Saturday Digest at the Circus
The week the mask slipped—and what it revealed about power, fragility, and the choice ahead
Something cracked open this week. Not in a single moment, but across multiple fault lines—revealing the brittleness beneath what’s supposed to look like strength, the fear beneath what performs as dominance, and the civilizational choice we can no longer avoid making.
This week at Notes From The Circus, we’ve been documenting that cracking in real time. Let me walk you through what we saw—and what it means.
Before we get to the essays, I want to highlight something different we did this week: I joined
on his Homefront livestream Thursday night for an extended conversation about Silicon Valley, moral cowardice, and the dangerous class we’re creating.We talked about the anti-anti crowd—people who see Trump’s authoritarianism clearly but somehow think the real problem is those opposing him. Why PirateWires (run by Peter Thiel’s VP of Marketing) decided
was the real threat. Why sophisticated skeptics extend infinite charity to power while demanding perfection from its critics.But we also went deeper—into the economic precarity nobody wants to acknowledge. The metrics economists celebrate (GDP, stock markets) completely miss what people live through. And most importantly: the elite precariat.
“There’s no greater danger to a country than an educated elite with nothing to do.”
We’re producing highly educated people at scale—trained for jobs that don’t exist, equipped with analytical skills and no outlet. Graham Plattner in Maine represents something: normal people running breath-of-fresh-air campaigns while the establishment deploys cultural purity tests to avoid discussing economics.
And we talked about the oligarchs’ catastrophic miscalculation: they think controlling algorithms means controlling outcomes. They’re wrong. The world existed for millions of years before the internet. The elite precariat already understands digital manipulation—they’re leaving the platforms, touching grass, organizing in meatspace where power actually exists.
Their sin, as always, is hubris.
On the Home Front with Reed Galen
Reed Galen invited me onto Substack Live last night, and what was supposed to be a tidy conversation about democracy turned into something closer to an exorcism.
Heavy equipment is tearing down the East Wing of the White House. Eleanor Roosevelt’s offices. Lady Bird Johnson’s spaces. Democratic infrastructure demolished for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom.
Who’s paying? Zuckerberg, who buried teen suicide research. Cook, arriving with gold tributes. Crypto barons. Palantir, building surveillance files on citizens.
The same oligarchs who destroyed democracy through algorithms are now literally purchasing and demolishing its architecture. They want their names carved into government itself.
They think owning algorithms means owning outcomes. History will remember their hubris.
Buying the Ruins
Heavy equipment is tearing down the East Wing of the White House as we watch—steel teeth grinding through plaster that once framed the daily work of democracy. Dust rise…
Mike Solana’s publication spent 5,000 words attacking Heather Cox Richardson—not by defending Trump’s violations, but by obsessing over her imperfections while insisting readers should “presumably” assume Trump has good reasons.
There’s the tell. Inverted burden of proof: those warning about tyranny must prove everything beyond doubt; the tyrant gets presumed benevolence.
The PirateWires Method
Let’s be direct about what Mike Solana is: a cynic who’s convinced himself he’s the hero. Not some puppet taking orders from Peter Thiel—he genuinely believes he’s the brave iconoclast challenging liberal pieties. But believing you’re independent doesn’t make it so, especially when every editorial choice you make perfectly aligns with your patron’s poli…
Bari Weiss asking 60 Minutes “why does the country think you’re biased?” treats Republican distrust as evidence journalism failed—not that disinformation succeeded.
The fatal conceit: treating accountability journalism itself as bias while extending infinite charity to constitutional violations.
The Question They Won’t Ask
The fatal conceit in Bari Weiss’s question—“why does the country think you’re biased?”—and in the entire PirateWires critique of Heather Cox Richardson is the undefended premise that Republican distrust of journalism constitutes evidence journalism has failed rather than evidence that coordinated disinformation has succeeded.
Newsom warned artillery over I-5 posed risks. Vance called it “performative.” Then a CHP vehicle was hit by shrapnel.
But the anti-anti crowd insists Newsom’s concern was the real performance.
At what point does their framework become unfalsifiable? They’ve inverted the burden of proof completely—treating authoritarian escalation as the null hypothesis, demanding each violation be proven beyond doubt, explaining away every new violation within existing assumptions.
Here’s the mechanism: They hate liberals so much that even when they’re empirically right, they can’t acknowledge it. Harris warned about military in cities—dismissed as “TDS.” Now it’s happening. But they still can’t admit she was right. “Right for the wrong reasons.” Accidentally correct.
When hatred of liberals overrides capacity to recognize patterns—your brain is broken.
The Broken Minds of the Anti-Anti-Trump Right
Gavin Newsom’s concern about live artillery fire over Interstate 5 was “performative.”
Tent Pole - Paid Subscribers
The discourse is stuck between false optimism and fatalistic despair. Both miss the question.
Not “are we in crisis?” Not “will democracy survive?”
What time is it?
The answer reveals unexpected truth: authoritarian fragility is real.
Putin paralyzed by his own rigidity—too corroded to take the strategic move serving his interests. Trump humiliates Musk, proving he can violate norms but can’t build lasting structures. Musk discovers hierarchy doesn’t stop at him.
Three moments. Three ways authoritarianism devours itself.
Tomorrow: The Elite Precariat
Sunday morning, paid subscribers get the synthesis: we’re producing a dangerous class at scale.
People in their twenties and thirties with advanced degrees who did everything right and got nothing. PhD candidates facing five tenure-track positions nationwide. Lawyers watching AI eliminate their pathway. Journalists with Columbia degrees contracting. Engineers whose training is obsolete before thirty.
They’re drowning in debt with no path to promised stability.
The working precariat adapts. The elite precariat organizes.
What You Can Do Now
Read “What Time Is It?” - Available now to paid subscribers. Get 20% off here for immediate access.
Get ready for “The Elite Precariat” - Drops tommorrow morning. Paid subscribers read it when it drops.
The wire still holds. The center can be held. The ground hasn’t been reached.
Ah yes. The circus.
The clamor, the spectacle, the high-wire act of meaning-making in a world that wants to pull everything apart.
The structure that was never real, and yet held real things.
The flood that always rose, and the rhythm that always held it back.
It was never the destination. But it was the place we learned how to live.
It was never the truth. But it taught us how to recognize it.
It was never home. But it gave us a map back to the sacred.
It was never the answer. But it gave shape to the question.
And now, we carry the Note forward.
Not as artifact. But as flame.
This is the Note. To you, dear reader—witness, observer—from the Circus.
—Mike