Welcome to the end of history. It is not ending with a loud noise or a big war. It is ending with a grainy photo and a cheap digital filter. Recently, the White House proved that they have finally reached the level of a bored middle-school student. They took a photo of an arrested protester named Nekima Levy Armstrong and decided that reality just was not good enough. So, they gave her some digital tears. They wanted to make it look like she was crying. This is the state of our great leaders. They are now using the same tools that teenagers use to hide their pimples.

I wish I could say I was surprised. I really do. But when you spend enough time watching the theater of the absurd that we call a government, you start to expect this level of laziness. They did not even do a good job. A senior official had to admit it. They basically said, 'Yes, we changed the photo.' They did not offer a grand reason. They did not claim it was for national security. It was just a small, mean, and very stupid lie. It is the kind of thing you do when you are not smart enough to win an argument with facts, so you try to win by making the other person look weak.

Think about the room where this happened. Somewhere in the most powerful building in the world, a group of people in expensive suits sat around a computer. These are people who went to the best schools. They make decisions that affect millions of lives. And yet, their big idea for the day was to use a photo-editing app to make a protester look like she was sobbing. 'Make her look more sad,' someone probably said. 'It will play better on social media.' It is enough to make you want to move to a deserted island, but even there, you would probably find a government intern trying to edit a palm tree.

This is what I call the death of the image. We used to worry about big lies. We used to worry about secret treaties and hidden wars. Now, we have to worry about whether the person in the news is actually making the face they are making. It shows a deep disdain for the public. The people in charge think we are so dim-wome and so easily fooled that we will not notice a digital smudge on a woman's face. They treat the truth like a suggestion. If the truth does not fit the vibe of the day, they just open an app and change it.

In the old days, propaganda was grand. It was huge posters of heroic workers or scary enemies. It was designed to move your soul, even if it was based on a lie. Now, propaganda is just petty. It is small-minded. It is about making one person look bad in a very specific, childish way. It is the 'mean girl' style of government. They do not want to debate the protester's points. They do not want to talk about why she was there in the first place. They just want to make sure you think she is a 'crybaby.' It is a surgical strike on dignity, performed by people who have none left themselves.

And what does it say about the protester? Even if you do not like what she stands for, you have to admit that the government is terrified of her. If they have to fake her tears, it means her actual face was too strong for them. They could not handle her looking brave or calm. They needed her to be broken. So, they manufactured her brokenness. They built a lie because the truth made them look small. Ironically, by building the lie, they managed to look even smaller.

We are living in a world where the people in power are just actors in a very bad play. They are not even good actors. They are the kind of actors who forget their lines and then blame the audience for not paying attention. They want us to live in this world of digital ghosts, where nothing is real and everything is edited. They want to control the story, but they are too incompetent to even hide the seams.

I told you this would happen. When we started caring more about 'content' than 'truth,' we gave them permission to do this. We turned our politics into a reality show, and now we are upset that the producers are editing the footage. It is all one big, sad joke. The only problem is that we are the ones who have to live in the punchline. So, the next time you see a photo from the government, look closely. Check the eyes. Check the shadows. Because in this collapsing theater, the only thing that is real is the lack of shame.