SUMMARY: In the wake of Election 2024, I find myself grappling with profound psychological distress, which I identify as ontological shock. This state arises from a deep disruption of my understanding of reality, exacerbated by the election of Trump and the Republican Party’s majorities. Despite knowing the systemic racism and misogyny embedded in our nation, I am shocked by the blatant embrace of corruption and the regression from progress. As I reflect on these issues, I am left questioning the future of our democracy and what steps we can take as a nation moving forward.
KEY WORDS: Ontological Shock, RD Laing, Lyndon Johnson, Psychological Distress, Cognitive Dissonance, Racism, Misogyny, Systemic Corruption, Democracy, White Supremacy, A More Perfect Union
COMMENT: How are you reacting to the outcome of the election? How are you coping with our strange new world? I’d love to discuss it with you in the comments.
- Ontological Shock: Understanding Our Reaction to Election 2024
- The Shocking Impact of Trump’s Election
- Image Attribution
I’ve been struggling with the outcome of Election 2024. It has caused me some serious psychological and emotional distress. I describe my state as being depressed, lethargic, dispirited, but by whatever name, this turd stinks just as bad with apologies to Shakespeare.
In my recent readings — reading has always been my sanctuary in difficult times — I came across a phrase new to me, ontological shock.
Ontological Shock: Understanding Our Reaction to Election 2024
Ontological shock is the psychological state in which your understanding of the world is so disrupted that it causes lasting distress. It represents a kind of existential distress that may exceed the ability of cognitive dissonance to cope with the contradictions between beliefs, past actions, and current reality. According to RD Laing, it occurs when something so anomalous happens that you must question your understanding of reality. It can be triggered by psychedelic experiences, near-death encounters, or profound personal revelations that disrupt established worldviews. This state can lead to significant changes in beliefs, relationships, and overall mental health, as individuals struggle to integrate new perceptions with their previous understanding of the world.
The Shocking Impact of Trump’s Election
As extreme as it may sound, I realized that I am experiencing a profound ontological shock with the election of Trump. Seeing Trump elected and the Republican Party win majorities in both houses of Congress has turned my world into an extreme DMT trip.
A Foundation of Racism and Misogyny
I have long known that racism and misogyny form the foundation of our nation, infecting every institution and system we have. I knew that deep in our souls, white people were fighting the demographic changes and resisting increasing equality of all of those we have successfully Othered over the years. I knew that we are a nation that prefers the easy jingoistic solution of steadfastly believing that we’re number one rather than confront some of the most immoral divisive events in our history. But, I didn’t think that we would turn our back so completely on the progress we’d made toward creating a more equal union that we would unashamedly and openly embrace the self-serving corruption that is Donald Trump and the modern Republican Party all so we can be as racist and misogynistic as we want to be, so white people won’t have to confront the decay and rot of the racism that forms the core of white culture for another little while, so we can go on believing that America is the shining city on the hill while it slides further down into the sea.
Turning Back Progress
I didn’t think we would so prefer the elusive pipe dream that Trump and the GOP offer in trade for our democracy, just to preserve the illusion white supremacy that dances in the collective imagination of most white people. But, I guess LBJ was right. Tell the lowest white person that they are better than the best Othered person, and they’ll give you their soul.
I simply cannot accept that this is who we are as a nation, but I guess we are. I. Guess. We Are.
The only remaining question is, where do we go from here?
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Image Attribution
This image was found on The Hills Are Burning using a DuckDuckGo Creative Commons License search.
The Psy of Life 
Dr Bandy Lee was correct: Trump’s insanity is contagious, and he managed -with a lot of help- to infect nearly half the voting public. And they voted for an insane, evil, and genuinely stupid man who represents even worse men: Putin, Leonard Leo, Murdoch, Musk, and a lot of billionaire oligarchs. None of them very smart, all of them, well, crazy.
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Howdy K!
Lee was right about everything. She called it every step of the way. Now we’re in a place called menticide where the norms and values that we’ve operated with have been removed and replaced by a different set. In this case, democracy and equality has been replaced by authoritarianism and oppression. Admittedly, there is a segment of the population that was and is hankering for it, but he’s managed to rope in a good number of folks who don’t realize what they’ve voted for.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Thank you John! It is much appreciated.
Jack
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I am so profoundly depressed and demoralized by the election results that functioning on an adult level has become difficult (to say the least). After over 50 years of personal endeavoring to achieve equitable rights for all races, creeds , and religions, I feel as if nothing I have ever done has been worthwhile. Fleeting accomplishments at best and a waste of time and energy at worst. I find it difficult to care about anything but my own survival, and that of my son and two closest friends who now live with me. ontological shock expresses what I am going through. I can not understand how this is what my country has become. I almost expect the brown-shirts to show up at my door for the blog posts I have written as being “against the state”.
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Howdy Suze!
So many of us are. 2016 could be just hoodwinked misinformed and an accident. 2020 looked like a course correction. But, 2024 is a deliberate act of duplicitous destructiveness by a wide swath of our population and a willing ignorance by many more. We knew what Trump was and is. We know what he’s going to do — Although, even those of us who claim to know, don’t really. We just know that it is going to be really really bad — so there is no excuse. We voted for it because we wanted it. We normalized it because we wanted it. We as in the collective we as in the group decision that voting is.
And, the unwillingness to critically look at the ways the Republican voter suppression and nullification laws may have influenced the outcome of the election is just complacency, compliance, and collaboration. That’s the part that really slays. No one is talking about it. No one except those of us out here on the fringes.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
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I am still a little groggy from the after shock of seeing our great nation suddenly fall prey to the rulers of darkness but I guess it was inevitable. We have probably had it much too good for much too and we have become complacent and apathetic due to any real threats to our well being…until now.
II often run images of what the German People must have felt like in the days before oppression overtook them to the degree which it did.
I get the idea from what I have read that those folks were going about their daily lives just like always, suffering the effects of a depression, just like we once did, but still feeling free enough to go to school, to church, to the beach on Sundays…to walk the streets free from hassles from law enforcement …and suddenly a superman appears promising to make their country “Great Again.”
In the beginning, the new Chancellor actually did some good things and the people apparently went bonkers over him — it sounds far too familiar for my liking…there are some stark similarities in what was then and what is now…and I fear what is yet to come.
More than half our voters fell for a continuous barrage of popaganda that would have made Joe Goebbels proud and now here we are….
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Howdy John!
I’m afraid Trump and the billionaires have us by the shorthairs. It’s not going to matter whether we go bonkers over what he’s going to do — we aren’t; cutting Social Security, privatizing Medicare, and the tariffs are going to ruin a lot of lives — but it won’t matter. Now that Trump is in place, he’s putting the oligarchs in charge and getting them out and undoing the damage they’ve done is going to be next to impossible.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
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Ontological shock really is the level of the effect for a lot of people and institutions. I see it in the endless (strongly encouraged and covered by the media) postmortemizing among Democrats over who did what wrong and caused the loss, and what to do instead (move Right? move Left? move Young? etc.) I may not be feeling it as much, because it isn’t my first time. I find I’m remembering pondering the possibility that I might need to flee the country in my Senior year in High School in 1962-3, seeing the rise of the John Birch Society and increased visibility of the KKK, along with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then, a year later, came the assassination of JFK, and the GOP running Goldwater for President. Maybe I’ve just never had as firm illusions about the dark side of American political culture.
I also have to keep remembering that however horrible the outcome of the election may be, it was not a landslide. The margin of difference in the popular vote was exactly what so many of the polls predicted, a toss up within the margin of error. Like every other GOP Presidential victory of the past 50 years, they owe it to the Electoral College system.
The DMT article is interesting, I’ll have to read it all later. I’m not sure it quite matches my experience with DMT, but that may have a lot to do with what I was expecting.
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Howdy Bob!
All of the postmortems seem more like attempts to regain control over a situation that is completely out of control. One of the worst things that happened is the clear secretiveness of the Trump campaign.
The only hope that I see is that in the past week or so, we’ve had in quick succession the South Koreans vigorously turn back martial law, the assassination of a corporate CEO by a disgruntled customer and the angry rebuffing of the public over his death, the fall of Assad, and the Georgians rioting against Russian control of their government. People are angry at the oligarchs and there isn’t likely to be enough bullets to stop us when it boils over.
My take on Trump’s 2024 victory is this: 2020 was the fluke. Trump has been riding a rising tide of authoritarianism since 2016. The only saving grace is that without Trump on the ticket, the GOP can’t win much, and Trump won’t be alive for much longer.
Huzzah!
Jack
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In the past few months, even in well run and presumably honest elections, incumbents world wide have been hit hard, and much of the complaint, as with many voters here, has been the economy and inflation. This has happened regardless of whether the incumbent party was (like the Biden administration) using stimulation policies, or austerity policies (which our Republicans plan). Clearly, the world has not recovered fully from the pandemic economy. Now, we are a bit more than a month away from installing the Trump Monkey Wrench Gang in Washington to make all of it so much worse in so many ways.
And, in Israel, Bebe N. is testifying defiantly in his corruption and bribery trial, which has not gone away, and is not being delayed until all his wars are won.
Biden’s win in 2020 was clearly a reaction to the blatant abnormality of Trump’s first term. 2024 was largely a product of the short attention span and worse memory of our electorate. Trump is unique is a number of ways, perhaps the most important of which is the enduring image projected in The Apprentice series. No other current politician has that on either side, no matter how much TV time they manage to get in the usual ways. He is, in that sense, a monster created by the media for the media to be able to ride the ratings wave no matter what he does. He has no heir apparent for that role. He has made being nasty lovable for a large number of voters. Nobody else has that particular talent. When he is gone, that simple fact will have the cult rank and file set up for their own ontological shock, especially when he has failed to being prices down and give all his loyal followers a pony. If he dies in this next four years, he infighting and back stabbing to replace him will be epic and ugly in the extreme.
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Howdy Bob!
But, American exceptionalism means we can’t be like other countries, right MAGA? If everyone else is voting based on economic issues, that couldn’t possibly be driving our vote because American exceptionalism. Or some such horse hockey. Perception and belief is everything. The narrative throughout Biden’s presidency was that the economy was terrible, not the accomplishments and miracle that he had pulled off.
And, Netanyahu is starting a new war to take the place of the two that are being settled, so he can stay out of jail maybe.
I have been struck and encouraged by the noticeable difference that Trump makes when he’s on the ballot. Now, we just have to hope that our votes will actually matter in 2026. NC is the proving ground for voter nullification and state authority realignment. Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, and to some degree Pennsylvania were the voter suppression proving grounds in 2024. We’ll see what Republican legislatures do between now and 2026 to the way we vote.
Seriously, not enough attention is being paid to the effectiveness of suppression and purges on the vote.
Happy Festivus!
Jack
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Without doubt, the Republican Party, and explicitly the people around Trump (Plan 2025 crew and assorted hangers on) intend to never lose another election. That’s how dictators think and dream.
The best hope may be that they will so far overplay their hand right out of the gate on “keeping his promises” about tariffs, immigrants, and deregulating, not to mention such utter stupidities as RFKjr proposes about vaccines and fluoridation, that essential systems will crash quickly. We have to remember that on some key fronts such as trade and tariffs, there are other players in the game. I think that our major trading partners see Trump clearly and know, as Angela Merkel observed, that he does not negotiate or even understand win-win outcomes, only win-lose outcomes, and they cannot let him win even one deal (although he can be allowed to think he did to draw him in). In that case, the retaliatory tariffs and even sanctions (for example, pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement again) will have to be big, fast, and painful. As bad as that would be for all concerned, a step-wise tit for tat escalation would be far worse.
The sheer over confidence and incompetence of this guy and the predators and enablers around him will have consequences. We have to be ready to take advantage of those.
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The only thing I can think, Bob, is that we need a massive Gandhi-MLK-style civil disobedience program where we all disobey nearly universally. I suppose in our global era, that would include every country in the world. We just cannot cooperate with them in any way shape or form. What exactly that looks like, though, is not exactly clear.
Jack
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At the world level, I seriously wonder how other governments, NGOs, and populations will respond to several of the Trump Team’s plans and policies. His reversal of every possible action against climate change is, and will be seen, as an existential threat to the world. What will they do? What will they do when US support for vaccination programs, abortion and contraception information programs, and other things goes away?
What will happen when millions of MAGA voters discover that when ObamaCare gets repealed, their ACA subsidized health plans, expanded Medicaid benefits disappear too and the prices on their Medicare Advantage plans go way up?
The rage being expressed about the for profit medical insurance industry since the murder of one CEO is, I think just a mild taste of what lurks in the populace.
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I don’t think it was, surprising at all, for Trump to win, after all, he knew how to, get the crowds all work up, and that’s the only thing he has, going for him, and he is, excellent at, manipulating his “followers”, to believe that he has their best interests in his minds, that would be his charm, and soon enough, during this second term of his, Uncle Sam will, slide down that, slippery slope, as it is now, faced with a state of the country getting, factioned, and on the out, it also needs to, watch out for the developments in China, Russia, as well as North Korea, the United States will be face with troubles on both the in and the out, or at least, that would be my, prediction, based off of Trump’s characters, and, how the U.S. had, operated in the past.
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Folks seem to be missing the forest for the trees. It isn’t just the US. It is the world. Climate goals, blown. He solicited a billion dollar bribe from the fossil fuel industry. The same industry that knew they were destroying the climate for the past seventy years, and their responses was, milk for every cent we can before it can no longer support eight billion lives. Of course, they bribed Trump. Of course, he’s going to blow up every climate deal and just destroy the environment for fun and profit.
US foreign policy and alliances are for sale. We aren’t going to defend Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, or Europe. We’ll defend Israel. But, Taiwan should just surrender now and avoid the inevitable bloodshed of a Chinese attack. The only thing that will save South Korea is that North Korea is too damn broke to buy Trump off and Russia won’t sign off on the deal.
The scale of the disaster is planet-wide. It is the Age of Global Oligarchy. We will all be working for the oligarchs, living at the average level of poverty of Russians. That’s what we’ve unleashed on the world.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
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