The Show We Watch While Our Country Falls Apart — dancing with…

Season 34 of *Dancing With the Stars* premiered this week to its usual fanfare: sequins, spray tans, and a former reality TV villain weeping over a waltz. My wife watched it live. I pretended to read a book. By the third commercial break, I had put the book down. This is the quiet bargain millions of Americans make every fall. We know the republic is creaking. We know the grocery bill is obscene, the news is a hostage video, and our neighbors have stopped speaking to each other over yard signs. And yet, there we are, Tuesday night, emotionally invested in whether a retired NFL linebacker can pull off a chaise lounge. I am not here to sneer at it. I am here to notice what it means. *Dancing With the Stars* is now twenty years old. It has outlasted three presidencies, two financial collapses, a pandemic, and the entire concept of shared reality. It is, in a strange way, one of the last remaining places where Americans agree on something. Red states and blue states both vote for the couple with the best chemistry. Nobody riots over a 7 from Bruno. That's not trivial. We have atomized into a thousand algorithmic silos, but for ninety minutes a week, a sizable chunk of the country sits in the same tent. We watch the same awkward foxtrot. We wince at the same judge. We mourn the same elimination. It is the closest thing we have to a national campfire, and it is hosted by a man who has been smiling through it since 2005. But there is a cost buried in the comfort. Every hour spent watching celebrities learn the paso doble is an hour not spent at the school board meeting, the city council hearing, the volunteer shift. *Dancing With the Stars* is not the opiate of the masses—that title belongs to TikTok—but it is a very pleasant anesthetic. It asks nothing of us. It demands no courage, no sacrifice, no civic muscle. It simply lets us feel something safe in a world that has become exhausting to feel anything about. And that, I suspect, is the real appeal. We are not watching because we care about the salsa. We are watching because we are tired of caring about everything else. The celebrities themselves are a mirror of our moment. Once the show cast actual stars. Now it casts people famous for being on other shows, or for marrying someone famous, or for a scandal that briefly trended. We have run out of icons, so we recycle the semi-known. It is the cultural equivalent of a garage sale. We are dancing with what's left. Still, I will probably watch again next week. **The opinion:** A society that can still gather around a bad tango is not yet fully lost. But a society that prefers the tango to the town hall is in deeper trouble than any elimination night can fix. Watch the show, sure—just don't let it be the only thing you show up for.