One of the features of “It’s Always 9/11” is the “Ticker Tape of Terror”. On one level this is literal, referring to the litany of bad news that runs on a ticker tape below the smiling television newscaster, varying in content but consistent in its message of fear. On another level, it is more amorphous and all encompassing, evident to anyone who’s ever “doomscrolled” down their news feed.

With the demise of print news, I’ve grown acutely aware of the overarching nature of this bad news, and the way it comes in waves. For a long time it was Covid, Covid, Covid. Relentless statistics of hospitalizations and deaths, possible symptoms, worldwide devastation. When certain restrictions were implemented, or re-implemented the emotional manipulation truly ramped up. We got articles about how people who find masking uncomfortable have psychopathic tendencies, the best masks to buy, “forever maskers”, the wonders of mRNA technology, how the grocery store is the most dangerous place you can be, how even small family gatherings could be super spreader events even shots from morgues or tapes of people in the last throes of dying from Covid. During these two years people died of heart attacks, of cancer, in droves from drug overdoses, alcoholism, and suicide, unphotographed, unreported. Stock phrases came and went. When “flatten the curve” no longer applied, it disappeared from the lexicon. We were told to “follow the science” until the science indicated a more nuanced perspective and then that phrase disappeared.

Then after two years, Covid abruptly disappeared from the headlines. Evidently, we were post pandemic. The new terror was the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Terrible as it was, it was only one of many conflicts around the globe and not exactly the first time a global power had invaded a small sovereign country. For a few weeks it was presented as the beginning of WWIII, atomic bombs about to drop, run for the bomb shelter. Meanwhile we could sign up for 24/7 news alerts and refuse Russian vodka.

Not to worry. The war in the Ukraine continues, with no lesser degree of damage, but only as backstory. The occasional mass shooting intrudes. A dash of monkeypox. Testimony that the President of the United States actively supported the armed insurrection on January 6, physically threatening his own Secret Service detail.

What happens to the forgotten stories? Does civil war continue in Syria? Are black people still being beaten by police? And oh yeah, climate change. Heat domes, floods, melting Antarctic ice, anyone?

What will be the next big story?

I vacillate between believing that shadowy powers that be are pushing their mysterious agenda and the more likely possibility that the ebbs and flows of the ticker tape of terror are non-ideological, largely the result of algorithms gone wild. Are new sources of terror introduced largely as novelty, ie people are bored with the old koolaid, let’s give them a new flavor? Do they garner more eyeballs, sell more advertising?

A population continually assaulted by a ticker tape of terror grows jaded. They want to live their lives after all, and not through a haze of fear. Twenty children shot in an elementary school. Oh, what a shame. The demise of our democracy? Scary. But nothing can be done. Thoughts and prayers. What’s for dinner?

One of the hallmarks of totalitarian takeover is a population that believes in nothing, trusts none of our institutions of media, law, science. That is the point we are at in our society, but we are not happy about it. We are anesthetized but do not want to be. We want to feel deeply, we want our lives to matter. A population that trusts in nothing will believe anything.