I wish I could be a denier, but reality keeps intruding, in spite of my efforts to avoid encountering it.
I do my best to avoid Outrage Culture. Most of the news these days (especially on the internet) is designed more to get people riled up so the site gets more traffic than to actually impart any facts. I assume everything I read is biased and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, I’m angry about a lot of stuff that goes on, but I can’t really affect it. Sad, but true. So I keep my head down, try to be kind, help when I can on an individual level, and focus on the things that I enjoy.
Like somebody mentioned upthread, I also try to keep the mantra, “This, too, shall pass” in mind. In many ways things are a dumpster fire now, but that won’t last. It never does, if for no other reason than humans always want what they don’t have. The pendulum will swing again, and things will get better. I keep telling myself that, anyway.
Also, cat videos. And real cats. They help a lot.
I really believe that we got where we are because of denialism. We turned a blind eye to racism in order to get along, we didn’t challenge the anti-democratic movement rising in our country and we let virulent anti-intellectualism prevent us from taking action on climate change. I think that it’s important that we call a racist a racist and embrace the shithole that is life in the 21st century.
Denialism? Everyone’s an asshole. The current asshole hasn’t done anything negative for my lifestyle. In fact, my investments are doing better than I have any right to expect with the current asshole.
I don’t agree with a wall, but it doesn’t affect me (and I have an immigrant spouse). It sucks that families are separated, but it doesn’t affect me.
I don’t deny of this crap, but it doesn’t affect me, so why should my sanity suffer? And remember, the topic here is “sanity,” and not something as simple as preferences.
There’s no reason to lose my sanity, because everything is essentially status quo.
I kind of want to be there when you Google climate change.
These days, I find that fast forwarding through Stephan Colbert’s monologue is a coping strategy.
Yeah, I’ve stopped watching it. It started out being cathartic, but eventually became too depressing.
My only son died 11 years ago. As sad as that is for me I am so relieved that he will not have to endure whatever comes in the future.
My deeply-felt and well-earned sense of perspective. “This too shall pass” applies to every single thing in life, the good along with the bad.
There have been better times than now, but there have been a lot worse times within living memory. The world managed to make it through nuclear standoff for 40 years or so. It was tough for some people to decide to raise a family during that time, they didn’t want to subject children to instant annihilation or worse, post-nuclear survival. When that ended some people thought it would be the millennium. When Obama was elected, some people thought it was the millennium. It’s never the millennium, and it’s never the end of the world.
I think the worst aspect of current American politics for many folks is that some people whom they hate are winning and thumbing their noses at everything those people hold dear. Those people should remember when they were winning and thumbing their noses at the losers. Everything goes both ways. That’s all it is.
Are you sure it’s ended?..
The threat of global thermonuclear war, probably yes. The more likely threat today is limited-scope cheap dirty suitcase bombs. Doesn’t change my point in the slightest.
My ex-wife and I lived with her parents for a year or so in Tokyo. They were both children during the war, but both saw their homes burned down during the firebombings of that city. Both lived through the poverty of the war and postwar periods. They saw democracy come out of military government.
One of my students here in Taiwan was a boy when he saw the Taiwanese army handcuff a line of people together and drive them into the ocean, facing being shot or drowning. It’s a much better world for them as well.
I think that America is going through a harder time than what people expected, but it’s still not that bad, comparatively speaking.
To be honest, I think you’re really underestimating the extent of the problem, it’s not that the US is going through a difficult time, it’s that Pax Americana is ending precisely at precisely the time when climate change will create tensions and competition for resources. The tensions that created Trump are nothing to what’s coming.
UN chief warns ‘a wind of madness is sweeping the globe’
Yes, there have been seriously troubled times in the past. And we’re heading into more and bigger storms. With a narcissistic toddler at the helm.
That (paywalled) article refers to conflict among nations, and I notice greater belligerence at a more individual level, too. Everyone seems to be saying, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!” It used to be that only the fanatics were fanatical, and now everyone seems to be looking for a fight.
What the world needs now is love, sweet love… and a global tragedy to put things back into perspective. Come on, coronavirus!
As you can see, my sanity’s long gone in these troubled times.