Nothing Feels Urgent Anymore — And That Should Terrify You

Hey Kenneth, I found the Frequency.

In the early stages of collapse, the warning signs come like alarms: loud, unmistakable, emotionally triggering. You feel compelled to respond. To signal. To warn others.

But we’re not in that phase anymore.

We’re in the part where everything bleeds together. Where Trump’s criminal and idiotic antics, Supreme Court nullification, dollar decoupling, tariff tumult, and cabinet secretariat stupidity all feel like background noise.

We are experiencing the flattening of outrage.

This isn’t a failure of attention. It’s a feature of the system now. And it’s not just cultural. It’s strategic.

Here’s how it’s been for me.

Typically, something happens - like Trump decides he will have the Park’s Department collect Student Loan Payments (which, hey, I finally got a copy of my Promissory Note, huzzah!). Then, I go, “Well, that’s ridiculous, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.”

Now, because I’m me, it takes me about 90 minutes to sketch out a banger of a rant complete with law, policy, and witty rantisms that results in a piece that gets read by half a million stackers, winds up being picked up by Reddit and Business Insider and a bunch of other publications, pilloried, piled on, etc.

And that’s fine. I’ve done it 10 times now. It’s almost routine for me. Trump does something cuckoo bananas. I go, “Well, that’s not how this works,” and we’re off to the races.

The result: another banger of an article that you’re all entertained with. We all end up smarter, and I end up less bananas.

Win-win.

Well, for the past two weeks, I’ve just been flatlined.

Oh, Trump wants to have the biggest financier of terrorism give him a plane, huh? Sure, why the fuck not. That makes sense. Trojan Airplane. That never went sideways.

Next.

Oh, Trump’s pissed that Wallmart is raising prices? That makes sense, maybe he should tariff the “country” of Wallmart like he did Mattel.

Next.

And so on.

But then, enter that twerp jackass Jake Tapper.

Tapper decides, I am the Oracle of CNN. I alone shall reveal why we lost the election. It was all Joe Biden you see.

And then, we find out, the poor man is dying of cancer. So, let’s all heap more shit on that guy. The former President. You know, the guy who gave his entire life to public service. Who put aside his own ego, to try and save the country. Who has suffered more personal loss than like any other public servant in history, yet continued to give to his country?

Let’s shit all over that guy.

And again, no outrage about that. I mean there should be the “Have you no decency? HAVE YOU NO SHAME?” from the likes of TNR or The Atlantic.

Instead we get doodly ass nothing. Nada. Zilchareeno.

I was so disgusted by it, I felt compelled to say something in a Substack note. A good number of you agreed with me. I mean, I’m like, if someone like me, a guy who stood on the other side of the aisle from the President for most of the guy’s life, can support him at this moment, what the hell is wrong with the likes of Jake Tapper and the rest of you Democrats for crying out lout?

And that’s when I realized, shit. I’m not paying attention.

We’ve hit the noise saturation phase.

Unfortunately, this is all very predictable in regimes that are bordering on collapse, and we are entering the most precarious phase of them.

We have moved into what I’d call Phase IV: Strategic Saturation:

• Phase I: Shock events – pandemic, insurrection, sudden destabilization

• Phase II: Legal maneuvering – institutional capture, court reshaping, rule reinterpretation

• Phase III: Narrative normalization – the rewriting of what is allowed to matter

• Phase IV: Signal collapse – all inputs are noise, no inputs change behavior

The circus isn’t a distraction anymore. It’s the architecture.

Why This Is So Dangerous

In classic authoritarian regimes, power consolidates around one or two central institutions. In postmodern soft coups, power decentralizes into unreality. The goal isn’t persuasion. The goal is fatigue.

This is why your brain feels fogged. Why aren’t you writing as fast? Why you’re wondering, “What’s the point?”

This isn’t depression. It’s data overload without resolution.

And it’s working.

What Comes After Signal Collapse

Signal collapse doesn’t mean violence. It means emptiness. It means the collapse of consequence. A kind of ungoverned drift.

In the U.S., it looks like this:

• Courts that can’t enforce their own orders

• Agencies that ghost whistleblowers

• Cities where crime and corruption become indistinguishable

• Presidents who no longer speak in policy—just vibes

What follows isn’t fascism in the boots-and-flags sense. What follows is patrimonial drift—a society governed by legacy holders, loyalty networks, and procedural deadlock. You don’t get jackboots. You get jargon.

And no, it’s not exciting. It’s not cinematic. It’s slow, boring rot.

How to Recover Signal

This is what I’m watching for now:

• Cross-institutional breakdown: When the judiciary, finance, and infrastructure all start to degrade in the same jurisdiction

• Silent elite exits: When hedge funds move family offices offshore without press releases

• Disappearing nodes: Courthouses that stop scheduling trials. Agencies that stop answering FOIA. Banks that ghost their clients.

These are the non-events that define collapse. Not the big explosions—but the quiet surrenders. None of this is happening yet, so I’m not saying freak out and run for the hills. And none of this might happen at all.

But there are warning signs to pay attention to. For example:

1. The U.S.–Canada Border Incident

Recently, American border agents began blocking Canadian (and other U.S. allies, and even temporarily detaining U.S. citizens) citizens from entry in certain cases—based not on documentation, but on suspicions tied to political affiliations or past social media behavior.

• This isn’t policy. It’s ad hoc enforcement drift.

• But it reflects something bigger: bilateral trust eroding quietly. Borders are slowly being hardened.

• That’s the first crack in the post-9/11 continental “safe passage” doctrine.

Signal: Border friction isn't about immigration anymore—it's about trust collapse between formerly integrated liberal democracies. It’s ultimately going to be about controlling the movement of people.

2. Worcester, MA: The ICE Standoff That Wasn’t

In Worcester, local police stood by as federal ICE agents used force against a community member. Not a criminal fugitive—just a foreign national caught in the jurisdictional gray zone.

And no one stopped them. No mayoral speech. No state intervention. No national coverage.

Signal: Local law enforcement is being quietly deputized by federal agencies without legislative mandate. Anti-commandeering doctrine is eroding. Cities are losing autonomy—not through law, but through passive compliance.

This is how the new enforcement regime spreads—not through executive orders, but acquiescence.

3. The FCC vs. Paramount: When the State Quietly Claimed a Veto on the Media

• The FCC, under pressure from Republican state attorneys general, is threatening to revoke approval for the merger and license renewals of CBS-owned stations, citing “ethics” and “responsibility” concerns tied to past political reporting.

• Paramount settled quietly—divesting key assets, restructuring station ownership, and avoiding a full legal fight that might have set precedent.

• KCBS has come under FCC investigation for allegedly reporting about an ICE raid that allegedly put ICE agents “at risk.” The claims are without merit, but their licensure is now at risk.

• Brendan Carr’s short tenure at the FCC has been nothing short of a complete shitshow of abuse and malfeasance, bullying television, radio, and media companies to bend to Trump’s will “or else.”

• CNN? Tapper’s out here writing books instead of noticing the playbook.

The message was clear: the federal government now reserves the right to revoke your ability to broadcast if it doesn’t like how you’ve covered a presidential candidate.

And the reaction?

Silence.

These are lawsuits and revocations that CBS would undoubtedly win in court. Undoubtedly. They are claims without merit. The “KCBS” claim is particularly egregious since the FCC is claiming they outed an “ICE” raid and placed officers at risk and violated the law. Which is a complete farce. They did no such thing, reported on the story hours after the raid had taken place, and reporting on the raid was most certainly within the scope of being “newsworthy” and in the public’s interest under their licensing. Again, a claim completely without merit and a suit that KCBS would undoubtedly win at trial if they forced the FCC’s hand.

Instead, nothing. My guess is you’ve never heard about this. No mass media defense. No congressional outrage. No public mobilization.

These stories are minor in scale, major in meaning. They tell you where the fault lines are forming:

• Border trust (international sovereignty drift)

• Jurisdictional integrity (domestic sovereignty drift)

• Media integrity (narrative sovereignty drift)

And almost no one is talking about them. Why?

Because the noise has done its job. We’ve become numb to change unless it’s explosive. But power doesn’t always explode. Sometimes it just reroutes.

And if you miss that moment, you miss the future being built.

If Nothing Surprises You, You’ve Already Lost

The scariest part of this moment isn’t the next Trump EO, or Gaza escalation, or SCOTUS ruling.
It’s that none of it surprises you. None of it feels urgent.

And when nothing feels urgent—it means the coup already happened.

So we have to stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Stay awake.

And above all else...
don’t buy Jake Tapper’s fucking book.

Seriously. Fuck that guy.
Joe Biden is dying of cancer—and Tapper wants to pin the entire Democratic trainwreck on him while the entire media industry is at risk of being burnt to the fucking ground by a demented lunatic currently occupying the White House?

What the fuck already. Truly.

The GOP being assholes is one thing.
Jake Tapper is operating on some kind of Zen Master tier of betrayal.
A true high priest of hollow institutions.

I may have lost my mojo for a while, but I think I got it back.

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