And I am … I am numb… but... I remember back to when a good scandal rose my ire.. I vented my spleen and it felt good. It felt like it meant something.. It was cathartic.
When the tapes were discovered and Nixon was ousted, when Reagan was caught red handed up to his armpits in arms sales, when GW sent young soldiers into harms way for a lie.. and yes even when Bill was caught denigrating the office he held with an intern (yes i am a dyed in the wool liberal but that should never have happened) I was pissed, I was furious, I was not going to stand for it.. But that was then.
Today I am numb, and I am afraid, not for the things that the party of Trump wants me to be afraid of but of what i am becoming..... I don’t want to be numb.. I want to be screaming from the rooftops.. I want to be horrified. I want to be genuinely angry at the state of this nation, what is happening to the most vulnerable of us and at all of the things that the self serving, dishonest, conscienceless Trumpites do every day, every hour of every day.. So many things to rail against… I long to feel as angry and pissed off as I did after the soul eating results of the presidential election left us with the most ignorant, and despicable president in history. But i am not.. I am numb..
It didn’t happen quickly, this emotional lethargy… It crept in slowly with the day after day pounding of every disgusting tweet, of the horrible mas shootings, the resurgence of Nazi’s in the US, imprisoning helpless children, the degradation of the rule of law and the trashing of the constitution.. In the beginning I hung onto every horrible thing thinking that this has to be it.. the one to bring it down.. John Olivers red buzzer.. We had them.. But it never came..
I think what made me notice how numb I really was is the front page articles on the children that are still imprisoned and separated from their families as the days tick by. It reappears every few days, to keep it fresh in our thoughts.. Initially I read it. Then slowly and surely it became background noise.. How? How could something this horrifying become background noise? How did I become so de-sensitized that I gave it so little thought. I realized that I was doing the same with Global Warming.. Hell i was one of the original readers of Mother Earth News, had every issue. I spouted verse from Rachel Carsons Silent Spring… And now I felt like it was another thing that I had no control over. Not with this president, with these Rethugs, maybe someday but not now. There were more important things to worry about. Huh? the planet is in danger of dying and I can’t muster the outrage anymore...And i bet that i am hardly alone.. How can anyone withstand this barrage of hourly insults on our humanity and not become numb.
So, yes I am numb. And I am scared. To quote Bruce Cockburn , “the trouble with normal is it only gets worse.” And this is the new normal, my new normal. I want my outrage back. I want to stop feeling like even though we are winning now, and i truly believe that we have turned the corner, I will never again look at this country, this world, without being jaded, without feeling the true full measure of outrage that all of this deserves. And I am scared for my children for whom this is normal. Who may be more accepting of a world where the overton window has tilted to the side of greed and oppression and left our humanity in the dust..
I want to be horrified… But I think along the way I lost a part of me..