Imagine that you are a race car driver, zooming around a track, passing car after car, catching up to secure first place, reaching the finish line and hearing all the cheers for you.
Now, imagine that every other car on that track is a billboard with a different major news headline and imagine that the people cheering are really people trying to inform you about different news headlines. You are still zooming past them, still gaining speed and still getting close to that finish line. That is exactly what is happening right now in society.
Every day, new headlines are released, and we are exposed to them. Right now, headlines often feel overwhelming, but people cannot just slow down and just stop looking at the news because, if they do and then they check the news a few days later, it is so much more overwhelming. The stress of the news headlines, added to other stressors like the economic state and daily life, consumes people without being able to stop it. At points, it is almost like we are in a void or like we are standing still, but everything keeps moving around us.
Because of this overwhelming number of news headlines, we often become desensitized to them. Collectively, we have all become partially desensitized to what is happening in the world today, especially here in the United States with what the current presidential administration is doing. Almost every new headline that is breaking news just overshadows the old one to the point that it almost does not get mentioned.
Many people feel as if there is nothing that they can do because they think that, even if their voice is heard, it will just be ignored. They struggle to stand up for injustice because there has not been significant progress made. Although, that is not saying that people are not speaking out; just look at the continuously growing number of participants for each No Kings protest.
