It’s beginning to feel like our country is depressed. There have been polls confirming that Americans have grown more pessimistic than ever recorded (Gallup Poll, 2025). Americans actively try to avoid the news, particularly news involving the President. There is a general fatigue about our state of affairs, be they financial, civic, or the way we simply engage with one another. For those who engage in social media, they find more toxic engagement (on platforms like X, where most companies and sports teams still send their customers/fans to engage). And that same toxic environment is driving user engagement and being promoted by search algorithms.

This could start to explain why Americans don’t appear to care about fundamental things. We just saw primary elections this week in Texas. And the candidate who was accused of securities fraud (and entered into a financial settlement on the matter), was divorced by his wife on ‘biblical grounds’ (he cheated), was accused of improperly using the influence of his office for personal gain, and was impeached by members of his own party (Republican) won the primary for US Senate against a 4-term incumbent. Nothing like this kind of record was on the incumbent’s record. In the initial primary, nearly 2.2 million people voted in the Republican primary (less than the 2.3 million people who voted in the Democratic primary) – that’s about 26% of registered voters for both primaries. In the Republican Senate runoff this week, only 1.4 million people voted – or about 8% of the electorate and a 36% decline in participation. It was estimated that $130 million was spent on this primary race – about $93 per vote finally cast. The 92% of the electorate that didn’t vote – they just shrugged their collective shoulders.

In another Texas runoff race, this time on the Democratic side, only 20,000 people bothered to vote in a race between an antisemite (‘lets turn an ICE facility into a detention center for Zionists and pedophiles and castrate them’) and an employee of the sheriff’s office (many years as a deputy). When the Republican primary is added in, only 8.7% of the registered voters turned out. And when the Democrats voted, over 7,000 people voted for the person who expressed open hatred for Jews (or at least those who had an opinion she disagreed with, as she claims to not be an antisemite). Apparently most of the San Antonio suburbs could not be bothered to express an opinion or interest in who represents them.

Caring starts at the top. Our Congress doesn’t care enough about our nation’s issues to stay in session and work on those issues. They would rather debate White House ballroom funding or payoffs to aggrieved convicted criminals. Our President has indicated that ‘affordability’ is a fake issue . And just this week, the President said out loud “I don’t care about the midterms” – probably to the dismay of the hundreds of Republicans running for elective office across the country this year. If our leaders don’t care, should we? Yes, we should – and we should have leaders that care as well – most importantly, about average Americans.

And the national disgrace continues…