Mass Trauma Undermines Social Stability

Seeing a lot of people expressing feelings of pervasive fear (especially in public) or catching themselves scanning public places for escape routes or being unnerved by and unable to stop themselves from focusing on individuals present who fit specific profiles, even when the individual displays no sign of threat. It looks like the violence over the 4th of July weekend broke the dam, and people are saying publicly things they've been keeping to themselves.

These are symptoms not dissimilar to hyper vigilance. It may not rise to the level of something like a PTSD diagnosis, but these are people just being regularly exposed to the news of horrific, life altering violence, and it's going to continue if effective actions aren't taken. It's not even taking into account the number of people who are directly affected and present during the acts of violence which are being reported in the news. Nothing about our government, culture or industries is prepared for the mental health crisis which is going to result. We can basically rely on the fact that all of those symptoms are going to be manipulated by people who want or have power, while they're simultaneously being treated as irrational responses and the reason to discount the veracity of these folks recognition of the conditions in which they are forced to exist.

We expect people to be rational political actors and then refuse to acknowledge their assessment of the conditions as being without and beyond rationality, refuse to provide more than the most superficial level of education and information, and to also accept that they have little to no power to address those conditions.

This one aspect, all alone and all by itself, is untenable if "democracy" is the claimed goal. At the very least, they have to be recognized by power as having a legitimate perspective on their conditions, and not even that is happening right now.

A nation of 300 million people experiencing a heightened and consistent level of sense of threat and fear over long periods is not going to be a nation making good decisions.