This essay traces a throughline across politics, media, economics, and everyday life to examine how power is being exercised less through clear decisions and more through delay, confusion, and selective enforcement. From global trade and diplomacy to domestic policy and public assistance, it looks at how loyalty-first governance replaces competence, turning bureaucracy itself into a tool of control.
Rather than reacting to each headline in isolation, the piece focuses on the pattern underneath them, and why recognizing that pattern matters. It closes with a quiet, grounding moment, suggesting that clarity, intention, and staying oriented toward the future can be acts of resistance in an era designed to exhaust and disorient.
