On this the eve of our elections an early winter snow falls silently. I have no thoughts of my own about the way things ought to turn out. I don’t see any side as being better than the other. Neither is capable enough to deal with the issues we face. The end of an age. The uncertainty of what is to come. We cannot even say for certain what has changed, though we feel it intimately. The end of truth. The end of civility. The end of freedom. The end of democracy.
It is an existential anxiety. It is us getting father away from each other. The loss of consensus that presages madness. And we fear the empty, sterile room of the madhouse, of being locked inside, no longer understood by anyone who peers in at us. We fear the gaze of those who, looking at us as though we were insane, would condemn us.
Panicked, we insist that whatever we most believe in must be shouted as loudly as possible. It must be made to be true. Not a truth understood but one that is made to be true. That is what it feels like, anyway, to scroll through media and read the news. The agonized and persecuted cries of the mad. But the doors of every room are unlocked, and we are all inside.
Robert Charboneau. 