For the past seven months, we have been living in a country with no leader, only a performer.

A man who confuses power with pageantry, governance with theater, and control with a camera-ready stunt.

That country is the United States of America. And I am writing to you from there.

Our president doesn’t solve problems. He stages them. And every day, the rest of us are forced to live inside his productions.

We see it when corporations are graded on their loyalty instead of their work. We see it when wind turbines are investigated as security threats while oil companies cash in. We see it when crime falls in Washington, but troops are still sent to the streets so the president can play soldier. We see it when a Spanish-language journalist is jailed for reporting. When the vice president passes out burgers as if a photo-op feeds families. When voting maps are redrawn like stage curtains to lock in power. When Russian hackers break into our systems and the president shrugs, calling it a compliment.

This is not leadership. It is not democracy. It is the dangerous spectacle of power, and the rest of us are paying the price for the tickets we never asked to buy.

Where the president keeps a scorecard. Axios revealed a list of 553 companies rated not on jobs created, not on wages paid, not on how they serve their communities, but on how loudly they praise the president’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Imagine that. The federal government grading businesses like schoolchildren, rewarding applause and punishing silence. That isn’t economic policy. That’s a loyalty test.

And it matters, because when loyalty becomes currency, ordinary people pay the price. Small businesses can’t compete with corporate giants who know how to buy favor. That means higher prices at the store, fewer choices in the marketplace, and a government more interested in applause lines than in the lives of working families.

Think about what this means in real life. A diner in Ohio that’s been serving pancakes for 40 years won’t get a bump in the president’s scorecard, but a corporation that spends millions on ads praising him will. A family-owned farm in Kansas can’t afford glossy PR campaigns, but an energy giant that bankrolls his rallies can. And the rules aren’t written in public where we can debate them, they’re kept in back rooms, deciding who gets heard in Washington and who gets ignored.

When that’s the system, it’s not just businesses being graded. It’s us. Because at the end of the day, it’s our grocery bill, our electric bill, and our job security that rise or fall depending on how loud a CEO claps at the president’s show.

Where even clean energy is put on trial. The Commerce Department launched a national security probe into imported wind turbines. Not oil. Not gas. Wind. The fastest-growing source of clean jobs in America, branded a threat. We already pay 50 percent more on the steel and aluminum needed to build them. Now, this investigation could drive costs even higher.

And who pays that bill? Families already struggling to keep the lights on. Over the past two years, the average American household has seen their electricity bills rise by more than 13 percent. Schools are already cutting art programs and after-school care, now they’ll be deciding whether to cut teachers or cut electricity. Seniors will be forced to ration air conditioning in the middle of record-breaking heat waves. Small businesses that run on thin margins, laundromats, bakeries, corner stores, will see their utility costs climb until staying open isn’t sustainable.

This isn’t about national security. If it were, we’d be reducing our reliance on foreign oil, not targeting the cleanest and most homegrown energy industry we have. This is about staging renewable energy as the villain so oil companies can keep writing the script. It’s a performance designed to make progress look like a threat, while fossil fuel lobbyists sit comfortably in the director’s chair.

Just another episode in the same show: whoever pays Trump the most money, showers him with the loudest compliments, and proves the deepest loyalty is rewarded with financial benefit, regardless of whether it serves the American people or protects the planet we all live on.

Where the president patrols the streets in body armor, playing soldier while crime is actually falling. Violent crime in Washington is down this year. Seventy-nine percent of residents didn’t want the troops there. Sixty-one percent said they felt less safe because of them. None of that mattered. When the cameras are rolling, the truth is a distraction. The only thing that matters is the shot.

Now picture what that means for real people. Parents walking their kids to school with Humvees parked on the corner. Families passing lines of federal agents armed to the teeth in neighborhoods that never asked for them. Entire communities forced to become the backdrop for someone else’s performance. That isn’t leadership. That’s intimidation dressed up for prime time.

And while that show was happening in D.C., another was unfolding in Atlanta. A Spanish-language journalist named Mario Guevara sat in an ICE detention center. His local charges had been dropped. A judge had granted him bond. But he stayed locked up anyway. His crime? Reporting in Spanish. Telling the truth. Bearing witness.

Think about his family. Children waiting for their father to come home. A community waiting for its reporter. What does it mean when the government not only rewards loyalty but also punishes truth? If Mario can be jailed, anyone can. And when journalists are silenced, the rest of us live in the dark.

Where the vice president thinks a burger is a policy. J.D. Vance stood at Union Station, handing out Shake Shack burgers to National Guard troops. A photo-op meant to show gratitude, but instead drowned out by chants of “Free D.C.” Families across America are paying 25 percent more at the grocery store than they did just a few years ago. Seniors are cutting their pills in half. Parents are skipping meals. And yet, this is what passes for leadership: a staged fast-food giveaway for the cameras. A performance that insults more than it inspires.

Because here’s the truth: a staged lunch doesn’t help when your fridge is empty. A burger photo-op doesn’t fix a broken economy. And while the vice president smiles for the cameras, families are staring at their bank accounts and realizing they can’t make rent.

Where democracy itself is redrawn. The president bragged about his “endgame”, a 100-seat Republican majority built not on persuasion, not on policy, but on maps designed to silence voters. In Texas, the new lines are already drawn to deliver five extra GOP seats, even though population growth there has been driven mostly by communities of color. Other states are lining up to follow the same script. And with talk of a national ban on mail-in voting, millions of Americans could be cut out of democracy before they ever even reach the ballot box.

That isn’t representation. It’s choreography. The ending written before the play begins.

And the cost is real. When districts are carved up, entire communities lose their voices. In Texas, Latino neighborhoods are split apart so their votes are drowned out. In Georgia, Black voters are packed into fewer districts to limit their influence. Citizens are reduced to background characters in a play they never auditioned for.

Democracy only works when outcomes are uncertain, when every vote counts the same. But in this production, the outcome is already fixed. The stage is tilted, the script is rigged, and the people are left sitting in the audience, shouting into the dark.

Where even our security is a punchline. Russia is hacking our critical infrastructure, hospitals, universities, manufacturing plants. The FBI sounded the alarm, naming a group called Static Tundra that has been inside our systems for years. They are exploiting decade-old software flaws, burrowing deeper into the networks that keep this country running.

And what did the president say? “They hack in, that’s what they do. They’re good at it. We’re good at it, we’re actually better.” A national security crisis treated like a joke. A threat to our families reduced to banter.

Think about what that means in real life. If hospitals lose access to their systems, patient care stops. If universities are hacked, financial aid records and student data vanish. If manufacturers go down, supply chains break, jobs are lost, shelves empty. Your paycheck, your electricity, your hospital records, your school networks, all vulnerable. And the man in charge shrugs.

For him, the performance matters more than the protection. Security isn’t about keeping Americans safe, it’s about keeping the spotlight where he wants it. Even when the stakes are life and death.

Where science itself is gutted. The Supreme Court let the administration slash $783 million in federal research funding, packaged neatly as an “anti-DEI victory.” But peel back the label and what you find isn’t savings or fairness. It’s fewer medical trials. It’s canceled cancer studies. It’s fewer grants for young scientists trying to find the next breakthrough. It’s slower progress on treatments that could save lives.

I will never forget sitting in my English class after winter break, waiting for my teacher to return. She was an avid skier, a woman in her 60s who lived for the slopes. When she finally came back, she was late, and she was missing nearly half her face. Skin cancer. Years of skiing without sunscreen, back before it was common advice. She looked at us, every one of us teenagers, and said: “If you take anything from me, wear sunblock.” That was the lesson she carried into the room, written across her face.

I think about her. I think about my parents, both of whom battled cancer in recent years. I think about my family member we just lost. I think about my friends who have buried children to cancer. And I think about these cuts. About how they tell us this is about DEI, when in truth it is about abandoning the research that touches every single household in America.

One in three Americans will face a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. That means this is not abstract. This is your neighbor’s chemo drug delayed. Your cousin’s clinical trial never launched. Your child’s doctor left without the tools to push a new treatment forward.

That’s the cost of this spectacle. Hidden behind three letters DEI is the quiet unraveling of research that belongs to all of us. Diversity, equity, and inclusion became the scapegoat. But the real casualty is knowledge itself. Science that should save lives is instead defunded because it didn’t fit the script of the show.

And who pays for that? Not the politicians on the stage. We do. Families waiting for cures. Patients hoping for new drugs. Communities counting on public universities to keep innovation alive. What looks like a political win in the headlines will mean funerals in real life.

This isn’t about saving money. It’s about scoring applause lines. And it is dangerous, because when the government turns science into a political prop, every American family lives with the consequences.

This is the weight of living inside Trump’s ego show.
Where corporations are graded for their applause.
Where clean energy is put on trial.
Where cities are militarized for the cameras.
Where journalists are jailed.
Where democracy is redrawn.
Where cyberattacks are dismissed as jokes.
Where science is defunded.

And I wonder how many people now think:
That power looks like intimidation.
That truth is optional.
That freedom is conditional.
That governance is just another show.

I think about future generations. What does their future look like if this keeps going? What do they learn when the most powerful man in the country shrugs off Russian hackers, jails reporters, redraws maps, and still calls it democracy?

Do they learn that leadership is cruelty with a spotlight? That safety is negotiable? That our country is nothing more than a stage set for one man’s performance?

Because if that is the lesson, then the danger is not just what happens now. The danger is what comes next, when a generation grows up believing this is what leadership is supposed to look like.

Because that is the real danger here. Not just the empty theater itself, but the way it rewrites our expectations. The way it teaches future generations that democracy can be treated as a script and freedom as a prop.

And history warns us of where this leads. We’ve seen it before. Leaders who used spectacle to cover decay. Bread and circuses in Rome. Stage-managed parades in Moscow. The speeches of dictators who promised stability but delivered oppression. Always the same pattern: distract the people, rewrite the rules, punish the truth, and cling to power.

Trump is not new. He is recycling the oldest performance in the book. But the stage is ours. The price is ours. The damage is ours.

And yet, even under the weight of it, there are cracks in the script. Protesters who boo instead of clap (Thank you, Washington D.C!). Lawyers who fight for Mario’s release. Journalists who refuse to stop reporting. Parents who teach their children that leadership is service, not spectacle. That truth matters. That democracy is worth defending.

That is why I still believe. Not in the show. Not in the ringmaster. But in us. In the people who refuse to be the silent audience. In the ones who demand more than theater.

This is not normal. It never will be.

And as long as we keep naming it, as long as we refuse to accept the spectacle as reality, we have a chance to write a different ending.

So feel the destruction. Name the theatrical performances for what they are. And then fight back.

Share this post. Talk about what is happening. Whatever you do, don’t stay quiet. Democracies die in the dead of the night. We are not going to lose this one.

This fight is not over. I still have hope for America. And so should you.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

P.S. If this spoke to you, share it. Save it. Talk about it.