Should We All Just Go Insane?
The case for leaning into it.
At the beginning of October, in one of my optimistic fits, I declared that I was pivoting to sanity.
“Being an absolute fucking lunatic is passé,” I said when I was convinced Kamala would win and I’d be drinking out of a coconut as I gazed upon a hot president again.
“Nothing is cooler than sanity — the last frontier of counterculture — when everything else has been swallowed up by big tech,” I wrote when Elon Musk’s threat to American democracy was still hypothetical.
As hard as I try to ignore the demonic executive orders and efforts to reshape the US government as a safe house for the world’s richest man, I’m just not wired to do that. In my next life, I want to know the bliss of ignorance. I would like to be reincarnated as someone who doesn’t connect the dots. It’s getting on my nerves that the spoon’s worth of microplastics in my brain can’t seem to coalesce with my recent levels of weed smoking to make me stupider than this.
So, here is my retraction: I am pivoting back to insanity. While I still think sanity is the height of chic, I no longer have the energy to pursue an enlightened path. Not after the terrifying natural disaster that kicked off my year or the blatant mainstreaming of Nazism after that. And since the last week of January, I have been trapped in America waiting for Homeland Security to approve my work visa renewal while Trump keeps threatening to annex my homeland. Good news, they’re letting me stay for three more years, so at least I can get back to procrastinating any life-altering decisions.
I knew Canada wasn’t immune to Donald Trump controlling the aux and spreading his chaos. But he should know better than to fuck with Canadians. The stereotypes are true, we are apologetic and polite, but those qualities mean we know how to work together in a way that the American mind can’t comprehend. Oh, and it’s the middle of winter. Shoveling your car out in -30 degrees celsius (-40 with the wind chill) isn’t a cure for seasonal depression, but it builds a lot of grit.
America has actually tried to claim Canada twice before, both times while it was still under British rule. The second time, during the War of 1812, ended with the White House burning and sent Laura Secord to the canon of Canadian mythology after she overheard Americans plotting and walked 32 kilometers (20 miles, if you must) to warn British forces of the impending attack. For her sacrifice, a chocolate store was named after her and inserted into every Canadian mall in the ‘90s. She was also featured in Heritage Minutes, a beloved series of cultural propaganda spots that aired during commercial breaks when I was growing up. Hers is one of the most memorable, but not the best. That would be this classic, where a lady yells about smelling burnt toast and then gets brain surgery.
A little over a week ago, CBC caught the Prime Minister on a hot mic saying his government is taking Trump’s annexation threats seriously. And things have only devolved from there. Honestly, I don’t even know what to think. Since Trump was re-elected, I haven’t been able to fully process this timeline. The vibes were so wild in November that I just kept saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Trump was indeed inaugurated, a wretched affair. And since that day, while I can’t look away enough to maintain my sanity, I also can’t look that closely because I’m worried it will burn my retinas.
This is a rip current of cultural insanity. And to survive a rip current you have to swim sideways to get out of it or float until it dissipates. Never swim against it, that’s how you get exhausted and drown. Personally, I’m going sideways. Until RFK Jr. takes my Adderall away, then I’ll just float on my back and talk to myself about what I see in the clouds.
There is, of course, a right way and a wrong way to be insane. And there is no better example of doing it the wrong way than Kanye West. I’m sorry to say, because he has made some of my all-time favorite gym music, that we can no longer separate the art from the artist, minus the Nicki Minaj verse on “Monster.” That we get to keep because he’s always been an asshole and almost didn’t include it on the album because it was so good that it threatened him.
Anyone downplaying the effect of him openly promoting antisemitism, racism, being mean to wheelchair kids and whatever the fuck else he’s been spewing about doesn’t seem to understand that this man has real cultural influence. Sure, he’s not as powerful as when he regularly got thousands of NPC fanboys and resellers to wait in line for hours whenever he released some basic-ass shit. But that kind of power doesn’t just vanish, and his follower count on “X” has grown since his latest rants. The man is clearly mentally ill, and he’s also a consistently hateful, dangerous menace.
The kind of “insanity” I’m choosing to embody is unique to women. I’m going to keep speaking my mind in a way that would have seen me burned at the stake or committed against my will in previous eras. Let’s not forget that while famous men get to run their mouths, and have it excused as mental illness, famous women who are mentally ill are put under conservatorships.
Maybe that’s why, in lieu of speaking our minds or revolting against the latest attacks on our autonomy, millions of women have taken to crying over an angler fish that recently swam out of the darkness to die.
Angler fish are seldomly seen by humans because they live in the deepest part of the ocean, where the only light that exists is created by their own little bioluminescent antennas. This rare video of a female angler fish escaping the dark world she was born into on a last gasp journey towards the light of the sun has triggered the girlies and introduced a tiny, black sea monster as the latest anthropomorphized folk hero in the annals of Unhingement.
Love her, but this diva’s ascent from the depths isn’t about empowerment. She’s yet another bellwether of our rapidly deteriorating climate.
My unhinged sisters, we need to talk. I know it’s revolution that you seek because I read your comments and had a great time consuming your content as you pinned those hopes on a literal dead fish. I know that patriarchal conditioning is a real beast — we’ve all seen how Republican women do their makeup. I get it. It took me a very long time to feel comfortable taking up space in this world. But we need to put down TikTok and start a new trend of cultivating our own power from within. May as well head into the deep end and do the necessary inner work so that real change can begin.
Insanity is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Until Donald Trump entered the White House (again), a president who has their mugshot hanging on the wall sounded like the rantings of a lunatic. But he did hang it up, right outside the Oval Office, where earlier this week, one of Elon Musk’s 13 props children (a new one just emerged from the depths of the right-wing internet) was overheard telling Trump he’s not actually the president. Children these days are just built different and even Snopes can’t officially deny what was said.
The president is a proud criminal and the man actually running the country espouses “family” values as he adds a fourth baby momma and disowns his trans daughter. If that behavior is our new status quo, then leaning into insanity is just what the doctor ordered. It’s time for us to band together and embrace the right kind of madness because the remaining dregs of normality have been eviscerated.
And speaking of evisceration, there is an asteroid headed towards us, and NASA just doubled its risk of hitting this planet of ours in 2032 to 2%. One of the astronomers who captured the latest asteroid pics called the whole thing “very exciting.” I have to agree, and even though it could also hit the moon (my Shayla!), I can’t wait to track the odds for the next seven years.
But not tonight. Tonight we have been gifted a brand new season of The White Lotus. The powers that be at HBO were like, “February 2025? We got just the thing for those sad motherfuckers.” I can’t wait to inject the premiere into my veins and see if Parker Posey can outdo Jennifer Coolidge.
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️
Liz
P.S. I fixed it:
YES PLEASE 🤝 "The kind of “insanity” I’m choosing to embody is unique to women. I’m going to keep speaking my mind in a way that would have seen me burned at the stake or committed against my will in previous eras." 🤝 Me too.
A much needed laugh! Thank you!