Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
More and more of us are becoming political junkies looking for our next dopamine hit.
Dopamine, that pleasure reward in our brain, is offered as encouragement for most people when we do good things and is the reason our addictions are so hard to give up. For me, it’s the chips and cookies I reach for when I’m stressed. For others it’s gaining political power, opiods, alcohol, tobacco, video games, pornography, winning an argument, “being right” and more.
Every time we watch media that confirms our beliefs, we get a little bit of dopamine. That’s why it feels like torture when we expose ourselves to news that doesn’t conform with our beliefs. There is no pleasure hit with dopamine to support widening our views. This is why facts don’t matter to people who have different beliefs. Most people don’t have a good enough reason to build the stamina to withstand the feeling of torture. No, it’s not really torture. It’s healthy civic behavior without an obvious reward.
As a nation, we are looking for our next dopamine fix. This has led us to the doorways of at least two different realities. One leads to corruption and greed everywhere. And the other … wait. The other reality offers corruption and greed, too. Where we diverge is over the cause of corruption and greed. There’s plenty of blame to go around; the opposing party, “those people,” giant corporations, and Wall Street among too many to name. And guess what? When we assign blame “ over there,” we get a dopamine hit. Because it’s not me. Righteous or self-righteous feelings arise.
As a nation, we have short-circuited our collective chemistry. And like all addictive behavior, ruin will follow unless we stop looking for our next fix and start addressing the pain, the trauma, the reality that we are all responsible. The United States will not be healthy until we reset our national chemistry – including normal amounts of dopamine for healthy behavior.
Why have we succumbed to an addiction-fueled culture where we would sacrifice our country?
Social media algorithms have made our fixes easier to get. Count the reactions on our own posts. Over 50? Dopamine hit. Like or “angry face” another’s post? Dopamine. Share a post to find your people? Dopamine and more dopamine. Video games likely deliver dopamine even faster. (I’m not a gamer, but have read some articles about it.)
At an ever increasing pace, Americans go for the dopamine fix, before anything else. It might be the news, our mobile devices and social media, it might be the next election or campaign. It might be the next battle in the Senate. Dopamine rules us as political junkies.
How might we start breaking our addiction to political junkie dopamine? We might start with a personal inventory of which behaviors lead to a healthy or unhealthy nation.
Unhealthy civic behavior:
- Watching or listening to conflict entrepreneurs who hook us to enrich themselves.
- “Stirring the pot” like a conflict entrepreneur just to get a reaction.
- Yelling at anyone because you are frustrated. This includes ranting on social media.
- Retweeting some outrageous misbehavior.
- Sharing disinformation.
Healthy civic behavior:
- Adopt a “do no harm” attitude.
- Engage only when you can contribute in a healthy way.
- When you are triggered, take a break and walk away. Manage yourself.
- Amplify the positive on social media 10x more than negative or angry content. Or resolve to not air or engage in grievances on social media.
- If pointing out injustice, ask for accountability and avoid blaming others.
- Shun the conflict entrepreneurs and do not honor them with your time.
- Attending local meetings with elected officials and honoring the dignity of others, regardless of your agreement or disagreement with their views.
- Be willing to change your mind when new information warrants it.
When I’m challenged by friends who watch conflict entrepreneurs and engage in the blame game, I ask what they want to happen and how it might impact their life. I remember that most people want to live a safe and meaningful life in community with others. We want to leave the world a better place than we found it, and have some material comfort.
This is how I get my dopamine hits; through connecting around our shared humanity. Not an absence of tension, but seeing others’ fears and hopes as connected to mine. I see our shared journey towards a just society.
Healthy dopamine comes from deep connection, exercising our (civic) muscles and knowing we make a positive impact on those around us.
Let’s get healthy together. One day at a time.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers a keynote speech at the 62nd Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, in Munich, Germany.
Marco Rubio is the only adult left in the room
Finally free from the demands of being chief archivist of the United States, secretary of state, national security adviser and unofficial viceroy of Venezuela, Marco Rubio made his way to the Munich Security Conference last weekend to deliver a major address.
I shouldn’t make fun. Rubio, unlike so many major figures in this administration, is a bona fide serious person. Indeed, that’s why President Trump keeps piling responsibilities on him. Rubio knows what he’s talking about and cares about policy. He is hardly a free agent; Trump is still president after all. But in an administration full of people willing to act like social media trolls, Rubio stands out for being serious. And I welcome that.
But just because Rubio made a serious argument, that doesn’t mean it was wholly persuasive. Part of his goal was to repair some of the damage done by his boss, who not long ago threatened to blow up the North Atlantic alliance by snatching Greenland away from Denmark. Rubio’s conciliatory language was welcome, but it hardly set things right.
Whether it was his intent or not, Rubio had more success in offering a contrast with Vice President JD Vance, who used the Munich conference last year as a platform to insult allies and provide fan service to his followers on X. Rubio’s speech was the one Vance should have given, if the goal was to offer a serious argument about Trump’s “vision” for the Western alliance. I put “vision” in scare quotes because it’s unclear to me that Trump actually has one, but the broader MAGA crowd is desperate to construct a coherent theory of their case.
So what’s that case? That Western Civilization is a real thing, America is not only part of it but also its leader, and it will do the hard things required to fix it.
In Rubio’s story, America and Europe embraced policies in the 1990s that amounted to the “managed decline” of the West. European governments were free riders on America’s military might and allowed their defense capabilities to atrophy as they funded bloated welfare states and inefficient regulatory regimes. Free trade, mass migration and an infatuation with “the rules-based global order” eroded national sovereignty, undermined the “cohesion of our societies” and fueled the “de-industrialization” of our economies. The remedy for these things? Reversing course on those policies and embracing the hard reality that strength and power drive events on the global stage.
“The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending,” Rubio said, “because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life.”
I agree with some of this — to a point. And, honestly, given how refreshing it is to hear a grown-up argument from this administration, it feels churlish to quibble.
But, for starters, the simple fact is that Western Civilization is an abstraction, and so are nations and peoples. And that’s fine. Abstractions — like love, patriotism, moral principles, justice — are really important. Our “way of life” is largely defined and understood through abstractions: freedom, the American dream, democracy, etc. What is the “Great” in Make America Great Again, if not an abstraction?
This is important because the administration’s defenders ridicule or dismiss any principled objection critics raise as fastidious gitchy-goo eggheadery. Trump tramples the rule of law, pardons cronies, tries to steal an election and violates free market principles willy-nilly. And if you complain, it’s because you’re a goody-goody fool.
As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said not long ago, “we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” Rubio said it better, but it’s the same idea.
There are other problems with Rubio’s story. At the start of the 1990s, the EU’s economy was 9% bigger than ours. In 2025 we were nearly twice as rich as Europe. If Europe was “ripping us off,” they have a funny way of showing it. America hasn’t “deindustrialized.” The manufacturing sector has grown during all of this decline, though not as much as the service sector, where we are a behemoth. We have shed manufacturing jobs, but that has more to do with automation than immigration. Moreover, the trends Rubio describes are not unique to America. Manufacturing tends to shrink as countries get richer.
That’s an important point because Rubio, like his boss, blames all of our economic problems on bad politicians and pretends that good politicians can fix them through sheer force of will.
I think Rubio is wrong, but I salute him for making his case seriously.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.