It Was the Darkest of Times, It Was the Dumbest of Times.

The stupid burns…

Let’s not sugarcoat shit—we are being held hostage by the dumbest dumbfucks who ever dumbed. Not just dumb—like, “oops, I microwaved a fork” dumb, or “I tried to charge my phone in the toaster” dumb or “I thought Bluetooth was a dental condition” dumb, but cosmically, generationally, ‘you must be this tall to ride democracy’ dumb. Every day, we all wake up and have to share a country with people whose brains look like they were assembled by a team of blindfolded squirrels high on Four Loko, using blueprints they found in a box of expired Pop-Tarts.

But it’s not just that they’re stupid—it’s that their stupidity is blasted from every rooftop, tattooed on their faces, and woven so deep into our national fabric it’s like we’re all being waterboarded with Mountain Dew Code Red.

Take Bobby Kennedy Jr.—a man whose thought process resembles a hamster wheel powered by expired Pixy Stix and broadcast live on public access TV at 3 a.m. He’s the kind of guy who’d bring a fork to a soup-eating contest and still wonder why everyone’s staring. In photographs, he almost passes for sentient, but the moment he starts talking he gives off the unmistakable impression of someone who’d lose a staring contest to a lava lamp. His decision-making skills are on par with someone who thinks “Do Not Drink” signs are just polite suggestions, which might explain why he decided to baptize his grandkids in Rock Creek—a waterway so toxic, the CDC recommends you wear a hazmat suit just to look at it on Google Maps and Bobby’s over there grinning like he’s discovered the fountain of youth.

We’re talking about a man whose hobbies include decapitating whales, dumping bears, and blending baby birds, all while waging a one-man crusade against the concept of brain cells. This is a guy who shouldn’t be trusted to change the toilet paper in a Walmart bathroom, let alone be handed the keys to the nation’s health and safety. If you gave him a roll of Charmin and ten minutes alone, he’d find a way to turn it into a public health crisis. He’s the human embodiment of a warning label, and yet here we are, watching him audition for roles that require, at minimum, a working relationship with reality.

He’s the kind of scientific anomaly that makes Darwin spin in his grave like a rotisserie chicken.

And then of course, there’s Kristi Noem, who changes outfits more often than a toddler with a UTI. One day she’s Border Patrol Barbie, next she’s a SWAT team reject, then she’s ICE, then she’s the world’s saddest airline pilot. If you gave her a taser, she’d probably use it on herself by accident. It’s impossible to underestimate her because she keeps finding new, creative ways to be even more ridiculous than you ever thought possible.

She posts thirst traps in tactical gear like she’s auditioning for a role in “Call of Duty: Small Town Mediocrity.” But don’t be fooled by the clown show—she’s so depraved she literally bragged about shooting her own puppy. Out of this whole circus, she might actually be the most evil of them all. She’s not just embarrassing herself; she’s embarrassing the entire concept of public office.

And at the top of this rotting fish sits Donald Trump—the Oompa Loompa Caligula, the man who looks like something I drew with my left hand, while drunk and asleep, during an earthquake. Now that he’s president again, the whole circus reeks from the head clown down. Trump isn’t just leading the parade—he’s the reason the calliope’s on fire. If you ever wondered how low the bar could go, just look at a nation that handed the keys back to a felon who thinks “covfefe” is a policy position. The fact that this tantrum-prone game show host is back in the Oval Office tells you everything you need to know about the collective judgment of half the country—spoiler: it’s not good.

But logic and standards don’t matter to the cult that worships at his golden toilet. For these folks, hypocrisy is a sacrament and reason is a foreign language.

And right now, the hypocrisy is Olympic-level—triple-axel, gold-medal, sponsored-by-Pampers hypocrisy. These folks could teach gymnasts a thing or two about twisting themselves into pretzels. They’ll clutch their pearls over a Democrat’s typo, then turn around and cheer for a guy who treats the Constitution like it’s a takeout menu.

Because MAGA is losing their collective bladder control over James Comey spelling out “8647” in seashells—a code so mild it could be printed on a Hallmark card—yet they’re out here foaming at the mouth for his arrest, as if he robbed Fort Knox. Meanwhile, their guy wanted to hang his own vice president like it was open mic night at the gallows, and while campaigning, shared a video starring Joe Biden hogtied in the back of a truck, like presidential snuff films were the new yard sign.

These people scream about “law and order” while cosplaying as extras from Deliverance. They’ll tell you cancel culture is the gravest threat to America—unless it’s Bruce Springsteen, in which case they want him shot into the sun. Meanwhile, Trump’s latest contribution to national discourse is declaring that Taylor Swift “isn’t hot anymore,” as if America has been breathlessly awaiting his verdict from the world’s tackiest throne. Sorry, Donnie, but Taylor’s getting along just fine without approval from a man who looks like a sweet potato left on the dashboard all summer.

It’s like we’re living in a country governed by the world’s angriest Facebook comments section, except the mods are armed, the rules are written in bronzer, and the admin keeps pausing to critique pop stars from his tanning bed.

We are all being forced to marinate in their stupidity, every single fucking day. We have to watch these clowns with power—clowns with guns, clowns with nuclear codes—turn the country into a punchline, and then a cautionary tale. It’s not just embarrassing; it’s existentially exhausting. The world is watching, wondering how the country that gave us the internet and jazz ended up ruled by people who treat presidential tantrums and seashell arrangements like matters of national security.

Once upon a time, there were grown-ups in the room—actual adults with ironed shirts, government IDs, and the ability to distinguish between a cabinet meeting and a costume party. Back then, if someone suggested digging a moat around the border and stocking it with alligators and snakes, they’d be quietly escorted to a nice chair and handed a cup of decaf until the impulse passed. Career civil servants—those unsung heroes with Rolodexes full of acronyms and a sixth sense for bad ideas—would have shut down any proposal that sounded like it was ripped from a rejected “Sharknado” sequel. These were the people who could sniff out a disaster before it made it to the PowerPoint stage, who’d look a would-be chaos agent in the eye and say, “No, you cannot turn homeland security into an episode of ‘Survivor: Federal Agency Edition.’” There was a time when public policy wasn’t just a dare to see who could make the headlines for being the most unhinged. Now, instead of seasoned professionals, we’ve got a cast of characters who treat every crisis like a TikTok challenge, and whose idea of leadership is seeing how many constitutional amendments they can trample before breakfast.

We’re not just living through a dumb phase; we’re living through a stupidity pandemic, and there’s no vaccine in sight. God help us all, because apparently, natural selection has left the building—and taken the last functioning brain cell with it.

It would be so easy to laugh at all of this non-stop, if it weren’t also so fucking frightening—but maybe that laughter is more powerful than we think. Maybe humor is how we keep our balance when the world tilts sideways, how we remind each other that we’re not alone in seeing the madness for what it is. Sometimes, the only thing standing between us and despair is the ability to look absurdity in the eye and crack a grin. Laughter doesn’t mean giving up or looking away; it means refusing to let cynicism win. It’s a way of saying, together, that we still know the difference between right and wrong, between leadership and lunacy. If we can’t fix everything right now, we can at least hold onto our sanity—and our sense of community—by sharing a joke, a story, a moment of clarity.

Maybe laughter is the last act of grown-up defiance we have left. And maybe, just maybe, it’s enough to keep hope alive until the day the real adults return—or until we realize we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for all along.

And with that, today’s song:

Love you guys!

Stay strong, stay safe, and laugh whenever the hell you can.

💙 Jo

As a side note, I’m thrilled to share that this little labor of love has been steadily climbing the Substack charts, and I truly cannot thank you all enough. This newsletter is not only my main source of income—the way I feed and shelter my not-so-littles—but also my greatest passion. Your support means more to me than I could ever fully express, and it fills my cup in ways words can’t quite capture.