People haven't really processed it yet. People who don't constantly and forcefully insist on rationality - in their own minds, from their peers, in their daily decision trees and interpersonal relationships - are going to take longer to process this. Most people "feel" there is still a going back to before times. Even if they think it's over. This is why you see capitulations and strange bedfellows and SCOTUS punting, punting noncommittally down the road, and shit like Fetterman and Bill Maher getting their captive minds suctioned from their heads, why Schumer bet big on folding, and it's why Adam Kinzinger appears to be the only politician with any balls in the whole fucking country. It's not a question of intelligence for these folks, it's a question of them being fucking slow to process grief or afraid to confront reality.
Everyone thinks if they lie low and stay out of the way, the Dems will take over in 2026 and we'll all breathe a sigh of relief and admire our having pulled back from the brink. They think they can play their cards right and come out of this unscathed, and everyone will go back to being universities, law firms, newspapers, and people of integrity like they have been in their hearts all along. They don't realize that they test has come and gone and they failed.
Some advice (from Band of Brothers, so not to sound like Steve Bannon, cinephile, but): Your only hope is to accept that you're dead. So you can function.
For those of us who have been saying this for years, it's annoying AF. But the pot will eventually boil over: of that, we are all guaranteed.
One of the loneliest things in the world is seeing clearly before others do, watching the collapse play out in real time while the people around you keep adjusting their seat cushions, waiting for someone else to step in.
Even most "aware" people still believe, on some level, that normal is paused, not gone. That this is a nightmare they can sleepwalk through and wake up from, eventually. But the test already happened.
I’ve written about this grief, the kind that comes from realizing your country isn’t asleep, it’s gone. The hardest part is knowing that telling the truth, early and often, will isolate you. You become the ghost in the room, the voice no one wants to hear because it means they’d have to act.
The rest might someday catch up. I keep wondering what’s left when/if they do.
People haven't really processed it yet. People who don't constantly and forcefully insist on rationality - in their own minds, from their peers, in their daily decision trees and interpersonal relationships - are going to take longer to process this. Most people "feel" there is still a going back to before times. Even if they think it's over. This is why you see capitulations and strange bedfellows and SCOTUS punting, punting noncommittally down the road, and shit like Fetterman and Bill Maher getting their captive minds suctioned from their heads, why Schumer bet big on folding, and it's why Adam Kinzinger appears to be the only politician with any balls in the whole fucking country. It's not a question of intelligence for these folks, it's a question of them being fucking slow to process grief or afraid to confront reality.
Everyone thinks if they lie low and stay out of the way, the Dems will take over in 2026 and we'll all breathe a sigh of relief and admire our having pulled back from the brink. They think they can play their cards right and come out of this unscathed, and everyone will go back to being universities, law firms, newspapers, and people of integrity like they have been in their hearts all along. They don't realize that they test has come and gone and they failed.
Some advice (from Band of Brothers, so not to sound like Steve Bannon, cinephile, but): Your only hope is to accept that you're dead. So you can function.
For those of us who have been saying this for years, it's annoying AF. But the pot will eventually boil over: of that, we are all guaranteed.
I feel this in my bones.
One of the loneliest things in the world is seeing clearly before others do, watching the collapse play out in real time while the people around you keep adjusting their seat cushions, waiting for someone else to step in.
Even most "aware" people still believe, on some level, that normal is paused, not gone. That this is a nightmare they can sleepwalk through and wake up from, eventually. But the test already happened.
I’ve written about this grief, the kind that comes from realizing your country isn’t asleep, it’s gone. The hardest part is knowing that telling the truth, early and often, will isolate you. You become the ghost in the room, the voice no one wants to hear because it means they’d have to act.
The rest might someday catch up. I keep wondering what’s left when/if they do.