NORMALIZATION Is a Dirty Word

and we need to unlearn it

I’ve heard it said that it’s almost unbelievable what one can get used to.  I guess we’re seeing that every day, in these times.  And of course, sometimes it’s a good idea to get used to things, as when one adapts to the inevitable debility of aging.  After all, it doesn’t help anything to obsess about not being able to heft 50 pounds of dog food anymore, or about having to take a bit longer to hike five miles.  Or three.

But some of the things we’re getting used to are frightening.  And it’s appalling that we “have” to get used to many of them.  Once upon a time, people didn’t routinely expect that if they had a medical crisis, they’d go bankrupt.  Going to the emergency room didn’t mean losing a house.  Medical bills have been a hardship for a century, but now, well, there’s an inevitable fight between the insurance company, which wants to pay out as little as possible, and the care provider — likely a for-profit organization — which charges $50 for a bandage.  The patient, and possibly his/her family, is caught between the two entities.  The resulting mental and emotional agony surely detracts from physical recovery, and all too frequently, the cost of medical care is ruinous.  Medical bills are the biggest cause of bankruptcy in this country, so we’re not surprised when we hear about people who max out their credit cards and then lose everything.  Even those with so-called “decent” insurance.  But we’re used to that.  Chances are, we know someone in hock to hospitals and doctors for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, because, oops! this life-saving treatment isn’t covered, or that medication costs $5,000 a dose.  What are we going to do?  Pay our premiums and hope for the best.  Or, if we’re poor enough that we have nothing to lose, we accept any care we can get.

Or what about the weather?  Every day, there’s a news story about a drought or mudslide or tornado or cold snap or heat wave or wildfire.  Hundred-year floods now happen almost annually.  What?  Tens of millions of dollars in destruction across three Southern states?  Didn’t that just happen last month, too?  So…five hundred people had to be evacuated from the path of a fire out West.  What else is new?  Of course, none of these disasters is ho-hum to the people who experience them, but the rest of the country hears about them, shrugs, and waits for the box scores.  We’re no longer appalled at the thought of all the mayhem caused by wild weather, because it isn’t rare anymore.  In all truth, we don’t give it a second thought unless food prices are affected down the line. 

Then there’s the matter of religion — a LOT to unpack there.  Used to be that a person was raised in a certain tradition or faith, and then remained allied with that faith in adulthood.  Or not.  It didn’t matter to anyone but the person in question (and perhaps, some zealous family members).  We as a nation just got on with our worship and beliefs (or lack thereof) and left others to theirs.  Sure, there have always been evangelicals, and we’ve all encountered proselytizing members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect, but we’ve brushed them off or avoided them, and no harm done.  As a rule, there was no penalty for not adopting, or deferring to, someone else’s beliefs.  It’s different now that there’s a significant percentage of the population who believes, along with Lauren Boebert, that the division of church and state is a myth.  Who believes that their version of “Christianity” should be imposed on the entire country, at any cost.  Laws should have Biblical foundations.  We should return prayer to the schools, along with display of the ten commandments (the bill in this case ultimately failed, but the sentiment was widespread).  At a 2021 ReAwaken America (read:  extreme Christian Nationalist) rally, Michael Flynn expressed the collective sentiment thusly:  “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion.  One nation under God and one religion under God, right? [emphasis mine]”  Why MUST we have one religion, or any religion?  I think most people fifty years ago would have been appalled. But Flynn’s comments didn’t make headlines.

And of course, those “Christians” believe that they have the right to dictate which books ALL children should and, worse, shouldn’t read.  A story about a bear who adopts some goslings is rejected as inappropriate for children.  A picture book about the true story of two male penguins who raise a chick was deemed to have homosexual overtones, so was removed from the children’s section. Tame romances have been removed from secondary school library shelves.  Certain math texts, of all things, have been deemed inappropriate, due to allusions to social themes within math problems.  Award-winning books from years past are no longer acceptable in the classroom or the school library.  In some cases, the fanatics have even attacked local public libraries.  A couple years ago, not many people had ever heard of or cared about drag queen story hours, but now, thanks to the “Christian” right, they’ve gained notoriety as a supposed scourge on the nation.  Any thinking person is disturbed by the very thought of book banning, with its threat of restricting thought and knowledge. But the right’s new policy of complete fabrication of nefarious motives on the part of writers is little short of insanity, and needs to be called out as such. Yet there's no one out there manning a bully pulpit to name the craziness for what it is, and blast it. We read about it, we move on.

Abortion has always happened everywhere in the world, as we know.  And it has usually been a covert operation; at least, since societies organized (read:  women, patriarchal structures, baby factories).  Thanks to religious dogma, of course, all the interactions surrounding conception were rendered unmentionable at best, taboo at worst.  But abortion only became unlawful in places in the U.S. beginning around 1850.  Fast-forward to 1973, and the women’s movement, and Roe v. Wade finally freed women to make their own choices again, after more than 120 years.  Religious zealots didn’t like it, but they had to abide by the Supreme Court’s decision.  Last year, the Court struck down that freedom, and the onslaught began anew.  Almost every month, a new abortion ban is signed into law somewhere in this country.  The bans are so draconian, women’s health is being jeopardized.  And certainly, there was an outcry and a backlash strong enough to affect the 2022 midterms; the reaction is still simmering.  But the daily stories of women being forced to carry non-viable fetuses to term, or sitting in parking lots until they were in fear of their lives from pregnancy complications….these stories are new.  The clamp-down on all care that could be seen as destroying an embryo, or a pre-term fetus, despite risk to the woman carrying it, is a level of pseudo-sanctimony we’ve never seen before.  It’s becoming so widespread, there doesn’t seem to be a way to fight it.  Those who believe in a woman’s right to choose are still outraged, and those who have any capacity for empathy and humane thought are saddened, but the seemingly relentless push to criminalize all abortions in any form rolls on, to the satisfaction of the DeSantises and Abbotts of the world. 

Gay-bashing has been common for decades, of course.  For centuries, homosexuality was hidden, again because of so-called religious proscription.  When it came out of the closet, so to speak, then the sport began.  But eventually, as this country became more enlightened, homosexuality was at least mostly accepted.  In 2015, same-sex marriage was legalized, marking a huge civil rights milestone.  But now…..we’re sliding backward again.  The rigidly “religious” SCOTUS majority is leaning toward regression in this area, after having destroyed nationwide abortion rights.  And a significant portion of the country is over there in the right wing with those justices.  The rest of the country is paying scant attention, in general, because this Court has shown it can be counted on to come down on the side of religious extremism.  It’s predictable, and SCOTUS appointments are for life, so what can we do?

Gender identity issues are relatively new, as far as the public is concerned, and most people aren’t very knowledgeable about them.  But I’d observe that the angst and the gnashing of teeth over such personal subjects is also new.  That is, religious fanatics are taking the view that they have the right to interfere in the most intimate questions humans deal with.  They’ve taken a “what does it matter in the scheme of things” decision and turned it into fodder for restrictions and codification, all the while publicizing their moral rectitude for the six o’clock news.  The rest of us are shaking our heads, but chalking it up to “normal” evangelicalism. 

And, as we’ve seen, the anti-Semites and the Islamophobes are having a field day, trying to “save” the United States from the iniquities of non-Christians.  We’re seeing a religious/ethnic bigotry every bit as strong as the racial version.  Again, for awhile, it appeared that the country was evolving into a more equitable society, at least in terms of tolerance.  In the last few years, though, the Christian Nationalist movement has openly come out against all those who aren’t followers of their particular fire-and-brimstone beliefs.  We who aren’t part of that movement are appalled at each new attack on a temple or mosque, but as such assaults are increasing, we see them only as a sign of the times.

The last two situations we’re getting used to are domestic gun violence and our ever-more-expanding military.  I can’t find a study that shows that our attitude toward guns is related to the country’s attitude toward global military domination, but I’ve gotta believe that our big, Pentagon gun fetish connects with individual gun worship.  I’m not saying there’s a mappable correlation between the desire for “full spectrum dominance” and the incidence of mass shootings, but to me, it makes sense that the mindset of establishing unstoppable military force, to be used to intimidate any country that opposes the U.S., is part and parcel of the second amendment fanaticism we see today.  In other words, if we as a nation have the “right” to dominate the world with weaponry, then every person with a gun has the right to dominate others.  It’s notable that, although every state outlaws private militas, not one state has gone after those entities within its boundaries.  Those who uphold their rights to private arsenals are in the minority in this country, but they succeed in preventing sensible management of those stockpiles.  Yeah, it’s a political thing:  fear of a filibuster if a gun control measure comes up, fear of losing votes from the “base,” and so on.  But the fact is that no matter how many innocent civilians are slaughtered every day, nothing is done, despite all the speeches about, “this can’t happen again.”  As of May 8, there have been 202 mass shootings this year, each one horrific beyond description, many of them involving children.  We read about them, we briefly agonize, and we get past them.  Because there will be another one tomorrow or next week, and we lose track of the towns, the victims, and the shooters.  It’s just everyday news.  Likewise, the word that the U.S. military has been engaged in this country or that country, or we’re shipping arms here or there.  Our representatives vote for obscene Pentagon budgets, because….that’s just what they do.  There’s money to be made, and they don’t question it, nor do most of us.  In any case, we out here in the hinterlands can’t do anything about it, anyway. 

Normalization means that, whatever the event or situation is, it may be tragic or disrupting or life-wrecking to the people who experience it first-hand, but to distant observers, it’s just more of the same that’s been in the news every day for several years, or decades.  Political violence, or threats thereof, now happens with alarming regularity.  A completely polarized country isn’t news anymore.  Leaders acting outrageously barely makes headlines, and in any case, we aren’t surprised.  A newly elected representative turning out to be a total fraud and likely a crook?  OK, not good, but we just had another representative investigated for sex trafficking, and he got off scot-free.  An ex-President successfully sued for sexual abuse?  A step in the right direction, but anybody who’s been paying attention since 2015 knew the accusation was only one among many.  Rampant homelessness in our cities? It’s everywhere, and most citizens accept it as an unfortunate but common occurrence, while averting their eyes. The credit of the United States being held hostage, because the radical right-wing party wants to gut the social safety net?  Yeah, been there, seen that before, in 2011, and most of us don’t think there will really be a crash this time, either.  Hope we aren’t wrong, because then, there will be more disasters to normalize.

I have to wonder where it all ends.  How much trauma can we absorb and then get used to, as a society?  How long can we inure ourselves to what we see every day?  It’s one thing to worry about personal problems.  It’s another thing entirely to suffer continual, overarching anxiety coming from external sources, sources that we can’t control at all.  Our defense mechanism becomes normalization, and at this juncture, it’s hiding so many national traumas, a breaking point should be inevitable.  We stuff it down and stuff it down, but even normalization has a limit, or so one would like to think, because there’s much danger in doing it constantly.  If there isn’t a limit, and we can get used to anything, given enough time and repetition, we’re lost as a country.  The autocrats and theocrats will have won.  Even now, they’re betting the farm on our capacity to paper over anything and accept the worst occurrences as normal.