There’s something deeply unsettling about watching the people who are supposed to be investigating serious crimes get caught up in what looks like political surveillance theater. The recent photos of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s binder showing search histories of Congress members looking through unredacted Epstein files has me thinking about just how far down the rabbit hole we’ve gone when it comes to privacy, power, and who’s watching whom.

The whole situation is a mess of contradictions that would be almost comical if it weren’t so serious. On one hand, we’ve got lawmakers accessing sensitive documents on government systems—systems that are, by design, monitored. That’s not exactly shocking. Anyone who’s worked in IT (and I’ve spent enough years in the trenches) knows that everything you do on a work computer is logged. Every search, every file access, every email. It’s Security 101.

There’s a satirical headline doing the rounds that pretty much sums up the absurdity of our current political landscape: Sussan Ley apparently can’t believe she’s less popular than a bloke who managed to combine an almost impressive litany of failures, scandals, and questionable decisions during his time as Prime Minister. The headline lists just a few of Scott Morrison’s greatest hits, and honestly, it barely scratches the surface.

The thing that struck me while reading through the discussion around this piece wasn’t the list itself – we’ve all seen variations of it before. What caught my attention was how many people admitted they’d forgotten just how terrible Morrison was as PM. One person put it perfectly: we have a collective goldfish memory when it comes to politics.