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All in all, I'd give this coping mechanism a B-

When we decided that a twitter personality was our best bet for president, I was pretty upset. I won’t tell you how upset or for how long, because certain corners of the internet sure would love to get their hands on my cuck tears. Outrage was the correct response at the time, but you can’t live in outrage long term. At a certain point, you have to be able to function day-to-day, work, and look your parents in the eyes again. It’s not giving up or giving in to a new reality, it’s just learning to cope in a way that doesn’t have you crying in bathrooms.

My primary method for coping with a Trump presidency was to pick three issues that I care about the most and only try and comment on social media when these issues came up. That was working pretty well up to a point, but let's check in at the 100 day mark and see how things are going for me.

1) Science funding: F-
20% in proposed cuts to the NIH (my favorite and likely more in cuts for NSF (who actually fund me directly). EPA slashed to the bone and even our golden child NASA is being restricted in what it is allowed to collect and share data on. The only bright spot is that Trump’s positive is too loathsome for your standard white bread republicans to support. Remember when Biden’s cancer moonshot enjoyed bipartisan support less than a year ago? 392-26! That felt nice. I miss us.

2) Public Lands: F+
I like Ryan Zinke. Or I tried to anyways. He's against returning federal land to states and seems to support the kind of mixed-use land management that should be common sense. He’s said some awful things in the past, but his record as it directly applies to his job at the Interior Department seemed miles ahead of other alternatives. It would be nice if he hadn’t called Hillary the Anti-Christ, but sometimes beggars can’t be choosers. His voting record in congress was in direct opposition to the stated Republican platform which read:

“Congress shall immediately pass universal legislation providing a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to the states…”

Kewl. This week we found out that his position may be more malleable than in the past, as 25 national monuments established by three former presidents are now “under review”. I’ll give them an F+ for not just immediately turning them into shopping malls.

3) Internet Freedom: Z
Ajit Pai is a rat bastard whose entire career has been spent either on Verizon’s direct payroll or doing their work for them at various regulatory agencies. But I’m being too polite. If I were a young Republican I would be furious at the lack of understanding my party has on the role of the internet in our daily lives. The “internet super-highway” shouldn’t be a privatized toll road controlled by Comcast and other conglomerates selling our browser histories for profit. It just doesn't seem like a complex idea to me, especially for the party that is a big fan of the phrase "level playing field".

That last point has me particularly riled, so a more thoughtful conclusion will have to wait.
What are your three issues? I hope things are going better for your list!

Preemptive Note-- 
Yes, there are absolutely worse things in the country than these three things. Yes, I didn’t include [your pet issue], which is inarguably worse than [one of the above issues, your choice]. At the end of the day, starvation in sub-Saharan Africa or genocide in Syria are also worse issues than [your pet issue] so let’s not fall into the fallacy of relative privation. As I said at the top, this is a coping mechanism, obviously it’s going to have its flaws. Sue me.

If [your pet issue] == Syrian genocide, then you are a better person than me and can rest easy at night.

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