We still have almost seven months left before Election Day, but already this election season is one of the weirdest ever. Let's briefly recap.

The Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, has remained out front despite insulting women with misogynistic remarks, despite insulting foreigners with threats of shutting or tossing people out the country and accusations of unfair trade practices, and despite insulting military veterans who were prisoners of war (even though he never served in the military).

He also has stood by a campaign manager who was recently charged in South Florida with misdemeanor battery for grabbing a reporter. The FBI is investigating the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, for possibly compromising classified government information, while significant numbers of voters from her own party don't trust her.

The Democratic challenger openly espouses a governing philosophy that frightened and appalled Americans for 75 years. The main GOP challenger is so disliked by colleagues within his own party that many of the 54 Senate Republicans may not back him.

Strange, indeed.

Yet perhaps the oddest thing, although a phenomenon like this has surfaced before, is the threatened mass exodus if Donald Trump wins.

Vox.com surveyed 2,000 registered voters and found that 28 percent of respondents would "consider" moving to another country, likely Canada, if Trump wins in November. For their part, Canadians are responding. The Lakeland Ledger noted that an Ontario-based information technology company has placed help wanted ads on Facebook featuring Trump's picture. A talk radio host in Nova Scotia has a website promising a new home for any Americans relocating if Trump prevails.

A month ago, The Huffington Post named at least seven celebrities — among them Whoopi Goldberg, Al Sharpton, Jon Stewart, Cher and Samuel L. Jackson — ready to leave America if Trump wins. Breitbart.com has added George Lopez and Miley Cyrus to the list, while Inquistr.com mentioned that Trump's old nemesis, Rosie O'Donnell, would join the fleeing gaggle.

Such threats are not new. Jim Fox, the Lakeland Ledger's longtime Canadian correspondent, reported the number of Americans who immigrated to Canada in the decade after George W. Bush won in 2004 roughly doubled, to 34,000. That's not a huge outflow from a country of 300 million-plus people, but at least those folks kept their word. Similar interest seems evident now. After Trump romped on Super Tuesday, Google reported that searches for "move to Canada" skyrocketed by 1,500 percent.

If Trump does somehow pull it off, we seriously doubt that Whoopi, Rev. Al, Cher or the rest of the gang are going anywhere. As the late Washington Times columnist and film critic Richard Grenier pointed out a generation ago, when their ilk was fascinated by various communist pols and revolutionaries commanding the landscape in Central America and Africa, those who blame America for all the world's ills rarely choose to live in the third-world paradises they champion.

Moreover, Adam Alter, professor of psychology and marketing at New York University, has offered a keen insight. Writing last month in the Washington Post, Alter cited two reasons why people who make such threats fail to follow through. For one thing, he said: "Life goes on even after traumatic events. Most of our lives consist of a series of mundane events." Secondly, "defeat stings less than we fear ... (because) humans have a tendency to overestimate how long severe psychological pain will last." Alter concluded: "Trump victory in November will distress his critics less severely and more briefly than they imagine. And most of them will go on, like thousands of disappointed voters do every four years, living the same lives in the same country they inhabited before Nov. 8, 2016."

So if Trump wins, you might be sad for a while, but you won't leave. And we can guarantee, you won't be bored.

REPRINTED FROM THE PANAMA CITY NEWS HERALD