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What’s Driving Us Insane?
By Howard Bloom
Today’s world is driving some of us insane. Why? The realities we take for granted are heaving beneath our feet.
For example, many believe that standard ethical and moral norms have been swallowed by a sinkhole. On May 14th, the president openly used his Saudi trip to make business deals for his family. Those deals included three trump towers, three trump golf courses, and one trump hotel. Where? In Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and, of course, Saudi Arabia.
According to the old norms, that’s bribery, influence peddling, self-dealing, and abuse of office. According to the president, it’s the art of the deal.
The Constitution is supposed to define our political norms. The emoluments clause says that no officer of the United States “shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” So Democrats are driven crazy by the fact that our president has just accepted a $400 million flying palace, a luxury Boeing 747, from the Emir of Qatar. A 747 with “marble-clad bathrooms, a grand staircase, multiple lounges, boardrooms, and a bedroom suite.” In other words, the biggest emolument this nation has ever seen.
Then there’s another crazy-maker. A social group defines itself by its choice of enemies. But we no longer know who our enemies are. Which side are we on, Russia or Ukraine? The Saudi Arabians and the Palestinians, or the Israelis? J.D, Vance, when he addressed the 2025 Munich Security Conference on February 14, implied that our enemies are our allies in NATO. Yes, according to Vance, our European NATO allies are our enemies! Thank god we all agree we have a problem with China
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Meanwhile, more things we have all come to depend on are being ripped away. Our ability to predict our daily lives is being threatened. The weather service that tells you and me whether or not we will need an umbrella when we leave the house in the morning has had its staff shrunk by 20%. And key systems like the Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters Database have been shut down. Which means that our ability to predict tornadoes and hurricanes with pinpoint accuracy is about to be degraded. Threatening American lives.
At the same time, our passenger planes seem to be falling from the skies. We’ve had 44 fatal aviation crashes so far this year killing 151. Then there are the disruptions at Newark Airport. Why? Our air traffic control system has a whopping 3,500 empty seats where there should be 3,500 experienced air traffic controllers. That’s why there have often been only three radar controllers in the tower at Newark Airport when there should be fourteen. Despite this, in February, DOGE cut 400 staffers from the Federal Aviation Administration, which runs the Air traffic control system. Those fired staffers supported operations designed to guarantee your safety.
When it comes to norms we have taken for granted being shredded, shaken, stirred, and fried, our ability to tell what’s true and what’s not is being threatened. We are going nuts over what’s real information and what’s misinformation, what’s true news and what's fake news. Republicans believe the mainstream media is filled with lies. But many are convinced that the media on the right is the fountain of falsehoods.
Even our full-time arbiters of truth, our scientific institutions, are being torn apart. Not just by the administration and its chosen executioner, DOGE. But by climate activists who insist that roughly 10% of the research done must conclude that the problem it studies is caused by man-made climate change.
In addition, the department of Health and Human Services no longer feeds us conclusions based on science. It feeds us conclusions based on whim. For example, the universal flu vaccine Robert F. Kennedy announced on May 1st that he would pursue is old fashioned and is weaker than modern vaccines, less targeted, and harder to produce in the quantities that you and I would need in a pandemic.
What’s more, If we ever run into truly hard times and lose our money, the health insurance system that would give us medical treatment—Medicaid—is in danger of disappearing.
Even our money is shifting in value. It has lost 25% of its power to purchase gold since January.
Heck, we can’t even be sure our jobs will be secure. JP Morgan says that the odds of diving into recession are a disturbing 60%.
And our jobs are being altered by A-I. A-I is taking over the simple, repetitive posts like executive assistant, receptionist, and customer service. And the jobs that are holding firm allow you and me to do the work of two people using A-I tools that give us superpowers. But even in A-I, there’s reason to go crazy. Ethicists tell us these tools could destroy humanity.
Fact is, I use four A-Is, and they are blissfully helpful. One of them is a Bloom Bot, an A-I clone of me. And I’m going to give my A-I clone the last word. “Madness,” it says, “is just evolution’s prelude to magnificence.”
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