American Lunacy, Part 1: Build Back Better

The signs pass on the highway. Recovery. Renewal. Build Back Better.

Gas prices dip like sedatives. The border holds its breath. NATO flinches in headlines nobody finishes.

The campaign barely exists. Basement to podium to basement. Stadium rallies on one side. Empty podiums on the other. The slogan doesn't sound like hope. Sounds like programming. Not a return. A replacement.

Most people smile anyway. Jesus.

Everyone knows that feeling when room temperature changes but nobody mentions it. Script shifts mid-sentence, everyone keeps reading. He stays home—they call it discipline. The other side fills stadiums—they call it denial.

Down-ballot, Republicans hold. Gain, even. But at the top? Clean transfer. No recoil. Just a televised nod and new backdrop. Institutions clap. Machinery hums. Somewhere between disbelief and submission, we all move forward.

There is no chaos. Only recovery.

The tweets stop. Loudest man in America vanishes like he never existed. What replaces him isn't celebration. It's sedative. Soft blue lighting. Familiar voices reading gentler scripts. Surface says calm. Gut says counterfeit.

But we already agreed not to trust our gut. When exactly did we sign that surrender?

Nothing burns. Everything opens on time. Federal buildings speak in lowercase now. Language shifts—feel it in group chats first. That pause before hitting send. Jokes that stop halfway. Conversations curving around corners they used to cut through. Nobody demands obedience. They just make disagreement sound like mental illness.

Not illegal. Just unwell.

The foundation tilts two degrees. Nobody announces new rules—they arrive like humidity. HR memos with updated language. Broadcast cadences that feel like Ambien. Following the science became faith. Asking questions became selfishness. Watch yourself adjust. Small corrections. Same instinct that makes you check mirrors twice on empty roads.

Everyone's synchronized, not unified.

Seventeen executive orders in week one. Seventeen. More than FDR after Pearl Harbor.

Executive Order 13985: "Advancing Racial Equity." Every agency submits equity plans.

EO 13988: suddenly "sex" includes whatever you feel today.

Written when? By whom? Center for American Progress, probably. 2019. While he was saying he wouldn't run.

The American Rescue Plan Act. $1.9 trillion. 242 pages no Republican saw before voting. Zero GOP votes. Didn't need them.

Democracy!

The silence isn't peaceful. It's procedural.

Executive orders land like software updates. No fanfare, just implementation. Culture re-skins overnight. Even coffee tastes different. Agencies shift dialect. Enforcement becomes "support." Mandates become "guidance." Same rules, gentler fonts. Like putting doilies on guillotines.

News anchors lean back with satisfaction that looks like relief but tastes like victory. Four years holding their breath, finally exhaling their actual opinions. No deliberation. Just confirmation that everything is "as expected."

The choreography is perfect. The credits, invisible.

People notice in their throats, not their mouths. Can't name what shifted. Corners feel sharper. Consent presumed. Questions become "misinformation." Concerns become "extremism." The space for "wait, what?" evaporates.

Nobody admits they see it. Not rage that arrives—just pulse. Slow. Restless. Feel it at dinner tables. Parking lots. In the gap between thought and speech.

January 6th

Some show up. Not to overturn—to locate. To find what disappeared.

D.C. stays quiet until it doesn't. Arrivals look like relatives, not revolutionaries. Hoodies. Handmade signs. Veterans in Sunday boots—your uncle's boots, the ones he wore to his job for thirty years before they said he was non-essential.

They come with questions, not weapons. Not what happened, but how. How it changed overnight like someone swapped the Constitution for IKEA instructions. How it arrived without fingerprints. Why nobody looks surprised.

Roll call for the ghosted. Gathering for the overwritten. See it in their posture—search party, not siege party. Looking for America like it's a missing person. They're verifying, not storming. Building stands. Story doesn't.

Pressure doesn't need planning. Just oxygen. Movement outruns the mood. Windows break. Every camera angle becomes the only angle. What starts as ache becomes ammunition.

You're watching your neighbors become the evening news.

Condemnation arrives instantly. Curiosity never shows up. They name villains, sweep the frame. Analysis arrives faster than footage—like it was pre-written.

The ache never gets addressed.

The most dangerous thing isn't what happened. It's still wondering why.

So people tune out. Not protest—repair. No organized silence, just absence. Quiet recalibration in uninvited homes. Not regrouping—reeling. From what changed. What didn't. From the sound of something precious being archived while everyone applauds.

Backup drives humming in buildings we'll never enter. Protocols activating like dominoes that were always standing.

Standing since before anyone voted.

The campaign promised boring. Moderate. Return to before-times. Adults in the room. Remember how relieved everyone was supposed to feel?

Ask yourself the question no algorithm will answer:

If the ballot didn't carry this freight, who packed the cargo?

🔪 Up Next: Part 2 - The Theft of Normal.
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