Checking for the Bottom and Not Finding It
The tragedy of supporting insanity
By Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ October 28, 2019
One of the most exhausting things in life is being a primary caregiver to a seriously ill, incapacitated person. This is a challenge for medical professionals but they chose and have been trained to do this. Ordinary people often have no choice but are forced into that role by uncontrolled events or family relationship.
This is something that people must rise to and do accepting the physical and emotional exhaustion in doing what is necessary to care for family members and those they love. Some exceptional people will take on this role for others out of compassion, They are heroes.
Having twice gone through this myself I know how, even though you are committed to the person you care for, the exhaustion can creep up on you. The small hours of the morning and you know there is really no hope and the demands steadily increase so that you don’t think you can go on. But you do even though you know the end is loss.
Not everyone can take this. I’ve watched family members collapse or struggle to overcome their own guilt at failing someone they love. They were not failing but they feel they were.
The people of the United States and many around the planet have, by sheer accident and bad luck, been forced to become caregivers to the president of the United States. Supporting someone through physical and terminal decline is brutal but dealing with someone with serious mental problems requires all of the effort but receives only outrage, endless demands, and anger in return.
As the collapse of the Trump regime accelerates I recognize the exhaustion. The majority of the population of the US desperately wants this to be over. We have no choice but to force ourselves to become numb to the lies, disgusting displays of immaturity, outrageous claims, and incapacity.
But now we are finally seeing death and destruction caused by this diseased individual and those using him for their own ends. That ugly reality is driving many people into whatever they can do to protect themselves while knowing there are others who cannot protect themselves.
Dealing with the daily reality of insanity being forced on us with constant images of the selfish greed of others feeding on that insanity, itself, produces social insanity. As the conditions worsen compassion and empathy wear out. We become less than what we are.
Historically this could happen in specific societies but normally only in small semi-isolated subsets of a society. In the past there was no daily onslaught for any but those in close proximity to diseased person even in a position of authority. We are now tightly linked in continuous, immediate social networks. We are living, effectivley, in the same house with an increasingly dependent mental invalid.
The irony of human social psychology is that people and groups will continue on under tremendous burdens but the growth of hope for an end to the situation makes it harder. If there is no real or immediate hope we put it out of our minds and try to support each other in shared misery.
We are now at that point and it is getting worse as hope of impeachment grows. Impeachment should and could remove at least the most diseased portion of the condition in which we are caught. But we all know that the structural problems being frantically covered up by those taking advantage of this situation must still be dealt with. And there are far larger problems for the planet coming down on us. The fires in California are only forerunners of our future.
For the US the removal of Trump and his cohort from positions of power is much more likely but Trump and his enablers is now in full panic reaction. They will do anything to distract or destroy the knowledge of their actions that will cause their removal. But there are many still feeding on this.
I’ve thought from the beginning of this tragedy that the US would not survive this acceptance of incompetence and insanity added to the steady decline of the American and Western empires. This, then, is the classic guilty wish for the death of the one we are caring for so that we can be released from the exhaustion. And can then get the grieving over with rather than suffering it us as an endless and vague potential.
Sadly, variations of this tragedy are being acted out in other parts of the planet. There are strong themes of irrationality in all of it but the US has the weight of a clearly mentally incompetent and rapidly declining person sitting at the top. Our sanity is being destroyed each day.
But the growing reality of a fast process of impeachment with the increasingly wild reaction of those caught by their own actions and incompetence has brought real hope. It’s just that hope makes the misery more intense.
As the increasingly crazed actions of Trump and his gang of criminals shines light on those who have used this situation for their own ends, the chance for real change grows by the day. That is the positive on which we need to focus.
Action will be taken but it will probably not be what is expected. The solution may not be what is expected. The exhaustion is growing and that expands the acceptance of what must be done to remove the disease.
The sickening display of Trump making up stories on the brutal death of Al Baghdadi and his children should have been a bottom but we know it was not. What should have been a success through bravery of US military personnel, Syrian Kurds, and Free Syrian Forces was reduced by Trump’s juvenile posturing.
The thunderous denunciation of Trump at the World Series game made it all worse rather than better. Trump should now know better than to appear in public.
There seems to be no bottom to the depths to which we are being pulled.
