No radio on in the car. Television only to watch the new second season of “The Diplomat” on Netflix and old seasons of “The Morning Show” on Apple TV. Instead of reading the front page of The Times, I go directly to Spelling Bee, and frequently stay there all day (not to brag, but I’ve gotten to Queen Bee level multiple times, and never give up before at least reaching Genius level).

      In other words, I’ve tuned out.

      I can’t bear to watch or hear or read the news. I can’t stomach each new outrage, each Orwellian appointment, each more outrageous reminder that the world is and will be different and awful. Most of all, I can’t bear to hear that voice or see that smirk.

      Apparently, I’m not alone.

      According to The Times—and yes, I did break the rule to see this—many liberals are tuning out the news. News addicts, the article said, “are quitting cold turkey.”

      It’s understandable, particularly for our generation.

      After so many years of trying to improve things—the years of marching in the streets against the Vietnam War, of rallying for civil rights, of signing petitions and donating money and knocking on doors and phone-banking and working for more justice, more equality, more freedom and acceptance—like many, I wonder what did it get us all?

      I feel exhausted and more than disheartened to see where we are after all that effort.

      We are not just back at square one. We are way behind square one if there is a behind. We are worse than Bush the Younger and Reagan and Nixon. Despite all our work and hope, this is indeed where we are.

      The prospect of a second Trump administration, with all the anticipated chaos, all the corruption, all the unraveling of what had felt, for a time at least, like some progress, now feels just like too much. Like many in the Times article, I feel “drained, exhausted, resigned, ready to choose a plaintive ignorance.”

      The exhaustion seems widespread. No one’s talking now about a million-person march on Washington. The organizers of the major protest planned around Trump’s second inauguration filed a permit application projecting about 50,000 participants, roughly five percent of the 2017 Women’s March.

      I know—I hope—this will pass. I believe I will get back to reading and listening and watching and consuming the news. And using that knowledge to work for what I believe. I know that, as David Remnick of The New Yorker puts it, “One of the perils of life under authoritarian rule is that the leader seeks to drain people of their strength. A defeatism takes hold. There is an urge to pull back from civic life.”

      But indifference, he adds, is “a form of surrender.”

      So, yeah, I know we can’t give in to that. But at this point in our long lives, at this point after all the time and work, like many of us, I just need a break.  

      I wish I knew how long this break is going to be.