Politics is often like physics: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” For more than a decade, we watched Newton’s Third Law of Motion as the political pendulum has swung first to the left, then to the right, and farther left and so on.

This began during Barack Obama’s time in office when he famously quipped, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone, and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions that move the ball forward,” should Congress not act in a manner in which he desired. Using his power is exactly what he did.

Obama had his Department of Justice grant citizenship to migrants through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive action. He and his party had the Affordable Care Act passed through a budget reconciliation process when it was clear it could not break the Senate filibuster.

He laid the groundwork for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in 2011 with an executive order titled: “Establishing a Coordinated Government Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce,” which would kick off an entire industry that Republicans would later campaign against. Obama would go on to staff these executive agencies with loyal Democrats.

And so the pendulum swung, and around came Donald Trump. The first version of Trump did not quite use the pen and phone Obama left behind as much as he is now, but he and the Republicans would use some of the Democrats’ playbook. Most obvious of these was the dispensing of the Senate filibuster for judicial appointments, which the Democrats used in 2013, despite the warnings from Republicans that they would come to regret it. 

Trump would go on to try to seize money for his border wall and cast aspersions against the media and “deep state.” For all the love Trump supporters currently have for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., they seem to forget that Operation Warp Speed, which granted money and legal protections drug makers in order to produce a COVID-19 vaccine, was a Trump initiative. But, hey, do not let pesky inconsistencies get in the way of your dogma, I suppose.

And oh, that pendulum, it swung again, bringing about Joe Biden. He would use his Occupational Health and Safety Administration to mandate vaccines on all workers in the United States, which, whether you are a pro-vaccine or anti, was illegal. He would, with a stroke of his pen, attempt to cancel on student loan debt. He would turbo charge the deeply unpopular DEI sector and leverage his Department of Justice to protect his son and prosecute his political opponent, pulling that pendulum back to the left like an arrow at full draw. 

Now that is where we live. The opposite reaction. The agencies that existed in a corrupt cycle of serving interest groups loyal to the billionaires that fund them are being dismantled. In their place are loyal sycophants dedicated to serving different billionaires. What does that have to do with the price of eggs in Peoria? Nothing, but you will notice a surprising lack of discussion about consumer prices, or  anything that is intended to make American life more prosperous.

What you get now is the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, playing with a chainsaw on stage. You get right-wing figures throwing out Nazi salutes with alacrity at the Conservative Political Action Committee summit. You get an oligarchy actively fueling an AI revolution that will finally free them from being accountable to those annoying workers and voters.

I do not know where this all goes next. Will it swing back even harder in the opposite direction or is our system finally broken? When we were fighting over the left and the right, were we just fighting the battle of the billionaire? I do not know. I just hope that whatever happens next, it is better than this.

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