Navigating Trauma at the End of Illusions

These past few years have been a reckoning on a global scale. From the genocide in Gaza to the rise of brutal fascist regimes to the revelations in the Epstein files, we are all bearing witness to the festering moral rot of the ruling class and the societal decomposition it has caused.

Our own governments supported and funded a genocide that they told us wasn’t happening, even though we saw it with our own eyes. We saw them lie and obfuscate and smear those who spoke out and contort themselves into the most grotesque spectacle to make excuses for blowing children to pieces, burying families under rubble, burning them alive in their makeshift tents, erasing entire bloodlines, shooting toddlers in the neck, torturing doctors and nurses, murdering journalists, teachers, poets and artists, leveling hospitals, schools, universities and shelters. We saw them run cover for the complete destruction of a society. And then draw up blueprints for a luxury, seaside resort over the mass graves.

We have seen the ascendency of a cruel, despotic narcissist in the most powerful and ruthless empire on the planet. A sadistic rapist, conman and gangster. One whose entire parlance is mendacity. One whose own body is a suppurating blob of Big Mac grease with bronzer slathered over its decay. One who has inspired grifters who turn a profit from sycophancy and a mob who delight in ignorance and humiliation and terror. Who have no problem with shooting women in the face or men beaten on the ground.

We have seen a billionaire class obsessed with living forever while condemning everyone else to a scorched earth. Who revel in demolishing the modest safety nets that keep people from absolute poverty. Who think democracy is quaint, but useless. And who use mass surveillance, usury and AI to suppress and distract us.

Now we are getting a glimpse into the nefarious machinations of the elite. A shadowy and sinister world of the most wealthy and powerful men, where human decency is a punchline. A world that uses sex as a bludgeon and treats the most vulnerable among us as objects to be used and discarded. And all the while we are seeing it, we are being gaslit again. Told that the world wants to “move on.”

Of course, none of this is new. Human history is littered with casual cruelties, unprovoked injuries, and banal evil. This world sits on top of a mountain of murdered corpses. The difference now is that the living biosphere, the one we all depend upon, is in the crosshairs. And the scope of brutality has expanded beyond the colonized or enslaved or racialized or otherized or dehumanized to include us all.

We have been integrated into the machinery of our own collective demise. Shoveling coal into a machine intent on our destruction for the profit of a few. And conditioned to see it all as necessary. As “progress.” If you are feeling overwhelmed or lost or shattered these days, you are not the abnormal one. You are grieving a world of illusion as it crashes to the ground.

Trauma can be a catalyst for change, but it can also be a drug. It creates bonds which can be regenerative, or ones which mire us in despair. Either way, it is unavoidable. Those who try to skirt its implications aren’t “the lucky ones.” They are like the ones who tell you to “stay put” in a building that is aflame. They aren’t saving you, they are choosing normalcy bias over urgency.

The trauma we are feeling is real. It is raw. It is unforgiving. But it is also a rejoinder to lived experience. It lives under our skin and its grammar is sorrow and confusion and rage. When we face it with integrity, we can eventually let the illusions go. It doesn’t mean the pain will be forgotten. But it can become the currency needed to unlock a door for our escape.

The rulers of this world have shown us who they are. Perhaps it is time we show them who we are.

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