[SATIRE] Alternative Inauguration Day Plans for the Functionally Doomed

Crowd at US Capitol during presidential inauguration | By Larisa

Ah, Inauguration Day 2025. A sacred American tradition, now reduced to a reboot of a show nobody wanted renewed. Donald J. Trump, the nation’s first two-time loser-turned-winner, takes the oath once more, flanked by his new running mate, J.D. "I Swear I Hated Him Once" Vance, and a crowd of supporters screaming "four more years!" with the same energy as a doomsday cult awaiting the mothership.

For the rest of us? The options are grim. Watching the ceremony means witnessing the world’s longest grievance monologue, as a tangerine-hued septuagenarian mispronounces “constitutional” and vows revenge on all who doubted him. Ignoring it entirely might give you an extra 24 hours of blissful delusion before the first executive order is signed in crayon.

So what to do? Fear not! If the thought of watching yet another rich old man in a flag-colored tie mumble about “American carnage” makes your skin crawl, here are some alternative activities to fill the void where democracy used to be.

1. Decline to Participate in Reality

Let’s be honest—we all need a break. Turn off your phone, close your curtains, and pretend that today does not exist.

• Level 1: Log off social media and mute every news outlet.

• Level 2: Pretend you're living in an alternate timeline where President Bernie Sanders is nationalizing healthcare and dunking on billionaires.

• Level 3: Fully disassociate—adopt a new identity, relocate to a remote cabin, and become that cryptid locals whisper about.

Bonus points if you start referring to America in the past tense.

2. Rewatch History for Comfort—Then Remember How That Turned Out

If reality is unbearable, why not escape into the golden glow of a historical drama?

• Watch The West Wing and tell yourself, "This is the America I believe in," while aggressively ignoring that Aaron Sorkin is the opium of the liberal masses.

• Rewatch Hamilton until you remember that the real Alexander Hamilton was a capitalist bootlicker who would have voted for the Patriot Act.

• Binge The Handmaid’s Tale and play the drinking game: “Which of these policies have already been happening for generations, just not to white women?”
  (Hint: It’s too many. You will not survive this drinking game.)

3. Take a Meaningless Walk to Process Your Meaningless Thoughts

Sometimes, when the walls of your home feel like they’re closing in under the crushing weight of historical decline, the only solution is to walk aimlessly through the streets, staring into the distance like a protagonist in a French existentialist novel.

• Stroll through the ruins of your optimism. Pause at a scenic overlook and whisper, “This country was a failed experiment.”

• Lock eyes with a squirrel. Let him judge you. He knows you don’t have a survival plan.

• Touch grass. Realize it is synthetic. The world is a lie.

When you return home, you will feel exactly the same, but at least now your legs hurt.

4. Prepare for the Collapse in a Way That Feels Productive but Isn’t

If you can’t stop the unraveling of civilization, you can at least LARP as someone who’s ready for it.

• Buy canned goods. Ignore the fact that you have no idea how to prepare them without electricity.

• Download PDFs on urban foraging. Convince yourself you can survive on dandelions and tree bark.

• Finally read The Dawn of Everything. (Or at least skim enough to sound interesting at the post-collapse commune selection trials.)

• Practice your new career as a barter economy specialist. Today’s skill: learning to make artisanal soap so you’ll have trade leverage when the dollar collapses.

None of this will matter when the power grid fails, but at least you’ll die feeling mildly prepared.

5. Engage in Healthy Coping Mechanisms (or Unhealthy Ones, Who’s Judging?)

The world is ending at a polite and steady pace, so do what feels right.

• Drink wine out of a mug. Pretend it's tea. It’s 11 AM. Who cares?

• Doomscroll aggressively. Find out what fresh new horrors await.

• Buy a book you’ll never read. Feel the fleeting dopamine hit of consumerism.

• Stress-bake an entire cake. Eat it with a spoon. It is your emotional support cake.

• Reorganize your kitchen cabinets. Because while you have no control over the state of the nation, you CAN control where the spices go.

The illusion of agency is all we have left.

6. Write Letters to the Future (That Will Never Be Read)

Consider this your "Dear God, What Happened?" time capsule.

• Write a letter to your great-grandchildren. Apologize for the climate.

• Draft an apology to your past self. She had dreams. She didn’t know.

• Compose a resignation letter to society. Sign it “A Former Believer in Progress.”

Seal these letters in an envelope, then burn them for warmth.

7. Plan Your Future as an Expat (For the 87th Time)

You’ve Googled it before. Now it’s time to really commit.

• Look up “Easiest Countries for Americans to Move To.” (Realize they require savings and functional social skills. Give up.)

• Check if New Zealand is still accepting people. (It’s not.)

• Remember that everywhere else has problems too. (But at least their problems are in a different accent.)

• Accept that you’ll never actually leave. The airport is stressful and your cat would never forgive you.

It’s okay. Canada wouldn’t have taken you anyway.

8. Laugh, Because There’s Nothing Else to Do

At the end of the day, there are only two options: laugh or scream.

• Make dark jokes and see who laughs. Those are your people now.

• Turn despair into content. If the world is a circus, at least be the jester.

• Watch a ridiculous movie. Something so unserious it reminds you that life, too, is a joke.

And if all else fails? Lie down. Stare at the ceiling. Wait.

Maybe, just maybe, this will all be a strange fever dream we wake up from.

But probably not. So drink some water, and get ready to do it all again tomorrow.

9. How to Explain This Day to Future Generations

At some point, assuming humanity survives long enough to have “future generations” (which, honestly, feels optimistic), someone will ask:

“What was Inauguration Day 2025 like?”

How you answer will depend on your level of trauma processing and personal bitterness. Consider the following options:

🟢 The Diplomatic Historian Approach (For When You’re Trying to Sound Reasonable)

"Well, sweetheart, it was a deeply polarized time in America. Some saw it as a victory for populism, while others saw it as a harbinger of democratic decline. There were concerns about governance, the rule of law, and the general competence of our institutions. But at the end of the day, people carried on, just as they always do.”

Reality Check: The child will grow up to read Wikipedia and resent you for lying to them.

🟡 The Sarcastic Survivor Approach (For When You’re Passive-Aggressively Reliving the Horror)

"Ah yes, January 20, 2025. The day America decided, ‘You know what? Let’s run it back.’ Like a bad sequel to an already terrible movie. Like a restaurant that gave you food poisoning and you still went back because the breadsticks were free. Anyway, we all just sat there watching, waiting for the asteroid."

Reality Check: The child will assume you’re exaggerating. They will Google "Trump 2025 executive orders" and immediately vomit.

🔴 The PTSD Veteran Approach (For When You Have Absolutely Given Up on Sugarcoating Anything)

"Listen, kid. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion while the driver, drunk on power and Diet Coke, insisted it was actually a victory lap. The country had been through four years of breathing freely, and then we decided ‘Nah, let’s try suffocating again.’ The entire ceremony felt like the opening scene of a horror movie where half the characters don’t realize they’re already dead. And you know what we did? We just sat there, scrolling, tweeting jokes into the abyss, because that’s all we had left. That’s what it was like.”

Reality Check: The child will stare at you in silence. They will never ask you about history again.

🖤 The "Why Would You Even Ask Me That?" Approach (For When You Have Emotionally Checked Out Forever)

"It was a day. People did things. I don’t know. I don’t remember. I wasn’t there. I was living in a hole in the woods eating moss and avoiding taxes. Ask the AI overlords to reconstruct the memory, I don’t care."

Reality Check: The child will grow up to tell their friends, “Yeah, my grandparent saw the fall of democracy but won’t talk about it. We don’t ask anymore.”

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Whichever explanation you choose, be sure to end with a long, exhausted sigh and at least one shot of whiskey. If history is kind, maybe they’ll never have to ask about 2029.