This Is Not Normal

The current president of the United States posted a meme comparing the former president and his wife to apes. The White House’s official response? They dismissed it as “fake outrage."

What the hell are we doing?

I woke up early in the morning and saw it on my phone. I was half-awake, scrolling the way I always do, bracing for whatever it was going to be. I paused for a second and did that quiet exhale you train yourself to do early in the morning so you don’t start the day on a bad note. The reaction bothered me more than the post itself. This is what’s changed.

I keep hearing “TDS” (Trump Derangement Syndrome) being thrown around like it’s an own and ending the conversation. As if the problem is people noticing instead of the things themselves. It’s a shortcut, a cheat to reframe behavior that would have been disqualifying not that long ago. Now they act like only unserious people can object to it.

Ten years ago, this story would’ve dominated everything. People weren’t more moral back then, there were just clearer lines. You could cross them but you would pay a price. Now it moves through this meta system: screenshot, engagement, debate over reactions, counterdebate about hypersensitivity... then it’s gone.

The social feeds refresh, the news cycle moves on, people stop paying attention.

The behavior isn’t the issue anymore. The problem is how quickly it’s normalized.

This is what Donald J. Trump understands instinctively. It’s more mechanical than ideological. He doesn’t care if the content or message is defensible. He only cares whether it travels and goes viral. If you haven’t noticed, the reaction becomes the story. The reaction to the reaction becomes the rebuttal. Accountability gets diluted along the way and people are forced into their tribal corners.

Just in the last month, you’ve seen this with Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

David Foster Wallace wrote about this in the 1990s. Not specifically about politics, but about the environment underneath it... a world where content is king and constant noise dulls any signals you want to register.

This isn’t outrage fatigue. It’s worse. It’s a numbness that starts to feel normal.

We’re not angry. Not shocked (anymore). We’re... adjusted to the new reality.

Americans used to talk and think about the presidency as something set apart. We referred to the bully pulpit and the weight of the job. Now it’s just another troll account. Another piece of content looking for attention.

Zooming out, I don’t think the internet created this. But it certainly set perfect conditions for this to grow.

The part that sticks with me the most isn’t the sheer ugliness of the post. It’s how normal it feels. How it quickly became something you can scroll past on the way to another post.

And this part doesn’t feel normal.