I can only hope these help:
1) Some terrible things are going to happen. Don’t hold your breath, don’t gnash your teeth, because it won’t help. Don’t grieve before the deeds are done: that is a recipe for perpetual, ongoing pain and distress.
2) Be prepared to protest, object, give money, when the time is right and it might make a difference.
3) Begin now to change some habits. Stop reading so many political blogs on a daily basis. Stop getting the adrenalin flowing by seeking out articles that mirror and amplify your outrage. As Garrison Keillor suggested: read more Jane Austen.
4) Think about how to support and pursue your political/social values by increasing your involvement in efforts close to home where you can actually make a difference.
5) Remind yourself, over and over: you have been here before, and the Republic survived. Johnson and Nixon conducted a catastrophic war that resulted in over one million deaths. Reagan instituted greed as a national goal. We also had eight years of a Clinton administration, and eight years of an Obama administration.
6) Remind yourself as well that we are the majority in this country; most people wanted Hillary Clinton to be president.
7) Remind yourself still further: The pendulum always swings in American politics. There is an evil, destructive strand in the American political psyche; there is also an idealistic force for the good. Perhaps as in each of our own psyches. There is also a tension, and consequent swing, between two benign but different approaches to the common good: conservative and liberal.
8) Reach out. Relate. Empathize. For sure with your hurting friends and family and neighbors, but with those on the other side of the political divide as well.
Ron Moline
Oak Park