Fear and Loathing in the American Living Room

Citizen Y sits on his sofa and feels his sickness. He is vaguely aware he is not well, but mostly this awareness is subconscious. He does not know that his disease is contagious. He does not even know that he has a disease per se, nor that he has had the disease for nearly six years. Citizen Y does not know that he will spread his infection to one of his coworkers tomorrow.

The television is on in Citizen Y’s living room. It’s Tuesday night at 11 pm. A news anchor tells him that the world is closer to annihilation, as the Doomsday Clock now reads two minutes to midnight. This makes Citizen Y feel validated briefly, and subtly better.

Citizen Y’s mind burns slowly, and the hatred and the frustration and the ennui will soon culminate, and Citizen Y will feel a wave of true despair for the first time in his life. This will happen sixteen days from today. Citizen Y knows only that his sense of anxiety has risen steadily for some time, but he cannot parse the inputs and decipher a cause.

Citizen Y is nearly finished with his fifth beer of the evening. It’s a strong IPA, 8% alcohol by volume. Citizen Y tells himself that he is definitely not an alcoholic because he drinks only beer.

Citizen Y thinks of himself as a man of culture. Some of his coworkers have skin that is a different color than…