This week, scientists revealed what they feel is convincing evidence that life previously existed on Mars. But, rather astonishingly, "Life On Mars!" headlines weren't the story of the week.

What should have been the political story of the week is also largely being ignored by the media as well. Vladimir Putin launched almost 20 drones into Polish airspace, which is a serious escalation since it's hard not to call this an act of war. The drones reportedly weren't armed with explosives, and Russia isn't taking any responsibility; but even so, invading another country's airspace is still a hostile act. Especially when that country is a member of NATO.

Donald Trump, the president of the United States of America, did absolutely nothing in response to this provocation. Or maybe "less than nothing" is better, since the only reactions Trump has had are simply ridiculous. First he sent out a social media post which said, in its entirety: "What's with Russia violating Poland's airspace with drones? Here we go!"

Um... what? Is Trump trying to channel his inner Jerry Seinfeld? "What's up with all the Russian drones in Poland?" you can almost hear Seinfeld say, on a comedy club stage with a brick wall behind him. And: "Here we go!"? What sentiment is that even attempting to convey? Who exactly is "we" -- and where exactly are we going?

Yesterday, Trump reacted further by offering up excuses for Putin to use. No, really. Here's what he had to say about the drone attack: "It could have been a mistake. It could have been a mistake." Poland's prime minister responded on social media: "No, that wasn't a mistake."

It wasn't a mistake -- it was a test. Putin wanted to see what Poland, NATO, and most importantly the United States would do when faced with such a provocation. And Donald Trump, true to form, seems ready to do absolutely nothing about it, unless you count "offer up excuses for Putin to use."

Today, Trump apparently realized how weak he is looking in the face of an international crisis, so he tried some tough-guy talk (in an interview on Fox News). Speaking of his patience with Putin, Trump said: "It's sort of running out and running out fast. We're going to have to come down very, very strong."

He's said such things before, but has never "come down" in any fashion against Putin. He also never actually issues a concrete threat -- it's all vague bluster. What does "come down very, very strong" even mean? What sanctions or tariffs or military response would that encompass? Trump never says.

In actual fact, Putin's test showed him, once again, that Trump is nothing but a paper tiger when it comes to Russia. Putin can essentially do whatever he feels like and Trump is just never going to do anything negative in response.

So what's next? Maybe the next time Putin makes a "mistake" with drones, they'll actually hit something. Will Putin begin attacking the supply lines in Poland that have been shipping weapons to the Ukrainians? Would Trump bestir himself to act even if that happened? So far, the signs are that he wouldn't.

This is not "making America great again." This is making America look weak and small and afraid. Our president is apparently frightened of the leader of Russia. Trump's never going to "come down very, very strong" on Putin at all. And Putin will continue doing exactly as he pleases, because he knows this.

That really should have been the biggest political story of the week, since it has global implications.

But it wasn't. Instead, we had an assassination.

The reaction to a gunman murdering a conservative activist has been pretty much what you'd expect. Conservatives, led by Trump, are demanding that all negative rhetoric from the left immediately cease, and anyone who uses such language should be severely punished. While negative rhetoric from the right is deemed just fine and to be encouraged. They want "rules for thee, but not for me," to put this another way.

This comes from the top down. Trump recorded a four-minute video from the Oval Office where he did not call for calm, but instead ramped up the rhetoric on his side. His statement did hit one good note, early on, as he condemned the killing as the "tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day," but then he followed it up by demonizing those he disagrees with.

Trump ran down a list of attacks on Republicans and conservatives. Missing entirely from his list were any mention of any attacks on Democrats -- including the recent assassination of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota and the attempted assassination of a second Democratic state lawmaker. The message was crystal-clear: attacks from the right are acceptable, attacks from the left are not. Trump was even directly asked about this in the Fox News interview, after Trump denounced the "radicals on the left." The interviewer then asked Trump: "We have radicals on the right as well. How do we fix this country?" to which Trump responded: "I'll tell you something that's going to get me into trouble, but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem."

This is not exactly a sweeping message of unity. This is not calming the country down. But it is exactly what we all should have expected, from a man who feels completely comfortable calling for political violence against his own opponents (such as telling his supporters that maybe the "Second Amendment people" should do something about Hillary Clinton, just to give one prominent example of many).

Trump regularly uses the most demonizing and dehumanizing language imaginable to describe either groups he is scapegoating (such as immigrants) or his political opponents. He has continued to do so, even after the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk. Other Republicans have been following in his footsteps, pushing the boundaries of decency (which barely even exist anymore in Washington).

In related news, this week the president of the United States threatened to wage war on an American city. Because he thought it was funny. He also shared the thought that domestic violence shouldn't be counted as a crime, but rather just "a man has a little fight with the wife." It was also reported this week that at a recent dinner party, the secretary of the Treasury threatened Trump's top housing finance officer by saying: "I'm going to punch you in your fucking face." That's where we are as a nation, folks.

Because this week seems like such a pivotal turning point in American politics, and because it was such a depressing week all around, we are going to skip over our political awards this week and go straight to an essay in lieu of our usual talking points. We did have a few Democrats we were considering for the awards, but their impressive and disappointing words and actions this week pale in comparison to the assassination (and its reverberations).

Volume 812 (9/12/25)

This week, we had a whole bunch of economic stats we were going to use as our talking points, but the gravity of the situation demands directly addressing a few things, so we're going to pass on purely Democratic talking points.

If you'd like to make your own talking points, here are some of the data points we would have used:

• Inflation is up to 2.9 percent and climbing.
• Coffee prices are up 20 percent from last year.
• The price of beef went up 2.5 percent in a single month.
• Electricity and utility prices are up 6 percent and 13 percent.
• School supplies are way up, too.
• Housing prices are also (pun intended) through the roof.
• The jobs market is slowing down due to layoffs and a hiring slowdown -- even recent college graduates aren't finding work.

But as we said, we feel the need to address the current political climate instead. Because where we are as a country right now is so worrisome. We even eschewed the editorial "we" in this piece, because it is so personal (and frightening). So instead of talking points for Democrats, here instead is a rather dismal take on where America is now and where we seem to be going.

A very dark road

I fear for my country. I fear that we are so far down a very dark road that it is going to take us a very long time to ever get back.

We didn't get here all at once. This has been building for decades now. I would lay the biggest portion of blame for the complete wreckage of civil political discourse we are now experiencing on Newt Gingrich, personally. Back in the 1990s, he introduced a new style of politics in America that we have not yet escaped from. The Gingrich style is to be as vicious as possible in describing your opposition and their motives. Or, in a single word: demonization.

We now have a president who regularly accuses approximately half of the country of "hating America." Anyone who opposes him is not a patriot, and not a "real" American. He also calls his opponents crazy and lunatics on an almost-daily basis. But Donald Trump did not start this descent into demonization, he merely accelerated it and took it to new lows.

Members of both political parties in America now routinely use apocalyptic language and baldly state that we are in an existential political crisis. Our country might not survive if the other party gets its way.

We are balanced between these two viewpoints. Ever since Gingrich appeared on the scene, Congress has changed hands more often than ever, historically-speaking. The Supreme Court has become completely ideological. And now the executive branch is run with one criterion only: loyalty. Loyalty to Donald Trump is the test everyone in the executive branch must pass before being allowed to stay on the job (or get hired). Anyone deemed insufficiently loyal is summarily fired.

This means that we are headed right back to the "spoils" system of government that America largely got beyond back in the 1800s. After all, what will happen when a Democrat becomes president again? Will he or she allow all the fervent MAGA ideologues to continue running all the departments of the federal government, or should they all be summarily fired? The GOP/MAGA weaponization of the departments of the federal government that has already happened shouldn't be allowed to continue (under a Democratic president), but this may lead to the next Republican president afterwards to institute their own purge. So we may have a swinging pendulum of alternating ideologues rather than honest and dedicated civil servants running our government for the foreseeable future.

As I said, we are on a dark path and getting back to "normal" is going to be a very hard journey that will likely take many years -- if it ever happens.

If these were normal times now and a political assassination happened, our president would be calling for calm. Remember George W. Bush, immediately after the 9/11 attack, pushing back on hatred and demonization of Muslims? That's the kind of thing we need right now, but I am not holding my breath waiting for it to happen. Donald Trump just isn't going to have some "Kumbaya" moment and call for calm. He's going to do what he always does -- fan the flames, feed the fire, and threaten to use any method he feels like (unconstitutional or not) to squash his opposition.

Here is how the deputy chief of staff of the White House spoke of his political opponents, after the assassination:

There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved. It is an ideology at war with family and nature. It is envious, malicious, and soulless.

His boss, the president, has been saying things that are just as demonizing -- or even worse. So, no, we're not going to get a "Kumbaya" moment at all.

Some conservatives reacted to the assassination of Charlie Kirk by calling for the Democratic Party to be outlawed, and for its politicians rounded up and jailed. Just for their political beliefs. Of course, there will always be hotheads calling for things like this, but these days they are not shunned or denounced or ignored -- sometimes their ideas are adopted. Which is frightening, or should be.

This week, Donald Trump threatened an American city -- run by Democrats, in a state also run by Democrats -- with war. He has sent American troops into two U.S. cities already and today announced that a third city (also run by Democrats) will be swarmed by American troops. This week, it took a federal judge's ruling to halt these soldiers from firing non-lethal weapons at journalists.

This is beyond dangerous.

Where will this all end? Nobody knows. But the safe bet at this point is that things are probably going to get worse -- maybe a whole lot worse -- before they get better. We're not going to shed this darkness in an eyeblink.

When political violence of any kind happens, it should be denounced by every politician, no matter which side it comes from. It must not be celebrated, or laughed at, or encouraged. It must not be ignored. We recently had a Democratic politician assassinated in her home and the president of the United States didn't say a word about it. Today, he was asked about right-wing political radicals using violence and his answer was: "I couldn't care less." Trump began his term in office by pardoning the January 6th criminals who had violently attempted a political coup. Even worse, Trump has heaped honors on them and fired everyone in the Department of Justice who worked on any of their cases. This sends a strong signal that political violence is not just acceptable but should be encouraged -- but only when it comes from the right and targets the left.

This all means that America is not likely to move beyond this violent political era for at least another three-plus years. Trump's not going to change. As long as he's in office, we will continue down this dark road we are on.

As the key question in the McCarthy hearings asked, America now seems to have lost its sense of decency. Nothing is seen as too juvenile or too provocative or too inciteful any more in our political discourse. The social media feed of our president reads like it was written by an angry elementary-school-aged boy. And this has become so normalized that it's barely even mentioned anymore.

I don't even know how we're going to get out of the dark place America is now in. I remain optimistic that some future politician will recapture this lost sense of decency and bring the concept of shame back to American politics. That used to be what kept political leaders in check -- the fear of the shame of staking out certain positions. But the age we now live in is an utterly shameless one. The response to any attempt at shaming politicians is now: "So what?"

I have been writing about American politics for almost two decades now. For the very first time, I find myself wondering if I should be afraid because of what I write. Is the government going to make anything written that is negative about Republicans illegal? Should I fear arrest and worse because I am exercising my First Amendment right to free speech? I have never had such fears before, but now they creep around the edges of my consciousness.

That is a very dark place indeed -- to even contemplate such a thing. But the White House is now planning what their reaction to the assassination will be, and it certainly sounds like they are indeed considering doing such things.

I do remain optimistic that the American form of government will survive and one day there will be a politician who reminds us again of the better angels of our nature, rather than stoking the demons within us. One politician won't be able to magically turn the tide in an instant, but they could at least lead us back to the light and away from the very dark road we wander on today. Maybe this is a rosy-colored thing to believe, but the alternative is just so depressing that I have to cling to such optimism.

I fear for our country. I really do. Because even with an optimistic future to look forward to, I still also believe that things are going to get a lot worse before they start getting better.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground