Our Jerri-Lynn, who mainly lives overseas, was briefly in the US last month and dropped by our NYC meetup. She commented to me that she was very eager to leave because she could sense how high the general tension level was. She didn’t go on at great lengths why, but it was clear that at least some of it came from the success the press was having at whipping up outrage over Trump, and often not for the right reasons, such as over his mainly ineffective executive orders as opposed to his success in getting hard core conservative judges confirmed. It’s not hard to add to the list of topics that go beyond the usual media “If it bleeds, it leads” rule: the risk of nuclear war (even though those supposedly nutcase North Koreans appear to have diffused that with some Olympic diplomacy), Rooskies, #MeToo, more open hostility towards “out” groups ranging from immigrants to the white working class to Muslims. And that’s before we get to listing sources of stress: way too many people with student debt, older people with little to no likelihood of being able to afford retirement unless they leave the US, upper middle class parents spending and pulling strings to make sure their kids wind up in the right social stratum.
Because Lambert and I read so much of this sort of thing on a daily basis, we’re somewhat desensitized. But we’ve both noticed and regularly discussed in the last few weeks that the news flow has become, for lack of a more precise word, weird. The big stories somehow don’t seem that big, perhaps because they more and more seem like variants on shopworn themes. For instance, there is still news and jousting coming out of the Mueller investigations, but the media’s default posture of This Is Really Big and Will Finally Bring Trump Down has come to have a “Boy that cried ‘wolf'” flavor to it. Yet we both find the secondary stories, which ought to be more interesting and relevant in light of the “too much attention on Washington” orientation of the press, seem flatter than usual.
In other words, even though we’ve been cranking out articles, both Lambert and I have been struggling to find things that we deem to be interesting and postworthy. It may be that we’re overstimulated and our calibration is a bit off. For instance, I couldn’t get very worked up about the stock market tsuris of last week. Wake me up if it might endanger something that matters, like the financial system or the real economy.
With that as background, I have an odd confession to make. Even though I am a moody creature, I am able to trace precisely what has got me in the state I am in, whether good or bad. But all day, I’ve been very agitated, when absolutely nothing unusual happened, not even a dustup in the comments section.
Because Lambert and I read so much of this sort of thing on a daily basis, we’re somewhat desensitized. But we’ve both noticed and regularly discussed in the last few weeks that the news flow has become, for lack of a more precise word, weird. The big stories somehow don’t seem that big, perhaps because they more and more seem like variants on shopworn themes. For instance, there is still news and jousting coming out of the Mueller investigations, but the media’s default posture of This Is Really Big and Will Finally Bring Trump Down has come to have a “Boy that cried ‘wolf'” flavor to it. Yet we both find the secondary stories, which ought to be more interesting and relevant in light of the “too much attention on Washington” orientation of the press, seem flatter than usual.
In other words, even though we’ve been cranking out articles, both Lambert and I have been struggling to find things that we deem to be interesting and postworthy. It may be that we’re overstimulated and our calibration is a bit off. For instance, I couldn’t get very worked up about the stock market tsuris of last week. Wake me up if it might endanger something that matters, like the financial system or the real economy.
With that as background, I have an odd confession to make. Even though I am a moody creature, I am able to trace precisely what has got me in the state I am in, whether good or bad. But all day, I’ve been very agitated, when absolutely nothing unusual happened, not even a dustup in the comments section.
by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism | Read more:
[ed. Exactly. It feels like something terrible is coming (and needs to happen), some cathartic form of resolution. See also: The Second Coming.]
As one commenter put it:
As one commenter put it:
The economy is ambling a drunkard’s walk climbing a knife’s edge. The Corporations remain hard at work consolidating and building greater monopoly power, dismantling what remains of our domestic jobs and industry, and building ever more fragile supply chains. The government is busy dismantling the safety net, deconstructing health care, public education and science, bolstering the wealth of the wealthy, and stoking foreign wars while a tiff between factions within those who rule us fosters a new cold war and an arms build-up including building a new nuclear arsenal. In another direction Climate Disruption shows signs of accelerating while the new weather patterns already threaten random flooding and random destruction of cities. It already destroyed entire islands in the Caribbean. The government has proven its inability and unwillingness to do anything to prepare for the pending disasters or help the areas struck down in the seasons past. The year of Peak Oil is already in our past and there is nothing to fill its place. The world populations continue to grow exponentially. Climate Disruption promises to reduce food production and move the sources for fresh water and the worlds aquifers are drying up. It’s as if a whole flock of black swans is looking for places to land.and another:
I’m starting to think that what we are experiencing is the realization that we’ve spent way too much time expecting that explaining our selves, our diverse grievances, and our political insights would naturally result in growing an irresistible movement that would wash over, and cleanse our politics of the filth that is the status quo.
It is sobering to realize that it took almost four decades for the original Progressive Era organizers to bring about even the possibility of change.
I think it’s dawning on us that we’re not re-experiencing the moment before the election of Franklin Roosevelt, and the beginning of the New Deal, we’re actually just now realizing the necessity of the daunting task of organizing, which makes our times resemble 1890 more than 1935.
Government by the people, and for the people has been drowned in the bath-tub, and the murderers have not only taken the reigns of power, but have convinced half the population that their murderous act represents a political correction that will return America to greatness.
It remains to be seen whether we will find it in our hearts to embrace both the hard, and un-glamorous work of relieving the pain inflicted by the regime that has engulfed us, and the necessity of embracing as brothers and sisters those who haven’t yet realized that it is the rich and powerful who are the problem, and not all the other poor and oppressed.
