Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Accepting our Grief

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), British author.

Having to accept Bush’s presidency for a second time is a difficult proposition to swallow. A friend mentioned the other night that having to suffer a Kerry loss and acknowledge four more years of a hard-right agenda is akin to going through the five stages of dying as Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described them:

  • Denial and isolation: "This is not happening to me."
  • Anger: "How dare God do this to me."
  • Bargaining: "Just let me live to see my son graduate."
  • Depression: "I can't bear to face going through this, putting my family through this."
  • Acceptance: "I'm ready, I don't want to struggle anymore."

The Misanthrope has decided to amend these stages as we prepare for the January inauguration of George W. Bush:

  • Denial and isolation: “How can 59 million people be so stupid”
  • Anger: How dare God do this to me and 55 million others
  • Bargaining: Make the U.S. Democratic Senators strong enough to filibuster hard-right legislation
  • Depression: I can’t bear to watch or listen to this knucklehead offer an insincere hand to the opposition while letting thousands of soldiers die for a war we did not need
  • Acceptance: I’m fed up with politics; there are more stupid people than smart people

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