Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
The shadowy politics industry is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Many Americans don’t know this industry exists. Before the 1990s, there were elections managers who helped candidates get elected. Often, these people might work for either political party. But during the Clinton administration something changed. A harder, more partisan approach became vogue. Then came the Citizens United decision, unleashing Super PACs and a new nirvana for political manipulators.
Technology advances were part of the equation, too. As our ability to target people with custom messages evolved, the new politics industry advanced to take advantage of the new technology. And then came social media to provide additional tools and niche marketing. Candidates are packaged in a formulaic manner to win elections. “Common good” ideals seem quaint by comparison.
This evolution was brought on by the politics industry of electioneers, party loyalists, marketers and conflict entrepreneurs, who together contribute to the toxic polarization we see in society. Individually, they are part of a Manhattan-like project, compartmentalized from one another, working their part of an election to subvert the common good in favor of winning elections. It’s time we have second thoughts about the value of winning “at any cost.”
The politics industry has brought us:
- All-or-nothing thinking.
- A disregard for the process of democracy.
- Paranoia that “they” are out to get us.
- Viewing other Americans as the enemy and/or evil.
- Nothing can happen unless we win.
- News bubbles that disallow for multiple viewpoints.
- A flawed census.
- An on going insurrection movement.
Collectively, our social norms have been eroded, exploded and imploded to the point where appeals to our basest survival instincts are used to create conflict among Americans. This is how nations fall. Appeals to our first instinct – that survival instinct – which resides in every human brain, easily manipulate and fool us into thinking our actions are righteous. They are not.
It is only on second thought, when we look around and see that our survival, in reality, is not at risk. Once we assure our survival, then we can engage with critical thinking. We can question “the answer” presented in front of us by the politics industry that “those people or ideas are evil.” We should stop and ask ourselves if there is another explanation and explore multiple perspectives.
In the wake of the leaked memo about the potential – and likely – Supreme Court decision overturning of Roe v. Wade, I received more than 50 appeals for money. Likely you did too. The politics industry will not let a controversy play out in the media when its practitioners could enrich themselves with campaign cash to lambast their opponents.
I am angry about this subversion of our democratic process.
Women’s health, like everyone’s health, is an issue I care deeply about. Yet I resist the knee-jerk reaction to be outraged or donate money to support my perspective. My outrage and money will not be used to support the politics industry that has taught us to follow our first (base) instinct instead of our second (rational) thoughts.
Like so many matters, this is a wedge issue that the politics industry is using to its advantage and our downfall. Maybe you recognize some of the other issues used in every election cycle?
- Gun rights and gun control.
- Immigration.
- Gender and sexuality.
- Vaccines.
- Free speech.
I posit that most Americans don’t realize the extent to which our thinking has been influenced by this shadow industry. Each of us believes our thinking to be infallible, because we live in our information bubbles without challenges.
This is our biggest danger.
It’s time we have second thoughts about any demonization of others. We need spaces and relationships to test what we believe using our critical thinking skills. When we challenge each other, we become stronger. We reweave our social fabric to co-create new social norms. The politics industry doesn’t want us talking to each other. It makes their job of winning elections harder. I say, let it be hard to subvert democracy.
Are we brave enough to follow our second thoughts?
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.