Living with the election result
Nov. 16th, 2016 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcThe shadow of sadness and distraction lingers from the election but it is perceptibly and steadily ebbing. Writing a bit more now may help me to process and move on.
I'd mentioned becoming depressed in 2007. I was extremely distracted and anhedonic. It took years to crawl out of that and it left its mark, including perhaps a couple of advantages. One is the simple knowledge that, although I found myself to be downcast and upset after the election, I had already both faced and experienced much worse so I knew that I would get over it in time. I was also left with some changes that last nearly a decade later: for instance, at the cost of becoming less tolerant and caring, I am also now more detached from the world, I guess as a defense mechanism. Not wholly detached: I've even reversed the move somewhat, including by starting this journal, but in cautious increments only. Perhaps this makes me more selfish, less driven by social conscience, but it keeps me functioning.
Recently this detachment has been assisted by the sheer surreality of our brave new world. The more I read about the transition to the new Trump administration, the more it seems that we are entering a Twilight Zone in which brazen nonsense is reported with a straight face. There isn't even a semblance of rationality and the public largely seem to take this in their stride. Perhaps my disengagement has me trapped in my own echo chamber though I read news like
I'd mentioned becoming depressed in 2007. I was extremely distracted and anhedonic. It took years to crawl out of that and it left its mark, including perhaps a couple of advantages. One is the simple knowledge that, although I found myself to be downcast and upset after the election, I had already both faced and experienced much worse so I knew that I would get over it in time. I was also left with some changes that last nearly a decade later: for instance, at the cost of becoming less tolerant and caring, I am also now more detached from the world, I guess as a defense mechanism. Not wholly detached: I've even reversed the move somewhat, including by starting this journal, but in cautious increments only. Perhaps this makes me more selfish, less driven by social conscience, but it keeps me functioning.
Recently this detachment has been assisted by the sheer surreality of our brave new world. The more I read about the transition to the new Trump administration, the more it seems that we are entering a Twilight Zone in which brazen nonsense is reported with a straight face. There isn't even a semblance of rationality and the public largely seem to take this in their stride. Perhaps my disengagement has me trapped in my own echo chamber though I read news like
Oxford Dictionaries has selected "post-truth" as 2016's international word of the yearand opinion pieces reassuring me with advice like
remember that elections determine who gets the power, not who offers the truthand I suspect that Wonko the Sane had a point.
