numbing

"Is it, in fact, unhealthy and desensitising and numbing to feel joy when we're surrounded by so much suffering?" he asks.

Thus, the challenge of continuously documenting and sounding the alarm about how abnormal and dangerous the Age of Trump is while never normalizing it as being somehow quotidian, and therefore numbing.

These nimble performers gamely rise to the occasion, but the comic adrenaline at this point has a numbing effect.

That sounds dramatic until you study the rise of fascism throughout history, which has always required a slow deadening, numbing and apathy in people.

That can produce psychic numbing, the inability or disinclination to feel, which can reach the point of immobilization.