It happens twice a year, every year. I complain about it -- often to you! -- twice a year, every year. It's the semi-annual switch between "Standard Time" and "Daylight Saving Time."

Fall back! Spring forward! In most of the United States, we just did the latter. Again.

The clock on my desktop computer and the clock in my brain are announcing two different times, an hour apart, and my body just doesn't want to accept the differential.

As usual, that makes me grumpy. But I'm one of those lucky people for whom grumpiness is pretty much the maximum negative side effect.

I work from home, and in theory I set my own schedule. In theory, I could just ignore the fake time change. The various things I do would look like they were an hour "off" to the world, if the world watched me closely, but it doesn't watch me closely and there aren't any damsels in distress, tied to tracks and counting down to to meetings with trains that I mustn't be late to interrupt or anything like that.

In fact, ignoring the switches between "Standard Time" and "Daylight Saving Time" would impact even my boring, semi-house-bound, life.

I'm married. I've got kids. I've got friends and co-workers. I occasionally, grudgingly, shop offline at physical stores with set hours of business. I've even been known to visit a bar now and again. Ignoring the fake time changes would put me out of phase with all those people and things. It would disrupt morning coffee with my wife, screw up planned interactions with my kids, get me to stores, happy hours, and medical appointments early or late, etc. So I grimace and comply

Others have it far worse. Every year, tens of commuters die in excess car accidents because the fake time changes throw people off their bodies' preferred adherence to circadian rhythms. Others show up late or tired, to work, reducing productivity to the tune of billions of dollars.

If a natural disaster or terror attack had that kind of impact, Congress would pass yet another disastrous and ineffectual version of the USA PATRIOT Act and social media would provide a whole new category of "never forget" memes.

The Daylight Saving Time scheme isn't a natural disaster, but it is a century old semi-annual terror attack. Congress and the president COULD address this particular attack effectually, by picking a single version of time ("Standard" or "Daylight Saving") to stick to year-round.

A month before his second inauguration as president, Donald Trump promised his party would use its "best efforts" to eliminate the fake time changes: "Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation."

Now in office, he's unwilling to address it after all, calling it a "fifty-fifty issue .... I assume people would like to have more light later, but some people want to have more light earlier because they don't want to take their kids to school in the dark."

So much for strong-man "leadership," I guess.

originally published at the Garrison Center

Yawning Through the Rites of Spring (Forward)