America has never lacked political showmen. So when Elon Musk — a man as comfortable launching rockets as launching tweets — announces his intention to form a new political party, the instinctive response is skepticism, if not outright derision. Call it the “America Party,” he says, a banner for those tired of both elephants and donkeys. Naturally, the memes wrote themselves.

But peel away the theatrics, and something more consequential is hiding in plain sight: the yearning. Americans are not necessarily flocking to Musk’s cause, but millions are scanning the horizon for something else. The spectacle may be Musk’s — but the discontent it feeds on is widely shared.

It is tempting to dismiss this moment as déjà vu. Third-party attempts are stitched into America’s political folklore. From Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose insurgency to Ross Perot’s data-heavy crusade, outsiders have long challenged the duopoly, only to be crushed by the machinery of incumbency.

The U.S. political system, with its winner-take-all incentives and rigid party structures, has proven uniquely impervious to disruption. But today’s landscape feels different — not because the rules have changed, but because the public mood has.

Start with trust — once a civic virtue, now a casualty. A Pew Research survey earlier this year found that only 22 percent of Americans trust the federal government to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time” — down from over 70 percent in the 1960s. Meanwhile,

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