I Gave the Benefit of the Doubt. Then I Woke Up.

Last night, I wrapped an audio live here on Substack. I went to bed trying to be balanced—trying to be that person who gives the benefit of the doubt. I said aloud, “Let’s see what happens.” That’s all. Just a simple, open-minded gesture. Not an endorsement. Not even optimism. Just… let’s see.

And then I woke up.

Nobody’s surprised.

That’s the thing about this moment in time: even when you try to suspend cynicism and just wait for the facts to play out, the whiplash is immediate. Ceasefire? Broken. But by whom? Who agreed to it? Did anyone agree to it? We don’t even have the full scope of what the damage was, let alone the information about what follows.

“Obliterated?”

We’re not dealing in facts anymore. We’re dealing in fragments, theater, and bullshit.

This means we are not out of the woods and most importantly this leaves our troops vulnerable.

So we’re all just stuck waiting—waiting for the truth to catch up to the show.

It makes you ask: how did we get here?

And the answer is uncomfortable but —we didn’t stumble into this. We bred it. Trump didn’t hijack the culture; the culture caught up to Trump. He was always there—in our pop culture, music, our late-night jokes. He was the troll before trolling was a term. And what we’re experiencing now isn’t some new mutation. It’s the fully evolved form of decades of spectacle-over-substance.

He’s turned politics into reality TV. Social media into a tool of destabilization.

And here’s where I try, once again, to find some kind of grounded thought. Because, yes, I believe Iran shouldn’t have nuclear weapons. And yes, if there was a credible threat, and a moment to act, and intelligence to support it, then decisive action may be justified.

But this version of that story? This version—with its vagueness, its contradictions, its carnival-freak-show delivery—is not the responsible way to do it. It’s a sideshow with missiles.

That’s why this moment, this constant pendulum between blind allegiance and unrelenting opposition, cannot be solved by the current system. The two-party structure feeds it. The siloed, incubated bubbles of thought harden it. The echo chambers reinforce it.

We have to break the system. We have to reimagine the political process. Because waking up like this—every single time—is not sustainable. Not for democracy. Not for diplomacy. Not for our sanity.

I gave the benefit of the doubt. But once again, I woke up to the reality show.