Dem
47
GOP
53
Here is the question we put before readers many weeks ago:
J.B. in Radnor, PA, asks: How does one keep their sanity and avoid becoming depressed from getting so deep into all the demoralizing news in U.S. politics, and the country as a whole?
And here is a final round of the answers we got in response:
G.O. in Atlanta, GA: I think about my mother.
She grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution under Mao, and suffered through widespread famine, brutality, and persecution.
By incredible luck, the exact year she was to leave high school, Mao left power, and a proper exam for eligibility into college was reintroduced. Only via that exam, and the subsequent work and serendipities that followed, was she able to leave to study and settle in the United States.
One day, during the first Trump term, my mother and I discussed my sister, who was inconsolably disturbed by U.S. politics. My mother confided in me, "I don't get it. You just survive. We all just survive."
I realized my own standards for a country I deemed fit to live in were much narrower than hers. No matter the challenges of her situation, my mother always moved forward and built a life for herself, just as so many around the world in devastating conditions do.
In the years since, I've worked to not take this lesson as an excuse to be ambivalent and tolerate what is occurring in the United States. What I try to take away is the bravery and resolve to believe that no matter what comes, I can handle it. We will survive.
D.C.W. in Fredericksburg, TX: I exercise in my garage gym daily on a spin bike or treadmill. To pass the time, I watch DVDs of old TV series. Favorites are M*A*S*H, Northern Exposure, 30 Rock, Law and Order and Columbo. Since 2016 I have not been able emotionally to enjoy my very favorite, The West Wing, for obvious reasons. That show to me is the best in writing, casting, performance, bantering and messaging. The live debate in the last season is a masterpiece. I know most of the dialog, but always catch something new and nuanced when I view it again. It moves so fast, the closed captioning cannot keep up.
I decided on Flag Day to start watching that series again from the beginning. With seven seasons, it will take me quite a while, watching one episode a day, to get through them. But after the first episode, seeing all my old friends and knowing the scripts and moves by heart, I was again lifted up. That show is fiction, but it shows what is possible. The next 150 days or so should be great. I have missed it, but I'm back with it and loving it. And those workouts to The West Wing are the fastest 45 minutes of all.
P.S. in Portland, ME: Re-watch The West Wing and feel free to cry.
J.K.H. in Richmond, VA: First, play with your kids. Take them to a pond or river and wade in it. Take long walks with them and tell them stories where evil was defeated and progress was possible.
Second, cats! Cats are the better angels of our nature. Petting a cat who is purring loudly is better than any sedative. (Added plus: look for all the cat posters on BlueSky, esp. "#Caturday")
Third, gor those with access to britcoms and of a certain advanced age: binge-watching Last of the Summer Wine. The Yorkshire countryside coupled with older Brits having fun as they get older and face mortality raises one's spirit a little.
B.M. in Papillion, NE: How do I cope with the current situation? Well, I have neighbors who are all in on MAGA. I poke fun at them, but with some subtlety, and in a way that (V) would appreciate. My RaspberryPi board awakens every night just past midnight. My Python script using the "selenium" package logs into one of my wireless access points to change an SSID. (If you, dear reader, don't know, this is the name you see when connecting up to a WiFi network.) Thus I am broadcasting several demeaning identifiers, as well as the only "presidential countdown SSID clock" that I am aware of:
S.D. in York, England, UK: I don't need the world to be calm for me to be calm. I just need to know what I can do next, and then do it.
C.B. in Hamden, CT: I am in general not successful at overcoming despair; the core of my professional life (scientific research) is one of the areas in which the disaster wrought by Trump II is irrevocable—nothing any future administration can possibly do will fully repair the long-term damage. But something that helps is a piece of advice I got from an acquaintance who is deeply involved in civil rights issues. The key to not getting overwhelmed, he said, is to identify the single thing you are best positioned to do, and do that one thing with all your heart and soul. Don't worry about the infinitude of other things—others will have to deal with the rest, and putting time and effort into fretting about the Big Picture rather than the thing you personally can do is a net loss to the cause.
In my case (in addition to voting and donating), I focus on the students at the elite university I am privileged to work at. One way or another, these kids will run the world in 20 years' time, and I try to set up situations in which I can have meaningful interactions with them that go well beyond the details of the courses I teach. That is to say, I try to actually do what the bad guys accuse us of doing: transferring my values to the next generation (although a local joke is that we do a lousy job of this—there's a whole legion of jackasses in public life who graduated from our place). Not by arguing about politics, or imposing my beliefs in any direct way, but by having deep conversations on topics around which my life and work have generated legitimate expertise: science, music, some areas of history and culture, antisemitism, and other topics. Such conversations have no direct impact on the current disasters, and as (Z) knows well, they garner neither reward nor respect from university administration. But they are the true essence of "liberal arts education," a utopian concept that I deeply believe in, and it's the most important thing I can do.
D.C. in Carbondale, IL: Absolutely every response has been helpful, confirmed my instinctive solutions, and provided additional great ideas. This week I've conceived of one more mechanism. I went to our first community summer outdoor concert of the season. The crowd was milling about and self arranging in a theater arc among the shading trees. As I planted my folding chair on the lawn and put up my feet next to my partner, I sighed deeply and noted "This is very relaxing!" The relief in my body was visceral, and reminded me of the healing I felt after the Covid shutdown lifted and I began spending Friday evenings with my friends for "Driveway Picnic," socially distant outside but still together for a few hours each week.
I'm pretty sure that as social primates our bodies produce beneficial, stress-relieving hormones when we're in proximity. Last night I watched a documentary about Woodstock that served as a prime example that imprinted a whole generation. The advent of TV and the internet atomized our daily lives severely, until many of us spend most free time in our bedrooms in front of individual screens.
Get back out there with nearby friendly humans, regularly. Notice how it feels. Oh, and it probably helps if music is involved.
C.Z. in Sacramento, CA: Randy Rainbow is my antidepressant:
"A Very Stable Genius Part Two!"
"WHERE THE HELL IS OUR CONGRESS?"
"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like F This"
"RFK!"
"Big Phony Schmuck!"
"Not What They're Paid For"
R.C. in Eagleville, PA: It was 1989, and my young daughter came to me with tears in her eyes, asking, "Daddy, why do they keep saying our name on the TV?" My father's youngest brother was one of the Americans held hostage in Beirut. The hostage takers singled out my uncle for execution, giving 48 hours for their demands to be met. Mercifully, negotiations succeeded, the execution never took place, and years later, the hostages were released.
Having been trapped in the center ring of a media circus, I've seen the psychological damage it can cause anyone. My family was understandably at DEFCON 1, literally living through a "final countdown." Many in the media saw it as their mission to bring their audience to DEFCON 1 with us. To combat this dis-ease, seek out information without the hype. I've learned that consuming the news with a dollop of snark is the best way to handle it.
D.J.M. in Salmon Arm, BC, Canada: Read Electoral-Vote.com in the morning and recite the serenity prayer. (V) & (Z) please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Then have a timbit and a double-double.
JC in Shawnee, OK: The only upside to having a completely deranged major political party is that I do not have to follow the news. I know how I will vote for the foreseeable future.
P.W. in Springwater, NY: When Donald Trump was running for re-election in 2020, amid all the talk of rigged elections, I decided I had to "do" something other than sitting on the sidelines and complain. So, over the years, I became an election inspector, volunteered for local Democratic candidates, and joined the local Democratic committee. When Trump was elected in 2024 and it seemed like the country was at risk for losing its democratic form of government, I became active in our local Indivisible group, going to rallies, posting on social media (which I rarely had before) and calling/e-mailing our local representatives in the Senate and House on a regular basis. I still do all of this because it's important to me that my voice is raised in protest to the insanity surrounding us and it's helpful to share this work with others who share my values. Is it working? I don't know yet, but to me, action is an antidote to anxiety.
But I also a volunteer for my local health department and raise puppies for a guide dog organization because there I know I am making a contribution to my community and can actually see the results. Plus, I spend time with dogs, the guide dog puppies and my own three, who are simply happy to be with me and bring peace and joy into my life. And most days I take time to read or to garden, to cook, to play Wordle, to watch or listen to baseball (Mets fans are conditioned to expect the worse) and keep in touch with family and friends, even if it's just a text. And I swim—both for exercise and mental health.
Sometimes I think I'm doing too much and maybe I should focus more on just a few things (and do those better?) but I'm never bored and no day is ever the same#8212;except, like many of your readers, each day starts with tea while reading Heather Cox Richardson and Electoral-Vote.com. What I don't do, except on rare occasions, is despair. I have faith that in the long run, America will return to trying to become a more perfect union and the disease or Trumpism will pass. Maybe that's naive, but for my own sanity, I have to believe that; I have to play a small part in working towards that.
S.S. in Venice, FL: 69 cruises since 2019. 10 more lined up so far. Oh, and the booze package doesn't hurt...
J.P. in Lancaster, PA: I treat my mental dis-ease by a rather childish method. I have gotten on the mailing/texting list of Republican politicians. I suspect it is because I have written to Republican politicians expressing my dissatisfaction with them and their "leader." Initially, I tried to keep my communications with them brief and as well reasoned as I could. When I got replies from them, usually weeks later, they were usually not specifically addressing the issues I had raised or the arguments I put forward. I wasn't surprised by this, given the number of communications they must receive. However, being ignored eventually got frustrating, as did the platitudes that were tossed in my general direction. I knew that no matter how well reasoned my arguments/points might be, the individuals I was writing to would not be persuaded to change their behavior or agree with me. So, I decided to have some fun.
I wrote them and gave them my arguments, as before, but I started to sprinkle in some of the invective that their leader and at least some of them have enjoyed spewing into the press and the airwaves. I assumed that like my previous, tamer communications, they would not be read and/or understood and/or result in any change. However, I could at least give them some of them what they have been giving so gleefully to the rest of us. Even if they didn't read what I wrote, I felt a bit better. Then, after one of my more insulting texts, I was unsubscribed. Some person, or maybe AI, had scanned what I had written and retaliated by removing me from their texting/mailing list. I was amused and kept doing what I had been doing periodically, mostly when I got a text from one of their people. I have been unsubscribed 5 more times. The last time I was unsubscribed within 1 minute of sending my text. I immediately texted them back and accused them of being wimps and dishing it out while being unable to take it. The texts have continued, in some cases from individuals who claimed to have unsubscribed me. I have continued to amuse myself by writing them back while being snarky.
Occasionally, the snark gets a response, unlike my more reasonable communications.
G.J. in Spokane, WA: When Donald Trump was elected in 2016 I, like so many Americans, felt compelled to do something positive in response. So, drawing on my lifelong love affair with quotations, I compiled Assuring Alexis: 306 Quotes of Encouragement and Hope for Withstanding the Trump Era. The "306" figure refers to the number of electoral votes that Trump received that year, and the price of the anthology, available in Kindle format, is $3.06.
Little did I know that this anthology would be as pertinent as a resource a decade later. The title refers to Alexis, a young Black woman who was studying outside the United States when Trump was elected. The day after the election she told her parents that she didn't want to return home to a country she feared would be dramatically different from the one she had left.
Her fears were well justified and the quotations remain as appropriate today as a source of encouragement as they were a decade ago, perhaps even more so. The task before us is set by another Alexis, the astute Frenchman who visited the United States in the 1830s. De Tocqueville wrote that "America is great because America is good and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." So let us join together not to "make America great again," in Donald Trump's words, but to ensure that it never ceases to be good.
Any royalties from the book will be given to charities focusing on press freedom, refugee resettlement, and education scholarships in Kenya.
L.R.H. in Oakland, CA: I stay on an even keel through a combination of luck and choices.
First, I have a resilient temperament, which I attribute entirely to luck (okay, life experience plays into this, but mostly I think it's luck of the draw). Second, no TV news; I read The New York Times and various reliable online sources only. Third, I try to take action in various ways. Lastly, I have a satisfying retirement career that keeps me occupied and positive.
G.S.C. in South Pasadena, CA: I feel the answer has two parts: Part 1 is how we deal with the anxiety our times create. Part 2 is how do we get peace? Those are two different issues and should be addressed as two separate issues.
Anxiety is one's fear or apprehension of what's to come (or is living through). When trumplethinskin first won, I went into a depression that lasted about a month. I found no joy in anything; I was just going through the motions. Then a friend shared one of Electoral-Votes.com's articles, which helped. It helped a lot! Your site explained that, with all the blah-blah that trumplethinskin makes, it's likely he's just talking to the wind or will be stopped by the way the system works. [trumplethinskin, v.2 has nullified much of the constraints that you said would protect us in trumplethinskin, v.1, but that's another story.] But, also, I am now wiser when I'm encountering this blah-blah and know what to be concerned about and what can be pushed off to the side—at least for the moment. The secret is that if problems are faced rationally, you do not need to feel like you are going off the deep end.
Peace is a whole different thing. I think I heard of this concept on NPR, not sure, but the subject of the interview was "What do you do for peace?" That is, what do you do so that when you are doing it, you can just focus on that thing, whatever it is, and everything else just is not there? Although I have many hobbies, perhaps too many, the one thing I can do for hours is to play with the photos I've taken on various travels. They are a sort of diary of the trip, sort of a "viary" if you will. When I visit a location, the first photo will be duplicated and turned into a placard showing the location's name and where it's located. I then select photos from the many I've taken of the location and save them for sharing online. I also take the time to enhance each photo so that it's better than just a snapshot.
My dad loved stamp collecting and specialized in Bavaria. I never knew why or how he got so entranced in it. But now, looking back, I realize that is where he got peace.
And with Electoral-Vote.com, I can quench my anxiety.
E.L. in San Diego, CA: I'm an engineer and businessman by profession, a musician by avocation. Although retired, I am still active full time.
I used to read the news first thing in the morning. After my retirement a decade ago, I continued to do so. Soon after the last presidential election, though, I realized that reading the news (and "the news") in the morning ruined my whole day. So, I changed my routine.
I now start my day with constructive activities: physical exercise followed by breakfast and my brain workout (sudokus and crossword puzzles). I then take a deep dive into my music endeavors and non-political reading, which consumes the rest of my (happy) morning,
I force myself NOT to read ANY news before noon. I read or watch the news online. No TV or radio. I always start by reading Electoral-Vote.com, my most trusted source of political news since 2004. Thank you (V), (Z), (L) and (A)!
I attend weekly meetings with a group of well-informed friends to discuss national and international affairs (no MAGAs allowed). Our unwritten rule: Always end the conversation on a high note.
I selectively provide significant financial support to political candidates, media outfits, and activist groups and organizations committed to defeating fascism. (I'm past the age for effective direct involvement.)
My afternoons are spent working on two major charitable projects that I conceived and are dear to my heart. One of them deals with promoting the art of music, the other with combating discrimination and antisemitism.
I do not socialize with MAGAs and do not discuss politics with anyone who cannot distinguish fact from fiction or is a single-issue voter or ignorant of history or incapable of rational and civil conversations.
My wife and I are politically aligned (I can't imagine a "politically-mixed" marriage surviving these tempestuous times). We exchange thoughts daily. To sleep better at night, though, we suspend all talk about war or politics after dinner and focus on the things that make our lives worthwhile.
In closing, I should clarify that the coping mechanism I just described is not intended as an escape from reality. We are living in very dark times indeed. It's impossible to avoid feeling depressed or angry at times. Still, as a survival strategy, it has helped me keep my anguish in check and enhance my emotional capacity to weather the storm.
Hope these ideas, with individual adaptations, are helpful to other readers.
M.T. in Lionville, PA: I sometimes read old science fiction. Here's a paragraph from H. G. Wells' In the Days of the Comet, published in 1906:
Now, the whole world before the Change was as sick and feverish as that, it was worried and overworked and perplexed by problems that would not get stated simply, that changed and evaded solution, it was in an atmosphere that had corrupted and thickened past breathing; there was no thorough cool thinking in the world at all. There was nothing in the mind of the world anywhere but half-truths, hasty assumptions, hallucinations, and emotions. Nothing...It sounds a lot like today, doesn't it? Yet we survived for 120 years. A lot of bad things happened in between, but overall things are better now than then.
Another thing: we say, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't." We probably also should say, "If it sounds too bad to be true, it probably isn't." The more emotional a piece of news makes a person, the more likely it's false or distorted. Making people emotional is a first step to extracting value from them, whether for good or for evil. Recognize that appeals to emotion are manipulating you.
D.R. in Lincolnton, NC: You think people are pissed of now, look at the reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, 1353-1336 BC. He radically changed the official religion, government and art (I learned about him in art history class). Among his many heresies, he required that all religious devotion previously exhibited toward the gods be directed toward himself.
He was called at the time a heretic, fanatic, criminal and possibly insane. After his death the monuments he built were destroyed and his name was excluded from the list of rulers compiled by later pharaohs.
I think about Akhenaten frequently of what happens after Trump is gone. In fact, I even thought about him during the George W. Bush administration.
If the ancient Egyptians could survive a disastrous leader, so can we.
Here is the compleat set (to use the Beatles' spelling), for those who might like to review:
Here is the question for next week:
T.B. in Waterloo, IA, asks: I'm turning 50 in September and to celebrate, a friend of mine and I are going to London for a week. (She turns 75 the same day I turn 50.) This is a lifelong dream of mine, as going to London has been #1 on my bucket list for the last 30+ years. To say that I'm excited is an understatement. I was wondering if any of your readers have suggestions for sites to see, or restaurants to visit (perhaps with favorite dishes to try)?
Submit your answers to comments@electoral-vote.com, preferably with subject line "London Calling"!