Liberals are Suffering the Seven Stages of Grief

Even if you are not aware of the “7 Stages of Grief” originally conceptualized by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, you may have experienced them at some level in your own life. Recovery from grief is possible. The Kubler-Ross model is not the best model for grief recovery but it suits my purposes here.

Let me illustrate the seven steps by examining the behavior of many liberals since the 2016 Presidential Election. Please note that individuals and groups can exhibit more than one of these steps simultaneously and they do not necessarily follow in specific order.

SHOCK:                 Lots of people were shocked when ‘sure thing’ Hillary Clinton failed to win the 2016 election for U. S. president. It just didn’t seem possible. For shock, look no further than the election night coverage. As the returns dribbled in confirming state after state going for Trump, the glib self-assurance of the mainly liberal commentators visibly drained from grinning to chagrin, betraying a sinking awareness that their prognostications were horribly off mark. As the tone sank from smug to glum one could almost hear their thoughts sifting frantically through mental rolodexes for whom they could call should they find themselves jobless on Wednesday morning.

DENIAL:                It didn’t take long for denial to set in. The shrill wailing and gnashing of teeth began before the voting machines had cooled. Calls for vote recounts began almost immediately and Green Party candidate Jill Stein spent millions of dollars attempting to ‘fix’ a faulty outcome and ‘restore the integrity of our voting system’. Hillary Clinton and others cheered this effort after ridiculing winner Donald Trump for expressing before the vote, his concern that Democrats might once again try to steal an election.

The irony that Democrats instinctively resist attempts to establish election integrity safe-guards such as voter ID requirements was lost only on Democrats.

Another example of denial would be that Hillary Clinton insists that “she won” the election because she gained more popular votes. The fact that popular votes have never been decisive in choosing our president shows the lengths people will go to support their denial. Or would that be called ‘delusion’?

ANGER:            There are too many examples of anger to cite here; violent campus riots, faked hate crimes, fake news, and everyone’s favorite, calls for impeachment. Democrats started calling for Trump’s impeachment prior to the inauguration and continue to this day.

According to our Constitution, in order to impeach, an actual crime must have been committed by a sitting president. That pesky requirement won’t go away. Additionally, the Democrats lacking control of either house of Congress is another stumbling block that these wannabe demagogues can’t effectively ignore.

Name calling is a favorite tactic of people devoid of ideas. Those who routinely condemn “hate speech” think nothing of calling Trump and his supporters a fascist, racist, blank-o-phobe (fill in the blank), hater, anti-semite and worse. This tactic, and voter’s weariness of it may be one factor in Trump winning. The fact that many of the protesters embrace and practice those very behaviors they claim to abhor and project onto Trump is disturbing.

Of course, the whole Russia-gate scandal started within 24 hours after the election and despite the lack of evidence (that would be zero evidence) Trump colluded with Russians to steal the election, multiple investigations continue six months into Trump’s presidency. How is it that the best intelligence agencies in the world cannot find evidence of criminal activity by such “a foolish, ignorant troll”?

If collusion existed, would it look something like former President Obama telling Russian President Medvedev that he “would be more flexible after he is re-elected”? Or would it look more like then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signing off on the sale of 20% of U.S. uranium reserves to a Russian owned mining company?

BARGAINING:   This stage is just now coming to the fore. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer offered to cooperate with President Trump on healthcare “if he ditches the Freedom Caucus” and does it Schumer’s way.

Other Democratic leaders, such as Nancy Pelosi are trying to quell the silly demands for impeachment from Rep. Maxine Waters, Sen. Cory Booker, Rep. Al Green and others.  Once Democrats regain both houses of Congress you can expect that chorus to rise once again.

After months of former FBI Director James Comey being condemned by the left for his betrayal of Hillary, Trump thought firing the director would be seen as a peace offering, a chance to meet in the middle. Of course, it is not about Comey or anything else, but only about stopping Trump no matter what he does.

Trust that all bargaining overtures are merely a ploy to co-opt Trump and separate him from his constituency, the better to sacrifice him.

DEPRESSION:     Can you say ‘snowflake’? This stage set in early and continues like a low-grade fever throughout the leftward end of the political spectrum. Universities set up ‘safe spaces’ with ponies and soft blankets for students who just couldn’t cope with the fact that Trump won. Reality can be so inconvenient. It’s not fair! I’m going to hold my breath until Hillary is President.

I know of one graduate student who retreated to her bed for over a week after the election. In doing this, she literally abandoned her mental health clinic internship until she found the strength to cope. The clinical responsibilities she abandoned included providing therapy to several chronically mentally ill clients.

TESTING:             The typical Democratic playbook needs some rewrites. Hysterically calling anyone you disagree with a racist doesn’t send people scurrying to the shadows like it once did. Playing the Russia-gate card is also reaping diminishing returns. One former Democratic Congresswoman, Nina Turner says people at town hall meetings aren’t asking about Russia, they’re asking about jobs. Go figure.

ACCEPTANCE:    Sooner or later the individual suffering from debilitating loss eventually comes to a place of peace and acceptance from where they can re-enter society and contribute in a positive manner. Of course, acceptance does not necessarily mean agreement or approval.

Grief can be a debilitating condition that inhibits one’s ability to manage simple tasks and maneuver through the day and through life. It affects one’s ability to maintain healthy relationships. Grief can sap one’s ability to successfully defend those people and ideals one holds dear. Grief is a necessary emotional process, but if one gets stuck, grief can keep one from living a full life.

The population I have used to illustrate the concepts of the Seven Stages of Grief may yet reach the point of acceptance in their recovery. I certainly hope so.

But I haven’t seen it yet.

….

John K. Adams is a writer, video-memoirist and a certified Grief Recovery Specialist who works in Los Angeles, CA.

But Some are More Equal than Others

We are constantly told through the media, the world will be better when women are in control.

Aggressive, predatory behavior towards members of the opposite sex, the groping of strangers in a bar, intimidation tactics like stalking and unsolicited taking pictures of individuals and their license plates… This stereotype du jour fits what most would presume was a description of the bad behavior of that most despised demographic, ‘white men.’

Yet all of this behavior was imposed on me recently, by women. Why would a so-called ‘oppressed minority’ adopt such ugly behavior? ‘Because they can’? Getting their ‘evens’? Are women literally becoming the men they hate?

My wife and I recently visited family in another city. Out for the evening, we stopped at a club. Dueling piano players played to a standing room only crowd. Scattered in the crowd were three women wearing sexually explicit pink head gear recently become fashionable.

After receiving several hard pinches and harder slaps on my back-side, I was an unwilling target. My peripheral vision confirmed that at least one of the ‘liberated’ wearers of the pink hats was responsible for this physical abuse.

How did I respond? I didn’t faint. I didn’t melt. I just left with my family. Other men in our party confirmed getting the same unwanted attention.

‘That’s what you get for going to that kind of bar’. Really? That’s an eerie echo of the old ‘blame the victim’ excuse decried by feminists when some fool claims ‘she asked for it.’

Any woman treated like that should call the police. Discretion being the better part, I chose against confrontation and the resulting silliness.

How clever of her to hide in plain sight. How mature. How progressive.

…

A few weeks ago I went to Balboa Park while waiting to pick up my wife. I parked in the shade and walked around the lake. The drought had taken many of the cherry trees. Young trees had replaced those that had died. The swans still swam elegantly. The coots moved like a massive black carpet in search of food.

When I returned to my car, another car was parked next to it occupied by a young woman. She caught my eye, I nodded and continued to my car. I began to read. Then I noticed the woman staring at me. I politely nodded and returned to my reading.

I did not engage with her.

She must have stared at me for ten minutes.

Should I flee every time I sense someone’s displeasure? Trying to second guess everyone quickly transforms to paranoia. I minded my business. What was my offense?

Then I looked up to see her photographing me with a smart phone. She left her car to grab a shot of my license plate. What mischief might she create with my image on the internet?

I stayed in my car. To ‘talk it out and reach an understanding’ seemed futile and absurd.

She drove away.

And had I snapped pictures of her? Imagine.

I know our Constitution has no ‘right to not be offended.’ However, I wish there was a right to be let alone.

This is how a culture ‘evolves’? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

How My Dad Solved the Cuban Missile Crisis

My father was a confident man. I never saw him anxious for anything. If he ever was, he kept it to himself. Even in the face of his own impending death, he put his concerns aside to comfort his loved ones, assuring them that all would be well.

He joined the Marines after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7^th, 1941. He fought in the South Pacific until he returned stateside for officer’s training school.

While in the Solomon Islands, he was assigned to the radio corps. Once an island was ‘pacified,’ his job was to lead a squad past any remaining resistance to the highest point on the island and install an antenna with which to establish radio communications to the outside world.

Hauling radio equipment up a mountain can’t be that easy. Doing so while an enemy is shooting at you would be nigh impossible.

I think, after surviving that, everything else was just gravy for him.

At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in October of 1962, the threat of nuclear war was a big deal. A few years before, Nikita Khrushchev had declared “We will bury you.” Now they were installing ballistic missiles in Cuba, aimed at us. What next?

Nowadays, nuclear annihilation is just one more item on the menu of devastating threats.  But then the weight of potential nuclear conflict was palpable.

I remember the many air raid drills conducted at my school. The idea that hiding under my desk would protect me in the event of a nuclear attack, seemed fanciful to me even then.

The poster advising citizens “In the event of nuclear attack, tuck your head between your knees and kiss your ass good-bye” had not been published yet. However, it perfectly captured the ironic sense of those drills. Mass incineration might be our collective fates, but at least we would be orderly and quiet.

At that time we lived in Wilmar, a farming town in central Minnesota, about two hours west of Minneapolis, out good old Highway 12.

The news on radio and TV incessantly explored all the ramifications should war break out.  Every night WCCO would broadcast a map of Minnesota. The animated overlay graphically depicted the radius of damage we could expect should an atomic bomb hit Minneapolis. Concentric circles would radiate out to 100 miles in every direction from ground zero. It was terrifying.

Everyone I knew was anxious. We had no context from which to judge these dire threats to everything we had ever known. Those Russians were crazy.

One promising solution was to build a private bomb shelter. The news talked about these and Popular Mechanics magazine published an article describing all the things a shelter should contain. It would be cramped but safe. It was do-able.

Dad had been through the war. I gathered some friends and approached him about the feasibility of building such a shelter.

He said, “You don’t need it.”

“Why not? The maps say the explosion will reach 100 miles and Wilmar is 100 miles from Minneapolis.”

“But we live on the west end of town. The radiation will never reach us.”

His perfectly reasoned argument put our minds at rest. Days later, the crisis was over. The Russians had blinked.

My Dad was so smart.