it is like nothing has changed
via Jonny Wilson
A Divided America is a powerful and provocative documentary that journeys across the country to confront one of the most pressing issues of our time: the growing political and cultural divide in the United States. Directed by Kelly Nyks, the film blends emotional, street-level interviews with sharp insights from influential figures such as Noam Chomsky, Tucker Carlson, Jesse Jackson, Al Franken, Amy Goodman, Nicholas Kristof, and Robert Putnam, offering a panoramic view of the forces fueling polarization. Rather than delivering partisan answers, Split presents a bold, unfiltered look at how we got here—and what it might take to heal.
spot on!
Donald Trump is not governing.
He’s retaliating.
Against the system that once dared to hold him accountable.
Against the citizens who still protest his rise.
Against the very idea of restraint.
He is now suing the U.S. government ….demanding $230 million from his own Department of Justice. Not for wrongful conviction. Not for proven harm. But for investigating him. For doing its job.
“We’re sort of suing ourselves,” he admitted.
No correction. No crisis. No constitutional guardrail.
Meanwhile, the White House East Wing …. home to national security operations and the First Lady’s office ….. is being demolished to make way for a 90,000-square-foot luxury ballroom.
In a time of economic fragility, climate whiplash, and institutional decay, the priority is crystal chandeliers.
Not hospitals. Not housing. Not healing.
But mirrors, columns, and a space to host elite gatherings in the ruins of governance.
And still, somehow, it gets worse.
As tens of thousands took to the streets in the NO KINGS protest movement, Trump posted a deepfake video of himself flying a jet labeled KING TRUMP, dropping feces on demonstrators. The clip was set to Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins … used without permission.
A presidential meme ….. designed to degrade dissenters, to mock resistance, to turn protest into punchline.
This wasn’t satire.
This was message warfare.
The deepfake wasn’t real. But the intention was.
Mock the masses. Flood the discourse with sludge.
Make the obscene feel absurd. Make the absurd feel normal.
That is the playbook.
Confuse. Distract. Shock.
Then profit from the silence that follows.
This is not new for Trump. But the scale has mutated.
He no longer breaks norms. He bulldozes them.
Then he builds monuments on top of the rubble.
He defunds trust, bankrupts memory, and sells the void back to us as content.
The lawsuits are not legal strategy.
They are dominance rituals.
Declarations of untouchability.
Signals that power now operates beyond consequence.
The ballroom is not architecture.
It’s mythology.
A shrine to self-interest.
A symbol of what happens when spectacle eats the state.
The meme is not a joke.
It’s a test.
A signal to followers, a humiliation for protestors, a reminder that he can fly above the law …. and drop what he wants.
Because this is not democracy anymore.
This is governance by grudge.
Leadership by mockery.
A republic held hostage by a man who turns every institution into either a weapon or a stage.
And if we don’t call it what it is … a shock strategy fueled by spectacle and vengeance … then we become part of the silence that lets it spread.
Trump isn’t making policy.
He’s making content.
And in a distracted empire, content always wins.
He didn’t need a coup.
He didn’t need a war.
He needed a meme.
And a ballroom to dance in while the republic burns.
The new Chief Marketing Officer of America’s biggest brands doesn’t sit in Madison Avenue boardrooms. It sits in Washington. And it doesn’t care about brand love, market share, or cultural relevance. It cares about tariffs.
This summer, General Motors reported a $1.1 billion tariff hit. Apple lost another $1.1 billion in a single quarter. Nike: $1 billion. Adidas: $218 million. These weren’t bad campaigns. They weren’t consumer revolts. They were politicians pulling levers that bled global brands dry.
And the bleeding has reached advertising.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau has slashed its 2025 forecast: US ad spend growth down to +5.7%, from +7.3% in January. The first half of the year looked stable. The second half is where the pain lands.
Marketers aren’t pretending otherwise. Nearly half say they’re cutting budgets outright. Others are shortening campaigns, pausing buys, or fleeing to performance-driven channels where every click can be measured.
The casualties over at the USA are obvious:
It’s a forced pivot from storytelling to transaction. As one media buyer put it bluntly: “Forget brand equity. Just sell before the next tariff drops.”
For decades, marketers told us they were culture’s architects. They built myths, symbols, slogans. But if trade policy can erase billions in ad spend overnight, then culture isn’t designed in creative studios anymore. It’s dictated in tariff negotiations.
That Nike campaign about human potential? It now competes with headlines about price hikes. Apple’s latest innovation launch? Drowned out by quarterly earnings wrecked by tariffs.
Marketers don’t control the message when they’re busy firefighting margin losses. Politicians do.
This isn’t just a budget story. It’s the slow death of brand advertising itself.
With customer acquisition and repeat sales now the only goals that matter, campaigns have collapsed into endless “buy now” loops. The promise of brand-building has been traded for measurable clicks.
It’s not strategy. It’s survival. And survival stories don’t go viral. They go silent.
The ad industry is bracing for more shocks in 2026. Social, CTV, and retail media will grow. Traditional media will shrink further. Marketers will keep demanding proof of ROI at every step.
But the bigger story is this: advertising has lost sovereignty. It no longer writes culture on its own terms. It rents its megaphone from politics.
In 2025, the Chief Marketing Officer of American brands isn’t a strategist, a creative, or even an algorithm.
It’s the tariff.
