Falling in love.
Being dumped.
A wedding.
A divorce.
The birth of a child.
The death of a parent.
Buying a house.
Watching it burn down in a wildfire.
Being hired for a new job.
Being fired.
Winning a huge lottery prize (I assume).
Watching your beloved country be overthrown in a slow-motion coup orchestrated by a few billionaires and facilitated by the least educated among us.

All of these things have one thing in common: they put people into what might be called a minor fugue state. It’s important to understand, I’m misusing the term. In psychology, a fugue state is a serious dissociative condition in which people will, for example, travel to places with no memory of how they got there. It’s a kind of escapist behavior and, again, in psychology, it’s very serious. But one definition (in the DSM-5) calls a fugue state a kind of “bewildered wandering.” That’s more how I mean it. My use of the term doesn’t refer so much a complete disconnection from reality as a great distraction brought on by serious, life-changing events. If you know a better word for me, please let me know…

Any of the things on the above list leave us functioning, but not at full capacity. We’re still “present,” which is why I say I misuse the term, but we’re largely distracted. We move through the day, doing what needs to be done but sometimes not even remembering that we had done the thing in question. We still function. We’re still out there. We’re just not 100%. We haven’t dissociated, we’re just distracted. (Okay, in the case of a new baby, we’re also just effing tired, but still…) Good things and bad come along and knock us off our game. But we have to keep moving, so we do. Hopefully, we don’t mess anything up too badly in the meantime.

I’ve been through most of those things on that list. (STILL waiting on that huge lottery prize.) Most of the time, we can only understand our reduced capacity looking backwards. We don’t even know we’re doing it while we’re doing it but once we see it, we’re usually a little stunned at how we even got along during those times.

I think most of the United States citizens are in a kind of minor fugue state because of the last one on that list, the whole “Watching your beloved country be overthrown…” Americans just aren’t used to treason and national betrayal as a “normal” state. It has thrown us off our games, a bit, a constant distraction.

I think (hope?) the charges, trials, and convictions are helping. They seem to be helping me. It’s been a bit crazy-making, listening to MAGA tell stories that have little to no bearing on reality, as though those stories might be real. I mean, has this country REALLY become a place where facts are fluid and evidence is ethereal? As these court actions play out, the clear answer is, “No!”

There have been over 1,000 convictions associated with Donald Trump’s January 6th coup attempt. (Meet Donald Trump and go to jail!) Mostly, they’ve been low-level charges and relatively minor sentences. That bothered me, at first, having seen what they did in the Capitol. But as they’ve moved up the ladder of responsibility, the charges and sentences have been more serious. Facts are NOT fluid. Verifiable evidence is still proof.

MAGA cons are likely to never know the reality of the situation. The conservative media bubble is producing articles and broadcasts every day attempting to distort truth and paint a different – and false – picture of events. (Cons think “spin” and “a lie” are the same thing.) They made tremendous headway before the courts could catch up. But events are overtaking the narrative, as the saying goes. Out in public, they’re free to say any damn fool thing they will – and they will. But in the courtroom, where “opinion” is far less valuable than factual evidence, the truth is being reinforced, one player at a time.

We’re getting to the big fish. Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders sentenced to decades in prison. Sydney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro flipping for the Feds against Trump. They’ll help convict John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, and, ultimately, Donald Trump, himself. The courts have pierced the heart of the conspiracy and the convictions are following along steadily.

I’ll tell you this: For me, the convictions are comforting, reassuring. The system, slow as it is, seems to be working, for the moment, and my minor fugue state is a bit less distracted every day…