By the end of May 2023, the national mood was exhaustion. Crisis after crisis had drained public attention. Inflation, shootings, political theater, erosion of rights—it all blurred into fatigue. That exhaustion was not incidental. It was cultivated.
Authoritarian systems thrive on overwhelming the public with stimuli. Too many crises at once create paralysis. People retreat, tune out, or choose selective focus just to survive. This diffusion of outrage is itself a political weapon. The more exhausted the public becomes, the easier it is to slip consequential changes into the background.
May 2023 offered a clear example. While headlines tracked the debt ceiling standoff, other measures advanced almost unnoticed: state rollbacks on reproductive rights, new barriers on voting, bills aimed at restricting public education. Each one significant. Each one capable of reshaping civic life. But in the haze of fatigue, their passage barely registered.
Exhaustion also undermines solidarity. People who might otherwise mobilize together become isolated, each too consumed with their own corner of crisis to connect the dots. Fragmentation is power’s oldest ally. If the public can be made to feel that resistance is futile—or simply too tiring—the outcome is already decided.
Yet exhaustion is not destiny. Throughout history, moments of deepest fatigue have also given rise to breakthroughs. The reason is simple: when people grasp that disengagement is surrender, fatigue becomes intolerable. Action becomes the only way to reclaim agency. The test is whether society recognizes exhaustion for what it is—not a natural condition, but a manufactured strategy.
By May 2023, the question was no longer whether Americans could endure the barrage. They already had. The question was whether they would see through the strategy of exhaustion itself, and refuse to cede their future in the haze of fatigue.