Fair enough, that’s cool.
Geocaching. It’s such a varied hobby - it can involve hiking, social meet-ups, puzzle-solving, tree-climbing or just wandering around your local park or shopping mall. But it will definitely get you out of the house and not thinking about politics.
I kind of braced myself and went through that whole grief process before Trump was elected, so I wasn’t particularly shocked or upset when it happened. But I remember people asking me why I wasn’t panicking. And my answer was just, “I am the same person no matter what happens. I stand for these values, and wish to achieve these goals, and nothing can change that.” And nothing has. I find that knowledge weirdly comforting.
Not to be UBER cheesy or relevatory of my country roots, but it brings to mind the Garth Brooks line, “It’s not the world that I am changing. I do this so this world will know that it will not change me.”
Once I made peace with that, I think it helped me let go of the hypervigilance.
Would it have killed you to put this in a spoiler box? 
Thats fair. But I think for a lot of people what hurt about Trump being elected is we felt like we woke up in a different America. One that was a lot meaner, dogmatic, crueler and crazier than the one we went to sleep in the night before.
That caused a lot of trauma for a lot of people. I never felt that way about any other election I’ve been in. Even though 95% of the people who voted for Trump also voted for Romney, I never felt like there was anything wrong with Romney voters. But the exact same people vote for Trump and now I feel like I live in a different America than the one I thought I lived in.
I remember back in 2004 when a wave of anti-gay laws were passed in the presidential year election, a lot of gay people said it was like waking up and feeling like a stranger in your own country. That is how Trump getting elected feels, and a lot of us are still dealing with that. I think thats partly why I get sucked into politics. I think for a lot of us, it is a way to traumatically bond in a society that feels a lot less responsible, evolved and sane than we thought it was.
I concur with Mortiss, gaming is a pretty good hobby.
That being said, Wesley Clark, you’ve always seemed like a pretty level-headed poster. I would never have guessed from your posts that you are condescending or arrogant, as you put it - I think you’re a lot more self-aware than most folks in general; you don’t seem anywhere as far down the rabbit trail as some folks.
Agreed. If Romney had won, I would have been a little disappointed; but I would not have been terrified trying to imagine what the future might hold.
I remember discussing Trump before the election with my mother and sister. I told them he was scary in a way I’d never seen, and I was genuinely worried because I could easily see him winning - he was only 3 points down in the polls and that’s well within the margin of error. They shrugged it off of course, don’t be silly, that lunatic can’t win, everyone’s saying so.
My joke through the latter months of the Trump campaign was that since he had insulted or otherwise demonstrated hatred of gay people, women, Jews, Communists, immigrants, atheists, and handicapped people, all we had to do was wait for him to say something about Gypsies and we could all fill our Hitler Bingo scorecards.
I wish I could say I was wrong about him, but as time has gone on the only silver lining I’ve found - his only redeeming qualities - have been his incompetence and stupidity. Like Hitler, the damage he’s doing is limited only by those dimensions.
I guess I saw him as a symptom of that meaner, dogmatic, crueler and crazier America that already existed. I’m not trying to discount your feelings about it, it just didn’t feel like everything changed overnight. I felt that whether he won or lost, we’d already lost. That said, the upshot was basically the same. I became obsessed with politics. And it’s hard not to be, particularly in my field with the kinds of friends I had on social media. But I quickly became disillusioned with my own tribe and the whole echo-chamber mentality.
Part of what helped was trying to view things more locally. My job helps, because I can point to that as something concrete I’m doing no matter how powerless I feel. Which is why I think the recommendations to volunteer could be good. It helps to not feel powerless if you’re doing something concrete and measurable. In a way it also made me realize how pointless words on the internet can be in fighting that larger battle.
I still do get stuck in it sometimes. But it happens less.
There are ways to keep yourself informed in a more positive way without necessarily having to argue/interact with people, and podcasts would be one of them. For me, they bring out my intellectual curiosity more than my outrage. And they definitely offer greater nuance than the clickbait news blogs.
Also, I agree with Velocity, you’re not arrogant nor a dick. But I’m guessing when you say it’s ‘‘turning you into a dick’’ you mean relative to who you used to be, or relative to who you want to be. And I understand that, too.
To be clear, I fully believe that Trump is a special kind of horrible and watching him gain popularity in the polls was some kind of fever dream nightmare. (Although one of the reasons I cited for not panicking was his obvious incompetence.) I’m not trying to minimize that take on it. I just seem to have coped with it differently.
But coming from the perspective of a sexual abuse survivor, the worst was just seeing people defend him on this measure. As my Aunt explained it, ‘‘I feel like my abuser was just elected president.’’ And that’s basically how a lot of us felt. Anecdotally, the therapists I know were swamped after his election with people who experienced a sudden increase in symptoms for pre-existing traumatic disorders.
So yes, I get the sense of re-victimization that many experienced for all kinds of reasons. The world suddenly felt less safe.
But Wesley is effectively saying with his OP, ‘‘this way of coping is not working for me, I don’t like who I’m becoming.’’ And I get that too.
So what are healthy ways to cope? And maybe sometimes the healthy thing is just getting the fuck out of dodge for a while.
I made this thread about Roy Moore, trying to figure out what all factors helped Jones win.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=844730
Measure for Measure posted a link to 538 that was informative that broke it down like this.
Add it all up, and an election that the GOP should win by 28-29 points, instead they lost by 1-2 points.
But thats the thing. Moore lost 20 points by being a horrible candidate. He lost 10 points due to being a christian theocrat who doesn’t respect the constitution, and another 10 points by being someone who preys on underage girls.
So that is a 20 point drop due to massive character flaws. The same thing happened with Todd Akin. He was ahead in the polls, made a comment about ‘legitimate rape’ and then he lost. It happened with other GOP senate candidates picked by the tea party too. They should have been easy GOP pickups, but the Tea Party picked candidates who cost them in the general election. Mourdock, Angle, Akin, etc.
So I guess for me, I got used to the idea that the public would do the responsible thing and reject a bad candidate. But when Trump came about, he lost almost no points. I still can’t figure that out. Why does Roy Moore lose 20 points due to bad character, but Trump pretty much loses 0?
For me, yeah the election has been traumatic. I guess I had more faith in Americans and their sense of duty, responsibility and maturity. And they show that in less important elections like senate elections. But when it comes to the presidency, they weren’t affected.
I think this traumatized me, and now I throw myself into politics to deal with a world that feels less safe, informed, mature and responsible than I thought it was before the election. But as I said, Mueller and the potential of a democratic congress (so there can be legitimate investigations) helps me feel things will be righted eventually.
I think the reason Moore was penalized more than Trump was because the nation hadn’t soured so much on the character issue a year ago as it was this year. A year ago, Trump was still perceived as “entertaining,” and the political winds were in the GOP’s favor. By this December, the US public had soured deeply on the GOP and also on “scandalous” politicians.
Also, for all we know, maybe Trump’s character issues *did *in fact get penalized at the polls last year as well. Maybe a normal, “scandal-free” GOP candidate like Romney would have beaten Hillary by 3-5% in the popular vote when Trump lost it by 2%.
Wesley, you just turned your need a hobby thread political. You sabotaged yourself.
I hate to help you wreck it but you do consistently ignore how truly unliked and mistrusted HRC was. That is the story. It is a bad story with a bad ending, but it is the reality we are living in.
And before you jumped on me, I voted for HRC, but I also saw how she was received.
If you’re not working and have a bit of money stashed, why not take a vacation somewhere away from the US? It’s summer down here in the southern hemisphere, and the beaches are hot and the beer is cold.
Or get in the car, disable your radio, and point the vehicle in some vague direction and ROAD TRIP.
You create a thread about wanting a distraction from following politics… and then you discuss politics. It is clear that following politics has a deep, abiding interest for you. Why try to fight it?
It does not sound like you have come to terms with understanding that in politics – as in every competitive endeavor – it is not possible to win every time. This is discouraging to be sure, but there is no way around it. You have to deal with it, preferably without becoming “arrogant, combative, condescending, filled with contempt, etc.” (i.e., turned into a dick) as you don’t like to exhibit those qualities and they can be unproductive, to say nothing of unhealthy. I daresay the issue for you is not following politics or even seeking distraction from it, but rather finding a better way to handle your emotional reactions to it. Given this as a foundation, any distraction you might find seems likely to prove short-lived and/or unsatisfying, adding to your malaise when you inevitably “relapse.”
As long as you care about the world to the extent you have amply demonstrated on this message board, following politics will be your destiny. I get the impression you are doing what you can to change things for the better, but even in organized groups, there are limits to how much change can be made. While a respite is certainly of value, it might also be a time for a “perspective overhaul,” allowing you to get a better handle on yourself, your emotions and your place in the universe.
I attended a concert by the St Olaf Choir a couple years back ------- you haven’t experienced throat singing until you’ve seen it done live by four Nordic kids from a Lutheran school.
To me, and perhaps to Wesley Clarke, it’s not just that the competition won. It was who they won with and what that says about our society and human progress overall. It’s being hit by a sledgehammer that, no, society doesn’t always progress, that there are a shit-ton of voters out there that are not decent people. And that they, against all odds, actually won the election. It’s like the internet electing a youtube commenter to run our country, and for some reason a good slice of America thinks that’s just A-OK.
Duplicate bridge.
The 24 hour news channels and ridiculous hyperbole is why I think modern political discourse can be unhealthy for many people. If one is getting vexed over events to a disproportionate degree other hobbies are an excellent alternative.
Scale modeling has a lot going for it. Did you build kits as a kid? If so than you know the basics. Kits are available on a wide variety of subjects. A little practice will get results you can be proud of. Then you got something you can put on a shelf and say, “I did that.”
I know, politics is much more than just another “competitive endeavor”. Politics reflect our most basic values. The most recent presidential election demonstrated that nearly half of voting Americans do not share what I thought were basic values.