Depends on the person. I’m a therapist, tons of my clients are very upset, scared, crying, having trouble sleeping, depressed, feeling powerless and angry, etc.

This administration’s actions are taking a huge toll on some people’s mental health.

And people who are trans or gay? They are scared and many want to get out but can’t.

Having said all that… there are plenty of people who are not bothered because they are not informed and don’t realize how bad things really are.

The average American barely has any idea there’s a war even happening or who the president is. Half the people I know think Biden is still president. Even people who do know there’s a war wouldn’t be able to find Iran on a map. Everything about our government and everything it does might as well be a TV show to my fellow Americans. They see it as fiction that doesn’t impact our lives and most people think it’s extremely boring so they tune it out.

People are crashing out but for different but associated reasons. Everyone’s broke, no one can afford healthcare, there’s a mass shooting every 3 days. Everyone’s tired and the alienation is so thick that people are all pointing in different directions to where they think the problem is. People are getting more conspiracy brained and twitchy.

People in the U.S used to say.

"Finish your dinner , there are kids in Africa/China starving. "

Now it’s our kids going without food.

They used to say

“we have to liberate religious fanatic dictatorships of other countries”

Now we hope someone liberates us from fanatic fascist dictators.

“We are the richest country”

Poverty is high and climbing every minute.

Children are illiterate. No one can afford basic healthcare and die from preventable diseases. Lose everything they own and become homeless from cancer or a serious injury.

Sex trafficking. That used to be other countries right?

Nope. It was here. It was always this place.

It’s been rotting for a while. Causes have effects. Some people don’t seem capable of actually following the path to see the outcomes. And the few who can are often ignored.

Even my other leftist friends thought I was being dramatic this time last year.

I couldn’t get them to engage much. Now they call me, sobbing. Overwhelmed. It was all real. It was all true. It’s all over for us. We can’t come back from this without a lot more hardship.

I think people still haven’t accepted that last one.

Our children can’t even read. You think we are going to bounce back from this in 5 or 10 years?

No one will trust the U.S for anything.

Right now they are all working to stop using the dollar as the main exchange currency. Many are working on their own tech so they don’t have to use our corrupt tech.

Hell some country in Africa has their own Internet now that’s not accessible to outsiders because they are sick of the manipulation.

It’s over. And we , the citizens, will be paying for decades.

None of this will be fixed any time soon. I know no one wants to hear that. But it’s true.

Go ahead and make your peace with it. And then be ready to fight and try your hardest to support each other.

We only have each other.

The ‘background noise’ is getting louder but for the most part, people are just carrying about their day worried about their own personal lives

Loo at American history. This really is business as usual, sad as it might be.

I just recently got a bunch of medical stuff and psychiatric stuff sorted out after decades of barely being able to function. So I’m finally feeling “normal” and the state of our politics has me stressed to the point of action, but not to the point of curling up in a ball and doing nothing, which is unusual for me. Very surreal to be functional in a nonfunctional world.

The oil prices have not hit the average consumer hard yet. They are releasing oil reserves and taking other measures to artificially reduce the price increase. It will probably take a month or two before things really starts to go down. (or up in this case)

If crying most days is crashing out, then yes.

There have been many organized protests against Trump since he took office. I’m not sure how much press they’ve received outside the US. Though many still support him because they are indoctrinated into the MAGA cult, I would say that most (over half) of Americans are against the war for a variety of reasons.

The problem is that there is not much we can do in the short term to create change. Our system of government does not have an effective means to recall a leader.

The threat of legal action does little to deter this administration. For one thing, it’s slow. For another, they’ve shown that they can and will ignore court orders and this far don’t suffer any consequences. Finally, the administration has done as much as possible to install loyalists and remove honest people in every part of government, including the legal system.

Impeachment is a joke. Even if the process was started again, Republicans in the Senate would never convict one of their own.

So the average citizen doesn’t approve of what is happening but don’t see any effective means to change. It’s a very helpless feeling. Many disgruntled communities have been able to create some change in their local government but even changing political parties is not real change. We still have 2 right wing parties bought by special interests. I think many of us just try to do good where we can in our own sphere of influence.

I keep it together because a lot of young people are around me. But on the inside I’ve kind of given up on anything good and dread the next fucking crazy thing to come up.

I’m an extremely privileged hedonistic inner city party queer. This shit weighs so heavily on me I’m consumed with visions of war whenever I go out to have fun now.

Tripping mushrooms at the beach unable to escape horrible visions of the cruel calculus of war. The anger and shortages spilling into violence, famine, and fleeing your home, the way hunger and exhaustion will beat you down long before a gun is ever in your face. Occult dance party the night after the war started, could barely dance or enjoy myself just weighed down by the war, as was my wife, so we left very early.

Asking other people who were around me at the dance party, on the beach, other recent concerts, no one else was that bothered by the war, it wasn’t something anyone had put much thought into.

I live very close to where the Battle of Atlanta started in the Civil War. It’s been 150+ years since this land and its people actually knew war. Sure there are soldiers overseas but that’s exactly it, overseas, out of sight out of mind. By and large I don’t think most Americans comprehend in the slightest what war is. A lot of us grew up in the Global War on Terror where aside from the toxic political discourse a persistent state of war really didn’t feel all that much different than peace felt before.

A lot of Americans have also wised up to the idea that we fight forever wars, to a lot of people they can’t even keep up with when the fighting has started or stopped, just this vague awareness there are constant military actions happening in the backgound. So when they hear about all this with Iran it’s just another drop in the bucket of forever wars, something they have become desensitized to after decades of the Bush’s, Obama’s, and Clinton’s killing sprees around the world. So much murder not only can they not keep up they just tune out.

So in conclusion I think America has fully internalized the Orwellian mantra War Is Peace. They just can’t tell the difference anymore not that they would’ve cared much about Iran back when they could.

Americans acting normal as fuck. People were crashing out 10x harder when the invasion of Ukraine started in 2022

I’m sure some people are. But constantly crashing out isn’t useful even in the worst situations. What is useful is taking real steps that have real effects. Action is the antidote for anxiety.

Trying to conduct my day as normal (food needs buying and bills need to be paid, after all), but with a marked increase of episodes of staring of into space internally shrieking as avenues of opportunity and life plans made years ago are irrevocably altered.

What’s the alternative? Give up? That doesn’t help anyone.

I have a “conservative” friend. We both had a bit of a crashout discussion last night. We’re American.

The economy is crashing in front of our eyes. We’re both extremely privileged and lucky and we both recognize it and we recognize how fucking stupid everything is in our society. We recognize we’re powerless to even change the nature of our jobs.

At this point, many of us are numb to the impending whatever. There is always 6 things happening that shouldn’t be happening (that we know about) and that could upend our lives. And usually there is very little we can do besides yell on the internet.