The Bill Always Come Due

This chaos wasn’t an accident.

It wasn’t some bureaucratic oversight, a misunderstood memo, or a tragic misfire of democracy. It wasn’t the result of mass hypnosis or the byproduct of neglected rural economies. It wasn’t “economic anxiety,” no matter how many op-eds tried to bleach it clean. This chaos was chosen.

Deliberately. Willingly.

Chosen by people who believed that cruelty could be justified—so long as it was visited upon the right people. As long as it was dressed up in the sacred binary of good and evil. As long as someone else bled, and they could tell themselves it was justice.

They believed, with a kind of holy certainty, that suffering could be righteous. That if the enemy screamed, it meant the plan was working. They didn’t see themselves as cruel. They saw themselves as correct. Soldiers in a moral war. And if a few lives had to be broken to protect their way of life? Well, then maybe that was holy work.

They weren’t fooled. They weren’t misled. They were invited. Offered a seat at the table of vengeance. Promised that someone else would pay the price, that the chaos would never cross their threshold. That’s what made it so easy to cheer.

And they elected a suit to carry it out.

Not a thinker. Not a leader. Not even a man with a plan. A suit. A costume stitched from grievances and soundbites, tailored to dominate, not to serve. A glossy silhouette projected onto screens and platforms, manufactured to resemble authority just enough that people would stop asking questions.

That’s what Donald Trump was, and remains: a suit with no soul. A shell wrapped around a bottomless appetite. A stage prop possessed by ego, powered by resentment, and mirrored by those who profit from division.

He wasn’t elected despite his cruelty. He was elected because of it.

Because cruelty was the feature. The thrill. The proof of concept. The promise kept.

So when he stood at a podium and announced a 10% baseline tariff on all imports, no one should have blinked in confusion. It wasn’t a slip. It wasn’t a gaffe. It wasn’t even about policy. It was a statement. A spectacle. A flex for the faithful. Proof that he could hurt the world on command—and make you thank him for it.

Jon Stewart, ever the scalpel, called it Liberation Day. A snide resurrection of economic nationalism, where Jesus rose from the tomb and the price of a Honda Civic rose $2,000. It was absurd on its face. But absurdity had become the point. Absurdity was the camouflage. The distraction. The show.

Tariffs, of course, don’t punish foreign governments. They punish you.

They show up in the price of your groceries, your brake pads, your new washer-dryer, your daughter’s asthma medication. They creep into your life like mold—quiet, slow, but inescapable. You don’t feel it all at once. You feel it in increments. A few dollars here. A skipped appointment there. A vacation postponed. A savings account that never fills.

That’s how tariffs work. That’s how policy works. It’s not theatrical. It’s not immediate. It’s arithmetic. Cause and effect. A tax at the border that passes through ports and factories, warehouses and trucks, until it lands squarely in your lap.

But Trump didn’t explain it that way. He didn’t need to. The suit did the talking.

The suit didn’t care about mechanics. The suit was a symbol. A walking myth. A fantasy in a red tie. The suit said, we are taking back control. The suit said, they hurt you, now we hurt them. The suit said, I am the wall, the sword, the reckoning. And people listened—not because it made sense, but because it gave them permission.

Permission to believe that their pain was sacred. That their loss was stolen, not circumstantial. That someone—out there, over the border, under a hijab, inside a faculty lounge—had made them feel small, and now it was time to make someone else feel it too.

They didn’t call it revenge. They called it balance.

And the suit promised to deliver it.

Because unpredictability wasn’t a flaw—it was the entire strategy. Chaos wasn’t a bug in the system—it was the brand. The smoke. The sleight of hand. If you flood the stage with noise, people stop asking where the exits are. If you break enough rules fast enough, nobody remembers what the rules were for.

This wasn’t governance. This wasn’t even ideology. It was improv. It was ego-driven dress-up. A man playing nation-state like a child plays soldier—executive orders in one hand, golf club in the other. He wasn’t passing laws. He was asserting dominance. On Twitter. On camera. On command.

Because when you elect a suit, you don’t elect a public servant. You elect a bypass machine. A fast-track to action with no accountability. A man allergic to process, unable to collaborate, obsessed only with optics. And what better weapon for optics than the executive order?

It looks powerful. It feels decisive. It skips the inconvenient labor of compromise, the messy virtue of debate. And it feeds the myth—the binary—of good versus evil. Of hero versus enemy. Of savior versus traitor.

That’s what 70 million people signed up for.

Not a vision. Not a recovery. A permission slip. A shortcut. A story where they were always the protagonist, and the suffering of others was always proof that the story was working.

They didn’t want solutions. They wanted vengeance without guilt, progress without tedious details.

They wanted to hurt then demand gratitude from the wounded. They would close the door and pat themselves for cracking a window.

Because the binary gave them cover. As long as they believed the people being punished were bad, then the punishment wasn’t cruel—it was justice. The refugee was an invader. The trans kid was a threat. The journalist was an enemy of the people. And if you could convince yourself of that, then what came next was easy. Palatable. Even noble.

But chaos doesn’t recognize nobility. It doesn’t recognize loyalty. It doesn’t ask whether you cheered from the bleachers. Chaos is not a scalpel. It is a flood. And floods don’t check voter registration.

That’s why it gets worse in 2026.

Because Trump’s single legislative achievement—his 2017 tax plan—was constructed like a landmine. The corporate tax cuts? Permanent. The middle-class cuts? Temporary. Set to expire. Designed that way. Built to sell a win in the short term, and then detonate later—after the parade, after the slogans, after the re-election bid.

It was always a trap. A countdown.

In 2026, it goes off.

Your standard deduction? Shrinks.

Your child tax credit? Cut in half.

Your tax bracket? Climbs.

Your household? Pays more—unless you’re a billionaire or a multinational corporation. Unless you’re the architect, not the pawn.

And unless Trump or one of his proxies pushes through an extension—which is far from guaranteed—you will see the illusion collapse in real time. While you’re still paying more for imported goods thanks to those patriotic tariffs, you’ll also be paying more in taxes. More for less. Two fists. One suit. No apologies.

And maybe, just maybe, that will be the moment when the curtain drops. When some of the seventy million feel the sting they believed would never reach them. When the cruelty crosses the street and knocks on their door.

Not because they were betrayed. But because they were used.

Because this was never about protecting them. It was about fueling them. Channeling their fear and pain and identity into a machine that fed only itself. That devoured reason, civility, economics, community—and turned it into grievance and spectacle.

They were told that the chaos would only burn the wicked.

But fire doesn’t discriminate.

And when the flood rises, there are no chosen people. Just people who can swim, and people who can’t.

The tragedy isn’t that they didn’t know better. It’s that they didn’t want to. They wanted a world where they were always the righteous ones. Always on the right side of history. Always on God’s team. And if that required bending reality until it broke, they were willing. If it meant calling cruelty justice, they were ready. If it meant burning down the village to feel in charge of it—they lit the match.

Because they believed the binary was real. That good people could do bad things without consequence, as long as they did them to bad people. That morality was a scoreboard, not a discipline.

But in the end, reality is not a parable. It’s a bill.

And it always comes due.

That’s the cost of electing a suit.

Not just the economic fallout. Not just the empty policies and broken alliances. But the moral corrosion. The erosion of empathy. The national addiction to dominance-as-virtue. The way people stopped listening, stopped thinking, stopped feeling—as long as their side was winning.

But no one wins when the center collapses.

You get a nation where policy is theater. Where rage is currency. Where governance is a costume party, and the only qualification is your willingness to hurt the people they tell you to hate.

You get a democracy held together by duct tape and ego.

You get a public servant who doesn’t serve.

You get a country where good and evil are costumes, and cruelty wears the crown.

And you get the bill.

In the end, reality is not a parable. It’s a bill. And it always comes due.