Wait until November 2024 and I’ll let you know.

Crazy is the new normal

Too early to say. Crazy has been modestly rebuked and it’s only making them more crazy. Even if main crazy is punished, we might see fringe crazy respond in a variety of obviously undesirable ways. If they do, then normal crazy might step back out of a desire not to be seen as associating with fringe crazy, but that doesn’t mean that crazy will have passed. Crazy will just change tactics and lightly rebrand to new crazy.

The only way to end crazy is to thwart crazy’s plans at every turn and make crazy nonviable as a means for gaining power.

Instead of using terms like normal or crazy, I’ll instead use terms like stability. Things are pretty unstable where I live right now. The economy is unstable; high gas prices, high rent and home prices, high mortgage rates, high homeowners insurance rates with some leaving the state, the closure of small and local businesses are increasing, etc. My state also has a political crisis, a restrictions of rights and extremism from the far right.

I go outside, talk to my friends, my extended family, it feels normal and stable.

I go online, and apparently the US is dying.

I think ita just an online thing.

Going “back to normal” is homeostasis. We don’t do and have never done that. We do allostasis: adapt to the new thing.

People do indeed seem to be adapting to the new thing. You can tell because they are still here.

Normal is, just like beauty, in the eye of the beholder…

Oh wait, that’s truth, normal is what the majority accepts… we’re domed, just don’t look up.

The way I see it, things are continuing down the crazy path but it feels more normal because people aren’t denying it completely like they were a decade ago.

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You have to provide more context…

Yes.

I think normal died around this time in 2019 for me.

To give some context, in Judaism Rosh Hashanah (which coincidentally just ended) is the new year. There’s a superstition that whatever you do on Rosh Hashanah will be a reflection of the upcoming year. For example, if you nap you’ll have a lazy year.

Anyway, that year, my younger son and I were at Temple for services. We noticed someone sitting behind us who seemed odd, but didn’t think much of it. At some point, he left so we focused on the service.

Midway through the service, my rabbi suddenly shouted NO with the same force as Gandalf addressing the Balrog. Then I saw why. The “odd guy” was running down aisle shouting happy new year to everyone. He was wearing a t-shirt. And ONLY a t-shirt.

He reached the front and tried to get up the stairs to where the rabbi, cantor, and torahs were. Only, my rabbi clotheslined him back down the stairs. The ushers rushed in and dragged him off. My son was smart and looked away. I wasn’t as smart and got “visual confirmation” that he wasn’t wearing anything below the waist. It was only for a moment but it burned into my brain.

So remember how I said “how Rosh Hashanah goes, your year goes?” I joked with my wife later that hopefully this wouldn’t mean we were going to have a crazy year.

Then 2020 hit.

Only I think this got stuck somehow and now EVERY year is crazy.

The people that ask this question are always boomers drowning in confirmation bias