How to Do Escapism in the Trump Era

If we must retreat into the private sphere, we should populate it with cherished others.

Prosocial forms of escapism, then, have their uses. Right now, though, anti-Trump Americans are at risk of embracing a less productive form of retreat: Rather than deepening our social connections to others, Americans withdraw by spending more time at home and on their own.

When escapism was pursued collectively, rather than individually, it forged important social bonds. In Bulgaria, historian Maria Todorova has argued that post-Communist nostalgia emerges from this “feeling of loss for a specific form of sociability,” which frayed with the development of free markets. In Romania too, political scientist Mihaela Miro