RFK Jr. is a fool. Who in their right mind is taking medical advice from a worm in a suit? He looks less like a candidate for president and more like something wriggled out of a rotten apple, dressed itself up, and decided it had opinions on vaccines. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so predictable: America has always had room in its tent for a good sideshow freak.
And that’s exactly what this political moment feels like—a carnival gone feral. Step right up, folks! For just the price of your democracy, you can see the full lineup. On the right side of the big top, Stephen Miller, a ventriloquist dummy channeling Nazi rhetoric with all the charisma of a haunted coat rack. In the center ring, Trump, the self-proclaimed “very stable genius,” stumbling over words like a toddler choking on alphabet soup. And slithering in from the shadows, RFK Jr., hawking his snake oil: autism caused by Tylenol! Never mind science, never mind reason—what sells here is spectacle.
It’s not even subtle. Miller dusts off the greatest hits of 1930s fascism like he’s spinning vintage vinyl. Trump forgets which century he’s in but still insists he’s the smartest man alive. And RFK Jr.—God help him—he’s the guy in the medicine show cart, swearing that this tincture of ground-up worms and cough syrup will cure everything from melancholy to madness. What he lacks in evidence, he makes up for in audacity. And his audience, bless them, claps like trained seals.
But maybe that’s the joke. Maybe we’ve always been living in the circus, and the only mistake was ever thinking otherwise. Politics as governance? Please. Politics as carnival has better lighting, louder music, and more laughs per ticket. The freaks have climbed out of the sideshow and taken over the center ring, and the crowd can’t get enough.
So what do we do? We point. We laugh. Because if you don’t laugh at the absurdity of a worm in a suit arguing with a clown in a crown while a ghost of fascism rattles its bones in the background—well, you might start crying instead. And honestly, that’s what they’d prefer: a scared, weeping audience. Better to be laughing.
The American political circus doesn’t deserve solemn analysis. It deserves mockery. The stakes are deadly serious, yes, but the players? They’re ridiculous. Clowns, worms, and snake-oil men don’t merit reverence. They merit derision—pointing, laughing, and the occasional tomato tossed from the cheap seats.
So laugh loud. Laugh hard. Because if democracy’s going down, it might as well go down to the sound of us cackling at the idiots who thought they were kings.