American View: Stop pretending everything is normal at work while the nation dies

Future of Work07 Dec 2025

The fourth calendar quarter has been absolutely awful this year in the USA. Amidst the insane “trade war” the American government launched on its own people, the deployment of military forces to our own city centres, our economy struggling like a crippled airliner, and a petulantly pointless government shutdown, most everyone I know is frazzled. I sure as hell am.

This situation came into focus for me just after lunch on Tuesday. I got a video message from my family’s favourite general contractor. We’ve been working with this fellow – let’s call him “Tony” – for almost ten years now. He and his crew have fixed everything from our floors to our roof and most of what’s in-between. Normally, Tony is irrepressibly upbeat and good humoured. He may take longer than other contractors to finish a job, but his work is meticulous and he always delivers what he promised. Can’t ask for better than that.

Anyway, Tony apologized in his video for not getting us his latest bid. He’s been slammed with work (a good thing) and distressed by the government’s virulent anti-immigrant (i.e., white suppremecist) policies. I get it! Tony is Hispanic, as are the majority of Texans. Even if Tony himself and his family are able to evade ICE’s Gestapo-inspired activities, he still has family, friends, coworkers, and neighbours to worry about. The unrelenting stress that accumulates from being subject to extrajudicial terrorism from untrained and zealous armed thugs is enough to take years off a person’s life.

I told Tony that his being late quoting a job was nothing in the grand scheme of things and not to worry about it. I told him that I understood how hard things are for most Texans right now. Everyone in my family has been feeling the stress; we all have people close to us that we worry about (to say nothing to the principles we live by that perceive these diet pogroms as anathema). Reality seems to be breaking down around us as the worst possible examples of humanity try to tear down everything our founders built after breaking away from the British Empire.

To be fair, it wasn’t so much a “great victory” as a “great annoyance” that exhausted the crown’s patience. “Fine! Have fun alone on your isolated continent!”

That’s the primary reason why I’ve been missing from the American View byline for the last two months. My last column posted here on 7th October. It’s not like I haven’t been writing for the past two months; rather, I’ve been typing tons of stress-fuelled drek. I’ve whipsawed from innocuous, non-political, business topics to incendiary screeds condemning the Junior Varsity Fascist club’s political antics. The rational and pragmatic half of my mind wants to remain “under the radar” (so to speak) and attempt to subtly calm the discourse so as to avoid being yoinked off the net. The other half of my mind – the louder half, if I’m honest – demands to go Full Berserker and rhetorically “bayonet charge” the architects of our downfall, consequences and decorum be dammed!

These two approaches are, obviously, irreconcilable. Rather than torture my poor editor with my radioactive screed drafts, I asked for – and was graciously granted – a short leave of absence from American View to get myself … well, not sorted. Sedated? Pacified? Arrested? I didn’t really have a clear plan. I just knew that the material I was banging out wasn’t good enough to meet our performance standards and might, as a side effect, give some diplomat an apoplectic fit.

It was Tony’s video message that helped me focus. I know that everyone around me is just as stressed out as I am (if not more) by the state of our crumbling world. Looking around my end of the street clockwise, we have a Chinese American family, a multigenerational Cajun household, a disillusioned Republican who’s joined the “Never Trump” camp, a California refugee family who turned their yard into a mini-farm, and a multigenerational Tongan family that cleans the area’s eateries every night. Ours is an unremarkable Texas neighbourhood; a little bit of everything. All our kids went to the same schools, played in the same sport leagues, learned to drive on the same crappy roads, and socialized every year at the Cajun folks’ crawdad boil. More importantly, every one of these families has been and is dealing with exactly the same emotions and stressors that we are.

“Who cares about your *#%$& holiday party, Karen? My kids just got deported to Greenland!”

No one in our neighbourhood is “safe” in any sense of the word here in Second-Rate Caeser’s AmericaTM. While none of us give a rat’s rump about the demolished East Wing of the White House, we’re all livid over the obliteration of laws, policies, and norms that make it not just possible but likely that some or all of us will see this administration’s goons’ violence directed at us and ours. It’s generally accepted as a matter of when, not if. The essential nature of a fascist(ish) government is that there must always be an existential threat that justifies its extreme measures and suspension of civil liberties. Once the government eliminates one imagined threat, they must pivot all the accumulated bile, hate, and fear to another target. We’re all going to be in the firing line for something.

I say all this because the American View is and has always been a platform for talking about security, work culture, and human behaviour. Everything I’ve typed this afternoon wasn’t a spleen dump. ^[1].^[2] Rather, Edgar’s apology video – remember that? – reminded me just how much every adult I know is suffering a massive burden of stress. The news only gets worse with each passing day, while the possibility of turning things around dies a little more with every news cycle. The inexorable disintegration of our republic is crushing people’s spirits … and that despair follows us all to work every day.

We’re stressed. We’re weary. We’re bitterly disappointed in our failed institutions. We’re furious over our failed “safeguards” and pathetic elected representatives. We’re losing hope and accruing rage. None of this should be in any way surprising!

If you’re paying attention, you know that people affected like this carry all of that accumulated stress and fatigue with them to the cube farm or the factory floor, or the classroom. The world around us exhausts us; it burdens us like a rucksack stuffed to busting with burning manure. Of course our productivity is going to drop. Of course our attention to detail will atrophy. Of course our motivation will evaporate.

Expecting “normal” performance from people right now is as childishly unrealistic as expecting the insanity of the last ten years to simply “go away” after the Mid-Terms. This is a long-term threat to morale, production, good order, and discipline. It’s only going to end when we either throw off this nightmare or succumb to it.

Therefore, my call to action for all of you today is to show compassion. Even if you yourself are miraculously unbothered by the demise of the Great American Experiment, be conscientious towards your workers, peers, and subordinates who are feverishly preparing for the worst. I exhort you to demonstrate empathy, restraint, and kindness. That’s not political and it’s not going to draw the fascists’ attention your way. It’s safe … ish. As safe as anything can be under current conditions. More importantly, it’s merciful at a time when there’s little human decency to be found.

Simply refusing to surrender to the moment can be a revolutionary act in itself.

That’s what I tried to do in my reply to Tony’s video message this afternoon: I told him that we understood and would continue to stand by him. I asked him to take care of himself and his family first, and I reminded him he’s always our favourite contractor. Hopefully, when all this is sorted, we’ll see him again. Until then, all we can do is survive … and that’s nothing to apologize for.

^[1] I deleted those pages in editing.

^[2] You’re welcome.