The Collapse of Democracy and the Reality of Dystopia
It's both shocking and dramatic, and incredibly banal
The reality of dystopia is surreal.
There are moments of dramatic upheaval, like when you hear about people being gunned down in the street or bombs falling on another country with minimal warning. Those moments catch you up, put a hitch in your step and send a spear of anxiety through your stomach like a wound.
But the in-between times are only shocking in their utter normalcy. Life goes on.
I wrote about the banality of collapse some time ago, where I described how it felt to visit my now-husband in the States before things got this bad. We enjoyed our time together as much as we could, knowing that dark days were on the horizon.
I wrote about how we were going about our daily life as usual, planning dinner, running errands. Talking about things that happened at work.
That was before I made the decision not to visit the United States anymore. It got too dangerous. It hurts to be apart, but it can’t be helped.
What’s striking about times like these is how for most of us, very little seems to change. We’re aware of awful things happening, and we feel some kind of way about those things, but when we look outside our windows… nothing.
Until it appears on our doorstep. And by then, it’s often too late to prevent calamity.
Now, I’m in Canada. I’m personally removed from the situation. But at the same time I’m in the thick of it, because the people I love are staring down the barrel of their government’s authoritarian takeover.
Most of them see it for what it is, and understand the horror. Some of them don’t.
All of them agree that times as they stand now are not normal. Yet, they still go to work, plan family get-togethers and hang out with friends on the weekend. They still buy groceries, cook dinner, watch comedy specials on Netflix and laugh themselves silly.
Life goes on. Even in a crisis. Even when democracy dies; life still goes on.
Even with my husband and I. We still watch movies, we laugh, we joke, we talk about our day at work. Occasionally we discuss politics and get riled up and scared, but usually, we talk about normal things.
I tell him about a visit from one of our regular’s dogs in the store, and he tells me about a wild turkey puttering around the parking lot at his factory.
You expect dystopia to look like a post-apocalyptic hellscape. You expect roving gangs, leather jackets, bullets smashing windows and the threat of starvation — and sometimes it does look like that.
But more often than not, it looks like what’s going on in North America right now.
It looks like a daily grinding struggle, difficulty making ends meet, a low-grade constant dread that something terrible could happen at any moment even on a bright sunny spring day. It’s hanging out at your neighbourhood cookout, sipping a tasty drink and keeping an eye on the street in case ICE shows up to start checking papers.
Dystopia looks like real life. That’s the scariest thing about it.
And the worst part of that is that there are people who use this as a justification to live in denial. Life looks normal, so they can shrug off anything we try to warn them about. We’re being alarmist and silly when we talk about the horrible things Trump’s regime has done, and what they plan to do.
To them, it’s ridiculous. Because in their minds, it can’t happen here.
They won’t believe it as long as the sun keeps shining. As long as they keep getting their groceries, keep seeing their loved ones, keep going to work. As long as life looks normal on the surface, they’ll keep pretending everything is fine.
We call this Normalcy Bias. And frankly, it’s going to get us all killed.
Solidarity wins.