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Many people have been exposed to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s model for stages of grief. She originally developed it as a model for people to understand that grief and loss are normal in our lives; that we generally experience all five stages, although not always in sequence. In fact, we sometimes lapse into a previous stage for all kinds of reasons. This is what grief looks like.
We have been experiencing devastating losses. Since I expect the chaos in our country to continue for a while, I think it’s helpful to have a way to frame events, understand them, and move into an encouraging future.
The first stage of grief is denial. When I first expressed alarm about the changes that were happening in this country, I was surprised at the number of people who denied that the changes were serious; that they were just a passing experience; that eventually life would get back to “normal” (whatever that is). After a couple of years of disruption, destruction and hatred thrown our way, I think that most conservatives have moved out of the denial stage.
The second stage is anger. This is the place where outrage, resentment and frustration take a toll. It’s easy to get stuck in this stage, partly because we are angry at ourselves for underestimating the power of the Left, and partly because we believe that the Left’s demands, accusations and expectations are outrageous. They are determined to force us into accepting their positions, and are not at all interested in ours. They demonize, ridicule, and even hate us because we are not willing to adopt their ideas. There’s a lot for us to be angry about.
It's easy to get stuck in anger. And the needle has not moved in our favor even remotely to confirm there has been a shift in the Left’s perspective. Occasionally I see someone take our side—some Democrats had the decency to honor Charlie Kirk after he was assassinated—but I see few signs of major conversions. (If anyone thinks I’m wrong, let me know.)
The third stage is bargaining: this is when the Republicans stop acting like Republicans and pretty much support the Democrats' proposals. The Reps have a long tradition of trying to get along, voting for obscene spending packages and caving in on health care demands. The Republicans use the excuse that they always get blamed for mucking up the process, and are reluctant to be the bad guys. There might have been a time when the Left understood how to compromise with integrity, but those times are long gone. They have been taken over by the radical Left, which believes that compromise is a sin.
The fourth stage is depression; many of us find ourselves here. There are moments that look like the previous stages, and where we feel hopeless to change things for the better. Depression is like a perpetual miasma that can overtake our normally resilient and positive outlook. If we get stuck here, we will metaphorically drown.
So how do we move to the last stage, acceptance? The word acceptance in these situations does not mean what you might think.
Acceptance means that life will not change unless we accept that we must become warriors.
Passive resistance has no place in our culture, except for those moments when we need to catch our breaths. We must challenge the Left unceasingly; we must remind the country that we have every reason to celebrate our founding and traditions; we will shout from the rooftops that we aren’t going to take it anymore!
Pushing back should be foremost in our minds; making excuses or justifying anything about the Left’s behavior is no longer acceptable. We must demand the same actions and behaviors from our legislators.
We must finally resolve to Make America Great Again—starting now!
Discussion (11)
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Well said. I wish I had your eloquence.
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How kind you are, Michael! Thanks.
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I've already seen some transformation here and around the world. The Gaza strip? The next Orlando ten years from now. Why? Cheap labor. You won't see a glitzy resort being built in New England because of our unions and expensive labor. Where do the big resort chains go? Where they can get cheap labor. It's all about the labor, for construction and for running the resorts and the surrounding area. Half of the population of Gaza in under the age of 35. Trump will change their employer and source of income from Hamas to The Newest Resort on the Sunny Mediterranean: Gaza. The cheap labor is not some form of slavery. To employees, it means you start at the bottom and if you do a really great job, you can work your way up through a upwardly mobile employee promotion system. It's a great way to generate wealth.
What was this state meeting in the United Kingdom about this past week? (1) Reasserting our longstanding friendship with the United Kingdom, which puts this UK-US geopolitical block back on top of the global pyramid where we belong. Where we fell from the first year of Biden's disastrous presidency. Biden lost the Brits' respect the moment he dramatically pulled out of Afghanistan without even asking the Brits. Which leads me to reason 2 for the UK trip this past week: Afghanistan.
The Brits have a conscience that we used to have but that slipped dramatically under Joe Biden. All those Afghans who helped us in Afghanistan? The humanitarian crisis that befell our friends after Biden pulled out? That's not us.
Trump announced yesterday, quietly, that he plans to reclaim Bagram.
I was out of my chair this morning. As has often happened watching this guy, he does stuff seemingly out of the blue that I really want done.
He seems to have a sense of global politics similar to mine--even with Ukraine. I have disagreed with every single thing he has said, but I have agreed with what he's done. He's opened a door to talks with Putin, which Biden and NATO slammed shut. Putin, evil person that he is, needs to feel that the guy he's talking to can empathize with him, and that's what Trump is doing on that front. I hope it succeeds. I would have imposed the no-fly zone the minute Putin invaded Ukraine, but the world stupidly did not do that, and we are now three years into a war I believe Biden caused indirectly, and we need to resolve it somehow because of the ongoing carnage and strategic location of Ukraine and the hell-creating nukes in the situation.
Back to Afghanistan this morning:
Trump mentioned that it had strategic significance as one of the largest military air bases in the world. That's putting it mildly.
Cities grow around water. So did Kabul. It sits at the base of a mountain chain (see James Mitchner's Caravans for a really good description of the geography here), very much like Denver, Colorado. Caravans is one of the best books I've ever read simply because it gave me a geographical-topographical sense of how civilizations evolve. (His book The Source is similar in this respect.)
Geography is destiny. It's a very interesting geographical setup. The city of Kabul grew as cities do, but what made this location so spectacular was that the Afghan tribes could live and hide and escape to the mountains with whatever they could steal from the caravans going through Afghanistan. Hence the military presence guarding the caravans over the centuries.
Afghanistan is considered part of the Middle East by geographers, and I could make that case in my head. It shares some cultural characteristics with the Middle East, but also with the countries--the "-stan" countries like Turkmenistan--that surround it. It became a metaphorical exchange train station for trading with the Far East, Russia, Eastern and Central Europe, and the Balkan states. Because it was a well-trodden path, it had waystations, overnight stops. Think the major highway systems in the United States: routes 95, 70, 80, and 90. Horses. Trains. Trucks. Anything that could travel over land and mountains. Mountain passes found and cleared. Watering holes along the way for horses and humans.
It's just the way it is.
I often thought that GW, someone I continue to admire very much, should have held a five-minute press conference and simply pointed to a big wall map. People would have seen the connection from Kabul to Baghdad quickly. :) Look at the waterways, airways, and highways.
Obama spoke forcefully for two years against the war in Afghanistan. So much so that I thought he would pull us out as soon as he was elected. That did not happen. Instead, he made a mess of our work in Iraq, but he kept our presence in Afghanistan throughout two of his terms. I got to thinking that our generals must have shown him a map. :) :)
On that disastrous day in August when Biden's babysitters left him alone in Washington unsupervised and he decided to pull out everything American from Afghanistan, handing the Taliban Bagram Airbase and a list of the Afghans who had been helping us, he gave an interesting speech, in which he said that he had said to Obama, "We have to get out of there, but he didn't listen to me." That sentence has been edited from the official White House version that I've linked to, but I remember him saying it that week. The ego here was unreal to me. "Obama didn't listen to me." That was the basis for our petulant president's decision.
At any rate, Trump is talking about reclaiming Bagram. That is vital to global security, and I couldn't be happier today.
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Marci, your optimism and pleasure over our transformation is wonderful. But here is my question: are you concerned that the Left is going to continue, and work even harder, to stop our progress? Also, how do you think he'll take back Bagram without bombing it all to hell? What will be left? I can't imagine that the Afghans are simply going to give it back to us.
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I am confident that he will get it back somehow for us to use.
As for the Left, they will always be with us, and I'd miss them if they weren't. They are my friends and neighbors, and just as in the United Kingdom, they are a permanent "opposition party," which is good for us. Let the debates go on forever. :) :) The debates will sharpen our minds.
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