Is Everything Farce?

Big Beautiful Bills, Unserious People, SpaceX, &tc.

Dear Friends,

I honestly do not know what I am supposed to do with The Quarter Inch these days. It is set aside to provide some commentary on current events or hot-button issues. But everything appears to be farce. What can I possibly say?

Congress is trying to pass a bill that they literally named the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Is this a serious country? Are these serious people? Is it supposed to be cute? Funny? Given the fiscal situation in which the United States finds itself, it isn’t even remotely funny. The party that ostensibly cares more about fiscal restraint is going to pass a bill that adds, according to the Congressional Budget Office, another $3.8 Trillion to the deficit between 2026 and 2034. This is the chart you should print out and tape to your bathroom mirror, or keep in your wallet for a reminder of just how unserious our leadership class appears to be:

So much winning. It looks a lot more like a race to the bottom.

Here is the level of seriousness exhibited by the President of the United States. I post these because I am convinced that his most ardent supporters and partisans have no idea just how unhinged he looks on social media day after day:

What an eloquent tribute to those who sacrificed their lives for this country.

“Something has happened to him.” Ahem. Yes, the President of the United States just learned that Vladimir Putin bombs civilians, apparently—three years and counting into his atrocities. The more telling thing (and leaving aside his grotesque moral equivalence between Putin’s bombing and Zelenskyy’s “talking”) is that this post is essentially a concession of total failure in his promises to bring the war to an end (“in 24 hours,” if you remember). Stymied by “USA hating” judges, stymied by Putin’s shocking “reveal” that he’s really a brutal totalitarian. Poor Donald Trump. He’s trying, but once again is being failed by people who won’t cooperate with his supposed mastery for deal-making.

This post came across my Facebook feed, a comment from one of the most dyed-in-the-wool MAGA supporters I know:

We were promised that Trump was going to drain the swamp. That he is the “reset.” Drat! The swamp wins again! And now Mr. MAGA concludes that what is needed is a “shake up” and “reset” of our entire system. “Repair” is impossible; it is time to “replace.” There is a reason the U.S. Founding Fathers feared populism more than pretty much anything else, and there it is in a single Facebook post: Revolution when you don’t get your way.

He says that there is something about the “Washington DC system” that “ruins most of the people we send there.” An alternative explanation is that we keep electing principle-less grifters and mediocrities and sending them there, starting with the man at the top, whom Mr. MAGA himself championed ad nauseam. And I will never cease reminding people that he was chosen in a primary election that included a large number of serious and qualified people. Cry. Me. A. River.