I knew 11 years ago that our public discourse would be degraded down into unfathomable levels. The 2026 campaign in Ohio has now confirmed it beyond anything I could’ve imagined.
Every time I look at a screen, politicians and political operatives are showing a sickness of heart and mind that’s truly horrifying.
So-called “news influencers” fester like open wounds of viral rot on America’s body politic, poisoning the lifeblood of our Republic with sepsis, hallucinations, derangement of the senses.
Obscene amounts of money are being dumped into our elections by a Second Gilded Age Who’s Who of the most monstrously malfunctioning human egoists imaginable.
The most expensive elections in American history are bombarding Ohio families with the stupidest, most despicable campaign ads I’ve ever seen.
In Ohio, nobody can escape this stinking detritus vomited forth from the dark, depraved insides of political operatives and the “consultant” class.
They’ll spend three-quarters of a billion dollars torturing Ohioans with these ads this year, AdImpact projects.
It’s worse than that, though. The dark money special interests are getting a hell of a deal, you see.
To them, it’s only three-quarters of a billion, but on the back end, through regulatory capture, sweetheart lawmaking, government contracts, and a whole galaxy of other mechanisms, they’ll receive hundreds of billions in public goods and resources. It’s pennies on the dollar.
The public is reportedly very concerned about public corruption. They should be. I have not known an Ohio in my adult life without a staggering amount of public corruption.
Now that kind of public corruption is being normalized on the national level, with the most venomous, adolescent politics possible to go alongside it.
I’m aware that the world is full of pathological people. I just will never get used to the fact so many clearly broken, pathological people are put on political and public pedestals and worshipped, fawned over, and platformed, above the great mass of normal, good-hearted people.
I don’t really understand this morally and ethically barren hellscape era of American politics we are in, but I do know normal Ohioans pretty well.
Normal Ohioans are horrified and sick of the madness.
No decent, well-balanced person I know thinks things are going well — absolutely not in our political discourse, but also not in the general American or Ohio experience.
It seems glaringly obvious to normal Ohioans that the political class has abandoned representation of their constituents for the representation of themselves, their friends, and their preferred private and special interests.
Everywhere we turn, families get squeezed, at the grocery store, at the gas pump, for school supplies, for toiletries, for everything from a haircut to our healthcare.
I don’t think the 50-year relentless upward redistribution of wealth in America is doing the trick for Ohio families.
I think Ohio families feel that they’re getting ripped off. I think Ohio families are incredibly frustrated by it.
They turn one way, they get ripped off; they turn the other, they get ripped off again.
Here’s what frustrates me as a crusty old journalist of 20 years: This whole game is so old and so boring, and if only the people of this state and this country could realize the true power they have, they can still fix it. We can demand the best of our public servants and we do not have to settle for anything less.
We do it by standing up for ourselves. We do it by turning away from the screens and toward each other as human beings.
The screwheads and the depraved hucksters of political provocateurs, operatives, and influencers want us to dehumanize each other.
They want us to play in their game, but it’s a bloodsport — it costs human lives and robs humans of their humanity.
It robs the screwheads of their humanity too. Resentful over their lost heart, they try to drag the rest of us into losing ours.
They try to make Americans believe that other Americans are our enemies. They try to convince us that our neighbors want to destroy us, destroy our families, destroy our way of life, destroy the country.
This is all nonsense and demagoguery. Most people just want to live their lives decently and be left well enough alone.
They try to example us to be our worst selves, to narrow our minds, to live in paranoia and resentment, to shut out and reject and dominate and victimize other human beings.
This is a bunch of crap. Anybody who follows that mindset will find themselves and their lives, in time, as soulless and friendless and barren as the ancient texts and fables warned.
The solutions are simple and small but could cascade into something much larger, if humanity in 21st Century America is ever able to regain its grasp.
We stop providing a market for hate and start giving our attention to each other as full human beings, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our communities, in our states, and in our country.
We be honest with ourselves, with each other, and about each other.
We demand honesty of those who seek to represent us in our self-government.
We demand honesty from those who demand our attention.
We demand a fair system to represent our interests and give us equal opportunity to earn our own way.
We recognize that every human being and every human life is different, and we give each other decency and grace.
We cooperate with each other in good faith to build extraordinary and beautiful things that benefit not only ourselves and our communities now but future generations, so they too may continue to cooperate and build extraordinary and beautiful things together.
We’ve gotten into this pit collectively. We can get out of it that way too.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.