It’s 2025 and our country is run by people whose moral core is rottener than Irish potatoes in 1845. Every day there is news about the intentional and cruel starvation of Palestinians; meanwhile, access to health care for the poorest Americans has been slashed so some bald billionaire can fill a swimming pool with gold.

But don’t worry, because Jubilee Media is here to fix it all with the discourse. Jubilee Media is a company that puts out bold videos that ask hard questions like, “Have you ever thought about being more racist?” It is pioneering the media space with ideas like, “What if Reddit but on a video?” Jubilee’s video “1 Republican vs. 25 Kamala Harris Voters (Feat. Ben Shapiro)” was the fifth most-watched piece of election content on YouTube last year.

Jubilee’s founder, Jason Y. Lee, states on the company’s website that “we are all inextricably linked and want to live for something deeper. Living for empathy and human good is a resilient vision, and one that is worthy of pursuit.” Ah yes, the empathy that is engendered by watching Ben Shapiro say misogynistic and racist things about a politician. Whenever I hear Ben Shapiro speak, I do feel something very deep inside me. But previously I just described that as stomach bile.

Despite his company’s track record of trawling the dark depths of the internet for clicks and money via rage-bait, in interviews, Lee continues to push the idea that Jubilee is all about radical empathy. Which totally explains why the videos produced by his company have such deep and thought-provoking subjects, such as “Anorexic vs Obese” and “Flat Earthers vs Scientists: Can We Trust Science?” You know, things that really elevate the discourse with nuanced perspectives like, “Earth flat!” and “I hate your body.”

This week, Jubilee made headlines with a viral video featuring British journalist Mehdi Hasan debating a guy who identified himself as Connor, who stated he hates being called a Nazi, because he’d rather be called a fascist and professed a fondness for Francisco Franco. Connor has since been fired from his job, but he’s been raising money on a Christian fundraising platform where people are leaving comments like “It's ok to be white” and “We need a white nation! It’s our only future! Vive le Fascisme!” You know, things that Jesus Christ would say.

This isn’t discourse, this is cheap Debate-Me-Bro culture packaged as videos exploiting our basest desires. America is not made better because you had people debate topics like how many babies can fit on the end of a sword, and do women deserve a little slap when they get mouthy?

This is just a craven monetization of the chum bucket of the internet masquerading as some noble quest for human understanding. We don’t gain anything by hearing a lineup of expired human dairy products say things like, “What if serial killers are actually good?” and “I should be able to play soccer with the heads of homeless people.” (Sorry, I think I just gave Gavin Newsom some ideas for his podcast.)

Just because you get some root-vegetable-ass looking man to say the most harmful thing he can think of doesn’t mean you are having a debate. You haven’t created any sympathy or nuance. All you’ve done is made some cash off the unfiltered ids of the next generation of shopping-mall mass shooters.

Dingus runner-up: Corn sweat

If you live in Cornado Alley, this time of year, you are basically breathing in the swamp crotch of agriculture. It’s called corn sweat and it’s the humidity created by the vast amount of corn and soy grown in the American midwest.

It’s a damp soy slurry out there and we are breathing in the armpit of big ag.

Did I mention going outside feels like being steam rollered by the wet hairy back of the Midwest?

Did I mention that going outside feels like being buried alive in hot, soggy tater tots? Drowned in boiling ranch dressing?

In sum, it’s nasty.

In America, we still don’t have universal health care or affordable child care. But we do have taxpayer-funded corn swamp ass.

Every summer we pay homage to the golden yellow phallus by roasting it, buttering it, chomping down on it at fairs, barbecues, and backyard parties, and all the while it is slowly suffocating us with its corn secretions.

The dingus runner-up is a rerun of last year’s “Corn Sweat” dingus newsletter.

And now for something good

When I heard the news that Hulk Hogan died, I thought, “Well that’s one less dingus I have to write about.” But even in death, know that he was a dingus.

Hey, everyone is being really mean to the commander in chief and hurting his widdle feelings over a list of alleged sexual abusers.

And now the president is suing the Wall Street Journal for putting it in the newspaper that he’s in the Epstein files. You just love to see the worst people fight it out.

God bless the Scots.

This week, Planned Parenthood won a partial victory fighting funding cuts in the courts.

And the French prime minister is suing Candace Owens.

Something I am enjoying

Some weeks this is the hardest section to write. It’s not that I don’t enjoy my life; it’s just that it feels really silly to write down that I had a nice time playing games with my kids or I had a really lovely night out with friends when people are starving in Gaza and every news story about America grips me with terror.

I have been underwater these days keeping up with this newsletter and trying to hire a new executive director as part of my work with the Iowa Abortion Access Fund while I begin researching my next book. All the while, I’m trying to get kids to camps, sports practices, music lessons, marching band, sports games, driver’s ed, weight training. I’m sure I’m forgetting something. I’m always forgetting something.

But I do believe we have to squeeze every drop of fun and celebration from the miserly hand of this life whenever we can. Some of my most enjoyable moments this past week have been losing myself in Larry McMurtry’s The Streets of Laredo, which is such a wonderful book, even better than Lonesome Dove, although I do miss the narrative voice of Gus McCrae.

I ate a plate of the best carrots of my life at Cobble Hill.

Sitting on my porch with a glass of mediocre wine, listening to the rain.