THE NEW YORKER's Jia Tolentino put this in words much better than I've been able to these past few months.
I'm sorry to be so out of touch, friends. Below is pretty much the reason why. It's not an excuse - and I plan to do better. But this is pretty much the explanation.
"One of the things I have feared most since the night of the 2016 election is the inevitable hardening of my own heart—and what such hardening might lead to, especially if it were experienced by many other people as well. Specifically, I feared that the Trump era would bring a surfeit of bad news, and that I would compartmentalize this bad news in order to remain functional, and that this attempt to remain functional would itself be so demoralizing that it would contribute to the despair and distraction that allowed all this bad news to occur."
"It has felt impossible, in the Trump era, to hope even for a second that our governing systems will operate on any standard of morality. What we have instead is a standard of consistency. If the President had ever convincingly espoused ideas of respect for people who are not like him, or of equal rights for women, it’s possible that he would be held accountable for his actions. Instead, he promised mass campaigns of cruelty against undocumented immigrants, and he is delivering. He said that he grabbed women by the pussy, and many women—twenty-two, so far—explained that, yes, he did that, or something like it, to them. Carroll’s essay—exceptional, devastating, decades in the making—has made me consider how hard it is to understand right away that you’ve been exhausted into submission, especially when submission and endurance feel inextricable. It’s reminded me of how high I’ve let my own hideosity bar get lately, and also of the fact that no one can lower it again but me."
Read this.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/e-jean-carrolls-accusation-against-donald-trump-and-the-raising-and-lowering-of-the-bar?fbclid=IwAR3IrKNC2hJTQwiCkHAMM187wQADvfsCFbMVm-zqVEyJmL92_anUGqx8Re8