Welcome to the “Golden Age”

In this world, the citizens pledge allegiance to screens. Every morning, they wake to the Voice who tells them who their enemies are and what is “true.” Those who question it are branded as traitors or “fake news.”  This “utopia” glows in the light of its own reflection. History is rewritten each election, sins erased for some, magnified for others. Culture wars distract while corporations shape policy from the shadows. Politics is theater, loyalty performed for an audience that’s forgotten it can walk away. Citizens are told they are freer than ever, richer than ever, better than ever — even as they grow more anxious and divided. The slogans say it plainly: this is prosperity, this is unity, this is the golden age.

At first glance, you might think this is the world of “1984,” or perhaps some grim sequel to it — a future where propaganda wears the face of authority and control comes wrapped in national colors. But look closer. 

This isn’t fiction. This is the United States of America.

Scroll the White House “News” feed and the pattern hits you: Every headline is written to provoke, to punish, to praise — not to inform. 

Several specific rhetorical moves recur across these White House headlines:

The headlines assign responsibility in the simplest, most accusatory way: By grammatical placement, the opposition party becomes the moral actor; this reduces structural complexity into a single-personification of fault. The Oct. 23 headline literally places “Democrat” and “jeopardize” in the same breath, shaping readers’ causal assumptions before they read a single sentence. The article on Nov. 7 titled “Democrats Are to Blame for Airport Chaos” says in the first paragraph that “Democrats’ shutdown tantrum — now dragging into its 38th day of misery — is a brazen, demented betrayal of the American people.” Democrats (not a legislative impasse, not “a stalemate in Congress,” not “stalled negotiations”) are presented as active villains who shut down the government and jeopardize the nation’s welfare.

Words like betray, crushes, taunts, and jeopardizes are moral judgments, not neutral descriptions. They transform political disagreement into moral failure or vice. The Oct. 22 piece accusing a “Top Democrat” of “cheering Americans’ suffering” elevates procedural bargaining into cruelty — a rhetorical escalation designed to provoke outrage rather than understanding. 

Frequent modifiers — “radical,” “sick,” “criminal,” “illegals” used as a noun — operate to dehumanize or delegitimize opponents. In the Oct. 16 article, phrases like “Radical Left” and “shutdown stranglehold” combine to paint the opposition not as political rivals but as existential threats. Similarly, headlines that refer to “violent criminal illegals” or “antifa violence” compress complex policy and local realities into a simplified enemy image. These modifiers prime readers to view entire groups as outside the bounds of legitimate political life. 

When the administration wants praise, it uses universal, celebratory language: “Widespread Acclaim for President Trump’s Diplomatic Triumph” (Oct. 14) stamps achievement with near-hagiography, which is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader in idealized manner. The headline doesn’t say “Administration officials hail” or “Observers comment” — it declares widespread acclaim and a triumph, turning complex foreign-policy developments into a personal victory lap for a single leader. That shift from policy to personality is central to campaign-style messaging. 

Several headlines read like clickbait or op-eds rather than governmental summaries. There’s an overt use of spectacular language — “clown show,” “annihilates,” “cheers suffering” — and even emoji in a headline on the administration’s site, an attention-grabbing flourish that barely belongs to social media outrage, not official news. These devices are designed to elicit immediate emotional responses (anger, fear, pride), making reflective reading less likely. 

Taken together, these moves are not accidental. Repetition of the same verbal strategies creates a rhetorical ecosystem: The front page becomes a curated stream of moral condemnations and triumphalist claims. That stream does three consequential things at once: It simplifies civic complexity into binary villains and heroes, replaces neutral institutional voice with partisan cheerleading, and normalizes a worldview in which the other side is less a legitimate opponent than an existential enemy.

When the government’s official feed habitually assigns blame to one party with theatrical language, citizens who rely on that feed — especially those with limited alternative news access — internalize narratives presented as official truth. People stop asking “What happened?” and start asking “Who is to blame?” The news stops being a tool for making policy intelligible and becomes a weapon for consolidating loyalty. The White House, more than any other branch of government, carries symbolic authority. When it speaks, people expect accuracy, professionalism, and a degree of neutrality — the sense that, even if you disagree with its policies, you can still rely on its facts. Once credibility erodes, the damage is nearly irreversible. Citizens no longer know whether to treat a White House statement as factual reporting or as political spin.

When the government itself describes one half of the country as villains, it validates contempt as patriotism. If Democrats are the ones who “crush” or “betray Americans,” then empathy for political opponents starts to look like disloyalty. This framing turns citizens into enemies and transforms democratic disagreement into moral warfare. It’s not merely that people hold opposing views; it’s that they begin to see each other as threats to the nation’s survival. That kind of rhetoric is a hallmark of authoritarian communication — it creates a moral binary: one side righteous, the other dangerous. The damage extends beyond party lines. Families, workplaces, and campuses absorb this tone. If the president’s own site models contempt, citizens follow suit. The effect isn’t energizing; it’s isolating. A democracy where citizens hate each other on command isn’t stable — it’s primed for collapse.

Americans use the official government websites for “trusted” information. For students, older voters, or working-class citizens without access to paid journalism, whitehouse.gov might be one of the few primary sources they see. When that source itself becomes biased, its authority amplifies the distortion. This is how propaganda works best: not by banning other ideas, but by flooding the public sphere with one voice that appears objective. If the White House itself tells you who the enemy is, why doubt it? After all, it’s “official.” And because it’s presented with the gravitas of government — flags, seals, presidential emblems — it bypasses skepticism.

The official White House website is the digital front door of the U.S. government, and should be a place where facts, press releases, and policy updates live free of spin. Instead, it now feels like walking into a political rally you didn’t sign up for. When you scroll the page, a bold pop-up flashes across the screen: “Welcome to the GOLDEN AGE.” It’s a strange greeting. For millions of Americans juggling student debt, climbing grocery prices, and housing insecurity, the phrase lands less like optimism and more like mockery. To call this moment a “golden age” isn’t just out of touch — it’s Orwellian. It’s a message that tells people what to believe about their own reality, rather than reflecting what that reality actually is. When the White House uses that same language — “Welcome to the GOLDEN AGE” — it unwittingly borrows from the playbook from past and current authoritarian governments. It’s a rhetorical sleight of hand that replaces conversation with proclamation. And that shift, from persuasion to declaration, is exactly what separates democratic communication from authoritarian messaging.  

During the government shutdown, across the top of the homepage, a banner stretched like a breaking-news ticker: “Democrats have shut down the government.” Next to it, a counter ticked upward by the second, marking how long the shutdown has supposedly been the fault of one political party. It’s the kind of framing you’d expect to see on a campaign website or a partisan TV graphic, not on the official website of the executive branch. It’s designed to look urgent — like a live news update or a national emergency alert — but the message isn’t informational. It names an enemy, assigns blame, and leaves no room for nuance. Today, there still is a banner, yet it says “Democrats Shut Down the Government for a Record 43 Days” and lists organizations — mostly grassroots or conservative-leaning syndicates —   to prove “Americans Don’t Agree with Democrats’ Actions.” 

Scroll to the bottom of the website and you’re met with a chipper invitation — “Stay in the know. Get direct updates from the White House in your inbox.” On its own, that might seem innocent, even helpful. But when the messages above it are steeped in blame, triumphalism, and self-congratulation, that cheerful call-to-action feels less like an offer for information and more like an attempt to recruit subscribers to a worldview.

Imagine if the situation were reversed: If a Democratic administration’s website once ran a header reading, “Republicans have destroyed the government,” it would provoke outrage. Every American, regardless of party, should expect the White House to rise above that level of rhetoric. The official website of the executive branch should speak with institutional authority, not partisan venom. 

Yet, this banner does exactly the opposite — it reduces a complex, structural process into a blame game headline. It’s also misleading by design. Government shutdowns are rarely the result of one side’s unilateral action. They emerge from a breakdown in negotiation — a standoff between Congress and the executive branch, or between the House and the Senate, depending on who holds which power. 

The real danger is the trap of normalization. Once the aesthetics of propaganda start looking familiar, they stop being alarming. The bold slogans, the hero worship, the constant portrayal of enemies — they begin to feel like ordinary politics. And when propaganda starts to feel ordinary, democracy has already begun to erode. You don’t need a coup to end a republic; you just need enough people to stop noticing the difference between truth and narrative.

It’s easy to imagine that people will see through this. But history shows otherwise — propaganda doesn’t convince by shock; it convinces by familiarity. By the time it feels ordinary, it’s already won.

The solution isn’t to demand that the White House become apolitical — that’s impossible and even undesirable. The presidency is, by nature, political. But political is not the same as partisan. A functional democracy depends on institutions that, while shaped by politics, still speak with impartiality and respect for all citizens. The White House’s communications must aim to inform, not to inflame; to clarify, not to campaign. 

The following are concrete, realistic steps that could begin to rebuild trust and we should call our representatives to call on the White House to do so: 

1. Require the removal of partisan banners and pop-ups from whitehouse.gov and end the use of accusatory or emotionally charged language in article titles.
2. Reestablish an internal editorial standard for factual, nonpartisan tone in all official releases. Every administration should have — and enforce — internal editorial guidelines that ensure neutrality. Such standards once existed within White House communications offices; reinstating them would help prevent the gradual slide into propagandistic rhetoric.

This is the face of contemporary authoritarianism: not storming the streets with rifles, but colonizing the mind with spectacle. The Golden Age is a warning. It tells us that loyalty has replaced conscience, outrage has replaced solidarity, and spectacle has replaced truth. The machinery behind it — media empires, billionaire power, and political elites — not only governs; it instead trains obedience, manufactures fear, and turns citizens into instruments of their own oppression.

You should be concerned — not only because of who occupies office today, but because of what it means when official channels stop serving the public and start shaping loyalty instead. This is a danger that transcends partisan lines, and it deserves outrage from everyone, no matter what side of the aisle they sit on.