Once again, we head into the worst weekend of the year. The night we lose an hour to the madness of Daylight Saving Time. The clock shifts an hour ahead and leaves the entire country sleep deprived and addled for the next week as our circadian rhythms struggle to acclimate.
Does anyone like waking up an hour earlier? Who still believes in this farce?
President Donald Trump sure doesn’t. He campaigned on ending Daylight Saving Time. Well, he posted about stopping it once, at least. That’s a campaign promise by my account, and I’m calling on the president and his administration to live up to it.
There’s still time to end this madness, Mr. President. A last minute reprieve from the oval office, a pardon, a stay of execution—we still have two days to stop this insanity and keep the clocks from switching.
Clearly, the president and his team are thinking about it. Elon Musk put out a poll about the clock change. He worded it terribly; the choices are unclear. It seems like he’s trying to presuppose an outcome, unfortunately.
Asking the internet do you want “an hour earlier” vs. an “hour later” could be read either way. Does he mean an hour before work or after work? Or does he mean the clock should be an hour earlier or an hour later? Presently, “an hour later” is in the lead, but what does this mean?
Unfortunately, technocrats like Elon often overthink this issue. They think the world should bend around factory schedules and such, that the sun should rise and set at their command. That DST somehow gives us more sunlight.
Some lobbyists even want permanent DST, keeping the clock set an hour earlier through the winter months as well. They think it’ll lessen energy usage, or make people buy more gasoline—there are all sorts of speculative theories. Eggheads cook up figures in a boardroom, but present a grander assumption beyond these specifics: that by changing the clock we can bend the universe to our will.
Forget all that noise. No study has ever conclusively proven that DST has any effects other than increased heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents. Shifting our sleep schedules twice a year is disastrous for our health, it turns out. We live in response to the sun, our bodies cycle each day based on light. We are not, in the end, perfectly rationalistic automatons. We live in this world and respond to it, far less than we shape it.
Unfortunately, historical knowledge eludes them as well. Permanent DST was tried in the 1970s and was so unpopular, after one winter of 9 a.m. sunrises, that Congress immediately voted to end it. Other countries have tried it more recently as well, Russia most notably. They switched back to Standard Time after a few years. No one likes waking up in the dark all winter.
Look, the clock should reflect what it was always meant to—the position of the sun in the sky. Noon on the clock should be as close to solar noon as possible, like it is on Standard Time. Regardless of all the debate on health and such, this is the most philosophically congruent position.
Keep the clock as the neutral entity it’s meant to be, and shift our behavior around that.
Perhaps it’s time to lose the rigidity of the 9 to 5. Shift your summer hours to 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., if that’s what you and your business want. That’s all you’re doing with Daylight Saving Time, you know. Forcing yourself to get up an hour earlier along with the rest of the country.
If you want to get up an hour earlier, go for it. That’s your God-given right. But leave the clock alone, and stop forcing the rest of us to. We like our sleep.
President Trump, it’s time to end this. Keep your promise, and stop the clock from springing forward once and for all.
Bobby Mars is art director of Michigan Enjoyer. Follow him on X @bobby_on_mars.
