PROVIDENCE, RI—Just over a week into the administration of President Donald Trump, local man Alex Seidman, a 36-year-old who will be shocked eight separate times by today’s news, told reporters Monday that at this point, nothing would surprise him. “Honestly, after everything that’s gone down in the past 10 days, none of it really even fazes me,” said the man who will be stunned on eight different occasions by news updates that will leave him wondering if the country’s longstanding democratic institutions can withstand even half of Trump’s first term in office. “Maybe a few months ago it would’ve upset me, even frightened me. But today, I’ll click on The New York Times and it’ll feel pretty [startling, with each piece of news more surreal and flabbergasting than the last, every article seemingly rewriting the rules of reality and slowly convincing me that there may no longer be any such thing as] normal.” At press time, Seidman was now fully convinced that he would be spending at least the next four years in a state of continually heightening trauma, and thus far has not been proven wrong.

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