Most of us are familiar with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief– denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Kubler-Ross’ list is a handy reminder that grief and the time it takes to run its course don’t always follow a straight line.
Grief comes from the Anglo-French word gref meaning injustice or calamity and the Latin word gravis meaning heavy. The dictionary defines it as a “deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement.” Grieve, is related but comes from the Latin gravare, to burden but also gravis or heavy, and its dictionary definition is “to feel or show grief.”
I’m currently grieving the shameful debasing of the American government. I leap-frogged over denial but I doubt I’ll get past anger until Donald Trump is out of office or behind bars – or both. Every day I struggle to find words that describe my feelings, but I am hard pressed to find anything more accurate or reliable than unbelievable.
I’ll survive. I know that, but I do worry for my children and grandchildren. Yesterday, we learned that global warming is degrading the ice cap and glaciers at many times the rate earlier thought. As a pilot, I used to calculate the “point of no return” when crossing the ocean. Today, the world is fast approaching the point of no return with respect to climate change, but our government is in the hands of science and climate deniers who pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accords.
So, while the Trumpers are in denial or simply disregarding global warming the rest of us are stuck in the anger or depression stages of grief. No one I know will ever accept the ignorance, cruelty, and inhumanity of Donald Trump. None of us is bargaining. We’re still in the anger stage and fighting back.
While Rome burns and Trump tweets, I’ve been fiddling. I’ve come up with some new lists of Kubler-Ross stages. I call them the Donald J. Trump Stages of Grievance, Greed, Governance, and Gall. There are overlaps, but here’s the lists.
- Trump’s Stages of Grievance
- Whining
- Lying
- Blaming
- Raging
- Ranting
- Tweeting
- Trump’s Stages of Greed
- Lying
- Cheating
- Stealing
- Defrauding
- Bankrupting
- Trumps Stages of Governance
- Disregard history
- Disregard the Constitution
- Disregard the Rule of Law
- Disregard US Intelligence experts
- Believe Vladimir Putin
- Trump’s Stages of Gall
- “I am a young, vibrant man. (April 2019)
- “I’m like really smart, I’m a very stable genius.” (January 2018)
- “There’s nobody that respects women more than I do.” (April 2016)
- “Nobody knows the Bible better than me.” (May 2017)
- “I know more about ISIS than the General do.” (November 2015)
- “I am the least racist person in the world.” (July 2019)
I suspect the squirrel in the White House isn’t running the show. He is manipulated by the people who have access to him. Meanwhile, his supporters don’t read the news we read. They live in an echo chamber. FOX runs a relentless prime time drum-beet of hate. Facebook algorithms make sure “the base” never sees what you write. Epoch Times, Limbaugh, etc feed the distortions for their own greed driven rewards, not personally believing all they say… just getting rich without a conscience.
We watched The Great Hack on Netflix. Too much drama over information, but stunning anyway. Reflecting on Cambridge Analytica’s disruptive meddling around the world is partly to blame for my early morning take on the Trump phenomenon.
Thanks for stirring up my brain. I enjoy your articles.