The World Is (Not) Always Ending

 I am not surprised at all that the US avoided default on it's debt. Of course someone (McConnell) blinked and we will get it extended to December, when we will have to do this shit all over again.

Here's the thing though. For the past two weeks we've been treated to endless hyperventilation in both the media and the Very Online about how this was going to be a financial Armageddon. In the end, the same thing happens that always happens: the side that is grandstanding backs down.

It seems to me that we have collapsed into a permanent psychology of crisis. This started in many ways with the Rise of Trump and his constant attacks on the norms that we thought governed our country. Remember how in the spring of 2017, we were constantly checking our phones, as John Mulaney put it, to check on the horse in the hospital? Trump thrived on chaos, but his grasp on us was possible because of the ubiquity of information via our phones and computers.

Then the damned plague comes around, and we all amp the crisis level shit up to 11 and never turn it down.

The Debt Ceiling Kabuki is basically a Thing that happens in DC every year or two. McConnell seemed to up the stakes, perhaps trying to tap into that state of permanent crisis. It didn't work, and he backed down, because he's McConnell, not Trump.

Another example is the Texas anti-abortion law. Everyone (rightly) freaked out over the law. Yesterday and judge issued an injunction stopping it. This is by no means the end, but neither was the "shadow docket" ruling by the Supreme Court. 

Nevertheless, we are still hooked into this sense of cascading crises. 

The whole Facebook scandal is linked to this, too. Facebook's entire model is to drive "engagement." It uses a form of AI to analyze everything you like and click to send you more of "that." We also know that negative stories or emotions drive that engagement more.

This has two outcomes.

The first is a never ending doom loop that has us constantly upset and angry. (Welcome to Mental Health Awareness Week, by the way.)

The second is to distort our sense of what really is a crisis and what is just trolling and clickbait. 

We have become a nation whose civic discourse is warped by shitposting trolls who hijack all conversations and strip it of subtlety and nuance in favor or anger and outrage. It's breaking us as a country. It's actively harm our brains, and it's as true of NPR as it is of Twitter.