Civics UnhingedThe Real Heirs of the Republic
Heritage, Myth, and the Power We Inherit
Civics UnhingedAbout 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...
Civics UnhingedHistory’s Exit Interview: Notes from the End of Progress
[Editor’s Note: In eras when progress was still possible, History played the role of witness — recording what a people built. But in the Trump era, public life has turned backward, not forward, and the work of government stewardship has collapsed into sabotage. Career civil servants are leaving government in record numbers because leadership has been replaced with duplicity. This essay imagines History itself joining the exodus — resigning not because the work is complete, but because those e...
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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Civics UnhingedStamped Twice
Support Civics Unhinged
Civics UnhingedStamped Twice
Civics UnhingedThe Real Heirs of the Republic
Heritage, Myth, and the Power We Inherit
Civics UnhingedAbout 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...
Civics UnhingedHistory’s Exit Interview: Notes from the End of Progress
[Editor’s Note: In eras when progress was still possible, History played the role of witness — recording what a people built. But in the Trump era, public life has turned backward, not forward, and the work of government stewardship has collapsed into sabotage. Career civil servants are leaving government in record numbers because leadership has been replaced with duplicity. This essay imagines History itself joining the exodus — resigning not because the work is complete, but because those e...
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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We live in a nation where you can spot the party in charge by looking at whether things are still standing. Bridges. Budgets. Civil rights. We had two years of genuine, grown-up governance under President Biden. Two years of bills passed, promises (mostly) kept, and adult decisions made. Then the circus returned. And suddenly everything — from climate funding to childcare subsidies to food assistance — has a target painted on it. Because the MAGA movement doesn’t govern, it un-governs. It burns the furniture, calls it renovation, and then sells the ashes on Rumble.
You already know this if you read Stamped Blue and Stamped Red, my paired dispatches from the two Americas we keep trading like a used mattress. But it’s time now for a third stamp. One that looks not just backward or forward, but through the middle of the wreckage. Because Trump didn’t return to finish what he had started, he returned to torch what Biden had built.
🎧 Listen to the narrated version of Stamped Twice: What You Get When Democrats Govern — And What Trump Keeps Burning Down (8 minutes, 23seconds).
When Democrats Govern: A Brief, Unpopular Success Story
Let’s review what the media mostly shrugged at during Biden’s two-year governing window:
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — The most significant infrastructure investment in nearly a century.
CHIPS and Science Act — Restoring American leadership in semiconductors.
Inflation Reduction Act — Climate investments, prescription drug reform, corporate tax minimums.
American Rescue Plan — Immediate pandemic recovery funding for families, schools, and local governments.
PACT Act — Health care for millions of veterans exposed to toxic burn pits.
Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — The first major gun safety legislation in 30 years.
That list should be printed on every mailbox between Bar Harbor and San Diego. Instead, most voters can barely name two of them, and many blame Biden for post-pandemic inflation caused by Trump’s incompetent pandemic-era governance, global supply shocks, and corporate price gouging. You know — the usual fairness of American political memory.
Yet the results were real. Under Biden, roads and bridges got fixed. Broadband expanded. Clean energy began to rise like crops in once-abandoned fields. Kids got lunch. Veterans got legitimate healthcare. Seniors got lower drug prices. Biden’s forward-looking policy initiatives were the government working for the people, not always glamorously, and not with cable-news panache. But in quiet, essential, Rooseveltian fashion. Then came the backlash.
Trump’s Second Coming: No Plans, Just Power
Trump returned to office not because he offered a plan, but because the GOP saw a grudge to be settled. The Supreme Court paved the way. His media echo chamber, aided energetically by mainstream media, hyped it. And his party — chained to him like a failed magician to a trick that never quite worked — was too cowed to offer an alternative candidate.
So here we are again:
Trump is ranting about tariffs and tanking global supply chains.
Trump passed another costly tax cut for the extremely wealthy.
Trump is defunding climate investments.
Trump is purging civil servants.
Trump is holding the budget hostage like a debt collector with a grudge.
Trump is filling the executive branch with ideologues, sycophants, and the occasional internet-famous grifter.
Gone are the days of cautious policy rollouts. Now it’s just vengeance, vendettas, and twenty-minute rants from the golf cart. Forget the Big Lie; Trump 2.0 is about the Big Payback.
The Republican Product: Cruelty — Performed Daily
Stamped Red wasn’t satire. It was a prophecy. You voted Republican? You got:
Books banned in school libraries.
Reproductive rights crushed.
LGBTQ+ families targeted.
Voting access narrowed.
Science silenced.
Agencies gutted.
These weren’t side effects. These were features.
And now, in Trump’s encore term, these features are metastasizing. Civil rights groups are under surveillance. Conspiracy theorists are rewriting the CDC guidelines. Women crossing state lines for health care are being tracked like fugitives. Immigrants — even legal ones — are facing new rounds of arrests, detentions, and deportations.
We are not in a governance cycle. We are in a punishment cycle. Government, to the GOP, is a tool to reward the loyal and crush the rest. MAGA politics is feudalism with Wi-Fi. The only question they ask of public policy is: who gets hurt and who gets paid?
Stamped Twice: What the Voters Must Remember
This essay isn’t a nostalgia tour for Biden’s first term. It’s a reminder that the guardrails only stay on the bridge if you keep voting for the people who believe in bridges to support those guardrails.
It took Biden and the Democrats two years to lay a new foundation for America’s recovery, equity, and forward-looking governance. It took Trump and his allies less than six months to set the dynamite charges and begin blowing holes in it, much like those who tried to erase Warsaw brick by brick.
Stamped Twice is what you see when you look through the smoke and realize:
One party builds. The other sells torches.
Unless the electorate learns to recognize the difference, we’ll keep voting ourselves into the fire.
Final Thought from the Bleachers
Trump isn’t back because he was missed. He’s back because enough voters stopped paying attention to how good it felt when the calliope was quiet. But the shrill music is blaring again, and Stephen Miller is handing out programs.
There is no mystery left — only memory.
Stamped Blue gave you governance. Stamped Red gave you grievance. And this essay, Stamped Twice, is your reminder of the choice still in front of you.
And if you’re still unsure what choice to make, consider this: under Biden, kids got laptops and school lunches. Under Trump, they’ll get coal in their stocking and a civics quiz proctored by Elon Musk and Joe Rogan.
Pick your stamp. While you still can.
— Dunneagin
Civics Unhinged
Watch short-form video commentary on YouTube Shorts: https://www.youtube.com/@civics_unhinged/shorts
☕ Reader editions and collected volumes are available at:
https://f-p-dunneagin-shop.fourthwall.com
👉 Thank you for listening and for your support.
We live in a nation where you can spot the party in charge by looking at whether things are still standing. Bridges. Budgets. Civil rights. We had two years of genuine, grown-up governance under President Biden. Two years of bills passed, promises (mostly) kept, and adult decisions made. Then the circus returned. And suddenly everything — from climate funding to childcare subsidies to food assistance — has a target painted on it. Because the MAGA movement doesn’t govern, it un-governs. It burns the furniture, calls it renovation, and then sells the ashes on Rumble.
You already know this if you read Stamped Blue and Stamped Red, my paired dispatches from the two Americas we keep trading like a used mattress. But it’s time now for a third stamp. One that looks not just backward or forward, but through the middle of the wreckage. Because Trump didn’t return to finish what he had started, he returned to torch what Biden had built.
🎧 Listen to the narrated version of Stamped Twice: What You Get When Democrats Govern — And What Trump Keeps Burning Down (8 minutes, 23seconds).
When Democrats Govern: A Brief, Unpopular Success Story
Let’s review what the media mostly shrugged at during Biden’s two-year governing window:
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — The most significant infrastructure investment in nearly a century.
CHIPS and Science Act — Restoring American leadership in semiconductors.
Inflation Reduction Act — Climate investments, prescription drug reform, corporate tax minimums.
American Rescue Plan — Immediate pandemic recovery funding for families, schools, and local governments.
PACT Act — Health care for millions of veterans exposed to toxic burn pits.
Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — The first major gun safety legislation in 30 years.
That list should be printed on every mailbox between Bar Harbor and San Diego. Instead, most voters can barely name two of them, and many blame Biden for post-pandemic inflation caused by Trump’s incompetent pandemic-era governance, global supply shocks, and corporate price gouging. You know — the usual fairness of American political memory.
Yet the results were real. Under Biden, roads and bridges got fixed. Broadband expanded. Clean energy began to rise like crops in once-abandoned fields. Kids got lunch. Veterans got legitimate healthcare. Seniors got lower drug prices. Biden’s forward-looking policy initiatives were the government working for the people, not always glamorously, and not with cable-news panache. But in quiet, essential, Rooseveltian fashion. Then came the backlash.
Trump’s Second Coming: No Plans, Just Power
Trump returned to office not because he offered a plan, but because the GOP saw a grudge to be settled. The Supreme Court paved the way. His media echo chamber, aided energetically by mainstream media, hyped it. And his party — chained to him like a failed magician to a trick that never quite worked — was too cowed to offer an alternative candidate.
So here we are again:
Trump is ranting about tariffs and tanking global supply chains.
Trump passed another costly tax cut for the extremely wealthy.
Trump is defunding climate investments.
Trump is purging civil servants.
Trump is holding the budget hostage like a debt collector with a grudge.
Trump is filling the executive branch with ideologues, sycophants, and the occasional internet-famous grifter.
Gone are the days of cautious policy rollouts. Now it’s just vengeance, vendettas, and twenty-minute rants from the golf cart. Forget the Big Lie; Trump 2.0 is about the Big Payback.
The Republican Product: Cruelty — Performed Daily
Stamped Red wasn’t satire. It was a prophecy. You voted Republican? You got:
Books banned in school libraries.
Reproductive rights crushed.
LGBTQ+ families targeted.
Voting access narrowed.
Science silenced.
Agencies gutted.
These weren’t side effects. These were features.
And now, in Trump’s encore term, these features are metastasizing. Civil rights groups are under surveillance. Conspiracy theorists are rewriting the CDC guidelines. Women crossing state lines for health care are being tracked like fugitives. Immigrants — even legal ones — are facing new rounds of arrests, detentions, and deportations.
We are not in a governance cycle. We are in a punishment cycle. Government, to the GOP, is a tool to reward the loyal and crush the rest. MAGA politics is feudalism with Wi-Fi. The only question they ask of public policy is: who gets hurt and who gets paid?
Stamped Twice: What the Voters Must Remember
This essay isn’t a nostalgia tour for Biden’s first term. It’s a reminder that the guardrails only stay on the bridge if you keep voting for the people who believe in bridges to support those guardrails.
It took Biden and the Democrats two years to lay a new foundation for America’s recovery, equity, and forward-looking governance. It took Trump and his allies less than six months to set the dynamite charges and begin blowing holes in it, much like those who tried to erase Warsaw brick by brick.
Stamped Twice is what you see when you look through the smoke and realize:
One party builds. The other sells torches.
Unless the electorate learns to recognize the difference, we’ll keep voting ourselves into the fire.
Final Thought from the Bleachers
Trump isn’t back because he was missed. He’s back because enough voters stopped paying attention to how good it felt when the calliope was quiet. But the shrill music is blaring again, and Stephen Miller is handing out programs.
There is no mystery left — only memory.
Stamped Blue gave you governance. Stamped Red gave you grievance. And this essay, Stamped Twice, is your reminder of the choice still in front of you.
And if you’re still unsure what choice to make, consider this: under Biden, kids got laptops and school lunches. Under Trump, they’ll get coal in their stocking and a civics quiz proctored by Elon Musk and Joe Rogan.
Pick your stamp. While you still can.
— Dunneagin
Civics Unhinged
Watch short-form video commentary on YouTube Shorts: https://www.youtube.com/@civics_unhinged/shorts
☕ Reader editions and collected volumes are available at:
https://f-p-dunneagin-shop.fourthwall.com
👉 Thank you for listening and for your support.
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