Most of the people I have known when they were mourning close friends and family have not gone through the Kübler-Ross stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Some researchers say that resilient people generally don't, and people with more rigid personalities do so more often. Well, I don't have a lot of experience with that, but what I have agrees with that notion.
At a July 4th picnic last year one of the picknickers had been working for Hillary Clinton, and didn't think she would vote for Barack Obama. It was a difficult choice for a Black woman, of course, between the possible first Black president or the possible first female president. I told her that she was in mourning, which she agreed with. The Hillary supporters started out in denial, even after Obama clinched the nomination, and were proceeding to anger--the PUMA stage. (Party Unity My Ass)
Well, they went on from there, and we didn't hear any more of that, and in fact most of Hillary's people did get behind Obama, and here we are. But that's the Democrats. What happened among the Republicans?
The initial reaction from Republicans to Obama's nomination was denial, right from the start. Rudy Giuliani sneering at community organizing as experience in the world in his convention speech, for example, while the audience chanted, "Ze-ro! Ze-ro!" We saw rising anger in the claims that Obama was an Arab or a terrorist, which McCain (to his slight credit) couldn't stand, and again during McCain's concession speech on the night.
Sarah Palin gave John McCain a bounce, but from then on it was a steady slide to election day at the same time that Republicans were claiming that Sarah Palin was still cutting into Obama's lead.
Anger was the next theme. Republican rhetoric kept ratcheting up, with McCain's The One ad, meant to suggest that Obama is the Antichrist, and the Celebrity ad comparing Obama with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. I don't think I have to recite the whole sorry history to you, with cries of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" at Republican rallies, and all the rest.
Well, it has been all denial mixed with increasing anger ever since the election. Denial was still ahead at the time of the Stimulus Bill. Either Health Care or just more time in mourning for the Perpetual Republican Majority brought out meaner, nastier, and less true things every week. The escalation has not stopped or even slowed down yet. On the contrary, it is still accelerating, to the point where we can't even keep up with all of the daily lies here on Daily Kos.
Right now the complaints about the President's school speech are about indoctrination and the "Cult of Personality", including comparisons with Mao in China and the Kims in North Korea. Rep. Joe Wilson (no relation) of South Carolina yelled, "You lie!" at the President during his speech, provoking loud boos in the House chamber. Wilson had to call the White House to apologize, and also issue a written semi-apology, sort of saying, "I'm sorry you made me so angry." For his part, the President, in his speech, called the Health Care lies "lies", and promised to call out the liars on Health Care in future, provoking sustained applause. I wonder whether they will do it on WhiteHouse.gov, or where.
Democrats have been reluctant to call out these lies, and the bigotry behind them, up to now, but have very gradually become more forceful as the lies became more and more outrageous. Even a few Republicans have complained about some of the lies. AARP said on the front page of its September Bulletin for members, "The Hype, The Lies, The Facts". MSNBC isn't shy about calling out lies. Ed Schultz has Psycho Talk, Keith Olbermann has Worst Persons in the World, and so on. We know where we can hear the truth about the lies: The Huffington Post, The Nation, here at Daily Kos, the Berkeley CA Daily Planet, Crooks and Liars,Talking Points Memo, Pacifica Broadcasting (including Democracy Now), and the rest of the progressive media and Internet blogs. But not the so-called Mainstream/actually Corporate Media. Yet.
Could Obama have thought that the Republicans would have gotten to bargaining by this time, so that a bipartisan health care bill would have been possible? I don't suppose so, and anyway, the denial and anger are still ratcheting up. How high can they go?
Well, Texas isn't going to secede, and states have not turned down stimulus money, although a few governors such as Sanford and Jindal have grandstanded on the issue. We can expect some noise, such as lawsuits claiming the Health Care plan is unconstitutional, as the Tenthers claim. (Named for the Tenth Amendment to the Consitution, reserving powers to the States). The real issue is that the Secret Service says that death threats against President Obama have been running four times higher than against President Bush, at about 30 a day.
This, too is a major point of denial and anger. Republicans will tell you that the Liberal Bush-haters were much worse than what is going on now. This would just be silly if it were not the President's life that is being threatened. As it is, we have to take this insanity seriously. (Among other things, the Secret Service needs a large budget increase.)
We can possibly hope that the bargaining stage will take hold someday, but I wouldn't even guess at when that could happen. In the meantime, what to do? Well, first, it won't do to antagonize the bigots needlessly. They could behave much worse, and I don't doubt that they will. But think about where they are coming from. They complain, "I want my country back," altthough it is obvious that they can't take us back to the 1950s, when Blacks, women, and even most teenagers knew their place, before gays came out of the closet, when abortion and in many cases contraception were still illegal. But the desire is real. The fear is real. The racists and the lily-white churches really believe that this is the end of civilization as they know it, because it really is.
It is not, however, Socialism, much less National Socialism (Naziism), or Communism (Stalinist, Maoist, or Kimist). Barack Obama is no more the Antichrist than Dick Cheney is (as Lyndon LaRouche has alleged).
We live in interesting times, don't we?
(Note: I said yesterday that I planned to write about the Republican response to President Obama's big speech on health care last night. It turns out that it wasn't worth it, because the response was written beforehand. Tonight they will have a second go, complaining about what the President actually said. Much more fun.)