18 AUG 2026.
For decades American politics was organized around a simple horizontal axis. Left versus right. Liberal versus conservative. Democrat versus Republican. That model is collapsing because it no longer adequately describes the alliances, arguments or suspicions shaping modern political life.
Increasingly the more useful divide is establishment versus anti-establishment. Institutionalists versus skeptics. People who instinctively trust government, intelligence agencies, corporate media, universities and credentialed experts versus those who increasingly ask whether those institutions have earned that trust.
This is why strange political coalitions now appear everywhere. Antiwar conservatives find themselves agreeing with old-school liberals. Civil libertarians from the left suddenly share concerns with populists on the right about censorship, surveillance and government secrecy. Working-class voters who once belonged automatically to the Democratic coalition increasingly sound culturally conservative while traditional Republicans sometimes defend corporations and institutions they once distrusted.
The old labels are becoming inadequate.
Consider free speech. Once treated primarily as a liberal cause, it has become central to much of the populist right. Consider war. Once associated with hawkish Republicans, skepticism of foreign intervention now crosses ideological lines. Even distrust of pharmaceutical companies, intelligence agencies, federal law enforcement and concentrated corporate power can unite people who disagree profoundly on almost everything else.
None of this means left and right have disappeared. Abortion, taxes, guns, immigration and cultural questions still create genuine ideological divisions. But something larger is happening underneath them.
People are reorganizing politically around trust.
Who do you believe? Who deserves scrutiny? Who controls information? Who benefits from the accepted narrative? Who is permitted to question it?
That emerging fault line may ultimately prove more consequential than the old partisan one.
The political future may belong not to left versus right but to those who defend institutions versus those demanding that institutions prove themselves worthy of being defended.
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I’m With Her takes John Hiatt’s “Crossing Muddy Waters” and turns it into something almost weightless. Aoife O’Donovan, Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz let the song breathe through immaculate three-part harmony, acoustic restraint and that rare musical discipline where nobody fights for attention. Their Grey Fox 2025 performance feels less like a cover than a communal remembrance, preserving Hiatt’s melancholy while adding luminous warmth. It is roots music stripped of vanity, three extraordinary musicians serving the song rather than themselves.
I’m With Her on John Hiatt’s “Crossing Muddy Waters” Grey Fox 2025
I’m With Her, featuring Aoife O’Donovan, Sara Watkins, and Sarah Jarosz performs John Hiatt’s “Crossing Muddy Waters” at Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival 2025. Brought to you by Less Than Face Productions. Audio by Bill K.
