Elisabeth Kübler-Ross M.D. developed the five-stage grief model that we use today. It is a guide to the stages that a dying or grieving person goes through while accepting death.
The five stages are:
· Denial
· Anger
· Bargaining
· Depression
· Acceptance
I've noticed that many of my readers (http://rjr10036.typepad.com/)are struggling to work through these five stages. All I would ask, as your self-appointed and thoroughly unqualified therapist is that you consider Bush's State of the Union address, the Alito confirmation and the plague of evangelicals from the perspective of each of the five stages.
I'm reassured and encouraged each day as I read comments and emails from various readers who are clearly working their way through the five stages. Despite their various defenses of Bush, the Republicans and the general situation, it's clear they are in the process and will eventually reach my level of acceptance.
Those in denial benignly smile and see what they imagine to be "the big picture." They are working from "within" the system. They sweep up all the horrible facts and hide them under some intellectual rug. They live in a world of grotesque stereotypes writing off dissenting human beings as apologists, cowards, Canadians and the French. They believe that Americans have a direct hot-line to righteousness and see things that others are incapable of understanding. They've convinced themselves that the Republicans haven't seized power through big lies, misinformation, an unconstitutional and illegal use of evangelical churches and illegal election rigging, but rather that the Democrats can't put up good candidates. Like all dictators, despots, traitors and fascists, the Republicans are brilliant at propaganda, disinformation and the art of the big lie. They're masters at providing the fairy tales that the deniers so badly need to hear.
The angry call me call me hyperbolic and a fabulist. They hide from history and reality and create a fantasy world in which those who have diagnosed the patient are liars, cowards and traitors. You can hear them raving and ranting in hospitals, condemning the "quack" who has had to deliver the diagnosis. They've convinced themselves that Bush and the Republicans are righteous and all the blame for the chaos in the middle east, the worst intelligence gathering network in the world, our collapsing economy, the fact that we are technically bankrupt as a nation and the obvious onslaught of global warming are either someone else's fault (Clinton, cowardly Democrats, the dastardly French) or necessary evils on the way to a better America and better American-made world. The angry simply hurl sarcasm and irrational insults, cherry picking facts and historical precedent that suits their deep-seeded sense of self-denial. Ann Coulter even threatens to feed rat poison to liberal Supremes.
The Bargainers argue that Clinton did it. Democrats are also corrupt. We're better off without that nasty dictator Saddam even if the war was wrong and based on lies and deceit. The president should be excused from criminal behavior if his heart's in the right place. The success of Brokeback Mountain is big step forward in gay rights, despite the fact that even in Hollywood gay actors are sidelined and denied their own roles. They celebrate the idea that a movie made by a straight director and starring straight actors represents a landmark in gay rights. They celebrate the fact that Washington state is now the 7th state to bar workplace discrimination against homosexuals and ignore the fact that in the other 43 states a homosexual can still be fired for no other reason that sexual orientation. As congress moves closer and closer to a constitutional amendment that will permanently deny homosexuals equal rights as Americans, the bargainers insist this is just an exercise and could never really come to pass. America's status in the world declines daily in terms of influence, scientific leadership and moral and ethical authority, but the Bargainers call this "growing pains."
The Depressed believe that America is dead. Our two party system is an abysmal failure. The president has abused his office to void our system of checks and balances and concentrate power in a most profoundly unAmerican way. Millions of Americans have fallen under the sway of medieval superstition and believe that as a good Christian, our president can do no wrong, casting aside the constitution and replacing it with the Bible. The man who is supposed to be the president of all of us, believes that those of us who are not reborn in Christ will burn for all eternity in the fiery pit of hell. And the Depressed listen to the State of the Union Address and wonder at the relentless march of lies and how members of congress can actually applaud those lies. The man who advocates teaching superstition as science in our schools stands before the world and says we need more science teachers so that our students can compete on the world stage. And people applaud. While the deniers and the bargainers see growing pains in the middle east and Iraq, the depressed see chaos and a bottomless pit that is sucking in more and more of our resources and hopes.
Now welcome to Acceptance. Those of us who are in Acceptance are ready to rebuild, even, if you'll forgive my appropriation of the term, resurrect our constitution and our democracy. Those of us who have reached Acceptance want a funeral aka the impeachment of George W. Bush. Those of us who have reached Acceptance acknowledge that if we can't muster enough votes to throw the corrupt and superstitious out of Congress this coming November, it's time to toss a fist of dirt into the grave, leave a stone on the monument and accept that the glorious 230 year long American dream is dead. With an extremist right wing White House, Congress and now Supreme Court solidly in place one can only wonder if there will even be election in 2008 if we fail to reverse this mess in 2006. After all, the war on terrorism as defined by Bush has no end until democracy is dead.