Welcome to the Seattle waterfront, where the damp, oppressive atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest is currently being outmatched by the suffocating stench of economic decay. In a display of distributive efficiency that would make a Soviet breadline supervisor blush, the Port of Seattle recently presented a delightful social experiment: 600 dock workers competing for exactly 70 jobs. It is the kind of ratio usually reserved for elite Ivy League admissions or the number of people who actually believe a campaign promise. But here, the stakes aren’t a degree in interpretive dance; it’s the increasingly slim chance of maintaining a middle-class existence in a world that has decided trade is a four-letter word.

The geniuses in our nation’s capital, blessed with the foresight of a concussed goldfish, have spent the last few years wielding tariffs like a toddler with a chainsaw. On one side, we have the Right, whose 'America First' rhetoric has successfully managed to make America first in line for a self-inflicted economic concussion. They promised that protectionism would bring back the glory days of the 1950s, forgetting that the 1950s also featured polio and the looming threat of nuclear annihilation. Instead of a manufacturing renaissance, we’ve achieved a maritime lobotomy. By slapping taxes on everything that moves, they haven’t protected the worker; they’ve simply ensured that the worker has plenty of unpaid free time to contemplate the nuances of their own obsolescence.

Not to be outdone in the arena of uselessness, the Left has responded with its signature blend of performative empathy and bureaucratic paralysis. They wring their hands with such vigor you’d think they were trying to generate enough friction to restart the local economy. They offer 'transition programs' and 'retraining initiatives,' which is political shorthand for 'we have no idea how to help you, but here is a brochure for a coding bootcamp that will be bankrupt by Tuesday.' They celebrate the 'green' transition of ports while ignoring the fact that a zero-emissions crane is remarkably easy to maintain when it never actually moves any cargo.

The real tragedy—if one can still feel anything through the thick crust of cynicism required to survive the 21st century—is the comparison to 2008. These dockworkers, individuals who have spent decades maneuvering massive containers with the precision of a diamond cutter, are reporting that the current climate is bleaker than the Great Recession. Let that sink in. We have managed to create an economic environment so hostile that the total collapse of the global banking system looks like 'the good old days.' Back then, we at least had the decency to blame the bankers. Now, the suffering is a direct result of 'policy,' a word used by people in suits to describe the process of lighting someone else’s house on fire to see if the smoke looks patriotic.

When 600 people show up for 70 slots, you aren’t looking at a labor market; you’re looking at a funeral for the American Dream, and the corpse is starting to smell. The 'uncertainty' these workers face isn’t some mysterious force of nature like a hurricane or a tectonic shift. It is a manufactured crisis. It is the inevitable result of a global supply chain built on the assumption that everyone will behave rationally, operated by a political class that views rationality as a character flaw. The shippers are staying away, the cranes are silent, and the containers are piling up elsewhere, all while the architects of this mess retreat to their fundraising dinners to congratulate themselves on their 'toughness.'

There is a profound irony in the fact that Seattle, a city that prides itself on being a hub of global connectivity and progressive enlightenment, is now the site of such a primitive scramble for survival. But that is the beauty of the modern world: the more we talk about 'connectivity,' the more isolated the actual human beings become. The worker is no longer a person; they are a rounding error in a trade deficit calculation. They are a variable in a spreadsheet managed by someone who thinks 'hard work' is an abstract concept found in a LinkedIn post.

As the rain continues to fall on the idle docks, the 530 people who didn’t get a job can at least take comfort in knowing they are part of a grander strategy. They are the collateral damage in a game of high-stakes chicken played by two political parties that are essentially the same brand of expired milk in different colored cartons. One side wants to tax the world into submission; the other wants to regulate it into a coma. Meanwhile, the Port of Seattle remains a monuments to human stupidity, a place where the only thing being exported is hope, and the only thing being imported is a very clear vision of our collective, pathetic future.