Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Chronic Trump Stress Disorder

We live in a world where soldiers can come home from war carrying something called PTSD—Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We understand the concept. You experience something terrifying, your brain files it under HOLY FUCKING SHIT, and then, long after the danger has supposedly passed, your nervous system keeps acting like somebody is still shooting at you.

But I think we may need to expand the diagnostic manual.

Because millions of us have developed something I will unofficially call CTSD: Chronic Trump Stress Disorder.

And before anyone reaches for their medical degree, no, I am not suggesting this is an actual psychiatric diagnosis. I am suggesting that if you have spent the better part of the last decade watching Donald Trump occupy the political landscape, your nervous system deserves hazard pay.

The first Trump presidency, from 2017 to 2021, was basically four years of waking up every morning and wondering:

What the hell happened while I was asleep?

Who did he insult?

Who did he fire?

What institution did he attack?

What treaty did he threaten?

What country did he piss off?

And, because apparently this was a perfectly reasonable thing for Americans to contemplate before breakfast:

Who is he going to bomb next?

There was a strange rhythm to it. You’d wake up, make coffee, check the news, and discover that the President of the United States had apparently spent the previous evening playing geopolitical Jenga.

And somehow, looking back, that version of Trump now seems almost quaint.

Quaint.

That is an absolutely fucking terrifying word to use when describing the first Trump presidency.

Because the current iteration doesn’t feel like a rerun.

It feels like someone took the original series, removed the brakes, threw the instruction manual into a fireplace, and decided the writers’ room should consist entirely of people yelling “What if we made it worse?”

The exhausting part isn’t simply disagreeing with Donald Trump. Political disagreement is normal. Democrats and Republicans have hated each other’s policies since before cable news discovered there was money to be made keeping everybody permanently furious.

This is different.

The stress comes from the unpredictability.

You don’t know what tomorrow’s headline is going to be.

You don’t know whether the next morning will bring a policy announcement, a constitutional crisis, an international confrontation, another bizarre executive action, another attack on an institution, another political vendetta, or something so completely fucking surreal that you briefly wonder whether The Onion has somehow taken over CNN.

And eventually, your brain starts adapting.

You stop being surprised.

That’s probably the most disturbing part.

The bar for “this is completely insane” keeps moving.

Something happens and you think, Well, that’s certainly disturbing.

Then something else happens and you think, Okay, that’s worse.

Then something happens after that and your brain simply shrugs and says:

Of course.

That’s CTSD.

It’s not necessarily panic anymore.

It’s anticipatory exhaustion.

It’s waking up already wondering what you’re going to have to process today.

It’s opening your phone with the emotional equivalent of putting on body armor.

It’s seeing a notification about the President and thinking, Oh Jesus, what now?

And the rest of the world gets dragged into it because American politics doesn’t exist inside America’s borders anymore. When the United States sneezes, the global economy reaches for a tissue. When the American president starts threatening allies, enemies, treaties, institutions or entire geopolitical arrangements, people everywhere start paying attention.

Which means CTSD may not even be exclusively American.

We may have accidentally exported it.

There is something uniquely exhausting about living through a political era in which normal has become the thing you have to explain.

You find yourself telling someone, “No, seriously, this actually happened.”

And they say, “You’re kidding.”

And you say, “I wish I were.”

That’s the psychological toll.

Not necessarily one gigantic traumatic event, but the cumulative effect of thousands of smaller shocks. The constant drip-drip-drip of outrage, uncertainty, anger, fear and disbelief.

Eventually, you become emotionally conditioned to expect the next shoe to drop.

And that’s where my completely unofficial medical diagnosis comes in:

Chronic Trump Stress Disorder.

Symptoms may include:

Checking the news before you’ve even finished your coffee.

Saying “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me” several times a week.

Developing a reflexive distrust of the phrase breaking news.

Experiencing a brief moment of genuine peace when nothing political has happened for six consecutive hours.

And perhaps the most serious symptom of all:

Remembering the first Trump presidency and thinking, “Honestly, those were simpler times.”

Because that’s when you know we’ve gone completely off the rails.

When the period you once considered an unprecedented political nightmare starts looking like the calm before the storm, you’ve officially entered CTSD territory.

And maybe the real problem isn’t that we’re all becoming overly sensitive.

Maybe we’re becoming accustomed to the abnormal.

That’s what should scare us.

Because a democracy shouldn’t require its citizens to develop psychological coping mechanisms just to make it through the news cycle.

We shouldn’t have to wake up every morning wondering what our government did while we were sleeping.

We shouldn’t have to normalize instability.

We shouldn’t have to become experts in constitutional crises, executive power, geopolitical brinkmanship and political retaliation just to understand what the fuck is happening in our own country.

But here we are.

So if you find yourself staring blankly at the television while another completely unprecedented event unfolds and thinking, Well, that’s Tuesday, congratulations.

You may have CTSD.

There is currently no known vaccine.

The recommended treatment is apparently another election.

And judging by the way things are going, I’m not entirely convinced that’s going to lower anybody’s blood pressure.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

I drive every day. And because apparently the American highway system has decided that my commute should also be a continuing-education course in personal injury law, I see accident attorney billboards everywhere.

Everywhere.

You have the husband-and-wife law firm. You have the guy with the giant head. You have the woman pointing at you like she just caught you stealing a candy bar. You have the attorneys standing dramatically in front of a courthouse. You have slogans that apparently passed through seventeen focus groups and one very caffeinated marketing consultant.

INJURED? CALL US!

WE FIGHT FOR YOU!

DON’T SETTLE!

And, of course, the phone number is approximately 14 feet tall.

Which brings me to the question my sarcastic brain inevitably asks:

Who goes to law school with the dream of eventually having their face on a billboard?

Seriously.

At some point in college, somebody sits down with a career counselor and says, “I’ve given this a lot of thought. I want to become an attorney.”

“Wonderful. What area of law interests you?”

“Well, eventually I’d like my face to be 30 feet tall next to Interstate 17.”

Ah. The dream.

Years of undergraduate education. Law school. Bar exam. Student loans. Internships. Research. Case law. Briefs. Courtrooms.

All so you can eventually stand next to a highway wearing a suit while twelve thousand commuters stare at your giant disembodied head every morning.

That is some serious ambition.

And then there’s another question I’ve always wondered about:

Why do some highways have so many accident attorney billboards?

Is it because there are a lot of accidents?

Or are there a lot of accidents because there are so many accident attorney billboards?

I realize this is probably not how causality works, but hear me out.

You’re driving down the highway and every 500 feet there’s another billboard screaming:

ACCIDENT? YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO MONEY!

Then another:

INJURED? DON’T TALK TO THE INSURANCE COMPANY!

Then another:

YOU COULD BE OWED MILLIONS!

At some point I’m wondering whether we’ve accidentally turned the highway into a financial incentive program.

“Please maintain a safe following distance.”

Sure.

But also…

What if I get rear-ended?

Maybe that’s my retirement plan.

Forget 401(k)s. Forget Social Security. Forget investing.

I could just get T-boned at 45 miles an hour and hope the other guy has really good insurance.

Apparently, getting into an automobile accident has evolved from being one of the worst things that can happen to you into a potential income opportunity.

And I’m not suggesting anyone should actually want to get hurt. Obviously. An accident can be traumatic, expensive, life-altering and sometimes fatal.

But the cultural messaging surrounding accidents is fascinating.

We have somehow created an entire industry whose advertising message is essentially:

“Congratulations! You got hit by a truck! Let’s see what we can get you.”

There is something profoundly weird about that.

We’ve become so litigious that every unfortunate event now seems to come with a corresponding legal marketing campaign.

Slip on a wet floor?

Call somebody.

Get rear-ended?

Call somebody.

Trip over a sidewalk?

Call somebody.

Look at a ladder wrong?

There is probably an attorney standing behind a billboard waiting for you.

And the billboards themselves have become so ubiquitous that I barely notice them anymore. They’re just part of the American landscape now.

Exit signs.

Gas stations.

Fast food.

Motel.

ATTORNEY.

It’s almost like roadside scenery.

And here’s where my brain starts wandering into the truly ridiculous question:

When did getting into an accident become part of someone’s retirement strategy?

Because somewhere along the line, we seem to have embraced the idea that if something bad happens to you, the first question shouldn’t necessarily be, “How do we fix this?”

It should be:

“How much is this worth?”

That is a pretty extraordinary cultural shift.

We don’t just experience misfortune anymore.

We monetize it.

And lawyers aren’t entirely responsible for this, of course. Insurance companies, corporations, medical billing, questionable business practices and our entire adversarial legal system all play a role.

But the sheer scale of the personal-injury advertising machine is fascinating.

There are apparently enough attorneys competing for accident victims that they have to purchase enormous pieces of real estate along our highways just to remind us that they’re available.

Imagine being the attorney who has to explain the marketing budget.

“Why did we spend $400,000 putting your face on billboards?”

“Because apparently people don’t know I’m a lawyer.”

“Did you try having a website?”

“No.”

“Social media?”

“No.”

“Television?”

“No.”

“So…”

“BILLBOARD.”

And not just one.

No, apparently the ultimate measure of legal success is billboard saturation.

Because if I can drive from one side of town to the other without seeing your face at least six times, are you even really an attorney?

Maybe that’s the next bar association requirement.

Pass the bar exam?

Check.

Character and fitness evaluation?

Check.

Twenty hours of continuing legal education?

Check.

Minimum of six highway billboards?

Congratulations. You’re officially practicing law.

And the funniest part is that these billboards have become so normalized that nobody even questions the underlying absurdity anymore.

We just accept that driving to work means being surrounded by enormous advertisements reminding us that our next fender-bender could potentially be the financial event of our lives.

Which leaves me with one final question:

Are we driving on highways, or are we driving through a gigantic legal vending machine?

Because somewhere between the exit ramp and the next red light, there’s apparently a lawyer waiting to turn my misfortune into a case number.

And somewhere, some law student is currently dreaming about the day when they can finally say:

“I made it.”

Not because they argued a landmark constitutional case.

Not because they changed the legal system.

Not because they defended the innocent or secured justice for somebody who desperately needed it.

No.

Because they drove past their own face on the interstate.

Now that’s the American Dream.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Well, folks, I suppose we can finally stop wondering what could possibly go wrong.

The Senate has now confirmed Donald Trump’s former personal defense attorney, Todd Blanche, as the Attorney General of the United States. Because apparently when you’re trying to convince the country that the Department of Justice is completely independent from the president, the obvious solution is to put the president’s former lawyer in charge of it.

What could possibly go wrong?

Blanche wasn’t merely some random lawyer who happened to cross paths with Donald Trump once at a cocktail party. He was Trump’s personal attorney. He represented him in criminal matters. He was part of Trump’s legal defense team.

And now he is the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

Let’s just sit with that for a moment.

The Attorney General is supposed to be the lawyer for the United States of America—not the lawyer for Donald Trump. The distinction is rather important. In fact, it is the entire fucking point of having a Justice Department that is supposed to operate independently of the White House.

But apparently we have decided that distinction is just unnecessarily complicated.

The Senate confirmed Blanche 50–49, with the vote taking place in the early morning hours as the Senate was preparing to leave for recess. (Le Monde.fr⁠)

Because nothing says “we are completely comfortable with this decision” quite like holding the vote while most of America is asleep.

It has the unmistakable aroma of a legislative version of quietly sneaking out of the house after curfew.

“Hey, everybody! Nothing to see here! We’re just confirming the president’s former personal lawyer to run the entire federal law-enforcement apparatus at four in the morning. Go back to sleep.”

And before somebody tells me this is an unfair comparison, let me explain the comparison I’m making.

This isn’t about whether Todd Blanche is personally competent as a lawyer. It isn’t even necessarily about whether he is a good person. It is about the fundamental conflict created when the president’s former personal attorney becomes the person responsible for overseeing investigations involving that same president.

That is precisely why recusal rules and ethical independence matter.

In fact, Blanche had previously been advised by Justice Department ethics officials that he should recuse himself from matters involving Trump. (Senator Schiff⁠)

And now the guy who was supposed to recuse himself from Trump’s cases is running the entire department that handles those cases.

That is not exactly what I would call a reassuring organizational chart.

And this is where the comparison to Roy Cohn becomes difficult to ignore.

Cohn was famous for operating as Donald Trump’s mentor, fixer and personal attorney, and for treating the machinery of government as something to be manipulated on behalf of his clients and allies.

The Attorney General is supposed to be the exact opposite of that.

The Attorney General is supposed to be the person who can look the president in the eye and say:

No.

Not “No, sir, because the polling isn’t good.”

Not “No, sir, because the Senate might get upset.”

Not “No, sir, because Fox News might have a problem with it.”

No, because the law doesn’t allow you to do that.

That is the job.

And that is precisely why the Senate’s decision matters.

Because if the president can install his personal lawyer as the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer, the question isn’t merely whether the DOJ has been politicized.

The question becomes whether we are redefining what the DOJ is for.

Is it still an institution whose responsibility is to enforce federal law regardless of who happens to occupy the Oval Office?

Or is it becoming the president’s legal department—with a few million employees, guns, prosecutors, grand juries and federal prisons attached?

Because those are two very different things.

And here’s the part that really makes my Gen-X bullshit detector start screaming:

We’ve spent decades hearing Republicans lecture everyone about the importance of law and order.

Law and order.

Law and order.

Law and order.

Apparently the slogan has now been updated to:

Law and order, provided the order comes from the guy in charge.

The irony is almost too perfect.

The people who spent years screaming about Hillary Clinton’s emails, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Benghazi, FBI investigations, congressional investigations and the supposed weaponization of government are now apparently perfectly comfortable with putting the president’s personal lawyer in charge of the Justice Department.

Because apparently government weaponization is only terrifying when the other team has the weapon.

When it’s your guy holding it?

Well, that’s different.

That’s patriotism.

That’s leadership.

That’s probably just “draining the swamp,” somehow.

And before anyone accuses me of declaring that the weaponization of the DOJ is now legally or factually “complete,” let me be precise: that is my characterization of what this appointment represents. But the concern isn’t imaginary. Blanche’s confirmation has already been described by critics as a major threat to the traditional independence of the Justice Department, particularly because of his previous role as Trump’s personal lawyer. (The Guardian⁠)

So congratulations, America.

We have apparently reached the stage where the person who used to defend the president can now decide who gets investigated by the federal government.

And they held the vote in the middle of the damn night.

What could possibly go wrong?

Honestly, at this point, I’m afraid to ask.

Because every time we do, somebody in Washington seems to interpret it as a fucking challenge.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Stockholm Syndrome, American Edition

This is my opinion, and I want to make that distinction clear because apparently in 2026, having an opinion that doesn’t come with a government-issued talking point is becoming an act of rebellion.

I have come to believe that the current Republican Party—or the Trump Republican Party, MAGA, whatever branding we’re using this week—has developed something that looks an awful lot like political Stockholm syndrome.

Not literally, of course. I’m talking about the psychological dynamic where someone becomes so accustomed to intimidation, threats, punishment, and control that eventually they begin defending the person doing the intimidating, threatening, punishing, and controlling.

And honestly, what could be more useful to an authoritarian than that?

You don’t necessarily need everyone to love you.

You just need them to become afraid enough of what happens if they stop loving you.

That’s a very different thing.

There is a familiar metaphor for this: the abused spouse who learns to navigate the household by avoiding the next explosion.

“I’ll make dinner. I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’ll tell you you’re right. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hit me again.”

Eventually, survival starts looking like loyalty.

And that’s what I see happening with a significant portion of today’s Republican Party.

Again, that’s my opinion. I’m not claiming that every Republican is an authoritarian, that every Trump supporter is abused, or that political disagreement is somehow equivalent to domestic violence. I’m talking about a behavioral dynamic that, from where I sit, increasingly resembles the psychology of someone who has learned that obedience is the safest option.

Trump doesn’t have to convince them that everything he does is good.

He only has to convince them that everything he does is preferable to whatever he tells them is waiting on the other side.

Immigrants.

Democrats.

Socialists.

“Communists.”

The “deep state.”

The media.

Universities.

Scientists.

Teachers.

Minorities.

LGBTQ Americans.

Anybody who can be turned into the next existential threat.

Fear becomes the currency.

And once fear becomes the currency, the person who claims to be the only one capable of protecting you suddenly becomes indispensable.

That’s one of the oldest tricks in the authoritarian playbook.

Create the threat.

Amplify the threat.

Convince people that only you can save them from the threat.

Then make obedience the price of protection.

And suddenly people aren’t asking, “Is this person behaving like a democratic leader?”

They’re asking, “What do I have to do so he doesn’t turn on me?”

That’s not patriotism.

That’s survival instinct.

And here’s the particularly bizarre part: some people will actually defend the person frightening them because admitting they’ve been manipulated is psychologically painful.

Nobody wants to look in the mirror and say, “Holy shit. I’ve been defending the guy who has been making me afraid.”

It’s much easier to say, “No, he’s fighting for people like me.”

So the abuse gets rationalized.

The threats become jokes.

The cruelty becomes strength.

The lies become “owning the libs.”

The corruption becomes “draining the swamp.”

The attacks on institutions become “taking back our country.”

And every time the behavior becomes more extreme, the rationalization has to become more extreme right along with it.

It’s a psychological treadmill.

And eventually, you aren’t even running because you believe in where you’re going.

You’re running because you’re terrified of stopping.

I’ve never been a Republican. But I’ve always liked to think for myself, and that’s precisely why this bothers me.

I don’t care whether someone is Republican, Democrat, independent, conservative, liberal, socialist, libertarian, or politically undecided. Nobody should surrender their capacity for independent thought to a political personality.

Democracy requires citizens who can look at their own side and say, “You’re wrong.”

That’s the whole damn point.

Your political party isn’t your spouse.

Your president isn’t your parent.

Your political movement isn’t a religion.

And your vote isn’t a blood oath.

If your guy does something terrible, you don’t have to invent a reason why it’s actually wonderful because he’s your guy.

You can simply say:

“That’s wrong.”

It shouldn’t be revolutionary.

Yet here we are.

And I think something interesting is happening beneath all the noise.

People are waking up.

Maybe not all at once. Maybe not dramatically. Maybe not with some Hollywood moment where everybody suddenly drops their MAGA hat in the rain and realizes they’ve been living in a political cult.

Real life doesn’t work that way.

Trauma doesn’t disappear because somebody finally recognizes it.

But little by little, people are beginning to recognize the pattern.

They’re recognizing the constant outrage.

The constant enemy.

The constant emergency.

The constant demand for loyalty.

The constant insistence that criticism is betrayal.

The constant shifting of the goalposts.

And eventually somebody starts asking the most dangerous question an authoritarian can hear:

“Wait. Why am I afraid of my own government?”

That’s when the spell starts to break.

Because authoritarianism ultimately depends on people believing that resistance is more dangerous than obedience.

And the moment enough people decide that obedience has become more dangerous than resistance, the equation changes.

That’s why I don’t think this is permanent.

I’m not a Republican.

I never have been.

But I’m an American, and I don’t want to live in a country where half the population has been psychologically conditioned to believe that keeping the powerful happy is the same thing as keeping the country safe.

I don’t want a political system where the objective is simply to avoid getting hit again.

I want citizens who don’t have to negotiate with power like an abused spouse negotiating with an angry partner.

“I’ll make dinner. I’ll stay quiet. I’ll tell you you’re right. Just please don’t hurt me.”

No.

That’s not freedom.

That’s compliance.

And compliance is not democracy.

Maybe the most patriotic thing any American can say to their own political party is:

“No. You’re wrong.”

Even when it’s your guy.

Especially when it’s your guy.

Because if you have to surrender your conscience to keep your political tribe happy, you’ve already surrendered the one thing democracy was supposed to protect in the first place:

your ability to think for yourself.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Every once in a while, I try to explain racism to someone who genuinely seems unable to understand what the problem is with it.

And honestly, I don’t know how to do it without making my own fucking head hurt.

So let’s try something completely ridiculous.

Not because the subject is funny, but because sometimes the only way to explain an irrational idea is to construct an equally irrational one and follow it all the way to its logical conclusion.

Imagine that tomorrow morning, humanity collectively decides that eye color determines human worth.

Not personality.

Not character.

Not intelligence.

Not what you’ve accomplished.

Your fucking eyes.

And because green eyes are among the rarest eye colors in the world, we decide that green-eyed people are obviously the superior form of humanity.

Why?

Because they’re rare.

And apparently, in this hypothetical universe, rarity equals superiority.

Congratulations.

We have invented Eye Color Nationalism.

Green eyes are now the gold standard.

If you’re green-eyed, you’re automatically considered intelligent, trustworthy, sophisticated, beautiful, hardworking and morally superior.

Nobody has actually tested any of this.

There are no studies proving it.

There is no scientific basis for it.

But look at those eyes!

They’re green!

Clearly, God, evolution, or some mysterious cosmic accounting department has selected these people for greatness.

Brown eyes?

Too common.

Blue eyes?

Nice try.

Hazel?

Confusing.

Gray?

Suspicious.

Green?

Ah. The master race.

And now we build an entire society around this completely arbitrary characteristic.

Green-eyed people get the best schools.

They get preferential treatment when applying for jobs.

They get the nicest neighborhoods.

They get more political representation.

When a green-eyed person commits a crime, everyone says, “Well, that was an individual.”

When a brown-eyed person commits the same crime, suddenly we’re having a national conversation about the behavioral tendencies of brown-eyed people.

See how quickly this becomes insane?

Now imagine that we start teaching children this nonsense.

Generation after generation grows up hearing that green-eyed people are superior.

Eventually, green-eyed people begin to believe it.

Some become genuinely convinced that their green eyes are evidence of superior intelligence.

Others become convinced that brown-eyed people are naturally lazy.

Blue-eyed people are supposedly emotional.

Hazel-eyed people can’t be trusted.

And gray-eyed people are apparently communists.

Nobody remembers where these beliefs came from anymore.

They’re just traditions.

They’re part of the culture.

They’re what we’ve always believed.

Then somebody finally asks:

“Wait a minute. Why are green-eyed people superior?”

And the answer is:

“Because they’re green-eyed.”

“Okay, but what does that have to do with their intelligence?”

“They’re green-eyed.”

“What does it have to do with their character?”

“They’re green-eyed.”

“What does it have to do with whether they’re a good person?”

“They’re green-eyed.”

“Can you prove any of this?”

“Well, look how many successful green-eyed people there are.”

And now we’ve arrived at the really interesting part.

Because if green-eyed people have spent generations receiving better schools, better jobs, better housing, better healthcare, better opportunities and greater social acceptance, eventually you’re going to be able to point to those outcomes and say:

“See! Green-eyed people really are more successful.”

No shit.

You’ve been stacking the fucking deck for them.

That’s not evidence of inherent superiority.

That’s evidence that opportunity produces results.

And here’s where the thought experiment gets even more absurd.

Imagine two newborn babies.

They are born on the exact same day.

They have healthy brains.

They have the same potential.

Neither has committed a crime.

Neither has done anything good or bad.

Neither has demonstrated intelligence, laziness, courage, cowardice, honesty, dishonesty, kindness, cruelty, ambition or apathy.

They are fucking babies.

Now imagine that one baby has green eyes and the other has brown eyes.

And somebody looks at those two infants and says:

“I already know something important about these human beings because of the color of their eyes.”

No.

You don’t.

You know what color their eyes are.

That’s it.

You haven’t discovered their personality.

You haven’t unlocked their IQ.

You haven’t examined their moral character.

You haven’t received a divine notification informing you of their future behavior.

You know what color their fucking eyes are.

Yet somehow humanity has repeatedly taken completely arbitrary physical characteristics and tried to turn them into hierarchies of human beings.

And here’s the part that should make anybody’s brain hurt:

What if we reversed the colors?

What if tomorrow we decided brown eyes were the rare and desirable ones?

Suddenly brown-eyed people are exceptional.

Blue-eyed people are suspicious.

Green-eyed people are overrated.

And every argument we previously made about the inherent superiority of green eyes suddenly becomes applicable to brown eyes.

The biological reality didn’t change.

The people didn’t change.

The eye colors didn’t change.

Only the story we told ourselves about them changed.

And that’s the point.

**The hierarchy was never actually contained in the eye color.

We put the hierarchy there.**

That’s what makes racism so profoundly fucking stupid.

Human beings take a visible characteristic—skin color, ancestry, facial features, whatever—and attach a completely unrelated set of assumptions to it.

Then we spend centuries defending those assumptions as though they’re laws of physics.

But skin color doesn’t contain a personality.

It doesn’t contain a work ethic.

It doesn’t contain an IQ score.

It doesn’t contain morality.

It doesn’t contain criminal intent.

It doesn’t contain kindness.

It doesn’t contain courage.

It doesn’t contain ambition.

It doesn’t contain the contents of someone’s fucking soul.

It’s a biological characteristic.

That’s it.

Just like eye color.

And here’s another thing that people sometimes miss.

Even if you could demonstrate a statistical difference between two enormous populations—and that conversation would require considerably more nuance than a fucking meme—you still haven’t told me anything meaningful about the individual standing in front of you.

If I tell you that men are, on average, taller than women, that doesn’t mean every man is taller than every woman.

If I tell you one population has a particular statistical characteristic, that doesn’t give you permission to assign that characteristic to every individual member of that population.

That’s called stereotyping.

And we already understand this concept.

We understand it perfectly when it applies to almost everything else.

We don’t look at a random person and say:

“You’re from Arizona, therefore I know your personality.”

We don’t look at someone wearing a baseball cap and say:

“Ah. I have determined your entire moral character.”

We don’t meet a 6-foot-4 man and immediately conclude:

“Obviously, this man is good at basketball.”

Because that would be fucking stupid.

Yet somehow, when it comes to race, human beings have repeatedly decided that this is an acceptable shortcut for understanding other human beings.

And then we get offended when somebody points out that the shortcut is bullshit.

Racism is essentially the intellectual laziness of replacing a human being with a category.

Instead of learning who someone actually is, you decide you already know.

Instead of judging an individual by their behavior, you judge them by their ancestry.

Instead of asking, “What kind of person is this?” you ask, “What category does this person belong to?”

Congratulations.

You’ve replaced a human being with a filing system.

And what makes this even more absurd is that none of us chose the characteristics we’re supposedly being judged by.

Nobody walked into the delivery room and said:

“Excuse me, doctor. I’d like to order the melanin package, please.”

Nobody selected their parents.

Nobody selected their ancestry.

Nobody selected the geographic location of their ancestors thousands of years ago.

Nobody picked their genetic lottery numbers.

And yet we’re perfectly willing to construct elaborate hierarchies around things people never had the opportunity to choose.

That isn’t meritocracy.

That’s assigning people grades for an exam they weren’t allowed to study for and didn’t even know they were taking.

And if your response is, “Well, my group is better,” I have a very simple question:

Better at what?

And according to whom?

And based on what?

Because the moment you start answering those questions, you eventually discover that you’re not really talking about race anymore.

You’re talking about culture.

Economics.

History.

Geography.

Education.

Opportunity.

Family.

Environment.

Politics.

Individual behavior.

And suddenly we’ve arrived at the uncomfortable truth:

People are complicated.

Which is precisely why racism is so attractive to people who don’t want to deal with that complexity.

Racism gives you a shortcut.

It allows you to take billions of individual human beings and shove them into a handful of boxes.

Good box.

Bad box.

Smart box.

Dangerous box.

Deserving box.

Undeserving box.

It’s wonderfully convenient.

It’s also fucking stupid.

Because human beings are not categories.

They’re human beings.

There are brilliant people and idiots in every population.

There are saints and assholes in every population.

There are criminals and doctors, heroes and cowards, geniuses and morons, generous people and selfish people in every imaginable demographic.

The distribution of human character does not conveniently stop at the boundaries of someone’s skin color.

And perhaps that’s the part that makes my head hurt the most.

If racism were actually some brilliant system for identifying human worth, you might at least understand why someone would be tempted by it.

But it isn’t.

It is an extraordinarily primitive attempt to make an impossibly complicated world easier to understand.

And the price of that simplicity is treating actual human beings as abstractions.

So if you genuinely don’t understand why racism is a bad idea, try this:

Imagine waking up tomorrow and discovering that your eye color determines your place in society.

Imagine being told you’re inferior because your eyes aren’t green.

Imagine watching someone with green eyes receive opportunities you never received.

Imagine being told that the statistical differences created by that system prove green-eyed people are naturally superior.

Imagine being judged before you speak.

Imagine being distrusted before you do anything.

Imagine someone deciding you’re inferior before they’ve learned your name.

Imagine your accomplishments being discounted because of what you look like.

Imagine your failures being treated as evidence against millions of people who share your ancestry.

Imagine being told that the circumstances of your birth somehow constitute evidence about the quality of your character.

Then imagine somebody finally looking at the whole thing and saying:

“Wait.

This is fucking ridiculous.

They’re just eyes.”

Exactly.

They’re just eyes.

And skin is just skin.

We’re the ones who decided otherwise.

And if you can understand the absurdity of inventing a hierarchy based on eye color, then congratulations.

You already understand racism.

Because the fundamental problem isn’t that somebody picked the wrong color.

The fundamental problem is believing that a person’s physical characteristics give you permission to decide what kind of human being they are.

Rarity isn’t morality.

Scarcity isn’t virtue.

Genetics isn’t a résumé.

And the circumstances of your birth are not evidence of your worth.

We’re all just human beings who happened to be born with different combinations of genetic lottery numbers.

The truly insane part isn’t that we are different.

The truly insane part is that we looked at those differences and decided some people deserved to be treated as less human because of them.

That’s the part that should make all of our heads fucking hurt.