The most prominent theme of the current leadership in Washington has become clear – indifference. No matter what the plight of average Americans, this leadership (from the Trump Administration to the majority leadership in Congress) has consistently shown itself to be deaf and blind. Despite polls showing dissatisfaction with the war, with inflation, with government corruption (showing astonishing agreement in a public that supposedly can’t agree on anything), the leadership continues to roll out disinformation in lieu of addressing solutions.

The war in Iran was supposedly over (if President Trump was to be taken at his word), yet Iran continued to demonstrate a desire to attack US assets and its Middle East neighbors this past week. Of course, the US responded. The administration was on Capitol Hill just a month ago saying that hostilities had concluded – there was a ceasefire (despite a shipping blockade and no actual cessation of firing of arms). All of this was some form of MAGA kabuki to show Congress that their powers to declare (and stop) war was not required. For much of Congress, this worked – war powers resolutions were advanced in the House and Senate, but by such thin margins as to make them meaningless. The public finds the war (and the costs of the war) intolerable – but in a heavily gerrymandered Congress (with more egregious gerrymandering planned for the November election), Congresspeople have little incentive to be responsive to the clear preferences of their constituents.

Perhaps this same philosophy applies to the President’s attitude towards inflation. His chief economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, went on TV this week and said with a straight face that there is a ‘good inflation story’ and that wages are rising – except not rising as fast as inflation. This was reinforced by the President saying “I love the inflation.” The American household is not learning to love inflation – since the war began, consumer revolving credit balances have by skyrocketing (up at an annual rate of 10.4%). I don’t believe it is coincidental that increasing energy costs (and their downstream impacts) ramped up in March of this year. The President may be excited that the price of a new car is coming down (as it tends to do this time of year, before the new models are released in the fall), but most Americans are not looking at large purchases like new cars (new car sales are down from last year). But, as the President frequently notes, the stock market is way up – which is great for the top 10% of households that hold a majority of US equities. Not so great for the nearly 40% of Americans that have no investments in the stock market (even through a 401K).

Perhaps all of the indifference about the attitudes of ordinary Americans goes hand-in-hand with our nation’s leaders willingness to leverage their power for personal gain. In the first quarter of 2026, the President’s own portfolio management made 3700 trades (in 61 trading days) – that is an absurd number of stock trades, unless you are leveraging some inside information. But clearly that wasn’t enough for the President. When filing a lawsuit against the IRS (essentially against himself, as he is the CEO of the government), he leveraged dropping the lawsuit into an insanely self-dealing prohibition on the IRS from challenging his personal and business tax returns (and that of his sons!) up until the date of the settlement – upwards of $100 million in emoluments if there ever were some. But the US piggy bank has been open for Trump’s family for some time. Last year, the Pentagon gave a $620M loan to a small North Carolina company in which Donald Trump Jr. has a stake – tell me what other small companies are getting $620M loans from the US government (particularly ones that are encouraged from the White House). The corruption is so obvious.

But corruption is just a symptom of indifference.

And the national disgrace continues…