There’s been much talk recently of coping, of how people dismayed, disgusted and even traumatized by the actions of our President – in office and in getting there – can overcome the debilitating despair that is Trump’s stock in trade. Here are ten potential coping mechanisms for the Reign of Terror Against Good Sense.
- Put your head in the sand and have a good snooze. RESULT – you will get what you deserve and what others decide for you.
- Rail to anyone who will listen and hope. RESULT—you may feel a bit better for a few minutes before reverting to the norm – the sad, depressing norm.
- Gather signatures calling for some kind of public action. RESULT—perhaps you may stir some others into some kind of action. You’ll feel good about this, but that good feeling may not survive the next tweetstorm branding women and black people “low-IQ.”
- Raise enough money to start a lawsuit on Constitutional issues with the best lawyers you can afford. RESULT — a lot of teeth gnashing, delays and perhaps some good ideas emerging.
- If you are a veteran, attend all sessions and make sure you are heard and help influence the military to do the right things. RESULT — keeps the military from going overboard.
- If you are gutsy, refuse in writing to pay your taxes to a government that is lying to you and disobeying laws and regulations with your money. People on the right have been doing this for years on the whacko premise that the federal government has no authority to tax individuals. Several of them have gone to jail, though, and none have persuaded a court of the rightness (legal or moral) of their cause. RESULT – potentially many years behind bars and an outstanding tax bill that grows precipitously.
- Put signs in your front yards or doors telling people that they are being misled by officials who are infringing their rights. RESULT – you’ll feel better telling people where you stand but may encounter cranky neighbors or “cease and desist” letters from your homeowners’ association.
- Park your car on a crowded bridge; get arrested and use the publicity to be heard. RESULT – you’ll lift the flagging spirits of others as despondent as yourself, at least temporarily, and may avoid a jail sentence.
- Get a couple of hundred ‘friends’ to hire some busses and go to DC and tie up traffic in front of the White House and the Capital. RESULT – snarled traffic and a long bus ride while the world continues to go to hell in a handbasket.
- Get a prescription of sleeping pills and spend the next 2 ½ years in a drug-induced stupor. RESULT – likely addiction, but you might escape the most maddening moments of the Trump presidency.
As the list shows, yes, there are things we all can do. What good they will do is less clear. What is perfectly clear, though, is that doing NOTHING will achieve just that. If you believe, as I do, that our President is a danger to our country, and to the very idea of democracy, it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do something, and keep doing it, and then get your friends to do it with you, and then their friends, as well. Most of all, whatever you choose to do between now and November, make sure you and every right-thinking person you know shows up on November 6th to take the only action that can stop this President: electing a Democratic Congress.
FAW Ideas 