EDITORIAL: You’re NOT SUPPOSED to get used to this

How normalizing chaos fuels authoritarianism and what we can do about it

I want to talk to you today about normalization — or better yet, hyper normalization. It’s that creeping feeling that somehow, all of this madness is just “normal” now. You know what I mean: when a slow-motion collapse happens around us, there’s a moment where people stop reacting. Outrage fades. Shock dulls. And what was once unthinkable becomes accepted as part of the everyday. Then, life goes on. We scroll through TikTok. We go bowling. We do whatever it is we do to distract ourselves from the fact that the world we live in is breaking down around us.

Look around: a presidential front-runner openly talks about “rooting out the vermin,” and it doesn’t derail his campaign. He wins the presidency. A top aide to that president publicly floats the idea of suspending habeas corpus, erasing due process. A sitting mayor is arrested simply for protesting at an ICE facility. The former president is gifted a free private jet by a political ally, and the country just shrugs and scrolls on. “That’s crazy,” we say. Then we keep scrolling.

That is the normalization I’m talking about. But here’s the truth we all need to be reminded of — this is not supposed to feel normal. The strategy, whether deliberate or insidious, is to drown us in so much chaos, so many outrages, that we stop blinking. We stop reacting. We enter a state that others have called hyper normalization — where the system is so obviously broken, so absurd, so dysfunctional, yet still somehow “works,” that we simply keep going. An absurd new baseline is established.

I struggle with this. Maybe more than most, because I’m steeped in the news and the politics every day. I read it. I report on it. I talk about it for a living. And sometimes, even I find myself slipping into the mindset of “I guess this is just the way things are now.” And that is the real danger.

I know some of you feel it too. You’ve told me you do. And that’s why it’s so crucial to recognize the moment we cross that line. The minute we accept “this is just how it is” — we lose. The authoritarians don’t need a violent coup or civil war. They only need widespread resignation. They need you to shrug and say, “Yeah, it’s crazy, but it’s not really my problem.”

That resignation — that widespread indifference — is the true endgame of authoritarianism. It’s not about mass enthusiasm for tyranny. It’s not about crowds marching in support of no due process or indefinite detention. It’s about enough people tuning out, enough people going numb, that the machinery of power keeps rolling unchecked.

You are not supposed to get used to this. But they want you to be.

So how do we fight it? How do we resist normalization and hyper normalization?

First, we refuse to forget. We remember how things used to be before the insanity. We hold onto the truth even when it feels repetitive or exhausting. When Trump says for the hundredth time that “we were losing a trillion dollars in trade to China,” we remind ourselves — and others — that the truth is the opposite. We were not losing; trade is mutual. When courts are ignored, when due process is suspended, when mass deportations become routine — we connect those dots and tell the whole story.

The goal here is to deny propaganda any easy pass. We call things what they are. We reject euphemisms and doublespeak. When one political faction tears down democracy and the rule of law, we stop pretending it’s a balanced “both sides” problem. It’s not.

Finally — and this is the hardest part — we have to make people feel the insanity again. We can’t only hope they understand this intellectually. We need outrage, fear, and urgency to come back in full force.

We won’t stop every abuse of power. We won’t magically reverse every injustice overnight. But if we allow ourselves to go numb, if we accept this as the new normal, we have already lost. That numbness means no resistance, no pushback, no democracy.

Let’s be clear: this moment demands that we refuse normalization. Because the cost of accepting this broken, absurd world as normal is far greater than just politics. It’s the soul of our society.