America’s back on the couch. We open with the shutdown-as-family-drama: unpaid essential workers, trust leaking out “in buckets,” and a Congress that swapped governing for purity tests and cable hits. It isn’t politics; it’s low differentiation with triangulation and emotional cutoffs, and the kids (us) feel it first.

Then the fun-house mirror: an AI-crowned digital king flinging sludge* on critics while a chunk of the country flirts with strongman fantasies. That isn’t satire; it’s validation hunger, narcissistic injury, and shame armor dressed up as memes. We talk about why chaos makes “decisive” feel holy, even when it’s unconstitutional later.

Last pour: TikTok’s privacy wobble. The app softens its “we’ll notify you” promise to law enforcement and reminds everyone that surveillance doesn’t start with punishment; it starts with belonging. Younger users shrug (“we’re watched anyway”), which is how norms shift while you’re dancing. Government anxiety plays helicopter parent, and once monitoring expands, it rarely contracts.

Prescriptions
• Label synthetic media on campaign content as parody/propaganda, big enough to read without pausing.
• Chore-chart Congress: no governing, no allowance. Anyone saying “leverage” while people miss rent does a 48-hour unpaid “reality” internship; anyone planning a “shutdown strategy retreat” funds staff groceries first.
• Satire break: try the “government surveillance starter-pack” costume. Salute the cameras.
• Retire royal cosplay. Republics don’t role-play monarchy.

Bourbon roll call makes a cameo, but the diagnosis is sober: we’re normalizing chaos and calling it content. Let’s stop cosplay monarchy, pay people for work already done, and act like adults in a shared house.

"Got Thoughts? Outrage? A Diagnosis of Your Own? Send us a text"

Support the show

Shrink The Nation is where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.
Hosted by board-certified psychiatrists and mental health pros with backgrounds in military, media, and systems thinking, we break down the psychology behind politics, culture, and public dysfunction.
Smart. Funny. Clinically sharp. Slightly buzzed.

Subscribe, rate, and share if you’re part of the exhausted middle looking for sanity in the noise.

For feedback or hate-listening invitations, hit us at [email protected].

Follow us everywhere: @shrinkthenation on X, Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky

Shrink The Nation — On the Couch With America.