How Terrified Are You? January 2017

Gonna say 8, feels like a 9 but there's plenty of room for things to get worse.

7

things are bad. the level of resistance so far is encouraging so that's why i'm not saying higher. but we're only 10 days into this shit

personally i am experiencing

- trouble sleeping
- difficulty concentrating
- easily startled
- irritability
- anhedonia
- loss of interest in activities i used to enjoy
- loss of appetite
- pounding heart
- general feeling like i'm stuck on an unpleasant carnival ride i can't get off of

ebbs and flows for me, one day i feel pretty dire and then the next day a big protest/rally/resistance gets me through the day mildly unscathed.

i definitely have trouble sleeping

I'm about in the same place as marcos. It helps to live in a liberal metro area. It doesn't help to have lived in the 60s and therefore having a well-armed imagination concerning what is possible in the way of social disintegration.

I lost sleep on Election Night, after which I recovered. For me "terrified" is inapt. I call my congressmen and others as part of my routine, like exercise, and, like exercise, it helps me sleep. Also, I disconnect from news around 9 p.m. to read and write.

3 or 4, which is very high for me (i'm white btw). i am extremely confident that the doomsday shit (martial law, camps) that the paranoiacs fear will happen will not happen, but a bunch of terrible, lower-level shit is going to go down and it's going to take years to clean up. i mostly just hope trump doesn't start a war

3. I have trouble sleeping and I am checking for updates all the time, but I'm distracted more than terrified. Ultimately I don't think this administration will get very far, I don't think Trump and this administration will last til the summer, I think this past week has goosed Americans into paying more attention and participating and putting on pressure and that's a good thing.

I am worried that a demo will turn into a massacre, I am worried that Bannon will make some insane military command, but I truly believe that somehow Trump and this crew will be removed from power peacefully and quickly

personally i am experiencing

- trouble sleeping
- difficulty concentrating
- easily startled
- irritability
- anhedonia
- loss of interest in activities i used to enjoy
- loss of appetite
- pounding heart
- general feeling like i'm stuck on an unpleasant carnival ride i can't get off of

check check check check check check check &c

I don't know that I would use the word terrified either but I don't live in the us and I think I spoke about 20 words total today

xxxpost and you've consequently never failed to wish us all a Good Mourning!

(it strikes me that all those are maybe symptoms of something not totally related for me though) xp

Thread needs darraghmac for some balance.

(i'm white btw). i am extremely confident that the doomsday shit (martial law, camps) that the paranoiacs fear will happen will not happen

haha i am also extremely confident it won't happen ... to you, anyway

5-6 (lol white hetero male) but i'd say 9 on an anger scale (lol white hetero male?)

it is definitely not going to happen but i understand the paranoia

i'm about at a 5, predicated on the idea that the bad shit will be more restrictive than actually world destroying, and that trump won't last. i'd be at 10 if i felt like the whole country was being swept up by this nationalistic fervor, but it's decidedly not.

i'm feeling more a sense of mourning (alfred otm) at what may be potentially lost from the progress that's been made over the years, all because of a single craven and despicable human being, and the sense that i'm seeing a vanishing future of what could have been, and that america--which even under bush i think--was still a place that was vv slowly moving forward towards some ideal. and now look at these shitheads.

*well not because of a SINGLE person, but still

i think this is really bad and in some ways irreparably damaging, but i'm more pissed off than terrified (nb i am a white male)

i have a lot of those symptoms all the time tho

I had a full-on anxiety attack last week. It followed my inability to really convey any useful information during a presentation at work, but I figured it out -- I couldn't even put together a narrative of what I wanted to present because I've been so preoccupied with political shit. I felt completely helpless.

I'm a little better now having recognized that, but holy shit

only 5/6 tbh, I'm getting increasingly zen these days and it couldn't come at a better time

It varies. Sometimes I'm doing OK, sometimes I'm in "we're all going to die" mode. Constant swings between "comically absurd" and "terrifying dystopia".

I'd say overall it varies between 5 and 10.

i'd prob be at about 3-4 on the "terrified" scale (still 9 on anger) but honestly the number of "middle-America" maniacs who are just willingly going along with this, celebrating it, is what kicks it up a notch for me.

i hope it'll be better when i get the hell out of middle america. jesus indiana is terrifying as hell.

i stopped in indiana on a road trip this past spring and even pre-trump i got the willies. probably didn't help i was mostly on a toll highway and going to weird truck stops and candle stores (?)

I'm a little too fatalistic to get terrified until my life and limb is threatened, but voted 8

that's pretty high on the terrified scale

i'm pretty optimistic. i think there is a huge opportunity for a lot of people to do a lot of good. the women's march and airport protests were just the start. the gains progressives make during this era will have been through the acid test.

the media is very anti-Trump, which is the best possible setup imo. we are maybe better off with an openly antagonist media/watchdog class. protests are good for ratings? let's run w that.

7

I voted 8 but my resting heart rate is always in the 90s even when there isn't an anthropomorphic chinchilla in office

Was gonna say a 6 but when I remember each individual thing it goes up to like, a 16

Ignoring the judiciary branch definitely amped it up a notch

It's super frustrating that nobody in Congress seems to be doing anything to stop this madman but the fact that the anti-Trumpers seem to be so numerous and motivated these days definitely gives me some hope. I'm seeing a lot of horrified reactions from people in my FB sphere, many of whom didn't vote Clinton, a few of whom I know voted Trump even if they don't admit it. If his approval gets into the low-30s I suspect Congress will finally start taking action. Hopefully it's not too late!!

I have a low stress personality but having to keep up with + process the info overload has def made me way more anxious than normal. so maybe 5?

I think I would be more concerned if trump's first week had been really normalizing and he had an approval rating that was ticking up. like the idea of a soft-fascist friendly trump with a 60% approval rating scares me more than what he's done so far. right now he's putting business leaders, the media and even many republican politicians in a position where they don't even have the *option* to support him. so I put a lot of faith into the idea that his unpopularity 'matters' and I'm rooting for him to keep putting himself out of normal range, even though short-term that means terrible things for the country, economy and many individual people.

still - we don't know the end of this story yet, but it's gonna be pretty unpleasant. the most powerful man in the world has a mental disorder. the chances that there will be violence on the streets and/or a real constitutional crisis seem a lot higher than they did a week ago. but as far as personal safety goes, I would feel more scared walking around NYC w/ a MAGA hat than a clinton hat.

I feel exhausted more than anything. the 2016 campaign and having to deal with Trump's alternate universe was a mire I didn't want to get stuck in but did, with the understanding that it'd all be over soon, only for him to unexpectedly win.

I certainly wasn't *happier* with the deplorables hiding in plain sight because we all knew they were there and pointed out it for years to anybody who wanted to listen. But it's one thing to know that there are a lot of garbage human beings that believe heinous shit and another to be smacked in the face with supporting evidence day in and out.

Cent FL definitely has some Trump nests, people decorating their trucks with obnoxious slogans, bumper stickers, etc. The most bizarre one was being at a karaoke night shortly after the election, where this lady performed a duet of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" with her friend (who happened to be Black) and at the end of the song, after singing softly and politely, starts barking "Yay Trump!" and "Go Trump!" and then I realized why she picked the song and went flush with rage.

but the fact that the anti-Trumpers seem to be so numerous and motivated these days definitely gives me some hope. I'm seeing a lot of horrified reactions from people in

maybe they're plotting a coup in private

oh wait i clipped the wrong quote

i meant to clip this

It's super frustrating that nobody in Congress seems to be doing anything to stop this madman

sometimes i'm happy that he's so incompetent, sometimes i'm terrified that something like 100 million americans are cool with him _anyway_. more than trump it's those 100 million people who scare me.

Trump's approval ratings have stabilized my nerves, yeah.

xxpost I mean other than the "not voting against confirmation" fiasco (which I have started to gravitate towards Shakey on), what else can they really do other than public rebukes, which they have done? It isn't like they can censure him at this point, and many of them actually went to airports to try and get CBP to comply with the judge's order.

Discipline though would require more flagrant abuses, ones that would actually cause people to cross party lines. And may be coming, but we aren't there yet.

Really though the Dems should just put 5-10 reps/senators on tweet duty each night and do nothing but troll Trump 24/7 until he either deletes his profile or goes back to Valhalla

2-3 - it's getting harder to tell where hysteria ends and reality begins though.

7

i'd say 5.5 - more just an ongoing background static of unresolvable anxiety than any kind of real abject terror

it's getting harder to tell where hysteria ends and reality begins though

for me this is part of the terror

fear of the unknown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQUcjt10NGg

For various pockets of the country: 8 (political unrest plus economic turmoil plus ready access to guns). Less a formal, full-scale civil war, more regional skirmishes on the lines of the Malheur occupation or the Baltimore riots.

For myself: 3 (I am a middle-class white female who lives outside of those pockets I fear are vulnerable). Unless I start regularly going to demonstrations wearing a t-shirt reading "NASTY WOMEN OPPOSED TO TRUMP," I will be a lot less directly exposed to the brewing trouble.

Thread needs darraghmac for some balance.

― Eats like Elvis, shits like De Niro (Tom D.), Monday, 30 January 2017 21:41 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm white, insured, in a well paid public service job in a country thats in the EU and I think I voted 1 in that other poll.

Voted 7. I'm too young to have experienced a world leader I think is likely to tear up the social fabric of the US and/or start a nuclear war before and I'm not enjoying it

posts not not at all in character!

srsly seeing dmac even slightly worried is more troublesome to me than most things

Bah, I was looking for some justificatory support for my state of non-terror.

Am genuinly surprised by yr 7 deems. This is why these 'describe yr pain on a scale from one to ten' things don't make sense to me.

Voted 5. Which feels high, as it should be. Shit be stirring for real. As it stands the world totally sucks. Me and gf can't go to the US as planned because of her Iraqi passport. Family troubled even more. I've enough priviliges to pull through, but this is not the world I want to live in.

listening to the latest Hardcore History is making me shoot right up to 10 tbh

preferring for now to take the Brian Eno line of "this is the end of something, not the beginning of it," which helps. (not that living through such things is ever desirable...)

i spent much of last summer reading things like "the rise and fall of the third reich" and timothy snyder's books, watching Shoah and other WW2 docs--i realize now i was unconsciously girding myself for something like this.

I will say that in no way is our situation as precarious as that, but one thing you learn from that kind of immersion is that resolving to fight, to go down fighting if need be, is far less anxiety inducing than imagining yourself a victim. you have to believe you have agency and self-determination and some control over the situation even if you dont. i dont know how this cashes out in reality, but just as a psychological stance to take--aggressive not passive--it is calming. and probably more productive too.

The Decline and Fall of the US Empire?
Wouldn't be so scary if it was self contained to Washington or at least the political element therein. Draining the swamp by imploding and sucking out the bad with you?
Better than swamping the drain anyway.
Wonder how long things will sit stagnant and festering.

I'm still optimistically hoping for a deus ex-machina of some kind or a united public getting rid of the administration. But from what I've heard there isn't a complete overturn of what is a group of disgusting individuals, it would all be the one individual.

Not sure if the next in line being absolutely unfitting would have less opportunity to be replaced but it would drag things out.

2. but i live in england. if i lived in the US probably be a 6 or 7.

can't say i'm any more worried about nuclear war than i was in the late 70's early 80's when i was a kid ie i was worried for about an hour after watching 'threads' then forgot all about it.

Holy balls, I almost never FP a poster but it was necessary, if not necessarily cathartic.

I'm on a pretty solid 6, rising to 8 when there are specific policy announcements/EOs or I'm on the phone with my mother, who voted for 45 and yesterday said 'I think he's a workaholic' (this was a positive) combined with a bunch of gaslighty shit - I finally told her to stop talking about it because we are not going to agree. Marching makes me feel less alone, especially in London.

Who did you FP?

there was one particular rotten apple on this thread yesterday that must be the prime candidate.

Oh, I'd forgotten that bizarre episode.

Something shifted in me between last night and this morning and I'm absolutely terrified.

The craziness that is a riot at Berkeley taking over right-wing news outlets-- while the Texas mosque burning was barely a blip, "violence is never the answer" assholes coming out of the woodwork, confirmation after confirmation, executive order after executive order. I read the antifa reddit this morning and saw it was polluted with clearly-fake information designed to disrupt and confuse any possible organization. I feel as if my perception of the world is crumbling very fast.

The interesting feeling I had last night was that I began to respect the alt-right movement for how successful it has been at shaping the internet into a gaslighting race-warmongering hellhole, and simultaneous with that feeling of respect was a desire to absolutely commit myself to the destruction of that movement.

I feel conflicted about using my public voice for any sort of political means.. last night when I was reading the news about Berkeley I almost rage-tweeted "Make America Declare War On Fascism Again" with images of Mussolini's corpse. Probably not a good thing. I don't know what to do any more except to turn off the news, attend marches, and make work

Yeah, I'm thinking more and more that the internet needs to become a secondary tool wrt organization and resistance.

fgti are you a dual citizen?

Absolutely turn off the news, a state of constant alarm will kill you

No Morbs, Canadian. I have an renewable O1 visa, and had been living and working in L.A. this past year-- I'm not sure if it was legal or not that I was doing so, as the O1 visa is for soloists/athletes who come to the states for gigs or games and then go home. I just moved back to Canada for a job and think I'm gonna stay here. As a non-US citizen I didn't feel safe about participating in activist activities the same way I have in the past in Canada.

sitting in a bathtub twitching so I'm once again trying the "break from news/social media" thing that I've failed two days in a row now. i think the general principles are good to follow:

1) take a break from the news periodically and dont keep refreshing it every 5 minutes - it'll be waiting for you when you come back to it
2) worrying is nowhere near as productive as strategizing and acting
3) our ability to predict outcomes in situations like these is middling at best
4) giving in to despair makes any action less effective
5) react to what has happened, and stop assuming Machiavellian strategizing behind every bit of news
6) don't forget to keep living in the process

I've decided that once I've had my inevitable brain or cardiac event, I'll ease up on the current events and maybe just stick to like SVU marathons.

neanderthal, that's all excellent advice. wishing you the best. i'm still up and down but am more up today. i'm finding that getting out a lot, getting involved on the ground with blm, etc., is really helping, though i'm constantly emotionally exhausted.

i expect the 2017 Baseball Prospectus annual delivered today

so that'll hold me til next Schumer protest on Tuesday

I had a much better day - walked five miles, met a friend for lunch, devised a truly banging chilli paneer to boot the last of a head cold, and managed to process most of the twin shitstorms (Brexit is not helping either) without wanting to scream.

been unfollowing people on instagram that post too much Trump content. which for me is more than 2 a day. i signed up to see your art or your kid or your house party, not to see a retweet of a tweet with a comment complaining about how much that person tweets. this morning at 730am while waiting for the bus i read one of these, it was a picture of Trump's tweet and the comment was this long rant about why is this guy tweeting at 6am. who the fuck cares? i figure if he orders a missile strike on Mexico i'm not going to rely on an instagram meme to find out.

I'm down to a 4. stopping refreshing the news endlessly was huge to me.

we might be headed for the end times, we might be headed for merely 'bad but repairable times', but ultimately, if shit happens that I can't control, well, w/e. will fight it where I can but the illusion of control hurts more than it helps where you can't make a difference.

I am so hella glad that I have so much saved in the bank now tho. I'll say that much

"if only I saw the instagram with the pic of the nuclear warhead, I could have stopped it in time"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

11 posters cool as cucumbers

mean is 6.01, median is 6

compare to 2009, mean was 4.83, median of 4

so it appears the 133 of us voting this year are somewhat more terrified than the 155 of us voting in 2009, but not that much more terrified?

i'm not feeling up to the challenge of STDEV but

http://i.imgur.com/JYncmiW.png

http://i.imgur.com/s4wHHV2.png

clearly it went down

lol, i went to make a chart as well

http://i.imgur.com/fxHmVCL.png

actually the standard deviation is not that different!

it did go down but not as mucb as i expected from just looking at the graph

I really think my terror going from like 8 to 4 came about due to the court pwning Trump and him reacting predictably as well as just deciding I'm not gonna let the daily news cycle ruin my life.

i am a lil nervous about tomorrow tho, to see what butthurt he continues to bring about the judges. merely bitching and moaning is poor taste, not 'illegal' obv, but I don't like when a rabblerouser President attempts to turn his base against the institutions created by the Constitution as a check and balance.

terrified of retribution IRL against judges and shit.

The problem with letting judges "handle" Trump is obviously that there are plenty of terrible, destructive things he and Congress can do that are perfectly legal.

literally shitting my pants but i don't think it's because i'm terrified, someone plz help

here take these alpine static. they may not fit as well but they are nice clean pants

i would buy a brand of incontinence pants called "alpine static"

soiling yourself can be the ultimate expression of contentment

For sale: shit pants, worn once

Despite whether it's proportionate to reality, every single morning I wake up irrationally listening for a large explosion (I live across the river from NYC).

Other than that I'm generally not feeling a ton of dread, but that's mostly due to a defensive numbness I've always had switched on my entire life.

terrified of retribution IRL against judges and shit.

― Neanderthal, Sunday, February 5, 2017 11:01 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can be sure all these judges ruling against him have received death threats im sure

Yes, I'm positive that people who are petrified of terrorism have themselves been terrorizing these judges.

Feel like we could save ourselves a lot of time by pointing out the rare instances of cognitive consonance among Trumpists.

up to 8 or 9 over the last few days, highest it's been for me, and almost entirely due to the IC leaks and their potential resolution, win or lose

loss of sleep, lack of interest in normal activities, drinking too much...

the first couple of weeks with the massive protests, overwhelming volume of calls to reps, etc, felt terrific by comparison

i've started having recurring nightmares about large scale disasters which has raised me back up a point or 2

at more of a 3 or 4 now, not because it's normalized, but since my brain eventually said "you can't function if you're freaking out every damn day".

shit like the DOJ Affirmative Action story or North Korea developments and I go back up p quick tho

terror of trump administration starting to level out, terror of americans continuing to increase

eesh yeah that's kinda where I'm at too.

my 5 has dropped to a 3 thanks to normalizing. good job everyone who tirelessly reposts every tweet

Your sarcasm is actually spat truth

At this point, I'm almost less afraid of Trump and his administration than I am the possibility that they're going to coast through four (eight?) years without suffering anything like a real consequence of their actions. Because if there isn't sufficient pushback on this level of naked hate and ignorance and venality, how much lower do we go before we're just done?

i must insist that my disposition is correct

bout 9 rn

america's institutions are strong

as long as you're not near the statehouses