This Can’t Be Today | American Psychedelia & The Paisley Underground 1977 – 1988 | (Cherry Red) 2025

https://monocledalchemist.com/2026/04/25/this-cant-be-today-american-psych/

Civil Discourse – It’s The Cynicism – Joyce Vance

It’s The Cynicism

By Joyce Vance, Jan 17, 2026

It seems to be everywhere you look, across the political spectrum. Far too many people don’t believe in anything anymore. They’ve lost faith in everything: our institutions, our values, and even each other. We’ve become a country of cynics.

One of the first posts I saw this morning on social media was about a well-documented instance where a Minnesota family’s six children were hospitalized after their minivan filled with smoke and tear gas fired by federal agents. Below the news report, someone had dismissed it in the comments: “I don’t believe it.” That was it. No explanation, nothing that cast doubt on the reporting. Just a rejection.

A little bit further down, someone had written about diminishing confidence in the Justice Department. A commentator wrote, “Did anyone believe in that anyway?”

We have become a nation of skeptics, of cynics. We are jaded. It’s all around us.

In her essay, Truth and Politics, Hannah Arendt wrote, “The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.”

The President spews lies so constantly and so casually that it’s easy to understand how people can lose their bearings. It’s an assumption that Trump lies, not something unusual. That’s the President of the United States!

One manifestation of the lies we’ve become so inured to is the destruction of confidence in our elections. Trump has lied for so long about voter fraud, about non-citizens voting (the evidence does not back that claim up), about voting machines, about stolen elections, that it has permeated the national consciousness and even when people see through the lies, a miasma of distrust for the entire process remains. And of course, it’s not just elections.

Who benefits from a loss of faith in our institutions and in our ability to come out on the other end of this national nightmare with an intact republic? It’s not hard to see. It’s the man who enjoys upsetting the balance of power guarded by NATO because he wants to own Greenland. The man who tears down the East Wing. The man who won’t release the Epstein Files.

At this stage, Trump no longer cares if people believe his lies. He just needs the chaos they generate and the absence of shared truths, shared facts, in our country. People who can no longer discern what’s true from what’s false lose their moral compasses, like the agents who are now shooting at the people they took an oath to protect and serve. It all benefits a leader who wants to take authoritarian control of a democracy.

Giving up your belief in how things should be is dangerous.

I’m not suggesting everyone should have blind faith in our institutions, far from it at this point. But we need to be aware of what’s broken and needs mending without getting stuck on it. Instead of succumbing to cynicism, let’s stay focused on what we can do, even the small things.

Be kind, share joy. Register to vote and make sure everyone around you does, too. We know what this is going to take, but we have to stop the spread of cynicism around us. We’ve come too far in the last year to accept Trump’s success as inevitable.

In the coming week, we will mark the one-year anniversary of the second Trump administration. Find your own way to protest it. Donate to a food bank. Help a neighbor out, or help someone you’ve never met but have empathy for. Sign up to work at a polling place, or decide to run for office. There is so much that we can do. What we cannot afford to do is to let a man who thinks of no one but himself win.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: It’s The Cynicism – Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

It’s The Cynicism by Joyce Vance

Ep 14 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Epicureans, Cynics, and Stoics

https://videos.trom.tf/w/8WyQw32WtnCaLzGqKu1rMZ

"Research shows that even though our society tends to view a cynical viewpoint as smarter or even more moral, cynical people are worse at problem solving and cognitive tasks, worse at telling whether someone is lying, have measurably worse physical and mental well being, and are less likely to vote, protest, volunteer or otherwise take steps to make the world better."

via hope-for-the-planet

https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/how-to-make-a-difference-happily

#quotes
#cynics

Are you a #skeptic or a #cynic?

#Skeptics tend to be open-minded, comfortable #questioning their #assumptions, and willing to change their minds; #cynics tend to be #pessimistic and #assume the worst in people and events.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-three-minute-therapist/202410/are-you-a-skeptic-or-a-cynic

Time for twisted Christmas songs! These ain't necessarily anti-Christmas, but they definitely approach at an angle. Reply with yer own, or better yet, post it an' tag me!

https://youtu.be/tgFa3Kco9Kc?si=rnTd8geSVjy6JR-M

I love me some self-aware cynicism!

#christmas #happyholidays #cynics

Via the #LincolnProject @ 9:00pm EST on Aug 23, 2024

Anyone with any shred of #sanity escaped #Trump's circle long ago. All that's left are #crooks, #deviants, #cynics, and #weirdos...and they'll make up his second term cabinet.

Stop attacking #cynics when the #hope peddlers have continually sold you on the notion that things will get better, all while the world watches everything get worse. Cynics aren't breaking the world and they're the only ones that are going to give you an honest assessment.

Hell, hope has been promising handcuffs for 10 years.