The fault lines aren’t invisible. They run like open wounds across the map, splitting neighborhoods, cracking marble columns, and bleeding out what’s left of trust. You walk through the corridors of government now and it smells like a slaughterhouse furnace left burning too long, the air thick with cooked paper and melted ambition. The country isn’t run so much as composted — layer upon layer of corruption and cowardice, moldering under the heat lamps of cable news.
Pam Bondi sits near the center of it all, a ghoul in designer heels, clutching Epstein’s sealed files like a dragon curled on a mound of skulls. She says “privacy” the way priests once muttered “sanctity,” like a magic word to ward off accountability. But behind her eyes you can almost see the names scrawled in blood — the co-conspirators, the clients, the powerful friends who keep her perched at the top of this trash heap. She is the custodian of the vault, and the vault reeks.
Dan Bongino paces nearby, a cartoon of rage stuffed into a suit, veins bulging like power lines about to snap. He knows things — that much he’s admitted — but knowing and speaking are different beasts. Instead he gnaws at his own credibility, whining online, crying in hallways, nursing the tough-guy persona like a wounded mascot. In the ruins he’s not a whistleblower, he’s a guard dog chained to the very kennel that feeds him. You can almost hear the metal clank every time he tries to bark.
And Kash Patel — sweet Christ — Kash Patel sits like a twisted Buddha on a throne of photocopied Q drops, grinning as if the collapse was his plan all along. He wears the ruin like regalia, turning conspiracy into policy, laughing at the smoke curling through the rafters. Trump calls him “a little crazy,” but in this wasteland, crazy isn’t an insult, it’s the qualification.
Hovering above them all is Trump himself, bloated and helium-swollen, tethered to reality by nothing more than cable news airtime and the fevered loyalty of a cult convinced the balloon will never pop. He orders the military to lay sod over the wreckage, to roll green grass across smoking concrete, as if turf can disguise collapse. And the soldiers obey, laying lawns for ghosts while trash burns in oil drums. They are landscapers of empire, janitors of decay.
Congress is no savior here. They sit in hearing rooms that look more like puppet theaters, eyes glassy, lips moving in rehearsed outrage. They sip coffee while the beams groan, calling for “accountability” the way a gambler calls for luck. Half of them know the truth; the other half don’t care. Both sides are comfortable in the ruins because collapse has ratings.
And the media — Jesus, the media is a swarm of neon insects buzzing around carcasses, turning every exposed rib into a chyron. They posture at the gates of the camps, they take panoramic shots of soldiers laying sod, they whisper about sealed files, but they never pry open the coffin. It’s too profitable to keep the corpse on display, embalmed and eternal, a scandal that never quite resolves.
Meanwhile, the people wander the wreckage. Some rage, some laugh, most stagger half-asleep, too exhausted to fight the smell. They are told this is democracy: a burning dumpster rolling downhill, flanked by carnival barkers and snake-oil priests. They are told this is freedom: camps by the swamp, lawns rolled out by soldiers, billionaires floating above them like toxic balloons.
This is not politics. This is a permanent funeral. The coffin is open, the organs sold at auction, the undertakers drunk and playing dice in the corner. America is on the slab, sewn together with fishing line, seams bursting under the heat, and the doctors keep insisting it’s “stronger than ever.”
But when you stand here — in the ruins, with the files locked away, with the sod curling brown on scorched earth, with the soldiers hauling garbage instead of defending the republic — you see the truth plain as daylight. This isn’t a government. It’s a grotesque installation piece, a surrealist trash fire curated by the very people who lit the match.
And the match, my friends, is still burning.
Even in the ruins, there are people who refuse to look away, who won’t swallow the official lies, who won’t let the seams rip without a fight. That’s what Closer to the Edge is built on — not blind optimism, but defiance. If the cowards in power think fatigue will silence us, they’re wrong. If they think secrecy will break us, they’re wrong. We are still here, still writing, still dragging their trash into the light.
If you believe the truth matters, if you believe laughter can survive even in a wasteland, if you believe there’s power in refusing to give up, then back us. Subscribe. Stand with us. Because this fight isn’t over — not by a long shot.
 | A guest post by
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Horrific diagnosis, but too goddamned true. Right now I wish I believed in hell so I'd know every one of the MAGAt scum would be going to it.
What do you think would happen if we set up a taxpayer strike? Refusal to federal pay income tax
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” — Theodore Roosevelt
Exceptionally well written Rook!