The Flattening 3: A Reckoning

The Ways We Learn Not to Care

I. The Grammar of Surrender

The language changed first. It always does.

Words that once carried weight,sanctuary, citizen, asylum, liberty,began to soften at the edges, to blur and dissolve like sugar in rain. The press briefings called them "clarifications." The anchors, their voices smooth as pharmaceutical commercials, called them "new interpretations." The officials, seated behind podiums that gleamed like altars, called it "restoring order."

They said "enhanced enforcement authority" and meant soldiers with badges who did not give their names. They said "targeted removals" and meant people dragged from their homes at three in the morning, children still in pajamas, coffee still warm on the counter.

We heard it. We read it. We made dinner.

This is how we live now. This is how we have learned to live.

The president doesn't appear much anymore. His face has become ubiquitous in the way that wallpaper is ubiquitous,printed on flags, posters, T-shirts, prayer candles sold in gas stations next to scratch-offs and energy drinks. His voice arrives filtered through surrogates and spokespeople, the kind who smile while describing procedural nightmares, who speak of efficiency while orchestrating cruelty.

There are no camps, they assure us. Only "containment zones." There are no bans. Only "eligibility reforms." There are no raids. Only "compliance verification."

The cruelty is itemized. Budgeted. Codified. Enforced with the mundane efficiency of a DMV transaction.

People disappear. A man on the subway is stopped and questioned about documents he doesn't carry. A teacher doesn't show up for class, her lesson plans still pinned to the bulletin board. A neighbor's house is raided before dawn, and by lunch there's already a For Rent sign on the lawn. Someone posts the video. Someone else writes a thread. The algorithm moves on.

We used to call it dystopia. But dystopia suggests something spectacular,fire, ruin, the dramatic collapse of recognizable order. This is quieter. This has an app. This has customer support. You can track your deportation status like a FedEx package. You can apply for re-citizenship through a streamlined online portal that crashes every Tuesday during maintenance. You can dispute your designation, though no one you know has ever succeeded.

No one marches anymore. Permits are harder to get, require background checks that take longer than the issues they protest. The National Guard handles "civil escalations" now. Some of them are from here. Some of them went to school with your brother. Some of them don't look up when you say their name.

You voted. You donated. You wrote the posts that garnered hearts and angry face emojis. You said the words that felt like prayer. The map turned red, then black, then quiet. The courts complied. The cameras turned off.

And still, you wake. You feed the cat. You buy toothpaste. You scroll past the footage of children behind chain-link, their faces blurred for privacy. You delete the draft of the letter you will never send.

Your child asks what "expedited removal" means. You say it's complicated. They ask why the boy in their class stopped coming to school. You say his family had to move. You don't say where. You don't say that no one knows where.

You remember when outrage felt sharp, when disbelief carried adrenaline that could fuel action. Now it feels like sand in the mouth. You're tired. Everyone is tired. You don't cry anymore when the headlines break. You turn off the phone. You carry on.

This is not the beginning. This is not the crisis point. This is the maintenance phase.

II. The Maintenance Phase

This is what it looks like after the bills pass, after the Supreme Court signs off, after the checkpoints go up and the paperwork is standardized and the system runs smooth and quiet like a well oiled machine that no one wants to look at too closely.

No one calls it fascism. That would be impolite. That would be inflammatory. That would imply a rupture, a breaking, a moment when things fell apart. And there has been no rupture. Only an adjustment. A reshuffling of norms. A recalibration of what we're willing to accept.

There are still birthday parties. There are still late night shows with hosts who make careful jokes about "the current political climate." There are still pumpkin spice lattes and airport delays and summer weddings where the bride's uncle doesn't come because he's afraid to fly. There are still weather reports, though they no longer mention the camps when discussing regional temperatures.

The world did not end. It was reformatted.

Something you recognize. Something you helped build. Not all at once. Not alone. Not knowingly. But slowly, over years, through silence that felt like self-preservation, through exhaustion that felt like wisdom, through the terrible mathematics of choosing battles you knew you couldn't win.

Now, it hums. And you live inside it.

The sleep comes easier now. You used to have nightmares back when it still felt like something could be done, like there might be a pivot point, a cliff edge not yet crossed. You would wake sweating, heart pounding, unable to tell dream from news. The raids. The smoke. The knocks at the door. The children screaming.

Now you sleep. Fitfully, but without the sharp terror of anticipation. There is nothing left to anticipate. The worst has not happened. The worst is happening. The worst will continue to happen with the regularity of trash collection, as scheduled, as funded, as normal.

You take your pills. You check the locks twice. You don't read the full articles anymore,just the headlines, the opening paragraphs, enough to absorb the shape of the thing. The date, the quote, the number of people detained, expelled, lost. You know the narrative by heart. You could write it yourself.

It has become easier, somehow, now that the pretense is gone. There is comfort in clarity. The mask is off. The rules are written down. They do not pretend to care about your opinion anymore. Neither do you pretend to expect them to.

You attend the mandatory workplace trainings on "Civic Alignment in Professional Settings." You answer the census with its new questions about household composition and country of origin. You decline to comment when the reporter calls. You stop tagging your location on social media. You avoid eye contact at the checkpoint near the freeway. You use your whiteness the way you use your phone battery,always aware of how much is left, how much you can spend, how much to save for emergencies.

There are new words. You learn them like everyone else. "Flagged." "Noncompliant." "Provisional." "External threat." "Culturally misaligned." You hear them on the radio, echoing through the loudspeakers at the airport, whispered between neighbors over backyard fences, carved into official signage with fonts that feel clinical, harmless, inevitable.

At the grocery store, a woman in line ahead of you is asked for identification. Not loudly, but loud enough. She fumbles for her wallet with hands that shake slightly. She says she's lived here for twenty three years. Her child holds her hand and stares at the floor. You study the magazine rack, the candy displays, anything but the scene unfolding three feet away. The guilt rises and falls like acid reflux.

No one intervenes. Everyone has a job to keep. A mouth to feed. A reason not to be noticed.

Later, in the car, you rehearse what you could have said. Even your imagination can't carry the moment forward. In your version, nothing changes. She's still taken. You're still afraid. The child still goes home to an empty house.

You adjust the rearview mirror. You drive home through neighborhoods where houses sit empty, where For Sale signs multiply like dandelions, where the elementary school has new fencing.

III. The Therapeutic State

The therapist says you are not alone in feeling this way.

She's seen a surge in new patients since what she carefully calls "the transition period." She doesn't say "the fall",that would be editorial, unprofessional but you both know what she means. The last election. The new laws. The drone footage that played on loop for three days before the networks stopped covering it. The line of buses outside the courthouse that stretched for blocks. The way the air changed, subtly, like the moment before a storm.

She says she's seeing more cases of what the literature calls "moral injury." Chronic fatigue. Sleep disorders. Dissociation. She says people describe a constant tightness in their chest, a sense of unreality, like they've slipped sideways into a parallel world where everything is technically functional but spiritually wrong.

You nod. You tell her you feel like you're floating above your own life, watching yourself go through the motions of a person who still believes in things.

She asks if that frightens you.

You say no. What frightens you is that it no longer does.

The room is soft. Muted colors, tissues on the table, the gentle hum of white noise from the air purifier. Outside, the city moves like normal,traffic, sirens, the sound of construction that never stops. Inside, you are trying to name the thing you are not supposed to say out loud: This country is making me sick. Not in the abstract. Not in the symbolic. But literally, physiologically. Your body cannot regulate. Your thoughts run in loops. You forget things. You feel guilty when you laugh. You snap at the people you love for no reason they can understand.

Your friends are in therapy too. They mention it like a confession, like an admission of failure. You're all being treated for different versions of the same condition: trying to remain human in a system that penalizes humanity.

There are new diagnostic codes for this. Climate grief. Authoritarian stress. Post-democracy adjustment disorder. But none of them feel precise. What you're experiencing is older than a hashtag, deeper than a trend. You are grieving the present. You are mourning a country that insists it hasn't changed, that what you're seeing isn't really happening, that your distress is evidence of your own instability.

You tell the therapist about the headlines you avoid, the words you can no longer say without your voice breaking: ICE, enforcement, detainment, appeal, unmarked van, family separation, civil forfeiture, extraordinary rendition.

You ask her if it's normal to feel this way. She pauses,a pause that lasts too long, that says more than her words will.

"It's not abnormal," she says finally. "We're all adjusting to the new reality."

The phrase clings to your skin like smoke. It sounds like something from a pamphlet. Like something a state worker says after a decision has already been made. You wonder what she believes. You wonder what she's adjusting to. You wonder if she reports on her patients' political anxieties, if there's a form for that now.

Outside, a digital billboard flashes a new slogan: "Strength Through Clarity." It is patriotic, vague, well-designed. You do not know what it means, and that is the point. Language doesn't clarify anymore. It flattens. It anesthetizes. It creates a fog that feels like peace.

You say goodbye. You schedule your next appointment. You pay the co-pay that your insurance still covers, for now.

On the walk back to your car, you pass a checkpoint. The guards don't stop you. You keep your face neutral, your hands visible. You remember the training video you watched at work. You do not look back.

Your heart still races sometimes. But you're getting better at ignoring it, at breathing through it, at pretending it's not happening.

That's what health looks like now. That's what adjustment means.

IV. The Institutional Hollowing

You used to believe the institutions would hold.

Not because they were perfect, or good, or just,but because they were there. Physical. Predictable. Built of brick and paper and the accumulated weight of precedent. You believed in them the way you believed in gravity or the sunrise. Not because you trusted them, but because you couldn't imagine life without them.

Now you can. Now you must.

The Courthouse

The courthouse is still a building. Fluorescent lights. Scuffed linoleum. Metal detectors that beep for belt buckles and underwire bras. A hallway lined with gray plastic chairs where people sit holding manila folders, holding each other's hands, waiting to be processed. There is no pretense of justice here anymore. Only the efficient movement of paper from one desk to another.

Due process means you waited your turn. Equal protection means everyone gets scanned. The rule of law means the rules, whatever they happen to be today, are applied consistently to whoever shows up.

You sit in the back of a hearing room waiting for your neighbor's name to be called. She was flagged last month,”provisional status review," the notice said. No one uses the word "undocumented" anymore. It's "unclear legal standing" or "pending verification" or "administratively complex."

Her lawyer is late. The judge is early. No one introduces themselves. A screen flickers with case numbers and deportation statistics. The bailiff yawns and scrolls through his phone.

The room is full of people who look like they already know the outcome. You sit there holding your coat, unable to tell if your presence is helping or marking you as someone who associates with the wrong people, who cares about the wrong things, who might need to be watched.

When her name is called, she rises so quickly she drops her documents. Papers scatter across the floor,birth certificates, marriage licenses, school records, proof of a life lived here. No one helps her pick them up. Not the lawyer. Not the clerk. Not even you.

The judge doesn't look up from his screen. He reads from a script. The case is continued. She is remanded. A uniformed officer takes her by the arm. She doesn't cry. She doesn't resist. She looks at you, briefly, and nods once,a gesture of goodbye, of gratitude, of release.

You do not nod back. You do not know why.

Later, you tell yourself you'll make calls. You tell yourself you'll write letters. But you also tell yourself there are cameras in that courtroom now, that your name was logged when you entered, that your employer receives compliance reports based on "behavioral proximity indicators."

You tell yourself this is how the system works. You do not ask whether it should.

IV. The Institutional Hollowing (continued)

The University

The university campus where you once studied feels like a museum of itself. The buildings are still there, but they feel taller now, more imposing. The glass is more reflective. The cameras more obvious. The flagpoles more frequent.

You pass through a turnstile at the main gate. A scanner reads your ID. You're logged into a database that tracks alumni engagement, political alignment, donation history. Nothing is said about this. Nothing needs to be said.

The lecture hall where you once argued about justice and power now hosts a course called Ethical Alignment in National Development. The professor reads from university issued slides. The format is standardized: beige background, navy text, federal seal in the corner. He quotes Plato, then Locke, then a directive from the Department of Cultural Security.

A student raises her hand. Her voice is steady: “What about undocumented people who’ve lived here for decades? What about their rights?”

The room stills. The professor looks down. He doesn’t scold her. He doesn’t even answer directly. He reads from the official reader: Legal status is the prerequisite for full participation in the social contract.

You watch the girl write something in her notebook, then slowly cross it out. You watch the other students watching,not her, but each other. Watching for who might report, who might nod, who might not.

The bookstore has been remodeled. Brighter lights, fewer titles, more branded merchandise. The philosophy section is now labeled Ethics and Heritage. Most of the books are published by a new press with federal backing. When you ask about Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the clerk pauses, types, says, “I think that’s been discontinued.”

You leave empty handed. You pass a banner advertising The Center for National Thought and Excellence, a new wing under construction. You do not know what that means. You do not want to know.

The Clinic

At the public clinic, your friend sits in a row of chairs beneath a screen playing patriotic music videos. She has breast cancer. She needs a scan that the restructured healthcare plan doesn’t cover. She’s been waitlisted,triaged by medical necessity and civic standing, the nurse explained. Her file was marked for delayed discretionary services.

She laughs when she tells you this. But it’s not a laugh that means anything is funny.

The clinic has been renamed The Vital Nation Wellness Center. The old name is still visible on the brick facade,you can see the outline where the letters used to be, like a ghost sign advertising something that no longer exists.

You bring her soup. You sit with her in the waiting room that smells like industrial disinfectant and fear. You talk about movies, the weather, anything except the fact that her treatment depends on a bureaucratic algorithm that factors in her voting record, her social media activity, her family’s immigration status.

You do not mention that you looked it up. You do not mention that you know how the scoring works. You do not mention that you’ve started curating your own digital footprint, just in case.

The School and the Library

At school, the librarian has taken down the banned books list. Not because the bans were lifted,because there are no books left to ban. The shelves have been curated. The curriculum has been “streamlined.” History is now Civics Heritage.Literature is now Values Based Reading. Science is now Natural Order Studies.

Civics Heritage starts in 1776 and ends in 1955. There are no protests in the textbook. No unions. No civil rights movement. No Vietnam War. No Watergate. No AIDS crisis. The past has been smoothed over like spackle on a wall,clean, colorless, structurally unsound.

You know the teacher’s real opinions. You went to college together. You’ve seen her Facebook posts from before she locked down her account. But she has a mortgage. A badge and a gun she wears on school property. A husband who’s been “spoken to” at work. She shrugs when you ask about the new materials. She says, “We’re just following guidelines.”

You both nod. You both understand.

The Workplace and Church

At work, there’s a new HR policy. New language to memorize. Patriotic compliance. Protected values.Cultural coherence. No one defines them. Everyone nods. You pretend not to notice that the woman who used to wear a hijab no longer does. You pretend not to notice who stopped coming to meetings, whose desk has been quietly cleared out, whose name has been removed from the directory.

The company newsletter features a new section: Spotlight on Civic Engagement. It profiles employees who volunteer with approved organizations, who attend sanctioned community events, who embody the “values alignment” that the company now prioritizes in performance reviews.

You submit your volunteer hours at the food bank. You do not mention that half the people in line are waiting for their asylum hearings. You do not mention that the food bank’s funding was cut last month, that they’re now partnered with a faith based organization that requires prayer before meals.

You still go to church. Not every Sunday, but enough to be seen. The sermons have grown less specific. There is still talk of grace, of justice, but the words float now,abstract and careful. You no longer hear the poor named, the imprisoned, the stranger. The language has been sanitized, made applicable to everyone, which is to say it applies to no one.

The choir sings louder. You hold hands during prayer. You do not say what's in your heart.

You are learning that community, too, can be a performance. That fellowship can exist without truth. That sometimes the price of belonging is a silence that grows inside you until you forget what your voice used to sound like.

V. The Forgetting

You forget things now. Not in the way that age forgets,the lost keys, the missed appointment, the name that sits just out of reach. This is a different kind of forgetting. A systematic dulling of emotional recall. A protective flattening of memory’s sharp edges.

You remember that a bill passed last month, but not what it did. You remember that someone protested last week, but not what for. You remember that something terrible happened at the border, but you cannot summon the city, the faces, the exact shape of the cruelty.

The details don’t stick. Not because they’re unimportant,because they’re constant. Because your nervous system has adapted to a baseline of horror. Because your attention has become a muscle that can no longer flex.

You weren’t always like this. There was a time when each new atrocity cracked something open in you. When your throat tightened at the sound of children crying through chain link fences. When you couldn’t sleep after reading a court decision. When your hands trembled while writing a check to an organization trying to stem the flood.

Now you skim. Now you share. Now you scroll past.

You still care, but it’s a shapeless caring. Untethered from action. Unmoored from consequence. You feel like a person walking underwater,everything visible, everything distorted, everything slow.

You talk to your therapist about the numbness. About the feeling that you’re playing the role of a person who still believes in things. She nods. She says it’s common now. She says she’s seeing it more and more.

You ask if this is what trauma looks like.

She pauses. Then says, “It’s what adaptation looks like.”

You sit with that. You realize your rage is still there, somewhere beneath the convenience and the fear and the anesthetic of routine. You want to find it again. You want to feel something sharp. You want to remember who you were before the flattening taught you to forget.

But you also realize that forgetting might be the only way to survive. That remembering everything might be the luxury of people who don’t have to live through it.

VI. The Social Theater of Normalcy

There’s a phrase people use now, mostly online, mostly with weary irony: “We live in a society.”

It used to be a joke. Now it feels like a curse. A bitter acknowledgment of how much is broken and how thoroughly we pretend otherwise. The pretending is constant. The pretending is required. The pretending is what keeps you employed, housed, safe.

You smile when you order your coffee. You make small talk with the delivery driver. You say “have a blessed day” to the man checking your ID at the courthouse entrance. You keep your voice level when your child asks why there are more soldiers at the mall this week. You say it’s for safety. You don’t say from whom. You don’t say that you’re not sure who’s being protected and who’s being contained.

At the holiday party, someone tells a joke. Not a cruel one, not outright. Just coded enough to test the room, to see who laughs, who doesn’t, who laughs too hard. You laugh. Not because it’s funny but because it would be more dangerous not to. Because silence is noticeable. Because you’ve learned which laugh says I’m safe and which laugh says I’m watching you.

This is how it works now. It’s not that people believe the lies. It’s that they believe believing them is easier. Safer. More convenient than the alternative.

Everyone performs stability. Everyone says things are getting back to normal, though no one defines what normal is or whether it was ever good.

Normal is the woman next door who no longer speaks to you since you forgot to put up a flag last Fourth of July. Normal is the man at work who keeps a Restore Order sticker on his laptop and watches you too closely during video calls. Normal is the app that tracks your location “for emergency purposes” and sends you notifications about “security events” in your area. Normal is the friend who stopped posting anything political and now only shares recipes and pet photos. Normal is the silence that fills the space where courage used to live.

In the checkout line, you stand behind a mother trying to explain to her toddler why their cousin can’t come home from school today. You listen. You do not interrupt. You do not help. You do not look away. You want to say something,anything but your throat is thick with calculations, with the weight of what you could lose.

You have been trained out of interruption. You have been trained into performance. You are a citizen. You are cooperative. You are calm.

You smile at the cashier. You take your bag. You walk out into the daylight that feels thinner than it used to, less nourishing, like milk that’s been watered down.

VII. The Flattening at Its Most Intimate

This is how you survive: You stay quiet. You comply. You try not to become the story. You hope your small kindnesses, invisible as they are, will be enough. You tell yourself your silence is strategic. You tell yourself it’s temporary. You tell yourself everyone is doing their best under impossible circumstances.

The coffee still brews in the morning. The trash is still collected on Tuesdays. The power grid still holds, mostly. There are still birthdays and anniversaries and mornings when the light hits the kitchen counter just right. There is still the weight of your child’s head on your shoulder, the smell of oranges in winter, the sound of your partner humming while they wash dishes.

This is the flattening at its most intimate: the way ordinary love persists inside the machinery of cruelty. The way human tenderness survives while institutions crumble. The way you can hold your family close while your country falls apart, and both things can be true at the same time.

You tuck your children into bed. You read them stories about brave princesses and talking animals and worlds where problems can be solved with kindness. You do not read them the news. You do not tell them about the children in cages, the families torn apart, the future that is being stolen from them while they sleep.

You say goodnight. You turn off the light. You close the door.

You pour yourself a glass of wine. You sit in the dark. You try not to think about what you’re teaching them by your silence, by your compliance, by your careful navigation of a world that demands you choose between your safety and your conscience.

You dream of nothing. You wake up tired. You make breakfast. You drive to work. You answer emails. You attend meetings. You buy groceries. You pay bills. You live.

And in the living, in the endless daily performance of normalcy, you discover something you did not expect: that you can lose a country and still love your family. That you can watch democracy die and still find pleasure in small things. That you can be complicit in atrocity and still be, in the narrow circle of your own life, a good person.

This is the final flattening: the discovery that most of history is made by people who thought they were doing their best, who loved their families, who told themselves they had no choice.

You are not the hero of this story. You are not the villain either. You are something more ordinary and more terrible: you are the person who learned to live with it.

You make dinner. You help with homework. You watch a movie. You go to bed.

Tomorrow you will wake up and do it again.

The machinery will hum. The system will function. The flattening will continue.

And you will live inside it, as you have learned to live inside it, with the particular grace of people who have discovered that love is not enough to stop the world from breaking, but it is enough to keep them breathing while it breaks.

This is how it ends: not with revolution or resistance, but with adaptation. Not with a bang or a whimper, but with the quiet efficiency of a people who have learned not to expect more than they can safely hope for.

You turn off the lights. You lock the doors. You set the alarm.

You sleep the sleep of the adjusted, the compliant, the resigned.

And in the morning, you wake up and begin again.

If you’ve made it through the trilogy, thank you. These essays weren’t written for speed or spectacle. They were written to name something we’re not supposed to say out loud: that the systems around us are teaching us not to care. Not all at once. Not violently. But through the slow erosion of instinct. Through procedures. Through policy. Through screens.

The Flattening Trilogy wasn’t planned. It emerged,piece by piece,from that quiet, daily dissonance. From the feeling that something essential had been dulled. That we were all moving through institutions, through headlines, through each other, without fully arriving.

This work takes time. It takes attention. It takes refusing to write like everything’s content. And if these essays have stayed with you,if they’ve helped name something you’ve felt but couldn’t say,I’m asking you to become a paid subscriber.

A paid subscription supports more work like this. It allows me to go deeper. To keep writing against the drift toward numbness. To stay with what hurts long enough to understand it. And to hold space for what still glimmers beneath the wreckage.

You don’t have to agree with everything I write. But if you believe in the value of moral clarity,of language that slows you down instead of speeding you up,I hope you’ll help sustain this work.

Become a paid subscriber.

If you already are: thank you. You’ve made this trilogy possible.

We are not helpless. We are not beyond repair.
We still get to decide what we notice.
And what we refuse to forget.

—Tom Joad