Uncertainty about the election getting to you? Is anxiety the dominant feature of your emotional landscape, maybe with a small sprinkling of impending doom?
You are not alone. A recent survey found that 69 percent of American adults are seriously stressed about the 2024 presidential election.
It’s difficult not to be worked up about politics in today’s polarized climate. Regardless of which side of the political aisle you sit on, you may find yourself glued to your browser or TV, gobbling up every tiny tidbit of news and feeling your stress levels skyrocket.
My job makes mail voting make the most sense, its already out of my hands and theres a small comfort in that and a large comfort in knowing I dont have to go to a polling place half filled with crazies.
Concern is justified. Frankly, articles like this one piss me off: everyone ought to keep their concern, and use it to motivate them into action. It’s fucking absurd that we’re here talking about “managing stress” and not “organizing counter-protests to Trump’s impending next coup attempt.” You want to make yourself useful, Arstechnica writer? Fucking tell us about that!
Anxiety and concern are not the same thing. If you’re only able to motivate yourself through stress and fear, do you. But many people don’t find anxiety to be a useful motivator. In fact, for many people, it has the opposite effect.
And this isn’t an Ars Technica writer. This is actually reprinted from The Converation, which is a platform that solicits academics to author articles intended for a broader audience than, say, academic journals. She’s an associate professor and licensed psychologist with a PhD.
Anxiety and concern are not the same thing.
Yeah, I know. And the article trying to gaslight us into mistaking the latter as the former is part of the problem!
OK
A recent survey found that 69 percent of American adults are seriously stressed about the 2024 presidential election.
That should be 100%. Our Democracy (what little there actually is) is hanging by a thread and there’s a big orange turd running around with scissors. If Trump wins that’s it, game over, the inmates are running the asylum and the dumbest, craziest, and meanest of the bunch will have just crowned himself dictator for life. If Harris wins we get to kick the can down the road for four more years and maybe if we work really hard claw back a little bit of the democracy we theoretically have.
I can buy the statistic. Republicans spent the last 4 years barely facing the consequence of their actions. They either win and everything is fine, or they keep eroding the democratic process and try again in 4 more years.
That and the right generally doesn’t believe in mental health concerns, so they just repress their anxiety, say they don’t have any, and then use that to invalidate the mental health concerns of others.
I suggest you read the article, specifically the section “Get flexible with your thinking.” :) A Trump win, while disturbing, has a lot of possible outcomes.
99% of those outcomes are bad, and 100% of the most likely ones are. The only vaguely positive outcome would be if Trump was immediately impeached AND convicted and considering congress couldn’t even manage that the last two times when he was blatantly guilty that’s effectively impossible.
So yeah, a Trump win is the end of the US. Even if he keeled over dead of a heart attack immediately after assuming office his VP is just as bad (worse in some ways). We’ve seen their playbook, project 2025 lays out exactly how they’re planning to destroy the US, and Trump has repeatedly talked about how he plans to run his dictatorship. When people tell you who they are (repeatedly) believe them. Trump badly wants to be a dictator in the style of Putin or Kim Jong Un. All he’s waiting on is the opportunity and we can not give it to him!
I’m not anxious about the election. I’m anxoius about what happens in the 4 years after it. Keeping me calm til November 6 is near useless.
