The Bonfire Of the Mediocrities

Trump's cabinet picks are exactly as preposterous as we all expected.

Imagine a Capitol hearing room once reserved for the likes of George Shultz or Condi Rice. Today, that space hosts a cast that makes the ensemble in Boogie Nights seem emotionally stable. We were warned that Trump’s second‑term cabinet would be a rolling disaster, but the reality has politely exceeded the forecast.

Kristi Noem is first off the clown car. The former South Dakota governor treats her post as a perpetual costume change: bomber jacket on Monday, velvet ball gown on Tuesday. If Noem actually encountered a copy of the Constitution, it would burn her like a cross burns a vampire; “habeas corpus” sounds to her like a new CrossFit move.

At least Noem is visible, which is more than can be said for FBI Director Kash Patel, the bureaucratic Bigfoot. Technically, he runs an agency you fund, yet no camera has captured him since confirmation. Evidently, staff at the ATF saw Patel as often as Elon Musk’s children saw their father, so Patel got the boot from what’s probably the most badass job in D.C.

If it’s raw emotion you seek, Dan Bongino obliges. The former Secret Service agent and now deputy director of the FBI built a talk‑radio empire peddling conspiracy theories, only to be hired into a job requiring him to painstakingly debunk the same nonsense. For instance, on his radio show, Bongino regularly suggested billionaire Trump bestie and teenage girl enthusiast Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in prison. Now, he is faking a backlash from his conspiracy-minded followers after he declared what we knew all along - Epstein killed himself.

So now America tunes in nightly to watch him bawl on live TV about how exhausting it is to mop up his own rhetorical oil spill.

Security, meanwhile, is Pete Hegseth’s Achilles heel—though he seems unaware he has one. The defense secretary forwards operational battle plans to buddies in an unsecured Signal chat labeled “Protein Shake Recipes/Secret War Plans.” Between emoji reactions, cousins weigh in on whether the 82nd Airborne should pivot left or right. Vladimir Putin must feel like he’s been granted a platinum-level subscription to American secrets free of charge.

Then there’s Scott Bessent, chief economic strategist and walking case study in the Dunning‑Kruger effect. Ask him how tariffs work, and he gushes about “great deals” the way late‑night infomercials tout shammy cloths. Bessent keeps running to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to cite debunked studies used by cognitive fruit flies to argue that somehow American consumers don’t pay tariffs. His next step will be to get Wilford Brimley to do a commercial explaining how we can fund the government with a reverse mortgage.

Hovering over this smoldering ash heap is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who recently strolled into HHS and cashiered an entire advisory board because its members had the audacity to believe in—of all things—vaccinations. He delivers each pink slip with the zeal of someone auditioning for Measles Czar, vowing he won’t rest until every American child can scratch at a spotted rash like it’s 1955 again. In an administration addicted to self‑inflicted wounds, RFK Jr. arrives brandishing the viral equivalent of a chainsaw.

Individually, these characters would be amusing side dishes. Together they constitute the Bonfire of the Mediocrities, a roaring blaze fed by résumés printed on rally swag. The fire consumes policy goals, institutional memory, and the public’s last scraps of trust. Agencies now schedule “explain your basic job” seminars just to keep the lights on.

Predictability is supposed to be the consolation prize of mediocrity—you don’t expect brilliance, but at least you avoid flamboyant collapse. This cabinet flips the formula: their failures are not unfortunate surprises; they’re the entire business model. When your defense chief leaks plans, your economic guru misunderstands tariffs, and your constitutionally illiterate Homeland Security secretary thinks Miranda Rights is an episode of Sex and the City, calamity ceases to be a black swan and becomes a daily press release.

Every conservative mantra—limited government, fiscal prudence, peace through strength—requires grown‑ups who understand levers, not selfies. Trump has taken that principle, stapled it to a piñata, blindfolded the nearest Fox News host, and handed him a bat. The right may laugh, the left may rage, but taxpayers mostly stare at the bill. Adversaries staffed by professionals do not pause while Kristi picks a new ensemble. Markets do not wait for Scott to rediscover Econ 101.

The collateral damage is already measurable. Career civil servants shuffle out the door, taking decades of expertise with them, because no one wants to be the violinist on this Titanic. Procurement deadlines slip, allies stop returning calls, and a generation of policy analysts decides DoorDash offers a clearer advancement track.

Perhaps, in some saner timeline, this cabinet serves as a civics‑class exhibit: choose loyalty over merit and watch the crash in real time. But we inhabit the actual timeline, and the rubble is ours to clear. Conservatives who once prized competence are left rummaging through charred agencies, hoping some manuals survived the heat. At some point, the joke stops being funny and starts being a line item in the deficit.

Fires, even bonfires, eventually burn out. The trouble is what remains: warped steel, cracked foundations, and a stink that lingers in the curtains. Rebuilding will require years and leaders who treat the Constitution as more than a backdrop for a photo-op.

ALSO: The Changing Face of “Real” Estate

If you live in a normal American city, you have no doubt driven by your local mall and seen large retail spaces that are either empty or repurposed for more active pursuits. With people buying more products online, big box stores are being shut down and converted into businesses that allow people to do things rather that buy things. (A Toys R’ Us, for example, could be converted into a giant activity center with trampolines and climbing walls.)

It seems that transition could soon be coming to our homes. For as long as I have been alive, one way people have demonstrated their wealth has been by having a large home. The era of the McMansion (brought low in the 2008 housing crisis) saw full neighborhoods of giant houses with lots of rooms, pools, and basketball courts - all the amenities favored by the nouveau riche.

But the technological era could start to change the size of the homes people favor. In the old days, you needed different rooms for different things - maybe you needed a few rooms to store books or art or to use as an office. If you wanted a different experience, you had to go to a different room.

But with technology - computers, VR headsets, mobile devices, video games, and the like, you can have all the experiences right there in one room. You can house all your books on one iPad, listen to music and watch every movie available on your television, and travel the world on your laptop computer. Who needs a 15,000 square foot home when you can do literally everything you want in a single 150 square foot room? Why pay all that extra money to maintain a huge house when the ten feet in front of your face can give you all the entertainment you need?

And that is just for the people who manage to maintain a life outside the virtual world. Some people are going to dive into VR headsets and never come out. For these people, large homes will be irrelevant, and anything larger than a single-room home (plus maybe an extra room or two, depending on whether they have families) will just seem wasteful. The only space they will need will be a few feet to lie down while they live their lives inside their own heads.

So look forward to the day when, just like driving an enormous gas-guzzling truck, having a large home will seem like a remnant of the past. Tiny homes will be the natural end result of our estates no longer being real.

ALSO:

For some reason this weekend, I ended up watching the 1999 movie Notting Hill. As a card-carrying Gen X-er, I had never seen it, and given it is one of the staples of my generation’s diet, I felt I should see it at least once.

To my surprise, I found it delightful. Hugh Grant’s back probably ached for months after filming, as he had to carry Julia Roberts through that movie - her only inspired bit of acting is at the end, when she gives her “I’m just a girl” speech.

I liked it so much, I decided to delve a bit more into the ‘90s rom-com genre, renting 1994’s Four Weddings and a Funeral the next night. Again, the movie starred Grant, and again, I really enjoyed it. (Perhaps the most unbelievable part of these films is Grant’s age - despite playing a rakish, confused young man, he was 34 and 39 years old in the two movies. It is safe to say Hugh Grant moisturizes.)

But I do have once question: Does every Hugh Grant movie involve Grant’s character:

1. Falling in love with an American girl who secretly has a boyfriend; and

2. Grant sleeping with that girl before she runs off, only to have to find her; and

3. Grant having a wacky group of friends that all take part in a plot to help him win the girl back; and

4. Grant has a relative or friend that has a disability that becomes an important plot point in his quest to find love?

(There are other similarities, but they would be spoilers.)

The only other observation: In Four Weddings, Grant goes to watch Andie MacDowell try on wedding dresses. After seeing one dress, he simply says, “DIVINE.”

A year later, Grant would be involved in a very public controversy after hiring a prostitute in Los Angeles. The woman’s name? Divine Brown. It’s like he was signaling us.

FINALLY:

I had never been a big Chris Stapleton fan, although I had known a lot of people who really adored him. That is, until I saw his 2024 performance of “Mountains Of My Mind” on Saturday Night Live:

Beautiful.