Trump administration is full of 12-year-olds

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They’re just some kids, and life is a nightmare …

Get 10 people in a room, and you’ll hear 11 theories on why everything sucks now.

Is America cooked because they let billionaires trot out too many stupid ideas on credit during the ZIRP era? Are we in terminal decline because of a backlash to progressive cultural and legal wins? Is it something unique to the person of Donald Trump? Are we all just clinically depressed?

There’s a little bit of truth to all the postulations, but none of them can explain all of what’s wrong with the US. Those looking for a cultural Theory of Everything could do worse than the one floated by musician Patrick Cosmos earlier this year: everything is dumb because everyone is 12 years old.

"Working on a new unified theory of American reality I'm calling 'everyone is twelve now,'" he wrote on Bluesky in September.

Cosmos credited everything from Trump’s decision to unleash the National Guard in American cities to the MAGA’s obsession with traditional masculinity to a persistent juvenile streak in American politics and culture.

"'I'm strong, and I want to have like fifty kids and a farm.' Of course you do. You're twelve. 'I don't want to eat vegetables. I think steak and French fries is the only meal.' Hell yeah, homie, you're twelve,” he wrote. “'Maybe if there's crime, we should just send the army.' Bless your heart, my twelve-year-old buddy."

The “Everyone Is 12” theory comes into sharper focus with a close study of the Trump administration. Trump is the type of permanent tween who is dazzled by a handsome man in a suit. His taste tends toward a prissy child’s idea of opulence, and his typical posture toward criticism is an adolescent’s conception of machismo. If there were any adults in the room, he’d be laughed out of it. So, he’s surrounded himself with men whose development is similarly arrested.

Kash Patel delaying the FBI investigation into Charlie Kirk’s assassination so that he could find a cool jacket is indefensible, until you realize a husky 7th grader is leading the bureau. Pete Hegseth half-renaming the Department of Defense to look tough while he drops high-tech bombs on fishing boats and preens about a “warrior ethos” is a total 12-year-old move.

The secretary of defense has faced intense criticism over the attacks, and his knock-kneed and pimply response is illuminating. Rather than rising to meet the gravity of his office, Hegseth trotted out a parody of the Franklin the Turtle children’s books (presumably because his parents keep the Tom Clancy out of reach).

“He runs around on a stage like he’s a 12-year-old playing Army. It is ridiculous,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said of the response. “This is not a serious person. He should have been fired after Signalgate, and then every single day after that.”

What do you think? Are we living in the dictatorship of the prepubescent? Will we ever live in a culture by and for adults again? Can we find a way to blame the way-too-old teens of “Stranger Things” for this? Sound off in the comments.

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