How to fight feelings of hypernormalization
Good morning Engaged Durhamites for Democracy!
I know the weather has been tough with all the rain. Despite that, we still had a mighty crew over the bridge yesterday showing folks we are here to defend our democracy!
Great news! NPR is suing the regime. Way to fight back!!
More great news. Trouble in paradise as Musk says he is leaving government. He is upset that he is no longer the favored child by the not-my-president who seems to be favoring a different AI company (OpenAI with Sam Altman, who Musk is now estranged) instead of his company xAI.
He also openly criticized the big bad bill saying he was, “I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.”
I rarely say thanks to Musk, but today I will as I agree as it is a terrible bill! Whiner Stephen Miller shot back, lying saying that the big bad bill will not increase the deficit. I wonder how long Musk will let Miller post on his website. I am hoping this rift takes some of the wind out of their sails given Musk rules that megaphone.
But even with Musk gone, he has left a mark on our government and still has his minions mining our data. They can use this data to intimidate people to obey in advance. As Brian Barrett of Wired stated, “Removing DOGE at this point would be like trying to remove a drop of food coloring from a glass of water.”
I will talk with the small team about what to do about the location of the Tesla protests. We also heard from an employee at Mattress Firm that she feels our protests have hurt her commission personally. At a minimum, we will move down farther from Mattress Firm. It looks like thunderstorms tomorrow afternoon when we are scheduled to be at Tesla. I will keep folks posted about whether the protest at Tesla will happen. We have yet to miss one week since we started over 3 months ago.
More great news! Judge Xinis denied a 30-day extension to bring Abrego Garcia home. Even though we have not heard about him for a while, Judge Xinis is not forgetting. She wrote,
“expended no effort in demonstrating good cause. They vaguely complain, in two sentences, to expending ‘significant resources’ engaging in expedited discovery. But these self-described burdens are of their own making. The Court ordered expedited discovery because of [the administration’s] refusal to follow the orders of this court as affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court.”
Bring him home! We must raise noise about Abrego Garcia. Remember rallying around one person as the point of our cause can help people have a unified message. Due process matters. When a judge tells you to do something, you do it!
More great news! Harvard is holding strong against the bully. And we need to call out our weak Republican congresspeople for not holding the bully accountable. Former university president Drew Gilpin Faust wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, stating: “Structured checks and the rule of law ... are once again at risk as we confront the subservience of Congress.”
And Harvard’s current President Alan Garber is not backing down!! He stated that Harvard must stand “firm” in “pursuit of the truth, helping to educate people for better futures. In the end, we're about … serving our nation and our world.” Yes Harvard. Do not obey in advance!!
More good news. The regime loses again for trying to punish law firms. They keep trying, and they keep failing. When people stand up, they lose because what they are doing is illegal. Thank you judges!
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/politics/trump-law-firms-wilmerhale.html?smid=url-share
More great news! U.S. Court of International Trade, a federal panel of judges, ruled that the not-my-president does not have the authority to levy tariffs at whim against countries. Let’s see those checks and balances working!!!
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/business/trump-tariffs-blocked-federal-court.html
Great news again (there is so much today!!). Many Republican Senators are speaking out as the not-my-president is not sanctioning Russia after its brutal attacks in Ukraine these past few days. Sen. Lindsay Graham is one of them, and he rarely speaks against the not-my-president. This is a good sign that maybe they are starting to find their spines.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/politics/trump-russia-ukraine-strikes.html
Karoline Leavitt, White House Professional Liar, says this war is all Biden’s fault. Instead of playing the blame game, let’s be clear who our enemy is. It is not Joe Biden. It is Putin! We must stand with Ukraine!
My Finnish friends are also worried about the Ukraine war and what Putin will do. Putin is not someone with whom you negotiate. We all know that. We need to be clear and in strong support of Ukraine against Russia.
I did ask the younger Finnish people what they thought about what was happening in the US. Their words were “scary” and “unpredictable.” I assured them we are fighting even though the media has downplayed. My Finnish friend asked what she can do. I said for her to please spread the word that most Americans are not ok with what is happening and to attend a protest in Helsinki on June 14th if they have one.
Speaking of doing something, there is something we all can to do protect our immigrants. We all can contact our Sheriffs asking them not to work to deport our neighbors. Thank you, Beth, for sharing.
https://www.safetybound.org/call-your-sheriff
Musk still has a stranglehold on many government contracts and is responsible for the firings of many. I am looking for someone who wants to take on another way to bring Musk down (remember he has still benefitted tremendously from government contracts and firing folks who would have investigated his companies). We can encourage our city councils to divest in his businesses. Anyone want to do this in our group?
More great news (can you believe it???)! We are talking about 3.5% of the population acting consistently. Well, there are 660 protests happening just this week. And I imagine this is an undercount as we organize about 7 ourselves each week!
Today I want to talk about the parallel realities in which we are living. Thank you, Annie for sending me the article that inspired this post. I posted an article a few months ago about this. It can be so hard to live in a world where we see destruction of a democracy and still be expected to go about our daily lives doing normal things. Living in this kind of world has been called hypernormalization.
Hypernormalization is the dual process of living in a dysfunctional world and also a normal world at the same time. And we vacillate between watching unlawful illegal acts breaking down the three branches of government and then turning to think about what we’re going to make for dinner. This state can make us feel demoralized, anxious, and helpless.
What helps is to acknowledge that this is happening. Nobody is gaslighting you. The democracy really is being dismantled, and we can’t just scream about it all day long. We do need to still function in this world as we continue to fight what is happening. We need to keep our jobs. We need to keep raising our families or taking care of our parents. We need to continue being good friend and partners. If we don’t, our fight will not succeed.
One the best antidotes to the anxiety of feeling this hypernormalization is be in community with like-minded folks. Being with each other helps us vent our feelings and our fears. It also helps us feel hope because surely somebody out there feels more hopeful on a day when we are feeling overwhelmed or hopeless. Or maybe we are the hopeful person who can help another person. Let us be the ones who can look for the silver lining and help somebody else who’s having a down day. Isolation only weakens us. We must seek out community in these times of our dual state existence.
Another great way to fight these feelings of hypernormalization are to reach out to others who might not be part of our community yet. Yes, there is something amazing about getting a hug from one of our movement family members (and man do I love hugging so many of you!!). There also is incredible power in reaching out to strangers. When phone banking, it is reassuring to hear so many people feeling the same way you are. The same is true when we go door knocking. The same as true when we hear so many honks when we’re protesting. All these things help us feel less anxious because we know we are not alone. We realize we are many, and the more of us there are, the greater chance we have of defeating this.
So please know that this feeling of hypernormalization is normal and has been felt by other citizens in countries when their democracy was being attacked. We can’t just fight what’s happening at all time. We don’t have the energy to do that. We do need to live our lives and fight with all that we can. And we need to charge our batteries at times.
Today, I hope we can call about Abrego Garcia. Judge Xinis has been clear. We need him home.
Have a great Thursday. We are living in hard times. Feeling discombobulated is normal. We are fighting hard to get to back to the real normal, and away from the hypernormal.
Warmly,
Kathryn
It was odd to be abroad and feel disconnected from the day to day experiences and actions. In Italy we had some conversations promoted byItalians we met who shared their negative feeling about Trump. They really find him very scary as a leader in addition the bad policies and were happy learn my husband and I were not fans and were fighting for change.