Why Narcissism Is Poisoning the Republic
In the state that assembled the American labor movement, everybody knows what a picket line means.
You have the group debates in the union hall. You shout, you argue, you cast your ballots, and tempers flare. But the second that strike vote is certified, the position is clear. You link arms, pull your shifts in the freezing cold or sweltering heat, standing shoulder-to-shoulder united against the company. Because the moment someone treacherously slips across that line to cut a private deal with management, they aren’t showing independence, nuance, or courage. They’re a scab and in Michigan, everyone knows that a scab doesn’t just break a united front. They’re allying with the oppressor and turning a blind eye to the needs of the group.
That instinct for self-preservation at the expense of the collective is the defining behavior of comfy politics. Comfy politics is the bipartisan culture of institutional entitlement where elected office is treated as an insulated executive promotion track rather than an earned public trust. In comfy politics, politicians obsess over decorum, fundraise off perpetual crisis, and view legislative seats as hereditary guarantees. Solving national problems is never an option, only preserving personal career mobility. Thereby keeping the donor checks coming, and protecting well financed insider networks from outsider disruption.
What played out on Sunday morning at Perfecting Church in Detroit wasn’t some sophisticated attempt at Machiavellian statecraft. It was purest distillation of comfy politics in action; a narcissistic spectacle by a wannabe political elitist who crossed the picket line for her own self interest less than two days from the midterm elections. Exposing herself as the scab she is while torpedoing the collective defense of working people because a defeated insider couldn’t bear to let an outsider win.
Machiavelli is famous for the concept of “the end justifying the means”. Machiavelli was arguing that winning the board was worth any cost. Writing with praise that princes build republics against chaos and condemning those that would open the gates to an enemy because the republic voted for someone else. He wasn’t arguing about petty grievances, he was arguing that calculated tactics should be used to ensure a victory for the group. Scorched earth politics are not intended to be used on one’s own team.
Stevens and her apologists hide behind procedural grievances and personal discomfort. A derailed career path is unfortunate but politics offers no guarantees; it is an active trauma unit and voters get to select the doctor of their choice. When an authoritarian movement is dismantling labor rights, gutting environmental protections, packing courts with corporate ideologues, and threatening the fundamental structure of representative government, the job of an elected representative is immediate triage. You cannot bandage a wound while the attacker is still stabbing.
Stopping that harm is the primary, non-negotiable duty. Handing a critical United States Senate seat to Donald Trump’s handpicked candidate, Mike Rogers—a man Stevens spent months denouncing—doesn’t just concede a vote. It surrenders the institutional shield meant to protect vulnerable communities from immediate catastrophe.
Authentic outsiders and political actors are running because they care about the community they represent, not any opportunity that betters themselves. Machiavelli for the greater good can be debated in ethics and philosophy classes; Machiavelli for one’s own future standing is a level of political avarice that cannot be tolerated in our nation’s politics. I get it, I’m an outsider, of course I’m going to sympathize with my fellow outsider.
Let’s step back for a moment and look at this objectively. 2016 was a decade ago. The lessons of Hillary and Bernie should be taught to candidates on day one but here we are. Last minute sabotage for the sake of one’s own political aspirations. All while opening a path for opposition victory. No matter how you frame it, our country is hemorrhaging right now. Normal procedure would be to work together to stop the bleeding. Imagine the last few years and our immediate future as a vehicle driving down a stretch of highway. The vehicle is going full speed ahead.
The 2024 election is a patch of black ice. Stability gave way, traction and forward mobility gone. The republic went into an uncontrolled spin. Skidding, we muster our courage, run a counter attack turning the 2026 Midterms into a recovery from the spin. We pump the brakes, steer into the slide, and fight with every muscle just to keep the car on the pavement. In 2028 it’s the moment of truth, the car is on solid ground again. Is everyone ok? Did we suffer anything unrepairable? Will the car be road worthy again? Then 2030 is a new dawn. Winter is over, the road is clear. It’s time to get back on the highway and make sure it’s properly treated by the next winter storm.
When the vehicle is sliding sideways at seventy miles an hour, anyone in the car who refuses to grab the wheel, ignores the brakes, or deliberately yanks the e-brake reveals their loyalties. Hint, it’s not to their fellow passengers.
They can afford the rollover. They have side-curtain airbags, five-point harnesses, donor retainers, executive health insurance and future tv and consulting gigs to get to.
The rest of the country doesn’t even have seatbelts.
Consultants don’t care about any of that. They always land on their feet even when they lose. Manipulating language to suit their needs ignoring those of the community beneath them. Twenty years ago, Family Guy satirized this exact intellectual rot in the episode “It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One”. Lois Griffin stood at a debate podium and realized that laying out nuanced policy was met with silence, but whispering “9/11” and “Jesus” brought thunderous standing ovations. It was meant to be a warning about democratic illiteracy. Instead, modern political consultants have adopted it as a marketing operating manual. Devolving our language from conveying issues of substance to gaming keyword search results.
Candidates tout “Pro-Life” stances and beliefs marketed it as holy reverence for life. Yet the actual policy defunds maternal care, attacks life-saving prenatal amniocentesis, restricts genetic medical research, and ignores environmental poisoning. It’s moral greenwashing—an umbrella term designed to control the body of others while showing utter contempt for the living.
The president can sneer the name “Mohammed” at campaign rallies as a cheap dog whistle against Abdul El-Sayed, designed to trigger an automated threat reflex. Offering no alternative to policy choices only hoping that fear keeps voters from judging an American physician who spent his career rebuilding public health clinics and testing tap water for lead.
The Orwellian greenwashing reaches its absolute peak when reactionary theology is weaponized in foreign policy. When evangelical end times prophecy demands unconditional regional conflict in the Middle East and support for a Jewish population they believe are destined to die so they can meet Jesus their pro-life stances evaporate. Treating living human beings as disposable cannon fodder for an engineered Rapture. When an outsider steps forward advocating for life, civilian survival, and peace, the death-cult logic treats him as a threat and ignores the nuance of his words because peace interrupts their preferred prophecy.
Ancient prophecy was never a fatalistic screenplay. From Jonah to Jeremiah, prophecy was a conditional emergency flare: Turn around, care for the vulnerable, and fix your house, or you will be evicted from the garden, condemned or destroyed. Leave it to modern reactionaries to get prophecy completely backward, actively pursuing the destruction of their God’s creation so they can throw their hands up and claim the destruction was ordained. And that says nothing of the cynical spectacle of staging a political ambush inside a holy sanctuary, violating the very sacred ground they claim to honor.
The people who engineered this eleventh-hour betrayal will not suffer if the Senate falls.
Haley Stevens will not lose her healthcare, retirement or face an eviction notice. She will not have to ration insulin or worry about an offshore conglomerate stripping her pension. If the party loses the majority, the consultant class and the corporate donor network will still cut checks. They will still have green-room hits on cable news and corporate board seats waiting.
The bill will be paid entirely by the people clocking in at plants in Macomb, Flint, and Wayne County.
This is the rotten core of “comfy politics.” A protected gerontocracy treats legislative seats as hereditary annuities earned through backroom networking rather than active service to the public. They lecture the electorate about “precedent” and “decorum” while the opposition plays for keeps. They demand that working families wait in line, but the instant voters reject their entitlement at the ballot box, they pull the pin on the grenade.
When even Chuck Schumer is calling you a party traitor you know you’ve messed up.
“The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!” – Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: First Contact (1996).
For nearly a century, the political class has treated gridlock as an alibi. You cannot spend decades voting for procedural stagnation and then pretend to be surprised that nothing gets built, wages decrease, the environment degrades, education falters and the cost of everything becomes extravagant while profits and wealth among the few are at historic human highs.
Gridlock is not an accident—it is a business model. Nobody cares if nothing actually changes. This system keeps donors happy, insulates bought and paid incumbents from taking hard votes, and ensures the emergency fundraising machine runs perpetually. It doesn’t help people, at least not to scale. It encourages apathy and welcomes corruption. It is not a government for, of and by the people. Every bit of it needs to be ripped out and replaced with elected officials who give a damn about their constituents and not wealthy donors who butter their bread. Change won’t be easy. It’ll likely involve a massive self-funding campaign on a national scale because the moment an outsider emerges who actually wants to govern, the establishment treats them like the systemic threat they are.
Some will argue that Trump was an outsider promising to drain the swamp, limit regulation and put an end to war. Not seeing him as the time share salesman that he is, they proved that Trump knew his mark and simply wrapped himself in the marketing of an authentic populist leader. Claiming to be tough on corruption while taking bags of cash and claiming success. The only money a politician should take is the money his actual human constituents donateto get them there.
The board for 2028 is being laid out right now. If our republic is going to survive the skid and make it to the dawn, the era of tolerating Trojan-horse saboteurs must end. Coalition politics means that when the primary ends, the ranks close. If you cannot stomach standing with the working people who chose a standard-bearer you didn’t approve of, then clear the floor for those who will.
Starting tomorrow, the rule is absolute: Unite or die.
November 4th update –
It would appear that some faith in the electorate has been restored. A near complete rejection of complacent republican candidates and reluctant democratic establishment has occurred. Hopefully putting a stop to party saboteurs and a consultant class that actively encourages failing upwards at the expense and contempt of the American people. We have successfully hit the brakes and are attempting a recovery from the skid. My only hope now is that once the vehicle is recovered that we don’t forget how dangerous the road was getting here.