The next four years are going to be a drag

I woke up today, opened NNW and had a familiar feeling sink in as I opened The Verge’s feed. Five or six posts were about things Mr. Trump had repealed or planned to repeal. Things repeated to environment, to reduce subsidies for EVs, and so on. It was a similar situation at Wired. At Wired, there was also a piece on Mr. Trump pardoning the rioters of Jan 6th.

I don’t care about TikTok. Let them sell it, shut it down. I don’t care. But I care about their environmental policies. You can’t ignore what the US does, it just is so damn big. Hence the dread.

I don’t want to feel this way. It’s the same reason why I don’t follow any Indian news channels. It’s all a stream of one shitty thing followed by another. I don’t want to know that. I am an optimistic person, but there a limit to my optimism.

We knew this was going to happen. This is the promise of Mr. Trump, after all. But just because you know something is about to happen, does not mean you will not feel bad when it happens.

I used to feel similarly about Mr. Modi’s second election. I felt a similar sense of dread. That India’s institutions will suffer, democracy will suffer. But I realised that there is an aspect of theatre to politics. Things are not as bad as they might seem. The world is not ending now. There is a place for hope in the world.