The dress was white with gold stripes. At least I think it was.

I know some people said it was blue with black stripes, but I saw white and gold.

You know what I am talking about… That viral sensation from several years ago involving a simple picture of a dress in a department store. All over the world, friends and family shared the pic and playfully debated whether it was white with gold stripes or blue with black stripes. It seemed like the split was right down the middle too; half of us seeing one color scheme and half seeing the other.

Despite this division, it was just a harmless, fun meme and the worst that maybe came from it were a few of those playful debates getting a little too heated. Yet, at the time of the picture’s viral spike, I remember feeling that the whole episode was trying to tell us more…

Even though it was just a picture of a dress, we quite literally “looked at things differently” (as so many like to say at the end of a debate). Millions of people observed the same picture yet didn’t see the same dress.

This stuck with me.

And not for the inbetweenist rationale that “there is probably a little truth to both”, because that explanation for anything is devoid of substance and, in this case, is simply wrong. The dress isn’t a little bit of both colors, it is one or the other.

I wasn’t taking a deep dive into the metaphysical, either; wondering if the dress was both simultaneously blue and white. Light doesn’t sometimes refract off the dress blue and then sometimes white, the dress is either blue or white.

No, this stuck with me because it meant that half of us were physically unable to receive and interpret the true colors of that dress.

It was later revealed that there was a simple, scientific explanation for this phenomenon. Cataracts, colorblindness, or various other eye diseases affect around 50% of the global population (whether they are diagnosed and treated or not) and these can lead to disabilities that impact one’s capacity to consume some colors. The lighting in the picture combined with the colors of the dress resulted in an image that sat right on the ocular degenerative edge, and exposed weaknesses that half of us suffer from.

Some of us couldn’t see the truth.

But what if it isn’t only this dress? What about other more meaningful things? Things that are incredibly complex and politically charged — things like the economy, international relations, or managing a global pandemic… The differences in these issues are not as pronounced as color variation but instead nuanced, and often part of a larger strategy or narrative. These types of things require context and diligent analysis to fully understand and form an opinion about.

Perhaps there are further limitations or disabilities – beyond the ocular nerve – that make it difficult for some of us to properly consume these types of complex truths. Maybe it’s not just that some people disagree on certain issue, that they are ill-informed or willfully ignorant, but there is a chunk of us who are physically incapable of receiving and interpreting information correctly.

It’s easy enough to isolate and explore why some of us were not able to process the color of a dress, and after all, it is just a dress. Despite its inconsequence, however, this episode might indeed have been telling us more…

It might’ve been showing us why the country (and even the world to a certain degree) are diametrically opposed on nearly every issue. Perhaps some of us lack the ability to process things correctly and simply cannot see the other side.

Maybe some are physically incapable of seeing blue or red?

Let’s just hope there isn’t something that exposes our own shortcomings; something that takes us to the societal degenerative edge.

This is the Story of a Hurricane

None of the experts saw it coming. But, then again, they weren’t really watching.

Despite the optimism and blue skies that most seemed to see, there was a storm brewing. Opposing pressure systems, fueled by the nearly boiling waters below, were on a collision course and nobody conceived the scale and scope of damage that would be done.

Even those that did sense a storm was coming expected it to be tame and controllable. Like it always was. There would be some light property damage, perhaps schools and jobs go on hold for a couple of days, then life returns to normalcy. They didn’t expect it to be as destructive and relentless as it really was. They didn’t expect such a loss of life.

They were all wrong about the hurricane. And this isn’t about a weather system…

I’m talking about the 2016 Presidential election.

We all know the peculiarities of the actual election results. Most of the pollsters were wrong; with something like 95% of polls projecting a Clinton victory all the way up to and including election day. A Trump victory required the perfect combination of certain voter blocs streaming his way and others not turning out for Clinton in critical swing states.

And it happened. Trump won. And we all remember the subsequent four years filled with anger, rhetorical vitriol and major stories (or scandals) that dominated headlines. We remember the hurricane.

But what’s curious is that the storm still hadn’t taken its shape when the 2016 election results became official. The conditions were there, sure. The waters below were boiling with mistrust and animosity towards those that viewed politics and life differently. The high-pressure system of progressivism and the low-pressure system of traditional, white America were converging on one another. The victors in history’s record books were changing. Still, though, as the results rolled in on election night 2016 the winds weren’t yet at category-1 levels, and the cyclone hadn’t taken form.

There was a moment, too, when it seemed like it might not ever take form. On election night itself Trump took to the stage and delivered perhaps the most humble and inclusive speech of his career. He went hat-in-hand to the American people and asked them to stop with the vitriol. He promised to be a president for all citizens and that bipartisanship would be a hallmark of his presidency. Even in the weeks following the election, during the transition period, Trump seemed to genuinely revere his position and it appeared he would take the responsibility of the office seriously. He even asked his supporters to show that same humility and willingness to work together with all Americans.

Then, something happened… it all turned on a dime and by inauguration day, the blue skies changed to grey. The eye formed and the hurricane made a line for our shores. It was coming for us now and there was nothing we could do about it.

Nobody really knows what made it all change. Some have speculated that something in the transition process flipped a switch for Trump, others posited that he never really meant anything he said leading up to that point and after a short period of lip service we got the real Trump. Whatever the reason, something happened in that time between election night and inauguration and it changed the disturbance from tropical storm to full-on hurricane.

The hurricane made landfall on inauguration day. The first signs of storm surge were when former Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed that the Trump inauguration was the largest in American history – when it very clearly wasn’t. Photographic evidence from numerous sources showed that the crowds were nowhere near Obama’s or even Bush’s inauguration. Still, Spicer trotted out in front of the world and made statements that everyone (including some Trump supporters) knew were lies. He accused anyone that called out his lies as unamerican or partisan. He told us that the pictures were fake and not to believe what we saw.

Still, most of us knew he was lying. Most of us knew that he knew he was lying.

But some of us didn’t. Some of us looked at pictures that couldn’t possibly be conceived as a larger audience and still believed it was the biggest ever.

The true, red-blooded #MAGA Trump supporters. His base.

After the fact, any real and earnestly collected counts of attendees were brushed aside with either obtuse clarifications or narrative alterations by the Trump administration. And his supporters believed those too. Some, to this day, will say it was the largest inauguration audience ever.

And when Trump saw this, he realized it was all he needed.

This process became the modus operandi of his presidency: 1) Make any false statement so long as it paints Trump in a good light; 2) Yell and scream about how true it is and anything to the contrary is a lie; 3) Move on and repeat, the news cycle will go to the next lie after about 24-hours anyways.

The hurricane raged.

Trump doesn’t care if he’s eventually proven wrong or caught in a lie. By staying ahead of the narrative and instilling the belief in his followers that everything other than what he says is a lie, the obtuse clarifications and narrative amendments become his truth. The explanations after his lies are somewhat believable because to his base, the other side is probably lying too and the excuse is good enough. It allows for the notion of an altruistic, behind-the-scenes Trump. One who maybe needs to lie or embellish publicly, as a strategy for accomplishing things privately.

The diehard Trump supporters are indifferent to his lies when he tells them and don’t care about any objection after the fact.

But suppose his supporters did care… Or, more precisely, they would care if they were able to see the lies, but they just couldn’t. What if they were physically incapable?

Maybe, much like the blue/white dress, it’s not just that some of us have a different perspective, or that we interpret Trump differently than the next person. It might be that some of us are only able to see Trump in a certain way.

This would put us in quite the precarious position, as a country. It means that we might not just be divided ideologically or philosophically, but at deeper levels.

The divergence in these pressure systems might be psychological, or even physiological.

I was Born in a Crossfire Hurricane

In the 1990s and early 2000s there was a significant spike in heroin use in the United States. Like any drug epidemic there were a myriad of reasons for it, but, also like others, it was mostly a matter of microeconomics. Supply and demand.

There has been a lot of study into those other reasons, though. Specifically, into the generational correlation with drug addiction outbreaks. Work has been done focusing on the type of drug that takes off during an epidemic, and how the circumstantial effects of events that occur during the lives of people in certain generations dictate the drug of choice.

For whatever reason, as some Baby Boomers and old Gen X’ers hit the prime drug using ages of 18-40 during the 1990s, they got really, really into heroin.

What is interesting about this is that heroin is an opioid, and users often bounce back-and-forth between injecting themselves with liquid heroin and taking opioid’s in pill form. Prescribed medications deliver a similar, but lighter effect and addicts pop pills while “clean” and use needles while “dirty”.

Following this outbreak, the heroin craze died down through the 2000s, but by the mid-2010’s the opioid problem reared its head once again. This time it was almost exclusively in synthetic, pill form; prescribed to the now retirement aged Boomers (and younger generations) for pretty much anything that hurt or worried them.

In 2013, prescription rates for opioids were 40% higher in the United States than the rest of the developed world. Peaking at 58 opioid prescriptions per 100 Americans in 2017. In that same year, over 70,000 Americans died of opioid overdose.

One in four people prescribed synthetic opioid medication develop a long-term addiction.

The effects of opioid addiction on those who don’t ultimately overdose are wide ranging but almost always permanent… Specifically, there is neurological damage that can lead to bouts of confusion, chronic drowsiness and loss of critical thinking skills.

Those side-effects probably make it difficult for an addict to cogently think through something they read or hear. They likely don’t consider different perspectives nor multiple contexts.

It would make it difficult for them to determine if someone was lying.

The Eye

That dress, as simple as it was, was trying to tell us more… It was signaling that a difference in ocular degeneration was just the first crosswind of a larger storm to come. Two large systems, so divided on social, political and even physiological levels, were turning face and poised to crash into one another.

No matter what happens in the 2020 election, whether Trump stays in office, leaves or protests the results, there will still be two conflicting pressure systems. There will be two sections of our population that “see things differently” and one of those groups might not be able to see anything else.

The hurricane churns.