I’ve felt it. You’ve felt it. Things feel off. Things don’t work the way we’ve come to accept as normal and expected. Whether that’s our institutions, our devices, or—dare I say—our bodies (TBH, the latter may be colored by my own experiences over the past year). The simplest tasks are glitching. Trying to get anything accomplished through customer service anywhere is a lesson in frustration. Nothing is working the way it should.
I have a theory.
Judging from the prevalence of YouTube videos on the subject, as is the case with many older people I find myself waking up almost every night like clockwork around 3 am. Sometimes I can fall right back asleep; other times—like this morning—not so much. My mind starts wandering.
I know I’m not the only one—again, because I spend too much time on YouTube—that everything just feels off. In fact, I will go so far as reality itself has felt off since I watched those planes slam into the Twin Towers on the morning news that fateful day in 2001 as I was getting ready for work—although nowhere near as much as it has over the past five or six years.
“High strangeness” is the only way I can describe it. Yes, life eventually returned to normal—and for a few brief months our country was united in a way I now doubt we’ll ever see again. But then Republicans got a war hard-on and Bush invaded Iraq (even though it had nothing to do with the attacks) and things started unraveling.
This morning, while laying awake listening to Ben breathe beside me, I envisioned reality as a meticulously maintained Jenga tower; a tower representing our shared reality.
Bear with me here. This is kind of in the weeds and I’m not sure I can adequately convey it in words.
This tower of our shared reality is composed of blocks made of 8+ billion smaller towers representing our individual lives. When we die the small gaps left in the structure from our individual towers disappearing are replaced by new towers of those who follow after us. The big, life-altering events we each experience individually can be represented by blocks being knocked out of our personal towers. It’s never enough to bring down the entire fabric of reality, but these events definitely affect our personal realities, forcing us to change. (see: cancer, etc.)
But something happened in 2001. Something came along and knocked out several rows wholesale making everything unbalanced. The tower started listing.
When it descended that golden escalator in 2015, more critical rows were knocked out. The tower started leaning dangerously and it’s only gotten worse over the past decade. That’s this feeling of everything being off. Because it is.
COVID, 2020. Another block pushed—although not immeidately out of the tower. Somehow this managed to give our collective reality an opportunity to reset. But then, BAM! It was knocked out as well and it was back to business as usual. The tower was beginning to look like a certain monument in Pisa, Italy.
I fear all it’s going to take is one more event, one more loss of a row of blocks and…
I don’t know about y’all, but I keep feeling like this is just around the corner.
I can relate.
Mark, I used to have similar 3AM awakenings. I usually just looked at the time and went back to sleep. I also leave the tv on all night, with the sound turned down or muted, so that is something to look at if need be. The infomercials on tooth transplants, etc. Or religion “Paid Content”. IF things are really bad, then I try the Internet for an hour or so, but that never does make me sleepy.
The 3AM time coincides with cortisol level spikes as we are sleeping, many note. There can be some YouTubve videos on that. Plus probably Google.
I was working nights when the planes collided with the NYC towers. I sat there listening, then turned on tv network news. As bad as it sounded on the radio. THAT is when I knew it was time to start thinking about getting a will together, and other things. I was bummed out that day. When I got to work, all of my co-workers were too. Very depressing, but I KNEW we could get through that, somehow or another.
The whole “things don’t make sense like they used to” orientation started with the 2016 political campaigns. Trump steamrolled the others on stage as they did not know how to best respond to his “new way” of attacking them. THEN he started to say HE could do things others could not, because he was an outsider, etc. He was saying he could do things the Constitution and Separation of Powers prevented him from doing, but NOBODY called him out on that, as if THEY REALLY BELIEVED he could do what he said. THEY (the voters) should have known better! As if they were ignorant of how government worked and operated. Checks and Balances. NOT an all-powerful “King”. As if THEY had completely forgotten their grade school, junior high, and high school classes in US History, World History, and US Government!!! NOBODY mentioned this, period! NOT even the network news people, it seemed.
As he was saying what he could uniquely fix, it was as if he had a (Chinese made) magic wand and a mountain or Energizer batteries. People wanted to believe and trust him, when they should have known better. I COULD see these things, but others did not want to, it seems.
And it got worse from there. People gave him “free passes” where others would have been put in jail or banished from the political stage if THEY’D done those things of that nature. He bragged about the female genitalia things, but when Al Franken made his hand gestures in a picture (which many red-blooded American Males would have dreamed of doing themselves, He had to resign his political post as the sleeping female in the picture was offended. Th e DEMOCRAT did the right thing, as the Republican went on down the street, in the gutter, as if he “had good sense”.
At THIS point in time, there are younger people coming online who do not know that things can be better or different than what Trump and Republicans have been doing. As if THEY either did not get classes in History and Government like WE did, or didn’t think they mattered to them. As the whole “modern life”, related to political things, is a very good continuing lesson in World History, US History, and Government . . . IF anybody might care to look and watch.
Because so much has been “normalized”, it seems, compared to what things normally would be, the “new normal” exists. Some care about our democracy as others don’t see what all of the big to-do about “fascism” is all about. Or WHY that even matters. Those history classes they seemed to miss (or forget) can explain that!
To me, the really amazing thing is that Republicans seem to be so weak that they MUST hang onto Trump’s coat-tails! But THAT is the hole they’ve dug for themselves. As they have made “obstruction” and “no good alternatives” as their current brand. Honed during the Obama years. Trump promised a better healthcare system 10 years ago, but where is it? Surely there are intelligent politicians that could have come up with something allegedly better. BETTER than the re-cycled “Romney-Care” system that Republican Mitt Romney put in place in Massachusetts when he was governor! But as THEY did not “invent it”, Republicans wanted nothing of it.
The “good things” are progressively revealing themselves, though. LBJ noted that “Republicans always ‘tank’ the economy”, back in the 1960s. And they are still at it! Trump did OK in his first year, but then he started getting weird on trade policies and things got worse since then. His claimed “better deals from China” never materialized! Then or now.
Geroge W. was having issues toward his last years in office. Obama inherited a shaky economy, but fixed it. Republicans said what he was doing would not work, BUT IT DID. Then all they could say was “IF We’d done it, it would have been faster.” BUT THEY did nothing except complain! No “better alternative plan”, other than “cut taxes”, which is their claim to fame. But also the reason local taxes are so high!
The THING that Republicans, when they were mostly business people in political roles, knew that in “sales”, if you don’t progress, you go backward really quick. Have to remain competitive. The current Republican “Lawyer” politicians never got a business education, so they don’t know these things.
Going “forward” means “PROGRESS”. No rocket science there! Yet Trump Republicans want to go backward, undoing things, just because it suits their fancy AND they can. I am guardedly optimistic that what Democratic leadership replaces these things with is better, sustainable, MAKES SENSE, and normal people understand it! Tat guano crazy Republicans don’t know how to fix anything, it seems! I suspect the average voter, IF their three brain cells will communicate logically, will realize this.
As many Republicans and MAGA realize they “got took” by Trump. THEY will have to figure out how that happened and why IF they ever want to be “powerful” and contribute to this nation’s future again.
Oh, I definitely HEAR YOU, Mark! There are themes, (bits and pieces) of the theories you write about, that touch upon my own experiences. B.T.W, I was in Lower Manhattan on that morning going to J&R Electronics which was across from that historic old church and graveyard and City Hall. This was the reason that eventually made me decide I had to (finally, eventually), leave the city a few years later.
On a decidedly more humorous level however, I add this: When you write that ‘something happened to you in 2001..’ well I sort of see this as well, in my own Film-themed way. As I approached the year, I realized that 2001 would absolutely NOT be the way it was depicted, as I’d hoped it would be, back in 1968, (when my hopes were initiated – Thank You, Stanley Kubrick).