We are living in the Stranger Things Upside Down. Same country, wrong version of it.
I used to think Trump Derangement Syndrome existed on both sides. People so blinded by their feelings about one man that they couldn’t think straight. I had some sympathy for that framing, honestly, because I knew people on both ends who fit it. I don’t have that sympathy anymore.
At some point the question stopped being about Trump and started being about whether you can see what’s in front of you. And if you cannot — if you watch what’s happening right now in plain sight, in real time, and somehow still come out the other end defending it — I’m not going to call you a bad person. But I’ll be direct: the delusion is not coming from the people who are alarmed.
This man ran as the peace president. He was going to end the Ukraine war in a day. Kamala was going to get us into World War III. You heard it a thousand times. You may have voted on it. So let’s check in on how that’s actually going.
He’s asked Ukraine — a sovereign country that was invaded — to surrender territory that Russia hasn’t even fully captured. That isn’t a peace deal in any meaningful sense; it’s closer to a ransom note delivered on behalf of the aggressor. We’re siding with the guy who started the war against the country being destroyed by it, and the people who voted for “no more wars” are calling it strategic brilliance.
His Defense Secretary is making references to holy wars. There’s an actual presidential post out there that reads like a war crimes threat. The administration is floating the idea of reinstating the draft — for a war we weren’t pulled into, where we weren’t attacked, where nobody invaded us. The only justification for a draft in this country is defending American soil from an invasion, and we are nowhere near that. But here we are, the trial balloon is up, and the same people who screamed about endless wars under every previous administration are nodding along like this is fine.
And then there’s Iran. He spent years telling you Obama was weak on Iran, tore up the nuclear deal that was actually working, ran maximum pressure, did the saber rattling, ordered the assassinations. Now, quietly, while you weren’t looking, his people are negotiating a nuclear deal that essentially tries to reconstruct the thing he destroyed. The thing he called a disaster. The thing he used for years to make you angry at Democrats. They’re trying to get a version of it back, and they’re hoping you don’t notice.
If you can’t see it at this point, I don’t know what to tell you.
Prices were going to come down. Day one. That was the promise. Tariffs are taxes, and the people paying them aren’t the corporations — it’s you. The billionaires got their tax cuts first. The corporations making billions while paying nothing got taken care of next. That isn’t America First in any version of the phrase that makes sense. It’s a con, and the people running it are laughing while you defend them.
The cabinet meetings look like an SNL sketch SNL would have rejected for being too on the nose — grown men competing to grovel the hardest, kissing the ring on camera, praising him in sequence like it’s a loyalty drill. This is what we’ve been reduced to. Not even bothering with the appearance of normal cabinet function. Just performing submission for the cameras and calling it governance.
Meanwhile the Epstein files start getting close and suddenly we’re in a standoff with Iran. I’m not saying it’s deliberate. I’m just saying that the firehose never seems to stop, that you can never hold any one thing in your attention long enough to be properly outraged before the next thing lands, and that whatever you want to call that, it functions like a feature rather than a bug.
While we’re here, a quick aside: almost every rational person in this country supports the police. Nobody sane wants chaos in the streets. People want law enforcement that’s well trained, well funded, and held accountable. What people are against is brutality and the absence of accountability — that’s it, that’s the whole disagreement, and it’s not actually that complicated. But if you feel compelled to fly the blue line flag and post All Lives Matter, you’re doing the exact same performative thing the Defund the Police crowd was doing in 2020 — using a real issue as a tribal signal instead of caring about it. The police themselves deserve better than being turned into a culture war prop by people on either end who don’t actually have their backs.
None of this reflects American values. We’re not arguing about tax policy here, or immigration, or healthcare. This is darker than that. It’s genuinely, historically dark, and the fact that it’s been normalized this fast is the part that scares me most.
We are watching the United States become Russia in real time — not as a metaphor, but structurally. The consolidation of power, the loyalty tests, the dismantled oversight, the open attacks on the press, the use of the federal government as a personal instrument of the man in charge. That’s not hyperbole I’m grabbing for effect. It’s a recognized pattern with a name and a history, and the way it ends, historically, is not good.
So who’s still defending it?
A lot of the people defending it were sold something — lower prices, peace, someone finally fighting for the little guy — and what they were sold isn’t coming and was never coming. The con man told you himself, on tape, that the more money you have the smarter you must be. You weren’t in that group. You were never in that group. You were the audience.
A lot more of them probably don’t think about it that much. Everyone they know believes it, their church reinforces it, their feed confirms it, and when something comes along that challenges it they’ve been handed a stack of ready-made phrases to end the conversation before doubt can get a foothold. Fake news. Deep state. Just jealous. I don’t think that’s stupidity. It’s conditioning, and conditioning is hard to break when it’s the whole environment you live in.
And then there are the people who know exactly what this is and like it because they like that it hurts somebody. I don’t think there’s anything I can write that’s going to reach those folks, and I’m not going to try.
I’ve run out of patience for the diplomatic version of this. The both-sides framing. The “I understand where you’re coming from” approach. I’ve written that post — I’ve written several. I still believe in trying to reach people, and I still think most people are being manipulated in ways that aren’t entirely their fault.
But we’re in the Upside Down, and I’m done acting like we’re not.
Even that's Odd 
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