We are in the End Times. I am aware. Just because I don’t write, tweet, or engage socially about it doesn’t mean I don’t know or care. I’m just trying to preserve my mental health.
To that end, I have submitted my request toΒ Lumon Industries to be severed like Mark, Helly, Irving, and Dylan, the courageous data mining employees on a Lumon office building’s severed floor. Being severed doesn’t sound that bad, now that we know how much happier Mark and company’s innies are at work compared to their outie selves. This clarity has unfolded with the return of Apple TV’s Severance, the dystopian thriller about employees who have undergone a “severance procedure” that surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives. During the day, while collecting digital numbers on a 1980s-style computer screen (the mysterious data mining), Mark and his cohorts are unaware of the outside world. They only tune in to the real world when they leave work. In theory, if I worked there too, this would leave me with only about five hours in the day to avoid news of our own fresh dystopia. I speak, of course, of the Washington D.C hot mess bubbling up from the sewer that will soon spread across the land and the globe, covering everything in putrid goo that half the country will lap up with a chef’s kiss.
We have waited three long years for Severance’s second season, and so far, it’s living up to expectations. The same can be said for Trumpocalypse 2.0. I am peripherally aware of Kim Jong Orange’s first-week reign of terror, and by that, I mean whatever portion of a news headline I saw in my inbox before I deleted it. Forelorn neighbors and family members have called and messaged my husband and me this week to commiserate over the evil clown show, and we’ve stopped them in their tracks. We just can’t engage. Don’t take it personally, we’ve told them. We are just looking out for our sanity and focusing on things that bring us joy: family, friends, food, travel, books, movies, TV, tennis, and pickleball. This is not an exhaustive list, but it’s what we’ve started with one week into another batch of the longest four years. Or maybe it will be eight years! One of my children broke protocol and told me someone, somewhere, in the political sphere was scheming for this!
I will perhaps tune in more when Bird Flu becomes, prophetically, the next pandemic under The Orange Man’s watch, and RFK outlaws life-saving vaccines in this country. (I am vaguely aware that anti-vaxxer RFK’s confirmationΒ for Health and Human Services Secretary has not yet happened.) I predict travel tourism for inoculations will become a thing, and hopefully, by then, my family and I will have our Italian passports. I didn’t have to, but I would have drained my bank account to hire the Italian lawyers who are pursuing my citizenship case based on my grandmother’s bloodline. And, yes, the irony isn’t lost on me that if things get bad enough here (a loose definition in my household), we would seek refuge among Italians who elected the most right-wing government since WW II. But in the words of my husband, “Italians invented fascism with Mussolini β let’s learn from the best!”
Back to my distractions from reality. When we’re not binging and streaming, our TV default station is now the Weather Channel. Or sometimes HGTV. Watching live sports can be tricky because afterward, one could forget to turn the channel to something neutral lest we see any triggering images in shades of apricot or tangerine. It’s a new era, and we’re working out the kinks.
Speaking of sports … yesterday, 29-year-old American Madison Keyes won her first tennis championship at the Australian Open, beating Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka in a nail-biting three sets. Go U.S.A.! Today, our Philadelphia Eagles trounced the Washington Commanders (formerly known as the Redskins) in the NFC Conference Championship, 55-23. Now they’re going to the Super Bowl! Go Birds!
There are plenty of things to love and be proud of in this country, no matter your politics. But for half of us, hell has frozen over (literally: it just snowed in Florida), and the reign of terror has just begun for immigrants and other marginalized populations. And just because we aren’t out there fighting in the streets or ranting on social media doesn’t mean we aren’t advocating for what’s good and right or that we don’t oppose the dark forces. We are also The Resistance. We may be quiet, but we are calculating. We are incognito. And we are legion.
Carla Conti is a true crime journalist, storyteller, and prison reform advocate. Her debut book, Chained Birds: A True Crime Memoir of Justice, Survival and Redemption Behind Bars, is out now with WildBlue Press.
