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'We'll Stop Caring About Trump In A Week,' Says Least Comforting Study Ever

by Rosey Baker
REUTERS

Even though today is a new day, it still feels like our country died and the guy in charge of the will is going to leave us all out of it.

We haven't stopped hearing from media outlets that this election was the most historically unprecedented one of our time.

But somehow, that doesn't stop us from looking to past election cycles for some remnant of comfort because human beings — with everything we've done — are still insanely stupid.

That being said, a 2012 election study published in the Journal of Experimental Political Science has recently resurfaced as we've been trying to make meaning out of what happened on Tuesday night.

The study concluded Republicans who voted for Mitt Romney felt a 30 to 60 percent drop in happiness, but then went back to feeling normal within seven days of Obama's re-election.

I don't know which is worse: the fact that Trump just got elected or the fact that this study suggests we'll all come to accept this new nightmare as our living reality.

Trump has actually suggested expanding the tactical use of Stop-and-Frisk by police officers, he has denigrated women, he has suggested banning all Muslims from the US and he wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico, claiming that Mexico will pay for it.

He has praised the likes of fascist leaders like Putin, and he has resisted denouncing the endorsements of the KKK and the white nationalist movement. David Duke, a former imperial wizard of the KKK, has publicly expressed his appreciation for Trump taking his message to a national audience.

I don't believe we have the option of sitting back and accepting that this is normal.

Even with the findings in this study, I don't think we will simply get over what happened in this election. Though we might feel "normal" in a week, the repercussions of a Trump presidency are just beginning.

Citations: You'll Get Over the Election in About a Week, Says Out-of-Touch Study (www.NYMag.com), Losing Hurts: The Happiness Impact of Partisan Electoral Loss (www.cambridge.org)