When the Story Stops Working
Trump's presidency runs on belief, and belief depends on keeping its contradictions apart. That distance is closing.
- Trump-era governance
- Democratic norms
- Civics unhinged
Civics Unhinged — A chronicle of American absurdity, written with a straight face and a sharp pen. Civics Unhinged — satire for those who still give a damn. — Page 2
The Bill Comes Due
Prices rise, confidence slips, allies hedge. None of it is ideological—it's mechanical, and mechanics always assert themselves.
- Trump-era governance
- Democratic norms
- Civics unhinged
The Qualification Gap
What JD Vance Reveals About Who Governs Now
- Trump's second term
- Trump-era governance
- Loyalty economy
The Lawyer Who Tried to Kill the Law
A failed argument can be tried again. A disqualifying one cannot. How the Big Lie ran out of room.
- Trump-era governance
- Democratic norms
- Civics unhinged
When the System Doesn't Need to Make Sense
In a system where contradiction is no longer a liability, coherence ceases to be a requirement. What follows is not chaos, but a form of control that no longer needs to make sense to function.
- Trump-era governance
- Democratic norms
- Civics unhinged
The Exception That Proves the Rule
How Trump's Governing Model Produces Cotradictions at Home and Abroad
- Trump-era governance
- Democratic norms
- Foreign policy
Stamped Twice
What You Still Get When Democrats Govern — And What Trump Keeps Burning Down
- Trump-era governance
- Democratic norms
- Civics unhinged
The Ugly Americans Among Us
As Americans increasingly view their political opponents as morally “bad,” the old warning about the Ugly American begins to feel less like a stereotype and more like a civic diagnosis.
- Democratic norms
- Trump-era governance
- Civics unhinged
Escalation Without Architecture
The United States is escalating a conflict it cannot fully describe, at a cost it has not fully explained, against a threat it has not clearly defined.
- Foreign policy
- Trump-era governance
- Civics unhinged
When Governance Becomes Political Hostage Taking
Trump told his own party economic relief would wait until they delivered his election-law demands. That isn't coalition governance—it's leverage.
- Trump-era governance
- Democratic norms
- Civics unhinged
About Civics Unhinged
Civics Unhinged is the new home for my long-form satire and political commentary — a place where essays can breathe without algorithms or paywalls. I write about the civic unraveling of our time: the absurdities of power, the decay of seriousness, and the endurance of humor as a last civic virtue. Dunnegin is a former senior federal official, policy analyst, and longtime political consultant who has advised members of Congress, federal agency heads, and corporate leaders. He has spent decades...
About Civics Unhinged
The Real Heirs of the Republic
Heritage, Myth, and the Power We Inherit
- Democratic norms
- Sovereignty
- Civics unhinged
World Stage, MAGA Script: Willfulness as Governance
How impulse displaced architecture in American statecraft [This essay is Part 1 of a two-part series on Trump’s foreign policy method and its global consequences. Part 2, Coercion Without Credibility Publishes March 3.]
- Trump's second term
- Trump-era governance
- Civics unhinged
History’s Exit Interview: Notes from the End of Progress
Somewhere between the ruins of Enlightenment optimism and the latest GOP fundraiser, History called it quits.
- Democratic norms
- Trump-era governance
- Civics unhinged
When Courts Rule but Power Doesn't Listen
Why Judicial Power Now Turns on Compliance, Not Rulings
- Trump-era governance
- Democratic norms
- Civics unhinged
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A chronicle of American absurdity, written with a straight face and a sharp pen. Civics Unhinged — satire for those who still give a damn.
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