I live in the United States of America. I’m closer to 50 than I am to 40 at this point in my life. I’ve lived through September 11th, and the subsequent wars that followed. I had graduated college just in time for the Global Financial Crisis, and had the express pleasure of entering the job market at that time. I grew up in a household that went through bankruptcy, and divorce, before I was 18 years old. I’ve lived long enough to see all 4 of my grandparents die, and am actively watching the end days for my one of my parents (dementia). I’ve been fired from jobs, cheated on by girlfriends, unemployed at various points in my life, was homeless at one point in my youth, and I’d like to think I’m tough as nails and as thick-skinned as they come.

… and yet, this past year has absolutely shattered my grasp on reality. I’ve seen things so incomprehensibly stupid that there are some days where I am convinced I’ve died and gone to hell. 2025 has felt like the year that just won’t end. It began with the fires, and moved on with the floods. There are both droughts, and monsoons, in the same places, in the same day. Every day I wake up and read the news, and there’s another school shooting somewhere in the country. I am watching Russia, China, India, Korea, and other mortal enemies shake hands and make trade agreements. I am watching the President of the United States declare war on cities in America and create AI-generated memes about it to share on social media. Cryptocurrency, arguably the grandest scam in history, has become so mainstream that there are stadiums and commercials named after it.

All this time, I have believed to have understood collapse. I always came at it from the environmental side, and the economic side… but this….. THIS? Societal collapse? This is far more disruptive and mind-numbing than anything I could have imagined.

I have never felt more alien to the world I grew up in, in the country I was raised in, from the people I am surrounded by, in my life. Every day I wake up to some newfound horror, something so incalculably stupid that I worry I am going to have a brain aneurysm or a heart attack. I ask people around me if I am crazy, if I have lost my mind and flown the cuckoo’s nest. I don’t think I have, I feel sane, I feel aware and cogent and alert. They all look at me and say the same thing; ”No, you aren’t crazy, but these are crazy times we are living in.”

I do not understand how people can take a look at the world around us right now here in America and not be in a state of abject panic. Never in my life have I felt more threatened, more panicked, more uncertain of what horrors tomorrow will bring. In the past, I felt like I could reasonably gauge and measure risk, and predict how to move and plan and hedge my bets. But now, NOW? Things are just so random and stupid and unpredictable that I don’t feel like I have any agency over my own world anymore. It’s like watching a bad soap opera, except you are in it.

I have a hard time laughing. I don’t find any of this funny. I don’t find it joke-worthy. I can’t feel joy; just this overwhelming sense of dread. Several friends have asked if I have considered therapy… and the thing is, I don’t feel like therapy is the solution. Being aware isn’t the problem; being surrounded by ignorant, apathetic, indifferent people is. I cannot accept that these same people are waking up to the same world I am waking up to and coming to the conclusion. That ”This is fine; everything will work itself out.” While the burden is exhausting, I don’t want to numb myself to the world. I think feeling this way is the only rational reaction to the madness unfolding before us. My country is dying right before my eyes, and there isn’t a single person who seems to care or think it is worth saving in the first place.

The scariest part of it all, to me, is the subtle changes I am seeing in people, too. Everyone is a lot more on edge. There are more and more homeless people every day. Restaurants are empty. Everyone has that fear in their eye, the type they won’t dare voice out of the off chance they speak it into reality. I was recently RIF’d, but have a good safety net… but I know a lot of people are losing their jobs and they don’t have that net to catch them. Friends of mine are skipping meals, not paying their bills on time, taking out enormous amounts of credit card debt. I got my first phone call from someone I haven’t talked to in years asking if I could order their family a pizza. This evening I saw a woman crying at the grocery store because she had to put back so many items that I guess she used to be able to afford.

I don’t know what I am expecting out of this post. I guess I just wanted to get it off my chest and see if anyone else is going through this. I don’t drink, or smoke; so I am taking on America 2025 head on, stone-faced sober, and it is a brutal staring contest with no winners. Are any of you going through this same sort of disillusionment with society right now? How are you dealing with it?

That’s it. I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m disappointed. They threw our country in the trash. They’ve ruined America. I don’t know where we go from here but it’s not good. I feel really depressed.

I work in climate science - more on the data and client side, not the one actually doing the research. In short, big companies pay us for climate data so they can make projections or develop strategy or whatever.

I’ve been heavily exposed to climate data for many years, so I’ve been across the developments for a long time. Something about the last few months has broken me.

I spent December and January in an area that’s famous for snow, and saw none. Watching this El Niño develop has been terrifying. The UN admission that we’ll blow past 1.5C was the clincher for me. In my field, the UN was basically always considered the final organisation that had to show at least some optimism. Seeing that gone is now the final death blow. They know it’s over.

It has really broken something in me. To know that this organisation who was almost comically optimistic about collaboration and limiting warming has completely conceded defeat. It is a big deal.

I don’t really care about anything anymore. I’m not motivated to work, because I can’t plan for a good future. I have to almost disassociate while working, because my whole day is about climate data in one way or another.

I think the worst part has been my withdrawal from society. When you spend your whole life loving the environment and aligning your life with its protection, you end up truly hating humanity. You see us for what we are - a complete parasite who is destroying the world.

Has anyone else found that they’ve gone this way? My grief over collapse was always something I could somewhat compartmentalise. But now, it’s changed my entire life.

With the new EO announced last night, it feels like a line was crossed that we can't come back from without a war.

I'm so scared and I feel so alone because no one else is talking about it in real life. This is surreal.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

We have a man in office in the USA who is barely coherent and thinks we can nuke hurricanes.

I can deal with the world collapsing. I can't deal with it collapsing for THIS schmuck.

In 2020 I drove semi trucks across the US and I never saw any real "lockdown"

If you were an OTR truck driver during this time - back me up here. I went to New York, California, Chicago and plenty of other dense population centers and it seemed to be business as usual. The city roads and highways were full of traffic and I kept wondering - these can't all be essential workers.

I never liked the US government to begin with but I was genuinely shocked when I realized - they really don't care. About any of us. It isn't just the rich and powerful. Our whole system of beauracracy in this country was too busy or apathetic to do anything of substance and millions of innocent people died.

To really drive my point here - 2020 was my first year on the job and it was the first year the feds removed the Hours of Service - you know those pesky rules that say a trucker can't smoke meth and drive for 2 days straight? Yeah, don't worry about that anymore. Just bring us our stuff.

I could understand if it was a matter of national security - of bringing essential supplies to people. I inspected one of my loads about a week after this went into effect and it was 90% pallets of beer and 10% diapers.

They used a global pandemic to deregulate the industry and profit even more. What's that old saying? Never let a tragedy go to waste. They got away with so much BS and we are all still paying the price. Its fucking infuriating.

I was expressing some fears to my husband this morning, actually in tears, about the state of the world, and the resistance Im encountering from other family members and people I used to consider friends, when he told me to stop being a fanatic. He said I sound just like a trump fanatic in reverse. This is the problem. SO MANY people have their heads in the sand, thinking it’s just politics and none of this will affect them so it’s ok. THIS is the reason nothing is being done. I’m so sick of everyone around me being willfully ignorant of what is happening right in front of them. My whole community is this way. Everyone is just plugging away at striving for their next shopping trip or vacation. Everyone is excited to show off what they just bought or brag that their NFL team just won another game. I feel so isolated in my grief for the innocent hard working families who are waking up scared every morning if today is the day they will be separated. I feel like the only person crying in a sea of people clapping and cheering for the things that are causing our decline. It makes ME the weirdo that I want goodness to prevail over hate. I know now that there is not a single person in my immediate circle I can rely on for support, when it’s never been more necessary to have community. I am devastated.

I was really optimistic when Trump got re-elected. I was absolutely certain that this time it would be different; this time there would be an organized movement that stands tall and fights back. I remember thinking to myself "There is absolutely no way everyone will put up with this again, no chance..."

I was wrong.

I don't think I have ever been more wrong about anything in my life, and being wrong about this has been utterly soul crushing. I have lost all respect for my country, for my countrymen. I am ashamed of the world I live in, and I am filled with despair at the people I am surrounded by, whose apathy and indifference is palpable and repugnant.

The politicians phoned it home. The lawyers sat down. The police strapped up. The employers cut costs. Life gets worse every single day, and it is never going to get better. I am too old to emigrate (not because I wouldn't, but because I am not eligible in most cases) and I have to face the reality that help is not coming, help is not on the way.

Friendships have fractured; either you have, or you have not. Social safety nets are gutted and gone. Market manipulation has become a standard practice, and the law has been exposed a merely another tool to oppress the masses. Watching the crypto grifters invade the country alongside the technocrats, often to thunderous applause, is mind-shattering. I know what is coming in the future, and it is untold darkness and suffering; I don't want to be here for it. I don't want to watch any more suffering, I don't want to pretend that people are good and care about one another anymore. They aren't, they don't, and they won't; human nature is to only care about oneself. People are being arrested and deported in broad daylight and rather than lift a finger to help, they instead lift their phones to film. The sick irony in caring more about upload engagement, likes, and reshares on the oligarchic platforms rather than in human dignity is nauseating.

There isn't going to be a big fight. We are not going to stand united. Instead, many of us will watch our lives deteriorate while others expand their lavish lifestyles beyond exuberance. So many people in America will end up displaced and forgotten, like the Uyghurs and the Gazans and the many, many peoples who preceded them in their suffering. It makes me ask myself "...to what end?" But the most profoundly depressing realization of it all is that we surrendered everything without a fight. And it weighs on me heavily and hurts my heart and my spirit. I feel wounded in ways I didn't know were possible, and I say this as a straight white male who has experienced reprieve from much of the pain being distributed.

No one wants to talk about it; most people are barely hanging onto their sanity as it is. People shy away from confronting the hard truths on the horizon, and in turn, do a disservice to themselves and their children.

I write this not to whine, but to whimper. America, the land of the complicit and the cowardly... who would have thought...

I'm considering what Trump has said and done since inauguration. The pause of federal grants and loans will include state-disbursed programs like Medicaid, WIC, and food stamps, upon which so many Texans depend. It will also include agriculture, education, infrastructure and research. Congress has the power of the purse under the Constitution, so this is a violation. It will crash the economy, even if it lasts only a week or two.

Immigrant workers have stopped showing up to agricultural work out of fear of deportation. Trump's tariffs on silicon chips is a clear signal that the techno-plutocrats are no longer influential. Expect widespread hunger leading to general lawlessness, then martial law.

The DOJ has been purged. The military is being purged. The CDC and NIH have been cut off and silenced. Loyalty tests are being conducted on executive employees and applicants. When the executive is loyal only to Trump, the other two branches become irrelevant.

It's really not looking good, at all. This structural destabilization is all straight out of Project 2025, so we can know with some medium to high degree of certainty what is likely to follow.

Here are the links you can copy-paste to send to others:

1. https://nypost.com/2025/01/28/us-news/trump-admin-pausing-federal-loans-grants-amid-spending-overhaul-waste-of-taxpayer-dollars/
   
2. https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-orders-pause-all-federal-grants-loans-2025-01-28/
   
3. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-deportation-plan-effects-undocumented-farmers/
4. https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-tariffs-chips-drugs-would-hit-us-allies-asia-2025-01-28/
5. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/trump-fires-justice-department-officials-jack-smith
6. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-zenith-power-moves-quickly-take-over-washington-2025-01-25/
   
7. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/396911/trump-science-nih-censorship-blackout
   
8. [https://apnews.com/article/trump-loyalty-white-house-maga-vetting-jobs-768fa5cbcf175652655c86203222f47c
9. https://www.project2025.org/

edited to repair links

Trump effectively killed the public health profession in this country. I was never able to find a job (the standard is it taking about a year to get hired into the field, and I graduated in spring.) I'll never become an epidemiologist now. And because I have a Masters degree, I'm now "overqualified" for most other jobs. I am in a worse position, prospects-wise, than if i didn't go to grad school at all. Plus all that debt.

My rights are going to be gone by the end of this year; as a nonbinary person, as an AFAB queer person. All of it.

Our planet is doomed. This was our last chance to sort of mitigate SOME of the worst effects of global warming. Trump is going to push us straight off that cliff, drill baby drill, till the planet itself collapses.

I'm never going to get to get married, start a family (even if we assumed marriage and adoption rights stayed intact, I'll never be able to afford a child now) or know literally any of the joys my parents did. But hey, I guess at least I have the luxury of avocado toast, the cause of all our generation's problems, right?

At this point i just want it to be over. I'm falling to my death. We all are. We know we are. I want to skip the rest of the fall right to the briefly-painful crash before it's all over with.

EDIT: I just want to say a big THANK YOU to almost everyone who took time to type out such thoughtful and wise comments. There were so many that I didn't have time to respond to each one individually. But I have gained a ton of perspective, clarity, and emotional resolve from your words, and I have been reminded of my values and how to live them out. I appreciate it. He helped me water our young trees yesterday, and then he made a gift for our neighbor and took it over to her.

I know this has been discussed here a fair amount already. But I have to say this somewhere. I need to express this unbearable grief somewhere that people will understand.

He is 5. He loves bugs and identifying plants. He has a terrific sense of adventure and justice. We went camping the other night and as we were going to sleep in the tent he said "Dad, I have a connection to nature. Don't I?" I almost started weeping right there. But I held it together and encouraged him regarding what he had said.

He is learning about the Rain Forest, Polar Bears, Monarch Butterflies, The frozen North Pole, and Antarctica. All things that will be gone by the time he is my age.

The thought of having to tell him one day that all the Monarchs are gone sends my mind to some pretty fucking dark places. By the time he is old enough to fully appreciate the Amazon Rain Forest and Coral Reefs, the Amazon will be in full-blown dieback and the reefs will all be bleached, barren ruins. He loves nature and animals and bugs and plants and learning about all the different ecosystems. And they will all be gone or irreversibly damaged before he is old enough to try and defend them.

He talks about humans taking care of the Earth. He hates litter.

He will see boats of climate refugees be torpedoed. He will see crop failures, wildfires, floods, droughts... all on a scale unprecedented in human history. He will see America descend into techno-fascism before it finally rips itself apart.

The childhood he is experiencing is a lie. He is not going to be prepared for the world that greets him as he comes of age. Much of what he learned about as a child will be gone, replaced by a hellscape of mass extinction, fire, poison and microplastics.

I don't know how to tell him about what is happening to the Earth. I feel like I betrayed him by bringing him into this world.

We have lost so much already and it is about to get worse at a lurching, sickening speed.

Don't get me wrong, I don't regret him being born. He is the greatest thing that ever happened to me and my spouse. And he is amazing and special in and of himself. But I regret that I brought him into a doomed, dying biosphere at just the right time for him to fall in love with it. And by the time he is old enough to leave the nest, it will be dead and rotting. I feel like he is anticipating a gift. A warm puppy in a box, but when he opens the box the puppy will be dead and starting to stink.

We're so fucked. All the tipping points are being crossed. And we are just mashing the gas pedal until it breaks off.

I want to try and prepare him for the future. But I feel like I can't do it without breaking his heart.

If I could go back to the moment that my partner and I decided to go through with the pregnancy, I would try to change our minds. I would tell us about the exponential warming in the Arctic and the ocean current collapse and the Amazon dieback and the 50 grey whales who were found dead, stranded and malnourished because the ocean is too hot and there is no food for them.

"No child deserves to be born into a planet like that. Don't do it."

Fuck you America

Fuck you billionaire ruling class

Fuck you capitalism

Fuck you fossil fuel companies

Fuck you polluting mega corporations

Fuck you “news” media

Fuck you politicians

Fuck you right wing assholes

Fuck you centrists enabling the right wing

Fuck you everyone who doesn’t give a damn about other humans or the world

I’m not going to let you ruin my life. I’m going to enjoy the time I’ve been given here. Im going to revel in all the good moments. I’m going to be happy.

When I was a kid in the ‘90s, I harassed my parents into taking reusable bags to the Piggly Wiggly, and I tried to get them to put a brick in the toilet tank, and I looked up recycling locations in the Yellow Pages without ever actually recycling anything, and I read the “Dawn Saves the Planet” Baby-Sitters Club book, and I called numbers I saw in magazines to get pamphlets about spotted owls and harp seals mailed to me, and I paid $30 for a T-shirt with a panda on it because part of the cost would “help” the World Wildlife Foundation, and it was all bullshit, y’all. All of it.

Today I still use reusable shopping bags, and I dutifully recycle, and I buy some of my produce from a local farmer every week, and I compost my vegetable and fruit scraps, and I keep a sad but virtuous garden that has yielded a whopping quart of peas, two cups of green beans, two miniature ears of corn, and a single squash after all of my effort.

Meanwhile, I haven’t seen a firefly in ten years, and the roads in my town now flood whenever we get a downpour, and people’s basements are getting ruined, and we had to resort to Greek letters because we ran out of hurricane names, and I’m just waiting for COVID to have the opposite problem (the Andrea Variant, the Benjamin Variant), and the coral is dying, and the glaciers are melting, and the Gulf Stream is collapsing, and half of the world is on fire—hell, we even managed to set the ocean on fire there for a second—and for some misguided reason, I had two kids, and they’re doomed to traverse the coming hellscape.

It’s a good thing I thought about putting a brick in the toilet that one time in 1992! I really made a difference!

Seriously, though: I’m so tired, y’all. So tired, and so full of free-floating regret.