The grotesque spectacle of government waste and fraud now being dragged, squirming and indignant, into the light of day in these early weeks of the Trump administration is a revelation not just of the corruption inherent in our ruling class but of something perhaps more insidious: the failure—nay, the willing dereliction—of what dares to call itself a free press. The very same media organs that preen and posture about their sacred duty to “speak truth to power” have, with a consistency that would be admirable if it were not so contemptible, turned their backs when the truth was too inconvenient, too damning, or worse—too obvious. The watchdogs of democracy, those brave sentinels at the gate, have proven to be nothing more than ornamental lapdogs, content to bark only when their masters instruct them to do so.
The Washington Post, for instance, has long adorned itself with the high-minded slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” But one is left to wonder: where, precisely, was this crusading beacon of enlightenment when the very corruption it now reluctantly acknowledges was running rampant? The so-called “mainstream” press did not fail in its duty to investigate; failure implies effort, however feeble. No, they refused. They abstained. They sat, glassy-eyed and bovine, before the open sewer of government malfeasance and, rather than follow the stench to its festering source, elected instead to busy themselves with the latest manufactured outrage or the pettiest partisan quarrel. What an admirable dereliction of duty! What a triumph of selective blindness! They did not simply look away; they participated in a grand act of deception, one so vast and so corrosive that it can only be described as complicity.
That the government mismanages, squanders, and pilfers our money should surprise no one. It is, after all, what it does best. The machinery of state, bloated and creaking under its own obscene weight, operates on a single immutable principle: the conversion of public funds into private gain. If history has taught us anything, it is that the ruling class will always find new and inventive ways to enrich itself at the expense of the citizenry, all while solemnly assuring us that it is for our own good. But that the media—the self-anointed Fourth Estate, the proud heirs to the noble traditions of muckraking and whistleblowing—should aid and abet such wholesale theft is an offense far more grievous. This is not journalism; it is propaganda, a fraudulent masquerade in which the participants affect the garb of inquiry while diligently ensuring that no inquiry takes place.
Consider, if you will, the sheer scale of their abdication. The same institutions that spent years hyperventilating over phantom scandals, that inflated the most trivial controversies into existential crises, that breathlessly assured us that democracy itself was in peril at every turn, have now fallen into a curious and deafening silence when confronted with actual, quantifiable, irrefutable corruption. And one must ask: why? Why this staggering incuriosity? Why this meticulous selectivity in their outrage? The answer, of course, is as simple as it is damning. Their interest was never in truth. Their loyalty was never to the public. Their purpose was never to inform. No, their allegiance has always been to the establishment, to the very institutions they pretend to scrutinize, and their function—far from being adversarial—has been to protect, to shield, to obfuscate.
To call them journalists is an insult to the very word. They are courtiers, flatterers, and, above all, enforcers of a narrative that exists not to illuminate but to obscure. Their raison d’être is not to expose power but to sustain it, not to challenge corruption but to excuse it when it is politically expedient to do so. And now, as their dereliction becomes impossible to ignore, as the rot seeps through the floorboards, they affect an air of belated concern, as though their ignorance were accidental rather than calculated. It is a spectacle at once pitiful and enraging, a transparent attempt to feign credibility when it has already been squandered beyond reclamation.
But here, perhaps, lies a glimmer of hope. For the American people, weary of the endless deception, have begun to take notice. The spell is breaking. The carefully curated illusion of a fearless and independent press is disintegrating under the weight of its own contradictions. The public, subjected to years of sanctimonious lecturing on the virtues of journalistic integrity, has begun to ask—quite rightly—why these virtues seem to operate only in one direction. And when an institution so thoroughly discredits itself, when it reveals itself to be not merely incompetent but dishonest, its authority is lost forever.
This, in the end, is the real story—not merely the exposure of government fraud, but the exposure of the media’s fraudulence in failing to report it. The great unraveling is upon us, and the charlatans who once masqueraded as truth-tellers are left scrambling, desperate to reclaim an authority they squandered through their own mendacity. But it is too late. Their betrayal is evident. Their complicity is undeniable. And no amount of belated, performative concern can wash away the stain of their deception. This is not just a crisis of governance; it is a crisis of journalism itself. And the American people, having finally seen the lie for what it is, are under no obligation to believe it any longer.
