You have been gripping the safety bar of the daily news cycle, white-knuckling your way through the state fair of American politics. It is time to exhale and let gravity take over.
Perhaps you thought the sudden, stomach-emptying loss of altitude was something to be feared. You step onto the platform, clutching your overpriced spun sugar, breathless with the anxiety of the modern news consumer. You see the Trump approval rating roller coaster looming over the Great American State Fair, and your immediate instinct is to tense up. Stop it. I have noticed a deeply unchic tendency among your generation to resist the plummet. When late-night hosts like Jimmy Fallon announced this attraction featured the biggest drop in history, you likely braced for impact. You should be softening into it.
The obsession with upward trajectory is so terribly last season. We are entering an era of unapologetic descent, and your refusal to surrender to the free-fall of the executive branch's polling numbers is creating visible tension in your jawline. Consider Brenda, a ceramicist from Asheville. She used to obsessively refresh the crosstabs, tightening her core with every demographic alienated by the administration. Now? She simply throws her hands in the air at the apex of the historic drop and lets the wind peel the moisturizer right off her face. The sheer velocity of the disapproval rating is exfoliating if you simply let it wash over you.
The architects of this experience understood exactly what they were doing. They built a ride that mirrors the sudden, plunging sensation of reading a morning push notification, but packaged it as leisure. By clinging so desperately to the lap bar of democratic norms, you are denying yourself the sublime relief of hitting rock bottom at seventy miles per hour.
If you are fighting the G-force of a historic polling collapse, you are completely missing the somatic release of the ride.
So the next time you find yourself strapped into the rattling cart of the American political apparatus, inching toward the precipice of a historically unprecedented approval deficit, do not scream. Do not check to see if your harness is locked. Simply purchase an overpriced niche hydration beverage, close your eyes, and allow the absolute floor to fall out from under you. Lean into the void. It is the only way to glow.