MAGA, they said. America First, they promised. War on Drugs, the sequel nobody asked for. On one day, off the next, like a light switch in a cheap motel, flicked by a guy who swears he’s saving electricity. Headlines read that the same “tough on crime” crowd is now very interested in mercy for a former foreign president convicted of moving enough cocaine to make half the country fail a workplace drug test, or so a lot of people are saying.

Some people have noted that this version of “law and order” looks a lot like: free dangerous people with connections, lock up the poor, the desperate, the immigrant who filled out the wrong form in the wrong decade. Common sense may imply that this is an odd strategy for national security, but common sense doesn’t get invited to the good parties. Many whispers speak of “strategy” and “realpolitik,” while your rent, your meds, and your student loans stare back at you like unpaid parking tickets from the universe.

If walls could speak, then the walls of certain federal buildings might mutter: “So we terrorize American cities with armored vehicles and masked agents, but it’s all for your safety, kiddo.” If insulations were obvious, then everyone would see how nicely padded the powerful are from the consequences of their own decisions. Call it terrorism if it meets your agenda, call it “necessary force” if it’s your team holding the baton. Some people say that’s just how empires talk to themselves when they’re nervous.

Undo everything your predecessor did, even the decent, boring stuff that worked, just to drag his legacy through the mud and see what squeals on cable news. A lot of people are saying the job now is not to govern, but to keep the outrage machine humming like a refrigerator at 3 a.m., drowning out the sound of your own thoughts. Meanwhile, dates don’t lie: whenever the news looks especially wild, another one of the greatest transfers of wealth in U.S. history seems to be shuffling chips from your table to someone else’s. And things like that.

What will this president not do to keep your eyes on the circus and off the counting room? He is burning this place to the ground—metaphorically speaking, of course—and you are in the fire, trying to check your notifications while the smoke alarm screams. Many whispers speak of “normal times” like they were an old TV show we all kind of remember but can’t find on streaming.

They will call these words sedition, or “irresponsible rhetoric,” or “unhelpful” at a time when, coincidentally, it is very helpful for them if you stay tired and confused. I will let you decide what label fits; Sherlock Holmes would probably suggest looking at who benefits, and then quietly light his pipe.

I hope you all vote next time, but with a little more sensibility than the last few seasons of this reality show have displayed. Common sense may imply that your ballot is not a magic wand—but it is also not nothing, and nothing is exactly what some people are counting on from you.

Yes, I am talking to you. The one scrolling in bed. The one in the break room pretending not to care. The kid just old enough to vote and the forty-something who swears it doesn’t matter. If walls could speak, they’d probably ask: “So, what are you going to do about it?”