A new era of sickness

With Trump, half the country became psychiatric diagnosticians and the other half proved diagnosable. With him, people discovered the term "solipsist": someone who is utterly incapable of seeing, thinking, feeling and understanding beyond his own self-soothing prison, someone for whom the entire universe is mirrors. With him, we learned that a person can be a narcissist and a sociopath in one and that the border between sociopathy and psychopathy is blurry. With Trump, we heard the term "man-baby" and instinctively knew it described the disintegrative and fearful child within a power-hungry, self-glorious man. And we learned that "mental illness" is not strange and not in the comfortable minority. It is pedestrian and it is easy for millions of people to be so wounded and angry that they require canned delusions to hold themselves together.

It's suddenly difficult not to be philosophers, those of us who know the lies for what they are. The world feels as if it has awakened to a different theme, like the nineteenth century fin de siecle ennui and social degeneracy. But unlike then, we cannot presently picture a moving on. We see that wide populations and movements are lost and corrupt and possibly evil. We see that these millions don't use reason but their pain, their moods, to run their lives. We see that the men and women holding the most significant posts in government don't care about wasting their lives, their one show on this earth, on revenge, petulance and childishness.

Our world feels different now. Without drama, we wonder if our country can remain a decent place to live, rather than a land of ignorant armies clashing by night,* if the Republicans win again: The botched wardens, guards and prisoners will have commandeered the terrain. It now takes brute force, our eyes averted, to live our own lives peaceably, knowing of this sea change: The sea is pressing at the levee.

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* Matthew Arnold's poem, Dover Beach.