Welcome to the late-stage collapse of the American experiment, where the most consequential economic decisions on the planet are now being mediated through the digital equivalent of a bathroom stall wall. We find ourselves staring into the abyss of a legal dispute that perfectly encapsulates our collective descent into idiocy: Donald Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook via social media, and the subsequent high-minded debate over whether a 'post' constitutes 'due process.' It is a collision between a man who views the Constitution as a series of annoying pop-up ads he’s trying to click 'X' on, and a bureaucratic priesthood that believes their job security is divinely ordained by the gods of the decimal point.

On one side of this intellectual train wreck, we have the former and perhaps future King-Emperor of Mar-a-Lago, a man whose governance style is best described as 'government by dopamine hit.' To Trump, the Federal Reserve is not an independent institution designed to manage the delicate levers of the economy; it is a personal piggy bank that refuses to give him the low interest rates he craves for his real estate vanity projects. When Lisa Cook doesn’t perform like a trained seal, Trump’s instinct is not to follow the tedious, boring protocols of the Administrative Procedure Act. No, he reaches for his smartphone—the digital guillotine—and attempts to sever her professional head with a few misspelled sentences on Truth Social. It’s a method of firing that has all the legal weight of a middle-school breakup text, yet we are forced to treat it with the solemnity of a Supreme Court hearing because our reality is now scripted by the lowest common denominator.

Then there is Lisa Cook and the Federal Reserve itself. The Fed governors like to pretend they are the enlightened stewards of the global economy, floating high above the vulgarity of politics in a cloud of 'data-dependency' and 'neutral rates.' In reality, they are a collection of Ivy League technocrats who spend their days tinkering with interest rates that punish the poor and bail out the rich, all while speaking a dialect of English so obscured by jargon it makes Latin look accessible. Cook’s defense—that she cannot be fired via social media because of 'due process'—is technically correct, which is the most boring kind of correct. She is hiding behind the shield of 'cause,' a legal requirement that she can only be removed for actual dereliction of duty, not just because a narcissist had a bad cheeseburger and decided to tweet-vent his frustrations. It is a battle of the elites: the crude barbarian who wants to smash the machine, and the self-important cog who insists the machine can only be dismantled if you fill out the proper HR paperwork first.

The debate over whether a social media post constitutes a valid termination notice is a masterclass in modern absurdity. Imagine, if you can, the founders of this crumbling republic—men who dueled at dawn over points of honor—contemplating a future where the legality of an official executive act depends on whether it was posted with a 'like' button. We are arguing about the 'process' of firing someone who manages a currency that is essentially an act of collective hallucination anyway. The Fed insists on its independence, a polite fiction that everyone agrees to maintain as long as the stock market keeps going up. Trump, in his blunt, moronic honesty, simply exposes the fact that 'independence' only exists until someone with a large enough megaphone decides it doesn’t.

Let’s be clear: nobody in this scenario is a hero. Trump doesn’t care about the economy; he cares about his own ego and the ability to bully anyone who doesn’t bow to his whims. Lisa Cook and her cohort don’t care about the 'sanctity of the institution' for any reason other than their own continued relevance and the preservation of a status quo that serves a narrow slice of the financial elite. If she is fired by tweet, the rule of law takes a hit, but if she stays, we are still stuck with a central bank that is perpetually reacting to the fires it helped start. It’s a choice between a digital autocracy and a stagnant technocracy.

Ultimately, this is the world we’ve built. A world where 'due process' is a quaint relic of a time when we expected our leaders to have more gravitas than a TikTok influencer. Whether or not Trump’s social media tantrums have the legal power to vacate a seat at the Fed is almost irrelevant compared to the fact that we are even having the conversation. We are living in a satirical nightmare where the levers of global power are being pulled by people who couldn’t pass a basic civics test, while the people who *could* pass the test are too busy arguing about the font size of their own termination notices. It’s all theatre, and the tickets are far too expensive for the quality of the performance.