Something is off. Something is in the air. Something just ain't right.
I've asked several people (both online and in person) if life seems more than just a bit off lately. I don't specially mean the dystopian worldwide political hellscape that's permeating every aspect of our lives, but just life in general. I look around and think, "This isn't the way this is supposed to be. It's all wrong." It's like an old episode of The Twilight Zone where the protagonist is the only one who knows something 's wrong, or in more contemporary terms, it feels like The Matrix is continually glitching. Frankly at this point I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the proverbial flying saucer appears and lands on the White House lawn. I mean it's about the only thing that hasn't happened.
But at the same time, I don't have an overreaching feeling of dread for the future (unless I spend too much time doomscrolling), but rather—and even when I do go doomscrolling—a feeling that everything's still going to be all right. And it's not years away…it's right around the corner. Something is going to happen to put an end to this madness and wake us from this horrible nightmare.
Listen…Felon45 does not have nearly the power or influence he and his handlers would have us believe. Now that he's tanked the economy he's losing his own followers. Look at how many times he's been swatted down by the courts since he took office. And despite his wet dream of disbanding the courts or upending Habeas Corpus, it's not going to happen. He's a sad, weak, dementia-ridden old man who's obviously suffered at least one stroke, increasingly can't get his words out, and still somehow dreams of being the next Hitler—but is in actuality just a couple Big Macs away from ridding the planet of his presence completely. And in any case he is not the source of this overall—"offness" I'm feeling. He is merely a symptom.
But what about you guys? What are you sensing?
I, too, have a strange optimism that things will work out.
It's not just 47. Even if the Orange Felon dies in office, 48 will be just as bad, possibly even worse because his attention span is longer than ten seconds.
In 2016 the US elected a bad man, and we survived that. But in 2024 the US voted against democracy itself, against decency to the poor and hungry, against combating climate change, against protecting the environment, against the very existence of trans people, against science, etc. etc. I don't see a path back from that, at least not without a violent revolution.
Well we are in the darkest timeline
As a fed, I'm seeing how much they're overreaching, and how the courts are going to smack the agencies down. Pain in the ass to deal with, and totally avoidable, but now we're in the "find out" stages for the folks in charge, so we get to watch them reap what they've sown.
When the election was over and the results in, I did feel very scared and hopeless. But in the months since then, as I've seen the way the world has been reacting to him, and the way our country is responding to him, I've turned to cautiously optimistic. He hasn't gotten everything his way, and although it will take a long time to recover from this, I believe we will recover, and hopefully learn from it.