pipelines, and submit themselves to the same laws they impose on everyone else. They won’t. That’s the point. They are not public servants. They are a protected class. And the country is rotting under them. – B