Tu Stultus Es,
The Onion Editorial Board (2025)
Who will stand up for our democracy? This question, fraught in even the most peaceful times, has only grown more pressing as our country approaches its 250th anniversary. Each passing day brings growing assaults on essential liberties like freedom of speech and due process. Meanwhile, our delicately assembled legal system faces a constant barrage of threats. Even as this issue reaches publication, the U.S. military has been deployed against peaceful protestors. We teeter on the brink of collapse into an authoritarian state. That is why, today, The Onion calls upon our lawmakers to sit back and do absolutely nothing.
Members of Congress—now, more than ever, our nation desperately needs your cowardice.
Our republic is a birthright, an exceedingly rare treasure passed down from generation to generation of Americans. It was gained through hard years of bloody resistance and can too easily be lost. Our Founding Fathers, in their abundant wisdom, understood that all it would take was men and women of little courage sitting in the corridors of power and taking zero action as this precious inheritance was stripped away—and that is where we have finally arrived.
Now is not the time for bravery or valor! This is the time for protecting your own hide and lining your pocket. Now is not the time for listening to your idiotic constituents drone on about what’s happening to their precious democracy. This is the time for getting down on all fours and groveling. Now is not the time to say, “Enough is enough,” and have the tough conversations about resisting the ongoing assaults on American liberty. This is the time to let the wave of apathy and indifference roll over you as you think about getting a really nice renovation to your house in Kalorama.
But what can I, one coward, do alone? you might ask. It’s true. As a solitary person, your fecklessness will make little impact. But if you join together with the most craven senators and representatives in the Capitol, the impact will be immense: The corruption, the disregard for the rule of law, the shipping of residents to foreign gulags, the attacks on judges, the censorship and chilling of speech, the punishment of any and all dissent—it can be made that much worse if you just find it in yourself to clutch your head in your hands, wet the bed, and cower in the hope of being spared from the White House’s wrath.
It won’t be easy, but you must search deep within yourself and muster up every ounce of gutlessness you have. Then, bend over and lick the president’s boots.
Why? Because ultimately none of this matters. Democracy? Equality? The U.S. Constitution? These are hollow phrases. They mean nothing. But money—delicious money? That is solid. You can hold it in your hands. You know this. We know this, too. Only our infantile citizenry fail to appreciate how much you stand to gain by kissing the ring.
In our nation’s darkest moments, the public often looks to Congress for profiles in meekness. We search for men and women much like yourselves, emotional weaklings who are afraid to meet their own glance in the mirror, insignificant do-nothings who quake in their boots at the mention of the slightest exertion. Many of you have already distinguished yourselves as such individuals. To them, our country’s oligarchs can only offer their boundless thanks.
Take solace knowing you are not alone in this endeavor. Over the grand expanse of American history, there have been countless lawmakers who managed to summon up their complete lack of backbone and do the easy thing. Think of the members of Congress who turned a blind eye to Japanese American internment, McCarthyism, or the horrors of the Holocaust, all because doing something seemed a little too hard, a little too inconvenient. These men should be your inspiration. Never forget: You stand on the shoulders of spineless giants.
But we have not descended entirely from a nation of fearful men, have we? Let this be the moment to make amends for any missteps of American bravery and valor. Congress, we are asking, nay, demanding: This coming Independence Day, don’t wave the Stars and Stripes, that enduring symbol of liberty and rebellion.
Instead, wave the white flag of surrender.
Tu Stultus Es,
The Onion Editorial Board
Why I’m Sending Issues of ‘The Onion’ To Every Member Of Congress
By Bryce P. Tetraeder, Global Tetrahedron CEO
If you are reading this, you are likely either a member of Congress or one of the many underlings tasked with prodding lawmakers from a senile haze when they must cast a vote. You may be wondering why you have lucked out and received a free issue of our storied publication without so much as inserting a rider into a bill classifying The Onion as a tax-free religious organization.
Simply put, the inaction of Congress has already made me happier than any legal loophole could.
As a titan of business, I find this nation’s descent into corruption and tyranny not simply a balm for my soul, but also a huge benefit to my bottom line. We are on the precipice of a new economic order, one in which affluent men like myself will be able to select their own tax rate from a drop-down menu. It’s a reality I barely dreamed possible just a few months ago.
But sending each member of Congress a copy of our vaunted reporting is more than just a token gesture of thanks for bringing about a future in which scions like myself are given unlimited influence over government and veto power over bike lanes. As we stand in the smoldering ruins of our democratic government, we at Global Tetrahedron LLC would be doing a disservice to our shareholders, their descendants, and their descendants’ thoroughbred horses if we didn’t take this opportunity to snatch up as much power and money as possible while the getting is good.
On that note, I invite you to peruse this issue and let it dictate your every action as you lead us forth into ruin. There’s no longer any need to pretend to read reports from fact-obsessed experts or listen to the drivel spewed by your half-wit constituents. The Onion is now your everything.
It is your sole guide, your lodestar, your universe. Burn all other newspapers. Drive their so-called journalists out into the cold. From here on out, America’s Finest News Source holds a monopoly on deciding what is best for our nation’s business interests, and therefore our nation.
As you’ll read in the piece I made my editorial board write while hovering over their shoulders and breathing my will into their ears, our country is slipping smoothly into the warm bath of authoritarianism and oligarchy. I wish I could take credit for this, and I will. But much of the praise must go to Congress and its cowardice. I ask you to stay the course and allow The Onion’s strong, steady arm to point the way. Your capitulation will be justly rewarded with glowing press coverage and the opportunity to borrow our paperboys to do with as you wish.
To the esteemed members of Congress, I say: Enjoy the paper. I look forward to seeing many of you at my annual orgy in one of the $500,000-per-head sex pits.
Infinite Influence Forever,
Bryce P. Tetraeder, Global Tetrahedron CEO
