. . . an era defined by increasingly volatile election results and cultural polarization. Psychologists and social scientists during the Biden–Trump era collected data and research that suggested a frayed and disunified nation. Television audiences were inundated with angry and incendiary broadcasts, and for a while it seemed like the cultural fabric of the nation was tearing apart. [See Chapter XVI: “What Happened to the World Wide Web?”]

Social-media networks, which at the time were linked together through what was known as “the Internet,” amplified the trend toward angry exchanges, but in “real life” and within smaller, individual “applications” that were easily installed into neurological devices [See Chapter V: “The iPhone and Its Demise”] that served as “cortisol floods” into the users’ brains.

The introduction of a radical and controversial academic movement, Critical Race Theory, exacerbated racial tensions between white and black Americans, and among races in general.

As the threat of COVID-19 [See Chapter XIX: “COVIDs 19 Through 27: An Era of Muzzlement”] ebbed and flowed, mask mandates were imposed and then, suddenly, withdrawn.

From 2016 to 2022, the country seemed to be spinning out of control, until February 2022, when large pharmaceutical corporations inadvertently spilled an enormous quantity of anxiolytic medications, thought to be expired and ineffective, into a spillway that connected to the water supply of Manhattan.

Anxiolytic medications were, at the time, used to reduce anxiety disorders in patients who presented with symptoms of agitation, paranoia, even schizophrenia.

The results were immediately apparent. Without making it public, researchers discovered that the entire urban area of New York City began to experience greater calm and mental quietness. The cable-news channels that originated there were suddenly filled with a more relaxed and emotionally stable staff. On-air personalities, which up until then had been encouraged to show nervous anger and emotional upset, instead reflected the successful introduction of psychiatric medications into a troubled and psychotic patient. [See Chapter XIV: “Over and Out: The Cable News Collapse of 2022.”]

Soil samples have shown huge deposits of trace elements from anti-anxiety medications such as Klonopin and Ativan, many of which are still highly effective. Present-day residents of New York City and its surrounding metro areas report feelings of connectedness and calm after eating local oysters or produce.

What happened next, exactly, is impossible to pinpoint, though historians have settled on the Benign Water Supply Tampering Theory.

Laboratory employees at several of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturing companies began to systematically experiment with other medication interventions.

Into the water system of the Los Angeles County metro area, unknown interventionists dumped enormous quantities of phenothiazine antipsychotic medications, such as Prolixin and Thorazine. Within hours, the entire Hollywood community felt relaxed and at ease. Entertainment-industry executives found themselves dazed and euphoric, leading to increased reading of scripts and an almost total lack of urgency. As the entire region took a collective healing breath, movies and television productions were shut down. [See Chapter IV: “Hollywood Wraps: From 2,000 channels to Three.”]

As the emotional temperature of the media centers decreased, Americans living in the interior of the country experienced a pause in the constant messages of emergency, decline, doom, and conflict. Relations among the races, conflict among ethnic groups, even the years-long cultural battles between “woke” and “non-woke” America improved measurably. Conflicts and disunity eased.

By the autumn of 2022, with the cultural centers of Los Angeles and Manhattan fully medicated and stabilized by anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic pharmaceuticals, America began to heal.

Only one influential metro area remained resistant to these interventions: Washington, D.C.

At this point, the small group of diagnosticians discovered that residents of the nation’s capital were suffering from delusional disorders, unlike their counterparts in Los Angeles and New York. When the medications being dumped in the water supply were adjusted from anxiety and psychotic treatments to those that pinpoint delusional disorders and hallucinations – Olanzapine, Amisulpride, Ziprasidone, and Quetiapine specifically – the results were immediate.

Two-thirds of the House of Representatives and every single senator decided to retire. Television “green rooms” around the city were transformed into quiet spa-like areas of reflection and calm.

By the 2027 January inauguration day for the first Tucker Carlson administration, an era of relaxed calmness had overcome the key metro areas of Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C., ushering in the “Chill Decades” of 2030, 2040, and 2050.

FOR FURTHER STUDY:

Ask your living relatives if they remember using the Twitter or Facebook applications on their “iPhones” and see if they can recall utilizing these devices. Create a family “oral history” of the Internet. As a class project, see if you can define the following terms: “browser history,” “Genius Bar,” and “troll.”

Build a scale model of the studio for the Tucker Carlson Show.

Reading suggestions: Zuckerberg: The Prison Years and Delayed Delivery: Jeff Bezos’s 30 Years Trapped in Space.