Hypernormalisation and You

I have not slept for 48 hours. I stayed up last night to watch the returns come in and the humanity seep out. Reality as we know it seems to have come unstuck. Up is down, left is right and moral seriousness departed town at some ill-defined point, drinking a six pack and entreating the residents to ‘Go nuts, I really don’t care anymore. I mean, fuck it, I’m off to Burning Man’

The whole hip world watched with both a keen sympathy and an inevitable disappointment as US citizens faced a difficult and unseemly choice in the execution of their civic duty.

Catshit or Dogshit, essentially.

A gimlet-eyed follower of global politics may well see parallels with the Russian system during the financial collapse of the Soviet Union. The state can go about telling you things are hunky dory as much as it likes, but when you end up queuing for stale bread for 4 hours and fighting over basic goods with your neighbours, you know the jig is up. And in some respects, that’s where the American political system is currently at. It is not a healthy democracy or even a halfway believable facsimile of one, yet it acts as if it is. The resulting psychological break is called Hypernormalisation*. It is the process by which unreality becomes reality.

We all know US politics is currently a race to the bottom, a kind of horrifying realisation of every exaggerated cynical stereotype one could have about the inverse of the American dream, a Freddy Kruegeresque romp through the living nightmare of crony capitalism and lint-headed policy making and empathy-free rhetoric and choices without choices that makes my head spin like an Unmoored Catherine Wheel. And I’m only outside looking in. Cthulhu knows what it’s like on the inside, especially when there are people trying around you trying to paint the above situation as ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’.

You must be absolutely Taking the Poll

If you’ll permit me a digression at this point America, I must admit, I was jealous of your considerable ability to outright lie to pollsters. Right to their fucking faces. I’m not gonna lie, I was a little hurt — I thought the Great British Public had that market all sewn up.

See, UK polls for both our general election and Brexit proved to be about as effective a predictor of future trends as haruspicy (look it up — I had to). So naturally, I thought it was a rare mark of British exceptionalism; that we are the only nation who will politely lie to pollsters on a mass scale. Yet many people who said they were gonna vote Hillary either stayed home or voted for the abominable orange man. So, as usual, America has done the same thing, only bigger and better. You have Trumped us.

Welcome to the new World

As a result, we now find ourselves in this weird alt-reality. A world where the fight has shifted from expanding the rights and human dignity of all people, to simply battling to keep our existing, hard-won gains. It is as if the rug has been pulled out from under us, then rolled up and used to bludgeon all our hope and empathy into the nether realm. But now is not the time for defeatism. Now is the time for resolve. Buckets of it.

Because your words and actions can and do bring about change in the unlikeliest and most life-altering of ways. The impact of some text on a screen from the imperiously human (and humane) Tremaine L. LoadholtT or the fiercely intelligent jaden violet or the hilariously, bracingly frank Classical Sass or the heroically determined Gerard Mclean has often been to shake me out of my own self-involved stupor, to educate, inform and set me on the path to future knowledge.

I’m certainly grateful as my quality of life has measurably improved as a result. The folks running Medium should be thanking their lucky stars that such people have worked to make their site a supportive and soulful community.

So just think what in the sam hill you could achieve if you chose to follow their examples and applied the same stewardship of your own experiences and emotions to the virtual and real communities around you right now, right this second. You should be so far past your personal fuck-it point by now that you’re politically committed like a Daniel Day-Lewis sleeping-on-prison-floors-and-learning-how-to be-a-cobbler-motherfucking-lunatic. It’s the only sane response to the current situation.

Now that I’m having my own Howard Beale moment, I similarly find myself without any clue as to what to suggest you do. Only two things spring to mind:

Aside from voting, make sure you stay engaged with the political process.

How about contacting your local political representatives to ensure they keep the promises they’ve made (and rethink the rotten ones…). How about calling out lazy media coverage and spotlighting fantastic journalism, wherever it may be found. Or challenging unsubstantiated views with facts, spunk and authentic, lived-in knowhow. That all sounds alright.

Don’t lie.

Applies evenly across the board, this one. Doesn’t matter if you are a citizen answering a poll or a high-ranking member of the DNC or Peter Purvis — don’t lie. It warps the fabric of reality and it warps you. Don’t. Fucking. Do it. Not even in the service of a cause you think is a noble one. In fact, especially not in that case. And here’s a thought: if you don’t feel comfortable telling a pollster who you are voting for, maybe that’s grounds for re-examining your choice? Just an idea.

Let’s Get To Work

I’d like to recommend a fantastic article I found today in one of the lucid half-hours when I wasn’t quietly going insane. It’s by a guy called FILM CRIT HULK who I love, and I think the words contained within are important and healing. I think they’re worth reading because I have faith that if we follow the actions he prescribes, then at the end of the next 4 years when the thinkpiece writers perform their haruspicy of the American soul, we might be cheered or even pleasantly surprised by what they feel this augers for the future. While that might not sound like much, right now, I’ll take hope wherever I can find it. Good luck, and if you’ve read this far, thank you for indulging my nonsense. I don’t know if it’ll do anyone any good, but I feel better for writing it.

*If you fancy a bit more background on Hypernormalisation, you can find the Adam Curtis documentary of the same name here on the excellent thoughtmaybe site.