The Static of a Collapsing State: On Being Trapped in the American Nightmare

There are nights you wake from a nightmare and the relief is a physical thing, a gasp of air in a silent room. But what do you do when the nightmare is the room? When the country you live in has become the locked door, the distorted face leaning over your bed? This is what it feels like to live in America now: to be in an abusive relationship you cannot leave. It is a sustained state of emergency, a psychological siege where the assaults are delivered through glowing screens and official decrees, leaving everyone trapped in a cycle of shock, grief, and a daze so profound it becomes a simulacra of paralysis.

We used to tell ourselves stories about America—stories of progress, of justice, of a moral arc bending, however slowly, toward righteousness. But the story has broken. Now, we just have the images, the flashes of horror in variable sequence: Los Angeles alight with endless blazes, massacres of Palestinians in Gaza, a state legislator and her husband shot dead in Minnesota, the chyron announcing we are “on the brink” of war with Iran. There is no plot, only a relentless phantasmagoria of dread.

This is not mere political disagreement or the routine tumult of a healthy democracy. It is a form of systemic, psychological abuse. It is a sustained campaign of gaslighting, where the very reality of our senses is denied by those in power. It is the deliberate infliction of collective trauma, an event or series of events that shatters the basic fabric of society and targets its most vulnerable for maximum harm. And it leaves its citizens, particularly those marked for eradication, in a state of perpetual, unprocessed anguish. This is an attempt to document the static of a collapsing state from inside the nightmare.

The human mind is not built for this velocity of horror. There is a natural rhythm to grief, a sequence of shock, anger, and eventual, fragile processing. But the current political moment has obliterated that rhythm. The news lands not as a series of discrete events, but as a continuous, percussive assault. Before the smoke has cleared from the terrorist attacks on Jewish communities in Colorado and Washington, D.C., the alerts flash with news of political assassinations in Minnesota. Before the names of the dead can be properly mourned, the national focus is wrenched toward Middle East, where the drums of war with Iran are beating a frantic, terrifying rhythm. There is no time to absorb one tragedy before the next obliterates its memory, leaving behind not understanding, but only a residue of undifferentiated trauma.

This feeling of being in a constant daze is not a psychological failing; it is a physiological response to an unlivable environment. Constant exposure to upsetting news is not a passive activity. It actively triggers the body's sympathetic nervous system, the ancient “fight or flight” response designed for acute, physical threats. Each headline, each push notification, each graphic image acts as a predator, flooding the system with adrenaline and the stress hormone cortisol. The results are tangible and physical: a racing heart, shallow breathing, a knot in the stomach, tense muscles, and a persistent state of hypervigilance. The modern media ecosystem, with its endless scroll and algorithms engineered to amplify outrage and fear, ensures that we are steeped in this toxic bath for hours a day, effectively locking the body in a permanent state of crisis.

The body’s emergency response system, however, is designed for temporary crises that can be resolved through action—fighting the threat or fleeing from it. The current political reality creates a debilitating paradox. The body is constantly being screamed at by its own chemistry to do something, while the conscious mind understands that there is nothing an individual can do to stop a political violence or avert a war. This disconnect, where the impulse to act is met with the reality of powerlessness, is a recipe for psychological collapse. The body, unable to discharge its stress hormones through action, remains in a state of high alert, burning through its resources until exhaustion and desensitization set in. This is a state of physiological learned helplessness, a biological burnout inflicted by the political landscape. It directly mirrors the dynamic of an abusive relationship, where the abuser keeps the victim in a constant state of anxiety and exhaustion to maintain control.

This physiological siege is compounded by a cognitive one. The sheer volume of high-stakes information overwhelms the brain's capacity to process it. When inundated, the brain can enter a state of paralysis, unable to make decisions, prioritize information, or even form coherent thoughts. This is the daze. It is a protective mechanism against a flood of input that is too vast and too threatening to manage. It turns the task of simply existing into an onerous one where everyday bleeds into the next without respite.

For those not directly in the line of fire, this constant, mediated exposure to the suffering of others induces a state of "vicarious trauma," where the observer begins to exhibit symptoms that mimic post-traumatic stress disorder: intrusive thoughts, chronic anxiety, sleep disturbances, and a pervasive sense of dread. Worse yet, those around us begin to cut us out as a defense mechanism. Their own trauma response informs the only agency they have left in the situation, abandon those around you suffering the most from this waking nightmare. This collective sociopathy becomes one of personal preservation.

To frame this experience as an abusive relationship with one’s own country is not an act of rhetorical hyperbole; it is a clinical diagnosis of a political strategy. Abusive dynamics in authoritarian regimes are predicated on control, domination, and the systematic erosion of the victim's sense of reality. The Trump administration has perfected the art of deploying these tactics not against an individual, but against the entire country.

The primary weapon in this arsenal is gaslighting. As a political tool, gaslighting transcends mere lying. It is the methodical, psychological manipulation of the a person to make them question their own memories, their own perceptions, and their own sanity, ultimately fostering a dependency on the perpetrator for the "truth". This strategy is visible in the administration's daily operations: making statements contradicted by clear video evidence, discrediting journalists and entire news organizations as "fake news," blaming political opponents for its own failures, and constantly rewriting history to fit the preferred narrative. This is not simply spin; it is a deliberate effort to destabilize public opinion, silence dissent, and consolidate power by making objective reality a contested space. It is weaponized unreality.

This tactic is uniquely effective in politics because of the inherent power imbalance between a government and its citizens. When a president, with the full authority of their office, insists that something you saw with your own eyes did not happen, a seed of doubt is planted. The citizen begins to wonder: Did I misunderstand? Am I overreacting? Am I the crazy one? This is the precise goal of the abuser: to isolate the victim in a fog of self-doubt, making them more pliable and easier to control. Worse yet, the media has been conditioned for decades to unquestionably accept the statements from the government and law enforcement when discussing a public issue. If the data and statements are manipulated or fabricated, the media often refuses to suggest it might be and instead simply prints the government’s view.

Political gaslighting and the infliction of collective trauma are not separate phenomena; they are two sides of the same coin. Gaslighting is the primary tool used to inflict and then deny the existence of collective trauma, creating a vicious cycle that deepens the abuse. A collective trauma is an event or series of events so cataclysmic that it shatters the basic fabric of society, destroying a community's sense of safety and meaning. The second Trump administration is not a single traumatic event, but a continuous, rolling series of them. When the state itself perpetrates or enables the acts that cause this trauma, through discriminatory policies, violent rhetoric, or the dismantling of democratic norms, it must then use gaslighting to manage the psychological fallout. It denies the harm it has caused, blames the victims for their suffering, and reframes the narrative to preserve its own moral image.

This creates a devastating feedback loop. A traumatic event occurs, a policy is enacted that targets a minority group, or violent rhetoric from the top incites a hate crime. The targeted community reacts with predictable pain, fear, and anger. The perpetrator, the administration,, then gaslights them, telling them their pain is not real, that they are being "too sensitive," or that they are, in fact, the real aggressors. This invalidation is not just a political tactic; it is a secondary psychological wound, a trauma layered on top of the initial one. It tells the victim not only that they have been hurt, but that their hurt does not matter. This is the essence of an abusive relationship: the victim is not only beaten but is then told they tripped and fell, making them feel isolated, confused, and insane.

This trauma is not distributed equally across the population. Its impact is often magnified in marginalized communities. For a straight, white, cisgender man, a news report about a discriminatory policy may be an abstract political issue. For a Black person, a Jewish person, a Muslim person, or a transgender person, it is a direct and personal threat. It is a reminder of their precarious status in a society where their safety and belonging are conditional. When a member of a targeted group is harmed, as in the terrorist attacks on synagogues, other members of that group witness it through the media and experience parts of the traumatic event as their own. This is how historical trauma, from slavery to the Holocaust to the Nakba, is kept alive and potent in the present. It leaves entire communities in a state of perpetual high alert, fundamentally damaging their sense of safety and belonging in American society. The abuser knows this. The targeting is not accidental; it is the point.

For all the ambient dread that permeates American life, for the transgender community of which I am a part of, it is not ambient. It is a targeted assault, a sharpened edge of the national crisis pressed directly against our throats. The general psychological warfare waged by the administration becomes a specific, personal, and existential threat that we must live with on a daily basis. The denial of our identities, the purge from government and civil society, the attacks on our ability to simply access healthcare. These are lives derailed, careers destroyed, and futures stolen. They are the quiet, bureaucratic violence that underpins the louder, more spectacular forms of hate.

The abuse is not only active; it is passive. It is not only in the blows that land but in the dread of the blows to come. This is the unique psychological torment of waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on your existence. Each June, as the court’s term winds down, the Supreme Court releases its most contentious decisions. This year, on decision days, a ritual of anxiety begins for millions of Americans. It is the compulsive refreshing of the Supreme Court's decision page., the pit in the stomach, the shallow breath held while waiting for the case the document that will determine the future of your rights, your family, your body. The case is US v. Skrmetti, which will determine the fundamental basis on which claims of government discrimination against trans people will be decided on. The waiting is not an abstract legal exercise. It is the concrete fear of waking up one morning to find that you are going to have less rights than you did the night before, that who you are is no longer protected by the constitution, and that your fundamental right to exist in public as an equal citizen has been erased by a few people in robes.

On the day of his father’s funeral, as he drove through the shattered glass of a Harlem race riot, James Baldwin had a terrifying realization. His father, a man consumed by a lifetime of racial injustice, had died in an "intolerable bitterness of spirit." And as Baldwin looked at the ruins of his city, he understood with chilling clarity that "this bitterness now was mine".^[1]

To live in America today, to be a member of a community that the state has marked for eradication, is to know that inheritance. It is a profound and justified bitterness toward a country that is actively hostile to your existence and the existence of those you love. It is the bitterness of seeing your friends, brilliant and qualified, lose their livelihoods for being who they are. It is the bitterness of seeing a decorated soldier branded a national security threat for her identity. It is the bitterness of seeing families flee the only home they have ever known to find safety. It is the bitterness of waiting for a court to decide if you have a right to exist.

The challenge, as Baldwin knew, is how to carry this righteous bitterness without letting it become a "self-destructive poison". The goal of the abuser is to break you, to remake you in their own hateful image. The final, most crucial act of resistance is to refuse that transformation. It is to hold onto one's clarity and humanity in the face of a system designed to strip you of both. In the face of overwhelming evidence of malice, such sentiments feel like just another form of gaslighting. Hope is a luxury we cannot afford; what is required is a radical and unflinching clarity.

We are in the nightmare. There is no waking up. The relationship is abusive, and we cannot leave. The only choice, then, is how we live within it. We must bear witness. We must name the abuse, again and again, in the face of its denials. We must hold fast to our own reality when the state and its propagandists insist we are insane. We must refuse to be broken. We must find each other in the dark and hold on. This is not hope. It is the grim, defiant, and necessary work of survival.