2017: The Year of Hopelessness

Mid-November in the Midwest. We’ve done the Daylight Savings Time switch, so it gets dark really early. Those of us with mild Seasonal Affective Disorder find ourselves struggling to get out of bed and fight the urge to hibernate rather than face another dark, overcast, cold, dreary day.

It is like this every year, to an extent. But this year it seems so much worse.

And I think we all know why.

I have written a lot on Medium about the Trump presidency, and I am sure that I sound like just another liberal cheerleader who enjoys politics as a hobby. But the truth is, before last year, I spent very little time thinking about politics at the federal level, and even less about state and local politics. I was aware, but it did not take up much of my time or energy.

I’ve joked that I really miss those days, but there is truth in that. Ignorance really can sometimes be bliss.

Now, don’t assume this is a coming-of-age story where I tell you how, as I have become an adult, I’ve realized the importance that politics plays in our everyday life. I am 43 years old. I’ve been pretending to be an adult for a long time. I was not ready for another paradigm shift at this point in my life.

Nonetheless, here we are. Yes, a lot of this has to do with Trump and how people have reacted to his particular brand of narcissistic idiocy. But for me it started earlier than that, with a jury duty scam that I fell for months before the election. It was a stark in-your-face moment for me where I had to acknowledge that some people in this world are selfish, egocentric monsters who willingly and deliberately harm others to get what they want.

I have, of course, always known this to be true, but academically understanding something and having it played out right in front of you are two very different things.

And one isolated incident of this egocentric lack of empathy would have been bad enough, but it turned out to be just the opening act in a long play full of disappointing human behavior.

Yes, it is easy to fall back on the standard comparisons to Nazi Germany, but one that I don’t hear as much as I would expect is the notion of “being a good German.” This politically-incorrect phrase refers to all the non-Jewish German citizens who went along with Hitler. I feel like I am seeing a lot of people being “good Americans” in the face of all of the current nonsense, and I am perplexed and saddened.

The freaking NFL kneeling scandal, for example. A player took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality on black citizens, and somehow this has become a divisive issue. Once upon a time people said that your right to stand up for what you believe in was a cornerstone of what it meant to be American, but apparently now this is only true if you don’t do anything that might suggest you don’t love ‘Merica. When did being American become about blind obedience?

What happened to the land of the free and the home of the brave? There is no freedom in media suppression. There is no bravery in deliberately alienating your fellow citizens.

I see people I grew up with and who I have known for years spouting the Republican party line, and I cannot imagine how they can believe it. I am faced with either believing that they are not nearly as smart as I thought they were, or that they know what they support is not really true and they are more selfish and evil than I thought they were. Is winning an argument now more important than actually being right?

That is why I say this is about more than Trump. It is about everyone’s reaction to what is happening to this country.

It is beyond just politics. I have seen the way we treat each other change. People are more likely to argue with you, and when they do, they are less likely to do it in a rational, reasonable way. We don’t have discourse or discussions anymore. We have name-calling shouting matches. And we are more likely to denounce loudly anyone who doesn’t agree with us instead of making any effort to understand their perspective.

I have always felt like our society placed too much importance on being nice versus being honest. But now it seems like we’ve gone directly to the other extreme, where we are more concerned about promoting our own views at the expense of others’ feelings and at the expense of the truth. How did we become such a nation of egocentric irrational toddlers?

I know that I have changed a lot since last year. I am angrier, less happy, more pessimistic, more wary. But I am also more engaged, more motivated to make a difference, and more likely to speak up for what I believe in.

As we move into the holiday season and towards 2017’s inevitable conclusion, here’s to hoping 2018 will see us move in a better direction.