ArcaMax

I used to use the website, the Wayback Machine, to find incriminating teenage poetry on long-lost LiveJournal accounts written by people who are now normal accountants and thought their old emo phase wasn't going to haunt them. Yesterday, I used the Wayback Machine to see a government website delete parts of the Constitution.

The chaos is real, but watching it as an average person far away from the threats tends to make you think that it's not coming for you, especially when many people are acting like this is normal.

But really, none of this is normal.

It's not normal for a president to fire the head of an agency because they don't like the numbers. It's not normal for Homeland Security to recruit by asking you to "defend your culture." It's normal to hear a governor threaten the arrest of lawmakers.

And that ad wasn't just about a nice-fitting pair of pants.

The more wackadoodle activities we see around us shift how we think over time. The Overton Window, also known as the window of political possibilities, describes the range of policies and ideas that are considered acceptable and politically doable by the public and politicians at a given time. It's a window that can be shifted as we normalize what we see.

When masked and unidentified people leap from moving vans and whisk people out of the Home Depot parking lot, it's fair to say that we've moved away from normal due process and that the Overton Window has been cracked open with a crowbar. What would have once been a political scandal is now a political strategy.

But another horrifying part? People are adapting to it, performing calmly as they polish the silver while the roof caves in.

More families will be lining up at food pantries because SNAP benefits are being slashed, and rent has outpaced wages in nearly every American city. Teachers are quitting mid-year. Kids are being raised in cars. Climate disasters hit one after another, and still, we're told to smile for the cameras and believe in bootstrap resilience.

There's a term for this, too: the normalization of deviance. When something is broken long enough and no one fixes it, people stop seeing it as broken. They call it the way things are. The cost of doing business. The new normal.

But this isn't normal. This is manufactured instability designed to exhaust us, confuse us, and convince us that fighting back is pointless.

The longer we pretend everything is fine, the more power we hand over to the people dismantling what's left of the social contract. They rely on our numbness to do things the way we've always done them.

We're not living in ordinary times. We shouldn't act like we are. The question isn't when we'll return to normal. The question is: Who benefits when we pretend this is?

So no, I won't play along. I won't call this, or where we're going, normal. And I'll challenge us to be proactive in finding innovative solutions before we slide into more oppression. We can't ignore that more waves against the norm will allow us to operate as we have before. We are the people we are waiting for: No one will come to save us except us.

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Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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