The boiling frog syndrome

You may remember that experiment involving a frog placed in a vessel filled with water and that is slowly heated up. This is commonly referred to as the boiling frog metaphor or syndrome. While not a rigorous scientific experiment, it’s a powerful allegory used to illustrate how people (or systems) can fail to respond to gradual threats until it’s too late. 

To all my American friends, this illustrates exactly and perfectly the situation Trump has put us into at the moment. As you know or can imagine, a frog placed in boiling water would immediately jump out, but if it’s placed in cool water that’s slowly heated, the frog supposedly won’t notice the danger and will eventually be boiled alive. 

Likewise, while no one with a right mind would move to Afghanistan, 340 million American appear to be okay with what Trump is concocting for them. Sure, modern science debunks the literal truth of this analogy as real frogs would likely jump out—but the metaphor persists because it resonates psychologically and socially. In our particular case under the Trump regime, it speaks to creeping normality, meaning that when small changes accumulate, they remain unnoticed until they result into a major shift, leading to undesirable or even catastrophic outcomes. 

This is precisely what is slowly unfolding for an American population that has become too complacent in the face of what Trump and his sycophants are serving them, especially when “illegal” immigrants are deported without due process, an imbecile is put in charge of health care, when climate change is suddenly denied, when our civil liberties are getting eroded and when a MAGA Congress vote for lowering the taxes on the richest while increasing the Nation’s debt. 

All these small changes don’t seem too significant to the American populace until a cataclysmic threshold is crossed. All this stands as a cautionary tale. Just because change is slow doesn’t mean it’s harmless. Wake up America!