If You Feel Like the Country’s on Fire, It’s Because Someone Lit the Match...

You Can’t Fix a Social Contract That’s Been Set on Fire — But You Can Stop Playing Along.

Photo by Arctic Qu on Unsplash

The Magician's Hand and the Shredded Social Contract…

Let’s talk about the “United” States of America. Spoiler alert: the only thing united these days is our shared exhaustion.

We’ve got two political tribes who would rather set the country on fire than lose an argument. Democrats and Republicans aren’t just disagreeing anymore. They’re living in two separate realities, eating different facts for breakfast, praying to different gods of outrage, and blaming each other for the rotting stench in the fridge — when both parties left the milk out in 1993.

And the social contract? That thing’s been used as toilet paper by both sides. As you can imagine it’s pretty messy now!

Here’s What Used to Be True: A long time ago, before TikTok turned everyone into a dopamine junkie with the attention span of a housefly — Americans actually shared some core assumptions:

• The Constitution mattered

• Borders were real

• Speech was free (even if it offended you)

• Elections were sacred

• Parents raised their kids, not the state

• You could vote blue or red and still go to a barbecue without ending up in a screaming match about gas stoves or gender pronouns

That’s the social contract. Or it was.

Now?