Lost in the Noise

I knew, as we entered this hellish new era, that they were going to try to overwhelm us to the point of desensitization, but daaaamn it’s been a brutal few weeks. I was going to use the word “blitzkrieg” (which has the bonus of being a keyword from the era we are echoing!) but I guess part of that definition includes the element of surprise, but none of this is a surprise, it’s just rapid-fire insanity.

They sure have succeeded in flooding the zone, and it’s hard to be a person that pays attention right now, but I also refuse to look away and let something slip past me.

I’ve got a separate post started (drinking game, take a shot!) trying to recap the major developments but it’s going to take a while to get that finished. I don’t think anyone reading this will probably need it, but I want to document it, because maybe if we all survive this, it will be useful someday.

I was also hoping to write about something “normal” for a change, just to prove that this fuckery hasn’t consumed my life, but I’ve been sick off and on for the last week and a half, and I still have a lingering hacking cough, so that’s been sort of sputtering out in the background too.

(I’m zero percent surprised by hearing that this has been one of the worst cold & flu seasons in recent history - there is so much crud going around right now, and we probably only know about a fraction of it, because the CDC has been kneecapped and is not allowed to tell us anything anymore. I tested negative for the usual suspects - strep throat, influenza, COVID, RSV, walking pneumonia - which is both good but also annoying because I’m just left with Generic Seasonal Plague™ and no obvious treatment other than my small personal pharmacy of over-the-counter remedies. And while I am not affiliated with any brands I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about my personal savior, Mucinex Sinus-Max Nasal Spray, because this shit is the real MVP. It kept my congestion at bay so I could focus on being miserable from my cough and sore throat instead.)

My “daily little reminders” posts sort of fell to the wayside too because I’d only pre-scheduled up through last Friday and then ran out of steam to get more. I’m hoping to restart those, or at least do some roundups, something.

I have found that right now, I’m a better curator than I am a fresh voice. I’m not an expert in any related field (but, hold my PSL when we get to this nonsense about wellness farms and threats to anti-depressants, this is where I’m going to shine) but I have a great algorithm on Threads that keeps me awash in the freshest doom to scroll through. Instagram too. I honestly don’t know when the last time was I saw a post from an actual person I follow, it’s all news meme accounts at this point, but it’s useful. That’s the communication method that is most effective right now, because our attention spans are frayyyyyyyyyed.

I haven’t had much of a voice (literally: I’ve been hoarse with Sultry Phoebe Voice for the past fortnight) (Thank you, Taylor Swift, for bringing this word back into the mainstream), so I haven’t been able to harass, I mean call, my representatives yet, but my mother makes her calls daily, and I am proud of her for that. Chuck’s voicemail has been full, color me surprised, but she seems to be getting through to everyone else. I have been hearing a lot about 5Calls.org as being an awesome resource for this, and as my respiratory health improves, I’m going to be looking into this.

Meanwhile, I’ve been disassociating via fiber arts, and crochet has been a lifesaver. It’s repetitive enough to be relaxing but requires enough attention to keep my ADHD brain happy.

(And no, I am not okay about the developments with JoAnn’s… both my local store and the one in the next town over are both on the hit list, which is going to leave only Hobby Lobby and Walmart as places to get craft supplies in this town. We do have a lovely local yarn store on Main Street but since I dabble in multiple crafts it’s not going to be enough. I’m hoping that they’ll at least remain functional as an online retailer; there is always Michael’s in the next town over, which I love just as much if not more, but driving thirty minutes to get to it isn’t always super convenient.)

I’ve been collecting physical copies of books relevant to a certain time period about ninety years ago, too. It’s not exactly as relaxing of a pastime, given the content and how triggering it is when looking around me, but it’s good. If anyone has any recommendations on documentaries, I’d love those as well, not sure why I hadn’t thought of that before, it literally just occurred to me as I was typing, so perhaps I’ll put out a call on the socials too.

I’m not sure I really have a point, here, with this post, other than just a therapeutic bloodletting of words and thoughts.

Maybe my point is that I’m really salty that I can’t just focus on silly things and enjoy my middle age, instead I have to be constantly stressed out as our republic crumbles around us and I have to figure out which new piece of news poses a direct threat to me and my loved ones, and what’s safe and what isn’t. I miss the things like public health and aviation safety and knowing that my taxpayer data was secure and that the national parks weren’t going to be chopped up and sold for parts and I miss having competent civil servants working for federal agencies. I miss measles being eradicated. I miss the WHO. I’m going to miss NATO. And Ukraine. I miss consumer protections, I miss checks and balances, I miss not having to be curious about what it would take to expatriate to a different country, I miss not having to worry about whether my medications are going to get cut off by a psychopath heading up HHS and I miss not having to worry about my parents and whether they are going to be able to get by when Social Security and Medicare gets axed. (I do not miss the prospect of my own retirement, because I have known for some time now that it is going to be highly unlikely I get there. I’m going to be the elderly employee who keels over at their desk. Assuming women are still allowed to work, that is.)

You know, the things we took for granted up until they started seeing the glint from the axe.

Towards the top of the list, I miss when unauthorized, unelected seig-heiling billionaires weren’t tampering with fuck-all and closing federal agencies and offices at his whims and rooting around in our data and fucking with the innerworkings of a country he’s not even from.

Most of all, I really miss the peace and quiet that the Biden administration afforded me, when I didn’t have to check the news as often because I knew the grownups were in charge.

(I also acknowledge that I am coming from a place of privilege that I haven’t been worried about all of these things for my entire life. While I myself happen to tick off several boxes on a DEI bingo card, I have never experienced the world the way other groups have. As has been said many a time, dystopian fiction is what we get when what has been happening to oppressed groups, finally happens to the privileged one. Ain’t none of this new. Margaret Atwood herself even said that every idea in The Handmaid’s Tale was plucked from a culture in history; she invented none of it.)

I wish I could talk about lighter stuff. Remember when the biggest stressor was trying to figure out whether or not Taylor dropped a clue on when Reputation (TV) was coming. (She has until August to use that trademark, by the way. It has to be soon.)

Seems like bullshit we have to spend all our time worried about fascists, you know? I mean, for fuck’s sake, my grandfathers literally fought a war over this shit already with the intent to secure the fact that this wasn’t going to happen again.

I will say this, though: as bleak as everything looks and feels, I had a strange moment this morning where my intuition tilted its metaphorical head and said, hold on a minute. I can’t explain why or how, because all signs point to otherwise, but I just had a feeling that told me that something was going to snap sooner than later, and all this stomping around they were doing was going to cause the floor to open beneath them and swallow them in it.

I don’t know how or where or whom, but I just had a very brief moment of certainty that the tide was going to shift. I have zero claims to any sort of Knowing things, it could have just been a moment of sleep deprivation and delusion, but I’ve always been perceptive, which is why the last many years have been exceptionally distressing to me, and even as the most abstract of gut feelings, it was enough to make me pay attention to it.

(This is the same intuition, however, that whispered to me around dinnertime on Election Day that everything was going to be okay, and so far, it has most certainly NOT been okay, but it’s not over, so I guess I can’t really say what timeline that little voice was on. “Okay” seems like a relative concept right now.)

Even if (when?) we get through this… we’re never going to go back to “normal” and that’s actually a good thing, because things weren’t working before, and wouldn’t it be lovely if we could build a new society where we weren’t… (gestures around wildly)… this?

That’s a fantasy thought experiment for another day, but I’m going to put that little nugget of hope in my pocket and watch for cracks in the storm.

Thanks for following along on this disjointed journey of a post, friends. I have done no editing or revising other than making sure that all of my sentences actually got completed, and even then, I’m not super certain of that, if not, oopsie doodles, it be like that sometimes.