The Price of the Performance State (🇺🇸 US-UK🇬🇧 Edition)

For years, Americans have argued over whether the government spends too much or too little.That may no longer be the most important question.What if the real question is why the government spends at all?In this essay, I argue that Trump’s second presidency reveals something larger than fiscal irresponsibility. Public money is increasingly judged less by what it accomplishes than by what it communicates. Spending becomes spectacle. Policy becomes performance. Citizens become the audience.If that transformation is real, it changes far more than the federal budget.It changes the relationship between the American people and their government.— DunneaginFull essay and the rest of the dispatches here → https://ai.paragraph.com/@civicsunhinged — free, by email, the day each one publishes. No fanfare, just the next one.☕ Reader editions and collected volumes: https://f-p-dunneagin-shop.fourthwall.com— Civics Unhinged | F.P. Dunneagin Get full access to ~ Civics Unhinged: Dispatches From Trumpistan ~ at dunneagin.substack.com/subscribe