I just figured out what living through Trump's presidency is starting to feel like for me.

[Tom Rinaldo]

Hell obviously, but there is something else, something sinister in a surreal sense. I just woke up having fallen asleep on the couch feeling as though I have become a prop consumed by Trump's ever expanding ego. Then it hit me. It's like we're living inside a Philip K Dick novel. And for those of you who are familiar with his writing, I'm thinking Ubik. It's like Trump has begun to permeate our reality, transforming it into something feverish that is an extension of himself.

This isn't a political analysis, it's emotional. And psychological in that mind dissolving way that PKD so uniquely captured. The half (or is is hyper) lucid thoughts of just returning to waking consciousness. And like a Dick novel, it's hard to be confident that one ever does awaken while living inside it. Holding our for election day, but Dick's characters are always hanging on to something also, until the floor of reality caves in on them again.

For those who are not immediately familiar with Philip K Dick, he is the Sci Fi author who wrote the books and stories that Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and the Man in the High Castle are based on. But I am thinking Ubik here, or the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch... That is all for now. Hopefully

[RHMerriman]

1. My first thought was kidney stone, but yeah, a PKD novel works too...

My first thought was kidney stone, but yeah, a PKD novel works too...

[Haggis for Breakfast]

5. Painful as Hell

Enough to drop the strongest among us to the floor.

Welcome to DU

[RHMerriman]

23. Many thanks...

Happy to be here.

[elleng]

2. It's awful, and I can't let it go (even if I could)

because I have 3 young grand children.

[Rural_Progressive]

10. You nailed it!!

I've been very blessed in my life. If it ended tomorrow I could leave with a smile on my face but no, I can't leave because my daughter had a baby in April so now I'm in for the long haul.

There are days when that does not make me happy. As someone who's spent a lot of his life promoting sustainable agriculture I've been banging my head on a wall for most of my time here.

But you can't quit when you when you bear some responsibility for another two generations being on this earth.

[C_U_L8R]

3. It would be a hell of a horror movie

Maga ghouls and their decaying orange overlord. Boo!

[Haggis for Breakfast]

4. I think you're onto something here . . .

[ooky]

6. Its like a bad dream that has you going in circles all night until you finally wake up

exhausted.

[lunasun]

7. Holy crap that is as creepy as the trump era has become

And I was just getting ready to go to sleep

[sprinkleeninow]

8. Yes, it's like when you have a substantial temp/fever and you

experience delirium.

Stupid disconnected nonsensical stuff plays in your mind over and over and over, and then you finally awake exhausted.

[Nasruddin]

9. Ubik

[Tom Rinaldo]

11. Yep. Great novel, horrific reality n/t

[FSogol]

12. Perfect call. n/t

[zentrum]

13. Good analogy. It is like that.

[UTUSN]

14. Dread, anxiety every day - for me

[Nitram]

15. Yes, Tom, we are definitely experiencing a Dickensian Dystopia.

A world-wide nuclear, biological, or chemical disaster is all we need to send us into a permanently underground existence.

[Tom Rinaldo]

17. If we had the technology ready a significant number of humans would be scrambling

to colonize other planets right about now.

I've loved PKD since I was a teen, but I never wanted to live in the worlds he described. Nixon came more than close enough for me.

[Nitram]

19. I read 15 or so of his novels when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa. There were

thousands of paperbacks of every genre in circulation among the 280 volunteers in Liberia, and Dick was one of the authors I discovered there. He doesn't do much with character, or even plot, but his IDEAS are pure genius. That's why his novels make good movies. He left a lot of room for character and plot development by screenwriters.

[Tom Rinaldo]

20. Yep. Each of his writings has a dozen or so wild concepts embedded in the "main plot"

that another author would have used as the primary theme of the story or novel. With Dick they seem to fly by seen just in the corner of your eye, while he madly takes you somewhere else. I marvel at those small details. I remember one work (not by name unfortunately) where the protagonist gets bombarded by tiny robotic insects that fly up to his ear to deliver personalized commercials as he walks down the street. Now that concept familiar, but this was before the internet. And it had virtually nothing to do with his main plot - just a throwaway detail.

[Nitram]

21. Good point. One novel could supply the theme for 5 different movies. Or more.

[ehrnst]

16. It's pretty much what people of color, and to some extent women, have lived through for centuries.

It's the experience becoming an adult and realizing in full what you are up against.

Welcome to the nightmare.

[Tom Rinaldo]

18. In terms of real life consequences, and justified paranoia, absolutely

I don't know if you've read Dick, but the aspect of a malevolent expanding ego encompassing and dissolving predetermined reality has a very specific Dickonian flavor to it.

[HAB911]

22. Yep, I made even madder

by the fact this is consuming 2+ years of my life and many old friends

Calculation: It's worth it because there is no other alternative