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6 ways to survive a President Trump without moving to Canada

It's not all bad, eh?

 

Dan Sanders

Internet Culture

Posted on Mar 3, 2016   Updated on May 27, 2021, 3:30 am CDT

After the polls closed on Super Tuesday, many Americans’ fight-or-flight response sent them running to popular website Google.com to determine whether fleeing to Canada was a viable way to escape the nightmare of the American political system.

It probably isn’t. America’s politics have long influenced Canada and everyone else. Simply abandoning your country in its time of need probably won’t relieve you of stress, and the orange ripples of Donald Trump‘s presidency will be felt the world over. Run-of-the-mill fear can only get you so far—so what options do you have? 

1) Develop a green thumb!

Gardening is a healthy (and delicious) hobby that will allow you to punch the ground in frustrated impotence every day for hours at a time. Pick your favorite varieties and watch them grow, blissfully ignorant of how terrifying this universe truly is. As the plants grow, your raving panic attacks will provide the plants nourishing carbon dioxide, while your tears will give them essential salts. As an added bonus, you will have something to eat or trade with when the food riots begin.

2) Staycation!

We are in the Golden Age of Television, and you have been missing so much of it because of your terrible job and ability to safely leave home. Why not go to work with Don Draper? The final season of Mad Men just landed on Netflix, so it’s time to experience life without equal rights (and watch a fun TV show about the 1960s). Order some takeout, board up the windows, and chill. You need more time to yourself. How about four years? Maybe eight. Probably eight.

3) Simplify!

Stop thinking about politics, it only makes you :( upset. Declutter! Simplify! Maybe build a tiny house or move into an RV. Does not being able to afford a house mean you can’t be a part of society? No, that’s crazy—you’re white! You don’t live in a trailer because of the cross-cultural economic impossibility of owning a home in the year 2016—you are a lifestyle brand. Internet fame, here you come! Everyone look at the organic lemonade you are making out of life’s responsibly grown lemons!

4) Grad school!

Go back to get your master’s degree in whatever who cares. It’s four years without real responsibilities. Retreat into your studies! Wear a scarf, pretend your life has value, and maybe by the time you’re done, the world will make sense again. Or maybe Danny Bonaduce is a Supreme Court Justice now. There’s no way to know for sure, but either way, you’ll be in so much debt that the president being a white supremacist will be the last thing on your mind.

5) Medically induced coma! 

Double Whammy! Escape Trump’s reign with the help of Mexico, land of Thumbing Your Nose at the Trump Administration (the Trump Administration, oh my god, the Trump Administration). Head for the sunny shores south of the border to be placed in a sort of limbo state until the dust settles. Use the affordability of Mexico’s health care system to sleep your way through America’s troubles in style! Once awake, you’re free to return to the home you abandoned, walking across the border unobstructed, ready to more comfortably shirk your civic duties.

6) Run for office! 

Instead of running for the border, why not run for office, you shitty coward? Do something to make things better instead of running away or assuming some orange strongman will make it better for you. You couldn’t even walk due north without Google’s help. Get it together. We can get through this, but we need to get it together.

Photo via Kevin Dooley/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

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*First Published: Mar 3, 2016, 3:56 pm CST