There is a particular brand of intellectual exhaustion that comes with watching the same socioeconomic train wreck happen in slow motion for a decade. Donald Trump’s latest pivot into the realm of 'tariff madness'—as the more polite, pearl-clutching elements of the press like to call it—is not a strategy. It is a neurological event. It is what happens when a man whose primary understanding of macroeconomics was gleaned from the back of a 1980s cereal box is given the keys to the world’s largest economy and told he’s a genius by a chorus of sycophants who are too terrified of a mean social media post to point out that the emperor is not only naked, but he’s actively trying to tax the clothes off everyone else’s backs.

The summary of the situation is as bleak as it is hilarious: the policy turns on a dime, and we are told to 'pity' those tasked with justifying his actions. Pity? I find it difficult to summon pity for the professional liars and careerist bottom-feeders who have signed up to be the intellectual human shields for this protectionist circus. These are the modern-day alchemists, tasked with the impossible job of turning leaden, erratic outbursts into the gold of 'strategic trade policy.' They are the ones who must look a camera in the lens and explain, with a straight face, how a 100% tariff on a basic commodity is actually a sophisticated masterstroke rather than a temper tantrum disguised as a fiscal tool.

Let’s be clear about what a tariff is: it’s a sales tax on the domestic consumer. It is a blunt, medieval instrument used by those who lack the nuance to actually compete in a globalized world. But in the MAGA court, it is treated as a magic wand. King Donald waves it, and suddenly, we are expected to believe that China is writing a check to the U.S. Treasury. The reality is that the American plumber will simply pay more for his tools, and the American family will pay more for their toaster, all so the King can feel like a 'tough guy' at a rally in a town whose industry died in 1974 and isn't coming back because of a tax on washing machines.

Of course, the Right is not the only participant in this theater of the absurd. The Left, in their predictable, performative horror, is just as nauseating. They decry the 'chaos' and the 'instability,' yet they have spent the last forty years doing absolutely nothing to address the underlying economic decay that made Trump’s brand of populist snake oil so appealing in the first place. They hate the tariffs, but they love the votes of the people who think tariffs will save them. They offer no alternative other than a return to the sterile, neoliberal status quo that hollowed out the country while they were busy arguing about the nuances of virtue signaling. It’s a dance of mutual delusion where the only losers are the citizens who actually have to live in the economy these people are setting on fire.

The historical parallels are as glaring as they are ignored. We’ve seen this movie before. It’s a repeat of every failed mercantilist experiment since the 18th century, wrapped in a 21st-century package of grievance and celebrity worship. The tragedy isn’t just that the policy is bad; it’s that it is so profoundly boring. It is the same cycle of ignorance: an erratic leader makes a demand, his advisors scramble to invent a justification that doesn't violate the laws of physics, the media loses its mind for forty-eight hours, and the public is left to foot the bill. It is the democratization of stupidity.

We are currently governed by a man who views the global economy as a zero-sum game played on a greasy diner placemat. He views trade not as an exchange, but as a conquest. And his advisors, those miserable careerists with souls like damp cardboard, are forced to pretend this is 'Art of the Deal' brilliance. They aren't justifying policy; they are performing an exorcism on logic. They are trying to find the 'inner logic' in a move that turns on a dime based on whether the King had a good lunch or a bad phone call. It’s not a government; it’s a hospice for common sense. In the end, we aren't being led by visionaries or even by competent villains. We are being led by a collection of grifters and their enablers, all of whom are more interested in the optics of the fight than the reality of the fallout. And the worst part? We keep watching, as if the ending is ever going to change.