Three Strange Paths to Not Thinking About You-Know-Who

Georgia Garvey
Fri, 24 Oct 2025 23:00:00 -0700
Opinion

Are you, like me, kind of freaking out a little bit?

Do masked men patrol your city streets, snatching people up and throwing them into vans headed for overcrowded detention centers where they will be held incommunicado and pressured to sign self-deportation orders that abrogate their rights to a fair trial?

Have your lawmakers all seemingly gone on an extended vacation, lolling around their favorite lobbyist's vacation home, swilling free Chateau Lafite Rothschild and fielding job offers to consult in the industries they're currently regulating, ending the day with some light insider trading to break up the monotony?
Updated: Sat Oct 25, 2025

Are you, like me, kind of freaking out a little bit?

Do masked men patrol your city streets, snatching people up and throwing them into vans headed for overcrowded detention centers where they will be held incommunicado and pressured to sign self-deportation orders that abrogate their rights to a fair trial?

Have your lawmakers all seemingly gone on an extended vacation, lolling around their favorite lobbyist's vacation home, swilling free Chateau Lafite Rothschild and fielding job offers to consult in the industries they're currently regulating, ending the day with some light insider trading to break up the monotony?

Did your commander-in-chief recently post a video of himself literally taking a dump on his constituents, then use your money to tear down a third of the most prominent national symbol of the transience of presidential power so that he can erect a ballroom vulgar enough to make Saddam Hussein weep tears of pure envy?

Perhaps you've learned a lesson from the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, that numbing your worry with rose and pepperoni pizza doesn't so much subtract from your problems as it adds to them.

Yet adult coloring books and meditation apps just won't do it.

Well, listed here are a few ways to get yourself over the hump until things turn around or the world ends — whichever comes first.

First, go to your favorite chatbot and put in something stupid. Everyone's always bagging on AI, but nothing beats it for playing along. I asked it to write me a four-line soliloquy using iambic pentameter in which a Shakespearean fool mocks a vain, narcissistic, shallow, corrupt man, and I got decent results:

"Go, preen thy soul before a darker glass,

Where truth looks back and laughs to see thee fawn.

Thy pride wears rouge that time shall soon surpass —

Paint peels, good sir, when morning brings the dawn."

Get creative with the technology that's removing our ability to think for ourselves! Ask it to write a breakup letter from Ernie to Bert in Pig Latin. Have it create a dating profile for Jack the Ripper entirely in Cockney slang. The possibilities are endless.

Next up, grab a copy of Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" at your local library and turn to a random page inside. It's like a Magic 8 Ball where the predictions were all written by a 2nd-century Roman philosopher/emperor.

As with a deck of Tarot cards, ask a question before you select your page. I asked what I should do to relax in the face of impending doom and here's what Monsieur Aurelius had to offer:

"For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to thy mind to this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily. And consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes. And be quiet at last."

That's basically the Stoic way of saying: "less jaw, more saw." I appreciate that.

Finally, here's one that's a bit more esoteric but complicated enough to really take your mind off things like the fact that the "America First" gang appears to be fine with Argentinean bailouts and a ground invasion of Venezuela.

Step one: Zero in on one goofy self-help strategy of any kind. Doesn't matter what it is: The Law of Attraction. Mirror affirmations. Quantum healing. Vision boarding. The power of positive thinking.

Step two: For one day, find several ways of doing exactly the opposite of the instructions for following that strategy. Think George Costanza in "Seinfeld," when he goes in the other direction of every instinct.

If it's the power of positive thinking, write in your journal that there's no way you'll ever learn to play the piano. I'm too old! My fingers are too short! Pianos hate me! Make a list of all the ways you've failed your parents over the years. Boo yourself in the mirror.

If you select the Law of Attraction, take five minutes to close your eyes and visualize losing all your money gambling, realizing a guy you met on Tinder is a serial killer and tearing your ACL playing pickleball. In the same day. If nothing else, you'll realize that things could be worse.

Now, none of these strategies will guarantee that you won't find yourself filled with a rising tide of rage every time you think about what's going on in the world. For that, you'd have to log off social media and put down your phone for a whole five minutes.

But what fun would that be?