Nation is exhausted and just plain worn out

This city and this country, are, in a word, exhausted.

The velocity of news in the Trump era has been unprecedented. The passions expressed in this period have few peers in history. The election left the country weary — and left just under half the voting public embittered. The United States is, quite simply, worn out.

There have been multiple explanations for the failure of President Donald J. Trump to win a plurality of the popular vote.

Maybe it was a smattering of things that conspired to boost former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to an apparent Electoral College victory to match his popular vote triumph.

But here is a separate explanation: Trump simply sapped a country that teetered on exhaustion before he began his presidential campaign.

Indeed, it is not simply Trump fatigue that plagues the country, and though the election is the indicator that historians will note, it is not the only one.

Americans are, of course, tired of hearing about politics. But they are also tired of their mobility being restrained, they are tired of their options being limited, tired of putting off, or constricting, even the sort of simple family gatherings that were unremarkable only 12 months ago. And a lonely Thanksgiving beckons, and eating alone is now joining “Bowling Alone.”

For this is a national Fannie Lou Hamer moment.

It was Hamer — a civil-rights activist beaten in a Mississippi jailhouse and, later, a leading figure in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that struggled for representation at the

Democratic National Convention in 1964 — who offered up, in a speech before the convention’s Credentials Committee, a phrase that made her famous and that captures this moment as well:

“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

So are we all. “Local and world events have brought out strong emotions and stressors this year, often one right after another,” Jennifer Wickham, a Mayo Clinic Health System behavioral health counselor in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, wrote in September.

“They include COVID-19, social distancing, quarantines, stay-athome orders, furloughs, job loss, masking, racial injustice, protests and demonstrations. There’s no question 2020 has been a year full of change and trauma.”

It’s not only an American condition, and it is not only electionoriented.

Hans Kluge, a regional director of the World Health Organization,

warned in October that what he called “COVID-19 fatigue” was rampant in Europe.

This exhaustion is both cause and consequence of contemporary political polarization.

“We all talk about polarization and divisiveness — it’s a mantra,” said Peter Stockland, a former editor of The Montreal Gazette who now produces a web magazine on the arts and culture called convivium.ca. “It’s like you in the United States are on a 17-hour car trip. You get snappish. You say things you ordinarily would not. The constant bombardment of politics that comes at us just wears us down. We get to the point where we just aren’t capable of making ordinary discernments.

“We have reached a level where this is a long journey through the night.”

Trump did not originate this sentiment. He only intensified it, sowing rage among his opponents, passion among his supporters. “We’ve had politics up to our ears, are gorged with it,” the presidential chronicler Theodore H. White wrote of the campaign between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter 40 years ago.

As Reagan used to say: You ain’t seen nothing yet.

There is no imminent antidote to this exhaustion.

Campbell believes if the notion the 2020 election was “stolen” takes hold, Trump supporters “may be exhausted, but will also be very angry.” The Pew survey showed that substantially more Republicans than Democrats described themselves as “worn out by the news.”

What to do? Wickham, the Mayo behavioral specialist, suggests Americans eat healthy diets, exercise and get enough sleep.

Then she adds one more: “Practice mindfulness to engage in the present moment.” All good advice — for the present moment.