American View: It is right or reasonable to expect normal performance during a disaster?
Let’s talk about procrastination: how it can simultaneously be good for your mental health and how it can ruin your day. To be clear, I don’t mean the general concept because I’m not a philosopher. I want to focus on procrastination as an instinctive act of self-preservation during traumatic events. I could probably spend ~20 paragraphs exploring the topic from a cognitive science perspective, but that would be an act of procrastination in itself since I’m having the devil’s own time getting this article sorted.
I’m alone this weekend. My darling wife left Friday night for a camping trip with the Scouts. She’s a girls’ troop leader, so she needs to supervise. Assuming no one gets seriously injured she’ll be back Sunday night. My oldest took off at five in the morning for the local Renaissance Festival. He said he was meeting up with his pals and won’t be back until Sunday night. My youngest has his own flat and has no reason to come home beyond weaselling a free meal. Ain’t likely to see him this weekend. That leaves me alone with Elmo the Wonder Dog. Normally, that would be a glorious and rare treat: just the two of us taciturn dudes hanging out with ear scritches taking the place of small talk.
In theory, this quiet weekend alone should be the perfect environment to craft a masterwork of commentary (assuming I had such a thing in me). The house is quiet. The neighbor’s pool party can be muted with a little streaming music. I’ve run out of chores to do as the laundry is done, the bills are all paid, the yard is mowed, and the pantry is full. I have no excuses: my tablet has a full battery, the Wi-Fi is up, and I have more coffee than any adult human can safely consume. Time to type! Excelsior!
In reality, Apple Music says I’ve been sitting on the couch, listening to Scandinavian goth music and staring at my phone for two hours while a blank Word document awaits my attention. Why, though? There are tons of security related stories to capitalise on: everything from America throwing the entire global system into chaos to America threatening to undermine NATO to America establishing, compromising, and revoking psychotic tariffs on everyone from our closest allies to those penguins that stole our date to the prom in 1795. Every one of these hot topics has security ramifications (to say nothing of geopolitical significance) that merit long-form essays and somber discussions by wiser heads than mine. I have a rich field of topics to pick from. Except …
Two of the insurmountable challenges I find in trying to grapple with these topics lies in their scope and instability No matter how strong a lock I think I have on any given topic, I can barely get three paragraphs typed before social media tells me that (a) the initial explanation of what happened was dead wrong, (b) the situations has been overtaken by global events, or (c) the lunatics “running” what’ left of our contrary have changed their “minds” and the whole story has mutated into an ineffable horror. It’s like hiring H. P. Lovecraft to run the Associated Press’s Twitter account and then shooting him full of hallucinations. No one can keep up, let alone understand what’s really going on. [1]
Additionally, danged near every story idea that I’ve tried to pin down this afternoon has proven to be so politically charged that I’m afraid writing about it will ignite a firestorm no matter how cautiously I describe the issues involved. Everyone is hopping mad about everything going on in America right now, rightly or wrongly. I must’ve picked up my phone to doom-scroll for ideas a dozen times since breakfast and found there was always something new and worse awaiting me. My notepad has the following scribbled entries:
- The U.S. government [USG] intends to betray and deport all the Afghan allies that we took in after the war
- The USG wants to slash funding for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency to ensure that no one gets any warning before the next lethal storms roll in
- The USG wants to take over a private university and enforce its ideological orthodoxy over all campus speech
- The USG wants to hold “meaningful” nuclear talks with Iran after demonstrating that it cannot possibly be trusted to comply with any of its own treaties or sworn agreements (see betraying N.A.T.O., et al)
- USG agents attempted to lie their way into public elementary schools in California, presumably to terrorize citizens with their Gestapo-Lite™ theatrics
It’s too bloody much to grapple with! I’ve had ideas about how to approach these stories and decided to procrastinate on all of them. If any of these stories could be proven to be wholly true and complete, I’m convinced I wouldn’t be able to finish a draft before the fraternity rejects pretending to run this insane asylum we call a country randomly changed the parameters. There’s just no way to deliver an accurate piece without divine intervention. Admittedly, I hate watching the disintegration of our democracy more than I hate wasting my time, but I can only affect the latter … and I don’t want to make an already awful situation worse.
That’s the larger problem: not writing about these topics and calling out the outrageous USG misconduct in each story feels like an act of disservice to my readers. People should be aware of just how bad things are over here. People should be inspired to act if only to protect themselves. Just knowing what flavour of insanity is coming their way can help inoculate readers against the attention-grabbing topics that will emotionally charge tomorrow’s headlines … and become the new hotness in phishing lures and social engineering scams a few hours later.
One the one hand, refusing to comment on any of these scandals is saving me from exhaustion from trying to keep up with a deluge of stupidity. At the same time, refusing to comment on any given scandal may be contributing to conditions that make other people vulnerable to scams and misinformation. It’s a no-win situation. I’m at a complete loss. I asked Elmo the Wonder Dog what to do and he moved to the other end of the couch without comment. I expected better, little man.
But that’s where we are in April 2025: we’re all stuck trying to make sense of the Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of our nation and everything it once attempted to stand for. The architects of our demise have flooded the headlines with so much corrupt and inexcusable acts of sabotage that no one can keep up, let alone stop enough of it to make a meaningful difference. What’s the point of yelling at the airline passenger smoking in the toilet when the pilot’s steering for an Alp and his mates are outside sawing the wings off?
Based on all this … … I suggest you cut your workers some slack in the days and weeks ahead. They’re likely to be overwhelmed by all that’s happening in world news and will — to save their sanity — attempt to buy some peace wherever they can. Given how little a normal person can affect the world, those moments of desperate sanity preservation will likely come through defensive procrastination if nothing else. Sure, appearing to zone out might negatively impact office productivity, but what else are folks supposed to do in unprecedented times like these? Raise hell in the streets? Bring back making guillotines in the shed? Take up arms and raze Washington D.C. to its foundations?
Speaking of, it’s high time for the people to …
What’s that, Elmo? The doorbell?
[peeks outside] What in blazes are undercover ICE agents doing on our doorstep?
What? Who? No, I’m not an undocumented immigrant! Buzz off!
What the hell do you mean you can arbitrarily revoke citizens’ citizenship “just for giggles?” Get the hell off my porch, you jackbooted buffoons and take your censorious agenda with …
[Recording Ends]
[1] “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh 54% R’lyeh tariff htagn! Bigly!”
Keil Hubert
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