Crying and coping: Left struggles with Trump’s aggressiveness

Liberals are struggling to cope with President Trump’s unprecedented shock-and-awe onslaught in the past two weeks against the battlements they erected over the past four years.

Some are vowing resistance and holding training camps. Some have turned to the courts and are counting on judges to deliver reprieves from the blitz of executive orders and actions.

Others have sought to strengthen their mental health as they despair at the idea of another four years of Mr. Trump in the White House.

Opportunists raving like televangelists argue that the way to political salvation is to give, give, give in cold, hard cash.

“We need your help,” Our Revolution, an outgrowth of Sen. Bernard Sanders’ presidential campaign, said in a fundraising email begging supporters to pony up money to try to derail the confirmation of Mr. Trump’s Cabinet picks.

Abortion rights groups said they needed money to pay for more security at clinics and for more attorneys to argue the lawsuits they figured to file.

“That’s why we need your help. Now. Today. This hour,” said the Feminist Majority Foundation, adding that contributions are tax-deductible.

Grappling with Mr. Trump began in the hours after the November election, but his first weeks in office exceeded what many liberals feared.

Marc Elias, a campaign lawyer who has worked for Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden, told his followers that he had been inundated with questions about how Trump resisters should react.

His ideas included supporting “independent media,” not holding Democrats to a higher standard and speaking out against Republicans at every chance, including on social media, at book club meetings and at family dinner tables.

Mr. Elias also told them to hold out hope.

“We are in for a long fight and must build and commit to an opposition movement that will stand the test of time,” he said. “We must understand that this will not be over in one election or with the defeat of any one candidate. This is the fight of our generation, and it will take time.”

Each Trump move renews the chorus of outrage.

Nowhere has Mr. Trump been more active than on immigration — and nobody is more actively resisting than immigration advocacy groups. They hold “field protection strategy” seminars for activists and know-your-rights sessions for immigrants who fear deportation.

Some groups in the Los Angeles area have set up a hotline to report immigration arrests. Lawyers and activists will investigate and determine whether anything can be done.

RootsAction, one of the first groups to press for Mr. Trump’s impeachment during his first term, is taking a boots-on-the-ground approach this year. Its RootsCamp promises to train liberal warriors to “fight to resist Trump’s agenda.”

“We can’t just sit back and watch,” Roots said.

For those inclined to look inward, psychologists have flooded the internet with coping strategies, such as building “emotional intelligence.”

Just before the inauguration, Time magazine’s website offered “science-backed” coping strategies for those experiencing increased anxiety.

They included exercise, performing acts of kindness, smiling at strangers and having a good cry, particularly with a friend.

“It might seem counterintuitive, but if you need to shed a few tears on Inauguration Day, it’s healthy to let them out with one caveat: You shouldn’t do it alone,” Time reported.

Time advised using Mr. Trump’s inauguration as an inflection point and deciding whether to “merely withstand” the next four years or “treat them like an opportunity.”

Jeremy Shapiro, an adjunct assistant professor of psychological students at Case Western Reserve University, said “political distress” wasn’t much of an issue until the 2016 election.

Writing for The Conversation just after the inauguration, he said it’s a bipartisan issue that lacks good research.

For now, he said, he is advising his politically distressed clients to try to gain some perspective and accept the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer, which urges them to find the strength to change what can be changed and the ability to acknowledge what cannot.

He advised them to limit the consumption of political news.

“The vast majority of people’s lives will not be seriously and concretely damaged by the policies Trump is proposing, and yet many of them are living with painful levels of distress, based primarily on what they read and hear in the media,” he wrote.

Mr. Trump will be tough for those on Capitol Hill to avoid.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, Maryland Democrat, invited psychologists to speak to lawmakers about coping with authoritarian behavior.

Punchbowl News, a website that reports on congressional doings, said its advice included avoiding partisan mudslinging.