This appeared in the December 2 issue of the Lansing City Pulse. You can find All Star Mechanical in the Lansing City Pulse regularly.

I remember the days when I could reasonably envision my future. Most of us could. We grew up with a quiet cofidence that if we worked hard and made decent choices, the road ahead — while never guaranteed —would at least make sense. We believed that raising a family wouldn’t
require a financial acrobatics routine. We trusted that our neighborsweren’t sizing us up as enemies.We assumed our children would inherit a world where they could imagine a future of their own, instead of
feeling powerless inside a capitalistic hellscape designed to extract everything from them while giving as little as possible in return.

That feeling — of predictability, of stability, of a functioning socialcontract — has evaporated. And nobody seems willing to say it out loud:

What is going on?
What is going on when we hear talk of closing the skies over Venezuela, as if the United States is inching toward yet another military escalation masquerading as righteousness? We’re told missiles are being launched at “suspected drug smugglers.” As though a few dozen extrajudicial killings — people vaporized without names, trials, or evidence — will somehow improve the lives of average Americans. We’re not safer. We’re not stronger. We’re not in the know. We’re being sold a narrative — and worse: We’re expected to swallow it without question. Because questioning the storyline is now treated as disloyalty. What is going on when the MAHA movement — MAGA’s even-less-informed cousin — keeps spiraling into conspiratorial nonsense every time the topic of public health comes up? How did we go from bipartisan trust in basic medicine to people loudly claiming Tylenol causes autism or whispering about bird  flu outbreaks that “they”are refusing to report? The irony is that the people sounding the alarm about government incompetence are the same people undermining the very systems that would help us in a crisis. We are as unprepared as we’ve ever been to handle any outbreak, not because the science isn’t there, but because the public conversation has been hijacked by opportunists who see fear as a business model.

And then there’s the economy — this supposedly “robust” miracle the administration keeps celebrating. They beam in front of cameras and proclaim historic success, while quietly withholding the basic economic data that every administration for decades released like clockwork. Jobs reports postponed. Inflation metrics missing. GDP numbers scheduled for public release on October 30 held back without explanation. They call themselves the most transparent administration in history. They act like a corporation shredding documents in a locked basement.

Transparency shouldn’t require binoculars and a prayer. I used to believe that if things went sideways, if the country hit turbulence, I could still protect my family. I had faith — maybe naïve, maybe conditioned — that the institutions built over generations would hold. That the people in charge, regardless of party, would be adults in the room. That America’s government, despite its  flaws, would remain tethered to credibility. But today? I  find myself feeling the country is closer to uncontrollable collapse than anything resembling stability. Not because of one crisis, but because of a sprawling pattern of dysfunction, denial, secrecy, and corruption. A pattern enabled by millions of people who’ve convinced themselves that loyalty to a brand or a movement is more important than loyalty to the truth.

Never did I think I would watch the legitimacy of the United States government dissolve so quickly, or so quietly. But here we are. The enabling of this administration —its lies, contempt for accountability,
bizarre obsession with theatrics — has been astonishing to watch. And it’s not happening because Americans suddenly stopped caring. It’s happening because many have been groomed to believe that any contradiction to the leader’s narrative is an attack on their identity.

That is the grift. That is the trap. And it’s working. People scoff at the word “propaganda” because it feels too dramatic, too foreign. But propaganda doesn’t need marching bands or giant posters.
Sometimes it looks like selective press access. Sometimes it looks like strategic silence. Sometimes it looks like one more missing report, one more unasked question, one more manufactured crisis used to distract from the rot happening in plain sight.

And it’s that rot that keeps me up at night. Because the collapse of trust isn’t theoretical — it’s already here. When a government stops telling the truth, the fabric of society frays. When people stop believing they have a future, they stop investing in it. When families feel unsafe, economically or socially, they retreat into survival mode. That’s not patriotism. That’s not prosperity. That’s not stability. That’s decay.
Maybe what scares me most is how ordinary everything still looks on the surface. The denial is so strong, the distractions so constant, that you almost forget the ground is shifting beneath you. People run errands, take their kids to school, go to work, scroll endlessly through their chosen echo chambers, and pretend everything is normal. But the air feels different. The future feels less like a promise and more like a dare.

And we all know it, even if we’re afraid to say it.

So again I ask: What is going on? It’s not one thing. It’s not even ten things. It’s a corrosive mix of
incompetence, disinformation, and greed wrapped in a  flag and sold as patriotism. It’s a public manipulated into embracing nonsense. It’s a government that has learned it can get away with o ering nothing but slogans, secrecy, and manufactured enemies. It’s a political culture where outrage is currency and truth is collateral damage. And in the middle of all that, ordinary people — people like me, people like you — are left wondering how the hell we’re supposed to protect our families in a world where the people in charge treat reality like an inconvenience.

This is what happens when people love power and money more than they love the truth, more than they love their country, and certainly more than they love the people they swore to serve.

Email me at lansingallstar@gmail.com

Ann Developer Siegle, Administrator

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