Which is why I’m an advocate of simply tuning it out. Heck, a major reason that Trump exists is that other people wanted to demoralize and offend you.
Realistically, you can’t do much to influence national politics, and many of the things you’re tempted to try (e.g., confronting people about their views) tend to backfire by causing the opposition to further entrench in their ideology. Think of politics like the weather—sometimes it rains, but you don’t get angry at the atmosphere because you’ve learned to expect that. Sometimes, in politics, you get some fascism and xenophobia, and it bothers you because you have an irrational expectation that people are going to be intelligent and conduct their offices with integrity. In fact, if you were born in almost any given time and place since the dawn of civilization, you’d be under the thumb of one despotic ruler or another, with little hope of reprieve. People who lived their entire lives under feudalism managed to cope with it somehow—and they may have even coped with it better, since they weren’t raised with rose tinted glasses.
You can’t control national politics, but you can control how you react to it. Remember that the events that are going to matter most in your life in the next four years are probably going to have nothing to do with Donald Trump. Likewise, the stuff you do that will matter most to society is probably not going to be related to your involvement in politics. Where your influence is really going to be felt is in the work you do every day, the way you treat your friends and family, and so on.
The problem with getting too sucked into the political theater is that it saps away the energy that you could be devoting to your local environment, where you really do have some influence. If you’re leading your life according to a value system that rejects Trumpism, then you’re already doing something to help. Activism can definitely be part of that, but if all you’re doing is driving yourself to despair by lending too much attention to the onslaught of bad news, then you’re really just undermining yourself.
Things get better, and they get worse, and they better again, and then they get worse. It’s an emotional roller coaster, but you don’t have to ride it.
