Fatigue? More like comatose.
I wish he would stop breaking everything.
That’d be nice. Then I can relax and not have to keep paying attention.
It’s kind of like being forced to stand in the middle of a driveway, and there’s a bunch of small children in a car in the garage. They also have the keys.
They’ve put the car in gear and it’s slowly rolling towards me. And I have to keep my eye on them as they’re rolling rolling rolling towards me, and yet I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to jump out of the way even if I needed to.
I’m seriously considering moving to a different state because it’s less likely to get blown up in a nuclear exchange.
I haven’t had to think about shit like that since the '80s.
“Fatigue” is not quite the word.
Do bouts of angry tears count?
I would love to go a day, nay even 12 hours with out the cheeto in chief being anywhere in my awareness. I’m afraid not to look at the news in the morning in case some new horrible shit has gone down overnight. I’m ambushed with news of him or the horrendous things his people are doing throughout every day. I don’t even live in the US, I hate to think how it is for you there.
I was tired of the US election last summer, I was looking forward to November when things would return to normal and watching american politics would be a curiosity rather than what feels like a survival reflex.
Thanks LDB - you nailed it!
Had to take a trip to Europe for that, but it did happen. Didn’t have to think about the mess for about two weeks. And it’s true: I didn’t. I busied myself with touring things and eating stuff and hanging out with friends and we never mentioned him. In fact, we had a standing agreement that nobody was to mention him.
If you can get away for a hike or a vacation to another country, it’ll do you good.
Since I’ve been back, it’s been constant Orange. Our media here sucks. They concentrate on less and less relevant stuff every year, and I find myself drifting further and further away from using it as a source of information. It’s so brainless.
I wanted BBC news about hurricane Ophelia. Well, their site detects I am in USA and they feed me BBC/USA type news! Orange! Fuckers! I wanted info relevant to Ireland and UK, damn it! So anyways, news in the USA is like how people in the USA try to portray Al Jazeera. We are in a spacetime reality distortion field here. Getting out of the country showed me how true this is.
Refuse to participate. Question authority. Question your sources of information. Trust nothing you hear without verifying it in some way. And be selective. Otherwise, you risk insanity.
I was thinking about this the other day, how bizarre it is to watch this utter disastrous trainwreck happening in real-time. Like many people, I remember the Bush II years, where we all knew our President was basically an incompetent doofus who said silly things like “put food on your family” and barfed at a state dinner while fucking up wars, making a hash of Katrina, and causing a recession. But he himself just seemed like a useless dingbat, a yokel with lousy advice; we were all frustrated and angry with him, but his actions never seemed malicious, just stupid.
Trump’s different. He’s exactly what we dreaded, a viciously cruel authoritarian apparently devoid of a soul who’s both weirdly incompetent and intent on destroying things apparently out of spite. America’s anger towards Bush was slow-growing; Trump’s been a monster right out of the gate, and like many people, I find it hard to envision how to deal with this for years to come, or how it can get worse. And the news surrounds me: every social media source, every news source is a constant stream of today’s awfulness.
And what makes this so much worse for me is that, somehow, a huge number of my fellow Americans still think he’s doing a wonderful job. That tells me I might be living in the wrong country (or the wrong century).
It’s like having a really annoying neighbor on the cul de sac determined to destroy the value of your home.
You know, the house with cars on blocks, lawn overgrown, windows broken and never repaired, foul odors wafting from uncollected trash, random cursing ala turrets syndrome coming from the back yard over a TV blasting Fox news 24/7, children with dirty faces chasing your car as you drive over spent cans of STP that were tossed from their front porch.
You keep hoping they will move away but, they multiply instead and add a trailer park to the backyard. The police won’t help. You want to move but you can’t go anywhere where they don’t have relatives.
Every day since November…
I understand Monika’s point about not sucking on the news firehose, but I don’t think that Trump fatigue is a good thing.
I get the feeling of fatigue: I’m finding it hard to keep up these days. But I still try because I don’t want to slip into acceptance.
I felt the same way until I realized that the horrible shit will or won’t go down whether I’m aware of it or not. And it’s not like I have any say in the matter. Why worry about stuff you can’t do anything about?
I have this terrible habit of worrying about stuff that will actively affect the quality of life for myself, my friends, and my family, and could result in wars that kill millions.
Exactly. I’d rather worry about how I’m going to get into a position where I can make positive change, instead of obsessing over the negative changes I can’t possibly influence.
For all his faults Bush II at least seemed believe in the institutions that he represented and tried to govern (he just did a shit job). 45 doesn’t even have this going for him - he’s an utter nihilist that only represents himself and his interests.
There’s a Gorey illustration for every situation
wish it was catching
And how does your worrying help you in these situations?
Related to what you said:
If you’re overwhelmed and losing your shit, take a break. Play with your kids. Walk in the forest and binge-watch a tree. Read some Pratchett. Do whatever you need to do in order to regain your balance.
But once you’ve got yourself together, step back up. This is an all hands on deck situation; folks can’t afford to pretend it isn’t happening.
And there is a key point. Worry is counterproductive unless it is matched by action. So:
It spurs me to action. It encourages me to contact my lawmakers. It reminds me that what Trump does affects me, and you, and all of us directly, and we can’t be complacent and stick our heads in the sand because we don’t want to be stressed out.
