Somewhere in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, a man named Rick is currently explaining to three different federal agencies why his fantasy football league’s “Senate Seats” side pot was, and I quote, “obviously a joke.” Rick, 47, a project manager who owns four grills and zero emotional regulation, apparently ran a spreadsheet tracking which congressmen would “flip” before the midterms.
One of those people was his cousin’s ex-wife, who works for a think tank, who forwarded it to a guy who forwards things for a living.
Here’s the thing nobody wants to admit: half of American politics is just this.
It’s a guy in a polo shirt named Rick who thinks he’s a genius because he read two Politico playbooks and a Reddit thread titled “What do they know that we don’t?” Meanwhile, actual Congress is doing its thing.
There’s a bill about broadband funding that’s been renamed three times because “Infrastructure” polled badly, then “Jobs” polled worse, and now it’s called the “American Connectivity and Opportunity Act,” which sounds like a timeshare presentation.
Either way, both sides will send out fundraising texts within the hour.
The texts will say “CRITICAL” in all caps.
They will be from a number you don’t recognize.
The real comedy is that nobody in Washington actually cares about Rick’s spreadsheet.
A leak gets you on Morning Joe, where you can say “look, I’m just asking questions” while a former senator nods like you’ve cracked the Da Vinci Code.
We love a scandal that requires zero understanding of how government works.
We love the idea that one guy with a Gmail account brought down the whole system, because it means the system is fragile, and fragile things are fun to watch.
And full of people who use the word “stakeholders” unironically.
He’ll go on a podcast where the host says “bro” 40 times.
He’ll pivot to selling survival kits or crypto or a newsletter called “The Real Deal.” And in two years, we’ll do this again.
The only thing that changes is the font. **Opinion:** We keep pretending politics is a chess match between geniuses when it’s mostly a group chat that got out of hand.
Final Thoughts
The sooner we admit that, the sooner we can stop acting surprised when the guy from accounting becomes a national headline.