My Top 10 Villains

Wow. It’s our 250^th Birthday. And there is quite a contrast between the people who founded America and those who have gotten it into its current sorry state. While there have been lots of bad actors throughout our history, short of the Confederacy, I don’t think there has been a group of people who have so threatened the Union. So, I made a list. Maybe you’ll want to re-prioritize it. Maybe you’ll want to amend it, or make your own list from scratch. But it’s time to think about the people who contributed to this mess, not just the mess itself.

#1 Newt Gingrich: He’s the one who purposefully converted collegialism among politically ideological opponents into all-out hatred and warfare. He’s the father of Party before Country, the foundation of our current ills.

#2 Mitch McConnell: By thwarting anything Barack Obama wanted to do, he turned Hope into frustration. Blocked Obama’s Supreme Court pick for nearly a year, then rushed through Trump’s nominee in a month–which is why we have such an unbalanced Court. Then prevented Trump’s second impeachment conviction and opportunity to rid ourselves of that pestilence permanently. At this writing, Mitch is hospitalized. We send our coldest regards.

#3 Joe Biden: He turned the silk purse of his White Knighthood in defeating Trump into the sow’s ear of letting his ego prevail, practically assuring Trump of a second term. By allowing the legal “persecutions” of Donald Trump to go on endlessly during his own term, he provided Trump both constant headlines and powerful motivation for revenge. And he gave us Hunter. Oi! Joe, if only you’d simply bribed Trump to go away and also declared yourself a one-termer from the beginning, how much happier our 250^th might be.

#4 Merrick Garland:  Here’s an idea– let’s wait years after an obvious insurrection to appoint a special counsel to go after the instigator. You would have made a better timid Supreme Court justice than a timid AG.

#5 Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Couldn’t you have waited a couple more months to die? Or maybe retired at the beginning of Joe’s presidency?

#6 Stephen Miller: The Trump administration is a pyramidal hierarchy with absolute cult stupidity and incompetence at the bottom and levels of increasing cruelty and hatefulness as you go up. At the pinnacle of evil sits not Trump, but this Nosferatuesque creature. The irony: He’s Jewish. But can’t you just imagine him in a monocle and SS uniform giving Himmler a run for his money?

#7 Rupert Murdoch: No one person is more responsible for the media-engendered divide that afflicts this country. He grew his fortune by tearing us apart and keeping us that way.

#8 James Comey: If it weren’t for his bumbling, Hillary Clinton might have been president and we would have had more of that comfortable level of corruption and government ineptness that we now so long to return to.

#9 Mike Johnson: Never in human experience has there been a more rosy-cheeked, more brown-nosed suck up to a school-yard bully.

#10 The entire Republican Senate Caucus: During Trump’s first term, they supervised the placement of a reasonably competent cabinet and presidential staff, keeping Trump in check. That all went out the window during his second term, when they gave, and continue to give him any stooge he wants. Now, with primaries out of the way, we’ll see if any of them gets a backbone. I won’t be placing Kalshi bets on that.

©2026, David B Bucher