It is the middle of August, the heat of late summer suffocates the cities and plains alike, and across the ever-decaying carcass of Empire, the Theater of the Absurd plays on with a kind of deranged endurance. Washington, bloated with money and ancient lies, hums like a ruptured hive. At its epicenter, men in power—saturated in entitlement and perfume-thick delusion—howl, blubber, and bellow their way through another “historic week” of crisis-management, which is to say, performance art stitched together by lobbyists and sugar-addled interns.
Today’s performance began with a particularly unhinged gesture of diplomacy as the aging imperial court attempted to orchestrate a direct meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin—a fantasy dressed up in the language of peace but reeking of geopolitical calculus and PR desperation. The American president, flushed with the gall of his own ego, bellowed through pursed lips about the “extraordinary possibility of resolution,” a phrase that dripped from his jowls like molasses fermenting in a war-room sewer. His mouth moved, his eyes glazed over, and his handlers, twitching with glee, watched as their master once again tap-danced on the stage of statesmanship like a drunken vaudeville relic.
At a hastily thrown-together press conference, National Security goblins slithered out of their under-lit caves, their tongues flicking, their suits radiating Beltway rot. One anonymous official, his tie soaked in the gravy of military contracts past, grunted that “we’re optimistic about this high-level engagement,” a phrase which, decoded, means absolutely nothing and was followed by a 47-minute exposition on “deterrence posture”—which is, as usual, the pseudo-academic term for threatening to vaporize children.
But if Ukraine remains the theater’s Act I, Gaza continues to serve as its never-ending encore. With stomach-churning predictability, the U.S. State Department shat out a recycled ceasefire proposal, previously rejected by both parties earlier in the summer, now dressed in new buzzwords and dripping in the bloodless language of “stability.” A White House spokesperson, whose press credentials might as well be etched into a gilded dog collar, shrieked at reporters that “the administration remains committed to a peaceful two-state solution,” her lips slick with fresh verbal diarrhea and the metallic tang of complicity.
All of this unfolded beneath the heavy cloak of media fog, where commentators with eyes glazed from decades of think-tank hors d’oeuvres earnestly tried to decipher this charade as though it bore any relation to reality. One MSNBC host, still drunk from a brunch panel, called the Zelenskyy–Putin proposal a “pivotal moment in global diplomacy,” shortly before mispronouncing Donbas, Chechnya, and geopolitics in the same sentence. Meanwhile, ratings soared.
Back in Gaza, the people—those actually being blown to bits, whose homes dissolve under U.S.-funded drone fire—walk calmly through the wreckage with a dignity that no Western institution could manufacture or even comprehend. There, in the craters of statecraft’s latest failure, children dig for their toys in rubble and mothers bury their sons beneath broken walls. They do not screech about ceasefires on camera. They do not beg to ram their noses into the sphincters of their paymasters. They quietly endure, still seeking balance amid the relentless chaos, still holding space for life even as machines of death scream overhead.
They are joined, across oceans and borders, by others just as grounded. Whistleblowers with trembling hands and iron hearts calmly leak memos detailing the latest arms deals signed beneath the tables of faux-negotiation. Grassroots activists speak with quiet clarity in community centers with leaky ceilings and no surveillance budgets. A former teacher from Wisconsin gently holds her neighbor’s hand at a town hall where local police have just received surplus armored vehicles “donated” by the Pentagon. A healer in East Oakland organizes a food share while federal agents kick in the door of a Palestinian elder halfway across the globe.
These are not people who seek power. These are not creatures of profit or hollow spectacle. These are human beings. They do not perform. They simply live. They do not command, they tend. They do not sell, they sow. And that is why the spectacle must drown them out.
The pageantry of Empire cannot survive a population that simply stops watching the show.
But as always, the actors persist. They perform because they must. To stop is to reckon. And reckoning is fatal to illusions. So instead, they howl. They dance. They puke empty slogans and brandish empty gestures. They print flags on bombs and tweet emojis from their bunkers.
They are not leaders. They are not diplomats. They are the ghouls of empire’s final act, tap dancing in grease-stained boots on a world ablaze.
And yet the Earth still turns. The rivers still run clear in the cracks of bombed cities. The trees still grow through concrete. And somewhere—between the roar of drones and the shriek of pundits—a child still sings.
This is not the collapse of diplomacy. It is the collapse of illusion. The great unraveling has no anthem, no press release, no cinematic arc. It arrives as an undoing—a slow unfurling of everything built on lies, everything sold to us with the smiling corpse-face of power.
And in that unraveling, there lies a subtle truth, not offered by governments nor ideologies nor the preachers of reform. It does not shout. It does not vote. It does not plead. It simply waits, like still water in a forgotten well.
To see it, one must stop seeking salvation in systems built for control, stop begging tyrants to behave like teachers. To see it, one must look—not out at the crumbling spectacle—but inward, where compassion and clarity rise unbidden. Real transformation begins not with the banners of resistance, but with the quiet undoing of one’s complicity in the dream of power.
The system cannot be corrected. It was designed to devour. It can only be seen clearly—and, upon that clarity, walked away from. Not with violence, not with fear, but with the deep, unshakable truth that freedom cannot be bestowed. It can only be lived.
Footnotes:
- “Trump pushes for Zelenskyy–Putin meeting” – The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/19/first-thing-trump-pushes-for-zelenskyy-putin-meeting
- “US discussing latest Gaza ceasefire proposal” – Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-discussing-latest-gaza-ceasefire-proposal-white-house-says-2025-08-19
- “Trump says no to US troops in Ukraine” – AP News: https://apnews.com/article/eb92b356b959170ea1921cbbce7c5911