This has been described as a mental condition of the not-normal variety, which it is, or used to be. But it seems to be contagious, and we seem to be succumbing. The long, slow process of fact-seeking underway since the scientific revolution and Enlightenment, and the systematic arrangement and correlation of these facts, are starting to look like just so much trouble and tedium. If the president of the United States doesn’t need to bother with that stuff, why should anyone? His hard-core supporters were happy enough to jettison it (although before ever adopting it). Whatever Trump says today is more than good enough for them. And any made-up scandal that mirror-images a real Trump scandal is absolutely satisfactory for the purpose of generating sufficient confusion to clear Trump’s forward path.

But it’s not just his supporters. Look around. When Trump breaks a norm, we all gasp and grumble, but then soon enough we adopt this as a NEW norm! A Trump one! For example? People don’t even expect Trump to be accurate or honest anymore. It’s just Trump being Trump! And when Trump goes two days without sounding like a shrieking maniac, he is described as being presidential. Presidential is now defined as two days without reportable bedlam. If Trump says he has no plans to obstruct justice that day, presidential! Implied threats, expectations of future obstruction, statements undermining the rule and orderly operation of law, all these are now accepted as the GOOD side of Trump. Apparently now, any day his arsenal of Nuclear Armageddon goes unlaunched is a fine old day in the USA.

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Trump is relying on this erosion, of course. It’s how he operates. He knows from past experience that normal people cannot sustain the appropriate level of outrage at his behavior. What makes it worse is the near-lockstep support his party is giving him, and the backstopping cheerleading, dissembling and reality-distortion that the powerful conservative media machine generates daily for him.

Regular people don’t want to have to carry the heavy load of cognitive dissonance that they are living in a land of lies and abnormality. It is frustrating, depressing and demoralizing.

Too bad. You don’t want to live with this stress, but duty calls. No, you may not let the cup you have been handed pass from your lips. As a citizen of a republic, you have a duty now. Everyone likes to thank our soldiers for protecting our country and not shirking. Now it’s our turn not to shirk. The Trump presidency is not a normal condition for this country, and we can’t let it become one. And it’s not just an abstraction. The damage from policies such as the outrageous tax bill, which is about to become law, is coming at you. At your economic standing in the U.S. economy, at your power in a system where money increasingly buys outcomes, at your health care, at your retirement. At your kids.

Sorry, but this time you don’t have the luxury of couching this one out. This is not normal. You cannot allow it to become normal. Yes, you are uncomfortable. You ought to be uncomfortable, you NEED to be uncomfortable with it, until you have set it right again.