Normalization - Part 1

I swear I'm still here!  In the last month, we closed on our house, hunted down furniture, moved-in with the bare minimum, have been cleaning up the old place, have all been sick, and 3/4 of us started school.  I have a ton of things to say, but have just been tired.  The theme of this post is a bit unexpected from myself, but I've recently observed a shift in how I'm processing events in the US and I wanted to talk about that while it's still fresh.  It might be a bit depressing depending on how you're internalizing the same issues, so fair warning.

But first, a small bit of background.  When I had Miles in 2015, I had to stop consuming the international news because my hormones absolutely couldn't process the war in Syria while maintaining any semblance of mental health.  Then, in 2016 I of course had to minimize my consumption of US national news as well.  It was a self-defence mechanism, of course, to stave off depression.  Having kids, working full time, and continuing the same level of awareness and activism that I'd had previously was impossible.  Everything felt like too much, so I pushed it all away.  I've worked back up to a decent level of awareness over the last couple of years, but I still kept myself detached enough to keep my mental health and my day-to-day life as the top priority.  

Over the last 10 weeks, I've continued to keep up with US national news from my usual sources, NYT and NPR, to the same degree that I had before we moved.  But over the last week or so, I've noticed that I feel detached from it in a different way than I had before.  I'm no longer the one pushing it away and I'm observing it as a partial outsider now.  Before, I'd read a headline and briefly think "Well, that's fucked up.  Just another day in America," then brush it off and go about my day pretending that it didn't affect me.  Now, I'll read a headline and stop at "That's fucked up."  

The difference may not seem like a lot, but it feels vastly different to me.  While living in the systems and being part of the society itself, I was fully aware that current events and broader cultural shifts were too much for me to handle and I was fully onboard with my self-preservation response to shut it down.  But now that I feel safe and I can open up a bit more to process what's going on in the United States, I can see that this is exactly how normalization happens.  Things that should strike us as absolutely unacceptable have become so common that people stop finding them appalling.  They may still be unacceptable and we talk about how terrible they are, but we also shake our heads and move on because otherwise we'd all collapse.  I think that feeling of exhaustion and helplessness was intensified over the pandemic, but this has actually been a slower moving process over the last many years.

While talking with our neighbors this morning, fellow internationals, I realized that the rest of the world has also become immune to the insanity of the United States.  I remember being in the UK in 2006 during the Bush II era and knowing full well that my country was a laughing stock.  The citizens of other nations are, of course, only going to absorb the news that is available to them and news which they choose to consume.  I assume they're only seeing a slice of what is actually happening and how it trickles down to the daily lives of everyone.  These particular neighbors are highly educated and clearly try to stay informed, but the look on their faces when we mentioned some basic aspects about why we left was eye opening.  It's one thing to be in the US and to know that things are bad, but it's a surprisingly different feeling to realize that things are so much worse than you ever thought when viewed from the outside. 

When we talked about leaving over the last year or so, some people were truly shocked that we would do something so drastic.  But not a single person, of any political persuasion, asked why or indicated that they thought it was a bad idea.  People know, they truly feel, that shit is bad.  It's just become so normalized that we've learned to live around it and the fact that some might use their privilege to leave is surprising.  And I think it's going to continue to surprise me, as I pull myself further away from it, just how bad it's actually been and how much worse I expect it to get.