When someone in power compares the American economy to the Titanic

JD Vance Compares The US Economy to the Titanic 

Yeah… I hear the exhaustion in this.  After eating the Cats and Dogs, That kind of bone-deep exhaustion where it’s not just politics anymore—it’s grief. - KHS

By Kenneth Howard Smith

APACHE JUNCTION, AZ [IFS] --When someone in power compares the American economy to the Titanic, that’s not analysis, it’s theater. And when the metaphor is coming from the same people steering the ship, it lands less like honesty and more like abdication. If you’re in charge and you’re telling the passengers the hull is breached, the next question is obvious: who hit the iceberg, and why are you still at the wheel?

What you’re describing isn’t just disagreement with policy. It’s the loss of a baseline—of norms, of restraint, of the quiet assumption that the Constitution mattered even when presidents were flawed. Reagan irritated people. Clinton embarrassed people. The Bush years enraged people. But there was still a shared understanding that the system itself wasn’t disposable.

That’s the rupture.

For a lot of veterans especially, the betrayal cuts sharper. You took an oath to an idea, not a man, not a party. Watching leaders treat that idea as optional—or worse, as an obstacle—feels like watching someone casually deface a memorial you bled for. Somalia in ’93 was chaos, but it was honest chaos. Everyone knew it was a mess. What’s happening now feels surreal because the disorder is wrapped in suits, press releases, and social-media soundbites pretending this is all normal.

And no—you’re not crazy for feeling like the news used to be boring in a good way. Boredom meant stability. It meant institutions were doing their jobs quietly. When the president’s name is unavoidable every five seconds, it’s usually because something is on fire.

One thing I’ll say, gently: this feeling that “the end is here” has shown up before in American history—Reconstruction, the 1930s, Vietnam, Watergate. Each time, it felt terminal to the people living through it. Sometimes the country emerged worse. Sometimes better. But never unchanged. What you’re really mourning might not be the end of the United States, but the end of the version of it that felt familiar and trustworthy.

That doesn’t make the anger wrong. It makes it human.

If you want, we can channel this into something sharper—an op-ed, a Sunday long read, or even just a structured way to say this is why it feels different this time. You’ve got lived history, not just opinions, and that matters.