Paying taxes is like putting gas in a car you’ll never drive. You fill it up, they thank you, and then they drive off to who-knows-where while you’re left standing there like an idiot, waiting for a ride that’ll never come. They’ve got a tank full of your cash, and you’ve got a pothole-ridden street, a crime wave, and a Department of Education that somehow manages to teach less with more money. It’s like they’re trying to set a world record for “most wasted potential.” You know, kind of like a Harvard graduate living in their parents’ basement.

We’ve been sold a bill of goods, folks. You pay your taxes, and in return, you get services. Great deal, right? In theory, yeah. Most of us don’t mind chipping in for the basics: police, national defense, and border enforcement. They say it’s there, but you’re not seeing much service for what you’re paying. Still, for the sake of argument, we can live with that.

But then there’s the other stuff — those bloated, inefficient government agencies with functions as clear as a cloudy day, where they shovel your tax dollars into a bottomless pit and tell you that somehow, this is progress. And when things inevitably get worse, they ask for more money to fix it. “We just need a little more to get things right!” Sure, you do. Just like the Department of Education needs more money to teach basic math, and the Department of Transportation needs more cash to figure out how to pave a goddamn road.

And what’s worse? The narrow-focus agencies that have one job. ONE JOB. Like FEMA. “Federal Emergency Management Agency.” Their entire purpose is in the name. It’s not “Federal Every-Time-There’s-a-Problem-We-Give-Money-to-Everybody-Else Agency.” No, they’re supposed to handle emergencies. Disasters. But you know what happens when a real emergency strikes? FEMA rolls up and says, “Sorry, we spent our last few billion on illegal immigrants and Ukraine, so you’re on your own! Good luck!” Oh, well, thanks for nothing. But hey, at least we got a nice photo-op of them standing next to a flood while holding a giant check for somebody not drowning right now.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m paying for an emergency response agency, I expect them to, I don’t know, respond to emergencies. Crazy, right? Apparently, not. And what do they say when you call them out on it? “We weren’t prepared!” Prepared? How the hell do you take billions in taxpayer money every year and still not be prepared for the one thing you’re supposed to be prepared for? You had one job, FEMA! ONE JOB. It’s like hiring a lifeguard who spends the summer learning to juggle while kids are drowning in the pool. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t think today was going to be the day I actually had to save somebody.”

The truth is, public institutions have become experts at one thing: failing upwards. They take your money, waste it, and then come back with their hand out for more because they weren’t “ready” for the job they were created to do. And we just keep paying, like the suckers we are. Because, what are you gonna do? Stop paying taxes? Sure, and then we’ll get a letter from the IRS saying we’re “non-compliant.” Non-compliant? Hell, at this point, it’s the government that’s non-compliant. You know, with reality.

So, at first, you think, “Alright, this has to be part of a grand conspiracy, right? A classic patronage network.” You know, where public institutions are nothing more than well-oiled machines for rewarding your buddies, starving your enemies, and ensuring that only the people who kiss the right rings get the resources. You break your back paying taxes, and all the money ends up going to the same damn people: the insiders, the cronies, the deep state fan club, obedient lackeys, and of course, your local neighborhood leftists.

Think about it: a hurricane hits. People need help. FEMA’s got billions to spare—or so you’d think. But who’s actually getting the money, the resources, the relief? Not the people who need it. When it impacts the wrong voting demographic who aren’t card-carrying member of the “approved victims” list, you can forget about help. They don’t vote for the Democrat party. Sorry, no FEMA for you. You’re not the right crowd to receive public money. And, to make it worse, you hear rumors—hell, you hear allegations—that volunteers, people who actually give a damn, are being blocked from helping. Imagine that! Good people, trying to step in where the government fails, and they get told, “Step aside, citizen. Please no help for them.”

Is this a real emergency agency? You can’t even manage to show up, but you’ve got time to stop volunteers from handing out water and blankets? What’s the logic there? Oh, right—no logic. Just patronage. If it’s not flowing through the proper channels, through the “approved” networks, it’s not allowed. You’re out there in a flooded home, waving for help, but unless you’re a fully-vetted member of the elite leftist disaster response team, don’t expect much.

At first, you figure, “Hey, this is just how the machine works. This is how patronage works.” The people who run these agencies aren’t interested in actually helping—they’re interested in keeping their supporters happy and making sure anyone who disagrees with them gets nothing but a view from the wrong end of the shaft. It’s all about keeping the right people fed and the wrong people starved. Leftists are in control now, so the system’s working exactly how they want it to. They reward their people, and if you’re not in that group, well, tough luck.

But then—then you start to think, “Maybe it’s worse than that.” Maybe, just maybe, it’s not some grand, evil scheme to withhold emergency help from non-leftists. Maybe it’s not malice at all. Maybe it’s something even dumber. Maybe it’s just good, old-fashioned incompetence. You know, the kind of stupidity that can only come from giving the steering wheel to someone who doesn’t know how to drive and telling them, “Don’t worry, just floor it and hope for the best.”

Let’s be honest—have you seen who’s in charge of some of these places? It’s like the hiring process went from “best and brightest” to “who fits the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion checkbox the fastest?” You used to want people with competence. Now it’s about making sure the color palette looks good on the department photo. And that’s how you end up with people in charge of emergency response who probably couldn’t plan a birthday party, let alone manage billions of dollars and save lives.

So, let’s take FEMA again. Theoretically, their job is simple: stockpile resources, prepare in advance by staging recovery resources when potential hurricanes are about to get dangerous, be ready to deploy them, and when disaster strikes, make sure people don’t die. You don’t need a Ph.D. to figure that one out. But guess what? When the head of FEMA has their head so far up the bureaucracy that they can’t plan ahead and fail to respond, you start to see how maybe—just maybe—they accidentally gave away all their money to illegal immigrants because they thought it was a good look. “It’s for the greater good,” they say, as they leave American citizens to drown in a flood. Brilliant strategy. There are always billions for immigrants, but when it comes time to deliver food, water, and life saving medicine to mountain valleys where citizens live, they somehow can’t seem to find the money.

You see, it’s easy to blame incompetence. You can picture the meeting: someone with a PowerPoint explaining how “redirecting funds to migrants will spread good will,” while completely ignoring that those funds were supposed to save citizen lives here, you know, in the country they built and wanted to have families in. But it’s all dressed up in these meaningless buzzwords: “synergy,” “global cooperation,” “crisis stabilization.” And before you know it, they’ve handed out billions to foreigners, thinking they’re solving pressing problem for citizens. Meanwhile, Joe Citizen is floating by on a mattress in his living room, wondering why the hell his tax money didn’t keep him from drowning.

And the best part? These idiots probably don’t even realize they’ve done anything wrong. In their minds, it’s a noble sacrifice. Globalism, baby! They’ll worry about the American emergency when it’s too late, but hey, at least they’ve made migrants no one wants feel better. And that’s what matters, right? That warm glow of self-righteousness while everything else burns around them.

Here’s a fun fact: we’ve let a bunch of agreeable idiots run the place. You know who I’m talking about—those sweet, smiling bureaucrats who look like they couldn’t find their own asses with a flashlight and a map. They don’t know anything, they can’t do anything, and yet, somehow, they’re in charge of everything. Why? Because they’re obedient. They follow orders. That’s it. No knowledge, no ability, no character—just mindless compliance with the latest ideological trends. And we wonder why everything’s going to hell.

You used to think leaders were supposed to be, I don’t know, smart? Capable? Maybe even moral? At least have some character, some backbone. Nope. Turns out, the only thing you need to climb the ladder in public institutions these days is the ability to parrot the right slogans and tick the right boxes. Who cares if you can actually do the job? That’s old-fashioned thinking, folks. The new qualification for leadership is whether or not you can be a good little follower. And let me tell you, they’re excellent at following. The problem is, they don’t know where the hell they’re going.

These people couldn’t lead a kindergarten class to snack time, but here they are, steering the ship of state with all the expertise of a blindfolded toddler. And when the inevitable disaster hits, what do they say? “Whoops! We didn’t see that coming.” Of course, you didn’t. You didn’t even bother looking. You were too busy making sure you didn’t offend the wrong people, didn’t step out of line, didn’t make any independent decisions. You’ve got an emergency? Good luck with that. You’re dealing with leaders who think planning is something that happens to other people.

And let’s talk about dumb decisions for a second. These people can’t explain their own choices, but they sure as hell can repeat the nonsense someone else fed them. They sit there in press conferences, blank-eyed, mumbling the same pre-approved phrases, the same dead language of bureaucrats and spin doctors. Ask them for details—real details—on why they spent billions of dollars on some project that doesn’t work, or how they plan to fix an institution that’s failing at its one and only mission, and watch the panic set in. Their faces go blank, they stutter, and then they fall back on their favorite excuse: “Well, we’re working on it.” Oh, you’re working on it? That’s great. Can you maybe start working on understanding what the hell your job even is?

These clowns don’t have forethought. They don’t plan. They don’t prepare. The concept of looking ahead and making sure things work smoothly seems completely foreign to them. You ask them what steps they’re taking to make sure the system won’t collapse next time, and they act like you just asked them to solve quantum physics in a language they don’t speak. “Uh, well, we have a committee for that.” Yeah, sure you do. A committee of more agreeable idiots, no doubt.

You know what’s funny? They’re consistent. Not at success, mind you. No, they’re consistent at failing. They fail every time, in the same predictable ways, because they don’t understand what’s necessary for their position. They don’t understand their own mission. You could throw them in a room with a stack of instructions and a full team of experts, and they’d still come out saying, “We need more diversity training.” Diversity training! That’s the go-to solution for everything. Your hospital’s understaffed? Diversity training. Your school’s failing? Diversity training. Your bridge collapsed? Well, it probably wasn’t inclusive enough.

It’s not that they’re trying to destroy things—hell, they’re not smart enough for that. They’re undermining civilization because they’re just too dumb to understand how it works. They’ve been given public money, public trust, and control over essential institutions, and instead of asking, “How can we make this better?” they’re busy making sure nobody gets offended at the next HR meeting. That’s their top priority. Not progress. Not stability. Not saving lives. Just making sure they don’t step out of line. You want to know why everything’s falling apart? That’s why.

And here’s the kicker—they have no idea what they’re doing wrong. None. They can’t figure out why the roads aren’t getting paved, why the schools are failing, why hospitals are overwhelmed. They think it’s all just bad luck or a conspiracy keeping them down. “Oh, well, we did our best!” No, you didn’t. You never did your best. You never even tried. You were too busy following orders, making sure you didn’t say the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. You weren’t leading—you were just complying.

So now we’ve got a government full of leaders who don’t know how to lead, who don’t care about results, and who can’t explain their own failures. But they’re obedient, and that’s what matters, right? Well, guess what? Obedience doesn’t save lives. It doesn’t build bridges. It doesn’t educate children. It doesn’t pave roads. It just makes sure the system keeps chugging along, failing at every turn, until there’s nothing left to fail at.

So, let’s talk about migrants, shall we? Because apparently, the patronage network isn’t limited to which citizens get funded. No, the grift has gone global. It’s not enough that we have public institutions here at home falling apart at the seams—we’ve got to bring in replacement for regime enemies and get them hooked on free money for compliance. Yeah, it’s the right thing to do if you’re more concerned with looking good at cocktail parties than actually doing your damn job.

But hey, what’s a few billion between friends, right? And don’t be too surprised if it turns out the Ukraine money finds its way back into the pockets of the Democrat Party, or maybe a nice, cozy lobbying gig for one of those “public servants” who somehow always seem to land on their feet despite a career where every move spreads expensive failure for the US. The world’s shadiest laundromat is open for business, and the spin cycle’s on high. And while the money’s getting scrubbed clean somewhere between Kyiv and Washington, guess what’s happening back home? Oh yeah, you still don’t have power after that last hurricane. FEMA’s broke. But at least Ukraine’s getting all the attention it needs.

You see, in their minds, sending billions to migrants who are reliable Democrat voters while you drown in floodwater is the right thing to do. Forget the fact that FEMA’s one job is to handle emergencies here for American citizens. No, no, they’re playing the long game now. They’re hoping, maybe praying, that no hurricanes, no earthquakes, no fires will hit while they’re busy paying for a replacement population who will tolerate corruption and incompetence. That’s their plan. Hope. Hope it all works out. Hope we get a few calm years, with no disasters. Because, you know, the weather’s always so predictable and emergencies can be postponed if inconvenient.

But here’s the thing about hope—it’s a lousy strategy when you’re running an emergency response agency. What you need is resilience. Depth. You need to be prepared for any damn thing that could happen. You need warehouses full of supplies, fleets of trucks, battalions of responders who can deploy at a moment’s notice. What you don’t need is to empty your coffers, wave goodbye to your resources, and then cross your fingers that Mother Nature’s feeling merciful this year.

But that’s where we are. Fragility. We’ve got public institutions that are supposed to be built for resilience but instead, they’re as brittle as a fortune cookie in a fistfight. And when the next disaster strikes—and it will—we’ll get the same pathetic excuse: “Sorry, we spent the money on something else. Guess you’re on your own.” That’s the official line now. Feigned impotence. The same institution that used to pride itself on saving lives is now shrugging its shoulders and saying, “Oops. Maybe next time.”

You can call it patronage. You can call it malice. Hell, you can call it plain old incompetence. It doesn’t matter what it is exactly—it’s the same spirit of failure in every one of our public institutions. They all crumble the same way, from the inside out. They’ve forgotten their purpose. They’ve forgotten who they serve. And now, as they fall apart, they drag the rest of us down with them.

What’s worse is that it’s not even some grand, external force taking us out. No foreign power, no cataclysmic event. No, we’re doing this to ourselves. A civilization, weakened and wounded from its own stupidity. We’re bleeding out from a thousand little cuts—each one made by the same dull knife of bureaucratic rot and self-righteous incompetence.

We’re watching the decline in real-time, folks. It’s happening right before our eyes. And the sad part? It could have been avoided. It wasn’t some inevitable collapse. No, this was chosen. Chosen by the very people we put in charge. The agreeable idiots. The feeble followers. The ones who don’t know how to lead, don’t know how to plan, and wouldn’t know resilience if it hit them upside the head. And now, they’re taking us all down with them.

So here we are. Living through the slow-motion destruction of public institutions that once held this place together. And the worst part? There’s no one left to fix it. No one left to care. Just a bunch of hollow suits, watching it all burn, as they siphon off whatever’s left. Welcome to the future, folks. Hope you brought a life raft. You’re going to need it.