Trump’s Chamberlain Moment: How to Appease a Dictator in Three Easy Steps
(Or: How to Hand Ukraine to Putin While Smiling for Russian State TV)
- Foreign policy
- Trump-era governance
- 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 5
The Techno-Monarch They Gave Us
Elon Musk never won an election. He didn't need one—he bought the court instead of the crown.
- Trump-era governance
- Democratic norms
- Civics unhinged
The Inheritance They Wish They Had
A Republic’s Real Heirs vs. Its Imitators
- Democratic norms
- Sovereignty
- Civics unhinged
Vought: The Ideologue with the Budget Knife
The most dangerous man in Washington doesn't shout. He understands what Trump never has—authoritarianism doesn't require chaos. It requires paperwork.
- Civil service
- Trump-era governance
- Civics unhinged
The Heritage Hustle
Welcome to the Ancestral Republic
- Democratic norms
- Sovereignty
- Civics unhinged
World Stage, MAGA Script: The Ignorance Doctrine
The Know Nothings of the 1850s built a movement on proud ignorance. Trump rebooted them—and handed them the nuclear codes.
- Trump's second term
- Foreign policy
- Trump-era governance
The Mirror Holds the Flame (In the imagined voice of Edward R. Murrow)
If Edward R. Murrow walked into a newsroom today, he'd recognize every instrument and few of the values.
- Democratic norms
- Trump-era governance
- Civics unhinged
Coup by Courtesy: How the GOP Handed Over the Keys
Power isn't always seized with tanks. Sometimes a party simply hands over the keys—and calls it governing.
- Democratic norms
- 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
THE ARSONIST’S ECONOMY
An economy designed not to lift citizens, but to weaken them into submission.
- Trade & tariffs
- Trump-era governance
- 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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