Incredulity

Sometime during President Trump's first term, people stopped talking about the 'Overton Window', the spectrum of ideas considered acceptable by the general public at a given time. When the consensus shifts so wildly, when chaos is a strategy, when disruption is perpetual, concepts such as 'acceptable' and 'a given time' become meaningless. And who is this 'general public' of which you speak?

But incredulity, disbelief and 'what the actual fuck?' were still valuable, effective and frequently deployed responses up to and including the January 6 2021 Capitol insurrection. A personal 'highlight' was the 2020 press conference where Trump asked his health officials to study the potential of bleach injections to combat covid. "Is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?" he speculated, while jaws dropped the world over.

Five years later incredulity is no longer appropriate or useful as a response to the daily barrage of cruelty, venality and subjugation emanating from Washington. How can we express disbelief about things we were told would be on the agenda? How does incredulity help Ukrainians, the Gazans or the trans community? How does it help anything or anyone?

Now we must believe what we are seeing and hearing and react to it with outrage and horror, protest and resistance. Now is not the time for incredulity, a redundant reaction if there ever was one.