The American political apparatus has finally reached its terminal velocity of stupidity. In a move that manages to be both profoundly cruel and impressively pathetic, the White House has released a list of 'first-year accomplishments' that includes—I kid you not—the removal of Secret Service protection for Hunter Biden. If this is what passes for a victory in the hallowed halls of power, we are not just circling the drain; we are the sludge clogging the pipes. We are witnessing the final transformation of the executive branch into a spite-machine, where the primary metric of success is how much inconvenience you can inflict on your enemies’ disappointing children.

Observe the sheer, unadulterated smallness of the maneuver. We inhabit a nation grappling with systemic decay, an economy that functions primarily as a wealth-siphoning vacuum for the elite, and a social fabric that has been shredded into confetti by decades of neglect. Yet, the official heralds of the administration find it prudent to boast about stripping security from the former vice president’s fail-son. It is the legislative equivalent of a schoolyard bully stealing a kid’s glasses and then demanding a ticker-tape parade for improving the bully's own visibility. It is not governance; it is a vendetta dressed in the cheap polyester suit of 'fiscal responsibility.'

On the Right, we see the 'Law and Order' brigade, a collection of grifters who view the Constitution as a suggestion and the federal budget as a personal slush fund. To them, Hunter Biden—a man whose life appears to be a series of 'What Not To Do' instructional videos—is the ultimate boogeyman. By yanking his protection detail, they aren't achieving a policy goal; they are indulging in a fit of high-stakes spite. They scream about 'Deep State' overreach while simultaneously using the machinery of the state to harass a private citizen with the precision of a laser-guided tantrum. It is a masterclass in hypocrisy, performed by people who lack the self-awareness to realize they are the very monsters they claim to be fighting. They treat the removal of a 'crackhead’s' bodyguards as a monumental achievement, as if the absence of a few guys in earpieces around a man in Delaware will somehow lower the price of energy or fix the crumbling bridges of the Midwest. It is the politics of the gutter, and they are swimming in it with Olympic-level enthusiasm.

Then we have the Left, a faction so deeply buried in its own performative sanctimony that it has forgotten how to breathe. They respond to this petty theater with a predictable mixture of pearl-clutching and 'what-about-ism.' They want us to ignore that Hunter Biden is a walking conflict of interest who has spent his entire adult life monetizing a surname he did nothing to earn. They frame the removal of his security as a dark omen of tyranny, while ignoring the fact that the man himself is a PR disaster that they’ve spent years trying to sweep under a very crowded rug. Their defense is as hollow as the administration’s 'accomplishment.' It is a battle between two groups of people who hate each other more than they love the country, and we are the captive audience forced to pay for the privilege of watching them burn everything down. They are both using a drug-addicted man as a pawn in a game of checkers that they think is 4D chess, but is actually just them eating the pieces.

The reality of this situation is far more depressing than the partisan bickering suggests. When the highest office in the land lists the harassment of a family member of a political opponent as a major success, it is a formal declaration that policy is dead. The 'Persiflating Non-Journalist' in me is almost impressed by the honesty of it. They are no longer pretending to care about the 'common man' or the 'future of the Republic.' They are openly admitting that the game is now purely about who can be the most insufferable prick on a global stage. The White House bragging about this is a signal to the base: 'Look, we can be just as small-minded and vengeful as you are on social media.'

This is the final form of the American experiment: a reality show where the stakes are life and death, but the plotlines are written by a team of monkeys with a grudge. Hunter Biden, with all his personal failings and legal entanglements, is merely a prop in a larger play about the death of dignity. The fact that his 'protection detail' is even a matter of public debate, let alone an 'accomplishment,' is proof that we have reached the bottom of the barrel and are now actively trying to dig through the wood. We are living through a period of profound intellectual bankruptcy where the 'news' is just a script for a show that refuses to be canceled, starring people who wouldn't be qualified to manage a lemonade stand, let alone a nuclear superpower.

So, let us raise a glass of lukewarm tap water to the administration. They have successfully humiliated a man who was already doing a fairly good job of it himself. They have saved the taxpayers a few pennies while wasting millions in administrative time and public attention. They have proven that there is no act too small, no target too irrelevant, and no victory too hollow to be trumpeted as a triumph. It is a magnificent display of intellectual bankruptcy, and I, for one, am bored to tears by it. We deserve this. We built this circus, we bought the tickets, and now we are complaining that the clowns are covered in filth.