Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

For nearly seventy years, American conservatives have used the phrase “liberal media” as though it were a self-evident insult. It’s become one of those political slogans that gets repeated so often people stop asking what it actually means.

Maybe it’s time we did.

Traditional journalism was never supposed to tell us what to think. It was supposed to tell us what happened, verify it with evidence, confirm it with multiple sources, and separate fact from rumor. That’s not liberalism. That’s journalism.

Somewhere along the way, conservatives began equating reality itself with liberalism. If reporting is based on documented evidence, official records, scientific research, court filings, or observable facts, and those facts happen to contradict conservative narratives, suddenly the problem isn’t the narrative—it’s the media.

Think about that for a moment.

If facts consistently have a liberal bias, perhaps the issue isn’t the facts.

For decades, journalists like Walter Cronkite became trusted not because they were activists, but because they painstakingly verified what they reported. Cronkite wasn’t famous for telling America what he wished were true. He was famous for ending each broadcast with the simple phrase, “And that’s the way it is.”

That wasn’t an opinion.

It was a mission statement.

Today’s media landscape has largely abandoned that distinction. We now have entire networks whose business model revolves around commentary disguised as news. Panels of pundits speculate endlessly, personalities tell audiences what they should feel, and evidence often becomes secondary to outrage.

Opinion has become entertainment.

Entertainment has become news.

And news has become whatever confirms someone’s existing beliefs.

Ironically, the media conservatives often dismiss as “left-wing” generally spends enormous amounts of time citing documents, interviewing experts, linking to source material, and issuing corrections when mistakes are made. Is it perfect? Of course not. Journalists make mistakes because journalists are human.

But there is a profound difference between making an error and intentionally constructing a narrative regardless of the evidence.

Conservatives have spent generations attacking the very idea that facts should be the foundation of reporting. Instead, they increasingly reward media that begins with a conclusion and then searches for evidence to support it. That isn’t journalism.

That’s marketing.

Or propaganda.

There’s nothing inherently liberal about believing that climate data should come from climatologists, medical information should come from physicians, election results should come from certified counts, or court cases should be reported using actual court documents.

That’s simply respecting evidence.

If that makes someone a liberal in today’s political vocabulary, then perhaps we’ve reached a strange place where believing verifiable facts has become a partisan identity.

The irony is almost impossible to ignore.

What many conservatives have spent seventy years calling “liberal media” is often nothing more than journalism doing exactly what journalism was always intended to do: gather evidence, verify facts, correct mistakes, and report reality whether people like it or not.

Reality isn’t liberal.

Reality simply exists.

Facts don’t vote.

Facts don’t care about political parties.

Facts don’t change because they make us uncomfortable.

And perhaps the greatest compliment modern journalism can receive is being accused of bias simply because it refuses to abandon the evidence.

As Walter Cronkite reminded America every evening, the goal was never to tell us what we wanted to hear.

It was simply to tell us the truth.

And that’s the way it is.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The Republican Party suddenly finds itself facing a political problem that has nothing to do with polling, fundraising, or campaign strategy. It is confronting something every political party eventually must: the reality that time catches everyone.

With the reported passing of Senator Lindsey Graham and the continuing uncertainty surrounding Senator Mitch McConnell’s health and political future, Republicans are entering unfamiliar territory. Even if they retain a Senate majority today, that majority has become noticeably thinner, and every vacancy, retirement, or prolonged absence magnifies the influence of every remaining senator.

In a chamber where a single vote can determine whether legislation advances, judicial nominees are confirmed, or a budget passes, arithmetic matters more than ideology. A three-seat cushion feels comfortable until it becomes a one-seat cushion. Then every illness, every resignation, and every special election becomes national news.

The challenge extends well beyond the current Congress. Republicans now have to ask what their Senate map looks like heading into the 2026 midterms. Do they spend valuable resources defending seats they assumed were secure? Do they recruit new candidates capable of replacing decades-long incumbents? Or do they continue relying on personalities who have dominated the party for years while hoping the transition takes care of itself?

Leadership transitions are never simple. Mitch McConnell has shaped Senate Republican strategy for nearly two decades. Whether one admired his tactics or opposed them, few would argue that he wasn’t extraordinarily effective at counting votes and keeping his conference together. Replacing institutional knowledge accumulated over decades isn’t as simple as holding a leadership election.

Lindsey Graham occupied a different role. He often served as one of the party’s most visible communicators on national security, judicial appointments, and foreign policy. His absence leaves another gap—not just in committee assignments but in the public face of Senate Republicans.

Democrats have faced similar moments. Parties inevitably lose senior members through retirement, defeat, or death. The question is whether they have spent enough time cultivating the next generation of leadership before the transition becomes unavoidable.

The Republican Party has increasingly become identified with one dominant figure at the top and a relatively small circle of long-serving senators around him. That concentration of experience creates stability—until it doesn’t. When several pillars begin disappearing at roughly the same time, succession suddenly becomes the central issue.

Looking toward 2026, Republicans may discover that maintaining a majority is only part of the challenge. They must also convince voters that the party has a deep bench capable of governing for the next decade rather than simply preserving the last one.

Political parties often spend so much time preparing for the next election that they forget to prepare for the next generation. Demographics, health, and time don’t consult polling averages before making their decisions.

The Senate’s balance of power may not change overnight, but its center of gravity already has. And that could make 2026 less about partisan ideology and more about who is ready to inherit the responsibility of governing when an era comes to an end.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

One of the more fascinating things about modern America is how many people loudly proclaim themselves to be Christians while appearing to have skipped over the parts where Jesus actually speaks.

The phrase I hear over and over is, “People just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”

It’s an interesting philosophy. It’s also one that Jesus never seemed to endorse.

Imagine the Sermon on the Mount under today’s version of Christianity. Thousands have gathered. They’ve been listening all day. They’re hungry.

Modern Jesus, apparently, would shrug.

“This was a planned event. You knew how long you’d be here. You should have packed a lunch. Poor planning on your part isn’t an emergency on mine.”

Except…that’s not what happened.

The Jesus described in the Gospels looked at a hungry crowd with compassion, not suspicion. He didn’t ask who had a job. He didn’t ask who deserved a meal. He didn’t ask whether feeding them would encourage dependency. He simply took what little was available and fed everyone.

That wasn’t an endorsement of laziness.

It was an endorsement of mercy.

The same applies to healthcare.

When Jesus encountered the sick, there was no admissions desk. No insurance verification. No co-pay. No preauthorization. No argument about whether the illness was the patient’s fault.

He healed them.

Every.

Single.

Time.

He never once said, “I’d love to help, but your deductible hasn’t been met.”

The irony is almost painful. Some of the loudest voices demanding cuts to food assistance, healthcare, and programs that help struggling families are also the quickest to quote Scripture.

Yet the words of Jesus are remarkably consistent.

Feed the hungry.

Heal the sick.

Care for the poor.

Welcome the stranger.

Visit the prisoner.

Love your neighbor.

Those aren’t obscure verses hidden deep in the minor prophets. They’re among the central themes of Jesus’ ministry.

Christianity was never presented as a theology of radical self-reliance. It was presented as radical compassion.

Yes, personal responsibility matters. Scripture is full of teachings about work, stewardship, and accountability. But those teachings were never meant to cancel out mercy. They were meant to exist alongside it.

The modern tendency to treat compassion as weakness and charity as moral failure says far more about our politics than it does about the Gospel.

If your first instinct when someone is hungry is to lecture them…

If your first instinct when someone is sick is to calculate what they owe…

If your first instinct when someone falls is to explain why they deserve to stay there…

Then perhaps it’s worth asking whether you’re following the teachings of Jesus or simply using His name to justify an ideology.

Because the Jesus of the Gospels never healed only the deserving.

He never fed only the productive.

He never loved only the successful.

He simply loved.

Maybe that’s the part so many self-professed Christians never got around to reading.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

One of the more frustrating things about modern politics is how quickly we forget our own history. Every scandal becomes “unprecedented,” every constitutional crisis becomes “something we’ve never seen before,” and every abuse of power is treated as if it materialized out of thin air.

It didn’t.

Donald Trump is not the first president to view the Department of Justice as something that exists to protect him personally. Richard Nixon certainly tried. He expected loyalty over law, believed the machinery of government should shield him from accountability, and discovered the hard way that the Justice Department was not supposed to function as the president’s personal law firm.

History delivered an important lesson back then that seems to have faded from public memory: Attorney General John Mitchell didn’t simply lose his job. He went to prison for his role in Watergate. The Attorney General of the United States served time because the rule of law ultimately mattered more than loyalty to the president.

That’s a lesson worth remembering.

Where Trump differs from Nixon isn’t simply in trying to influence the Justice Department. It’s the breathtaking scope of what he appears to believe the federal government is for. The DOJ isn’t merely expected to defend administration policies. It’s expected to investigate his political enemies, ignore his political allies, defend him personally, and pursue whatever grievance happens to dominate the news cycle that day.

That’s not how constitutional government works. That’s how personal governments work.

Then there’s the Supreme Court.

The Court’s presidential immunity decision granted presidents broad immunity for official presidential acts. Whether one agrees with the ruling or not, it was never intended to mean that a president can wave a magic wand over every action and declare, “Official business.” The difficult question is where the line is drawn, and that line will almost certainly be litigated for years.

Sometimes I joke that if a president claimed he shot someone on Fifth Avenue because it was somehow necessary for national security, we’d spend years arguing whether it was an “official act.” It’s absurd, but that’s the uncomfortable place we’ve wandered into. The immunity decision answered one question while creating dozens more.

The Constitution was never designed around the assumption that one person would believe every institution exists solely for his personal benefit.

The Justice Department belongs to the American people, not to the president.

The Attorney General represents the United States, not the individual occupying the Oval Office.

The Supreme Court is an independent branch of government, not a presidential customer service desk.

Those distinctions matter. They always have.

I dislike using the word “unprecedented” because it’s become the media’s favorite adjective. Everything is unprecedented. Every Tuesday is unprecedented. At some point, the word loses all meaning.

But while Trump’s actions have historical echoes, the sheer scale of his expectations is remarkably different. Nixon tried to bend institutions to protect himself. Trump often behaves as though the institutions exist for no other purpose.

Nixon failed.

His presidency ended in disgrace, his administration unraveled, and some of the people who carried out his wishes paid a very real price—including the Attorney General himself.

History doesn’t repeat itself exactly, but it does rhyme. The hope is that it rhymes loudly enough for Americans to remember that no president is supposed to own the Justice Department, no attorney general is supposed to serve as personal counsel to the Oval Office, and no Supreme Court exists to function as a presidential insurance policy.

The strength of a republic isn’t measured by how much power a president can accumulate.

It’s measured by whether the institutions designed to restrain that power still have the courage to do so.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

For as long as I can remember, we have talked about responsibility in terms of we. Our Constitution begins with “We the People,” not “I the Influencer,” “I the CEO,” or “I the Politician.” Somewhere along the way, though, we’ve managed to invert that idea. We’ve become a society that wants collective credit when things go well but individual victimhood when things go badly.

It’s a strange evolution.

When success happens, everyone rushes to the front of the line to declare, “I did that.” When failure happens, suddenly it’s, “They did this to me.”

We’ve replaced accountability with blame.

Take recent examples. Graham Plattner refuses to simply acknowledge responsibility for his own alleged sexual misconduct. Instead, the story becomes that the Democratic establishment somehow victimized him by exposing or accusing him. Whether the allegations are politically inconvenient is beside the point. If you committed the act, then the responsibility belongs to the person who committed it—not the people who reported it.

Donald Trump operates from the opposite direction but reaches the same destination. Nothing is ever his fault. Inflation? Someone else. The deficit? Someone else. International conflicts? Someone else. Every problem supposedly originated with somebody else, yet somehow he’s also the only person capable of fixing it—even when many of those problems began under his own watch.

That’s not leadership. That’s marketing.

I’ve seen this mindset outside of politics, too. In hospitals, when someone makes a serious mistake, the immediate instinct is often to blame the individual. Yet sometimes the real failure belongs to the organization. Was the employee properly trained? Were procedures clear? Was staffing adequate? If an institution sets someone up to fail, then the institution shares responsibility.

That’s where “we” matters.

Climate change is another example. No single person caused it. None of us individually filled the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. That’s a collective problem requiring collective responsibility. We all benefit from modern society, and we all bear some responsibility for improving it.

But collective responsibility has limits.

Some things simply belong to the individual.

If someone drives drunk, assaults another person, commits fraud, rapes someone, or murders someone, that isn’t society’s fault. It isn’t the media’s fault. It isn’t your political opponents’ fault. Those are personal choices. Those are moments where the word “I” matters.

“I did it.”

“I was wrong.”

“I accept the consequences.”

Those may be the hardest words in the English language.

We’ve become so eager to explain behavior that we’ve forgotten to judge behavior. Understanding why someone made a terrible choice is not the same thing as excusing it.

There is wisdom in the old coaching cliché that “there is no I in team.” Teams succeed and fail together. Organizations rise and fall together. Nations solve problems together.

But there absolutely is an “I” in responsibility.

Responsibility begins with the individual. If I made the decision, I own the decision. If we created the problem together, then we solve it together.

The trick is knowing the difference.

Our culture seems to have forgotten that distinction. We’ve become experts at outsourcing blame while privatizing success. We demand grace for ourselves and accountability for everyone else.

Maybe it’s time to reverse that equation.

Start with the mirror.

Own your mistakes.

Share the victories.

And remember that “We the People” only works when each one of us is willing to occasionally say, “I was wrong.”

Dwain Northey ( Gen X)

One of America’s favorite political myths is that what this country really needs is a businessman in the Oval Office. Every election cycle, someone inevitably declares, “The government should be run like a business.”

No. It shouldn’t.

Governments and businesses have fundamentally different purposes. A business exists to generate profit for its owners or shareholders. A government exists to provide stability, infrastructure, justice, security, and opportunity for its citizens. Those goals overlap occasionally, but they are not remotely the same mission.

Imagine if your local fire department were run strictly like a business. The fire chief would ask for your credit card before putting out your burning house. Public libraries would close because they don’t make money. National parks would be bulldozed into shopping centers because the quarterly earnings report looked better. Rural hospitals would disappear entirely because the return on investment wasn’t high enough.

Businesses ask one question: “Does this increase profit?”

Governments have to ask a much harder question: “Is this good for society?”

Those are not the same thing.

The irony is that many of the CEOs people idolize became successful precisely because they were willing to remove emotion from their decisions. Lay off 10,000 employees? If the stock goes up, congratulations. Close a factory that has supported a town for generations? Sorry, shareholder value comes first. Cut pensions? Eliminate healthcare? Outsource jobs? Wall Street applauds because the balance sheet looks prettier.

In corporate America, compassion is often treated as an expense.

That’s why many successful CEOs develop a reputation for emotional detachment. Whether it’s fair or not, the job rewards an ability to separate human consequences from financial outcomes. It’s not necessarily that they’re evil; it’s that the system incentivizes viewing people as costs, assets, liabilities, or productivity metrics rather than as human beings.

That mindset may increase quarterly profits.

It is a terrible way to govern 340 million people.

A president doesn’t oversee employees. A president represents citizens.

Children with disabilities aren’t line items. Veterans aren’t overhead. Seniors aren’t depreciating assets. Public schools aren’t profit centers. Disaster relief isn’t a bad investment because hurricanes don’t generate revenue.

Human beings don’t fit neatly into spreadsheets.

Running a government also requires accepting responsibilities that no rational business would ever voluntarily take on. The military loses money. Roads lose money. Public health departments lose money. National parks lose money. Scientific research often loses money for decades before producing breakthroughs. Education costs enormous amounts of money long before society sees the return.

A corporation would eliminate many of those expenses.

A civilization cannot.

History has shown this repeatedly. The greatest presidents weren’t necessarily the greatest financiers. They were leaders who understood diplomacy, compromise, history, law, and perhaps most importantly, people. They recognized that the health of a nation cannot be measured solely by GDP or the Dow Jones average. A country is measured by whether its citizens can build meaningful lives, whether justice is applied fairly, whether opportunity exists, and whether future generations inherit something better than what came before.

Balance sheets don’t capture hope.

Quarterly earnings don’t measure dignity.

Stock prices don’t tell you whether democracy is healthy.

Of course, fiscal responsibility matters. Governments shouldn’t waste money simply because they’re governments. Budgets matter. Efficiency matters. Accountability matters.

But reducing the presidency to the role of CEO misunderstands the office entirely.

A CEO’s legal duty is generally to maximize value for the company and its owners.

A president’s moral duty is to serve the people—including those who will never make anyone richer.

Those are entirely different jobs.

Perhaps it’s time we stop confusing corporate success with public service. Being brilliant at increasing shareholder value doesn’t automatically prepare someone to lead a nation of hundreds of millions of unique human beings with different needs, beliefs, struggles, and dreams.

The Oval Office isn’t a corner office.

America isn’t a corporation.

And citizens were never meant to be treated like shareholders—or worse, expendable expenses on someone else’s balance sheet.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

There’s a certain appeal to stepping off the treadmill. Not disappearing from society or becoming a survivalist caricature living in a bunker, but simply asking a question that seems almost radical today: How much do I actually need to live well?

The older I get, the more appealing that question becomes. For those of us pushing retirement age, the idea of getting off the grid starts sounding less like something dreamed up by a guy wearing a tinfoil hat and more like a solid retirement plan. Every year brings another increase in property taxes, insurance premiums, utility bills, grocery prices, and some shiny new subscription we’re apparently supposed to need just to exist. At some point you stop asking, “How do I make more money?” and start asking, “How do I need less of it?”

We’ve built an economy where people work longer hours just to afford bigger mortgages, larger vehicles, and subscriptions to things they barely use. Meanwhile, the basic necessities of life—food, shelter, water, and energy—seem increasingly out of reach for the average person. Maybe the answer isn’t making more money. Maybe it’s needing less of it.

Imagine purchasing a modest piece of land in a state like Nebraska, North Dakota, or Montana. Land is still relatively affordable in many rural areas compared to much of the country. Instead of building an enormous house, you build an efficient one. You dig an eight- to ten-foot-deep greenhouse, taking advantage of the Earth’s natural thermal mass. Below the frost line, temperatures remain remarkably stable throughout the year, dramatically reducing the energy required to heat or cool the greenhouse.

Cover it with modern greenhouse materials, add thermal mass such as water barrels or stone, and supplement it with a modest solar array. Even in northern climates, you could grow lettuce, spinach, kale, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, herbs, strawberries, carrots, and countless other fruits and vegetables year-round. Fresh food wouldn’t arrive on a truck from two thousand miles away. It would be growing a few steps from your kitchen.

Raise a small flock of chickens, and suddenly you have a reliable source of eggs, natural fertilizer for your garden, and, if necessary, meat. If you have the skills—and the stomach—to hunt, deer, turkey, rabbits, or other game could provide much of your protein without relying on industrial agriculture. Add rainwater collection, composting, and perhaps a modest orchard, and you’ve built something remarkably resilient.

This isn’t about rejecting technology. Quite the opposite. It’s about using technology intelligently. Solar panels, efficient insulation, geothermal principles, LED grow lights when needed, rainwater harvesting, and modern greenhouse engineering allow one person or one family to produce far more food than would have been possible a century ago.

More importantly, it changes your relationship with work.

Imagine working because you want to, not because missing two paychecks means missing your mortgage payment. Imagine grocery stores becoming supplemental rather than essential. Imagine inflation making the evening news and realizing it barely affects your dinner table because most of your food comes from your own property.

There’s also something wonderfully satisfying about telling the utility company, “No thanks, I’m good.” The older I get, the more I appreciate the idea that my retirement plan doesn’t hinge on what Wall Street did today, whether the power company needs another rate hike, or whether eggs have suddenly become a luxury item again. If my biggest concern is whether the tomatoes need watering, I’d call that a pretty good day.

Would you still participate in society? Of course. Most people would still want internet access, healthcare, travel, and the occasional luxury. But your dependence on an increasingly fragile economic system would be dramatically reduced.

There’s also a psychological benefit that often gets overlooked. Gardening, caring for animals, repairing your own equipment, and producing tangible results each day provide a sense of accomplishment that many modern jobs simply don’t. Instead of staring at spreadsheets or answering emails that will be forgotten tomorrow, you can literally watch your efforts bear fruit.

Would it be easy? Absolutely not. Gardening requires knowledge. Livestock requires responsibility. Hunting isn’t for everyone, and greenhouse systems still require maintenance and occasional repairs. Off-grid living isn’t an escape from work; it’s trading one kind of work for another. The difference is that your labor fills your own pantry instead of helping some CEO decide whether this quarter’s bonus should buy the yacht or the vacation home.

As technology continues to improve and renewable energy become more affordable, this lifestyle becomes increasingly attainable for people of moderate means. It may never be completely independent of the outside world, but it doesn’t have to be. Independence isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. Every tomato you grow, every egg your chickens lay, every kilowatt your solar panels produce, and every meal that comes from your own land is one less thing you have to purchase from a system that seems to become more expensive and less stable every year.

In an age of economic uncertainty, climate disruption, and a culture that constantly tells us happiness is one purchase away, perhaps the greatest luxury isn’t owning more.

Perhaps it’s needing less.

And honestly, if retirement means trading rush-hour traffic for gathering fresh eggs, harvesting tomatoes in January, and listening to birds instead of cable news, that sounds less like dropping out of society and more like finally figuring it out.