I feel like my brain cannot absorb any more stupidity. Any more cynicism. It's all full up. Yet I go back to the well every day and dredge up some more sludge. Sometimes it's the news itself and sometimes it's the coverage. Often it's both. In times of crisis the media at its best puts things into some sort of context. I remember in the days after 9/11 poring over the pages of The New York Times to get a grasp of the events that blindsided everyone. It helped. It was the media doing what is does best. Using the known facts at hand to place the current climate in some sort of context. That world was different. 20-some years on, the ground has shifted underneath us. The New York Times keeps disappointing me. In subtle and spectacular ways. It's still my default source but I now keep my distance. Its editorial page usually says thr right things but the coverage is littered with features that seem to be trying really hard not to be tarred with the elite Northeast liberal brush or as if it's overly conscious of coming across as "The Old Gray Lady."  Some examples include the endless "what do regular working class people think?" interviews and  articles asking what the bird pattern on RFK Jr's tie means or the subtext of Melania's hat choice.  The Washington Post, which did so well in the first dark term that dawned in 2016, fell off a cliff of credibility when Jeff Bezos saw the threat and promise of the change in administration. Seemingly all at once. This is what it must have felt like in the gilded age. When your powerlessness as a lone individual at the mercy of events is put into stark relief.

At moments I try to walk the empathy route and always run into a dead end. The equation is unresolvable. If they think this, then why do they accept that? If X = Y then... but there are too many variables— unknowns in the actions and beliefs of these people worshipping at the altar of venality. I want to take the country by the shoulders and shake it. The way a man would take hold of a hysterical woman in an old movie or a blabbering drunk in a saloon. It feels like what would have happened if the Wizard of Oz continued as if nothing happened after Dorothy discovered the Wizard was a fraud. Or like  living in an alternate version of It's a Wonderful Life where the evil industrialist Mr. Potter is the hero. Was this country always so cynical? When did the lunatic fringe grow in number and encircle us? That 30% of the electorate that once voted for segregationist George Wallace or white supremacist David Duke has gotten bigger and the 'them' has become 'us'. It has made me even question myself a little for being so out of touch with this poisoned mainstream of American life.  The media tried sounding the alarm but when it was called "biased" it retreated into the darkness where Democracy dies. Now its principal job seems to be giving benefits to an endless parade of doubts.

My resigned apathy fights my simmering anger to a draw. Then they do battle again the next day. I take refuge in Reddit, now exiled from Twitter. I feel some vague sense of community there among people  grinding their axes against current events and drift off into offshoots of the culture focusing on car crashes and "Am I overreacting?" threads or communities devoted to Hockey or Canada or drunk people falling down. I consider myself someone with a moral center. But my capacity for empathy is severely tested until it reaches its breaking point. The person who praised his inaugural speech as "hopeful" broke me on one day this week. Tomorrow it will be another citizen blithely mocking logic and common sense the way a child might throw a glass to the floor and get surprised when it shatters. 

My acts of defiance are small and a little pathetic. In response to the blowhard's anti-Canadian bluster I bought a Canadian flag (made in China), flagpole, and bracket and put it up on inauguration day, to the bafflement of my neighbours, no doubt. On the Canada subreddit the question is asked "would you take up arms and fight for Canada if it came to that?" "Hell yeah" I say to myself, gung-ho for this fictional war that will never come to pass. The comments are dominated by Americans who say they would fight on the Canadian side, which is somewhat reassuring.  I make a mental note to renew my ACLU membership and maybe volunteer for the campaign of Congress member Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who is still the only politician on either side of the border I've donated money to. But besides that, I'm at a loss. Moving to another country sounds pretty good right now but I know the consequences of this administration are global. What a cock up.  

"But what can we do?" I'm asked that question by my doom-scrolling companion freshly outraged by the latest policy atrocity coming through her phone. Am I like the apathetic Germans who just hoped Hitler would go away? The New York Times posts a video with four political dissidents from other countries who describe the danger of ignoring authoritarianism and its incremental grabs at power. It's a sobering message. I go back to AOC who posts a message that is the closest thing to a plan I've heard: "One thing about me is that I will fight Nazis until I'm six feet in the ground."