The Doctor and the Disaster - How Dr. Phil Tried to Defeat Wokeness and Failed Against Reality

Once upon a time there was a man who believed he could heal the American soul. Dr. Phil McGraw, the television psychologist with the fatherly frown and the warm Texan accent, who had guided millions of people through their neuroses with the words “How does that make you feel?” - until he decided to become the biggest patient in the country himself. Because America, Dr. Phil thought, was sick. Too sensitive. Too woke. Too busy arguing about pronouns instead of wearing cowboy hats. So he founded Merit Street Media - a kind of Fox News with a doctorate. A network for all those who get hives at the word “diversity” and believe empathy is a communist conspiracy.

What was planned as a conservative success story ended up as a reality show about the limits of human overestimation. The expensive studio set, half Nashville, half divine judgment, became a symbol of an enterprise that failed before it was even understood. Millions flowed into cameras, lighting systems, and patriotic stage designs - red, white, and blue lights so glaring that even the American eagle probably applied for asylum in Canada. But the audience never came. Instead of the expected masses of outraged patriots, only a few bored seniors and two influencers showed up, who thought “Merit Street” was a new energy drink brand. The ratings hit the ground faster than Dr. Phil’s hairstyle in the Texas wind.

McGraw tried to save what could be saved. He brought preachers, former Trump advisers, and failed country singers in front of the camera to show the “true voice of America” - a soundtrack of resentment, grace, and roaring. But even his most loyal fans felt that it was no longer the therapist speaking, but a man caught in his own diagnosis: narcissism, grade five, with acute self-promotion tendencies. When production costs exploded, investors declared the network “on indefinite hiatus.” In truth, that means: dead, buried, forgotten - somewhere between Truth Social and the remains of CNN+. The website still shows the smiling face of a man who believed he could heal the media world with common sense. But the prescription had expired, and the medicine was poisoned.

Ironically, it was precisely the “woke culture” Dr. Phil loved to mock that ultimately saved him his last few viewers - not out of enthusiasm, but pity. Young satirists dissected his patriotic talk show into viral clips, TikTok analysts turned his quotes into memes, and on Reddit the phrase circulates: “Merit Street - where empathy dies and egoism is therapy.” So Dr. Phil now stands among the ruins of his mission. A man who once explained to America how to solve conflicts has now triggered the greatest conflict of all: the one between self-image and reality. His network was not a revolution but a regression - into that world where white men with microphones mistake themselves for destiny.

Maybe Dr. Phil should have sat on his own famous couch for once. The diagnosis would have been simple: megalomania, intensified by Fox News syndrome. The therapy: less camera, more self-reflection. But in Trump’s America that is the most dangerous illness of all - insight. And so all that remains of Merit Street Media is a bitter echo. No uprising against wokeness, but a warning to all who believe outrage is a business model. The final scene of the show could not be more symbolic: Dr. Phil, alone in the studio, surrounded by empty chairs, murmuring into the silence: “How does that make you feel?”

America does not answer. It has long since switched off.