Jonna Carter: Survival Skills

The world gets darker by the minute. Authoritarianism is on the rise in every corner of the globe. We're at war with Iran for no explicable reason other than a lapse of judgment has rendered us BFF's with Bibi. We've come to understand that billionaires can be pedophiles with impunity without fear of reprisal. The EPA has mutated into the Environmental Peril Agency. Measles is having a revival worthy of Broadway. There's the occasional glimmer of light such as the firing of Kristi Noem on Thursday, but these glimmers are few and far between. As New Hampshire's National Guard has been called into service for a war without reason we can be assured things are going to get much, much worse.

How does one get out of bed each morning to face a day inevitably filled with shock and horror and heretofore unthinkable behaviors of so-called "leaders?" How does one distract from the fact that our country is barely recognizable, its foundational norms crumbling and its values seemingly vaporized? These are sobering times necessitating for many of us the employment of some sort of individualized survival mechanism.