Coping with the Circus: A Guide for the Trump Era


Today, I’m sharing a coping skill you might find useful as we navigate the upcoming Trump presidency. Why? Because he’s already kicking things off with a circus—and the whole point of a circus, of course, is to provoke outrage.  

Jean-Paul Sartre captured this dynamic perfectly:  

 “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”  

See? Sartre had their playbook down before cable news or Twitter were even a thing.  

Knowing this, you have a few options to maintain your sanity as the circus rolls into town:  

(1) Ignore the ringmaster completely. After all, the goal is to provoke a reaction. No reaction? No fun.  

(2) Treat it like theater—absurd, over-the-top, sometimes infuriating, but ultimately scripted and predictable.  

(3) Channel your frustration into something constructive. Maybe knitting? Or axe-throwing? Whatever keeps you from screaming into the void.  

My personal choice? I skip U.S. network news altogether and catch Trump-related updates through The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert. Works like a charm for my mental health. Plus, those clowns hate when you laugh at them. As for real news, I stick to foreign sources like Deutsche Welle and France24 (I’ll share more about that in my next post).  

Pick whichever strategy works best for you. Just remember, the circus isn’t about making sense—it’s about making noise. Don’t let yourself be manipulated into outrage.

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