I’ve figured out how to mentally and emotionally survive the next three years under Donald Trump. (If there is a God, please let it be only three years!). I’m not proud of the plan I’ve come up with. But I think it will work for me. It is not for the faint of heart. So for some of you, don’t try this at home.

Basically, I’m going to expect the worst from the Federal Government on most fronts. So, I have already mourned the loss of an environmental policy that actually fights climate change. Therefore, I will not bleed again and again as the environmental progress we’ve made is chipped away, bit by bit. At the end of Trump’s term, I’ll be thrilled if we can still safely breathe the air and drink the water, at least in most of the United States.

I have already surrendered the ideal that the U.S. Government will promote any kind of individual rights – civil rights, right to choose, LGBT rights, freedom of speech and press, freedom from deportation, hate crimes and voter suppression, etc. I will look only to the Blue states to protect individual rights, as many states have already promised to do. Selfishly, I live in a Blue state block so I hope to be shielded from the worst of the onslaught against rights that will take place elsewhere in the country.

I know that neither health care nor public schools will get the programs or the financial support I believe they should get. So I won’t freak out at every attempt to destroy both systems. I’ll hope that the inertia of a huge bureaucracy (and the incompetence of the Trump administration) will at least mitigate the radical nature of the changes the Trumpettes want to make. But basically I will assume that for public education and national health insurance plans, the next three years will be like Moses’ time wandering in the desert. (At least this time it should be three years and not forty!)

Conflicts of interest will be huge. Regulations will be nonexistent. Autocratic rhetoric will be rampant. As for foreign policy and the economy, if we don’t end up in a major recession, a nuclear war or under martial law, I’ll consider it a win.

The one area where I can’t hide my head in the sand, is the media. My only hope that we will again function as an enlightened, progressive country, lies with the press/media. We can keep our ideals alive if at least some voices in print, on TV and online remain sources of ‘facts’, ‘truth’ and ‘real news’. With their support we can fight back against the dinosaurs roaming the land trying to destroy everything about us that is decent and good. We will survive to triumph again as long as progressive voices continue to be heard and continue to share ideas and plans for political resistance.

Other than keeping some form of resistance and truth alive, I have no hopes for the Trump years. So I can’t be disappointed or surprised by pretty much anything. I won’t enjoy watching the world going to Hell in a hand basket. But I may be able to weather the experience without having a complete meltdown.

Categories: political parties, Politics

Tags: Ellin Curley, Federal government, Government, polarization, Politics, stress, Stress and relaxation