The World Under Trump: Your Anxiety Is Being Hijacked
And If You Don’t Learn to Control It… Someone Else Will
The World Under Trump: Your Anxiety Is Being Hijacked
And If You Don’t Learn to Control It… Someone Else Will
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #899: May 17th, 2026.
There’s a strange thing happening right now that millions of people feel… but very few understand.
People wake up tired before the day even begins.
They check headlines with the same nervous anticipation gamblers feel pulling a slot machine lever.
Another scandal.
Another executive order.
Another collapse.
Another warning.
Another prediction about democracy…the economy…AI…war…surveillance…violence… corruption…collapse..instability…disease…inflation…civil unrest…authoritarianism… social fragmentation…or the next thing waiting around the corner.
And the nervous system never fully resets.
Ever.
That’s the important part.
Because most people think anxiety comes from events.
It doesn’t.
It comes from unresolved anticipation.
From the feeling that danger may emerge at any moment… while simultaneously feeling powerless to orient yourself effectively…inside the uncertainty.
That combination is psychologically brutal.
And…if you don’t understand what’s happening to your nervous system right now…you can accidentally become a permanent hostage to the emotional climate of the age.
Which is exactly what many systems profit from.
Fear is profitable.
Confusion is profitable.
Disorientation is profitable.
An emotionally overwhelmed population becomes easier to manipulate…easier to exhaust…easier to fracture…easier to sell to…easier to radicalize…and easier to control.
That’s not conspiracy thinking.
That’s simply how human beings work.
And here’s the dangerous part:
Most people are trying to solve anxiety at the level of thought…while continuing to feed their nervous system a nonstop stream of uncertainty…outrage…doom…prediction…and emotional overstimulation.
That’s like pouring gasoline on yourself….while reading books about fire prevention.
It doesn’t work.
So let me give you a framework that may fundamentally change how you experience the world from this point forward.
Anxiety Is Often A Prediction Addiction
Most anxiety is not happening in the present moment.
Read that again.
It is happening in an imagined future.
Your nervous system is rehearsing scenarios.
“What if this happens?”
“What if they do this?”
“What if everything gets worse?”
“What if nobody stops it?”
“What if I lose stability?”
“What if I’m not prepared?”
And the brain responds to vividly imagined danger almost as strongly as immediate danger.
That means your body begins living inside hypothetical futures as though they are already occurring.
Now multiply that by:
Doomscrolling
Algorithmic outrage
Political chaos
Social media acceleration
Economic instability
Nonstop alerts
Fear-based content ecosystems
…and you have millions of people trapped in chronic nervous system activation.
Not because danger is imaginary.
Some dangers are very real.
But because the brain loses the ability to distinguish between:
Informed awareness
And perpetual anticipatory catastrophe
That distinction matters enormously.
Your Nervous System Was Not Built For This Volume Of Input
Human beings evolved in relatively small environments.
Your ancestors were not psychologically processing:
Wars in five countries
700 political opinions a day
Economic predictions
AI fears
Climate warnings
Public scandals
Cultural collapse narratives
Conspiracy loops
Surveillance concerns
Algorithmic emotional manipulation
…all before breakfast.
Your nervous system was designed for acute threats.
Not permanent globalized psychological immersion.
But modern media ecosystems make money…by keeping you emotionally activated.
An activated person clicks more.
Consumes more.
Returns more.
Stays emotionally hooked longer.
So if you constantly feel overwhelmed, understand this:
Your nervous system may not be malfunctioning.
It may be overexposed.
The Most Dangerous Form Of Anxiety Is Helpless Anxiety
Fear itself is not always destructive.
Sometimes fear sharpens awareness.
Sometimes fear motivates preparation.
Sometimes fear keeps people alive.
But helpless anxiety is different.
Helpless anxiety occurs when:
Attention stays locked on threats
While agency disappears
That combination creates exhaustion…despair…learned helplessness…and…eventually emotional paralysis.
And…this is where many people are living right now.
They monitor collapse constantly…while feeling incapable of meaningful action.
That is not sustainable psychologically.
Which means one of the most important things you can do is restore agency.
Not fake optimism.
Not denial.
Agency.
The Goal Is Not “Feeling Safe”
This may surprise you.
But psychologically healthy people are not people who successfully eliminate uncertainty.
That’s impossible.
Life itself…is uncertain.
The economy is uncertain.
Politics are uncertain.
Health is uncertain.
Relationships are uncertain.
The future is uncertain.
Trying to eliminate uncertainty completely…is like trying to eliminate weather.
You cannot build emotional stability around permanent control. It can’t be done.
The healthier goal is something far more powerful:
Developing the ability to remain psychologically organized while uncertainty exists.
That changes everything.
Because now the question becomes:
“How do I function effectively despite instability?”
Not:
“How do I guarantee instability never arrives?”
One of those questions creates resilience.
The other creates endless anxiety.
Attention Is Psychological Nutrition
Whatever you repeatedly expose your mind to becomes psychologically amplified.
That’s not motivational fluff.
That’s neuroscience.
If your daily informational diet consists primarily of:
Outrage
Fear
Humiliation
Hopelessness
Panic
Collapse narratives
Catastrophic prediction
…your nervous system adapts accordingly.
You begin living in permanent vigilance.
And vigilance is exhausting.
Now I am not telling you to become uninformed.
That would be foolish.
What I am saying is this:
You must become intentional about the ratio between:
Information
Orientation
And activation
There is a difference between:
“I understand what’s happening…”
…and:
“My nervous system is drowning in nonstop threat stimulation.”
Many people…no longer know the difference.
Stop Confusing Vigilance With Preparation
This is one of the biggest psychological traps intelligent people fall into.
They believe constant monitoring equals control.
It doesn’t.
At a certain point, excessive monitoring becomes self-harm.
You do not become more prepared by emotionally marinating in catastrophe 14 hours a day.
You become depleted.
And depleted people make worse decisions.
Here’s what actually creates preparedness:
Clear thinking
Emotional regulation
Strategic awareness
Strong relationships
Physical health
Practical planning
Financial adaptability
Psychological flexibility
Panic rarely improves any of those.
Your Body Keeps The Score Of Your Information Environment
You cannot psychologically consume chaos endlessly without physiological consequences.
Eventually the body begins adapting to chronic stress exposure.
Sleep changes.
Breathing changes.
Attention changes.
Patience changes.
Memory changes.
Hope changes.
Relationships change.
Your nervous system begins expecting danger automatically.
And once that happens…even ordinary life starts feeling subtly threatening.
This is why emotional regulation is no longer optional.
It is survival infrastructure.
Calm Is Not Weakness
Some people unconsciously believe staying emotionally activated means they care more.
It doesn’t.
Constant panic is not moral superiority.
Constant outrage is not wisdom.
Constant anxiety is not preparation.
In fact…some of the most effective people in dangerous historical periods…were not the most hysterical.
They were the most psychologically organized.
The people capable of:
Thinking clearly
Adapting quickly
Maintaining relationships
Regulating fear
Preserving strategic focus
Emotional steadiness is power.
Especially in chaotic environments.
What Actually Helps
Here’s what I’ve personally found matters most during unstable times:
1. Reduce Psychological Overexposure
You do not need 14 hours of crisis input to remain informed.
You need signal.
Not endless stimulation.
2. Build Real Human Connection
Isolation magnifies anxiety catastrophically.
Human nervous systems regulate through trusted connection.
3. Focus On Controllable Variables
Health.
Money habits.
Skills.
Relationships.
Preparedness.
Community.
Daily structure.
Agency calms the nervous system.
4. Stop Time-Traveling Constantly
Most anxiety lives in imagined futures.
Return attention to:
“What is true right now?”
Not:
“What catastrophic scenario might someday occur?”
5. Protect Your Nervous System Like It’s Strategic Infrastructure
Because it is.
Your ability to think clearly…may become one of your greatest assets in the years ahead.
One Final Thing
You are not weak for feeling overwhelmed sometimes.
You are living through one of the most psychologically overstimulating periods in modern history.
But…you must understand something critically important:
If you do not consciously organize your attention…
the world will organize it for you.
Algorithms will.
Political systems will.
Media systems will.
Fear merchants will.
Outrage machines will.
And…once your nervous system becomes permanently hijacked by uncertainty…your ability to think clearly…love fully…act effectively…and maintain hope begins deteriorating slowly.
That’s why emotional regulation is not escapism.
It’s resistance.
It’s preservation.
It’s how you remain functional….while other people psychologically fragment.
And…in unstable eras…the people who remain emotionally organized…often become the people most capable of protecting others too.
That matters.
More than most people realize.
#HoldFast
Back soon.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins
P.S. One of the biggest lies modern culture tells people is that staying psychologically overwhelmed means you’re “awake.”
No.
It often means your nervous system has become trapped in continuous activation.
Awareness…without regulation…eventually becomes paralysis.
The goal is not ignorance.
The goal is maintaining enough emotional steadiness…to continue thinking clearly… making good decisions…protecting the people you love…and participating meaningfully in reality without psychologically collapsing under the weight of nonstop uncertainty.
That’s the real challenge now.
P.P.S. One reason paid subscribers tell me they stay subscribed year after year is simple:
They’re exhausted by noise.
What they want isn’t more panic…more outrage…or more doomscrolling.
They want orientation.
They want someone calmly connecting dots before the broader public realizes the pattern matters.
That’s what the paid side of this newsletter is designed to provide:
Deeper strategic analysis
Pattern recognition
Psychological framing
Historical parallels
Actionable clarity
and the kind of grounded perspective that helps people stay emotionally and mentally organized during chaotic times
The free articles help you stay aware.
The paid pieces help you stay oriented.
And in periods like this, orientation becomes an advantage.
File the date: May 18, 2026. Jack is correct about the mechanism. The nervous system cannot distinguish between immediate threat and vividly imagined future danger. That’s not a flaw in human wiring. That’s the point of view of someone who understands how the system works.
Note which systems profit. Algorithmic activation. Media platforms. Political machines that convert panic into engagement. Attention into votes. Anxiety into compliance. Jack is correct about this too: fear is profitable. Confusion is profitable. Disorientation is profitable.
But here’s the pattern that matters historically.
Totalitarian regimes did not invent this. They discovered it. The Nazis did not invent propaganda—they industrialized psychological overwhelm. The Soviets did not invent surveillance—they weaponized the knowledge that being watched changes thought itself. The Chinese did not invent information control—they scaled it.
What all of them understood: a population in permanent nervous system activation cannot think. Cannot organize. Cannot resist. Cannot even recognize what’s happening to them because their prefrontal cortex has been offline for so long that the amygdala became the decision-maker.
That’s not metaphor. That’s neurology. That’s history. That’s strategy.
Jack identifies the trap: most people try to solve anxiety at the level of thought while continuing to feed their nervous system a stream of crisis. Read that again. That’s the core vulnerability. Because once you’re caught in that loop, you stop being able to recognize the loop itself. The exhaustion becomes normal. The activation becomes identity. The panic becomes patriotism.
And here’s what the history shows: the people who remained functional in unstable eras were almost never the ones who stayed most psychologically activated. They were the ones who learned to distinguish between informed awareness and perpetual catastrophic rehearsal. Between signal and noise. Between preparation and paralysis.
Jack is correct that this is not escapism. It’s the opposite. Emotional regulation is what allows you to see clearly. To act effectively. To protect others. To maintain relationships. To think.
Notice what Jack describes: agency, controllable variables, human connection, psychological organization. These are not luxuries. They are the infrastructure of resistance.
The question each person faces now is simple: Will your nervous system be organized by you, or organized by the systems that profit from your disorganization?
That distinction determines what you can see. What you can do. Whether you remain a thinking agent or become a reactive instrument.
The answer reveals everything about what comes next.
#HOLDFAST
Again, thank you for your clarity, understanding and orientation in these very turbulent times. None of us will be useful in dealing with these turbulent times if we don’t remain clear and levelheaded. Take care of yourselves and your families for the long haul!