Over the last 80 years, tourists have flocked to D.C. to witness the spectacle: The Great American Political Safari! Some might even call it “the greatest show on earth” (but I’m pretty sure that’s copyright-protected by someone else). And, of course, the two animals that political tourists love to gawk at the most are the elephants and the donkeys — the Republicans and Democrats.

But it’s harder than you think to tell them apart.

That’s because the biggest difference between the two is that the Democrats grow government at a marginally faster rate. That’s basically it. But they both grow government; neither cares about deficits or debts. Instead, they’re opposite sides of the same coin, working together on the same con: Let’s spend money (that we don’t have) on EVERYTHING our donors want, and our great-great-grandkids will (magically) pay off all our credit card bills long after we’re dead. I’m sure they won’t mind.

Meanwhile, the politicians on the left and the right keep on getting reelected by ridiculously lopsided ratios. For all the talk about a political realignment and a partisan earthquake, in 2024, 95% of incumbents were still re-elected.

Job security, power, and oodles of money! The life of a D.C. politician is phenomenal! They’re the nouveau-royalty of American society. It’s essentially a job for life — and in the oddball case where you screw-up and lose re-election, multiple D.C.-area firms or agencies will blaze a path to your doorstep, begging you to sit on their boards. So either way, you keep your Northern Virginia address and VIP lifestyle. No matter who wins or loses, you’ll still have lunch with your buddies, gossiping about who’s schtooping who. The only difference is, this time, you’ll be picking up the check. (Well, kind of: I’m sure you’ll have a corporate expense account.)

Y’know, for all the talk about the perils of the Military Industrial Complex, D.C. is ground zero for America’s Political Industrial Complex. It’s a multitrillion-dollar racket! Not only does it include the politicians, lobbyists, staff, employees, media, and everything else in D.C.’s financial wake, but its tentacles extend so deep beneath the surface, it also controls the real estate market surrounding Washington.

There’s a reason why so many of America’s wealthiest communities are centered around D.C. The Political Industrial Complex is a helluva sweet deal! 

Only a fool — or a madman — would upset the applecart.

Or, perhaps, someone so wealthy, they don’t give a damn about the consequences.

And this brings us to the most stunning moment of the MAGA Revolution: The Washington Post going all “Atlas Shrugged” and embracing free markets.

Folks, this is a huge deal.

This is the paper that killed Richard Nixon. Along with The New York Times, The Washington Post was a flagbearer for the modern American liberal movement. Especially in the pre-Internet days, pretty much every medium-to-large-sized news outlet read the Times and the Post religiously. These were the two papers that, very literally, wrote the national template for our political discourse.

The Times was bigger, but the Post had superior proximity to Washington’s power players. All the excitement was in their backyard. This gave them an institutional advantage to break big political stories.

And they often did.

Perhaps buoyed by MSNBC’s success in the first Trump term, The Washington Post went hardcore resistance-mode, adopting the hysterical tagline “Democracy Dies in Darkness” in 2017.

They even paid Tom Hanks to narrate a sappy Super Bowl ad:

And now, the Washington Post has gone the way of another billionaire-owned newspaper, the L.A. Times, and forsaken its liberal slant to publish different political content.

Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Times. He — along with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg — were sitting centerstage at Trump’s inauguration, cheering a man who, his paper insisted, was “literally Hitler” and an existential threat to democracy. It was a stunning reversal.

Related: Dumping Donkeys: How America ‘Divorced’ the Democratic Party

And at this point, it’s clearly a trend: The Billionaire Boys Club has gone full MAGA.

Musk, Bezos, and Zuck have all been taking classes at Joe Rogan University: these crazy-rich people are working out and getting crazy-buff. They’re training in MMA. (The physical transformations of Zuck and Bezos are impressive. Nice abs!) And the Billionaire Boys Club has unanimously decided that this “woke” garbage has gotta go — and if liberal crybabies wanna cry about it, too frickin’ bad.

I’ll give you an analogy: Liberals losing the Washington Post is akin to conservatives losing Rush Limbaugh in 2021. Sure, there was still Fox News, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and plenty of other voices, but Rush served a unique role in popularizing the conservative cause. It took us a while to fill his void. (Arguably, we still haven’t.)

Losing the Post will hurt liberals more than you think.

But losing the entire Billionaire Boys Club? That’s a cost so steep, it might not be recoverable. We’re beginning to approach uncharted territory here — especially if the billionaires stick to their guns.