On why life in America has started to feel like The Hunger Games
I cannot ignore this sense of unease that the events of the last week has left me with, as if we could teeter into a dystopian nightmare at any momen.
Look, I don’t usually write about politics, but right now I can’t ignore this sense of unease and anxiety which I’m feeling, and it’s alll about the political weather. At the moment I find myself reading the news too often, and scrolling X obsessively. I find myself swallowing and sighing, completely preoccupied, a thrum of anxiety present, even when I’m pouring milk into a glass from a child’s outstretched hands or walking Pablo though the park at dusk. I push the thoughts away, but, at least at the moment, I know they’re still there. I step outside, to make the energy in my body move and stop my hands fluttering around my phone again, but I feel it out there too. The oppressive heat, which makes my hair stick to my forehead, and confines me, because when I come back inside, it’s too cold. The air conditioning makes me shiver. Everything feels out of kilter, all wrong.
This is not my country; I’m here as a visitor, but America is home at the moment and over the last week, when my phone was filled with weird and frankly terrifying images from the Republican convention, it truly felt like real life was not a world away from turning into something closer to The Hunger Games. Life suddenly looked like a freakish version of a horror game show, where reality is in no way what it seems, and truth and facts are all open to debate, if you’re lucky enough to be allowed to debate.
I don’t write about politics, because there are many, many people far better qualified than me to write about it, but I think about it and talk about it, at least at home, a lot. If you want real political analysis of what’s going on right now, read David Brooks, a voice of sanity and intelligence on many, many things, but especially what’s happening on the chequer board of power. And while I don’t write about politics, I do write about the way life feels, and I’m living in Washington DC right now. I’m not going to analyse the politics, but I can certainly tell you what it feels like here, a week after Trump was shot.