Trump and the Collapse of Competence in America

This WTF Wednesday isn’t just a rant. It’s a full autopsy on why basic competence has collapsed in America. 

I’m talking about the simplest tasks. Calling a pharmacy. Scheduling a doctor. Upgrading a phone. Everything that should take minutes now takes hours. And for millions of us, it feels like the entire country forgot how to function.

Everywhere you turn there’s another problem waiting for you. You try to check a prescription and the system’s down. You try to reach a human being and the phone tree traps you in circles. You show up for an appointment and they say it was canceled but can’t tell you why. 

Even the places that used to run like clockwork are now tripping over their own shoelaces.

And it’s not just one industry. It’s healthcare. It’s banking. It’s retail. It’s technology that keeps failing at the exact moment you need it most. 

You stand in lines that don’t move. You get messages that contradict the last message you got. You try to solve one simple problem and end up trapped in a maze where nobody knows anything and nobody can help you.

This episode digs into how incompetence has become the new national default. You see it everywhere. Fast food. Airlines. Doctors offices. Apps that ask you to do the work the company used to do. 

We’re now living in a country where helping yourself is the only way to get help.

A culture of incompetence doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It spreads. It’s taught. It’s absorbed. People are overwhelmed and undertrained. Systems are overloaded. 

The smallest problem becomes a chain reaction because no one has the tools or the bandwidth to get anything right the first time anymore.

This episode digs into that connection. How millions of people were taught that effort’s optional. How compassion’s weakness. And how that mindset’s helped collapse basic service and basic responsibility across the country.

If you’ve ever wondered why everything feels harder, slower, more chaotic, and more broken than it used to be, this episode’s for you. 

It’s raw. It’s honest. It’s every frustration you’ve swallowed this year finally being said out loud. 

And it all leads to one question. How do we fix a country where competence left the building and has no plans to return?

This is your Wednesday WTF episode.

And, if you’d like to help support this podcast financially with a small donation before the holiday’s…

here is the link: 

https://ko-fi.com/aworldgonemad

AWorldGoneMadPodcast@gmail.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The WTF Stage
• 0:36 The Case Against Competence Collapse
• 1:46 Verizon Upgrade Saga Begins
• 3:49 Kafka Texts And Spiritual Exhaustion
• 5:06 Beyond Verizon: Systemic Service Failures
• 6:18 Seasonal Overload And Tinsel Excuses
• 7:40 Culture, Leadership, And Lowered Bars
• 10:37 Listener Feedback And Parting Charge

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

This is a worldbone.

unknown: 0:04

This is a world on that.

SPEAKER_01: 0:08

I'm Jeff Fallenwolf. Welcome to A World Gone Mad. It's Wednesday and this is normally the WTF episode. You know the one where I usually talk about what the fuck Donald Delusional and his supporters are doing to us and how any of this could hurt us. But this episode because of the holidays, I want to go in a different direction. I want to talk about incompetence. WTF, what the fuck happened to competency? This time of year is supposed to be magical. Lights, music, family, gratitude. And instead this December, America becomes a giant incompetence obstacle course. You can't get a straight answer. You can't get a human being. You can't get a problem solved. And if you dare try to upgrade your phone, may the odds be ever in your favor. Somewhere along the way, competence packed a suitcase, left the country, and didn't even leave a note with its forwarding address on the refrigerator. This isn't political, this isn't economic. This is a national skill shortage so bad it should be classified as an endangered species. And the holidays make it ten times worse because everybody's overwhelmed, understaffed, undertrained, and existing on fumes. Now let me give you a real life example that pushed me over the edge this week. My girlfriend and I, two adults, reasonably intelligent, able to operate heavy machinery, tried to do something simple. Upgrade our old iPhones, not start a company, not build a rocket, not negotiate world peace. Just upgrade two older iPhones to new ones through Verizon. And this turned into a nine-hour multi-part miniseries. Four phone calls, two in-person store visits, conflicting answers, agents who swore they fixed it, only for the next agent from Verizon to say, I don't see what happened, what you say, sir, in our system anywhere. Even after each person I talked with left extensive notes in the database. It was like I was talking to ghosts. At one point it felt like the Verizon people were reading from a script written by a malfunctioning Roomba. Meanwhile, all my girlfriend and I wanted was the same thing millions of people want during the holidays. In this case, a simple upgrade of our iPhone, where our emails would update in a timely fashion, and we don't have to wait for carrier pigeons to deliver each individual message to us. Nine hours, three separate days, nine, spent on this fiasco of upgrading two iPhones. That's an entire workday. That's a flight to London. That's a Lord of the Rings movie marathon. And my favorite part of this incident after talking to multiple people at Verizon trying to get this fixed was the text message I received this morning after two weeks trying to solve this. Hello from Verizon, the text message said. We have reviewed your request to ensure you receive consistent, dedicated support, and to avoid involving multiple representatives, we kindly ask that you refrain from calling us back. Your needs will be handled from start to finish by one single point of contact. Please don't involve multiple people from Verizon. That's what the text message said. Don't refrain from calling us back. Which is what I was trying to do in the first place. Deal with one person. And at the end of it, you're not even mad anymore. You're just spiritually exhausted. Trying to remember what you were trying to do when you started all of this. My girlfriend and I were looking forward to the excitement of getting two new modern technology phones until this Fellini movie with Verizon occurred. And this is happening everywhere. It's not just Verizon, it's not Apple, it's not Best Buy. It's happening in fast food locations, retail, restaurants. It's the entire ecosystem of American customer service nowadays. You call the pharmacy. They don't know where your prescription is, even though they texted and left you a phone message saying your prescription is ready to pick up. You call your doctor. They tell you the next appointment's April 2037. And let me give you another real-world example from this past week. I called the office of my orthopedic specialist because they said I owed$25. I called them and asked why. They told me it was for my follow-up office visit that I failed to show up for. I told them I never scheduled a follow-up office visit after the first time I saw the doctor. And we went back and forth like a merry-go-round, like I was trapped in the twilight zone, and we never got anywhere. I told them I'm not paying$25 for something I didn't schedule. They told me I have 30 days to pay. In competence in all areas of our lives. You call the airline. They suggest you download their app because apparently you're the customer and the employee now. We're doing half their jobs for them. The new American training manuals, if confused, blame the computer. If the customer pushes back, put them on hold. If the customer calls back, pretend you never heard of the problem in the first place. And the holidays magnify it. Everything's overloaded. Everyone's short staffed. Half the country's coughing, the other half's traveling. So when you need help with anything, anything, you're entering a seasonal incompetence vortex. Your package is late? Holiday volume. Your appointment got canceled? Holiday staffing. Your new phone upgrade turned into a nine hour documentary? Holiday chaos. It's the only time of the year where incompetence gets wrapped in tinsel and sold as a festive inconvenience. This is the WTF of today's show. We've lost basic operational competence in America. And we're all pretending this is just how things are now. It's not. It's unacceptable. The bar used to be to do the job right. And now the bar is set at just don't make it worse. We're living in a country where the phrase, I actually fixed it for you, sir. Sounds like a miracle. And the irony: the more technology we add, the less anything works. You walk into a grocery store and there are 15 checkout lines at the front, but only three cashiers manning them. Everyone's on a break, or the store didn't hire enough staff for the holidays. So here's my holiday message to everyone. If you manage to get through December without spending nine hours trying to upgrade your phone, without screaming at an AI voice system, without hearing, I'm sorry, our system's down, or we'll get to you in a few minutes. Our average wait time is three hours. You're one of the chosen ones. May the odds be ever in your favor. Because competency left the building, and nobody knows when it's coming back. And honestly, why would it come back? When the guy who built an entire movement on arrogance, on hatred, on not caring about anyone, is still out there spreading that same attitude like confetti. Of course, I'm talking about the man in charge. Donald Trump lowered the bar so far that half the country now thinks efforts optional. Compassion's weakness. And doing your job well is some kind of liberal plot. Let's make America great again, shall we? Thank you, Donald Trump, for your nonstop contribution to a culture where millions of people don't give a crap. Don't try, don't care, and don't even pretend to. Trump's attitude has spilled out into the bloodstream of this country. And now we're living with the side effects every day. The stress, the chaos, and the incompetency that's flooded every corner of American life. Make America great again, right? We can't even get customer service to call us back. Would love to hear from some of you with your thoughts. You know how to reach me, you got an email, you got a toll-free number. Uh, would be nice to before the end of the year hear some feedback from you. That's your WTF Wednesday. This is a world gone mad. I'm Jeff Allen Wolfe. I'll be back Friday. I say the shit that no one else will because I don't care who I may piss off. I'm not mainstream media, no BS, no talking points, no fake headlines. The truth has to be told. Until then, Wolfpack listeners, remain skeptical, keep focused, but most of all, stay hopeful.

SPEAKER_00: 11:25

There is chaos in the world. Can't you see? And we need to stand up and preserve our demon see. This is a world under this is a well.