The Emergency We Cannot Feel: On the Psychological Unreadiness for American Collapse

Why the most dangerous political crisis in modern American history is met with emotional denial, moral distortion, and cultural distraction.

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Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And the United States is experiencing a constitutional crisis that threatens to end our democratic experiment.

That sentence—stark, unqualified, devoid of hedging—causes a peculiar form of discomfort. It demands we confront a reality most of us are psychologically unprepared to process: We are living through a slow-motion collapse of constitutional democracy in the United States, and most people—not just average citizens but intellectuals, journalists, and elected officials—are emotionally and cognitively incapable of grasping the scale of this threat.

This is not merely a political problem. It is a moral and psychological crisis of coherence—a collective failure to align our emotional response with objective reality. The distance between the magnitude of what is happening and our capacity to feel its significance represents one of the most dangerous disconnects in American history.

We treat an existential threat to self-governance as if it were merely another election cycle. We discuss the potential end of constitutional democracy in the same register we might debate tax policy or infrastructure spending. We have normalized what should never be normal, accommodated what should never be accommodated, and rationalized what should have provoked immediate, sustained resistance.

The gap between the emergency and our feeling of emergency is not accidental. It is the product of specific psychological defenses, media failures, and deliberate manipulation—all combining to protect us from the emotional and moral burden of confronting our situation honestly.

The Nature of the Crisis: A Republic in Freefall

Before examining why we can't feel the emergency, let's be clear about what that emergency is.

The current administration has openly defied Supreme Court orders—not just disagreed with them or criticized them, but explicitly refused to follow them. The president has accepted a $400 million jet from Qatar—a half-billion-dollar private aircraft gifted by a foreign government and nominally routed through a “presidential library” agreement—in clear violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause. This arrangement isn't just personal enrichment; it's exactly the kind of foreign influence the Constitution was designed to prevent. Federal law enforcement agencies have been weaponized against political opponents, with Democratic politicians arrested on flimsy pretexts.

Most horrifying, as documented by the libertarian Cato Institute, approximately 50 individuals who appear to have broken no laws and followed proper immigration procedures have been renditioned to a facility in El Salvador where they face what amounts to life sentences beyond the reach of American law or due process. This is not a policy dispute—it is the establishment of an extrajudicial gulag system.

Meanwhile, the president has explicitly promised to be a “dictator on day one,” stated that Article II gives him “the right to do whatever I want,” and vowed vengeance against his perceived enemies. His administration has systematically replaced career civil servants with ideological loyalists, dismantled independent oversight mechanisms, and worked to transform the Justice Department from an independent agency into a personal enforcement arm.

These are not normal politics. This is not “business as usual.” This is not simply “the pendulum swinging.” This is the deliberate dismantling of constitutional governance and its replacement with personalized, authoritarian rule.

The global implications are equally severe. America's democratic collapse threatens to accelerate authoritarianism worldwide, endangering liberal democracy from Europe to Asia. When the world's most powerful democracy abandons its constitutional principles, it doesn't just harm Americans—it undermines the global order built on democratic norms and human rights.

Let us name this plainly: What we are witnessing is a fascist movement's consolidation of power. Not metaphorically. Not hyperbolically. Literally. The cult of personality, the systematic assault on independent institutions, the weaponization of law against enemies while exempting allies, the demonization of minorities, the glorification of strength over law, the explicit rejection of constitutional constraints—these are the defining features of fascism as a political form.

Yet despite the clarity of these developments, our emotional and psychological response remains wildly inadequate to the moment.

The Emotional and Psychological Response: Defenses Against Reality

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The human mind employs powerful mechanisms to protect itself from overwhelming distress. When reality becomes too threatening, too destabilizing, or too contrary to our fundamental assumptions, we unconsciously deploy defenses to maintain psychological equilibrium. In our current crisis, these defenses are working overtime, creating a dangerous gap between what is happening and what we can emotionally process.

Denial Disguised as Normalcy

“This is just politics.” “We've been through partisan divisions before.” “The pendulum always swings back.” “The institutions will hold.”

These comforting phrases allow us to acknowledge surface-level problems while denying their existential nature. They locate our current crisis within the familiar framework of normal democratic contestation rather than recognizing it as something fundamentally different.

This form of denial often invokes history as a sedative rather than as instruction. Yes, America has weathered serious challenges before—the Civil War, the Great Depression, Watergate, the turbulent 1960s. But this selective use of history conveniently ignores that democracies do fail. Republics do collapse. Constitutional orders do dissolve. The fact that America has survived previous crises offers no guarantee it will survive this one.

The historical record is clear: Democracies can and do die. The Roman Republic fell after centuries of stability. The Weimar Republic collapsed into Nazism. More recently, democratic backsliding has transformed Hungary, Turkey, and other once-promising democracies into competitive authoritarian regimes. History offers cautionary tales as well as reassurances, but our psychological need for comfort leads us to cherry-pick the latter while ignoring the former.

Deflection

When reality becomes too threatening, we often focus on adjacent but less existential concerns. During the 2024 election cycle, endless discussion of Biden's age, his cognitive decline, and Kamala Harris's perceived electability problems absorbed enormous amounts of moral energy and media attention. These were legitimate concerns, but they were discussed with an intensity wildly disproportionate to the fundamental question at stake: Whether constitutional democracy would continue to exist in America.

This deflection extends to post-election analysis. Rather than confronting the unprecedented nature of what is unfolding, commentators retreat into familiar policy discussions or palace intrigue reporting. They analyze cabinet appointments as if they represented normal transitions rather than the infrastructure of authoritarian control. They discuss tariff policies without acknowledging the fundamental transformation of American governance underway.

This deflection serves a psychological purpose: It allows us to feel engaged with current events while avoiding the emotional burden of confronting democratic collapse. It's easier to worry about inflation or immigration policies than to face the dissolution of the constitutional order that has defined American life for nearly 250 years.

Bothsidesism and Cynicism

Perhaps the most pernicious psychological defense is the retreat into a posture of weary cynicism that treats all political actors as equally corrupt, equally dangerous, and equally responsible for our predicament. This “pox on both houses” stance feels sophisticated and balanced. It protects us from accusations of partisanship while allowing us to acknowledge problems without taking a moral stand.

Hannah Arendt identified this dynamic decades ago when she observed that totalitarian propaganda succeeds “not because its audience believes in the lies, but because people become unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood at all.” Cynicism doesn't require believing fascist narratives—it merely requires believing that nothing is truly believable, that all claims are equally suspect, that truth itself is just another form of propaganda.

This stance is emotionally comforting precisely because it absolves us of the responsibility to make moral distinctions or take difficult stands. If everyone is equally corrupt, if all institutions are equally compromised, if truth is merely a function of power—then withdrawal into private life becomes not just tempting but seemingly rational.

But this cynicism serves power rather than resisting it. It creates exactly the conditions where authoritarian consolidation can proceed unopposed—a population too disillusioned to defend democratic institutions they no longer believe in.

Performative Objectivity

Journalists and commentators face a particular form of this defense mechanism: the retreat into performative objectivity that treats a fascist movement as simply one pole in a normal political spectrum. This manifests in headlines that frame constitutional violations as mere “controversies” or “disputes,” in coverage that gives equal weight to factual reporting and propaganda, and in analysis that studiously avoids moral judgment even when confronting clear moral abominations.

Consider how major media outlets covered the president's explicit defiance of the Supreme Court—not as a constitutional crisis but as a “dispute over border policy.” Or how the rendition of innocent people to foreign detention has received minimal coverage compared to endless dissections of political strategy. Or how the accepting of a $400 million jet from a foreign government merited less outrage than a Democratic politician's awkward campaign gaffe.

This failure isn't merely professional; it's psychological. The notion that democracy itself might be collapsing is so destabilizing, so contrary to the frameworks journalists have internalized, that they retreat into the comfort of both-sides coverage even when one side is actively dismantling democratic governance.

Moral Equivalence

Perhaps the most insidious defense against reality is the impulse to establish moral equivalence between fundamentally different phenomena. This manifests in arguments that treat policy disagreements as comparable to constitutional vandalism, that equate political mistakes with authoritarian assaults, that insist on finding “both sides” equally culpable for democratic erosion.

This equivalence provides psychological comfort: If both sides are equally problematic, we needn't make difficult moral choices. We can maintain friendships across political divides without confronting fundamental ethical questions. We can preserve our self-image as reasonable, moderate people who see the good and bad in all perspectives.

But this comfort comes at the cost of moral clarity. The question before us is not which party has better policies or which candidate is more personally appealing. It is whether we will maintain a system where those questions can continue to be democratically decided at all.

The Arendtian Frame: The Banality of Complicity

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Hannah Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism offers profound insight into our current predicament, particularly her concept of “the banality of evil.” Arendt observed that the Holocaust wasn't primarily carried out by sadistic monsters but by ordinary bureaucrats, functionaries, and citizens who processed papers, followed procedures, and participated in a system whose horror they refused to fully acknowledge.

We see this banality replicated today—not in death camps, but in the quieter complicity of those who should know better. Career officials who implement unconstitutional policies because “it's my job.” Law enforcement officers who carry out illegal renditions because “I was following orders.” Civil servants who witness abuses but remain silent to protect their positions.

As I noted in a recent discussion, the rendition program sending innocent people to El Salvador wasn't executed by Donald Trump alone. It required hundreds of bureaucrats, law enforcement officers, and administrators—each performing their small part in a system whose ultimate horror they could conveniently avoid contemplating.

This pattern extends to our intellectual and political elites. How many senators privately acknowledge the constitutional crisis while publicly maintaining decorum? How many journalists recognize the fascist nature of what they're covering while carefully avoiding such “loaded” terminology? How many corporate leaders understand the threat to democratic governance while calculating that accommodation serves their short-term interests?

Arendt would recognize this behavior immediately. It is the same pattern she documented in her analysis of how democratic institutions surrendered to authoritarianism—not through dramatic confrontation but through gradual accommodation, not through enthusiastic endorsement but through quiet complicity.

Perhaps most troubling is the persistence of what I call the “whisper campaign” mentality—the belief that private diplomacy, backroom negotiations, and quiet influence can somehow constrain a movement explicitly committed to dismantling constitutional constraints. This strategy failed spectacularly in Weimar Germany, where institutional leaders believed they could “moderate” or “control” Nazi power from within. It is failing again today, as each accommodation merely emboldens further assaults on democratic norms.

I've experienced this dynamic personally—friends and colleagues who privately acknowledge the severity of our crisis while counseling against public confrontation. “You'll alienate people who might still be persuaded,” they warn. “There are moderates in the Republican caucus,” they insist. “Work the system from the inside,” they advise.

This stance isn't merely tactical; it's psychological. It allows them to acknowledge the threat while avoiding the emotional and social costs of confronting it directly. It preserves their self-image as reasonable people seeking common ground rather than forcing them to make difficult moral choices that might disrupt their professional networks or social standing.

But as I've written previously, this approach fundamentally misunderstands the nature of our crisis. The house is already underwater. When constitutional order is collapsing, when courts are being defied, when innocent people are being renditioned to foreign gulags—private whispers do not constitute meaningful resistance. They become, instead, a form of complicity disguised as strategy.

Why People Can't Feel It: The Collapse of Coherence

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Underlying these psychological defenses is a deeper crisis—what I've described elsewhere as the collapse of coherence. This isn't just about disagreement over facts or values but about the disintegration of the shared frameworks that make meaningful political discourse possible at all.

Coherence isn't merely logical consistency. It is the alignment between mind and world, between word and deed, between our understanding and reality itself. It is what philosopher Bernard Williams called “the desire for truth”—not just accuracy in particular claims, but a comprehensive orientation toward what is real.

Our current crisis exists not just at the level of policy or even institutions but at the level of meaning itself. The deliberate assault on truth—the flood of contradictory claims, the relentless denials of observable reality, the normalization of lies as merely “alternative facts”—has eroded our capacity to maintain coherent moral and cognitive frameworks.

This collapse of coherence manifests across multiple dimensions:

Epistemic coherence—the alignment of belief with evidence—has been systematically undermined through propaganda, conspiracy theories, and the deliberate destruction of shared information sources.

Moral coherence—the alignment of values with action—has been corrupted through selective outrage, partisan ethics, and the subordination of principle to political advantage.

Narrative coherence—the alignment of our stories with lived experience—has fractured into incompatible explanatory frameworks that no longer permit meaningful dialogue across political divides.

Temporal coherence—the connection between past, present, and future—has dissolved into a perpetual, chaotic now where each news cycle erases the last, preventing sustained attention to ongoing crises.

Without these forms of coherence, we cannot process the emergency we face. We lack the cognitive and moral frameworks needed to recognize democratic collapse as it unfolds, to distinguish between normal political conflict and existential threat, to sustain the attention and emotional engagement that resistance requires.

This is why so many Americans—even those who oppose the current administration—cannot feel the emergency. Their capacity for coherent understanding has been systematically dismantled by the very forces they need to recognize.

What Must Be Said

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In the face of this psychological and moral crisis, clarity becomes not just an intellectual virtue but a form of resistance. We must name what is happening, without euphemism, without equivocation, and without the false comfort of neutrality.

This is fascism.

I understand the reluctance to use this word. I acknowledge that it has sometimes been misused by the left, applied too broadly to policies they simply dislike rather than to genuine authoritarian movements. This overuse has created an understandable allergic reaction among many thoughtful people.

But the misuse of a term doesn't invalidate its proper application. The fact that some have incorrectly diagnosed pneumonia doesn't mean pneumonia doesn't exist. And what we face now—the cult of personality, the manipulation of law to serve power, the demonization of minorities, the glorification of strength over principle, the explicit rejection of constitutional constraints—these are the defining features of fascism as a political form.

To refuse this word is not moderation but evasion. It is not caution but complicity. It reflects not intellectual rigor but psychological denial—the desperate need to believe we remain within the bounds of normal politics when we have already crossed into darker territory.

Fascism doesn't arrive announcing itself with swastikas and goose-stepping troops. It comes draped in familiar symbols, speaking the language of tradition, order, and national renewal. It maintains the forms of democratic governance while hollowing out their substance. It works through existing institutions rather than immediately abolishing them.

What makes our current moment particularly dangerous is how it combines traditional authoritarian features with technological capabilities for surveillance, propaganda, and control that previous fascist movements couldn't imagine. The fusion of authoritarian intent with algorithmic power creates possibilities for sustained oppression that exceed historical precedents.

This is why clarity matters so urgently. Without the proper diagnosis, we cannot formulate the proper response. If we persist in treating an authoritarian movement as merely another iteration of conservative governance, we will deploy inadequate tools against an existential threat.

What Must Be Done

The appropriate response to fascism is not normal opposition but moral resistance. Not tactical accommodation but principled confrontation. Not private diplomacy but public witness.

This resistance begins with moral courage—the willingness to speak truth despite social costs, professional risks, or personal discomfort. It requires moral clarity—the capacity to distinguish between normal political disagreement and fundamental threats to democratic governance. And it demands civic resistance—the refusal to normalize or accommodate authoritarian consolidation.

In practical terms, this means:

Refusing to center the wrong stories. When media coverage focuses on trivia while constitutional violations go unremarked, we must insist on proper perspective. When commentators treat fascist rhetoric as merely “controversial” rather than dangerous, we must restore moral clarity.

Refusing to indulge fascist spectacles. The strategy of overwhelming our attention with constant outrages, contradictory claims, and manufactured controversies works only if we allow ourselves to be manipulated by it. We must maintain focus on the core threat rather than chasing each new distraction.

Refusing to treat a slow coup as normal politics. We must reject the pressure to discuss authoritarian consolidation as if it were merely another policy dispute. We must insist on the fundamental distinction between governance within constitutional boundaries and the systematic dismantling of those boundaries.

Most importantly, we must be witnesses—not passive observers but active participants in the maintenance of truth. When someone dismisses constitutional violations as mere politics, we must speak up. When someone equates democratic flaws with authoritarian assaults, we must correct them. When someone retreats into cynicism or bothsidesism, we must insist on moral distinction.

These acts of witness may seem small compared to the scale of our crisis. They may feel inadequate in the face of constitutional collapse. But they represent the essential foundation for any larger resistance. Without the maintenance of truth, without the preservation of moral clarity, no other form of opposition is possible.

Coherence or Collapse

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And the American experiment in self-governance is facing its most severe threat since the Civil War.

These statements are not partisan hyperbole. They are not rhetorical flourishes. They are descriptions of reality as it exists—descriptions that many of us struggle to fully internalize because their implications are too destabilizing, too contrary to our fundamental assumptions about American exceptionalism and democratic resilience.

But the center cannot hold through denial or deflection. It can only be held through clarity—through the painful but necessary acknowledgment of our true situation.

This clarity begins with saying what is true, even when others aren't ready to hear it. It continues through the patient, persistent defense of coherence against the forces that would dissolve it. And it culminates in the courage to act on that truth, to align our response with the reality we face rather than the reality we wish existed.

The wire still holds—but only if we walk it. Only if we maintain the tension between truth and power, between principle and expediency, between the republic we've inherited and the responsibility to preserve it.

This is not about partisanship. It is not about policy preferences. It is about whether the American experiment in self-governance will continue or whether it will join history's long list of failed republics—remembered not for what it achieved but for what it surrendered.

The emergency we cannot feel is no less real for our failure to feel it. The collapse we struggle to acknowledge is no less imminent for our reluctance to face it. And the responsibility to resist, to bear witness, to hold the center—that responsibility falls to each of us, whether we're emotionally prepared for it or not.