Ignore the professional LARPers, paid trolls, political party propaganda outlets, and social media junkies and everything seems pretty normal.
The 3.4 million American citizens living in Puerto Rico probably don’t feel like everything is normal. The president has mocked them as lazy, criticized them for straining the budget, made a joke (Christ, I hope it was a joke) that all the money being spent is a loan that Puerto Rico will have to repay, etc.
Things probably don’t seem normal for a lot of our allies. Trump has pledged to decertify our nuclear arms deal with Iran, despite the fact that virtually his entire cabinet is begging him to stop. Trump says he wants to decertify the deal because he doesn’t like it, but that’s not how deals work. Once you enter into an agreement, you have to abide by it. If you routinely break your agreements, why would anyone ever enter into an agreement with you? This kind of behavior could damage our ability to negotiate with other countries for decades.
Things probably also don’t seem normal for the 20-30 million Americans whose health insurance premiums are about to go up by 25% because the president defunded ACA cost-sharing payments for no discernible reason. Cutting the payments will increase the deficit, and make life worse for tens of millions of Americans. The only reason I can see for this is that the President wants to undo all of his predecessor’s accomplishments, even if his changes make things objectively worse.
Then we get into bizarre things. I don’t remember previous presidents feuding with sports teams, saying that Neo-Nazis were “very fine people,” nominating a drug czar who was deeply involved in the opioid crisis, or any number of other things that are unimaginable from any other president. None of this is normal.
The only things that are normal are things which generally change slowly. The economy is still strong, unemployment is low, gas is cheap, and the stock market is high. Some of that has to do with big investors and companies expecting hefty tax cuts. Should that plan fail (at least one senate republican has come out against the current tax plan, so they can only afford 1 more defector) then I think we’re going to see a sea change amongst investors and employers.
Not to say the market won't revert.
But it feels hysterical to declare that "everything is crazy."
For comparison, we had hurricanes, presidential scandals, yada yada in the late 1990s.
Well, yes, and then we had a recession right after the late 90s. Is your comparison supposed to be reassuring?
Do you think that in Bill Clinton's second term "everything was crazy?"
(I mean, maybe not everything, but not everything is crazy now.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0
I’m not sure if every bull has to end with a crash. Perhaps it just peters out?
From about 1965 to 1982, the market had basically 0% return. There were no big crashes (except for 1973), but the market simply "petered out" for about 20 years. On an inflation-adjusted basis, someone who started investing in 1965 wouldn't have broken even until 1995.