Charles P Pierce Masterpiece: "THIS ISN'T THE 2020 I ANTICIPATED IN DECEMBER."

The State of Unreality

In this year of plague and quarantine and monumental disruption, a collective sense of dissociation is settling in. Just in time for the election.

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Recently, in trying to get a grip on what the context of the upcoming national election might be, I came upon a psychological phenomenon called “derealization,” a dissociative disorder the symptoms of which include:



• Distorted perception of time, space, and size of things around you.

• Feeling of unreality from the world around you, as if in a dream or trance.

• Feeling as if everything is foggy, fuzzy, or warped.

• Sense of being disconnected from those around you as if you’re trapped in a bubble.

• Thoughts of going crazy or being very ill.



And it struck me that not only did that describe my own general feeling during this time of plague and quarantine, but also it fairly describes the political condition within which the president has succeeded politically, because it also fairly describes the world that he has created around himself his entire life. He creates derealized situations, milks them for every dime, mines them for every possible advantage, and then moves along to his next one, leaving his victims stuck in the fog of disbelief, both of what they have experienced and of how the president keeps getting away with it.



There is no telling what the campaign will be like, except that its heart will be dark and ominous. There is even less telling what the election itself will be like, except that it will be foul and furious. The pandemic has sounded El Degüello for all of us. No quarter given. Your ballot or your life. We’ve already had a dry run of that in Wisconsin, where the state’s Republicans forced an in-person election in the teeth of the virus, only to lose it to an enraged Democratic turnout. However, about two weeks later, right on schedule, people in Wisconsin began to get sick.



In this unprecedented time of plague and fear, we are asked to be separate and together and choose a president, to be together while we are separate in order to judge the fitness of a man whose demonstrable unfitness has helped create the derealized country that will somehow hold an election. No, this is not the 2020 I had anticipated. It is not at all that.

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Please read all of it, worth sharing:
https://link.esquire.com/view/5bda03a47e555430683e8dbdc3pe6.62h/8e443a6d